In exchange for getting $425 million in state sales-tax money to renovate their existing stadiums in 2006, the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals agreed not to ask for any more state money during the course of their new 30-year leases. The renovated stadiums won’t even be open for another two years, and already the Chiefs are, you guessed it, asking for more money: this time, $25 million for additional work at Arrowhead Stadium, plus an indoor training facility in nearby St. Joseph.
A spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that it was okay for the Chiefs to ask for more state money after they’d promised not to, because “they’ve redefined the scope of the project. These are new things with St. Joseph.” And Kinder, apparently, gets to decide the matter with just a few of his closest friends:
Kinder heads the Missouri Development Finance Board, which is slated to consider the plan today.
Stadium subsidies have been controversial in the Legislature, so they have been increasingly routed through the obscure finance board. It is made up of eight people appointed by the governor, three Cabinet heads and the lieutenant governor.
You sometimes wonder after reading the article what journalists do all day. It seems unlikely that they actually pick up the phone and call anyone, when putting together a story is so much easier by rewriting press releases.
I would just love to see one journalist ask exactly how many “tourists” are expected to visit (and what data that is based on) and how much each person is supposed to spend in sales taxes to make up $25 million in “investment”
One would think that running football practice would be one area of sports that should be a core competency of a football team and not the public. So would providing whirlpools, training tables, and the like. But maybe not.
GDub makes a great point. Sadly, there is an increasingly less accountability around sports and money. Its sort of like corruption except that it’s legal.