By Roldo Bartimole
The city will fork over $2 million a year for 15 years to the billionaire-owned Cleveland Browns for stadium “improvements.” Plus another $12 million from the sin tax revenues. Both follow a $5.8 million capital contribution earlier this year by the city.
That’s a $30 million pledge, atop the $17.8 for $47.8 million. A nice holiday gift.
The Browns are supposed to invest $90 million. Where or how that’s guaranteed no one can really say. They might spend only $20 million or less. Private business.
Would you take Jimmy Haslam’s word for it? I wouldn’t, given his track record as a big time chiseler.
The Council vote was a rush job. It always is. Down and dirty. Better to avoid investigation. And on a holiday week, too. Just after an election. Diabolically schemed. Better to deceive and manipulate.
It is more than thumb your nose at the public. It’s rub your nose in it.
It’s sickening to see veteran council members as Joe Cimperman, Matt Zone, Martin Sweeney and Jay Westbrook vote for this deal. They bend so well.
Westbrook came into Council as a Kucinich progressive. He now leaves as a complete sell-out. He helped Mayor White pass the original sin stadium deal. Now he’ll likely get a profile in courage send off from the Plain Dealer.
I wrote about the first dirty deed: “Cleveland’s City Council had an extremely difficult time but barked up a new football stadium despite four days of testimony that make it clear to anyone with half a brain that the one-sided deal was bad for the city.”
At that time, I wrote in Point of View, Vol. 28, No. 11, my newsletter: “The real kicker is that ALL the revenue sources you can think of – from tickets to loges, food concessions to parking, to advertising to naming rights and novelty sales – all flow directly to the eventual team owners…” including 108 loges, 8,000 club seats and permanent seat licenses at up to $2,000 each.
(Point of View is available on the CSU memory site.)
We always knew that Mike White, Council President Jay Westbrook, City Council and Fred Nance gave it all away. It was clear then.
I wrote at the time, “The deal is a sham, a complete Looters Dream…”
The Plain Dealer keeps telling us that the city really is only paying $22 million. Not $30 million. It cites the inflation factor. That’s the Browns sales line. The PD reporters swallow. But it’s just PR.
I called an expert in such financial matters and he says it would be $25 million, not $22 million. (At 2.6 percent current inflation rate).
Beyond that, however, what if the city invested the $2 million each of the next 15 years rather than giving it to Haslam, I asked. The $2 million a year investment at 3 percent above the inflation rate, he says, the city’s money would grow the $30 million to $38 million, earnings of some $8 million.
So you can deflate or inflate true costs.
It could cost each of 390,000 Cleveland residents nearly $100 each.
The Browns, Mayor Jackson and the PD want only to make the city’s subsidy diminish using the inflation factor. They ignore the future value of money. It’s inconvenient for them.
It’s all in how you want to look at it. Who you want to favor. Haslam and Jackson don’t look at it to favor ordinary people. They slanted toward the wealth guys. The PD helps them.
The Browns also crow about the city getting admission tax revenue on tickets to games. As if it comes out of their pocket. The tax is paid by the customer not the team. The team is merely a pass through. It’s not their gift. It’s a tax. Clear and simple.
Indeed, it’s never mentioned that when Council passed the original legislation for the football stadium it increased the admission tax 2 percent on all ENTERTAINMENT VENUES to help pay for the stadium. It said at the time that the increase would produce $36 million toward Browns stadium cost. All to the team owners benefit.
People who attend functions from Playhouse Square to Beachland Ballroom to any movie house pay 8 percent admission tax, 2 percent of it going directly to the Browns stadium cost.
So other businesses are really helping to finance the stadium and Haslam.
It’s as if the city and county have not already given Browns owners tens of millions of dollars. It is a new start with every new wad of cash for them. We spend entirely too much public revenue for private interests.
Where is the Tea Party when and where it is needed to stop local government corruption of tax money? Money to millionaires, not indigents.
Here’s what we’ve been spending on stadiums/arena in Cleveland:
PUBLIC TAX FUNDS PAID FOR GATEWAY & OVER-RUNS AS OF 2013 FROM COUNTY DOCUMENT
– $240.5 Million (1st 15 years of excise sin tax)
– $125.5 Million (County general fund payments for Gateway bonds as of 2013 with $70 million still owed. Next payment due Jan. 15, 2014)
– $38.2 Million (City admission tax for Gateway Bonds) – $8.6 Million (County Bed Taxes for Gateway Bonds) – $8.8 Million (excess from sin taxes for Gateway Bonds)
– $21.3 Million (labeled as “other” for County Gateway Bonds)
– $3.75 Million (County to reimburse State Loan for Gateway)
– $3.75 Million (City to reimburse State Loan for Gateway)
– $5.8 Million (City advance to Browns for Capital Improvements)
– $2.0 Million (Repay loan from Cleveland Foundation for Gateway)
– $11.5 Million (County payment on Gateway overruns)
Think if the city invested all that money to help improve itself, what it would have meant to Cleveland and its people. Instead it goes to multi-millionaires and billionaires.
1990s – CITY VOTED TAXES TO PAY FOR BROWNS STADIUM:
DOWNTOWN PARKING 8% TAX $213,000,000
ADMISSION TAX HIKE $36,000,000
CAR RENTAL TAX $18,000,000
SIN TAX – 10 YEAR EXTEND $116,000,000
Several small entrepreneurs have actually decided enough is enough. They have started a web site to protest the next big sports give-away. They oppose the attempt to extend the taxes on wine, beer, alcohol and cigarettes. For 20 years more, after 25 years of subsidy. This may be a first citizen action in a long, long time. Citizens organizing against these massive subsidies to private businesses. Here’s the site:
Yes, enough should be enough.
Roldo Bartimole has been reporting since 1959. He came to Cleveland in 1965 to report for the Plain Dealer where he worked twice in the 1960s, left for the Wall Street Journal in 1967. He started publishing his newsletter Point of View in 1968 and ended it in 2000.In 1991 he was awarded the Second Annual Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in Washington, D.C. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland chapter, in 2002, and was named to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, 2004. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]
2 Responses to “ROLDO: The Dirty Deed Is Done”
b
ITS the brownies! NO matter WHAT else happens…Oh…FYI…IF interested. Rollingstones or someone did article on RETURN far as sports stadiums,etc.Yup…THEY did this classic horizontal vertical graph chart which pretty much summed up the info,’take; on all that…team performances vs.stadium costs,benefits,etc. THE construction costs EVEN WORSE NOW EVEN AFTER THIS Major 2008 mini Depression and results lackluster at best…as usual…taxpayers take a hit. ACTUALLY THIS IS OR WAS a good deal….warped way BROWNS own worst enemy and our “ally”…DEAR JIMMY H….THANK U babe…
b
GOOD point far as TEAPARTY…..step up or shut up (far as THEM thou considering WHO their clientele is …or least 10% of em…). SAD part…ENOUGH people FEEL ThaT way,sorta vote that way and YET……