Category: Kansas City Chiefs

Friday roundup: Browns officially want $1.2B for Brook Park dome, Chiefs will take whatever stadium money someone offers

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks to those who’ve re-upped as FoS supporters in recent days without my reminding you. There are still a handful of numbered Vaportecture art prints left, so donate now if you think that’s the kind of thing you’d like, or if you don’t want that thing near your house at all but just want to support the work of this site.

Speaking of work, there’s a whole lot of it today:

  • Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have confirmed they are indeed focusing on a new domed stadium in suburban Brook Park, releasing a statement yesterday saying, “The transformative economic opportunities created by a dome far outweigh what a renovated stadium could produce with around 10 events per year.” The statement also said that “this stadium will not use existing taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs,” which neatly obscures the fact that it would use $1.2 billion in new taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs. And headlines like “It’s official: Cleveland Browns moving to Brook Park” remain premature, since nobody in state or local government has approved the $1.2 billion in tax money yet, so really we’re still just at “Browns owners’ #1 choice is someone giving them $1.2 billion,” and who wouldn’t want $1.2 billion? I bet you could roll around in it real nice.
  • Speaking of non-announcements, Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt says he might want to move to a new stadium in Kansas, or move to a new stadium in Missouri, or renovate his current stadium in Missouri, whatcha got? “I certainly don’t expect to have anything finalized by [next spring], but I’d like to know the direction that we’re heading in that time frame,” said Hunt, which isn’t even a fake deadline, come on, man, don’t you know you’re supposed to set a date and then move it later if necessary? Do I have to call you up and read Chapter 4 to you out loud?
  • In extremely unsurprising news, NFL owners unanimously approved Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s plan to accept $775 million in public money to pay for stadium upgrades. “The NFL believes in Jacksonville. I believe in Jacksonville, and I know our fans and the people throughout the community believe in Jacksonville,” Khan said after the vote from London, where his team will keep on playing one “home” game a year under the new deal because one can always believe in two places at once.
  • As if Chicago doesn’t have enough new stadium demands, Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto says he’s looking at building a soccer-specific stadium as well. Mansueto says it would be privately funded, but they all say that, so if he does settle on a location and a plan, it’s worth keeping an eye on the fine print.
  • For everyone writing up your “Where will the Tampa Bay Rays play in 2025?” articles, please cross Durham, North Carolina off the list, Bulls management says there’s no room there. Also if you’re wondering what is being done with the Rays stadium roof that was blown off last week, you can buy bits of it on eBay.
  • Green Bay Packers management says it wants to sign a 30-year lease extension on Lambeau Field and pay for all stadium upgrades in that time and just wants the city of Green Bay to freeze its rent in exchange. That’s probably not a terrible deal, but it would cost city taxpayers something — $30 million, according to city operations chief Joe Faulds — and the current lease runs through 2032 with a 10-year team extension option, so one can see why the city might not jump at the chance. Anyway, let this be a reminder that even fan-owned sports teams can demand public money, nonprofits got the profit motive too.
  • It took 27 years for this Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon to come true, but with cities like Tulsa offering cash payments for remote workers to relocate to their cities, you too can now be Ned Balter.
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Friday roundup: Sacramento celebrates A’s move with new golf simulators, KC residents say cap public stadium funds at one-third

access_time personNeil deMause

Sports economist Victor Matheson and I were both on a radio show this week to discuss the Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium situations — you can listen to it here, but first check out the rest of this week’s stadium and arena news, it’ll be quick, I promise:

  • There’s a “major economic boost” coming to Sacramento now that the Oakland A’s are relocating there temporarily, reports KCRA-TV: A new brunch-and-golf-simulators venue is opening across the street! (It was going to open there anyway, but now that the A’s are coming, the owner is trying to open it earlier.) Also, the mayor is “in discussions” with three new restaurants! Feel the excitement!
  • There is no excitement in St. Louis, where the Cardinals are still technically in the playoff hunt, but fans in the best baseball city in the world don’t want to watch .500 baseball, it turns out, or even buy hot dogs. “I love being the hot dog lady,” says hot dog lady Karen Boschert. “I’ve cut my staff down. My prices are reasonable. You can take my food into the stadium.” Maybe she could pivot her sales pitch to point out that you can buy her food and not bring it into the stadium? Just an idea.
  • Pollsters in Missouri decided to ask an unusual question of local voters: not whether taxpayers should pay toward new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, but how much. The average was two-thirds team, one-sixth state, one-sixth city and county, which is kind of arbitrary and doesn’t account for whether the public would get back any share of revenues or community benefits or anything, but sure it sounds fair. Ish. Time will tell if the team owners come back with “zero-thirds team, poke in the eye with a sharp stick public.”
  • Most of the San Antonio residents who testified at a Wednesday hearing on a $160 million Missions minor-league baseball stadium “voiced concerns and skepticism,” according to Fox San Antonio. For actual quotes we have to turn to KSAT, which notes that a local arts and social justice activist said, “This project is all about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer,” while a resident of a housing complex that would be demolished to make way for the stadium said, “I would not be able to get somewhere else, and I would end up in the street yet again.”
  • Chicago’s city budget is facing a $982.4 million shortfall, and Mayor Brandon Johnson says, “There are sacrifices that will be made,” but not new Bears and White Sox stadiums, those are important even if they would cost the city upwards of $1.2 billion and $2 billion respectively, sacrifices are for little people.
  • Team-funded studies of a Philadelphia 76ers arena say it would be great, other studies show it would be a disaster; the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board says it’s up to the mayor and city council to figure out where the truth lies in the middle!
  • Another group of developers unrelated to either the Royals or the city has come up with renderings for a new downtown baseball stadium, and guys, you should at least look up how many players are on the field for a baseball game.
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County kills Chiefs stadium sales-tax vote planned for November, because reasons

access_time personNeil deMause

I’m being punished for not posting anything to the site yesterday by all the news happening today, right? Anyway, so this also happened:

There will be no vote this fall on a Chiefs-only sales tax measure. By a vote of 5 to 4, Jackson County legislators on Monday defeated an ordinance that would have put a quarter-cent sales tax measure on the November general election ballot.

If you’re scoring at home, that’s the revised sales-tax measure that Kansas City councilmember Manny Abarca introduced last week to fund about $300 million worth of a Chiefs stadium renovation. The vote then was 5-4 in favor, and yesterday it was 5-4 opposed, and the application of advanced mathematics allows me to determine that somebody switched sides in the interim, but the Kansas City Star coverage doesn’t report on who that was. It does report that the Chiefs owners did not support the ballot measure proposal, which seems bizarre, but maybe they think they have a better shot at getting approval for stadium subsidies that don’t require a public vote? Come on, somebody allegedly in the business of journalism, can you share some hints? KCUR? KMBC? No? Well, fine then.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas did post on Facebook:

The Chiefs will be playing in Kansas City, Missouri for a generation to come.

The Royals will be playing in Kansas City, Missouri for a generation to come.

Don’t get distracted by the day-to-day sausage making. Good work is getting done to ensure a positive future for all.

Sure, maybe? Not getting distracted by political posturing is always a good plan, but Lucas here is clearly doing political posturing of his own, so who knows. A generation from now we’ll look back at this time and think either “Wow, remember when people thought the Royals and Chiefs were really going to move if they didn’t get some crazy amount of public money from K.C.?” or “Wow, remember when people thought that the Royals and Chiefs might not get some crazy amount of public money from K.C.?” or “That Quinton Lucas guy had as bad a crystal ball as that 1970s Montreal mayor.” My bet, based on past history, would probably be on Door #2, but past performance is no guarantee of future results, though sometimes it rhymes.

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County readies re-vote on tax hike, this time just for Chiefs stadium, to see if voters hate that any less

access_time personNeil deMause

It looks like Jackson County, Missouri is going to go ahead and follow up the resounding April defeat of a referendum on raising sales taxes to fund new Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadiums by holding a redo of the vote, only this time just for the Chiefs. The new ballot measure would raise the county’s sales tax by 0.25% for 20 years instead of 0.375% for 40 years, and would leave out the baseball team — presumably because Royals owner John Sherman’s stated desire to build a new $2 billion stadium on top of an existing neighborhood with no guarantees of any aid for residents and businesses that would have been displaced was seen as too great a liability.

Whether Jackson County residents would really vote in November to approve a trimmed-down version of what they overwhelmingly rejected in April is another story. If the quick back-of-the-envelope math I just did is right, the present-value cost of skimming off those future tax revenues would go from around $600 million for the two teams combined in the April plan to around $300 million for the Chiefs alone in the new plan — which is better but not really that much better, since it would still leave the Royals to be dealt with. And while $300 million might seem cheap compared to some other recent NFL upgrades I could name, there’s no guarantee that Chiefs owner Clark Hunt wouldn’t try to wrangle state or city funding on top of a county sales-tax surcharge.

Of course, whether a re-vote can actually work may be less important to county officials than looking like they’re at least doing something in response to Kansas’ offer of potentially billions of dollars in state money: Jackson County legislator and new-stadium stan Manny Abarca told KMBC, “I think it’s about having folks at the table truly negotiating in good faith and not just sitting there,” which is an impressive bit of saying the quiet part loud. After voting 5-4 this week to amend the referendum proposal, the county legislature must hold a final vote on it next week to get it on the November ballot. If that goes through, we can let the shouting re-commence!

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Kansas official: Multibillion-dollar bidding war for Chiefs and Royals is “gross” but still “the right thing to do”

access_time personNeil deMause

The Missouri Independent ran a long article on Friday about the current border war between Missouri and Kansas over the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, much of which is about how throwing money at sports teams to move to your state is pointless, which you can probably skip if you already read this website. What’s more interesting, to me anyway, is what it says about how and why elected officials in both states are totally chill about engaging in a bidding war despite agreeing to a binding ban on interstate bidding wars just five years ago:

“I do not like this. It feels gross,” Kansas state Rep. Jason Probst said during a caucus meeting of House Democrats in June. “This whole show that’s going on feels disgusting to me. And it’s still the right thing to do.”

In an interview, Probst, who is from Hutchinson in central Kansas, said the reality of professional sports requires governments “to play the game” and offer public assistance, lest they risk losing teams altogether.

“You can stand on your principles. … But if another state isn’t playing by the same set of rules you are, then they’re going to make that investment and they’re going to take that away,” he said.

Yeah, that whole “this is bad policy, but if we don’t do it somebody else will” thing is precisely why development subsidy watchdogs have been saying there’s a need for cross-border nonaggression pacts for almost 30 years now. And Kansas and Missouri did just that in 2019, but unfortunately it only seems to have applied to Kansas’s payroll-tax-kickback program, not the sales-tax kickback program it plans to dip into for $1.4 billion or more of state stadium spending, so oh well! Also, apparently legislators back in 2019 forgot to say out loud that they were including an unstated “sports teams don’t count” clause:

“The sports teams are sort of in a special category of their own. I don’t think that’s what that legislation really was meant for,” [Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan] Patterson said of the truce.

The article also includes some dirt on the STAR bonds program that Kansas has approved for use on new Chiefs and Royals stadiums, noting that it is “often-criticized” and has mostly “failed at its goal of increasing tourism” and has even led to defaults on one project’s bonds when sales tax revenue came in slower than expected. Kansas officials point out that since these are revenue bonds, the state can just let the bondholders swing in the breeze if the bonds default; University of Colorado-Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter counters that that’s never going to happen:

“In the real world, there’s a huge risk to Kansas state taxpayers,” he said. “They’re going to have to decide to either bail out the project or do nothing. And if they do nothing, their credit, the state’s credit worthiness, will take a hit. And that will make all future borrowing more expensive.”

All of this is an excellent example of why relying on states and cities to agree to stop raiding each others’ businesses is a hopeless cause: As the 1995 Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis paper cited above notes, there have been lots of attempts at interstate nonaggression pacts, and they’ve always ended up being broken by one state or another. The only solution is for Congress to step in — which U.S. Rep. David Minge tried to get it to do back in 1999 by taxing local level subsidies out of existence, only to find that his colleagues in the House had no interest in even giving it a committee hearing, doubtless because business leaders in their states wanted to keep those subsidies flowing.

The next best hope is that local officials on one side of the state border or the other decide to say “too rich for our blood” and let the neighboring state “win” the team and all the stadium costs that go with it, knowing that those can never be paid off by whatever small bump results in local tax revenue. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like anyone made this point in the Independent article, but hang on, I’m not to the end yet, oh look:

But this sort of jockeying between states only benefits team owners, said Neil deMause, a journalist who has written a book about stadium subsidies. Taxpayers and fans, he said, stand to gain little, especially if game tickets become more expensive at new facilities.

“All the economists I know say the best thing you could do is reject it for your state and have the stadiums get built in the other state,” deMause said. “You still get to go drive across the border and see the games the same way as you would otherwise … but you don’t have to pay for building the thing.”

What that guy said.

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Friday roundup: How fast is the A’s Vegas stadium going nowhere, and other questions

access_time personNeil deMause

Another week down! Have you been enjoying the Olympics so far? Did you even remember the Olympics were happening, other than to make sure you weren’t going anywhere near Paris during them? I, for one, cannot wait for the 2028 flag football competition.

Meanwhile, here’s what’s been happening:

  • Until now Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s lack of any options for funding a Las Vegas stadium has just been widespread conjecture, but now a research note by JMP Securities analyst Mitch Germain confirms it: “The Oakland A’s new stadium currently remains in a holding pattern. The last piece of the puzzle was private financing obtained by the owner for the remaining cost of the stadium. Chatter suggests this may have hit a roadblock.” Oh wait, “chatter” could just mean Germain is reading the same conjecture? We can upgrade it to extremely widespread conjecture, at least.
  • Oakland has officially signed a deal to sell its half of the Oakland Coliseum site to the African American Sports & Entertainment Group for $105 million, paid out between now and June 2026. If AASEG fails to make the payments, then … that part didn’t make it into the San Francisco Chronicle story, it’s okay, they had bigger fish to fry.
  • The Massachusetts legislature adjourned this week without rezoning industrial land in Everett for a new New England Revolution stadium, and team owner Robert Kraft said he’s “deeply disappointed,” then threw some passive-aggressive shade by adding, “Massachusetts’ political landscape is one of the only places where creating opportunities in environmental justice communities and rehabilitation is dictated by the needs and bargaining of political leaders with outside influences.” Outside influences, eh? Were they … agitators?
  • Cleveland councilmembers want the Cleveland Browns to keep playing in Cleveland, not so sure about the whole “giving them hundreds of millions of dollars” thing, film at 11.
  • There are two competing proposals to put a sales tax increase back on the ballot to raise money for a Kansas City Chiefs stadiums, and the Jackson County legislature just voted down the one for a 0.125% hike over 25 years but is still working on the one for a 0.375% hike for 40 years.
  • Chicago Bears president/CEO Kevin Warren says he still prefers a new stadium on the Chicago lakefront that would come with billions of dollars in public money, but if that doesn’t work, Arlington Heights is nice, too.
  • Turns out someone did do a more robust analysis than the one by the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office of the number of hotel room stays attributable to Philadelphia Phillies fans, and the finding was “not statistically significant.” I know Springer books are pricey, but the fiscal office really couldn’t afford $180?
  • The Atlanta Braves owners’ decision to build their stadium in the middle of the woods in the suburbs has prompted much debate, but until now it didn’t have its own Tracey Ullman parody song.
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Chiefs owners say they need stadium cash in six months — or whenever, really

access_time personNeil deMause

Spare a thought for the poor sports team owner trying to run a bidding war, won’t you? Sure, it may seem like a cushy job from the outside — increase your billions in wealth by getting different states or municipalities to compete for who can stuff the most money in your pockets — but it also takes some finesse.

Take, for example, the Kansas City Chiefs, whose team president Mark Donovan last week declared that he was setting a January 2025 deadline for getting a new stadium deal finalized:

“We have to get this right,” Donovan said. “We are going to do the due-diligence. We are going to take our time and do it right. But there is a reality to the timing. You can only take so much time to get it right. And that window is starting to close.”

Now that’s the way to light a fire under local legislators, with an arbitrary deadline! (The Chiefs’ current lease runs through the end of the 2030-31 season, so there’s no real rush here.) Ah, but you don’t want to be too strict with the deadline, in case it might take elected officials a bit longer to actually get legislation passed.

Enter team CEO Clark Hunt:

“I would agree with Mark that we would like to make some significant progress over the next six months,” Hunt said. “I know from having been through a few stadium efforts that they’re slow moving and unpredictable, so to say we’ll be able to get to the finish line six months is probably optimistic, but we would like to make some progress on support of the training facility just for you guys by Labor Day.”

This is some Grade A rushed-cop-patient-cop business, kudos to Donovan and Hunt for pulling it off.

Hunt also made clear yesterday — as clear as possible in sentence fragments, anyway — that he’s willing to consider all options for a new or renovated stadium, saying, “The possibility of a new stadium also on the Missouri side. And I think if we went that route, certainly, we would have to look at a dome. Dome gives you the ability to host a lot of other events which could be important for the community.” He added: “We’re really approaching it with an open mind. We don’t have a desired outcome. We just have to find a solution that works for the community, and something that works for the club.” (Hunt also stressed that “our focus is very much on finding a solution here in the metropolitan area,” though even that, you’ll note, contains as much veiled threat as promise.)

This is exactly what shaking the legislative tree to see what falls out looks like, and is exactly what’s to be expected in the wake of April’s failed sales-tax subsidy referendum. Backing for a new stadium bill in Missouri is still uncertain, and it’s hard to get a bidding war going with just one bidder. So it makes total sense to turn up the heat by setting a six-month deadline — and then, with the other hand, turning the heat back down by saying really any time will do. The only risk is that elected officials will realize they have all the leverage and can just say “no” — but that hasn’t happened much yet in 40 years of sports border wars, so we can forgive Hunt and Donovan for assuming it’s not about to start now.

 

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Friday roundup: St. Pete okays $1B+ Rays stadium subsidy, A’s Vegas $ remains a mystery, Bears’ $2B ask still a no-go

access_time personNeil deMause

Was it only two weeks ago that I skipped the Friday roundup entirely on the grounds that nothing was happening? What Berenstain Bears universe was that? The stadium and arena news firehose is back on in full force, so let’s get to it:

  • The St. Petersburg city council indeed voted 5-3 to grant final approval to a $1.3 billion Tampa Bay Rays stadium that will come with between $1 billion and $1.4 billion in public subsidies, bringing almost to an end (the county commission still has to vote on July 30) one of the longest-running stadium battles in sports. “We are St. Pete!” shouted city chief equity officer Carl Lavender following the vote, either overcome with emotion or just reading the wallpaper. Rays owner Stu Sternberg declared, “I think, how it was put today, it was just the right time in the right place, and most importantly, the right people,” which is another way of saying that if a sports owner takes enough swings enough times, even a 15-year stadium losing streak can end up with them holding a ten-figure check from the public.
  • After the development agreement between the Oakland A’s and the Las Vegas Stadium Authority released yesterday revealed nothing specific about the team’s stadium funding plans, team board member Sandy Dean gave the authority more nonspecifics, saying owner John Fisher is in “good shape” raising money but providing no details of where it could come from other than that it would use $300 million in debt and $850 million in private equity and that “it would be a positive to have outside investors,” something A’s execs are “going to talk with folks about” in “the coming months.” (Who’s going to invest $850 million in a team that has an estimated value of $1.2 billion, plays in the smallest market in MLB, and starts out with $300 million in debt? Reply hazy, ask again later.) Dean also said that Fisher would only use $350 million of the $380 million in public funding approved last year, because reasons.
  • MLB commissioner Rob Manfred did reveal this week that the artificial turf at the A’s broiling Sacramento stadium will be cooled by “a hydration element,” and if anyone knows what that means — sprinklers? underground cooling pipes? misters attached to the light poles? — please let me know in comments.
  • Also Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times asked a bunch of MLB players who grew up in Las Vegas what they thought of the A’s moving there, and replies included “it’s a terrible idea” (Paul Sewald), “I don’t see it in Vegas” (Bryce Harper), “as soon as they get a good team, they start trading guys before they get too expensive” (Tyler Anderson), and “the whole thing, I fear, is going to be an abject disaster” (Sewald again). On the other hand, Tommy Pham said, “They said the same thing about the Golden Knights: Would this be a hockey town? … Everybody wears Golden Knights stuff in Vegas now.” Opinions differ!
  • Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker met with Chicago Bears officials this week to discuss their $2 billion state funding request for a new stadium, and Pritzker still hates it, with his press spokesperson saying afterwards “the governor’s position has not changed” from May, when he called the plan “a nonstarter.” Maybe Bears execs need to threaten to move to Indiana, that usually seems to work.
  • Jackson County probably isn’t going to hold another vote on Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium funding this year, but it could next year. Gov. Mike Parson will be out of office then, and the people running to replace him won’t be known until the results of an August 6 primary, so this could still go a lot of ways.
  • Paris cultural sites are preparing for next week’s start of the 2024 Summer Olympics by anticipating massive dropoffs in customers. In London during the 2012 games, visits to museums, movie theaters, zoos, and the like “dropped by a staggering 30 percent” as non-sports tourists steered the hell clear of the city, and Paris is expecting the same. “We’re the big losers of the Olympic Games,” said independent theater chain operator Pierre-Édouard Vasseur — though maybe he’ll rethink that once athletes start collapsing and dying from the heat.
  • NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says his league would consider expanding to Las Vegas once its new TV deal is finalized and arena developers have contacted the league for specs on building NBA-ready venues. Las Vegas, at last count, has as least three arenas that could host NBA games, but sure, building a fourth arena just for the NBA to host the fourth big-league sports team in the nation’s 40th-largest TV market makes total sense.
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Three months after losing sales tax referendum, Royals and Chiefs owners ready another one, this time with gun to voters’ heads

access_time personNeil deMause

When you’re the owners of a pair of sports teams and have your heads handed to you in a voter referendum to have the public pay for your stadium projects, what’s the next step? Why, wait a few months and then try, try again, of course:

“I do think before all this is said and done, Jackson County is going to have another vote,” said [House Majority Leader Jonathan] Patterson, the presumptive next House speaker.

What’s changed since Jackson County voters rejected a sales tax hike for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals by a margin of 58-42% on April 2, of course, is that now there’s the threat of the teams moving from one Kansas City to the other. Now that the state of Kansas has approved using state sales tax money to pay for 70% of new stadium projects, with no upward limit, the hope is presumably that the fear of having to cross state lines to see games can flip 9% of county voters to approve what three months ago they rejected. Patterson straight-up said as much yesterday: “I think now with the Kansas option staring us, staring us right in the face, I think that changed the dynamic, and it would be a different vote next time around.”

This gets us to one of the reasons it’s been so hard to get any lasting wins in the now nearly four-decade-old battle against public stadium subsidies: Team owners can absorb as many defeats as they have to, so long as they eventually get one victory. If they’re rejected by city officials, they can go to the state; if by the state, they can turn to the county. If a referendum fails, they can seek to have elected officials just override the results. Or they can just wait three months and call a do-over of the exact same referendum, this time with less carrot and more stick, and see if the results are any different.

(Or, yes, they could dip into the $400 million a year in league TV and sponsorship revenues they collect before selling a ticket. But that would be crazy talk.)

There’s still lots to work out about any new public ballot measure, including when it would be held, whether the terms of the sales-tax hike and how it would be spent would be the same as last time, and whether Royals owner John Sherman even wants to go that route again after his extreme personal anti-charisma helped torpedo the last measure. (Sherman still has a backup plan in North Kansas City in Clay County, Missouri, and Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has met with officials there to discuss that possibility.) All options are on the table, really, which is kind of remarkable just 98 days after one of the more decisive anti-stadium-subsidy votes in recent memory — but apparently the lesson of 21st century democracy is if you have enough money and pull with local government, if you don’t like the election results, just wait a few minutes and try again.

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Friday roundup: Missouri gov vows bidding war for Chiefs and Royals, Coyotes (?) owner (??) throws in towel

access_time personNeil deMause

Has there ever been a week before this where two cities dropped a combined $1.425 billion on sports stadium subsidies? Actually, yeah, there was that week in April 2022 when Maryland approved $1.8 billion in stadium subsidies one day after New York approved $1 billion in stadium subsidies, which is honestly going to be tough to beat. Part of this is just how state legislative calendars work, with elected officials typically racing to get potentially unpopular bills passed super-quick at the end of sessions before anyone notices, but it can still feel alarming in the same way a couple of sports subsidy plans getting defeated in quick succession can feel encouraging. “Don’t get distracted by small sample sizes” is probably the best guidance, though “Whoever has the gold makes the rules” isn’t bad either.

Anyway, it’s Friday, so you know what that means! Let’s see what else has been happening:

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