Jackson County considers a Chiefs tax — excluding the Royals — as stadium talks drag on
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Jackson County legislators will consider not just one but two stadium sales-tax ballot measures on Monday, county legislator Manny Abarca announced on Friday.
There’s the one proposed last month by the legislature’s chairman, DaRon McGee, that would extend the current 3/8th-cent sales tax for 40 years to help pay for a new Royals ballpark in downtown Kansas City and finance the renovations that the Chiefs want done at Arrowhead Stadium.
And then there’s the surprise proposal that Abarca has added to the agenda, which he characterizes as his backup: a proposed ballot measure that would ask voters to approve a 3/16ths of a cent sales tax — about 19 cents on a $100 purchase — for 25 years that would benefit the Chiefs alone.
“My goal is to keep both teams in Jackson, but not at all costs,” he said in a text message announcing the addition. “My priority is to definitively keep the Chiefs in Kansas City.”
The move comes at a crucial point in the county’s lease negotiations with the teams. Both teams would prefer that the county put a sales tax extension on the April ballot, which would require the legislature to decide by the end of this month.
But the timing is especially important for the Chiefs, Abarca said in a phone interview, because he said Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has promised the team that he will ask the state General Assembly this session to provide financial support for improvements at Arrowhead.
This is Parson’s last year in office due to term limits, and there’s no telling whether the next governor will be as supportive of the Chiefs, as the Missouri General Assembly ends its session in May and would not be scheduled to go in session again until next year, unless Parson were to call for a special session this summer.
“That’s where I believe they (the Chiefs) truly believe that April for them is pretty critical,” Abarca said.
Chiefs tax polls well
April is critical for the Royals, as well, if only because they would prefer to be on the same ballot as the Chiefs in asking for tax support of a new, billion-dollar stadium in downtown Kansas City. A recent poll shared with The Star shows 60% of likely voters surveyed would support a sales tax extension.
That poll, conducted by Remington Research Group for the Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City, did not ask survey participants whether they would vote to support the Royals. But the team’s popularity and attendance has waned with each losing season since the team’s 2015 World Series win.
“My understanding is they (the Royals) don’t have as much commitment from the state of Missouri. So it is less time sensitive for them,” Abarca said of the April date. “I think more more sensitive is the fact that they need to be on a ballot with the Chiefs.”
Parson has said he will support state funding for both teams, but has not announced how much that might be. It’s contingent on Jackson County getting its sales tax situation resolved, Parson’s spokesman Johnathan Shiflett said. The earliest he might make that known is during his state of the state address on Jan. 24.
The deadline for getting something on the the April ballot is a day earlier, Jan. 23. That’s more than two weeks from now, but the county legislature needs to build in a cushion.
That’s why Monday could be a critical meeting. If either proposed ballot measure passes then, County Executive Frank White Jr. has made it clear he would veto any tax proposal unless he has newly signed leases in hand from the Chiefs and Royals.
And no agreements have been reached.
White would have up to 10 days to issue that veto after Monday’s vote, or it would become law without his signature. If he did veto it, then it would take six votes to override, and it’s unclear whether even five members are willing to move ahead without leases in hand, let alone six.
Another factor: the lack of a community benefits agreements with the teams. As chairman of the legislature’s stadium improvements committee, Abarca presided over a hearing Thursday afternoon during which members of labor and social justice groups demanded that neither team be given additional government aid without guarantees that the projects would be built with union labor and that workers at the stadiums would be paid a living wage, among other demands.
But so far those negotiations haven’t taken place.
On Friday afternoon, the Chiefs and Royals issued a joint statement proposing a set of financial commitments they would make to Jackson County if the county can get an extension of the 3/8th-cent sales tax for both teams on the April ballot and voters pass it.
This story was originally published January 5, 2024 at 12:19 PM.
