Field of Schemes
sports stadium news and analysis

  

This is an archived version of a Field of Schemes article. Comments on this page are closed. To find the current version of the article with updated comments, click here.

November 30, 2011

Hamilton County to sell hospital to feed stadiums

The Hamilton County Commission has finally agreed on a plan that would allow them to keep paying off the Cincinnati Reds and Bengals stadiums while still handing out the property tax break that was agreed to as part of the stadium deal (and which is so important to county taxpayers, especially if they're really rich). Under the new plan, the county will sell Drake Hospital to a private corporation for $15 million, helping to close next year's $14 million stadium budget gap.

It's still not clear whether the gambit would be legal — earlier reports suggested that any proceeds from hospital sales are legally required to go to health care — but that's the kind of thing that can be worried about later. Sort of like how the county is going to pay the following year's stadium budget gap, assuming the economy doesn't pick up by then and start generating bucketloads of sales taxes. But surely we don't have to worry about that, right?

COMMENTS

I wish I could find it online, but WKRC-TV ran a soundbite from Hamilton County Commissioner Chris Monzel last night in which he said, essentially, that hospitals aren't a core function of county government and that Hamilton County shouldn't be in the hospital business anyway.

Free stadiums for billionaires *are* a core function then?

Posted by djl on December 1, 2011 07:06 AM

No no no, see the stadium is for the "people" but the hospital is just for the hurt and ill. Everyone "uses" and "benefits" from the stadium. :)

Posted by Joshua Northey on December 1, 2011 10:49 AM

It is something we have to worry about.

And stop calling me Shirley.

Posted by Dave on December 1, 2011 07:44 PM

Latest News Items

CONTACT US FOR AD RATES