Rich people work hard and earn their money.  I lie.

It’s much more complex than that and we help enrich them in so many ways.

They know how to NOT pay taxes but get others to pay taxes that benefit them.

In Cuyahoga County it has become the way politicians do things.

The extra tax tab for our rich – and the public’s subsidy thereof – should be updated monthly so people understand that they are paying for that nearly always empty stadium on our lakefront. It’s a city-owned stadium that bestows amazing benefits to one of Cleveland’s richest families.

In June, County Auditor figures showed that Cuyahoga taxpayers shelled out $1.49 million in sales taxes to pay for Browns Stadium bonds, used almost exclusively by the Cleveland Browns, owned by the billionaire Lerner (credit card) Family.  The Lerners pay rent of $250,000 – without any increase for inflation for 30 years – for use of the stadium.  The city, in turn, generously picks up the casualty insurance at about half that cost.

Browns stadium packs in more than 70,000 fans each game with all receipts down to the last hot dog going to the supposedly generous and charitable Lerners.  As do all revenues from food concessions...  parking, advertising, naming rights and novelty sales also go to Lerner’s private business.

There are other taxes in addition to the “sin” taxes that support the Browns Stadium, built by the city at who knows what price.  The cost is estimated at a low-ball $325 million but the real cost will never be known.

There are additional taxes supporting the bonds, including taxes on parking lots, car rentals, extra admission taxes to shows, games, etc., city utility subsidies, not to mention $33 million from the State of Ohio and $3 million from the destitute RTA.

The Lerners are paying less for the use of the new stadium than the scrounge Art Modell paid for the old stadium.  Put that in your pipe and “sin-tax” smoke it.

You won’t read any of this in The Plain Dealer and it isn’t because there isn’t enough room in the new, skimpy PD.  The PD doesn’t believe in monitoring the rich who live off the rest of us.

I called the stadium “Looter’s Dream Field.”

The $1.49 million tax bill was only for last month.

Since January, you paid $7,038,611.98 and since the start of the sin tax for Browns Stadium, the cigarettes, alcohol, wine, mixed beverages and beer taxes have paid a grand total of $40,743,883.80.

Now that’s a lot of public charity for the wealthy Lerners.

By the way, Schools Chief Executive Officer Eugene Sanders, we are told, needs money for school uniforms (how about education?), yet the billionaire Lerner family pays NO PROPERTY TAXES on the stadium.  That means the school system gets NOTHING from the new 73,000 seat Browns Stadium.  Nada.

Just to keep the new taxes in Cuyahoga County up to date: Smokers also paid $3.1 million in taxes for the Cuyahoga County arts and culture tax and $10.9 million for the year thus far and $27.09 million since the tax started February 2007.

The late Al Lerner appeared grudgingly only once at City Council for his sweetheart deal that gave him the stadium essentially free.  He appeared with his chief operating officer Carmen Policy.  Agog Council members were allowed to finger Policy’s 1994 San Francisco Super Bowl ring for a touch of celebrity, as I had written in the Free Times in 1998.  You can imagine the oily unctuousness of that scene.

As the meeting ended, I approached Lerner.  He was ready...

“You’re that very right-wing guy,” Lerner said quickly, trying to be cute.

I said to him...

“You said you never took a tax abatement.  But you are taking a tax abatement on the stadium and it’s coming directly from the schools.”

He tried to dodge, saying he doesn’t take abatements for his office buildings.

However, in the case of the stadium, he said...

“I don’t consider this the same thing because this is a package that was put on the table...  I had nothing to do with negotiating the tax exemption.”

Actually, Tim Hagan (pictured, left) and Mike White went to Columbus on a corporate jet and lobbied successfully that ALL Ohio stadiums/arenas would be tax exempt FOREVER.  What sweet guys.

How clever a dodge for Lerner.

I suggested that he reject the abatement and his answer was...

“That’s just me making another donation.”  Pressed, he said, “You’re talking to the wrong guy.”

I told him I was “talking to exactly the right guy.”

At that point, someone loomed close beside me.  It was Browns security chief Lewis Merletti, a former director of the U. S. Secret Service.

“Is he going to be your bodyguard?” I asked Lerner.

Lerner got huffy.  Merletti moved in to cut short the conversation, “We have to get going.”  Lerner’s last remark was...

“I think it’s fair to say that there are a lot of things you and I are not going to agree on.”

He was right on that score.