A taxpayer-financed renovation to Soldier Field, home to the Chicago Bears, has come back to bite taxpayers. Count us among those not surprised.
Reports the Chicago Tribune:
“As the Chicago Bears make plans to build a new stadium, taxpayers still are on the hook for the old one. A big bill is coming soon —and the primary method of paying for it may not be enough.”
And the numbers are stunning:
“Due to refinancing and years of primarily paying interest instead of principal, the debt owed for Soldier Field has ballooned from the original $399 million to $631 million, according to the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, or ISFA, which manages the debt payments. The increase in the debt alarms experts who work in stadium financing,” the newspaper reports.
“No sane person would have agreed to this deal,” said J.C. Bradbury, a professor of economics at Kennesaw State University in Marietta, Georgia, who has studied sports stadium financing.
Ah, yes, the insanity of it all.
And as Bradbury further reminds in the Tribune:
Stadiums typically have trouble paying themselves off; whether it’s a hotel tax or a tax break [or, we add, an out and out public subsidy], it detracts from other public investments.
“I think the thing that people need to remember is that subsidies going to stadiums are NEVER a good deal,” Bradbury wrote to the Tribune. “Supporters always promise large returns, and then they are unapologetic when they don’t happen.
“This happens over and over again. Expecting a stadium to generate a revenue windfall for the community is like expecting Charlie Brown to kick the football. It’s not going to happen.”
It is, of course, yet another reminder of the definition of insanity.
And it forces us to wonder what kind of additional insanity taxpayers will be asked to bear with the upcoming renegotiation of leases in Pittsburgh at PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium.
Speaking of insanity, city government in Pittsburgh can’t seem to stop imposing regulations for which it has no legal warrant in state law.
To wit, Commonwealth Court ruled Friday that the city does not have the authority under state law to impose all manner of rules and regulations governing rental units.
Among the edicts struck down were inspections without owner or lessee permission and mandatory attendance at a “landlord academy,” among others.
Slapped yet again for an overreach that has become the rule and not the exception in Pittsburgh, the city says it plans to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
The government overreachers never appear to learn.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
