Was defeat of Royals/Chiefs stadium tax hike Frank White’s fault, or to Frank White’s credit?

While we await Chicago Bears stadium plan details, let’s kill some time reading Monday’s Kansas City Star article on “what went wrong in Jackson County” that led to the overwhelming April 2 vote against a 0.375% sales-tax hike to funnel money to Royals and Chiefs stadium projects.

(And yes, “what went wrong” is very much a leading framing, since it implies that Jackson County residents expressing their opinion that they didn’t want to kick back $500 million in sales taxes en route to well over a billion dollars in public stadium is a bad outcome. But let’s not hold the article responsible for the headline’s crimes, and just see where it goes.)

Kansas City Manager Brian Platt offered reassurance last week as the teams consider next steps. The city will take a lead role from here on in trying to keep the teams happy, by learning from others’ mistakes…

“We were largely on the sidelines, on the city side, for a lot of this,” Platt said. “And we are going to take a much more active and proactive role in making sure that whatever comes next, we are a big part of it. And that we’re listening to all the voices that need to be heard.”

Not a great start: “Reassurance” implies that KC residents want a different jurisdiction to take over that isn’t as skeptical of the teams’ demands, which doesn’t appear to be what the voting results show at all.

Emails obtained by the Star between the county and the team reveal what was said behind the scenes, and ultimately how the talks broke down.

Internal emails! Now we’re talking.

Let’s see, blah blah, Platt “re-enforced the narrative” that Jackson County executive and former Royals second baseman Frank White “bargained in bad faith” — no, that’s you re-enforcing the narrative, and also it’s actually “reinforcing” — and “the teams cast White as a villain.” Where are these emails already? “The blame game will go on.” This article sure does!

Okay, now we’re talking:

The Star has obtained correspondence between the Royals and White’s administration that shows the arc of the negotiations…

[In May 2023,] two Clay County commissioners and the mayor of North Kansas City posted an open letter on X, formerly Twitter, saying that not only were they willing to make an offer for the team, but that the Royals were interested.

White saw that as an insult to Jackson County taxpayers and fired off a letter to Sherman that day. … “Given today’s unfortunate developments, I urge the Royals to publicly reaffirm their commitment to Jackson County until at least 2031 and voice their intention to continue calling Jackson County home for decades beyond.”

Ignoring White’s ultimatum, the Royals issued a public statement saying that the team had not yet decided where it was headed but “continue(d) to be actively engaged” in talks with Jackson County, as well as others.

Not really news that this is how it went down, but it’s at least new documents. Tell us more!

Brooks Sherman, the [Royals] president of business operations, said the team envisioned that the cost of building a new ballpark would be shared by county taxpayers, the team, Kansas City and the state of Missouri, but left out a crucial detail. What it didn’t say was exactly how much the $1 billion-plus ballpark was expected to cost, or how much each party would be expected to contribute to the project.

Again, this isn’t news, as it had been clear for months before that that Royals owner John Sherman didn’t want to specify how his stadium was going to be paid for, except that the first $250 million or so would come from the sales tax hike. But sure, here’s an email showing that team execs were saying the same thing privately as publicly.

[Jackson County counselor Bryan] Covinsky said the county needed more information before face-to-face talks began, such as how much money the team expected to receive from the city and state, as well as any tax incentives the Royals might pursue on the commercial ballpark village development the team proposed building around a new ballpark.

Okay, let’s skip ahead: Is there anything in these emails that we didn’t already know from public statements? And what does it all have to do with the role of Frank White, as promised by the lede? We have White requesting only a 20-year sales tax hike instead of 40 years, which we also knew already, and Royals execs saying nope nope, and more talks, and Sherman agreeing to at least cover property and casualty insurance on their new stadium, and finally both teams saying they’re going ahead with the April 2 vote regardless of what White wanted. And then got their heads handed to them at the ballot box.

The only thing new here, then, is the framing: Both White and the team owners are presented as having screwed up by failing to get a deal agreed on before sending it to a public vote, which then led to referendum being defeated.

But there is another way of looking at this, which is that White stood his ground in refusing to give in to the teams’ demands (though he did offer up as much as $300 million in public money for each stadium, and didn’t rule out city and state money being used as well so long as it wasn’t coming out of his jurisdiction’s pocket), and the teams tried to get what they wanted by going around him directly to county voters, who likewise told them to kick rocks. That’s not a failure so much as tough negotiating — and if the teams now come back with reduced subsidy demands, it’s a success.

Of course, stories like this one in the Star that cast responsible governance as “getting things done” when the things are making it a spending priority to meet the wish lists of local sports billionaires only make it harder to negotiate toughly, since it throws shade on elected officials who do so. The Star has generally done pretty good reporting on the whole Kansas City stadium saga so far; if Platt is indeed taking the lead in talks, let’s see how the newspaper portrays his role, and if they chide him if he gives in too far to the owners, or only if he doesn’t give in enough.