KCPD claims it will run out of money if budget sticks. Mayor says ‘totally incorrect’
Kansas City police’s budget manager said a $42 million funding reallocation approved by the City Council would force layoffs and cause other cuts in critical police services, a claim city leaders say is not true.
The KCPD’s budget manager, Kristine Reiter, testified in Jackson County Circuit Court Wednesday that, if allowed to prevail, the Kansas City council’s decision to reallocate police funding would force the layoffs of 1,000 officers and civilian workers at the end of the year. She said it would force reductions in patrol divisions located in the city’s urban core.
But Tammy Queen, the city’s finance director, testified that laying off workers, and especially police officers, would not be allowed to happen. The city would immediately locate and reallocate the appropriate funding to pay their salaries and other essential operations.
The reallocation would be about 18% of the department’s overall $239 million budget.
The testimonies took place during a court hearing that would settle a lawsuit filed in late May by the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners against Mayor Quinton Lucas and the City Council, challenging their efforts to have more say in how the Kansas City Police Department spends taxpayer resources.
Lucas disputed the department’s claims, saying they are “totally incorrect.”
“We now have heard three different numbers about how many officers would be laid off. What we are seeing is testimony that is just grasping at straws inconsistently,” Lucas said during a break at the hearing. “It is very clear in this situation we continue to see the city is funding the police department consistently and will continue to do so.”
Lucas added the city has recently sought to increase the police funding to pay for an academy class and raises for police officers.
Attorneys for the police board and the city presented their cases before Circuit Court Judge Patrick W. Campbell, who said he would impose judgment within seven days of the hearing.
Pat McInerney, who represents the police board, said Missouri law gives the police board authority over the police department and the city could have moved the $42 million during the budget process.
“When the (police) board approves that budget that door slams and nobody else can reach in, grab money, adjust money, or do whatever they want,” said McInerney, who served on the police board from 2009 to 2013.
The ordinances are an attempt by the City Council to wrestle control of the police department, he said.
“This is about control 100%,” McInerney said. “If these ordinances are allowed to stand, who knows what they will say going down the road the city,”
Tara M. Kelly, an attorney for the city, said the City Council has acted within the bounds of its constitutional and statutory authority in withdrawing a portion of the money it allocates annually to the police department.
Kelly pointed out that the police board has made 65 budget adjustments over the past decade to spend money on body cameras for police officers.
“This case is about authority and the city does have an extra bit of authority on its side and that authority comes with being a charter city under the Missouri Constitution,” she said. “There is no constitutional authority, there is no statutory authority, and there is no charter authority that says the city can’t revisit an appropriation.”
What would the new KCPD budget look like?
The lawsuit is in response to the City Council’s vote to approve two ordinances by Lucas that reduced the KCPD budget by $42.3 million. It placed that money, about 18% of the KCPD’s $239 million budget, in a separate fund and its use would be the matter for City Manager Brian Platt and police commissioners to negotiate.
The city would reallocate the money to a newly formed “Community Services and Prevention Fund.”
While the City Council sets the police department’s budget, the police commissioners have oversight on KCPD operations. With an exception for a brief period, the police department has been under state control, a product of the Civil War, the Confederacy and white supremacy, historians say.
Council members who supported the budget measure said that the city has no say in how tax dollars are spent. Meanwhile, the city saw a record number of homicides in 2020 and so far more than 100 killings in 2021.
Critics of the plan, including four members of the Kansas City Council who represent Northland districts, have tried to portray the measure as “defunding the police” despite the ordinances calling for Platt to negotiate on the allocations of the $42.3 million with KCPD and no other city department.
Lucas’ ordinances earmarked an additional $3 million in police funding for use in hiring a new class of recruits from the police academy, something that Police Chief Rick Smith had said he has not been able to do since February 2020.
The police commissioners contend that the ordinances provide no means to return money to the police department if an agreement is not reached. They are seeking to prevent the city council from reallocating the money.
Kansas City leaders, however, have called claims in the lawsuit legally and factually false. City leaders argue that the city council acted within bounds of its constitutional and statutory authority.
Lucas has said the city may have a legal argument under the Equal Protection Clause under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which says people have to be treated the same under the law.
The city also contends it has followed the appropriation process to fund the police department and that Missouri provides it the authority to revisit any money that exceeds the state funding requirement of 20% of the city’s general revenue.
Meanwhile, local civil rights leaders have sought to intervene in the lawsuit. Urban League of Greater Kansas City president Gwen Grant alleges that the current policing structure is a “Taxation Without Representation” scheme that violates the Missouri Hancock Amendment, a citizens’ initiative that limits state revenues and local taxes.
This story was originally published September 1, 2021 at 1:57 PM.
