Photograph Source: Conman33 – CC BY-SA 4.0
Don’t say dreams don’t come true. If you wish very hard, wish upon a STAR and click your feet together (and are a billionaire with a net worth of 1.6 billion dollars), you too can get your 3 billion dollar domed football stadium. You can get that stadium built with a majority of public funds—a 60/40 split. That STAR you wished upon is a Sales Tax and Revenue Bond. STAR is a method to use future sales taxes to fund current projects, this being the plan going forward to move the NFL Kansas City Chiefs from their current Missouri location across the river to a new site in Kansas.
STAR bonds have been used in Kansas before for much smaller projects. Some have been successful like the one that funded The Salt Museum. Yes, the Salt Museum—not exactly billion-dollar deals. Not all of the STAR bond initiatives have worked out well, however. Notably, an 85.2 million bond used to fund the Schlitterbahn Water Park went awry in the most horrendous way imaginable. The success of this development project did not come to fruition due to a water slide causing the decapitation of the Kansas Secretary of State’s 10-year-old son. The park closed, and 74.8 million was left of the STAR debt, much of it being “worked off” by restaurants and shops in the ex-Schlitterbahn area through the sales tax. A new plan is afoot to redevelop the water park site into something new with another round of enhanced STAR bonds. Hopefully, a non-lethal idea this time.
It’s not surprising that Kansas wants to become known for something bigger and brighter, especially in the tourism arena. Yes, they have attractions such as the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Cawker City and the site of the In Cold Blood murders. They have the Barbed Wire Museum and the “They Also Ran Gallery” (a museum on the second floor of a bank in Norton that celebrates past presidential race losers). Perhaps the most stunning attraction is the mummified under-glass remains of S.P. Dinsmoor at “The Garden of Eden” in Lucas. The Civil War veteran was said to have received an accidental double Civil War pension, so he did what most of us would do in that situation if we had some extra fraudulent funds. He used the money to create about 150 narcissistic statues around his house depicting……well, him mostly, but he did it with a biblical slant. He also married a 22-year-old (he was only 81) and charged people a quarter to see him pose in a clear casket. He had a “speaking tube” from the house to the street that he used to yell at anyone walking by the house without paying. Dinsmoor now poses all the time in that glass casket, the only activity in there being some mold. So yes, Kansas was itching for some global street cred on the tourist front. It’s too bad they didn’t question the billionaire snake oil salesman that breezed into town from Dallas, promising more trickle down benefits, similar to that asbestos snow that fell in Oz.
The Chiefs are owned by Clark Hunt, a man with a net worth of $1.6 billion, his family’s overall net worth being $24.8 billion. You may recognize the name–his grandfather H.L. Hunt was a famous oil tycoon who dabbled in reactionary rightwing politics. He was affiliated with the John Birch Society, gave advice to the Alabama segregationist George Wallace on how to get around rules for the governorship in Alabama, advocated for black Americans to be sent to Africa and well, a lot of other things…He also produced 15 children with three wives, two of whom tried to corner the silver market in the late 70s. So, you know, just regular family stuff.
Clark’s father, Lamar Hunt brought the Chiefs to Kansas City long ago after getting some stadium deals of his own (twice). The family never really left their Dallas enclave, though Kansas City seems to think the family is one of their own. The Hunts do have a place to stay while in town, though, a 3-story home away from home in Arrowhead Stadium. I’m sure they will need similar lodging to be built in the new stadium. It can’t just be any small spot, however, not for someone with a reported 12,000 square foot, $17-million home in Dallas. Why do you care about this dude’s home, you may ask…Well, mainly because this obscenely wealthy person is asking the public to fund much of his new stadium. In a setting of garnishing wages for student loan defaults and driving the poor off of Medicaid, it seems stunning that one so wealthy would have the gall to not pay for his own damn stadium. And I’m sure he will require the above-mentioned subsidized housing in that stadium.
The Hunt family is very religious, however, so I guess that makes up for some of the bad behavior. Presumably, James 5:1-3 isn’t to be taken very seriously. It’s the one that says riches corrupt, hoarded items, including precious metals (!) testify against them. You know, leftist hippie crap. Gracie Hunt, one of the younger family members, is getting involved by combating the assault on goodness from those who hoard wealth. Just kidding, she’s getting involved in getting worked up about Bad Bunny being the halftime performer at the upcoming Super Bowl. She is pushing for an alternative halftime show from Turning Point USA featuring Erika Kirk. She says that Bad Bunny has “cheap appeal” and that his shows don’t align with “American values”. Remarkably, Gracie was thrilled to meet Taylor Swift, stating she was enchanted by her and said of Taylor that she is “wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, all the things……” Presumably she was impressed with Taylor’s song “Wood” an ode to Travis Kelce’s dick, but done tastefully while white and blonde, not performed in the style of rap lyrics done while Puerto Rican.
To give a clear notion of the money involved here—two billion, well, that’s almost $700 for every Kansan. Good to know in times of scarcity, as we find ourselves in now, that amounts like that will be required to give some billionaire welfare. Wait a minute, you say: this isn’t a direct tax on every single Kansan—this will be paid for by a sales tax. Yes, this is true. The most regressive tax there is and also, those bondholders want interest for their trouble, of course. So it’s gonna be more than two billion, some economists estimate the true cost will end up being more like 6.3 billion over the next 30 years. A sales tax hits everyone in the area hard and the way it is set up is that the surrounding area will have to tack this on to goods and services. If there isn’t enough revenue generated, it’s likely the radius of the sales tax implementation will expand. And even if it is successful and paid off, it will be on the backs of people living in the area who might not really want to fund bondholders’ profits and subsidize the Hunt family fortune. But they really didn’t get a say, did they?
And about that possible 30 years of paying on the debt…the Hunt/Chiefs organization aren’t going to own the stadium. They will be paying “rent” that they get to largely keep. It’s supposed to go back to their own use for security services and who knows what else. This means that they can reap the benefits of the stadium, receive all those profits and leave the place like an abandoned rented Walmart when and if they please. Probably when the place starts needing major renovations and upkeep, I’d venture. Who knows? They live in Dallas, maybe they’d like to move the team down there and get another sweet revolving deal. Unlike the fans, there is no local allegiance with these types. The lesser amount they are fronting will likely be replaced quickly and will increase exponentially. They may leave town and a crumbling stadium behind them whenever they’ve milked the place dry.
The politicians of Kansas seem to be–well, a bit naive. Governor Laura Kelly, dressed in her smart cardigans, is negotiating with sharks. She breathlessly exclaims, “This is a game changer for Kansas and a signal to America and the world that our state’s future is bright.” Kelly is basically a Democrat who is what a Republican used to be before they went completely bonkers. That is to say, bland and ineffectual and more likely than not to assist corporations over citizens. Her Republican accomplice in this deal, Ty Masterson, the President of the state Senate states, “Best of all this will not cost one more penny for taxpayers”. Now, I’m not an accountant, but I am pretty sure the ST in STAR is Sales Tax. I guess that regressive tax doesn’t count as a tax to Masterson unlike horrors such as estate taxes. I don’t know that I’d take too much stock in his financial literacy, however. He went bankrupt in 2010 with 885,000 in debt, 160,000 of it being from credit cards. Also, if you please—look up his image. He most certainly lives for New Year’s Eve and completely loves a sloppy steak at Truffoni’s. I just don’t get a good feeling about these guys being decision makers for multi-billion dollar deals.
But most of all, you’d think that Kansans would take a peek behind the curtain and see who is making all these unlikely promises. Who is the wizard? Hell, even Missouri is “The Show Me State”. Perhaps that’s why they let this one get away—good old-fashioned skepticism and disbelief.
Another issue to consider is that average citizens can’t really even afford to go to an NFL game. Estimates place cost averages for high value team tickets at nearly $300 and this doesn’t even include incidentals like parking. Speaking of which, Chiefs fans love their tailgating but that won’t be allowed in the new stadium. You can’t expect the Hunt family to make money if you don’t buy their $50 cups of beer, I guess.
But here we are, in this time of bread and circus, when even the circus has to be funded by the public, and they can’t afford the tickets to go watch it.
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