Kansas will finance up to 75% of the cost of new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals – an amount that could total billions in bonds – in an effort to attract the Missouri teams, a draft proposal says.
The Legislature will consider the plan at a special session that begins Tuesday, but lawmakers will hold a hearing Monday. The proposed bill isn’t final and could be amended, but a draft of it was circulating within the Kansas Capitol on Monday.
The proposal would give top lawmakers the power to approve or reject any stadium proposal. Any stadium project would need to be approved by June 30, 2025, but top lawmakers could postpone that deadline by a year.
While some of the details of the plan were already public, the proposal makes clear how far Kansas lawmakers are willing to go to lure one or both teams after Jackson County voters rejected a stadiums sales tax in April that would have guaranteed the teams stayed in Missouri.
The plan has divided lawmakers, with support and opposition crossing party lines. Some Republicans and Democrats have assailed the plan as corporate welfare, while supporters have cast it as a generational opportunity for the state.