Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Page 7
AFFAIRS OF STATE (Column)
Sports Should Not Be Government’s Top Priority
By DAVID KLINE
We are living in strange times. The city of Sacramento is taking police officers off the street to save money at the same time it is considering paying millions for a new arena for the Sacramento Kings.
Where are the city’s priorities?
In July, Sacramento’s police chief said that to comply with a mandated 2 percent budget cut, he was recommending the elimination of 15 positions, including three captains, four community service officers and five mounted officers.
The cuts, which will noticeably reduce the police presence in Old Sacramento, are intended to save just over $2 million.
At the same time, the City Council has been negotiating with the owners of the Kings to find a way to build a new arena using up to $175 million in tax dollars.
And it appears that the team’s owners, who are rich enough to own their own casino in Las Vegas, want the taxpayers to contribute even more. When the City Council voted to cap the taxpayers’ hit at $175 million, the Kings’ representative walked out of the meeting in a show of disappointment.
None of this is new, nor is it unique to Sacramento. The same thing has been going on for years throughout the country (and in Canada) as wealthy team owners try to get the taxpayers to pay for their stadiums, arenas and ball fields.
Even Wayne Huizenga, the billionaire owner of several sports teams, got the taxpayers to subsidize the building of a new arena.
City leaders agree to these bizarre deals believing that the prestige and economic activity created by a professional sports team more than compensate for the cost to taxpayers. They ignore the obvious —this prestige and economic activity would take place even if no tax dollars were involved.
Meanwhile, the working stiff who pays many of the taxes can’t afford to go to the games. The $30 tickets and $6 beers and $8 parking fees add up quickly, and heaven forbid the entire family wants to go to the game.
The situation is summed up quite nicely by Joseph L. Bast, president of The Heartland Institute in Chicago, who wrote in 1998:
“Future historians will look back on the 1980s and 1990s with amazement. Communities that were hard-pressed to keep their schools open or police on the beat nevertheless spent billions of dollars on stadiums and arenas for use by professional sports teams. Even mediocre athletes were paid more for a single season than the average hard-working taxpayer would earn in a lifetime. The average taxpayer, who was taxed to build sports facilities and support players’ salaries, could not afford to walk through the turnstile and watch a live game.”
What is the solution? Bast suggests that more teams follow the lead of the Green Bay Packers, which is owned by stockholders and is operated almost like a non-profit corporation. The team doesn’t threaten to move, because the owners all live in the Green Bay area, and thanks to the National Football League’s lucrative television deals and profit-sharing arrangement, the team has remained very competitive even though it plays in ancient Lambeau Field.
There is another, simpler solution. All governments could quit subsidizing the building of sports teams and could simply let the teams operate like other businesses. It might take a national ban on subsidies to get some cities to go along with this plan, but the long-term effect would be very positive. We’d still have sports teams to cheer and boo, the host cities still would enjoy economic benefits, and the owners still would make healthy profits.
And the taxpayers could either save their money or use it to put more police on the street to round up the looters and rioters after the championship game.
— Capitol News Service
Copyright 2004, Metropolitan News Company