Lucas offers plan to give Kansas City more say in how police spend taxpayer money
Mayor Quinton Lucas, in charge of a city that has no local control over its police department, is pursuing a strategy to upend how the Kansas City Police Department is funded to give City Hall more say on how the department spends its money.
Lucas planned to introduce two ordinances during Thursday’s City Council meeting.
“I think it finally gives the people of Kansas City some accountability of policing activities in their city,” Lucas said Thursday. “I hope it compels the police department to engage more actively in a lot of our newer approaches to violence prevention.”
The new ordinances come as KCPD Chief Rick Smith, whose police get more money from the city’s general fund budget than any other department, has complained that the department has been unable to bring on a new academy class since February 2020. The KCPD received $239 million in the current year budget, but police officials have been asking for more money over the last week.
KCPD is governed by the Board of Kansas City Police Commissioners, whose members are appointed by the Missouri governor, except for the mayor of Kansas City who always has a seat on the commission. The Kansas City Council has little influence over the police department aside from approving its budget.
But even in approving its budget, it has little say in how the police spend the money. Lucas said his strategy aims to give the city leadership more influence in police spending.
Lucas’ ordinances work in two steps.
The first ordinance reduces the KCPD budget by $44 million. That would result in KCPD’s budget equaling 20% of the city’s general fund revenue, which Missouri law requires as the minimum Kansas City can devote to policing.
But that doesn’t mean KCPD’s budget is actually slashed to the minimum allowed by state law.
That $44 million is reallocated to what the city calls a “Community Services and Prevention Fund.” Kansas City Manager Brian Platt and the police commissioners would then negotiate on how to spend that money.
Lucas said his ordinances do not functionally cut the police budget — in fact, it earmarks an additional $3 million to pay for a new police academy class — but instead gives City Hall more say in how KCPD spends money.
“It does not defund; indeed, it actually increases funds, but it does create an area of I think substantial accountability that has been lacking in this city since the 1940s,” Lucas said in an interview.
Lucas said at a press conference outside City Hall on Thursday that he hopes police will agree to spend money it negotiates with the city manager on areas such as mental health, conflict resolution and crime prevention.
“This year in the Missouri legislature, we saw bills about police residency, we saw bills about police budgets, we heard a bill about driving over protesters,” Lucas said. “What did we not have? More money for prevention, more money for intervention, more money for conflict resolution, more money for mental health services. And if Jefferson City won’t help us on that, then we will do it ourselves.”
Smith said he was “disheartened” that the police department was not notified about Lucas’ plan before it was announced at a press conference.
“As a member of the Board of Police Commissioners, the mayor meets monthly with other board members, department members and the public,” Smith said in a statement. “At these meetings, we discuss performance and statistics from each bureau, including crime, budgets, policy and other matters. The mayor and the other sponsoring council members have not previously mentioned this proposal, so our discussions about it are just beginning.”
Support and opposition
Jean Peters Baker, Jackson County prosecutor, lauded Lucas’ proposal, calling it the closest to local control of the KCPD, at least in terms of resource allocation.
“The idea of doing something different makes perfect sense,” Peters Baker said. “We are in a crisis of violence in this city. We’ve never had the historic rate of violence like we’re having right now.”
Lucas may have enough council support, at least for now, to press ahead on his proposal.
He said his measures have at least eight co-sponsors, which gives him an apparent majority to pass the ordinances. Those co-sponsors are council members from districts south of the Missouri River.
Teresa Loar, a council member whose district covers parts of Kansas City largely in Platte County, said she and others were not notified about Lucas’ plan.
“None of us had any idea this was happening,” Loar said.
Lucas’ office said there were attempts to make contact with all council members, including direct conversations with two Northland council members.
Loar said she was not keen on Lucas’ proposal.
“I think it’s a nice way of saying we are defunding the police,” Loar said.
During a Thursday afternoon press conference, Northland council members Loar, Heather Hall, Kevin O’Neill and Dan Fowler sought to cast Lucas’ ideas as a measure to cut police budgets.
“This is about protecting the people who are most vulnerable, who need the help when they need it, and they want the police to come with a call,” Hall said. “And I don’t understand how they believe a $46 million reduction in the budget will allow for increased opportunities for the police to show up.”
The Northland council members predicted that the Missouri General Assembly may take action to get involved.
State reaction
Some Republicans in the Missouri General Assembly were lukewarm on Lucas’ proposal.
His proposal comes as lawmakers in the General Assembly have moved to lessen local control of police departments. They passed one bill that lifts KCPD’s requirement that officers live within city limits, over the objections of Lucas and other local officials.
They also passed another blocking cities from cutting their police department budgets by more than 12 percent over five years, relative to other city departments — a reaction to the “defund the police” movement to redirect funds from policing toward alternative social services that do not use force. Under the bill, residents in those cities could ask a judge to stop the budget cut.
Neither bill has yet been signed by Gov. Mike Parson. The sponsor of the second measure, state Sen. Bill Eigel, said he expects the governor to approve it.
“We are certainly trying to discourage any situation where local cities and communities are trying to move away from funding their police departments at their current levels or reducing future funding,” he said.
Eigel, a Weldon Springs Republican, said he did not know the specifics of Lucas’ proposal or whether it would fall under the situations governed by his bill. He said he wanted local authorities to have flexibility in funding “different areas of law enforcement,” but the bill discourages shifting funding “away from the officers that are risking their lives every day.”
“I’m concerned whenever I hear any city or town is looking at different ways to potentially cut funding” from police, he said.
Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, a Parkville Republican, said there was a shortage of police officers patrolling streets in Kansas City.
“I think it’s the worst thing the city could do at a time when we have record high crime,” he said.
‘4,500 people murdered in Kansas City’
While the Board of Police Commissioners is not bound to negotiate with City Hall on the other $44 million, Lucas said an absence of cooperation from the commissioners would mean they’re the ones cutting the police budget.
Lucas said he developed this latest strategy after seeing poor results in combating violent crime in Kansas City. Last year, the city broke a record in yearly homicides with 176.
Even with last year’s dubious distinction, Lucas said the city’s trend with homicides has been troubling over the course of his life.
“‘I’ve been alive for 36 years, and there have been about 4,500 people murdered in Kansas City,” Lucas said. “That is more than the Americans who died in the Iraq War, almost double the Americans who died in the Afghanistan War. These are traumatic numbers.”
There’s precedent for City Hall to enter into contracts with departments and outside agencies that spend the city’s tax dollars. The city has an agreement with the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority on how it spends a portion of city sales tax earmarked for transportation. It also has an agreement with VisitKC, which also receives city funding.
City Hall also had a contractual agreement with the KCPD to increase parking control in downtown. A report by City Auditor Doug Jones released in April indicated that KCPD was not living up to its end of that deal by not providing the promised number of parking enforcement officers to monitor downtown.
Asked if Lucas can rely on KCPD to honor commitments with any contract that’s reached with KCPD on broader policing matters, he said, ”Very simply, if there’s a breach of the contract and I guess there would be certain remedies, one of which is certainly the funding choices that are made by the city council the next year.”
A hiring freeze?
It’s not clear yet how police will react to Lucas’ proposal. Already this month KCPD leadership has been suggesting that the police are not adequately funded.
Smith last week published a post on his online blog that said a hiring freeze is depleting his department’s staffing.
Smith wrote that KCPD is losing more than eight officers a month due to attrition, a problem he said was compounded by the police department not having an academy class of new recruits since February 2020.
“We are down 116 officers and do not have the budget to replace them,” Smith wrote.
Two KCPD officials testified on Wednesday to the Kansas City Council’s Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee that staffing issues have caused some police officers being dispatched to parts of the city outside their patrol zones.
Smith’s blog post said other KCPD departments are experiencing staffing shortages, too, including being down 11 positions in the crime laboratory.
There was some skepticism about Smith’s post in City Hall.
Platt, through a city spokesman, said that a member of the police department who retires from a senior rank position has a salary at or near $150,000 and can be replaced with a recruit who has a starting salary around $40,000 without requiring additional funds.
“In addition, the reductions in the KCPD budget were not only a suggestion from the police chief during the budget process but were for the most part eliminating positions in the budget that were currently unfilled,” city spokesman Chris Hernandez said in an email. “This right-sizing of the budget should have no impact on current service delivery.”
Smith’s post concluded by calling for readers to contact their city council representatives and request that KCPD get a share of the $97.5 million that Kansas City received from the American Rescue Plan Act.
Currently there are no plans to give KCPD a cut of federal funding. Lucas said the city’s policy is to avoid using one-time funds like the federal pandemic stimulus funding to support ongoing expenses.
“They would like rescue plan (funds), they are not in line to get any rescue plan funds at this current moment,” Lucas said.
This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 11:43 AM with the headline "Lucas offers plan to give Kansas City more say in how police spend taxpayer money."
