When Cuyahoga County voters in 2014 approved extending a cigarette and alcohol surcharge for 20 years to provide $13 million a year to the Cleveland Guardians, Cavaliers, and Browns for stadium and arena repairs and upgrades, they were told it was necessary to keep the teams from breaking their leases and moving elsewhere. (They were also told it would “Keep Cleveland Strong,” via stickers that Guardians stadium ushers had to wear on their uniforms under penalty of firing.)
Unfortunately, Cleveland area residents aren’t sinning like they were projected to, and earlier this year it was reported that Cavs owner Dan Gilbert had been fronting money to pay for such “repairs” as upgraded elevators and escalators and a film on the arena’s new glass wall to keep birds from flying into it, while waiting for tax proceeds to come in. And now the Guardians and Cavs owners and the Gateway Economic Development Corp., the quasi-public agency that owns the sports venues, have asked the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County for an extra $40 million to fill in for the missing tax money:
Cleveland’s share of the money would come from the general fund, which covers basic services. The city can afford to pay the $20 million thanks to numerous unfilled vacancies, Finance Director Jim Hartley said.
Paris Saint-Germain wants to build a new stadium and leave publicly owned Parc des Princes because the city won’t sell the stadium to the team (for what the team wants to pay). Now the city is trying to prevent the team from acquiring the land for the new stadium. This is the complete opposite from how things operate in the US.
https://www.coliseum-online.com/moves-afoot-to-block-psgs-new-stadium/?+arena+NEWS+from+around+the+world=
This is why the fine print matters so much when making financial commitments based on consumption taxes. Sin taxes in particular are quite funny to me, because the people hammering out these agreements never seem to go down the hall to talk with the local health authorities about their initiatives to get people to stop smoking and drinking so much. I’m sure back in 2014, Cuyahoga County had a smoking cessation campaign with projections proudly proclaiming they’d get a certain number of people off tobacco in a decade. Consumption taxes never account for the substitution effect either, like the emergence of tobacco-less nicotine products like Zyn. Inflation also doesn’t help matters because a rapid increase in the base price acts as a multiplier and can make those taxes onerous – and decrease consumption- in a hurry.
But, we’ll continue to see them used liberally, because politicians can claim they didn’t raise taxes and for whatever reason local media never calls them on this.