Oct. 17--Uncle Sam's investment in Kansas City area banks is starting to pay dividends -- though two banking firms have stopped sending checks to Washington.

The money, totaling $8.7 million from 14 Missouri- and Kansas-based companies with branches in the Kansas City area, has flowed into the U.S. Treasury.

It's the dividends and interest these bankers owe on shares and debt the Treasury bought through its TARP program.

Congress created the Troubled Asset Relief Program to boost capital at healthy banks amid the financial crisis. To get money, banks had to pass muster with regulators on viability.

Now the money is flowing the other direction in the form of quarterly payments. Another round of dividend and interest payments are due next month, but two area banks have begun to miss their due dates.

Blue Valley Ban Corp., which owns the $810 million Bank of Blue Valley, got $21.75 million under TARP in December last year. In February this year it paid $211,458.33 in dividends but has missed payments that were due in May and August.

Kansas City-based Dickinson Financial Inc. gained $146 million under TARP in January. The owner of the $4 billion Bank Midwest, $835 million Armed Forces Bank in Leavenworth and four other banks, has paid $2.63 million in TARP dividends this year.

But Dickinson missed its August payment of just less than $2 million.

Both companies are expected to make up the missed payments. Neither can pay dividends to their regular stockholders while missing Uncle Sam's check.

Both companies are losing money, which is why they stopped paying.

"It's all about preserving and growing capital," said John Pittman, a banking consultant at CrossFirst Advisors LLC in Overland Park.

Pittman said banks that were losing capital lost money, and for them to pay out dividends at the same time would only exacerbate the trend.

Blue Valley CEO Bob Regnier said the Overland Park-based company had put off TARP dividends to keep the capital on hand.

Quarterly earnings reports from Blue Valley Ban Corp have included the cost of paying the dividend, Regnier said, to show accurately the current financial condition of the publicly traded company. The money, however, has not been paid.

Bank Midwest's parent company is also trying also stopped paying its TARP dividend, as well as other shareholder dividends, to preserve capital, said John Cox, who is general counsel of Dickinson Financial.

Cox said the decision to pay a dividend rests with the company's directors.

"Any payment you miss, you obviously have to make that up," Cox said.