Public Funding for Stadiums Jumps the Shark in Miami

Cities readers know that one of my biggest economic development peeves — right alongside government-backed casinos — is the gargantuan public giveaway to professional sports stadiums. And according to the Brookings Institution's Adie Tomer and Siddharth Kulkarni, writing earlier this month in the Sun Sentinel, the outrageous, over-the-top deal for the new Miami Marlins stadium should once and for all end the "era of publicly funded stadiums."

As has been widely reported in the Miami press, the Marlins's owner, Jeffrey Loria, was able to extract government backing for the new, architecturally innovative $600 million stadium. After promising the region that he would create a winner as well as attract some big name free agents, Loria then let go of several star players in a $160 million payroll dump via a ludicrous deal with the Toronto Blue Jays. But as Tomer and Kulkarni point out, the deal is even more disastrous than it seems: