I’ve never seen a smoking gun as hot as this.

At the bottom of page nine of the Greater KC Women’s Political Caucus’s October 15, 2007, financial disclosure report is $750 contribution from Wayne Cauthen, Kansas City’s city manager.  This matches perfectly with three separate records of a city credit card transaction for the same amount, to the same organization, dated October 10, 2007, and made by the city manager’s former top assistant, Ramonda Doakes .

Meantime, if you look at Section 115.646 of the Missouri law book, you’ll see that it’s plainly illegal to use public money to support political causes.

And if you check out the Code of Ethics for the International City/County Management Association, of which Cauthen is a member, you’ll find Tenet 7: “Refrain from all political activities which undermine public confidence in professional administrators.”

The KC Women’s Political Caucus is a political action committee (or PAC) that makes direct contributions to political candidates. One of the reasons why it’s illegal to give city money to a group like this is because people who pay city taxes are of a variety of political persuasions, and they expect their taxes to go toward things like filling potholes and not political candidates and causes they might completely disagree with.

I asked for a comment from the City Manager, of course. And got back a long email in which he passes the blame to a subordinate and offers no explanation for why his name appears as the donor in the Caucus’s file.

In other words, he’s suggesting that his closest assistant – acting entirely on her own, without his knowledge – took a credit card and made a large donation in his name. Not a health club membership or a trip to Florida. A political donation for her boss.

Members of the City Council, who are Cauthen’s bosses, learned of this during a committee meeting in April. The allegation arose in an audit of the city’s use of tax-payer-funded credit cards.

Incredibly, no action was taken on the apparent violation of law and ethics.

In fact, if you watch the video of the meeting, you’ll find that our elected leaders had virtually no response whatsoever.

I asked the Councilmember Deb Hermann why no one said anything, and she said: “Because nobody cares about that stuff here. Cauthen is untouchable. If the mayor would’ve done that, people would’ve gone nuts.

Ok. So that’s politics. But we’re talking about laws and ethics. Surely there’s some sort of oversight that transcends politics.

And there is. Sort of.

The city has a Municipal Officials Ethics Commission that’s authorized “to investigate and report on allegations of violations of the City’s charter.”

But that group hasn’t met for a year. In fact, I called a couple of its members – Marsha Campbell and Dan Porrevecchio – they both told me they don’t even know who chairs the committee. I tried several times to contact the chair, La Juana Counts, who the mayor appointed last summer, but she hasn’t called me back. Counts is an attorney in the federal prosecutor’s office.

In the past, the City Council would direct the commission to meet on issues. But the current council is so politically fractured that they’ve essentially abdicated that responsibility. In early 2008, they passed a measure directing the city auditor to deliver all of his reports directly to the Commission.

So, thanks to that, the Commission’s chair has received the report that contains the allegation against Cauthen. But, like I say, they’ve done nothing about it.

I’ve also been told by several people who wish to remain anonymous that several people have made complaints about the situation to the city’s ethics hotline. And that information has also been shared with the Commission’s chair.

But still, nothing.

Other than that, it seems like all that’s left is the Fourth Estate. But it’s been pretty anemic on this issue, too.

The Star ran a little 400-word story about the credit card audit, with a couple of sentences about the $750 purchase but no mention of Cauthen, adding, lamely: “No further details were provided.”

Yet those further details are in easily obtained public records. It wasn’t until two weeks later that Cauthen was called out on Tony’s Kansas City, in an anti-woman post that was illustrated with a picture of a couple of thong-wearing strippers. (As usual, Tony’s post seemed less interested in ethics than misogyny, stating: “I've always said the politics and women don't mix or at the very least neither should be taken seriously.”)

However, as I dug into this story, I discovered that the ICMA – the one with the Code of Ethics mentioned above – has an enforcement policy of its own. They investigate allegations of wrongdoing and issue sanctions that range in severity from private censure to being banned from the organization.

Indeed, the ICMA recently censured an assistant city manager of an undisclosed city simply for writing a letter on behalf of a political candidate.

Why? What’s wrong with a government official dabbling in politics?

Because it’s in direct opposition to the very principle and history of the city manager form of government, according to Michele Frisby, ICMA’s director of public information.

“This form of government was created in the early 20^th century in reaction to the corrupt political machines – Tammany Hall, and all that,” she explains. “That’s why we want separation from politics. Because back in the day, it was all politics. The only way you got anything done was if you knew somebody.”

John Nalbandian, a professor in the University of Kansas’s Department of Public Information who is an expert on city management, agrees, adding that an apolitical City Manager should be a priority for elected officials.

“As an elected official, what you want to be confident of is that the professional staff will tell you what you need to know rather than what you want to hear,” he says. “What the Council should want is a politically neutral city manager. You want to believe that they’re giving the best advice and, more importantly, they will work on behalf of the council’s best advice.

“Once you a city manager starts advocating for political causes, that neutrality is tested.”

That said, Nalbandian adds that he has met Cauthen on several occasions and that he doesn’t have an “impression that (Cauthen isn’t) trying to do what’s best for the city.”

Like the city’s ethics commission, the ICMA has not investigated the matter. But that’s just because no one has asked them to.

“Someone would need to file a complaint,” Frisby says. “Contact us and say this is what is going on.”

The director of ethics at ICMA is Martha Perego. She can be reached at 202-962-3668 or mperego@icma.org.