Friday roundup: Rays stadium gets a yes vote that’s actually a no, Bears tax break talks get weird

If any of you were wondering what happened to this year’s sports economics conference at University of Maryland Baltimore County, it moved from April to June, so it hasn’t happened yet. I just booked my trip, so FoS readers can expect a liveblog on the day of stadium-related papers, at least. And if you’ll be at the conference on Tuesday, June 9, please find me and say hi.

Before June we still need to get through May, which remains jam-packed with the exciting denouement to several team owners’ push for stadium and arena deals this legislative session, while (some) legislators resist demands for ever-higher public subsidies. How that’s currently going:

• The Tampa city council followed in the steps of the Hillsborough County commission, voting 4-3 yesterday to approve the Tampa Bay Rays‘ nonbinding MOU for a Tampa stadium project. All eyes, though, are on the swing vote that secured passage, Bill Carlson, who said he’s only for it before being against it: Carlson said he voted yes on the MOU to “help the Rays get the state money” but would “definitely vote no” on a binding MOU because “I don’t believe in private sector subsidies.” Given that state legislators have said they’ll only approve state money for the Rays if the city and county are committed to their share of spending, Carlson may yet regret saying the quiet part loud here — it’ll be very interesting to see what happens when the legislature next takes up the state funding bill, which needs to happen in the next week as Florida wraps up its special budget session.
• The Chicago Bears stadium tussle took a weird turn this week, as Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson pitched a plan to keep the team in the city by giving Chicago more control over the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, which Gov. JB Pritzker (pretty reasonably) declared to be “no plan at all.” Johnson then declared that city lawyers had met with Bears officials about a possible new lakefront stadium, which led the Bears to issue a statement that while team lawyers met with city lawyers, the Bears “have exhausted every opportunity to stay in Chicago.” All this would be a mere media sideshow, if not for the fact that some Chicago-area state legislators are reportedly holding off on approving tax breaks for an Arlington Heights stadium in hopes that the team can be kept in Chicago — though that’s according to state Sen, Bill Cunningham, the main sponsor of the tax break bill, so for all we know he has his own motivations for blaming the bill stalling on people with unwarranted dreams of the team staying put. On the third hand, Cunningham also said some legislators have expressed distaste for the size of the tax breaks themselves, as well as impatience that the Bears are demanding infrastructure money as well but haven’t put forward a traffic study for what would actually be needed. At this point there’s going to be no way for Bears officials to know just what they’ll be in line to get from Illinois by the end of this legislative session, which is going to make it very interesting to see what they decide about Indiana’s stadium subsidy offer, or if they’ll somehow try to put off Indiana for a few more months until they see just what Illinois is putting on the table.
• Not to be left out of all the media shouting, Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia says that an Indiana stadium is no good because it would be near a toxic waste site, while Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. says not to worry because “the Bears know far more about environmental concerns in that area than any of us, because they’re spending millions of dollars on it.” Is that how that works? Pretty sure that’s not how that works.
• Athletics vice chair Sandy Dean says the team has a contingency plan for still building a Las Vegas stadium even if Bally’s doesn’t move ahead with its proposed surrounding development, which could be tricky given that the Bally’s section was supposed to provide some of the entrance plazas to the A’s stadium. Dean says the team might try to replicate something similar to its Championship Plaza in Oakland, with food trucks and outdoor games, which sounds really hot for Vegas, but maybe. A’s owner John Fisher has still only spent about the first $400 million on the $2 billion project, meaning we still don’t know what will happen once he has burned through public funds and needs to come up with the rest from his family money.
• Cuyahoga County will not be quadrupling its “sin tax” on alcohol and cigarettes to raise an estimated $56 million a year for additional upgrades for the Cleveland Guardians stadium and Cavaliers arena, after state legislators said they wouldn’t approve such a hike. The county could increase ticket taxes instead or add a 0.25% sales tax surcharge; it could also just stop funneling money to the teams and dare them to break their sweetheart leases, but nobody is putting that on the table for now.
• Wondering how on earth the Philadelphia Phillies are finding $205 million worth of upgrades to their spring training facility, funded with the help of $115 million in city and county money, in addition to the previously mentioned addition of “batting cages with floor scales that track a player’s weight distribution through an entire swing”? This interview with Phillies Florida operations director John Timberlake won’t explain it, but you will learn that yes, he is Justin’s uncle.