Chiefs stadium to cost all Kansans tax money, Royals up next – Field of Schemes

I have to figure hardly anyone is reading this here on Christmas weekend, but for those of you who are, here’s an abbreviated news roundup, much of it about the proposed Kansas City Chiefs stadium deal, because almost everything is this week:

• The STAR bonds that Kansas plans to use to finance $1.8 billion worth of a Chiefs stadium (and close to $1 billion in other development by the team) confuse a lot of people, and headlines like the Kansas City Star’s “Much of Wyandotte, Johnson counties will pay for Chiefs stadium with sales tax” aren’t helping. No, people inside the “stadium district,” which could end up covering much of those two counties, won’t be paying extra taxes for the stadium; rather, an amount equal to all future sales and liquor tax receipts above what the district is getting now will be removed from the state’s general fund and used to pay Clark Hunt’s stadium bills. (State officials seem to believe that all this will be free money because the only reason tax revenues will rise in the area will be the eight home games a year the Chiefs will play, which is insane on several levels — more on that after the holiday.) That means the cost will fall just as much on Kansans in Topeka and Wichita and points west as it will on those in and around Kansas City, since the state will have to find a way to pay its future bills without a couple hundred million dollars a year in tax revenues it would have otherwise gotten. So really it’s “Everyone anywhere in Kansas will pay for Chiefs stadium,” hth.
• Elected officials in Missouri, meanwhile, have learned their lesson from the huge giveaway across the border: Time to try to throw billions of dollars at the Royals owners or risk being left without any billionaires to give tax money to. KC, MO Mayor Quinton Lucas noted on Tuesday that voters look to be opposed to this sort of thing, so “we’ve talked about a pathway that allows us to do it through public body approval rather than perhaps having to go to the ballot box,” take that, voters who insist on having opinions the mayor doesn’t like!
• Construction of the Athletics‘ planned Las Vegas stadium is ongoing — for now, at least — but the casino complex that’s supposed to surround it may not happen for a while if ever: Leaseholder Bally’s has yet to announce a financing plan for its part of the project, and may yet seek another investor to take over the development. That could be a problem for A’s owner John Fisher, who was counting on Bally’s building a parking lot and other infrastructure that the ballpark would use, meaning he’d need to find a way to pay for it on his own, even while figuring out how to pay for the bulk of his $2 billion stadium on his own.
• Greater Greater Washington has a good long rundown on how this year’s Commanders stadium deal became so bad that it still outpaces even the extremely bad Chiefs stadium deal, dipping briefly into a discussion of Swiss semioticians before returning to its main point: “The moderate flank of our government behaved as recklessly and irresponsibly with the District’s finances as their progressive colleagues are so often accused of, but, because it’s sports, masquerading as economic development, they won’t be attacked by business advocates, the press, or public opinion for putting their pet causes first.” Well, possibly by public opinion, but mayors know how to get around that.
• Finally, I did a bunch of interviews this week about the Chiefs stadium deal, and you can find one of them here — another from December 24 should be showing up here, but it looks like it’s been delayed by the Christmas rush, check back later.