The Pitch:

By David Martin

A few weeks ago, Kansas City, Missouri’s City Council let a piddly $36,000 contract with an engineering company bloat all the way up to $22 million. (You read that right: three additional zeroes.) That same day, the council held up a nonprofit group’s measly $125,000 funding request.

Care to guess which deal would have put money in the hands of black people?

Those who guessed the lower amount get a gold star for healthy cynicism.

OK, I’m not playing fair. My opening question gave you limited information. I didn’t note that Mayor Mark Funkhouser and other council members clearly weren’t happy that the $36,000 contract, a five-year-old agreement with Burns & McDonnell, was being rewritten for the 10th time. And I didn’t tell you that the nonprofit, the 12th Street Heritage Development Corp., had made a special request because sloppy bookkeeping kept it from traditional funding sources. Read more…

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