More mis-direction?

A couple of days ago two items appeared in our daily paper which deserve comment.  Both refer to the ongoing fiscal fiasco at the Capital Improvement Board (CIB).

The first was co-authored by two proponents of the concept that the state owes downtown Indianapolis a living.  Which is, of course, a very un-subtle suggestion to the currently sitting General Assembly that bailouts are in order locally.

As is all too frequently the case, these gentlemen continue to lump professional sports with convention business as significant, appropriate sources of outside revenue for the city.  We disagree.  Convention visitors bring in money.  Professional sports re-allocate local spending.  Money now spent on Pacers' tickets will not be buried in the back yard if the team leaves town.

This attempt to put pressure on the state parallels the second item mentioned above.  An editorial, it contains equally misleading sentiments, as follows.

"The state took the lead in building Lucas Oil Stadium; it must not abandon the city now with operating costs pushing the CIB to the point of crisis."   (Our emphasis.)

Abandon?  The state did indeed "horn in on" the project - over strenuous objection of the city.  The agreement between the city and the state however, - signed in 2005 - very clearly declared that operational costs would be the responsibility of the city.

Presumably the city, had it handled the construction for which it had secretly planned for years, must have had in mind some idea of how to handle increased operating costs.   If there were such plans, where are they now?

A suggestion that fiscal problems are a recent phenomenon for the CIB is ludicrous.  We're told the Pacers have lost money for 26 of the last 28 years, and that the CIB itself has been in the red for 10 years - with at least one member of that board having been a participant in its decisions for 17 years.

We have, over the years, opposed subsidies and tax gimmick on the grounds that a private business which won't "happen" without them is a poor risk.  It is also true that decades of these policies have diverted untold millions of tax dollars away from legitimate municipal expenditures.

It seems to us that what we are now seeing downtown is the natural - and to be expected - results of the broad use of these financial crutches.  Once begun, they become a way of life upon which the recipients depend, for which there are ever new proposals for their usage, and in which the only changes in cost to the taxpayer are upward.

One may wonder whether the timing of disclosure of the Pacers' and CIB financial problems while the legislature is in session is coincidental.  We tend to worry that fast-moving, panic-driven legislative actions could become habit forming.  Visible results of this kind of effort elsewhere are not encouraging so far.

Comments

[Vox Populi]

Zip on over to AdvanceIndiana web site and pick up Ruth Holladay's blog article. The poor, poor Simons and a few friends (around sixty of Indianapolis's elite) just came back from a Cancun vacation. Another chapter from the playbook field of schemes, wine and dine the corporate big wigs and then let them plead the case of the hapless owners.
Here's an interesting quote from Paul Beeston who at the time was VP for the Toronto Blue Jays, "Anyone who quotes profits of a baseball club is missing the point. Under generally accepted accounting principles, I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss and I could get every national accounting firm to agree with me." In short, unless an impartial accountant reviews the Pacers books we will never know the true financial picture of the Pacers.

[John Howard]

And today, WRTV posts this story:

http://www.theindychannel.com/money/19031586/detail.html

High Cost Of Stadium May Force Football Finals To Move
IHSAA Says It Can't Afford To Rent Lucas Oil Again

"Last year, the two-day football finals drew 58,000 fans to the new stadium, which the IHSAA paid $100,000 more to use than they had with the RCA Dome,"

Ain't that just great?!?

[John Howard]

Happy anniversary. 25 years ago today, the Irsaps brought their Ponzi scheme (rhymes with 'team') to Indy. Can we ever forgive Baltimore for allowing that to happen?

[John Howard]

Yikes, that was a totally accidental misspelling of 'Irsay'