Teresa Loar’s plan would spend an additional $45 million on Kansas City police

Whether she knows it or not, Councilwoman Teresa Loar’s latest plan would hand the Kansas City Police Department an additional $45.3 million that would do nothing to help solve the city’s violent crime crisis.

Her plan should be quickly dismissed, and almost certainly will be. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the proposal, which says something important about the misunderstandings and contradictions of the ongoing lawsuit over the $42 million the council redirected from the police budget last May.

(Again, this money was always going to be redirected right back to the police budget, only with some strings attached by the funders, aka Kansas City taxpayers. So the idea that reducing the police budget by zero dollars was somehow tantamount to “defunding” was a lie from the start.)

Back to Loar’s ordinance: It has no clawback provision. So if the City Council passed her bill, then lost its legal fight with the Board of Police Commissioners, the city would end up sending two checks to the department: the disputed $42 million, plus Loar’s additional $45 million.

Loar did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But she won’t be able to claim her $45 million could be canceled by the council if her measure passed and the city lost the case later this year.

Why? Because the police department believes the City Council can’t cut its spending except at budget time in the spring. If Jackson County Judge Patrick Campbell bought that argument, the cops would have to get their original $42 million, and Loar’s $45 million as well.

Sure, there’s an argument that the Police Board and Chief Rick Smith could give Loar’s $45 million back voluntarily, if they won the case, but that wouldn’t happen.

Which means that no responsible city council member should even consider Loar’s ordinance before knowing the outcome of the case.

Conflict of interest with judge, police board lawyer?

There’s another fundamental issue at stake. The police board’s lawsuit claims the City Council is illegally interfering with its operations by “cutting” $42 million from the police budget. Remember, that isn’t accurate: The police department would still get the $42 million, but would need to agree with the City Council on how to spend it.

But if that intervention is illegal, how could Loar add $45 million to the budget without improperly interfering as well?

The door has to swing both ways: If it’s illegal for the City Council to remove money from specific police accounts that would then be reallocated, it has to be illegal for the council to add money to those same accounts.

Loar wants to take the $45 million from federal COVID-19 relief funds, but that money is generally a one-time thing. So if the board hired new officers with that money this year, they would likely have to be laid off next year, and what sense would that make?

Judge Patrick Campbell will have to sort through this mess when he hears the case in September. Kansas Citians should hope and expect that he will explore these issues impartially, but they should keep their eyes on his court.

In 2012, Campbell filed an application with the state to become a judge. The lengthy application asks for the names of five people who could provide “letters of reference” for the candidate.

Campbell’s application listed attorney Patrick McInerney as one of his references. And McInerney is now the lead attorney for the Board of Police Commissioners in the pending lawsuit.

Clearly, the judge has had a prior relationship of some type with McInerney. Through a spokeswoman, Campbell declined to comment on the nature of that relationship, or on any potential conflict of interest.

Last week, Campbell issued two orders widely seen as supporting the police department’s case.

Teresa Loar’s political proposal is not only bad law and bad policy, but also misses the point. The dispute between the mayor, the City Council and the police board isn’t about money.

It’s about determining who’s responsible for protecting the public: Is it the people voters select, or an unelected, unaccountable, state-appointed board?

We’re confident that a fair hearing will reveal the right answer.