Rarely is yours truly in a position or mood to praise either the Ricketts family or Mayor Rahm Emanuel. However, the deal that the Ricketts’ offered the city, and that Mayor Emanuel was able to extract with hard bargaining, seems too good to be true.
The Ricketts want to refurbish Wrigley Field, which, for all its beauty and splendor on a television screen, is falling apart. Like most mega-wealthy owners of big league sports teams elbowing their way to a prime position at the public trough, the family sought some kind of a public subsidy to help with their project. At first, the family proposed retaining all, or at least a major share, of the increase in amusement taxes collected at Wrigley for the next several decades, to help with the $300 million renovation. A deal was almost reached until the family’s patriarch upset the Mayor by considering bankrolling a media campaign against the Mr. Emanuel’s former boss, Barack Obama. (See my 9/17/12 post on Rant Political, HOW BIG A HYPOCRITE IS JOE RICKETTS, reproduced below and my 5/18/12 post on the Insightful Pontificator, PIPING THE MAN ’S TUNE on this aspect of the subject.) Negotiations resumed, as they always do when politicians and wealthy, connected people see an opportunity to mutually benefit from the expenditure of taxpayer money, after the Joe Ricketts/Barack Obama storm had blown over.
One supposes that we should be grateful for Joe Ricketts’ tirade that scuttled the talks based on the amusement tax subsidy; the deal that has emerged from the resurrected negotiations seems too good to be true. The Ricketts’ now say that they will refurbish Wrigley with no ($0) public subsidy if only the city will allow them to display more advertising in the park, have unlimited night games and several night concerts at the field, and use Sheffield Avenue as a blocked off site for street festivals during home games. The Mayor is trying to extract an even better deal, proposing, for example, that the 30 game limit on night contests not be eliminated but, rather, expanded to 40 or so games. It seems to this observer, though, that rather than hold out for a little trimming at the edges, the Mayor ought to hit the Ricketts’ bid before the family arises from its torpor and the deal goes away.
In this era of politicians’ dancing on the financial strings of billionaire team owners, it is unheard of for a major stadium to be constructed or overhauled without the taxpayers footing the bill one way or the other. But here we have a deal in which the taxpayers are asked to give up nothing and the only people who are hurt are the owners of the “rooftop clubs” across Waveland and Sheffield from the ballpark and an amorphous group of people known as “the neighbors.”
It’s hard to work up much sympathy for either of these supposedly aggrieved parties. The “rooftop club” owners are stealing the Cubs’ product and feel entitled to keep stealing it in perpetuity. One could argue that the club owners have invested big money in their facilities based on a deal that they thought guaranteed them access to their purloined product for decades. But even if the proposed deal goes through, the clubs will still exist and profit. The views they can provide will not be as unobstructed as they currently are due to more advertising blocking the sight lines and there is a chance that the owners will consequently have to charge less for their purloined product. Sob.
And the neighbors? They moved in next, or in reasonable proximity to, a ballpark that has been there since the outbreak of World War I in Europe and now they’re complaining about crowds and night games? This is much akin to people who move in next door to an airport and complain about the noise.
Neither the “rooftop clubs” nor the “neighbors” have much of an argument, but they both have the ear of Alderman Tom Tunney, and the rooftops have paid big money for that ear, to the tune of $190,000 in direct and indirect campaign contributions. And nothing focuses the attention of a politician, and especially a Chicago
But since when has Rahm Emanuel given much consideration to the thoughts, desires, and pleadings of members of his City Council? If he decides he likes the Ricketts deal, Alderman Tom Tunney will be collateral damage. After all, there are plenty of people who could be 44th Ward Alderman, but there aren’t many such stellar opportunities to burnish a Mayor’s image as champion of the taxpayers.
Just one more thought: This deal does indeed sound too good to be true. Either I have to wake up from this dream or there’s something malodorous in this deal that neither I nor anyone else has been able to sniff yet.
HOW BIG A HYPOCRITE IS JOE RICKETTS?
Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of what has come to be known as TD Ameritrade, has put up $10mm for an independent media campaign supporting the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney and another $2mm for a similar campaign supporting GOP congressional candidates. He is providing the funding through an independent PAC called (Get this.) The Ending Spending Action Fund, eschewing contributions to similar independent PACs so he could spend his own money the way he wants to spend it, an admirable course of action.
But…
isn’t Joe Ricketts the patriarch of the Ricketts family that owns the Chicago Cubs? And isn’t that same Ricketts family negotiating with (begging, really) Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for massive taxpayer subsidies for the modernization of Wrigley Field, the only asset that makes the Cubs a viable franchise? (See a 5/18/12 piece in The Insightful Pontificator entitled PIPING THE MAN ’S TUNE for more commentary on this very situation and my 9/10/12 Rant Political piece THINK THE TEACHERS’ STRIKE WILL HURT RAHM EMANUEL? THINK AGAIN, along with my 8/4/12 piece TRUSTING THE CHICAGO POLITICIANS, for background on the state of Chicago
If Joe Ricketts is so dead set against spending, why is his family asking the taxpayers of Chicago
One might try to argue that the senior Mr. Ricketts is not involved in the Cubs, that it is his kids, who run the team, who are bowing and scraping before Mr. Emanuel for the luscious taxpayer bone they so crave. But the team is owned by a family trust, in which Mr. Ricketts remains involved and which would not exist but for his efforts. Without Mr. Ricketts, his kids would not have had anything like the money necessary to buy their latest toy; the Ricketts family owns the Cubs and without Mr. Ricketts there would be no Ricketts family, figuratively and literally.
Joe Ricketts talks a good game and puts his money where his mouth is. Unlike his big spending, GOP supporting colleagues, he is not a blind party loyalist but is bipartisan in his desire to control spending and unseat incumbents who exacerbate our spending problem. But actions speak louder than words, and the actions of the family he heads are echoing the refrain we seem to hear from many self proclaimed small government conservatives:
“I hate it when government spends money…on other people.”
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