It looks like the Sonics won't be getting a taxpayer subsidy from the legislature this year after all. Good. Not that I have anything against the Sonics. I just think the owners should raise money for their team on the capital markets and leave the legislature to tend to essential government matters, like roads and criminal justice, etc.
Senate Bill 5991, their new Income tax bill, as example is being put up to allow a more consistant revenue stream to the state. It runs from 2.2% to almost 9% on our hard earned earnings.
That is what I call a blank check!
Posted by: Gs on March 4, 2006 04:30 PM
You can occasionally cut one leech off at a time, but there are always more to replace it. Lots more! The parasites all know that eventually they can buy their way onto the taxpayers' nipple and it's just a game of patience and orchestrating the right recipe of rewards to buy it from those who control taxpayer dollars.
Anyone who wants millions from the state to support anything Seattle-related knows that they just need to cut in Gregoire, Sims and Nickels with the appropriate dollars. Then one or more of them will lobby on their behalf for the big enchilada. It's a sad, but successful equation.
Posted by: MJC on March 4, 2006 04:32 PMFurthermore, we shouldn't there be a public subsidy given that the City of Seattle runs Key Arena as part of the Seattle Center, and wants to maintain ownership and rights over the operations. The Sonics already pay a lease (and in this case have said the lease agreement is an economic loser for them so they won't renew it as is when it runs out), so why shouldn't the City be expected to have to modernize the facility if they want the Sonics to sign another lease?
Capital markets are a nice idea, but they generally don't exist for sports teams short of the sports team building its own facility outright. The Sonics will end up somewhere with a public subsidy, whether that be staying in Seattle, moving to Bellevue, or moving out of state.
And as a side note, a move to Bellevue would be catastrophic for the Seattle Center since the new arena would pull away a significant number of other bookings such as concerts, thereby making Key Arena unviable to maintain. I would argue that outcome would actually be worse for the taxpayers of Seattle, especially since they pay very little of the actual taxes that are in question for a public subsidy.
Posted by: Eric Earling on March 4, 2006 05:25 PMThe Seattle Center is an OK place for modest cultural productions, and if anyone profits from them, it is the members of the performing companies who use the venue.
A professional sports franchise is a whole order of magnitude bigger, and its profits go to its private owners - whether in cash positive gate receipts, or in the capital gains in future sale of the franchise. 'Modernizing' a muni stadium, as understood by the glitterati of pro sports, means works far beyond those required to provide a clean dry comfortable venue for artistic or local teams whose members might even be from Seattle.
And the ritual extortion practiced by pro sports teams is despicable. Build us a palace or we'll leave. Good. Leave then, and may some other city be so stupid as to furnish the Danegeld for the next palace.
Posted by: Hank Bradley on March 4, 2006 06:17 PMHaving the Sonics leave the state is not an adequate solution to this problem. Any sentiment to the contrary expressed by politicians or citizens is simply juvenile and unacceptable.
What this might mean though is we need to obtain a new ownership group for the SuperSonics. We were able to run off Ken Behring when he tried take our Seahawks to California in the mid-1990s.
If Howard Schultz and his group tries to make good on any idle threat to move the team out of Washington state, then he should be met with a wave a citizens outrage that would make the Behring-Seahawks fiasco look like a Sunday school picnic. Maybe a nice region-wide boycott of a certain espresso vending retailer combined with a lobbying campaign to the NBA will dampen that fire.
If this tactic which is being used by the Sonics ownership group is simply a ploy to allow the team an opportunity to break its lease at Key Arena (The Seattle Coliseum) and move to Bellevue, which is what I believe, then let them.
There isn't any difference to the average state taxpayer of having the team play on the east or west side of Lake Washington. In fact, it seems that most of the people who pay to watch the games come from the Eastside anyway. The only losers will be the City of Seattle. No one will do too much weeping outside of the Emerald City if its political leadership is too inept to keep the team.
The only reason there needs to be state legislative action is if Schultz tries to take the team to the bright metropolis of Oklahoma City or some other two-bit town with a fan-base one-tenth the size as ours.
What we will get is the usual low bids with massive cost overruns, new taxes that never end, and a finished product prone to continual lack of engineering necessary in a major earthquake zone.
That's Greg Nichols and Queen Christine leadership! With a dab of Ron Sim's thrown in to boot.
Posted by: GS on March 4, 2006 06:48 PMNice town, and all, but let's not mistake Seattle for a top 10 market. The only reason the Packers are in Green Bay to this day is because of its public ownership.
Posted by: Danny on March 4, 2006 06:50 PMActually... speaking from a television standpoint, Seattle is the #12 market (of about 215) in the nation in terms of size. Seattle proper isn't all that big at just over half a million, but the metro area is well over 3 million people. And given that people who watch the Sonics don't just live in Seattle proper, but the whole metro area, I wouldn't be knocking the area for its size. True, the markets that are bigger than us are a lot bigger, but Seattle isn't exactly small (or even medium) potatoes.
Posted by: Mike H on March 4, 2006 08:17 PMI am everyone's responsibility too. Everyone needs to take care of me first, then take care of themselves.
Posted by: Jason Woodruff on March 4, 2006 08:28 PMI say we walk away now, before the whole thing collapses.
Posted by: Janet S on March 4, 2006 09:02 PMThe millionaire or billionaire owners will get what they want and we'll be the ones who end up paying for it. Just SOP in Washington state.
Posted by: Clean House on March 4, 2006 10:12 PMUnfortunately, you are right. Republicans and democrats almost certainly will be holding soon a joint press conference on the matter and perhaps even using a special session to do it. A big love in for all.
Subsidies of sports arenas bypasses normal politics altogether.
Posted by: Erik on March 4, 2006 11:12 PMMy Dad had season tix to the Blazers for over 25 years. At one time, they were a great team, that made the city proud. You'd find the players mingling with the citizens in a lot of normal everyday places, restaurants and bookstores. The players had respect for the game and the city. Players often played their whole careers in one city because they enjoyed the city and the fans enjoyed the player. It was mutual. Those days are long gone. My Dad dumped his season tix a few years back and has not looked back. I stopped watching the NBA years ago.
If you want to watch exciting basketball, watch the NCAA tourney. But the NBA is a joke. If the Sonics want to leave Seattle, because the owner can't bilk the taxpayers to get the City to renovate the Key, good riddance. If we need to renovate sports facilities to get people to show up, something is wrong.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 5, 2006 12:09 AMAt least Paul Allen had a plan that didn't affect taxpayers except those who were visitors to Seattle or those who were fans.
Seems to me that Howie is being lazy...
Posted by: Brent on March 5, 2006 12:25 AMI find college basketball much more exciting, especially since the Huskies won't lose any more Martell Webster's to the NBA.
In fact, there was nothing like watching the Huskies today in Arizona, although the cable signal dropped with 9.x seconds to go and Arizona with the ball. It didn't come back until the exit music was playing. Oh well. TGFI - Thank God For the Internet...
Posted by: Brent on March 5, 2006 12:28 AMI wasn't knocking Seattle for its size, as much as I was ONCE AGAIN commenting on some of the insular arrogance expressed by some on this board...e.g., the shot at Oklahoma City as a two-bit town. No disrespect...as I said, nice enough town.
Posted by: Danny on March 5, 2006 06:07 AMlove to expose the rest of the moochers...its not solely howie
Posted by: righton on March 5, 2006 06:33 AMWell, now that we've heard the Word of God from one of the elect, we should behave as all the learned Editors of the big papers recommend: DON'T express those juvenile sentiments, even if we have the ways and means to do it. Someone might take offense.
"We were able to run off Ken Behring when he tried take our Seahawks to California in the mid-1990s."
I remember that that was the beginning of the Great Sports Palace Taxpayer Shakedown. After Ken Behring, the sports glitterati siezed the microphones and the presses and made plain that the Kingdome, which had been so highly praised just a few years before as a home-town multi-use facility, was wholly unacceptable to Seattle's role as a First-Class City. An emergency was declared, the great and the good pulled all the right strings backstage in Olympia, and we were stuck with half the bill (yes, half a billion) for Safeco Field - which was the opening of Ron Sims' creative campaign to ensure that County gummint records of the necessary wheeling and dealing were never to be exposed to the light of day.
The precedent is set, emergency and all. Sports extorts while media reports damn few of the contortions pulled by the governing bodies behind the scenes to achieve their First Class status.
One lonely observation needs to be appended to this rant. By the 'equal protection' clause of the 14th Amendment, if one pro team has standing to extort a subsidy from the taxpayers, then every pro team in the State should enjoy the same despicable priviledge. Get busy, governing scalawags, and spread the wealth.
Actually, the City profits in part. That’s one of the big debates at the City Council level of these discussions, including Nick Licata’s insistence that Key Arena could be profitable without the Sonics (though that doesn’t take into account lost revenue if the Sonics move across the lake and their new facility pulls in concerts that would otherwise go to the Key).
Moreover, a remodeled Key also serves to draw in a better array of concerts given the Key’s imperfections as small to medium concert venue, though the Sonics would still be the biggest users of the building. That former point is one of the advantages of a remodel that has been cited from the beginning of these discussions. Promoters aren’t simply looking for a “clean dry comfortable venue,” they’re looking for a venue where they (like the managers of the facility) can maximize their profit, as you alluded to as well.
I should also point out, similar to some other posters, that I’m not thrilled with the NBA’s product, and I personally haven’t been to a Sonics game since the late ‘90’s. But, I think we as a civic community should try to keep the Sonics if reasonably possible, and the potential of the Sonics moving to Bellevue would be an undesirable turn of events for Seattle proper and the Key Arena/Seattle Center (which makes the opposition of the likes of Licata all the more fascinating).
While Nick Licata and I share very few political opinions, when it comes to municipal subsidies for sports palaces I'm in his corner. He also has a better approach to local arts (excepting his curious preference for showcasing poets, when he could be trumpeting eccentric musicians instead) than most councilmembers: it was he who supported local venues in 'allowing' live music against the mindless control of the State Liquor Board.
He lost the battle against the Seahawk stadium boondoggle, but he took on the whole City-County-State establishment and made the case well enough to gain his City Council seat. And the points he made against the taxpayer subsidy of that stadium remain valid today. If he thinks Key Arena could be profitable without the Sonics, I'm more inclined to believe him.
Posted by: Hank Bradley on March 5, 2006 09:28 AMAllowing the team to leave the state is not an option. You don't deal with problems by walking away from the table.
I didn't mean to insult the sensibilities of Oklahoma City fans either with the "two bit" comment. But there is no way that any sports owner that has any sensibility is going to move the Sonics from as large of a market as the Seattle-Metro area, with 3 million people living here along with quite a few millionaires and billionaires, to Oklahoma. Or Virginia. Or Nevada. Or Kansas City or any of the half a dozen other cities mentioned.
If Schultz tries to continue using that tactic, then the state legislature should rightly call his bluff.
The only ones who should have a stake in this mess so far is the City of Seattle. Does the Emerald City want to keep the team or will they let Bellevue steal it away?
As a final thought, the folks opposing the two stadium were wrong too. Having two world class sports venues and a convention center built in the heart of our state has gone a long ways towards improving the economic vitality of the region and also providing yet another recreational opportunity for people who live here.
Queen Gregoire's Statements:
"OLYMPIA — The Sonics' future in Seattle was left in question Saturday after Gov. Christine Gregoire and legislative leaders announced there would be no vote in the Legislature this year on a taxpayer-funded expansion of KeyArena.
But Gregoire and lawmakers pledged to work with the team, as well as with city and county officials, to come up with a plan that might fly next year.
So for all those democrats who say that they were holding firm to not fund this, I say it looks to me like they are holding off (until next year after the election) the funding and tax hiking for this. Maybe it will be an Emergency by then!
Posted by: GS on March 5, 2006 11:52 AMShe-who-must-be-obeyed and her democrat party retinue DIDN'T do something explicitly against the public's best interest???
Someone call The Pope!
It's a miracle!
Posted by: Cartman on March 5, 2006 12:14 PMNo offense necessarily taken. Your expanded explanation makes perfect sense. Seattle, and the PNW benefit greatly by having the professional sports teams that are currently there. As I said on a post just prior to the Super Bowl, it is an incredible boost to a community's morale and pride when one of its own wins the championship.
IF Seattle is smart, they will do what it takes to keep the Sonics in town. If Bellevue is smart, they will do what it takes to drag the Sonics across the lake.
Posted by: Danny on March 5, 2006 12:54 PMSince the amount raised by the taxes is always more than needed to service the bond debt King Ron will use the surplus for give-aways to his pals and cronies in the arts and other favored campaign donors. After all, the same scheme worked for Gary "Cipher" Locke.
Bonds sold to fix the Kingdome roof generated more income from taxes than needed to service the debt. Rather than pay down the debt, Gary and the KC Council passed it out to friends in the arts, etc.
When the state put together the financing package for Safeco Field the Republicans put provisions in the legislation that any surplus would be used to retire the debt. That's why the cry from the liberals that the legislation was too "restrictive."
elections have frequently turned on the "Joe-Shmoe" basics--witness Chicago not too long ago--simple garbage pickups/strikes and snow removal were the camel-back-breaking issues--not high society art parks, homeless care or glitzy sports-o-ramas! just beware of the salesmen--honey tounge promises turn into 20-year levies and bonds;
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on March 5, 2006 09:31 PMIf the owners of the Sonics want improvements then tax the tickets to the games. The city of Seattle can also tax tickets to other events to help pay for it if they want. I don't see the Sonics' owners offering to share in the profit when the team is eventually sold either, yet they want the public to fund their venue.
Posted by: Palouse on March 7, 2006 08:50 AM