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November 12, 2006
On Election Day, billionaire team owners looking for taxpayer handouts had it just as rough as the GOP.
Salon.com
King Kaufman's Sports Daily covers initiatives across the country that opened a "cannawhoopass" on "billionaire sports team owners looking for welfare to build stadiums and arenas" this week.
Seattle voters overwhelmingly passed Initiative 91, called the anti-Sonics initiative in some circles. It requires that any city tax dollars invested in a stadium or arena yield a profit at least equal to the return on a 30-year U.S. Treasury bond, which at the moment is a little under 5 percent.
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There's nothing preventing the Sonics and Storm from staying in Seattle other than the desire to soak the taxpayers. Bennett and his partners can finance a new arena themselves, and the new law says nothing about county or state taxes, though Chris Van Dyk, who leads the group Citizens for More Important Things, which spearheaded the I-91 campaign, all but dared the teams to try that route.
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Meanwhile, Sacramento voters soundly rejected a quarter-cent increase in the sales tax that would have paid for a new arena for the Maloof brothers and their team, the Kings.
Posted by amy at November 12, 2006 10:42 AM