Gov. Mike Kehoe’s stadium funding plan for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals is facing growing resistance from across the ideological spectrum as lawmakers prepare to return to the Missouri Capitol on Monday.
From the right, the Senate Freedom Caucus is threatening a return to procedural gridlock if the agenda for next week’s special session doesn’t expand to include broad-based tax cuts and changes to the initiative petition process.
“If Gov. Kehoe and legislative leaders insist on using taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars for a half billion dollar (or more) handout to billionaire sports team owners in a standalone bill, the Missouri Freedom Caucus will vote against such a proposal and will consider utilizing any tools at its disposal to stop it,” state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, said in a statement on behalf of the four-member Senate Freedom Caucus.
From the left, Democrats are seething that the governor’s agenda for the special session includes hundreds of millions for stadiums but only $25 million in disaster recovery funds for victims of recent tornadoes in the St. Louis region.
“The conversation can’t even begin until serious disaster relief is considered,” said state Sen. Stephen Webber, a Columbia Democrat. “Why do I care about a billionaire’s stadium when people have lost their homes? There’s absolutely no way we’re going to serve a billionaire a feast and leave crumbs for people who just lost their homes. That’s not happening.”
Complicating all calculations is the Democratic fury over how the regular session ended. Republicans used a rare procedural rule to end debate on controversial bills on abortion and paid sick leave.
Democrats promised the Senate would not function normally until they feel they can trust the GOP to work towards compromise.
On Thursday, Democrats showed just how disruptive they could be when Webber halted the routine work of signing bills from the regular session by noting that the chamber lacked a quorum because a majority of senators were not present.
The Senate was stuck as it waited for GOP legislators to make the unplanned trip to Jefferson City from their homes for what was supposed to be a largely ceremonial day.
Then Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, an Affton Democrat, made a motion to adjourn the session for the year. Without voting on that motion, Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican, adjourned the Senate until Friday so more members could be rounded up.
“It’s not coming together just swimmingly as of right now,” said state Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Springfield Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The delaying action Thursday was about how the regular session ended, Beck said in an interview. He said he hasn’t had enough conversations with members of his caucus to decide tactics for the special session.
“The only part of the special session I think would be critical would be trying to get some relief for the people of the city of St Louis after the tornado,” Beck said. “There’s some hard feelings out there about how things happened. There’s also a feeling of like the amount of aid that they’ve offered is kind of a slap in the face.”
On Tuesday, Kehoe announced he was calling the legislature back into session to approve $25 million in disaster recovery funds and a little over $200 million in construction projects that failed to win House approval during the regular session.
But the highest profile piece of Kehoe’s special session agenda is his plan for the state to pay up to half the costs of a new stadium for the Kansas City Royals and renovations to Arrowhead Stadium for the Kansas City Chiefs — projects estimated to cost up to $3 billion.
Both teams have expressed interest in leaving Missouri when the lease on their current stadiums expire in 2030, and Kansas lawmakers have put a deal on the table that would use state incentives to pay for up to 70% of the costs of new stadiums.
Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins told The Kansas City Star on Thursday that if the Chiefs or Royals are interested in leaving Missouri, they should act on the state’s offer soon before the deal expires at the end of June.
Kehoe argues that the cost to keep the teams in the state would be less than what Missouri stands to lose if either team leaves the state. He claims the economic activity associated with the Chiefs supports 4,500 jobs, while a new stadium for the Royals would generate about 8,400 jobs.
But while the proposal easily cleared the Missouri House in the legislative session’s final days, it died in the Senate.
A bipartisan filibuster derailed its progress, with complaints ranging from the price tag to the lack of legislative input on the plan.
Senators also complained that stadium funding was taking precedence over $500 million in construction projects killed by the House days earlier that would have funded eight hospitals around the state, supported a new nuclear reactor at the University of Missouri to make cancer treatments and a new mental health hospital in Kansas City.
How opposition in the Senate plays out — the Senate will take up the special session bills first because of anticipated difficulty — will decide what the House can do.
State Rep. Doug Clemens, a Democrat from St. Ann, applauded the moves Thursday to disrupt the normally routine Senate action.
“It’s high time that Democrats dig their heels in and I support this,” Clemens said. “The governor needs to sit down and negotiate with Senate Democrats if we’re going to change things we’re going to make government work for the people.”
House Speaker Jon Patterson, a Republican from Lee’s Summit said he’s ready to act on Kehoe’s package but knows things could change.
“This is politics and negotiating is all part of it,” Patterson said. “There may be negotiations ahead but we will take a look at the current package and move ahead.”
House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, a Kansas City Democrat, said she’s generally supportive of the items Kehoe is requesting but would like to see more for disaster aid and construction spending.
What happens in the Senate, she said, is the key to the special session.
“The tenor in the Senate is probably going to dictate a lot of what happens,” Aune said.
Kehoe’s special session agenda includes very little of the construction budget spending, creating blowback. Instead of $50 million originally slated for the University of Missouri nuclear reactor, the governor called for only $25 million.
“The governor’s office gave me their word on $50 million, and I expect not one penny less than that,” Webber said. “I’m genuinely perplexed why they would give me their word then go back on it. I didn’t play games with them, and I don’t understand why they are playing games with my district.”
Hough also said the capital construction bill should spend more. And he questions whether the state should start paying for disaster recovery in cases where FEMA is not participating.
The $25 million proposal, he said, “is kind of like a drop in the bucket. That’s also why the state doesn’t do disaster payments, generally, because we don’t have a printing press like the feds.”
Republicans hold a super majority in the Senate — 24 of 34 seats. But it’s unclear if there are 18 GOP votes in support of Kehoe’s stadium plan, meaning Democratic support may be crucial.
Kehoe has a big hammer to sway votes — there are 248 items added to the budget by lawmakers at a cost of $550 million that are in bills awaiting his action. Kehoe has the power to veto any item from the budget he doesn’t like.
“I’ve got members calling me saying, is he gonna veto my stuff?” Hough said.
Kehoe will have to use every bit of his political skills to win passage of the special session package.
“The easiest way to frame this, from my perspective right now, is that there’s an awful lot of negotiation still yet to be done,” Hough said. “It’s just not as simple as everyone’s going to show back up after the way the session ended.”
A spokeswoman for the governor said he “respects the legislative process and hopes that legislators will work together to deliver on the time-sensitive issues in his call for the special session.”