A newly passed House budget bill includes a provision to sell $600 million in state bonds for a proposed domed stadium in Brook Park for the Browns.
But the floor of the Statehouse wasn’t without fourth-quarter drama on Wednesday.
Republican State Rep. Ron Ferguson, of Wintersville, teamed up with Democrats in an underdog effort to defeat the deal.
Republican leaders who control the House majority, including state Rep. Brian Stewart and House Speaker Matt Huffman, managed to fend off that legislative maneuvering with some deft late-game defense.
The two-minute drill
First, Ferguson and state Rep. Sean Brennan, a Parma Democrat, attempted to insert a measure into the budget bill simply defunding the project. They wanted to do so through what’s called a floor amendment – some standalone legal language that House members can hold a vote on. That would have to come before lawmakers vote on the final bill itself.
In an interview, Ferguson said he believes he had the support to kill the Browns project through the defunding amendment.
“It’s not very popular in the Republican caucus,” Ferguson said of the prospect of using public resources to subsidize the stadium.
But he never got the chance to show his team of support. Word of the defunding amendment got out, and Huffman called on Stewart first, who had a new amendment play of his own.
Stewart moved to increase the up-front money the Browns would stake for the project from $38 million to $50 million. Under the amendment, the state would get to keep this money, plus any accrued interest, if the Browns were to fail to pay off the bonds. The Browns owners say the stadium and related development will generate enough new state taxes over the term of the deal to pay off the state bonds. (Some lawmakers continue to question the team’s figures and ask for more details.)
In an interview, Stewart described the amendment as firming up political support from “a few” House Republicans.
“The amendment that I offered was based on talking to caucus members,” Stewart said. “We had a few people who were looking to have a little greater security collateral for the taxpayers.”
The amendment passed 55-15, with Brennan among those voting “yes.”
Brennan then tried to introduce his defunding amendment, but Huffman ruled it out of order. House rules say the same section of a bill — in this case, the section dealing with the Browns stadium deal — can’t be amended twice.
The Hail Mary
Two hours later into the House session, Ferguson ran a different play that he said he cooked up earlier in the day.
He proposed an amendment that would disallow using money from an existing state program to pay for roadways associated with a professional sports stadium. The language would undo a part of the budget inserted to help build a tennis facility in Warren County.
Republican leaders tried to block the amendment – the one pulling roadway money from related sports stadium projects — but they failed by a single vote. Then, a Democrat, state Rep. Cecil Thomas, ran in from the hallway for the subsequent vote on the amendment itself. Thomas voted “yes.” But a Democrat, state Rep. Chris Glassburn, of North Olmsted, aligned himself with Republican leadership and switched to a “no” vote. The amendment failed by a single vote, 49-50.
The budget bill eventually passed with no changes, other than Stewart’s amendment increasing the Browns’ up-front money. The budget, including the stadium financing deal, now heads to the state Senate for consideration.
Republican House leadership and Ferguson said they don’t believe their amendment – the one pulling money from roadways improvement attached to sports facilities – would have sabotaged the Browns stadium deal. Ferguson said he believes the amendment only failed because a handful of members got confused in the sequence and voted the opposite way than they’d meant.
Stewart described the vote this way: “I think this had a few members who maybe were looking for an opportunity to vote against the Browns deal and decided to use this unrelated amendment as an opportunity to kind of virtue signal on that I guess.”
But at least some lawmakers thought the vote was a way to block the stadium deal.
“I know there were some who were claiming that wasn’t what his [Ferguson’s] intention was,” Brennan said in an interview. “But that absolutely was the intention.”
What it all could mean
While backers of the Browns deal gained a victory on Wednesday, the drama around it may foreshadow a tough road ahead. Stewart, for instance, wouldn’t have introduced his amendment requiring the Browns to put in more up-front money if he thought support for the Browns deal was guaranteed.
In addition, the vote on Ferguson’s amendment shows there are House Republicans willing to vote against funding for sports stadiums. Legislative leaders usually tightly choreograph voting sessions, by making sure anything that’s in a final bill has enough support to pass, and they almost lost control of this one. This all could spell trouble for the Browns deal later in the budget process.
The House will vote on the budget bill again in a couple months.
The next step in the process is the Senate approving their version of the budget bill, likely before mid-June. Then, a special committee of House and Senate members will negotiate how to combine the House and Senate plans. The House and Senate will vote on the final product before sending it to Gov. Mike DeWine before a legal deadline on June 30.
If he wants to, DeWine then could veto individual parts from the budget. Lawmakers can overturn governor’s vetoes, but need 60 votes in the House and 20 votes in the Senate to do so. So, some of the 49 House members who voted for Ferguson’s amendment would have to vote to save the Browns deal, if that veto ends up happening.
The governor has said he doesn’t like the financing plan. But he’s said he thinks the project is important. He proposed another way to pay for the stadium, via a tax hike on sports gambling.
That doesn’t mean he’ll veto the deal, but the Wednesday votes could give him some insight into where the House stands if he does.
