Here we go again. And Pittsburgh knows this sordid scenario all too sadly:
Another professional sports team is demanding multiple millions of dollars in public money to build a new playground. And if it doesn’t obtain the fleece it’s attempting to sheer from taxpayers, it will move.
This time, it’s the Buffalo Bills of the NFL. In what The Buffalo News bills as “one of the largest asks for public money in pro sports stadium negotiations,” the franchise is seeking $1.5 billion to build a new football field.
And if Buffalo, Erie County and New York state officials don’t pony up, the Bills reportedly would consider fleeing to a supposedly greener playground for multimillionaires in Austin, Texas.
The Bills’ owner, Pegula Sports and Entertainment, also wants some of that $1.5 billion to help cover arena renovation costs for another pro team it owns, the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres.
But make no mistake, the Bills’ ownership wants taxpayers to pay 100 percent of its new football stadium bill.
As if this isn’t a big enough kick in the pants to taxpayers – oh, by the way, the Bills are valued at more than $2.15 billion with a new, higher, valuation expected to be applied by the month’s end – there’s this simply nausea-inducing passage, again, from a Buffalo News report:
“One person with knowledge of the matter noted that stadium projects around the nation have run the gamut: some with no public money, some as much as 40 percent to 70 percent. In some cases, they include more taxes on concessions or luxury boxes, though the person said such revenue flows won’t be as big in Buffalo as a major-market team might draw.
“The person said the talks so far ‘have been fair’ and that the government negotiators – regarding the build-new or renovate-existing dilemma – ‘understand why they (the Bills) don’t want to invest in a stadium with a limited useful life.’”
Really?!
Allow us to translate: The owners of the Buffalo Bills admit this is a bad investment. But they have no qualms about demanding taxpayers make a bad investment.
This is despicable. Who thinks this way? The coddled and very wealthy barons of sport, that’s who.
“Here’s a thought,” offers Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute: “Offer half ownership of the team for sale to upstate New Yorkers. See if that raises enough for the stadium.
“People desperate to keep the team should ante up, one share at a time,” the Ph.D. economist says.
Many others, of course, are not backing this latest attempt at a taxpayer shakedown, either. Thank goodness for such a small wonder.
“I hope that after countless economic development corruption scandals that state and local governments are starting to realize that subsidizing billionaires to build anything is a fools’ errand,” Ron Deutsch, executive director of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, told the newspaper.
“Whether it’s a stadium or a solar panel factory, we shouldn’t be using taxpayer dollars to fund the development desires and dreams of billionaires. In this big-league development game, one thing is for sure: the billionaires win and the public loses,” he added.
Added John Kaehny, executive director of the Reinvent Albany watchdog group:
“The research on stadiums … is they do not pay for taxpayers. They are just money thrown out the window. You’d get the same kind of return from burning stacks of $100 bills along Lake Erie than building a new stadium for the Bills or any other sports team.”
But – and as the case ended up in Pittsburgh with The Great Build the Stadiums End-Around of nearly 25 years ago – the economic facts don’t matter to public officials. And even if they did, nothing likely would change.
For, as the 19th-century proverb goes, “No combination of statesmen is a match for a general combination of fools.”
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
