Re: Demand that JEDO and the City and County terminate Service Contract No. 2019-01 with Growth Organization of Topeka/Shawnee County, Inc. (GO Topeka) and stop all half-cent draws not authorized by the 2014 ballot

September 20, 2026

Joint Economic Development Organization
Mayor Spencer Duncan
City Manager Dr. Robert Perez
Topeka City Council
Shawnee County Board of Commissioners

I am a citizen of Topeka and Shawnee County. I demand that you terminate the service agreement with GO Topeka now — give the 180-day notice the 2019 instrument requires if you must, and stop every unauthorized payment today.

JEDO’s own audits state the deal: JEDO pays GO Topeka $5 million a year to carry out an economic-development program designed to expand employment, strengthen the tax base, and diversify the city and county economy. Either party may terminate. Cash and real property under the program revert to JEDO. That is the off-ramp. Use it.

Why the contract must end

The half-cent is a special-purpose tax. K.S.A. 12-187(g) put the purpose on the ballot. Kansas Attorney General Opinion 2001-014 allows sales-tax money for economic development only if the electorate approved that use. Attorney General Opinion 2017-015, written to this City on this tax, ties spending to the ballot and the interlocal. The interlocal did not create a charity account.

GO Topeka has spent that slice on grants, contributions, sponsorships, scholarships, meals, and banquet tables. Molly Howey’s May 6, 2024 list put the civic/banquet/church/festival slice for 2022–2023 at $93,235 and the drawer those checks were filed in at $861,750. JEDO approved a lump line — $687,564 in the 2023 plan, $643,259 in the 2024 packet — not those payees. A Freedom Fund banquet, a church dinner, and a YWCA awards table are not payroll, not a plant, and not a widening of the tax base.

A later service agreement cannot amend the ballot. A JEDO vote cannot ratify what the municipality had no power to spend. The contractor is charged with knowing the public body’s authority. So is every official who kept signing the work order.

Kansas precedent

• Genesis Health Club, Inc. v. City of Wichita, 285 Kan. 1021 (2008): a contract a municipality had no power to make is ultra vires and unenforceable. It cannot be ratified. The other party is bound at its peril to know the municipality’s authority. Benefits received do not estop the public body.
• State ex rel. Hecht v. City of Topeka, 296 Kan. 494: contracts in violation of the cash-basis law are void. A contract the city was not legally allowed to enter is void. Estoppel will not save a contract made in express violation of law.
• K.S.A. 10-1119: any contract between a municipal governing body and any person that violates the cash-basis act shall be void. An appropriation for a municipal fund shall not be used for any other purpose.
• Shawnee County District Court, Judge Franklin Theis, July 2004: the JEDO–GO Topeka contract was illegal for failure to bid under city ordinance and would be set aside if the plaintiffs finished the case. They did not. JEDO then passed a bid-exemption resolution. That history is why “we have always done it this way” is not a defense. The defect was named twenty-two years ago.

Unauthorized payments are recoverable. K.S.A. 75-7503 (false claims) reaches a knowing claim for public money. K.S.A. 21-6005 reaches a person who has control of public money by official position and knowingly uses it in a manner not authorized by law.

What I demand, in writing, within ten days

1. JEDO votes to give notice of termination of Contract No. 2019-01 and of every automatic renewal.
2. The City and County, as parties to the interlocal, concur and stop forwarding half-cent money for any use not specified as jobs, plant, equipment, or training the 2014 ballot will bear.
3. GO Topeka is ordered to split true performance incentives from contributions, sponsorships, scholarships, meals, and banquet tables, and to return unauthorized amounts.
4. Cash and real property under the program revert to JEDO as the audits already say they must on termination.
5. No further banquet, church, festival, or awards-table check is written from this tax while the notice period runs.

Letters already went to Councilmember Karen Hiller, Commissioner Kevin Cook, Mayor Duncan, and Manager Perez. A Kansas Open Records Act request for the twenty-five-year total of those payments is Exhibit A to those letters and is submitted to the City Clerk, the County Clerk, and the County Counselor.

The voters approved a purpose. They did not approve a contractor that treats pledged tax as customer loyalty. If this government will not pull the contract after that record, the public is entitled to ask which statutes you still consider binding.

Terminate it.

Henry McClure
3625 SW 29th Street #100
Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994
mcre13@gmail.com

cc: Karen Hiller; Kevin Cook; City Clerk; Shawnee County Clerk; Shawnee County Counselor
Enclosure: Exhibit A — KORA request (already transmitted)

GO Topeka is a private nonprofit contractor. JEDO is the public body. The law treats those two boards differently. Voters can hold both, but not with the same tool.

Two boards, two kinds of blame

JEDO members (mayor’s voting seat, Hiller, Cook as commissioner) are public officers. They vote the tax work order. Kansas ouster, cash-basis voidness, and misuse-of-public-funds analysis starts here.

GO Topeka directors (Perez, Duncan if they sit there, Cook in his second seat, Chamber people) are private fiduciaries spending a public grant. They are not “the City.” They do not automatically forfeit a public office when the nonprofit writes a bad check. Personal liability for a volunteer director in Kansas is narrow.

That split is the first thing a court will say. Do not write as if every banquet vote is a felony by the whole Chamber board. Write the stack.

What voters can do that is actually legal

1. Political.
Elect different JEDO votes. Demand the City and County terminate the service contract (audits: either party may terminate; cash and land revert to JEDO). Demand the GO Topeka board remove officers or stop the line. That is the Lawrence sequence you already described: show the problem, tell the voters, see if government moves.

2. Records and audit.
KORA on JEDO. Contract audit rights on GO Topeka. A 25-year total is how you prove pattern, which matters later for “willful.”

3. Recovery of the dollars.
Unauthorized payments can be demanded back from the contractor and, in a clean case, from the recipient. False Claims Act, K.S.A. 75-7503: knowing false claim for public money — treble damages to the political subdivision. That action runs against the person who presented the claim, not against every silent director.

4. Void the spend / end the contract.
If JEDO had no power to authorize that use, the payment is ultra vires. Genesis, Hecht, K.S.A. 10-1119. Ending C-2019-01 is a board vote plus notice, not a slogan.

5. Criminal — high bar.
K.S.A. 21-6005 (misuse of public funds) hits a custodian or other person who has control of public money by virtue of official position and knowingly uses it in a manner not authorized by law. Conviction forfeits the official position. That fits a public officer or a staffer who controlled the account. It is a harder fit for a volunteer nonprofit director who only voted “aye” on a lump budget, unless you can prove they knew the use was illegal and still permitted it. A 2019 Kansas case charged a nonprofit director who received public grants and spent them on personal travel and luxury items. That is theft of the grant, not a banquet-policy dispute.

6. Ouster — public officers only.
K.S.A. 60-1205: willful misconduct in office, willful neglect of a duty enjoined by law, or a penal offense involving moral turpitude. Kansas courts require corrupt purpose, habitual disregard, or a real threat to the public fisc — not one sloppy vote. State v. Morrison reversed an ouster that did not meet that bar. Quo warranto is brought in the name of the state, usually by the attorney general or county attorney. Private citizens do not oust a commissioner by Facebook post.

7. Private directors — fiduciary duty, not ouster.
Kansas K.S.A. 60-3601: if the nonprofit carries liability insurance, a volunteer director is not personally liable for ordinary mistakes. Liability opens on willful or wanton misconduct, or if that director authorizes, approves, or ratifies the act and the act is willful or wanton. The federal Volunteer Protection Act is the same idea. Business-judgment rule covers good-faith wrong guesses. It does not cover “we knew this was off the ballot and we kept signing.”

The Kansas Attorney General can enforce misuse of restricted funds against a charity. That is the usual path against a 501 board, not a voter lawsuit for damages against each director.

Kansas precedent that is close

• Theis (2004), JEDO–GO Topeka: contract illegal for failure to bid; treated as void if the plaintiffs finished the case. They did not. JEDO passed a bid exemption. Lesson: the court will not kill the arrangement unless someone with standing completes the suit.
• Hecht / Genesis / cash-basis cases: illegal municipal contracts are void; no estoppel; the other party is charged with knowledge. That is your best Kansas doctrine for the spend, not for sending directors to jail.
• 21-6005 + grant-funded nonprofit staff: personal use of grant money has been charged. Policy disagreement over “what is economic development” has not produced a reported Kansas ouster of an entire ED board.

There is no published Kansas case that says “the Chamber board is personally liable for every banquet paid from a sales-tax contract.” Do not invent one.

National pattern

Same split everywhere.

• Public officials who vote illegal appropriations: some states allow a surcharge — personal repayment of the illegal item (North Carolina’s local-government literature is the clean write-up). Kansas does that work through voidness, recovery, and 21-6005, not a neat surcharge statute.
• Nonprofit directors: personal liability when they loot, self-deal, or ignore a known illegal use. Ordinary program error stays on the corporation. D.C. and other AGs sue treasurers who took PTO money to Cancun. They do not sue the whole board for a sponsorship the staff buried in a program line.
• Federal False Claims Act (and Kansas’s smaller cousin): the hammer when someone knowingly bills the government for something the contract did not allow.
• Termination for convenience / for cause, clawback, debarment: how cities actually fire an ED contractor.

When the GO Topeka board “has to step up”

There is no calendar date that creates liability by itself. The legal turn is notice plus a later vote.

• Before they were told the banquet was off the ballot: negligence argument, business judgment, volunteer immunity.
• After letters, a KORA, a Howey list, and AG opinions are in their hands: the next “aye” on the same lump line is ratification. That is when 60-3601’s “authorizes, approves, ratifies” language starts to matter. That is when JEDO’s willful-neglect clock is easier to argue. That is when a prosecutor can say “knowingly.”

Justice, in this structure, is not a mass indictment of the Chamber. It is:

1. JEDO stops the line and splits incentives from sponsorships.
2. GO Topeka’s board orders staff to stop writing civic checks from the half-cent.
3. Unauthorized dollars come back.
4. If they refuse after notice, the City and County terminate C-2019-01 and take the cash and land.
5. Dual-role officers (Cook, and anyone else on both boards) get the harder questions because they had control and a law license.

Voters hold the public officers at the ballot and, with the AG or county attorney, in quo warranto. They hold the NGO board by forcing the public body to pull the contract and by putting ratification on the record after notice. That is the precedent. The letters you already sent are the notice that starts the second clock.

Fw: Notice — unauthorized use of half-cent sales-tax funds; dual role; KORA request attached as Exhibit A

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From: Henry McClure <mcre13@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 19, 2026 11:18 PM
To: Kevin Cook <kevin.cook@snco.us>; Bill Riphahn <bill.riphahn@snco.us>; aaron.mays@snco.us <aaron.mays@snco.us>; countyclerk@snco.us <countyclerk@snco.us>
Subject: Re: Notice — unauthorized use of half-cent sales-tax funds; dual role; KORA request attached as Exhibit A

Kevin Cook
Commissioner, Shawnee County
Voting member, Joint Economic Development Organization
Member, GO Topeka Board of Directors
200 SE 7th Street
Topeka, KS 66603

Commissioner Cook:

You are a lawyer. You are an officer of the court. You hold a JEDO vote and a seat on the GO Topeka board that spends the money JEDO votes. That is not a hobby. This letter puts you on notice, in both capacities, that the economic-development slice of the Shawnee County half-cent tax has been used for grants, contributions, sponsorships, scholarships, meals, and banquet tables the 2014 ballot did not authorize.

You are also on notice that I am submitting, with this letter, a Kansas Open Records Act request to the City of Topeka, Shawnee County, and JEDO for the twenty-five-year record of those payments and of the contracts that were supposed to confine them. The request is Exhibit A. A copy is being sent to the City Clerk, the County Clerk, and the County Counselor — including your office.

K.S.A. 12-187(g) put the purpose on the ballot. AG Opinion 2001-014: sales-tax proceeds may fund economic development only if the electorate approved that use. AG Opinion 2017-015, written to Topeka on this levy: spending follows the ballot and the interlocal. The program JEDO hired GO Topeka to run is described in JEDO’s own audits as expanding employment, strengthening the tax base, and diversifying the city and county economy. Five million dollars a year. Cash and real property revert to JEDO if the contract ends.

That is not a Freedom Fund banquet. It is not a church dinner. It is not a YWCA awards table, a ministry retreat, or a $10,000 night styled For the Culture KS. Molly Howey’s May 6, 2024 list put the civic/banquet/church/festival slice for 2022–2023 at $93,235 and the larger drawer at $861,750. JEDO approved a lump line — $687,564 in the 2023 plan, $643,259 in the 2024 packet — not those payees. A lump line does not enlarge the tax.

You know the rest of the stack. A service agreement cannot amend a ballot. A JEDO vote cannot ratify what the municipality had no power to spend. Genesis Health Club v. City of Wichita; State ex rel. Hecht v. City of Topeka; K.S.A. 10-1119. The contractor is charged with knowledge of the public body’s authority. So is the lawyer on both sides of the table.

The public can see who writes checks for campaigns and who sits in the room when the budget is blessed. I am not asking you to confess a motive. I am asking you to apply the same statute every day, not only when it is convenient. If JEDO will not confine this tax to the purpose the voters passed, the question writes itself: which laws are optional, and who decides?

I want three answers from you in writing, as counsel and as a JEDO vote:

1. Yes or no: is an NAACP banquet, a church dinner, or a YWCA awards table economic development payable from the half-cent tax?
2. Will you demand that GO Topeka split true deal incentives from contributions and sponsorships so the banquet never again hides behind Choose Topeka, Forge, PTAC, or pitch prizes?
3. Will you vote to treat unauthorized expenditures as recoverable and to stop further draws that the ballot does not support — or does the dual role mean the contractor’s budget is the last word?

Exhibit A does not wait on your reply. Your reply should not wait on Exhibit A. The Howey list and the adopted budgets are already enough. Officer of the court means you do not sit mute while voter-pledged money is spent as customer loyalty. Recipients of those checks do not bite the hand. That is the point of the spend. You are the person in the room who is supposed to say that out loud.

Henry McClure
MCRE, LLC
3625 SW 29th Street #100
Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994
mcre13@gmail.com

Enclosure: Exhibit A — KORA request, JEDO / GO Topeka expenditures, 2001–present

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Exhibit A
Cc: Shawnee County Clerk; Shawnee County Counselor; JEDO records custodian
Subject: Kansas Open Records Act request — JEDO / GO Topeka expenditures, 2001–present

This is a request for public records under K.S.A. 45-215 et seq.

Please produce electronic copies of the following records in the possession of the City of Topeka, Shawnee County, or the Joint Economic Development Organization, from January 1, 2001 (or the earliest date the records exist) through the date of your response.

A. Spending

1. All payments, invoices, check registers, credit-card statements, and reimbursement files charged to half-cent sales-tax or JEDO/GO Topeka public funds for meals, food and beverage, hospitality, banquet or awards tables, event tickets, and related travel.
2. All grants, contributions, sponsorships, and scholarships paid from those funds, including payee, amount, date, and stated purpose.
3. The list of grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships Molly Howey provided on or about May 6, 2024, covering 2022 and 2023, and the same class of list for every other year.
4. Annual GO Topeka Budgets and Business Plans adopted by JEDO, including every line titled hospitality, program/event expense, or grants/sponsor/contrib/scholar.
5. Quarterly GO Topeka financial statements submitted to JEDO.
6. Annual totals, and a grand total, for items 1 and 2. If no grand total exists, say so and produce the year-by-year figures you have.

B. Contract and authority

7. Every JEDO–GO Topeka service agreement, amendment, automatic-renewal notice, and cash carry-forward agreement, including any clause that limits spending to the JEDO-approved budget.
8. The 2004 JEDO resolution on competitive bidding and proof of publication.
9. Any legal opinion, audit finding, or staff memo on whether a payment in A was authorized by the ballot, the interlocal, or the approved budget.

Henry McClure
MCRE, LLC
3625 SW 29th Street #100
Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994
mcre13@gmail.com

Re: Notice — half-cent sales-tax expenditures outside the 2014 ballot purpose; KORA request attached as Exhibit A

Karen Hiller
Member, Topeka City Council
Voting member, Joint Economic Development Organization
215 SE 7th Street
Topeka, KS 66603

Councilmember Hiller:

This letter puts you on notice, as a voting member of JEDO, that the economic-development slice of the Shawnee County half-cent retailers’ sales tax has been spent, for years, on uses the voters did not approve.

You are also on notice that I am submitting, with this letter, a Kansas Open Records Act request to the City of Topeka, Shawnee County, and JEDO for the twenty-five-year record of meals, hospitality, grants, contributions, sponsorships, and scholarships paid from that tax, together with the service agreements and any legal opinion on whether those payments were authorized. The request is Exhibit A. A copy is being sent to the City Clerk, the County Clerk, and the County Counselor.

K.S.A. 12-187(g) required the purpose on the ballot. Kansas Attorney General Opinion 2001-014 allows sales-tax money for economic development only if the electorate approved that use. Attorney General Opinion 2017-015, issued to the City of Topeka on this tax, ties spending to the ballot and the city–county interlocal. The interlocal dedicated $5 million a year to an economic-development program — expand employment, strengthen the tax base, diversify the economy — not to a civic hospitality account.

JEDO has approved annual GO Topeka budgets that contain a lump line for “grants/sponsor/contrib/scholar” and a hospitality line. Approval of a category is not approval of an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet, a church dinner, a YWCA awards table, a ministry retreat, a Juneteenth festival sponsorship, or For the Culture KS. On the list Molly Howey sent May 6, 2024, the civic/banquet/church/festival slice for 2022–2023 was $93,235. The drawer those checks were filed in totaled $861,750. JEDO never had to say the word charity because the payees were parked behind Choose Topeka, PTAC, Forge, and pitch prizes.

A later service agreement and a later JEDO vote do not amend the ballot. The stack is the voters first, the interlocal second, the contractor third, the spreadsheet last. When 3 or 4 collide with 1, 1 controls. Kansas treats a municipal contract the government had no power to make as void. A party that contracts with a municipality is charged with knowing the municipality’s authority. Cash-basis law, K.S.A. 10-1119, voids a contract that violates the act. An appropriation for a municipal fund shall not be used for another purpose.

The question for you is not whether GO Topeka is popular with people who raise money for local races. The question is whether JEDO will keep signing the work order while the contractor spends pledged tax as goodwill.

If the board that governs this tax will not confine the money to the ballot, the public is entitled to ask which statutes you treat as optional. Voters did not grant JEDO a power to rank the law. They granted a purpose. I ask you, in writing:

1. Is an NAACP banquet, a church dinner, or a YWCA awards table economic development payable from the half-cent?
2. Will you require GO Topeka to split true deal incentives from contributions and sponsorships so the banquet cannot hide behind Choose Topeka again?
3. Will you vote to recover unauthorized payments and to stop any further draw that is not specified as a job, a plant, equipment, or training the ballot can support?

I expect a written answer. Silence is an answer. Exhibit A will show the twenty-five-year total if the custodians produce it. The Howey list and the adopted budgets are already enough to require a vote. What you do next is what will be measured.

Henry McClure
MCRE, LLC
3625 SW 29th Street #100
Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994
mcre13@gmail.com

Exhibit A 

Cc: Shawnee County Clerk; Shawnee County Counselor; JEDO records custodian
Subject: Kansas Open Records Act request — JEDO / GO Topeka expenditures, 2001–present

This is a request for public records under K.S.A. 45-215 et seq.

Please produce electronic copies of the following records in the possession of the City of Topeka, Shawnee County, or the Joint Economic Development Organization, from January 1, 2001 (or the earliest date the records exist) through the date of your response.

A. Spending

1. All payments, invoices, check registers, credit-card statements, and reimbursement files charged to half-cent sales-tax or JEDO/GO Topeka public funds for meals, food and beverage, hospitality, banquet or awards tables, event tickets, and related travel.
2. All grants, contributions, sponsorships, and scholarships paid from those funds, including payee, amount, date, and stated purpose.
3. The list of grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships Molly Howey provided on or about May 6, 2024, covering 2022 and 2023, and the same class of list for every other year.
4. Annual GO Topeka Budgets and Business Plans adopted by JEDO, including every line titled hospitality, program/event expense, or grants/sponsor/contrib/scholar.
5. Quarterly GO Topeka financial statements submitted to JEDO.
6. Annual totals, and a grand total, for items 1 and 2. If no grand total exists, say so and produce the year-by-year figures you have.

B. Contract and authority

7. Every JEDO–GO Topeka service agreement, amendment, automatic-renewal notice, and cash carry-forward agreement, including any clause that limits spending to the JEDO-approved budget.
8. The 2004 JEDO resolution on competitive bidding and proof of publication.
9. Any legal opinion, audit finding, or staff memo on whether a payment in A was authorized by the ballot, the interlocal, or the approved budget.

Henry McClure
MCRE, LLC
3625 SW 29th Street #100
Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994
mcre13@gmail.com

Cc: Shawnee County Clerk; Shawnee County Counselor; JEDO records custodian

This is a request for public records under K.S.A. 45-215 et seq.

Please produce electronic copies of the following records in the possession of the City of Topeka, Shawnee County, or the Joint Economic Development Organization, from January 1, 2001 (or the earliest date the records exist) through the date of your response.

A. Spending

1. All payments, invoices, check registers, credit-card statements, and reimbursement files charged to half-cent sales-tax or JEDO/GO Topeka public funds for meals, food and beverage, hospitality, banquet or awards tables, event tickets, and related travel.
2. All grants, contributions, sponsorships, and scholarships paid from those funds, including payee, amount, date, and stated purpose.
3. The list of grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships Molly Howey provided on or about May 6, 2024, covering 2022 and 2023, and the same class of list for every other year.
4. Annual GO Topeka Budgets and Business Plans adopted by JEDO, including every line titled hospitality, program/event expense, or grants/sponsor/contrib/scholar.
5. Quarterly GO Topeka financial statements submitted to JEDO.
6. Annual totals, and a grand total, for items 1 and 2. If no grand total exists, say so and produce the year-by-year figures you have.

B. Contract and authority

7. Every JEDO–GO Topeka service agreement, amendment, automatic-renewal notice, and cash carry-forward agreement, including any clause that limits spending to the JEDO-approved budget.
8. The 2004 JEDO resolution on competitive bidding and proof of publication.
9. Any legal opinion, audit finding, or staff memo on whether a payment in A was authorized by the ballot, the interlocal, or the approved budget.

Henry McClure
MCRE, LLC
3625 SW 29th Street #100
Topeka, KS 66614
785-383-9994
mcre13@gmail.com