The Missouri House closed the special legislative session Wednesday with votes to finance professional sports stadiums in Kansas City and provide tornado relief for St. Louis.
Three special session bills, already approved in the state Senate, are now in the hands of Gov. Mike Kehoe. He is expected to sign them quickly, putting the decision on whether to stay in Missouri in the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, who are also considering an offer from Kansas to cross the state line.
State Rep. Chris Brown, a Republican from Kansas City handling the stadium bill, asked his colleagues to do what they would do to retain any large employer.
“We really need to, or should, look at these franchises, not just as entertainment,” Brown said. “They are entertaining, obviously, but it’s an incredibly big business.”
Opponents of the legislation said it improperly benefits wealthy team owners at the expense of other Missourians. They also contend the bill is unconstitutional.
“The middle class, everyday Missourian is expected to pay for this,” said state Rep. Richard West, a Republican from Wentzville. “We’ve been promising for years for some form of tax relief or tax adjustment or something to ease the burden on what they have, and this is exactly the opposite of what we promised them to come up here to do.”
The measure to finance new stadiums was the most controversial of the three bills, passing on a 90-58 vote, with 32 Democrats joining with 58 Republicans to provide the majority. There were 13 Democrats and 45 Republicans who voted against the bill.
To finance the stadium construction, the bill sets aside tax revenue generated by the teams and economic activity at Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums. Estimated at just under $1.5 billion over 30 years, the funding would pay for half the costs of improvements at Arrowhead and a new home for the Royals.
The Kansas offer would cover 70% of the construction costs for new stadiums, but it expires at the end of the month. The bill passed Wednesday requires financing from local governments, either in Jackson County, where the teams currently reside, or Clay County, which is trying to lure the Royals.
It is impossible to put a ballot measure before voters in the time remaining for the Kansas offer. House leaders from the Kansas City area had differing views on whether the teams should accept or reject Missouri’s offer now that it is a firm commitment but without knowing what voters will approve in the Kansas City region.
“I don’t know what the teams will do,” said House Speaker Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican. “They have their own plan. I think that’s very unlikely, but I’m just worried about the things I can control, and teams are on their own schedule and will act accordingly.”
House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, a Democrat from Kansas City, said the teams should make a decision before June 30
“I would call on them to do so,” Aune said. “We bent over backwards here in the Missouri legislature to deliver them something by the end of their imposed deadline of June 30. And I would very much like for them to hold true to that deadline and let us know where they’re going before that.”
Chiefs owner Clark Hunt issued a statement thanking the legislature but made no commitment.
“The passing of this legislation is an important piece of the overall effort,” Hunt said. “While there’s still work to be done, this legislation enables the Chiefs to continue exploring potential options to consider remaining in Missouri.”
Patterson and Aune also disagreed on whether the extra disaster aid and property tax controls Kehoe added to the special session agenda had made the difference between success and failure on the stadium bill.
Patterson said each bill was considered on its own merits and that the property tax provisions may have cost votes. The stadium legislation won 103 votes in the House in May but the bill died in the state Senate.
“I’d like to think that people took a look at both those things on their own,” Patterson said. “I don’t think anybody here voted for one thing just because of the other.”
The House voted down two amendments so the bill did not require another vote in the state Senate. Patterson said it would have failed the second time around.
“A second Senate vote on the (stadium bill) would have been impossible, just the political climate after that vote,” Patterson said. “So we were very mindful of that. I thought if it goes back, it’s not going to pass.”
Aune said the additional disaster aid was essential to securing Democratic votes.
“If he wanted to get this stadium done, which is an economic development opportunity for the state and a priority of our governor, it was necessary to make sure that he could shore up those votes by making folks happy in other ways,” Aune said.
Disaster relief
During debate on the special session spending bill, the House fell silent as state Rep. Kimberly-Ann Collins, a St. Louis Democrat, described the devastation of her north St. Louis legislative district.
Collins was home on May 16 because the General Assembly adjourned early instead of working to the final day allowed by the Missouri Constitution. She was in her car, preparing to attend a high school graduation when the tornado hit, she said.
“I watched a tornado rip through the middle of my house district,” Collins said. “I also watched it rip off my roof, and I watched the tornado rip off my neighbor’s roof. To this day, debris still sits in my front yard, and I’m a girl that has no insurance.”
Four of the five Missourians who died in the tornado lived in her district, Collins said.
The disaster relief provisions in the legislation address both the devastation of the May 16 tornado in St. Louis and the damages suffered by other Missourians in storms and flooding earlier in the year. They are:
- $100 million in the spending bill for storm recovery in the city of St. Louis;
- $25 million for home repairs and other housing needs through programs of the Missouri Housing Development Commission, available in any county included in a request for federal disaster aid;
- A tax credit worth up to $5,000 for insurance deductibles paid for residential damage in an area included in a request for federal disaster aid. The legislation would allow $90 million in claims this year and $45 million per year for future years.
The provisions were demanded before the Senate vote because of uncertainty about the federal response to the tornado. Kehoe asked President Donald Trump for a federal disaster declaration for the tornado on May 25 and for April 29 storms in Scott on May 19.
Trump approved both late Monday, making federal aid for emergency housing and rebuilding available to individuals and providing money to reimburse the state and local governments for recovery costs.
State Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Democrat from Ferguson who is in her last term in the House, asked her colleagues to stand by St. Louis for the long-term.
“For those of us who will be termed-out next year,” Proudie said, “we need the rest of you who will be here five years later to continue to remember this day, to remember this time, to remember these last three weeks, to continue to pour help into these communities, into these people.”
Constitutional questions
The property tax cap in the stadium bill will be imposed in 97 counties. There would be 75 counties where basic tax bills would not increase more than 5% per year and 22 where no increase would be allowed.
The list excludes most of the largest counties of the state and many members opposed it because the Missouri Constitution requires property taxes to be “uniform upon the same class or subclass of subjects.”
Another constitutional objection was raised that the bill improperly aids a private entity by giving state support to the Chiefs and Royals, in violation of a provision added to the Constitution in 1875.
“I haven’t heard an argument yet that this bill is going to be upheld,” said state Rep. Bill Hardwick, a Republican from Dixon. “I’ve only heard arguments that we should ignore the fact that it’s unconstitutional.”
The likelihood of the property tax provisions being blocked by the courts led at least one Democrat to vote for the bill. State Rep. Kathy Steinmetz of Columbia, speaking at a news conference after the vote, said she sees the cap as shifting the tax burden for schools to state taxpayers.
“They’re ending up paying more,” she said, “so that we can help the school districts that are not putting forth that local tax effort.”
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.
