How Missouri conservatives’ favorite law could lead to ‘defunding’ Kansas City police

If the Kansas City Police Department ends up with less money in the weeks ahead, the state’s anti-tax conservatives will bear primary responsibility, not the progressives who want to “defund” the police.

That counterintuitive result is clear from a legal motion filed this week by Gwen Grant. She heads the Urban League of Kansas City, but filed the motion as an individual taxpayer. One who wants to intervene in the lawsuit between City Hall and the Police Board over the $42 million in redirected police spending approved by the City Council.

(That money will still go to fund the KCPD, but Kansas City will for the first time since the 1930s have some say over that portion of the money we taxpayers fork over, and that has outraged conservatives in Jefferson City and on the governor’s police board.)

Grant makes some arguments we’ve heard before: The current state-run police board violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, and is “taxation without representation.” Those are real and important issues.

But Grant’s request also includes an explosive new claim: Kansas City can’t be required to spend more than 20% of its general revenue fund on police, her motion argued, because that would violate Missouri’s Hancock Amendment, the sprawling 1980 initiative that remains the gold standard for anti-tax, anti-government conservatives everywhere.

Grant is onto something.

For those unfamiliar: The Hancock Amendment prohibits Missouri governments from increasing spending beyond a limited amount. And tax increases, generally, must be approved by a vote of the people.

But the Hancock Amendment also includes a little-noticed clause forbidding the state from imposing additional spending on cities and counties. The prohibition against these “unfunded mandates” prevents the legislature from loading expensive state programs on the backs of city councils, county legislatures and their taxpayers.

In 1980, as is the case today, Missouri law required Kansas City to pay just 20% of its general revenue fund to the police board. The Hancock Amendment explicitly bars the state legislature, or any “state agency,” from requiring anything more than that, forever.

Is the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners a state agency? Yes. In fact, the city police board concedes it’s a state agency, in the very papers it filed in the current litigation. Too late to back away from that now.

The courts agree. “The Police Board is a state agency subject to (Hancock),” the state Supreme Court said in a 1982 St. Louis case. “Therefore, the Police Board may not require the City to fund an increase in its budget.”

The police board, and the legislature, simply cannot require Kansas City to spend more than 20% of its general revenue fund on the department. We expect the courts to share that view.

The police board may argue that City Hall waived Hancock by approving additional funding earlier this year, but that’s a real stretch. If a court decides appropriations can’t be altered, cities and counties across the state will face a nightmare of unchangeable, locked-in budgets.

There is a way to make all of this go away. State legislators could give Kansas City’s police department $42 million. We won’t hold our breath.

Grant’s motion to become a part of the police board-City Hall lawsuit is critical, and the judge should approve it. As it turns out, cities may lack the power to invoke the Hancock Amendment, but individual taxpayers like Grant have standing to use it.

The Missouri Constitution is like tissue paper in the hands of conservatives, of course. If they insist on requiring additional police spending from Kansas City’s budget, though, they will have to shred the Hancock Amendment, a centerpiece of right-wing thought in Missouri for half a century.

Kansas City isn’t defunding its police. It wants accountability and transparency for the money it spends, and is right to do so. But if the department has less than it thinks it needs, this year or next, the Hancock Amendment, and the conservatives who worship it, will be one reason why.