tiggerpolice

Smart play: Let New Orleans pay the Saints


The issue: Special taxes to pay off the Saints.
We suggest: They put the cost where the benefit is.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco is proposing a set of new taxes that would target the New Orleans area generally and New Orleans Saints fans specifically to generate the money the state needs to keep paying the team $186 million over 10 years. It’s an obligation the previous administration incurred but which the state now says it cannot meet.

Blanco’s proposal is good politics. If legislation to implement it is drafted properly -- for example, the taxes should sunset when the 10-year deal concludes -- it deserves passage. The plan to continue the controversial payments to an already-profitable professional sports team would place most of the burden with those who will derive the primary benefit of keeping the Saints in New Orleans.

On Wednesday, consideration of the tax plan was delayed for a week in the Legislature so the Blanco administration can conduct further discussions with legislators from Orleans and Jefferson parishes, where hotel and car-rental taxes would go up. In addition to room- and car-rental customers, Saints’ ticket-buyers would pay surcharges. Together, the new taxes would produce an estimated $12 million a year, which is almost what the state believes it needs to pay its annual keep-the-Saints bill.

Understandably, many Louisianians in the far-flung reaches of the state and the members of the Legislature who represent them are not inclined to keep paying the Saints. Residents of western and northern Louisiana do not closely follow the team; the Houston and Dallas teams are nearer to their homes and their hearts. And these residents derive little of the financial benefit attributed to the Saints’ operations in New Orleans.

However, according to an economic-benefit analysis by Timothy Ryan of the University of New Orleans, more than 4,000 jobs with salaries of $161 million are created directly and indirectly by Saints’ operations, those operations create more than $25 million in state and local tax payments annually, and overall spending in Saints-related operations tops $400 million. While those numbers are estimates, it is indisputable that the team’s presence makes a significant positive contribution to the economy of the New Orleans region.

Yes, it’s galling that owner Tom Benson has demanded that state government pay him a subsidy and that the state was more or less forced to comply to keep the team from leaving. Lamentably, that is the situation across the nation with other NFL teams and other states and cities. There is financial competition by cities that do not have teams to pay big bucks to owners to attract them. On top of the measurable economic impact, our society bequeaths teams a desirable quality-of-life quotient -- you can debate the merits of that, but you cannot argue that it exists.

The previously mentioned economic-benefit report indicates it would cost the city and state money were the Saints to leave. Additionally, New Orleans and Louisiana would suffer in prestige if the Saints depart for a more-lucrative location -- and clearly there are cities that can put more money on the table.

Louisiana state government presently does not have the dollars available in its budget to meet all of its needs for education, health care and coastal preservation, all of which are higher priorities than professional football. New levies on New Orleans-area car rentals and hotel rooms and Saints-ticket surcharges look like a politically palatable solution to keeping up the state’s payment obligation to the team.


http://www.houmatoday.com/apps/pbcs....506020316/1030