Mayor Bill Skaggs?

Last week, I said that those in support of recalling Mayor Funkhouser had not given enough thought to who will succeed him. The more I look into this, the more concerned I become. Today, I've been wondering if our next Mayor will be Councilman Bill Skaggs.

I've been looking at the charter and the Missouri revised statutes, and it's my belief that the process of collecting signatures and putting a measure on a ballot must be finished before May 26, or the citizens of Kansas City won't get to decide who'll replace Mayor Funkhouser. According to the charter, if Funkhouser is removed after November 1, The Mayor Pro Tem automatically becomes Mayor. The current Mayor Pro Tem is Bill Skaggs. But that doesn't mean Skaggs will be Mayor. It's entirely possible that Maybor Funkhouser himself will choose our next Mayor. More about that later.

The first question, which few take seriously is whether the leaders of the recall effort can collect 17,000 signatures in 30 days. This seems unlikely to many. Yet, some of the people leading the recall effort are veterans of the Obama presidential campaign. The Obama campaign didn't just assign work to its volunteers. They trained the volunteers to run the campaign without the help of the paid staff. The result of this training is that campaign volunteers in Jackson county once collected 20,000 voter registration cards in a single week. To take another example, the Saturday and Sunday before the November election a single neighborhood team (roughly one eighth of the total effort in Jackson county) hit 8000 doors in midtown. Can these same people collect 17,000 signatures in thirty days? You bet they can.

So, how does this add up to Skaggs becoming Mayor? How does this add up to Funkhouser appointing his successor? To answer that, I have to stitch together a number of seemingly trivial pieces of fabric. Pay careful attention. I've tried explaining this to a few friends, and the legal minutia are hard to follow. If you find this confusing, say so in a comment. I'll do my best to rewrite the post for clarity.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. If my logic is wrong, I hope someone will correct me.

Piece 1: The Mayor has to be removed before November 1. Paragraph 208(b)(1) of the city charter says that if the Mayor's office becomes vacant in the last eighteen months of a term, the Mayor Pro Tem automatically steps in. Eighteen months before the end of Funkhouser's term is November 1. In other words, in order for us to have a say in who our next mayor is, the recall vote cannot be on the November 3, 2009 ballot.

Piece 2: The recall election must be held on August 4. Section 722 of the charter says that recall elections must be on the "next available municipal or state election held not less than forty-five days after the petition shall have been presented to the [City] Council." The only available elections between now and November 1 are June 2 and August 4. We're outside the 45 day window for both dates, but State law excludes the possibility of holding the recall election on June 2 (see Piece 3).

Piece 3: The election boards of the various counties must be notified of the election by May 26. Section 115.125 of State law requires that the city has until 5:00 P.M. on the tenth Tuesday before an election day to notify the county election boards that a recall election is to be held. For a June 2 election, that deadline has passed. The tenth Tuesday before August 4 is May 26.

The City Clerk says petition signatures must be turned in by April 28, leaving only four weeks in which to set an election date. A typical ordinance takes about three weeks from introduction to passage. However ordinances have been know to take months or even years to make it out of City Hall. If the petition ordinance is held up for any reason, the May 26 deadline could be missed. In which case, the soonest Funkhouser could be removed from office is November 3, two days past the November 1 charter deadline. If there is any provision of law that says City Hall can call an election on any day other than those already listed on the Secretary of State's web site, I can't find it. If anyone knows of such a statute, please post a link as a comment. Note also that the May 26 deadline must only be met if the council wants to put the measure before the voters on August 4. There's no law that says they can't put the measure on the November ballot.

Piece 4: The final piece is a rumor that I heard a few years ago. One of the names on the official paperwork for the recall effort is a Clay County Democratic Committee Woman named Donna Cushman. In 2005, Donna Cushman's house was destroyed by fire. Rumor has it that her insurance company tried to stiff her on the cost of rebuilding. Who, according to this same rumor, took legal action against the insurance company on Cushman's behalf? None other than our current Mayor Pro Tem, Bill Skaggs.

I still haven't explained how the Mayor could appoint his own successor. The charter says that the Mayor can appoint any sitting member of the council as Mayor Pro Tem. Furthermore, the Mayor can remove the Mayor Pro Tem and appoint someone else for any reason at any time. This begs the question, has anyone on the council been atypically chummy with the Mayor in recent weeks?