Two more professional football cities have agreed to allow the National Football League to play them for major suckers. In the same week. And it clearly does not bode well for Pittsburgh-area taxpayers.
As The Center Square news site reports, taxpayers in Jacksonville will pay $775 million of the $1.4 billion tab – more than half, obviously — to renovate the Jaguars’ stadium.
Meanwhile, taxpayers in Charlotte will pay about half of the $1.2 billion cost to renovate the home of the Carolina Panthers.
By the way, the votes by Jacksonville and Charlotte city councils were overwhelming, 14-1-2 and 7-3, respectively.
With leases soon to run out at largely taxpayer-funded venues for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers, expect the rich barons of sport that own these franchises to conspire with government leaders and use these latest examples of public funding stupidity to attempt to leverage even more public subsidies for expected facility upgrades at PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium.
Never mind that most economists continue to agree that such public funding remains a very bad idea.
As The Center Square adroitly reported this past week:
“Economists who have studied publicly funded stadium deals have repeatedly shown [they] do not bring the promised returns and do not spur other economic activity in a community.
“As economist J.C. Bradbury of Georgia’s Kennesaw State University has pointed out, that is especially true of renovations to existing NFL stadiums at the same spot.
“’There is no legitimate policy justification for devoting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to upgrade an NFL football stadium,’ Bradbury told The Center Square. ‘The research on this is clear and unambiguous: sports stadiums are not salutary public investments.
“’City leaders were obviously aware that the evidence is not on their side, which is why they chose to ignore it rather than make a case based on sound research. Frankly, every council member who voted for [these plans] should be extremely embarrassed. It’s negligent conduct.’”
But what equally irks Bradbury is the lack of media scrutiny of this latest government-sanctioned theft:
“What caused Charlotte/Jacksonville media outlets to largely not report that their city councils passed massive subsidies for NFL stadium renovations over the near-unanimous opposition from economists?” Bradbury asked.
“I don’t think there is some conspiracy, but there is clearly a blind-spot here,” the economist noted. “It’s really important to spread the word among reporters that stadiums are very bad public investments. There is no reasonable case for stadium subsidies of this size. The story writes itself.”
Or at least it should. But in far too many cases, local media also have locked arms with government, chamber-of-commerce rah-rah groups and corporate titans to smear the honest brokers of economic facts and bully the approving votes of local government jurisdictions.
Consider it “public purpose” malpractice at its absolute worst.
It’s what happened in Pittsburgh 30 years ago. And the stage is being set again as lease-renewal time nears.
The newly christened suckers on the city councils of Jacksonville and Charlotte will be getting what they voted for – not much at all in the way of economic growth. But it will come as it usually does with a horridly high bill for taxpayers.
For shame.
Oh, by the way, The Associated Press reports that Forbes ranks the owner of the Carolina Panthers as the second wealthiest in the NFL with a net worth of $20.6 billion.
Chew on that one for a while.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
