New soccer stadium gets assist from Kansas taxpayers

Posted by Scott Rothschild June 9, 2011 at 10:23 a.m.

Reading all the glowing articles this morning about the new $200 million state-of-the-art soccer stadium in Kansas City, Kan. that opens tonight got me to wondering, "Isn't the state of Kansas — read Kansas taxpayers — involved in this project?'"

The answer is yes.

In 2010, Gov. Mark Parkinson's administration hammered out a deal to help finance the stadium and a new office complex for Cerner Corp. Under the deal, the project would be subsidized with $85 million in state tax credits and $144.5 million in STAR Bond assistance. STAR Bonds allow developers to finance major commercial, entertainment and tourism areas and use the sales tax revenue generated by the development to pay off the bonds.

The use of STAR Bonds has many critics who generally contend this is an unnecessary subsidy of big business, puts other businesses at a disadvantage and shorts distressed state coffers at a time when the state is struggling to pay for basics, such as public safety, social services and education.

But as he was leaving office, Parkinson said the project was one of the highlights of his tenure as governor. He defended the use of STAR Bonds, saying the project would create thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact.

So, while the players are sitting tonight in the plush locker rooms on $5,000 seats imported from Spain, and fans watch the action or replays on 330 high definition televisions or connect on the more than 150 WIFI access points, it might occur to someone to say `Thanks' to the Kansas taxpayer.

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consumer1 (anonymous) says…

Gov. Mark Parkinson was a democrat... democrats subsidizing big business? Of course they do. They are no different from republican's. At that level of politics it is all about big business, yet the small people still think it is about them. What a joke.
June 9, 2011 at 10:37 a.m.
1. question4u (anonymous) replies…
  
  "Small people"?
  June 9, 2011 at 12:39 p.m.
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autie (anonymous) says…

Taxpayer dollars? Heck, I don't even like soccer. Or nascar. But money is money, right? If that investment plays out and does generate revenue for state coffers...through the multiplier effect or after abatement expire or what ever.....go for it.
June 9, 2011 at 10:53 a.m.
sr80 (anonymous) says…

I didn't see a single job listing to work at this new stadium "thousands of jobs" Bull !!!!!
June 9, 2011 at 2:35 p.m.
stuart (anonymous) says…

SR80:

http://lawrence.craigslist.org/fbh/24...

http://lawrence.craigslist.org/fbh/24...

Here are two..... posted on craigslist, a beer venor and a cook!
June 9, 2011 at 7:23 p.m.
commuter (anonymous) says…

It may not have created "new jobs" but didn't someone have to build the stadium? It kept people employed instead of sitting at their computer complaining about what is going on.
June 10, 2011 at 6:30 a.m.
tomatogrower (anonymous) says…

I don't really agree with this, but they had a sold out crowd last night. I think the Royals are having a problem doing that, aren't they?
June 10, 2011 at 7:06 a.m.
merrill (anonymous) says…

The new owners of the Washington Nationals baseball team in Washington, D.C., paid $450 million for the team. But, in fact, they got the team for free, because the subsidy they’re getting for the new stadium is worth $611 million. We actually paid these people to buy the team.

Now, in this country right now, we are spending $2 billion a year subsidizing the big four sports: baseball, basketball, football and hockey. It accounts for all of the profits of that industry and more. Now, there may be individual teams that make money, but the industry as a whole is not profitable. And that’s astonishing because the big four leagues are exempt from the laws of competition. By the way, irony is not dead, because here are people who are in the business of competition on the field who are exempted by law from the rules of economic competition.

If you go to England and you want to start a soccer team, they have to let you join the soccer league. There are thirteen commercial soccer teams in the London area. New York City, the biggest city in the country, there are two baseball teams, because there’s no free entry into the market. In Los Angeles, there’s no football team. And the owners use this power to prevent others from owning teams, to prevent municipal governments from owning teams, to prevent nonprofits from owning teams, to extract money from the taxpayers to build them new stadiums.

At the same time that we’re doing this, we are starving our public parks for money. And I show in Free Lunch how the rise of urban gangs and now suburban gangs is connected to this. We used to have all sorts of programs in this country after World War II for young men and young women on Saturdays and during the summer and school holidays, where even if you didn’t have any money—didn’t matter that your parents didn’t have any money, because—and I know this because I did it as a child—you could go to any one of a half-dozen different places, and there were organized activities to keep you out of trouble.

After all, idle hands are the devil’s workshop is not exactly a radical new idea. Well, we’ve cut and cut and cut those programs to fund two different subsidies: one to sports teams’ owners, one that goes to Tyco, General Electric, Honeywell and some other big companies. And, lo and behold, we’ve had a big rise in urban violence because of the vacuum being filled by young people who no longer have these organized activities.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/18...
June 10, 2011 at 7:39 a.m.
1. stuart (anonymous) replies…
  
  So who owns the Green Bay Packers?
  June 11, 2011 at 12:21 a.m.
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