The chairman of the D.C. Council said he believes the Council will approve the deal to bring the Washington Commanders back to D.C. — but it’s going to take longer than the team and the mayor have agreed to.
After months of delays, Mayor Muriel Bowser sent her 2026 budget to the Council. It includes funding for the stadium development and her 2025 supplemental budget, which includes $400 million in cuts imposed by Congress.
Since the announcement that Bowser and Commanders owner Josh Harris reached a deal to bring the team back to D.C., the big question has been: Will the D.C. Council approve the deal to spend more than $1 billion of D.C. taxpayer money?
On Thursday, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson — who has opposed public funding for the stadium — said a stadium deal will likely be approved.
"Let me be clear. I think that we, I think that ultimately, the Council will agree with the stadium. But I think that we can make the deal better," he said. "It's what the Council has done with every stadium proposal in the past. But this all takes time. We don't even have the documents concerning the stadium."
Mendelson warned there are still some obstacles, with the first being timing: The deal signed by the mayor and the team calls for Council approval by July 15 or the Commanders can pull out.
Mendelson said he doesn’t see a way the Council can approve the Commanders deal — and the budgets — until late July or early August.
"I think the July 15 deadline, which was negotiated without any collaboration or discussion with the Council, is going to be very difficult," he said. "The members met yesterday to discuss what the budget schedule would look like, and that's going to be difficult."
Mendelson also expressed concerns about the financial impact of the deal for taxpayers, but he is optimistic those can be worked out.
"I have found the Commanders to be very cooperative, and they want to get this deal done, and we want to get this deal done," Mendelson said.
The Commanders deal is far from the biggest issue facing D.C. residents in the budgets just submitted by the mayor. Both budgets will include hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts, including about $400 million in cuts imposed by Congress that have to be made before October.
Mendelson has a sober warning to D.C. residents about what those cuts will mean: "I think they should be bracing for bad news, but I don't know exactly what that looks like. And when I say bad news, that there will be service reductions. There'll be contracts frozen and probably some furloughs."
The Council plans to hold public hearings on both the stadium deal and the budget cuts in coming weeks.
If the District misses that July 15 deadline to get the Commanders deal approved, the team and the District could agree to extend that deadline, or the team could opt to restart negotiations with Maryland or Virginia.