They counted one job three times and called it job-years. I know the sentence. It is what a consultant writes when the honest number is too small for a press conference, and what a county executive reads aloud when the consultant has gone home. A job-year is a real unit; economists use it; it is not a crime. It is also a way to take one plumber, keep him on the site for three years, and put three plumbers in the brochure. Somewhere in every one of these deals there is a footnote that does the work the headline is pretending to do. This one got read out loud by a resident at the microphone, which is the only reason I know about it.
Here is the record. WTOP’s John Domen and 7News’ Ida Domingo and Tom Roussey reported that on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, the last day of its legislative session, the Prince George’s County Council in Maryland voted 8-0 to authorize up to $215 million in special-obligation bonds to help build a proposed 6,000-seat Sphere entertainment venue and surrounding complex at National Harbor. Sphere Entertainment Co., the company behind the giant glowing orb in Las Vegas, would gradually repay the bonds to the county; the county would also build a $40 million parking garage and provide up to $130 million in bond financing, repaid through tax revenues generated by the facility once it is built. WTOP reports the state put in more than $13 million and puts the whole Sphere at $1.4 billion, with the hope, when the deal was announced, of shows in early 2030. County Executive Aisha Braveboy called it “a $1.3 billion dollar economic impact” to the county and said it “will more than triple in tax revenue what we are losing with the Commanders leaving in a few years and the closure of Six Flags.” 7News reports the Ernst & Young analysis linked from her website projects nearly 8,000 full- and part-time jobs statewide, about $1.58 billion in annual economic activity by year three and $127.8 million a year in state and local taxes — and that EY itself cautions the projections “rely partly on information supplied by Sphere Entertainment,” that actual results could differ, and that the jobs supported by visitor spending would not necessarily all be new. Then Fort Washington resident Christopher Goins pointed to the 1,750 construction jobs and the footnote that counts one person in the same job for three years as three jobs. “It’s a sleight of hand. It’s an accounting fiction. It’s literally cooking the books,” he said. Asked about it, Tracy Benjamin, the county’s deputy chief administrative officer for economic development, said, “We did not conduct that analysis,” and, “I think Ernst and Young is a pretty reputable company.” The next day, by email, Benjamin confirmed it: “Each of the 1,750 jobs in this equation are cumulative one-year jobs during the construction period.”
Now the defense, and Benjamin made it fairly after a night to look. Construction crews come and go; a job-year is how economists measure paid labor on a project where nobody works the whole time, and Benjamin says many more than 1,750 individuals will earn wages building it. The bonds are special-obligation, meant to be paid from the project’s own revenue rather than the general fund, and Sphere, not the county, is supposed to make the payments. Braveboy says the county has leaned on homeowners too long: “Far too long, we have focused our attention on our residential tax base, which has put a burden on our property owners.” I have some recent, personal feelings about residential tax bases, and I am not going to pretend that sentence didn’t land. Fine. Then read what the handshake actually is. The county lends its borrowing power to a public company, builds a $40 million garage next to it, and pledges taxes the venue will generate to paying off the venue’s own financing — which means part of the “new tax revenue” on the poster is spoken for before the first show. WTOP reports the council majority wanted a project labor agreement guaranteeing union construction labor, Sphere’s owners wouldn’t cross that line, and it took Braveboy and the governor’s office to bring the council to yes; what survived is a labor-peace deal for workers after it opens that leaves out protections for the people who build it. So the construction workers are the ones counted three times and protected zero times. The company got the bonds, the garage and the vote. The county got a consultant’s number, a disclaimer and a deputy vouching for the consultant’s reputation instead of its math.
Deb wants to know if a job-year means Buck’s thirty summers mowing the same lawn count as thirty jobs, because if so she would like him paid. Buck says it was only ever the one lawn and it was plenty. Joey has offered to build a smaller orb for the backyard, no bonds. I love them. They are seasoning.
“Job-years” is the alibi. The footnote is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. Eight council members voted unanimously for a $215 million bond authorization on a jobs promise that the man who read the fine print called cooking the books and the official who defended it promised to look at it only after a reporter asked. Maybe the orb glows every night and pays every bond on schedule. I hope it does; the people of Prince George’s County deserve one deal that does what the poster says. But a county that borrows for a company and pledges that company’s taxes to repay itself has become a lender with no collateral but a light show. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask, out loud, before the groundbreaking: how many people, not job-years, will build it; who pays if the orb runs short; and who on the council read the footnote before voting?
Sources:
- WTOP News, John Domen, “Prince George’s County gets the ball rolling on Sphere with final vote to approve concert venue,” Oct. 27, 2026
- 7News (WJLA), Ida Domingo and Tom Roussey, “$215M Sphere financing package approved by Prince George’s County Council,” Oct. 27, 2026 (updated Oct. 28, 2026)
— Theo Ashford-Lindström
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