The Kansas state house voted 79-41 last night to pass a bill creating a sports authority to build and operate a Kansas City Chiefs stadium, and lo and behold, it now includes language subjecting the authority to public transparency laws, while also allowing the city and county where the stadium would be built to have votes on the 11-member authority board:
The board would have 11 voting members, including legislative appointees, the state commerce secretary and a representative of the team. If the stadium is built in KCK, both the Olathe and KCK mayors would receive a direct vote on the board.
The authority’s governing board includes appointed members from the governor, House speaker, House majority and minority leaders, Senate president, Senate majority and minority leaders, and the team. The secretary of commerce serves by virtue of holding office. The two mayors of the host cities serve as ex officio members if they elect to participate.
Assuming the state senate follows suit, this should put an end to the standoff where the state was threatening to disenfranchise Kansas City, Kansas and Wyandotte County unless they kicked in more local sales tax money. Though if you read the above closely, you may have noticed that the final bill retains another provision that had raised eyebrows:
“The Hunt family would have a longer and more aggressive voice at the table,” Democrat State House Rep. Alexis Simmons said. “They would be the only owner in the NFL to have a voting voice at the table in the financing discussion.”
Setting aside the question of how long a voice should be, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt getting a vote on the public board that he’ll be negotiating his lease with later this year is indeed a conflict of interest. Bill sponsor Rep. Sean Tarwater put it differently, telling his fellow legislators that none of them should vote against the sports authority bill just because the stadium would involve billions of dollars of tax subsidies because “That deal is done. This is just our opportunity to put guardrails on it and have oversight of the project.” Sure, “guardrails,” let’s go with that.
The Chiefs have until this fall to lay out the terms of a lease, which would include who would get stadium revenues and how ongoing stadium expenses would be dealt with — good thing we have those transparency provisions, because this is going to be fascinating to watch.