Demand a fair deal for Portland taxpayers
Tom Dundon just bought the Portland Trail Blazers for $4.25 billion. He is now asking Oregon taxpayers to fund a $600 million renovation of the Moda Center, the arena where the Blazers play. He is not expected to contribute to the renovation cost. The team has not committed to a long-term lease.
Senate Bill 1501, introduced February 9, 2026, would redirect state income taxes from the general fund — money currently paying for education, health care, and public safety — into a new arena fund. Portland's mayor has pledged $400 million over the life of the deal. Multnomah County has pledged $88 million. The state's contribution is undetermined.
In exchange, the public receives no equity in the franchise, no share of revenue beyond modest ticket fees, no clawback if the team is sold at a profit, no relocation penalty if the team leaves, and no firm commitment that the Blazers will stay.
We support keeping the Blazers in Portland. We support renovating the Moda Center. We refuse to accept a deal where the public pays everything and gets nothing.
If the public invests $600 million, the public deserves a real return. These are the minimum protections every Oregonian should demand before a single dollar flows.
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Decades of peer-reviewed economic research from Stanford, Brookings, and dozens of other institutions conclude that public stadium subsidies do not generate net new economic activity. The Brookings Institution found that for every public dollar spent, the local economy sees roughly thirty cents in return. The jobs are part-time. The spending is redirected from other local entertainment, not created from nothing.
The city owns the Moda Center but Rip City Management operates it and collects the bulk of revenue from concessions, luxury suites, naming rights, and events. The city collects modest ticket fees that are contractually reinvested into the building. The operator collects five to eight times as much from a building the public owns.
When the franchise eventually sells for billions, the appreciation driven by the publicly funded renovation accrues entirely to the owner. The public captures nothing.
The system is designed so that leaving is free and staying costs the public money. An owner who threatens to leave gets a $600 million renovation. An owner who commits gets nothing. Loyalty is punished. Disloyalty is subsidized. Our five demands flip that equation.
The Green Bay Packers are community-owned. They can't leave. Because they can't leave, they never threaten to leave. Because they never threaten to leave, they never extort the public for a new stadium. The alignment between the team and its community is total. The franchise is one of the most valuable and beloved in professional sports.
The NFL's response was not to celebrate this model. It was to ban any other team from adopting it. The NBA never allowed it in the first place. They banned it because it works — for the public.
Portland can't do full community ownership. But it can demand the closest approximation: equity stakes, revenue sharing, and structural alignment between the owner's financial interests and the city's.