Council vote to claw back police funds has only divided, enraged much of Kansas City
Minneapolis, the site of George Floyd’s murder and ground zero in the “defund the police” movement of a year ago, was recently ordered by a judge to hire more police officers.
Will a court likewise have to order Kansas City to fully fund its police department?
It’s quite possible, after the City Council voted 9-4 on May 20 to claw back $42 million of the police budget it had already passed just weeks before, and to require the department to negotiate for its return in whole or part. The state-appointed Board of Police Commissioners, which governs the Kansas City Police Department, has sued the city to overturn the council’s clawback.
Just as importantly — while calling police funding here into question at a time when other cities are actually re-funding their police — the eight council members and Mayor Quinton Lucas have further divided the council, by not even telling the four dissenting council members (or the police department) that the clawback was coming until May 20, the day of the vote. And they’ve enraged a good many citizens in the process. Indeed, an effort is now under way to recall at least one of the eight council members.
These are all wholly unnecessary divisions that are unlikely to heal anytime soon. Nice job, mayor and council.
“I feel totally betrayed by the mayor and the other eight people that co-signed on that ordinance,” says Councilwoman Teresa Loar, who opposed the clawback along with colleagues Heather Hall, Dan Fowler and Kevin O’Neill. “I’ve never withheld any information from the mayor or my colleagues, and I assumed we were a transparent council. But obviously not.”
“In six years that I have been on the council, not once has someone done such an egregious, secretive pulling of funds from any department,” Hall adds. “They defunded the police department budget 20 days after they all unanimously voted for it.”
Fowler says his feedback indicates that constituents agree about 3 to 1 with his opposition to the clawback. “And of the 25% who have some sympathy for changing the police budget, most of them don’t like the way it was done,” with the four Northland council members left in the dark before the vote.
A recall petition against 4th District Councilman Eric Bunch, for his vote in favor of the clawback, was recently turned in to the city by a group calling itself Taking KC Back. Officials late Friday were verifying that it has the required 2,427 signatures. “Eric Bunch is just the first. There are other recalls coming,” says Taking KC Back spokesperson Shannon Bjornlie. “We just feel like it’s time that we hold these people accountable for their bad decisions.
“The other thing that’s particularly concerning to our group is, there’s no plan for this money.”
Three City Council members may get their own lawyer
The May 20 vote and ongoing lawsuit have even prompted Fowler, Hall and Loar — who are in the peculiar position of rooting against the city in the lawsuit with the police board — to ask the city for separate legal representation in the case. Their request was denied, but Loar says the trio may get their own lawyer for the case, perhaps even if they have to pay out of their own pockets.
Months after the May 20 ambush, Hall and Loar are still seething, along with many of their voters.
“They’re almost speechless, many of them,” Hall says of her constituents. “No one understands why it was so secret.”
Hall vehemently disagrees with those who say the May 20 vote wasn’t defunding police: “Obviously this is a defund the police movement. It is obvious in every way. Those colleagues who did this said, ‘Oh no, this is only going to help the police.’ OK, if this is so good for the police, and so good for the citizens of our city, why didn’t you invite the four Northland council people who are duly elected just like you to talk about it? If it’s so good for everybody, why were you so secretive about it?”
Hall notes that her colleagues talk of transparency and accountability and collaboration. “Yet there was none of that, when nine of my colleagues secretly went behind our backs and wrote ordinances to pull away $42 million.”
Mayor Quinton Lucas gives his personal guarantee that the $42 million will go to the police department. But when asked, he could not point to verbiage in the May 20 ordinances that back up that guarantee. And in fact, he acknowledges that, “as could happen any day of the week,” the council could vote to withhold some of the funds. He says he would veto such a move, but admits he could be overridden.
Kansas City officials yearn for local control of the police department, and I was one who thought it was a good idea. Local control was taken away, and assumed by the state, in 1939 due to the vast corrupting influence of Kansas City’s Tom Pendergast political machine. Ironically, with the divisive and reckless May 20 vote, it’s likely that Kansas City has only further convinced state officials that local control is a bad idea.
“Not only is this illegal,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt wrote about the City Council’s action in a court brief, “it is also bad policy. … This is the worst time to interfere with police operations. Kansas City just experienced the deadliest year in its history. Defund efforts also hurt low-income and minority communities, and these ordinances take $22 million from patrol areas serving them.”
A Jackson County judge hears oral arguments Wednesday on making the police department whole. It’s a shame he won’t be able to do the same for a divided council and community.
