And in the latest sign that George Orwell is our national showrunner this season:
Mayor Quinton Lucas told reporters that the city has projections for how much tax revenue a new stadium could generate based on what Kauffman Stadium in the Truman Sports Complex produces now — which city officials say is roughly $5 million a year.
But he has not specified what those projections are, and city staff isn’t giving them up just yet. When asked by The [Kansas City] Star for the information, Lucas’ office directed the question to city staff, who said the information is private because of active negotiations with Royals officials…
The city also declined The Star’s open records request for information related to the projections, citing state law that seals negotiated contracts until they are executed.
That is what’s technically known as some BS, maybe even some total BS, we’ll have to wait for the forensic linguistic analysis to be complete. While the state’s share of stadium funding is limited to what the team and its players and employees paid in income, sales, and other taxes in 2025 — a number that no one claims to have, though it’s been estimated as around $15-17 million — the city can kick in whatever it want, based on whatever it claims the stadium is “generating” in sales tax revenue. The scare quotes are because much of that money, around $5 million a year currently, is currently being paid into city coffers already by the Royals, who would simply be moving their spending to a different part of town. something that a city finance official readily admitted to the Star:
Jordan Berger, a spokesperson for the city’s finance department, said the city estimates Kauffman Stadium generates between $4.5 and $5.5 million annually. He said that figure does not include the revenue generated by the 1% earnings tax paid by visiting ballplayers nor indirect tourism revenue, like hotel taxes. Currently, that revenue is used to fund various general fund expenditures, like public safety, mass transit, and capital improvement.
No worries, though: Even though this is $5 million a year that is currently being used for other things that would instead be paid annually to the Royals, the city wouldn’t really be losing anything, because of something about isosceles triangles. Also, if the Royals were to move out of the city, they wouldn’t pay taxes on any of that money — try not think about whether locals would instead spend it on other things, that’s for economics nutjobs — and so it really isn’t costing city residents anything! Ned Balter must be so proud.
The Royals have no place outside of Kansas City Missouri to move to. Kansas shot their wad on the Chiefs, Clay County told them they were done jacking with them. MLB will never allow them to move as long as expansion is on the table. That leaves Kansas City, MO where they already reside. The mayor should never go to an auction because he would surely bid against himself.
Missouri is currently working on eliminating the state income tax. They would raise sales tax to compensate. I wonder what the interaction would be with available funds to pay bonds?
Good luck with that, Missouri. My friends in Texas, another no income tax state, complain about their sky-high property taxes. That’s probably coming for Missouri as well. Eliminating one tax doesn’t mean that the government can or will stop spending money.