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.