Frank White opponents could have enough signatures for recall vote — but there's a catch

Yahoo

25-04-2025

Supporters of an effort to oust Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. feel confident they can get a recall measure on the ballot this summer.
If they are successful in forcing a countywide vote – and then prevail at the polls – White's nine-year tenure as the top elected official in county government could come to an end.
But while close to meeting the county charter's requirements to force an election, there's no assurance that they will get enough signatures on petitions to do so.
Asked whether he wanted to discuss the recall effort, the former Kansas City Royals second baseman turned Democratic politician declined the offer.
'Not really,' he said in a text message Thursday morning. 'I'll just continue to do the work.'
Organizers of the grassroots effort to unseat White announced this week that they had gathered and election officials had certified more than half of the 42,900 signatures necessary to put it on the ballot — and that they're continuing to circulate petitions.
Leaders of the volunteer effort are centered mostly in eastern Jackson County. They put out a schedule on Facebook saying when and where they would be collecting signatures this weekend in Independence, Lake Lotawana, Blue Springs and Lee's Summit.
And while their effort persists, White's opponents are hoping another significant chunk of signatures will count in their favor soon too, putting a recall election within reach.
A well-funded dark money group has gathered about 29,000 potentially additional names supporting a recall, 'if not more,' according to that group's spokesman.
But there's a catch.
Democracy in Action has not turned those signatures into the election boards for verification, and for now, they aren't able to.
The political consulting firm the group hired to gather those signatures is holding onto them until Democracy in Action pays them in full for that work.
'We definitely owe them,' Democracy in Action Executive Director Guy Howard said Thursday. 'We kind of went out there without having the funds, so we had some credit with them, and they did the work. And now they're just waiting to be paid.'
Should even half of those signatures be certified by election officials, it could be enough to force a recall election.
'There's still people out there working on collecting signatures, kind of the grassroots movement, because we don't know if Democracy in Action is going to come through and get those released or not,' said County Legislator Sean Smith, who has been a vocal supporter of the recall campaign.
The recall effort grew out of taxpayers' dissatisfaction with how White and county assessment director Gail McCann Beatty set values on real estate for property tax purposes during the biennial reassessment cycle in 2023.
Many homeowners saw big spikes in the taxable values of their homes then and blamed White for the tax increases that followed.
Recall organizers began circulating recall petitions at shopping centers, gun shops and community events that summer. Their efforts had largely stalled by mid-2024.
But consternation grew after White said he would oppose the rollback order that the State Tax Commission issued last August.
In its controversial order, the state commission required Jackson County to reduce the assessed values on three-fourths of the county's 300,000 real estate parcels because the commission said the county's 2023 reassessment process was flawed.
Taxpayers were not given proper notice of their rights to appeal those higher values in 2023, the state commission said, and ordered the county to retroactively cap most assessment increases from that year to 15%.
Signature-gathering events were organized through Facebook groups like Fight Jackson County Missouri Assessments and Recall Frank 7% White – a reference to the single-digit percentage increase on White's own home in 2023, when many others saw huge spikes.
As of this week, those volunteers had turned in about 23,000 valid signatures. They submitted another 6,000 unverified signatures on Wednesday, Smith said.
Many of the latter will likely be disqualified for a variety of reasons. Names of people who don't live in Jackson County don't count, for example.
And because the recall campaign has been going on so long, some people might have signed their names twice on separate occasions many months apart.
'We anticipate we're going to start encountering quite a few duplicates,' said Tammy Brown, the Republican co-director of the Jackson County Election Board. 'People are going to forget they signed it. They're going to think it's a new one. So we anticipate seeing some duplicate signatures, and the system tracks that, so only one signature will count.'
The county election board verifies the signatures of people who live outside of Kansas City. The Kansas City Election Board verifies those with Kansas City addresses.
If enough signatures are certified, a recall election must be held within 60 days of that certification, according to the county charter. Brown said it would be up to the county legislature to set that election date.
As it is an odd-numbered year, there are no regular election dates remaining on this year's election calendar in Missouri, which means a recall would need to be a special election.
A special election typically costs county and Kansas City taxpayers around $1 million, Brown said, but the cost could be lessened by reducing the number of polling sites and poll workers to staff what she thinks would be a low-turnout election.
It also might be cheaper if another taxing district wanted to add a vote for something else to the ballot, but so far none has set an election.
Were the recall petition drive left to volunteers alone, many more months might pass before the organic effort could reach the threshold needed to put White's removal up for a vote.
But Democracy in Action's involvement has potentially sped things up. As a nonprofit formed as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization under the tax code, the group does not have to reveal its donors and has not volunteered that information when asked.
But Missouri campaign finance laws do require Democracy in Action to reveal who it is paying to work on its behalf and for what purpose.
Between November and the end of January, the group spent $182,325, according to its campaign finance reports. All but $7,800 of that was paid to the Kansas City political consulting firm co/efficient.
And of that, $135,000 was spent on collecting signatures. 'Paid petitioners,' is all the reports say.
Howard would not say how much more Democracy in Action owes co/efficient for collecting signatures since its last payment on Jan. 24. His focus now is on raising enough money to pay the firm back.
'We believe we're done. We believe we have enough signatures,' he said.
Even recognizing that some signatures will be disqualified, 'we think we have enough to get us over the hump,' Howard said.
Should there be a recall vote, Democracy in Action won't be alone in needing to ramp up fundraising to bolster a campaign.
As of its April 11 campaign finance report, White's committee Citizens for Frank White Jr. had just $4,900 in the bank.
White was once a hometown hero. As a youngster, he helped build the Truman Sports Complex as a laborer.
He won a starting position on the Royals in the 1970s and went on to earn eight Gold Gloves and help the team win its first World Series title in 1985. He later was manager of the organization's minor league team in Wichita and announced Royals games on TV.
In 2014, he won a seat on the county legislature largely based on his reputation as a ballplayer. The legislature appointed him county executive in January 2016 after his predecessor resigned.
He won election that November to finish out Mike Sanders' term and was re-elected in 2018 and 2022.
But as early as 2019, some residents were growing dissatisfied with his insistence on setting property values for tax purposes as close as he could to their actual market values, which is the standard set by state law.
Even then, some called for his recall. Tempers flared again in the 2021 reassement cycle and boiled over two years later.
In addition to his differences with Smith and other legislators over the issues of property value reassessment, White and a majority of the legislature have been at odds over spending issues for the past two years.
His veto of the proposed 2025 budget has White and five legislators in a stalemate that has resulted in the legislature refusing to approve most spending measures since the first of the year.
On Wednesday, Smith, who is a Republican, and two Democratic legislators – Manny Abarca and Venessa Huskey – sent a letter to the state's Republican attorney general requesting an investigation.
Smith, Abarca and Huskey accused White of failing to work full time as the county's top administrator because during the baseball season he is a coach for the minor league Kansas City Monarchs.
But primarily, they want Andrew Bailey to look into White's recent actions with regard to the budget and his refusal to follow the State Tax Commission's order to roll back 2023 assessments.
White says the rollback order that the tax commission reissued this week is improper and, according to a judge, unenforceable.
White claims that the county has followed state law and done things by the book. He recently agreed to cap property reassessment increases for this current year at 15% because of uncertainty over how litigation over the tax commission order will turn out. But he did so reluctantly, saying the cap would be unfair to those whose values stayed flat or fell because the tax burden would shift on them.
In a prepared statement, he called the letter to Bailey 'a deeply disappointing attempt to mislead the public through false and politically motivated accusations.'