“We sent a message that Seattle is not a Socialist state. People don’t want government subsidizing private business."

Um, socialism is the government ownership of business. The public subsidy of private business is known as good old american style capitalism. (E.g. ADM and Cargill have been government subsidized for 40 years by price-reducing subidies corn.)

It's not just that sports subsidies are subsidies. It's that as businesses they are basically huge marketing engines. You aren't subsidizing a sports team as much as you are subsidizing a huge corporate branding enterprise. That just feels dirty to a lot of folks.

Kudos to Van Dyk.

I hope someone can send Wally and Howard a not saying we love the Sonics, hated the decisions ownership made, especially trying to sucker us for more money.

Public funding for multi-zillion dollar sports enterprises is stupid. How is it not?

Los Angeles hasn't had an NFL team for close to 15 years and until the NFL decides they need our market bad enough to build their own playground, we won't miss them.

Enjoy Tulsa, Sonics. Thanks for '79. Don't forget to write.

This is gettin' bad. First we are voted the second whitest city in the US, then we can't sell tix to a Digable Planets show and now we lose our basketball team. Do I smell a really nasty trend????

whew... now i can stop pretending to care about the NBA.

The only thing I'll miss is the Storm.

Just think - more venue space for cool music acts!

Yeah, and I'll bet Howard & his fellow owners are weeping - all the way to the bank. Clearly, they cared as much about keeping the Sonics in Seattle as many of the people who signed off on I-91. This just proves, the whole debacle was never about doing right by the fans, or about restoring some forgotten sense of civic pride in our former champions or whatever other pseudo-emotional BS they spewed - it was always about the money; how much they could squeeze out of the taxpayers, or how much they could squeeze out of some other town full of gullible rubes.

So, when you hear the inevitable hanky-wringing paeans to the soon-to-be-lost legacy of the Seattle SuperSonics from the former owners, just remember, a multi-million dollar check goes a long way toward drying up those sniffles.

Josh:

One day, I hope, you will outgrow your penchant for facile, superficial "journalism." Until then, let me inform you that the person who scuttled Schultz's deal was Nick Licata, and not that sports-hating loser Van Dyk.

Either Oklahoma City is a bluff, or these Okies are just bad businessmen. That town can't support an NBA franchise, and Seattle can.

Van Dyk's initiative would tie the city's hands, and should be defeated. His goal is to drive professional sports out of town, not to save taxpayer money. To this day he is still pissed off over the Mariners' ballpark, even though it is the best baseball stadium in the country, and one of Seattle's most positive assets.

Certainly we should force the Sonics to accept a better deal for the taxpayers. If the new owners won't deal, then yes, kiss their asses goodbye. But now that Schultz is out of the picture, give a deal a chance to work.

Bravo Ivan. What he said.

Hey Ivan, please read this article I wrote several months ago on Nick Licata V. The Sonics.

In what way can OKC "not support an NBA franchise"? It's not THAT much smaller than Seattle, with no competing major-league sports. It's the biggest city in the entire Great Plains, and aside from the metropolitan area residents, it has a vast pool of people within driving distance.

Good luck, and good riddance. We won't miss them at all; hardly anyone will even remember they were here.

From what colleagues are telling me they've seen in the news... it appears the Sonics are going to stay in Seattle at least for this season due to a strange turn of events in OKC: the Hornets, who played in OKC this year due to New Orleans getting wiped out, may not just play in OKC this season but will apply to permanently stay there.

Years from now, people will look back on this day, and try to remember what the Sonics were. Were they a frosty beverage? A burger joint? Or a lame sports team that made our soccer team suddenly seem world class?

Comte, Ivan, et al: What part of "we don't care" do you sports-lovers not understand? How can we make you understand that we really (no, really) don't care one iota about your favorite sport. Ivan, I don't want the city to get a better deal; I want there to be no deal whatsoever. Not one red cent of taxpayer money spent to help out a local team. That's right, Comte, it is all about money and I don't want to do right by the fans. There are plenty of local profit-making enterprises (Microsoft, Washington Mutual) that can generate "civic pride" without nipping from the public purse.

I am a sports fan and i still agree with David Wright. The NBA is acting more like gangsters than civic minded members of the communities they are in. It's highway robbery and we shouldn't play the fools no matter how sweet the cool aid is - don't drink it! Hopefully other sports franchises will think twice the next time they try to fleece Seattle.

Nah Nah Nah Nah
Nah Nah Nah Nah
Hey Hey Hey
Good Bye!

Um, David I have no idea what brand of crack you're smokin', but please point out where in my post I declared myself a "sports fan". Yes, I did use the word fan one time, but never identified myself as one.

Frankly, I couldn't care less about the Sonics; I was simply pointing out that, despite all of Schultz & Co's public pronouncements to the contrary, as soon as the ink on that $350 M (yes, that's $350,000,000) check is signed, they're not going to care either - and I doubt they ever really did.

could have been worse - could have been $550,000,000, with $200,000,000 of it Seattle taxpayer money.

That would buy a lot of schools. Or bus service. Or parks. Or sidewalks.

As far as that goes Will, I wonder if the sale absolves Schultz & Co. from eventually paying back the City for the bonds we've been carrying for the past decade, that they were supposed to pay off? I don't recall the press ever looking into that question. But in any case I can't imagine the OK investors agreeing to buy the team, if it also meant taking on the debt load from the previous renovation.

David Wright:

Oh, I understand your position all right. I understand it perfectly. and I don't favor the deal that the Sonics tried to bludgeon the city with either, any more than you do.

I also understand that the Sonics' lease runs through 2010, and the taxpayers *should* demand that all parties honor it till a better deal can be worked out.

It doesn't matter if *you* don't want a better deal. Your vote is counted, and you're outnumbered. Most people *do* want professional sports in this town; they just want the taxpayers to have a bigger cut and better terms. Nothing wrong with that; that's what *I* want, too.

Sports-haters like you and Ted Van Dyk are in the minority, which you lot insist on learning the hard way, every time.

If the deal is good enough for most people, it will be signed, the Sonics will stay, you will pay like everyone else, and I'm perfectly happy with that.

If the Okies think they can dictate their terms to this city at this time, the Sonics will leave, and it will be the ownership's fault, and I wish their mostly black team good luck in the peckerwood belt.

Thanks for the lesson in power politics, Ivan. I already knew there were people like you who feel no compunction about fleecing others to pay for their wants, but it is rare to encounter someone so willing to revel openly in his own self-centeredness.

I assume we won't be hearing any complaints from you the next time a large agri-business or oil conglomerate lands a fat government subsidy, since such subsidies clearly represent the democratic will of everyone except a few anti-corporate nutjobs. Right?

Ivan, I can name better ballparks than Safeco. Coors Field, here in my hometown, for one. Camden Yards for another. And don't overlook the oldies but goodies, Wrigley Field and Fenway Park.

Ivan, Oklahoma can support an NBA franchise. The New Orleans Hornets played there last season after Hurricane Katrina and the attendance was 7th best in the NBA. Also, the OK group can buy out the lease.

You don't need 3 sports teams, or even any sports team, to make a great city.

Wright:

Every case is different. I am neither an absolutist nor a hypocrite. You appear to be an absolutist. That's your right, but it's also your problem.

There are relatively good deals and relatively bad deals. If the only deal that the Sonics' new ownership will accept is the one that Schultz offered the city, then yes, I stand with you.

But your position appears to be as absolutist as the Sonics' position, at the other end of the continuum. Somewhere, though, there is a deal out there that will satisfy enough of the parties to keep the Sonics in town, and I expect our elected officials to find that deal and sign it.

You can be pure, virtuous, and sanctimonious in your little anti-corporate bubble, but every city in this country has been built and developed by public-private deals such as this. Go live in a cabin in the boonies like the Unabomber if it's too much for you.

The black population in the "peckerwood belt" is many times the proportion it is here in the "white refuge" belt. OK has far more black people that WA does, even though WA is twice as big overall.

Clearly, a sports franchise killed David Wright's father.

Seriously, though, there are people on extremes of both sides... one side thinks that teams have every right to ask the public for millions and get it... and the other side feels that pro sports has absolutely no place in a big city and deserves less than nothing from them. Sports are so popular that tens of thousands pack a stadium to see their team each game... so it's not like sports was forced upon the public against its will. At the same time, there's a line between a civic contribution and extortion, and the Sonics' demands, let alone only 10 years after receiving stadium renovations on the city's dime, are over the line.

Wait... isn't David Wright the all-star 3rd baseman for the New York Mets?

Ivan: You are creating a false dichotomy (and I suspect you know it). We would not all need to go live like the Unabomber in a society without corporate welfare. Plenty of large corporations that play key roles in our society do not require government subsidies.

Some people cite government provision of transportation and education as examples of important investments, then try to argue that their favorite subsidy is just another example of such investment. But even the people who make this argument know that there is a vast gulf between the provision of a diffuse public good with across-the-board benefits and a subsidy that targets a particular business in a particular location.

I am not so naive as to believe that people will stop trying to get their favorite business subsidized. And I am not so naive as to believe that some won't succeed. But to claim that those of us who oppose your favoite subsidy are just neanderthals who need to shut up and go back to our caves is beyond the pale of logical discourse.

Wright:

What part of "I oppose the Sonics' present offer" have you failed to understand?

The question is not "do we do these deals or do we not?" Because we do. The question is: "Where do we draw the line on each particular deal?"

For the Seattle Center Coliseum (hey, nobody paid *me* a nickel for "naming rights"), I say no, the tenant does *not* get a cut of other bookings, unless it books them itself. The tenant does *not* have sole management rights over the entire venue. That venue belongs to the taxpayers. The tenant does *not* get "luxury suites" built at public expense.

Start with that and let's deal. None of this "just say no to sports, period" shit, and none of this Initiative 91 crap that would bind the city's hands.

If the deal is on mutually beneficial terms, and if the taxpayers get something for it, then it's not a "subsidy" anymore. It's all where you draw the line.

Would you call the tax breaks to Boeing "subsidies?"

Yes, I would call the tax breaks that were constructed specifically to benefit Boeing subsidies, and I opposed them.

Because the taxpayers got nothing in return, or because it's your ideology?

Somebody gets something out of every government funding decision, but the net effect of targeted subsidies is almost always negative. So my opposition is on entirely practical grounds.

Left to it own devices, a business will usually choose the most economic alternative. If it's more efficent to build airplanes somewhere else, Boeing will move there. If there is insufficient demand to make a pro sports team profitable in Seattle, there won't be a pro sports team. Government only intervenes with subsidies when it wants to entice a business to choose a less economic alternative. A less economic alternative means that resources are not allocated in a utility-maximizing way.

In the soviet command-and-control economy, when the government wanted to make a bad business decision, it could just issue the order. We have to use subsidies, so we get the bad effect of the bad decision and we get to pay for it. Ah well, at least having to pay lowers the number of such interventions.

Meanwhile, in "progressive" Sacramento, the politicians and Vegas billionaire Maloof brothers (Kings owners) contrive behind closed doors to put a sales tax measure on the ballot. To subsidize a $500 new arena (the King's 3rd since moving from Kansas City). Same old arguments by proponents, basically distilled to "civic pride" and that feeling of being a big league city. Big league shaft job on citizens/taxpayers, some of whom actually believe their are better ways to launder 1/2 billion into the local economy.
Seattle has my respect -- hit the road if you can't pay your own way in our city. your not a public entity.