Kansas leaders and new group ramp up efforts to lure the Kansas City Chiefs from Missouri
TOPEKA, Kan. — Top lawmakers in Kansas have intensified their efforts to address the Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs by offering to let the professional football franchise shape a plan to use government bonds to finance a new stadium in Kansas.
Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson said in a statement Tuesday that the Legislature would consider the proposal during a special session on June 18. They invited the Chiefs to “discuss the plan” in a May 23 letter to Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt, and the leaders will be released on Tuesday.
Their actions came as a new Kansas nonprofit, Scoop and Score, launched a campaign to bring the Chiefs from Missouri to Kansas. The group started an online petition to the Legislature, sent text messages saying the Chiefs “deserve a permanent home in Kansas” and registered 20 lobbyists to represent the Legislature in the Statehouse, including a former House Speaker. Representatives and some of the state’s most prominent contract lobbyists. .
Kansas officials saw an opening in early April after voters on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area resolutely refused to expand a local sales tax used to maintain the complex that houses the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium and Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals professional baseball club.
“Your insights and expertise will be invaluable in shaping the success of this project,” Hawkins and Masterson said in their letter. “Your organisation’s status and experience in professional sport will help shape our understanding and ensure that this initiative is aligned with the interests of all stakeholders involved.”
The lobbyists who have registered to represent Scoop and score include Ron Ryckman Jr., a Kansas City-area businessman who served as speaker of the Kansas House from 2017 to 2022. His former chief of staff at the Legislature, Paje Resner, also registered, and she was listed as the group’s founder when it filed its articles of incorporation. integration with the state on May 13.
Hunt told reporters in April that the Chiefs would have “a broader perspective” on the team’s future home after the Missouri vote. The Chiefs had hoped to use their share of local sales taxes to help pay for Arrowhead’s $800 million renovation.
The plan favored by Hawkins, Masterson and other members of the Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature would pay off bonds for a new stadium with sales and alcohol tax revenue generated in a designated area around the stadium. It would be similar to how the state and officials in Kansas City, Kansas, financed the construction of NASCAR’s Kansas Speedway and an adjacent shopping and entertainment district.
“We are ready to make the Kansas City Chiefs even stronger,” Hawkins and Masterson said in their letter. “It also promises to be a win for Kansas taxpayers and a game-changer for our state’s economy.”
Some lawmakers were pushing a similar proposal to build new stadiums in Kansas for both the Chiefs and Royals before lawmakers postponed their annual session on May 1, but the plan was never voted on. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly called the special session to consider broad tax cuts next vetoing three previous tax plans, but lawmakers can consider whatever they want.
The previous stadium financing proposal was opposed by American for Prosperity-Kansas, a small-government, low-tax group that long opposed the use of such bonds and was influential among Republicans. Critics have argued that using the bonds for major projects amounts to the state picking economic winners and losers rather than the free market.