Subject: You exploded over a hot dog. The banquet checks did not even raise your pulse.

Commissioner Cook:

You are a lawyer. You are an officer of the court. You sit on JEDO with a vote. That is not a hobby. That is a higher duty than the rest of the room, and you have spent years reminding people that you know the rules better than they do.

So let’s talk about the rule you applied to me.

You came at me personally over a hot dog. Electioneering, you said. A frank in a bun. Mustard. Onions. You treated that like I had stuffed the ballot box. Fine. You set the temperature. Live at that temperature.

Now apply it.

On May 6, 2024, Molly Howey sent me GO Topeka’s own list of “grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships” for 2022 and 2023. I published it. The line includes church dinners, ministry retreats, Juneteenth festivals, an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet, YWCA awards tables, Peace and Justice sponsorships, and a $10,000 night called For the Culture KS. The civic/banquet/church/festival slice that no honest person can call a factory is $93,235. The whole drawer Howey dumped those checks into totaled $861,750, because the banquet was hidden behind Choose Topeka, PTAC, Forge, and pitch prizes so JEDO would never have to say the word charity.

You are the lawyer on the board. You know K.S.A. 12-187 et seq. The purpose goes on the ballot. Special-purpose sales tax stays inside that purpose. Kansas AG Opinion 2001-014: sales-tax money may fund economic development if the electorate approved that use — not if a contractor later decides a church dinner “feels like vitality.” AG Opinion 2017-015 is your county’s own half-cent. Spending follows the ballot and the interlocal. The GO Topeka contract is tighter than both: no grant-fund spending except as specified in the annual budget JEDO approves.

A banquet table is not payroll. A ministry retreat is not a plant. A Freedom Fund banquet is not a widening of the tax base. If you can find the electioneering statute in a hot dog, you can find the purpose clause in a $2,500 banquet check. Do not tell me the statute is too hard. You have already demonstrated you can get theological about condiments.

Officer of the court means you do not sit mute while a contractor spends voter-pledged money as a customer-loyalty program. Recipients of those checks do not bite the hand. That is the point. Public money in. Political goodwill out. You are supposed to be the person in the room who says that out loud, louder than you said it to me over a frank.

I want three things 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 GO Topeka split true deal incentives from contributions/sponsorships so the banquet never hides behind Choose Topeka again?
3. Will you use the same voice on those expenditures that you used on me about the hot dog — or was the outrage only available when the target was Henry McClure?

If a hot dog is a hanging offense, a banquet paid with other people’s sales tax is a board failure. You do not get to be the smartest lawyer in the room only when it is convenient. Read Howey’s list. Read the statute. Then get as loud as you already proved you can get.

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