(The Center Square) – Lawyers suing to stop the state from giving the Cleveland Browns $600 million from Unclaimed Property Funds now want a judge to issue a restraining order.
DannLaw, which filed the class action lawsuit earlier this month, asked for a temporary restraining order on Friday to stop any of the money from going to the Haslam Group while the suit is in court.
Both the suit and the motion for the restraining order were filed on behalf of people whose money is being held in the state’s Unclaimed Property Fund.
The suit was initially filed in state court in July, but DannLaw dismissed it and moved its fight to federal court.
“Ohio has a legal and moral obligation to safeguard these funds,” former Ohio Attorney General and DannLaw founder Marc E. Dann said in a news release. “Instead, the majority in the legislature and the governor have decided to loot them and funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to their wealthy campaign contributors who just happen to be among the richest people in the United States. This is a textbook example of the corrupt pay-to-play culture that has perverted state government for far too long. Our goal is to stop them, derail this unconscionable scheme and protect people’s property.”
The state’s plan, approved in the legislature on a Republican party-line vote, would take the $600 million from unclaimed property, with the expectation it would be paid back using a tax capture at the site of the new stadium in Brook Park.
Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, called the idea innovative and would save the state $400 million in debt service.
The issue is that the state currently collects taxes at the Browns’ Huntington Bank Field and creating a tax capture at a new stadium would mean the state would be collecting less tax money for its general fund.
Economists who have extensively studied the public funding of sports stadiums show that they 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.”
As previously reported by The Center Square, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said he opposes the plan, but it is legal.
