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.
“Instead of going into a general pot for roads or schools or tax relief, (that money is) locked into one project for 30 years,” he said.
In last week’s meeting, Chiefs attorney Korb Maxwell said the bonds could be paid off within 15 to 20 years based on internal projections.
He also urged lawmakers to consider the income tax revenue the state could pull in through the 20,000 construction jobs and 4,000 permanent positions that the Chiefs estimate the development could bring.
But the questions kept coming.
Critics said one of their biggest red flags came from a preliminary map the Kansas Department of Commerce shared illustrating the size of the STAR bond districts. This is the area they proposed the extra sales tax will come from — seemingly all of Wyandotte County and much of Johnson County, two of the most populous in the state.
“It signals that the stadium and the entertainment district alone cannot generate enough sales tax revenue,” Austin said.
‘Really, really weird’
Those concerns had already made their way into the discourse on the stadium by the time the deal was announced. On KCUR’s Up to Date, Republican legislative leaders praised the Democratic administration that brokered the deal, and dismissed the idea that the development would come at the expense of local residents.
“It will not take away or diminish any of the other services that the state provides,” said Masterson, who is seeking the GOP nomination for Kansas governor in 2026.
But Joy Eakins, a Wichita business owner who’s also running for governor as a Republican, said supporters' heads are in the clouds.
“I think they got emotionally involved,” Eakins said of the bipartisan majority of lawmakers who approved STAR bonds for the Chiefs. Like Austin, Eakins doubted the Chiefs would have left the Kansas City metro area without massive tax incentives, as some feared.
Eakins said she wasn’t surprised that criticism is hitting the deal from multiple directions.
“I think what it says is that people are tired of career politicians on both sides of the aisle,” she said.
She cautioned that she wasn’t against the Chiefs team itself — a sentiment Xu and Austin echoed. And Xu agreed with what Austin said in a recent Kansas City Star op-ed: that the deal “isn’t a disaster.”
“I don't want to be overly alarmist about this,” Xu said. “I'm not going to say this is going to lead to defunding of the public schools or anything like that.”
Maxwell, the Chiefs attorney, told lawmakers there is still plenty of ground to cover over the next year.
He estimated it will take about 9 months to hammer out the “definitive documents” that fill in the gaps left in the original term sheet — including the size of the STAR bond districts and the resultant impact on local budgets.
Meanwhile, the issue stands as a rare exception to entrenched partisan division in Kansas.
Xu said it feels “really, really weird” to land on the same side of an issue as prominent libertarian and conservative commentators.
“But on this one, it's just like, ‘Yeah, I'm with Michael Austin on this one,’” he said. “That's funny.”
Zane Irwin reports on politics, campaigns and elections for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at zaneirwin@kcur.org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio.
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