Attention, Pittsburgh sports fans! We direct your attention to the pitcher’s mound at Camden Yards, home to the Baltimore Orioles, for the latest round of “How Much Money an Uber-Wealthy Baron of Sport Yet Again Can Extort From Taxpayers.”
Yes, fans, please stand, remove your hats and place your right hand over your wallets. As one media outlet reports it, “The Baltimore Orioles and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced a joint commitment to what they called a ‘multi-decade, public-private partnership’ to revitalize the Camden Yards sports complex.”
You see, the Orioles’ lease with the Maryland Stadium Authority is up at the end of 2023. And the dirty birds weren’t about to extend their lease again. After all, they want, nay, they deserve major upgrades to their taxpayer-funded home.
The state of Maryland already has approved measures that will pave the way for $1.2 billion worth of loans to the authority to upgrade both the Orioles’ ballpark and the separate football stadium home of the Baltimore Ravens. Dirty birds of a feather indeed do fly together.
All that’s needed now is a signed, sealed and delivered agreement between the Orioles and the authority. The Ravens already have cut their deal.
Assume the position, Maryland taxpayers. Thank you, sir, may I have another!
“I am looking forward to continuing to collaborate with Gov. Moore, his administration, and the Maryland Stadium Authority in order to bring to Baltimore the modern, sustainable, and electrifying sports and entertainment destination the state of Maryland deserves,” Orioles CEO John Angelos said.
Well, of course he is!
And we can only guess that the original “renaissance” promised by the taxpayer-raiding backers of Camden Yards more than 30 years ago never materialized, eh? Why else would even more public money – more than a billion more — be “required” to spawn a brand-new “renaissance.”
We guess “renaissances” ain’t what they used to be, right?
Don’t these hustlers, hucksters and pimps for faux “renaissance” have any shame?
No. They do not. And the public to be shorn yet again of its wealth to underwrite the trollop barons of sport will play their sheeple part like good little forced collectivists.
Look for similar cluster clucking with the coming expiration of leases for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers at PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium, respectively.
But the fact of the matter is that the time is ripe for both franchises – and those in Baltimore, too, and anywhere else that the public footed the bill – to pay for their own fields of dreams, put their playgrounds back on the tax rolls and be forced to become productive members of society instead of the leeches on the public kitty and the public weal that they are.
Harsh? Hardly! It’s the way this public policy should be prosecuted.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
