The Browns’ plan to relocate to suburban Brook Park, Ohio, and build a $2.4 billion domed stadium and mixed-use development has moved from one legal quagmire to potentially another.
As expected, a recently approved state plan to provide $600 million toward the stadium project, backed by funds from an account of unclaimed funds, has generated a lawsuit. A group of former Democratic lawmakers in Ohio has followed through on a prior threat to challenge the use of that money, filing a lawsuit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court against several state officials and claiming the plan is unconstitutional on both the state and federal levels.
The unclaimed funds are derived from sources such as utility deposits, uncashed cashier’s checks, and forgotten bank accounts, with Ohio currently holding nearly $5 billion of such money. For the new Browns stadium, some of those funds would be used to help support stadium construction, and then repaid through future tax revenues generated at the venue.
”The state now intends to confiscate the private property … for the purpose of funding a private development, depriving the rightful owners of their property,” the lawsuit reads in part. “The state intends to do so, even though it has long been settled that funds held by the state of Ohio in its ‘unclaimed funds’ account are private property.”
The lawsuit seeks class-action status and an injunction to block the use of the unclaimed funds, and it says the public-sector costs will ultimately exceed $1 billion when factoring in additional related costs.
“The state of Ohio intends to steal over a billion dollars in private property from its citizens and pour it into the pockets of [Browns owner] Jimmy Haslam, one of America’s richest men,” said Jeffrey Crossman, former Ohio legislator and part of the group that filed the lawsuit. “Everyday Ohioans are outraged by this blatant abuse of power. The government can’t just take someone’s property and give it to someone else.”
The legal challenge closely follows the approval of the Ohio budget that included not only the Browns stadium funding, but also changed elements of the state’s Modell Law to apply limitations on pro teams in the state relocating only if they intend to leave Ohio entirely. That shift in the Modell Law essentially mooted a prior lawsuit from the city of Cleveland, which had argued the Browns’ intended move to the suburbs was unlawful.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has opposed the use of the unclaimed funds and called it “poor public policy,” but still believed it was legal. Along similar lines, Gov. Mike DeWine previously said he anticipated the lawsuit as the recent state budget process unfolded.
“I’m sure that will be tested in court, if that’s what we end up doing—if that’s what the legislature ends up doing,” DeWine said last month regarding the use of unclaimed funds. “So I’m sure that will be tested. But that’s nothing. A lot of things get tested in court.”
