As Kansas lures the Chiefs, here’s why the path to staying at Arrowhead is complex
The Chiefs and Royals ran the most expensive ballot campaign in Kansas City history to prevent the subject of this column from being relevant.
Their Plan B.
Jackson County voters last month rejected a 40-year, 3/8th-cent sales tax earmarked to help fund stadium projects for the two teams— and the only public response in the ensuing six weeks is that they will separate their plans for what’s next.
But what is next?
Some Kansas lawmakers are certainly trying to clear an avenue for that separation, hoping to lure the Chiefs specifically to the other side of the state line with a supercharged STAR (Sales Tax and Revenue) bonds proposal. While that plan invites more than a dose of healthy skepticism, including whether it has the necessary support, that story and its pretty pictures have managed to overshadow the most pressing questions in all of this:
What is the path for the Chiefs if they want to stay at Arrowhead Stadium? It was their publicly stated preference, after all. So how do they try that route again?
I talked to more than a dozen people engaged in the stadium talks, with that question at the center of our conversations, and the CliffsNotes summary needs only a gesture.
A shoulder-shrug.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has told reporters he is prepared “to do whatever we can to keep the Royals and Kansas City Chiefs in the state of Missouri.” On the face of it, that ought to provide optimism about the future in their current state, especially when that pledge comes from a man with a literal Chiefs tattoo inked on his right arm.
Except there is an uncertainty within that pledge:
How?
It’s hard to gloss over the roadblocks. The Missouri state legislature could be described as at a standstill, and that would be putting it kindly. And we’ve already seen Jackson County, from executive Frank White to the voters themselves, rebuff the teams’ proposals.
Those are precisely the two sources of revenue the Chiefs are hoping will tag along for this ride.
A recoil in Jackson County, therefore, would require they thread multiple needles.
Forget whether they’d have the appetite for that — nobody, as of yet, is offering them a bite.
The Chiefs have not had substantial dialogue with any level of local government — the city, county or state — about their next steps in Missouri, multiple sources told The Star. In fact, after a campaign put the stadium conversation on our TVs, street corners and billboards, the aftermath of a failed vote is defined by a word rarely associated with a Chiefs stadium:
Quiet.
You could point out that it has been just six weeks since the April 2 vote. Indeed, some parties determined a breather could be a good thing.
But the present-day calm might be indicative of a larger matter that will remain into the future.
Which is this: Nobody has identified a clear plan for what could be next in Missouri, I’m told by multiple sources — not the Chiefs themselves, nor anyone in much of a hurry to present a path to them.
As some in Kansas attempt to open a proverbial door for the Chiefs — and my colleague, Jonathan Shorman, reports this will require some maneuvering — it appears the two-time defending Super Bowl champions would have to knock down some walls in Missouri.
Let me explain, because this could be the axis on which the Chiefs’ future pivots.
While I believe the Royals could be presented with some options that include additional help from the city — though that’s also to be determined — that avenue wouldn’t be as feasible for an organization attempting to remain in a county-owned asset. (Mayor Quinton Lucas did meet with Chiefs leadership last week.)
The Chiefs expect the county and state to contribute financially to their renovation project, which they estimated would cost $800 million, in addition to annual maintenance costs. The Hunt family has pledged $300 million.
Many have told me the Chiefs need the state and county money before they move forward in Missouri — or we could note that a billion-dollar business more accurately wants the money — but in this case, what actually matters is they expect the public contribution. Same as their counterparts across the NFL, a handful of whom have seen public money poured into their projects.
For the Chiefs, however, there are significant impediments to turning on those faucets — namely, the county and the state.
The Chiefs’ stadium question in Missouri
As the Chiefs express urgency, something to the contrary is bubbling in Jefferson City.
A group of hard-right Republicans comprising the Missouri Freedom Caucus has caused the Missouri state senate to work extremely slowly this year, making the passage of even routine legislation a challenge. The senate only narrowly beat a constitutional deadline to pass their own budget Friday.
Funding for a Chiefs stadium renovation would not qualify as routine.
On April 4, two days after the teams’ proposal was turned aside in Jackson County, state Sen. Bill Eigel, a vocal leader of the Missouri Freedom Caucus, said, “I know of no path in the Missouri Senate where we’re going to do any public funding of sports stadiums. I think that would be resisted vociferously and extensively.”
State Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat, said last week, “I’ve had no one come to me and talk to me about state funding — mostly because I think they know it would have been hard to do if (the Jackson County sales tax) had passed.”
That doesn’t paint a pretty picture on state funding. But it would help explain why Parson’s public comments about supporting the Chiefs ebbed and flowed throughout the last year, from the whatever-it-takes variety to the we-shall-see sort, and back again — an indication that the Chiefs were not on solid ground ahead of their last vote.
Given that this is a picture painted across party lines, what reason do we have to believe the state’s willingness to offer support would suddenly change?
I’ll add one thing I think would change: It’s hard for me to imagine the Chiefs putting another measure in front of voters until the uncertainty of state funding is settled. That’s just basic logic.
The Chiefs should have used the last six weeks to study the six months that preceded them. That could lead the organization in a few directions — perhaps back to their renderings, for example, which did not prompt excitement from a large-enough contingent of fans.
But that education would also include making a note of the seesaw public comments from top state officials.
The risk became more apparent, not less so, as the April 2 vote neared.
What about Jackson County?
For the sake of a hypothetical, though, let’s say the Chiefs crack that code at the state level. Maybe the state legislature picture looks differently in 2025 than 2024. Maybe they figure out — or someone figures out — a path that circumvents the legislature altogether.
That leaves the county’s support.
Hurdles there, too. Plural.
And they are the very hurdles the Chiefs couldn’t leap last month.
I’m guessing this isn’t your introduction to the teams’ pursuit of new digs. Which means you already know that Jackson County executive Frank White vetoed the Chiefs’ and Royals’ two-team proposal. And then, after the nine-member county legislature overrode his veto, he outwardly campaigned against the measure and publicly celebrated with county citizens when they voted it down.
White has reached out in hopes of renewing talks with the Chiefs, I’m told, and the two sides plan to meet. It’s difficult for me to envision a scenario in which one side expressed a change of thought on the subject in the time since their failure to reach an agreement ahead of the April 2 vote, but we’ll see. Some time has passed.
Maybe you’ve had the same thought as county legislator Manny Abarca: that the Chiefs can just try again without aligning themselves with the Royals. That’s long been the conventional wisdom. Abarca told The Star he planned to put forth two Chiefs-only proposals, eyeing the November ballot for another vote, though a legal expert indicated to The Star that Abarca would need to wait 12 months.
Putting that aside doesn’t ease the Chiefs’ dilemma at the state level (and I don’t think we can just put that aside, by the way). Furthermore, that plan looks better above the surface than it does below.
The above-the-surface: The Chiefs would likely generate more support on their own, though the April 2 measure’s 58%-to-42% margin of defeat spoke loudly.
Below the surface? I’ve heard more than one person suggest that the Chiefs’ participation in an expensive, though notably unspecific, community-benefits agreement package was because of their attachment to the Royals through the 40-year sales tax proposal.
The Royals’ ballpark location and surrounding proposed ballpark district became a focal point of labor groups, who left disappointed that ancillary development workers did not receive more protection. The Royals negotiated with those groups for more than a year on a CBA, though they failed to come to an agreement and instead reached a separate pact with a table led by county legislators.
If the Chiefs are no longer attached to a team planning to move downtown, displacing businesses and building ancillary development — descriptions that do not apply to the Chiefs’ renovation plan — you can’t help but wonder about their continued willingness to participate in that plan, or at least the full scope of it.
Chiefs president Mark Donovan had previously expressed a commitment to continue with a current fair-trade agreement contained in the last iteration of the lease in 2006. That fair trade agreement looked far different than the CBA published by the teams in the days before the vote.
Which prompts another pressure point. Would the county legislature, which had members negotiating that CBA, agree to put an item on the ballot without that same CBA commitment? Would White? And even if so, could the Chiefs sell a less expansive CBA to voters who just turned them down, even if they are merely renovating Arrowhead Stadium and not building a ballpark district?
The uncertainty
It’s a lot, I realize.
If you prefer a simpler summation of the two parties the Chiefs want on board — state and county — how’s this? Uncertainty.
The purpose here isn’t to deem this impossible. It’s to point out that the possible has yet to emerge, and when you dig into the weeds, it’s evident why.
Those are two fairly tall hurdles for the Chiefs: getting the state funding they seek and generating county support and voter support even with a scaled-back CBA.
It’s more complex, in other words, than the aforementioned conventional wisdom: Why don’t the Chiefs just go to the ballot alone?
I do want to underscore that it shouldn’t be easy to secure hundreds of millions in public funding. The question here, though, is the degree of difficulty, or even plausibility.
It’s relevant to mention once more that some Kansas lawmakers are trying to erase that doubt (emphasis on trying). I’ll also mention once more the skepticism there. But the attempt alone is relevant, given its contrast. There is quite evidently more activity in one state than its counterpart.
Look, I’ve long pointed out the most important clue in how this concludes — where the Chiefs and Royals call home after 2031 — is their preferences. They told us what they wanted when they put those preferences on the ballot. There is a reason the Chiefs first pursued the notion of remaining at their current address. And Jackson County does have one advantage: They own the asset.
So I certainly won’t refer to that scenario as impossible, because this is politics, and politics are frequently defined by change. But that’s exactly what some of these aforementioned hurdles would require: a change in stance by, well, someone.
That’s the point. The conversation is no longer what Chiefs want the conclusion of this story to be, but rather something entirely different.
If that’s indeed still their preference, what can be the conclusion in Missouri?
The Star’s Kacen Bayless contributed reporting for this column.
