Category: Kansas City Royals

In the wake of Thursday’s passage of an ordinance by Mayor Quinton Lucas to give Royals owner John Sherman $600 million in city money toward a new downtown stadium, Kansas City councilmember Johnathan Duncan wants to force the city to let residents hold a public vote on the plan. The city’s charter allows voters to force a public referendum on city ordinances if opponents gather signatures equal to 10% of the number of votes in the most recent election for mayor within 40 days — something Duncan says “wouldn’t be a giant lift” — but there’s also a major catch:

The city’s charter bars citizens from forcing referendum votes on ordinances “with an accelerated effective date or emergency measures,” giving city leaders the ability to stave off a referendum by declaring the ordinance as an emergency or expediting the ordinance’s effective date.

The proposed ordinance introduced by Lucas on Thursday includes an accelerated effective date because it involves “appropriating funds and relating to the design, repair, maintenance or construction of a public improvement.” That language is likely to block any potential referendum push.

And here we are back at why public votes on sports subsidy deals are so much more common on the West Coast: It’s really hard to get a referendum on the ballot in the rest of the country, in part because of those states’ pre-Progressive Era constitutions that provide tons of loopholes for elected officials who don’t want to be subject to the whims of voters. “There’s more ways to finagle your ways around referenda laws [in] other parts of the country,” remarked University of Colorado Denver public affairs professor Geoffrey Propheter in 2022. In 1998, for example, New York city council speaker Peter Vallone tried to put a referendum on the November ballot to block then-mayor Rudy Giuliani’s push for a new Yankees stadium in Manhattan, but Giuliani successfully knocked it off the ballot by means of a law that allows the mayor to preempt any ballot measures that year by proposing one of his own on any issue he likes. (That Yankees plan ultimately fizzled, but Giuliani succeeded in laying the groundwork for his successor Michael Bloomberg to approve more than a billion dollars in public money for a new Yankees stadium in the Bronx eight years later.)

Whether you think direct democracy is a good thing or not — and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical, from the legacy of California’s Prop 13 to that state’s public initiative industry that increasingly allows those with the deepest pockets to buy ballot measure wins — it’s definitely a stumbling block for sports subsidies, as Propheter has found that the general populace approves those about 58% of the time, vs. 96% of proposals that go to a vote in legislative bodies. An owner like Sherman could certainly pour money into fighting a Royals stadium ballot measure, but it’s historically a lot easier to win over a relative handful of local elected officials.

None of which is to say it’s going to be impossible to force a vote on some piece of the Royals plan, given that so much of it is only vaguely penciled in and could require future votes by city, county, and state legislators, some of which could be more susceptible to gathering signatures to block them. But Sherman appears to have gained momentum among lawmakers since the Chiefs‘ announced move across state lines to Kansas, with fears growing that the Royals could follow suit despite team officials saying three months ago that they had abandoned thoughts of moving to the one Kansas site that had been floated. The public at large may make some dumb decisions and be subject to the influence of big money, but they still have a ways to go to catch up with their elected representatives in those regards.

 

Kansas City officials are set to introduce a bill this afternoon to fund a new downtown stadium for the Royals, and while we don’t have the actual bill language, we do have a Kansas City Star report on whatever details sources close to the deal felt it was in their interest to leak, this oughta be good:

The plan is built around a specific location: Washington Square Park.

This is likely to be controversial, as Washington Square Park is a public park, and is also not really big enough to fit a modern stadium on, let alone the ballpark district Royals owner John Sherman is hoping for.

Kansas City would contribute roughly $600 million of the project, according to a copy of the proposal obtained by The Star.

So … $600 million in cash? Would the Royals pay anything for the public land they’d be using? Would they pay property taxes? Rent? A cut of stadium revenues? You’ve read the proposal (or at least a copy of it, what does that even mean in this era of digital documents?), K.C. Star, tell us the details!

Mayor Quinton Lucas is expected to unveil the plan as an ordinance during Thursday afternoon’s City Council meeting at City Hall, he confirmed to The Star. The ordinance authorizes City Manager Mario Vasquez to negotiate and execute a 30-year term sheet, lease, and development agreement with the team to build the new stadium.

This implies that the Kansas City council could be asked to pass the $600 million in public funding before the details of lease and development agreement are worked out, which would be … bad? I’m going with bad.

The planned reveal marks a key step in the drawn-out fight over the Royals, potentially the first domino in a process that, after years of twists and turns, could suddenly roll quickly.

DOMINOES DON’T ROLL

It’s not yet clear whether the Royals will jump at the deal, though Lucas said the proposal is the result of “hours and hours of extensive discussion” with the Royals.

So the ordinance would be passed before the Royals agreed to it? That also sounds bad!

Lucas told The Star that the proposal would also require a vote on Tuesday from Kansas City’s Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners in order to use the park. That board would continue to be the owner of the property, though operations “continues to be some level of discussions,” Lucas said.

Okay, that implies that the Royals would be paying neither for the land nor property taxes, though it’s certainly possible to roll those elements into any deal even on city-owned property, which would be the responsibility of Vasquez to figure out, sounds like.

That process would notably attempt to side-step a public vote on the stadium two years after Jackson County voters soundly defeated an April 2024 proposal for a separate site downtown.

It’s unclear where the $600 million would come from if not from a source that would trigger a public vote, but we’ll see.

How will the stadium project be funded? The ordinance will be introduced just two days after Kansas City officials successfully convinced voters to renew the city’s 1% earnings tax for another five years, a critical vote that loomed over ongoing Royals talks.

Ah, and that tax would be—

Lucas said Tuesday night that revenue from the earnings tax would not be used to cover any stadium costs.

Never mind.

The city will pursue a public-private partnership, with its $600 million contribution earmarked for a project that includes the stadium and team offices, acquisition and demolition of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City building that the company has vacated and a neighboring service road. That portion of the project would be split — with 60% of the funds coming from public entities, such as Kansas City and Missouri, and 40% in private funding, sources said.

So $600 million public (including state money?), $400 million private, except that the stadium would actually cost $1.9 million, plus there’s the surrounding development, “the bulk” of which would be paid for by Sherman (not counting land and tax breaks, obviously). The known unknowns are stacking up fast.

Kansas City, according to the ordinance, intends to pay for its portion of the stadium using a constellation of funds, including bonds, city appropriations and Tax Increment Financing (TIF). The city plans to reimburse itself using proceeds from the bonds, but the ordinance does not include specifics about how that would play out.

BONDS ARE NOT A FUND! Also you can’t reimburse yourself from bonds, you make payments on bonds, they don’t pay you. Come on, guys!

At the state level, the stadium would rely on a sweeping funding package Missouri lawmakers approved last summer in an attempt to keep both the Royals and Chiefs inside state lines. The law allows Missouri to pay for up to 50% of a new stadium for the team, but it’s unclear how much money the state or Jackson County will actually contribute.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for further updates once it is completely broken.

Speaking of deadlines, Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman hasn’t set any for his long-running campaign for a new baseball stadium somewhere in or around the K.C. area, but he still surely knows that without creating some sense of urgency, everyone is likely to wander off and start focusing on other things to do with billions of dollars in tax money. And so on Monday, Sherman did his best to say that the clock is ticking, without ever quite explaining what will happen if time runs out:

“I’ve got a great sense of urgency on this. Time is not our friend. When the Chiefs made their announcement [to move to Kansas] in December, there was a whole new wave of enthusiasm on the Missouri side. And don’t mean they weren’t working hard [before], but from the governor on down, there’s a lot of effort being put forth.”

If that was a little on the vague side, what Sherman said next was far more saying the quiet part loud:

“When I’m talking about urgency, that’s to me a business tenant that I think you should always employ in any organization. When you have a window of opportunity, you better run through it because those windows close. I feel the same way about the stadium.”

Leaving out the odd image of running through a window of opportunity, Sherman appears to be admitting here that the urgency is all on his end: He knows that whatever stadium offers are on the table — more on that in a second — may not be there forever, and that he’d better grab one while he can. After all, eventually someone in Missouri government may notice that he already has a perfectly well-liked stadium that was renovated in 2009, while the threat of the state of Kansas spending billions of dollars on the Royals after just doing so for the Chiefs both is unlikely and wouldn’t really hurt Missouri. And once that realization strikes, Sherman runs the risk of any plans for public funding evaporating entirely.

At this point, with Clay County and Kansas both showing little interest, Sherman really only has one offer, from Kansas City, Missouri, and we’re not sure exactly what it is. KCMO mayor Quinton Lucas said last week that “we will get a deal done in 2026 that’s fair and transparent for our taxpayers, our future and our team,” without actually specifying what that would look like. (He’s denied claims by a state legislature that it would involve funneling half a billion dollars through K.C.’s Port Authority.) One would hope that, now that Sherman has acknowledged that his window is closing, Lucas can use that as leverage to strike a stadium deal that’s actually fair to taxpayers — though he still has a ways to go in the “transparent” department.

What’s a sports team owner to do when his bidding war is running out of bidders? If you’re Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman, you just keep on pretending you have bidders anyway. Reports KMBC-TV:

Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman said the team is still exploring stadium options on both sides of the state line.

Sherman made the comments at a “Royals Rally” at Kauffman Stadium Saturday.

He said the team is focused on finding a place to develop a mixed-use site for year-round entertainment.

Sherman also said Clay County is still in play to be the home of the Royals.

Okay, sure, cool. Sherman can also still be “exploring” stadium options in Greensboro or the middle of Central Park or Antarctica, that doesn’t actually help if those places aren’t exploring giving him money as well. Unless, of course, he thinks that making this kind of statement will result in headlines about how his Royals could still move to Kansas and so Kansas City, Missouri needs to step up with subsidies … oh. Oh.

Just straight-up lying about whether you have other stadium offers is pretty shameless, but hey, it’s worked before. Though none of those involved Kansas City in any way, so (checks notes) … oh. Oh. In that case, give Sherman his Nobel Prize for Chutzpah right now, nobody’s going to top that this year.

Amid increasing talk that Missouri officials are readying a stadium offer to Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman despite all the other bidders having dropped out, state representative Mike Jones dropped this on Facebook yesterday:

I have recently learned that Mayor Quinton Lucas is seeking to direct approximately $500 million in Kansas City taxpayer funds through the KC Port Authority for the Kansas City Royals. This proposal would move forward without a public vote, and efforts are being made to keep the plan out of public view.

No sourcing at all from Jones, and Mayor Lucas immediately denied he had any such designs on sneaking through public money without a public vote, promising that he would put any stadium funding plan before the city council for approval. That didn’t satisfy Jones, however, who said he’ll introduce legislation to require a public referendum — of voters, not just councilmembers — before any state expenditure of more than $100 million on a sports facility.

Requiring a public ballot isn’t a death knell to stadium plans: They’re still approved by voters a little over half the time. But that’s still a way lower winning percentage than they have in legislative bodies — and given how things went at the polls the last time Sherman tried to get state tax money, the question of who gets to decide on any Royals subsidies is likely to be a big deal in any Kansas City stadium talks. If nothing else, Jones going public about the risk of an end run around public oversight puts public oversight squarely into the discourse, and that can never be a bad thing for the remaining fans of democracy.