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John Taylor,
President of the Virginia Institute for Public
Policy, publisher of Virginia Viewpoint.
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Yes,
Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and his name is
Anthony Williams, mayor of Washington, D.C.
His gift to you is his promise to raise taxes
in the District to build a $400 million major league
ball park in his town.
Thanks to his generosity, you can have all
the benefits of major league baseball with none of
the extra taxes or any of the awful traffic gridlock
that thousands of additional fan-packed cars would
add to an already ugly
Northern Virginia
rush hour.
What
began decades ago as an effort to “bring baseball
back to Washington” has since degenerated into an exercise to bring
a stadium to your neighborhood: Contending
investor factions seeking a team must demonstrate to
the management of major league baseball that they
have access to substantial sums of public money to
build the facility. With
land, new metro access and predictable cost
overruns, the final cost will likely run close to
$500 million. Because
each of the investor factions has acquired access to
different public treasuries, the successful exercise
of that access will determine on which side of the
river the stadium and team will locate.
Recognizing
that prospective fans may soon realize it makes very
little difference where a team locates within the
metropolitan area, and that the only tangible
difference between one location and another is who
pays the cost and bears the traffic, investor groups
are working overtime to create a sense of psychic
team ownership and pride of possession among the
citizens. One
misinformed citizen-advocate contends a Virginia
site will put “Arlington
on the map,” apparently unaware that goal was
achieved in 1920 when the county changed its name
from
Alexandria
to Arlington.
That’s
a pretty lame objective, however, and not likely to
entice much of the public to fork over millions of
tax dollars to wealthy team owners whose top
employees earn in the millions. So, instead, team
owners contend that a ball park and a major league
team stimulate local economic activity, portraying
them as engines of prosperity for the communities
that host them. To
this end, a few years ago the Virginia
investor group hired a local professor who
dutifully reported that a ball team would be a boon
to the
Northern Virginia
economy.
Notwithstanding
the glowing promises, there is precious little
evidence to support this view.
In fact, more recent studies suggest
that hosting a team might even be detrimental
because it diverts valuable public dollars to less
productive uses. Professors
Humphreys and Coates of the University
of
Maryland recently concluded that “we find evidence that
some professional sports franchises reduce the level
of per capita income, casting doubt on the ability
of a new sports franchise or facility to spur
growth.”
With
the exception of the players, who seldom live full
time in the community where they work and play, most
of the jobs created by a professional sports
facility are part-time, low wage, and seasonal, not
exactly the type of employment a sensible elected
official would openly embrace in defense of higher
taxes on ordinary people.
As Professor Robert Baade concluded after
studying 48 cities and finding no positive impact:
“…sports' slow-growth pattern should not be
surprising. The
slower growth reflects the kind of economic activity
that investments in professional sports spawn.
Sports divert economic development toward …
relatively unskilled (low wage) part-time jobs.”
Given
the high cost of attending professional sporting
events these days, and with the typical family’s
entertainment budget a small residual – i.e.,
what’s left over after paying the bills -- money
spent on baseball tickets is usually money shifted
from another leisure activity like golf, dining out,
or movie attendance, thereby diminishing business in
those venues. As
Baade observed in another study that again found no
positive gain: “…professional sports realign
economic activity within a city’s leisure industry
rather than adding to it.”
Most
people, however, don’t need a detailed academic
study to raise doubts about a ball park’s
benefits. Memorial
Stadium did nothing for north
Baltimore
, and Orioles
Park
has failed to stem the flight of jobs and residents
from the city. R.F.K.
stadium did nothing for nearby Anacostia, and Capital
Center
did nothing for P.G.
County. Elsewhere in
the nation, much the same can be said of the Vet’s
impact in south Philly or Yankee Stadium’s
contribution to the
Bronx.
For
Northern
Virginia,
which is already one of the most prosperous regions
in the nation, one can only wonder why anyone would
think that spending $400 million to create a few
hundred low paying jobs makes any sense.
Send them to the District.
It’s a bad deal for them too, but in a city
where 37 percent of the adults are functionally
illiterate, selling hot dogs may be the option of
choice.
--
August 25, 2003
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