Frank White recall effort gaining steam among Jackson County residents
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (KCTV) - A new count is underway in the petition effort to recall Jackson County Executive Frank White.
About half a dozen people gathered on the sidewalk Wednesday afternoon outside the Jackson County Board of Election Commissioners in Independence. Some wore t-shirts that read, “Recall Frank White.” Then, they stepped inside, toting three thick, black boxes filled with signed recall petition.
Trailing behind them were Tima and Lonnie Ford. Lonnie held a clipboard with a much smaller number of signed petitions. Tima estimated she’d collected about 100. The Independence homeowner said she joined the effort very recently after struggling to find a place where she could sign.
“I thought, well, I’m going to go back to the old roots in the ‘60s and go door to door, and that’s exactly what I decided to do,” she said. “I have been going door to door in my neighborhood for a week.”
She turned to her husband Lonnie, wearing a recall t-shirt, and explained that she’s now solicited him to accompany her so that she can expand her door knocking, because she doesn’t feel safe knocking on doors she doesn’t know while alone.
The beef that got her on board is property taxes.
“We’re senior citizens and seeing what amount our taxes went up - because we’ve been paying our taxes on our own — it just shook us to the core,” she said.
People don’t need a reason to sign a recall petition, the 2023/2024 property assessment cycle seems to be a motivator for many of the people signing up. Questions about the legality of that year’s assessments have pitted the county executive against the State Tax Commission. It’s a battle with no surrender in sight.
Many people were upset to see what they thought were excessive increases in their homes’ assessed values. The tax commission called out that year’s assessments not for how quickly the values rose but for failing to perform the proper inspections required for large increases.
Less than a decade ago, the tax commission called the county out of compliance for setting assessed valuations far below fair market value, setting off a series of steep increases.
WILL A RECALL HAPPEN?
The number of signatures gathered getting increasingly closer to the total needed to place a recall on the ballot.
Tammy Brown, the Republican director of the Jackson County Election Board said it will take 42,902 verified signatures to make it on the ballot. The county charter indicates the threshold be calculated as 20% of the number of registered voters who voted in the last election in which the county executive was on the ballot.
Brown said as of February 27, when the last batch of petitions was delivered, a total of 23,311 signatures had been approved. That’s more than half of what’s needed. She also broke down the total by location, amounting to 80% from Eastern Jackson County and 20% from Kansas City.
Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith, who officially joined the effort last fall, estimated 8,000 additional signatures were dropped off Wednesday.
All of those signatures, he said, were gathered by volunteers.
A Missouri Ethics Commission filing shows that a group called Democracy in Action hired paid poll workers to gather signatures in November. White called the effort “a political sideshow funded by a dark money group.”
Smith took issue with that portrayal.
“In the state of Missouri, almost all successful petition efforts have a paid element to them,” Smith said. “This one’s unique in as much as most of the collection effort has actually been done by grassroots volunteers that just had to figure out how to organize themselves.”
ADDITIONAL EFFORTS UNDERWAY
Smith also penned a letter to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey dated on Monday asking for an investigation into White. The letter was also signed by Legislators Manny Abarca and Vanessa Huskey.
White called the letter “a deeply disappointing attempt to mislead the public through false and politically motivated accusations.”
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