{"id":512520,"date":"2026-01-09T03:51:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T03:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/512520\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T03:51:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T03:51:26","slug":"royals-suitors-dropping-like-flies-kansas-chiefs-stadium-still-faces-bond-questions-field-of-schemes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/512520\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals suitors dropping like flies, Kansas Chiefs stadium still faces bond questions \u2013 Field of Schemes"},"content":{"rendered":"

If\u00a0Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman was hoping that the\u00a0Chiefs announcing a move across the border to the state of Kansas in exchange for around $4 billion in subsidies<\/a> would spark a bidding war for his own team, well, not so much, it appears. Kansas house speaker Dan Hawkins declared this week that the December 31 deadline for the Royals to pursue state-backed STAR bonds was set in stone<\/a>, and the offer is now off the table. (Though with the legislature set to consider expanded STAR bonds beyond 2026, it\u2019s always possible to put it back on the table.) On the Missouri side of the border, meanwhile, potential Royals suitors are getting cold feet as well<\/a>:<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Clay County Commissioner Jason Withington said that he was done negotiating with the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Kansas, I\u2019m done negotiating with the Kansas City Royals,\u201d\u00a0he wrote on Facebook<\/a>\u2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the August deadline approached, we were then told they wanted to move to the April 2026 ballot at the earliest. Tomorrow was the deadline we gave the team to meet that timeline. They\u2019ve now told us they aren\u2019t ready for that either. At some point, you stop negotiating\u2013and start being honest about what\u2019s actually happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

One would think that this leaves Sherman with only the option of Jackson County and downtown Kansas City, Missouri, which should put local officials there in the driver\u2019s seat to limit taxpayer subsidies, especially after Jackson County voters made their feelings clear in April 2024<\/a>. Or one would\u00a0hope, anyway \u2014 after all, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt didn\u2019t have anyone else offering him $4 billion before Kansas put its deal on the table, but that didn\u2019t stop that state from seizing the winner\u2019s curse<\/a> with both hands.<\/p>\n

Yet Hunt may still have a chance to seize defeat from the jaws of victory. The city of Kansas City, Kansas and\u00a0Wyandotte County still must sign off on the deal, and Mayor Christal Watson and other local officials are concerned that kicking in city and county sales taxes \u2014 as the state wants them to do to keep its costs to a dull roar \u2014 could force local governments to raise property taxes to compensate<\/a>. And there are still questions about whether even the proposed giant 330-square-mile stadium sales tax increment district can generate enough funds to pay off the STAR bonds, or at least to convince bondholders that the bonds are safe. And that, University of Chicago bond expert Justin Marlowe tells the Kansas City Star, could lead the state to go back on its \u201cno new taxes\u201d pledge<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cDo we default on the bonds and hope that the bondholders are willing to take a haircut, which they won\u2019t be. Which they never are,\u201d Marlowe said. \u201cIf it goes to court and there needs to be some sort of negotiated settlement, it\u2019s fair to say that at some point, everyone will look to the state to provide some kind of relief to prevent the Chiefs from leaving, to prevent this otherwise potentially successful development from failing before it has a chance to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discussions over how to draw the STAR bond district should be interesting indeed \u2026 or would be, if Kansas didn\u2019t have a special state law allowing talks to be conducted in secret<\/a>, only making a plan public once it\u2019s been finalized. State officials won\u2019t even reveal what non-disclosure agreements they\u2019ve signed regarding the Chiefs deal, citing that same confidentiality clause<\/a> that was approved as part of the expanded sports STAR bonds package in 2024 \u2014 refusing to disclose what you can\u2019t disclose is some next-level stonewalling, excellent work, Kansas state obfuscatorians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If\u00a0Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman was hoping that the\u00a0Chiefs announcing a move across the border to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,2596,2595,4,252],"class_list":{"0":"post-512520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-kansas","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-royals","12":"tag-kansascity","13":"tag-kansascityroyals","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-royals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115863111960887877","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}