Step 1: Make a threat about jobs/money to get lawmakers to pay attention.
Step 2: Get favorable legislation passed. Hold hands with lawmakers in photo-op for the papers.
Step 3: Stall on delivering on promises until lawmakers leave office or come up with excuses.
Step 4: Profit.
For who are this measures passed? Interesting explanation:
>..."There will be no public dollars, no taxpayer dollars used for this project," he said. "The entire project has been privately capitalized and is being privately funded." The nuance between that statement — similar claims were made by Inglewood Mayor James Butts — and tax breaks that could reach $100 million lies in the fine print of a 185-page initiative plan filed by the developers earlier this month. It includes two paragraphs of how Inglewood would eventually reimburse the project for the costs of roadwork, utility work and public parks on the nearly 300-acre site. Meany estimated those costs at $60 million. The city would also reimburse costs of security, medical services and shuttles to off-site parking during stadium events, which Butts estimated at about $8 million a year.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-stadium-tax-break-201501...
Also, being pedantic, Inglewood is its own city.
Most cities that tell teams to shove it just end up losing their teams to other markets: In this case, San Diego and St. Louis.
I get what you're saying, though - cities often give up a lot (and probably too much) to keep franchises happy.
I'm mostly just pointing out the major power disparity between LA and other cities: Major sports teams want to be in LA far more than LA wants a major sports team. That's not true of, say, Seattle or St. Louis or San Diego.
Yes, just like they "fall for" municipal operas, art museums, Shakespeare in the Park, and any number of other cultural amenities that don't have obvious and immediate economic impact.
Perhaps your complaint is less about public investment in cultural benefits than it is an issue with one particular kind of culture?
> During its history, the zoo-museum district - officially known as the Metropolitan Zoological Park and Museum District - has raised about $1.3 billion, stabilized five once-struggling institutions and helped some of them develop international reputations.
Source: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/zoo-museum-tax-dis...
So that's $1.3. billion in tax dollars raised specifically to fund the museums and zoo in the largest park of one mid-sized U.S. city.
That tax raises 35 times the $5 million per year the city pays on the bond for the old Rams stadium, which generates a lot of articles like this one:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rams-los-angeles-st-lou...
Of course, HuffPo doesn't write any articles about the zoo tax, because literal rams in cages is a more noble use of money than figurative Rams throwing a football, one presumes.
The number here also dwarfs the direct public subsidy for Busch Stadium, also in St. Louis, which also got a ton of ink and public scrutiny.
More info on that subsidy here:
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/What+the+public+paid+for+the+...
That's divided amongst 5 public organizations. Not all going to one billionaire.
"That tax raises 35 times the $5 million per year the city pays on the bond for the old Rams stadium"
Stadium for one purpose, for a team owned by a billionaire, who also left town.
The cost to the city was also far more than just $5 million a year; the total amount the city put behind the stadium was $280 million.
"Of course, HuffPo doesn't write any articles about the zoo tax, because literal rams in cages is a more noble use of money than figurative Rams throwing a football, one presumes."
Or maybe it's because NFL teams, with the exception of the Green Bay Packers, are owned by billionaires who could easily afford to build their own stadium.
And I've never seen a zoo threaten to leave town unless the city agreed to pay for a new elephant habitat.
how many of them now are actually one purpose? Local example is AT&T Stadium (also known as "Jerry World") which in addition to the occasional Dallas Cowboys win also hosts a lot of UIL sporting events, high school football playoffs, motocross, monster trucks, rodeo events, and a bunch of concerts.
Nearby Globe Life ballpark has... well, baseball.
> And I've never seen a zoo threaten to leave town unless the city agreed to pay for a new elephant habitat.
Never seen one threaten to leave, but I've seen them threaten to close down exhibits.
1) We spend money on other types of cultural amenities all the time and nobody cares; and...
2) That spending is of an amount that lodges it appropriately within this conversation.
In fact, what the high salaries in sports reveal to me is that the public wants sports a lot more than they want museums.
So I guess that means we're at an impasse.
> You chose not to mention that, for reasons I think I know.
You should re-read my original comment, the one that started this truly silly subthread, which twice reveals that there are multiple organizations included in the district.
Maybe someday we'll get an itemized tax bill, so you can see that you paid $4.12 for Amazon's electricity and $1.23 for a new sports arena, and can vote for someone else if that upsets you. Now that I think about it, that will never happen. And so, the cycle continues.