Recent reporting in The Kansas City Star and elsewhere on the Democratic primary for Jackson County prosecutor reminded me of an odd statement from one of the candidates about COMBAT spending. COMBAT is an acronym for the Community Backed Anti-Crime Tax, a Jackson County anti-drug and crime prevention fund spending about $25 to $30 million each year raised through a quarter-cent sales tax.
Speaking this January, Melesa Johnson said to a largely Black audience : “The harsh reality is we can’t send white people into the homes full of Black people and expect them to make the same amount of inroads that you or I can make. Lord willing, we will see a day where that is not the reality. Jane Elliot, one of her favorite quotes of mine is that, ‘It only takes one generation to surpass racism.’ But we are not in that generation.”
Johnson did not specify who was racist — those offering support or those receiving it — but she was very clear what she was going to do about it.
She continued : “We have to get unapologetic about these things and be willing to frustrate and anger some of the organizations that are primarily staffed by white people, and say, ‘Hey, maybe you don’t get your funding this year, because there’s an organization on the East Side in the middle of the urban core that can do this work better than you.’ Hard stop. And those are some of the plans I have with COMBAT funds if elected as Jackson County prosecutor.”
Set aside that such a race-based funding decision is pretty clearly a violation of the 14th Amendment . Even if that weren’t the case, is awarding public funds based on race really the best approach? I asked COMBAT leaders how they make funding decisions and was told they rely on outside reviewers to “alleviate the appearance of bias.” The prosecutor then approves those decisions, operating under the Jackson County Compliance Review Office, which oversees equal opportunity standards.
After 30 years, you’d assume there must be all sorts of data on what works and what doesn’t. In 2023, COMBAT funded 75 organizations that provide crime prevention or drug treatment. Are all those programs equally effective? Do some approaches have better outcomes than others?
No one wants to just throw money to the wind, right?
As it turns out, COMBAT doesn’t appear to measure outcomes. The closest it comes is a Community Impact Report , which relies chiefly on anecdotes and testimonials — many from people with financial interests in supporting COMBAT. A clue COMBAT doesn’t monitor program effectiveness is a note in the report indicating the number of those served by various programs are based on “grant application projections.” Not only is this relying on self-reporting by those receiving funds, but doing so at the moment they apply, when their plans are the most optimistic and least tested.
Consider the DARE anti-drug program. In the 1990s and early 2000s, research made it clear that DARE was “ineffective .” Yet COMBAT continued giving it money. The DARE organization has since retooled its approach and claims to be seeing success . That’s great if true, but improvement came only by measuring outcomes.
Even worse, COMBAT poorly manages its resources. An October 2019 audit of COMBAT commissioned by Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker found that funds were not well accounted for and spent on non-crime related projects. An April 2020 report by Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway was critical of COMBAT’s recordkeeping.
It doesn’t appear to have gotten better. There are no meaningful financial documents on COMBAT’s website; repeated requests for them remain unfulfilled. Its annual reports provide no financial data and are largely pages of press releases .
Jackson County taxpayers deserve better. Without measuring and publicizing outcomes, we risk wasting money on ineffective or counterproductive programs. More worrisome, without meaningful data we allow those with possibly ulterior motives to steer contracts based on personal relationships, conflicts of interest, or even an unconstitutional and probably meaningless reliance on race.
Patrick Tuohey is co-founder of Better Cities Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on municipal policy solutions.
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