No one may have ever been worse at running a professional football team than Jimmy and Dee Haslam. But no one may have ever been better than them at convincing elected officials to act in ways that betray their constituents.
Money always trumps logic in Columbus, so the Haslams used large campaign contributions to convince the legislature and governor they deserve $600 million to abandon a city the Browns have called home for 75 years. State government’s massive use of taxpayer funds to help finance a covered stadium for the Haslams in Brook Park amounted to an epic betrayal of downtown Cleveland.
There will come a time, perhaps 10 years from now, when the new stadium begins to steal concerts and other events from downtown Cleveland. And that is when the legacies of every single person who helps make this happen will be forever stained.
Last week, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb became the Haslam’s latest victim, agreeing to years of payments totaling $100 million in return for dropping a lawsuit designed to prevent the Browns from fleeing. In 2025 dollars, Bibb got about $70 million. About $30 million of that will be used to tear down the existing stadium. For the billionaire owners of the Browns, the payment amounted to little more than a rounding error. They must have laughed their way all the way back to Berea.
The Haslams bought off an entire city for about $130 million less than they agreed to pay Deshaun Watson, a quarterback accused by more than two dozen women of predatory sexual behavior. The Watson fiasco may have done more harm to an individual franchise than any transaction in NFL history. As Sally Jenkins, the nation’s best sports columnist, wrote in The Washington Post in August 2022, “Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam seemed to think that cloaking themselves as human rights activists would somehow drug you into forgetting they wagered three first-round draft picks and the biggest guaranteed contract in NFL history on Watson, even as the line of women accusing him of sexual creepism wrapped around the block.”
Nevertheless, a whole lot of people who live here inexplicably consider the Browns an essential part of our quality of life. So before this sad saga is over, more than $1 billion in tax dollars paid by working-class Ohioans will be used to finance a privately owned stadium and reconfigure the surrounding infrastructure.
Ken Silliman, the thoughtful and civic-minded former Gateway chair who served in important roles for former Mayors Michael White and Frank Jackson, has been consistently critical of replacing the present stadium with “$600 million of state money that could have been better spent on public schools, libraries, lead paint remediation and health care.” The Browns have said they expect at least $300 million more in local tax money, not counting more highway relocation funds expected to cost well over $100 million.
The day after Bibb had his pocket picked and wished the Browns well in another city, Michael Deemer, CEO of Downtown Cleveland Inc., posted on Facebook, “Downtown Cleveland Inc. remains deeply concerned about the impact of the Browns’ decision and the strain it will place on small businesses and the competition it will create for public infrastructure resources.”
He is so right. This is what real leaders should be talking about. And the people who don’t should be ignored. What a contrast Deemer’s statement was with a city administration that chose optics over outcomes.
The dangers this project poses to downtown should be frighteningly obvious to anyone with a pulse. That’s precisely why the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s support for the Browns building a massive stadium development project in Brook Park was the most irresponsible single decision made by the Cleveland business community in the last 50 years. If you’re paying dues to the GCP, you’re subsidizing a betrayal of downtown.
A mayor’s job is to fight for that downtown, and for every one of his or her constituents – especially in a city with so many voiceless residents in desperate need of a better life. Yet there the mayor stood in City Hall last Monday, a smile on his face and the Browns owners at his side, a tone-deaf Justin Bibb falling for the Haslam hustle.
If there’s a way to do so, Cleveland City Council should slow this down. “To be honest, nobody down here is happy about this,” Council President Blaine Griffin said of council, while acknowledging there may be little the body can do about it. “The taxpayers deserve better.”
Indeed, they do. The Haslams claim they have enough public funding to build the new stadium, but they continue to lobby for a hotel bed tax or sin tax increase. It would be economic cruelty to force downtown hotel owners to charge customers a fee for a project that may put them out of business. Any ballot issue, including a sin-tax increase, that becomes a referendum on the Browns ownership would suffer a devastating defeat. Buying the electorate would be immeasurably more difficult than buying the Ohio General Assembly.
Brent Larkin
Brent Larkin, PD staff member, photographed in the Plain Dealer studio, June, 2001. (Larry Hamel-Lambert/The Plain Dealer) For Column Sigs DIGITAL CAMERA FILE entire shoot is on CD. The Plain DealerThe Plain Dealer
Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne would not support either of these ideas, but some County Council members shouldn’t be trusted to do the right thing. Ronayne has been the most consistent and courageous voice on the Browns issue, the one person who genuinely understands the harm Haslam’s project could do to downtown.
Some bottom-feeders within the Democratic Party want to reward that leadership by finding and funding a candidate to challenge Ronayne’s re-election bid next year. It would take a special kind of fool to believe that plot might succeed. Taking a stand against forcing working-class voters to hand their hard-earned money to billionaires is an unassailable ticket to re-election.
In two weeks, Bibb will also be re-elected. But standing there with the Haslams, accepting a few crumbs, made him look weak. A bold leader would have looked the Browns owners in the eyes and warned them not to harm downtown. Or else. The whole thing was pathetic. Clevelanders deserve so much better.
Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.
To reach Brent Larkin: blarkin@cleveland.com
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