Category: NBA

Friday roundup: Rays stadium demands include federal disaster relief money, $10/year rent while keeping all revenues

access_time personNeil deMause

On top of everything else this week, the Tampa Bay Rays management dropped their draft memorandum of understanding for a Tampa stadium deal, which sheds a little more light on what precisely they’re asking for in terms of public money. I’ve only had a chance to give it a quick read, but so has Noah Pransky of Shadow of the Stadium, so maybe combined we can hit the biggest takeaways:

  • This is just the Rays’ proposed MOU; county officials haven’t reviewed it yet.
  • Rays owner Patrick Zalupski wants it finalized by June 1, so that a stadium can be open by 2029 — probably an impossible timetable, but if it works to create a two-minute warning, sure, why not?
  • The land under the stadium itself, currently owned by the state, will be shifted to the county’s possession — so all of that previously reported between $1.1 billion and $2.5 billion in free land and property tax breaks is still in play.
  • The Rays will lease (or maybe “license”) the stadium for 35 years, for a rent of $10 a year. (No, that’s not a typo: not $10 million, $10.)
  • The stadium itself will cost at least $2.3 billion, with $251 million coming from the city of Tampa (source TBD unless I missed it) and $750 million from Hillsborough County, which will include hotel tax (TDT) money, sales tax surcharge (CIT) money, revenue from an already existing TIF district (Drew Park) around the site, and possibly federal disaster recovery block grant funds. that, notes Pransky, are “generally earmarked to rebuild housing & infrastructure that support low-to-moderate income populations.”
  • Any excess public revenue from all those tax streams will go into a future maintenance fund, so the actual amount of county funding could be much higher, a la the Atlanta Falcons‘ infamous “waterfall fund.”
  • “The Rays Stadium Entity intends to seek additional Public Funding from other available public funding sources,” so the total public subsidy could be even more much higher.
  • The Rays will impose a ticket surcharge, but that money will pay off the team’s portion of costs, not the public’s, so no help there.
  • Likewise, the “Rays Stadium Entity will retain all revenue generated pursuant to the Lease, including but not limited to revenue associated with tickets, parking, suites, signage, advertising, promotional inventory, sponsorships, concessions, merchandise, broadcasting rights, royalties, licensing fees, concession fees and other sources described in the Lease.” So the city and county will get bupkis in stadium revenues to help pay off their share, not even naming rights on a county-owned building.
  • This is all just an MOU for the stadium itself; the surrounding development appears to be waiting for a later date, so no more details on when that would be built, how much it would cost, how much in property tax breaks it would be receiving, or how on earth it could be “100 percent privately financed” but with “tax dollars from the district used to eventually pay off the tab.“

So we’re at a minimum of $2.1 billion in public costs for the entire project, and a maximum of who the hell knows, but numbers like $4 billion or even higher are certainly not out of the realm of possibility. There are certain to be lots of questions from Hillsborough County Commissioners, especially on that CIT sales tax surcharge that voters were promised wouldn’t be used for stadiums (and which residents currently oppose using for a Rays stadium) — in the MOU it’s earmarked for “on-site horizontal infrastructure,” which could mean things like roads and sewers but also building foundations. In fact, County Commissioner Joshua Wostal, who is emerging as one of the louder critics of the deal, has already called attention to a clause saying if the city and county can’t come up with the funds in the MOU, they’ll need to “use best efforts to endeavor to secure alternative financing,” something Wostal said seems to be a “poison pill” intended to “force the commissioners to vote no in what seems to be an intentional killing of the deal.” Or maybe they just hope commissioners will agree to anything, it’s happened before!

More on all that next week, surely. In the meantime, here’s the rest of this week’s news:

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Friday roundup: Has Cleveland’s mayor actually found a way to make Guardians and Cavs owners help pay for own repair costs?

access_time personNeil deMause

No time for a lengthy roundup intro today, I’m too busy catching up with the latest problems resulting from sending Microsoft Outlook into space. Plenty of juicy bullet points, though, you can dig into those right now:

  • Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb is proposing establishing sales tax surcharge of up to 5% in and around the Guardians‘ stadium and Cavaliers‘ arena to help fund what could be $400 million in ongoing repairs and upgrades at the venues, expenses the city’s sports authority is required to cover under the teams’ leases but which it has no money for. Cleveland.com describes this as “Cavs and Guardians fans footing the bill,” but actually a lot of this could fall on the team owners, as fans are unlikely to put up with higher prices on tickets (or, to a somewhat lesser degree, hot dogs or souvenirs) just because taxes went up. One catch: Any “New Community Authority” would require any property owners to agree to join and be subject to the tax; the stadium and arena are owned by the sports authority, though, so it’s at least possible Bibb could force this on the teams over their objections. Lots of team prepare for such backdoor funding attempts by inserting “no ticket tax surcharge” clauses into their leases — I’m not spotting any in the Cavs and Guardians leases on an initial look, but feel free to search for yourselves.
  • NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell turned up the heat on the Chicago Bears stadium situation on Tuesday, declaring: “They need to find a solution for a stadium. … I think it’s really important that they come to a resolution on this relatively soon. … This is an important time to get this resolved sooner rather than later.” Okay, that’s less “heat” than “typical commissioner whingeing,” no reason to report on this as upping the pressure in any real oh come on, NBC Chicago.
  • Predatory lending tycoon Tom Dundon has been approved as the new owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, and he was not pleased at all that one of the first questions he got was why he hasn’t committed any of his own money toward an arena renovation that the team is seeking $600 million in public subsidies for. “No one’s ever told me I didn’t have skin in the game before,” snapped Dundon. “We don’t know each other very well. So, look, we’re going to negotiate and do a market deal.” Easy for him to say since he’s already landed the first $365 million in state funding, but at least maybe this will give local legislators a bit more backbone as they negotiating the remaining $235 million — especially since minority owner and venture capital succubus Sheel Tyle declared, “I don’t want people to be concerned or scared. We are committed to Portland, 100 percent. Full stop.” Somebody please alert Ron Wyden.
  • The Maryland legislature has killed legislation for the 2026 session to spend $217 million in public money on a stadium to host new Baltimore men’s and women’s soccer teams, partly because there’s community opposition to building it atop a public golf course that was the site of some of the first integration of the city’s public facilities. “When we introduced the legislation, the purpose was not to get it funded,” bill sponsor state Sen. Antonio Hayes told the Baltimore Banner, “the purpose was to keep the conversation going” — so you can rest assured we’ll hear about this again in the 2027 session.
  • Denver Broncos owner Greg Penner says he won’t be able to meet an “ambitious” 2031 target date for opening a new stadium without help from “a lot of key partners at the city level [and] at state level.” In particular, Penner still needs to finish acquiring land for the stadium — he said if the new stadium isn’t ready by 2031 he could just extend his lease at the old one, so it’s not clear why anyone would feel pressured by this deadline other than him, but this is just how team owners roll.
  • The Missouri legislature is considering cutting $2 million from its stadium maintenance budget and redirecting it to a fire department program in retaliation for the Kansas City Chiefs announcing they’ll move to Kansas in 2031 — though in the meantime, it would also reduce maintenance spending on the Royals stadium as well, assuming the Royals stick around.
  • World Cup participant countries typically get tax exemptions during their teams’ time spent in the host nation, but because Trump administration is only extending that courtesy to nations that have signed specific double-taxation agreements with the U.S., “It’s going to cost most non-European countries a lot of money to go to the World Cup” this summer, says tax consultant Oriana Morrison. And that’s before visiting fans pony up for the inflated cost of train tickets to the games in Massachusetts. Props to both the federal and local governments for finding ways to claw back some of the costs of hosting the World Cup, I guess, though taking it from the pockets of Haitians seems just slightly cruel and unusual.
  • Inglewood is spending $8.5 million to “revitalize” its downtown so that it’s more lively in advance of the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Summer Olympics, hey wait, weren’t Super Bowls and Olympics supposed to revitalize their surroundings? U.S. news media, we await your corrections.
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Friday roundup: Can the Home Team Act save your home team, and other pressing questions

access_time personNeil deMause

Let’s get this out of the way, since it’s blowing up on the socials: Yes, Sen. Bernie Sanders and another less famous guy (Rep. Greg Casar, a second-term representative from Austin and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus) yesterday introduced a “Home Team Act” that would require sports team owners to give one year of notice before moving or terminating a team — and also give local buyers the right to purchase the team “at a fair and reasonable price” first, with the price determined by a team of appraisers appointed by the Treasury Department. According to the bill, either private buyers or local governments themselves would be eligible to purchase the team, and any owners who jumped the gun would be subject to a $30,000-a-day penalty.

Removing team owners’ ability to threaten to yank a city’s team away if they aren’t bestowed with public subsidies would indeed be a huge step toward ending stadium shakedowns. And it’s justifiable on a couple of grounds: Not only do teams owe their livelihood to the local fan base, but leagues also routinely use their monopoly power to deny teams to cities if they, say, have one in the next state over, or just out of spite.

At the same time, though, there are plenty of questions about this bill. First off, this is Congress we’re talking about, which has not exactly shown the backbone to stand up to the sports industry — even Sanders and Casar, notes the Chicago Tribune, “acknowledge the legislation won’t get passed quickly, if at all.” The bit about governments being allowed to purchase teams could be dicey, given that leagues currently have the power to reject public ownership, or, for that matter, even private buyers they don’t like. And in terms of enforcement, a $30,000-a-day penalty only amounts to $11 million over an entire year, and no sports team owner is going to let a crappy $11 million stand in the way of moving wherever they damn well please, or at least threatening to in order to extract money from the public treasury. (Local governments could also seek “injunctive and monetary relief,” so presumably judges would have the power to impose harsher penalties, if they saw fit.)

Basically, once this has more than two co-sponsors, then we can start taking it more seriously. Until then, it goes next to David Minge’s Distorting Subsidies Limitation Act as proof of concept that our elected representatives could be doing more to stop the flow of tax dollars to extortionate billionaires, they just don’t want to.

Other pressing questions from the week that just was:

  • Could there be some speed bumps for the Tampa Bay Rays stadium plan and its $2.25 billion in public cash, land, and tax breaks after all? Hillsborough County Commissioner Josh Wostal is demanding that the county and the Tampa Sports Authority release “all draft documents and personal notes” about the deal before a hearing is held next Wednesday — and further says if no public hearings are held before a scheduled April 15 vote, he’ll move to postpone it. “People at a minimum deserve transparency,” said Wostal. “And we are playing hide the ball?“ No word yet on whether others on the commission will support such a wild-eyed radical position as wanting to talk about what’s being voted on before a vote, but people are arguing on the internet about the Rays deal, and in particular its potential use of infrastructure money that elected officials previously pledged wouldn’t go to stadiums, so that’s a start, perhaps.
  • Will the Ohio state legislature add $45 million in road and transit upgrades around the Cleveland Browns‘ new stadium to the $600 million in state money they’ve already promised owner Jimmy Haslam for construction costs? We won’t know until they revote on April 23 following a public comment period, but given the committee that can authorize such spending unanimously passed it the first time: probably.
  • What about Haslam’s demand for $50 million in city and county money for a stadium for a Columbus women’s soccer team, will he get that too? Five out of nine city councilmembers say they’re opposed, the other four say they need more information, more lobbying is clearly needed.
  • Will the new Oklahoma City Thunder arena end up costing taxpayers there more than the $850 million they approved back in 2023? Possibly, says assistant city manager Brent Bryant, who explained that given “economic uncertainty,” the city will “add a factor to that on top of the anticipated cost, to try to plan for that.” What does that mean? Sorry, only one question per bullet point!
  • Is prospective new Portland Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon “a go-getter” with “enormous passion and spirit,” like NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he was on Wednesday, or a predatory lender who got rich by letting people take out high-interest car loans that they would inevitably default on, like Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica reported earlier that morning? Nothing saying it can’t be both!
  • As Anaheim officials push for the Los Angeles Angels to restore “Anaheim” to the team name, could team owner Arte Moreno or the 80-year-old’s eventual successors move the team to Los Angeles County? The L.A. Times’ Bill Shaikin writes that “the logical landing spot would be Inglewood,” only to have Inglewood Mayor James Butts tell him, “We’re maxed out when it comes to sports. We are not going to reduce the housing stock and move residents out to have a baseball team.” Welp, that’s unfortunate, but the column’s already written, too late to go back and choose a new topic!
  • Does the city of L.A. know what year the 2028 Olympics will be held? Possibly not!
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“Privately funded” Bulls/Blackhawks arena development asks for $55m in tax breaks, could seek more

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been almost two years since the owners of the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks announced plans for a $7 billion development housing-and-concert-space-and-hotels-and-0ther-stuff project on the parking lots around the United Center arena, without exactly indicating who would be paying for it, though it’s been widely described as “privately funded.” And now we have one sliver of an answer: a $55 million property tax break.

[Chicago Mayor Brandon] Johnson introduced the estimated $54.7 million in property tax incentives to the City Council on March 18. Under Cook County’s Class 7b special assessment, the project’s property tax rate for the first phase would be 10% for the first 10 years, 15% for Year 11, then 20% for Year 12…

“Cook County incentives such as a Class 7B are standard incentives designed to encourage private investment in underserved areas, and this project is exactly that,” [an unnamed United Center] spokesperson said. “Developments across Cook County routinely pursue these types of incentives, and we’ve done so with the understanding that the development will generate significantly increased property tax revenue over time.”

Developments across Cook County indeed receive tons of property tax breaks — it’s a Chicago specialty — but that doesn’t necessarily make them a great idea. Yes, a new development will pay more in property taxes than parking lots would have, but it would also come with new costs, starting with schools for all the kids at the new housing to attend; and that’s assuming that any new development at the United Center doesn’t lead developers to build less somewhere else in the city, which is very much something that can happen. (The Chicago Tribune editorial board points out that the planned music theater could also siphon off concerts from other city venues.) As for categorizing the arena’s Near West Side environs as “underserved,” that’s possibly a bit of a reach when it’s had the second biggest increase in property values in the entire city since 2000.

That said, $55 million in tax breaks for a $7 billion project wouldn’t be the worst sports-related development deal, if that’s all that Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf and Blackhawks owner Danny Wirtz would be pocketing—

The project is also in a tax-increment financing district, which could give city officials another way to subsidize the project or the infrastructure it needs, including a new station on the CTA’s Pink Line.

Sigh. Okay, file this one under “Public cost: TBD” for now. Maybe we’ll learn more once the Chicago city council, which unanimously approved the project itself last year, takes up consideration of the tax breaks, at a time also TBD.

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Pelicans owner demands state arena subsidies so wealthy fans can have crushed velour seating

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a few years since New Orleans Pelicans owner Gayle Benson last talked about getting upgrades to the team’s arena, in part because she fell behind on making payments to the state on Superdome renovations for the Saints, which she also owns. The arena renovations are back on again now, and they include adding more seats, more VIP clubs, and refurbished luxury suites with “high-end furnishings like island bars, crushed velour furniture, brass light fixtures and wood floors” — all the better to distract you from the fact that you just paid premium prices to watch the Pelicans.

How much would all this cost? The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which got ahold of the team’s plans via a public records request, notes:

Cost estimates were not included in the report. The state and Pelicans are expected to pay for the project through a public-private partnership similar to the one used to fund the recent $560 million renovation of the Superdome.

The Times-Picayune doesn’t bother to go into detail about how the Saints deal works: It was in fact two-thirds state money, one-third Benson money that the owner dragged her feet on paying until she could get the state spending upped from $300 million to $380 million in exchange for a five-year lease extension until 2035. How much taxpayers would be on the hook for in a Pelicans deal, and how long Benson would be willing to extend her lease for — it currently expires in 2029 — remains unknown: Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District attorney Larry Roedel told the paper that the arena plans are “preliminary at best” and both renovation funding and a new lease are “subjects yet to be negotiated.”

The New Orleans arena, for those keeping score at home, turns 27 this year, and just got a state-funded $54 million renovation in 2014. It’s sadly lacking in crushed velour, however, as well as having too many upper-deck seats and not enough lower-deck seats, which the Times-Picayune informs us are “a prime revenue source for the Pelicans.” If the goal here is to have the state of Louisiana spend a pile of money so that the team can increase its profits, might it be simpler and cheaper to skip the whole renovation business and just have the state pay Benson directly? It is a local tradition, after all.

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Friday roundup: Blazers threatened councilmembers’ careers if they didn’t subsidize arena, Rays stadium tax vote planned for April 1

access_time personNeil deMause

Would love to have a witty introduction for you here, but it’s late enough already and this week’s bullet points are far too juicy to wait any longer!

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Blazers owner-to-be lands first $365m of arena renovation tax money, still hasn’t agreed on lease

access_time personNeil deMause

The Oregon state house voted 43-13 late Friday to approve $365 million in state income tax funds toward a renovation of the Portland Trail Blazers‘ arena, a project that will ultimately cost $600 million, 100% of that coming from public coffers. And it did so before a lease extension with presumptive incoming team owner Tom Dundon, something that prompted The Oregonian to lead off its coverage like so:

While some legislators argued that it was unwise to volunteer Moda Center funding without first negotiating a lease, the Oregon House overwhelmingly passed a bill that clears the way for the state to pay for nearly two-thirds of the renovations that lawmakers hope will keep the Trail Blazers in Portland for at least two more decades.

Because The Oregonian is, by all evidence, a pretty bad newspaper, it then smash cuts to House Majority Leader Ben Bowman asserting that “the Blazers are proof that something can be emotionally meaningful and economically strategic at the same time.” (Say it with me now: “[citation needed]!”) But it did at least highlight the biggest problem with starting the ball rolling on a possible $600 million taxpayer subsidy for a man who made his billions in subprime lending before starting to buy up sports teams (and Major League Pickleball for some reason): Is “hoping” the Blazers will stay in Portland for two more decades enough of a return on that public spending?

This isn’t even a question of whether Dundon will spurn the Oregon taxpayer cash and refuse to sign a lease extension. Rather, as we’ve seen time and again, what a city actually gets out of a lease commitment depends very much on the details, as one cleverly worded state-of-the-art clause, say, can lead to either the team breaking its lease and skipping town or using the threat of that as leverage to gain even more taxpayer cash. The only way that $600 million in taxpayer money is useful, in other words, is as a carrot to extract good lease terms; if Oregon gives the milk away for free, Dundon has no reason to lease the cow, or something like that, it’s a pretty terrible proverb that doesn’t even make much sense where it originated in East Africa.

Still to be decided: another $235 million in redirected county car rental taxes and foregone city and county business taxes on the team’s sale to Dundon. It’s always possible that Portland and Multnomah County could hold out on those in order to try to bring Dundon to the lease negotiating table, but that’s an even smaller cow, more like a calf — you know what, I give up, abandon metaphor. The state of Oregon just promised a big bag of cash to a billionaire who’s buying the local NBA team in exchange for nothing, that’s the only thing you need to know here.

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Friday roundup: Bears battle drags on, Blazers subsidy heats up, 15 teams now angling for Ohio unclaimed funds cash

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s Friday! But because of other commitments, I’m writing this from Thursday evening! So if there’s any breaking Friday morning news, complain about it in comments, and we’ll get to it on Monday, which for me will probably be Sunday. You following all that? Doesn’t matter, just read your bullet points, they’re good for you:

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Friday roundup: Breaking down taxpayer costs of the proposed Indiana Bears deal, plus other stadium news

access_time personNeil deMause

The Indiana legislature’s amended bill for a Chicago Bears stadium project is finally up, and we can start to get a slightly better sense of what it would entail in terms of public costs. Tax expenditures would include: a city of Hammond admissions tax, Lake County and Porter County food and beverage tax surcharges, a Hammond food and beverage tax surcharge, a Lake County hotel tax surcharge, what looks like local income and sales taxes from a stadium district, and state sales taxes from a stadium district. The stadium authority would also own the stadium and lease it to the Bears (terms very much TBD), so it would presumably be exempt from property taxes.

That is a ton of moving parts, needless to say. There being no fiscal analysis attached to the bill to project how much each of these taxes will raise, it’s impossible to determine what the total public price tag would be, though something upwards of $1 billion seems likely given all the revenue streams involved. (WGN calls it $1 billion exactly, not sure where that number comes from, though Indiana house speaker Todd Huston did throw that number around as an estimate yesterday.)

The bill also says that “the stadium board is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the capital improvement upon completion of construction,” which sounds bad, and then two paragraphs later that “the authority has no responsibility to fund the ongoing maintenance and operations of the capital improvement,” which sounds good but also contradictory. (It’s possible this is just dividing up responsibilities between two state agencies, I need to keep going through the bill language to be sure; if so, it’s bad for taxpayers because it could end up a grift that keeps on giving.) Also “the stadium board will retain all revenues from operation of the capital mprovement,” which sounds very good for Indiana but also not likely something the Bears ownership would agree to if it really meant what it sounds like it does. So lots of questions still up in the air, we get another public hearing on this before the full Indiana house and senate votes next week, right? Right? Anyone?

Meanwhile, in other news this week:

  • The proposed Tampa Bay Rays stadium development at Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry Campus would include relocating a middle school and some county offices to … somewhere, while the college’s buildings would be rebuilt in a compressed corner of the campus … somehow. The new Tampa Bay Times reporters on this story, one of whom was just promoted from intern and the other just graduated from college last summer, don’t appear to have actually asked anyone with the Rays or with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office about how this is all expected to work, sure do miss Colleen Wright’s reporting on the Rays stadium saga.
  • The Cleveland Guardians and Cavaliers would like some of that sweet state unclaimed funds money that the Browns are using for their new stadium, please, to use for upgrades to their current homes. The state can get right on that just as soon as that little matter of the restraining order against the state using the funds at all is cleared up.
  • The estimated $750 million cost of renovations to the Arizona Diamondbacks stadium — which only cost $354 million to build in the first place in 1998, about $700 million in today’s dollars — is now expected to be “much higher,” according to team CEO Derrick Hall. Hall didn’t say exactly how much higher, or whether it will all fall on the state to increase its planned $500 million cut of the costs, or when the D-backs will get around to actually signing a new lease in exchange for the renovations.
  • Athletics team execs say $300 million has now been spent on construction of John Fisher’s Las Vegas stadium and $989 million contracted for, out of a total price tag of still figuring that out. This is either the biggest bluff in sports history or the biggest dog-catching-the-car-and-having-to-figure-out-what-to-do-with-it, honestly looking forward to the inevitable cataclysmic denouement either way.
  • The waiting to see if the state of Connecticut will provide $127 million to build and MLS Next Pro soccer stadium in Bridgeport is over, and the answer is: Nope, go kick rocks. State Economic Development Commissioner Daniel O’Keefe cited the need to reduce state spending and what the Connecticut Post termed the “mercurial nature of the sports industry,” noting that the Connecticut Sun may be about to move to Houston and the Bridgeport Islanders may be about to move to Hamilton, fool me three times, shame on me. Developers plan to instead use the planned stadium site for a project involving youth sports indoor and outdoor fields, which apparently don’t require hundreds of millions of dollars of state subsidies like pro sports do.
  • The video of my interview yesterday on whether Los Angeles should try to renegotiate its 2028 Olympics hosting deal is now up at Alissa Walker’s Torched site, go check it out if you like. Chris Tyler of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, which commissioned me to do my Olympics report, joined as well, and the three of us spent a solid hour discussing what went wrong and options for trying to fix it — suffice to say that if former L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti’s ears are burning today, this is why.
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Oregon bill offers Blazers owner all income taxes from in and around arena in exchange for not threatening to move yet

access_time personNeil deMause

The Portland Trail Blazers are in the middle of being sold to Carolina Hurricanes owner/subprime auto loan baron/“glass chewer” Tom Dundon, and apparently the threat of the team’s expiring lease in 2030 and Dundon’s reputation for playing hardball has Oregon elected officials moving toward spending a ton of money on upgrading Portland’s arena to avoid the team from moving to (Oregonian staffers throw darts at giant wall map of the U.S.) Nashville or Kansas City. What would Oregon taxpayers give up, and what would they get in return? As usual, it’s complicated:

  • According to a bill introduced on Monday by state Senate President Rob Wagner, the state would take all income taxes collected in and around the Blazers arena for the next 30 years and make them available for Dundon to use on arena upgrades. That would include not just taxes on Blazers players and staff, as team execs were previously reported to be seeking, but income taxes paid by any entertainers who perform at the arena, and even by the construction workers performing the upgrades.
  • This income tax money would be used to pay off $360 million in state bonds, as part of an overall $600 million public funding package. The rest would come via $75 million from a city climate fund meant to be used on projects that reduce carbon emissions and help residents at risk of climate change impact, $75 million from county car rental taxes, and $50 million from city business taxes and $40 million from county business taxes on the sale of the team to Dundon. All of these look to be present value, meaning the nominal amount of taxes redirected over time would be considerably more, if you prefer to count that way (I do not); the bill itself helpfully informs us that it “may have fiscal impact, but no statement yet issued” and “may have revenue impact, but no statement yet issued.”
  • In exchange, Dundon would agree to keep the Blazers in town for “a specified term” of time, which isn’t vague at all. If the Blazers’ eventual lease extension ends up concluding anytime before 2044, it could break the Charlotte Panthers record for the most expensive per-year lease extension in sports history.

That’s significant chunk of change for an arena that Portland taxpayers already helped then-Blazers owner Paul Allen build in 1995 and then took off the hands of Allen’s heirs in 2024, saving them about $1.2 million a year in property taxes. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek is on board, though, calling the arena subsidy “an opportunity for the city and the state and the county to put their best foot forward and say, ‘Look, we want to be a partner with the new owner to keep the team'” and meeting with NBA commissioner Adam Silver last month to argue for the deal. Then there’s Oregon U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who took in a Blazers game on Saturday and wandered the arena telling anyone who would listen that he wants to “help anybody who wants to keep us in town” and calling the privately owned NBA team valued at $4.25 billion “infrastructure” and “a huge economic development opportunity” and “a big economic force in the state” when he wasn’t too busy exchanging hugs with former Blazers player Buck Williams.

The biggest stumbling block right now appears to be Multnomah County, where county leaders have expressed a desire to use their $40 million business-tax check from the Blazers sale to spend on actual resident services, or at the very least to backfill the car rental tax money the county would be giving up. That’s relatively small potatoes, though — the biggest piece, the $360 million in income tax money, is expected to be voted on by the Oregon legislature by the time it wraps up its session on March 8.

That leaves less than four weeks for public discussion, which would be plenty of time to go over the dubious theory that businesses should keep the income taxes paid by their employees because if they skipped town all that tax money would go away, which 1) it almost certainly wouldn’t and 2) pretty much defeats the whole economic purpose of luring and retaining businesses regardless. Tune in Monday at 8 am PT to watch the state senate rules committee discuss the income tax diversion bill, sorry, looks like no public testimony at this one as it’s a committee “work session,” but surely there’ll be time for the public to be heard, at least minutes before the legislature takes its ultimate vote.

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