It was a short week due to the placement of the holiday, but still there was news that demands recapping:
- Oakland A’s consultant Jeremy Aguero and Las Vegas tourism chief Steve Hill, who were the main twosome lobbying for the $600 million deal to fund a Las Vegas A’s stadium, managed not to have to register as lobbyists because the post-COVID world meant you could lobby people without actually going into the legislative building, and the legislature didn’t want to force anyone who called their legislator to register as a lobbyist, and so here we are. “If you’re saying that that’s totally fine within our current laws, then yes, the laws need to be updated,” Nevada Assemblymember Selena LaRue Hatch told the Nevada Current. Also, “Aguero’s firm, Applied Analysis, serves as staff to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, which will negotiate agreements with the A’s,” wait, what? Isn’t Aguero a paid A’s consultant? Perhaps the Fox Guarding the Henhouse Act of 2022 might need to be updated as well.
- A guy in Arlington Heights has launched a petition drive to recall Mayor Tom Hayes and village trustee Jim Bertucci over their support of a Chicago Bears stadium, mostly because of traffic concerns and because he’s upset about the demolition of the Arlington Park racetrack grandstand. The village doesn’t actually have much say over the stadium plans — which are currently on hold because Bears ownership wants a giant property tax break and Cook County don’t wanna give it — but somehow it led to consummate NFL insider Mike Florio writing about how voters approve stadium referendums less often than elected officials approve stadium funding bills, so Geoffrey Propheter should be happy, at least.
- Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, is preparing to introduce legislation to allow Washington, D.C. to build a Commanders stadium on the RFK Stadium site, something incoming team owner Josh Harris would really, really like, if only as a negotiating chip with Virginia and Maryland. A committee spokesperson told the Washington Post that any use of the RFK land “would not be a land sale,” of course it wouldn’t be, Josh Harris doesn’t want to pay property taxes, he just wants to use the land. Members of the D.C. council still “have differing opinions about how the site should be used,” according to the Post, but D.C. councilmembers have a history of getting to yes, so this one certainly bears watching.
- A new St. Petersburg stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays “could generate up to 17,782 sustainable, annual jobs in Pinellas County over 30 years,” according to two guys with no economics background but who definitely own a football and a basketball.
- A billionaire who dropped out of the University of Rhode Island in the 1990s to focus on the family business of being filthy rich says he wants to buy 81-year-old McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket and bring back professional baseball; Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien says thanks, but that ship has sailed now that the city is preparing to turn over the site for a new school. Terrible timing by Stefan Soloviev? An attempt to get his foot in the door of any future efforts to bring baseball back to Rhode Island? You have all weekend to debate this, that’s what the comments section is for.