(The Center Square) – A law firm has a class action lawsuit prepared to file if Ohio’s Legislature and Gov. Mike DeWine approve of a budget plan to use $600 million in unclaimed funds in the state to help fund a new $2.4 billion Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park.
The lawsuit will be filed by DannLaw including former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann and former State Representative Jeffrey A. Crossman making the announcement Wednesday after the Legislature released its final budget bill on Tuesday night that included the plan.
The Senate and House are expected to approve the budget this afternoon.
“The State of Ohio, through the named Defendants, intends to confiscate Ohioans’ ‘unclaimed funds’ and divert them from their intended purpose – to be held and preserved for the benefit of the rightful owners – to finance the construction of a private sports stadium for the Cleveland Browns,” the draft lawsuit states.
The lawsuit says that the unclaimed funds are private property and not for public use.
“The majority in the General Assembly and the Governor may think it’s acceptable to pick the pockets of Ohio’s working families to reward billionaire Jimmy Haslam for his huge political contributions, but we think it’s fundamentally wrong,” Dann said in a statement. “That is why we’ll be standing at the courthouse door ready to file this lawsuit when and if this unprecedented abuse of the public trust actually becomes law.”
The plan was introduced a month ago as Ohio Senate President Rob McColley’s newsletter said the plan “saves the state $400 million in debt service” as it takes the funds out of the $3.7 billion balance of unclaimed funds held by the state.
Legislative leaders called the plan a “visionary economic plan” and a “win-win for taxpayers and the economy.”
Economists who have extensively studied the public funding of sports stadiums, however, have consistently shown that stadiums do not produce the promised benefits and instead rely on diverted spending from elsewhere in a region.
“This is not free money,” economist J.C. Bradbury of Kennesaw State University in Georgia told The Center Square. “You can’t just pull public stadium funding out of the air.
“It has to come from other priorities or out of taxpayers’ pockets. This isn’t forward-thinking, it’s willful ignorance. This is an F answer in Econ 101.”
Ohio’s Office of Budget Management sent a memo earlier this year related to public funding for the stadium saying that the Browns’ economic claims were filled with inconsistencies and incorrect information, citing Bradbury’s work and the work of other economists.
“Ohio would own or partially own a sports stadium and the responsibility for maintenance, with no additional revenue,” the OBM report says. “The state does not currently own any professional sports stadiums/fields/arenas.
