Category: Jacksonville Jaguars

Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan held a holiday party on his megayacht last week, and invited Mayor Donna Deegan and members of the city council that in June approved $775 million in public funding for renovations to Khan’s team’s stadium. But no worries, this totally ethical, or at least within existing city ethics rules, according to, uhhhh, one of the mayor’s aides:

Carla Miller, who is a special adviser to Deegan and previously spent years as the city’s ethics director, said the per-person cost of the party stayed within the legal limit of what an elected official could accept by attending it.

“In this case, it was totally allowable,” Miller said.

Florida state law and city ordinances, it turns out, limit the value of any gift from a business that lobbies the city to $100, and attendees were allowed to bring a +1, so that capped the value per person at $50. Miller said a Jaguars representative — who surely would have no reason to fudge this just to evade illegal lobbying charges — assured her that the total value of the finger foods and alcoholic beverages served came to less than $50 per person, so all was copacetic.

It’s worth noting, though, that this ignores the 400-foot elephant in the room, which is the yacht itself. When you go to a party on a superyacht, you don’t go for the canapes, you go to hang out on a superyacht, but Florida ethics law doesn’t seem to factor that into the $100 limit. (One councilmember, Matt Carlucci, told the Florida Times-Union that he agreed the “optics weren’t the greatest” but that “if I turned it down, my wife would have been very disappointed.”) If the party had been held at a stadium suite during a game, say, presumably the Jags would have to factor in the value of tickets to the game; instead, Khan gets to use his $360 million boat as an ethics-free investment in schmoozing.

This is important not just because of abstract ethical lines, but because we have seen time and again how important informal social pressure is in encouraging local electeds to approve stadium subsidies even when their constituents are opposed, because everyone in the local growth coalition that shows up at these parties agrees that the business of local government is subsidizing local business. That makes the true value of an event like this invaluable to Khan, even if he didn’t attend himself (he sent his team president, Mark Lamping, instead) and only served domestic beer.

Another councilmember, Rahman Johnson, described the megayacht party as “an elegant, understated affair,” and the Jaguars and Khan as “a corporation and an individual who has contributed more to the betterment of downtown Jacksonville than anyone in our city’s history.” You can’t buy goodwill like that — or rather, you can, so long as you keep the food and drinks tab under $50 a pop.

The Jacksonville Daily Record has a long, dull explainer on the city’s upcoming $775 million in subsidies for a Jaguars stadium renovation, and much thanks to University of Colorado Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter for reading it closely so we don’t have to and finding the details hidden way at the end:

Let’s back up here for a second, as the funding plan is a little complicated. In 2016, with the city owing more in pensions to government workers than it had on hand, Duval County voters overwhelmingly approved extending a 0.5% sales tax surcharge, previously used for road and infrastructure projects, to pay down the pension debt. This May, with the city still owing $3.9 billion on pensions, the city council approved siphoning off $600 million in sales tax money to use on the Jaguars stadium. (The other $175 million in city stadium money is coming from existing hotel taxes.) With the sales tax money now not available to use on pension debts until 2030, “the city would need to use general fund taxpayer dollars to make up the difference of $254 million to fund its share of contributions,” according to the Daily Record. (The pension fund gap is less than the full $600 million in siphoned-off money because the sales tax is coming in faster than initially expected. I think — the article isn’t super clear.)

That’s a lot, but the upshot is: Jacksonville residents voted for a sales tax hike to pay for pension costs, but the city decided to raid that fund to pay for upgrades to a private NFL team’s stadium, so now it will have to either cut services or raise taxes again to cover its pension debt. That is not exactly how the Jaguars deal was sold at the time, but then, we were all distracted at the time by the pretty pictures.

And one day after the Charlotte city council overwhelmingly approved $650 million in public spending to renovate the Carolina Panthers‘ 28-year-old stadium, the Jacksonville city council one-upped them by overwhelmingly approving $775 million in public spending to renovate the Jaguars‘ 29-year-old stadium. The vote was 14-1 with two absentions, and it came with all the expected trappings:

A terrible marketing name: The Jaguars’ redone stadium has been branded as the “stadium of the future,” which, aren’t all stadiums “of the future”? Since it’s, you know, where we’re going to spend the rest of our lives?

Democracy!!!1!: Of the council’s 14 Republicans and 5 Democrats, 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats voted in favor, with one of each absent. Republican councilmember Mike Gay cast the lone vote against the deal, saying there’s “a great deal wrong with it.” and that it wasn’t what voters had meant the city’s 0.5% sales tax surcharge to be used for. Meanwhile, two different councilmembers, Republicans Kevin Carrico and Terrance Freeman, abstained because of conflicts of interest, which was somehow two less than the last time the council voted on a stadium measure.

Intimations that the team would have moved without the money: Fox Sports ran with the headline “Jacksonville approves $1.4B ‘stadium of the future’ to keep Jaguars in town,” though there were never any offers from other cities to lure the Jaguars elsewhere. Also the Jaguars get to keep playing one home game a year in London under the new deal, so really the headline could have used an asterisk. (The team’s new lease extension runs for 30 years, at least, which makes the per-year cost less than the Panthers’ newly established record $43 million a year.)

Fresh stadium renderings: Including an image of Jags owner Shad Khan where even his moustache looks overjoyed to be getting a $775 million check from taxpayers.

Bad sports metaphors: “By your vote we have scored a touchdown,” declared council president Ron Salem following the vote, in a long tradition of trying to define giving public money to sports team owners as literally something fans should cheer about. (Councilmember Matt Carlucci appears to have gone even further, saying, “Let’s not go for a field goal, let’s go for a touchdown,” though that was only reported secondhand by a Jacksonville resident in attendance, so citation needed.)

Kicking the can down the road on community benefits: The council followed through on its promise to remove $94 million in affordable housing and homelessness prevention spending from the stadium bill — though at least Khan’s $77 million worth of community spending, which will still happen. (And the $94 million in delayed city spending may still happen as well, it just will be voted on separately later on.)

The $775 million in public cash could end up being the largest lump sum of public money ever for renovating an existing stadium, depending on how far Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti dips into his bottomless state slush fund. Coming just one day after the Charlotte vote, this is a clear sign that any thoughts that the tide has turned on sports subsidies were premature at best. But at least we have journalists rooting out the details of the deals to keep elected officials honest?

It’s only Wednesday, and it’s already a long week.

There’s a new poll out of what Duval County residents think of the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium renovation plan, and while I hesitate to outright call it a dumb poll, the way it’s being presented in the media is at least 90% dumb:

Our first look at how Jacksonville voters feels about taxpayer-supported stadium renovations shows mixed emotions about funding.

A poll by the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab finds a little over half of voters say they’re opposed to taxpayer money going to the stadium, but an overwhelming 81 percent favor the 150 million dollar part of the deal going towards community support.

The headline that WOKV-FM chose for this story was “UNF poll: Duval voters hesitant but willing to fund billion-dollar stadium deal,” which isn’t actually what “a little over half of voters say they’re opposed” means. (It’s also not really a billion-dollar stadium deal: It’s a $1.4 billion stadium renovation with $775 million paid by the city, plus about $227 million worth of additional spending on “community benefits,” about two-thirds of that paid for by taxpayers. But I digress.) Yes, people like the idea of spending money on affordable housing and other social goods, especially when part of that money would come from Jags owner Shad Khan, but they dislike the part where the city would give three times that much money to Khan so he can have a snazzier place to put on football games.

And over at the Florida Times-Union, they report that the poll actually asked whether locals would support stadium spending without the community benefits spending, and the survey says:

Combining the community benefits agreement with the renovation costs caused overall support of the deal to jump [from 41%] to 56%.

Still, 72% of respondents said they would prefer to vote on the spending in a referendum, which Deegan has repeatedly spoken against.

No, neither 41% nor 56% in favor is “a little over half opposed.” It’s all convoluted enough that I’m tempted to give News4Jax a pass for its headline “UNF Poll: Majority support stadium changes but oppose amount of public spending on construction,” except no, that’s completely wrong, there’s no excuse there.

The poll also asked what Duval County residents’ spending priorities were, and the answer was not at all positive for Khan:

In an open-ended question, respondents were asked their top priority for the investment of tax dollars in the City of Jacksonville.

The most popular response with 23% was infrastructure and roads which was followed by education and schools with 19%, and public safety and police with 13%. Four percent of respondents said downtown revitalization, and 3% said the stadium and the Jaguars, with 10% who didn’t know or refused to answer.

They are definitely not making “hesitant but willing” like they used to.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., a Washington Post poll of area residents from both within and near the city found that:

A 51 percent majority says the stadium should be built in D.C., while 17 percent say it belongs in Maryland and 15 percent say Virginia. The remainder did not specify a preference.

Among Commanders fans, the preference for D.C. grows to 63 percent, and among District residents it is 76 percent. City residents are now more open to public funding of a stadium. In 2022, two-thirds of D.C. residents opposed using city funds to help finance a new stadium in the District; now residents are split on the issue.

It’s no surprise that football fans in D.C. would rather get to watch football games in D.C., or even that many suburbanites would prefer a central location, since for many it’ll be easier to get to downtown D.C. than from one suburb to another. As for residents being “split” on using “city funds,” what were the actual results, and did the question specify how much in public money?

So now that Daniel Snyder has been replaced by a somewhat less odious Commanders owner, more D.C. residents are indeed okay with spending city money on a new stadium, though no actual price tag was included, so we don’t know whether they’re okay with spending $100 million or $500 million or two bits or what. And suburbanites still absolutely hate the idea of ponying up anything at all for an NFL stadium, which may be why they’re happy to let D.C. take the hit of hosting the Commanders.

The accurate way of reporting on polls like these is to lay out what people actually say they would support and what they wouldn’t — but when that runs afoul of what elected officials and team owners want, news outlets generally try to crowbar the findings into the terms of generally accepted horse race journalism. Polls are generally garbage at this point in history, but when they’re weaponized into not gauging the public’s priorities but rather finding ways to get a deal done, they become worse than useless.