Category: NFL

Friday roundup: Oregon okays $800m in MLB stadium spending because “transformative”

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a minute since I’ve issued an appeal for new supporters for this site, so: If you aren’t already a supporter of this site, please consider becoming one! There are both monthly and one-time options, and in addition to subscriber benefits like receiving all the stadium and arena news in your email inbox and getting whatever tchotchkes I come up with next, you ensure the piece of mind that comes from knowing you’re helping to keep this site going into its 28th year, which just began this month! Shedding light on the sports subsidy game in any way that affects actual policy turns out to be harder than even a professional cynic like myself thought — for all the reasons this site covers every day — but if we can all just keep it up for another 28 years, I think we might finally start getting somewhere.

As always, thanks to everyone who is contributing now or has contributed in the past — it not only lets me pay the ever-increasing costs of hosting this site and enables me to spend time writing it without going broke, it’s heartening to know that people think this issue is important enough to devote your hard-earned dollars to. Or maybe you just like pointing and laughing at billionaire failsons, that works, too. I hope to be able to keep this site going until it’s no longer necessary, at which point you’re all invited to the victory party, if any of us are still mobile enough by then to dance.

And with that cheery thought, here’s your weekly dose of ways everything still mostly sucks now:

  • The Oregon state senate voted 24-5 to approve $800 million in public bonds toward building a Major League Baseball stadium, just as soon as Portland gets a Major League Baseball team. Senators say the project will pay for itself by using money from player income taxes (it won’t) and that it will be a “forward-thinking, transformative opportunity” and “a showcase of what is beautiful, central, core to our constituents of Portland,” which is giving money to ex-Nike execs so they can have their own private sports team, I guess? Please enjoy your requisite J.C. Bradbury Simpsons meme, it’s well earned.
  • What do Washington, D.C. councilmembers think of the news that their mayor is on the brink of agreeing to spend $850 million toward a Commanders stadium at a time when the district budget is just red ink up to its eyeballs? “Is this really going to cost us close to a billion dollars?” asked council chair Phil Mendelson, while economic development committee chair Kenyon McDuffie called it a “once in a lifetime opportunity” before being asked how the city could afford it and replying, “I haven’t seen the details.” It’s okay, all the other kids are doing it!
  • Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman says he does not support the Cincinnati Bengals owners’ request for $350 million in state money toward stadium renovations, and wants to hold out for a deal where taxpayers “can actually make money” like … the Cleveland Browns deal? I’m getting kind of tired of linking to my explanation of the Casino Night Fallacy, but seeing as this seems to be some sort of mass delusion that state legislators are signing up for, maybe it can’t be explained enough.
  • The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals owners are still kicking tires on potential stadium sites, yep, that’s excuse enough for a news story, nothing else journalists should be spending their time covering, probably. Local business leaders say it’s important, anyway, and if we didn’t have a free and independent press taking its editorial directives from the local chamber of commerce, where would this country be?
  • Modesto, California is trying to build a stadium to get a soccer franchise. Of all the 2025 things that you never expected we would be living through, that’s one of the 2025iest.
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DC mayor reportedly set to spend $850m on new Commanders stadium, budget cuts be damned

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been no secret that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser really really wants to build a new Washington Commanders stadium at the site of RFK Stadium, and yesterday some details were leaked via NBC Washington reporter Mark Segraves:

D.C. is close to a deal worth more than $3 billion to bring the Washington Commanders back to the District and build a new stadium at the RFK Stadium site.

So the “deal” is worth $3 billion, for both a stadium and a “mixed-use residential and retail development.” And who would be paying for that?

Multiple sources familiar with the deal told News4 that Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Commanders have the framework for a deal in place that would see the team paying the vast majority of the costs to build a new stadium and much of the money provided by the city going for infrastructure that will support the entire 180-acre development.

“Vast majority,” you say? So how much would D.C. taxpayers be on the hook for?

The Commanders would put up as much as $2.5 billion, and the District would provide up to $850 million, documents obtained by News4 show.

This is what’s known in news circles as “burying the lede,” and that’s quite a lede to bury. The unnamed sources specified that the district’s money would only go toward “infrastructure,” plus also “eligible capital costs,” with one example being parking garages that would be used by the new complex. Would D.C. get to recoup parking fees at the garages it built, at least? Or would Commanders owner Josh Harris get 100% of the revenues while taxpayers covered a quarter of the costs? The sources were silent on this, or else Segraves never asked.

As for where D.C. will get that $850 million, $350 million would be “paid in 2032 through taxes generated from the new development,” which is super unclear — bonds would be sold in 2032 based on future tax revenue? which taxes? — but not nearly as unclear as where the district would get that first $500 million:

One hurdle is the looming $410 million in budget cuts D.C. faces for the current fiscal year that were imposed by Congress. That must get resolved, then the mayor can present her budget for fiscal year 2026, which needs to be approved by the D.C. Council and Congress.

Details! Bowser claims her budget is ready to go, in which case we — and the D.C. council — should soon learn more actual specifics of this proposed deal.

In the meantime, a campaign called “Homes Not Stadiums” has launched a petition drive to hold a voter referendum on a measure to block the use of the RFK site for a stadium so that it can be used for affordable housing instead. “To prioritize the stadium over the needs of the people who actually live here, it’s not acceptable, and the mayor should allow the people to have a say in it,” said campaign organizer Kris Furnish, who is an experienced local activist, albeit not previously around budget or housing issues.

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Podcast claims $1.2B Browns subsidy wouldn’t cost Ohioans anything, because reasons

access_time personNeil deMause

If you read the internet, which clearly you do or how else are you seeing this, you may have noticed that it’s getting harder and harder to actually get any information from news sites these days. Between paywalls, a barrage of ever more intrusive ads, and clickbait editorial stylings (This Famous Celebrity Just Did a Thing You Won’t Believe!), readers are increasingly fighting a losing battle to find out what’s going on in the world, and that’s even before we get into everything increasingly being written by ChatGPT.

Which brings us to yesterday’s headline at Cleveland.com:

“If you’re not going to the games, it’s largely not going to affect you:” Breaking down the Browns stadium deal

Hmm? That’s the argument being made by advocates of a Cleveland Browns stadium subsidy, certainly: This is all “stadium-related” tax money, so it doesn’t matter if the state gives $600 million of it to Browns owner Jimmy Haslam. (Another $600 million would come from the city of Brook Park and Cuyahoga County, and that’s also part of the stadium deal, but apparently it’s considered rude to say so out loud.) Except that the bill would siphon off all taxes — sales, income, anything else not nailed down — from an as-yet-undetermined area surrounding the stadium, so it could affect you even if you’re just going near the games. And since these are taxes that are currently being paid into the state’s general fund on Browns-related sales and income at their existing stadium, instead giving the money to Haslam would be a net loss for anyone who relies on the state of Ohio to fund anything else, like schools or roads or what have you.

So who said that quote, anyway? An economist? A state legislator? A Browns lobbyist? ChatGPT? The Cleveland.com story, which is only two paragraphs long (unless there’s a longer version behind the paywall, but if so most readers will never see it*), doesn’t actually cite the quote at all, forcing interested readers to dig through its Today in Ohio podcast episode, which sports the title “Ohio House budget makes another devastating assault on public schools.” That title only refers to proposed property tax breaks that are threatening to eat into the schools budget, though; what about proposed tax redirection for Haslam?

Scroll past enough Home Depot ads, and you finally get to the Browns section around eight minutes in:

Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn: “The Haslams have put together a financing deal that on the surface looks a lot better for taxpayers than the recent deals for renovations for the Guardians and the Cavaliers….”

Impact editor Leila Atassi: “When you actually dig into the numbers on the Brook Park proposal, it is a lot better than the deals we’ve seen for renovations at Rocket Arena or Progressive Field. Here’s what we’ve found: The Haslams want, of course, the state and Cuyahoga County to each borrow $600 million to help build this new stadium, but the way they plan to pay it back is different: About 85% of the taxes would come directly from people who use the stadium, through things like ticket and parking taxes, or taxes generated by the surrounding development. Only about 15% would fall on the general public, like tourists who stay in hotels or people renting cars. So basically, if you avoid hotels in Cuyahoga County and rental cars, you won’t be paying for this stadium.”

Okay, let’s take a minute and talk about how the system of taxation actually operates. There are two pieces to it: First, the state or another governmental body collects them; then, it spends the proceeds on something. If the tax rate is raised to pay for a project — as was done with cigarette and alcohol taxes for the Guardians — that’s new tax revenue. And if more tax money comes in than would have without the project, those are incremental tax revenues.

Read the podcast quote again, and it increasingly comes off as complete nonsense. The money used would all come from existing taxes, not new ones, so people going to games or renting cars wouldn’t be paying any more than they would be in the absence of a new stadium. The difference is in what would happen to that tax money once it was collected, as it would now be handed over to Haslam instead of being kept to pay for government services. So the only way it wouldn’t cost regular Ohioans anything would be if there was an incremental increase in the amount of taxes collected as a result of the Browns moving a few miles south and any additional development that happened in Brook Park that otherwise would not take place anywhere in Ohio — neither of which are things that the Haslam proposal even pretends to claim it can prove would happen.

But let’s keep listening and see where that quote in the headline comes from:

Quinn: “At heart, they’ve come up with a plan where if you’re not going to the games, it’s largely not going to affect you. And we haven’t been able to say that about any other stadium deal pretty much in the history of Cleveland. And so that’s why it was kind of important to do the story. I don’t think people hate them are going to take the trouble to read it; they’re just going to say, ‘No. No. No.’ But the idea is they’re going to have to play somewhere, and they’ve come up with a deal that, from my standpoint, I don’t have to pay anything. That’s okay with me to not have to pay anything for this.”

Atassi: “That’s true.”

At the risk of being predictable: No. No. No. It’s simply not true that Ohio can take $1.2 billion in tax money and give it to the local billionaire sports owner and it won’t cost Ohioans a dime. But by employing enough doubletalk and hoping that listeners won’t think too hard about how taxes work, it’s possible to pretend that public money isn’t really public money, because someone related to the team touched it once.

I’m the first to acknowledge that modern journalists have a rough time of it, what with a dwindling handful of reporters forced to stay on top of the news while being graded on how many clicks they get. But this is straight-up journalistic malpractice: Two top editors at the city’s most prominent news source misleading listeners about basic economics, without even asking someone who could explain how budgets work.

And what does an actual economist have to say about this?

When compared to other shit sandwiches, this shit sandwich isn't so bad. #journalism www.cleveland.com/news/2025/04…

— J.C. Bradbury (@jcbradbury.bsky.social) 2025-04-14T23:41:57.559Z

Now there’s a headline. Somebody get J.C. a job as impact editor.

*UPDATE: A reader finally sent me a copy of the full paywalled version of the article, which does cite Quinn as the source of the quote, though it doesn’t identify who he is. And it also includes this disclaimer:

Artificial intelligence was used to help generate this story from Today in Ohio, a news podcast discussion by cleveland.com editors. Visitors to cleveland.com have asked for more text stories based on website podcast discussions.

Something tells me that when readers were asking for more “text stories” based on podcasts, they didn’t mean AI hallucinations. Though honestly the AI doesn’t appear to have been hallucinating here any more than the human podcast hosts, so maybe it’s all just part and parcel of the gray goo.

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Friday roundup: Bengals want $350m in stadium money from Ohio, A’s still insist Vegas stadium is happening for real

access_time personNeil deMause

The spring legislative season is always exhausting, but at least we’re already up to … April 11, is that all that it is? At least we can hope that all the team owners lining up for stadium and arena money have already gotten their bills submitted, though plenty of subsidy demands have emerged this late or later: Today is in fact the second anniversary of the Maryland legislature approving $1.2 billion in public money for renovations for the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens (a number that would eventually grow to an unlimited number depending on how much in taxes comes in) essentially without warning, so it wouldn’t be that much of a shock to see a surprise demand emerge from out of nowhere.

And speak of the devil:

  • Hamilton County and Cincinnati Bengals owners the Brown family have declared that if the state of Ohio is set on giving $600 million in tax money to the Cleveland Browns for a new stadium, it should also give $350 million to the Bengals for renovations. The entire renovation plan would cost $830 million and would include a new scoreboard, suite upgrades, new roof canopy, new seating, and improved walkways, escalators, and elevators — which sounds like a lot for that work, honestly, unless the suite bathrooms would be getting diamond-encrusted faucets — and would presumably include county money as well, though officials didn’t specify how much. “Our lease ends before theirs,” griped Hamilton County commissioner Stephanie Summerow Dumas. “Just wondering why is there so much focus on the Browns.” (Hmm, can’t possibly imagine why.) No word on whether the Bengals owners would tear up that insane state-of-the-art clause in their lease as part of the deal, you would think that would be important to ask, I’m looking at you, Cincinnati Enquirer.
  • Newly appointed West Sacramento Athletics president Marc Badain has declared that the team is still on track for a June groundbreaking for its Las Vegas stadium, blaming “skeptics” and “negativity” for the idea that John Fisher may not be able to find $1.15 billion in construction costs on top of the $600 million he’s set to get from the state of Nevada. “There’s a lot of people that make a living out of questioning the success of sports venues and what they actually do for a community,” said Badain, and while on the one hand I feel seen, I do question his description of this as “making a living,” as well as questioning whether a groundbreaking actually means you’re going to build a stadium given that just about anyone with a few shovels can hold one — whoops, there I go with the skepticism again, Badain sure has me pegged!
  • The Denver city council has some skeptics about spending $70 million for land and infrastructure for a NWSL stadium, with councilmember Sarah Parady saying, “We are facing the collapse of global financial markets. … I think we’re gonna be sitting here in a year [and] we will have paid in our amount of money from our incredibly scarce dollars that we are going to need for so many fundamental needs in the city.” Also concerning is the estimated additional $80 million in property taxes the city would be giving up by agreeing to buy and own the land under the stadium, according to  University of Colorado-Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, who is not only a local but also the expert in calculating such things.
  • Just a few months after $900 million in tax money was approved for upgrades to the Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club‘s Delta Center and the Salt Palace convention center, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s office abruptly expanded the project’s TIF district last Friday to also redirect taxes from two luxury hotels, an apartment tower, and parking facilities on an adjacent block, providing an additional $59 million in tax money kicked back to the developer, according to Propheter. (That developer would be Jazz and Hockey Club owner Ryan Smith — quelle coincidence!) Then on Tuesday the Salt Lake City council unanimously approved creating the embiggened tax district, with councilmember Victoria Petro bemoaning that “we had no options” but adding that “there is no decimal point here that has been taken with anything less than the gravest consideration,” assuming the gravest consideration can be applied in just two work days.
  • “Salt Lake Bees’ new stadium in Daybreak expected to bring economic impacts, growth to local businesses” was the headline on Utah’s ABC4 website on Tuesday, and if you’re wondering “expected by whom?” and your guess was the owner of a single local coffee shop, you’re a winner!
  • Bridgeport, Connecticut now has an idea for how to pay for a $75 million minor-league soccer stadium, and it’s a TIF district, surprise, surprise. Also the full cost would now be $100 million, and would involve additional state money as well, but who can put a price on being one of the umpteen million cities to have a team in one of the nation’s two warring sets of soccer leagues?
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Ohio house passes $600m subsidy for Browns stadium even as owner says team would stay without it

access_time personNeil deMause

As expected the last time I wrote an “I expected” lede, the Ohio state house has approved $600 million in tax subsidies for a new Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park that would cost a total of $2.4 billion and also require another $600 million in city and county money. The final version of the bill tweaked the terms very slightly — Browns owner Jimmy Haslam would pre-pay $50 million of his share instead of $38.5 million — but it’s still basically the same plan that Cleveland city and Cuyahoga County officials all hate.

The main person whose disdain for the plan matters, though, is Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who could veto it if he wants, though he’s hedged so far on whether he’ll actually go that far. The state senate needs to weigh in, too, and could make more changes if it wants.

All of this sounds very reasonable on the surface — democracy in action! — until you step back and consider the big picture of what’s going on here:

So what we have is one of the most expensive public stadium subsidy proposals in history, to induce a team that wouldn’t leave anyway to move a few miles south, to escape a building that is younger than Elle Fanning and which was just renovated and the team owner has said could be renovated again. And yet it looks like the main roadblock will be if the governor throws a hissy fit because it would require spending the wrong $600 million. We don’t get the checks and balances we want, and maybe not even the ones we deserve, unless we have all been very, very bad indeed.

 

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WTH is up with that “Bengals should move to Chicago” story?

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s always fun when you get to see how stupidity breaks out in real time, and so it was with the story growing over the last few days that the Cincinnati Bengals ownership could respond to the looming expiration of their lease by moving, and in particular by moving to Chicago. This, it turned out, was less a rumor — a rumor needs to be spread by multiple people — than conjecture, or maybe just a looming deadline and the desperation of one man, NBC Sports’ Mike Florio:

With the [Chicago] Bears getting nowhere when it comes to finagling taxpayer funding for a new stadium, the solution could come from having a second team play there.

Instantly, the inventory of games would double, from 10 to 20. It would become much easier for the Bears (and possibly the other team, unless it’s just a tenant) to pay for the building with minimal public assistance.

Enter the Bengals. They’re less than three months away from the final countdown to the expiration of their lease at Paycor Stadium. During the league meetings this week, executive V.P. Katie Blackburn said the quiet thing out loud — after 2025, the Bengals can go wherever they want to go.

It’s easy to come up with a list of cities that currently have no NFL teams. But the best outcome for the Bengals, and the Bears, could be to partner up in a new Chicagoland stadium. Lakefront or Arlington Heights. Wherever. The revenue from 20 NFL games each year, along with everything else that could be hosted in a fixed-roof building, should be able to pay for the building.

It’s hard to know where to even begin. Yes, splitting the costs of a $2 billion or so stadium between two teams would make it somewhat more affordable — but there’s little sign that the revenue from 20 NFL games a year plus “everything else” that could be hosted there would pay for a new building. After all, the Bears and Bengals each play 20 combined home games a year (including preseason) right now, so those revenues would have to rise by about $7 million per game — that’s $100 more per ticket sold, in a future Chicago where the two teams were fighting for the same fan dollars — just to break even.

Still, it was off to the news cycle races, as the Cincinnati Enquirer and multiple other outlets repeated Florio’s suggestion without asking anyone if it made any sense; something called Motorcycle Sports even chimed in, calling it a “bold idea.” USA Today’s Bengals Wire at least called it the “worst possible take,” though in doing so the site still managed to amplify Florio’s fantasy by sending clicks its way. (I realize I’m doing the same here; fact-checking bad reporting is always tricky to do without giving more air to the original misinformation, what whatcha gonna do.)

None of which matters for the idea of the Bengals moving to Chicago, because there is zero sign that either the Bengals or Bears owners would ever consider it. But it does help cement the idea in people’s heads that the Bengals might move somewhere, which is exactly what Bengals VP Katie Blackburn was hoping to do last week by saying, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the option up. So, you know, we’ll see.” (A statement, incidentally, that was called “a powerful, loaded comment“ by one Mike Florio.) That option is to extend the Bengals’ legendarily lucrative lease for five years, something the Bengals owners are mulling doing unless Hamilton County coughs up a sweet enough renovation deal to entice them to sign a new lease with fewer holographic replay system guarantees. Threatening to move the team at the same time as you’re threatening to stay and extend your sweetheart lease is … I think “bold idea” sums it up pretty well, don’t you?

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Friday roundup: Bucs want “major renovation,” won’t say yet who’d pay for it

access_time personNeil deMause

Today’s main event will be the liveblog of day two of the sports economics conference at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, which tons of presentations on stadiums and stadium-adjacent topics, but first here’s the regular Friday weekly news r0undup, written entirely on Thursday! If anyone’s roof blew off this morning, it’ll just have to wait till Monday.

  • Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Joel Glazer wants a “major renovation” of his stadium once the Bucs’ lease expires in 2028, funded by, uh: “We’re going through a phase right now where we’re assessing the stadium and what might be needed. And I know [Hillsborough County and the Tampa Sports Authority are] assessing the stadium and what might be needed, and once both of us are done with our assessments, then we come together and go talk about it, work through things.” Asked last summer about Bucs stadium funding, Tampa city spokesperson Adam Smith said team execs “haven’t approached the city about anything like that” and “we don’t expect them to”; either that was code for “paying for this is the county’s problem” or Smith really believes in the power of positive thinking.
  • Unlike the [Sacramento] Athletics, the Tampa Bay Rays have managed to sell out their 10,000-seat minor-league stadium in their opening series, even at prices running more than $100 for every seat that comes with an actual seat. Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano blames this on the Rays needing to make up for “a potential loss of revenue from ticket sales, concessions, luxury boxes and the associated costs of relocating for a year,” not the desire to capitalize on artificial ticket scarcity. It’ll be interesting to see if those high prices hold up once the Florida summer heat hits — for what it’s worth, there are still plenty of seats available for next week’s series against the Angels.
  • Speaking of the Rays, the clock officially ran out on their St. Petersburg stadium deal on Tuesday, and now owner Stu Sternberg is free to shop around for another city that wants to give him a billion dollars. Anyone? You in the back? You were just stretching your arms? I see.
  • Cincinnati Bengals VP Katie Blackburn was asked what’s up with the team’s lease that’s set to expire in 2026, and replied, “We could, I guess, go wherever we wanted after this year if we didn’t pick the up option up. So, you know, we’ll see.” NFL move-threat stan Mike Florio of NBC Sports called this “a powerful, loaded comment“; one might also argue that it’s exactly the kind of vague non-threat threat that you issue when you don’t actually want anyone noting that no cities have newer stadiums ready to offer. Potato, potahto!
  • The Jacksonville Jaguars need a place to play for two years while the city of Jacksonville is paying for stadium upgrades, so they’re asking Orlando to play them to play there, cool, cool.
  • A Massachusetts judge ruled that the demolition and reconstruction of White Stadium for the Boston Legacy F.C. can move forward, though opponents say they’ll continue to fight against it. (Boston Legacy, btw, is the new name for the much-derided BOS Nation F.C. women’s soccer team, presumably meant to honor the easiest way to get into Northeastern.)
  • Chicago Bears president Kevin Warren says the team is now focused on building a stadium in Arlington Heights, except for the portion of its focus that is on the Chicago lakefront. More news as actual news comes in, not just attempts at leverage plays.
  • Los Angeles elected officials are finally starting to get steamed about how the 2028 Olympics are being planned in a city that is recovering from disastrous fires, though so far it seems to be mostly about where the sailing competition will be held. If history is any guide, the real outrage won’t come until the Games actually begin.
  • Wondering how the affordable housing promises attached to the Brooklyn Nets arena are going? Does “Empire State Development (ESD), the gubernatorially controlled authority that oversees/shepherds the project, says it might enforce the $2,000 a month penalties for each unbuilt apartment, though that process may be fraught” answer that question? If you’re wondering why ESD only “might” enforce the penalty clause that was designed to make sure developers actually build what they promised, ESD VP Arden Sokolow says that if the state fined them, “you wouldn’t be getting any housing there,” whereas this way … oh, would you look at the time, we’ll have to cut off questions there!
  • Former Anaheim mayor and illegal helicopter registrant Harry Sidhu was sentenced to jail time for deleting emails to hide them from an FBI investigation into soliciting bribes related to a proposed Los Angeles Angels stadium deal — if you had “two months in federal prison plus a $55,000 fine” in the betting pool, you’re a winner!
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Ohio legislature kills governor’s stadium slush fund, will he veto its Browns subsidy bill in return?

access_time personNeil deMause

As expected, the Ohio state legislature has killed Gov. Mike DeWine’s proposal to use increased sports gambling, cigarette, and cannabis taxes to fund a $2 billion stadium slush fund, and will instead move ahead with its own plan to collect all sales and income and other state taxes from in and around a new Cleveland Browns stadium and use them to give Browns owner Jimmy Haslam $600 million toward the stadium’s construction cost. (Cuyahoga County and the city of Brook Park would be on the hook for another $600 million.)

DeWine still would have to sign off on the legislature’s omni-TIF plan, though, and if the pro-stadium NEOtrans blog is to be believed, he may veto it instead:

[DeWine’s] opposition — including a possible veto — to HSG’s funding proposal could also cause removal of the funding before the legislature votes in a couple of months on the a proposed biennial budget that starts July 1, 2025 and ends June 30, 2027.

But if it remains in the final bill, there’s a strong possibility that DeWine could veto it. If he does, it requires a 3/5 majority vote in both the Ohio Senate and Ohio House of Representatives to override a governor’s veto — and that supermajority may not exist.

That’s an overwhelming number of coulds, but, sure, a three-fifths majority is harder to muster than 51%, so the threat of a DeWine veto would throw at least a medium-sized wrench into Haslam’s stadium plans. So is the governor really threatening a veto, or what?

At a forum at the Columbus Metropolitan Club led by the Statehouse News Bureau’s Jo Ingles, DeWine was asked if he would veto the amendment. It would add the $600 million bond package to the budget and would eliminate his proposed sports facilities fund, paid for by doubling the tax on sports gambling operators, who are mostly located out of state.

“If you look at the next 10 to 20 years, there’s going to be a lot of demand on the state budget for this. I don’t think we can afford to continue to go into the general fund of our budget and take this money,” DeWine said.

That is, as Statehouse News Bureau put it, “stopping short of threatening a veto” — though the site didn’t speculate about whether DeWine actually doesn’t intend to veto the legislature’s plan or just isn’t threatening a veto yet. Add in that DeWine was still trying to push for his own now-dead subsidy plan at the time he said all that, and it’s really impossible to say for sure what the governor’s game plan is until he responds to the legislature stripping his plan from the budget, which he hasn’t yet done.

But so long as we’re reading tea leaves, I’ll play: The Republican-led state legislature didn’t axe DeWine’s tax plan because they’re antsy about handing money over to sports billionaires, but because they’re antsy about anything that can be said to be “raising taxes”: “Anywhere where there was a program that was proposed to be added or expanded, we either said no or dialed back the increase,” finance chair Rep. Brian Stewart bragged. Taking the money from existing taxes and giving it to Haslam, though, doesn’t count as “spending” in their eyes — same as giving income tax deductions to Ohioans who donate to anti-abortion fake medical clinics isn’t considered spending, even if it’s exactly the same from a budget perspective.

What we have here, then, is a squabble not over whether to give gobs of money to the Browns and other Ohio sports teams to build stadiums for their own profit, but rather which money to use. This seems like the sort of thing that a bunch of fellow Republicans could hash out a compromise over — or that could lead legislative leaders to wait out a lame-duck governor and see if the next one is more on their wavelength. Sure would be nice if the main debate here were over whether the subsidies are worth it at all and not just where the money will come from, but we live in the worst of all possible timelines.

 

 

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Browns owner: If Ohio won’t give me $1.2B in tax money, I’ll keep playing in Cleveland

access_time personNeil deMause

Apparently all the stadium news decided to happen in the last 24 hours, that’s okay, I didn’t have any better plans for things to do with my Tuesday. Anyway, in Cleveland yesterday, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam revealed his “Plan B” if the state, county, and city don’t approve $1.2 billion in public money for a new stadium in Brook Park:

Haslam said it will come down to whether Ohio lawmakers approve $600 million in funding for the stadium proposal in the budget at the end of June. If so, the plan is to have shovels in the ground to begin construction in Brook Park in the first quarter of next year.

If not, Haslam told reporters that the Browns would move to “Plan B,” which would be renovating the existing Huntington Bank Field in downtown Cleveland.

So, wait, hang on. That $600 million in state tax money, the revenues that supposedly would cease to exist without the Browns playing in Ohio, is needed because without it … the Browns would keep on playing at another location in Ohio? Even if you think that Cleveland would be better off reclaiming its lakefront property that is currently occupied by the Browns stadium, there is no math by which it’s worth spending $1.2 billion in government money just to move the Browns and their fans a few miles southwest.

There is certainly a theme emerging to this firehose of a news day, and it is this: From Oregon to Arizona to Ohio, sports team owners and their pals in state and local government are tallying up every scrap of tax revenue they possibly can as “attributable” to the local sports team, and then demanding a check in that amount — and never mind if it’s tax revenue that the government would be getting anyway because if the team left people would just spend their money elsewhere, or because the team owner has no intention of leaving regardless. There haven’t been many big changes in the stadium subsidy playbook over the 27 years I’ve been writing this blog, but I’m tempted to say that the increasing reliance on the Casino Night Fallacy is a growing trend. Next up: To find out whether state legislators can see through it as well as Oscar Madison, or if they’re happy enough to use it as an excuse to hand over public cash to the local sports billionaires, whether it makes any damn sense or not.

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Friday roundup: Angels owner could be skimping on stadium repairs, St. Pete may send Rays owner a bill for their wasted stadium time

access_time personNeil deMause

Hey, did you hear the one about the time that then-New York governor and now-New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo gave two of Elon Musk’s cousins $750 million in public money to open a solar-panel factory that ended up not making any solar panels but just re-sold another company’s solar panels for twice as much per watt as the national average? Me neither until recently — consider it bonus topical content.

Meanwhile, back in the now:

  • Anaheim city officials have no idea how much maintenance work is needed at city-owned Angel Stadium because the Los Angeles Angels‘ lease doesn’t require them to tell the city about repair needs, but it could be “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth, according to state auditors. They suggested either asking Angels owner Arte Moreno if the city can do occasional inspections or maybe seeking a court order. It’s important because Moreno is on the hook for certain maintenance costs, while others would fall on the city; the Angels owner recently said, “I’m not going to put $200 or $300 million into a stadium that a city owns without any of their participation. Maybe we’ll get a new mayor and council that wants us to stay,” which is not exactly a commitment to live up to his lease obligations.
  • Pinellas County is considering sending Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg a bill for county time and money spent on the St. Petersburg stadium deal Sternberg ultimately backed out of, and St. Pete Mayor Ken Welch said the idea “has merit” and he may do the same. “Yeah, why not?” remarked county commission chair Brian Scott, who was previously for the stadium deal. “When we find out what that is, we’ll send them an invoice.”
  • Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine still wants to raise sports gambling taxes to raise $600 million toward a Cleveland Browns stadium (and more toward other future stadiums), but the state legislature still prefers its omni-TIF idea to do the same, and DeWine hasn’t said he’ll veto the legislature’s plan. As for the idea of just not giving Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam $600 million to move from one part of the state to another, no one (besides state house Democrats, but who cares about them) seems to be interested in that, way to go, Ohio.
  • Bexar County, the city of San Antonio, and the Spurs owners have signed a nonbinding agreement not to use county property taxes to fund a new $1.5 billion basketball arena, instead relying on hotel and car rental taxes, which, uh, was the plan all along? Could this nonbinding agreement just be a way to get headlines like “Bexar County agrees not to use property taxes to fund new Spurs arena”? Surely elected officials would not be that cynical!
  • Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman says he has “multiple [stadium] opportunities on both sides of the state line,” because of course he does, he wants to be a savvy negotiator, after all.
  • The USL is expanding to compete directly with MLS and adopting promotion and relegation even, and you know what that means: lots of new stadiums! Modesto, California gets one, and Rogers, Arkansas gets one, and Albany, New York gets one, and by “gets one” I mean of course “gets to help pay for one,” that’s just the price of doing business in a world where there are now two leagues that could be forced to compete for the right to play in markets, hmm.
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