-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 17:26:32 -0500 Subject: Mad About Sports From: Common Courage Press <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: polit lit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~? \??B z? ?T ??| z? Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Information about this email course appears at the bottom. Please note: we have changed list providers, and we apologize for any short-term inconveniences this may cause. Our new subscription address is: http://www.commoncouragepress.com Feed the Rich Myth: One way to create both jobs and fun is to make your city a major sports Mecca by adding a new stadium. Just ask New York's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. He argued that it was necessary to raise $600 million in taxes because Yankee stadium had to be replaced after a chunk of it had broken off, that a new stadium would generate tax revenue and thousands of jobs, and that the project would create an economic impact of $1 billion dollars. You've no doubt heard tell of the importance of being a team player. But that's been replaced by a new adage: the importance of being a team owner. In "Field of Schemes: How The Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit," authors Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause reveal that behind the slick pitch of Giuliani and others is the Cadillac of welfare programs for the rich. Despite Giuliani's promises, consultants KPMG-Peat Marwick projected an economic impact of only $105 million, a mere tenth of what the mayor was claiming. The city's Independent Budget Office reported that a new stadium would generate only 570 new jobs along with $5 million in new city taxes--nowhere near enough to pay the estimated yearly bond payments exceeding $75 million. The game of stadium welfare--taxpayers building new stadiums filled with luxury boxes for team owners to make more money on--is heating up. Boston, Birmingham, Alabama, San Antonio, San Diego. As the century draws to a close, it's difficult to find a major U.S. city that hasn't been cajoled, threatened or blackmailed in a fight to build a new sports palace. Just how big is this problem? Cagan and deMause estimate cities will have spent $11 billion between the start and the end of the 1990s. It's small wonder the game is so popular. While manufacturing plants can win tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks, sports teams hit corporate welfare home runs that can reach the half-a-billion-dollar-mark. New stadiums can house upwards of 200 luxury boxes which go for $100,000 a year and up, money that doesn't have to be shared with the teams' municipal landlords or with their fellow owners, since all four major sports exempt suite revenue from profit-sharing among teams. Translation: millions more per year in team profits. Meaning profits in teams owned by the likes of billionaire Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers. Who loses when sports-team owners get their new complexes? Cleveland provides a disturbing answer. Heralded for being in the midst of an economic renaissance, it undertook to construct three publicly-funded sports facilities in a decade. Meanwhile, "the percentage of Clevelanders living in poverty rose from 17 percent in 1970 to 40 percent by the mid 1990s. The city school system, drained of property taxes, is in shambles--only 38 percent of its students graduate high school, with only seven percent testing at a 12th grade level--and was placed in state receivership in 1995. In fact, the day before the deal for a new football stadium was approved by the city council, the Cleveland public school system announced it would cut $52 million over two years, laying off 160 teachers and eliminating interscholastic athletics from a program that Cleveland School Superintendent Richard A. Boyd described as 'in the worst financial shape of any school district in the country.' " But what about all those jobs new that stadiums are supposed to create? Many studies reveal that the estimates of "thousands of jobs" created by new stadiums are out in left field. Mark Rosentraub, author of "Major League Losers," found that the economic impact of professional sports teams is small--especially when compared to the size of the public subsidies, which can often run as high as $250,000 per job. Want to throw a curve ball at this scam? The authors show it isn't the all-star politicians who bring about change. Instead, the winning game plan is carried out by everyday activists--who want the money to go to schools and services instead of to wealthy team owners. In Birmingham, the Real Accountability, Progress and Solutions group (RAPS) won a 1998 referendum, garnering 57% opposition to a proposed stadium that would have cost $703 million. This despite those favoring the new stadium spending $1 million in their unsuccessful campaign to woo voters. In San Antonio, those salivating over a new stadium came up with a different ploy: instead of new taxes which were sure to be unpopular, the new stadium was to be funded from existing property taxes currently being used for education. This out-of-the-mouths-of-students strategy didn't work, either. Requiring approval from the East School District, which would have lost $18.5 million in revenue, the plan was effectively killed by the school board. But you gotta give rich people credit for creativity. In North Carolina's Guilford and Forsyth Counties they tried on a one percent tax on restaurant meals combined with a fifty-cent ticket tax to fund most of a $210 million stadium. But an initial plan for restaurant chains Wendy's, Subway, and Pizza Hut to provide information on the stadium campaign to customers collapsed after managers were deluged by angry phone calls from customers, who pointed out that they would be endorsing a tax on their own products. In the end, despite outspending stadium opponents by a whopping $716,000 to $26,000, stadium backers were soundly defeated. These facts come from the just-released paperback edition of "Field of Schemes: How The Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit" by Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause. For more on this hot investment tip, click on http://www.commoncouragepress.com/schemes2.html NEXT WEEK: The Politics of Youth MONDAY: Youth Crime This is the free Political Literacy Course from Common Courage Press: A backbone of facts to stand up to spineless power. Email 40, October 29 1999. Week 8: More on Corporate Crime Homepage: http://www.commoncouragepress.com To subscribe (or unsubscribe) for free: http://www.commoncouragepress.com/politlitelist.html Chatroom: http://www.cartserver.com/bbs/a/3827/index.cgi Feedback/Title suggestions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Missed any? Course archive: http://www.commoncouragepress.com/politlitarchive.html YES! 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