Most people recognize “the biggest loser” as a popular TV program.
In this story we will address Californians being the biggest losers as it relates to taxpayer funding of professional football stadiums.
While San Diego in currently engaged in their deliberations of moving the San Diego Chargers to the City of Industry there must be something in the air that entices us to support “corporate welfare” on behalf of those team owners whose pockets are much deeper than any of ours while supporting a venue for 10 NFL games per year.
To illustrate how successful these feel good adventures turn out read what Sign On San Diego reports. “But for us taxpayers, since 1995 our relationship with the Chargers has been a fiscal nightmare. The ticket guarantee, where taxpayers bought unsold tickets for many years, cost us more than $35 million. Even the Chargers admit, and at times appear to be bragging, that the team’s current deal with the city is costing us almost $20 million a year. The team’s current claim is that if it continues playing at Qualcomm through 2020, taxpayers will take a $300 million hit.”
Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/20/downtown-nfl-stadium-expensive-fantasy-chargers-he/
This hunger for newer football stadiums by team owners has no boundaries. There is another battle going on now in the Bay area where two cities are fighting for bragging rights of how they convince their taxpayers of the benefits of having an NFL team in their city. We read that the voters of Santa Clara are split when asked about city funding towards a new stadium for the San Francisco 49’rs while the city of Oakland is currently proposing a new stadium to accommodate two teams, the Oakland Raiders and the very same San Francisco 49’rs.
Last Wednesday’s San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate, reported that Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, a member of the Oakland Coliseum Board, voted to spend $125,000 on a study of a new Oakland stadium to house two NFL teams. In selling his peer’s on the expenditure he is quoted to say that “We have a better location, a better infrastructure and better access to roads and mass transit.”
The Gate report mentions that “Oakland has quietly spent more than $19 million to buy up 18-plus acres around the Coliseum complex in anticipation of a possible stadium deal.”
We are thankful that MORR and CURE are not the only California Watchdog groups tracking corporate welfare abuses. The following February 7th report is from Santa Clara Plays Fair blog regarding an NFL stadium in their city:
49ers PR Campaign Hides the True Stadium Costs
Dear Santa Clarans,
In a June 3, 2009 interview on Chronicle Live, “49ers’ President Jed York broke down the financial details of the team’s proposed stadium deal with the City of Santa Clara,” and acknowledged the true stadium construction costs:
The $937 million stadium price tag includes $444 million from Santa Clara and its agencies as follows:
$114 million as a direct subsidy from Santa Clara (12%),
$330 million from Santa Clara’s joint powers agency, the Stadium Authority (35%).
But since Jed York’s interview, the 49ers PR campaign has lumped the $330 million from Santa Clara’s Stadium Authority in with the team’s contribution to inflate the team share to $823 million (88%). This misleading information has been mailed into our homes, appears on a 49ers stadium booster’s website, and unfortunately has been reproduced in newspaper articles. In Jed York’s online letter to 49ers fans, he reduces Santa Clara’s share even further, from $444 million to only $79 million.
The $330 million from Santa Clara’s Stadium Authority is not mentioned in either the 49ers stadium ballot initiative or in the text of the Term Sheet. Santa Clara’s city council agenda reports and Term Sheet Exhibit 14 list the details of Santa Clara’s $444 million contribution to the stadium.
Santa Clarans should be provided with complete and correct information about all of the stadium construction and operational costs.
Voters in Santa Clara have the right to know how much debt our city will incur, so we can make an informed decision without being misled about the total cost of a stadium to our city.
http://www.santaclaraplaysfair.blogspot.com/
Gilbert note. According to a press release the Santa Clara 49rs’ stadium, which could open in 2014, will house 68,500 fans. It will contain solar panels and a green roof. The site will be located on part of the Great America Theme Park east of Highway 101 just north of San Jose.
While California cities struggle to balance their budgets and long term pension obligations when will someone have the courage and conviction to lobby their peers to cut up their credit cards? If a stadium pencils out let the team owners foot the bill.
i really dont like you guys at all
Anonymous.
Are you having a bad day? What are you talking about? You really don’t like us? What does that personal opinion have to do with local taxpayers picking up the tab for tycoons who own major league sports franchises?
Hi Larry,
Thanks for your site. Please tell people to check out http://www.santaclaraplaysfair.org. They can read about why Measure J, our stadium ballot measure, does not disclose the costs of the stadium to Santa Clara residents (hint, there is no legal requirement for city ballot measures to contain a financial analysis like there is for state ballot measures, so voters are left unprotected at the municipal level from predatory corporations when city officials want to give a gift of public funds for professional sports, or any other development using city dollars). Your readers will also find a detail breakdown of the costs, the loss to our general fund, the false/misleading campaign the 49ers are waging in Santa Clara, and the truth about jobs and schools. It is hard to believe that we still live in America, the way we are being treated by our city council majority and the 49ers together with the local media who have endorsed the stadium so they are loaded with pro-stadium coverage, and will not report the true costs or risks. The law needs to get changed to require financial disclosure on ballot measures, and voters need to realize that freedom of speech allows professional sports teams to say anything they want in campaign materials, but that doesn’t make what they say true. The 49ers are spending millions of dollars here to get our hundreds of millions, but at the same time telling us there’s no cost to our general fund, no costs to residents, etc. to make it sound like the stadium is free. Then we have a group of local people who think they stand to financially benefit from the stadium so they have thrown their lot in with the 49ers and are trying to strong-arm the rest of us into voting yes. Literally, this campaign is tearing our community apart and we will never be the same again. Shame on the 49ers owners and the NFl for doing this to us just so that they can increase their team value and profits.