Kansas is making a serious effort to become the new home of the defending Super Bowl champions, with lawmakers on Tuesday approving a plan to lure the Chiefs and Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals from Missouri.
A bipartisan legislative majority passed the measure authorizing state bonds to fund new stadiums and training facilities for both teams in Kansas, a metropolitan area of 2.3 million residents that borders Missouri. Three Super Bowl championships in five years and player Travis Kelce’s romance with pop icon Taylor Swift have made the Chiefs perhaps the region’s best-known civic asset.
The plan in the Republican-controlled Legislature is headed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. While she did not commit to signing the agreement, she said in a statement that “Kansas now has an opportunity to become a powerhouse in professional sports.”
Both the Chiefs and Royals said they look forward to considering Kansas State’s options. The lease for the Missouri State Sports Complex and its side-by-side stadium runs through January 2031, but both parties said they should already be planning for the future.
“We’re excited about what’s happening here today,” Chiefs attorney Cobb Maxwell, who lives on the Kansas side, said at the state House after the bill passed the Legislature. “This is so real.”
Voters and economists are not sold
The approval caps a two-month effort that followed Missouri voters in April rejecting the continuation of a local sales tax to fund maintenance of the team’s stadium.
Supporters of the plan ignore decades of research by economists who have concluded that government subsidies for professional stadiums are not worth it. They also overcame criticism from lawmakers that they moved too quickly.
A spokesman for Missouri Gov. Mike Parson did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. But in Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas promised “a good offer” to keep both teams in town.
“In my opinion, today was mostly about leverage,” Lucas said. “And these teams are in a unique position of leverage.”
Some officials in Kansas have reached the same conclusion.
“I think the Chiefs and Royals are taking advantage of us,” said Rep. Susan Ruiz, D-Kansas City.
The Kansas stadium financing plan voted 84-38 in the state House of Representatives and 27-8 in the Senate. Lawmakers from across the state — even in western Kansas, far away from any new stadium — supported the measure.
It would allow state bonds to cover up to 70 percent of each new stadium, with the debt repaid over 30 years through sports betting revenue, state lottery sales and new sales and liquor taxes from the shopping and entertainment districts surrounding the new stadiums. .
House Commerce Committee Chairman Sean Talwater, a Kansas City-area Republican, said the Chiefs could still spend $500 million to $700 million in private money to build a new stadium.
“There is no blank check,” Talwater told Republican colleagues at a news conference.
Tax breaks or stadium bills?
Lawmakers debated the plan during a one-day special session called by Kelly after he vetoed three tax cuts before lawmakers adjourned their regular annual session on May 1 to allow them to consider tax cuts. .
Republican leaders have pledged not to move forward with the stadium proposal until the Legislature first approves a plan to cut income and property taxes by a total of $1.23 billion over the next three years. Many lawmakers believe voters would be angry if the state helped fund a new stadium without cutting taxes.
As the tax bill passed, the stadium plan even gained support from lawmakers who viewed it as a handout to wealthy team owners. Some said inaction could result in the team leaving the Kansas City area, and some said they grew up wanting the Chiefs to stay in Kansas.
“It’s amazing to me how quickly we solve problems when they are wealth-oriented and business-oriented,” said Rep. Jason Probst, a Democratic congressman from central Kansas.
Yet Probst voted in favor of the bill.
“This is the system we’re stuck in, so if we choose to exit the system, we’re going to fail every time,” he said.
Economists who study professional sports teams have concluded in dozens of studies that new stadiums and shopping and entertainment districts would simply take existing economic activity away from the rest of the community, producing little or no net benefit.
“It could still help Kansas and it could hurt Missouri just as much,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College in central Massachusetts who has written several books about sports. “This is a zero-sum game.”
Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a skeptical Kansas City-area Republican, used a Christmas Eve metaphor to describe the excitement among supporters before her vote against the bill.
“There were visions of sugar plums,” Baumgardner said.
