“NAST strongly encourages the Ohio House to reject the Senate’s legally questionable proposal,” wrote NAST CEO Shaun Snyder to House Finance Chair Brian Stewart on June 13. “No objective review of the proposal can result in any conclusion other than that the state would be seizing title to property that belongs to individuals. The notion of doing so should be repugnant to Ohioans.”
Additional questions were raised June 20 by Rep. Sean Patrick Brennan, D-Parma, who claims the Senate proposal violates the Ohio Constitution’s one-subject rule, which requires bills to be confined to a single topic, conveyed by their title.
“This is a massive change in property law and it has no business being stuffed into a state budget bill,” said, Brennan said in a June 20 press release. “It’s a textbook example of what the single-subject rule was written to prevent — unrelated, far-reaching policy changes snuck into must-pass legislation with limited public scrutiny.”
Senate Finance Chairman Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, told WCPO’s sister station in Cleveland that the proposal can withstand legal scrutiny.
“We’ve done a lot of legal work prior to announcing this to make sure that we’re on solid ground. We believe we are,” Cirino told News 5 Cleveland. “Doesn’t mean there won’t be a challenge here or there.”
The controversy marks what could be a fateful week for Paycor Stadium, where an $830 million renovation project awaits state funding and a long-term lease agreement between Hamilton County and the Cincinnati Bengals. Both are facing June 30 deadlines.
The Senate proposal is one of three ideas to garner legislative support during Ohio’s budget process, which began with a proposal by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to fund stadium projects by doubling Ohio’s sports betting tax.
The Ohio House replaced that idea with a $600 million state bond issue for the Browns’ $2.4 billion stadium complex in Brook Park.
Of the three proposals, the Senate plan is likely best for Hamilton County and the Cincinnati Bengals. That’s because it would create a $1.1 billion funding pool from which teams could seek grants as early as this summer.
The House version excluded the Bengals by restricting stadium funds to counties with more than 1 million in population, while the governor’s plan called for teams to compete for roughly $180 million a year in new sports-betting revenue.
When he was in Cincinnati last week, DeWine again voiced support for his sports betting proposal while criticizing the House plan for its use of general fund money to support stadiums.
He didn’t say whether he would veto the House plan. Neither did he endorse the use of unclaimed funds.
“It seems to me kind of poetic justice that the people are making the most money, you know, from these stadiums or the people who are in the gaming business and they need to pay more,” DeWine said.
The state treasurer’s association said its chief problem with the Senate proposal is the “permanent escheat approach” of the legislation, meaning it forever separates unclaimed funds from their rightful owner. The Senate proposed eliminating ownership rights for people who failed to claim their funds after 10 years.
The treasurer’s group suggests modifying the legislation to separate the state’s legal liability for unclaimed funds from its accounting liability, under rules developed by the Government Accounting Standards Board.
That would let the state pay the small percentage of claims by people who actually request their unclaimed funds, without forcing teams or the state to pay back stadium grants.
“Ohio can have great, publicly funded cultural and sports facilities, paid for through unclaimed property,” Snyder wrote. “It can also have a world-class unclaimed property program, which fully protects the rights of missing owners. The two are not mutually exclusive.”
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