Caveat Lector - Politics, Government and the Free Press – by Mark B. Evans

by Mark B. Evans on Jun.26, 2009, under Editorials, Politics

Baseball teams should build their own stadiums

Among the mass of bills the state Legislature is wildly roaring through this week in the mad rush to finish the session is one that would allow Pima County to create a sports authority district.

House Bill 2572 has the support of most of Pima County’s legislative delegation and has already passed the House and is expected to pass the Senate.

Gov. Jan Brewer also is likely to sign it.

She shouldn’t.

She should save us from ourselves and help us resist the temptation to enter the pro sports stadium-building battlefield where more often than not team owners are enriched and taxpayers are fleeced.

The bill would allow the county Board of Supervisors to put to voters the formation of a sports authority special taxation district and if created, gives the authority the authority to put sales tax increases and bonding measures before voters.

Pima County wants to enter the fight for Major League Baseball spring training teams but without the taxation district it’s like fighting a tank with a sharp stick.

Spring training reportedly brings in between $30 and $40 million a year to the local economy. The county wants to hold on to that money and the taxes tied to it. But to do so, it must pay the extortion of MLB team owners who want new stadiums or renovations to existing ones.

So in order to get millions of dollars in spring training money, the county wants to extract millions of dollars from the local economy in new taxes. Or put another way, they want to raise a tax to gain a tax. That’s senseless.

Perhaps it might make sense to get in bed with pro teams if their owners didn’t break their deals whenever they wanted. The Chicago White Sox were supposed to be here for another three years but bought their way out of their contract for a measly $5 million and moved to Glendale to play in cushy new digs with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The White Sox are the ninth MLB team to change spring training sites in the past 10 years. More changes may be on the way. The Cincinnati Reds are moving to Phoenix from Florida next year and the Diamondbacks and Rockies are unhappy without a third team in Tucson and are being heavily courted by Maricopa County and Las Vegas.

The Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority will spend about $400 million over the next 20 years building and renovating spring training stadiums in Phoenix. That’s on top of cities like Glendale spending their own millions to build stadiums like Glendale’s $108 million facility for the White Sox and Dodgers.

If the Dodgers can leave Dodgertown, where they’ve been playing in Vero Beach, Fla., since they were Dem Bums from Brooklyn, then why should any community trust a pro team’s promises? Glendale’s money talked and the Dodgers walked, as did the White Sox.

Didn’t the county learn any lessons from the White Sox? Doing business with baseball teams is bad business.

It’s fair to argue that there’s no harm done in passing HB2572 because voters will still have the ultimate say.

But professional baseball is an emotional issue for Americans. We love Dem Bums and those Cubbies and them damn Yankees. It’s not the money that tempts voters to give millions of their tax dollars to billion-dollar corporations, it’s the baseball. We’re our own worst enemy.

The state should help save us from ourselves and kill HB 2572.

Let baseball teams build their own stadiums.


8 Comments for this entry

  • Art Jacobson
    June 26th, 2009 on 11:13 am

    We made a mistake when we located TEP on the south side, rather than downtown. That made Dan Eckstrom happy, but no one else and now it’s too late.
    An interesting comment floated to the surface of one of the Star’s comment threads a day or two ago. Let’s build a high rise Casino downtown. That should spur downtown development!

  • Red Star
    June 26th, 2009 on 1:11 pm

    Interesting thoughts about dependency, opiates and The Old Pueblo today from Mark Evans…

  • Red Star
    June 26th, 2009 on 1:23 pm

    “Let’s build a high rise Casino downtown. That should spur downtown development!”
    Indeed. But first the good people of Pima would have to cede downtown to the feds and then persuade them to make it a res. Then a casino might be built. None of that is gonna happen, of course, even though downtown was their Native American turf before it was whitey’s.
    No, the correct way to redev downtown (assuming that is a “good” and feasible goal…one must always consider the embedded premises) was to slide UA semi-pro athletic facilities downtown. That was and is the Red Star way…
    Is it too late?

  • Jonathan DuHamel
    June 26th, 2009 on 5:31 pm

    if sports stadiums are such a good deal, then they should be funded privately.  Besides, a case can be made that such government expenditures violate the AZ constitution:
    Ariz. Const. art. 9, § 7 states: “Neither the state, nor any county, city, town, municipality, or other subdivision of the state shall ever give or loan its credit in the aid of, or make any donation or grant, by subsidy or otherwise, to any individual, association, or corporation, or become a subscriber to, or a shareholder in, any company or corporation, or become a joint owner with any person, company, or corporation, except as to such ownerships as may accrue to the state by operation or provision of law or as authorized by law solely for investment of the monies in the various funds of the state.”

  • susan
    June 27th, 2009 on 11:21 am

    I agree that the baseball teams should pay for at least half of the stadium, and maybe they would stay through their contract time and maybe then some.  The downtown area is too small of area to build anything at this time and the rio Nuevo project and trolly idea was ok, but not the right area of downtown, mainly because it is a small area.  The train and bus station need more room too.  I have lived here all my life and would like to see it upgrade, but two many people have outside thoughts, which might work here, but it is not all their money to use, even with committies on there team, then still should check with the voters with big projects and have the meetings where people can make them to voice their opinion. 

  • ldonyo
    June 30th, 2009 on 6:58 am

    No matter how much you spend on building a facility to make a team or teams happy today, someone else will outspend you and take those teams away tomorrow. Yes, spring training baseball brings in a lot of money to the Tucson economy, but how much does it cost Tucson to get this income?

    The last numbers I saw published were $125 million for a facility in Marana. After allowing for overhead costs, infrastructure improvements and the cost of the Pima County Sports Authority (which will not be working for anything close to free), my guess is that it would take five to six years to break even. By that time, the teams playing there will probably want some renovations and improvements, so there will be another large capital outlay by the county, say $10 to $20 million over two or three years to get everything done. That means that after 10 years, Pima County might be ahead by $30 – $50 million with almost all of the net increase coming after year seven.

    That’s an awful long time to hope someone doesn’t steal one of your three teams away with a shiny new spring training facility.

  • ldonyo
    June 30th, 2009 on 7:01 am

    On a completely separate note, why are there no links to the other blogs on each blog page? Ease of navigation is key to a user-friendly site, especially if you want people to come back.

  • Justice
    July 2nd, 2009 on 1:40 pm

    Where’s the shiny “New Tucson Citizen” that you told us was debuting on July 1st?

    Just a guess but perhaps a funding problem from Gannett Corporate that you didn’t foresee?

5 Trackbacks / Pingbacks for this entry

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.