Steve Stanek Tells MCC Board Why Involvement in Baseball Stadium/Convention Center Is Bad Idea

Appearing before the McHenry County College Board Monday night was McHenry’s Steve Stanek. In his post at Chicago’s Heartland Institute, Stanek has undoubtedly done more research on baseball stadiums and convention centers than anyone at the college

Here’s what he said:

Thank you for putting me on your agenda. And thank you to Donna Kurtz who surprised me with a phone call a couple of weeks ago and invited me to meet you and discuss this stadium issue. Because I’ve already sent you a lot of material, I promise to be brief.

Many years ago I was a student here at MCC. Several weeks ago Regan Foster from the Northwest Herald called me for an article she was writing, and I told her I love MCC – and I meant it.

The affection I feel for MCC is why I have been peppering you with letters and economic research papers and inviting you to contact the researchers themselves. I believe this stadium deal could do economic harm to the college and the region.

As you know from my letters, I am research fellow at The Heartland Institute, a free-market policy group in Chicago. I am also managing editor of Budget & Tax News, a monthly publication that covers budget, tax and economic development issues. The publication goes to all Congressmen and Senators, all state lawmakers, and about 9,000 municipal officials in the 350 largest cities.

In doing this work I regularly read economic reports and economic development studies by people who work independently of business groups, industries or specific businesses. I also regularly speak with researchers themselves.

A humorist named Artemus Ward once joked,

“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we do know that just ain’t so.”

The researchers I am talking about believe in the truth behind Ward’s jest and devote themselves to sorting out what’s so from what ain’t so.

These researchers regularly disagree over other things like the minimum wage or income tax cuts or the economic impacts of illegal immigration. Yet they overwhelmingly agree the promised economic benefits of sports facilities usually are overblown.

Your own consultant, Economics Research Associates, has an issue paper by Steven E. Spickard, a senior vice president there. Spickard wrote, and I quote:

“[F]or economic development purposes, sports stadiums and arenas are not particularly effective at creating jobs and income.”

Spickard studied major league sports facilities and some of you may be thinking, well, we’re talking about a minor league stadium. But Spickard’s analysis holds true for minor league facilities, and many others have included minor league facilities in their studies and have reached the same conclusions.

Just two months ago, Harvard University Professor Judith Grant Long testified before a Congressional subcommittee in Washington, DC. She said her research showed professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey have received subsidies totaling $18.5 billion since 1990.

Here’s what she said about that:

“There is absolutely no evidence that $18.5 billion in public benefits have been generated since 1990 to compensate.”

And I have already sent you a research article by Adam Zaretsky, an economist for the U.S. Federal Reserve, who wrote,

“Has financing a sports stadium ever been the best alternative? Research shows ‘No.’”

Entire books have been written about this.

One is

Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit.

Another is

Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums

by Professors Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College and Roger Noll of Stanford University.

The professors write:

“A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment. No recent facility appears to have earned anything approaching a reasonable return on investment. No recent facility has been self-financing in terms of its impact on net tax revenues. Regardless of whether the unit of analysis is a local neighborhood, a city, or an entire metropolitan area, the economic benefits of sports facilities are de minimus.”

Tomorrow – Convention Centers


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