Maryland senate president slams brakes on O’s $1B subsidy amid team sale rumors and last-minute lease changes

The maybe-billion-dollar Baltimore Orioles renovation subsidy and development deal came to a screeching halt on Friday, at least for the moment, as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore canceled a planned announcement after state senate president Bill Ferguson raised objections:

“Fundamentally, I believe that the long-term lease for the use of the ballpark should not be conditioned on whether or not a private owner receives a 99-year ground lease to develop land owned by Maryland taxpayers,” Ferguson, a Democrat whose district includes the ballpark, told The Baltimore Banner. “This is more relevant today, as recent news has heightened uncertainties about the future ownership of the team.”

That “recent news” refers to reports that billionaire private equity goon David Rubenstein is in talks to potentially buy the Orioles from the Angelos family. Team ownership goon John Angelos has said he doesn’t intend to sell — among other things, if the family waits until his father, 94-year-old Peter Angelos, dies, they can evade capital gains taxes — but that apparently didn’t placate Ferguson, who either really doesn’t want to approve a giant development deal for a pig in a poke, or doesn’t want to approve a giant development deal at all and is using the team’s potential sale as an excuse to slam the brakes.

The Orioles deal was already getting weird, as Moore tried to get the team’s owners to sign a lease extension while the development fine print is still being finalized. As an inducement to that, a proposed revised deal would have handed the Angeloses $600 million (and more) in state money for stadium renovations approved last year, while giving the team and public officials four years to agree on a development plan; if they couldn’t work one out, the team owners, whoever they were at that time, would be able to break their lease after just ten years.

What happens now is unclear: Ferguson said in his statement that he’s “confident the parties will reach a fair deal before the end of the year,” which certainly implies that he has some modifications in mind that would placate him, but if so he didn’t divulge what they are. Nothing to do now but keep watching the tea leaves in the next week or two, and see whether this ends up being a game changer or merely a speed bump.

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5 comments on “Maryland senate president slams brakes on O’s $1B subsidy amid team sale rumors and last-minute lease changes

  1. Neil, Reddit’s kind of being dumb about the Thunder’s new arena.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/18fkdpc/espn_oklahoma_city_voters_mull_tax_to_build_900m/

    I have no idea if the OKC fans are being paid by the team because apparently OKC’s downtown didn’t develop till the Thunder arrived.

  2. An easy answer would be for the team to pay fair market value to lease the land owned by Maryland taxpayers if they want to develop it as part of a lease scheme. And, of course, FMV would be determined by an impartial body who would also set an amount to be paid annually in lieu of taxes on the land they seek to develop under lease (or, like other commercial leases, they could add the developed assessment value PILOT to the land lease. Either way works and is consistent with how pretty much all other businesses who wish to occupy non-owned land are treated).

    That wouldn’t necessarily make it “fair” that this one entertainment business gets effectively paid to upgrade a facility it really has never paid anything like a reasonable amount to use over the past 30 years, but it is a step in the right direction.

  3. What ever happened to inheritance taxes? Did the rich “fix” that too?
    Oops, dumb question…..

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