Kansas City News Blog

Pete Levi, the extravagantly compensated president of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, revised history with a guest commentary in this morning's Kansas City Star.

Levi used the occasion to pat himself and his friends on the back for confronting climate change in a meaningful way. Levi wrote that chamber leadership had been "visionary when it comes to sustainability and carbon reduction strategies." As an example, he cited the Climate Protection Partnership, which helps businesses reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Levi wagged a finger at anyone who would suggest the city's business elite had been "obstructionist." But obstruction is good word to describe the chamber's actions at key moments in the city's failed pursuit of climate-helping light rail.

In 1997, then Mayor Emanuel Cleaver II famously branded a light-rail proposal as "touristy froufrou" after meeting with the chamber officials. Cleaver's remark halted the momentum of an Area Transportation Authority plan to build a line from the River Market to the Plaza.

In 2001, Cleaver's successor, Kay Barnes, backed a city-sponsored plan to lay track from Vivion Road to 75th Street. But the chamber and other powerful interests spent $200,000 opposing the initiative, which failed at the polls. (For more on the subject, read this and this.)

So now Levi, who is retiring, wants a laurel for all he's done to make Kansas City more sustainable. But the fossil-fuel-powered technology that he and most everyone else in the city's workforce relied upon to get to work this morning tells a different story.