{"id":186659,"date":"2013-11-25T21:33:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-26T02:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/11\/25\/what-you-mean-that-taxpayer-funded-stadiums-dont-create-growth\/"},"modified":"2013-11-25T21:33:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-26T02:33:00","slug":"what-you-mean-that-taxpayer-funded-stadiums-dont-create-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/11\/25\/what-you-mean-that-taxpayer-funded-stadiums-dont-create-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"What?  You Mean that Taxpayer Funded Stadiums Don&#8217;t Create Growth?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-11-25\/rebirth-eludes-baltimore-as-camden-reality-lags-promises.html\">Hoocoodanode<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Boosters of Baltimore\u2019s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, built at taxpayer cost of $210 million, promised the baseball stadium would lead an urban renaissance, revitalizing blighted neighborhoods and bringing jobs and tax revenue to the city\u2019s struggling downtown.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">More than two decades later, the pledge stands unfulfilled. Baltimore is burdened with 16,000 vacant properties and some of the highest taxes in Maryland. The neighborhoods around Camden Yards have fewer businesses than they did in 1998. And the ballpark and a National Football League stadium nearby will require state and local debt service of about $24 million in 2014.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Baltimore\u2019s lesson is one that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has taken to heart. He said Nov. 11 that Georgia\u2019s capital city wouldn\u2019t pay to build a new stadium for the Atlanta Braves &#8212; regardless of the team\u2019s promises to bring thousands of jobs and pump tens of millions of dollars into the local economy. So the franchise said it would relocate to suburban Cobb County, which agreed to pay $300 million of the facility\u2019s $672 million cost.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cIt\u2019s wrong to take money from taxpayers and hand it to millionaires and billionaires,\u201d said Arthur Rolnick, a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota who has studied the public cost of professional sports stadiums. \u201cIf you try to justify it on economic development, the arguments dissolve pretty fast. The public would be much better off if they invested in things that would improve the quality of life, like roads and bridges, education and lowering crime.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It ain&#8217;t just stadiums.  It&#8217;s <b>all<\/b> the corporate welfare out there.<\/p>\n<p>It is a losing proposition for governments.<\/p>\n<p>Just wait until Cobb County gets hit with the <b>real<\/b> bill for the Braves&#8217; ballpark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hoocoodanode: Boosters of Baltimore\u2019s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, built at taxpayer cost of $210 million, promised the baseball stadium would lead an urban renaissance, revitalizing blighted neighborhoods and bringing jobs and tax revenue to the city\u2019s struggling downtown.More than two decades later, the pledge stands unfulfilled. Baltimore is burdened with 16,000 vacant properties and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1038,1005,1009,1057,983],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget","category-business","category-government","category-sports","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}