Will KC area bus agency CEO be forced out? After closed-door meeting, board won’t say
After a two-hour, closed-door meeting to discuss whether the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority’s CEO and president, Robbie Makinen, would keep his job, the authority’s board of commissioners adjourned Thursday without announcing the results of that discussion.
According to sources who were privy to an earlier conversation, Makinen was informed a week ago by a member of the board after another three-hour closed session that Thursday would be his last day. He could either resign or be fired.
But it was unclear at the end of this week’s executive session whether Makinen was still on the KCATA payroll or not.
“The KCATA board of commissioners has met to discuss the status of our CEO,” chairman Melissa Bynum said. “Because this is a personnel matter, we will have no further comment pending further action of this board. And that is our statement for today.”
Makinen was out of town and as of 3:25 p.m. had heard nothing from the board.
For the last six and a half years, he has run the independent governmental agency that coordinates bus and para-transit service across the metro area. Prior to taking the job in December of 2015, the 57-year-old Makinen was chairman of the KCATA board, on which he had served since 2007.
The board’s members represent local governments throughout the region that, through an act of Congress in the 1960s, created the KCATA to establish a public bus system out of the disjointed public and private bus systems people then relied on.
Kansas City, with three seats on the board, had lobbied for Makinen’s ouster.
City Hall and the KCATA
Mayor Quinton Lucas and some members of the city council publicly criticized the KCATA for months , saying the agency wasn’t working quickly enough to improve bus service that has had poor reliability since even before the pandemic and has been slow to recover due to a shortage of bus drivers.
They also felt that the transportation’s authority emphasis on economic development projects detracted from the KCATA’s primary focus, reliable mass transit.
More recently , city officials’ dissatisfaction with Makinen boiled over when, as The Star first reported Thursday morning, he attempted to thwart city officials demands that the KCATA hand over millions of dollars that the transportation authority received from the federal government to help KCATA weather financial hardship caused by the pandemic.
Ultimately, the KCATA gave into those demands and agreed to let Kansas City use $22.5 million in transit money to replace 84,000 streetlights, as well as $10 million on two other projects.
But that agreement came only after Makinen failed to get a bill passed in the Missouri Legislature that would have blocked the city from using transit money for non-transit purposes and after he called the Federal Transit Administration to see if they had objections.
According to at least two sources with direct knowledge, Lucas was upset when an official from the Biden administration called him to ask why the city and KCATA were at odds.
Makinen’s relationship with Lucas deteriorated after that.
At a recent meeting with the chairwoman and vice chairman of the KCATA, City Manager Brian Platt demanded that Makinen be replaced or the city would consider finding a vendor other than the KCATA to run the city’s bus service.
Makinen’s time at KCATA
Former Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders named Makinen in 2007 to be the county’s representative on the KCATA’s board of commissioners.
Makinen had been one of Sanders’ closest aides, serving on a number of public boards and as the county executive’s liaison to the mayor and top officials of cities in eastern Jackson County.
At the KCATA, he has been a champion of providing public transit to people who relied on it to get to their jobs and doctor’s appointments.
Blinded by a medical condition in middle age, Makinen was also devoted to providing better transportation option for people like himself who can’t drive and need help getting around town.
