For months, Jackson County officials dodged questions about who would replace Frank White Jr. as county executive if he was recalled.
Now, voters have their answer.
Phil LeVota was sworn in as interim county executive later yesterday, three days after he was appointed by the county Legislature to the position on Oct. 13.
He was appointed to the position immediately after the Legislature concluded the last of its nine candidate interviews for the job.
LeVota, an attorney and former Democratic Party official, once worked in the county prosecutor’s office. He represented several Jackson County residents in a lawsuit against election boards to schedule the recall election date for Sept. 30. The election boards argued in that lawsuit that state law required the election to occur on Nov. 4.
LeVota told The Beacon that his number one priority for the next year will be relief for property owners who were shocked by big increases in their tax bills during the 2023 and 2025 assessment cycles.
“Every person, bar none, that I ever spoke to and have spoken to since,” LeVota said. “The reason that they voted Frank White out was the property tax assessments. … That’s clearly my mandate to fix that.”
Alongside the property assessment fixes is ongoing uncertainty surrounding stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. Jackson County voters in 2024 overwhelmingly rejected a sales tax proposal that would have helped finance renovation of Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs and a new ballpark in the Crossroads for the Royals.
As White campaigned against the recall this summer, he said that while voters may have been ticked off about property assessments, he believed the recall campaign itself was bankrolled by the stadium lobby. If he were recalled, he warned, the teams would have better leverage for “sweetheart stadium deals” on the taxpayers’ dime.
The county Legislature’s vote to replace White — five votes for LeVota against four votes for Dan Tarwater — marked yet another contentious vote along the familiar 5 to 4 split. Now that he’s the county executive, LeVota will have to navigate any residual factional divides until this term ends in January 2027.
Here’s what LeVota’s priorities are for the next 14 months and what it means for the 2026 election for county executive.
How was Phil LeVota appointed?
After White was recalled by voters on Sept. 30, the Jackson County Legislature started working on finding a replacement to serve out the remainder of his term.
That process had been a point of contention among the legislators until the moment that LeVota was appointed.
The Jackson County Charter is vague when it comes to how recalled executives are supposed to be replaced. It states the chair of the Legislature appoints the temporary executive — in this case, Kay Barnes, who will have served in that role for a little more than a week — until the Legislature votes to appoint a replacement.
This year’s process was more transparent than what happened in 2016, when former County Executive Mike Sanders resigned and the Legislature voted unanimously to appoint White to the position without any application process. By contrast, the Legislature this time opened up the application to any Jackson County Democrat who wanted to apply, and it hosted a marathon of public interviews with the nine candidates on Oct. 13.
(The charter required that White’s replacement be a member of the same political party as him.)
But the Legislature never had any public discussions of the nominees after the interviews concluded. Immediately after the final interview of the day, the Legislature cast ballots for their preferred candidates and then voted to appoint the winning candidate.
Some members of the Legislature wanted a longer process with more public deliberation.
Legislator Megan Smith, who represents At-Large District 3, said she was caught by surprise when her colleagues moved to immediately vote on the next county executive.
She was not warned beforehand that the Legislature was going to call a vote so soon. And that’s probably because the majority five-member faction didn’t need her vote.
“If members of the Legislature didn’t know what’s going on,” she said, “I can’t believe that the public knew any more, either.”
That was in stark contrast to the feedback she had been getting from her constituents during a listening session about the replacement process.
“Use the time you have,” she said, reading her notes from the session. “Don’t make mistakes.”
Instead, she felt the process was rushed and that certain members of the Legislature domineered the selection to get their preferred candidate chosen without transparency.
Last week, Smith tried to offer suggestions during an Oct. 9 meeting of the Legislature. She sought at least three public listening sessions before taking a vote and extending the application deadline to get more applicants. But the five-member majority forced a vote to set the process before there was any substantial discussion on Smith’s suggestions.
“The next morning, I realized that the listening sessions were just smoke and mirrors,” she said. “The people who took the time to apply in good faith, I mean, it was a waste of their time.”
LeVota, on the other hand, said that this year’s process was more transparent than in 2016, when the Legislature appointed White to replace Sanders. He believes that Smith’s suggestions were simply an attempt to drag out the process.
“The Legislature opened it up to a bunch of people,” he said, “then had people apply, then had listening sessions, then had public interviews. So it was pretty doggone transparent.”
Relief for (some) taxpayers, but rocky waters ahead for schools
Once he’s sworn in, LeVota wants to move quickly on property assessments.
LeVota has good news and bad news for Jackson Countians who want a remedy after years of controversial property assessments.
The good news is that he plans to comply with the State Tax Commission’s order to roll back the 2023 property assessments and cap them at a 15% increase from the 2022 valuations.
The bad news is that no one’s getting any money back. And it might be a long road to finally get a handle on a property assessment crisis that dates back almost a decade.
Within his first few weeks, LeVota said he plans to figure out policy for how to comply with that State Tax Commission order related to the 2023 assessments. He also wants to cap the 2025 commercial property assessment increases (for properties valued less than $5 million) at no more than a 15% increase from last year’s value.
But there’s a problem there.
On the whole, the market value of Jackson County properties increased by 30% between 2021 and 2023.
Certain assessments — perhaps even a large number of assessments — may have been individually inaccurate. But if the county caps all assessment increases at 15%, then the county will be undervaluing three out of four properties in the county that actually increased more than that amount.
And when properties are reassessed in 2027, after LeVota’s cap is lifted, those properties could spike right back up to market value all over again.
“My answer to that is, man, 85% of people said this is screwed up, so they need relief,” he said. “It’s a valid, valid fiscal concern you raise. (It’s) more important getting relief to people right now.”
So what about the relief?
Don’t expect any refund checks to be coming in the mail.
The taxes collected based on the 2023 property assessments were spent by the taxing jurisdictions like local governments and school districts more than a year ago. That money is long gone.
Instead, the county will likely issue tax credits that can be applied to a future property tax bill.
But that leads to another fiscal hiccup. If 75% of property owners use a coupon to cover a portion of their property taxes, then are those taxing jurisdictions including school districts about to take a big hit to their funding?
“They sure are,” LeVota said. “They’re not going to like it, and there might be lawsuits and stuff, but we’ll deal with that. We’ve got to get relief to the taxpayers.”
So the school districts will face a choice. Either they can cut spending for maintenance, teachers and classroom materials, or they can increase their mill levies to make up for money they’re not getting due to the tax credits.
If the taxing jurisdictions decide to increase their mill levies, the tax credits could end up creating a net increase for some Jackson County residents’ property tax bills.
“It’s not my circus over there,” LeVota said. “They can do their due diligence. I think they shouldn’t be increasing their folks, their constituency, but that’s on them.”
The future of the stadium debate
LeVota was more guarded in talking about what negotiations will look like with the Royals and the Chiefs.
As the county Legislature considered who would take White’s place as the next county executive, LeVota was a favorite among proponents of a stadium subsidy for the Royals and the Chiefs. And now that he’s been chosen, he doesn’t want voters to think that’s his only priority for the next year.
“I’m working on the tax assessments first and foremost,” he said. “There’s nothing more important than that … I don’t want anyone out there that just saw me get elected to think I’m dealing with stadium stuff and not tax assessment stuff.”
Looking ahead, LeVota said his preferred site for a Royals ballpark would be whichever one the team is interested in.
The most important thing, he said, is that both teams stay in Jackson County.
The role that LeVota would play in a stadium decision as county executive is representing the county in negotiations and eventually signing legislation that puts another question on the ballot for a public subsidy.
White vetoed similar legislation last year, leading the Legislature to override the veto.
LeVota’s main requirement for a future stadium subsidy to be put on the ballot is that there be “community buy-in.”
“I’m confident that the Chiefs and Royals know that this doesn’t just come with a blank check to do what they want,” LeVota said. “They’ve got to be community partners and there has to be benefit to the people.”
Looking ahead to 2026
LeVota said he has absolutely no interest in serving as the county executive long-term.
He signed an affidavit during the selection process promising that he was not planning to run for the position in 2026, when voters will next cast their ballots for county executive.
And he told The Beacon that’s not going to change.
“I signed the affidavit, and I was going to poke my finger and put blood on it too,” he said.
He acknowledged that sometimes people make those kinds of proclamations and then change their minds later.
They might realize they’re doing a good job and want to do more, they might enjoy having political power, or they might have someone in their ear asking them to run for reelection.
“None of those three things are going to happen,” he said. “There is no way I’m going to run at all, period. Someone comes and says, ‘Here’s a million dollars for a campaign.’ I’m not doing it.”
So who is running?
The only candidate so far who has created a campaign committee for 2026 is Stacy Lake, who previously ran and narrowly lost the Democratic primary to White in 2022. White won with 53% of the vote to Lake’s 47%.
Her name had been floated as a potential option to replace White before the recall. But she ultimately decided not to apply for the interim position because she wanted to earn the position by a vote of the public.
“The Jackson County government has an appointment problem,” she said. “Our last county executive, our prior prosecutor and our current sheriff were all decided by appointments. … I think it’s autocratic.”
She believes that the charter should be amended to require a special election in the case of a recall or resignation, rather than letting the interim be appointed by the Legislature or county executive.
“I don’t know why people are afraid of an election,” she said. “Yes, we do have a representative democracy. But in order to become that representative, you have to win. You have to get that position by vote of the people. And that’s what makes America different from other places.”
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
