AntiDrug Tax Lifts Kansas City

By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

KANSAS CITY, Mo. When weekends turn rowdy, Preston Washington arranges
for his clients to leave home and move temporarily into a halfway house to
avoid violating their parole.

"They're living in surroundings where there's a lot of drugging and
drinking on weekends," said Washington, a former policeman and parole
officer who runs Opportunity to Succeed, a program that helps exconvicts
find jobs, housing and a drugfree life.

"None have barriers like convicted felons," Washington said. "The
opportunity is here for them to make that transition as productive citizens."

Opportunity to Succeed is one of an ingenious array of local programs that
are partly financed by tacking a modest quarter of a percent onto the local
sales tax imposed in Jackson County, which includes half of Kansas City and
all of its innercity neighborhoods.

Seven years after it went into effect, the county's antidrug tax remains
highly unusual in financing drug treatment and prevention along with law
enforcement. At a time when politicians vie to cut taxes, Jackson County
Prosecutor Claire McCaskill concedes that "the prospect of passing a new
tax appears daunting to most people."

Yet the surtax remains popular even though it raises the combined state and
city tax to about 6.5 percent in Kansas City and 6 percent elsewhere in the
county.

The antidrug tax was approved by Kansas City voters in 1989 in response to
a surge of violent crime that was linked to crack cocaine. But the county's
former prosecutor, Albert Riederer, who championed the tax, had no detailed
plan for spending the new revenue. More than $400,000 went to buy new
computers for the prosecutor's office, while money earmarked for drug
prevention and treatment took a long time to reach the street.

The tax's image was hardly enhanced by the choice of a hypodermic syringe
as its symbol.

After Ms. McCaskill became prosecutor in 1993, she gave the antidrug tax
an aggressive and acronymic name, COMBAT, for communitybased antidrug
tax. A clenched fist replaced the syringe, and an experienced public health
administrator, James T. Nunnelly, was hired to run the program for the
prosecutor's office.

The tax itself has been credited with some results. Last year, the number
of drug cases filed for prosecution rose to 2,212, from 515 in 1989.
Violent crime has declined 30 percent since 1991, pushing Kansas City,
which once ranked as the thirdmostviolent city in the nation, off the
list of the worst 10. And as many as 700 people a month have entered or
returned to drug treatment, Nunnelly said.

But with drugs still a problem, other dividends are less tangible. "How do
you prove that which you have prevented?" Ms. McCaskill asked.

To find out how voters felt, she organized another referendum to renew the
tax in 1995, two years before it was to have expired. This time, 71 percent
of the voters approved it, compared with 63 percent the first time around.
Some actively campaigned for it, to little opposition.

"With COMBAT, we taxed our own selves," said Ethel Sutton, the chairwoman
of the Vineyard Neighborhood Association, which represents an impoverished
downtown area. "We knocked on doors because we wanted the tax."

Some Kansas City residents say the selfimposed tax has strengthened a
willingness to work across racial and economic lines to resolve the drug
problem.

"It has reinforced the glue that brings people together," said Ron
McMillan, an outreach worker for the Kansas City Free Health Clinic, which
provides health care for the indigent. "A lot of this is about getting
people in the neighborhoods to say, 'Hey, we want to do something about
this ourselves.' "

Ricardo Lucas, another outreach worker for Project Neighborhood, a group
that steers people with drugrelated problems into available programs,
said, "Where can you find me, an exfelon, sitting down with the mayor and
the prosecutor to get things done, not just pittypat conversation?"

Of the approximately $16 million raised annually by the tax, about $9.2
million goes to arrest and prosecute drug criminals.

"COMBAT has allowed us the manpower and resources to attack retail drug
sales," said Maj. David Barton, the commander of the narcotics and vice
division of the Kansas City Police Department.

The tax enables Barton to put 27 more detectives on the street and to hire
two forensic chemists and several clerical workers.

"It has allowed us to expand and work both ends of the drug chain
traffickers and retail markets," he said.

The tax has also paid for 19 prosecutors to expedite criminal cases through
the court.

The tax supports a county drug task force that pursues drug trafficking
outside Kansas City, and another response team that uses local housing
codes, unpaid utility bills and neighbors' complaints to close down houses
where drugs are sold.

The remaining $6.8 million in annual revenue is spent on drug treatment and
prevention as forms of crime deterrence, including a drug court offering
nonviolent felons with addiction problems the option of going into
treatment instead of prison. Before, only limited statesupported programs
were available.

"When people hurt people, we're going to lock them up for as long as we
can," Ms. McCaskill said. "When people don't hurt people, we're going to
save our money and force them to become good taxpayers. It is the only way
this country is going to come to grips with this crisis."

The tax is even used to get truants back in school and to drugtest any
juvenile who runs afoul of the criminal justice system.

Mrs. Sutton's Vineyard group received COMBAT money to enlist unemployed
young people in a watch group against vandalism and drugs and to help build
a community center.

"If you live in a raggedy neighborhood, you're going to think raggedy,"
Mrs. Sutton said.

An alliance between police officials and such community gadflies is rare
enough for most cities, but as Ms. McCaskill observed wryly, "There's
nothing like money to force collaboration."

COMBAT money has also been used to match outside grants for drug treatment
and prevention, including a summer program to teach computer and social
skills to teenagers.

"COMBAT is like a magnet that has the capacity to attract national dollars
that otherwise wouldn't come into the community," said the Rev. Keith
Brown, the director of Project Neighborhood.

Nunnelly said he did not worry about overextending COMBAT's resources.

"There are too many people who go at this thing with a oneshot approach,
and they don't build a foundation for change," he said. "Don't be in a
hurry. Really give it an opportunity to grow."

McMillan said he came to Kansas City to be treated for a cocaine problem
because the waiting list in New York City was so long. He stayed on to help
others get treatment and works with gang members, prostitutes and other
street people.

"COMBAT gives teeth to what I do," McMillan said. With the programs
financed by the tax, he added, "I can take a person and get him into
treatment the same day."

Ms. McCaskill said the tax had changed her views about drug abuse.

"This is such a multilayered problem that you've got to cover the
waterfront," she said. "We've let the public think that we can take care of
the problem. I understand the seduction of telling people what they want to
hear, but the criminal justice system is not equipped to take care of the
underlying causes of crime and drugs."

Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company