Category: Washington Commanders

The Washington, D.C. city council is set to cast its final vote on the Commanders stadium deal tomorrow, because D.C. has one of those council systems where stuff has to be voted on twice to be sure that legislators are serious. Given that the council already voted 9-3 last month to approve the deal, nobody expects anything different here, but everyone and their sister is still scrambling to get in some last-minute lobbying:

• Mayor Muriel Bowser called the Commanders deal the “best and fastest way” to redevelop the old RFK Stadium site, saying, “We don’t have a $2.1 billion partner waiting in the wings,” an odd remark given that Bowser specifically chose not to seek competitive bids for the site.
• Leaders of three local unions wrote an op-ed in the Washington Business Journal calling the Commanders stadium deal “a major win for our unions, our members and every other working-class resident of this city” thanks to the Commanders’ guarantee of using union labor to build the stadium and hotels on the site and employing a majority of D.C. residents for building the rest of the project — a guarantee that helped win over the two key swing votes needed to pass the stadium bill.
• Kingman Park residents are pushing for a last-minute deal to change plans for a new parking garage that they say will tower over nearby park space. And also maybe add grocery stores. And a new Metro stop.

Ignoring Bowser, who’s gonna Bowser, these are clear signs that we’re deep into the haggling over the price phase of the Commanders deal, which is all too often the only phase many stakeholders get involved in. If you’re going to hand over $6.6 billion or so in subsidies to a billionaire private equity goon, yes, it is absolutely preferable that at least district residents get some well-paying jobs, and that neighborhood residents get some say in how it affects their immediate surroundings. But when details like these — and not the $6.6 billion or so in subsidies, most of them hidden in the fine print as is standard these days — end up being the main or even the only thing that unions and community members focus on, that’s some serious missing the forest for the trees, not to mention an open invitation for sports billionaires to buy off opposition by throwing some cheap community benefits at the problem.

How we got to the point where advocacy groups are mostly just concerned about getting theirs is a long, long story, and probably needs to start with that time the U.S. government decided to break up unions that took a bigger-picture view of social change by trying to deport their members to countries they weren’t even from. There are definitely exceptions: Some community groups aren’t just NIMBYs, and some unions do try to make the world a better place for more than their own members. But so long as we live in a world where construction workers turn up to testify on behalf of any development project that’ll employ them, even when it means less public resources available for their union and non-union neighbors, stopping rich people from siphoning off tax money is always going to be an even more uphill battle than it would be just from all the other rich people supporting them.

The D.C. city council voted on Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Washington Commanders stadium plan on Friday, and it went as expected, approving the revised agreement 9-3. Needing five votes to block a two-thirds majority, opponents were only able to muster three: Matthew Frumin, Brianne Nadeau, and Robert White. Councilmembers Charles Allen, Zachary Parker, and Janeese Lewis George all signed on to the deal once the Commanders agreed with local unions to guarantee using union labor and 51% local hiring on the mixed-use component of the project. Frumin, who had been a potential yes vote, switched to no after team officials refused to agree to financial penalties if housing on the site isn’t built on time.

Commanders owner Josh Harris is now set to get $1.058 billion in city cash plus at least $5.6 billion in free rent and tax breaks, which will be the biggest public sports subsidy in U.S. history by a mile. (The previous record depends on how you calculate the value of tax breaks, but all the contenders are well under $2 billion.) There’s still another council vote to be held in September, but D.C. has apparently told Harris to go ahead with stadium work regardless, apparently on the assumption that D.C. won’t be hit by any hurricanes in the interim.

For a team owner who had no other tangible offers in place from other local governments, and a site that was a potential gold mine for the district but which will now be in Harris’s control on a 90-year sweetheart lease, $6.6 billion is a pretty incredible get. Maybe savvy enough negotiators don’t need leverage? Or maybe it’s as simple as what one councilmember, hiding behind a veil of anonymity, told ESPN: “The alternative is we’re still talking about this in 10 years.” Got some bad news for you, buddy: You may yet be talking about this again in 10 years.

The D.C. city council held its second day of Washington Commanders stadium hearings yesterday, questioning Mayor Muriel Bowser and team officials, but all you really need to know is in this paragraph from the enshittified Washington Post:

By the hearing’s end, it was clear that a majority of the council members had made peace with the idea of supporting a publicly funded stadium development despite initial skepticism over the price tag. A council budget office study found that while a different type of mixed-use development may generate more revenue in the long run, a development anchored by a new pro football stadium would unleash economic benefits six years sooner — a timeline that multiple lawmakers said they found persuasive.

That council budget office study is here, and this is the chart showing what apparently turned the heads of some councilmembers:

If you think the blue line looks more enticing than the yellow line, congratulations, you’re qualified to be on the D.C. council!

But the budget office didn’t only look at tax revenues from the project — which, importantly, were just generated by plugging the amount of spending at a stadium district into the REMI projection algorithm, with no accounting for whether it would cannibalize any spending or development from elsewhere in the district. It also looked at public costs (under separate cover), and as Greater Greater Washington reported, hoo baby would there be a lot of those:

That’s cumulative cost, not present value — in other words, it counts costs 30 years down the road the same as costs today. But it also leaves out one mammoth subsidy: The 26 years of rent-free land, followed by 64 more years of reduced rent, that Commanders owner Josh Harris would get for his surrounding development, which economist Geoff Propheter has previously calculated as costing the city somewhere between $6 billion and $25 billion.

But, you know, that blue line looks good enough to dispense with most councilmembers’ skepticism, sure, let’s run with that. With today’s council vote looking largely in the bag, councilmembers unhappy with the deal appear to be trying to win some concessions around the edges, which is tough to do when your vote isn’t needed for passage, but they’ve giving it their best shot:

• Zachary Parker wants more local union jobs at a hotel adjacent to the stadium.
• Robert White wants guarantees that affordable housing will be built in the first 10 years as promised, and is seeking a housing preservation fund to keep residents from being priced out of the nearby Kingman Park neighborhood.
• Charles Allen wants to cut down on the number of parking garages built for the stadium, saying he’s worried it would lead to more traffic.

Concerns like these are all fine enough, but focusing on them when there’s a $6-billion-plus taxpayer giveaway on the table is a little like cleaning the bank windows while your vault is being robbed. D.C. residents have said they overwhelmingly want a better deal; we’ll find out today if the council agrees, or if it thinks trimming a few hundred million dollars off the billions in subsidies to a sports billionaire is good enough for government work.

After more than 13 hours of public testimony — WTOP called it “more than five hours,” which is technically true but maybe not the most precise — yesterday’s D.C. council hearing on the city’s proposed Washington Commanders deal finally wrapped up in the wee hours of the morning, after the last of the 503 people signed up to testify had finished. (I’d guesstimate that about three-quarters of those signed up never actually showed, or as WTOP would call it, “more than 20%.”) There were plenty of people both for and against the stadium plan, with most of the “yes” side talking about their love for the team or desire for more jobs for the Ward 7 neighborhood, while much of the “no” contingent focused on the extremely team-friendly lease deal that would see the district giving up billions of dollars in cash, tax breaks, and use of public land while getting almost nothing back in terms of rent or shared revenues.

You can read some samples of yesterday’s testimony here, or download individual statements, or even watch the entire thing over from the beginning if you’re a masochist. But perhaps more important than the opinions of those of us who had nothing better to do on a Tuesday morning/afternoon/evening is a new poll showing that D.C. residents overwhelmingly want the city council to reject the current deal and keep fighting for a better one:

60% of DC residents want the DC Council to continue negotiations with the Commanders to strike a better deal for District taxpayers, even if it risks the deal altogether, or to explore other options for the RFK site, according to a new poll commissioned by Greater Greater Washington and conducted by Tavern Research from July 27-29, 2025. Just 26% want the Council to approve the proposed deal as-is, with no amendments or negotiations…

• 65% of poll respondents oppose exempting the Commanders from paying property taxes for 30 years.
• 62% oppose exempting the Commanders from paying sales taxes on the sale of personal seat licenses, which give owners the right to buy tickets for a certain seat at any public stadium event.
• 54% oppose giving the Commanders exclusive rights to develop housing and retail around a football stadium at RFK for $1 per year.
• 63% believe the District should instead hold a competitive bidding process to assign development rights to the land around a football stadium.
• 61% believe the DC Council should eliminate some stadium parking spots to pay for a new Metrorail station.

Notably, this poll was taken after council chair Phil Mendelson got Commanders owner Josh Harris to agree to pay some taxes he initially wasn’t going to, trimming the total public subsidy from more than $7 billion to more than $6.6 billion. (Or as WTOP would call it, “more than a dollar.”) No adjustments to any of those bullet-pointed items above are included in Mendelson’s revised plan, which is set to be voted on by the council at some point tomorrow.

Today the council will hear from representatives of the Commanders and the mayor’s office, who presumably won’t be required to stick to the three-minute speaking limit that the hoi polloi were given, but also will hopefully give time for some pointed questions from councilmembers. (Here’s a whole bingo card full of them, if anyone on the council needs some ideas.) Right now, with a little over an hour before the hearing starts, the official livestream says it’s for “invited guests only,” so refresh that page later to see if a better link shows up. And if you’re really desperate for some Commanders stadium-related entertainment, here’s what I testified via Zoom at around 9 pm last night:

Good evening. My name is Neil deMause, and I’m co-author of the book and website “Field of Schemes,” which investigates how public money is used to fund private sports stadiums. I’ve been studying this issue nationwide for three decades, and I feel safe in saying that the proposed Commanders stadium bill would be not merely a bad deal for DC, but one of the most wasteful uses of taxpayer dollars on a private sports facility in US history.

This isn’t a matter of believing that “any subsidy is unacceptable,” or that it wouldn’t be nice to have the Commanders back in D.C. at a reasonable price. But according to the best estimates of experts in tax expenditures, the total cost of the District’s cash expenses, tax breaks, and land discounts to Josh Harris would add up to at minimum $7 billion, money the district would never get back. Even restoring the handful of tax revenues that are proposed in the revised deal — revenues any other business in DC would pay as a matter of course, mind you — would still leave taxpayers holding the bag for well over $6 billion. That’s more than quadruple the most expensive public cost to date — it wouldn’t just break the record for the largest subsidy for a US sports stadium, it would completely shatter it.

One common theme I’ve found in my research is that city officials almost never realize they have leverage in negotiating stadium deals – all too often, they approach talks from the vantage point of “What’s the team owner asking for, and how can we make it not quite as bad?” Right now neither Maryland nor Virginia nor any other local government has offered Josh Harris anything, let alone the billions of dollars DC is proposing to provide. The District is, quite simply, bidding against itself, which is a great way to end up needlessly giving away the store.

Unfortunately, cities do this all the time. Not because sports fans want them to sign a blank check to team owners — as a sports fan myself, I know well that fans hate the idea of handing over their money once at the ticket window and again on tax day. And I know that elected officials can’t truly believe that new stadiums are an economic boon when 40 years of research shows they create very few jobs, and very little new tax revenue, relative to their massive cost. But I also know it can be hard to say no when the other public needs that the money could be spent on can’t afford lobbyists like wealthy sports owners do.

There are still ways the council can improve this deal, as numerous witnesses have testified today. At the very least, the council should demand that Josh Harris come up with a competitive offer, with fair rent and sharing of revenues from the stadium, parking garages, and surrounding development, that matches what DC could get for a mixed-use development on the open market. To vote for the bill as it stands currently would just be taking public money that could otherwise be used on city services for all residents and handing it over to a single billionaire, and no one, no matter how much they love their NFL team, should want that. Thank you.

Today’s the big day in D.C.’s debate over giving at least $6.6 billion in subsidies to Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris for a new stadium and other development at the RFK Stadium site, as the council prepares to hold a hearing that will consist mostly of public testimony about the plan. At last count, 503 people had signed up to testify; I’m #369, which if everyone takes their allotted three minutes and no one gives up in frustration would have me speaking at around 4:30 am. WUSA took a peek at testimony that was posted online ahead of the hearings and determined that most of the speakers are in favor of the stadium deal, or at least in favor of the Commanders moving to D.C. — since Mayor Muriel Bowser’s public messaging has been that it’ll only cost the city $1 billion and taxpayers will make it all back anyway, ignoring all the hidden tax breaks and rent-free use of city land, it’s going to be hard to tell what residents would think of the deal if they had all the numbers.

And speaking of making the money back, the Washington Post points out that the 200 events a year a Commanders stadium is projected to host would mostly include things like bar mitzvahs, quoting sports economist Victor Matheson as saying this makes the event figure “intentionally misleading,” while citing unnamed “boosters” as saying that “an event is an event” — is bothsidesing a personal liberty or an aspect of free markets, I forget?

I’m not going to bother to try liveblog all 25 hours or whatever of today’s hearing — especially since council chair Phil Mendelson has signaled that he’s made up his mind already and is just letting the public blow off steam — but I’ll post updates here if I notice anything significant like swing-vote councilmembers actually appearing to pay attention. You can play along as well by watching here and posting in the comments.

UPDATE 12:38 pm: Not going great!

Two hours into the DC Commanders stadium hearing, and I don't think a single person testifying has mentioned the public costs, only the benefits (in jobs, new concerts, etc.) If you only care about what you're getting and not what you're spending, have I got a used car to sell you.

— Field of Schemes (@fieldofschemes.bsky.social) 2025-07-29T16:23:37.095Z

It's also clear that a bunch of people in the neighborhood around the stadium site are saying "hey, at least our community will get some jobs for once" — but if DC ends up spending millions of dollars for each new job, that's a hugely wasteful way to get some hot dog vendor gigs for Ward 7.

— Field of Schemes (@fieldofschemes.bsky.social) 2025-07-29T16:27:23.325Z

D.C. council president Phil Mendelson has issued a press release announcing that he has indeed scheduled a first council vote on a Washington Commanders stadium deal for next Friday, August 1, and that his revised deal will include the following concessions from the team:

The Commanders have agreed that the following revenues instead will go to the District:

$260M parking revenues from non-stadium-event days (team estimates ~$170M higher)
$112M parking taxes (18% rate) will go to the city
$ 54M Sales taxes on merchandise (10.25%) will go to the city
$248M Sales taxes on food and beverages (10%) will go to the city
= $674 million total (over 30 years)

That “(over 30 years)” implies that much of those taxes and other revenues won’t arrive until the 2050s or later. Without a revenue schedule it’s tough to know exactly how backloaded D.C.’s new revenues would be, but even if it was evenly divided across the 30 years — unlikely in the extreme, given inflation — we would only be looking at about $350 million in present value. If we deduct that from the estimated $7 billion–plus city cost of cash grants plus tax breaks and discounted rent, that brings us to a mere $6.65 billion, still more than four times the record subsidy for a U.S. sports stadium.

In a press conference, Mendelson said that “the Commanders have thought it’s really, really, really important for the council to get to a vote by the end of the month,” and that he used that as leverage to improve the deal. If the first council vote passes next week, he said, a second vote is tentatively scheduled for September 17 after the council returns from its summer recess.

There are some other tweaks — Mendelson’s statement indicates that “The Council’s legislation redirects $600 million from the ‘Sports Facility Fee’ (formerly Ballpark Fee) to a Transportation Improvement Fund for Metro improvements,” though it appears this would just go to improvements for the Commanders stadium’s Metro stop — but nothing as significant as “not give Commanders owner Josh Harris 90 years of rent breaks” or “ask Harris to make payments in lieu of property tax.” Hopefully we’ll learn more by next week’s public hearings, though as of now the official legislation hasn’t been updated, so it’s always possible no one will know what they’re voting on until the day of the vote or shortly beforehand. Democracy!

UPDATE: I’m still watching the entirety of Mendelson’s press conference, but just got to this amazing bit:

REPORTER: I think there was a perception that we were waiting on the two additional studies that have not been released yet, and then the hearings — and I think yesterday, speaking to people, they were under the assumption that these hearings, their points of view and their input would be taken into consideration before a deal. And then it’s announced today that we have a tentative deal, I think they’re a little bit taken aback. What do you tell those people that, 400-plus people have signed up, they’re going to be ready to testify and they’re like, “Well, it seems like a done deal.”

MENDELSON: Well, I think it’s important that we still hear from the public. I expect that a lot of the testimony is going to be very simple “We think it’s great the Commanders are coming back, and we want you to vote yes.” I think we are going to hear a lot of that. And I think we will also hear from some folks that they think that any subsidy is unacceptable to them. It’s important that folks have the opportunity to express those views. Where we are is, I think, much more nuanced and more beneficial to this city.

Democracy dictates that we hear from both types of overly simplistic citizens before dismissing their opinions as insufficiently nuanced! Or, well, after dismissing them, technically. But we want to hear from them anyway, it’s so nice to get the thoughts of the little people.