An arbitrator has ruled that the Pittsburgh-Allegheny Sports & Exhibition Authority (SEA) must pay nearly $1 million to cover the costs of improvements to the Pittsburgh Steelers from scoreboard upgrades at Heinz Field (now Acrisure Stadium).
As per the Post-Gazette, the crux of the 12-page order was that the scoreboard’s upgrading expansion was a capital repair under the Steelers’ lease.
“That meant that the SEA, as the stadium owner, was on the hook for the improvement because it is required to cover the cost of capital repairs,” the P-G reports.
But here’s what caught our eye. Again, from the P-G:
“The arbitrator’s opinion and order, issued Dec. 19, was obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette through a right-to-know request. The decision is not part of the public court record.”
Sorry, but that’s not acceptable. The SEA is a public authority, funded not only by surcharges on tickets but also by tax dollars. Its business is the public’s business. If the public can’t see it, it can’t know it. And it has every right to know it.
And lest we forget, the Steelers fed mightily at the public trough to build their new stadium in the 1990s.
An arbiter’s decision issued on Dec. 19 should have been made public that very day. Instead, it was released for public consumption on or about March 25, more than three months later, and only because the P-G demanded it with a right-to-know request.
Of course, the Steelers are equally complicit in this subterfuge. The NFL franchise initially sought $1.2 million in its scoreboard claim. But as the P-G further reports, “the Steelers later dropped the amount they were seeking to $964,015. Under the team’s lease, conflicts involving less than $1 million are eligible for arbitration, while those above that amount are contested in the public courts.”
“The SEA has claimed that the Steelers went the arbitration route to avoid having the ‘dispute heard in a public court of law,’ a contention the Steelers have denied. The authority eventually agreed to go to arbitration,” the P-G said.
Slicksters, times two, eh? And too slick for the public’s good.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitue.org).
