If City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County taxpayers have any sense, they’ll start casting wary eyes on the resurrected dubious goings on in Cleveland. For it appears that another shafting by the barons of sport is gaining steam in both metros.
As Axios Sports reports it, Cleveland Councilman Brian Kazy will moderate a discussion on public financing for pro sports stadiums Thursday at the Cleveland Public Library.
A panel will discuss a budding plan by the Browns to have taxpayers underwrite hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements to the existing Cleveland Browns Stadium along Lake Erie or to build a new facility 15 miles southwest of downtown Cleveland along Interstate 71 in Brook Park.
The latter reportedly would be a domed stadium.
Never mind that, as Axios also reports, “there is a virtual consensus among economists that public subsidies for these facilities are poor investments,” proponents have dusted off that old script that Cleveland risks losing its NFL franchise if the public doesn’t pony up the subsidies.
“Cleveland subsidizes its three downtown stadiums via a sin tax on cigarettes and alcohol, a parking tax, an admissions tax and general revenue dollars,” the Axios report reminds.
Both sides will be represented on the panel: Brad Humphreys, professor of economics at West Virginia University; Victor Matheson, professor of economics and accounting at the College of the Holy Cross and Ken Silliman, who worked under Mayor Frank Jackson before chairing Gateway Economic Development Corp.
“In a 2018 academic paper, Humphreys argued that stadiums should not be subsidized by taxpayers at all, while Matheson argued that the direct and indirect benefits of a stadium could justify some public expenditures,” Axios says. “Silliman self-published a book last year on Cleveland’s history of financing pro sports facilities.”
And the news website reminds that in April it was Councilman Kazy who introduced legislation directing the city to fully enforce the “Art Modell law.” That’s a provision in the Ohio Revised Code requiring a professional sports team intending to relocate to give its host city six months’ notice and allow the city an opportunity to purchase the team.
As if government should own any professional sports team.
This week’s panel discussion is worth watching by Pittsburgh and Allegheny County taxpayers, considering the coming expiration of the Pirates’ and Steelers’ leases at PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium, respectively.
There have been rumblings, at least from the Steelers, of coming requests for loosely defined upgrades in any new lease. And you can bet that taxpayers will be asked to contribute, as they initially were.
But as WVU’s Humphreys has noted in his scholarly research, as recently as last September:
“Despite robust evidence that stadiums are not economic development catalysts and confer limited social benefits, public outlays persist and exhibit a positive growth trajectory, which could prove costly to government budgets in coming decades.”
Nothing has changed. And Cleveland taxpayers can ill afford to again be duped into thinking otherwise. The same holds true for Pittsburgh and Allegheny County taxpayers.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
