Kansas City News Blog

Kansas City Police Chief Jim Corwin

Last Thursday afternoon, members of the Kansas City Police Department received an e-mail with the subject line: "Police Budget Update." The "Extra Daily Informant" explained how the department is going to make ends meet with a $15 million cut to the budget that begins May 1.

Chief Jim Corwin, the memo noted, had tapped a 12-person task force earlier in the day to study the numbers and make recommendations to the full Board of Police Commissions later this month. In bold letters, the Daily Informant emphasized: "The following are only examples of some of the proposals. Nothing has been decided."

Among the cost-cutting possibilities: keeping empty more than 80 vacant positions, holding off on purchasing new vehicles and eliminating the department's "10th holiday" (the day after Thanksgiving). The e-mail also suggested certain perks, like tuition reimbursement and clothing allowances, are on the chopping block. But, the memo stated, "Both the Chief and Board voiced opposition to cutting any of these benefits."

The chief and the board have already been decisive about cutting some benefits, though: those of the department's gay and lesbian members.

According to the very last lines of the two-page memo, a "special meeting" of the board was convened on April 1. At that meeting, the group decided to eliminate health insurance coverage for the domestic partners of gay department members. The advisory noted that the cut would affect eight people and save the KCPD $421,293.

Rich Lockhart, a KCPD spokesman, said it's not only staff with a same-sex partner at home who are feeling the pinch. Health insurance premiums are going up for everyone in the department, he said. "And that was one area that allowed us to save that much money and affected so few people. It was a decision the board made," Lockhart says of the domestic partner benefits.

That decision hasn't gone unnoticed in the gay community. Nettie Alford, vice president of the Lesbian and Gay Community Center of Kansas City, says the quiet move at the police department is out of step with a nation moving toward equality for gay and lesbian couples.

"Then we see the shortsightedness of our own city government, where we have typically been encouraged," Alford says. "To have domestic partner benefits offered, it's so much easier for members of the community to work for the police department and have normal lives."

Disappointed at the KCPD's decision, Alford says, community members are reaching out to city officials, including Mayor Mark Funkhouser (who serves on the Board of Police Commissioners), to discuss alternative means to deal with financial woes and still restore full coverage to everyone on KCPD's payroll.

"Is this the direction the city wants to go?" Alford says. "The City Council seems to be moving in a different direction, one toward fairness and equality and then, for the Board of Police Commissioners to just dump eight families, remove health insurance for eight families, is this really how the city wants to handle budget shortfalls?"

We'll keep you posted on developments.