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Back in April, a referendum was introduced to the voters of Jackson County, Missouri, letting them decide whether or not the public should fund a $500 million subsidy for new stadiums for both the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals. The public said no, resoundingly so with 58 percent against.
That story isn’t quite over yet, though, as now a second referendum is being prepared, but this time it will only involve the Chiefs. As Neil deMause put it at Field of Schemes:
The new ballot measure would raise the county’s sales tax by 0.25% for 20 years instead of 0.375% for 40 years, and would leave out the baseball team — presumably because Royals owner John Sherman’s stated desire to build a new $2 billion stadium on top of an existing neighborhood with no guarantees of any aid for residents and businesses that would have been displaced was seen as too great a liability.
That’s good news, in the sense that even if this is approved, the tax rate is smaller and for less time, and the Royals aren’t going to be able to get their way through this method. The bad news is that there are other ways to get public funds for stadiums, and they purposefully avoid voters. So this doesn’t mean the end for John Sherman’s scheme, just this particular method.
Speaking of public subsidies, the key to the A’s unlocking the funds they were promised by various governments in Nevada is the acquisition of the rest of the financing, which is going to have to be private in some way, whether raised or from owner John Fisher’s own accounts slash mommy and daddy’s money. According to Stadium Authority Chairman and unregistered lobbyist for the A’s ballpark, Steven Hill, the A’s are possibly going to present their private financing plan to the board at the October 17th meeting. The thing about “possibly” is that it’s also “necessary,” per Hill’s own words. “That’s needed in order to approve everything that needs to happen.”
The fact that Hill is saying “it’s a possibility” and not “oh of course they will present the plan” is pretty telling. The financing plan still isn’t actually finalized, and the best guess as to when things will be wrapped up is December, but even that is being said in no small part because that gives everyone, including Major League Baseball itself, enough time to sign off on all the necessary paperwork for the A’s to actually start building the stadium in April of 2025. Which is to say, all of the reporting on this still isn’t on what will happen, but what needs to happen, with people like Hill publicly operating under the assumption that those two are the same thing. And no one in the A’s camp is saying it won’t, because why would they admit anything in opposition to the idea that everything is going just fine, thanks for asking. Even though, again, that private financing plan being submitted at that mid-October meeting is merely a “possibility,” and the “possibility” is because it’s August right now and they still haven’t actually finalized that plan!
Time is running short. And the stakes are high, too, as I wrote about for Baseball Prospectus earlier in the month. MLB isn’t forcing Fisher out now, but if things start falling apart with this deal for real, well:
If he doesn’t secure the private financing needed to build the A’s new home in Vegas, he then will not get the public subsidies. He will then be unable to leave Sacramento, but he also won’t be able to stay there forever. Not because Sacramento won’t let him—surely, they’d love to officially refer to them as the Sacramento A’s, and know that they aren’t a temporary attraction, and extend the three-year deal they’ve got in place—but because MLB is unlikely to allow that to occur without stepping in and forcing a sale. You can’t let a team go on playing in a park like Sutter Health. What will the folks in Nashville think?
Hey, another segue. While we’re on the subject of Baseball Prospectus, my latest went up there on Tuesday. It’s a look at the possibility of trading draft picks that I’ve been discussing in this space a bit, but more refined and cohesive now that I’ve had time to think about the various things the league has said or leaked about, i.e. the caveat that a hard-slot system would be needed for this to move forward. CBA season has truly started, even if it feels like it hasn’t quite yet.
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