True. And one of the legislature’s sweetheart moves in this month’s lame-duck session was to exempt the Cincinnati Bengals from having to pay about $9 million in sales tax on improvements made to the team’s Paycor Stadium. The same tax break, if sought, could also apply to the Cleveland Browns and Ohio’s other big-league teams.
The legislature’s nonpartisan budget analysts warned that if enough teams sought the tax break, it “could reduce state sales tax collections by hundreds of thousands of dollars or as much as tens of millions of dollars per stadium, [and] county sales and use taxes could be reduced by hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars and local transit authority sales and use taxes could also be reduced by similar amounts.”
The General Assembly’s kiss for the Bengals was slipped into a 323-page bill that started out, long before, as a humdrum, 122-page plan to update township government. The stadium amendment, and many other riders, were crowbarred into the township bill, which the Senate (27-1) and House (76-7), passed in the middle of the night. (It’s only fair to note that Brennan voted “yes” on the township Christmas tree bill; Dean voted “no.”)
Lame-duck sessions are a real threat to Ohioans’ wallets and, more importantly, to their liberties Earlier this month, for example, Ohio’s Republican-run Supreme Court killed a $650 million damage award Lake (Painesville) and Trumbull (Warren) counties had won against big drugstore chains for the chains’ alleged role in enabling the national epidemic of opioid addiction.
In a 5-2 opinion written by Justice Joseph T. Deters, a Cincinnati Republican, the court ruled that the General Assembly had abolished the particular legal theory that Lake and Trumbull county had used to (initially) win their “public nuisance” lawsuit against the drugstore chains.
And just when did GOP members of the General Assembly kill that “common law” argument? Deters and his allies didn’t specifically say so, but those maneuvers happened in December 2004 and December 2006 – during lame-duck General Assembly sessions.
So much for the public interest – and for the Ohio Bill of Rights, which promises Ohioans that “every person, for an injury done him in his land, goods, person, or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law, and shall have justice administered without denial or delay” – unless, that is, a lame-duck legislature is stampeding for the exits.
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The new year will almost certainly feature big stakes Columbus lobbying by Ohio’s major sports team owners for taxpayer handouts (while one in eight Ohioans lives in poverty).
A rough count suggest Ohio pro teams field at least 20 Statehouse lobbyists. Meanwhile – and this could cut two ways – Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has to be well-versed on the sports business. He and his family own the Asheville (North Carolina) Tourists, a High-A affiliate of Major League Baseball’s Houston Astros.
In 2025, Major League Baseball’s traditional opening day will be March 27. For Ohio’s pro teams and their owners, it may come much sooner – at the Statehouse.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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