Tax-base growth sharing key to a resurgent NE Ohio: Thomas Bier

Underlying the Cleveland Browns’ proposed move to Brook Park are two critical issues: the fractured way Northeast Ohio governs itself and the region’s struggling economy.

For decades, the region has been treading water. We would be in real trouble but for the jobs and investments of the Cleveland Clinic and other health care systems. Beyond health care, the region has failed to connect in any substantial way with growth industries spawned by automation and computers.

Promoters of the Browns move promise economic growth from a new stadium and related development. But experience elsewhere counters that promise. The nonpartisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission’s review of the project emphasized that many studies of sports projects across the country have overwhelmingly concluded “there