Two weeks after Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe called lawmakers back to Jefferson City for a special session focused on stadium funding, disaster relief and construction projects, the General Assembly has sent bills for all three to the governor’s desk — with some tweaks.
The special session was spurred in large part by a renewed border war with Kansas over the location of stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals.
“I’m asking legislators to work with us to keep these businesses in the state where they belong: the state of Missouri,” Kehoe said in his special session announcement. “The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals are Missouri’s teams.”
Missouri special session bring stadium funding — and more
The governor’s proposal to provide state funding for Chiefs and Royals stadiums passed the House but died in the Senate during the regular session. It was passed by the Senate in the early hours of the morning June 5.
The vote — of 19 to 13 — saw Democrats and Republicans fall on both sides of the issue. It also divided the conservative Freedom Caucus, whose chairman stepped down the following day after he was criticized for his support of the bill.
Sen. Kurtis Gregory, a Marshall Republican, carried the stadium funding bill, which included the original Show-Me Sports Investment Act proposal allowing the state to use taxes it collects from the teams to help pay off bonds used to finance stadium projects.
Proponents of the legislation argue it would only use revenue that the state would stand to lose if the teams moved to Kansas or elsewhere. For the Chiefs, that equals about $28.8 million in state tax revenue, according to a 2023 study by the team.
On June 11, as the House geared up to debate and vote on the bill, Gregory said conversations with lawmakers that morning had made him more optimistic about the bill’s chances of passing “than I was three or four hours ago.”
He said he’d spoken with liaisons from the teams about the bill, and he said they were “definitely excited and thankful.”
“The offer from Kansas was a very real offer, and something of serious consideration,” Gregory said. “I feel like, if they really wanted to move to Kansas, they would have already signed. They wanted to see what we were going to come up with, and I think what we have here is a very fair offer.”
Gregory, who earlier this year carried a bill creating a Clay County Sports Authority with the hopes of paving the way for one or both teams to move to Clay County, said the funding bill would also support the teams if they opted to move to the Northland. His district includes part of Clay County.
The sports authority bill “was a really small but big component of potentially keeping them here, but (the funding bill) is the really big anchor component to help try and keep the teams here,” he said.
The bill also makes several changes to amateur and collegiate sports tax credits and property tax law.
One of the property tax provisions allows residents in areas where the governor has requested a federal disaster declaration to deduct their home or renter’s insurance deductible — up to $5,000 — from their state income taxes. Only victims of 2025 disasters would be eligible for the credit.
The tax credits won’t be refundable but can be transferred or sold, and they can be carried forward through the following 29 years or until the full $5,000 value is redeemed, whichever comes first.
The other property tax provision requires 22 counties — including Jackson County — to put before voters a ballot question asking whether the county should grant property tax credits to eligible homeowners.
That portion of the bill was proposed by Grain Valley Republican Sen. Joe Nicola. He said that during the regular session he proposed the legislation for all of the state, but narrowed it to Jackson County in response to pushback.
After he did, Nicola heard from lawmakers from other counties asking to have their districts added to the bill.
While the stadium funding portion of the bill was a major topic of debate on the House floor, the tax provisions were a particular point of contention for representatives on both sides of the aisle.
For Rep. Darin Chappell, a Rogersville Republican, the fact that counties were only included because their representatives personally reached out to Nicola — and the fact that some of those counties could see their property taxes frozen while others would only have increases capped — made the bill both unfair and unconstitutional.
“Different counties are utilizing the tax relief that has been offered. Other counties, my own included, are denied. Of the counties that are given tax relief of some degree or another, they are at different rates,” Chappell said. “And the determination of which counties are which was determined by the senators in their chamber in the middle of the night.”
The bill also included a severability clause, which means that if one part of the law is found unconstitutional, the other parts would be able to remain in place.
Columbia Democrat Rep. Kathy Steinhoff also raised concerns that essential services would struggle from a loss of property tax revenue.
“I know (property taxes) are not a popular thing in this chamber. But until I hear a reasonable substitute for how we are going to fund our local communities, it’s what we’ve got,” she said. “I, for one, want to live in a state and a community where I have police that are well-paid. I want to make sure that if my house is on fire and I call somebody, they’re going to show up to put it out.”
“It’s how we fund our schools in Missouri, and over the years, it’s become more and more important,” she added. “In the state of Missouri, the average (school) district gets 48% of its funding locally.”
The stadium funding bill passed the House by a vote of 90 to 58.
No language was changed in the House version because an amended version would have to go back to the Senate, where House Speaker Jon Patterson, Republican from Lee’s Summit, said another vote on the bill “would have been impossible given the political climate after that (first) vote.”
Lawmakers win more disaster aid from governor
In his initial call for a special session, the governor had only authorized the General Assembly to allocate $50 million in general revenue funding, including $25 million for the Missouri Housing Trust Fund and $25 million for a cancer research reactor at the University of Missouri.
In addition to raising the reactor’s allocation to $50 million, one of the concessions Kehoe made after negotiations was allowing lawmakers to add $100 million in general revenue funding to the state’s Disaster Relief Fund.
Once the governor requests a federal disaster declaration, the money allocated to the fund will be transferred to the Missouri Housing Development Commission, which will then be responsible for distributing the money to impacted communities.
Families will be eligible to receive aid from the fund if they make less than 75% of their region’s median family income or the state’s median income, whichever is greater.
In areas with a federal disaster declaration request, residents will also be able to apply for part of $25 million allocated to the Missouri Housing Trust Fund to meet demand for emergency housing assistance and home repair and construction grants.
Several St. Louis-area representatives tearfully testified about the destruction they saw in their communities, but also about their gratitude for the support they received from both sides of the aisle after the tornado.
“The number of text messages I received… I never thought that I would develop a bond with you. Never. The representatives that took our police department away,” said Rep. Kimberly-Ann Collins, a St. Louis Democrat, referring to a bill passed earlier this year that gives control of the St. Louis Police Department to a governor-appointed board.
“I hope that you hear our hearts in this moment. We’re not begging for anything. We’re just asking for what we’re owed, and we are so grateful,” said St. Louis Democrat Rep. LaKeySha Bosley. “Please don’t let this be the last time you show up for us.”
Some construction projects made it to the finish line
The General Assembly also passed a construction bill that the House didn’t pass during the regular session after the body’s leaders shocked House Democrats and the Senate by refusing to bring it up for a vote in an effort to reduce the state budget.
As a compromise, the governor proposed that the General Assembly instead approve all of the bill’s projects that don’t require any general revenue funding while leaving the general revenue projects for future sessions.
Beyond $175 million in general revenue split between the research reactor, Disaster Relief Fund and Missouri Housing Development Commission, the construction bill passed by the General Assembly only included non-general revenue projects.
In the Kansas City area, approved projects include a $48 million, 200-bed mental health hospital in Kansas City and an $800,000 addition to a Highway Patrol Troop A building in Lee’s Summit.
However, 12 other Kansas City-area projects included in the original construction bill, including infrastructure upgrades, athletic facilities and health care projects, were not funded.
Rep. Betsy Fogle, a Springfield Democrat, said she was “disappointed in the governor’s office for not including those infrastructure projects in the call” for a special session.
“When I look at what was not included in the call, it wasn’t necessarily projects for my city or my district. It was projects for the majority of the state. We’re talking about hospitals that might close their doors because we didn’t fund their services,” Fogle said during floor debate. “We did not even have a chance to debate those things in this appropriations bill.”
What’s next after the Missouri special session?
The three bills passed by both chambers will now go to the governor’s desk, where he is expected to sign them into law.
The Missouri Housing Trust Fund expansion includes an emergency clause, which means it will go into effect as soon as the governor signs it. As for the stadium bill, timing on state funding depends on the teams, which would have to decide they’re staying in Missouri and apply for the funding.
Rep. Mark Sharp, a Kansas City Democrat who has for several years sponsored legislation aiming to make state funding available for the stadiums, said: “I’m very happy, but at the end of the day, I know that us passing this bill and this bill being signed by the governor don’t automatically mean anything.”
Lawmakers were called back to Jefferson City shortly after the regular session ended in part because the Chiefs gave the state a June 30 deadline to present its stadium funding proposal. June 30 is the expiration date for Kansas’ STAR bonds, which the state passed to try to lure the teams over the state line.
In order to get state funding under Missouri’s bill, the stadium projects would need to have “significant” local investment.
That could be supported by Jackson County’s current 3/8-percent sales tax. However, when Jackson County voters were asked in 2024 to renew the sales tax in tandem with approving a new Royals stadium at the Crossroads, they shot the proposal down.
“It’s unfortunate that the Chiefs gave a deadline of June 30, because there are a couple of things that still need to happen to ensure that the project has adequate funding,” Sharp said, adding, “I do suspect that if another vote came up … you could see a shift, particularly if the two questions (of a stadium location and the sales tax) were separated.”
The county cannot get a sales tax renewal question to voters before June 30, meaning that the teams might have to either accept Kansas’ proposal or choose to stay in Missouri without a guarantee that local support — and, by extension, state support — would be available.
House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, from Kansas City, said she wants the teams to make a decision this month.
“We’ve bent over backwards here in the Missouri legislature to deliver them something by 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,” she said at a press conference after the final vote.
As the state waits to hear from the teams, lawmakers are also reflecting on their productivity during both the special and regular sessions.
Aune said the bipartisan support for St. Louis and stadium funding showed that “it’s not all infighting.”
“Legislators contain multitudes, and we have the capacity to disagree without being disagreeable,” she said. “Bipartisanship is not dead in Missouri, even with a supermajority in place, and I think Missourians need to hear that.”
In a statement, Senate Minority Floor Leader Doug Beck from Affton wrote: “Coming into special session, Senate Democrats wanted an increase in storm relief funding directed to St. Louis, full funding for the MU cancer reactor, a new mental health hospital in Kansas City and the assurance that no stadium project moves forward without local support. We achieved all of these goals and more.”
