KC police funding fight set for statewide ballot. Will Missouri voters pay attention?
When voters in Springfield, Cape Girardeau and St. Louis head to the polls in November, they will be asked to weigh in on a dispute unfolding hundreds of miles away over Kansas City police funding.
But will they care?
The Republican-controlled General Assembly this month advanced an amendment to the Missouri Constitution that would give lawmakers the power for the next three years to increase the minimum level of funding Kansas City must devote to its state-controlled police force. The proposal will be put to a statewide vote on Nov. 8.
The amendment is the culmination of a backlash by conservative legislators against a failed 2021 attempt by Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and the city council to assert more control over the police budget.
Under a 1939 law, Kansas City funds a police department that’s controlled by a board of commissioners appointed almost entirely by the governor.
Lawmakers passed a bill raising the percentage of Kansas City’s general revenue that must be spent on police from the current minimum of 20% to 25%. To make the change constitutional, however, they need voters across the state to approve the amendment.
And that means getting voters in all parts of Missouri to pay attention to a local fight. Both sides will make their pitches to a statewide electorate that’s much more conservative and much less racially diverse than Kansas City. In Missouri, 16.2% of residents are Black or Hispanic, compared to 38.3% in Kansas City.
In interviews, supporters and opponents of the measure are already previewing the messages they plan to take to voters across the state.
Amendment backers will contend it’s needed to push back on efforts to “defund the police” in Kansas City. It’s a blunt argument that conflates who controls police funding with the amount.
Still, Republicans previously deployed anti-”defund the police” messaging across the state in 2020 in their successful effort to defeat Democrat Nicole Galloway, the state auditor, in the governor’s race.
Opponents will emphasize the importance of local control. They will also raise the prospect of Republicans trying to control police funding elsewhere in the future, including St. Louis, which regained local control of its police a decade ago.
“There is already a push to put St. Louis back under state control,” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, a vocal critic of the amendment. “These are two major cities...that, more consistently, elect Black Democratic leaders. This is a pure partisan battle over who controls what.”
Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, a Parkville Republican who spearheaded the effort to pass the amendment through the Missouri Senate, said what happens in Kansas City would have a ripple effect across the entire state.
“Everyone should care when there are radical attempts by the Kansas City City Council to defund the KCPD because that is going to destabilize the Kansas City economy,” he said.
Local fight comes amid national debate on policing
The plan sought by Lucas and the city council would have reallocated $42 million from the police budget to establish a Community Services and Prevention Fund. It would have funded the police department at the state-required 20% threshold, while allowing the city to control spending above that amount. A judge found the plan illegal.
Luetkemeyer painted the move as an effort that would have allowed crime to creep into the city’s surrounding suburbs.
“When we see law enforcement being defunded south of the river, that means that crime is going to migrate north of the river because you’re going to have crime being unchecked,” Luetkemeyer said, referring to the Missouri River, which divides Kansas City into two, with more conservative neighborhoods in the north.
The two city council districts fully north of the river – districts 1 and 2 – are about 78% and 71% white. Two of the three districts completely south of the river are minority white districts, with Black residents making up a majority of the population.
The fight over the amendment is playing out amid a national struggle over policing reform sparked by the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black Minneapolis resident, by white police officer Derek Chauvin. President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order Wednesday to require federal law enforcement to review and revise policies on use of force and restrict the flow of surplus military equipment to local police, the Associated Press reported.
It also comes after two years of record and near-record numbers of homicides in Kansas City. Last year marked the second-highest number of homicides in the city’s history, with 157. The highest was 2020, with 182 killings.
It’s not yet clear how much organization – and money – will go into campaigns on both sides of the ballot question. No formal campaign operations have been established yet. Voters, for now, are occupied by the August primary election.
The state’s law enforcement community largely hasn’t weighed in yet. Blue Springs Police Chief Bob Muenz, who chairs the Missouri Police Chiefs Association, said in an email the group’s board had not yet discussed the measure. Leaders for the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Mark Tolbert, president of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, said he feels that voters would likely support the measure as long as they see the police department being accountable and good financial stewards.
“Policing has become such a valued commodity in the community that if we continue to do the work that we (the police board) do and show people that we are being transparent and open I think that communities all across Missouri will vote to see that increase,” Tolbert said.
“As long as they know it is going to be utilized in a manner that helps the department to be transparent and to protect and serve the community.”
Will St. Louis be next?
Luetkemeyer said the goal of the amendment is solely to “stabilize” the Kansas City Police Department’s budget. But opponents point to the amendment’s vague language and say it could be used to control police funding in other parts of the state as Republicans float the possibility of once again bringing St. Louis police under a state-controlled board.
The question voters will be asked in November is whether the Missouri Constitution should be amended to “authorize laws, passed before December 31, 2026, that increase minimum funding for a police force established by a state board of police commissioners to ensure such police force has additional resources to serve its communities?”
The state constitution currently restricts lawmakers from requiring cities to increase funding above existing levels unless the legislature provides additional money.
The amendment doesn’t explicitly mention Kansas City, though the city is currently the only one with a state board of police commissioners.
“I don’t even know if the state of Missouri will be paying attention to this,” said Rep. Jerome Barnes, a Raytown Democrat. He called the amendment a “knee-jerk reaction” by Republicans.
A bill offered this year by Republican Rep. Nick Schroer of O’Fallon would have taken control of St. Louis police away from local officials. While Schroer’s bill failed to gain traction, if the city were returned to state control, the upcoming ballot question would also likely apply to St. Louis.
“Absolutely they will try to make this applicable to the City of St. Louis,” said Lucas.
Former Missouri Supreme Court Judge Michael Wolff said the constitutional amendment would allow the legislature to increase minimum funding for any state-controlled police department. If St. Louis ever came under state control, the legislature would then have to pass a bill that set the department’s funding levels, he said.
Barnes emphasized the importance of framing the amendment to voters as a matter of local control. The amendment is nothing but “the state taking over,” he said.
“I know they’re probably going to promote it as defunding the police. They’re probably going to put it out as that,” Barnes said. “And I’m hoping people can see through that and look at what local control is because today it’s Kansas City, tomorrow it would be Springfield and the next day it would be somewhere else.”
Sen. Eric Burlison, a Battlefield Republican and a candidate for Congress in the 7th District, said the ballot question itself is fair. Lawmakers could have added what he called “ballot candy” to nudge voters in a certain direction, but didn’t, he contends.
“They could have said something to the effect of, ‘shall the state of Missouri not defund the police?’” Burlison said.
While the amendment deals with Kansas City, a lot of Missourians visit the city for work or play. “While we might not live there, we certainly want to be safe when we’re there,” he said.
Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, has yet to sign the bill that would raise Kansas City’s minimum police funding threshold if voters approve the amendment. Parson, a former Polk County sheriff, has given no signs he plans to veto the measure, however.
Asked about the legislation at a news conference last week, Parson said he wasn’t aware of all the details. He said that a year ago “they tried to take money away” from Kansas City police.
“I’m all for supporting law enforcement,” Parson said. “Whatever it is to make sure that they have the needs they have, whether it’s financially, whether it’s the manpower, whether it’s the state helping.”
But Lucas and other Kansas City supporters of local police control have long said state control turns the city into a “colony” in Missouri.
Lucas said he plans to actively oppose the measure and hopes to “prevail on people’s common sense.” The effort to raise the department’s funding is unconstitutional and potentially sets the state up for years of litigation, he said.
By taking away local control, he said, the ballot question “makes Kansas Citians secondary citizens in their own state.”
The Star’s Glenn Rice contributed reporting
