Quinton Lucas has nobody but himself to blame for Kansas City police funding failure | Opinion

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has decried passage of Amendment 4. His list of complaints: His lack of political control over the city’s police department, the increased funding requirement and the financial burden it places on local taxpayers.

His arguments are internally contradictory and don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Lucas has two positions on policing. First, and what got us here, was his effort to redirect funding from police activities into “newer approaches to violence prevention.” He doesn’t believe an increase in funding for the KCPD would be useful in countering rising violent crime. Yet his spokesperson Jazzlyn Johnson tells me more funding “can support law enforcement success.” Which is it?

Research tells us increasing police officers reduces homicides and pays a dividend in crime reduction. Lucas knows this too — it seems he just wants to be on both sides of the funding argument.

Lucas also asserts the KCPD is not sufficiently under the thumb of local politicians. But the mayor exerted more control over Kansas City policing than any other Missouri politician. Johnson apparently recognizes this, lauding the mayor’s work in getting “leadership change at KCPD, higher pay for officers, and closer relationships between the police department and our community.”

Lucas claims the homicide rate is proof the Board of Police Commissioners system doesn’t work. This is nonsensical. The current system has been in place since the 1930s, through good times and bad. The structure has nothing to do with our high homicide rate. This is a political red herring.

As for Amendment 4, this is Lucas’ own fault. Back in May 2021, the heyday of the “defund the police” movement, Lucas and his City Council colleagues introduced two ordinances. According to Black Enterprise, “One significantly cuts the Kansas City Police Department (KCPD) budget and the other creates a new community fund.” Lucas again played both sides of the street by arguing cutting police funding wasn’t really defunding the police, according to Fox4KC.

The police board sued the city, alleging the action was unlawful. A Jackson County judge ruled against the city, ordering the funds be restored. In the ruling, the judge pointed out the ordinance states its intent is to “reduce the annual police budget.” He also found the city, having already passed a budget for the year, “transferred the monies in those city accounts to a new account.”

Once Kansas City adopted the budget and transferred funds to the police, it could not then move the money around. The city refunded to the police the money Lucas claims not to have defunded.

It was a complete legal defeat for Lucas. But that’s not where it ends.

The General Assembly drafted legislation increasing Kansas City’s required spending on police from 20% of its general revenue fund to 25%. It passed the overwhelmingly Republican legislature in Jefferson City and won with over 63% of the statewide vote in November 2022.

Lucas and others complained that the ballot language was misleading. A court agreed and a corrected measure was back on the ballot this month. It again won statewide, albeit by a much slimmer margin.

Back in 2021, Lucas could have waited until the next budget to make the changes he desired.

He could have used his position on the Board of Police Commissioners to negotiate from a position of strength how police funds are assigned.

Instead, he picked fights he should have known were hopeless.

Lucas made Kansas City — and himself — irresistible political targets for Jefferson City. He diminished the legislative freedom of all future city leaders. And he wasted public funds fighting a losing battle. Now he wants to cast blame everywhere else: on the police board system, on the legislature, on the voters of Missouri.

I asked the mayor if he had any regrets about what led up to Amendment 4. None were provided. But it — all of it — rests squarely on his shoulders.

Patrick Tuohey is co-founder of Better Cities Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on municipal policy solutions, and a senior fellow at the Show-Me Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to Missouri state policy work.