Jackson County prosecutor missing funding, says programs could suffer. Here’s why
As Jackson County exits its fifth month without a working budget, county prosecutor Melesa Johnson says her office’s ability to prosecute cases is starting to suffer — and that tax-funded violence prevention programs are at risk of breaking down.
The Jackson County Legislature has been locked in a standoff with county executive Frank White over the 2025 county budget since January, when legislators first approved a budget that White quickly vetoed. In the months since, the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office and other agencies have been unable to access most of the money that would be theirs to use and distribute under the budget.
Since the beginning of the budget freeze, the prosecutor’s office has been unable to pursue funding for new programs that could allow them to take on more cases, and has been unable to send attorneys to conferences and trainings, Johnson said. Without a budget, the organization has also been unable to authorize funding for the services that support its attorneys’ main trial strategies.
However, during an extended testimony to the Jackson County Legislature on May 14, Johnson said that her greatest concern about funding delays in the prosecutor’s office centers on the COMBAT program, a tax funding source that has upheld much of Jackson County’s law enforcement and recidivism efforts since the 1990s.
Continued lack of access to the fund could cripple dozens of organizations across the city, Johnson told legislators.
“It is my sincere desire to make COMBAT function like the well-oiled philanthropic organization that it is intended to be,” Johnson said. “Right now there is an extreme backlog with us getting payments out of the door.”
County legislators have moved to release 2025 tax funds to some county programs for necessary daily operations and emergencies. For instance, legislators voted on May 12 to release $71,751 from the projected 2025 general fund to satisfy a narcotics task force grant awarded by the Missouri Department of Public Safety, and voted on February 24 to renew a $255,130 contract with the Missouri Department of Conservation to rebuild a boat ramp on the Blue River.
But so far, the majority of the legislature has signaled that the use of COMBAT tax funds doesn’t qualify.
“Sadly, [COMBAT] is not an emergency in my view,” first district legislator Manny Abarca said at a May 19th meeting of the legislature’s finance and auditing committee.
White did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Johnson’s concerns.
Jackson County Prosecutor seeks funding
COMBAT, or the COMmunity Backed Anti-crime Tax, was first passed by Jackson County voters in 1990. The $0.025 tax, or quarter-cent tax, provides funding for organizations that focus on violence prevention and substance abuse treatment.
Johnson testified to the legislature that COMBAT funding is at the top of the list of issues the budget freeze has caused in the prosecutor’s office.
However, it’s far from the only challenge she says the budget situation has caused.
As the budget freeze has continued, county prosecutors have had to cut down on hiring experts in various criminal fields as consultants or expert witnesses, according to Johnson. The office has also had to largely stop hiring investigators, whom attorneys typically rely on to track down witnesses, Johnson said.
“We are trying to hold on by a shoestring and definitely give you all room to do the legislative work that you all need to do,” Johnson told legislators. “But as we enter the summer months, I would be lying if I said that I’m not concerned.”
The prosecutor’s office has had to limit the amount of transcripts available to attorneys, since transcripts are ordered at cost, and has had to revert to collecting depositions virtually. Johnson said that limits on transcripts have forced the prosecutor’s office to cut back on reopening cases or engaging post-trial motions.
“Without having these resources, it just prolongs the slow justice that we already know exists,” Johnson said.
Funding for travel has also been unavailable, meaning prosecutors cannot bring in key witnesses from out of town or set up face-to-face mediation between victims and offenders.
Prosecutors have found that holding these meetings in person makes victims feel empowered and is often a key step in securing plea deals, Johnson said.
“We’re having to be very, very conservative with the transcripts that we offer,” Johnson said. “This does affect our case outcomes.”
Some county leaders including 6th district legislator Sean Smith, feel that the prosecutor’s office should be able to fund some of the missing functions, including transcription, through the small operating budgets that county offices can access until the budget passes.
“I’m trying to understand what appears to be rules that differ either day to day or depending on who’s asking,” Smith said at the legislature’s May 14 meeting.
Johnson said she’s received mixed guidance from the county on what spending would be authorized.
“We were under the impression that we could only do absolutely essential spending,” Johnson said.
How COMBAT works
About two-thirds of the revenue from the COMBAT tax goes into the annual budgets for Jackson County courts, the Jackson County Corrections Department, the county Drug Task Force, the Kansas City Police Department and the prosecutor’s office, according to the 2024 COMBAT end-of-year report.
The funding that goes through the prosecutor’s office doesn’t go toward day-to-day operations. Instead, Johnson’s staffers are responsible for passing out funding to other organizations — that is, when there’s an active county budget to work within.
COMBAT funding went to 95 programs across 424 locations in Jackson County in 2024, according to the program’s end-of-year report. Recipients include the Rose Brooks Center; KC Common Good; Kansas City Mothers in Charge; and the Housing Authority of Kansas City.
With no active budget, the county is focusing on releasing funds to programs that would break down completely without funding, according to Abarca. As a result, between 60 and 70 agencies have contracts with COMBAT that have gone unfulfilled, Johnson said.
“A lot of our agencies… They’re taking out loans,” Johnson said. “They’re laying people off. They’re limiting the amount of people that they serve, doing their very important functions.”
In 2024, COMBAT had a budget of just under $23,500,000, about $5,600,000 of which went to the prosecutor’s office. The tax also generated $10 million in extra revenue, part of which COMBAT staff had planned to spend on hiring a new community engagement specialist and purchasing new grant management funding.
Also among the casualties of the budget freeze: a proposal for a summer recidivism program for high-risk juvenile offenders.
Prosecutor’s office staff had planned to invite twenty young people previously involved in the family court system in some way to a summer program funded by the leftover 2024 COMBAT money.
The program would have included cognitive behavioral therapy and conflict resolution training, as well as introducing the teens to potential mentors. The prosecutor’s office had tapped several Kansas City Chiefs players and local music producers to participate before the program died in its planning stage, Johnson said.
Funding future programs
Johnson has not discussed her budgetary concerns publicly since May 14. A spokesperson for Johnson declined to speak on the record about the relationship between the prosecutor’s office and the county as budget debates continue.
If a 2025 budget remains unpassed, Johnson said that a new set of additional concerns could arise at the prosecutor’s office.
Along with delays in giving out grants through COMBAT, the prosecutor’s office is unable to accept grants without a budget. The office typically relies on several federal and private grants every year.
While most of the federal grants the office received in 2024 are expiring or phasing out, Johnson said, being blocked from applying for new grants has been a “handicap”.
“When you don’t accept the monies quickly, not only do you not get those monies, you are most likely thrown out of the program,” first district legislator Jalen Anderson said at the May 14 hearing.
Vanishing federal grants alongside frozen COMBAT funding mean that violence intervention programs across Jackson County are losing both of their major funding sources at once, Johnson said.
“None of us in this room are going to go down to 35th and Prospect and take a gun out of somebody’s hands,” Johnson said, addressing legislators. “But these organizations will.”
Johnson told legislators that she expects the caseload at the prosecutor’s office to increase over time as changing federal policies create additional cases, centered on issues including immigration.
As Johnson and her staffers continue to grapple with the impacts of frozen funding from the COMBAT tax and throughout the prosecutor’s office, legislators are gearing up for another phase of the fight to pass the budget.
During the legislature’s May 22 meeting, an ordinance to pass the 2025 budget - mostly as proposed in January - was introduced once again.
This story was originally published May 23, 2025 at 2:41 PM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the Jackson County Prosecutor was charging fewer cases. The story should have said the prosecutors office has been unable to fund programs that would allow it to charge more cases.
