Top Kansas lawmakers renewed a massive incentive offer for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals on Monday, reaffirming their desire to poach one or both teams from Missouri.
The Legislative Coordinating Council, or LCC, voted 7-0 to give the teams until Dec. 31, 2025, to lock in a deal with Kansas that would fund up to 70% of new stadium costs with public money.
The move, less than a month after Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed his state’s incentive package into law, further ratchets up the intensity of the border war over the teams’ futures.
The decision to renew the offer follows a June 26 letter from Chiefs team president Mark Donovan requesting an extension of the Sales Tax and Revenue, or STAR bond, incentive package.
House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican who repeatedly said in recent months that he opposed keeping the offer on the table past June 30, told fellow LCC members that he now believes a short-term extension makes sense.
He attributed his change of heart to a statement in Donovan’s letter that the Chiefs had submitted a proposal to the state and received no response for six weeks.
“That’s not fair to the teams,” said Hawkins, who is running for state insurance commissioner. “Doesn’t matter what team it was. That’s just not fair to the teams when they’re making proposals and they’re not getting responses back.”
The 2024 Kansas law establishing the stadiums incentive package authorizes David Toland, the lieutenant governor and commerce secretary, to negotiate a deal with one or both teams.
Toland’s office declined to comment on the accusations of failure to communicate in a timely manner with the Chiefs.
“The Kelly-Toland administration will continue to keep the interests of the Kansas economy as its top priority in our negotiations with the teams, and will not be swayed by political pressure to give away hard-earned tax dollars to satisfy certain special interests,” Toland said in an email statement where he thanked LCC members for extending the STAR bond deadline.
The LCC approved one motion extending the underlying stadium STAR bond law through June 30, 2026. But in a separate motion, lawmakers specified that they would only consider a deal brought by Toland before the end of 2025.
Royals preference?
After the meeting, Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, told reporters that he’s not aware of an existing offer from the Chiefs or Royals to move to Kansas yet.
But he said it’s important that both teams be given a fair shake, doubling down on the suggestion that Gov. Laura Kelly and her Democratic administration have neglected the Chiefs.
“It is political,” Masterson said. “And I think most Kansans know there’s a little bit of a disconnect. I think the administration tends to favor the Royals over the Chiefs, and I think most everyone else in the conversation would say the inverse. But it would be great to have both of them.”
Masterson said he appreciates the letter from the Chiefs president expressing continued interest in a potential border hop.
“We believe the foundation is in place for something truly historic — not only for our team but for the future of the state’s economy and national profile,” Donovan wrote in the letter.
Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, one of two Democrats on the LCC, said she remains optimistic about Kansas’ prospects with both teams.
But when asked which of the two franchises would be more likely to pay back stadium bond debt through sales tax generated by surrounding development, she didn’t mince words.
“I would think that the Royals would have an advantage there just because of the sheer number of games,” Sykes said.
Normally, Kansas STAR bonds can only fund up to 50% of a public attraction with future tax revenue, but the specialized stadiums offer authorizes that public subsidy to climb as high as 70%.
Missouri’s offer, passed during a hectic special session last month, would fund up to 50% of new construction or stadium improvements.
One major difference between the two incentive packages is that Missouri’s plan would require a local commitment, which could come in the form of a local tax vote like the one Jackson County voters overwhelmingly rejected last April.
Kansas’ offer includes no such requirement of a local commitment. But the proposal hinges on a STAR bond project larger than any such development Kansas has supported through the incentive program before.
Although fans and lawmakers on both sides of the state line have stressed the potential economic windfall of locking in stadium deals, decades of research show stadium projects rarely earn back the amount of public aid that goes into them.