As the Tennessee Titans look to construct a new stadium, Gov. Bill Lee has proposed a budget amendment that would potentially see a $500 million bond authorization for a new football stadium in downtown Nashville.
The $500 million plan would use tax revenue to the fund the stadium, which the governor's office believes would be an investment in not only the Titans but in national, international and year-round revenue opportunities in the state, WSMV reports.
The $500 million was not an amount requested by the Titans organization; rather state officials came up with the number after looking at similar stadiums. Tennessee Titans President Burke Nihill said the team does not plan for Nashville taxpayers to foot the bill for the new stadium.
"We are committed to maintaining the priorities from a financing architecture — we do not want the taxpayer today or any day to have any obligation to be funding the NFL facility in town," Nihill told the Nashville Sports Authority, per WSMV.
Following Lee's proposal, which was submitted on Tuesday (March 29), Nashville Mayor John Cooper 's office released a statement thanking the governor for his attempts to keep the Titans in Nashville but reiterated his stance against using taxpayer money.
"We appreciate and welcome the Governor's willingness to make this potential investment in Nashville. For the last twenty years we've loved hosting the Tennessee Titans under the original lease, and that first lease now obligates us to provide and maintain a first-class stadium," Mayor Cooper's office said in a statement.
However, the statement continued, "Mayor Cooper is committed to two goals: keeping the Titans in Nashville for generations to come, and doing that in a way that does not divert tax dollars from education, affordable housing, infrastructure, or other general fund obligations. We are continuing to study stadium options that allow us to do both."
The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a non-profit think-tank based in Nashville, called Lee's proposal "extremely disappointing" and that it is neither the state nor the local government's job to "fund the pet projects of millionaires and billionaires."
"The government should never force hard-working Tennesseans from across the state, or even Nashvillians, to back funding for a stadium that many of them will never even visit," Beacon Center CEO Justin Owen said in a statement. "While we love football and love the Titans, we should be following examples like the Super Bowl champion Rams in Los Angeles, which relied on no upfront tax dollars for the construction of their state-of-the-art stadium. It worked there, and it can work here, too."