One of the two commissioners of the Orange County Commissioner who voted against Tuesday’s approval of a $94 million Orlando City Soccer Club stadium has spoken out about the team’s claims that the project would produce $1.2 billion in economic impact over the next 30 years.
“The technical term for their (Orlando City’s) economic study is ‘twaddle.'” said Brummer on our Open Mike radio show Wednesday morning. “It reminds me of the old joke about CPAs and it goes like this: A client calls a CPA and says, ‘You’re a math expert, how much is 2 plus 2?’ And the CPA says to the client, ‘What did you have in mind?’
Best part of that joke: Brummer himself is a CPA.
That “our,” incidentally, refers to Orlando Sentinel columnist and ESPN radio host Mike Bianchi, who previously distinguished himself by writing when the Orlando Magic‘s $480 million in arena subsidies were approved that he “wanted to run up and high-five [Orlando mayor] Rich Crotty. Or put on one of those big foam fingers and start chanting, ‘Rich, Rich, he’s our man. He’s gonna pass this venue plan!’” Predictably, Bianchi is all in favor of the OCSC soccer deal, writing that “if you want to be a big-league city, you have to build venues to attract teams,” and also that “There are two things that bring a city together — tragedy and winning sports teams.” Bianchi did not comment on whether this means he’d also be in favor of subsidies to attract terrorist bombings.
I loathe to give the Sentinel any pageviews, but you left out the blog post by Bianchi on the stadium: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/blogs/open-mike/os-mls-soccer-stadium-orlando-fred-brummer-20131023,0,7376331.post
There’s a lot to be said about how Orlando has never seen a sports subsidy deal it didn’t like, but when you have unabashed cheerleaders masquerading as voices of authority in both print and TV media, then nobody has any reason to question the logic or sanity behind every project that they push through. Nobody sees the idiocy behind blowing millions of tax dollars on two stadiums at the same time (three, if you count the Amway Center).
It’s gonna be hilarious when the Bianchi’s and the Bruey’s of Orlando sports media make public pleas for more tax dollars to be spent on “modernizing” these venues 15 or 20 years from now. Hopefully I’ll have left the city long ago by then.
Thanks, Kei, just added the link.
http://westorlandonews.com/2013/10/21/did-jacobs-and-family-benefit-in-return-for-pushing-orlando-soccer-deal/
More often than not, subsidizing sports teams results in tragedies, so I suspect Bianchi is gonna be one happy man.
…. and since subsidizing sports facilities often results in the need to layoff policemen, close fire stations, schools and hospitals (sometimes even sell them – probably at a distress price to companies controlled by the very robber barons you offered the original subsidy to appease…), I think it can easily be argued that this makes potential acts of terrorism both more likely and harder to defend.
I guess this could be called a win-win, depending on which socio-economic groups you support…
“Bianchi did not comment on whether this means he’d also be in favor of subsidies to attract terrorist bombings.” I howled at that. Well done as always, Mr. deMause