Tag Archives: publicly funded stadium

What do PAT and the Buccos have in common? No matter how much taxpayer money they have been given, they simply are not able to keep from falling into deeper and deeper holes.

The Pirates’ long, painful slide into being a major league laughingstock is well known. PAT’s long decline into financial ill-repute takes a little more digging to understand. For the Pirates years of mismanagement and poor judgment have produced the fiasco that portrays itself as a major league franchise. Port Authority’s troubles arise out of too much spending on projects that can never pay a return to taxpayers and collective bargaining agreements that have saddled the agency with employment costs and legacy cost that no private entity could hope to survive.

The Pirates promised that a new ballpark would end their financial and performance woes. The Port Authority thinks cutting service and laying off overpaid drivers will solve their problem. All they are doing is running a smaller, still very expensive system.

The question is; why do fans and taxpayers put up with the endless displays of incompetence?