| CrestedSaguaro |
Feb 13, 2018 9:15 PM |
Arizona could join national compact forbidding taxpayer-funded sports facilities
I've long been against public-funded stadiums. It will be interesting to see if these proposed bills will go anywhere.
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For years, Arizonans have listened to repeated threats from its professional sports teams.
Revenues are down, so the hockey team may move across town. If the basketball team doesn't get major upgrades to its arena, it will start looking for a new home. The baseball team could head out of state if it doesn't get the renovations it says it needs.
These threats have been part of the national sports conversation as well. Three National Football League teams have moved, or planned to move, in the past three years.
A series of bills introduced across the nation, including in Arizona, aim to curtail professional sports teams' ability to coax their way into better benefits through relocation threats.
'Millionaires being subsidized'
A duo of identical Arizona bills — one introduced in the House and the other in the Senate — would have the state enter into a national compact forbidding the spending of taxpayer dollars on new professional sports teams' facilities or renovations to existing ones.
"You have millionaires being subsidized by the taxpayers, and it's really not necessary. It's really a bill motivated to protect the taxpayer," said Sen. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert.
“It's really a bill motivated to protect the taxpayer,”. The compact would not take effect until 24 other states agreed to join, which would diminish teams' ability to threaten to move elsewhere to get better financial incentives, according to Tom Jenney of Americans for Prosperity, the group that's pushing the compact nationally. It would not apply to existing contracts.
Jenney said teams tend to "play states and cities off of each other," by threatening to leave.
"We would like to remove the temptation entirely," he said.
Currently, four other states have bills that mirror Arizona's measure working their way through their legislatures, according to Americans for Prosperity. There is no time limit indicated in the bill, so not all 24 states would need to sign on this year.
Is bill inadequate to solve problem?
John Vrooman, a sports economist and professor at Vanderbilt University, said in an email Monday that Arizona's bill seems "inadequate in scope to solve the national problem that it is trying to correct."
"If 25 states adopt a mutually-binding non-relocation agreement, then what about the other opportunistic 25 states?" he said.
Instead, Vrooman suggested the regulation of sports teams should come at the federal level.
“If 25 states adopt a mutually-binding non-relocation agreement, then what about the other opportunistic 25 states?”
John Vrooman, sports economist and professor at Vanderbilt University
"Unfortunately for local taxpayers held hostage, that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon," he said.
Americans for Prosperity is a conservative advocacy group funded by controversial billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, making the group's opposition to publicly-financed stadiums unsurprising.
But recently, even left-leaning groups and politicians have called out sports teams asking for subsidies.
The progressive Brookings Institute published a report in 2016 criticizing the federal government's financial involvement in stadium funding.
Locally, Phoenix Councilwoman Kate Gallego, a Democrat, announced her opposition to renovating the Phoenix Suns' arena and the Milwaukee Brewers' spring training facility.
Taxpayer financing is the norm
Bills introduced across the nation, including in Arizona, aim to curtail professional sports teams' relocation threats. Wochit
In Arizona, taxpayer-financing — at least in part — is the norm for most professional sports facilities.
Petersen, who sponsored Senate Bill 1453, said Glendale's Gila River Arena, where the Arizona Coyotes play, is the best example of a "bad deal for the taxpayer" — and why a compact is necessary.
Glendale borrowed $180 million to build the arena, which opened in 2003. The city has a $13 million annual debt payment on the arena through 2033.
For nearly the past decade, the Coyotes have threatened to leave Glendale with an empty arena and tens of thousands of dollars in debt to pursue cushier offers elsewhere — either in downtown Phoenix, the East Valley or out of state.
The Suns have been asking Phoenix to pitch in for a new or significantly rehabbed arena for the past several years.
The Suns and Phoenix evenly split the nearly $100 million price tag on Talking Stick Resort Arena when it was built in the early 1990s. The city still owes about $8.24 million on the building.
The Arizona Diamondbacks are also in a squabble over the future of its facility. The team sued Maricopa County, the owner of Chase Field, last year over a disagreement as to who should pay for $187 million in stadium repairs.
Chase Field opened as Bank One Ballpark in 1998. Roughly two-thirds of the $354 million cost was financed through a public quarter-cent-per-dollar sales tax that was approved in 1994 and expired in 1997.
Representatives from the Coyotes, Suns and Diamondbacks declined to comment on the legislation.
Why only limit public money to sports?
Mark Rosentraub, professor of sport management at Michigan Center for Sport Management, raised several questions after hearing details of the Arizona legislation.
"Cities are now competing and offering subsidies to Amazon, so I do wonder why would there be a focus only on sport if one wants to limit public investment for economic development? Should we not legislate or agree not to offer inducements to any business? Why is the line drawn only for sport? And would it impact professional teams or also apply to the World Cup and the Olympics?" Rosentraub said.
He also questioned why cities and counties can't be trusted to make their own decisions in their own self-interest, suggesting that a team's value could depend on the location.
"Would the absence of a public investment impact teams and cities? The answer is yes, in both intended and unintended ways," he said.
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https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...ies/309535002/ |
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