http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/co...5ce5-8056-3e2c862d6874.html?mobile_touch=true
McClellan: Financial plan for stadium like neither ham nor eggs : News
Good morning, suckers. How’s the weather in fly-over country today?
I read in the sports section the other day that National Football League
Executive Vice President Eric Grubmanwas in San Diego and Oakland, Calif., last week urging those cities to move quickly to build new stadiums in order to prevent the Chargers and Raiders from moving to the Los Angeles area. He reportedly told a San Diego radio station that of the three cities facing the loss of a team, only St. Louis “had produced a clear financing plan for a new stadium.”
Really? We have a clear financing plan?
Advertisement: Story Continues Below
I was reminded of the late U.S. District Court Judge William Hungate. When some attorney would make a specious argument, Hungate would say, “If you had ham, you could have ham and eggs, if you had eggs.”
Truth is, we don’t have a financing plan. At least not a realistic one. Our plan calls for a team and the league to kick in about $450 million. Rams owner Stan Kroenke does not intend to spend millions of dollars to build us a stadium. In fact, he’s ready to break ground on a stadium in Inglewood, Calif., near Los Angeles. In the unlikely event the league would tell him he has to stay here, he’d almost certainly opt to stay at the Dome on a year-to-year lease. That way, he could retain his free agent status.
In addition to that $450 million that we don’t have much chance of getting, our plan calls for about $350 million of public money.
Where are we going to get it? The state is broke. The Legislature is cutting social services. Part of this is ideological — the anti-welfare crowd has come up with the Strengthening Missouri Families Act to motivate poor families to become self-sufficient by knocking them off of welfare — but part of it is a nod to financial reality. We don’t have money to build another stadium.
Especially in St. Louis. Outstate people don’t like us. I remember when then-Gov. Matt Blunt said Democrats live only in places where people don’t want to live. The Republican governor was talking about St. Louis. Don’t expect money from Jefferson City.
Forget about St. Louis County. In 2004, county voters passed a charter amendment that said no financial assistance would go to a professional sports facility without a public vote. That amendment passed 72 percent to 28 percent. That vote was taken well before Stan Kroenke got control of the Rams and morphed into Henry Potter.
These days, the sentiment is so strong against public funding for a new stadium that the stadium boosters have given up on county money.
You guys are off the hook, Gov. Jay Nixon told County Executive Steve Stenger.
That leaves the city of St. Louis. Fortunately, the city has more money than it knows what to do with. Oh, wait a minute. The city is broke, too. What’s more, city voters also overwhelmingly passed an ordinance that prohibited financial assistance to a professional stadium without a public vote. City voters passed that ordinance in 2002. The Rams had a popular owner then. The Greatest Show on Turf was still a vivid memory.
Now the
Dome Authority has filed a lawsuit seeking to avoid a public vote. The lawsuit claims the ordinance is “overly broad, vague and ambiguous.”
“Our issue is time — not a public vote,” said David Peacock, who is spearheading the new stadium proposal.
Just because you’re in a hurry means you can overrule the will of the people? I know what Judge Hungate would have said to that argument.
To complicate matters, John Ammann, a St. Louis University law professor and head of the legal clinic,
has threatened to sue the city to force a public vote.
Does this sound like a “clear financing plan” to you?
Let’s remember this about Eric Grubman. In January, he was asked about comments that Dallas Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones made to the New York Times that Kroenke could move to Los Angeles without the league’s permission. Grubman dismissed the comments and said Jones made them in the heat of the moment after his team lost to Green Bay in a playoff game. “A lot of passion and emotion. And he gets hit with that question from an out-of-town reporter … .”
It turns out those comments were made a week earlier in an interview in Jones’ office.
Clearly, Grubman will say whatever will help his cause. In this latest matter, we’re being used. Grubman is using our “financial plan” to try to get San Diego and Oakland off the dime. After all, those teams need new stadiums. The Rams are going to Los Angeles.
