Updated: 2:08 PM CDT May 26, 2021
KMBC 9 News Staff
The Northland Republican members of the Missouri House of Representatives said they have asked Gov. Mike Parson to call a special session after city hall budget changes reallocated $42 million from the Kansas City Police Department’s budget.Under Missouri law, the state maintains oversight of the Kansas City Police Department. The representatives made the request in a letter sent to Parson’s office.Last week, the city council passed two new ordinances that reallocated more than $42 million of KCPD’s budget for specific crime prevention efforts.The ordinances were introduced and passed within six hours Thursday. It involves moving more than $42 million from the police budget to a new community service and prevention fund. Spending of that money would have to be approved by the city manager and the police board, which is the group overseeing the police department.The House members that represent parts of Kansas City said in a joint news release the move by the city council and Mayor Quinton Lucas puts KCPD officers at risk.“There is a new financial crisis now that’s been created by the mayor when it comes to providing public safety for Kansas City at a time when violent crime in Kansas City is at an all-time high,” Rep. Doug Richey said in the release. “This is more than wrongheaded on the part of Mayor Lucas.”[ READ THE LETTER TO GOV. PARSON ] Rep. Josh Hurlbert said the funding change “threaten the positions of 400 law enforcement officers. “The actions of the city council are reckless all in an attempt to grab some form of power by the mayor,” Hurlbert in the release.Rep. Sean Pouche said, “It is very disappointing that the mayor chose not to include any of the Northland in the discussion nor the police chief in this decision or mention his plans during the recent budget talks.”The letter says “Kansas City is a city in crisis. This move only pushes a city we love and represent closer to the brink of disaster. As a state, we must move to protect our citizens in the state’s largest city and restore the statutory intent of the General Assembly. In light of the rapidly developing situation, we ask that you call a special session of the legislature to address this dangerous action.”Mayor Lucas responded to the call for a special session with strong words Wednesday afternoon."While I welcome my Republican friends’ newfound interest in the plight of Kansas Citians, particularly in our inner-city neighborhoods, respectfully, our community, my community, has been in a violent crime crisis for my entire lifetime. With more than 100 murders per year in Kansas City for generations, we have to work non-stop and creatively to fix our serious gun violence problem, not continue to look the other way as our state legislature majority has done for too long," Lucas said in a statement. The statement goes on to read, "Our plan increases funding to the police department while we also as a city and with separate investments are addressing the root causes of crime, like poverty, lack of adequate mental health, and housing instability. Thousands of my brothers and sisters have died on Kansas City’s streets since the 1980s. The crisis has long been here. While new to some legislators, it’s not new to Black Kansas Citians. I hope our legislature, rather than using cities as a talking point to appeal to their base, works with us, as we respect our police, our educators, and our health care establishment to actually make a difference in outcomes for our city and work with us to make Kansas City safer."For those legislators interested, I am inviting them to join me and neighborhood leaders on a walking tour of our neighborhoods most consistently impacted by violent crime. We all have to work together on solutions to this problem and we all know funding in one area alone will not solve all our problems.”The move by the House members is the latest development in an ongoing battle between city hall and other elected officials. According to meeting minutes released Tuesday morning, the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners voted 3-1 in a closed session to “authorize the initiation of litigation” after the reallocation of KCPD funds. The board’s move to initiate litigation is an attempt to get the ordinances overturned and return the funding back to their control based on their claim that Kansas City, Missouri, does not have the right to control the KCPD budget.