Would love to have a witty introduction for you here, but it’s late enough already and this week’s bullet points are far too juicy to wait any longer!
- Lobbyists for the Portland Trail Blazers worked to get city councilmembers on board spending $600 million on a renovation for the team’s arena by threatening that their political careers would suffer if they didn’t, according to one councilmember, who said team representatives “made it clear that elected officials will be blamed if the team leaves Portland.” History shows that elected officials are far more likely to be removed from office by voters angry that they gave public funds to sports team owners, but when did lobbyists ever let facts get in the way of a good extortion scheme?
- Hillsborough County commissioners could vote April 1 on using $467 million in sales tax surcharge money on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium, just two years after voters approved extending the tax on the condition that it not be used for new stadiums. “We have not even began to collect that tax,” Commissioner Joshua Wostal told the Tampa Bay Times, “and here is a suggestion that we already deceive the taxpayers that we made a promise to no less than two years ago.” If the county commission approves that money, the Tampa city council could be asked to vote the next day on the stadium plan, which would involve a total of $2.25 billion in public cash, land, and tax breaks.
- Once the A’s (presumably) move to Las Vegas in 2028, Sacramento will be ready to host an MLB expansion team — just as soon as it has a stadium and an owner and an expansion team. “I think MLB is going to give a hard, hard look at Sacramento with only one team in Northern California,” said Sacramento Mayor/self-proclaimed “sports guy” who read Field of Schemes but missed the part about why tax breaks are the same as cash gifts Kevin McCarty.
- The former Ford engine plant where the Cleveland Browns want to build their stadium complex is too polluted to use for housing, but Browns officials are convinced they can do cleanup at the site and get the needed approvals. They may also need to find a new source of $600 million, of course, but Cleveland.com assures us that “state lawmakers from the governor on down have already shown their willingness to find a way to fund the project,” and being willing to pay is the same thing as having the money to pay, right?
- Former L.A. County supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who wrote the premier report on why the 2028 L.A. Olympics needed to secure an agreement with the IOC for L.A. not to be on the hook for Olympic losses, says now that city officials moved ahead without such an agreement, “I don’t believe that anyone in the city knows what the books are now.” He’s very likely not wrong!
- The Orange County Tourist Development Council voted unanimously last week to set aside $20 million to host either the 2029 or 2030 NBA All-Star Game and $15 million to host the 2028 Olympic qualifiers, if it’s picked for either of those, because surely those will work out well.
- New England Revolution owner Robert Kraft will guarantee $8 million in security costs for 2026 men’s World Cup games in Foxborough, Massachusetts, ending a standoff that was threatening to prevent matches from being held there.
- Is the USL really going to be able to launch a new top-tier division to compete with MLS at the same time as teams are folding? The Guardian looked into it and came back with a decided “uhhhh, maybe?“
Folding Schmolding.
Full steam ahead on the USL front. Hey, if MLS can find suckers, why can’t they?
vis the extortion play by the prospective-maybe-but-not-yet owner of the Trailblazers (or his designates), is it really extortion?
I mean, that is certainly the goal… but is it REALLY extortion?
Normally you have to extort someone by threatening to take away/withhold/fail to provide something they actually need.
Like air. Or water. Or heat in the winter/air conditioning in the summer.
Or maybe you just refuse to let them out of the basement cell you’ve locked them in.
Does threatening their major league sports team really qualify? I mean, it’s pretty much the definition of a want and not a need. We could all live just fine without any professional sports (and we all once did!).
I’m not arguing that it is an attempt at extortion, nor that it is likely to be successful even if that effort is very weak (or even flimsy to the point of being non existent).
But is it extortion?
Putting a gun to my head and demanding $500 or you’ll pull the trigger might work.
Demanding $500 or you’ll never let me watch reruns of Green Acres… not so much.
I’d put pro sports much closer to the Green Acres threat than anything else.
Shocking that a guy who made a fortune preying on the vulnerable would hire henchmen who try to intimidate elected officials.
Look, electeds are ALWAYS on the hook for their decisions. Sometimes the populace rises up, and sometimes it shrugs.
But saying “you’ll be blamed” is certainly an attempt at coercion if it doesn’t rise to the level of extortion. Electeds face the voters at regular intervals. Those threats by lobbyists are just typical bluster.
Now if the team’s owner made their fortune in…waste management or construction for example…well, maybe that message hits differently.
I disagree that ‘electeds’ are “on the hook” for their decisions.
They may lose their high paying do nothing jobs eventually if they make poor decisions, but look at the long string of public officials (both elected and employed) who make these kinds of catastrophically bad for the public deals who serve out their full terms then drift off into a lovely taxpayer funded retirement, or go to work for the very companies/individuals who benefitted most from the taxpayer largesse the ex officials forced through.
Near where I live, a $600m+ publicly sports palace features a plaque honouring the city councillors who voted in favour of the deal that forced taxpayers to fund it. That city has also been experiencing double digit property tax increases annually since that facility opened. The councillors who did not vote for the deal are not memorialized on the plaque, and the ones who did – without exception – retired before the next election. Several now live very comfortably in Palm Springs – no word on who their generous and very accommodating landlord there might be.
The officials who ram these corrupt and damaging deals through rarely pay any real price for doing so. Some might get voted out of office at some point in future (though they have a way of reappearing in different roles down the road), but they aren’t ever held fiscally accountable for their poor decisions.
“Rays owner’s Jacksonville homebuilding company secures official partnership with team” Tampa Bay Business Journal. The Governor gives his largest contributor 100 acres of public land in a growing suburb. Taxpayers give him $1 billion. The worse investment of public money and land. Why do taxpayers fall for this grift?
Literally nobody has asked taxpayers about this one, and there is no plan to do so.
It’s Floriduh! It’s a state full of Republican con men, grifters, all led by the King of the Cons, the big TACO!