|
Richard Sherman, the outspoken defensive player for the Seattle Seahawks, blasted billionaire team owners for putting local taxpayers on the hook for privately owned stadiums. As ThinkProgress reported Thursday morning, Sherman made the comments on an interview with a Seattle-based sports radio station when asked what he would do if elected president.
“I’d stop spending billions of taxpayer dollars on stadiums and probably get us out of debt and maybe make the billionaires who actually benefit from the stadiums pay for them,” Sherman told John Clayton of 710 ESPN Seattle. “That kind of seems like a system that would work for me.”
Sherman has a great point: CenturyLink Field, where Sherman plays, cost $560 million to build. Local taxpayers were forced to put up $390 million of that money, even though Seahawks owner Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft) is worth over $17 billion, making him rich enough to build 32 CenturyLink Fields all on his own.
But Seattle isn’t alone in billing taxpayers for privately-owned stadiums. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ net worth is right around $5 billion, yet local taxpayers were forced to pony up $325 million for his new $1.2 billion stadium in Arlington, Texas. This means $325 million went toward a privately-owned venture for the benefit of a billionaire owner, as opposed to $325 million in new investment for building new schools, expanding access to healthcare, or updating roads and infrastructure.
As author Gregg Easterbrook wrote in his book, King of Sports: Football’s Impact on America, some 70 percent of the $1 billion costs incurred in building and maintaining stadiums throughout the year comes from local taxpayers, not team owners.
It’s probably too late for Sherman, who told 710 ESPN Seattle he would run on the “Independent Party” ticket, to run a serious campaign. But Congress could still theoretically pass a bill repealing tax exemption on bond issues for privately-owned stadiums, which President Obama already unsuccessfully tried to do.
