In a crowded hearing in Topeka last week, Kansas lawmakers drilled a lawyer for the Kansas City Chiefs on the deal to bring the NFL team across the state line.
Democratic state Rep. Rui Xu found himself in an unusual spot at this meeting: He agreed with conservative colleagues on a hot-button issue.
“I was huddling together with (Republican) Representative Kristey Williams, who I get along with personally well,” he said. “But we have nothing in common philosophically, other than we don’t like tax giveaways for billionaires.”
Late last month, top Kansas lawmakers authorized a deal to use a financing mechanism known as STAR bonds to help the Chiefs pay for the construction of a new stadium in Wyandotte County — fewer than 30 miles from the current site of Arrowhead Stadium in Jackson County, Missouri.
The deal also includes a practice facility, team headquarters and surrounding mixed-use developments in Johnson County.
Chiefs officials and state leaders swapped jokes, sports memorabilia and soaring statements during the announcement in Topeka.
“With this new stadium, we’re creating thousands of jobs, bringing in tourists from around the world, attracting young people, and most importantly, we’re continuing to make Kansas the best place in America to raise a family,” Gov. Laura Kelly said in a statement.
Like previous economic development deals, lawmakers across the aisle, including Democrats Kelly and Lt. Gov. David Toland and Republican state Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins, threw their full support behind the move.
But the stadium deal’s skeptics are just as ideologically diverse. Lawmakers and commentators from across the political spectrum in Kansas have raised concerns about the fairness and economic viability of leveraging public money to assist a multibillion-dollar sports franchise.
And even as moderate politics seem like a relic of less polarized times, debates over major tax incentives — like the deal that would bring the Chiefs to Kansas — show that there are still some issues that aren’t strictly red or blue.
What are critics saying?
Proponents of Sales Tax and Revenue, or “STAR,” bonds boast that the financing method does not create new taxes. Rather, for the Chiefs deal, private investors will buy bonds, which will provide up to 60% of the construction costs for the stadium.
Then, once the Chiefs start playing games at their new stadium in 2031, state and local governments will use the additional sales tax revenue generated around the Wyandotte County stadium, Johnson County facilities and entertainment districts to pay those bondholders back — plus interest.
“Yes, having the stadium over in Kansas will generate revenue,” said Michael Austin, an economics lecturer at Washburn University in Topeka. “What I’m trying to ask as an economist is whether that new revenue will be enough to pay off the cost.”
Austin has held prominent positions in libertarian-conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity and the Kansas Policy Institute. But he used almost the exact same terminology that Xu, a progressive Democrat, used on social media to describe the deal: “socialized costs and privatized gains.”
Austin said he’s skeptical that the new economic activity will be enough to cover construction costs and core services at the same time.
