King Kaufman's Sports Daily
On Election Day, billionaire team owners looking for taxpayer handouts had it just as rough as the GOP.
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Nov. 9, 2006 | What a great Election Day!
Oh, I don't mean the Democrats sweeping into power or the state where I live not outlawing medical research that might save my life someday on the basis of other people's religious beliefs. That was all nice.
But I'm talking about the cannawhoopass voters opened up on billionaire sports team owners looking for welfare to build stadiums and arenas.
Seattle voters overwhelmingly passed Initiative 91, called the anti-Sonics initiative in some circles. It requires that any city tax dollars invested in a stadium or arena yield a profit at least equal to the return on a 30-year U.S. Treasury bond, which at the moment is a little under 5 percent.
City officials had opposed the measure, of course, saying it went too far.
"We are not in the business [with the city's] opera or symphony or ballet or sports to make money for the city treasury," Mayor Greg Nickels told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "What we're trying to do is have a high variety of cultural activities."
That's rich, if you'll pardon the pun. When politicians are trying to sell stadium welfare to the voters, they're always yammering on about how the new place will be a boon to the local economy, that every tax dollar invested will yield, say, $3 in profit.
But when the voters say, "OK, let's put it in writing -- nothing spectacular, just a nice little 5 percent profit," all of a sudden the issue becomes cultural enrichment. Sorry, voters, you looked under the wrong cup. The pea's under "cultural enrichment" this time, not "profits."
Funny. You play that same game on the sidewalk outside the arena and the beat cop runs you in.
The measure does go too far. A major sports team in a city does provide benefits to the populace, and shouldn't have to guarantee a 5 percent profit to get any civic support at all.
But I believe it was the philosopher Spinoza who put it best when he said, "Oh well, dude" ("Oh goed, saletjonker"). The scales were tipped so far in the other direction -- ask Seattlites about those sweet packages the Mariners and Seahawks got -- for so long that what we have here is a good ol' fashioned backlash. Deal with it, billionaires.
Clayton Bennett, the Oklahoma City investment banker who's the new owner of the Sonics and WNBA Storm, says he and his partners will fulfill their lease at Key Arena, which runs through 2010, and will keep looking for a new, taxpayer-financed arena in King County, but outside of Seattle. As my friend Mike Seely wrote in the Seattle Weekly, "We'll see how long it takes for the county Oklahoma City's in to change its name to King."
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