March 13, 2005

Wolff at the door

Whether you're an Oakland A's fan, an Oakland taxpayer, or just an opponent of sports subsidies, the headline this weekend certainly looked promising: "A's to spearhead park plans: Future owner acknowledges public funds scarce, tells local leaders he'll lead stadium drive." Incoming A's owner Lewis Wolff, long thought to be looking to move the team to his hometown of San Jose, instead declared that he not only was hoping to keep the team in Oakland, but would take over for the county in building a new stadium there: "Since we need the venue, we are the ones planning it," he told the Oakland Tribune. "That does not mean we will not ask for assistance ... but we understand the priorities and the resources available. There are a lot of higher priorities for them than the venue."

Sounds great, right? It certainly did to Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele, who told the Trib: "I'm hoping that it is a sign that the stadium might be a private venture." That would certainly be an improvement over the last pitch by the outgoing A's owners, which was to split stadium costs 75/25, with the team picking up the small slice of the pie.

Unfortunately, as we've seen before, in the stadium-finance biz, "private" doesn't necessarily mean that taxpayers are off the hook. The most dramatic example: the Miami Heat, whose owners successfully got a new-arena referendum on the ballot in November 1996, only to face widespread opposition to the notion of "public financing" for a private project. With just days to go before the vote, the Heat owners announced a switch: Instead of the public building the arena and the team paying rent, the team would build the arena and the public would pay "operating costs" for the team to play there.

The actual effect on who would pay what, it turned out, was zero: The public would be putting up just as much money through the operating-cost subsidy (and forgone rent payments) as it would have if the city government had signed the arena checks. But the sleight-of-hand worked to mollify voters, and so the Heat now play in the brand-new American Airlines Arena, while the Miami Arena, barely a decade older, is set to become a shopping mall. While there's no telling whether Lewis Wolff is being sincere or pulling a similar bluff - for some reason he didn't include me in his MySpace friends list - it's a good reminder to apply a healthy dose of skepticism when reading, or writing, headlines about "private" stadium drives.