As violence steadily increases across Kansas City and community support for his agenda starts to noticeably fade, Mayor Q delves into a constitutional theory promoted by the newspaper in order to salvage an ordinance mired in litigation.
The editorial premise as newsies play lawyer for their last remaining subscribers . . .
Kansas City can’t be required to spend more than 20% of its general revenue fund on police, (Gwen Grant's) 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.
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.
That's a very clever argument that won't improve overwhelming public sentient against Kansas City's sketchy defund ordinance.
Btw . . .
But I digress . . .
This post was actually inspired by the Mayor's latest demand directed at the Kansas City Police Board that was, in turn, inspired by dead-tree media legal theory . . .
Again, this comment is revealing for reasons that have nothing to do with mind-numbing legal theory based on political chatter.
Mayor Q is now fighting alongside activist Gwen Grant and The Kansas City Star for a defund ordinance that has earned overwhelming local and nationwide rebuke. In fact, the "defund the police" movement has been disavowed by Democratic Party leadership.
The reality is that without revealing the budget for his ordinance, Mayor Q is merely asking for a blank check in service of yet another 12th & Oak slush fund; making an utterly hypocritical and highly questionable argument predicated on transparency and accountability but offering none in return.
You decide . . .
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