Libertarians Cheer
Praise D.C. Council for rejecting stadium welfare deal
The national Libertarian Party is saluting the Washington, D.C., city council for torpedoing a "sports welfare" scheme that would have built a new Major League Baseball stadium with taxpayer funds.
"Let’s play ball, but let’s play it with private money," said Joseph Seehusen, executive director of the national Libertarian Party, which is headquartered in Washington, DC. "It’s not every day that Libertarians cheer our local government, but in this case the praise is well-deserved. Let’s tear up this welfare check for baseball millionaires."
Seehusen placed a congratulatory phone call on Wednesday to Linda W. Cropp, the Democratic chairman of the D.C. Council, who shocked her colleagues late Tuesday night by requiring that half the money for a new baseball stadium come from private financing.
The legislation, which was approved on a 7 to 6 vote, unravels a deal struck between Major League Baseball and Mayor Anthony Williams that required the city to pay for a new stadium to house the former Montreal Expos. Williams now has until June to line up private financing to cover 50 percent of the stadium’s cost.
Noting that polls show a majority of residents oppose a taxpayer-funded stadium, Seehusen said the vote is a huge victory for the people of Washington, DC.
"Washington residents narrowly escaped getting mugged by their own mayor," Seehusen said. "Anthony Williams and Major League Baseball had hatched a plan to bilk the already impoverished residents of this city of up to $579 million to pay for this stadium.
"He called it a ‘gross receipts tax’ on business. But of course businesses would have passed the cost right on to customers in the form of higher prices. Thank goodness that one council member with a conscience had the courage to stand up and stop them. Three cheers for Linda Cropp."
The solution to sports welfare: Replace stadium taxes with user fees.
"With publicly financed stadiums, the cost is borne by two groups of people: those who go to the games, and those who don’t," Seehusen said. "It makes no more sense to force one person to pay for another’s baseball ticket than to force him to pay for another’s golf clubs, groceries or gasoline."
Privately financed stadiums, on the other hand, are financed by user fees, he pointed out. The users are the owners, the players, the fans, the advertisers and anyone else who wants to participate voluntarily.
"The fact that a sports team is demanding a taxpayer subsidy means that the project is, by definition, not economically viable," he said.
"Let’s put an end to taxpayer-funded stadiums, and quit turning baseball into a political football."
