The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals say they need more time to negotiate new stadium agreements with Kansas.
Monday, predictably, the state extended the deadline for stadium talks with both clubs.
It isn’t clear why more time is needed. Members from the Kansas legislature met in Topeka Monday. Republican House Speaker Dan Hawkins, who once opposed any extension, decided Monday to blame the delay on slow responses from the executive branch.
He supported a Dec. 31 extension in a meeting of the Kansas Legislative Coordinating Council. The teams did not testify.
What are the teams — and the state of Kansas — going to learn in the next six months that they don’t already know?
The so-called STAR bonds proposal has been on the table for more than a year. Its basic provisions are well understood: The state would use sales tax proceeds from a special district to pay up to 70% of the cost of a stadium project.
Local participation is possible but not required.
Perhaps there’s a more fundamental reason for the delay. Perhaps both teams have come to realize that building new stadiums in Kansas might be hideously expensive, both for the teams and for governments.
Reasons for the delay
A $4 billion Chiefs stadium complex, for example, might cost Kansas more than $175 million annually in debt service payments.
That’s more than two-thirds of all state sales and use tax collections in all of Wyandotte County in a single year.
That likely means a Wyandotte County STAR bond district will have to encompass a majority of the county.
It simply wouldn’t be possible to pay the debt service from the state tax revenue generated by the stadium itself, or even the businesses nearby.
The Chiefs face a hefty price tag, too: easily more than $1 billion over 30 years, plus maintenance, repairs, taxes, and other costs.
That’s money the club might prefer to pay to its players, or to keep ticket prices low.
The math is a bit easier for the Royals in Johnson County, largely because they play more games and have a higher attendance.
