Jackson County legislators discuss future of Chiefs, Royals

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Jackson County Republican Legislator Sean Smith is one of FOX4’s guests on Sunday, May 26’s episode of 4 The People .

Smith told FOX4 he does not know whether there’d be another ballot initiative later this year for the Kansas City Chiefs and the Royals, but he says the conversations since the failed April 2 sales tax election have been very modest.

“I think in order to have a plan that works for everybody, we need to have some really robust and transparent conversations,” Smith said Friday.

Smith said the fact there have been conversations between county leadership and the teams that non everyone knows about may be a challenge.

Since the April sales tax vote failed, Smith told FOX4 he voted ‘no’ in that election even though he was in support of the measure going on the ballot.

“I really felt like the plan wasn’t complete yet,” he continued. “I felt like by putting it on the ballot, we allowed the teams as much time as possible to get things wrapped up. They didn’t get there to my satisfaction, so I chose to vote no as an individual voter. I also chose not to reveal that until after the election.”

Wednesday, May 15, Jackson County Democratic Legislator Jalen Anderson talked about the issue, just a day after FOX4 found out Royals Chairman and CEO John Sherman had responded to the county about trying to have some sort of conversation about where the team’s going to be playing baseball in the future.

Monday, May 13, Democratic County Executive Frank White said he hadn’t gotten a response from the team, which his Chief of Staff has since apologized about .

“The crucial part of everything here is that we can’t have a repeat of what we did last time,” Anderson said that day. “What I mean by that is, ‘He said. They said. She said. They said,’ and I think that I’m not surprised if the county executive wants to keep everything close to his chest this time around, because the last time he was open about it, we had too many cooks in the kitchen.”

Friday afternoon, FOX4 sent a records request over to White’s office to see if we could get the communications between the teams and the county since April 3 of this year. The public information officer for the office, Marshanna Smith, has already responded to FOX4 saying those records are closed.

Smith’s full interview airs Sunday on 4 The People at 10 a.m.

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