by Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

It’s time for a bistate wrap-up of interesting developments from the past week.

First, Missouri-side voters were in a positive mood Tuesday and deserve a pat on the back for endorsing several needed issues.

Second, Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson gets an atta-boy for playing a little hardball with the Kansas City Wizards and Cerner Corp. over their proposed projects at Village West.

And finally, Kansas City development lawyers — of all people — are whining about their lack of influence at City Hall.

Voters in Jackson and Clay counties overwhelmingly renewed sales taxes for law enforcement purposes.

In fact, the COMBAT election — fueled by more than $200,000 in campaign spending — garnered about 71 percent approval. That was the same margin of victory achieved by the almost-no-budget campaign for the Clay County tax.

Looking forward, Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders and COMBAT officials need to keep their promise to develop a revised plan for using the anti-drug money in the future. Voters gave the county a pass on failing to deliver that report before Tuesday.

Liberty voters approved a tough, smoke-free law that will protect residents in the future.

The decision to ban smoking in all restaurants and bars overruled the City Council’s weak ordinance from early 2009, which allowed smoking in too many public places. Give credit to a dedicated group of residents who hustled to get this initiative on the ballot.

Now, Raytown shamefully becomes the largest Kansas City-area city where its elected leaders have refused to approve smoke-free legislation. The Board of Aldermen ought to place the issue before Raytown voters to see what they want to do.

In Kansas, Republican legislators are pressuring Parkinson to give away extra tax dollars to promote development in Wyandotte County.

Parkinson is wisely refusing to buckle to that pressure.

Instead, he says a package of $229.5 million in subsidies is as high as the state will go to help build a new Wizards stadium plus a nearby office complex for Cerner.

While both are worthwhile projects, Parkinson defended his take-it-or-leave-it approach by pointing out something that’s troubled me for months about the incentive package: For many years to come, the current deal would divert tax revenue badly needed by the state and county to provide basic services to their citizens.

Republicans apparently want to make the deal a net loser of tax revenue for even more years. That doesn’t make sense.

I seldom have laughed harder recently than when The Star on Tuesday featured complaints from developers about Kansas City’s new zoning codes.

No doubt the rules are bureaucratic in nature. They may slow some needed development, while also preventing some bad stuff from happening.

The ironic part came when development lawyer James Bowers Jr. moaned about how the staff and City Council hadn’t listened to him and others, even after they had formed a special organization to lobby City Hall.

Sorry, but if there’s any group that has had special, outsized pull at 12th and Oak for many years, it’s the long list of people who promote private development with public dollars in Kansas City.

Bowers, Michael T. White, Mike Burke, Dave Frantze, Jerry Riffel, Dave Fenley and many other development lawyers consistently have had better access to the city staff and the City Council than the neighborhood groups, environmentalists, bike lane supporters and others who recently supported part of the city’s new zoning codes.

Now, as they bellyache about a sudden and supposed loss of influence, these development lawyers are seeing how people who often get ignored by city government really feel.

It’s frustrating, right?

Editorial Board member Yael T. Abouhalkah can be reached at or 816-234-4887. He blogs at voices.kansascity.com. He appears on “Ruckus” at 7 tonight on KCPT, Channel 19.