As reported here yesterday afternoon, the Jackson County legislature officially overrode Jackson County Executive Frank White’s veto of holding a referendum on a sales tax surcharge extension to raise more than $500 million for Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium projects. While it had looked like the decision would go down to the wire before today’s deadline to put the issue on the April 2 ballot, two county legislators, Jalen Anderson and Sean Smith, abruptly switched their votes yesterday after discussions with the teams.
This is being widely reported as that “voters will have a say” in deciding an extension of the 0.375% sales tax hike, but that’s not really accurate, though it is one of the team owners’ talking points. By local law, voters would have to approve any sales tax increase regardless. What this does is to ensure that a vote will take place 10 weeks from today even if the team owners haven’t yet finalized lease terms by then — a more accurate slogan might have been “Jackson County deserves the opportunity to vote for a pig in a poke,” but they don’t let me fact-check these things.
With the April 2 referendum now in place, here’s some of what we now know and don’t know about the teams’ stadium plans:
- The teams’ letter of intent that they sent to the county legislature on Thursday guarantees that the team owners will cover insurance costs on a new Royals stadium and renovated Chiefs stadium, as well as forgoing a share of the county’s park property tax levy. Royals owner John Sherman has also said he’ll select a stadium site by the end of February — though that presumably wouldn’t prevent him from re-choosing a different site late, as is all the rage. “They’ve committed the key things in writing with signatures. That was my bar,” said Smith after voting to overturn White’s veto.
- Still up in the air, in addition to the Royals’ preferred stadium site: what would be in the teams’ leases; what kind of community benefits agreements they would commit to; how much the team owners would be kicking in to the projects; and how much additional public money would be required from the city and state (previous reports have projected this as around another $700 million). Media reports say “some officials” say leases could be approved by March 1, but also they might not; Chiefs president Mark Donovan said yesterday that “obviously before [April 2] we’ll have to share more information about what we’re doing,” adding, “we’ve been strategic on when exactly we wanted to share that information,” which strongly implies that what is made public before the vote will be determined less by what the public needs to know and more by what the teams think will improve their chances of winning.
There will presumably be more reporting in the days to come on what turned Anderson’s and Smith’s heads — Anderson released a statement yesterday crediting “multiple meetings with the Sports Authority, the Royals and Chiefs’ leadership, the concessions we have received thus far, and the response from the community stakeholders” as the reasons for changing his vote, read into that what you like. For now, though, it’s full speed ahead toward the April 2 vote. We know that sports funding referendums pass a little over half the time, and we’ve seen examples on the last year of both big wins and big losses for team owners at the ballot box. It should be an interesting next 10 weeks.
I believe forking over taxpayer money for stadiums succeeds less often when it goes to the ballot box than when it’s just Cobb County’d through, but how less often, do you know, Neil?
And when was the last time such a referendum failed and the team in question actually moved out of their metro area? Genuinely curious.
58% to 96%, it’s in the link above from “a little over half the time.”
Last time a team moved after a referendum failed was the San Diego Chargers.
Duh. Thank you. That’s what I get for reading late at night.