Wichita council OKs airport marketing contract, will talk more about conflicts of interest

After several false starts, the Wichita City Council approved a media buying contract for Eisenhower National Airport with Copp Media on Tuesday.

The contract, approved a week after the council voted it down, includes new language prohibiting Copp from taking on mayoral or City Council candidates as clients while doing business with the city.

The council also voted to schedule a workshop where staff will present a policy for discussion about the ethics of double-dipping in city campaign work and city contract work.

Mayor Brandon Whipple, Vice Mayor Mike Hoheisel and council member Maggie Ballard, who previously voted against the Copp contract, joined Brandon Johnson and Jeff Blubaugh in support. Becky Tuttle abstained and Bryan Frye, whose wife is the firm’s business manager, recused himself from the vote.

The contract provides Copp $150 an hour for search engine optimization and social media management as well as a 15% commission for media buying services.

Since 2013, Wichita has paid Copp $1.9 million to place media buys and provide other services for the airport, as well as another $750,000 for media planning and buying through a second city contract unrelated to the airport. Copp President Bonnie Tharp said most of that money has paid for advertising. She said her firm has made $397,170 in profits from its work for the airport in the last 10 years.

When their existing contract expired in February, Copp reapplied through the standard RFP process and was selected from a pool of three applicants. But some council members raised ethical concerns about the firm’s work on behalf of city candidates, including a $60,000 media services buy from former council member Cindy Claycomb in 2021, when she was running against Ballard.

Before voting to approve the contract, Johnson renewed his complaint that the city’s handling of Copp after they had already been chosen through a competitive bid process could discourage other businesses from wanting to contract with Wichita in the future.

“The Wichita City Council has not adopted this policy,” Johnson said. “This company is essentially forced to sign this in order to do business with the city.”

Tharp said in a phone interview after the vote that she’s relieved the contract has been approved. But she expressed frustration with the discourse around her firm’s contract.

“I’m just glad they approved a contract that has gone through the process, that if there are stipulations that need to go — I don’t think Copp Media should be treated any differently than anyone else,” Tharp said. “If they believe that handling political candidates prohibits me from doing my job as an agency for the airport, I don’t get the connection for that.”

City Council members told The Eagle last week after rejecting the contract that they had not known before the meeting that Copp had already signed an agreement not to do political work with city candidates moving forward.

Conflicts workshop

After the vote, Ballard thanked the firm for their patience before talking about possibly adding a similar provision to other city contracts.

“I feel bad that [Copp] got caught in the crossfires of this conversation that some of us have been having for quite some time, and I think it’s important that we do continue the conversation of potentially a conflict of interest between city campaigns and some of the contracts that are coming up with the city,” Ballard said.

She specifically cited an upcoming option for contract renewal with the Greteman Group, a graphic design firm that provides creative services for the airport.

Frye, who worked in marketing for local television news stations for 25 years before getting into politics, asked Ballard whether media services include traditional news media outlets and the U.S. Postal Service.

“When I ask for defining media services, that includes TV stations, newspapers, postal services. I mean, how far are you thinking this needs to go?” Frye queried.

“That’s a great question,” Ballard responded. “I’m happy to consider the conversation. I just don’t want the conversation to stop.”

Layton said staff could draft and bring to the workshop language dealing with media services, including attempting to define what media services entail.

He suggested that the ethics board, which recently began to issue decisions on ethics complaints, could weigh in with suggestions on the issue of city contracts and political clients.

“This is a motion to direct staff to look towards policy so that we’ll have a policy in the future that will help avoid any conflicts of interest, particularly when it comes to media,” Whipple said. “And then that policy will be presented at a workshop in which we can further the discussion.”

The motion authorizing the workshop passed 7-0.

This story was originally published April 11, 2023 at 1:33 PM.