Reflections on the Stadium Tax

On the morning of Saturday, May 7, I was merely upset that last week the Hennepin County board had volunteered those of us who live, work, eat, drink, and play in our most populous county to assist in buying a new stadium for the Minnesota Twins to the tune of $85 Million. According to Forbes.com, the owner of the Twins has over $2 Billion in assets and is currently climbing upward through the 200s on the list of the worlds richest people. A quick trip over to ESPN.com and one finds that the combined salary of the Twins players this year is approaching $57 Million, and that is one-third of the way from the bottom of the Major League ranks.

Usually a brisk walk around one of our beautiful city lakes makes me feel better about living here even when our elected officials seem to be selling me out, so my darling and I headed off toward Lake of the Isles. It has been a little unnerving in the past year sharing one narrow path with dozens or, on nice days even hundreds, of other walkers, runners, bikers, skaters, and their dogs. I've seen a good thunderstorm push the lake well past the parkway and into the front yards of the houses surrounding it, blocking the paths and roads completely. The majority of the grassland between the road and the water is currently usable to neither person nor beast because of the temporary gravel fill meant to rapidly compress the underlying soil. And the parkway itself is a bone-jarring drive because the weight of the trucks hauling the gravel fill is destroying the road surface. These supposedly temporary issues occupying my vision as we rounded the north end of the lake, I wondered aloud what the current prognosis was for completing the much-needed shoreline stabilization and flood control project that was originally supposed to be finished later this summer.

With the full force of the universe's wonderful and ironic sensibility, my question was answered upon returning home that same hour. I cracked open the most recent issue of my neighborhood paper to discover that while the gravel fill will be removed this year, the project will proceed no further than that for the indefinite future because the recent state bonding bill removed $2 Million that was promised for the project in 2005. While repaving some footpaths may (thankfully) be one of the more pressing issues facing the Isles neighborhood, there are certainly other more important matters our city, county, and state could be addressing. I do hope that the missing $2 Million went to fund some road or bridge repair, or facilities maintenance at the U of M campus. Perhaps a new municipal building, or the wonderful Central Library approaching completion downtown.

All that said, it wasn't either the delay in the Isles project or the proposed stadium tax that moved me from upset to incensed this week. It is wondering how we in Hennepin County are finding $85 Million dollars in new revenues to subsidize a private enterprise when all of the jurisdictions in which I live, from the city to the county to the state, can't seem to find an extra penny to teach the generations of our future. It is marveling as we raise bus fares and cut service because somehow public transit is expected to be self-supporting, but a business of billionaires can get handouts. It is feeling like we are being starved by state cuts to public safety, local government aid, and infrastructure, while we turn around and give up more of our hard-earned money to help those who are already rolling in it. It is worrying about the tens of thousands being cut from Minnesota Care – many of whom will be paying for the stadium every single day and will almost certainly never glimpse its interior. It is remembering how the return of hockey to St. Paul was supposed to be such good business for the city, and then seeing how quickly we have forgotten that the total absence of a hockey season this year made no appreciable difference in tax revenue for our sister city. (It seems that we will spend the same amount of money to entertain ourselves whether or not professional sports are an option.) How we can put $85 Million into a stadium that, at current ticket prices, will cost a family of four a minimum of 35 additional dollars to park (or ride) and enter, but can't find $2 Million for a greenspace every one of us is free to enjoy, including two couples from Georgia and California we met that morning sitting on a bench by the lake, without reaching into our wallets for yet more money.

And now the Legislature is leaning toward letting any municipality raise taxes with a referendum. If Woodbury wants more cops or better education for their children, it certainly seems they should be able to pay for it out of their own pockets. And if the people of Hennepin actually wanted to pay for a new stadium, why not? Having been raised in Minnesota by Minnesotans, I was under the impression that we all worked together to make life better for all of us. Moving K-12 education funding to the state level was not just to reduce property taxes, but to give every Minnesota child an equal chance to get the best education available in the country. Apparently the time has come for us to regress to mine-is-mine and yours-is-yours. I moved from incensed to angered.

But the push to outrage came from reading that Mr. "No Tax Increases" himself, Governor Pawlenty, agreed to sign off on the new tax almost as soon as it was proposed. Is this the same governor who wants public referenda on almost everything from property taxes to anti-gay constitutional amendments? He has sworn to veto any gas or cigarette tax increase no matter how small or how popular, so what is his reason for giving this one a free pass? Could it be that he can conveniently forget this new tax in his next run for office? There are certainly enough issues where I find a lot of distance between my position and Pawlenty's, including taxation, and I don't enjoy paying taxes any more than anyone else. I have paid them since the age of 16 with little complaint, and I continue to support the idea that their collection by our governments is acceptable because of the promise and hope that they will be used for the common good. Public money channeled directly to the benefit of a single private interest isn't even in the ballpark of common good.