The blank-check problem
You wouldn’t renovate your own kitchen this way: the contractor names the price, you commit the money, and the itemized bid arrives after you’ve signed. That is the order of operations both governments are being asked to vote for this month.
Neither August vote spends a dollar — and that’s the problem. What gets voted is the number, and the number is the one thing that never gets renegotiated. The scope comes later, written by the people receiving the money.
“to be attached” Verified — what Exhibit A, the itemized $573M budget in the City’s own draft, says instead of numbers.
The County pointed its protections at its own wallet. The City gave its protections to a committee that doesn’t exist yet. Neither requires the one thing a homeowner would demand: an itemized bid, checked by their own inspector.
How these numbers fit together
The same scope, escalated and repeated over 20 years: $505M. Inside it: ~$164M genuine repair, ~$341M revenue-generating upgrades.
This is the current number. The earlier “$600M ask” you may have seen was the floated figure this draft replaced.
The balance sheet’s ~$850M–1B modeled core sits inside this range.
Not the $2.5M-per-year maintenance reserve — that is a separate recommended term.
Verified primary document · Calculated arithmetic from verified inputs · Modeled assumptions disclosed & adjustable. Every line’s paper trail: the Public Balance Sheet.
Are these votes blank checks?
Legally, no — and officials will correctly say so. The County’s August 6 resolution is an affirmation plus instructions; its money still requires an intergovernmental agreement in December, a county-code change, and budget votes in 2027 and 2028. The City’s August 12 term sheet is non-binding; its money still requires an MOU vote this winter, a lease ordinance in early 2027, and budget actions after that. Every vote below is a toll gate where the public can still speak and conditions can still be attached:
- Aug 6 — County board votes its resolution and amendment slate (9:30 a.m.).
- Aug 12 — Council votes the term sheet.
- Nov/Dec 2026 — Council votes the MOU; County board votes the IGA.
- Q1 2027 — Council votes the lease ordinance — the binding one, and, like any city ordinance, subject to referendum by petition.
- 2027–28 — budget appropriations, at both governments.
But here is why “non-binding” is cold comfort. In public deals, the number voted first becomes immovable while the scope stays fluid. Once August passes, every later vote inherits $573M as settled fact. By December, “we already committed” forecloses the scope question. The check isn’t blank — it’s worse: the amount is pre-filled, and the payee writes the memo line later.
The number came before the scope
Every private construction project runs in one order: scope, then budget, then commitment. This deal is running in reverse. The proof is in the City’s own July 16 draft term sheet, obtained under public records law. It prices the renovation at $573,000,000 — “as itemized and shown in Exhibit A,” “based upon information to be verified.” Exhibit A is an empty page:
NTD: Estimated Renovation Budget to be attached.Exhibit A to the City’s draft term sheet, July 16, 2026 · production 471144_00011 Verified · the full document story →
Meanwhile, the City’s own consultant priced the full renovation scope at $253M in today’s dollars — and no document anywhere in three governments’ processes reconciles the $573M ask to it. The number didn’t come from a scope. So the scope will be reverse-engineered to consume the number.
At the July 30 work session, the City confirmed the genealogy on the record (per the session’s caption record): the winter talks set a “$600 million… target” that the NBA was “validating,” and “573 was us getting as close to that 600” from the three governments’ combined capacity — while the NBA, councilors confirmed, never requested $573M specifically. And the deputy administrator, in the same session: “we still don’t know what 573 is getting us.” A target validated by the league, assembled from what governments could pay, itemized by no one.
It gets one step worse. The draft says the budget will be “updated… in the Definitive Agreements” — meaning the team writes the baseline after the money is committed, and whatever it writes becomes the baseline. That matters because the deal’s best protection — cost overruns belong to the team — only bites above the budget. If the counterparty drafts the budget after the commitment, padding isn’t an overrun. It’s the budget. A padded budget is an overrun the public pays in advance.
The protections, audited
Both governments have written real protections. The question is what each one actually covers — and when it can still be used.
The County’s
- No responsibility for cost overruns — affirmed in the resolution.
- No cash moves before 2028; bonds in 2029.
- Information gates: an updated economic analysis, an employee census, and a renovation plan with a budget breakdown, before further votes.
- Amendments on the table: a clawback if the team leaves, payments to school districts, funds released only after a board vote — and one sentence that does more than the rest combined: “the contribution level will be proportionately reduced if certain terms are not achieved.” That turns a pledge into a purchase.
Verdict: strong for the County’s own wallet — and honest: its own spreadsheet prices the true cost at $138.6M with interest, not the $101.6M headline. But its clawback runs against the City, because the team isn’t a party to anything the County signs — and its own timeline has it adopting the IGA in December, before the lease exists. A lock, pointed at its own wallet, installed before reading the policy.
The City’s
- Overruns assigned to the operator — against a budget that doesn’t exist yet.
- Audit rights, inspections, design approval — held mostly by a Joint Authority whose membership hasn’t been decided.
- “Information to be verified” — with no named verifier and no deadline.
- No information gate anywhere: nothing says “no MOU vote until the itemized budget exists.” No requirement to reconcile $573M against the City’s own $253M study. No publication requirement before votes.
Verdict: insufficient — and the City is the party that can least afford it. It owns the building and carries the largest exposure: $120M in cash, ~$275M of arena revenue recycled into the building over 20 years (the draft’s own Exhibit D), plus the maintenance ask. Paper rights, exercisable later, by bodies that will have already spent their leverage.
The shared gap is the fatal one: no independent scope referee. The state law funding this deal (SB 1501 §6(2)(a)) already requires the State to retain an arena-negotiations expert during this negotiation — and the deal-terms review still hasn’t surfaced. The only independent scope document in existence is the City’s own $253M study, sitting on its own shelf.
What sufficient would look like
Five fixes — all still available, none of which slows the deal by a day:
- A scope gate with a quality bar. No MOU vote until an itemized budget exists and an independent owner’s representative reconciles it, line by line, to the City’s own $253M study.
- A frozen baseline. Exhibit A completed and locked before the overrun clause means anything. You can’t have an overrun against a budget nobody wrote.
- Money that follows scope categories. Genuine repair funded differently than the revenue-generating upgrades the operator keeps — the City’s study already sorts the scope into ~$164M of repair and ~$341M of upgrades.
- Walk-away preserved at every stage. A verification right without a walk-away right is a formality. The City’s signature is the consideration — condition it. Term 00 →
- The County’s sliding scale, adopted city-side. “Proportionately reduced if terms are not achieved” is the only protection in this entire deal that works automatically, instead of requiring a future council to find the courage to blow up a deal.
None of this is exotic. It is how every bank, every insurer, and every homeowner in Portland commits money to construction: the bid first, the check second. The City’s own Exhibit A says “to be attached.” Attach it first.
The votes are toll gates, and the public owns three instruments at every one of them.
What you can actually do →