Below is one minute of transcribed dialogue from yesterday’s Sound of Ideas episode, in which WCPN hosted a conversation about the sin tax. In 59 seconds, the back-and-forth between a sin tax proponent, a sin tax opponent, and a neutral radio host perfectly demonstrates the crux of the argument that’s captivated the county (and is up for a vote on Tuesday as Issue 7).
(The episode was explicitly described as “not a debate,” but the whole hour brings up some really worthwhile opinions/points of view/facts from all sides of the table. This back-and-forth is but one very important moment in the conversation.)
There have been plenty of news stories from all sorts of sources in the Cleveland area (most of whom are on record as openly supporting Issue 7), though few reports home in on the argument brought to light here. In fact, the Sound of Ideas conversation just sort of rolled onward after this question was presented.
Tune in here; the transcription comes from audio recorded from 25:14 to 26:13.
Peter Pattakos, member of C.A.S.T.: I think even apart from all of the debt that we still owe on these facilities and all the money that we’ve already put in, we still haven’t heard about why the team owners continue to need public subsidies on the orders of hundreds of millions of dollars. The pro-sin tax folks can say we have a good deal, but we don’t have the first bit of understanding about why that’s the case.
Kevin Kelley, City Council president: Well, wait. That is an argument that kind of perplexes me, because the Cavs and the Indians provided a detailed capital list. They took journalists through and they pointed out exactly what it is. The city of Cleveland paid URS Company $400,000 to do a detailed study of our capital needs for the next 25 years. All this is public information. If you’ve failed to not look or not educate yourself about it, that is not, that is not on us.
Michael McIntyre, Sound of Ideas host: If I could, let me ask –
Peter Pattakos: That doesn’t get to the question. The question is why do we have to pay for it. Why can’t the teams, which make –
Michael McIntyre: He says because we own it.
Peter Pattakos: – which make hundreds of millions of dollars of profit –
Kevin Kelley: We own this stuff. We own it.
Peter Pattakos: Then let’s take some of the profits out of it if we own it.
o_0
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2014.
It seems like this whole deal just needs to be re-negotiated with more kickback to the taxpayers of Cuyahoga. Its true we need these facilities to be operating and can’t jeopardize that, but minus the obvious Gateway jobs and foot traffic downtown it provides, we dont get a fair shake in terms of ROI.
Looks like we found a perfect way to pay for the redevelop public square!
exactly….logical thinking!
There is no profit to be taken out. Gateway has made it clear in many an annual report filed with the state that they intend to stick Cuyahoga county with a $193 million debt that they “probably will not be able to pay back.” – Gateway Economic Development Corp of Greater Cleveland Cuyahoga County Regular Audit. 2012. Table 4
Yep! That about suns up this whole Issue 7 debate!
I’d rather pay a few extra cents on the occasional case of beer that I buy than pay an extra $5 per ticket to a game when the tickets are already overpriced.
Hey Joni, why shouldn’t we take that few extra cents on your beer and use it to fix the schools, the roads, or help 50% of the city’s children who are living in poverty, or fix the City’s third world infant mortality rate, or do anything else with it but give it to three billionaires who don’t need it?
I’d bet dollars to donuts that “Joni”‘s IP address traces back to one of the three teams or R Strategy Group. Any takers?
Vote no and see how being a slumlord of sports facilities works out for Cleveland. Kansas City, Las Vegas, and Seattle would love to have the Cavs if they can’t pry the Clippers away from Donald Sterling.
Field of Dreams II tagline: If you build it and let it fall down, they will leave!
This issue is the absurdity of absurdities. Let me get this straight: the purpose of the Sin Tax is to gouge those who purchase alcohol and cigarettes not because anyone is trying to discourage consumption but rather so the County can use that money to pay for sports stadiums that do not produce anything but a fleeting moment witnessing the passing of a football, the dribbling of a basketball and the throwing of a baseball so that such a minute tidbit of diversion can be enjoyed by all. The stupidity of this proposition is enough to make your head spin even though the spin doctors advocating passage of this nonsense are already doing a pretty good job of hypnotizing the voters to actually consider supporting it. At least the Robber Barons of the previous centuries provided something tangible such as oil, steel, railroads etcetera. These team owners do not even provide one tangible thing that could ever be considered with the term “value added.” Almost everyone discusses this “enterprise” as though it is the same thing as industry {which it is not}. The price of admission is essentially a voluntary tax paid by those who can afford it to pay those who don’t need it. If this isn’t a transfer of wealth I don’t know what is.
The real outrage here is the fact that taxes on alcohol and cigarettes will not be used to aid in the reduction of addiction {hence the reference to “sin”} but rather to stuff the pockets of all three teams who could easily afford to pay for the repairs themselves. The vote was rammed through the last time {under somewhat suspicious circumstances} and hear we go again. But this time…not so fast!!! We the voters of Cuyahoga County are going to fight the proponents on this one and we don’t care if the teams up and go somewhere else {please see my views on entertainment below} because quite frankly there are simply more important things than sports and the unearned money that comes with it. Those in public office who are too stupid and lazy to find other ways to grow a major American city need to resign and leave their self-seeking political ambitions on the scrapheap of history. Don’t ever let it be said that this was time when the tide ran out on Cuyahoga County but rather was the time when the voters rose up to welcome the rising tide of change and rebuked this pathetic paradigm our previous elected leaders embraced. Let the battle be joined.
And now to the real underlying issue at hand:
One of the most disturbing facts about our capitalist nation is the misappropriation of funds directed to the salaries of entertainers. Everyone should agree that the value an athlete, movie star, talk-show host, team-owner, etcetera brings to the average citizen is very small. Granted, they do offer a minuscule of diversion from our daily trials and tribulations as did the jesters in the king’s court during the middle ages. But to allow these entertainers to horde such great amounts of wealth at the expense of more benevolent societal programs is unacceptable. They do not provide a product or a service so why are they rewarded as such?
Our society is also subjected to the “profound wisdom” of these people because it equates wealth with influence. Perhaps a solution to this problem and a alternative to defeated school levies, crumbling infrastructures, as well as all the programs established to help feed, clothe and shelter those who cannot help themselves would be to tax this undeserved wealth. Entertainers could keep 1% of the gross earnings reaped from their endeavor and 99% could be deposited into the public coffers.
The old ideas of the redistribution of wealth have failed, and it is time to adapt to modern-day preferences. People put their money into entertainment above everything else; isn’t it time to tap that wealth? Does anyone think this will reduce the quality of entertainment? It seems to me that when entertainers received less income, the quality was much higher.
Oh yes..the same old threat “the teams will move” manure. Hey..if the team owners can’t ante up money to fix and repair the facilities THEY use, maybe they should move. What you are telling me is the owners do not want to invest in their own teams. We have the Indians that get free rent unless they have more than 1,850,000 sold tickets in a year. What a deal! You can own a losing team, make money off tickets, concessions, parking, naming rights, and even broadcasts plus have the lowest payroll in their league while raping the taxpayers for free money and still make an absolute killing in profit!
These sports facilities are a business plain and simple, and like any business, they need to make money. If they cannot make money, file bankruptcy and sell the facilities to the owners for $1. Oh..and contrary to what our politicians tell us, “WE” do not won the facilities. Gateway owns them. We just get to support their lazy arses. Heck..residents of Cuyahoga County ought to be getting a DISCOUNT of 20% on tickets for living in Cuyahoga County as a reward for paying taxes for 25 years on these boondoggles!
Hey Kent…you could get off these forums and start a website for VOLUNTARY donations for these facilities! If you and your pro-sinners think it is such a good deal, you should have no problem getting donations! heck, the 3 sports teams should have no problem giving you $3 million as that is what they have spent so far to pass this tax.
$3 million. I wonder how many repairs that could have paid for?
A NO vote is a vote to dump Chief Wahoo! Which is what will happen when the Tribe moves to Vegas and changes their name and colors.
BROWNS BOLT for Los Angeles…deja vu all over again…as the Rams bolted Cleveland for SoCal in 1945, the year before the “real” Browns began playing here.
And the Cavs can head west…for Kansas City or Seattle or maybe somewhere else. If OKC can support an NBA team, so can a lot of smaller markets that are smaller than Cleveland’s. Maybe south…to South Georgia…they can become the Macon Whoopees.
Has any city ever lost TWO franchises in TWO different sports? Oh, wait…WE did…NFL and NHL. Hell, we’ll top that this time…we can be the first city to lose THREE franchises in THREE major sports! (Four if you count the Barons…)
Think a lot of people laugh at Cleveland now? How you gonna like being Little Rock or Tulsa…only with more snow? But Cleveland won’t be laughed-at for long…we’ll just continue to be the Incredible Shrinking City…while being IGNORED.
Never say never.
Chuckles the Clown
This is the attitude that keeps the scam going Chuckles. The reality is there was a spate of civic bidding wars in the 90’s thanks in no small part to the NFL and Modell doing the phony execution act on the Browns. I think cities have wised up to the shell game here though, after teams left Baltimore, Cleveland, and Houston…only to end up in…Baltimore, Cleveland, and Houston. The game is up, and the trend is increasingly for cities to call the bluff on this scam. The reality is the markets are the markets. NEO is going to have a pro football team, because whatever our inferiority complexes (you seem to have a raging case) we are we’re definitely in the top 20 markets for pro sports. As long as that’s true, there will be teams here, and as soon as it’s not, there won’t. The civic hostage payment isn’t going to matter. When you vote to continue the hostage economy rather than standing up to the scam, you are actually increasing the potential instability in the system with your hostage payment. Other cities are wising up and we should too.
The “we will lose out teams argument” has to end somewhere. What are you willing to do, or give up, to keep these teams? Shrink our Police and Fire a little more? End garbage collection? Playhouse Square? The Port of Cleveland?
Granted all those are silly hypotheticals, but what I know for certain is that these teams ARE immensely profitable AND they will always ask us to pony up more and more money AND we will never see a red cent in return.
While I do see the business that is generated because we have three sports franchises, I wonder if it is enough to justify our contributions/investments. Even if it is, why isn’t there a better way to generate those funds rather than another punitive tax that disproportionately targets the powerless?
In general, I’m tired of businesses all over America threatening city/state governments with the “give us every tax abatement and piece of funding we want or we’ll go next store.” This is a race to the bottom where the only loser will be the people.
We’re in the top 20 sports markets NOW…barely. The city is now 44th largest in the country…and still falling…county population has been stagnant for many years…and the metro area has gone from 14th to 16th to 18th in the last couple of decades.
Do the math…when roughly two dozen Clevelanders vote with their feet EVERY DAY, it doesn’t take a math whiz to see what’s down the road in another decade or two. A calculator and a glance at census figures will tell you the sorry tale. Without some kind of a deal, at least one of these teams is going to join the exodus. Maybe more than one. What do you do with an empty facility or two?
Truth be told, even if they ALL hit the road, it won’t affect my life all that much. I’m pretty old and the losing doesn’t hurt as much when you stop caring anymore…or expecting championships in your lifetime. And I’m now too poor to go to many games.
In addition, I have bigger problems than the Tribe, Browns, or Cavs. To begin with, I’m a lifelong, Die-Hard Cub Fan.
Chuckles the Clown
Do people forget the sin tax passed when Modell left?
Why is the tax for 20 years when the leases are for 15?
Why is it the rent on Cleveland Stadium $250k is less than what a first year rookie makes, and this is presumably a “good” deal?
If scoreboards are used for ad revenue profits, why do they not pay for themselves?
If we own the stadiums why do we share in 0% of the profits from these scoreboard ads and the selling of naming rights?
Why do people who may not be sports fans have to subsidize a private entertainment enterprise for the entertainment of others?
If these teams do so much (all 3 major LOSERS) do so much for the region, why do they need to be subsidized by the public?
If it’s a “sin” tax shouldn’t atheists be exempt?
How does a gov’t who’s been raided, indicted, and jailed for all types of corruption come to drinkers/smokers and try to play it as morality thing, when really none of it goes to cessation?
What in hell do smokers/drinkers have to do with sports? Why can’t fans of those sports fund their own good times?
No one cares if our sports teams move. They suck, and no one wants them. Ever hear the Jaguars to London rumors? Hey, wow, that’s great except that London doesn’t want the Jaguars because they SUCK ASS. The residents of Cleveland are the only ones that will put up with these greedy owners and their s****y teams, so we’re stuck with them and they’re stuck with us. Now pay for the repairs to your own ****ing stadiums, you assholes.
They want to leave, leave. Getting a new team can’t POSSIBLY be any worse than the last 15 years we’ve had with the “Browns”