How Missouri lawmakers tanked a Chiefs, Royals stadium-funding deal
At a closed-door meeting in the basement of the Missouri Capitol this week, Gov. Mike Kehoe pitched Republican lawmakers on a sweeping plan to keep the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals in the state.
The pitch worked. Until it didn’t.
The last-minute stadium funding bill would have allowed Missouri to help pay for up to half of new stadiums for the teams. It appeared to be moving through the General Assembly at breakneck speed and overwhelmingly passed the state House in the final days of the legislative session.
But the plan ran into a constellation of issues when it reached the Senate that ultimately tanked the stadiums deal for now. Republican senators were instead determined to pass legislation to overturn a voter-approved abortion rights amendment and a paid sick leave law, leaving the stadium funding — and the teams’ futures in Missouri — in doubt.
“I just think that these other two issues took up so much time and oxygen that it just wasn’t gonna happen,” Sen. Mike Cierpiot, a Lee’s Summit Republican, told The Star at the Capitol. “I think it had no chance. I didn’t know at the time, but now that we know how it played out…there was no chance that was going to be able to move through here.”
Cierpiot framed the stadiums deal as an “afterthought” amid the attempts to overturn abortion rights through a new statewide ballot question and strike down the paid sick leave law.
In the session’s final hours, speculation began circulating in the Capitol of a so-called “global deal” between Democrats and Republicans that would have allowed the stadiums deal to move forward. It involved ongoing negotiations on the abortion rights and sick leave overhaul proposals.
But, in the end, the negotiations blew up. Republicans chose to employ an exceptionally rare procedural motion to shut down a Democratic filibuster and pass those two issues. The chamber then adjourned for the year, leaving Missouri with no stadium-funding plan and intense acrimony among lawmakers who will likely be asked to approve one in the future.
“I want to be abundantly clear, there was a path today to get that stadium financing done,” said Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat. “We had a very clear path to get that done and it was the Republican supermajority that chose not to go down that path.”
On top of putting the future of the Chiefs and Royals in doubt, the bill’s failure also raises questions for Kehoe, who rolled out the funding plan at the 11th-hour and could not get it across the finish line this session.
Lawmakers, staffers and lobbyists who spoke with The Star have signaled that a significant amount of the negotiations centered on removing from the proposed abortion ban language that purports to ban transgender health care for individuals under 18. Those procedures are already banned under state law and Democrats wanted the language stripped, arguing that it was added to trick voters into approving the abortion ban when it reaches the ballot.
“Their idea is bad and the only way they can get it to pass is they have to throw something out there, which we call ballot candy,” said Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, a St. Louis-area Democrat. “They have to get the people thinking they’re voting for something else.”
However, House Speaker Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, pushed back on the idea that Republicans “would ever tie” abortion to the sports stadium deal.
“Nobody would ever give up our fight for pro-life causes with sports (stadiums),” Patterson said.
In addition to the fights over abortion and sick leave, lawmakers of both parties were incensed that the stadium-funding measure was filed at the 11th-hour with no input from the general public.
They have also criticized its cost, pointing to the fact that it was approved by the House days after that chamber, in a move that blindsided senators, cut roughly $500 million in spending that would have funded construction projects across the state, including $48.2 million for a mental health hospital in Kansas City.
“A lot of senators were concerned that, you know, they felt like it was rushed, wasn’t vetted, didn’t go to committee, all that stuff,” said Rep. Chris Brown, a Kansas City Republican who filed the proposal as an amendment to another bill on the House floor.
Brown acknowledged that there were probably also negotiations going on behind the scenes that tanked the stadiums bill, which he framed as “a little quid pro quo stuff that didn’t quite work out.”
Failed response to Kansas
Approval of the last-ditch plan would have marked Missouri’s most expansive proposal to keep the Chiefs and Royals since Jackson County voters in April 2024 rejected a stadiums sales tax. After that vote, Kansas lawmakers approved a sweeping proposal to offer supercharged bonds to finance up to 70% of the cost of new stadiums for one or both teams.
Sen. Kurtis Gregory, a Marshall Republican who sponsored the underlying bill with Brown’s amendment, told The Star that it was unfortunate the bill failed. However, he expressed cautious optimism that Kehoe would call lawmakers back into a special session to pass it.
“I think there’s definitely a special session at play,” he said. “I don’t think that we want to let this opportunity pass.”
The measure, if passed, would hand the Chiefs and Royals a large incentive to remain in Missouri without requiring either team to commit to a specific stadium location. The package also wouldn’t prohibit the Royals from moving from Jackson County into North Kansas City in Clay County — a possibility that has garnered renewed public interest in recent weeks.
The plan relies on bonds and tax credits that could pay for up to half the costs of upgrading or building new stadiums. It would allow the Chiefs and Royals to apply for aid but the state would have to sign off on each project.
Under the plan, the total amount of state funding will be capped at 30 years and cannot exceed 50% of the total project costs. The proposal will also require contributions from local governments.
In the final hours of the session, Kehoe, the Republican governor, appeared to take a direct role in trying to get the bill across the finish line. He roamed the halls of the state Capitol, pitched the closed-door gathering of House Republicans and visited senators’ offices.
Kehoe’s hands-on involvement with the proposal, which is unusual for a sitting governor, posed a big test of his political clout and sales acumen after spending years as a prominent Jefferson City businessman. But his attempts to sell lawmakers on stadiums proved fruitless — at least for now.
“It’s unusual,” Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said of Kehoe’s approach. “Generally, when governors have something that they’re particularly interested in, they try to get things moving much earlier in the process and build the support they need.”
A Kehoe spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. However, the Republican governor previously told reporters that he would consider calling lawmakers back into a special session if they did not pass the stadium-funding bill this week.
“Legislators aren’t excited about coming into special sessions,” he said. “But it’s that big of an economic project and that big of an economic impact that in the past it certainly has warranted other governors a special session.”
For Gregory, the sponsor of the bill, he believes Kehoe is committed to finding a path to get the bill across the finish line. When asked for more details, Gregory said “there’s always a path.”
“I think we still got a shot,” he said. “We still got a shot.”
