Good news, everyone! The Ohio state legislature has decided to vote today on a way to pay for $600 million in state costs for a Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park, and the solution is: Borrow it from the state’s unclaimed funds account and repay it over time by siphoning off tax revenues collected in and around the stadium.
WKYC-TV describes this as “provid[ing] $600 million for the proposed Cleveland Browns domed stadium in Brook Park using unclaimed funds,” which it isn’t really — it’s the same omni-TIF deal as the legislature proposed back in March, just with the initial money being borrowed from the unclaimed property fund. This primarily would get around one major stumbling block in the original plan: The state wanted Cuyahoga County to sell bonds that would be repaid by the omni-TIF, but county executive Chris Ronayne hates the idea of helping the Browns move to Brook Park, so having the state loan itself the money gets around that issue.
That just leaves the bigger stumbling block, which is that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine still hates the TIF plan and prefers his own plan to raise sports gambling taxes and use that money instead. The stadium funding package is part of the state budget, but DeWine has the power to make line-item vetoes, and could do so if the legislature passes it today and sends it to his desk.
The main real news here, then, is that it’s finally decision time for DeWine: Shoot down the legislature’s plan to gift Browns owner Jimmy Haslam with $600 million in state tax money in hopes of reviving his alternative plan for gifting Haslam with a different $600 million, or acquiesce in order to get the stadium across the finish line. Either would arguably be terrible ideas — two different state budget analysts have warned that there’s no evidence that Ohio would be able to recoup the money by new spending at the stadium, which makes sense when you consider that it would mostly just be hosting the same events as the Browns’ current stadium, only a few miles to the southwest. There’s also the question of the other $600 million in city and county money that Haslam wants from increased county hotel and rental car taxes and city income, ticket, and parking taxes, but everyone seems to be planning to cross those bridges when they come to them, so: Bring on The Decision 2025: DeWine’s DeLemma!
How does the state gambling tax work? Is it assed by where the site is located, or by where the gambler is located? If you’re a big money gambler, it seems like it would be worthwhile to establish a second address in a low gambling tax state, or use a VPN to hide your location.
It’s on the gambling companies, not the gamblers, and is based on where they’re licensed. So no way around it if you want to operate legally in the state.
https://tax.ohio.gov/business/ohio-business-taxes/employer-withholding/withholding-sports-gaming
Agree with all this. One small point to factor in is that the nearby I-X Center, which has been the main site for Cleveland’s auto shows, etc. is being repurposed. Most of its business will presumably go to the downtown Convention Center (easing some of the pain of losing the Browns) but some smaller events could transfer over to the domed stadium since they are both in the same area. It seems like domed stadiums generally have 100k to 150k sf of usable floor space for events.
are domed stadiums every successfully used for convention space? that always seems to me to be one of the things that they are pitched for but that never really pans out.
neil, what does our resident convention center expert have to say about this?
Define “effectively.” You can hold a giant plenary in one, but would you really want to?
I would argue that the extent of what Ohio Republicans are doing for the Haslams in their budget bill — $600 million dome funding, requiring that any future County vote to increase its sin tax must include the dome as an eligible recipient, and neutering the State’s Art Modell law to ease the team’s relocation to Brook Park— is unmatched in the US’s history of state stadium incentives. When coupled with the Haslam’s’ significant political contributions to Republican leadership… well, I’ll leave that to readers’ imaginations. But I would like to know if there’s any state that has done more for a sports franchise…
“Unmatched” is a pretty high bar. Changing the Modell law to only apply to interstate moves, as they just did today, is huge and hard to put a value on, but when you compare it with NY state giving $750m to the Bills owners on top of $250m in county money, or Maryland giving $600m in renovation money to the Orioles plus more in future tax money … it’s kind of hard to pick just one, you know?