Kansas City leader wants a public vote on Royals stadium. Would that work?
For Kansas City Councilman Johnathan Duncan, the city’s plan to offer the Kansas City Royals $600 million for a new stadium was rushed and orchestrated “behind closed doors.”
He wants to force a public vote on it.
“I believe that our government should be transparent and I believe that public dollars should go to public good,” Duncan, who represents southwestern Kansas City, told The Star. “I think that, for a decision like that, that should go to the will of the people.”
Duncan began publicly floating the idea shortly after Mayor Quinton Lucas on Thursday unveiled the city’s plans for a new, $1.9 billion stadium at Washington Square Park near downtown. The progressive councilman said he was in discussions with various groups about whether to launch a signature-gathering drive to force a citywide vote on the stadium plan.
Progressive organizing groups — and Duncan himself — have over the past two days mulled several different mechanisms to push back against the stadium plan. But the exact path, and whether a path exists at all, was not immediately clear.
Any attempt at forcing a public vote could run into a constellation of hurdles. A signature-gathering drive would require a well-funded and organized campaign. That campaign would face up against longstanding fears about the Royals leaving town after the Chiefs’ announced move to Kansas, fears that could doom a race to collect signatures.
One potential, but rarely-used path could center on a quirk in city law that allows voters to challenge most ordinances passed by city council members. The process, called a referendum, is similar to a state-level tool used by opponents of Missouri’s new, gerrymandered congressional map.
The city’s charter allows citizens to force a vote on city ordinances if opponents collect enough signatures — equal to 10% of the number of votes in the most recent election for mayor — within 40 days of an ordinance’s passage.
“I still think that we could do that in a weekend, maybe two, but it wouldn’t be a giant lift,” Duncan said.
But perhaps the largest roadblock for that process could be one erected by city leaders. 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.
City laws give council members broad authority to file ordinances with accelerated effective dates, including measures for public improvements and appropriations.
A spokesperson for Lucas on Thursday touted the city’s proposed funding plan as different from the 2024 failed sales tax vote over the Royals and Chiefs stadiums. The spokesperson, Reagan Witkowski, said the plan would be developed with “traditional economic development tools,” similar to the Kansas City Current’s CPKC Stadium, the Parade Park project in the 18th and Vine District and a major redevelopment project in the West Bottoms.
“The mayor’s focus is on facilitating a strong development, inclusive of public engagement, that is fair and responsible for our taxpayers, a benefit to our community, and able to keep our team in Kansas City,” Witkowski said. “The mayor is not concerned about legal and political hypotheticals. We’ve got too much work to do.”
Emergency ordinances require support from nine of the 13 council members to pass. Eleven council members, including Lucas, have co-sponsored the measure, signifying that an emergency ordinance could have more than enough votes to pass.
Duncan and council members Nathan Willett and Melissa Patterson Hazley were the sole members of the City Council to not sponsor the stadium proposal.
It remains unclear whether there will be enough energy to launch a campaign against the ordinance and organizing groups had not yet decided on a path forward as of this week. Further complicating any effort is a recent court ruling in Independence in which a judge ruled that tax breaks for a planned data center did not legally qualify for a referendum.
Geoff Gerling, a longtime local Democratic leader, said in an interview that several progressive groups known for organizing campaigns had come out against the stadium plan, such as the Missouri Workers Center.
But Gerling cautioned that the political environment surrounding a Royals stadium deal and the “tone of the city” had changed since Jackson County voters rejected a stadiums tax in 2024. He pointed to the Chiefs’ planned move to Kansas.
“Now it’s like, ‘Well, wait, hold on. We do love our teams and we understand that there is an economic impact to them being on this side of the state line in Kansas City,” Gerling said. “We need to think about this. We just need a fair deal.”
Duncan, for his part, tried to strike a balance between supporting the Royals — and his support for a downtown stadium — and the argument over what the city’s role in that discussion should be.
“I don’t feel like we should be held hostage by a business that says, ‘we’re going to leave if you don’t shower us with public dollars,’” he said. “I would hate to see the Royals leave, but it was more concerning that, you know, we have a state across the state line that’s willing to race us to the bottom.”
