Ballpark Figures Were Just That Stadium Revenues Won’t Offset Tax Increases, Legislators Admit As Football Issue Looms

Stadium spending is a central issue in the 1996 election, where candidates who’ve spent public money for the Mariners’ baseball park are hoping to make it look like a good business deal.

But, even under the most optimistic estimates, the new stadium will generate about half the new state tax revenue it costs.

And now some of the same politicians who backed the Mariners’ stadium are running for governor - and there may be a new football stadium on the horizon.

When the Mariners came sniffing around for a new baseball stadium last fall, lawmakers voted to provide $94 million in state help, including a tax credit for King County worth $59 million.

The state also created two new lottery scratch games and new stadium license plates expected to raise $46.1 million.

At the time, legislative leaders said there wasn’t really any state money in the deal, arguing state dollars spent on the $325 million stadium was offset by money generated by keeping the Mariners in town.

“Don’t believe it,” said Sen. Bob McCaslin, R-Spokane.

Some East Side lawmakers now regret their votes.

An independent consultant’s report for King County, published in August 1994, showed if the team left town, as it threatened to without a new stadium, people would still spend about the same amount of money on entertainment, they’d just spend it on something other than baseball.

New state tax revenue that would be lost along with the team amounted to only $1.5 million that year, according to the report.

With a new stadium, attracting an estimated 3 million fans, new money pumped into the state economy was estimated at $47.3 million; 499 jobs and $1.6 million in state tax revenues.

The state tax credit to build the new Seattle stadium, meanwhile, costs the general fund $4 to $8 million a year over 20 years.

Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly for the stadium, including nearly every Republican member of the East Side delegation, led by Rep. Dale Foreman, R-Wenatchee, the House Majority Leader and a GOP candidate for governor.

Even Reps. Mark Sterk and Larry Crouse, avowed skin flints, voted for the stadium.

“It’s the one vote I regret,” Crouse said Friday. “Now every time I have a bill before me that I call a gray bill, neither all bad or all good, I think ‘Remember the Mariners’ and study it more closely.”

Sterk, R-Spokane, said his vote was a mistake. “My constituents made that very clear when I got back home.” Rep. Duane Sommers, R-Spokane, had not yet taken office.

Democrat Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, spoke out passionately against the stadium, arguing the money should be spent on more pressing needs.

Sen. John Moyer, R-Spokane, and McCaslin, both up for re-election this fall, were excused from voting in the Senate. McCaslin’s wife had recently died. The vote was not close in the Senate so their absence did not alter the outcome.

Sen. Eugene Prince, R-Thornton, who is up for re-election, voted for the stadium on the basis of the importance of regional cooperation.

The bill also gave King County the authority to enact $186 million in local taxes, which it promptly did, even though county voters had turned the new stadium down at the ballot just months before.

King County Executive Gary Locke, a Democratic candidate for governor, said he figured his constituents weren’t voting against the stadium, but against the sales tax increase proposed to pay for it.

Locke argued keeping the team in town adds to the region’s quality of life, and pushed the new stadium both at the ballot in King County and before the Legislature during the special session. Locke said he opposes a new stadium for the Seahawks, preferring to keep the team at the Kingdome. A new stadium is one of several options under consideration by a citizen task force.

Locke said money for a new football stadium should come primarily from the team and the private sector. If more money is needed, stadium users and fans should pay for it through admission surcharges, special lottery games and Seahawks license plates, Locke said.

Democrat Norm Rice, another candidate for governor and mayor of Seattle, backed the Mariner’s stadium too. “I’ve never tried to totally argue it on economics. I won’t argue that people wouldn’t spend their money somewhere else if they didn’t spend it there.

“But the stadium helps indirectly with tourism and trade because it’s a venue.”

Rice said he would put public money into a new stadium for the Seahawks only if the benefit is bigger than the public investment. “Otherwise it will never fly.”

Democratic candidate for governor Jay Inslee has hammered Locke over the stadium issue, accusing him of putting sports before schools.

Inslee says he thinks he knows why politicians took the Mariners’ bait, from as wide a spectrum as arch conservative Foreman to liberals Rice and Locke.

“When the bats get hot, economics goes out the window,” Inslee said.

During the special session on the stadium lawmakers watched the redhot Mariners playoff series on television just off the House and Senate floors. Two lawmakers wore Mariners’ uniforms on the House floor and several whistled “Take me Out to the Ballgame” in unison. Inslee said lawmakers should have assessed the stadium question on strictly economic terms, especially now that the state is living under Initiative 601, the tax and spending limitation measure.

Inslee said he would not put public money into a Seahawks stadium. “There are a lot more important things than giving money to wealthy sports team owners.”

Others say money isn’t the only issue. As one fan commented in the consultant’s questionnaire, “The Mariners make the city a more fun place to be.”

One joke circulating in the halls of the Capitol during the special session echoed that sentiment: What’s Seattle without the Mariners and the Seahawks? Portland.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo