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Our week's biggest local newsmakers and moments dissected.

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Hello and welcome.

I'm Nick Haynes, and thank you for joining us on our weekly journey through the week's most impactful, confusing and befuddling local news stories hopping on the weekend review bus.

With us this week from KMBC nine News chief political analyst Michael Mahoney, Kevin Collison from City Scene, KC from our own digital newsroom here at Kansas City, PBS, Marie Sanchez and from KCUR News Now, if you ever wanted to be on television, head to your local rally house this week.

You can bet local news crews are going to be camped out in the store's parking lot so they can tell you how cheap shirts, scarves and hats are just flying off the shelves.

Make no mistake, the Chiefs are the biggest news story in town just ahead of their AFC championship game.

But just as big, if not bigger for Kansas City leaders is that the NFL draft will be in town in just a matter of weeks.

Union Station is the site for what has become one of the biggest events in pro football.

It'll be here before we know it.

It will run from April 27th through April 29th.

And Kevin Collison putting on this event doesn't come cheap.

The Kansas City Council just approving $3 million to help host the televised showcase.

One council member saying it takes money to throw a party.

But what is Kansas City getting for all that money?

Well, the folks at the Kansas City Sports Commission think we're going to get 100 plus million dollars in direct spending from all of them.

They always say things like that.

Well, if it's anything like what I saw being set up for in Nashville a couple of years ago, I mean, they took over all of Lower Broadway, which is the big honky tonk district, had a huge stage.

They drew over 300,000 people to this thing.

So it has come from just being a television thing about ten, 15 years ago to being a major draw for folks who are NFL fans.

But don't look about 350,000 visitors visit, KC says, 40,000 hotel nights.

Really, Lisa.

I am a little bit more skeptical on this one.

I think any time there's a major sporting event announced, there are always these promises of huge economic impact.

And I don't know that there are many studies that really bear that out.

I think we have to take it into account where people aren't spending their money if they're going to the NFL draft or, you know, how many people who live in the area who might avoid the area altogether because of this influx of people downtown.

I agree with Lisa on this.

These economic impacts are often overblown.

And the thing about it is, is most definitely people will come from around the country for this draft.

It's become a wonderful marketing tool for the for the NFL and their off season.

You know, we've received quite a few emails from our viewers about the city's plan for the draft.

Alan asks, What is the city doing about all this trash?

He says It's everywhere, particularly on the sides of the highway.

When you come in from Casey Airport, Kevin, what message will that send visitors?

Well, I hope somebody wakes up no doubt to the responsibility that they apparently don't know they have, which is to take care of all the debris and weeds along the highways.

I had a story this week on city scene about a fire that broke out behind a building down on the crossroads.

It was a homeless encampment, but they'd been there for years.

The fence had broken down.

The owner had asked Moda to fix the fence.

They never did.

He offered to buy the land.

They wouldn't even get back to him.

And you just any any observer on our highways, particularly on the Missouri side, the Kansas City side, it's atrocious.

And I don't even know if Modoc realizes that's part of their job to clean debris and weeds from the highway right away.

Just because a story takes up multiple pages in the Kansas City Star, does that mean it's important?

What are we to make of a new Kansas City Star exposé this week that finds Burns MacDonald the losing bidder on the KC Airport project has been awarded $62 million by a panel of judges after it's revealed that an attorney hired by the city inappropriately used his position to undermine the company's bid.

So it was disqualified from consideration.

I have to say it's a massive story in terms of its length.

There's a lot of twists and turns, but should we be clutching our pills this week, Lisa?

And perhaps more importantly, will it have any impact whatsoever on the opening of this new KC Airport, which could be happening in March?

I will.

I'll answer your second question first, which is I don't think that this story will have an impact on the opening date or on taxpayers for this for this current project.

However, I think this is a really important cautionary tale.

When we have massive, massive infrastructure projects like this, the biggest in Kansas City's history, there cannot be enough scrutiny to that.

The process has to be transparent.

And I think the next thing we have to take from this is that the attorney at the center of this story has also been in talks with the Kansas City Royals on a potential move downtown.

This is the same person who drafted an M.O.

for the city that left the city on the hook for major four major financial repercussions if this deal fell through.

And we have to make sure that that does not happen again.

One or the other implications for this, Kevin?

Well, I think it is a big story in the sense of you're talking about one of Kansas City's largest law firms.

BLACKWELL One of Kansas City's largest privately owned engineering firms, Burns and Mac, are one of the largest public works projects we've had in many years.

Around here.

It's a scandal by any definition.

It's a big story.

But but this happened many years ago.

This is not this is, you know, five years ago or so.

Yes.

Yes.

It doesn't impact taxpayers because the person's there.

It's the law firm that has to pay that $62 million.

It's not going to affect the opening at the airport for the rest of us.

Why should we care, Mary?

Well, when you talk about transparency, when you talk about how the sausage is made in this case, how the terminal was made, it's very important.

But I think for the average person, what they care about in terms of that airport right now is, is it going to still open on time?

Will my flight connect?

Will my bag be there?

That's more of the general.

This for anyone who watches government and government private partnerships, it is important because it is the process and it shows how things can get undermined.

You know, here's another money story for you.

Jackson County in Kansas City apparently can't agree on a regional jail.

So they're building to case you all news talking about Kansas City officials now moving forward with a plan to build a $150 million city jail if talks failed on a proposal to find space for Kansas City inmates in the new Jackson County detention Center now under construction a couple of miles north of Arrowhead Stadium.

What I find remarkable about the story is that there's all this talk about cutting police funding.

A big effort and block incarceration.

And now we want to spend more than a half a billion dollars to detain people, not even just not one, but two jails.

Why can't they get along on this?

Lisa?

I wish I had an answer for that.

To me, this is a total failure of two local governments that serve largely the same population, failing to work together on something.

Now they'll, the Jackson County legislators will tell you, adding adding space for Kansas City puts us over budget.

Kansas City Municipal Court will say our inmates have different needs than the people you're incarcerating in Jackson County Jail.

But to your point, to spend all of this money for two facilities that may end up being across the street from each other is is ridiculous.

And Kansas City has to still find the money for this $150 million, I think.

Would it be a bad look if they were to use the marijuana tax money that they're trying to put on the ballot in April for this?

Well, I don't know if anybody has actually talked about that, but there was an interesting little angle in there where Mayor Lucas was quoted as saying he might try to divert some police funding for this thing, which could put him right back in the hot seat with the police commission because they had a huge row last year when the city tried to use some police budget moneys for other purposes.

So this could put them right back in that.

And I agree it is a pathetic situation where you're right, these are pretty much the same populations we're talking about and why these two communities, which again, gets to the question is, why don't we do what Wyandotte County did and merge the city and the county and stop having any of this stuff going on?

All that.

I would agree.

And it is there a little bit different populations and that you're hoping that what people generally are at in a city a municipal charge for don't end up in a county a more serious charge and it does have a huge impact on our specialty courts.

They've had a lot of trouble because they don't have that stick anymore, a carrot and stick sort of thing that if you don't go along with, say, your domestic violence case and what we view as you can do something to mediate, then you're going to end up back in jail.

Well, there's no jail.

There's no jail space.

Two weeks later than advertised, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly finally delivered her State of the State address this week.

You may remember she hit the pause button on the annual speech earlier this month after coming down with COVID.

Her office now claims it was a false positive test.

That meant she was left delivering her speech this week on her birthday.

A little Republicans joining in the singing.

It's customary to give a gift to the birthday boy or girl.

Did Republicans say Governor, as it's your special day, we'll just say yes to everything on your wish list?

Michael Mahoney Yes.

We'll immediately eliminate the sales tax on food, drop that tax on diapers and tampons.

Yes.

To that.

Back to school sales tax holiday.

You want it?

And yes, to wiping out the tax on Social Security payments to less well-off seniors.

No.

Is the answer to all those questions.

This speech by Governor Kelly earlier this week had almost no news in it in the conventional sense of the word.

Everything you talked about were ideas that she had been laying out either during the campaign or since then.

The the purpose of this speech was to set down her marker, lay out her agenda to a Republican House and Senate with super majorities in it.

She may get some buy in on the grocery tax.

We'll see.

We'll see on that.

Some on the other stuff, perhaps the Social Security tax break for seniors might might get some traction.

But the other things that she's been talking about, medical marijuana, Medicaid, those sorts of things had long been on our agenda.

Our probably D.O.A.

in the way that she wants to have it happen with respect to the legislature.

So she didn't try to top Mike Parson, the governor of Missouri, who last week said we were going to expand I-70.

She didn't say we're going to remove all the tolls, for instance, from I-70 in Kansas just to try and get one up on Missouri.

She did.

She did not.

And Mike is right.

This the governor Parson in Missouri did did break some news during his speech with that announcement in Kansas.

We had her budget released weeks before the speech.

We knew exactly what was in there.

And he's exactly right.

Now, how about raising the minimum wage in Kansas, lost in a haze of holiday parties at the end of the year, Missouri hiked its minimum wage to $12 an hour.

It means low wage workers in Missouri and almost $5 more now than they count about party in Kansas.

But is that about to change?

Johnson County Senator Ethan Colson this week introduced a bill that would raise the Kansas minimum wage from being one of the lowest in the country at 7.20 $0.05 to $16 an hour by 2027.

There are enough lawmakers who would say, What the heck, Let's do this.

Mary.

Perhaps we'll see.

I'm kind of thinking they might not go for it, although we probably really need to point out that we're already behind the curve and where inflation is in productivity, in relationship to wages.

I mean, if you really do that math, which economists do all the time, the minimum wage ought to be around 24.

Even I've seen as high as $27 an hour.

We're talking we're still going to be arguing over 725.

That's a problem.

That's the bigger issue.

In 2018.

Voters in Missouri passed the increase in the minimum wage gradually.

It's now $12 an hour.

We were told at the time if this was to be passed, there would be businesses exiting Missouri, heading over to Kansas.

Did we really see that?

Kevin As far as I know, it did not have any effect.

In fact, we have a labor shortage still.

I mean, these places are struggling.

Every fast food place you go to has a sign on the window saying, you know, help needed and all kinds of other businesses.

So I don't think it played out that way at all.

You know, over the weekend, America mark the 50th anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion in the nine months since the Supreme Court overturned that landmark ruling, the issue remains certainly far from settled on both sides of our state line in Kansas, there were hearings this week on a bill that would give local governments the right to ban abortions.

It's considered a legal workaround after Kansas voters rejected new abortion restrictions last year.

It's a strategy being employed in several of the states.

Five towns in Nebraska voted to ban abortion within their city limits in November.

Is there anything in the law to stop that from happening here?

Michael Yeah, the Supreme Court of Kansas is the main obstacle in this because in 2019 they ruled that there was a right in the state constitution for women to have bodily autonomy.

That law and that opinion is still on the books.

When the legislature passes whatever they're going to pass in this regard, and I expect them to pass something, it'll run right up against that ruling in 29.

But I see Mary, the new attorney general in Kansas, Kris Kobach, has said he wants and is asking, appealing for the Supreme Court to now revisit that landmark decision on abortion that they made.

Are they do they have to do that?

Do they have to listen to him or can they just rebuff his efforts?

I don't know, interest.

But I mean, I think Chris Kovac's efforts are going to be multifaceted.

And so you're going to see a lot of things percolating up, either of how he's going to challenge perhaps what is already on the books, maybe try and get people to the legislature to tweak those laws.

You're going to just see an awful lot of churning continue to occur.

Telemedicine, you know, most abortions now do not happen surgically.

They happen through a medicinal.

And there's arguments, lawsuits already going on at the federal level over just that process.

You're just going to see a lot of different different topics or different ways to come at this.

On the Missouri side, a lot of the push has been to change the way make it more tough, more difficult to get issues on the ballot in Missouri in an attempt to head off a potential abortion measure in Missouri that would legalize abortion.

But I keep hearing that over and over again.

If you go to the grocery store, you don't see anybody collecting signatures at this point in time.

Is that really happening?

I think I think we're still talking about it.

I think a antiabortion lawmakers want to want to head off this effort and are trying to pass legislation to make it more difficult to get this sort of thing on the ballot.

Some want a two thirds majority to approve new new amendments.

We'll see what I look for.

A serious effort now.

Kansas City Mayor Quinta, Lucas has just returned from Washington after meeting with the nation's mayors.

And according to The Washington Post, one of the big topics of conversation was trading ideas on a problem facing almost every city in the nation dead downtowns.

It's clear, the paper argues, it's no longer COVID fears holding workers back from returning.

While tourists are back, office workers are still missing in action.

It's 1215.

This sidewalk should be full, but there's nobody here.

There are lots of stories being run like this in cities across America.

This one from a local news station in Portland, worried an absence of office workers will lead to spiraling downtown property values and increased crime and homelessness.

Kevin Collison Is that Kansas City's experience?

All we bucking that trend.

What you're seeing here is a lot of cities people aren't coming back to the office the way they were at COVID.

Therefore, the buildings have a lot of vacancies and a lot of the people who depend on office workers to buy lunches to do services over the noon hour are struggling.

One of the things that we've done very well in Kansas City over the years is renovate our obsolete and vacant office buildings into apartments.

We and that is one of the things that you're seeing coming out in the national media that cities need to do more of, which is convert all this empty office space into housing and into other uses in Kansas City, whether it was through design or not, we have been doing that now.

It's been a big part of why our downtown population has increased, because we have had good tools to renovate these older buildings that had been vacant.

And that is a strategy that's being talked about now all over the United States.

And another big strategy, of course, in Kansas City is to add a ballpark downtown that will also rejuvenate our downtown area.

By the way, Royals owner John Sherman.

Yes, we'll see about that.

Just announced two more stops on his listening tour for the downtown Paul Park idea.

The Ball Park Roadshow heads the Urban Youth Academy next to the 18th and Vine Jazz District Monday night and then to the Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence on Tuesday evening.

Michael, it's been crickets on this for quite some time.

Are the Royals now prepared to say at these sessions where they will build and the details of how they will fund Kansas City's newest stadium?

No, I don't think they're going to tip their hands nearly that far on either either one of those questions.

I suspect that the royals have a short list of preferred sites for this, but they're not they're not tipping their hand on that.

It mean.

Yet.

And they're certainly not saying yet how much money they're willing to put into this and how much money they're going to ask for from the from from government to to make this happen.

Those are very, very big questions that need to get.

And I know you were big into that first listening session, Kevin, because you said so on this program, but are you surprised that we haven't heard any more details since?

It's been really from everybody I've talked to, they pretty much have identified a site and it's that area called the East Village because it's got enough property for them to be able to do all the other development around it.

And I do think what Sherman said was the it's a $2 billion deal.

The half of it is this private development that'll go around it, he said.

They're not going to be looking for any public money for that.

And he also said a substantial amount of money for the stadium itself would come from the team.

But he also said that at least right now the plan is only to ask Jackson County voters to extend the current sales tax that's going out to Truman Sports complex.

One more item, though.

The big, huge factor that everybody is going to wait to see, perhaps after we win a Super Bowl is what do the chiefs want?

Because that is the other big part of this deal.

And we have not heard crickets, to use your phrase, from the Chiefs.

Are you surprised, though, Mary?

We haven't heard any more details on any of this for such a huge project?

No, not at all.

And in a way, I don't know that that's not part of the strategy.

And I think it's a strong strategy.

The airport originally didn't have a lot of public support.

So what they're doing now is letting people have those conversations.

Here's kind of what we're thinking, but without enough specifics for anyone to really go crazy negative on it, let people it over, let people think about it.

That's all.

That's part of how you get these things passed and supported.

You know, it's a huge shift for Kansas City, so people need time.

Yeah, especially in light of the fact and there's so much residual affection for lack of a better word on the sports complex and the stadium for for the royals and the Chiefs for that matter out there.

You know they loved Kemper too, despite the fact that it was in a god awful location in the West Bottoms.

They love the airport because it was so convenient this city and I don't think we're all that different from other cities tends to take a tremendous connection to things.

And even though they are clearly obsolete, they still fight it.

And the other thing is we're not you know, one of the things there was a baseball author, Paul Goldberger, came in.

He said we were probably better that we didn't do the ballpark downtown 15 years ago because downtown was still extremely weak, he says.

Now, this downtown area is on a good roll.

There's a lot of great stuff going on.

The ballpark would only reinforce it.

We're not talking about a silver bullet here.

We're talking about building on the momentum we've already got going downtown.

That's the point I was trying to make about ballpark being the last thing in terms of redevelopment.

A few thousand more jobs would help to.

Well, as we don't have Kevin Collison with us often I do want to make sure we hit before we leave another big trend story and that's what's hot on earth is happening on the plaza this week.

Another longtime restaurant closes its doors.

Zocalo has been on the plaza for nearly a decade.

They're also right next to that big hole left by Nordstrom's decision not to move from Oak Park Mall.

That was in April.

And no mammoth retailer has come forward and said, yes, we want to be there in all of that time.

Kevin, you.

Know, there's been no progress on what was supposed to be the Nordstrom site.

And there are a couple of promising things.

You know, restaurants come and go, but we do have this group of folks, some very influential civic leaders who have formed what they're calling the Plaza Area Council, and they want to be a umbrella organization to try to look out for the plaza.

And for what it's worth, I had a story the other day about a new Aloft hotel that just opened up, which will be next to another hotel with a food hall.

So, you know, the Plaza definitely needs TLC.

But Mary Zocalo was one of the few local restaurants that were on the plaza.

And as somebody reminded me, they were just on the plaza and said, Boy, look what's there.

Now we have a LensCrafters, a Cinnabon and an 90 ends pretzels.

It's becoming no different than a suburban mall.

I would agree.

I mean, it just it they don't have the you know, the Kansas City iconic places.

There's no halls down there anymore.

There's no starkers.

There's none of those really the high end, really better boots.

But, you know, Helzberg is it's just changing.

So and that will be the struggle going forward.

What do you do?

I don't know what the answer is.

I hope that they can save it, revitalize it, make it into something that makes sense for now.

When you put a program like this together every week, you can't get to every story grabbing the headlines.

What was the big local story we missed?

One dead, three wounded after a shooting at a Kansas City funeral home.

It comes as Wallethub singles out Kansas City for having one of the country's biggest homicide problems.

It ranks number five on a new violence list restricting drag shows and transgender athletes.

In sports, the ACLU now claims Missouri leads the nation in the number of bills targeting the LGBT community.

Matt Lucas testifying against some of those measures this week is tick tock.

What ails this.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley grabbing the headlines.

Has he proposed a nationwide tick tock ban and move over Prince Harry.

Former Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo making the rounds as he releases his new book.

The Washington Post lists him as the seventh most likely Republican to win his party's nomination for president.

Scammed and out of nearly $700,000, the FBI now investigating how digital thieves wiped out the campaign account of Kansas Senator Jerry Moran and the countdown is on.

The Biden legal pot just over a week away in Missouri.

All righty.

Righty.

Lisa, did you pick one of those stories or something?

Completely different?

I picked a story that developed a little bit last weekend about this apartment building in northeast Kansas City where a fire knocked out power and left residents without heat.

Not to single out this specific apartment because I think going into those department, it told us what 4 to $500 a month can look like in this city.

And it is people, children living next to vacant apartments where people are coming, breaking into the building.

It looks like no railings on stairs.

It looks like paint peeling from ceilings and a lack of utilities there.

I think it really highlights how important and what kind of crisis our affordable housing situation is in Kansas City.

Michael.

The debate underway in Jefferson City over LGBT rights and the drag show controversy in in Colombia.

It's already got the attention of the new attorney general, Andrew Bailey.

Mary.

One of the things that Governor Kelly did say very prominently within her speech was kind of a please knock it off on these types of bills on her side of the state line and really just for ballast, even as we try and understand how to even write about this, there are almost a half a million public schoolchildren in the state of Kansas, pre-K through 12.

Last year there were around seven, six or seven students who were transgender in athletics.

I'm Kevin and I got to throw my lot in with these guys.

It just gets disheartening.

The culture war issues, they are after books and libraries thereafter, kids supposedly being exposed to horrible drag queens.

And in the meantime, the state's rural economy is in shambles.

You know, higher education.

We've got gun violence in Saint Louis, in Kansas City.

That's a disgrace to the nation being, frankly, the world.

I know that we will say our week has been reviewed courtesy of Lisa Rodriguez from KCUR lNews and Kevin Collison from City Scene, KC from Flatland, the Kansas City PBS Digital NEWSROOM, Marie Sanchez and Michael Mahoney from KMBC nine News.

And I'm Nick Haynes.

Next week, the four immediate past mayors of Kansas City join us as we bring together Emanuel Cleaver, Kay Barnes Sly James and Mark Funkhouser in a special hour long edition of the program.

Would you join us Until then, from all of us here at Kansas City, PBS, be well, keep calm and carry on.