To the editor:

As a dedicated, lifelong Kansas City Chiefs fan, I would love nothing more than to see the team proudly call Kansas its permanent home. The thrill of having a world-class franchise on our side of the border is undeniable. However, as a taxpayer looking closely at the state’s aggressive strategy to lure the team away from Missouri, I believe we must separate our love for the game from our fiscal responsibility to our communities. The current multi-billion-dollar stadium relocation proposal ignores a harsh reality: the steep, long-term price tag of this project will be quietly and disproportionately paid by rural communities, particularly here in western Kansas.

The proposed plan relies heavily on Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) bonds, alongside the creation of a powerful state sports authority. Proponents repeatedly assure us that this massive project comes at “no new cost” to regular citizens because it does not involve an immediate hike in our daily sales tax rates. But this is a dangerous financial shell game. For the next 30 years, billions of dollars in state sales tax growth generated within these massive new stadium and entertainment districts will be completely frozen. Instead of flowing back to the state treasury as it normally would, that revenue will be captured and diverted exclusively to pay down the stadium debt incurred by a billionaire ownership group.

When you vacuum billions of dollars out of the state’s general treasury over three decades, every single Kansan loses – especially those of us hundreds of miles away from the metro area. The State General Fund is the lifeblood for critical statewide public services. It funds the State Highway Fund, which repairs our rural roads and highways, and it provides base aid for public school districts. When the state treasury is squeezed to finance a luxury NFL dome, it means there will be fewer resources available for rural infrastructure grants, mental health services, and local classrooms. We are effectively forcing families in towns like Larned and Great Bend to subsidize a playground for the wealthy in Kansas City at the direct expense of our own local safety and education.

Furthermore, decades of independent research from sports economists have proven time and again that professional stadiums do not actually generate new wealth for a state; they merely shift existing wealth around. Every dollar a family from central or western Kansas spends on a hotel room, dinner, and a ticket at a Chiefs game is a dollar taken directly out of our own local economies. The state will capture the tax revenue from that transaction inside the locked stadium zone, while our local main street businesses lose out on that economic activity entirely.

We should not be starving rural Kansas to feed an NFL franchise, nor should hard-working families be expected to shoulder the hidden burdens of tax breaks for a dynasty family. I urge our state lawmakers to look past the stadium lights and consider the long-term damage this lopsided deal will inflict on the small towns that keep Kansas running.

Sharon McGinness

Larned