SUNDAY SHOCKER - Squitiro Taking Over as Chiefs Head Coach

On the Sunday before the Super Bowl, new Chiefs General Manager Scott Pioli shook up City Hall and Arrowhead Stadium by announcing that Gloria Squitiro will be replacing Herm Edwards as Head Coach of the Chiefs, effective immediately. "Squitiro knows how to make things happen in Kansas City," Pioli explained, "and she's not welcome at her first choice of workspaces, so I thought we should let her try her hand at coaching a football team."

Ed Ford, of course, was the first to criticize. "She has no experience!", he shouted from the back of the room, where nobody had been paying attention to him. Pioli replied that Herm Edwards had plenty of experience, and "look where that got us." Clark Hunt chimed in that Ed Ford really ought to spend at least a little time doing something other than attacking the Mayor and his wife, but Ed Ford shook off the suggestion. "I paid Pat Gray good money to conduct a 'push poll', and I want my money's worth. If I don't have Gloria to attack at City Hall, somebody might start asking why I haven't accomplished anything."

The traditional media were in a state of shock. Steve Kraske and Deanne Smith were seen sadly handing over thick files to Jason Whitlock and Joe Posnanski, and CJ Janovy was rumored to be in despair. "Squitiro was Janovy's muse. CJ managed to create a cover story out of nothing but snark and Photoshop," a source from within the very quiet Pitch newsroom whispered. "I gotta go and empty the trash now."

In her first address to the team, Squitiro was clearly relaxed and in her element. "You big lugs," she shouted, "you've probably heard a lot about me. Most of it's not true, but losers like to talk. I like to get results. If I took a funny-looking, dour accountant and ran a campaign that made him Mayor, it will be easy to take a 2-14 group of losers like you to the Super Bowl. Alvin Brooks was a helluva lot tougher to beat than the San Diego Chargers, I tell ya. From now on, we're wearing orange!", she shouted, and then murmured, "and I'll be attending your team physicals, too." The players squirmed a little upon hearing that.

One of the Chiefs players, speaking under condition of anonymity, seemed pretty pleased with the choice. "Sure, she hasn't coached before, but she never worked in a Mayor's office before, either. She's smart, aggressive, and not afraid to say what's on her mind. I think she might fit into the NFL even better than she did City Hall."

Brandon Clark, a skycap at the Kansas City Airport, was enthusiastic about Squitiro's new role. "I've seen her stand up for herself when she thought the officiating was questionable, and she will dominate the sidelines."

Contacted at her Northland home, Frances Semler remained bitter about her experience with the City. "I just hope she takes a hard look at that Gonzalez guy!" she shouted, before slamming the door on a reporter.

Clark Hunt seemed especially thrilled with the salary negotiations. "She works for free!", he exclaimed. "That frees up lots of money to spend on draft picks. And I think she might be able to convince Funk that city support for the Jackson County Sports Complex should keep on flowing. Can't get much further East Side in Kansas City than Arrowhead Stadium, so keep that money flowing."

Jan Marcason expressed frustration that Squitiro had circumvented her anti-Volunteer Ordinance. "Volunteers are bad people," she complained. "We need to find a way to regulate everyone who works for free in this city, especially Gloria Squitiro. Ed Ford suggested in one of those famous backroom meetings that I should have named my ordinance the anti-Gloria ordinance, and included a provision that told her to stay in her house at all times, but I didn't listen to him because I wanted to make it look like I was spending time on something that wasn't so mean-spirited and foolish. I guess he was right. Mean-spirited and foolish isn't really unusual on this Council."

Mayor Mark Funkhouser seemed happy with the turn of events. "I'll be spending most of my office hours at Arrowhead Stadium now, rather than my house in Brookside. It's more convenient for the residents of the East Side, and I'll be holding Town Hall meetings at the Stadium on a weekly basis."

Wayne Cauthen was unavailable for comment on the news. He was busy negotiating with Cordish to give them the parking concession for Arrowhead, in exchange for a handful of promises.

"This is a great time for the Kansas City Chiefs franchise," Scott Pioli gushed. "Gloria Squitiro has watched her husband try to lead 12 Council members at a time, and he's made some great plays, like the New Tools initiative, a better budget and an economic development policy, and he's made a few bad calls, too. Like a football coach, he has done it by empowering the members of the Council to make the right plays. Now, Gloria gets to try to manage 11 players on the field at a time, and accomplish her goals through them. It ought to come easy to her. She can trade the ones that aren't doing their jobs, but Funk doesn't get to do that."

(UPDATE!: I received a gentle and good-natured email from the fine folks over at FuKCed City, who pointed out that this post bears more than a passing similarity to their post of a little more than a month ago entitled "BREAKING NEWS: One Arrowhead Shocker!" and reporting that Gloria Squitiro was becoming the team's General Manager. All I can say is if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they should feel incredibly flattered. I can't even deny that I read the piece when it was posted - I read all their posts, because they're great. It must have stuck in the back of my mind, and come out in a more wordy and less original form. My apologies to the crew over at FuKCed City, and, if you haven't bookmarked them yet, add them to your list of regular reads.)

Suits, Settlements and Silliness

It's always about the money, isn't it? Maybe not, this time.

For an amount rumored to be under $50,000, Ms. Bates has settled her suit against her former friend, Gloria Squitiro. Ms. Squitiro did not even know that her insurer had agreed to the settlement, and is reportedly none too happy with the result. She wanted her proverbial day in court to disprove all the allegations made against her, but, really, that was never going to happen - the court of public opinion reached its verdict long before the facts came in, and this media environment was never going to allow that court to retry that case. If a pro-Gloria version is voiced in the forest, and Tony and Yael don't approve it, does it make a sound?

Does it strike anyone else as strange that the suit continues with the prime defendant on the sidelines?

I hope that attentive readers remember that months ago, at the peak moment of silliness in the so-called Volunteer Ordinance, I wrote "Something has been 'off' about the whole affair. . . . I have way too much respect for Jan Marcason and most of those who supported her to believe that I am seeing the complete picture. . . . As described above, the Bates case, even on its best day, wouldn't justify the expense that Marcason was proposing to spend on consultants and criminal records checks."

At this point, we now have Gloria Squitiro's liability settled, just as I had foreshadowed, for a tiny fraction of the amount the City Council wanted to spend on consultants and records checks. But the case continues on against the City Council!

While I'm confident that Ms. Squitiro is disappointed that the case got settled, I want to point out that somebody here was pretty darned smart with the money, and it most definitely was not the hysterical City Council! If I recall correctly (and I do), the only person who voted against the misguided, ineffective volunteer ordinance was Mayor Funkhouser.

So, if you're keeping score at home, we have Ruth Bates paid, we have Gloria Squitiro safely out of harm's way, and we have the City Council getting sued!

If I were Gloria Squitiro, I would take a few of my no-longer-at-risk dollars and buy a bunch of nice honey crisp apples for the council, and deliver them to their offices as a way of asking "How do you like them apples?".

Folks, it looks like all the game-playing by our squabbling, ineffective City Council has blown up in their faces.

Mayor Funkhouser Stands Up for What's Right - Political Courage versus Political Opportunism

Funkhouser has announced his intention to file a lawsuit seeking reversal of the Anti-Squitiro Ordinance, just as I argued that he must over a month ago. I hate to see litigation erupt, but the Council's attempt to take over the Mayor's office was a serious breach of governmental roles, and Mark's suit is important and justified not just for his own convenience, but for future councils and future mayors.

It has been mildly amusing to see pundits and observers get themselves worked up about Funkhouser's meetings at his home, when it has been obvious that Mark was simply "laying low" until after the Light Rail Election.

Of course, the expedient thing for Mark to do would be to simply set Gloria up outside the office and set her to work on a project of her choosing. Heck, if he asked her to take on elderly issues, or community health concerns, or some other topic, it would generate positive exposure for both of them. They could walk away from the pack of lies and backroom dealings that resulted in the "volunteer ordinance" and start building an invincible base of political capital for the next round of elections.

They know that. Heck, I know of at least one political coward who offered that advice.

But Mark has a lot more political courage than I do, and he's going to stand up for the structure of our city government. The council does not control the mayor, and the mayor does not control the council.

Mark is entirely capable of working under the control of the council. He did that for years as Auditor. He's great at it.

But it's not his role now, and it wasn't the council's role to pass an ordinance directing him on how to run his office. Politically, the council saw an opportunity to pick on Gloria Squitiro when she was down, and they took full advantage of that opportunity. They did what was easy and convenient and politically expedient.

Now Mark Funkhouser needs to be the grown-up who looks above the rat-pack politics of the 26th Floor and considers what is right for the future of our city. By going one way, he could join in the Council's political opportunism and make himself (and his wife) more popular than ever. By going the other way, he will expose himself (and his wife) to more hostility and frustration, but he will fulfill his responsibility to his office and to this city.

Thank God we elected a non-politician to the Mayor's office.

All Things Considered - Council's the Source of the Embarrassment, and Yael Expects No Gatekeeper

I winced when I heard that NPR's All Things Considered was going to be doing a story on the saga of the Volunteer Ordinance. I feared that they, like the local media, would mischaracterize the story as being about something other than the a power grab by the City Council in a misguided attempt to decide how the Mayor should run his office.

NPR got it right, but I'm still wincing. Our City Council was shown to be the source of the problem, interfering with a Mayor's decision to work with his spouse. NPR even went further and gave Yael Abouhalkah enough rope to hang himself, quoting him as "a columnist with The Kansas City Star, [who] says city residents don't need a gatekeeper in the mayor's office."

Really, Yael? You, in your infinite wisdom, have decided that Mark doesn't need a gatekeeper? Even though every Mayor since Henry Kumpf has had a gatekeeper of some sort? (Confession - I really don't know if Henry Kumpf had a gatekeeper - I just looked back at some historical KC Mayors and picked one with a funny name.) It takes guts for a columnist at the Star to issue such an opinion, sitting in an office shielded by more plexiglass and paranoid guards than a payday loan shop at two in the morning.

In the big picture, though, NPR saw that the City Council is at fault here. Mark clearly states that he just wants to be left alone to run his office and focus on the real city issues. The City Council, though, wants to play around with staffing decisions that aren't theirs to make. The KC Star is annoyed that Mark doesn't maintain an open-door policy that they themselves don't emulate.

Meanwhile, we had 21 murders in August, and the City Council wants to play games.

Last Thursday, I saw Alvin Brooks talk about a local murder, and he challenged each of us to think about how the blood of a hopeless young man is on our own hands. 5 or 6 Council members were there, fresh from their override of the Mayor's veto. Sadly, I doubt that any of them even thought about how their silly, unconstitutional game-playing was a part of the problem.

Instead of being on the national media for innovative crime solutions, we're on NPR because our City Council doesn't like the Mayor's wife. Our Council has chosen to focus its attention on the feisty Italian in a cubicle rather than the poor kids shooting each other, and that's what NPR found worthy of broadcasting.

How embarrassing.

Gloria Squitiro Having the Last Laugh?

Lately, City Councilmembers have been so twisted up inside with their seething need to run the Mayor's office that they even missed the humorous irony in their complaints that their own bogus volunteer ordinance is creating a circus atmosphere. When they're not threatening each other or behaving unprofessionally, they're whining and manipulating and pointing fingers.

Not a fun bunch to be around.

That's why it was so refreshing to see this light-hearted exchange between the always-controversial Richard Tolbert and Kansas City's favorite First Lady, Gloria Squitiro. In it, Mr. Tolbert proposes marriage, and Gloria accepts, with a letter to Mark explaining her decision. "He's a much more experienced politician than you are, and to top it off, he's much less controversial." Of course, if Mark and Gloria split up, there's an additional twist - "You are now free to hire me to work in the Mayor's office. That is, if you think you can afford me."

It's good to see that someone in City Hall still has a sense of humor and an ability to rise above the sniping and lying. No wonder Mark Funkhouser wants her in his office. I wish each of our City Councilmembers had someone like her around. It might do them some good.