The People Said Let Us Vote. The Council Gave a Billionaire $600 Million Instead

It took less than 20 minutes.

On Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, the Kansas City Council voted 11-2 to pass Ordinance 260704, approving 165 pages of agreements that commit $600 million in public money to a new stadium at Crown Center for the Kansas City Royals and the team’s billionaire owner, John Sherman. Thirty years of debt. No public comment. No public vote. Twenty minutes.

I was in the chamber when it happened, and I want to tell you what I saw, because what I saw was not democracy.

“You Don’t Get to Speak”

The intimidation began before anyone reached the chamber doors. Two days earlier, city officials had violently arrested Darrell Miller, a community leader with Missouri Workers Power, at Tuesday’s committee hearing. On Thursday, the council answered the outrage over that arrest by flooding City Hall with police. Officers stationed in the lobby. Officers posted outside the chamber. A show of force aimed at the very residents whose money the council was about to spend, as if the people of this city were a threat to be managed rather than a public to be answered.

Inside, residents held signs reading “Let the People Vote.” City staffers and contractors filled rows of seats. And before the meeting began, a group of attendees near me were asking one another why there would be no public comment on a $600 million commitment. A City Hall employee seated rows ahead turned around and answered them with one sentence:

Then they stormed off. In my own estimation, that sentence was the day’s honest summary. Everything that followed, the speed, the police, the gavel, was that sentence made into policy. When the vote came down, the chamber erupted in chants demanding a public vote. Yet the council moved on to the next agenda item.

The Money Is Ours. The Stadium Is His.

City leaders will tell you that no one is writing Sherman a check. Technically they are right, and the truth is even worse. The city plans to raise its $600 million share by selling bonds, borrowing in our name, then spending the next three decades paying that debt back with public revenue. The ordinance routes food and beverage tax dollars into a fund created for the stadium debt, which means the taxes collected on meals across this city now help pay for a billionaire’s ballpark.

Then there is an even more problematic promise the agreement makes. It states that the Royals will have “no obligation to repay or otherwise support payment of” the city’s bonds. If revenues fall short, the city covers the gap. The city means us. Our general fund, the same fund that pays for streets, buses, and housing, everything this city claims it cannot afford, now stands as the guarantee on a billionaire’s loan.

Working families in this city lose their homes over unpaid property taxes. The owner of a Major League Baseball team will owe none on a $1.9 billion district built for his benefit.

“The city is about to give him $600 million in infrastructure, while our infrastructure is crumbling,” said Mitch, a representative of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, at the meeting.

They Voted Before the Numbers Existed

Council member Johnathan Duncan, one of only two no votes along with Nathan Willett, told his colleagues that the city’s third-party financial analysts had not finished their review, and that complete numbers were still “weeks” away. The council voted anyway.

Duncan said the 5% share of non-baseball revenue the city negotiated for itself “is nothing” against a multibillion dollar deal, and that the city had bargained from fear when it held every card.

The community benefits agreement, the portion of this deal meant to answer people like us, commits the Royals to $55 million over 30 years. Set that against $1.9 billion and it comes to less than three cents on the dollar, most of it drip-fed at roughly $1 million a year.

They Believe This Is Over

The council has shown the residents of Kansas City who it serves, and it is willing to set aside our democratic processes when its rich friends want new toys. But the story did not end when the gavel fell. Organizers who packed the chamber say they will keep pressing for a public vote on the funding, and an initiative petition aimed at putting the deal before voters is already in motion.

In June, organizers with Missouri Workers Power submitted more than 4,500 signatures, well above the roughly 2,068 required, and the City Clerk certified it, starting a 60-day clock that runs out Aug. 31. Inside that window, the council has two choices: adopt the ordinance the petition demands, or send it to the ballot. Missouri Workers Power has already put City Hall on legal notice, in a letter to Mayor Lucas, the council, and the City Clerk, warning that if voters approve the measure, every contract signed and every bond issued after that point in defiance of it would be unlawful. Mayor Lucas has taken the opposite position, telling reporters that agreements finalized before a public vote would stand no matter how that vote comes out.

The council believes the matter is settled. I watched the faces in that chamber, and nothing about them looked settled. A city that can find $600 million for a billionaire in 20 minutes can find it for its people. The people now understand that City Hall moves in their direction only when they force it to, and that work began before we ever walked out of the building.