Last month's post on Pittsburgh's slots-for-arena scheme got picked up by the Pittsburgh City Paper, some great unexpected publicity which meant a slightly elevated level of comments.
Some of these are simply not worth a response, but others are. Those that are fall into two distinct categories:
(1) People who misconstrued or missed entirely some of the key points, and who had arguments with positions I do not share; and
(2) Principled disagreements that at least engaged with the issues that I was raising.
I will deal with all of these in turn. Let's recap what I said, this time with an emphasis on what I did not say about the slots-for-arena deal:
* The state has legalized slots, and Pittsburgh will be getting one of the licenses. I did not take a position on the legalization of gambling, though I did note that as a revenue-raiser it amounts to a regressive tax, and that it is see-no-evil libertarian childishness not to acknowledge that it will have negative social effects. These issues are separate or at least distinct from the issue of what we do with gambling revenue once it's been legalized, but it is right and good to insist that casino owners do something to make up for the social harm that they inevitably cause. Also, I did not make the case that any one proposal was better than any other, least of all that the Isle of Capri/Penguins/Nationwide proposal is worse than Forrest City or any of the others. In my view, they're all bad from the point of view of what we might have got had our elected leaders made a different decision long ago on which things were important in this process. They did not, and we are stuck with shit.
* Developers competing for the license are throwing in "sweeteners" to make their proposal more appealing in the eyes of the public officials who will decide who gets the license. So in the Isle of Capri example, they are throwing in $293 million for a new Penguins arena. We can argue endlessly about whether slots will really bring in that much money, but the developers surely do seem to think so -- so much so, in fact, that they are willing to set aside hundreds of millions of dollars from the development because they think it will help them grease the skids with political decision-makers. They seem to think that they will still make a tidy profit on top of that.
* Because this process is so political, it is the height of silliness to claim that any of the revenue involved in these projects is merely "private" money. The decision of who gets the project will be a political one, one in which the public should properly be involved -- and in fact, that is not only not a bad thing, it is a model that we ought to follow for all forms of "economic development." At the same time and in consequence, it is dishonest to argue that using this revenue for purposes other than an arena would be impossible because developers simply wouldn't do it. They would do it if we all made it clear that it is important, because the slots license is that potentially lucrative.
* All of the developers are proposing to do something for the Penguins as one of their "sweeteners," because our political leaders long ago made a choice about what to emphasize and what was important. The title of my post may have put the onus on Mario Lemieux because he is indeed a slimy opportunist who would gleefully steal directly from the health or public school budgets if he could, and because he shamelessly positioned himself to reap a windfall from these revenues that were at least theoretically to be available to the public for other purposes. (It is childish -- nay, infantile -- to suggest that I would have had to meet him personally to make the judgment about whether he is an asshole. His reprehensible public conduct is bad enough to make that assessment. I don't care if he loves his wife, nor do I give a shit if he has a touch of that contrived personal humility that so many Pittsburgh sports fans find endearing and "non-threatening" especially when compared to the "arrogant" black athletes they love to hate. In his private life he may be a "nice guy"; in his public life, he is a dick. Pittsburgh has made him a very wealthy man. Mario Lemieux has not "done a lot for this city"; this city has done a lot for Mario Lemieux, period.) But in the actual post I made clear to put the blame more squarely on our elected officials, who sent a message to the developers that the arena was important, when they could have easily sent the message that something else was more important.
The only legitimate counter-argument to these points came from several posters who argued that the $293 million is not simply throwaway money but is an investment, since the arena will inevitably bring in more revenue and economic development for the city. I happen not to agree with this position, but it at least engages in a principled way with the issues I was trying to raise.
For these folks, I would suggest reading some of the critical literature on local "economic development" subsidies, particularly the giveaways to white-elephant convention centers, professional sports, and commercial entertainers that nearly every city and region in the country has pursued at one time or another. All of the evidence indicates that the economic development "bang for the buck" from these projects is much less than investments in basic infrastructure, health care, and education.
In the case of health care alone, consider the fact that the endowment fund for adultBasic health insurance for the whole state of Pennsylvania was at $330 million when it was taken to balance the state budget. (This program was itself funded with tobacco settlement money, which once again raises the issue of regressive "sin" taxes -- a digression, but one worth noting in any case.) The $293 million that Isle of Capri proposes to put into the arena in Pittsburgh alone over the course of just a few years is a comparable figure (and Isle of Capri's promised pittance of $1 million a year in vaguely-defined "community benefits" looks infinitesimal by comparison). With a little research, anyone could raise similar comparisons about the shuttered city rec centers and pools; about city schools; or about programs for drug and alcohol treatment, mental health, and HIV/AIDS prevention.
One commenter accused me of typifying the "mentality" of this city, and oh, how I wish that were true. But if by accusing me of being a typical Pittsburgher, someone means to say that I am against creating a few more hip yuppie enclaves while leaving vast social problems untouched, then I proudly plead guilty to that charge, and lustily raise a can of Iron City in the general direction of yinz guys.
