JACKSON COUNTY ASKED TO RESTORE SOME D.A.R.E MONEY

The Jackson County COMBAT Commission voted today to ask county
legislators for more money from the anti-drug sales 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 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 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 on
March 11, but because three commissioners had resigned and two others
were absent, the commission was without enough members to take a vote.

Earlier this month, the county Legislature voted to restore $112,000
mistakenly cut from DARE due to 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 will 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 approved the tax
in 1989 and renewed it in 1995 and 2003.

Independence Police Chief Fred Mills, a non-voting member of the
COMBAT commission, said 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 use
surplus COMBAT funds to restore cuts in drug treatment funding this
year. The commission will discuss Wilson's proposal at their April
meeting.

County officials have said that surpluses 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 figures
available.

But on Monday, former Jackson County Prosecutor Claire McCaskill told
county legislators that if both 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 formula. She also said all of the 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 today, 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. But the 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.