Lowry: Stadium A Tough Sell Fiscal Conservatives Not Comfortable Raising Taxes To Build M’S New Home

Rounding up enough lawmakers to help the Seattle Mariners build a new ballpark is proving to be a very tough sell, Gov. Mike Lowry said Thursday after emerging from a fourth day of closed-door talks on the issue.

“I’m optimistic that we’ll have” a proposal to take to the Legislature, said Lowry, flanked by legislative leaders and Seattle and King County officials.

But House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, was not at all sure of that.

“There are a lot of questions, and new ones all the time,” he said before going into the meeting earlier in the afternoon. “And frankly, I’m not at all comfortable with some of the information we’ve been getting.”

Ballard, who heads a GOP caucus of fiscal conservatives, said many members will not accept a bailout plan that would raise taxes, even taxes ultimately levied by King County following legislative authorization.

“Many members consider the authorization to be the same thing as raising taxes,” he said.

He said members also don’t want to dip into a nearly $700 million budget surplus because expenditure of money would raise the baseline from which the state could increase spending in future years. Initiative 601, approved by voters, places strict limits on state spending increases.

Ballard said he thought his majority caucus would agree to a bailout package if he could show them that the money to pay the cost would be covered by taxes that would be lost if the Mariners were to leave Seattle.

Lowry said he and legislative leaders would meet Friday and possibly over the weekend to hammer out something. “It is a tough sell. A very tough sell,” he said.

Lowry wants a package agreed upon by leaders before calling the Legislature into special session, something he wants to do by the middle of next week.

Mariners owners have said they will put the team up for sale Oct. 30 if there’s no action on a stadium bailout.

Last month - just as the Mariners began the steamroller performance that produced the first A.L. West title in the team’s 19-year history - King County voters narrowly defeated a sales-tax increase to raise $240 million for a new retractable-roof stadium and Kingdome repairs.

King County and the Mariners would have to come up with the rest of the estimated $285 million required to build the outdoor stadium. The Mariners already have pledged $45 million for the project.

Lowry said he wants the Legislature to act by mid-October or earlier to allow the King County Council time to approve a local tax increase for its share of the cost. Among those levies would be a hotel-motel tax, an increase in the car-rental tax and an admissions tax.

Despite the most successful season in their history, the Mariners expect to lose $30 million this year, bringing losses to $67 million since new owners bought the club 3-1/2 years ago.

Owners blame the red ink on the configuration and lack of amenities in the multipurpose Kingdome.