Yahoo Finance As Kansas plans to lure the Chiefs, what’s Missouri’s plan? ‘Move forward cautiously’
As the Kansas City Chiefs weighs its future in the region, Kansas lawmakers are poised to take action in less than two weeks to attract the Super Bowl-winning team across state lines.
Missouri lawmakers are not rushing to pass a counteroffer.
The Kansas Legislature may authorize potentially billions in public financing for a new stadium for the team at a special session that begins June 18. The top Republicans in the House and Senate threw their support behind the aggressive plan this week in a letter to Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt.
But Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, and Missouri Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican, told The Star on Wednesday they’re not convinced lawmakers need to address the issue in a special session. While they expressed a desire to keep the team in Missouri, they also emphasized the need for any incentives to be financially sustainable.
“I think it’s vitally important that we keep both teams in Missouri. They’re true economic engines for the state,” said Patterson, the presumptive next House speaker. “But I think we need to move forward cautiously and in a fiscally responsible manner. It sounds great to give away a billion dollars, but that money has to come from somewhere.”
Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, and Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, plan to advance a proposal to use a supercharged bond program to help finance a new stadium. Lawmakers will already be in Topeka to work on tax cuts, offering a window to pitch the Chiefs on a move to Kansas after the Missouri General Assembly ended its annual session last month.
The urgency comes after Jackson County voters in April rejected a Chiefs and Royals plan for a 3/8th-cent sales tax. That plan would have included the Chiefs renovating Arrowhead Stadium, with the Hunt family ownership planning to contribute $300 million toward a project with an estimated $800 million price tag.
Under the Kansas plan, state officials would be authorized to issue Sales Tax and Revenue – STAR – bonds to help finance a new stadium, which could cost upwards of $2-3 billion. STAR bonds finance major attractions designed to spur nearby development and Kansas is effectively the only state to use such a program.
Kansas state Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Stilwell Republican who chairs the House Commerce Committee, first attempted to advance the STAR bonds proposal in the final days of the regular session. The Legislature adjourned without voting on the plan.
“In discussions with the Chiefs, they don’t – they view this as an incredible offer,” Tarwater said Tuesday on Sports Radio 810 WHB. “And if we pass this bill, the chances of them coming to the state of Kansas are extremely high.”
The Chiefs declined to comment after the release of Hawkins and Masterson’s letter on Tuesday. Hunt has previously said the team is looking at all options.
It’s not clear how much of a stadium would be financed by bonds, but Tarwater’s initial plan authorized up to 100% financing. The Kansas Department of Commerce, which would sign off on a STAR bond district, has indicated it doesn’t anticipate allowing 100% financing, even if given the option.
The sales taxes from districts surrounding the attractions pay off the bonds. The bonds, which have been unrated in the past, are backed solely by future sales tax revenue from the projects – making them a potentially risky bet for bondholders. The first STAR bonds default occurred last year, on the Prairiefire project in Overland Park.
Large defaults could threaten the credit rating of the municipality or government agency that issued the bonds. Experts who have previously spoken to The Star have cast serious doubt on whether a stadium and nearby development could generate enough sales tax revenue to pay off a project financed entirely or largely by bonds.
Researchers over several decades have consistently found that stadiums and arenas are not major drivers of economic development. A 2022 review of 130 studies over 30 years revealed that nearly all empirical studies found “little to no tangible impacts of sports teams and facilities on local economic activity” and that the level of subsidies typically provided for stadiums “far exceeds any observed economic benefits.”
While the review found that any identified economic effects typically occurred in the area immediately surrounding a stadium, those impacts weren’t always present and “can not be generally applied to all stadium projects.”
“The reality is that stadiums are very poor drivers of economic development, economists universally agree they’re bad public investments,” J.C. Bradbury, a professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia who has studied sports economics, told The Star last month.
Parson reaffirms Chiefs support
Missouri lawmakers on Wednesday signaled they don’t plan to quickly put forward any major proposal in response to Kansas.
Patterson, who said he spoke with Republican Gov. Mike Parson’s office on Wednesday morning, voiced skepticism that Missouri lawmakers need to pass their own proposal during a special session. The Missouri General Assembly won’t meet again to pass legislation until January, unless the governor calls a special session.
“I support trying to keep the teams in Missouri, but I think we just have to do it in a responsible manner,” Patterson said. “I’m not sure a special session would be the best thing to do. Of course, that’s up to the governor.”
Parson spokesperson Johnathan Shiflett did not directly respond to a question from The Star about whether the governor was considering a special session.
“The Kansas City Chiefs have a long, rich history at Arrowhead Stadium, and we remain optimistic that their story will continue in Missouri for generations to come,” Shiflett said in a statement.
“Governor Parson will do what he can to keep the Chiefs in Missouri. The Chiefs are Missouri’s team, and Governor Parson continues conversations with the team’s leadership to ensure that remains.”
Shiflett said that he had nothing else to add regarding any future plans or proposals.
O’Laughlin appeared to share Patterson’s hesitance, saying that Parson, an avid Chiefs fan, was “capable of engaging with the Chiefs’ owners and investigating outcomes that would be supported by Missourians.”
“I’m not convinced we need to convene the legislature at this juncture,” O’Laughlin said in a statement. “And I suspect the Governor feels the same though I do not speak for him.”
Any Missouri proposal to use state funds to keep the Chiefs is almost certain to run into resistance in the state Senate. The chamber has been gripped by infighting between a group of hard-right senators and Republican leadership and the General Assembly ended its annual session after passing just 28 non-budget bills, a modern record-low.
“It seems to me there’s a lot of fact finding that will need to happen before we rush to convene a session,” O’Laughlin said. “We are also in the middle of an election season which could result more in grandstanding than in serious work.”
O’Laughlin appeared to be referring to recent spats between the hard-right Missouri Freedom Caucus and Republican leadership in the Senate that upended most of the session.
In April, Missouri state Sen. Bill Eigel, a vocal leader of the Freedom Caucus, pushed back on the suggestion of Missouri using public money to keep the Chiefs in the state.
“I know of no path in the Missouri Senate where we’re going to do any public funding of sports stadiums,” said Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican who is running for governor. “I think that would be resisted vociferously and extensively.”
Missouri state Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, said on Wednesday she agreed with Patterson and O’Laughlin that lawmakers don’t need to rush into a special session.
“There’s still time on this,” said Nurrenbern, who is running for state Senate. “I think any rush to put together a package wouldn’t really have all the voices at the table and that’s what’s needed.”
She also expressed hesitance about Missouri entirely using taxpayer dollars to keep the team in the state, saying Hunt and the Chiefs need to “put their money where their mouth is and show that they’re ready to truly put some significant investments in.”
Nurrenbern pointed to one person who could help bolster Missouri’s efforts to keep the Chiefs: John Rizzo. Rizzo, the top Democratic leader in the Senate who terms out this year, was offered a contract last month to become the executive director of Jackson County Sports Complex Authority.
While Rizzo’s contract hasn’t been finalized yet, Nurrenbern said she feels he’s the right person to be at the forefront of negotiations with the Chiefs. His entry into the new role would come after he navigated Senate Democrats through a record-breaking filibuster this year that blocked a measure to overhaul direct democracy — a major win for Democrats who hold just nine seats in the chamber.
“He’s certainly in the right place at the right time to make all of this happen,” she said.
Rizzo declined to comment through a spokesperson on Wednesday.
Kansas plan to ‘scoop and score’
While Missouri lawmakers remain cautious, top Kansas lawmakers want to seize what they portray as a major opportunity.
“The rich tradition and history of the Chiefs are beloved across the entire Kansas City region and throughout Kansas. The potential to establish a home for the Chiefs family here on the Kansas side of the state line is an opportunity that deserves a thorough conversation,” Hawkins and Masterson said in a joint statement.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat who could sign or veto any legislation, declined through a spokesperson to comment on Wednesday.
During the Sports Radio 810 interview, Tarwater was nudged about the suggestion that STAR bonds sound too good to be true. “That’s the heart of the whole pushback. People just aren’t receiving that message,” Tarwater said.
Still, he said Missouri lawmakers “might be taking things for granted.”
“They could learn from us but they’re kind of dysfunctional right now,” Tarwater said.
Proponents of luring the Chiefs to Kansas have launched a campaign, Scoop and Score, to encourage Kansas lawmakers to pass the STAR bonds proposal. The effort involves former Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr. of Olathe and 19 other lobbyists.
The group says any stadium would be a “public/private partnership with the franchise owner contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to the project.”
Still, some Kansas lawmakers voiced caution this week. State Sen. John Doll, a Garden City Republican, said he opposes trying to pass the plan during the special session.
“We’re talking about billions of dollars. You can’t jump in there in an afternoon,” Doll said.
Kansas state Rep. Ken Rahjes, an Agra Republican, said he wants more information and is probably leaning toward opposing the proposal at the moment.
“I’m just a little curious of the timing of this,” Rahjes said.
Across the border, Missouri lawmakers remain confident that they can keep the Chiefs, even if they’re not rushing to put together a proposal.
Nurrenbern, the Kansas City Democrat, said both Kansas and Missouri need the border war “truce” that Parson and Kelly signed in 2019 to end the use of tax incentives to lure companies across state lines without creating new jobs for the region.
“We’ve got to stop the bidding war across the state line, it doesn’t help either side,” she said. “I think the Chiefs are gonna want to stay in Missouri.”
The Star’s Jenna Barackman contributed reporting
