Eight Kansas City, MO, Firefighters Among Top 10 Highest Paid
Your Kansas City tax dollars pay for salaries of city employees, from road engineers and firefighters to nurses and attorneys. But who makes the most?
In 2025, 1,204 city employees were paid $100,000 or more a year, out of more than 4,000 employees. These high earners include water plant operators, municipal court judges, and directors of departments like aviation and health.
Governments are required by law to share how much they pay their employees. The Star obtained this information through an open records request.
Brian Platt was the highest paid city employee, despite working less than four months at the city in 2025.
Last March, Platt was fired from his position as city manager. This came after the city was ordered to pay more than $900,000 in a whistleblower lawsuit which alleged Platt instructed city employees to lie to the public. The Star reported in November that Platt would cash out at least $500,000 in payouts.
Here is the gross pay of top Kansas City officials in 2025:
- $495,732, Brian Platt, former city manager, who received a $408,000 lump sum on top of his salary of $87,600 for the approximately three and a half months he worked
- $296,950, Mario Vasquez, current city manager
- $179,102, Quinton Lucas, Kansas City mayor
- $87,000, city council members
Close to 3 in 4 city employees that make more than $100,000 work for the fire department, including paramedics, battalion chiefs and fire investigators.
John Morrow, firefighter/paramedic with the Kansas City Fire Department, earned over $200,000 in overtime last year, while 17 of his KCFD counterparts earned more than $100,000 in overtime each. Firefighters working many hours of overtime has been an issue for almost a decade, according to city audits and Star reporting.
In 2024, John Morrow and Brian Platt were the fifth and sixth highest paid Kansas City employees. Last year, they swapped places to be the highest and second-highest paid.
The 2025 list does not include employees of the Kansas City Police Department, local school districts or county, state and federal governments. Their paychecks come from other budgets.
The also Star published information on the highest paid Kansas and Missouri state workers, along with Johnson County employees.
Here are the 10 Kansas City employees with the highest total pay in 2025:
- Brian Platt, former city manager: $495,732
- John Morrow, firefighter/paramedic: $378,151
- Anthony Seymour, fire captain: $339,836
- John Baker, deputy fire department director: $321,567
- Mario Vasquez, current city manager: $296,950
- Michael Gilchrist, fire captain: $292,945
- Timothy Dice, firefighter/paramedic: $291,255
- Joseph Ortega, fire captain: $276,401
- Tim Bowman, fire captain: $273,625
- Steven Eller, fire captain: $272,469
Look through this database of more than 1,200 Kansas City employees paid more than $100,000 in 2025. The overtime category includes both double time pay and standard overtime. The city did not immediately respond to questions about the types of money included in the lump sum payment category.
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