People still hate Real dea

Deseret Morning News editorial
Published: Wednesday, June 6, 2007 12:47 a.m. MDT
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With funding arrangements for the new Real Salt Lake stadium still going through public processes, it's important to keep reminding officials that a strong majority of Salt Lake County residents don't agree with using taxes for such a thing. Even if a tax-funded facility is inevitable, that reminder ought to make guardians of the public treasury act with more care.

And so, a poll conducted by Dan Jones & Associates for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV, published Monday, shows that 60 percent of county residents oppose the Legislature's decisions to give $35 million in county hotel taxes to the stadium project. Statewide, 56 percent oppose it. Those figures are consistent with polls taken previously on the same subject.

Team officials say these figures represent a general lack of education. Once people understand that out-of-towners are paying for the stadium when they spend the night at local hotels, they change their minds and support the stadium.

That would be, of course, if those people also believed there is such a thing as a free lunch. Or if they like to be mesmerized by those shell games performed by street magicians.

Sure, visitors will pay the public's share of the stadium. But if they weren't, the hotel taxes they pay would be used to fund something else — most likely a public service legitimately associated with tourism. No matter where you extract money from public coffers, it creates an impact that must be covered in some other way. And no matter how you try to explain this funding scheme away, people are being forced to give up their hard-earned money so that government can hand it to a private entertainment enterprise.

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Without the hotel tax, those visitors would have more money to spend in local shops and restaurants. Every dollar taken out of public circulation has a multiplied negative effect on the economy, just as every dollar put in multiplies in a positive way.

Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon remains the only high-profile public official who seems to understand this. The Legislature bulldozed over his objections to the funding scheme. But, at his insistence, the final version of an interlocal agreement that put it into place was stripped down so it simply gives the hotel money to the state to fund the stadium. He wouldn't allow the city of Sandy to join the agreement and possibly use part of the money for a hotel, broadcast studio or some other thing near the stadium.

Now Sandy has to work out details of its $10 million portion of public subsidy. City officials need to be similarly careful. The public is watching. Most of them remain skeptical.

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