Missouri’s August Ballot Issues Explained

Missouri Governor Mike Parson holds up a copy of a bill he just signed to increase the Kansas City Police Department’s budget during a ceremony at the department’s headquarters in June 2022. (Photo courtesy of the Missouri Governor’s Office)

Kansas City officials will have another chance next month to fend off an effort by Missouri lawmakers to force the city to spend more on policing.

But despite opposition from Kansas City leaders and activists, there is no formal campaign underway to oppose the ballot initiative, which was previously passed by Missouri voters but later struck down by the Missouri Supreme Court due to misleading ballot language.

Instead, opponents of the proposal will try to spread the message without “giant checks,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said.

“But I don’t pretend that this will necessarily be the deciding factor,” Lucas said.

At issue is a question that will appear on Missouri voters’ ballots Aug. 6 as “Amendment 4.” It asks whether the Missouri Constitution should be amended to require Kansas City to spend at least a quarter of its general revenues on policing, an increase of nearly $39 million.

Missouri voters approved the spending increase earlier in 2022 by 63% of the vote. But the measure was unpopular with Kansas City residents. In the Jackson County portion of Kansas City, more than 61% of voters rejected the amendment. It passed in Platte and Clay Counties, which include Kansas City suburbs.

Lucas sued the state’s auditor and secretary of state, alleging that a summary on voters’ ballots “materially misstated” the proposal’s costs. He won, and the Missouri Supreme Court ordered the election results overturned and a new vote held.

The police funding amendment is one of two questions on Missouri voters’ ballots in August. The other, passed by the Missouri General Assembly last year and listed as Amendment 1, would exempt child care facilities from property taxes in an effort to “make child care more available” to “support the well-being of children, families, the workforce and society as a whole.”

“We clearly have a shortage of child care facilities in our state,” Senator Travis Fitzwater said last year during a hearing on the property tax reform. “We need to provide opportunities for people who are receiving child care.”

A “yes” vote on Amendment 1 supports amending the Missouri Constitution to exempt child care facilities from paying property taxes.

On Amendment 4, a “yes” vote would support amending the Missouri Constitution to increase the minimum amount Kansas City must spend on policing from 20% to 25%. A “no” vote would leave Kansas City’s spending obligation at 20%, although city officials could voluntarily spend more.

Campaign for police funding

The police funding dispute stems from the Kansas City City Council’s 2021 attempt to exert some control over the Kansas City Police Department’s budget.

For more than 80 years, the Kansas City Police Department has been governed not by the city council, but by a board of commissioners appointed by the governor of Missouri. Kansas City is the only city in the state and one of the few in the country that does not direct its police department. It simply provides the funds for the department.

Although the city was required to provide the funding requested by the board between 1958 and 2022 (up to 20% of the city’s general revenues), it has little say in how it is spent.

The city often exceeded its 20% obligation.

But following racial justice protests that swept Kansas City and across the country in 2020, City Council members sought to set aside $42 million in police funding above and beyond mandated spending for “community engagement, education, prevention, intervention, and other public services.”

The measure was criticized by Republicans in the Missouri General Assembly, who voted to increase Kansas City’s contribution to 25% of revenues.

“Kansas City’s shortsighted move to dismantle the KCPD, if attempted again, will have lasting and dangerous consequences for our metro area,” Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer said in a 2022 committee hearing when the amendment was approved by lawmakers.

Luetkemeyer, who lives in the Kansas City suburbs, introduced the legislation in 2022 to increase the city’s spending commitments for the police department. He did not respond to a request for comment.

The 2022 legislation passed the Missouri General Assembly on a vote that was largely along party lines, with Republicans supporting increased police spending and Democrats opposing it.

Lucas said voting no was the “only common sense solution.”

Kansas City residents, he said, should be the ones who determine the city’s policy direction by electing local representatives. He said the council should raise police salaries one year and spend money on other needs, such as firefighting, the next.

“Who should tell you, ‘No, you can’t take care of your firefighters; you can’t take care of the nurses in your public hospital because you have to comply with what Jefferson City does just for political flattery?’” Lucas said.

Lora McDonald, executive director of the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity, or MORE2, called state lawmakers’ attempt to force Kansas City to spend 25% of its revenue on policing “a political ploy.”

“What do you care what our police department has or doesn’t have?” McDonald said. “It’s none of your business. It’s not your money.”

Lucas said there was “no organized campaign” to convince voters to reject the amendment.

Last month, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the issue would be on the ballot in August instead of November, giving proponents and opponents a little more than two months to mobilize voters.

According to Missouri Ethics Commission records, no spending committees have been formed to vote for or against Amendment 4, and no independent groups have spent money on the race.

Childcare tax credit

In addition to the Kansas City police issue, Missouri voters will also get to decide in August whether to amend the state constitution to provide child care facilities with a property tax exemption.

The proposal, which Fitzwater championed during the 2023 legislative session, is one of several efforts by lawmakers in recent years to address Missouri’s shortage of child care facilities.

This spring, Parson and lawmakers attempted to pass a package of child care tax breaks, but the legislation failed in the Senate amid ultraconservative opposition to “welfare,” or the effort to “give away free child care.”

Research by The Independent and MuckRock has found that nearly one in five children in Missouri lives in a “childcare desert,” where there are more than three children under the age of 6 for every licensed childcare space — or no licensed spaces at all.

“This is just one incentive to try to make it easier for the facilities,” Fitzwater said during a committee hearing on the property tax exemption last year. Fitzwater did not respond to a request for comment.

Fitzwater’s proposal received support from a wide range of child care, economic development and anti-abortion groups.

Samuel Lee, a lobbyist for Campaign Life Missouri, said during debate on the bill last year that the anti-abortion group supported legislation focused on “pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker development.”

“The pro-life movement has generally not been involved in child care,” he said, “even though for our maternity hospitals and pregnancy centers, the lack of available child care, the lack of transportation and the lack of housing have always been the three biggest problems for their clients.”

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry also supported the measure last year. Lobbyist Heidi Geisbuhler Sutherland said business owners told the chamber that the lack of child care makes it difficult to find workers.

“It will take a comprehensive approach to address the child care crisis,” she said, “but I think this measure is a good way to start.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock with questions: [email protected]. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and X.