Kansas is making a serious push to become the reigning president’s new home. Super Bowl Champions with lawmakers approving a plan Tuesday attract the Chiefs and Kansas City Royals of Major League Baseball away from Missouri.
Bipartisan legislative majorities approved the measure to authorize state bonds to help finance new stadiums and practice facilities for the two teams on the Kansas side of the divided metro area of 2.3 million by the border with Missouri. Three Super Bowl victories in five years — and player Travis Kelce’s romance with pop icon Taylor Swift — have made the Chiefs perhaps the region’s most famous civic asset.
The plan from the Republican-controlled legislature goes to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Although she stopped short of promising to sign him, she said in a statement that “Kansas now has the opportunity to become a professional sports powerhouse.”
The Chiefs and Royals said they were eager to review Kansas’ options. The lease for the Missouri complex with their side-by-side stadiums runs through January 2031, but both said they should have already been planning for the future.
“We’re excited about what happened here today,” Korb Maxwell, a Chiefs attorney who lives on the Kansas side, said at the Statehouse after the bill was approved by the Legislature. “It’s incredibly real.”
Voters and economists are not sold
The approval capped two months of efforts to capitalize on refusal in April by Missouri voters to maintain a local sales tax used to fund the upkeep of team stadiums.
Supporters of the plan swept aside decades of research by economists, concluding that government subsidies for professional sports stadiums not worth the price. They also overcame criticism that lawmakers were moving too quickly.
A spokeswoman for Missouri Gov. Mike Parson did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. But in Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas promised to “present a good offer” to keep both teams in town.
“Today, in my opinion, a lot of it was about leverage,” Lucas said. “And the teams are in an exceptional leverage position.”
Some Kansas officials have reached the same conclusion.
“I think the Chiefs and the Royals are using us,” said state Rep. Susan Ruiz, a Kansas City-area Democrat.
Votes on Kansas stadium financing plan have taken place 84-38 at the State House and 27-8 in the Senate. Lawmakers across the state — even in western Kansas, far from any new stadiums — supported the measure.
It would allow state bonds to cover up to 70% of each new stadium, paying them off over 30 years with revenue from sports betting, state lottery ticket sales and new sales taxes and on alcohol collected in the shopping and entertainment districts around the new stadiums.
House Commerce Committee Chairman Sean Tarwater, a Kansas City-area Republican, said the Chiefs would likely spend between $500 million and $700 million in private funds for a new stadium.
“There is no blank check,” Tarwater told his GOP colleagues at a briefing.
Tax cuts or stadium bills?
Lawmakers debated the plan during a one-day special session called by Kelly to urge them to consider cutting taxes after she vetoed three tax cut plans before lawmakers adjourn their regular annual session on May 1.
Republican leaders had promised that the stadium project would not come forward until the Legislature approved a plan to reduce income and property taxes. a total of $1.23 billion over the next three years. Many lawmakers argued that voters would be angry if the state helped fund new stadiums without cutting taxes.
Once the bill passed, the stadium project gained support even from lawmakers who saw it as a gift to wealthy team owners. Some said failure to act risks pushing teams out of the Kansas City area, and a few said they’ve wanted the Kansas Chiefs since they were kids.
“I’m amazed at how quickly we can solve problems when they’re wealth-oriented, when they’re business-oriented,” said state Rep. Jason Probst, a Democrat from central Kansas .
Still, Probst voted for the bill.
“This is the system we are stuck in, so if we choose to opt out of this system, we will lose every time,” he said.
Economists who study professional sports teams have concluded in dozens of studies that a new stadium and commercial and entertainment area only take away from existing economic activity elsewhere in a community, resulting in little or no net gain.
“It could still help Kansas and maybe hurt Missouri to the same extent,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College in central Massachusetts who has written several books on sports. “It’s a zero-sum game.”
Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Kansas City-area Republican, used a Christmas Eve metaphor to characterize her supporters’ enthusiasm before voting no.
“There are visions of sugar plums,” Baumgardner said.
