Cleveland Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam for months have been asking local and state officials to help subsidize their planned new enclosed stadium in Brook Park.
A team official made that case in public for the first time on Tuesday during a state legislative hearing.
Ted Tywang, the chief administrative officer and general counsel for the Haslam Sports Group, told members of the Ohio House Arts, Athletics and Tourism Committee that the team still wants the state to contribute $600 million toward the project by borrowing the money. The borrowed money would be repaid through a financial maneuver referred to as tax-increment financing. This works by diverting the future increased state tax revenues tied to the stadium project to pay off the loan. All of this needs lawmakers’ approval.
Tywang then called an intriguing audible. He said the Browns are offering to hand off a $38 million up-front escrow payment that would be the state’s to keep if the projected revenues end up not covering the loan.
The offer stands in contrast to Gov. Mike DeWine’s stadium financing plan, which calls for funding the project and other future sports facilities through an increase in the state’s sports gambling tax.
It also happened three days ahead of a Friday deadline by which lawmakers must submit proposed changes to DeWine’s state budget bill. The House is expected to unveil its revised budget bill in early April. It then would go to the Senate. The two chambers must agree on a final product by the end of June.
Majority Republicans are receptive, Democrats aren’t
House Speaker Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, said Wednesday the hearing was the idea of the tourism committee chair – state Rep. Melanie Miller – and gave the Browns a chance to “tell their story” of what could be a major economic development project. It seems likely the proposal could end up getting added to the budget.
“I think the caucus needs to look at it and decide what to do,” Huffman said. “But I’ve heard mostly positive things from our Republican caucus about it, so we’ll see what happens here.”
Democrats, who are in the deep minority, seemed skeptical.
“There are far more important things I think the legislature should be prioritizing than the Haslam Sports Group’s new stadium,” said state Rep. Terrence Upchurch, a Cleveland Democrat. “Especially since they only won three damn games last year.”
Probing the defense
Gov. Mike DeWine, meanwhile, ran with a football theme in his annual State of the State Address, which he delivered at the Statehouse on Wednesday.
That’s largely thanks to the recent addition of Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel to his administration’s roster. The former Ohio State University football coach – and ex-Youngstown State University president – will lead an initiative to develop a workforce training program for the state’s university system, DeWine announced.
“We have the playbook. We have the team,” DeWine said while closing his 75-minute speech. “And now together, let’s go win.”
That wasn’t the only football play DeWine tried to call Wednesday. He also urged the legislature to support his policy priorities – including his alternate stadium financing plan.
Great minds think alike
An amusing subtext to DeWine’s Wednesday address is the notion that Tressel may run for governor next year – something that seems unlikely right now, but which Tressel decidedly has not ruled out.
Viewed through that lens, some initiatives DeWine described seemed quite similar to those proposed by Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, the race’s frontrunner and hypothetical Tressel opponent.
One new example: The governor announced a proposal directing his administration to develop a model civics education curriculum that can be deployed in elementary schools across the state.
DeWine said teachers have told him this young age group is in the greatest need of social studies education. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, has proposed requiring high school seniors to pass a civics test prior to graduation like the ones new U.S. citizens have to take.
The governor also touted his administration’s work on cutting regulations – a focus of Ramaswamy’s brief tenure at the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. DeWine said that if his budget is passed in the current form, 4.6 million regulations and more than 4,100 rules would be slashed.
DeWine announced another addition to the new lieutenant governor’s portfolio. He said Tressel will lead a soon-to-be-announced initiative promoting physical fitness education in schools. Ramaswamy in turn has described reviving the Presidential Fitness Test – including the dreaded pull-up challenge – that ex-President Barack Obama eliminated.
Fighting in Ohio Trump World?
U.S. Rep. Max Miller has built a political career largely thanks to his close personal relationship with President Donald Trump.
But the Rocky River Republican, who got his start in politics as a White House aide during Trump’s first term in office, now is publicly sparring with elements of the MAGA-sphere.
It ties back to a brief article from NBC News last week. The report described an excerpt of an upcoming political book in which Miller is described as privately critical of Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s false comments about Haitian immigrants in Springfield during last year’s presidential campaign. Miller compared them to targeting of Jews, the book said, and he also dissuaded Trump from campaigning in Springfield.
Several people in Trump’s political orbit shared the story on X, the social media platform formally known as Twitter, and attacked Miller for disloyalty. Arthur Schwartz, a political operative with close ties to Vance and Donald Trump Jr., mocked Miller for supporting Marco Rubio in the 2016 presidential election. Charlie Kirk, leader of Turning Point USA, an influential conservative political group that targets college students, went so far as to call for Miller’s ouster.
“He pretends to be a conservative when in reality his fidelity is not to America or his voters. He must face a primary and be removed from office,” Kirk wrote.
Miller responded in his own post, calling Kirk a fairweather Trump fan and touting himself as an early adopter.
Miller told Signal in a statement that he’s been with Trump all along and said the media “is just trying to divide us.”
“I have no problem with Vice President Vance,” Miller said. “My past comments are nothing more than water under the bridge. If President Trump had a real problem with me you would hear about it from him directly like you have seen with some of my colleagues. I’m not going to let the media paint a picture that doesn’t exist.”
What Ramaswamy’s ad blitz signals for GOP race
I broke the news this week about Ramaswamy’s affiliated super PAC reserving the first statewide ads of the 2026 election cycle in Ohio.
Lots of people will see the ads, which are running through the end of the month. I suspect, though, that they’re really aimed at a smaller audience.
That’s because they come at a time when almost no one is thinking about any election, much less one that’s a year away or more. From that perspective, they are unlikely to move the ball for many voters.
But they are a sign of Ramaswamy’s campaign’s financial strength, showing that he and his allies can and will spend millions of dollars unusually early in the campaign season. This could give pause to Ramaswamy’s current Republican opponents – such as state Attorney General Dave Yost – or potential future ones, such as Tressel.
In short, if Ramaswamy and his team have a huge budget and want to try to clear the field of GOP candidates, this is one way to try to do it.
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