Mayor Bowser’s Billion-Dollar Mistake
District of Columbia (D.C.) Mayor Muriel Bowser and the City Council are proposing to give a billion-dollar taxpayer handout to the Washington Commanders for a new football field to replace Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Stadium.
While Mayor Bowser is championing the deal as a defining achievement of her administration, giving more than $1 billion to the well-resourced owners of the Washington Commanders at a time when D.C. residents face escalating housing prices, failing schools, and a public transportation system approaching bankruptcy flies in the face of those in need. Under the latest plan, the District would pledge $500 million in new tax-exempt public infrastructure bonds over four years, along with additional funding for infrastructure upgrades to roads, utilities, and public transit that could raise the public price tag well above $1 billion. Citizens Against Government Waste named Mayor Bowser the May “Porker of the Month” for gouging taxpayers with her fiscal negligence.
To finance the bond repayment, the D.C. Council plans to extend the Ballpark Fee, which was created to help pay off bonds for Nationals Park and slated to expire after 2026. Instead, Mayor Bowser proposes rebranding the tax as the “Sports Facilities Fee” and continue to levy it indefinitely on D.C. businesses who had anticipated tax relief upon the Ballpark Fee sunset. The Commanders will also be handed substantial development rights to the land surrounding the new stadium. The team will be responsible for the stadium itself and “activating and developing multiple parcels of land around the stadium with restaurants, entertainment venues, hotels, housing, green space, and more.” The land is currently owned by the federal government but managed by D.C.
This move is fiscally irresponsible at a time when D.C. faces a $1.1 billion budget shortfall stemming from Congress’s decision not to include an appropriation for the District in the April 2025 fiscal year 2026 continuing resolution. It would also further jeopardize the city’s fiscal health on the heels of losing its triple-A bond rating and raise future borrowing costs for any purpose. Mayor Bowser’s giveaway to the Commanders is simply corporate welfare dressed up as “economic development.”
The Fair Budget Coalition, which represents the interests of lower-income residents of the District, has circulated a petition asking the mayor and council to replace RFK Stadium with “housing and other neighborhood-focused amenities – not an NFL stadium.” According to the group, the land could support an additional 9,000 residential units beyond the 6,000 included in the current development plan, while preserving space for the existing skate park, recreational field, and farmer’s market. And they also suggest that the money can be better used to benefit all D.C. residents by supporting the financially distressed Metro system. The petition states, “We need to invest in community, not spend $850 million to fund a billionaire’s for-profit playground.”
Like stadium and arena projects in other cities, Mayor Bowser is framing everything as “revitalization,” but these sweetheart development deals enrich private owners at the taxpayers’ expense and frequently fail to provide the overexaggerated community benefits. And there is nothing preventing the Commanders’ owners from paying for everything themselves, like the Las Vegas Knights’ T-Mobile Arena. Knights’ owner Bill Foley said that public money is better spent “on firefighters, teachers, and policemen,” than professional stadiums.
An August 2022 report that reviewed more than 30 years and 130 reports on the impact on local economies of spending $33 billion between 1970 and 2020 on sports stadiums and arenas corroborates the findings of “very limited economic impacts.” The analysis found that the “large subsidies commonly devoted to constructing professional sports venues are not justified as worthwhile public investments.” The authors noted the “paradox of local governments continuing to subsidize sports facilities despite overwhelming evidence of their economic impotence.”
Diverting substantial public funds to a stadium project undermines the city’s ability to provide essential public services and its long-term economic stability. The name may change from Ballpark Fee to Sports Facilities Fee, but for D.C. businesses and residents, it still smells like the same old public risk and private reward that will add the nation’s capital to the list of failed stadium endeavors.
