If the lawsuit succeeds, things get interesting: Would Ohio dig around for a new revenue stream? Or could lawmakers reconsider whether giving Browns owner Jimmy Haslam $600m to move from one part of the state to another is really such a great idea?
The biggest problem with starting the ball rolling on a taxpayer subsidy for a man who made his billions in subprime lending: Is "hoping" the Blazers will stay in Portland for two more decades enough of a return on $600m in public spending?
Indiana's plans to give the Chicago Bears owners $1B or $4B or more for a stadium remain TBD, as do Illinois' plans to give them a $2B tax break plus maybe “infrastructure” money — this seems unlikely to end well either way.
Vowing that "no part" of billions in city and county spending on the Rays would take away from other priorities is quite the claim, especially when one option on the table is to fund a stadium by raiding a county infrastructure and schools fund.
St. Paul Mayor Kaoholy Her said she plans to fight hard for state subsidies for billionaire Wild owner Craig Leipold's hockey arena, while "above all" being "committed to being a good steward of taxpayer dollars," who said comedy was dead?
Typically, Ohio asks taxpayer-funding recipients to extend their leases — but not the Bengals, nuh-uh. This would make $234m in state money in exchange for a zero-year lease extension the most expensive per-year stadium subsidy in history, at $∞/year.
This is going to be a difficult choice for Bears owner George McCaskey, given there are still unknowns with both states' likely $1B+ offers — but with no deadline to make a decision, he can sit back and hope the bidding war continues to escalate.
I have a hard enough time keeping up with all the pro sports news — to cover college sports, too, I'd definitely need an intern.
He's not still on the council — he resigned in 2020 amid a cloud of ethics violation allegations. But now he's running for council chair against Phil Mendelson, because America!
Jack Evans, who I once described as an "unindicted co-conspirator" of D.C. sports team owners, just texted me asking for campaign donations, I wonder which AI he has running his fundraising.
This week's votes in IN and IL are only the start of the Bears stadium battle, not the end. Keep that in mind if you read headlines declaring the team's move to Indiana is complete; we've seen those before, and they don't always work out how you expect.
And you could still be right! But I'm increasingly thinking it's possible that Fisher won't let the prospect of setting fire to his family fortune stand in the way of being the toast of MLB's smallest market.
I always go back to Nixon's quote (paraphrasing) that "I can't use nukes in Cambodia, the hippies will burn down the White House." Not that I advocate *literally* burning things down, but you do want electeds to be more afraid of public backlash than of what lobbyists will say about them at parties.
It's a billionaire's prerogative to spend their money on really stupid crap, so just because spending $1.4B of his own money on a Vegas A's stadium would be a dumb idea doesn't necessarily mean John Fisher isn't prepared to do it.
Getting certainty about the size of IN's Bears stadium tax district seems the bare minimum of due diligence, but it's unclear if anyone will attempt that. Blank checks aren't a good way to go into stadium talks, but it looks like where things are headed.
With no fiscal analysis attached to the Bears bill to project how much each of the taxes will raise, it's impossible to determine Indiana's total public price tag, though something upwards of $1B seems likely given all the revenue streams involved.
Not if the team ends up having to lower ticket prices by the same amount as the ticket tax goes up. www.fieldofschemes.com/2017/07/14/1...
Bears spox: "Hammond is the site we are focused on. Work to be done.” Is that like saying Hammond is their current first choice for going steady?
Yeah, ticket taxes are definitely the least of all evils, especially since teams generally then have to keep ticket prices less egregious to keep from overpricing the market. Which is one reason why the Bears may not go for the Indiana offer, honestly, team owners *loathe* high ticket taxes.
Bears stadium subsidies in Indiana reportedly could include a special stadium tax district in Hammond, a 12% ticket tax, 1% county food and beverage taxes, increased county hotel taxes, and more. Total public cost: Nobody's saying yet.
Royals owner John Sherman appears to be admitting that the urgency is all on his end: Any stadium offer on the table from KCMO may not be there forever, and he'd better grab it before city officials realize what leverage they have.
If anything, Bears officials should be sweating: If Indiana doesn't take up a sports authority bill in the next 48 hours, their leverage with Illinois vanishes. That's a fine tightrope to walk, and it'll be fascinating to see how team execs approach it.
As the old journalism adage goes, "if your grandmother says she loves you, take her at her word and put it on the front page, so long as she owns a local sports team."
"We want tax breaks and infrastructure spending for a stadium in Arlington Heights." (Crickets) "Or maybe we'll stay in Chicago." (Crickets) "No, really, Arlington Heights." (Crickets) "You know, Indiana is a place." (Phone rings off the hook, caller ID says "JB")
Given that when Kansas tried a similar exercise in Chiefs net tax estimation, economists deemed the resulting figures "incredibly optimistic," "insane," and "just not credible," it's probably best to take Wyandotte County's numbers with a grain of salt.
A state arena subsidy bill would give new Blazers owner Tom Dundon $360m from all income taxes from players, staff, performers, and even construction workers doing upgrades, plus another $240m in city/county money, in return for a lease extension TBD.
Who even knew there was a Nobel Coal Prize? (I’m assuming it’s just a lump of coal.)
80% of all news headlines should come with an assumed invisible “claims press release.”
Illinois Gov. Pritzker said "we're not throwing money at building a stadium" while also saying there's "progress that's been made" on providing state infrastructure money and tax cuts for a Bears stadium.
It's been called that since 1949, after the guy who donated the money to build it. And no, they're not planning on renaming it Taxpayer Stadium now.
