Ohio has been sitting on a massive $4.8 billion treasure trove that most residents don’t even know exists – and now state lawmakers want to use it to help build the Cleveland Browns a new stadium.
Wednesday’s episode of episode of Today in Ohio discussed the Ohio Senate’s budget plan to tap the state’s enormous unclaimed property fund to finance the controversial Brook Park stadium project.
As Courtney Astolfi explained on the podcast, “The unclaimed property fund is just like a ball of money that sits there. It’s been sent into the state by banks and businesses after no one’s claimed it for three to five years. Think money from inactive bank accounts, old safe deposit boxes, uncashed checks and the like.”
The ambitious plan would pull approximately $1.7 billion – about one-third of the total fund – to create a “sports and culture facility fund” that would provide the Browns with their requested $600 million loan for the Brook Park stadium. State Senator Jerry Cirino indicated the fund could also support proposed upgrades to Paycor Stadium where the Cincinnati Bengals play.
Unlike Governor Mike DeWine’s earlier proposal to simply grant the money through increased sports betting taxes, this approach maintains the loan structure, requiring the Browns to repay the funds using tax revenues generated at the new stadium site and surrounding development.
While the hosts acknowledged the financial soundness of using existing state funds versus issuing bonds (which would add approximately $400 million in interest costs), Chris Quinn raised questions about the unclaimed property fund itself: “That’s a lot of money that’s unclaimed. And the state used to require the publishing of every name in each county of anybody that had unclaimed funds under their name so that people could scan it and see whether they’re owed money and withdraw it.”
Quinn wondered whether the state deliberately stopped publicizing these unclaimed funds to accumulate a massive reserve: “You wonder now when the state stopped requiring that if the real goal was to build up another massive block of cash and hide from people the fact that they have money in this fund.”
The revelation prompted podcast host Laura Johnston to immediately check her own status: “When this published, I (asked myself) do I have unclaimed funds? I mean, I don’t think I do, But I found three things.”
Listen to the conversation here.
Note: Artificial intelligence was used to help generate this story from Today in Ohio, a news podcast discussion by cleveland.com editors. Visitors to cleveland.com have asked for more text stories based on website podcast discussions.
Listen to full “Today in Ohio” episodes where Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with Editorial Board member Lisa Garvin, Impact Editor Leila Atassi and Content Director Laura Johnston.