Chiefs News: Governor signs Kansas stadium bill; Missouri pols respond

As expected, Kansas governor Laura Kelly has signed the STAR bonds bill Kansas lawmakers passed on Tuesday. When the new legislation takes effect on July 1, the Kansas City Chiefs (and Kansas City Royals) will have one year to decide if they’ll move into new Kansas stadiums financed up to 70% with that state’s unusual STAR (state tax and revenue) bonds.

Kansas City mayor Quenton Lucas believes the bill restarts the economic border war between the states, which was settled in 2019 with an agreement between Kelly and Missouri Governor Mike Parson.

“The [Kansas] vote provides only a speculative ability to sell bonds untethered to private funding plans, costs, locations, or discussion of the unknown consequences for taxpayers and existing businesses,” he told reporters after the vote, per KMBC-TV.

But Kelly sees it differently.

“The border war was really focused on businesses like AMC Theatres, which went back and forth, back and forth,” she said, according to the Missouri Independent. “We never discussed teams.”

Jackson County Executive Frank White — a former Kansas City Royals star who opposed the extension of the county’s 3/8-cent sales tax that, if passed, would have kept both the Royals and Chiefs in Missouri — worries that the situation could escalate into a bidding war.

“We must focus on common sense over politics,” White said. “Our resources should be used wisely to improve the lives of our residents, not wasted on bidding wars that only serve to drain public funds and divide our region.”

Other Missouri politicians are concerned about the Kansas effort, which gained traction when Jackson County voters rejected the sales tax extension on April 2.

“It’s a wakeup call to Missouri that there are other states that are willing to do whatever it takes to get the teams,” said Missouri House majority leader Jonathan Patterson of Lee’s Summit.

Before Kansas legislators approved the STAR bonds bill, Patterson — who is in line to become House speaker after November’s general election — thought his colleagues would not offer alternative solutions before the fall.

“I think after the primary [election], we will be able to look at possibly having a special session to address this issue,” he told the Kansas City Star. “Before the primary, there would be a lot of politics involved in this — and I think once that’s out of the way, it’ll make it easier for us to come up with a plan.”

So far, no politicians have proposed a concrete solution to keep the teams in Missouri. But any idea that used taxpayer money would likely face opposition.

“We want to keep the Kansas City Chiefs and KC Royals in the state of Missouri,” said Warrensburg representative Denny Hoskins, per the Independent, “but we can’t saddle taxpayers with billions of dollars in debt to help finance stadiums.”

Hoskins — a candidate to become Missouri’s next secretary of state — doesn’t believe projections that there will be enough revenue generated to repay private investors who purchase Kansas STAR bonds. He thinks Kansas will eventually have to repay investors with taxpayer money — and doesn’t want that to happen in Missouri.

“Missouri taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for financing stadiums for billion-dollar corporations and multimillion-dollar athletes,” he said. “It’s hard enough being a Missourian right now just trying to keep your own money in your pocket, let alone financing stadiums for a billion-dollar industry.”

Despite his opposition to the sales tax extension, White is open to ideas.

“My office remains open to conversations with the Royals, Chiefs, lawmakers, and other stakeholders,” he declared, “but any proposal must [not drain public funds] and make sense for our community.”

Kansas representative Sean Tarwater of Stillwater was among those who spearheaded the bill in Topeka. While acting as one of the public faces of the effort, he said that since it could take four to six years to build new facilities, the teams must act soon.

“So to build a structure of this magnitude, they’ve got to act right now,” he told 810 Sports host Soren Petro. “That’s why we’re doing it now; [we’re] not waiting until next year. They’ve got to act now. They’ve got to make a decision. But if they don’t, this bill is good for one year.”

But time may not be as much of an issue as Tarwater suggested. His colleagues, after all, could extend their deadline after an afternoon’s debate — and both teams are tied to their Jackson County facilities for at least seven seasons.

On the issue of time, Mayor Lucas didn’t hesitate to use a sports metaphor.

“We remain in the first quarter of the Kansas City stadium discussion,” he promised.