Will Jackson County push back to keep Chiefs, Royals in MO? What another vote would need
A top Missouri legislator predicted a couple of weeks ago that Jackson County will have another vote on whether to approve a sales tax to keep one or both of Kansas City’s two biggest sports franchises in the county.
House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, did not say when he thought that might be. But chances are it won’t be this year, given recent developments in the county legislature, which is the only body authorized to authorize a countywide vote.
A redo of April’s failed stadium tax measure to build a new Royals ballpark and renovate Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs will definitely not be on the August primary ballot. That door closed long ago.
Which leaves November as the next possible time for a stadium tax election. However, the chances of that happening are slim.
Two proposed ordinances that could conceivably get something before voters at the fall general election have gone nowhere, and time is running out.
County legislators have until Aug. 27 to get something on the already crowded November ballot. And if County Executive Frank White Jr. were opposed for some reason — like last time — they’d need to pass something by the middle of next week, and with at least a 6-3 supermajority to override White’s veto.
And that level of urgency is not evident at the county courthouse currently.
Too much still up in the air
Those two Chiefs-only sales tax measures introduced by 1st District Legislator Manny Abarca last month? They are both stuck in the finance and audit committee and have been for a month.
Committee chair Megan Marshall, who represents the 3rd District At-Large, has no intention of advancing either for further consideration until she hears what Gov. Mike Parson and County Executive Frank White Jr. might have in mind for convincing the teams to stay put. If not at the Truman Sports Complex, then at least someplace on the Missouri side of the Kansas City area.
Yet neither White nor Parson has promised to work out a detailed plan before that Aug. 27 deadline. White has said he wants a more equitable deal for county taxpayers than the current ones with the teams, before moving forward.
And while Parson would support incentives for the teams, he has offered no specifics and leaves office at the end of the year.
“I think it is in the best interest of the county that we, for lack of better words, stand down right now, until we learn what other financial implications are there to directly benefit the residents of this county,” Marshall said.
She went on to say that putting something on the fall ballot before any agreements have been worked out with one or both teams would be repeating one of the key errors that caused voters to soundly defeat the 40-year stadium sales tax on April 2.
“As we learned earlier this year, when we put something on the ballot without a full plan in place, the voters don’t agree,” she said.
Shift in the county legislature
Abarca introduced his sales tax measures in June with the notion that they would kickstart a discussion among his colleagues and demonstrate to the teams that Jackson County was still interested in working out a deal.
One calls for a 1/8th-cent sales tax for 25 years that would raise under $400 million. The other is for a 3/8th-cent tax that would raise $2.2 billion over 40 years. The idea, Abacra said, was for legislators and the teams to find something they might agree on within that range.
He also hoped the discussion might prompt White to take action. White led the county’s negotiations with the teams until the Royals and Chiefs decided last December to negotiate directly with members of the legislature instead.
With Abarca’s support, last year 4th District Legislator DaRon McGee introduced an ordinance that put the 40-year, 3/8th-cent sales tax measure on the April ballot without first having signed leases or community benefits agreements in hand.
White, Marshall and the current chair of the legislature, 5th District Legislator Jeanie Lauer, wanted to wait until those agreements were finalized. While they were in the minority then, now all three are in positions of power to determine what happens next.
Lauer assigned Abarca’s proposals to Marshall’s committee in June, knowing that Marshall had made it clear last fall that White, not the legislature, should take the lead on negotiations with the teams.
On Tuesday, when Abarca asked Lauer to transfer the sales tax proposals out of Marshall’s committee to the full legislature so that they could be debated by all nine members, she was noncommittal.
“I appreciate you bringing that up, and I’ll take that into consideration and see what the next appropriate step would be,” Lauer said and immediately went to the next item on the agenda.
Lauer did not respond to a request for comment on what that next step might be.
In an exchange of text messages, Abarca said Marshall and Lauer are in key positions to move things forward with the teams, given White’s seeming lack of interest in hurrying to get something on the November ballot.
“There is no path to an election in November without Megan Marshall and Jeanie Lauer,” he said. “So if they continue to hide full transparency from the public and the legislature, we can kiss these teams goodbye.”
The Kansas question
Abarca is among those who fear that Kansas officials could convince one or both teams to cross the state line with the offer of big incentives. Recently, the state Legislature approved a bill that allows the issuance of STAR bonds that would pay for up to 70% of the estimated cost of a professional sports project.
Gov. Laura Kelly signed it into law. No public vote would be needed to authorize sale of those bonds. Kansas could approve that the debt be paid with sales taxes and other revenues generated in the area surrounding a new Chiefs stadium, estimated to cost at least $2.5 billion, a Royals stadium, which would cost $1.5 billion or more to build — or both.
Missouri has no similar financing mechanism, but it’s one of the financial incentives that state officials could discuss once the August primary is over. A special session of the Missouri legislature is also possible but less likely.
Abarca told The Star that Lauer’s influence could be key to getting some kind of state aid package for the teams, as she is a Republican and a former member of the Missouri General Assembly.
Marshall is a Democrat with only local political experience: two years on the county legislature and two years on the Lee’s Summit Board of Education.
“As a bipartisan team,” Abarca said, “they have the best chance at success at the moment. I have full confidence they won’t bypass their duties and will step up to the challenge.”
This story was originally published July 17, 2024 at 2:47 PM.
