I just thought I’d add to our discussion of the Charlotte City Council’s closed-door, screw-you-taxpayers, cronyistic stadium deal for the Great Pro Football Franchise That Is Too Big to Fail, Except on the Field.
Our City/County Issue Guide has warned against local governments “subsidizing or outright funding functions that belong to the private sector” in a self-defeating pursuit of “economic development” while ignoring opportunity costs as well as other cities’ disappointing experiences (and their own, too) with such projects. In blog posts, newsletters, and articles over the years (those are just a representative sample) we have discussed these projects as they arose and passed along others’ research for the benefit of discerning public officials and citizens skeptical of stadium projects’ sirens’ song of Future Great Economic Growth and Big-City-Has-Arrived Relevance.
