Hoop dreams dead

There’s the lack of support for a government subsidy. There’s the lack of a fan base in a town where everybody’s loyal to their hometown team (go Angels!). There’s subtle opposition from a gambling industry that doesn’t want to take pro sports — even for a single team — off the betting books, or see would-be gamblers spend time at a stadium rather than at the slots.

Add to the list the failure of Senate Bill 501, introduced one week before the 2011 Legislature’s final adjournment, which collapsed under its own flaws.

The bill sought to provide a way forward for one of three sports stadium ideas: A city-planned complex slated for the Symphony Park land downtown; an arena planned for UNLV; or a three-arena project planned for land across Interstate 15 from the Mandalay Bay. In the wake of SB501’s demise, the last project has been declared dead.

Ironically, the person most at fault for the bill’s destruction is a woman who never formally had jurisdiction over it: Assembly Taxation Committee Chairwoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick, who should be nominated for Legislator of the Year. She agreed to discuss the bill “in concept” in her committee, where it got the most extensive vetting.

Kirkpatrick was the perfect legislator to hear this bill: She still feels the unintended consequences of the 2005 green building bill that allowed casinos to collect huge tax rebates for constructing more environmentally friendly buildings.

No respecter of persons, Kirkpatrick and members of her committee drilled into the bill line by line with a vengeance, ferreting out details and exposing flaws. (The bill initially could have allowed the city of Las Vegas to funnel tax money from throughout its redevelopment area to an arena project, a new level of chutzpa for an entity long practiced at giving away the store.)

Essentially, the plan worked like this: The county would form an “event facility district,” and channel all increased tax revenue (from nearly every tax in the state’s arsenal) back to the arena project. With some exceptions, local and state governments wouldn’t see much new revenue from the projects, but then again, they’d see nothing if an arena was never built.

Still, any arena project would have impacts on local and state services, from public safety to water and sewer infrastructure, to roads and highways, that would have had to be borne by the taxpayer. But developers of all three projects testified they simply could not build without the tax incentives, and noted that it’s the rare arena built without at least some help from the government.

But Kirkpatrick wasn’t swayed by the millions of dollars represented by would-be stadium developers who came before her committee, nor the hundreds of thousands in lobbying talent hired to represent them. She declared repeatedly she would not process the bill without having her questions fully answered.

“Without direction, without a clear intent at the end, I don’t care if it (the bill) ever makes it out,” Kirkpatrick said at one point.

Stadium developers who may have wrongly fancied themselves another NV Energy or Nevada Tavern Association (entities that did get favorable last-minute bills through the legislative process) may have chafed at Kirkpatrick’s forcefulness. But the reality was, the bill had problems, and her committee did its job in pointing them out.

Arena dreams aren’t entirely dead in Nevada — Caesars Entertainment has a ballot initiative in 2012 for its planned project behind the Strip, and the UNLV proposal, which doesn’t rely on a pro sports team, may still be viable, too. But there are plenty of hurdles still to overcome, and a long list of reasons why a major-league sports team may never call Las Vegas home.

 

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist, and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/SteveSebelius or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or at ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.