Prime Kansas legislators have intensified efforts to woo the Tremendous Bowl champion Kansas Metropolis Chiefs by providing to let the skilled soccer franchise form a plan for utilizing state bonds to finance a brand new stadium in Kansas.
Kansas Home Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson mentioned in an announcement Tuesday that the Legislature would contemplate the proposal throughout a particular session set to convene June 18. They invited the Chiefs “to weigh in on” the plan in a letter Could 23 to Chiefs Chairman and CEO Clark Hunt, with the leaders launched Tuesday.
Their actions got here as a brand new Kansas nonprofit group, Scoop and Rating, launched a marketing campaign for bringing the Chiefs from Missouri to Kansas. The group began a web-based petition aimed on the Legislature, despatched texts saying the Chiefs “deserve a everlasting residence in Kansas,” and registered 20 lobbyists to characterize it on the Statehouse, together with a former Home speaker and a number of the state’s most outstanding contract lobbyists.
Kansas officers noticed a gap in early April after voters on the Missouri aspect of the Kansas Metropolis metropolitan space decisively refused to increase a neighborhood gross sales tax used to maintain up the advanced housing the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium and Kauffman Stadium, residence to skilled baseball’s Kansas Metropolis Royals.
“Your insights and experience are invaluable in shaping the success of this challenge,” Hawkins and Masterson mentioned of their letter. “Your group’s stature and expertise in skilled sports activities will assist form our understanding and be sure that this initiative aligns with the pursuits of all stakeholders concerned.”
The lobbyists who registered to characterize Scoop and Rating included Ron Ryckman Jr., a Kansas Metropolis-area businessman who served as Kansas Home speaker from 2017 by 2022. His former legislative chief of workers, Paje Resner, additionally registered, and she or he was listed because the group’s incorporator when it filed its articles of incorporation with the state on Could 13.
Hunt informed reporters in April that the Chiefs would take “a broader perspective” in regards to the staff’s future residence after the vote in Missouri. The Chiefs had hoped to make use of their share of the native gross sales tax to assist pay for an $800 million renovation of Arrowhead.
The plan favored by Hawkins, Masterson and different members of the Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature would repay bonds for a brand new stadium with gross sales and alcohol tax revenues generated in a delegated space across the stadium. It might be much like how the state and officers in Kansas Metropolis, Kansas, financed building of NASCAR’s Kansas Speedway and an adjoining buying and leisure district.
“We’re poised to make the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs even stronger,” Hawkins and Masterson mentioned of their letter. “It additionally guarantees to be a victory for Kansas taxpayers and a game-changer for our state’s economic system.”
Some legislators have been pushing an analogous proposal to construct new stadiums in Kansas for each the Chiefs and the Royals earlier than lawmakers adjourned their annual session Could 1, however the plan by no means got here to a vote. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly known as the particular session to contemplate broad tax cuts after vetoing three earlier tax plans, however legislators can contemplate no matter they need.
The sooner stadium-financing proposal confronted opposition from People for Prosperity-Kansas, a small-government, low-tax group lengthy in opposition to the usage of such bonds and influential with Republicans. Critics have argued that utilizing the bonds for giant tasks represents the state selecting financial winners and losers as a substitute of the free market.
