Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

How would one propose to make it illegal for an elected government to finance construction of a public building? I mean, yeah, sports stadiums are wasteful. But how would you draft that such that it wouldn't eliminate libraries and museums?

I mean, I agree with you in spirit but at the end of the day the whole point of a democratic government is that it's empowered to work to better our collective lives. And that has to include dumb-but-popular boondoggles as offerings to attract football teams.

View on HN

Sure, allow the government to construct sports stadiums. The government can then make it free for any sports team to use (though preferential treatment of any one team has to be prevented), and since it's a public building any revenue generated from ticket sales goes towards operating the building, with leftovers going back to the government (just like libaries, museums etc). There's nothing really wrong with that. Naming rights also obviously stay with the government, anything else would be silly.

There is something really wrong with that. The government is taking on concerns outside its core responsibilities. Sports are non-critical entertainment and that's something the government should not be creating. We can discuss regulations, zoning, and other ways government could be involved, but a lot of people don't use these stadiums, and I'm sure they'd prefer their tax money and gov resources be spent on more crucial infrastructure.

Don't all of those arguments also apply to libraries and museums?

Libraries and museums serve the purpose of educating the masses, which is something the government should be and is involved in (mainly because an educated populace is crucial for democracy)

And sport doesn’t provide education? Sport teaches self discipline and resilience, surely to traits that are essential to democracy.

so does math, or public gyms. All without the funneling of even more public money in to already wealthy hands.

You want stadiums? Sure. Public gets the profits with the owner renting the space.

There’s a huge corpus of jurisprudence on this in the EU, where such funding is illegal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_aid_(European_Union)

Doesnt stop them giving land for free and supporting infrastructure though. Which can be a huge part of the cost. Aalianz Arena (munich) is a good example

It’s not a terrible thing to improve transport infrastructure for a part of the city. Similarly I was reading that the council local to Tottenham’s new stadium are improving public squares around the area, but they’re spending only £30m relative to a stadium cost of £850m. And it is public squares which are being improved.

Governments can usually spend to improve general resources around a project, but not contribute to the project itself. With the idea of preventing market distortion from subsidy and a race to the bottom between different states.

I’m surprised they can give land for free, I’d have thought that would fall foul of the legislation.

I don’t think funding is the problem. It’s misappropriation and lack of oversight. I was involved in the construction of two stadiums and the money is unlimited during construction. Very wasteful.

Pretty easy, private corporations are different than public non profit organizations. Football stadiums may weasel into non profit. But it is absolutely a for profit organization. I've never been to a library that requires an ultra expensive tickets. Museums have a reasonable rate for expenses in conjunction with donors.

It's a two part but simple questions for lawmakers: are you a profit making entity or are you not. if you are, please explain the benefits you will provide to the taxpayer, and it better wow me.

If it does go forward there should be contractual guarantees on jobs and tax revenue with fines for not producing.

Cities don't need to attract football teams. Football teams should be begging cities to allow them there.

On jobs, I’m unconvinced that stadiums create many jobs. At least at the stadiums I’ve lived near, they seemed to be fully staffed with far fewer people than other social venues - say casinos (though I don’t see a US government making a casino) or even a mall.

I’d rather localities invest in community centers, libraries, museums, etc than stadiums.

There will be a lot of jobs during construction, but it's perhaps worth noting that those will not necessarily be for locals. In operation, I agree that thr number of jobs is likely fairly low, and mostly low wage.

Those construction jobs are invalid for inclusion because they’re temporary unless the building is going to be destroyed and rebuilt regularly. The only jobs created that can be included in the decision to build or not are the long term jobs.

Or you could make teams pay for their own stadiums. They take the revenue so why shouldn't they? The equivalent is Amazon requiring local government to provide them with automated warehouses for them to relocate to (or remain in) that locality.

>dumb-but-popular

Do you have a recent example of a new football stadium that had popular support among the constituent taxpayers? My memory can only recall ones opposed by the general public.

I remember the Seattle vote back in the mid-90s, we clearly rejected it but they went ahead with it anyways.

I lived there then; as I remember it was put to the ballot two or three times -and when it kept getting voted down they basically just said "screw it" and built it anyway.

They passed a hotel occupancy tax by council vote alone to build it if I remember correctly...and the tax is still going on today. I'm far from a anti-tax conservative, but I feel like this is the wrong thing to be taxing for.

Don't they vote on them? In my hometown of Arlington TX there have been two stadiums* built with part public financing in the last decade. Both were ballot issues in a normal election. I thought that's how it was done everywhere.

* Jerry Jones's $1B monstrosity for the Dallas Cowboys was narrowly approved around 2008 and the new Texas Rangers stadium was voted on this past year, not sure the margin or cost.

To my knowledge, they're not on ballots in most cities.

Cowboys stadium in Arlington. It was funded by a referendum, so it at least had popular support among local voters.

Los Angeles has a new stadium planned for Inglewood with all of the risk borne by developers who then get to enjoy a cut of the future tax earnings

https://www.welikela.com/proposed-inglewood-football-stadium...

Simple: make them free to enter.

Museums aren't free to enter.

Perhaps they should be.

Libraries are, but in larger cities like LA or SF they tend to evolve into coworking spaces for the homeless, at which point they cease to be public spaces that people feel comfortable taking their families to.

Why? Do homeless people eat children?

Many public ones are

And some non-public ones, like the Minneapolis Institute of Art https://new.artsmia.org/

Might be a way to do it with a tax on private stadium construction. Allow deducting (private costs - all public subsidies). So for any local subsidies you receive, you have a commensurate increase in taxes.

Similar problems exist with subsidies for factories, although at least those are producing something at the end of the day.

> But how would you draft that such that it wouldn't eliminate libraries and museums?

That's easy! You just make the law only apply to stadiums.

I am sure it would be perfectly possible to include a detailed description of what a stadium is, in the law.

> How would one propose to make it illegal for an elected government to finance construction of a public building?

State constitutional amendments requiring a referendum.

Well, sure. That works if these things are unpopular. They're not. That's the problem.

Lost in the discussion of how many hundreds of million dollars St. Louis lost in its relationship with the Rams is the fact that the city loved that team and the stadium construction was a huge deal and a big political victory.

The underlying flaw in the reasoning here is that it's all based on a personal feeling that "My government is spending my tax dollars on something I don't like but other people do". Well... yeah. That's the cost of living under a government. The government's job is fairness, not pleasing everyone.

>> the city loved that team and the stadium construction was a huge deal and a big political victory

Can you quantify "the city loved"?

I'm sure the construction was "a huge deal", large construction projects almost always are.

Something professional politicians choose to support != something that a majority of voters would choose to support, given the chance.

You can’t quantify love or sentiment unless you accept brand loyalty and subjective measures. It seems like a silly thing to request but perhaps that is your point. If these were ballot initiatives for funding similar to public transport you would see a bit more rejections from anyone outside of the city centers. If we go by popular vote you will likely see most cities vote to keep their teams because we’ve all been raised to think of them as ours despite owning nothing.

>> If we go by popular vote you will likely see most cities vote to keep their teams

Source?

>> because we’ve all been raised to think of them as ours despite owning nothing.

Not sure why there should be a connection between public funding for teams and teams staying in any particular city.

If all cities stopped public funding for privately-owned sports teams, the teams would still need a place to call "home".

The owners would just be slightly less rich.

I’m not implicitly agreeing that a connection should exist, but I’m also not going to pretend it doesn’t. Sports are a huge part of American culture and is one of the least contentious elements. I don’t have a source which empirically states “most cities would vote for the team” other than brand loyalty statistics which don’t correlate perfectly to this conversation. I’m attempting to discuss the less tangible aspect of this arrangement and why it is a bit of a radical variable in anyone trying to address this lopsided agreement. If you discount sentiment you aren’t even attempting to see why sports teams appeal to people and why they haven’t revolted at the thought of subsidizing them. I am not speaking in favor of subsidizing them or maintaining a status quo but instead I am trying to help quantify a city’s love of a team. I won’t even broach the topic of college stadiums and athletic fees but it might be one area that does have research on this topic.

The underlying flaw is that the public allows their politicians to spend their money on personal political victories.

There's no payback for politicians that waste tax money either explicitly or via tax breaks. Nor for them misstating benefits or outright lying about them.

So yea if politicians around the country are not held responsible then complaining is indeed a waste of time.

> That works if these things are unpopular. They're not.

I don’t have a comprehensive statistic, but almost every time I read about stadium subsidies being put to a vote (or a poll), the funding is rejected [1][2][3][4].

[1] http://www.golocalprov.com/politics/golocal-statewide-poll-j...

[2] https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/07/28/poll-finds-...

[3] https://www.ktnv.com/news/political/ktnvrasmussen-poll-voter...

[4] https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/voter-revolt-on-stadiums...

Hrmm, most of the time I've seen them on ballots locally they are approved.

The government should be limited to provide things which are better as a monopoly like some roads or electric grid and for things that are essential and the market fails to provide from some reason. And yes, museums are not necessarily essential and in many cases should not be provided by the government but rather by a private entity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com