Kay's Buffet

Kansas Citians are so freaking generous.

Maybe it's the good feeling going around because the Chiefs look practically unbeatable. Or maybe it's the rapidly approaching Christmas season. Or maybe it's just some heartland kind of thing.

Whatever it is, look no further for an example of the bleeding-heart nature of your friends and neighbors than the November 4 election, when KCMO voters chose to increase taxes on each and every purchase they make, just so they could help out not themselves but a needy class of locals who no doubt feel fortunate to live and work in this city: Wealthy developers.

Starting April 1, a little extra gets piled on the price of every mattress, milk shake and motorcycle you buy so the city can add about $1 million to the tens of millions it showers on rich landowners each year.

Yes, this tenderized T-bone understands that generous Kansas Citians actually voted for the sales-tax increase to bail out the crappy local bus system.

But as Casey Logan pointed out in these pages recently ("Busted," October 23), part of the reason the Area Transportation Authority needed rescuing in the first place was that millions of dollars of transit money have been siphoned away to pay for millionaires and their erections.

The three-eighths-cent sales-tax increase approved by voters only adds to that generosity. About 6 percent of what the city collects from the new tax will go to tax-increment-financing breaks for developers.

And developers do love TIF, which stands for "Receipt? We don't need no stinking receipt."

As a recent audit by the city's resident spoilsport Mark Funkhouser shows, Mayor Kay Barnes' handpicked minions appointed to the TIF Commission have been playing fast and loose with taxpayer money -- cutting checks for developers who, instead of submitting verified receipts for their construction projects, have been reimbursed millions based on no more proof than numbers stated in spreadsheets, expense reports, business letters and, hell, as far we know, martini-stained napkins.

The meatheads at the Economic Development Corporation, who supply personnel to the program and hand out TIF checks, couldn't account for about a quarter of the $31 million we paid in fiscal 2002 to the builders and attorneys on the TIF gravy train -- who also just happen to be major contributors to Queen Kay's coffers.

Herroner herself, not surprisingly, has done what she can to stifle any discussion of the audit, which, in any other city -- particularly one with a daily paper that wasn't comatose -- would amount to a major scandal.

Councilwoman Becky Nace found that out when she tried to bring up the findings of the TIF audit in an October 2 City Council business meeting. After the council had finished hashing out the items on its agenda, Nace raised the topic under "general discussion," which is traditionally when our leaders get to ramble about whatever's on their minds.

"I'm shocked that this didn't cause an earthquake, but a whimper," she said.

"There are reasons," Barnes replied with a tone that this meat patty, after listening to a tape of the meeting, can only describe as icy.

"OK, I want to hear them," Nace responded.

At that point, Councilman Jim Rowland -- who was once so out of favor with Barnes that he considered running against her but, after receiving a plum committee assignment, has become her lap dog -- stepped in to note that Andi Udris, head of the Economic Development Corporation, has vowed to do a better job.

But Nace wouldn't be dismissed so easily.

"This seems criminal to me," she said. "I'm wondering why we're not calling for an investigation.... Is there criminal activity?"

"No," Barnes replied sternly. "There is no criminal activity."

The Strip loves a decisive public figure, but unless she has a law degree we don't know about, Herroner is hardly in the position to make such a pronouncement.

Once again, suck-up Rowland stepped in to protect Her Majesty: "I will reiterate. Mark [Funkhouser] never said anything about criminal activity."

This slab of protein hardly needs to remind Rowland that Funkhouser, an auditor, has as little standing to identify criminal activity as Barnes has to dismiss it.

When Rowland tried to change the subject, saying that time was running out, Nace sounded stunned.

"I think we have time to talk about $228 million," she said, referring to the amazing amount of cash that's still promised to Herroner's cozy circle of developer friends and their attorneys.

But if Nace got the brush during that meeting, she really got shut out after it.

Queen Kay has made sure no one will be asking those kinds of nasty questions in her presence in the future. At a recent meeting, she cut off Alvin Brooks when the mayor pro tem tried to bring up new business, saying that doing so was against the law. Turns out she's right. By statute, only prearranged topics can be addressed by council members at public meetings.

And now that she's got something she doesn't want brought up, Queen Kay's sticking to the rules like Courtney Love two days before a custody hearing.

Plaza Frights
Notorious cyberpirate John Barry appears to have struck again, and this time his victim is the Country Club Plaza.