Supporters of bringing the Chiefs to Kansas have narrowed their plan and are promising tax cuts

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas lawmakers hoping to lure the Kansas City Chiefs from Missouri are trying to win over skeptical colleagues by narrowing their proposal for encouraging the Super Bowl champions to build a new stadium and by linking it to a plan for broad tax cuts.

The Legislature expected to consider the stadium proposal during a special session set to convene Tuesday. The measure would allow the state to issue bonds to help the Chiefs and Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals finance new stadiums on the Kansas side of their metropolitan area, which is split by the border with Missouri.

Supporters on Monday backed away from an earlier plan to allow state bonds to cover all of the construction costs for new stadiums. Their plan would use revenues from sports betting, the state lottery and new taxes raised from the area around each new stadium.

Top Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature also said the stadium proposal is their second priority during the special session, behind cutting income and property taxes. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly called the special session to consider tax cuts, but she cannot limit what lawmakers consider — creating an opening for a plan to woo the Chiefs and Royals.

“We definitely need to demonstrate that we’re getting relief to our citizens,” said Senate President Ty Masterson, a Wichita-area Republican who is backing the plan.

Many lawmakers have argued that voters would be angry if the state helped finance new stadiums without cutting taxes. Kelly vetoed three tax-cutting plans before legislators adjourned their regular annual session May 1, but she and top Republican lawmakers have drafted a compromise measure to reduce taxes by $1.23 billion over the next three years.

The first version of the stadium-financing plan emerged in late April, but lawmakers didn’t vote on it before adjourning. It would have allowed state bonds to finance all stadium construction costs, but the latest version caps the amount at 70%, and it says legislative leaders and the governor must sign off on any bonding plan.

Supporters of the plan also modified it so that it only applies to professional football and Major League Baseball stadiums, instead of any professional sports stadium for at least 30,000 spectators. Bonds would be paid off over 30 years.

“We’re trying to bring something grand to the state of Kansas,” said state Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Kansas City-area Republican leading the push for a stadium plan.

Free-market conservatives in Kansas have long opposed state and local subsidies for specific businesses or projects. And economists who’ve studied pro sports teams have concluded in dozens of studies over decades that subsidizing their stadiums isn’t worth the cost.

“Most of the money that gets spent on the Chiefs is money that would otherwise be spent on other entertainment projects,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College in central Massachusetts who has written multiple books about sports.

Kelly told reporters Monday that she won’t “invest a lot of energy” in a stadium plan, letting lawmakers lead. She and Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, signed an agreement in 2019 to end years of each state using subsidies to steal the other state’s jobs in the Kansas City area, but Kelly argued that their truce doesn’t apply to the Chiefs and Royals.

“We never discussed the teams,” she said.

Kansas legislators consider the Chiefs and Royals in play because in April, voters on the Missouri side of the metro area refused to continue a local sales tax for the upkeep of the complex with their side-by-side stadiums. Missouri officials have said they’ll do whatever it takes to keep the teams but haven’t outlined any proposals.

The two teams’ lease on their stadium complex runs through January 2031, but Korb Maxwell, an attorney for the Chiefs who lives on the Kansas side, said renovations on the team’s Arrowhead Stadium should be planned seven or eight years in advance.

“There is an urgency to this,” added David Frantz, the Royals’ general counsel.

Supporters of the stadium plan argued that economists’ past research doesn’t apply to the Chiefs and Royals. They said the bonds will be paid off with tax revenues that aren’t being generated now and would never be without the stadiums or the development around them. Masterson said it’s wrong to call the bonds a subsidy.

And Maxwell said: “For a town to be major league, they need major league teams.”

But economists who’ve studied pro sports said similar arguments have been a staple of past debates over paying for new stadiums. Development around a new stadium lessens development elsewhere, where the tax dollars generated would go to fund services or schools, they said.

“It could still help Kansas and maybe hurt Missouri by the same amount,” Zimbalist said. “It’s a zero-sum game.”

Court documents are shining light on the alleged killing of a 24-year-old woman by her husband.

Gavino McJunkins-Macias, 23, has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of his wife, 24-year-old Kenia Lopez. Bond has been set at $1 million, according to a press release from the Miami County, Kansas, Sheriff’s Office. McJunkins-Macias has also been charged with abandonment of a corpse by the Carthage Police Department.

As of June 14, McJunkins-Macias was in custody at the Jasper County Jail. On the morning of June 17, he entered a plea of not guilty. On the same day, an extradition hearing was held to return McJunkins-Macias to the authorities of Miami County, Kansas. McJunkins-Macias appeared via video from custody.

A probable cause statement from the Carthage Police Department says the Jasper County Emergency Dispatch Center received a 911 call from McJunkins-Macias about 11:35 a.m. Thursday, June 13. He told authorities the dead body of his wife was inside a camper at 600 N. Main in Carthage. Authorities found Lopez dead from an apparent homicide.

According to the Miami County Sheriff’s Department, Lopez was killed in the 33500 block of Metcalf Road in rural Louisburg, Kansas. The camper, with Lopez’s body still inside, was then driven to Carthage. McJunkins-Macias was arrested at the scene shortly after making the 911 call.

In an interview with police, McJunkins-Macias confirmed the camper was his. He said he brought the camper to Carthage about 7 a.m. with Lopez inside, knowing she was dead.

After arriving in Carthage on Thursday morning, security footage shows McJunkins-Macias detaching his vehicle from the camper. Documents say he then abandoned his wife’s body for approximately three-and-a-half hours while he met with family and “handled other business.”

Anyone with information related to the case is asked to call the Carthage Police Department or the Miami County, Kansas, Sheriff’s Office.

TOPEKA — Legislation to be presented Monday to Kansas lawmakers to lure the Kansas City Royals or Kansas City Chiefs across the state line would allow issuance of bonds to cover 75% of stadium projects with a minimum capital investment of $1 billion.

The STAR bonds would have a 30-year payback schedule, rather than the 20-year timeline for other state bonded projects. Current STAR bond law in Kansas limited financial support for economic development projects to 50% of the cost.

In addition to state revenue from sports gambling and lottery gaming, sales tax revenue from businesses in the respective sports stadium development districts would be earmarked to cover bond debt. In another unusual move, the bill would allow up to 100% of sales tax revenue on alcoholic liquor sales within a stadium district to be dedicated to paying off bonds.

A 40-page bill outlining details of the incentives was prepared for consideration during the special legislative session called by Gov. Laura Kelly for the purpose of resolving a stalemate on state tax reform. The session formally opens Tuesday, but committees devoted to business and tax issues will convene Monday.

The scramble in Kansas to pull together a bill supporting construction of Kansas stadiums for the Royals or Chiefs followed the April rejection by Jackson County, Missouri, voters of a sales tax measure that would have generated funding for a downtown baseball stadium for the Royals and financed renovations to Arrowhead Stadium where the football team plays. The teams are bound to existing stadium leases through 2031.

Kansas House and Senate commerce committee members are to meet 2:30 p.m. Monday at the Capitol to wade through the stadium bill. The bill draft could be amended by committees in either chamber. Legislative leaders expect the measure to be voted on Tuesday by the full House and Senate and, if approved, sent to the governor.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said Missouri would develop a “competitive” offer regarding the professional sports franchises if Kansas stepped forward with a package.

Big lobbying push

An army of lobbyists and other business interests have made informal presentations in recent weeks to any of the 165 Kansas legislators willing to talk about the STAR bond blueprint. Those conversations are expected to continue Monday night among lawmakers invited to a Lawrence steak house to hear from lobbyists, a Royals executive and representatives of organized labor.

Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover, and House Speaker Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, reached out to owners of the Chiefs to see if they were open to consideration of “mutually beneficial opportunities.”

An organization called Scoop and Score was formed to pitch the border-war idea, but much of that organization’s marketing has been on behalf of a stadium for the Super Bowl champion Chiefs.

“Here in Kansas, we have the unique opportunity to solidify our region as the forever home of the Chiefs at no additional cost to Kansas taxpayers,” Scoop and Score’s social media post says. “We need every Chiefs fan in the state to contact their legislator and urge them to vote to keep the Chiefs in Kansas City.”

Americans for Prosperity in Kansas, however, has campaigned against the STAR bond concept. Legislators with constituents long distances from the Wyandotte County or Johnson County suburbs where the stadiums would likely be constructed have expressed doubts.

Two-stadium solution

The proposed STAR bond bill addressed one financial concern raised by skeptics of the attempt to raid Missouri for the Chiefs or Royals. The bill says bonds for stadium projects issued by the Kansas Development Finance Authority would be obligations of KDFA and “shall not constitute a debt of the state of Kansas within the meaning of … the constitution of the state of Kansas.”

“They are not full faith and credit bonds” and would be “payable solely from the sources identified in the STAR bonds financing act, namely incemental sales tax, alcohol tax and expanded lottery money,” said a briefing document summarizing the bill.

That provision would forbid general tax revenue flowing into the Kansas treasury to be called upon to pay holders of STAR bonds issued for the NFL or MBL stadium projects if one of the sports business districts failed to generate sufficient revenue in the future.

Reports of revenues filed with the Kansas Department of Revenue in connection to STAR bonds for sports stadiums “shall be kept confidential and if unlawfully disclosed would be subject to penalties.”

The bill would make permanent a one-year budget provisio approved by the 2024 Legislature that would dedicate lottery revenue above $71.4 million annually, excluding revenue from sports gambling, to the Attracting Professional Sports to Kansas Fund.

Some fine print

Under the bill prepared for consideration by the Legislature, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Commerce would have authority to enter into a STAR bond agreement with no more than two professional sports franchises. The bill proposed sports business districts would be established by June 30, 2025, but a council comprised top legislative leaders and the governor could extend the deadline for one year.

A final agreement with the Royals or Chiefs would have to be approved by the same bipartisan council of politicians, which is known as the Legislative Coordinating Council. The LCC would possess authority to approve or reject the deals whether the Legislature was in session or not. The agreement wouldn’t be considered a public record until the LCC by majority vote accepted an agreement.

The definition of “major professional sports complex” for purposes of the bill would be a stadium with more than 30,000 seats for holding National Football League and Major League Baseball contests as well as other events.

A memorandum summarizing the bill says franchises eligible for the incentives would be NFL or MLB teams located in “any state adjacent to Kansas.”

The Kansas bill would allow, but not require, local governments to dedicate tax revenue to the sports franchise developments for the Chiefs or Royals.