KC Royals could have won the new stadium vote. Insiders reveal how it all went wrong | Opinion

Reality Check is a Star series holding those with power to account and shining a light on their decisions. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email our journalists at RealityCheck@kcstar.com.

More than a month has passed since Jackson County voters soundly rejected an extension of a 3/8-cent sales that would have financed a new baseball stadium for the Royals and help offset some of the costs for the team to build an entertainment venue in the Crossroads Arts District.

The tax would have allowed the Kansas City Chiefs to renovate Arrowhead Stadium as well. But building a new ballpark near downtown Kansas City was an opportunity for the Royals to do something transformative for the entire community.

Over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve spoken with several people involved in the behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Royals.

I came away from these discussions with a better understanding of how the team came up short on a potential binding arrangement known as a community benefits agreement, or CBA. This economic growth package focused on living wage union jobs, affordable housing, transit, child care and environmental protections for some of the city’s lowest wage earners.

My conclusion: Community leaders gave the Royals a viable blueprint to follow to gain public support for a new ballpark in the East Crossroads neighborhood.

Look, the Royals organization is a for-profit professional sports franchise. It has no obligation to cure society’s ills. But asking for close to $500 million in public money comes with a great deal of responsibility.

The Milwaukee Bucks understood this. The Royals didn’t. As a result, in April, Jackson County voters rejected the proposal by a 58-42 margin. Perhaps the result reflected a sentiment that favored the coalition’s demands.

Local labor leaders met with Milwaukee officials

In a March 8 meeting, a former co-owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and a labor leader from that city met in Kansas City with a pro-union community representative for Jackson County. Others involved in private negotiations with the team were there, too.

This meeting was one just one of many held over the course of a yearslong process that ultimately ended with voters rejecting the proposed sales tax that would have cost taxpayers $1 billion over 40 years.

According to minutes from the meeting, Alex Lasry, former co-owner and senior vice president of the Bucks, told attendees that the ball was pretty much in the Royals’ court. If the team really wanted to secure a CBA it could have.

The Bucks, Lasry said, worked with city and state officials to get the deal done, according to the meeting minutes.

“To get this thing to work, people just have to want to get it done,” he said.

Also at the gathering was Bridgette Williams, executive director of the Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City, Jeremy Al-Haj, executive director of the Missouri Workers Center and Peter Rickman, president of the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Union, or MASH.

Williams was brought to the table during Jackson County’s public CBA negotiations with the Royals — a separate process from the community-led one. The county eventually secured a nearly $270 million pledge from the Royals and the Chiefs.

Because that agreement lacked benefits that would directly address affordable housing, as the Los Angeles Clippers’ CBA with the city of Inglewood does, the private community groups here left the table and urged voters to say no to the sales tax.

In Inglewood, the Clippers’ $100 million pledge toward community benefits included about $80 million for affordable housing, according to reports. The franchise’s $2 billion privately-financed Intuit Dome is expected to open this summer. No taxpayer money was used to build it.

Rickman’s MASH organization represents about 1,000 food and beverage workers at Fiserv Forum and other venues throughout Milwaukee’s Deer District.

Minutes from that meeting in Kansas City provided a rare inside look on how the Bucks secured public subsidies.

Community groups demanded too much

The focus of the private CBA talks with the Royals was to address some of the city’s long-standing economic inequities, Stand Up KC’s Terrence Wise told me. But the Royals balked at a list of demands presented by a coalition of community stakeholders.

Stand Up KC, Kansas City’s branch of the national Fight for $15 minimum wage movement, was among an array of community-led groups that initiated talks with the Royals for more than a year before the public vote.

Known as the Good Jobs and Affordable Housing For All Coalition, these groups negotiated a private CBA with the Royals. It used Milwaukee’s progressive Deer District CBA as its model.

In that city, the NBA’s Bucks signed a binding agreement with a community coalition to use $250 million in state aid to build a new $524 million arena and entertainment venue. As part of the deal, the Bucks agreed to provide union protection for low-wage workers in the district and pay them a livable wage and provide other benefits.

In January, the coalition provided the Royals with a copy of the Bucks agreement with labor leaders there and a list of demands that exceeded Milwaukee’s, which did not include an affordable housing component.

“We gave them a blueprint on how we wanted this done,” Wise said.

Based on election results, the Royals organization struck out.

Williams, the Heavy Constructors boss, and Gwen Grant, executive director of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, were part of Jackson County’s group that reached an agreement with the Royals. In April, I asked them about the separate private CBA. They agreed that the community groups demanded too much from the Royals.

Sam Mellinger, vice president of communications for the Royals, declined to comment for this column.

But in public statements leading up to the April 2 vote, team owner John Sherman said the Royals would go above and beyond the community agreements in Milwaukee and Inglewood. After reading details of those CBAs, I can’t help but think that wasn’t the case.

Wisconsin’s bipartisan coalition created Deer District

After the failed vote, there was talk that Kansas City would bypass Jackson County and ignore the will of the people to fund the Royals’ new stadium. One thing city officials should know: In Milwaukee, local elected officials and the Bucks organization worked together to seal the CBA deal, according to Lasry, the team’s former co-owner.

Because of direct community benefits, state lawmakers were also supportive, he said.

“City Council members went to Bucks and said they won’t vote for this unless the Bucks signed a good jobs agreement,” Lasry said, according to minutes from the March 8 meeting in Kansas City.

Ultimately, the Bucks and Wisconsin’s Republican-led legislature worked with Democrats to secure a financial commitment, and the Deer District was born.

Without the support from the state’s minority Democratic Party, that would not have been possible, Lasry said.

“One of the things that got Democrats on board with giving state money to a stadium was the community benefits agreement,” he said.

Prior to Jackson County’s vote, I favored a similar CBA agreement here. After the proposal’s failed vote, I remain supportive of a package that benefits service workers, low-income folks and the community as a whole.

From the Royals’ perspective, it’s fair to ask if negotiations were derailed because too many cooks were in the kitchen. In the end, more than a dozen groups were invited to the bargaining table.

Yet, the CBA process provided the Royals with a path to respond in an authentic way to the community and move the city forward, said Gina Chiala, executive director of Kansas City-based Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom.

“The Royals left us with an all-or-nothing approach,” she said. “They thought that would work. Going forward we hope they acknowledge low-wage workers and tenants are important.”

More specifically, the Royals were shown a great example of how a good community benefits agreement could curry favor with voters.

Instead, the team missed a golden opportunity to uplift some of the city’s most vulnerable workers.