Brittany Wallman of the Sun Sentinel reports six out of eight Broward County commissioners support a plan to give money to the team to help make sure the team stays in South Florida. The Panthers are asking for an extra $80 million.

Working against the Panthers is the amount of debt left to pay on the arena, totaling around $225 million. The team is looking to get a break on payments against that through money taken from tourist taxes that have produced more money than they expected over the years.

They've been in that arena since 1998, and they still owe $225 million?

What the hell are these people doing? And why don't they just share an arena with the Heat.

What the hell are these people doing? And why don't they just share an arena with the Heat.

They used to share an arena with the Heat in downtown Miami, but they ran away from the dark people and went up to gated-community/outlet-mall suburbia. You would think it would have helped them, but they had better attendance and more interest downtown than they ever have up by the Glades all alone.

I guess basically, the arena books lots of concerts, and lots of people go to those, but the Panthers bring very little money in and lose tons of it, largely because the NHL's salary floor has gotten so high.

So you're saying it's smarter to have a stadium in a large city vs. a suburb?

The funny thing is that Curious Hair also seems to lament the loss of the Islanders to the "big city" in hockey. He should be loving that they moved to Brooklyn.

Yeah, because hockey in Florida is how we should judge everything.

Second of all, the Barclays Center was built for basketball only, which means that the sightlines and capacity are ridiculously compromised in order to fit an ice rink. It's only expected to seat 14,000, with a lot of those seats having obstructed views, in some cases everything behind one of the blue lines. Of course, these seats will be more expensive than anything was at Nassau, and I fear the ramifications of selling an inferior good for a higher price.

The team's main request is to be relieved of contributing toward the debt on the arena; the county would pay the remainder of the $225.1 million debt, with help from a $2 million annual state subsidy.

That's not all the Panthers are asking for. Here's what else is in the 59-page Panthers proposal:

•If the arena profits exceed $12 million, the county would reap 20 percent of any profits. That's not changing. But the calculation of "profit" would change, to help the Panthers keep more of the revenues. The team would continue to count as an expense $4.5 million in arena bond payments even though the county would be paying them. The Panthers also would move to the expense ledger a $250,000 annual arena management fee paid to the Panthers by the county.

•The Panthers would remove from the profit books the money made from seats in exclusive sections: Club Red and ADT. That move alone would allow the Panthers to keep $6 million or more in revenues without counting them toward the profit-sharing threshold, according to the auditor's analysis.

•The Panthers' contributions toward arena reserves, set aside for repairs and renovations, would be cut, saving the Panthers at least $650,000 a year, or $9.7 million in all.

•The ability of the county to check the Panthers' financial books would be reduced.

•The team's payment for property insurance for the arena would be capped at $1 million, and the county would pick up the rest. That's an estimated $600,000 a year, or $9 million over the life of the contract.

The team would back away from financial responsibility for maintaining the arena, and would ask the county to pick up $500,000 a year in maintenance. That piece of the deal would cost the county $7.5 million in tourist taxes.

•A 22-acre piece of vacant land owned by the county next to the arena would be given to the Panthers for construction of a hotel-casino. The county's financial return would be negotiated.

Please allow a moment's indulgence to explain how developments in Florida are made on, say, the county level:

1. You are a developer. You want to build 500 houses in the county.
2. The planning department notes that 500 houses will require bulldozing wetlands or a historic neighborhood or some other poor-people thing, so you will have to pay an environmental impact fee, pay to relocate the historic neighborhood or not build at all.
3. You tell this to the County Commissioner whose election campaign you bankrolled 10% of, because you are a wealthy developer.
4. The planning department presents its findings at the Board of County Commissioners meeting, at which point your County Commissioner moves that you be granted an exemption from both restrictions on building and paying any fees for doing so, based on some fantasy that another blot-shaped treeless Omega Man zone of ranch-housed crudscape is going to finally turn around the economy of a county that's entirely made up of developments like that.
5. Just for the hell of it, the BoCC exempts you from a shitload of other taxes or fees.

Speaking of which, here's how the other part of that farcical dance goes:

1. You are a developer. You want to build 500 houses in the county.
2. The planning department notes that these 500 houses will put roughly 1,000 new motorists on the roads in this part of the county, choking the flow of traffic. They demand that you spend $20 million in concurrency fees to widen roads and bridges to the neighborhoods, create new stoplights and signage and perhaps even build an on-ramp addition to an existing highway.
3. You tell this to the County Commissioner whose election campaign you bankrolled 10% of, because you are a wealthy developer.
4. The planning department presents its findings at the Board of County Commissioners meeting, at which point your County Commissioner moves that you be granted an exemption for paying concurrency fees for 25 years.
5. An entire neighborhood, and everyone else who uses these roads, commutes through hell for 20 years.
6. Before the 25 years are up, the county realizes that the traffic problem has become so severe that they must rehabilitate and expand traffic arteries before your bill is due, funding them through an emergency bond issue. This obviates the need for you to pay anything, because your concurrency fees were tied to old projected road upgrades made by county planning staff 20 years ago, all of which have been superseded and overridden by the plans for the new bond issue. Thus the taxpayer has just funded your concurrency fees, which means you've bilked him twice, because back during the concurrency fees meeting...
7. Just for the hell of it, the BoCC exempted you from a shitload of other taxes or fees.

This is the PG version of Florida development at the county level. The entire state is like this. The R-rated version has the same degree of horse trading but involves something gratuitous, like a public servant receiving a blowjob from a man or woman with the sort of pigmentation they usually mention to scare their constituents into voting.

The DCA is just like those jerks from the FBI or the HHS who tried to make Rick Scott answer questions about stealing millions of dollars of taxpayer money. They resist collusion and fraud because they are anti-business. So, Scott naturally wants to destroy the DCA as part of his "government austerity" program. The DCA is yet another lead-footed socialistic bureaucracy holding up progress — shining glorious flat-earthed, ranch-housed, winding-streeted, "Whispering Glades at Miramar"-named progress. The future is ticky-tacky, and it will all look the same.

Nevermind that Florida is glutted with brand-new unsold houses and with citizens irresponsible people trapped in older homes they can't sell without taking a punitive loss. Rick Scott knows what the public already understands: that it's currently just too onerous for the lions of real estate to build suburban housing in Florida. Rick Scott understands the heartache, the loss confronting multi-millionaire real estate developers and building contractors. They only want want to restart the economic engine of building things because they know that when you build crap — any crap, anywhere — then you are rich.

So not only does Scott's housing solution resemble Chief Clancy Wiggum's theory of deep hole escape, "No, dig up, stupid!" but it also relies on the same free-market bromides and unsubstantiated wishful thinking the state GOP has peddled for decades. Again, assuming that you are a developer, his thinking goes something like this:

• We can bankroll cutting taxes by eliminating the DCA.
• The DCA impedes your new development.
• Your new development will stimulate the economy by your earning money and... something else happening, which we map on this graph with: ???
• Despite an absence of taxes, this economic stimulus will result in your generating tax revenue by your being so stupid that you pay all of the remaining shred of taxation to which you are subject, and also because of ????
• This will fund the state government. Also, entrepreneurship. Lastly, America.
The irony here is that the DCA already does the last part. Municipal and county governments excitedly roll over for new development like a disturbingly obsequious dog. Sure, he loves you, but he's kind of embarrassingly fawning, and his fascination with your crotch does neither of you any good.

It worked for the Marlins.

Big reason why Dade stood its ground with the Dolphins. Now they have to renovate Dolphin Stadium themselves. This is Broward, though. Demographically, it's a whole other world.

County Mayor Barbara Sharief said the team’s arena lease — which runs for another 14 seasons — does not include an “out” clause. But Commissioner Martin Kiar said the Panthers could leave at any time if they agree to cover their remaining debt payments, currently $63 million.

The National Hockey League would need to approve a relocation, and the Panthers have not asked for permission to move.

“We can’t force them to stay here if they are given permission by the NHL to move, but they would still need to fulfill their obligations to the county,” Kiar said.