Stadium Welfare: More Baseball Bashing
Katherine Mangu-Ward | December 28, 2006, 6:19pm
When baseball players aren't using steroids, their bosses are robbing polite Minnesotans of millions so that they can have nice new locker rooms in which to use the aforementioned steroids. A new ballpark is being built for the 2007 season of the Minnesota Twins at the low, low price of $522 million:
On Monday, an additional 0.15 percent sales tax -- 3 cents per $20 purchase -- kicks in. Over time, it is expected to generate enough money to pay for three-quarters of the stadium.
Hennepin County Commissioner Mike Opat, who helped steer the stadium plan through the Legislature, said he hears complaints "from time to time" about the new tax. The county won permission to enact it without a voter referendum.
"I'd imagine there are people who are going to see that appear on sales receipts and continue to gripe about it," Opat said.
Legislation limited the county's spending on infrastructure to $90 million, so they're also planning court action to condemn some of the properties on the site of the proposed ballpark or take them with eminent domain:
"It's going to be a challenge. We're not in this to pay any price," Opat said. "The land needs to be purchased at a fair and not unreasonable price because the public is in for a defined amount and that's as far as we go."
James | December 28, 2006, 7:58pm | #
The story is that Minnesota fought against the stadium for over ten years. The newspapers wanted one; the politicians wanted one; developers were on board. They used every trick: they tried to create an aura of inevitability about it, they tried creative accounting, deceptive accounting, and outright false accounting. They threatened to move the team. They promised mythical economic advantages.
At every turn, gadflies worked ceaselessly to inform the public, expose connections among the players, and pepper politicians and pundits with embarrasing questions about the assumptions of the various plans. And this worked in Minnesota because, like a lot of states, Minnesota has a large, liberal urban area and a huge, conservative rural area. The gadflies played skillfully on the social-justice theme in the urban areas and the government-waste theme in the rural areas, consistently creating a consensus against the stadium that caused the politicians to back down.
Why is it being built? Because the state isn't putting in a dime. In the end, Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, created a plan that rests solely on county and city money, meaning the rural counties won't have to pay for it. Suddenly, the issue no longer resonated for anyone who didn't live in Hennepin County.
This is the only reason they managed to squeak it through. Even so, the Minnesota State Lege, which has to approve local bonds, put strict limits on the money to be spent, which is why they're trying to screw the landowners. Too bad for them, I suppose, but the rest of the state can only discipline the county government so much: it's up to Hennepin County voters to turn out the commissioners.
