Public Managers, Judges, and Legislators: Redefining the "New Partnership"

that the courts are the senior partners. On September 15, 1987, United States District Court Judge Russell Clark ordered a doubling of property taxes in Kansas City, Missouri, in order to aid in the desegregation of the school system. Nine thousand Kansas Citians voiced their disapproval by paying their property taxes under protest, while others responded by staging a series of tea parties to complain about taxation without representation. Two and one-half years later in the landmark decision of Missouri v. Jenkins, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court surprised many by supporting Judge Clark's actions in part. It upheld the authority of a federal judge to order a local government to levy a tax increase in order to remedy constitutional violations, even though state laws prohibited such a tax increase.