October 10, 2007
Congress takes on stadiums, cont'd
For those of you who missed round one of the Congressional hearings on public stadium funding, today is round two, as Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Domestic Policy takes on the question of whether sports facilities "divert public funds from critical public infrastructure." (Otherwise known as the "Did the Twins make the I-35 bridge fall down?" question.) I won't be there this time, but plenty of people I've written about here will, including Minneapolis Federal Reserve VP Art Rolnick, Harvard urban planning professor Judith Grant Long, and Good Jobs New York director Bettina Damiani, as well as hopefully again at least one guy who looks alarmingly like Bud Selig.
The action starts at 2 pm Eastern time, and you can follow along at your computer via webcast on the subcommittee's website.
I don't see how anyone can seriously think that an Interstate bridge could fall because of a baseball stadium. Bridge repair money comes from gas taxes. If everybody spent so much on sports items, including tickets... maybe that would decrease the volume of gas money slightly. The most likely casualty of overspending on sports stadiums is in the category of legitimate government functions that were robbed in order to pay for the subsidy. Schools, police and fire spring to mind first. Supporting sports stadiums are like adopting your children's favorite friends. There is always room for one more, right? The self deceptive process of pretending that an extra mouth to feed and an extra child to nurture is no less dishonest than the BS economic studies that show all kinds of benefits from sports activity. I did not say there was no benefit. The problem is determining if the benefit really equals or exceeds the cost.
Posted by: Danny L. Newton on October 11, 2007 10:50 AM
