Kansas Meadowlark: $2,833,797 cash available to Think Big on Question 1 committee

November 3, 2004

$2,833,797 cash available to Think Big on Question 1 committee
(click here to read 1.2 MB PDF report)

An Aug 8 Kansas Meadowlark report revealed details about the Bistate Arts & Sports Committee raising $483,055 with $362,542 still in the bank during the August 2004 primary. This fact was reported by the KC Business Journal on Sept 3 and finally over a month later by the KC Star on Sept 13!

This was an incredible amount of political money considering ALL candidates for JoCo state offices in Kansas only raised about $642,000 during the same period.

The Kansas Meadowlark reported about the creation of the Bistate Arts and Sports Committee in June. The Meadowlark is not aware at what point the "Bistate Arts and Sports Committee" was renamed the "Think Big on Question 1" committee. However, the figure for "Cash on hand at beginning of period" for Think Big was $362,642 in their October 25 report to the Kansas Secretary of State. This matches the "Cash on hand at close of period" for the Bistate Arts and Sports Committee, so the two groups must be the same.

One can only speculate the name change was made at least partially to make tracking the money more difficult. One can also speculate that the reason the report was filed in Kansas was to make it more difficult for anyone to find, since the Missouri Secretary of State puts similar reports online immediately and would have been readily available to anyone before the election. The Kansas City Star can opine that we need to strengthen campaign laws on Kansas contributions, but the Star finds it easy to overlook "secret" money that it's trying to hide from the public.

Click here to view the recent 9-page Think Big on Question 1 report (PDF is 1.2 MB) that revealed:

$2,471,255 contributions and other receipts
$2,833,797 cash available this period

To save disk space I will not publish the 15-page expenditures report at this time, but if you really want to see it, I'd be willing to E-mail it to anyone that is interested.

The address of the committee shown below, 3720 W. 199th Terr, Leawood, is the home address of Peter Levi, president of the Greater KC Chamber of Commerce.