Donna Deegan says financing Jaguars’ stadium off pension assets would keep it ‘all in the family’

Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan isn’t committing to a novel stadium finance proposal advanced to media by her chief negotiator with the Jaguars, but she is borrowing a title phrase from Norman Lear to sell it.

That floated plan would include borrowing from the pension fund’s assets to fund stadium renovation costs.

“It would basically be keeping it all in the family, right? And then of course you, you’d have to pay the pension fund back … at the rate at which they would target their investments. So, I don’t know that that’s something that will actually happen,” Deegan said on WJCT FM.

“That is an idea that, that Mike Weinstein floated to me and said that this is just one of the many options that I’m looking at.”

Deegan said she had advised Weinstein to “think out of the box” since “this is going to be a big-ticket item regardless of what the price tag is.”

“And I said, you know, come up with, with creative ways in which this would allow us to do this with the resources that we have, and I think it’s just one of the things he’s looking at.”

Weinstein described the proposal as a way to pay down pension and potentially circumvent the bond market, at least while it made sense to do this in terms of interest rates.

“Instead of putting it into the land, instead of putting it into the stock market, they would put some of it and give it to the city. The city would, in return, guarantee principal and interest at their AAA return target,” Weinstein said.

The agreement would also include an opportunity for the pension funds to “have a call on it, which means at any time they’re stressed for cash, they can call some of it back, which they’ll never be because they’ve got $5 billion in cash basically.”

It remains to be seen if this will fly with the City Council, of course.

City Council President Ron Salem told Florida Politics on Saturday he had serious questions about the move being explored by the Deegan administration to fund renovation costs that could approach a billion dollars.

“I am concerned that we are negotiating raises at the same time as this issue has surfaced. In addition, I want to understand the cost savings of borrowing from the pension fund versus borrowing the money in a traditional fashion. There is significant work that needs to be completed if this is truly an alternative,” the Republican at large Councilman said.

Salem said he had been briefed on the proposal by chief negotiator Weinstein, who is handling talks with the Jacksonville Jaguars ahead of a deal being presented to the City Council this summer.

Randy White, the current Vice President who likely will lead the Council starting in July, has not been briefed by the administration. But the former Fire and Rescue Administrator is taking a wait-and-see approach as he researches the proposal, and is curious what the Police and Fire Pension Board thinks, as well as the Fraternal Order of Police and the Jacksonville Association of Fire Fighters.

Likewise, Finance Chair Nick Howland is learning about the executive branch’s intentions from reading the news. However, he is not completely skeptical of the unique funding scheme.

“I’m reading this report in the media just like everyone else and have plenty of questions. That said, my main concern is negotiating a deal that’s in the best interest of taxpayers and financing that deal in the most efficient manner possible. I will never support raising taxes for a stadium renovation, so alternative financing options are certainly worth exploring.”