In December, Tara Bennett stood in front of the Platte County commissioners urging them to enact a children’s mental health services tax that voters had already passed the month before.
“Do all of you all like receiving those Park Hill notifications when we lose another child?” Bennett asked. “If you vote against this and another one of those comes across, this is on your shoulders and you bear some responsibility.”
Bennett was one of dozens of Platte County residents who addressed officials that day, before the three-person commission was set to vote on the fate of the Children’s Services Fund.
Bennett has three kids herself and stressed the importance of supporting youth mental health.
”I see the need there every day,” she said. “I talked to parents and administrators and teachers, and we all know that accessing mental health resources is too hard for our children.”
Ultimately, all three commissioners refused to implement the quarter-cent tax, which 56% of county voters had approved in November’s election.
Now, Bennett and fellow resident Warren “Greg” Plumb are suing Platte County commissioners, saying that officials “have a present, imperative, and unconditional duty” to carry out the election results.
“It’s not up to a three-person commission to decide to overturn the will of the people,” Bennett told KCUR .
Platte County has a serious shortage of mental health providers. There’s just one provider for every 840 residents — that’s half the amount of Missouri’s county average of one provider for every 430 residents.
Almost a dozen other counties in Missouri have a Children’s Services Tax, including Jackson and Clay counties.
An impact report, conducted in 2023, found that the Jackson County Children’s Services Fund helped over 50,000 children that year.
Dennis Meier, who spearheaded the Platte 4 Kids Coalition that put the tax measure on the ballot, said that commissioners are failing to protect the county’s children.
“ Whether they may or may not legally, it's a separate question,” Meier said. “It begs the moral question – why would you fight so hard to keep mental health services away from kids?”
The commissioners argue they have the power to overrule the measure, pointing to a Missouri statute that reads: “The governing body of a city not within a county, or any county of this state may, after voter approval under this section, levy a sales tax.”
Commissioners claim that the use of the word “may” instead of “shall” gives them that discretion. But children’s mental health advocates call this a misinterpretation.
The three commissioners have opposed a children’s services fund from the very beginning, forcing advocates to collect signatures for an initiative petition and then seek a judge’s order to add the measure onto the ballot.
Second District Commissioner Joe Vanover said he’s against raising taxes at all, and argued that it should be up to the parents to handle their children’s mental health needs.
Vanover released a statement this week in response to the lawsuit: “The radical left only cares about raising taxes and advancing their woke agenda. Instead of helping children, they are wasting money on lawyers.”
At the meeting in December, Presiding Commissioner Scott Fricker claimed the measure would “disenfranchise future voters,” because it has no sunset law, meaning the tax would stay in effect indefinitely.
Even though the tax measure passed with more than half of the vote, Fricker also said he is standing up for the 70% of Platte County residents who either didn’t vote for the tax or didn’t vote at all.
The third commissioner who voted against the tax was Dagmar Wood, whose term ended at the end of 2024. The commission’s new member, Allyson Berberich, has not spoken publicly about her stance and did not respond to KCUR’s request for comment.
Along with commissioners Fricker, Vanover and Berberich, the lawsuit also names the Missouri Department of Revenue, which would enforce the county’s tax collection, as well as its director, Patricia Vincent.
The lawsuit requests the judge rule quickly, so Platte County can begin collecting the tax on April 1, the first day of the second fiscal quarter.
“The voters or [sic] Platte County have expressed their will at the ballot box and Respondents should not be entitled to thwart their will to advance their own personal political positions,” the petition states.
