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The $1.5 billion–plus Kansas City Royals stadium subsidy plan sailed through its first city council committee hearing yesterday, with the Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee voting unanimously to approve $600 million in city funding plus hundreds of millions more in tax breaks. The vote sent Mayor Quinton Lucas into paroxysms of metaphor, declaring that “today is a home run for Kansas City” and that the approval “ensures today that we can walk and chew gum,” among other things.

The committee vote followed a contentious hearing where Kansas City residents, in their first opportunity to sound off on the stadium plan after details were released just the day before, spent hours taking two minute apiece at the microphone, with supporters mostly touting the stadium as a job creator (nope) while opponents mostly complained that billions of dollars in public expense was being rushed through in a matter of days in order to avoid a public vote. The most contentious moment ended with what KMBC, in a paroxysm of the passive voice, described as “one person ended up in handcuffs after being escorted out.”

What actually happened is made clearer in the video posted by KMBC. After testifying against the council approving the stadium funding without a public vote, Darrell Miller, a Kauffman Stadium worker who is a leader with the Missouri Workers Center that is behind the push for a November ballot measure, began complaining off-mic that pro-stadium-funding speakers were being allowed to go over time while opponents were being cut off. In the video, two security officers grab Miller while he’s speaking and begin dragging him off, as he declares, “Get your hands off me!” Eventually even more officers arrive and drag Miller out of the room and then wrestle him to the ground and handcuff him; Fox4KC reports that he was then charged with trespassing and assault, as one does.

The stadium funding next heads for a full council vote, which a city spokesperson said should take place later this week — presumably at its next hearing tomorrow at 2 pm, so get your stadium bingo cards ready — while a rezoning vote to allow for stadium construction will follow on September 3. It seems pretty unlikely that a significant number of councilmembers are going to step up to block the bill at this point, though at least one yesterday did object to the fact that plans were moving ahead without a promised fiscal impact study of spending so much money on the Royals while getting no rent and virtually no stadium revenues in return. The state of Missouri would still need to formally sign off on its $540 million share, but as the state has already set aside money for that, it seems a fait accompli as well.

While there’s still the possibility of a lawsuit from the workers’ center, which has previously called the rush to preclude a public ballot measure “legally questionable,” it seems entirely possible that Kansas City will approve its $1-billion-plus share of a Royals project just three days after the proposal was released, which would be in the running for shortest public discussion period ever for a stadium deal. That would certainly be a home run for somebody, but who exactly will be left as an exercise for the reader.

A Kansas City council committee is set to vote today on approving city money toward a new Royals stadium, so naturally the actual legislation didn’t get released until yesterday, providing everyone involved approximately no time to read and understand it. While everyone scrambles to play catchup, here’s an attempt to at least figure out the main gist of the city’s proposal, after looking at the most important bits and emailing with a bunch of economists who did the same (particularly University of Colorado Denver’s Geoffrey Propheter, who should be a finalist for the Nobel Prize for Speed Reading).

At stake is one bill, plus three accompanying agreements:

• The bill, ordinance 260704, would allocate $20 million from food and beverage taxes to be placed in a Special Obligation Downtown Stadium Bond Fund, which would be used to pay for [scene missing].
• An accompanying funding agreement, the Baseball Stadium Funding Agreement, would devote $600 million in city money toward a $1.9 billion stadium, with the state and county providing another $540 million. This would include $90 million for “infrastructure” from “funding not otherwise committed to the Project,” plus $510 million in “legally available sources,” which are both fancy ways of saying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
• The Baseball Stadium Lease Agreement spells out how much rent the team would pay ($1 a year, plus 5% of net non-baseball profits, which as Propheter notes will likely be 0% if the team as operator is smart enough to ensure that non-baseball events run at a loss) and who would get all other revenues, including naming rights and advertising (Royals owner John Sherman, without exception).
• A Baseball Stadium Development Agreement that probably lays out a bunch of other stuff, I haven’t finished reading it all yet.

The ordinance is super-short, but it contains one slightly worrisome clause: It would authorize “the City Manager to execute a lease, non-relocation agreement, development agreement, community impact partnership agreement, and funding agreement with the Kansas City Royals or an affiliated entity for design, construction, and operations of a new stadium, team offices, and supporting infrastructure.” Previous legislation authorized the city manager to negotiate terms with Sherman; it’s unclear how much additional leeway he would have in “executing” an agreement, though the lease does at least say it’s contingent on a council vote to approve it being held no later than the end of September.

The associated agreements, meanwhile, are very long, and include enough worrisome clauses to keep a council hearing very busy indeed, if anyone chooses to ask about them. In addition to the items laid out above:

• Sherman would pay no property taxes on the stadium, since it would be city-owned, and would also receive a full sales tax exemption from all spending on construction, as well as on future maintenance and upgrade costs. Total cost: undetermined as of yet, but on a $1.9 billion stadium, likely to be half a billion dollars or more.
• The city can’t levy any ticket or parking taxes to recoup its $600 million share, which would instead be paid off by an assortment of “economic activity taxes” (not strictly defined, though expected to include a STIF district to kick back city sales taxes) both within the stadium district and outside it.
• All funds from actual stadium revenue, meanwhile, with the exception of that 5% cut of non-baseball profits if any exist, would go toward paying off Sherman’s costs: $760 million toward construction, plus $55 million in “community benefits” (paid out over 30 years, so actually significantly less than $55 million in present value).
• Any future state or county taxes that impact the team are required to be siphoned off to fund the Royals’ stadium maintenance, notwithstanding that the state and county aren’t even parties to this lease.
• The Royals can stop spending anything more than $1 million a year on stadium repair in the final five years of its lease, which would almost certainly be used by whoever owns the Royals in 2051 to extract a new or renovated stadium.

This is a world-historically terrible agreement for taxpayers, with a near-record $1.9 billion stadium being covered 60% by the public while they receive virtually 0% of the proceeds — and, in fact, would lose far more money from all those tax breaks than any meager non-baseball revenue the city might receive. The total public cost would almost certainly be in excess of $1.5 billion, and could reach $2 billion, either of which would be a new record for the largest MLB stadium subsidy ever.

A vote of the city Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee is expected today, with a full council vote by the end of the week. If that seems like a crazy rush when the full deal has only been available to read for less than 24 hours, the goal is to pass legislation by the end of the month in order to avoid any possibility of holding a public vote in November, as a local labor group is trying force the city to do with a petition campaign. So the council is willing to cut some corners on democracy in order to … well, cut more corners on democracy, it’s just cutting democracy all the way down, really. Tune in today at 9:30 am Central (Zoom link here) to see if any democracy sneaks in during today’s committee hearing.

A Kansas City council committee was all set yesterday to consider allocating $20 million to a Royals stadium fund for something unspecified, when Mayor Quinton Lucas abruptly pulled it from the meeting agenda because democracy:

“I believe that even in representative democracy, i.e. going through city council meetings, you have a fair opportunity not just for our review, but for the public’s review on that, which we’re working on,” Lucas said about the agreements with the Royals. “I don’t think that was possible today.”

Councilmember Johnathan Duncan shed a little more light on what “a fair opportunity for review” meant, noting that councilmembers only received a summary of the proposed Royals agreement on Monday night, with finalized agreements still not available. Duncan called the process “a sham and a shame,” and decried rushing to “run a billionaire a $600M welfare check on the backs of City taxpayers for his for profit business.” The reason for the accelerated timetable, he told reporters, is that city lawyers told the council that it needed to finalize the stadium this month in order to avoid being subject to a possible November ballot measure where voters could decide whether to kill the deal.

That deadline looks like it won’t be met, as even the $20 million down payment isn’t scheduled for a hearing until September 1; Lucas said he might call a special session for next week to vote on Royals stadium matters, but also said he doesn’t expect any council action this week or next. The mayor also specifically noted that he “appreciated my chat” with the workers’ group that has submitted petitions to force a vote, which sure sounds like an attempt at an olive branch — one that Missouri Workers Power member Jaeda Roth told KCUR was nice and all, but it wouldn’t dissuade her group from pursuing a public vote:

“Our decision makers can’t keep trying to rush this process without considering what we the people need, and without all of us having the final say when it comes to the question of how our tax dollars are spent,” Roth said. “It’s time for our city to put poor and working people first and address the cost-of-living crisis crushing all of us, not give our money to a billionaire for a ballpark he could pay for himself.”

It’s too early to call Lucas’s proposed Royals deal stalled, but it sure seems like it’s hitting significant headwinds. We’ll know more once the mayor actually submits something for the council to vote on; don’t wait up.