Indiana Gov. Mike Braun says he isn’t sweating Porter County leaders’ opposition to raising food and beverage taxes for a new Chicago Bears stadium the next county over, because really it’s Porter County that would be missing out on all the fun of taking part in shoveling money at the Bears owners:
Under the law, Porter County would have to approve a one-percent food and beverage tax to have representation on the stadium authority. The governor said if it doesn’t get approved, the biggest impact would be on Porter County itself.
“If they choose not to put any skin in the game, they’re not going to have any say-so for what happens from all the economic benefits we’re going to get from it,” Braun said.
Maybe you’re the one up a stump, Porter County! Does a county get a chance to fund a stadium deal every day?
The whole Porter County kerfuffle points up one of the weirder things about the Indiana Bears stadium deal: Though it was passed by the legislature back in February, it didn’t precisely spell out who would be spending what on a stadium, or even where exactly it would be. A newly created sports authority will be able to offer the Bears owners money from a whole bunch of taxes, only some of which actually exist yet:
- All new property tax, income tax, and sales tax for the next 35 years from an omni-TIF district encompassing the stadium and an undetermined number of square miles around it. This could certainly amount to billions of dollars, much of it potentially cannibalized from spending that has nothing to do with the Bears, but just as we saw in Kansas, it’s impossible to say exactly how much without knowing the size of the district.
- A doubling of the Lake County hotel tax from 5% to 10%, which would provide at least $90 million.
- Those 1% food and beverage tax surcharges in Lake and Porter counties, which would be worth about $250 million each, if approved.
- A 12% ticket tax, which would be worth about another $200 million, though as established ticket taxes are unlike other taxes in that they tend to come out of team owners’ revenues.
The best guess at the total public cost is “easily past $4 billion,” but that could go up or down depending on what gets approved in terms of that tax diversion district plus the new taxes. And a quarter-billion dollars from Porter County seems like a significant amount of money, though I suppose Braun is right in that if county leaders balk at that, the state could always compensate by running the omni-TIF district all the way to the Ohio border.
All this makes Indiana’s bid for the Bears a bit of a moving target in the state’s bidding war with Illinois, which is no doubt very much to Bears owner George McCaskey’s liking. (“You’re willing to give us $1.5 billion in property tax breaks and infrastructure money, you say? Well, what if I told you Indiana was offering a TIF district the size of the entire Local Group?”) Right now you have a three-way — or more, given the various Illinois factions — game of chicken going on, and nobody’s showing each other their cards, and … okay, maybe it’s too early in the day for me to be writing extended metaphors. If anyone says they know how much money Bears execs could get out of either Indiana or Illinois, they’re lying, that’s the upshot here.
Somehow I get the feeling the Bears are staying in Illinois, but the Colts will get a windfall for stadium upgrades after seeing how much Indiana is willing to do for an NFL team.
Or after NOT seeing how much Indiana is willing to do for an NFL team, as things are going.
My take: the ball is on the 35 yard line and Indiana’s calling an audible but their wide receiver can’t hear because of crowd noise so Coach Braun better call a timeout and make sure everyone knows the play!
Didn’t Indiana already do plenty for an NFL team?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Oil_Stadium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_Dome
Gosh, at this rate, NFL tickets might be unaffordable some day.
You’d be fools to pass on this, Porter County. You’re not appreciating the potential economic impact. There could be a fan from South Bend who stops in your county to buy a Coke from McDonald’s on their way to or from the game.
Governor Twunt speaks like a real Twunt
The economic benefit may be that the politicians from Porter County would be allocated tickets and maybe even a suite for games. Worth every penny of 250 million to the politicians.
If politicos are so sure their ‘math’ is right on these types of deals, I always wonder why they don’t extend them to other sectors of the economy.
You know, “we are going to impose a 3% state wide sales tax and use the proceeds to build restaurants. These restaurants will be full all the time and will generate upwards of $12Bn a year in economic benefits as all the spending at these new state owned but privately run restaurants will be new spending and thus generate and endless stream of free money for the state”.
There isn’t a single person on the planet that would take such a statement seriously (particularly anyone who has run a restaurant before). Yet here we are.
I used to lobby a friend of mine on the city council of the self-proclaimed “Sports City USA” to declare my lot a TIF Zone and build a pool in my backyard. Then the city could use the incremental increase in property tax from higher assessments to pay off the pool over a 20 year period while increasing the tax base for the city. Surprisingly, he never offered to take me up on it. But then I’m not a billionaire sports team owner either.