Housing Stability, Zero-Fare Mobility, and a City Built on Opportunity

Mayor Quinton Lucas leads Kansas City with a blend of lived experience and policy pragmatism. Raised on the cityʼs East Side, sometimes experiencing homelessness with his mother, Lucas carries a lived understanding of housing insecurity that now shapes his governing philosophy. In 2019, he became Kansas Cityʼs youngest mayor since the 1850s and only its third Black mayor, running on a platform that links equity to mobility, neighborhoods, and public safety.

On housing, Lucas has transformed personal history into public policy. Early in his tenure, he established Kansas Cityʼs first Housing Trust Fund, giving the city a recurring mechanism to support deeply affordable units and preserve housing in historically underserved neighborhoods. His administration has pushed for zoning reforms, tenant protections, and public-private partnerships aimed at building more attainable homes in a city wrestling with rising costs and uneven development patterns. For Lucas, housing is the structural foundation for stability, safety, and upward mobility.

On mobility, he is best known nationally for championing zero-fare public transit, making Kansas City the first major U.S. city to eliminate bus fares system-wide. The move, adopted during his early mayoral term remains one of the countryʼs most ambitious transit-equity experiments, aimed at reducing financial burdens on working families, increasing ridership, and connecting residents to jobs, schools, and health services. Lucas has paired this with continued investment in street, sidewalk, and infrastructure upgrades, ensuring mobility improvements reach every neighborhood rather than concentrating downtown.

Regionally, Lucas has become a visible voice on economic growth, aviation, and infrastructure. He has championed the modernization of Kansas City International Airport, expanded small-business support, and positioned the city as a logistics and mobility hub in the Midwest. He frequently works with neighboring jurisdictions to coordinate investments in transportation, workforce, and economic-development initiatives, arguing that the region rises or falls together.

Under Lucas, Kansas City joined the Bloomberg Philanthropies City Data Alliance, using AI to modernize its 311 system so requests can be categorized and routed faster while giving the city a clearer view of service gaps across neighborhoods. The city is also leaning on its long-running MetroLab partnership with local universities and KC Digital Drive to test data-driven tools for transportation, public safety, and neighborhood health. Looking ahead, Lucasʼs north star is a Kansas City where opportunity is not dictated by your ZIP code.

It will showcase how state and local agencies can operationalize agentic AI at scale, with a focus on human-in-the-loop accountability, data readiness, and multi-agent architectures for functions like emergency management and inspections. 

It will convene state and local IT executives, emerging leaders, and visionary thinkers to discuss leadership, innovation, and strategy. It goes beyond technical solutions to address the people, policies, and practices for advancing digital government and to gain insights, relationships, and skills needed to lead their organizations and communities into the future.

KFFʼs latest 50-state Medicaid budget survey digs into how state programs are managing FY 2025–26 after the new federal reconciliation law (H.R.1). The report is useful for understanding how budget pressure, long-term care demand, and policy changes are reshaping access and benefits for one-in-five US residents covered by Medicaid. Read →

More local governments are turning to fractional IT and cybersecurity talent as the fastest way to strengthen their digital infrastructure without adding full-time headcount. Short, expert-led sprints help agencies modernize systems, improve data workflows, and tackle long-standing tech debt, while part-time ongoing support keeps projects moving and staff trained. For resource-constrained cities and counties, this model delivers the kind of flexibility and specialization that traditional hiring canʼt match.

This episode explores how the extended federal government shutdown is delaying major state and local projects, especially IT initiatives that depend on federal reimbursements and approvals. Guest Justin Marlowe explains how the disruption is forcing states to re-evaluate long-standing financial and operational dependencies on Washington, accelerating a shift toward greater fiscal and governance independence.

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