Vikings stadium: Forget it -- don't waste public funds

By MIKE MEYERS

April 10, 2011 at 10:16PM
(Susan Hogan — Joel Koyama/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Legislators sense this may not be the best time to roll over for a new Minnesota Vikings stadium.

They're devilishly busy kicking the poor off health insurance rolls, slashing affordable housing programs, starving the state university for cash and sparing the rich from tax hikes.

Let's use their reality-based hesitation, however fleeting, to examine the case, however flimsy, for public aid to Minnesota's least needy.

Teams build community. If it were true, Green Bay, which has little to boast beyond its football team, would be the best damned place to live in America. Maybe it is. Call a Realtor about relocating. Operators are standing by.

Over the years, what's made Minnesota special is not pro athletes fighting drug arrests, facing morals charges or snapping photos of their genitals.

The state's measurable achievements -- economic and social -- have been tied to high-quality education, top-flight public services and a workforce ready for cutting-edge research and innovation.

Legislators should fret about the clear and present risk of losing those rather than the imagined peril of parting with a Sunday-afternoon diversion.

Sensing that the public doesn't buy the idea that the Vikings define Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton is trying to reframe the case for a new stadium. He has rebranded the Vikings venture "the people's stadium."

Why has Dayton had a bumpy ride in politics? After all, he can say "the people's stadium" with a straight face.

The fact that 75 percent of the people, in the latest poll, aren't willing to pay for a stadium built in their honor seems to be lost on the governor. Wait. Such instincts may explain why he's had a bumpy ride in politics.

Still, "the people's stadium" does have an inviting ring. It's far catchier than "Millions Not Spent on Job Training for the Disadvantaged and Disabled Field."

Pro sports are a pillar of the economy. What does a community get in return for paying hundreds of millions for a pro sports stadium? Study after study shows the return is close to zero. (Note to sports fans: Your weekend amusement is priceless. It's also worthless as a public investment.)

Consider the Vikings generating $10 million a year in income tax. That's somewhere between a half and a third of what state and local governments would pay every year to finance the bulk of a $1 billion stadium.

Nearby bars and restaurants may prosper from games on Sundays. But a dozen games a year do not make a business -- or a major tax revenue stream.

Want to see the economic development a stadium sparks? Visit the Metrodome neighborhood. Better still, for a fresh example, visit St. Louis, where a "stadium village" next to the Cardinal's latest home never materialized.

What delivers the goods -- and returns for commuters and employers -- is money spent repairing or replacing neglected roads and bridges. What's the score in the Legislature on that front?

And who's talking of spending a billion dollars on educating preschoolers? Studies show such programs offer double-digit returns to society in the form of increased graduation rates, higher incomes and smaller prison populations years later.

The new Twins stadium got raves, and a Vikings stadium could, too. Shills for a football stadium chant a new mantra: "Minnesota has embraced the new ballpark."

Fans have. For the rest of us, the experience has been less an embrace than an awkward handshake from a grinning auto dealer who's handed over the keys to a sports car we don't need and didn't order but that will cost us nevertheless.

The place has all the sheen and sizzle of a venue built at someone else's expense. Why not splurge when the public is paying?

Twins critics, indeed, now are silent after their pockets have been picked to finance a stadium over the next three decades. They're following the advice Victorian mothers gave their daughters for their wedding night -- close your eyes and try to think of something else.

Paying for stadiums takes nothing away from other government programs. Nobody's talking about tapping money from the state general fund, Vikings boosters proclaim. But "stadium taxes" represent a distinction without a difference.

Higher sales taxes, ticket taxes, income tax surcharges on players or taxes on sports memorabilia all represent potential revenue that could be raised for less parochial interests than a stadium.

If the state imposed a new sales tax on clothing, should the money raised revert to Men's Wearhouse or Ann Taylor?

The St. Paul Saints, the Wild and the Timberwolves shamelessly join the Vikings in seeking to butt into line for public money. At a time when many legitimate claims for tax dollars go begging, "I've got mine" team owners want more.

A new, improved stadium can add hundreds of millions of dollars to the value of a team. How kind that some owners turn philanthropists, handing out a check here and a check there, with their generosity noted in the newspaper.

If team owners get their way on publicly financed stadiums, they'll be sucking up money that could have been spent on the health, education and housing of Minnesotans in need. That means more charity cases. Keep those philanthropy checks coming!

The 'people's stadium' won't be for the Vikings but for all of us. There's a name for a place where high school teams can hold tournaments, wrestlers can hit each other with folding chairs and fans can cheer flaming mechanical dragons at truck pulls. The name is the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.

As bumper stickers on cars of a certain age say, "Don't laugh. It's paid for."

Yes, the roof fell in last winter. But installers are busy putting up a new one, which presumably can endure for decades.

Most people dwell in homes that are more than 30 years old. The Vikings can, too.

Or, if they don't like it, they can leave.

Building stadiums is about spending public money for private gain, taxing the many for the benefit of the few. Want to be No. 1? Think kids, potholes and bridge supports.

Let Los Angeles or some other city build a "people's stadium." Let Minnesota reserve its public treasury for the people.

Mike Meyers, a former Star Tribune business reporter, is a Minneapolis-based writer.

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MIKE MEYERS