6 days ago
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Ohio Senate's plan to finance Browns stadium 'piracy,' county exec says
Story Highlights Ohio Senate Republicans propose using $600 million from unclaimed funds for Browns stadium.
Chris Ronayne opposes the plan, calling it "piracy" of public funds.
The proposal includes $1.7 billion for a Sports and Culture Facility Fund.
Ohio Senate Republicans on Tuesday rejected the Ohio House's plan to issue $600 million in state bonds to help pay for a new Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park.
Instead, the Senate GOP's initial state budget plan would get that money from the state's $4.8 billion unclaimed property fund.
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"They're coming after roughly 13% of that fund for the sole purpose of building a stadium in Brook Park," Chris Ronayne, Cuyahoga County executive, said during a late-afternoon press conference on Tuesday. "To me, it's piracy."
Under the Senate's plan, $1.7 billion of Ohio's unclaimed funds would be used to create a state Sports and Culture Facility Fund, according to Senate Finance Committee Chair Jerry Cirino, a Lake County Republican, reported
Of that, $600 million would be used to help cover the estimated $2.4 billion cost of building a covered Browns stadium in Brook Park, according to Cirino. The remaining $1.1 billion would be used for other stadium projects, such as upgrading the Cincinnati Bengals' Paycor Stadium, reported.
"We believe this is a good plan," Cirino said during an Ohio Senate press conference Tuesday. "It doesn't put the credit of the state in jeopardy."
If the state could not repay the bond funding, its credit ratings would suffer.
"It is an economic development project that happens to involve a sports team and a stadium," Cirino said. "We feel it's a very creative way to ... use money that is not working for us right now."
Cuyahoga County's Ronayne has vocally opposed Dee and Jimmy Haslams' plan to finance the Browns' new stadium with state money, a plan the Ohio Chamber of Commerce supports.
And Ronayne calls a similar plan for Cuyahoga County to issue bonds to fund the Brook Park stadium a risky bet.
Both Ronayne and Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb oppose moving the Browns out of Cleveland's lakefront stadium because they say it would siphon revenues from downtown businesses.
But the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the region's chamber of commerce, endorsed moving the Browns stadium to Brook Park two weeks ago.
The "doable plan" for a next-generation Browns stadium would be redeveloping Cleveland's lakefront stadium at about half the cost of the Brook Park stadium "in concert with the transformation of the Cleveland lakefront," which Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam proposed to the city more than two years ago, Ronayne said in March.
On Tuesday, Ronayne likened the Browns stadium funding plan in the Ohio Senate's budget to robbery.
"Frankly, your pocket is being picked [by giving] $600 million to Haslam Sports Group for the sole purpose of [funding] their next version of Cleveland Browns stadium," Ronayne said Tuesday.
The senate's budget plan also cuts funding for Cuyahoga County's libraries, schools and Medicaid recipients, he said.
"This is a morally bankrupted budget, and we urge the governor to line-item veto those portions of it that just don't make sense" and to restore some of the lost funding for the county, Ronayne said.
Carrie Ghose, a staff reporter for Columbus Business First, an affiliated publication, contributed to this story.
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