The Commanders' efforts to build a new stadium have "hit more roadblocks over financing and concern about widespread sexual harassment allegations involving the organization," according to Flynn, Cox & Fortier of the WASHINGTON POST. The team has "pitted Virginia, Maryland and DC against one another to deliver the most ambitious pitch to lure the Commanders," but the team's "tactics, history and culture have made it a tough sell to some politicians who hold sway over incentives or land deals the Commanders need to execute their vision of a multibillion-dollar sports-entertainment destination." The ongoing congressional investigation into alleged sexual harassment within the Commanders organization also is "complicating federal legislation that Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) plans to introduce to sell the RFK Stadium land to DC." Norton said that she "intends to eventually file the bill," but the investigation has made the Commanders "unpopular among House Democrats, including key leaders she'll need to move the bill." Maryland lawmakers are "working on a plan that would invest hundreds of millions of dollars around the existing stadium site, building roads and infrastructure nearby." But Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan yesterday said that he "would not support building the team a stadium, nor handing out the types of incentives Virginia has advanced." Hogan: "We’d like to keep them in Maryland. We’re not going to get into a bidding war over them. … If Virginia wants to do that, and they want to go to Virginia, I would say, 'Good luck.'" Efforts to return the team to RFK "could get launched later this spring." After the Washington Football Team changed its name to the Commanders last month, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser said that she "wants to welcome the team back to DC at RFK Stadium -- something she had held off advocating while the team had its previous name" (WASHINGTON POST, 3/16).
FLAG ON THE PLAY? A WASHINGTON POST editorial states members of the Virginia General Assembly "have been embarrassed by reports of the original, over-the-top sweetheart deal they were prepared to grant" Commanders Owner Daniel Snyder for a stadium to which the team intends to move in '27. Versions of that measure "would have diverted potentially unlimited amounts of tax dollars generated by the project ... to pay off debt used to built it." They rewrote the legislation to set a $350M limit on Snyder's "public funds bonanza." Snyder "would put up" some $2B of his own funds "toward the project." Still, "why should he, one of the richest individuals in the United States, be treated to such a tax picnic?" Some other NFL owners "have received no such handouts." Virginia is the most populous state in the country without a big-league professional sports franchise. But a tax giveaway to a mogul is a "poor way to go about it." Virginians "should throw a flag on the deal" (WASHINGTON POST, 3/16).
