[Elvis]

https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/t ... -is-a-scam

THE PUBLIC FINANCING PROPOSAL FOR THE NEW ST. LOUIS RAMS STADIUM IS A SCAM

October 8, 2015
Chris Thompson

From the Who The Hell Didn't See This Coming file, it turns out desperate officials have badly misled their constituents about the costs and economic benefits of a publicly financed NFL stadium. This time, it's happening St. Louis—next time it will be Oakland or San Diego, and then Washington, and then maybe London, and so on.

Here's what's happening now: through a sunshine law request, St. Louis Magazine got its hands on some documents showing that city taxpayers will end up paying $215 million more for a proposed new Rams stadium than previously disclosed. The smoking gun is a schedule of loan payments appropriated from Event Day tax revenue between 2021 and 2051 that show the city's burden rising from $4.785 million to a ridiculous $9.975 million by 2051. Those payments are compounded with the base rental payments included in another schedule, which by 2023 will rise from $5 million annually to $6 million, again until 2051. All told, by 2051 St. Louis will be paying $15.975 million annually for the proposed stadium—which is a lot of fucking money for any city, let alone one already struggling to get by.

Also, raise your hand if you think the Rams will be playing in a 30-year-old stadium in 2051.

While this is all scummy and dishonest on its face, it's also even worse than it looks, and for a couple of reasons. First, St. Louis is five years away from having fully paid off the public debt associated with the awful Edward Jones Dome—under this proposal, instead of the $6 million earmarked for that debt finally dropping back into, you know, the actual municipal costs of managing a major American city, that money will go towards new financing of another stadium, along with additional millions and millions of dollars. Second, the taxpayers of St. Louis were denied a public vote on the public financing package, a move that was justified in part by the assertion that the financing of the new stadium would continue at the same level as before and require no new taxes. That turned out to be, at best, a shitty semantic end-around—Event Day taxes that would otherwise go to the benefit of the city would instead be used to pay for the new stadium, and at a level dramatically higher than before.

But wait! There's more!

"Now, in addition to conveniently ignoring that the current bond payments would have disappeared in 2021, the task force has quietly asked the city to back Regional Sports Authority bonds for the project at a dramatically higher level than suggested before. This presumably is needed to cover the gap in funding created when County Executive Steve Stenger refused to avoid putting the issue to a vote in the county, prompting Gov. Jay Nixon—a key stadium advocate—to remove county taxpayers from the picture."

So, when the County Executive insisted upon letting his constituents vote on their share of public financing, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon kicked the county out of the deal and shifted their anticipated share of the costs over to city residents, who had helpfully already been denied any say in the matter. Democracy in action.

And so what was already a queasy mess has officially turned into a giant clusterfuck. Having a prominent local sports team is fun, and losing one sucks. But it's increasingly obvious that St. Louis taxpayers would be better off without the Rams. The cost of keeping them—as dictated by the team's extremely greedy owners and seconded by the state's extremely shameless power brokers—far exceeds the benefit. And that's accounting for Tavon Austin being fun as hell.

[BuiltRamTough]

I remember Judge Frawley asked Bob Blitz a direct question. How will you pay off the city portion?

Bob - By extending the bonds at 6mil.

Got to love the system.

[Hacksaw]

Who the hell is this guy?

[Hacksaw_64]

Who the hell is this guy?

LOL I don't know. The ST. Louis version of Wally George maybe?

[Elvis]

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/colu ... 967a7.html

McClellan: Frawley Field forever

By Bill McClellan

National Car Rental Field trips off the tongue nicely, but I suspect our new palace on the river, if it is ever built, will be like the bridge at Poplar Street, which is now officially the Congressman William L. Clay Sr. Bridge, and used to officially be the Bernard F. Dickmann Bridge, but has never been known as anything other than the Poplar Street Bridge.

In other words, our stadium will have a name of its own, at least to locals. It will be called Frawley Field.

If it ever exists, it will owe its existence to one man, Circuit Court Judge Thomas J. Frawley.

He gets little credit. Most attention goes to former brewery exec Dave Peacock and attorney Bob Blitz, the two-man “task force” on the stadium project. But their efforts would have meant nothing if not for Frawley.

Like so many pivotal figures in history, he arrived at his date with destiny quite by accident.

In 2002, city voters overwhelmingly passed an ordinance that prohibited financial assistance to a professional sports facility without prior voter approval. Oddly enough, the election had little to do with the Rams. They were in the early years of a 30-year lease. Plus, they were still popular. Those were the days of the Greatest Show on Turf. The public concern was directed more toward the Cardinals, whose owners were trying to get public funding for the new Busch Stadium.

But the Rams’ 30-year lease turned out to have a loophole, and last year, Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke announced his intention to jump through that loophole and head to Los Angeles. If St. Louis were to prevent the Rams from leaving, or perhaps attract another football team, we needed another stadium. Gov. Jay Nixon appointed Peacock and Blitz to lead the charge.

Would city voters approve public funding for a new stadium? There was no time to find out. “We need clarity quickly,” said Peacock. To achieve that clarity quickly, the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority sued the city. The lawsuit asked that the ordinance from 2002 be declared invalid.

The city counselor’s office defends the city against lawsuits. But the city counselor works for the mayor, who was a vocal supporter of a new stadium. So the city seemed to be rooting against itself. It was, to be sure, a very strange situation.

The case was assigned to equity court. There are no juries in equity court. A judge issues findings of law. Two judges are assigned to equity court in the 22nd Judicial Circuit, which serves the city. They were then, and are now, David Dowd and Joan Moriarty.

The lawsuit was assigned to Dowd. He was ill, and the case was transferred to Moriarty. Each attorney gets one disqualification. No reasons are required. Blitz disqualified Moriarty. With nobody left in equity, Presiding Judge Bryan Hettenbach assigned the case to Frawley, who was, at the time, assigned to the criminal docket.

Frawley came up in family law. That is, he was a divorce lawyer. That can be a tough business, but people who practiced against him say he was ethical and hard-working. People also say he is a very decent person. He has been a judge since 1991, but much of his time on the bench has been spent in family court or juvenile court, neither of which get much attention from the press.

Suddenly, the low-profile judge was thrown into the middle of a fierce civic debate. One side said, “No more money to billionaires.” The other side said, “If we want to be a big league city, we need a football team.”

Those weren’t the legal arguments, of course, but even the law doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

I sat through the hearing, and I felt sorry for the city counselor. He might not have wanted to win the case, but I didn’t see how he could lose. His opponents were arguing that a law passed more than 20 years ago to finance the current stadium “adjacent to the convention center” could be used to finance the new stadium. That seemed a stretch.

More importantly, for the stadium supporters to prevail, the judge would have to overturn an election. I could not imagine he’d have the nerve to do that.

He would! He did!

Adjacent can mean many things, he wrote in his opinion.

Well, I guess it could, but I remember the original debate more than 20 years ago. The football stadium was going to be part of the convention center so it was going to be more than just a stadium. Perhaps that’s why Moriarty was disqualified. Maybe she has a memory.

As for overturning the election, the judge declared the resulting ordinance was too vague. The city, a gracious loser, announced it would not appeal.

So the stadium project lives. Maybe you think that’s a good thing, or maybe you think it’s a bad thing. But if it does ever rise majestically along the river on the city’s near north side, the locals won’t call it National Car Rental Field. It will always be Frawley Field to us.

[Hacksaw]

"Living is easy with eyes closed
misunderstanding all you see"
Frawley Field Foreva.

F that!

[Hacksaw_64]

"Living is easy with eyes closed
misunderstanding all you see"
Frawley Field Foreva.

F that!

FFS

[TSFH Fan]

Good thing the Edward Jones Dome will magically disappear in a puff of smoke if a new stadium is built. Wait, it won't? They'll still have to include basic maintenance of that thing in the budget too?? Good thing they can pay for it on top of everything else, right?