An aerial view of Truman Sports Complex Star file photo
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe on Tuesday called state lawmakers into a special session to pass a stadium funding plan for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals after legislators failed to approve the plan in the final hours of the legislative session.
Kehoe, at a press conference inside his state Capitol office, ordered lawmakers to return to Jefferson City on June 2. The Republican governor did not set a deadline, but state law allows special sessions to last up to 60 days.
The special session will focus on the teams, disaster relief after recent tornadoes and severe weather in St. Louis and eastern Missouri, and state funding for projects that didn’t pass during the regular session, including funding for a new mental health hospital in Kansas City.
“The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals are Missouri’s teams,” Kehoe said.
Kehoe’s stadiums proposal would allow Missouri to offer state aid to pay for up to 50% of new or upgraded stadiums for the two teams. If passed, it would mark a major moment for the Kansas City area and signify the state’s first major response to Kansas in the protracted fight over the future of the teams.
The Republican governor’s announcement on Tuesday came after the General Assembly ended its annual session without passing the stadium-funding plan, which he unveiled in the final week of the session with no public hearings. After passing the House, the plan ran into a constellation of issues in the Senate.
Kehoe, in response to a question from The Star on Tuesday, defended his decision to push the plan at the 11th-hour. He said that, as he was developing the funding package, he felt it was “significant enough” that it might require a special session.
“We really didn’t have kind of the cake baked until the last couple of weeks of session,” Kehoe said. He added that the teams and other stakeholders have now decided “what a competitive offer should look like.”
But Kehoe may now be looking at a potentially volatile special session. The first-year governor will have to navigate the plan through a fractured General Assembly that is experiencing the same issues that tanked the proposal earlier this month.
Lawmakers of both parties are angry after House Republican leaders refused to hold a vote on a roughly $500 million budget bill for capital improvement projects across the state, including nearly $50 million for a new mental health hospital in Kansas City.
Kehoe, in his special session call, wants lawmakers to approve funding for some of those projects, including the hospital and money to help the University of Missouri-Columbia build a new nuclear research reactor. He estimated the total dollar amount for those projects at around $200 million.
Democrats are also furious with Republicans for employing an exceptionally rare maneuver to break a filibuster in the Missouri Senate to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot to again ban abortion in the state, just months after voters narrowly overturned a ban. Republicans also broke a filibuster to repeal sick leave protections approved by voters last November.
In addition to those issues, lawmakers of both parties have problems with the stadium-funding plan itself. Some frame it as a giveaway to rich sports team owners while others have criticized the way Kehoe tried to ram the plan through the General Assembly at the last minute.
Kehoe on Tuesday offered a nod at all of the potential issues his stadium-funding, disaster relief and budget plans might face. He said he has spoken with House and Senate leadership about how to get the proposals across the finish line.
“There are some raw nerves out there and some wounded feelings and I’m asking them to consider that these initiatives that we will put before them are very time sensitive and very needy,” Kehoe said. “I think it’s appropriate to put these forward and let the legislature try to do what it does and rebuild those relationships to the extent possible, but understand that the need, whether it’s in a disaster community or on the economic development, is very real and very time sensitive.”
While Kehoe did not give lawmakers a deadline to pass the stadium funding plan, he framed the proposal as necessary to keep the teams in Missouri. And June could be an especially important month to pass the plan.
After Jackson County voters rejected a stadiums sales tax in April 2024 that would have guaranteed the teams remained in the county, Kansas lawmakers passed a supercharged bonding plan that authorizes public financing for up to 70% of the cost of new stadiums. The offer expires at the end of June.
Kehoe on Tuesday said he has spoken with the owners and management of the Chiefs and Royals. Both teams, he said, have significant options on the table.
“I believe that (if) Missouri does not put some sort of offer forward, I’m not speaking for either those teams, I think the risk is real that they don’t stay here,” he said. “I believe that the package that we can present to them, again with the help of the local communities, will be serious enough for them to give it great consideration.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2025 at 10:19 AM.
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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.