KSHB 41 reporter Charlie Keegan covers politics in Kansas, Missouri and at the local level. Share your story idea with Charlie.
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Former Director of Assessment Gail McCann Beatty sat down for her first interview since Jackson County fired her in November 2025.
“I think the public needs to know what’s going on,” she told KSHB 41 News reporter Charlie Keegan.
Her interview comes one day after County Executive Phil LeVota responded publicly to a wrongful termination lawsuit McCann Beatty filed against the county.
“This is the most frivolous claim I've ever seen in 30 years of practicing law,” LeVota said Wednesday.
McCann Beatty’s attorney, Dennis Egan of the Popham Law Firm, called LeVota’s reaction hasty.
During her seven years leading the department, property owners saw increased values which led to lawsuits, a record number of appeals, audits, and interventions from the State Tax Commission.
In a lawsuit filed in December, McCann Beatty argued LeVota fired her after she blew the whistle, calling a 2025 proposal to cap commercial property values at 15% illegal.
She provided KSHB 41 News with a letter she sent to LeVota on October 15 laying out the reasons for going against the proposed cap.
“First of all, the 15% is arbitrary, there’s nothing in the statutes that says you can cap the taxes,” she began.
In his response, LeVota said McCann Beatty’s letter had nothing to do with her firing.
“One of my goals in this office is to restore confidence in county government,” he said.
Egan said Missouri’s whistleblower laws protect McCann Beatty.
“All she needs to do in this lawsuit is show she had a good faith belief that she was raising an issue of illegal activity or else something that’s against public policy of the law,” Egan said. “That’s all she has to has to prove. She will make that case easily, easily.”
LeVota added he does not plan to settle this lawsuit, which means a jury could decide McCann Beatty’s fate.
Egan, the attorney, is weighing the option of moving the trial to a county other than Jackson County where many property owners might have a negative bias toward his client.
“There was nothing I would’ve done differently because I believed we followed the statutes,” McCann Beatty said about facing a jury.
McCann Beatty said she will not run for the assessor job when it becomes an elected office in Jackson County in 2028.
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