Walters Admonishes Sacramento Kings

Dan Walters takes a shot at proposed public financing of a new stadium for the Sacramento Kings. In the draft deal, a 0.25% county sales tax generating $60 million a year would pay for 3/4 of the construction costs, with the ownership group picking up the rest. Walters is right in lampooning the proposed tax structure (" A tax in Sacramento, raising about $60 million a year, would burden the poor to finance entertainment for those affluent enough to afford inflated Kings ticket prices", he writes) for this purpose, while also rightly lambasting the lack of any real public benefit arising from the new stadium.

Given all of the conflicting demands for municipalities and counties, its hard to imagine that the best use for a $60 million/year revenue in Sacramento is subsidized stadium construction (transportation infrastructure anyone?). But even if one offers that subsidizing new business facilities is ideal, I think there's plenty of new businesses you could work to attract that would do a whole lot more for the average citizen in terms of new job opportunities (i.e.: a relocated auto parts plant, for instance, with lots of assembly-line jobs vs. a stadium with a handful of players making most of the money and everyone else taking tickets for minimum wage). And if the goal is to make downtown more attractive, how about increased policing, new homeless shelters, or beautification of existing structures? All of these would do a lot more to make downtown Sacramento more attractive than building a new stadium.

One would hope that Sacramento would be wise enough to resist subsidizing the retailization of urban economies in California with taxpayer dollars. But perhaps not.

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