mcre Media .......[Henry McClure Publisher]: 09/15/26

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Re: minutes

 The December 3, 2024 GO Topeka Full Board minutes show how the 2025 public budget was locked in before JEDO voted.

 GO Topeka is the contractor. JEDO is the public board that appropriates half-cent sales-tax money to that contractor. On December 3 the contractor’s own board approved (1) the 2025 Budget and (2) the 2024–2025 cash carry-forward. JEDO took up those same items eight days later.

 Commissioner Kevin Cook is listed as a GO Topeka board attendee at that meeting. He also sits as a voting member of JEDO. The same person helped approve the contractor budget and later votes, as a public officer, on whether that budget may spend voter-pledged sales tax. Mayor Padilla was in the room for the GO Topeka vote as well.

 What the minutes do and do not show:

They show a lump-sum 2025 budget and carry-forward passed on a simple motion. They do not attach a recipient list for “grants/sponsor/contrib/scholar.” They do not name banquet tables, church dinners, festival sponsorships, or awards tables as authorized economic-development costs.
They show Innovation Center 2.0 Option 1 was contested. The chair invoked a super-majority because of “robust discussion.” The vote to use that procedure was 15–7 of 22 (68%). The vote to approve Option 1 was 14 yes, 5 no, 2 abstain of 20. That is a facility/lease commitment from carry-forward, not a banquet line, but it is the same pot: special-purpose sales tax held by the contractor.
A section of the KORA copy is redacted. The public record of what else the board did that day is incomplete.

 Sequence that matters for unauthorized spending:

GO Topeka board approves the annual budget and carry-forward (Dec. 3).
JEDO later adopts that budget and carry-forward and, on Dec. 11, 2024, approved Innovation Center 2.0 construction of about $6.59 million against an $8.44 million carry-forward balance.
The approved budget still contains a grants/sponsorship/contribution line as a category. It still does not itemize civic/banquet checks. Approving the category is not a finding that those checks match K.S.A. 12-187(g), AG Op. 2001-014, AG Op. 2017-015, the 2014 ballot/interlocal, or “grant-fund spending as specified in the annual budget.”

 The legal questions stay the same: is a banquet or civic sponsorship economic development payable from the half-cent; will deal incentives be split from contributions/sponsorships so they cannot hide inside Choose Topeka, Forge, PTAC, or pitch prizes; and will any check not specified in the JEDO-approved budget be treated as unauthorized.

 These minutes add one process fact: the contractor board, with a sitting JEDO vote in the room, passed the budget first. JEDO’s later vote did not create a recipient-level authorization that the GO Topeka minutes themselves do not contain.

From: Yahoo Mail <hedgetree@yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2026 7:33 AM
To: Henry McClure <mcre13@gmail.com>
Subject: Fw: minutes

Find this interesting?

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Rhiannon Friedman <rhiannon.friedman@topekapartnership.com>

To: Yahoo Mail <hedgetree@yahoo.com>

Sent: Monday, September 14, 2026 at 03:42:35 PM CDT

Subject: RE: minutes

Carol,

Thank you for reaching out regarding the GO Topeka Board meeting minutes.

As a private nonprofit organization, we are not generally subject to the Kansas Open Records Act (KORA), so our Board meeting minutes are not public records under KORA.

K.S.A. 45-240 does provide specific requirements for nonprofits that receive public funds, but those requirements are focused on documenting and reporting the receipt and use of those public funds rather than Board meeting minutes.

For that reason, we are not required to provide Board meeting minutes under K.S.A. 45-240. If you are looking for financial information related to public funds, we’re happy to help with that request.

Thank you,

Please take a survey and share your perspective about the future of Topeka, Shawnee County.

English: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GTStrategy

Spanish: El Plan Estratégico Comunitario de 5 Años para Topeka y el Condado de Shawnee

From: Yahoo Mail <hedgetree@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 9, 2026 8:02 AM
To: Rhiannon Friedman <rhiannon.friedman@topekapartnership.com>
Subject: minutes

Good morning, I would like to read the minutes of the Go Topeka meetings. I read they were online, but I can't find them could you help? If not, I would like to make a Kora request for the Go Topeka minutes from May 2025 to present. Thank you, Carol Marple 785-221-2306

KORA - Subject: Half-cent sales tax — unauthorized sponsorship/contribution spending vs. ballot purpose and JEDO contract

Rhiannon —

 Below is a law-only note you can copy into an email. No personal framing. It is written so a lawyer or JEDO member can answer the spending question on the statutes, the AG opinions, the ballot/interlocal, and the GO Topeka contract.

 The Shawnee County half-cent retailers’ sales tax is a special-purpose tax. K.S.A. 12-187(g)(1) requires the governing body to specify the purpose or purposes for which the revenue will be used and to put a statement of that purpose on the ballot. The 2014 extension language pledged the tax for economic development and named infrastructure/quality-of-life projects. Spending must stay inside that approved purpose.

 Kansas Attorney General Opinion 2001-014 holds that sales-tax proceeds may be used for economic development only if the electorate approved that use. A later contractor or board cannot expand the purpose because a dinner, banquet, or sponsorship “feels like vitality.” AG Opinion 2017-015, issued to the City of Topeka on this same county half-cent, confirms that use of the tax follows the ballot proposition and the city-county interlocal. The interlocal and JEDO’s annual appropriation to GO Topeka are the operating documents that implement the ballot.

 The GO Topeka service contract is tighter than the statute. JEDO appropriates a fixed annual amount for the economic-development program. Grant, contribution, and sponsorship spending is permitted only as specified in the annual budget JEDO actually approves. A banquet table, church dinner, ministry retreat, festival sponsorship, NAACP Freedom Fund banquet, YWCA awards table, or similar civic/event check is not payroll, not a plant, not equipment, not a job-creation incentive, and not a widening of the tax base. Those items are contributions/sponsorships.

 On May 6, 2024, GO Topeka produced its own list of “grants/contributions/sponsorships/scholarships” for 2022 and 2023. The civic/banquet/church/festival slice that cannot reasonably be classified as a factory or employment incentive totaled $93,235. The larger drawer into which those checks were placed (Choose Topeka, PTAC, Forge, pitch prizes, and similar program labels) totaled $861,750. Combining banquet and sponsorship checks with deal incentives under one program name does not convert the banquet into an authorized economic-development expenditure. It only conceals the character of the spend from the board that is required to approve the budget.

 Three written answers are requested from counsel and from JEDO:

Yes or no, with citation: is an NAACP banquet, a church dinner, a YWCA awards table, or a comparable civic/festival sponsorship an economic-development cost payable from the half-cent tax under K.S.A. 12-187 et seq., AG Op. 2001-014, AG Op. 2017-015, the 2014 ballot/interlocal, and the GO Topeka contract?
Will JEDO require GO Topeka to split true deal incentives (real property, equipment, employment, training tied to a project agreement) from contributions, sponsorships, and scholarships so banquet and civic checks cannot be booked inside Choose Topeka, PTAC, Forge, or similar buckets?
Will JEDO treat any line that is not specified in the approved annual budget as unauthorized grant-fund spending and require it to be reclassified or repaid?

 If the expenditure is not on the ballot, not in the interlocal allocation for economic development as JEDO defined it, and not specified in the JEDO-approved budget, it is an unauthorized use of special-purpose sales-tax money. That is the legal issue.

Look here - this is against the law

This is why we want the report

Henry McClure

Time Kills Deals

785.383.9994

444