Kansas City mayor defends his record on police budgets

After Kansas City Police Chief Darryl Forté blogged this week about police pay raises, Mayor Sly James responded Wednesday with his own blog post defending his record for supporting police funding increases.

Forté blogged Monday that he was concerned about the city’s five-year Citywide Business Plan. That plan currently contemplates raises for police officers of 2 percent per year, while city firefighters and other union employees are slated to get raises of 2.5 percent to 4.7 percent per year for the next three years, under new agreements that the City Council approved. The chief said police deserve the same raises as city employees.

On Wednesday, James said he appreciates Forté’s leadership, but the mayor also defended his own record of supporting police budget increases every year since he was first elected in 2011. The adopted police budget in 2011 was $206 million, while this year it’s $242 million.

“If anyone wants to talk about what is NOT being done to support our FOP (Fraternal Order of Police), we absolutely have to talk about what HAS been done by my administration to support, strengthen, and value our police department,” the mayor wrote. “Our police department has received pay increases of 2 percent or more in their wages plus larger increases to benefits since I entered office five years ago.”

At the same time, the mayor pointed out, the city and police reached an agreement in 2013 to stabilize pension payments in a way that had not been the case earlier.

James noted that 74 cents of every dollar in Kansas City’s general fund goes for public safety, although that includes the Fire Department and Municipal Court as well as police.

At a discussion Tuesday about the police pay raise concerns, City Council members said they highly value the police force and they want to treat officers fairly in their pay raises. But they also noted that the city has countless other needs, and the vast majority of layoffs and budget cuts in recent years have been borne by non-public safety departments, while public safety functions have largely been held harmless.

The mayor also pointed out that Kansas City is the only city in the country where the police department is not part of city government. Instead, it is a state agency that answers to the Board of Police Commissioners, which negotiates the pay package with police officers. The city’s main function is to fund the police budget, without any real say in how the department is run.

This story was originally published October 26, 2016 at 1:49 PM with the headline "Kansas City mayor defends his record on police budgets."