Former top aide to Kansas City manager claims she was cast aside due to her age and sex

Kerrie Tyndall steadily rose to the top ranks at City Hall over a decade under former Kansas City manager Troy Schulte, but she claims her career was upended after Brian Platt became city manager at the end of 2020.

Tyndall, 54, alleges in a newly filed sex and age discrimination lawsuit that the city manager, who was 35 when he was hired almost three years ago, treated her unfairly and demoted her because she gave him advice that he didn’t want to hear.

Frustrated by her cautious approach to green-lighting development deals that he supported, Platt sidelined her, the suit alleges, and excluded her from important meetings.

He began assigning some of her duties to younger and male co-workers and ultimately removed her from her post as assistant city manager and director of economic development. Platt transferred her to what she considered a dead-end job at the aviation department last September. She quit a month later.

The suit filed in Jackson County Circuit Court names city government as the sole defendant. Platt is not named or listed as a defendant, but the city manager is referenced throughout the lawsuit. Tyndall is seeking an unspecified amount of back pay, money she would have earned had she still been employed by the city as well as punitive damages for the city creating a workplace that the suit contends “was permeated by discrimination.”

A city spokeswoman said the city does not comment on pending lawsuits.

But an aide to Mayor Quinton Lucas issued a written statement on his behalf late Friday afternoon defending Platt and taking aim at Tyndall’s work record on the economic development front.

“For the first half of the mayor’s current term, economic development in Kansas City was in disarray, with developers fleeing for other communities, stakeholders clamoring for equitable policies to attract affordability, and City Hall paralyzed by years of policy discussions, but little implementation,” Lucas chief of staff Morgan Said wrote in a text message.

She said Lucas has “welcomed” the economic development leadership of Tyndall’s successor, assistant city manager Mario Vasquez.

Schulte picked Tyndall in 2011 to fill a newly created position as his assistant in charge of business retention. The job was part of a $600,000 effort to keep businesses from relocating.

Previously, she had been a business development officer for the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City and had 15 years of experience in her field, having previously worked for the cities of Olathe and Blue Springs.

Four years after she came to work for Schulte, he promoted her to become his director of economic development and in 2018 made her an assistant city manager.

Schulte retired from the city at the end of 2019. Platt started work as his permanent replacement almost a year later.

Tyndall’s lawsuit also addresses a period before Platt’s arrival. During that interim period, she began to feel political pressure for what she claims throughout the lawsuit was her prudent approach toward protecting the interests of taxpayers.

Her suit cites an episode in the spring of 2020 when the city council was trying to create a $500,000 loan fund to support small businesses that were suffering in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several council members criticized her by name in a public session for not moving fast enough to get the money out to those businesses. Tyndall claims in the lawsuit that the delay was due to the need for her and the legal department to build safeguards into the agreement between the city and the organization chosen to administer those loans: the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City.

“Plaintiff (Tyndall) believed that moving forward with the contract without the necessary terms would, among other things, result in mismanagement,” the suit says. But a video recording of that meeting shows that she was cut off at least twice by Mayor Quinton Lucas and not given an opportunity to defend herself at that public meeting.

Had she been allowed to speak, the suit claims, she would have shared information “which would disclose mismanagement, a gross waste of funds and abuse of authority, violation of policy, and waste of public resources.”

The lawsuit does not say what that information might have been, but the EDC in a separate lawsuit filed this year alleged that its own controller, the late Lee Brown, had stolen millions of dollars from the organization. The agency also would later fire the woman who was the CEO of the EDC at the time of that meeting for alleged financial improprieties.

The bulk of the allegations in Tyndall’s lawsuit, however, dwell on her alleged mistreatment by Platt.

He has been aggressive in promoting development deals during his 2½ years as the chief executive of city government, particularly downtown and in the River Market area. The lawsuit claims that his approach led to clashes with Tyndall, who advised Platt “of numerous proposed deal structures which would result in a waste of fundings” for city taxpayers.

Platt ignored her cautions, she said, “and became frustrated with (Tyndall) for raising legitimate concerns as to mismanagement and waste of funds.”

She discussed what she considered Platt’s “mismanagement” with people inside and outside of city hall and on July 20, 2022, was told her job within the city manager’s office was “no longer supported.”

She claims that phrase was a euphemism for Platt wanting her gone because of her age and gender and because city officials wanted to “remove her from her job to prevent her from raising concerns about mismanagement and waste of funds.”

When she left the city manager’s office, the lawsuit said her job duties were given to a younger and less qualified man and that a younger woman was promoted to become assistant city manager.

Citing Lucas’ sentiments, Said defended Platt’s right to choose his own leadership team.

“The lawsuit evidences understandable disappointment for an employee with a corporate restructuring, but attempts to transform a lawful reassignment to a six-figure position of an at-will employee into a claim for which no facts are present to support a legal violation,” the statement read.

The city faces another lawsuit that concerns the city manager’s office. Former communications director Chris Hernandez said he was demoted when he refused to lie on behalf of Platt about city operations. That case is pending.

The Star’s Bill Lukitch contributed reporting.