OK with how OKC trying to snag Sonics
Posted: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 11:51 PM
I’m not a fan of cities engaging in corporate welfare for the owners of sports teams, who would seem to have enough money as it is. But if a city is going to hand out tens of millions of dollars to create a couple of hundred part-time minimum-wage jobs taking tickets, serving $6 beers and parking cars, there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way.
Oklahoma City on Tuesday did it the right way. Instead of the city government just handing the money to local businessman Clay Bennett, who owns the Seattle Sonics and wants to move them to his home town, the matter was put to a vote. By a whopping 62-percent majority, the electorate extended a one-penny sales-tax increase for 15 months to pay for improvements to the Ford Center and to build a swank practice facility for the team.
The other NBA owners have to approve the move, but with commissioner David Stern upset with Seattle for refusing to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into a new arena for the team, it seems a foregone conclusion.
It’s still a bad idea. As Andrew Moylan of the National Taxpayers Union pointed out in an op-ed piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “At best, stadiums are an inefficient investment of tax dollars for meager benefits and at worst, they constitute massive transfers to rich team owners and players at the expense of ordinary taxpayers.”
But at least it’s the taxpayers’ idea, and that’s what counts here. For whatever reason, in Oklahoma City, there’s a belief that a major-league sports team will make everything better – or at least take their minds off the city’s high crime rate and other problems, such as a police department that sorely needs more manpower. (Relevant statistics on everything in Oklahoma City are here.)
The city provided a temporary home for the New Orleans Hornets after Katrina, and the team drew well. There’s every reason to believe the Sonics, should they relocate, will also do well there in their first couple of years. But let the public beware: if the team doesn’t improve rapidly, interest will evaporate like spit on a griddle. And then they’ll be stuck with a basketball team and an owner who will soon enough be demanding a brand-new arena – at public expense.
No one’s thinking about that now, but the city might want to discuss this with Nashville, where last summer the NHL Predators – lured to Tennessee with great heaps of public money – were talking about moving out of town. It turned out that the locals lost interest in hockey after a while and attendance was lagging at less than 14,000, which would be low even for the New Jersey Devils.
Bennett talks a great game about helping his home town, and the people bought his spiel. And I’ve no doubt he’s even sincere. But he’s a businessman, and as such he’s not going to absorb losses if the local lose interest – or run out of money to buy tickets.
I wish the taxpayers of Oklahoma City luck, and I hope their decision to pay a rich guy to come to their town works out. But if it doesn’t, don’t let me hear you whining. And when Bennett comes around asking for more money for another arena and threatening to move if he doesn’t get it, don’t say you weren’t warned.
