They are a lousy team with perhaps the worst owner in all of professional sports, but the Imperial City wants the Redskins nonetheless. As Alex Gold and Ted Gayer of the Brookings Institute write:
Recently, DC mayor Muriel Bowser announced that she has reached out to Dan Snyder, owner of the DC-area NFL team, about returning the team to the Nation’s Capital from its current location in suburban Maryland.
Fine, you think, if they want Snyder and his inept squad, no skin (red or otherwise) off my nose.
But, not so fast. Seems that the governors of Maryland and Virginia are also interested. Thus:
… a bidding war [is] likely, with each location promising a newer and fancier replacement stadium for the team’s current home.
And, in the way of these things:
Wherever the Washington team winds up, there’s little doubt that taxpayers – both locally and across the nation – will be on the hook for much of the stadium’s bill.
It can all be blamed, like so much else, on the lousy, jury rigged tax system:
Even if one buys the argument that local taxpayers win from subsidizing a team to locate in their area, there’s no reason that federal taxpayers should be part of this bidding war. Residents of, say, Wyoming, Maine, or Alaska, gain nothing whether the DC-area football team is lured to Washington or Virginia or Maryland. Yet, under current federal tax law, taxpayers throughout the country will wind up subsidizing the stadium, wherever it’s located. The future home of the DC-area’s NFL team will most likely be financed, at least in part, by the issuance of municipal bonds. Holders of municipal bonds pay no federal tax on the interest income, in effect providing a federal subsidy for the financing of a stadium for Snyder’s team.
