Kansas leaders and new group step up efforts to lure Kansas City Chiefs from Missouri

TOPEKA, Kan. Top Kansas lawmakers have stepped up efforts to attract the Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs offering to allow the professional football franchise to come up with a plan to use state 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 scheduled for June 18. Chiefs President and CEO Clark Hunt with leaders revealed Tuesday.

His actions came as a new Kansas nonprofit group, Scoop and Score, launched a campaign to bring the Missouri Chiefs to Kansas. The group started an online petition to the Legislature, sent texts saying the Chiefs “deserve a permanent home in Kansas” and registered 20 lobbyists to represent it at the Statehouse, including a former House speaker and some of the most prominent contract lobbyists in the state. state. .

Kansas officials saw an opening in early April after voters on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro area decisively refused to extend a local sales tax used to maintain the complex that houses the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium and Kauffman Stadium, home of professional baseball’s Kansas City Royals.

“Your insights and experience are invaluable in shaping the success of this project,” Hawkins and Masterson said in their letter. “Your organization’s stature and experience in professional sports will help shape our understanding and ensure this initiative aligns with the interests of all stakeholders involved.”

Lobbyists who registered to represent Spoon and score included Ron Ryckman Jr., a Kansas City-area businessman who served as speaker of the Kansas House from 2017 to 2022. His former legislative chief of staff, Paje Resner, also registered and was listed as the group’s incorporator when it filed its articles of incorporation into 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 vote in Missouri. The Chiefs hoped to use their share of local sales tax to help pay for an $800 million renovation of Arrowhead.

The plan championed by Hawkins, Masterson and other members of the Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature would pay off bonds for a new stadium with alcohol and sales tax revenues 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 prepared 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 the Chiefs and Royals before lawmakers ended their annual session on May 1, but the plan was never voted on. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly called the special session to consider sweeping tax cuts after vetoing three previous tax plans, but legislators can consider whatever they want.

The previous stadium financing proposal faced opposition from Americans for Prosperity-Kansas, a small-government, low-tax group long opposed to the use of such bonds and influential among Republicans. Critics argue that the use of bonds for large projects represents the state choosing economic winners and losers rather than the free market.