As lawmakers debate funding for the Washington Wizards and Capitals' potential monumental move to Virginia, the News4 I-Team set out to get documents behind the proposed deal. Most of the requested public records have been withheld by many of the elected leaders and public agencies now supporting the $2 billion project they expect taxpayers to help back.
For months, the I-Team filed Freedom of Information Act requests in D.C., Richmond and Alexandria seeking emails, letters, presentations, studies and documents related to how the deal came together and the studies supporting it. Except for a long-sought study released Friday, the results have been limited.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin unveiled the proposal in December and said at the time that “any project like this would first and foremost be good for the Virginia taxpayer."
His sell was "no upfront cost" to taxpayers to build what Monumental Sports and Entertainment’s owner Ted Leonsis calls the most advanced arena ever. Of the $2 billion it is expected to cost, at least $1.5 billion is tax dollars collected once the sports complex is built.
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We’re told by his team that the governor and Leonis met face-to-face at least three times in July, September and November of 2023. High-level staff meetings were held before and after those. The I-Team asked to see PowerPoint decks, letters or notes from those meetings. We were denied. Once the deal was announced, we requested emails between the governor and his staff and Monumental. Those too were denied. No explanation or citation of any legal exemption was given.
In December, a select group of Virginia lawmakers, the Major Employment and Investment Project Approval Commission, met at the State Capitol in Richmond and unanimously approved the deal.
Using Virginia Open Records laws, we asked to see the documents they saw in closed session before voting. The group provided the one-page agenda, but that was all. There’s no mention of a billion-dollar project on the agenda. According to a video of the open portion of the meeting, lawmakers referred to it only as "Project Potter" without any mention of the cost.
In the closed meeting – the one where elected leaders agreed to a plan putting Virginians on the hook for a billion plus dollars – legislative staffers connected to the Commission withheld “all meeting materials.”
“The law does not require their disclosure,” they wrote the I-Team.
Sports economists who study how your dollars are used on arena projects tell the I-Team the details matter, and the promises are easy to make but harder to fulfill.
“I think that it's often the case when these deals are presented, they're presented as though it's totally done,” Kennesaw State University economist J.C. Bradbury told the I-Team, “There's no reason to fight back when in fact, there is a huge fight coming.”
Bradbury, who has studied many arena proposals and is generally a skeptic of them, told the I-Team that Virginia taxpayers have every right to be upset with the secrecy of this deal.
“All the research that has been done ever by economists, regional scientists, urban planners, they tend to find there's little to no economic impact from hosting professional sports teams or building new stadium, and that public dollars devoted to subsidizing them are poorly spent. It's not a great use of money,” Bradbury said.
Andrew MacDonald is a former vice mayor in Alexandria and is now part of the Coalition to Stop the Arena at Potomac Yard. He said he too has tried to get some of these documents without much more luck.
"They clearly don't want us to, to fully understand how this whole how this process began,” McDonald told the I-Team. "You can't make good decisions if you aren't providing information for people. And it basically begs the question, is everything just a fantasy?"
For months, the I-Team has been asking for documents with the City of Alexandria, where the posted summary of the deal shows taxpayers will pay $106 million to develop projects around the arena and share in the risk of the bonds.
Attorneys for the City of Alexandria denied those requests calling the documents proprietary and confidential. They claimed releasing them could jeopardize the deal. Those attorneys eventually released the $108,362 contract to do the analysis, but redacted much of the work to be done.
Just days ago, Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson told the I-Team: "I am frustrated at how long it is taking [to release deal documents]… I wanted this out as soon as possible. I wanted this out in December, but we'll get it out as soon as we can. "
Days after that, the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership released a partially redacted Economic Impact Analysis.
The analysis projects billions in economic impact and the creation of more than 22,000 jobs at the sports and entertainment complex.
Once he read the analysis, economist Bradbury called it “simply not credible.”
Bradbury said it raises more questions about huge job creation figures, where all the new revenue would come from, why some portions are still redacted and the basic methods the study relied on. He said it makes clear the need to get this material out early in the process – instead of now – with three weeks left for Virginia lawmakers to consider the proposal.
“This is very common in stadium deals where you want to put the numbers out and you don't want to give people time to talk about them or reflect upon them, because it always results in, revealing the problems with these numbers. And the more people hear about them, and hear about the problems with, the more likely they are to question them.”
The Alexandria Economic Development Partnership stands by the project and the analysis that supports it. Stephanie Landrum, AEDP’s CEO, told the I-Team: “The benefits of a fully built-out Potomac Yard are very real — monetarily, but also in the creation of a new, vibrant, walkable, dense, transit-oriented neighborhood and entertainment district."
Correction (Feb. 20, 11:34 a.m.): This story previously misstated the name of AEDP’s CEO. It's Stephanie Landrum. This article has been updated.
