Kansas City must spend 25% of its general fund revenue on police after Missouri residents voted on the issue Tuesday.
The vote on Amendment 4 was surprisingly even on Tuesday evening.
According to unofficial results from the Missouri Secretary of State, the vote was 51.18% to 48.82%.
Many Kansas City residents support local control over the police and see the vote as an attempt to exert more state power over a local agency.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas had said that voting no on Amendment 4 was “a vote for local control and accountability.”
In the part of Kansas City south of the Missouri River, unofficial results from the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners showed 28,172 voters voted no and 14,206 voted yes on the amendment.
The Kansas City Police Department is overseen by the state Board of Police Commissioners, which consists of four members appointed by the governor and the mayor.
The amendment, which would require Kansas City to increase the amount of general revenue it spends on police from 20% to 25%, first went before voters in 2022. It drew criticism from local officials who argued that voters across the state should not determine how a municipality makes public safety decisions.
More than 63% of Missouri voters voted for the measure when it was last on the ballot in November 2022.
But the Missouri Supreme Court threw out the results in April, ruling that voters had been misled by the wording on the ballot.
The crux of the court’s decision focused on the summary budget statement voters saw on the ballot, which stated that “local government agencies do not estimate any additional costs or savings in connection with this proposal.” The court found this to be misleading.
The amendment was put back on the ballot with amended text and voters cast their votes again on Tuesday.
Kansas City has often funded its police department at or above the 25% threshold. The $317 million budget approved this year was 25.03% of general revenue, according to the mayor’s office.
