Top Missouri lawmakers are set to discuss the state’s most ambitious action yet to retain the Chiefs and Royals.
The conversation will include the governor himself.
Two Republican lawmakers confirmed to The Star that Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe and House Republicans plan to meet Tuesday behind closed doors. The anticipated gathering at the state Capitol comes as the House is poised to debate a bill to potentially lure the Kansas City Royals to Clay County.
Missouri lawmakers face a ticking clock to advance stadium-related legislation before a mandatory adjournment at 6 p.m. Friday. Legislation to help finance professional sports stadiums in the state has largely languished this year.
The details of the Missouri package — and whether it would encompass both the Royals and Chiefs — weren’t immediately clear. It also wasn’t clear whether the proposal would be limited to the two Kansas City teams or include potential aid for other Missouri professional teams.
Republican lawmakers who spoke with The Star on Monday did not have specific details about what would be discussed during the meeting. But Rep. Jim Murphy, a St. Louis-area Republican who chairs the House Fiscal Review Committee, and Sen. Kurtis Gregory, a Marshall Republican who sponsored the Clay County bill, both said that House Republicans were scheduled to meet with the governor.
House Republican lawmakers were informed of the meeting during a closed-door caucus meeting on Monday. While not unheard of, governors don’t often speak to party caucuses.
“We’ve got nothing other than we’re having a meeting,” said Rep. Brad Christ, a St. Louis Republican. Christ said he heard a rumor that the meeting was about stadium funding, but that lawmakers were not told explicitly that would be the focus of the gathering.
A Kehoe spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
The package appears likely to surface as an amendment or substitute proposal to legislation that would authorize Clay County to create a sports complex authority similar to the one in Jackson County. The bill previously passed the Senate and is currently in the House, where Republican leadership could bring it up for debate as early as Tuesday.
Kehoe repeatedly voiced support for keeping the Chiefs and Royals in Missouri while campaigning for governor last year. Since taking office in January, he has met with lawmakers, Kansas City officials and others about the future of the teams but hasn’t publicly endorsed specific legislation.
On Monday, Kehoe met with U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, a Republican who represents northern Missouri. Graves told Columbia radio station KSSZ said “we’re trying to do everything we can to come up with a good package that incentivizes both teams staying in Missouri.”
Kehoe’s apparent embrace of a proposal now comes nearly a year after the Kansas Legislature passed a package to court the teams, offering to use a super-charged bonding program to publicly finance up to 70% of the costs of one or more stadiums.
The Kansas plan, which uses Sales Tax and Revenue, or STAR, bonds, came just months after Jackson County voters in April 2024 rejected a 3/8th-cent sales tax stadiums sales tax extension that would have guaranteed the teams remained in the county. The STAR bonds measure will expire in June, though top lawmakers can vote to extend it for another year.
An eleventh-hour Missouri path would arrive closer to the sunset of that one-year STAR bonds proposal than its sunrise.
It could represent a step forward — and undoubtedly a welcomed one from the two Kansas City teams — though it would not guarantee the Chiefs will stay at Arrowhead Stadium, nor the Royals in Jackson County.
The future of the Chiefs and Royals
The two teams have said they anticipate inching toward a resolution by the summer, but sources told The Star that the Chiefs have continued to have conversations with Kansas officials, as well. The Royals have been mum on the specifics of their plans, but sources told The Star last month that they have engaged in talks with the Merriman family, which owns acreage in North Kansas City in Clay County.
A late push from Missouri lawmakers could significantly alter the landscape in the state that hasn’t changed much — at least not publicly — since Jackson County voters rejected a renewed sales tax measure last year earmarked to fund a renovated Arrowhead Stadium and a Royals downtown stadium in the Crossroads District.
A state-funding mechanism is one potential change.
There would still need to be another.
Since the failed vote some 13 months ago, the Chiefs have consistently stated they do not envision a path in Missouri that could bypass another try at the ballot box in Jackson County. And that remains true.
Ideally, they have said, that try would include support, not opposition, from County Executive Frank White Jr., who saluted the original measure’s failure. There is no indication that White’s stance on public funding for a stadium has changed, nor that the Chiefs have put forth a proposal that has persuaded him to change it.
Here’s what has changed: The Chiefs separated their project from the Royals’ plans for a new ballpark that asked voters to hit a moving target in April 2024.
The Chiefs haven’t been eager to rely on that detachment alone to turn around a voting result, and it’s worth noting that their initial renovation project didn’t inspire a positive response ahead of the election, either. Team president Mark Donovan told The Star that any new renovation proposal would take that into account.
The Royals have not been as publicly adamant in their stance to duplicate the current funding mechanism through the county, and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and his office have been more involved in talks with the Royals than the Chiefs. There’s a reason for that. The Royals have exclusively explored moving, which would require a new building that would not likely assume the same county ownership as the stadiums occupying the Truman Sports Complex.
Royals principal owner John Sherman told The Star six weeks ago — the eve of Opening Day — that he does not envision a scenario in which his team is still playing baseball at Kauffman Stadium after the 2031 expiration of the two teams’ leases with the Truman Sports Complex.
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A reporter for The Kansas City Star covering Missouri government and politics, Kacen Bayless is a native of St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from the University of Missouri with an emphasis in investigative reporting. He previously covered projects and investigations in coastal South Carolina. In 2020, he was awarded South Carolina’s top honor for assertive journalism.