The Real Salt Lake Fiasco

I have serious issues with the decision to build a stadium for the soccer team Real Salt Lake (RSL). Today I read that the new stadium will seat 21,000 fewer fans than Rice Eccles Stadium where they currently play. This means they built a stadium that is half the capacity of their current stadium. Why? When the team was trying to get taxpayers to pay for the stadium it seamed like they needed the stadium (presumably for overcrowding). As the stadium was obviously not filled then it seemed silly to build a new one. What possibly could the need be that required taxpayer dollars?

I really don't care if you like soccer or not. It isn't all that popular in America, even now, yet for some reason Salt Lake needs a soccer team? We don't even have a football team and football is way more popular! Now by all this I'm not stating that we shouldn't have a team, just not a tax dollar supported team.

I guess that's all beside the point. My real objections to the stadium run much deeper. The team originally asked Salt Lake County for money for the stadium. The county did an economic study to look at the risks for the plan. This is wise to do as it prevents tax dollars from being wasted. Well the county came back and said the stadium was a bad economic investment and it couldn't justify spending tax dollars on such a risky investment. What did the team (owner) do? They (He) complained and said the investment was fine! I bet that wasn't biased at all.

The story gets even worse. RSL then went to the governor to get the decision overturned. Governor Huntsman (go here to send angry e-mails) called the legislature together and had them change Utah law so that the money the county wouldn't give to RSL became under the State's control! The governor and the legislature forced the county to spend county tax dollars in a way the county didn't want to! This is crazy. It is a violation of county rights in my opinion. Republicans talk about state rights and avoiding federal government intrusion; apparently counties don't have the same rights in their relation to states. Remember, what makes this all worse is that the county had turned the project down for being a risky and irresponsible use of tax dollars.

Real Salt Lake of coarse would prefer to sweep these little facts under the rug. Their PR team began talking about how the tax dollars are hotel tax dollars so its just people from out of the state (or county) that pay that tax anyways. This is a clever lie. True the money comes from hotels largely used by non-residents. The problem is, now that this tax money is being used on the stadium, the county must divert tax money from residents (property, sales, etc.) to cover whatever services the county wanted to spend that money on. SO IT IS THE SAME AS SPENDING RESIDENT'S TAX CONTRIBUTIONS!

I forgot to mention that several times Dave Checketts, the RSL owner, threw fits when cities in Salt Lake County turned down the stadium plan because it was too risky. The county wasn't the first to come to this conclusion. Checketts would threaten to move the team from the county among other things. Yet the legislature and governor had to bow to his wishes and force the county to spend tax dollars. Have none of these people ever dealt with a whining child before? Oh you didn't get your third box of cookies and are now crying incessantly? Poor thing, here are some cookies and heck, here is a case of candy bars too.

I am disgusted by the recklessness of the governor and legislature of Utah and of RSL. We really should vote these people out of office.