By ALLISON KITE
Missouri Independent
Missourians on Tuesday voted to require Kansas City to spend more of its municipal budget on policing, reinstating a policy that had been overturned by the state supreme court.
The race was called by the Associated Press at 11:30 p.m., with the amendment winning 51% to 48%. That means the Missouri Constitution will be amended to require Kansas City to spend at least 25% of its general revenue on police, amounting to tens of millions of dollars per year.
While it provides funding for the department, Kansas City is the only major city in the U.S. that doesn’t have local control of its police. The Kansas City Police Department is governed by the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, which includes the mayor and four members appointed by the Missouri governor. That means while the City Council writes the checks for the Kansas City police, they have no control over how funds are spent.
Between the 1950s and 2022, Kansas City was required to spend at least 20% of its general revenue on police and often exceeded that. But in 2020, as racial justice protesters pushed for police reform across the nation, Kansas City sought to exert more influence over the police budget.
Following the protests, sparked by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Kansas City officials attempted to set aside $42 million in police funding — above its obligatory 20% spending — for “community engagement, outreach, prevention, intervention and other public services” in an attempt to increase police accountability.
But the move was lambasted by Missouri Republicans, who claimed City Hall was trying to “defund” the police.
Missouri lawmakers responded with legislation requiring Kansas City to spend at least 25% of its revenue on police, which passed in the spring of 2022 on a largely party-line vote with Republicans supporting increased police spending.
Voters then, in the fall of 2022, approved the legislation with 63% of the vote. The policy was unpopular, however, in the Jackson County portion of Kansas City where 61% of voters rejected it. It passed in Platte and Clay counties, which include suburban parts of Kansas City.
After the vote, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas challenged the election in court, saying a summary printed on voters’ ballots “materially misstated” the cost of the proposal.
The fiscal note summary accompanying the 2022 amendment said the requirement that Kansas City spend at least 25% of its revenue on police would result in “no additional costs or savings.” The state argued that because the city had voluntarily granted that much in the past, the amendment simply removed the city’s discretion rather than imposing a new cost.
City Hall, however, argued the mandate could potentially cost other departments up to $38.7 million in budget cuts.
The Missouri Supreme Court agreed with the city and ordered the results of that election be tossed and a new vote be held, paving the way for Tuesday’s vote.