The first problem we need to solve? Finally putting to rest the notion that somehow .. this time .. "Build It & Pray Like Hell Someone Comes" will work. It won't It hasn't Rhody is littered with carcasses of zombie deals perpetrated by @CommerceRI #EndCorporateWelfare #38Stadium https://t.co/HOUkmlUL5p
— The Coalition (@Coalition_Radio) December 27, 2017
Couldn't agree more. Now a marina, on the other hand… #loughlinmarina #yougiveusthemoneywellgiveyoutheslip https://t.co/YJArqdqpCo
— LoughlinRI1 (@LoughlinRI1) December 26, 2017
RI GA has no business funding a new Pawsox stadium to aid multimillionaires when the state pension funds and our school infrastructure needs fixing. Where is the GA loyalty? Is it to multimillionaires or our citizens, including hard working state employees & school children?
— Bruce Waidler (@Bruce_Waidler) December 27, 2017
Fine by me. I am done being forced to pay for everyone else.
— DTM (@D_T_Mar) December 15, 2017
Perhaps it’s just the moment and the particular set of issues raised, but a quick-hit Providence Journal interview with Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo feels like a bit of a change in tone, from backing away from legalizing pot to holding back on school construction bonds.
A couple of points are worth teasing out:
“Look,” Raimondo said Tuesday, “I think it would be really sad if we lost the PawSox to Worcester …. But no, I am not going to get into a bidding war. We can’t afford a bidding war. We have a deal on the table now. I would say: Go ahead and pass that deal.”
“I am not going to get bid up, and pay more than we can afford, so we don’t lose it to Charlie Baker,” she said.
This is particularly nice to see. Rhode Island has lost thousands of residents in recent decades because the state didn’t want, essentially, to bid for them to stay by making it easier to make it in Rhode Island. Why should a minor league baseball team get better treatment?
Raimondo said her budget proposal will honor the next promised $25-million cut in local car taxes, part of a multi-year phaseout plan lawmakers approved earlier this year.
This is interesting. Last week on the radio, John DePetro and I had some fun speculating that Democrat Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello of Cranston was sending signals to Raimondo. First, he was seen chatting with her potential Democrat primary foe, Lincoln Chafee, and then his shadow could be seen around the edges of Joe Trillo’s bizarre declaration of his intent to stage a third-party campaign that would almost certainly split the vote against Raimondo.
Holding to the car tax elimination, which the speaker championed, could be a sign that the messages have been received and an agreement struck.
In other words, IF attendance increases and IF we sell naming rights and IF we can borrow or get cash from team owners. https://t.co/5uu73bXJXY
— OSTPA (@OSTPA1) December 5, 2017
Not to overuse the word, but let’s just say that I’m cynical about the newly proclaimed interest in development around the proposed PawSox stadium in Pawtucket:
Pawtucket leaders Wednesday used the interest in developing Tidewater and inquiries from an unnamed hotel developer to build near a new stadium in support of their push for a state-backed financing deal for the proposed $83-million downtown ballpark.
But cynicism aside, Rhode Islanders should take Mayor Donald Grebien’s explanation of the economics as a warning sign about government officials’ understanding:
“The Ballpark at Slater Mill is the catalyst that Pawtucket, the Blackstone Valley and Rhode Island need to continue to move forward,” said Mayor Donald R. Grebien. “Pawtucket is a business-friendly city and investors and developers are already expressing support for the ballpark project. However, the private sector cannot wait forever. They will look elsewhere to invest. That is why it is so critical that the General Assembly act prudently and expeditiously to enact the enabling legislation and move our great state forward.”
Anybody who’s ever negotiated the price of a car should know that you never buy under time pressure. In this case, Grebien’s attempt at pressure undermines his larger argument.
If the stadium really generates economic value then the private sector really will wait or come back. On the other hand, if these two particular prospects (one anonymous) are critical to the venture, then taxpayers should take that as a warning. After all, the whole deal relies on ancillary development to pay the debt. If the “private sector” isn’t clamoring for spots, the deal is too risky.
For my weekly call-in on John DePetro’s WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM show, this week, the topics were Judge Flanders’s announcement and chances, the PawSox thoughts of Attleboro, and the Raimondo-bomb of UHIP.
@IanDon I have always thought, and continue to think, that Worcester is a bluff. This might be real tho.
— Andrew Morse (@CAndrewMorse) November 17, 2017
Does the Worcester area have the population to support a AAA team? Everyone knows Worcester and Providence have the same population., but…
— Andrew Morse (@CAndrewMorse) November 17, 2017
Cranston/Warwick/Johnston/North Providence/Pawtucket/East Providence are equivalent to 2 more Providences. Worcester doesn't have anything like those numbers in the immediately surrounding area.
— Andrew Morse (@CAndrewMorse) November 17, 2017
If surrounding development is key to success, don't we need to know more about that than about the team's P&L?
— Art Norwalk (@ArtNorwalk) October 29, 2017
The final Senate Finance hearing about the proposal for a new PawSox stadium in Pawtucket, as reported by Kate Bramson of the Providence Journal, has a couple of details that ought to be warning signs to Rhode Islanders with respect to the attitudes of government officials in the state:
[Pawtucket City Commerce Director Jeanne] Boyle said city payments could be made in early years from money set aside in a capitalized-interest account from bond proceeds. She said the city could also assess a fee on property near the stadium so some additional money would flow into the city’s general fund right away.
If this is correctly reported, then it’s new. Up to now, the hints that we’ve heard have been that the city might expand the tax increment finance (TIF) area around the stadium so that more taxes would go to the stadium. Ultimately, that’s just a sneaky way to force an increase in taxes without immediately blaming it on the development.
This sounds like a direct tax on businesses and residents around the stadium under the assumption that they’re profiting somehow from the stadium. That would be a terrible way to go.
On a different matter, consider this evidence that Bristol, Portsmouth, Tiverton Senator James Seveney isn’t really representing his own constituents:
… Sen. James A. Seveney pinpointed that the legislation says money from a surcharge on premium tickets (in corporate suites, for example) might help the state pay off its $23-million contribution. But as it is written, the legislation doesn’t allow that for the city’s payments.
“Maybe that should be in yours,” Seveney said, to which Grebien responded: “We’d gladly take that. Having said that, it was very difficult negotiations.”
Seveney continued: “I’m not too worried about the state’s position, and I’m not worried about the team’s position. I think they’re going to be fine. I am worried about you guys.”
Why is an East Bay senator more concerned about Pawtucket taxpayers than about the liability of the people who elected him? Sure, we should care about Pawtucket’s problems, but Seveney is essentially putting forward his constituents as a cash cow.
3 #polls, 3 yrs, 3 sponsors tell 1 story.
RIers love their #PawSox, they're just not in favor of public $ to build stadium. #ListenUp pols pic.twitter.com/iGP6K4qF1h— John Della Volpe (@dellavolpe) October 23, 2017
The gender-war angle doesn’t provide very good perspective for economic issues; indeed, it might make sense for U.S. Soccer to increase gender pay disparities in the short term.
For my weekly call-in on John DePetro’s WADK 1540 AM show, last week, the topics were Gordon Fox, a summer Senate race, racial politics, and the possible WorSox.
The rhetoric about who pays what on the proposed PawSox stadium is just that (rhetoric); at the end of the day, the state is entering into a boatload of debt without voter approval for an insider deal.
Losing the PawSox seems mainly to be a worry of RI’s decision-making elites, but the best thing Rhode Island could do is to make it clear that it has decided to get back to basics and get itself onto a better path.
Many Rhode Islanders are simply not going to believe the PawSox deal is not a subsidy; advocates should look for new, innovative ways to prove that it isn’t.
Tim White raises an important point that seems to have been avoiding discussion related to the PawSox deal:
If approved, there will be another cost associated with building a new stadium in downtown Pawtucket to host the PawSox: tearing down McCoy Stadium.
The city of Pawtucket owns the land that 75-year-old McCoy is on, and officials have indicated there are no plans to keep the ballpark if the PawSox leave, whether by moving across town to the proposed Apex site or out of state.
The options on table range from likely to certain to require more government money and debt. Rebuilding the high school on the spot will mean a big bond and a state taxpayer fund match and still leave the city with a plot of land to repurpose or dispose of. A private buyer would probably negotiate and receive subsidies for some part of the property redevelopment. Or just leaving it alone will mean a tax-free chunk of land in the city.
Whatever the final ask for the new stadium is, don’t forget that the project isn’t done with taxpayers, yet.
Even the best argument for government involvement in a new PawSox stadium reasons backwards; why is it government’s role at all to ensure that we have entertainment and will absorb the risk for private investments?
Obviously, there are some differences between a city-funded facility for a double-A minor league baseball team and a state-funded stadium for a triple-A team, but Joseph De Avila’s Wall Street Journal article on the Hartford Yard Goats caught my attention yesterday because it illustrates some of the perils:
Hartford, a city of about 124,000 residents that is facing a fiscal crisis and a high poverty rate, is on the hook for $68.6 million in bonds issued to cover most of the construction of Dunkin’ Donuts Park.
Mayor Luke Bronin, a Democrat who opposed the stadium but is now reluctantly dealing with it, said the ballpark alone will never generate enough money to pay back the debt. The original idea was that surrounding development will generate funds to pay off the loans and bring in additional tax revenue for the city.
Given the incentives and structure of government, advocates for some big expenditure have a narrow objective to get a project approved. They just need some authority — whether an elected official or an electorate passing a ballot initiative — to give the go ahead. Then, decision-making enters a weird realm beyond the reach of the people actually paying the bill, but with a those in charge obligated to continue on the public behalf.
So, we start out with promises and grand visions and wind up scrambling just to make something work without loosing too much money.
Mr. Bronin plans to borrow $20 million in bonds in the coming weeks to cover a shortfall in the city’s budget, and next year the city is already projecting a $65 million deficit.
Despite the challenges, Mr. Bronin said: “There is no question it’s better for the city to have a baseball park than a vacant parking lot.”
Why is there “no question”? Hartford is now borrowing money for operating expenses. That’s insane. Unfortunately, many people have a vision of government in which it is a means of doing things that really make no sense at all.
For my weekly call-in on John DePetro’s WADK 1540 AM show, the topics were Robert Flanders’s play for the U.S. Senate, Raimondo’s tuition talking point, and Dominick Ruggerio’s insider senate presidency.
Click full post for audio.
I’ll be on again Tuesday, April 11, at 2:00 p.m.
On the largest sports and media stage in the world, several news outlets somehow got it into their heads that Brady’s sole responsibility wasn’t to concentrate on football and lead his team to a fifth Super Bowl title. No, he also had a moral responsibility to denounce his friend and golfing buddy, Donald Trump.
In their attempts to put Brady and the team on notice about their problematic friendship, the media somehow managed to convert former Patriots haters into fans. Because while few institutions are more hate-able than the Patriots, the media is definitely one of those institutions.
Obviously, we New Englanders don’t hate the Pats and it’s not our fault the rest of the country – or the NFL offices – can’t handle their success (but those of us who grew up as Yankee-haters do sorta get it!).
That being said, the week leading up to the Superbowl saw Brady, Belichick and Kraft join the ranks of other celebrities who have fallen afoul of the media moralizers. “Spineless Feminist” Taylor Swift came in for criticism when she didn’t attend the Women’s March on Washington. Fellow Diva Lady Gaga has now fallen afoul of the Progressive Prudes for not properly politicizing her Superbowl Halftime show. “[I]t’s disheartening to watch someone with so much heart (and guts and spleen) stare down a moment of this magnitude and blink.” Twitter was full of lefty media types gloating over the Pats performance and correlating the blowout to their support for Trump. Karma or something. But then at least some of those tweets got deleted once the Pats won.
Here’s hoping things calm down soon. I don’t think we can take this amped up environment that politicizes everything. Can we?
At the Rhode Island State Field Hockey Championships on Oct. 30, seventh-seed Pilgrim High School upset the top-seeded Lincoln School to win the Division II championship. It was an outstanding achievement, and the team’s hard work and perseverance was rewarded with the receipt of the traditional championship plaque — well, traditional for every champion except for the Division I champion. For earlier that day, the Division I state champion Barrington High School team received a more elaborate and impressive trophy.
Source: Marc Comtois: R.I.’s ‘second-class’ champions – Opinion – providencejournal.com – Providence, RI
Basketball star Charles Barkley has hit the news now and then recently with some unexpectedly common-sensible statement or other, and he hits close to the mark when he says:
“All politics is rich people screwing poor people,” he said during the NCAA basketball tournament media day, according to The Guardian.
However, when he elaborates, he slips back into the received wisdom of people who, like him, have “always voted Democratic — always” and emphasizes that Republicans are especially good at “dividing and conquering.” I think he’s got that exactly backwards, with Democrats’ being especially good at pushing divisive policies and ideas to the point that Republicans look to be dividing the wave by standing firm.
But be that as it may, Glenn Reynolds contributes two key points:
The second point merits detail. For one thing, other institutions in society are less prone to total capture by an elite and, in any event, aren’t empowered to force people to do things or to confiscate money from them as government is. For another thing, when the inherent power of society is divided up across a variety of institutions, even to the extent that they’re all captured by “the rich,” they’re directed by different rich people whose interests might conflict and create a friction that gives the middle class and poor leverage.
The basic principle underlying all this is so simple and obvious as to be axiomatic: Consolidating power helps the powerful. The more people consent to be ruled by their leaders, and the smaller the group of leaders whom they consent to follow, the more likely the poor will be screwed.
With the push for a taxpayer-subsidized minor-league baseball stadium in Providence continuing, this quotation from a 2012 essay in The Atlantic seems like something worth keeping handy (emphasis added):
… according to leading sports economists, stadiums and arenas rarely bring about the promised prosperity, and instead leave cities and states mired in debt that they can’t pay back before the franchise comes calling for more.
“The basic idea is that sports stadiums typically aren’t a good tool for economic development,” said Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross who has studied the economic impact of stadium construction for decades. When cities cite studies (often produced by parties with an interest in building the stadium) touting the impact of such projects, there is a simple rule for determining the actual return on investment, Matheson said: “Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that’s a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact.”
Others agree. While “it is inarguable that within a few blocks you’ll have an effect,” the results are questionable for metro areas as a whole, Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of Michigan, said.
Major League Baseball has decided to ban the ability of a baserunner to intentionally collide with a catcher in an attempt to score a run. Personally, I’m in favor of this. It never made any sense to me. If people want to see those kinds of collisions, go watch football. A catcher is all geared […]
The NCAA handed down a one half of one game suspension for current Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel for taking money for autographs. However, they have a bit of a history with giving out much longer suspensions for lesser offenses. It’s time to shut down the NCAA.