The leader of supermajority Republicans in the House said on Wednesday he hasn’t seen two analyses from state entities of the tax revenue projections for the Cleveland Browns domed stadium development in Brook Park. The House budget includes a package of $600 million in 30-year bonds to help finance that project, which Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) has supported.
The Haslam Sports Group claimed the stadium project would bring in $1.3 billion more in tax revenue than the state would spend on the bonds. On March 31, Huffman said those numbers were getting reviewed by the treasurer and the state budget office.
“We've sent it to the Treasurer's office. We've sent it to OMB. We sent it to lots of people and everybody. But their calculation is that all of this money will come back to the state," Huffman said. "This is a $3.6 billion economic development project. It's the largest in the history of the state with the exception of the Intel project, about $100 million more than the battery plant down in Fayette County."
A report released Monday by the Legislative Service Commission, which does research for state lawmakers, said it wasn't able to get the full report from the consultants working with HSG, but that it believes the revenue estimates are "overly optimistic." A few hours after that LSC report, Office of Budget and Management Director Kimberly Murnieks released a memo that had been written in March that blasted the tax revenue estimates. Her memo said the bond proposal plan is "risky" and that the Haslam Sports Group “inappropriately overstates projections of future taxes generated by the project, over-inflating positive impacts of the Brook Park development." She added that with there are other big capital project awaiting funding, "the state does not have the capacity to accommodate these priorities plus $600 million in bonds for a single sports facility.”
“I haven't reviewed either of those reports,” said Huffman on Wednesday when asked to react to those two reviews. On the LSC analysis, Huffman said, “I just I read a kind of a story about it, but I haven't reviewed the report, so it's hard to respond to it." And Huffman said he also hadn't read the memo from Murnieks, "which apparently was available in March but wasn't made available to the House during our time. I guess it would have been nice to have that that report while we were reviewing all of that."
But the leader of House minority Democrats said she had thoughts about those analyses.
"I have read them. Not surprised to see that the estimates were likely generous and overestimates," said Minority Leader Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington). She said with cuts to Medicaid, the decision not to fully fund the Fair School Funding Plan and less funding to food banks and libraries, the plan is "morally reprehensible."
Some Democrats had raised concerns about the bond proposal, but Russo said there are Republicans who are worried as well.
"This plan needs to be vetted. We need to have information and input from multiple sources, because in the last couple of decades of public funding for stadium construction has proven over and over again the return on investment is not good," Russo said. "I don't know why we think Ohio is an exception or the Browns stadium is an exception to that."
Gov. Mike DeWine has not threatened to veto the bond plan, but instead has talked up his sports facilities fund, which would be backed by a doubling of the tax on sports gambling operators. Republicans in the House stripped that out of the budget, saying they had no interest in raising taxes. They also removed tax hikes on cigarettes to fund a child tax credit, and on marijuana for money to put toward the state's 9-8-8 suicide hotline, grants to high schools to bring back driver's education and other items.
