The firing of Penn State head football coach James Franklin is yet another giant black eye for the commonwealth’s first land-grant university.
But it’s not for the firing itself of the leader of a suddenly flailing team that at season’s beginning was considered a contender for college football’s national championship.
No, it’s for the fact that Franklin’s contract calls for him to be paid nearly $50 million to go bye-bye. As one local morning radio station host quipped, the person who really needs to be fired is the person who authorized such a contract.
The Fiasco de la Franklin follows this summer’s 47 percent pay raise for Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi. All of this compensatory profligacy comes in a climate of university belt-tightening, including branch campus closings.
And it’s not just a matter of “optics.” It’s a matter of public stewardship gone haywire that must be held up to serious public scrutiny.
There are a few wonderfully telling passages in reporter Jeremy Reynolds’ Post-Gazette dispatch about what could become a tussle for public funding between the barons of sport and the arts community when, as expected, the former seek more public money to upgrade their PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium playgrounds.
From the Reynolds dispatch:
“A study published in 2023 in the Journal of Policy Analysis found that, ‘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’ …
“It also noted that, ‘Economic research continues to demonstrate that stadiums remain poor public investments, and optimal public funding of professional sports venues is substantially less than typical subsidy levels.’
“Another study, published in 2021 in the Journal of Regional Science, reported that, ‘Estimates do not identify increased commercial property values from the stadium development, which is consistent with past studies that find little to no positive impact on economic activity.’”
Considering other news reports have indicated that, combined, the Pirates and Steelers could be seeking more than $1 billion to renovate these facilities when their leases are up in a few short years, the public would be wise to remember the scholarly research that shows what they don’t do for the local economy.
Speaking of corporate wealthfare:
Commonwealth Development Partners of Connecticut is seeking a $7 million taxpayer handout to help it partially convert downtown Pittsburgh’s Grant Building from office to residential units.
Yet again, we are forced to remind that taxpayers have no business being turned into involuntary venture capitalists. Commonwealth, seeking profit, should risk its own capital – 100 percent – in pursuit of that profit.
Then there’s Walmart. It recently purchased the Monroeville Mall to, reportedly, demolish it and repurpose the property as a commercial/retail “destination.”
But it, too, wants taxpayers to defray its costs to the tune of $7.5 million.
As a Tribune-Review editorial recently noted:
“(T)he request for funding sounds like so many projects where multibillion-dollar companies leverage their plans with an open palm. This is how the billionaire owners of sports teams get public money to build stadiums. This is how factories are built with promises of tax waivers only to abandon the area when the agreement ends.”
WalMart’s profits for its fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2025, were $19.4 billion, an increase of more than 25 percent over its previous fiscal year.
Simply put, Walmart has no business bellying up to the taxpayer trough for any of its private projects.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
