(The Center Square) – Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost thinks it’s a bad idea to give taxpayers’ private funds to the Cleveland Browns, but he doesn’t believe it’s illegal.
Yost, a Republican, said on social media he hopes Republican Gov. Mike DeWine uses his line-item veto authority to remove the plan Republican lawmakers inserted into the budget that would use $600 million of unclaimed taxpayer funds for a new stadium in Brook Park.
“I don’t like this stadium plan and hope the governor vetoes it,” Yost wrote on social media Wednesday. “But I’ve already looked at it, and Dann and Crossman are wrong on the law. If they sue, they will lose.”
Yost’s post came shortly after the law firm DannLaw, which includes former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann and former state Rep. Jeffrey A. Crossman, announced they have a suit ready if the plan becomes law.
A few hours later, Republicans in Ohio’s Senate and House easily passed a state budget that included the Browns stadium plan over objections from Democrats.
Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, who is from Cleveland and represents part of the Cleveland area, also questioned the legality of using individual taxpayers’ funds from private businesses.
“We looked through and found the money in the way of Ohioans’ unclaimed funds,” Antonio said during the Senate debate Wednesday. “Taking that idea, applying to many sports franchises because clearly there were more waiting in the wings; they are already queuing up. I don’t think my colleagues on my side of the aisle have a problem creating a system to be able to discuss how much of a loan it is; the problem is we don’t know if it’s constitutional to use the funds from unclaimed funds. We’re going to find that out, I’m sure.”
Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, recently said the state plans to create a tax capture at the site to replenish the unclaimed funds, and the plan “saves the state $400 million in debt service.”
McColley also said the tax capture “is forecast to return $636 million to the state from incremental tax revenues.”
Economist J.C. Bradbury of Kennesaw State University in Georgia, who has extensively studied the public funding of sports stadiums, called Republicans’ idea “willful ignorance” and said promised benefits rarely, if ever, turn into reality because it diverts spending from other areas.
“This is not free money,” Bradbury recently 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.”
The budget and plan for using taxpayer money to fund the Browns’ stadium is now in the hands of DeWine, who can sign it, veto it or use a line-item veto to take specific parts of the budget.
