Considering Needs, Plan Is A Nonstarter Boondoggle Why Subsidize Lousy Team’s Playpen?

The rush to clip taxpayers for yet another Seattle stadium smells worse than a locker room at halftime.

The Senate found just enough votes to pass a subsidize-the-Seahawks scheme - but only because Majority Leader Dan McDonald, who opposed it, had left town. Shortly before the vote, the bill’s Senate sponsors discovered, to their shock, a clause requiring taxpayers to pay even more than expected for the stadium if the project is delayed. Who wrote that fine print? Who really wrote that bill? Who cares? The Trojan horse rolled through anyway.

Now it goes to the House. The political climate there, as in the Senate, is conservative. This is a strange climate indeed for a package of tax increases. Consider: This Legislature is cutting property and business taxes. Balking at a gas-tax increase to repair the roads. Threatening to roll back local school levies - a move that would force very damaging cuts. Dragging its feet over the health insurance and child care that welfare recipients need for the transition to entry-level jobs. Pinching pennies over requests for needed state facilities in economically struggling areas like Spokane.

But what happens to this flinty-eyed conservatism when one of the world’s richest men seeks tax breaks and tax increases to build a second pro sports arena in economically booming Seattle?

Is it really less important to educate kids, maintain roads and help poor people enter the work force than it is to subsidize a playpen in which the overpaid prima donnas of professional football can break each other’s kneecaps?

Apparently. Around the nation, taxpayers have been caving in to blackmail from team owners who threaten to leave town if they don’t get swankier digs at public expense.

It is not necessary to play this game. After voters refused to subsidize a new stadium for the San Francisco Giants, the team found private-sector financing.

Other than the athletes, most jobs with a pro sports team are part-time and low-paying, and the budget’s comparable to that of a downtown department store. Economic impact is marginal at best.

If it’s the thrill of victory that people want, the Sonics, the Mariners and the Huskies are more likely to provide it than the Seahawks, one of the lousier teams in football. Let ‘em leave.

, DataTimes MEMO: See opposing view under the headline: By not playing ball now, we lose

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