I neglected to mention last week that the Pawtucket Red Sox had revealed the projected costs for their proposed new stadium, and it would be roughly $45 million from the team, $23 million from the state of Rhode Island, and $15 million from the city of Pawtucket. (The Providence Journal uses higher numbers because it adds up all principal and interest payments over time, which is stupid for the same reason it’d be stupid to add up all your mortgage payments over 30 years to describe the cost of your new house.) But you can forget all that for now, anyway, because the PawSox stadium plan appears to be going nowhere fast in the state legislature:
“The Senate has not received any legislation from the Governor’s office or the Pawtucket Mayor’s office,” [State Senate President Dominick] Ruggerio said in a statement. “At this point, it is too late in the session for a thorough, public review of a proposal of this magnitude. Should legislation be forthcoming, I am not opposed to reconvening in the fall to consider it in a deliberative and public manner.”
House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello had reacted coolly to the PawSox’s latest stadium proposal, indicating it wouldn’t get House consideration unless related legislation was introduced at the request of Governor Gina Raimondo.
“Speaker Mattiello is not putting a deal before the House Finance Committee that was negotiated by the governor, as the chairwoman of the Commerce Corporation, without her endorsement and her stamp of approval,” Mattiello spokesman Larry Berman, said in a statement Tuesday. “The speaker finds it highly unusual that the governor is unwilling to endorse a financial plan that she and her team negotiated. The stadium is a significant taxpayer investment, and with the governor sending mixed signals, it is likely too late in the session to initiate a proposal of this magnitude. The House Finance Committee has a great deal of other work to do.”
Oof — declining to take action on a requested stadium subsidy is one thing, but saying “We have a lot of other work to do, don’t bother me”? That’s cold.
To their credit, Rhode Island legislators appear to recognize that they have no good reason to throw a bunch of money at the PawSox owners, especially when the owners have promised not to threaten to move until 2020 to heal “wounds that were suffered by fans” the last time they threatened to move. Coming up next, probably: More threats to move. This doesn’t seem to be working out too well so far for Larry Lucchino and his fellow owners, but remember, they only have to win once.
That’s an interesting tack. Heal wounds? The NFL never healed any wounds that I can recall, but I suppose when all these tinpot minor leaguers step up to the public stadium cash trough for the first time and get rejected, they have to cook up some P.R. game plan by the seat of their pants. It really is gauche from where I sit in on Park Avenue.