Billionaires Upset After Taxpayers Reject Sports Stadium Subsidies

Voters in Jackson County, Missouri, rejected a sales tax ballot measure that would have funded stadium renovations to the home of the Kansas City Chiefs and built a new stadium for the Kansas City Royals.

The billionaire owners of the two teams expressed their regret that taxpayers were unwilling to subsidize their clubs for the next four decades. The open question is whether either ownership group will carry out their veiled threats to move their clubs to another county or state, whose political class would jump at the chance to shower the teams with tax money.

What voters rejected was a lopsided deal that had them, not the owners, footing most of the stadium costs:

More than 58 percent of voters ultimately rejected the plan, which would have replaced an existing three-eighths of a cent sales tax that has been paying for the upkeep of Truman Sports Complex – the home for more than 50 years to Kauffman and Arrowhead Stadiums – with a similar tax that would have been in place for the next 40 years.

The Royals, who had pledged at least $ 1 billion from ownership for their project, wanted to use their share of the tax revenue to help fund a $2bn-plus ballpark district. The Super Bowl champion Chiefs, who had committed $300m in private money, would have used their share as part of an $800m overhaul of Arrowhead Stadium.

What's interesting about this campaign is how voters soundly defeated the measure despite televised pleas from Chiefs and Royals players for a “yes” vote.

Perhaps that shows the limits of celebrity. Regardless, the star power pitch went high and outside. 

Elsewhere on the sports billionaire welfare front, Virginia taxpayers avoided being stuck with the bills for a stadium complex for the Washington Capitals and Wizards. Instead, the teams will remain in the District of Columbia, thanks to the locals pols promising half a billion dollars of taxpayer-funded stadium upgrades.

The Virginia deal got off to a shaky start, with vague estimates of how much everything would cost and how much of those costs would fall on taxpayers. Democratic lawmakers, who usually are as eager as their GOP colleagues to hand out public money to private ventures, balked at all the vague promises of economic growth. Not because they are somehow friends of the taxpayer. But as with so much in Virginia politics, they weren't given a piece of the action (or support for their own pet projects).

Never fear: another deal will come over the horizon for a stadium, entertainment complex, or other master-planned sports Xanadu that the pols will fall all over themselves to support. With taxpayer money. Because it's for the children. Or jobs. Or something. 

When really, it's all about the politicians' edifice complex.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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