This Politician Refuses To Play Ball
How can you not like a guy like Texas Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, who tells hard truths plainly?
While many members of the Texas Legislature are stumbling all over themselves trying to accommodate owners of professional sports franchises by relieving them of the tyranny of having to spend their own money on the arenas where their teams will play, Bullock is telling hard truths.
Using such terms as “corporate welfare” and “reverse Robin Hood,” Bullock has clearly expressed his contrarian sentiments for proposals to use local sales tax money to underwrite pro sports facilities.
“Tremendously wealthy people own these franchises,” Bullock said recently, “and they’re looking for public monies to build a stadium where their franchise can play. It’s just corporate welfare.”
From his tone, you could surmise that Bullock is pretty disgusted with the idea that capitalists should be exempt from capitalism - that is, raising and spending their money the old-fashioned way rather than pushing their way to the public trough.
As Bullock pointed out, numerous bond issues for schools and other essential public works around the state routinely get crushed at the polls, but adorn the ballot box with the team colors, and “presto, zappo,” let the games begin!
“Do you have any idea … with this same amount of money, what you could do with schools in Dallas or in Houston or in San Antonio? Think about it,” he said.
Alas, Bullock exposes himself as a curmudgeon lacking team spirit, a citizen fussbudget excessively concerned with the mundane task of building and sustaining a civilization rather than getting in touch with what really matters to people - entertainment, and lots of it.
He even confessed his lack of zeal for sports, marking him as a man woefully out of step with the slam-dunk, boogaloo-in-the-end-zone culture that worships boorish multimillionaire specimens of arrested adolescent development. Bless him.
Bullock is unfazed by the dark threat from team owners to pull their teams out of Texas if they don’t get what they want. He as much as tells them not to let the door knob hit ‘em in the hiney on their way out. Let Nashville fans cry now in their Jack Daniel’s over the Oilers, or whatever alias they assume next fall.
“I believe it’s a lot of blackmail,” he said. “All of these owners are saying, ‘Build me a stadium or I’m going to move my club.’ But to tell you the truth, I haven’t lost a single night’s sleep over the prospect of a sports team leaving Texas. Not one. Maybe some of those owners have missed a night’s sleep, but they haven’t missed a meal.”
Rich folks aren’t used to being talked to that way, but Bullock also talks their language. He proposed that they behave like good capitalists and issue common stock to finance their own stadiums, in the manner of the Boston Celtics basketball team and the Florida Panthers hockey franchise.
But capitalism being an inherently risky venture, the owners much prefer the reliability of siphoning off a steady, certain revenue stream from the public tax system. It’s done wonders for Gov. George W. Bush’s Texas Rangers. With shoppers in Arlington forking out more than 70 percent of the $190 million construction cost of The Ballpark in Arlington through a half-cent sales tax, the estimated value of the franchise increased by $55 million.
Of course, it’s still a free country, and under proposals pending before the Legislature, the local folks could vote whether to tax themselves to subsidize the captains of capitalism.
As Bullock noted, however, other aspects of civic life have failed to generate the same level of enthusiasm for financing public services. He mentioned public education, and throwing temper tantrums in Austin about raising sufficient state taxes to pay for excellent schools has become a celebrated Texas tradition.
In another realm, last year’s brutal and costly drought raised the specter of generating public money to develop a statewide water plan, including the construction of reservoirs. One proposal to impose a tiny levy on all water bills - residential, industrial and agricultural - recently met with the political equivalent of an epileptic seizure in Austin.
Many necessary improvements to the state’s transportation system, especially in increasingly congested urban areas, have languished for years from lack of sufficient state revenues to move from the drawing board to road-ready completion. One solution, which would avoid the hated alternative of actually paying taxes for public thoroughfares, could be toll roads.
It’s all a matter of priorities, don’t you see, and when it comes to the cultural imperative of professional sports, well, a taxpayer’s just got to do what a taxpayer’s got to do.
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