Category: San Antonio Missions

San Antonio stadium would displace 381 low-income families, replace their homes with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

access_time personNeil deMause

While plans for a new downtown stadium for the minor-league San Antonio Missions would cost city residents $126 million in tax kickbacks, the more pressing issue as a city council vote approaches this Thursday is the 381 units of affordable housing that would be demolished to make way for the new development, which would also include a hotel and new stores. City officials say there will be replacement apartments as well, but after meeting with project proponents on Sunday, some residents now say they don’t trust the promises and want the council vote delayed:

[James] Boscher and [Brooklyn] Ramos told KSAT on Friday that they didn’t expect to be able to stop the stadium project, but they wanted guaranteed housing in the area at similar rates and money to help move.

Boscher’s opinion shifted after taking part in a Sunday meeting that included [Weston Urban developer] Randy Smith and three city council members. It seemed clear, Boscher told KSAT on Monday, that council members didn’t have enough information and that Weston Urban “didn’t have any actual guarantees.”

Weston Urban owns the Soap Factory apartments, which it says it would tear down in stages, with residents being allowed to move temporarily to other units before those are then demolished, or moved to other housing it owns elsewhere in the city if those are available, or maybe just given “housing navigation” services to find new homes. The stadium wouldn’t actually go on the Soap Factory site — it would be across the street, if I’m reading this map correctly — but the apartments would be torn down to make way for a mixed-use development that could eventually include 1,500 new apartments, or not:

Under terms of the Missions owners’ deal with the city and county, bonds for the ballpark’s construction would be sold only when Weston Urban has its projects for phases 1 and 2 designed and financed.

Those initial phases would add about 575 apartments and between 175 and 200 hotel rooms, Smith said….

More than 1,500 apartments could be built through all four phases.

No guarantees about whether any of that housing would be built, though, or whether it would be available at the same low rents as the current apartments. And really, no explanation of why the Soap Factory buildings need to be torn down rather than built around, other than presumably that Weston Urban doesn’t think low-income neighbors would be as attractive as thousands of new residents meant to “be a massive shot in the arm of existing businesses and small [food and beverage] folks,” as Smith puts it.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg says the new development is necessary in order to generate new tax revenues to pay for the stadium so that taxpayers don’t “end up on the hook” — which only makes sense if you think that tax revenues from new development should go to pay private developers’ costs, something that has not worked out well in the past. Some council members have reportedly expressed concern about tearing down the apartment complex; we’ll have to wait and see whether it’s enough members, or enough concern, to delay Thursday’s vote.

 

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Friday roundup: Sacramento celebrates A’s move with new golf simulators, KC residents say cap public stadium funds at one-third

access_time personNeil deMause

Sports economist Victor Matheson and I were both on a radio show this week to discuss the Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium situations — you can listen to it here, but first check out the rest of this week’s stadium and arena news, it’ll be quick, I promise:

  • There’s a “major economic boost” coming to Sacramento now that the Oakland A’s are relocating there temporarily, reports KCRA-TV: A new brunch-and-golf-simulators venue is opening across the street! (It was going to open there anyway, but now that the A’s are coming, the owner is trying to open it earlier.) Also, the mayor is “in discussions” with three new restaurants! Feel the excitement!
  • There is no excitement in St. Louis, where the Cardinals are still technically in the playoff hunt, but fans in the best baseball city in the world don’t want to watch .500 baseball, it turns out, or even buy hot dogs. “I love being the hot dog lady,” says hot dog lady Karen Boschert. “I’ve cut my staff down. My prices are reasonable. You can take my food into the stadium.” Maybe she could pivot her sales pitch to point out that you can buy her food and not bring it into the stadium? Just an idea.
  • Pollsters in Missouri decided to ask an unusual question of local voters: not whether taxpayers should pay toward new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, but how much. The average was two-thirds team, one-sixth state, one-sixth city and county, which is kind of arbitrary and doesn’t account for whether the public would get back any share of revenues or community benefits or anything, but sure it sounds fair. Ish. Time will tell if the team owners come back with “zero-thirds team, poke in the eye with a sharp stick public.”
  • Most of the San Antonio residents who testified at a Wednesday hearing on a $160 million Missions minor-league baseball stadium “voiced concerns and skepticism,” according to Fox San Antonio. For actual quotes we have to turn to KSAT, which notes that a local arts and social justice activist said, “This project is all about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer,” while a resident of a housing complex that would be demolished to make way for the stadium said, “I would not be able to get somewhere else, and I would end up in the street yet again.”
  • Chicago’s city budget is facing a $982.4 million shortfall, and Mayor Brandon Johnson says, “There are sacrifices that will be made,” but not new Bears and White Sox stadiums, those are important even if they would cost the city upwards of $1.2 billion and $2 billion respectively, sacrifices are for little people.
  • Team-funded studies of a Philadelphia 76ers arena say it would be great, other studies show it would be a disaster; the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board says it’s up to the mayor and city council to figure out where the truth lies in the middle!
  • Another group of developers unrelated to either the Royals or the city has come up with renderings for a new downtown baseball stadium, and guys, you should at least look up how many players are on the field for a baseball game.
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San Antonio to spend $126m on minor-league ballpark, gullible journalists call this no public money

access_time personNeil deMause

The owners of the minor-league baseball San Antonio Missions, who somehow include both Nolan Ryan and Manu Ginobili, have been angling for a new stadium since they bought the team in 2022, and their proposal has finally reached the city council, with a projected cost of $160 million. And how would that money be raised? Not to worry, says KENS-TV, “if current plans hold, taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook”:

Funding for the new ballpark would primarily come from a $34 million team equity contribution from the Missions. The rest, about $126 million, would be paid for by bonds issued by the newly created San Pedro Creek Authority, with a pledge from the Houston Street Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ).

Those are taxes collected under a state law which are used for economic development projects.

Now, I am not an economist, though often play one in poorly fact-checked articles. But I am fairly sure that if a project is being funded by $126 million in taxes, then taxpayers are, by definition, on the hook.

The argument here, of course, isn’t that taxpayers aren’t paying for the stadium, it’s that they’re paying for it with money they wouldn’t have without the stadium. This is the Casino Night Fallacy, and while I could talk yet again about how just because tax revenues are “new” to a specific parcel of land doesn’t mean that it isn’t being cannibalized from other tax money that woulc be collected anyway, or would not be available for public uses if someone developed the land but without the ballpark, but I would much rather let Felix and Oscar explain it:

Felix: What have you got there? Where’d you get all that money?

Oscar: From Arnold, he owed it to me.

Felix: What?

Oscar: Yeah. He owed it to me since the year one.

Felix: The “let it ride” guy owed you money?

Oscar: That’s my Arnold.

Felix (reaching for a pile of cash): Well, that’s wonderf—

Oscar: Don’t touch the money, Felix.

Felix: But what a—

Oscar: Don’t touch it, I told you not to touch it.

Felix: But now the opera club gets its money back. Yay!

Oscar: I don’t think I heard you.

Felix: We’re saved! We get our money back!

Oscar (hastily gathering up his money): Now I know I didn’t hear you.

Felix: Surely you’re not thinking of keeping that money?

Oscar: Why not? It’s my money!

Felix: No, it’s not! It belongs to the opera club!

Oscar: How do you figure that?

Felix: Well, Arnold got it from us, you got it from him, you give it back to us! Then everybody’s even!

Oscar: That can’t be right. See, I’d be out all this money.

Felix: No, you wouldn’t! You’d just be back where you started from!

Oscar: Yeah, but only Arnold wouldn’t owe it to me anymore. See, I had this money coming to me.

Felix: But it came from the opera club! From them to him to you to me! It’s like an isosceles triangle!

But fine, that’s only one San Antonio news outlet, anyone can have a gullible day. Let’s see how the San Antonio Express-News covered the—

The Missions owners’ first pitch to city officials for a new ballpark downtown boiled down to this: Please foot almost the entire bill.

That’s how City Manager Erik Walsh on Wednesday recalled that first meeting.

The minor-league ball club struck out.

Seriously?

One article like this is bad enough; two is clearly the sign of a concerned media campaign to spin $126 million in public spending as “no public spending.” There is only one acceptable response by the San Antonio council: Don’t touch the money, Felix.

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Friday roundup: It was the best of summers for team owners demanding stadiums, it was the worst of summers for the rest of us

access_time personNeil deMause

The calendar on my screen says it’s September, which means we made it through another summer. (Not technically until the equinox on September 23, I guess, but if Labor Day weekend doesn’t mark the end of summer, I don’t want to be a part of your arbitrary seasonal delineation scheme.) And quite a summer it was, kicking off with Oakland A’s owner John Fisher fighting for (and getting) $600 million in public money for a new stadium in Las Vegas, then proceeding with Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman ramping up talk about a new $2 billion stadium project either in downtown K.C. or in the next county over, the mayor of Oklahoma City saying the Thunder need a new arena because their 22-year-old one “will keep getting older,” the San Antonio Spurs owners exploring a new arena to replace the one that they just had renovated for them a few years back, many anonymous people claiming that the Milwaukee Brewers will move somewhere without $400 million in publicly funded upgrades to their 22-year-old stadium, and of course the great New York City cricket stadium fiasco, which just gets more fiascoey by the day.  Plus the Chicago Bears are still shopping themselves around to every possible Chicago suburb, the Arizona Coyotes owners are doing the same with every town in the Phoenix area, and the mayor of San Francisco wants to build a soccer stadium without even knowing for what soccer team for some reason.

There are a bunch of possible reasons why we’re seeing this flurry of new sports subsidy demands: lots of stadiums built in the ’90s getting to a point where team owners aren’t embarrassed to ask for new ones, flush state budgets and the promise of federal infrastructure spending getting owners salivating, a rush particularly in MLB to secure new stadium deals before expansion maybe takes some cities off the potential move threat table. Or, you know, this is just the sort of hellscape we’re doomed to live in after our government decided to give all the money to the rich people and then let them spend it on buying elections. Either way, this site’s work clearly isn’t going to be done for a while yet, so I better get started on some fresh tchotchkes to keep you all interested in helping to support it.

And if you prefer news items to tchotchkes, we got you covered there too:

  • Lease extension talks between the state of Maryland and Baltimore Orioles owner John Angelos might still be going nowhere fast, but Gov. Wes Moore (pictured here wearing an Orioles uniform and here doing it again, because that’s how he rolls) says he’s confident of “being able to not just get the lease done, but also making sure that getting the lease done includes all the other lenses that I think are going to be important in this long-term deal.” “Lenses” here apparently means a plan to redevelop the area around Camden Yards, which Moore painted as a win-win for the city and state, and surely not just a giveaway of $300 million in state money plus public land to Angelos so that he can profit from the redevelopment, heaven forfend.
  • Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno is still trying to get the city of Anaheim to pay him $5 million for costs associated with “processing the illegal cash sale of Angel Stadium,” as the Voice of OC puts it. That’s pretty ballsy, but keep in mind this is a guy who’s also trying to get out of paying MLB luxury tax by cutting all the players he just traded for in July and hoping someone else signs them, not to mention tried to push through an illegal stadium land purchase to begin with, so ballsy is pretty much par for his course.
  • Two New York City council committees have voted to give Madison Square Garden just a five-year extension on its operating permit, half the length of its previous permit and infinitely smaller than the perpetual permit that the owner of the Knicks and Rangers was seeking. While this could raise hopes of seeing the city’s Padlock Unit chain up the arena gates, more likely it’s just the council kicking the can down the road again; especially since, as the New York Times notes in classic Timesian we’re-not-saying-we’re-just-saying style, “the Dolan family has shown itself adept at bending the will of the government to advance its own interests, particularly when the various branches of government are not on the same page.”
  • The kerfuffle over the Philadelphia 76ers owners’ terrible “community info sessions” on their new Chinatown arena plans continues, with the first public Zoom meeting held in Mandarin criticized as “garbled” and lacking proper translation; no word yet on how this Tuesday’s meeting in Cantonese went.
  • The Charlotte Observer sent questionnaires to city council candidates asking how much the city should be contributing to upgrades on the Carolina Panthers‘ stadium, and if “any answer would be premature” is the kind of response you were hoping for, then you will be very pleased by the efficacy of candidate questionnaires. (To be fair, it is kind of dumb to ask about how much should be spent without taking into consideration things like whether the team owners would pay additional rent, say; to also be fair to the Observer, it really does sound like the candidates mostly used this argument as an excuse to duck the question entirely.)
  • Construction has finally begun on Inter Miami‘s cursed new permanent stadium! Or at least “earthwork and site work” has begun, according to a team press release, jeez, Miami Herald, you couldn’t even be bothered to drive over and confirm it? The stadium is now scheduled to open sometime in 2025, but we’ve been hearing similar predictions for, good lord, has it been five years already? At this rate Lionel Messi’s kids are more likely to play at a new Inter Miami stadium than he is.
  • If you thought what Congress needed was a Historic Stadium Caucus to work on ways to upgrade older college football stadiums, including possibly with federal infrastructure money, U.S. Rep. Garret Graves has some great news for you.
  • The promised housing construction that was supposed to be built as part of the Brooklyn Nets arena is set to miss a May 2025 deadline, and New York state is considering greasing the skids by restoring a tax break that expired last year, because of course it is.
  • There might be worse ways to frame a story about how the owners of the San Antonio Missions are trying to get city money for a new minor-league baseball stadium and city officials haven’t been returning their phone calls until the next day than “Missions can’t get to first base on downtown baseball stadium,” but between the what’s the holdup with approving subsidies? and the terrible baseball play on words, it’s hard to imagine one.
  • The company that owns the Boston Red Sox is buying the company that owns the TV rights to Pittsburgh Pirates games, which Marc Normandin points out means that going forward it’ll be easier for the Red Sox to outspend the Pirates if the Pirates make more TV money. Normandin calls this “just a weird sentence to type”; me, I’m reminded of syndicate ball, which was a fun time.
  • What do “Spring training season brought $418M to state’s economy in 2023” and “Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour has a huge economic impact” have in common? If you guessed “They’re both as big a load of BS as that time people insisted LeBron James leaving the Cavs destroyed Cleveland’s economy,” you’re a winner!
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Friday roundup: How much economic impact won’t the Super Bowl have, and other dubious sports news

access_time personNeil deMause

“Under the present regime, there is no real downside risk to posting.” I probably should have spun this off into its own post, and added some anecdata about how when I post two items in one day it always seems like one of them gets overlooked, but then I would have to come up with an additional headline and post again to social media so screw it, just go give Tom Scocca the clicks, he needs ’em now that he doesn’t have a day job again.

Anyway, you probably skipped that to go straight to the bullet points, and here they are:

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Friday roundup: Friends don’t let friends believe what they read about stadiums in newspapers edition

access_time personNeil deMause

Hey, who’s been watching the World Series? Not me! Baseball is my #1 sport and always has been, even as I’ve learned way too much about how the sport’s sausage gets made, but for whatever reason this year I’ve completely lost interest by now: I don’t know if it’s that I’m burned out after more rounds of playoffs than ever before, or by the presence of the 11th-best team in baseball in the finals, or that modern baseball means no starting pitcher goes deep enough into games to have a shot at a no-hitter anymore, or that the Phillies–Astros matchup feels like it should be the 1980 NLCS, or because I now know enough about the randomness of short series to feel like who actually wins the World Series is meaningless, or thanks to John Smoltz seeming like what you’d get if you ran every bit of baseball commentary ever through a Markov generator, or what, but it’s something.

I could come up with some hot take extrapolating this out into What It All Means For Baseball, but I’m probably not a representative sample of anything. It does, however, show how quickly things can change for an individual fan, and that sports fandom is not eternal or imperishable.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, except to say that sports fandom is weird, man. That it’s also the basis for a multi-billion-dollar industry that has huge sway over our lives and politics is even weirder.

And on that note, here’s some news about sports and politics and lives:

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Friday roundup: Despite Bears owners’ best efforts, Illinoisans wonder out loud who’d pay for stadium project exactly

access_time personNeil deMause

Summer must really be over, because the stadium and arena news cycle is starting to heat up again, albeit heavily weighted toward events in Chicago and Arlington Heights:

  • Chicago Bears chair George Halas McCaskey and team president Ted Phillips revealed more about the team’s stadium plans beyond an enigmatic white blob at last night’s public meeting in Arlington Heights. McCaskey said the team owners “will seek no public funding for direct stadium structure construction” but “we will need help,” and said he needs “property tax certainty” (which sounds like he wants property taxes kicked back to the team) and that “it’s not our part to say that property taxes for Arlington Heights residents won’t go up, but that might be for reasons that have nothing to do with this construction” (which definitely sounds like he wants property taxes kicked back to the team). Phillips added that the new stadium would provide a “first-class experience” with tailgating and, um, stuff. Several locals in attendance expressed concern over how much the stadium would cost them, with nearby resident Linda Gaio saying she’d like “some sort of documentation, or maybe there’s some website or something where we could check the progress of these talks and the negotiations and how it’s gonna affect us residents.” Will a catchy ditty suffice?
  • The Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity have also submitted petitions to the Arlington Heights Village Board seeking to stop any future financial incentives for “any business or corporation to operate in the village.” That seems poorly worded — couldn’t the Bears execs argue that the money isn’t to lure the Bears, but is just to improve the village’s infrastructure by paving the roads with dollar bills? — and the village board is almost certain to reject it, at which point Americans for Prosperity would have to go back and get 6,550 signatures (12% of registered voters) to place it on a public ballot, at which point they would then have to get a majority of votes. Not saying they can’t do it, what with their deep pockets, but it’s probably best not to place all your hopes in a deus ex Koch.
  • Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says she has “Plan B, Plan C and others in the works as well if the Bears decide they’re going to abandon the city of Chicago,” but wouldn’t say what any of those might be. Block Club Chicago speculates Lightfoot “could try to bring another team to Chicago or the city could redevelop Soldier Field and the surrounding area for concerts and other uses,” which, good luck with that first one, and good luck with the latter one too, given how few stadium-sized concerts there are. Though if it meant tearing down the spaceship and just leaving the historic part of Soldier Field, maybe it’d be worth it — okay, probably still not given the cost, but it’s still more viable than “convince Roger Goodell that Chicago should have two NFL teams.”
  • In non-Chicago news, an Alameda County judge has rejected claims that the Oakland A’s Howard Terminal stadium environmental impact statement was inadequate, which … hang on, didn’t we just talk about this last week? Well anyway, the judge really did it now, I guess, which leaves no remaining hurdles for the project except for where around half of the city’s $1 billion in infrastructure spending would come from, you know, just details.
  • The Kansas City Star editorial board, which is on record against giving too much money too fast to Royals owner John Sherman for a downtown stadium even while talking up a downtown stadium, has declared that it’s a good thing that Kansas City Manager Brian Platt has put on hold for now plans to hire a consultant for Royals and Chiefs stadium talks. Because why? Because the teams haven’t said what they want yet, and skeptical taxpayers’ “concerns will harden into outright opposition if they believe deals are being cooked up behind closed doors, without a full public debate.” Advocacy for democratic procedure, or concern trolling, you make the call!
  • Arizona Coyotes execs say the team will sell out its entire season at its tiny Arizona State University arena home, and bring in more season-ticket money than they did in Glendale — yes, that’s how artificial scarcity works, by allowing you to raise ticket prices through the roof, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the Coyotes will make more money at ASU’s arena, just that they’ll make more money per fan. Which isn’t terrible in terms of taking lemons and making lemonade, but it’s still not really worthy of an entire ESPN article unless it was a super-slow news day.
  • The Salt Lake Bees are threatening to move without a new or renovated stadium, and the Eugene Emeralds are threatening to move without a new stadium, and the San Antonio Missions are threatening to move without a new stadium. The likely unionization of baseball’s minor leagues may put a crimp in MLB’s attempts to use the minors’ downsizing to pressure players into being more desperate to play for any wage, including for free — or may not, depending on whether MLB players are ever willing to stage a sympathy strike on behalf of minor leaguers in order to help them get a contract — but it’s still going gangbusters in terms of shaking loose public stadium money.
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Friday roundup: The rich get richer, subsidies for me and not for thee, and other American truisms

access_time personNeil deMause

This has been a week, so we’re going to get straight to the news. If you want to check out what I’ve been doing in my spare time, though (other than this website), you might want to play my text adventure game Improv: Origins, which just placed 4th (out of 18) in an interactive fiction competition. It has superheroes, socioeconomic commentary, and oh so many rubber bands…

Anyway, stadium news is what you came for, stadium news is what you get:

  • The Denver Broncos‘ sale to Walmart heir Rob Walton for $4.65 billion is expected to be approved by the NFL next week, in what would be a record price for a U.S. sports franchise. The Las Vegas Raiders are selling a minority stake in their team for a price that would value the whole team at $6.5 billion. While it shouldn’t escape notice that Walton is thought to be looking to get public money for a new stadium and Raiders owner Mark Davis already did, it’s also worth noting that pretty much every NFL team is soaring in value thanks largely to massive national TV contracts — so while “these dudes are filthy rich, they don’t need our money” is legit, “these dudes are getting filthy rich by building stadiums on the taxpayers’ dime” is only partly true, since it’s just one factor increasing the filth.
  • Americans for Prosperity is calling on Arlington Heights to pass an ordinance barring it from provide “corporate welfare” to the Chicago Bears, which is ironic to say the least given that Americans for Prosperity is a mouthpiece for the Koch brothers (well, the alive one, anyway), who have collected more than half a billion dollars in corporate welfare themselves. Though maybe it’ll pass, and one shouldn’t look strange bedfellows in the mouth, but nobody ever said one shouldn’t point out their hypocrisy.
  • This article claims that the $279.5 million in California state money that the Oakland A’s owners want for their Howard Terminal infrastructure funding is definitely going to be used for that, which Mayor Libby Schaaf already claimed last year, but I for one will wait till I see the receipts. Anyway, still lots more public money that needs to be found under sofa cushions before the project can be a reality.
  • Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff says MLB’s new minor-league stadium requitements could cause San Antonio to lose the Missions if it doesn’t upgrade their ballpark, and it’s not worth renovations that could cost $5-10 million when you could build a whole new one for $75-150 million. I’ve read it three times, that what he said, you try to make sense of it.
  • The Baltimore Orioles‘ Camden Yards changed sports architecture (arguably for the better) and sports stadium funding (inarguably for the worse). That’s nothing new — it’s a large chunk of Chapter 1 of Field of Schemes — but if you want to read a whole lot more words to that effect, some of which are “But here we get to the crux: Camden Yards is not categorically salvific,” The Ringer has got you covered.
  • “Rays president offers new stadium details” promises the St. Pete Catalyst headline, which the article reveals to be: “It is inappropriate for me to get into some of the confidential details of those discussions.” They really don’t make details the way they used to.
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Friday roundup: The minor-league stadium shakedown will continue unabated into our glorious future (plus: FIRE!)

access_time personNeil deMause

This was a short week but it felt long to me, though at least nobody interrogated my cat about whether I would be resigning, so there’s that. Anyway, we have a big stack of Other News ahead of us, so let’s dive in:

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Friday roundup: A’s stadium plan gets a win, Maryland’s “pro-stupid” ticket kickbacks, and, oh yeah, the death of democracy

access_time personNeil deMause

Some of you, if you read here back in April about New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s commitment of $1 billion in public money to a new Buffalo Bills stadium and about how New Yorkers of all stripes were overwhelmingly opposed to it, may have wondered if handing over tax money to billionaires would come back to haunt Hochul at election time. Well, the Democratic gubernatorial primary was this week, and: Not so much, as Hochul won in a landslide over challengers Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi, who both criticized the stadium deal, if mostly after the fact.

This is one of the big questions about stadium deals: If voters generally don’t like them, why do they keep electing politicians who do? I explored this in my latest article this week for Global Sport Matters, and the answer is money is more powerful than people, mostly:

So why are politicians so quick to kowtow to team owners’ requests, even against the wishes of their own constituents? [Villanova University sociology professor Rick] Eckstein says he thinks they probably fear the loss of campaign funding more than the loss of votes, especially when, with enough campaign funding, you can just run ad campaigns to win those voters back…

The unrelenting pressure on legislators is only heightened by the sports media, which can make a stadium deal seem more important than shown by objective data, whether economic impact figures or polling numbers. “There’s this complete misconception of how popular sports is,” Eckstein says. Nearly half of Americans don’t consider themselves sports fans, he notes — but those who do are more likely to be male and have high incomes. “It’s important to people who happen to have more money, more power, more resources,” he says.

Those damn elected officials, always chasing the next buck! Good thing our system of democracy has checks and balances so that other branches of government can counter those with deep pockets who want to run roughshod over public opinion — er, never mind.

On that sobering note, here’s the rest of the week’s news:

  • The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission voted 23-2 last night to remove Howard Terminal’s designation as a port facility, which opens the door for Oakland A’s owner John Fisher to use it for a stadium-centered development project. This is being called a huge — sorry, HUGE — win for Fisher, and it is in that without it he would have had to give up on his Howard Terminal stadium plans. But it’s also not entirely unexpected, and anyway the commission didn’t actually approve his stadium plans, just approved allowing him to apply for a permit for them, plus he still needs final approval from the city council and for someone to find $360 million under sofa cushions to pay for the rest of the traffic upgrades Fisher wants. Easy-peasy!
  • Hey, remember when the state of Maryland gave the Baltimore Orioles owners (whoever that turns out to be) $4.5 million from the state’s share of Paul McCartney tickets for no good reason? Then you will perhaps enjoy the news that the Maryland Stadium Authority has now given the Baltimore Ravens owner $150,000 from an Arsenal-Everton soccer friendly match for no good reason. Maryland Treasurer Dereck Davis says he’s “seriously considering” asking for legislation that would prohibit the authority from doing this stuff, adding, “There’s a difference between being pro-business and being pro-stupid. And I’m not pro-stupid.”
  • Tennessee already approved state sales tax kickbacks for a new Chattanooga Lookouts stadium, and now it’s time for the Lookouts owners to drop their other planning shoe: the announcement of an $89-94 million stadium that would get $79.4 million in tax money, including both those sales taxes and also a tax-increment financing district to kick back property taxes from the area around the stadium as well. The Lookouts would pay rent starting at $1 million a year plus cover maintenance costs, which team co-owner Jason Freier called “extraordinarily high for a minor league team” and which Mister Math says would still only be a small fraction of his stadium costs, so quit doth protesting too much, hmm?
  • Could the Chicago Bears owners build a minor-league baseball stadium to host “four to six teams of undrafted college players” (read: unpaid player-interns) next to their new Arlington Heights football stadium? Do they really even have the money to build the football stadium? Nobody’s saying, but that won’t stop the Chicago Tribune from speculating wildly, that’s just what journalism is now.
  • A developer in San Antonio is looking to buy land for building a baseball stadium, which would be paid for by … nobody actually knows, nor does anyone know whether this would be for a potential MLB team or for the minor-league Missions, the article just ends there, this is also just what journalism is now. See what Rick Eckstein means?
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Field of Schemes