Ballpark

To get their new ballpark approved, the Tampa Bay Rays made many promises to local students…now that the deal is done, the Rays will just ignore almost all of them.

It has been reported this week that the city has agreed to a community benefits agreement (“CBA”) with the Tampa Bay Rays. In this agreement, the Rays are forced to do little except say that they made efforts to do small things for local citizens. Overall, the CBA has the city giving the team $80M of taxpayer money while the team is promising to give $21M worth of benefits to the city. As the Tampa Monitor wrote about the community benefits agreement, the deal “relies too much on the Rays voluntarily keeping their promises.” Additionally, there is almost “nothing…

Stadium

Kansas City Chiefs relocation deal still unknown, company hired to do their economic report has questionable past

Essentially, the state of Kansas allows for lawmakers to use a “special incentive program” that was started just two years ago to fund a project like the Kansas City Chiefs. The lawmaker who wrote this law (not including language allowing for the public to vote) claims that the public doesn't need to vote since the sales tax is not increasing. I really do hope that this politician understands that while the sales tax will not increase, the money that it brought in to MANY state functions (like public education, facilities, etc...) will now be diverted to the Chiefs project.…