The Ohio legislature indeed passed a budget yesterday that included $600 million of state money for a Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park, as promised. But the final vote also shifted the playing field in two significant ways:
- The votes in each house were by more than 60% supermajorities (23-10 in the senate, 59-39 in the house), meaning that even if Gov. Mike DeWine vetoes the stadium provision, the legislature now has the votes to override it.
- The budget includes changes to the Art Modell Law prohibiting Ohio teams from moving out of their host cities without permission if they received public stadium money, instead limiting it to a prohibition on teams moving out of state. This would presumably head off any lawsuit against the Browns moving to Brook Park.
This obviously changes things significantly, cutting off the two main avenues for stadium opponents to block Browns owner Jimmy Haslam’s plans to relocate to a new domed stadium on Cleveland’s outskirts. But it also raises one new potential problem: By borrowing money from the state’s unclaimed property fund in order to do an end run around Cuyahoga County — which was originally slated to issue bonds, except county executive Chris Ronayne is a Browns move opponent — it could face different legal challenges that the state would be unconstitutionally using private funds without compensation. (SI reports that some former Democratic legislators have already threatened to file such a suit.)
And even with the $600 million in state cash, Haslam would still come up a bit short of the $2.4 billion he’s seeking to build a Brook Park dome. The Browns owner is committed to spending $1.2 billion, the state would provide $600 million by kicking back every tax under the sun collected in and around the stadium site, and the city of Brook Park would supposedly siphon off $422 million in income, parking, and ticket taxes and send it to Haslam for stadium costs. That leaves $178 million that was supposed to come from county hotel and rental car taxes, except, once again, Ronayne is expected to try to block that; it’s possible that Haslam could just cover that portion and be happy with his $1.022 billion in state and city tax money, but all that is as yet uncertain.
But potential new lawsuits and remaining funding holes aside, Haslam’s plan to get Ohio taxpayers to pay him more than a billion dollars to move the Browns from one part of the state to another just took a giant leap forward — even though Haslam said he wouldn’t move his team out of Ohio even if he didn’t get the stadium money. Maybe savvy negotiators don’t need leverage after all? Don’t tell Jerry Reinsdorf, you’ll just give him ideas.
I hate the fact I was born in the heart of downtown Cleveland 64 years ago. Thieving carpetbagging creeps with zero roots keep coming into town to enrich themselves, and they keep letting them get away with it. In fact, they encourage it. There was never a question of Haslam’s motives, I called it when he bought the franchise. The politicians are nothing but weak enablers on the take.
I think I liked Cleveland better when the river was on fire, at least then there could be no argument that it’s a sewer. Field of Schemes, indeed.
I wonder what would happen if opponents launched a massive “collect your unclaimed property” campaign? If enough people reclaimed their money, the fund would be insufficient to cover the loan. I know Illinois’ fund is $21 dollars lighter since I became aware of it.