Marlins keep pitching for ballpark subsidy

[Accord]

TALLAHASSEE In spring 2001, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig told state lawmakers that, without public money for a new stadium, the Florida Marlins would most likely move or be disbanded.

 

Lawmakers said no, but in spring 2002, the Marlins were still here.

 

In spring 2004, the Marlins said it was "now or never" for a new stadium, or the team would leave South Florida.

 

Lawmakers said no, but in spring 2005, the Marlins are still here, still playing in their home of a dozen years, Dolphins Stadium and still explaining why they need a $60 million state subsidy for a new, baseball-only park.

 

This year's push was preceded by a trip to Las Vegas, a city that is looking for a big-league ball club, and a claim that their landlord, H. Wayne Huizenga, was kicking them out in 2010.

 

So far, it doesn't look like the Marlins' claims are going to work this year, either.

 

Senate President Tom Lee called the Marlins "terrorists" for threatening to leave, and later said Huizenga had told him he would allow the team to stay past 2010 eliminating for some lawmakers the sense of immediacy that the Marlins had been pushing.

 

With two weeks left in the session, a bill for a second subsidy for the Marlins the first one now goes directly to Huizenga has stalled in the House, where Finance and Taxation Committee Chairman Fred Brummer has refused to hear it. The Marlins measure also faces an uphill fight in the Senate, where Lee has been skeptical of the request from the start.

 

Which leaves proponents to start the usual gambit with bills that have failed to advance through committees: attempting to sneak them into other legislation and hope that opponents do not notice.

 

"I would not count them out yet," House Speaker Allan Bense said of the various sports subsidy bills in the legislature this year.

 

Others may follow suit

 

On Tuesday, the proposal to give the Marlins $2 million a year for 30 years to help build a new ballpark in downtown Miami displacing 50 residential properties, possibly through eminent domain proceedings will come before the Senate's tax committee.

 

If it passes, it will not be because of evidence that a new stadium would be an economic boon for the state.

 

To the contrary, a Senate economist this month testified that publicly financed sports arenas do not generate significant new tax revenues. Because pro teams attract mainly local residents, and not tourists coming to Florida specifically to watch sports, the vast majority of money spent at pro baseball games would have been spent, in the absence of baseball games, at other taxable activities like restaurants or shopping.

 

Further, said economist Ross Fabricant, although money spent on the actual construction of sports arenas does generate economic activity, it generates less returns than an identical amount of money spent on roads or schools, which provide continuing benefits for society as a whole.

 

A $3,000 study paid for by the Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce questioned the accuracy of the studies Fabricant relied on, but did not offer any conflicting research.

 

Instead, the chamber report stated in its opening page: "Professional sports stadiums and arenas often become financially obsolete long before becoming physically obsolete." It also implied that doubling up on other teams' subsidies is something the state is going to have to soon face: "Although the state is currently considering providing the remaining key element in a new stadium financing package for the Florida Marlins, similar issues with other sports venues are not far off."

 

Both statements are among the favorite arguments of opponents of the Marlins subsidy: If the Marlins deserve a second $60 million subsidy for a new venue, then why don't the Tampa Bay Devil Rays or the Florida Panthers? And how frequently must taxpayers come up with new subsidies or risk seeing teams move out of state?

 

Fabricant's analysis, though, had little effect on the Senate Commerce Committee two weeks ago. Members who supported the Marlins smirked and joked as Fabricant presented his report, and at the subsequent meeting voted all of the proposed sports subsidies through the committee with easy majorities.

 

Polls haven't seemed to matter much, either. A recent survey of 1,007 Florida voters by Quinnipiac University found that 84 percent opposed a new Marlins subsidy. Among self-described Marlins fans, 68 percent still opposed it.

 

Teams paid despite strike

 

The phenomenon is not a new one. If a chairman gives a bill a hearing, committees rarely vote down one backed by high-priced lobbyists who donate heavily to legislative campaigns.

 

"These things have only friends, no enemies," said Brummer, the Apopka Republican who has emerged this year as the most vocal, and powerful, enemy of all sports subsidies.

 

During the past 12 years, seven of Florida's nine pro sports teams have gotten the $60 million. At first, it was just new teams, such as the Marlins, but eventually even teams that already were here got the money as a matter of what proponents said was "fairness."

 

Together, they now account for $14 million a year in tax money going to private pro sports teams. The owners of two arenas of the two hockey teams, the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers, are getting $4 million between them this year, even though no hockey games will be played, and no sales tax generated, because of the canceled season. A golf museum gets another $2 million, a fishing museum gets $1 million and five spring training sites each get $500,000 a year.

 

The largesse began in 1988, when St. Petersburg pushed hard to become the first city in Florida to get a Major League team, the Chicago White Sox, who were unhappy with their existing home, Comiskey Park.

 

In Tallahassee, Pinellas County lawmakers put together a $30 million state subsidy for the city's Suncoast Dome, which was then under construction, with the help of a key aide from Gov. Bob Martinez's office: Jeb Bush, then Martinez's commerce secretary. Bush, like other proponents, claimed that bringing the White Sox to Florida would result in more state tax revenue.

 

The White Sox ultimately used the Florida offer to leverage a replacement Comiskey Park out of Illinois lawmakers, but five years later, state lawmakers used the 1988 St. Petersburg language as a model for a new subsidy law to give Huizenga, then the owner of the Florida Marlins expansion team, $60 million to retrofit his football stadium for baseball.

 

Seventeen years later, Bush, now governor, no longer claims that a new stadium will generate new business and new jobs. But he said he supports the Marlins' bid for a new subsidy "as a matter of fairness," although he has said the request would have to compete against more pressing needs like prisons, roads and schools.

 

A years-long effort

 

In 1993, the state Department of Revenue sued what was then Joe Robbie Stadium, arguing that it should get no more than $10 million of the $60 million because that's all Huizenga had spent. His allies in the legislature in 1994 changed the law to permit any improvements at the park to count toward the $60 million. The suit was dismissed as moot.

 

Within a few years, Huizenga was trying to get a new, baseball-only stadium for his team. Following the Marlins' 1997 World Series championship, Huizenga sold off the top players, saying he couldn't afford high salaries without a new park.

 

Subsequent owners took up the cry. In 2001, under the ownership of investor John Henry, the Marlins told lawmakers they could not field a winning team unless they got a new park.

 

Three years later, still in the same stadium, the Marlins won their second World Series title. And the very next spring, they were back, claiming they needed a new park so they could make enough money to stay in South Florida.

 

If their attempt fails this year, there is no reason to believe they won't try again, as they have before, in the hope that a reshuffling of legislators and committees will give them an easier route to the money.

 

The House speaker to succeed Bense, for example, is Rep. Marco Rubio, a Miami Republican and strong supporter of the subsidy. And the Senate president to follow Lee will be Sen. Ken Pruitt, a Port St. Lucie Republican who voted in favor of the subsidy in the Senate Commerce Committee two weeks ago.

 

The clearest winner in the Marlins' efforts, though, probably is Huizenga. Whether the Marlins stay where they are or move to downtown Miami, Las Vegas or Mexico City, Huizenga's Dolphins Stadium will continue to get $2 million for the team through 2024.

 

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/cont...rlins_0425.html

[prinmemito]

I think they should keep trying next year of they don't get it this year. Start building the stadium and come back for the money. That's the way to go, IMO.

[Malman]

I think they should keep trying next year of they don't get it this year. Start building the stadium and come back for the money. That's the way to go, IMO.

754478[/snapback]

 

 

This is it. Bottom of the ninth, bases are loaded, two men out and we are down by one.

 

We need a big hit.

[PBMarlin]

I think they should keep trying next year of they don't get it this year. Start building the stadium and come back for the money. That's the way to go, IMO.

754478[/snapback]

 

That is likely what will happen, but no way they could make that statement now.

[DcFishFan]

A recent survey of 1,007 Florida voters by Quinnipiac University found that 84 percent opposed a new Marlins subsidy. Among self-described Marlins fans, 68 percent still opposed it.

 

Who the hell are these 68% and have they ever actually been to a game at JRS?

 

Sheesh!

[Flying_Mollusk]

I think they should keep trying next year of they don't get it this year.? Start building the stadium and come back for the money.? That's the way to go, IMO.

754478[/snapback]

 

That is likely what will happen, but no way they could make that statement now.

754552[/snapback]

Whats the point? It seems like every year some power hungry jerkoff stalls it with his own might. It pisses me off when one single congressman thinks its his duty to legislate for the rest of the state.

[Guest Moneyball]

I think they should keep trying next year of they don't get it this year.? Start building the stadium and come back for the money.? That's the way to go, IMO.

754478[/snapback]

 

That is likely what will happen, but no way they could make that statement now.

754552[/snapback]

Whats the point? It seems like every year some power hungry jerkoff stalls it with his own might. It pisses me off when one single congressman thinks its his duty to legislate for the rest of the state.

754767[/snapback]

 

 

Like prinmemitio said in an earlier thread. It's time we rebel from the northern part of the state. Seeing as how they have a different plan for us.