TESTIMONY OF NEIL DEMAUSE AT D.C. COUNCIL STADIUM HEARING (PRESENTED BY 
SHAWN MCCARTHY OF LEAGUE OF FANS), OCTOBER 28, 2004

The decision that faces the D.C. council in the coming weeks is one that 
will have far-reaching implications, not just for the District and its 
citizens, but for America as a whole. The question that you are being 
asked is not whether Washington deserves baseball, or whether you support 
economic development. Rather it is: How much money should Major League 
Baseball be allowed to extort from the public purse in exchange for 
locating a baseball team in your city?

I've been researching and writing about stadium deals for nine years now, 
and have spoken with dozens of economists and public planners who have 
studied sports facility development. And I have yet to find a single 
independent economist who believes that building new sports facilities has 
*any* significant impact on a city's economy. In terms of measurable 
economic impact, they're nonexistent; in terms of job creation, they 
typically come in at more than $250,000 in public expense for every new 
job, one of the worst ratios imaginable. As University of Chicago 
economist Allen Sanderson has famously said, you'd create more economic 
impact by going up over your city in a helicopter and tossing the money 
out the window than by building a pro sports stadium.

Look no further than Baltimore, where Camden Yards, despite its 
popularity, is costing the state of Maryland $14 million a year to pay off 
and, according to Maryland economists Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys, 
getting back just $3 million a year in new taxes, for a net loss of $11 
million a year. Mayor Williams' proposed stadium would be much more 
expensive than Camden Yards - even after adjusting for inflation - and far 
more costly to D.C. taxpayers. According to my calculations in the 
accompanying article from Baseball Prospectus, even after accounting for 
spending by any new visitors to the city, the District would be losing 25 
to 30 million dollars a year on a stadium, solely to enrich the baseball 
team's private owners.

The tragedy is that it doesn't have to be this way. When local officials 
said no to public subsidies, both the San Francisco Giants and the St. 
Louis Cardinals agreed to shoulder the bulk of stadium costs themselves. 
And Washington's leverage couldn't be better, as right now you have Bud 
Selig over a barrel: Baseball has burned its bridges in Montreal, and D.C. 
is its only viable option. If D.C. presents Selig with a stadium bill that 
forces the team's private owners to take on a larger share of the 
financing, Selig will likely kvetch and moan - but he will have little 
choice other than to accept.

Washington, D.C., faces a choice. You can become known as the city that 
reopened the floodgates of sports welfare. Or you can strike a tough deal, 
and tell Major League Baseball that if it wants to tap into the lucrative 
D.C. baseball market, it needs to cough up its own money for a stadium. 
Now that would be a baseball legacy to be proud of.