Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross might not want to point too many fingers at Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford for killing his stadium renovation subsidy referendum, now that it looks like the referendum was likely to go down to massive defeat anyway:

A majority of Miami-Dade voters who cast ballots in the special stadium election before it was called off opposed the $350 million makeover, according to a count the elections department released late Tuesday.

The tabulation showed that among the 60,678 voters who voted by mail or at early-voting sites, 34,780 — about 57 percent — opposed the Dolphins’ proposal, compared to 25,898 — or 43 percent — who favored it.

How rumors get started:

At a brief meeting with reporters, [Miami Dolphins CEO] Dee was asked directly if the team would consider relocating to Palm Beach County, if a stadium was built for them there.

“We’re open minded to all long-term solutions,” Dee responded.

So, some reporter (I’m guessing from a Palm Beach news outlet) decided to ask Dee if the Dolphins would move to a new stadium there, and Dee, being no dummy, didn’t rule it out. No big news there.

The resulting Miami Herald headline:

Miami Dolphins ‘open-minded’ to stadium in Palm Beach

Number of people seriously proposing building the Dolphins a stadium in Palm Beach: zero. (Okay, one, counting whoever asked Dee that question.) Amount of money it would cost to build a new stadium in Palm Beach: somewhere around a billion dollars. Amount that the Dolphins would be willing to put in toward that amount: not a whole heckuva lot, given Dee’s past statements on the matter, and that the Dolphins would still be stuck with $232 million in remaining debt on Sun Life Stadium even if they moved. Budget shortfall on this imaginary stadium: somewhere around a billion dollars.

We can only hope that this was actually the start of a subtle ruse on the part of the unnamed questioner, and that future questions will become progressively more implausible: “If someone offered you a stadium in Tallahassee, would you move there?” “In Guantanamo Bay?” “In Mare Tranquillitatis?” Whoever can guess the point at which Mike Dee stops responding, “You can’t close the door on anything,” wins two tickets to … no, not a Dolphins game. Something good.

Man, just when we were gearing up for a nice ridiculous Miami Dolphins stadium subsidy campaign, the Florida house had to go and ruin everything by failing to vote on a stadium renovation subsidy bill before the end of their session on Friday. This means that the public referendum that voting already started for is now called off, as is (for the moment, anyway) hopes by Orlando City Soccer Club and other Florida sports teams for a chunk of the state stadium boodle,

There’s lots of fingerpointing going on now, as you’d expect — Dolphins owner Stephen Ross accused House Speaker Will Weatherford, who failed to bring the bill to a vote, of “put[ting] politics before the people and the 4,000 jobs this project would have created for Miami-Dade and that is just wrong,” while Weatherford replied that “you’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars and I think the House just never got comfortable there when the session ended” — but the real question is what exactly happens now. Does Ross go ahead with the renovations, or a smaller set of renovations, with his own money?

The Miami Dolphins do not intend to pay for any upgrades to Sun Life Stadium now that the team’s push for a subsidized renovation to the 1987 facility has failed, CEO Mike Dee said Sunday.

“We cannot do this without a private-public partnership,” Dee told Miami Herald news partner WFOR-CBS 4. “At this time we have no intention of investing more.”

That’d be a no, then. So what are the Dolphins going to do, other than shaking their fists angrily at Weatherford? (Dee called his vote an “abuse of power” and repeatedly called him “a guy from Pasco County,” and somebody planted a story in Mike Florio’s NBC Sports column saying that “a source” says that “those supporting the proposed upgrades to Sun Life Stadium” believe that Weatherford killed the bill because he was promised monetary support in the next election. So, yeah, they’re pretty mad at Weatherford right now, or at least trying to focus their rage there.) Will the Dolphins, say, threaten to move now?

“The Dolphins are one of the only franchises in the NFL that don’t have a long-term lease with their community,” Dee said. “At some point somebody’s going to buy the franchise from Steve, and clearly the stadium is the first thing they would need to address.”

Well, that’s not exactly a threat per se—

As for whether Ross might sell the team or try moving it elsewhere, he added: “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Now that’s getting closer to a threat. Or at least the kind of statement that the media can interpret as a threat to move, which is just what Ross and Dee need right now.

Realistically, the team isn’t going to move anywhere anytime soon: While the pending announcement of who’ll get the next couple of Super Bowls was a nice opportunity to try to press for renovation money, there was enough legislative support for public subsidies that the Dolphins will invariably be back a year from now to press their case again, just like the Marlins did year after year after year. But in the meantime, it’s worth their while to get the “Will the Dolphins move to L.A.?” rumors started, in the hopes that maybe that will help turn around some of those awful poll numbers that likely would have defeated the referendum next week anyway.

In fact, Ross might have dodged a bullet here, since this way he gets to blame Weatherford for blocking the stadium bill, instead of having to blame the public for voting it down. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that sources say critics of the deal believe some people imagine that Ross planned it this way all along, but … oh, wait, I just did, didn’t I?

Only two weeks to go before a public vote on your stadium renovation plan that everybody hates? Here’s a creative way to get people thinking of it as a jobs package instead of a $127 million stadium subsidy: Invite people to apply for jobs at the stadium that don’t exist yet!

As the team touts a proposed $350 million renovation of Sun Life Stadium as a job creator worthy of tax dollars, the Dolphins will open up Sun Life Stadium on Thursday to aspiring construction workers, laborers and others who would want to work on the project…

Rick Beasley, head of the South Florida Workforce employment agency … praised the Dolphins for getting a head start in lining up local workers for what would be one of the largest construction profits underway in Miami-Dade.

“Some people can be skeptical and say this is just a ploy to get people out to vote,” he said. “For me, I want to make sure we have people in the system ready” to take a job.

Transparent vote ploy or sop to desperate unemployed Florida construction workers? Why can’t it be both?

It’s never over till it’s over in stadium campaigns — cf. last year’s Minnesota Vikings stadium scramble — but with one week left to go in the Florida legislative session, things are not looking good for the Miami Dolphins renovation bill. Miami-Dade state representatives are trying to stall the bill in the house, and have succeeded in getting that body not to move until the state senate does first (the Miami CBS affiliate called the house bill “essentially dead”); and the senate postponed debate on the stadium bill again on Friday, with the chief sponsor left to insist, “No, we’re not panicking yet.”

Dolphins CEO Mike Dee appeared to be panicking just a little, though, leading a stadium tour for reporters just so he could point out how OH MY GOD IT’S 26 YEARS OLD:

Dee led reporters and camera crew through a tour of the stadium Friday to show where the renovation dollars would go. And in pointing out the aging state of the stadium, he made the point that fans shouldn’t count on Sun Life being acceptable to a future Dolphins owner once Ross’ tenure ends.

“Somebody is going to walk in here and say, ‘This place can’t be preserved,’ ’’ Dee said. “It is better dead than alive.”

Or in layman’s terms: My guy doesn’t want to see anything happen to your precious football team, but if some other guy comes in here, hoo boy, you don’t want to see what’ll happen then.

Meanwhile, Miami-Dade residents get to start voting on the stadium plan today, even though the whole election might get called off by Friday if there’s no bill passed by the legislature. Though at least getting to vote on measures that don’t count would be a welcome change from the usual state of affairs in Florida.

The proposed Miami Dolphins stadium renovation agreement was released late last night, giving Miami-Dade county commissioners 16 whole hours to read it before today’s noon meeting where they’re expected to vote on it. Which means it’s time to for some quick reactions, some culled from the Miami Herald’s reporting (and subsequent blog entry), some my own observations:

• Most of the $191 million in private costs would be paid off by a $150 million loan from the NFL — which, since it would largely be repaid with money the Dolphins would otherwise have to give to the league as revenue sharing, is really more of a grant than a loan.
• There are a bunch of penalty clauses: $20 million if Dolphins owner Stephen Ross sells the team in the next five years, and up to $100 million (according to a fiendishly complex formula that would take more than 16 hours to chart all by itself) if the stadium doesn’t host enough Super Bowls, college bowl games, and other big events over the next 30 years. (Though it’s worth noting that this latter penalty wouldn’t be paid until the year 2044.) Plus, Ross will provide $4.8 million to prepare to hold a referendum on the plan, money he won’t get back even if the state nixes the referendum idea.
• If there’s excess hotel tax money raised in any year, it would get put into a reserve fund. If there’s a shortfall in another year, the reserve fund would be tapped to make up the difference. If there’s still not enough money, the Dolphins would be on the hook for it — so at least Miami wouldn’t be looking at a Minnesota-style debacle.
• The document sure mentions “economic development” a lot, for a project that would actually reduce attendance at Dolphins games (though presumably get those fans to pay more for the fewer seats that remain).

There are probably other tidbits in there, but it’s a busy morning and the document isn’t searchable, so that’s all for now. If any FoS readers want to make this into a team scavenger hunt, though, by all means have at it.

After many days of around-the-clock negotiations, it looks like there will be a Miami Dolphins stadium renovation subsidy plan for voters to decide on next month after all. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez announced late last night that he’d agreed with Dolphins owner Stephen Ross on a plan that would:

• Provide the Dolphins with $7.5 million a year, increasing by 3% a year for the next 26 years, using money from a 1% county hotel tax hike.
• At the end of 30 years, the Dolphins would repay the county between $110 million and $120 million, essentially making the deal an interest-free loan as was previously discussed.
• The Dolphins would pay up to $120 million in penalties if they failed to bring four Super Bowls and four national college football championships to Miami over the next 30 years.
• The Dolphins will reimburse Miami-Dade for the cost of the election.

So how much does this make the total public cost of the proposed Dolphins deal? This is challenging my Excel skills a bit, but I get $155 million worth of tax money given to the Dolphins (in present value, calculated at a 5% discount rate), less $28 million worth of repayments, for a net total of $127 million in cost to the county. (Drop the discount rate to 4% and it’s $136 million, raise it to 6% and it’s $118 million, but in any case pretty close to what we estimated before, depending on whether we expect inflation ever to return.)

A May 14 vote isn’t yet a sure thing: First, the state legislature has to sign off on the hotel tax hike, which is still a work in progress. And then the Dolphins have to actually win at the ballot box, which looks to be an even dodgier prospect. Still, the team has five weeks in which to launch an all-out campaign blitz, something that’s worked in Miami before.

Mike Florio of NBCSports.com has written that Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross’s promise that he won’t move the team if his stadium subsidy isn’t approved just means that he’ll sell to another owner who’d then move the team, so be afraid, woooooooooh!

There’s really nothing I can add to that. Click through if you like to rubberneck.

The Miami Dolphins stadium subsidy bill keeps grinding through the Florida legislature, passing another House committee this week as an April 15 deadline looms if the team has any hope of getting a May 14 referendum on the ballot. (Dolphins owner Stephen Ross wants a vote in advance of the NFL’s Super Bowl L and LI award vote the following week, which is pretty much the only threat he has to work with.) There’s still the matter of a state senate amendment that would cap annual new tax subsidies for sports projects at $15 million a year, and force different teams and leagues to fight their way to the head of the line — an attempt to head off the burgeoning land rush for subsidies from pretty much everybody, from MLS teams to baseball spring training sites — but given that the Dolphins won’t much care who else is getting money so long as they get theirs, it probably won’t be too much of a holdup.

Of course, the Dolphins would still have to win a public vote, and that’s likely to be a much tougher row to hoe. But hey, you don’t get if you don’t ask, right?