Colin McNickle At Large

Government marketeers still don’t get it

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Well isn’t this rich:

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has written to Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Robert Manfred, imploring him “to rethink a restructuring plan that would affect three minor league teams” in the Keystone State, reports The Associated Press.

For you see, the Professional Baseball Agreement between MLB and the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues expires after next season. And that would lead to 42 minor league teams being dropped.

Among the teams to be affected are the Erie SeaWolves, the Williamsport Crosscutters and the State College Spikes.

Wolf told the AP that the proposal will put players out of work and be economically harmful to Erie, Williamsport and State College.

But the wire service says major league owners have lamented that their $500 million annual investment in salary to support minor league teams leads to an annual return of only $18 million.

Perhaps Wolf and his economic “development” brain trust should have considered such numbers before they pumped $12 million in public money into the SeaWolves’ home field last year and $1.25 million for the Crosscutters’ home turf in 2016.

What part of economically “unsustainable” did Wolf and Co. not understand? And why is it that when it comes to the barons of sport, elected officials open the vault to the First Bank of Taxpayer Suckers and insist that the robbery is an “investment”?

Simply put, and for the umpteenth time, taxpayers have absolutely no business underwriting playgrounds for the rich. Sound public policy demands a full understanding of sound economics. And that’s sorely lacking in this deal and all others like it.

We’d like to think that Dan Gilman, chief of staff to Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, had something of a public policy epiphany the other day. But, alas, and sadly, we know better.

Gilman was quoted in the Tribune-Review recently as noting that “the business model” of the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh “is not sustainable.”

No kidding – governments’ “success” at attempting to command the marketplace is notoriously abysmal. Yet the recidivist hubris of these government marketeers knows no bounds.

Perhaps Gilman not only was referring to the URA seeking to keep out of private hands the Hill District site whose URA-commanded and heavily subsidized Shop ‘n Save grocery store predictably failed but the sheer disdain with which the URA views the marketplace.

But that’s not what Gilman was talking about at all. No, he was merely pointing out the competition for scarce taxpayer dollars from the myriad government entities regularly milked to keep covering up for the continual lies of government interventionists has been drying up.

Sigh. Better make that a double – with a  head-shaking chaser.

Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).

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Colin McNickle
Colin McNickle

Colin received his B.G.S. from Ohio University. The 40-year journalism veteran joined the Institute in October 2016. That followed a 22-year career with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 18 as director of editorial pages for Trib Total Media. Prior that, Colin had a long and varied career in media — from radio, newspapers and magazines, to United Press International and The Associated Press.

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