Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells us, “Improving the Jones Dome won’t just help Stan Kroenke, it will help the entire region.” Huh? The proposal by the Rams – and any other proposal to spend money on the Dome other than for required maintenance – should be summarily rejected.
The city’s deal with the Rams was an ugly pig when it was done back in 1994, and it is still an ugly pig. Burwell needs to stop drinking the Rams’ Gatorade and wake up to reality. The City of St. Louis is facing its third year of multi-million-dollar deficits, St. Louis County is laying people off to balance its budget, the State of Missouri has its own $500 million deficit. Burwell’s own Quad Cities-based employer has had to file bankruptcy.
The situation in which the city now finds itself was forecast in 1994 when then-Comptroller Virvus Jones voted against the Rams’ lease because it was a bad deal for the city. Despite Jones’ objections, the city entered into a lease that required the Rams to pay only 250K a year, let the team control all of the Dome’s operating revenue from August to February, yet pay no operating expense. This includes ticket sales, concession revenue, any rental revenue from non-Rams football events and 75 percent of all of the advertisement revenue, including naming rights revenue.
“When the late former U.S. Senator Tom Eagleton met with me to explain the details of the lease, I told him the terms were worse than what the Japanese did to the people of Nanking, China,” Jones tells the EYE. “He told me this was a ‘take it or leave it,’ ‘sell or no sell’ deal and that no changes could be made.”
The city took it.
“The main change I wanted was to share the revenue from the concessions and get a larger share of the ad revenue for a maintenance-improvement fund to finance the improvements that were sure to be needed every 10 years,” Jones said. “I asked Eagleton what would be the obligation of the CVC if eight other NFL teams played in stadiums that have crystal glass domes? Eagleton just laughed and said he could not worry about that because he would probably not be alive when the improvement clause kicked in.”
The senator passed in 2007. And while Jones’ crystal ball was a little cloudy – the Rams want the city to pay for a retractable dome, not a crystal glass ceiling – the fine print is kicking in, all right. It’s kicking in right against the taxpayers’ skulls.
Eagleton is not around to hear the outrage. Jones was not spared it back in the day, however prescient his opposition may have been.
“When I opposed the lease in 1994, I was vilified,” Jones said. “Radio stations and sportscasters were receiving death threats on my life because I disagreed with signing a lease that obligated the CVC to improving the Dome every 10 years to adhere – not merely to public safety needs or preventive maintenance issues that would occur with any property – but to the aesthetic standards of the top-tier stadiums in the league.”
Burwell may be banging the drum feebly for the city to pony up the money for the Rams’ retractable dome and other improvements, but the EYE thinks that’s the last thing Kroenke actually expects or wants to happen. The Rams’ ridiculous proposal is a poison pill he doesn’t expect the city to swallow. There is no possible way that rational business people would conclude that the city would be able to convince the voters in this economy (or even the elected officials of St. Louis city, St. Louis County and the state) that they should even consider paying for any portion of this proposal. The estimated $700 million cost of the stadium – not to mention the forecasted $500 million-plus loss in convention and related business resulting from the projected three-year closing of the Dome during construction – means this thing has to be dead upon arrival.
Even if you want a professional football team in St. Louis, even this chronic sorry loser of a football team, who wants Kroenke here now? Kroenke has been the quintessential civically disengaged CEO of a high-visibility sports organization. Who wants to pay any more of his bills? He is acting like a parody of the entitlement mentality of NFL owners, who seek to extort concessions from communities starved for professional football in their city. The privileged legal status of NFL franchises that feeds this mentality needs to be examined.
This proposal shows us what Kroenke really thinks of St. Louis and the people who pay taxes here. He has just said, in so many words, “Let them eat cake” – or concrete. And the EYE doesn’t mean a Ted Drewes concrete custard.
Tishaura and Rush
The EYE’s admiration for the intelligence and insight of Virvus Jones – who helped to found this column and whose activist tenure in the Comptroller’s Office created some lasting benefits for the city – is no secret. His daughter Tishaura Jones, Assistant Minority Leader in the Missouri House of Representatives and candidate for City of St. Louis Treasurer – inherited her daddy’s tart, unflinching candor.
A number of Missouri Democrats issued statements on Monday when Speaker of the House Steve Tilley, a Missouri Republican who looks like Howdy Doody with a goatee, went forward with enshrining a bust of loudmouth right-wing radio bigot Rush Limbaugh in the Missouri Capitol. But Tishaura’s response cut the deepest. Here is the nugget that news outlets picked up:
“It is quite clear from their handling of the Limbaugh ceremony that Republicans were ashamed of what they were doing and wanted as few people as possible to witness it. When you take great steps to hide what you’re doing, it usually means that you know what you’re doing is wrong.”
That so perfectly expresses the shameful thing that happened in Jefferson City this week, when Limbaugh was honored by Tilley at the state Capitol in a closed ceremony with armed guards.
Tishaura Jones’ complete statement issued on Monday is worth hearing:
“In recent weeks, House Republicans have repeatedly made Missouri a national laughingstock with their ‘don’t say gay’ bill and support for legislation to address the non-existent problem of employment discrimination against gun owners while simultaneously seeking to make it easier for employers to discriminate against victims of actual bias. And now they would honor a man who has no honor.
“Last week a truly remarkable and deserving man, Dred Scott, was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians in a ceremony that was open to the public and streamed live on the internet. Today’s induction of controversial radio host Rush Limbaugh was in sharp contrast, with the ceremony kept secret and the House chamber locked to all but a select few while a dozen armed guards blocked members of the public from entering. Even the web feed from the House chamber was silent.
“It is quite clear from their handling of the Limbaugh ceremony that Republicans were ashamed of what they were doing and wanted as few people as possible to witness it. When you take great steps to hide what you’re doing, it usually means that you know what you’re doing is wrong.”
It is instructive to compare this common sense from a good Democrat against the blather Limbaugh spewed about the Missouri Democrats who opposed his being honored on stated principles. Limbaugh is praising Tilley for going forward with the ceremony, albeit under lock and key and armed guard: “He did not give them any quarter, laughed at them when they called his office, which is what you have to do because they are deranged. They literally are deranged. Our friends, our so-called friends, on the other side of the aisle, are deranged.”
