Kansas leaders and new group ramp up efforts to lure the Kansas City Chiefs from Missouri

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Top Kansas legislators have intensified efforts to woo the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs by offering to let the professional football franchise shape a plan for using state bonds to finance a new stadium in Kansas.

Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson said in a statement Tuesday that the Legislature would consider the proposal during a special session set to convene June 18. They invited the Chiefs “to weigh in on" the plan in a letter May 23 to Chiefs Chairman and CEO Clark Hunt, with the leaders released Tuesday.

Their actions came as a new Kansas nonprofit group, Scoop and Score, launched a campaign for bringing the Chiefs from Missouri to Kansas. The group started an online petition aimed at the Legislature, sent texts saying the Chiefs “deserve a permanent home in Kansas,” and registered 20 lobbyists to represent it at the Statehouse, including a former House speaker and some of the state's most prominent contract lobbyists.

Kansas officials saw an opening in early April after voters on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area decisively refused to extend a local sales tax used to keep up the complex housing the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium and Kauffman Stadium, home to professional baseball’s Kansas City Royals.