MORE FUNDS ARE SOUGHT FOR DARE PROGRAMS

The Jackson County COMBAT Commission voted Thursday to ask county
legislators for more money from the anti-drug tax surplus to help pay for
Drug Abuse Resistance Education programs.

"I think all of the commissioners are committed to doing what it needs to
do to bring DARE funds up to what's needed," said Darrell Curls, interim
chairman.

The amount of anti-drug sales tax money given to DARE in 2004 was cut
$231,000, or about 18 percent less than the $1.29 million the programs
received in 2003.

The special meeting Thursday was the first opportunity the COMBAT
Commission has had to address the cuts in programs since a controversy
erupted last month. Police officials in February questioned the DARE cuts,
and Prosecutor Mike Sanders called for an independent audit of the tax.
Later that month, Sanders accused County Executive Katheryn Shields of
misspending money from the COMBAT surplus, which DARE officials said they
did not know even existed.

COMBAT officials were prepared to discuss DARE funding at a meeting March
11, but because three commissioners had resigned and two others were
absent, the commission was without enough members to take a vote.

This month, the county Legislature voted to restore $112,000 mistakenly cut
from DARE because of a math error. However, that still left the program
about $119,000 short of what it received last year. Police officials said
that without additional money, DARE programs would be eliminated at some
schools.

COMBAT is a quarter-cent sales tax used to pay for law enforcement, drug
prevention and drug treatment programs. Voters first approved the tax in 1989.

Independence Police Chief Fred Mills, a nonvoting member of the COMBAT
Commission, said Thursday that DARE was key to getting voters to renew the
COMBAT tax last year. Mills questioned why the program faced cuts, while
COMBAT surplus funds were being spent on other projects, including capital
improvements for the Jackson County jail.

"The DARE program is a wonderful program and I don't know how we are going
to tell the kids of Jackson County they are not a priority," Mills said. "I
went to every DARE graduation and said that if the tax continued, DARE
would continue alive and well. Then on the next budget cycle after the
vote, we get this sort of treatment. I think it's absolutely wrong."

The decision to seek new funds for DARE prompted other agencies to also
seek more money.

Susan Wilson of Swope Health Services asked commissioners to urge county
legislators to use surplus COMBAT funds to restore cuts in drug treatment
funding. The commission will discuss Wilson's proposal at its April meeting.

County officials have said that surpluses were accumulated during the early
years of the COMBAT tax before many of the programs it paid for were
developed. But the surplus also grew from unspent money. In the mid-1990s,
the county Legislature voted to spend about $20 million of the surplus to
build a jail annex. The Legislature also developed guidelines for spending
annual COMBAT revenue and for spending the remaining surplus through 2001.

The surplus amounted to $10.4 million in 2002, the most recent figure
available.

But Monday, former Jackson County Prosecutor Claire McCaskill told county
legislators that if the guidelines were followed, the county should not
have such a large COMBAT surplus.

Controversy over the anti-drug tax gained momentum last month when Shields
acknowledged that millions of dollars in surplus COMBAT money was allocated
without following the approved percentage guidelines.

The COMBAT tax specifies a formula for distributing the money among police,
prosecutors, corrections, drug treatment, courts, drug prevention and DARE.
That was done for an estimated $19.5 million expected to be collected this
year. But the county did not follow that formula in allocating $6.4 million
of the surplus.

Shields maintained that the surplus should be allocated based on need, not
according to the guidelines.

She also noted that all of the questioned expenditures were for COMBAT
programs and approved by the county Legislature.

However, Mills disagreed.

"I think the surplus should be included," Mills said. "Whatever monies
there are, I want DARE to get its percentage of that. That's the commitment
we made to the voters."

In other developments, a vacancy on the COMBAT Commission was filled by
Dorothy Kennedy, who had stepped down from the commission earlier this year
at Shields' request to serve on another county commission.

The county Legislature and Shields asked Kennedy to return after three
other COMBAT commissioners recently resigned. Two commissioners stepped
down amid questions about potential conflicts of interest. Another resigned
to pursue a position with another agency.