Guest MINDSETTER™ Girouard: We Can Only Blame Our Leaders for the Loss of the PawSox

Monday, August 20, 2018

Guest MINDSETTER™ Larry Girouard

 

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I did not want the PawSox to leave.  The PawSox has been part of the fabric of Rhode Island for nearly 50 years. I have many happy memories of watching PawSox games with my children and friends. That said, I strongly feel that the taxpayers (which means the State of Rhode Island) should not have been put at risk again.  If there was no risk to the taxpayers, then leadership did a poor job conveying that.

Taxpayers do not trust leadership for all the reasons we place on the table when we debate our leadership’s qualities over a beer.  This is why 70% of the electorate was against funding a new PawSox stadium.  Actually, they are not against the PawSox, they are against the total lack of transparency that leadership has exhibited on programs like:

38 Studios ... this “shady deal” cost the taxpayers millions and to date, only two-bit players have been placed on the carpet. Really!!!!

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Truck Tolls ... 60%++ of the electorate believes that cars will be tolled if/when the truckers win the lawsuit.  Leadership is hiding behind their belief that they can just toll trucks. This gets the gantries up so that the switch to all vehicles can happen with a flip of the switch if they lose the lawsuit.

RhodeMapRI ... the HUD section 8 housing program was supported by a committee and never solicited a vote from the taxpayers.

Lack of Ethics ... while not a formal program, it certainly appears to be one, and leadership has done a good job here. Just read the papers.

RI’s big government does whatever it wants, with as little discretion for the taxpayer as possible. While leadership wants to keep their power position jobs, they push the envelope as far as possible to drive the economic engine to fund their insatiable appetite to spend.  A $9.6bn budget for a state the size of RI with only one million people is ridiculous by any measure.

I do not think that there are many, if any, Triple-A ballparks in the country that are making money.  At some point, losses will fall back on the taxpayer despite the promise of $1M in net revenue coming back to the State from the new ballpark. With the expected cost of the ballpark being $85M based on the last funding mechanism, the return of $1M per year certainly raises the question regarding the quality of the investment.  Perhaps this is why net worth people like Mr. Ryan and Mr. Murray did not support more of the investment

I am not a believer in the “if you build it, they will come” mentality.  RI must change its business culture if our State wants to attract investment. The facts remain that business investment has been minimal, Rhode Island is at risk of losing a house seat after the 2020 census, and most importantly, RI continues to be in the bottom 10% of the business-friendly studies (CNBC, Thumbtack, WalletHub, and the like). Take this low rating coupled with Rhode Island’s abysmal ethics reputation, and you have a State brand that totally discourages investment.

This is why the electorate is not willing to gamble on the PawSox promise. RI Leadership has clearly demonstrated that they are NOT willing to make the changes needed to change the direction of the State ... for example:

They refuse to grant the governor the line item veto (one of only 6 states that does not have this)

They refuse to create an office of Inspector General that will place a watchful eye over the activities of leadership.

They refuse to reduce significant business regulations that would lower the barrier of entry ... this should be easy

As you know, when you are in last place, or near the bottom, the opportunity for dramatic step function improvements are right in front of you. This is true both for a business and a state.  The opportunities are there, but you have to have the courage to drive change. Our leadership lacks that courage and, as a result, you see the results.

A shiny new PawSox stadium would have been part of the icing on the cake for Rhode Island, but the cake is very stale and uneatable. The cynic in me says that leadership only wanted the PawSox for one reason, and one reason only >>> union jobs at the ridiculous prevailing wage.

So now the finger pointing starts with leadership as they balance their own personal agendas with their “for the good of Rhode Island” public persona. This blame deflection should be most entertaining. One can only hope that the dissatisfaction of the electorate is reflected in the polls this November.

 

Related Slideshow: Who Lost the PawSox? August 2018

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Owners' Error

Starting from nearly day one, the new ownership group of the Pawtucket Red Sox -- a collection of some of America’s most wealthy businessmen -- saw their investment in the team as a “gift” to Rhode Islanders and that their vision of a mega-stadium in Providence was a windfall.

The ownership group’s early strategy was to demand more than $140 million in subsidies and tax breaks and that led to strong public backlash.

The ownership group -- with a collective net worth of $6 to $8 billion, later blamed the late Jim Skeffington for the misstep, but the collection of owners all thought that for a small investment in the PawSox -- $2 million to $3 million per owner, reportedly, the windfall potential was tremendous -- and all financed by taxpayers.

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Raimondo’s Flip Flop

As the Providence proposal took on water Governor Gina Raimondo reversed field and went from supporter to opponent on the financing structure.

Raimondo, who had once chided critics about complaining about the move from Pawtucket to Providence, flipped on the ownership group and ultimately opposed the Providence financing deal. The implications were two-fold.

First, it raised questions with owners about who to negotiate with and how to negotiate with Rhode Island’s government in good faith. Second, it did tremendous damage to her already strained relationship with Speaker of the House Nick Mattiello. Her change left him the last official holding the political hot potato.

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Lucchino’s Demands

After Jim Skeffington’s death, former Boston Red Sox top executive Larry Lucchino took over the ownership effort to site a new stadium.

Lucchino, who had built stadiums in Baltimore and San Diego for major league franchises, had a formula. While his ownership group in Boston had failed to build a new Fenway Park in Boston due to public opposition, Lucchino put forth a series of demands and, more so than any factor, lead to the team’s stadium efforts failure.

First, he would not wait until after the 2018 election. Second, he refused to have the owners take on the final financial backstop. Third, he refused to acknowledge that times had changed — that minor league baseball’s popularity which peaked in the 1990s was long past.

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Public Support — No Millions for Billionaires

At the end of the day, Rhode Islanders, by an overwhelming majority did not want to invest taxpayer dollars in a public stadium.

According to two GoLocal polls conducted by Harvard’s John Della Volpe which asked, “The Rhode Island General Assembly is in the process of negotiating a $40 million public financing deal with the Pawtucket Red Sox for a new stadium, hoping to bring a vote before the House and Senate this summer.  

In general, do you favor or oppose the use of public funds to help finance a new stadium for the Pawtucket Red Sox?”

Net: Favor                   33%

Strongly favor             13%

Somewhat favor          21%

Net: Oppose                59%

Somewhat oppose      21%

Strongly oppose         38%

Don't know                   8%

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Lack of Functional Leadership

In the end, the dysfunctional relationship between Raimondo, Mattiello, and Ruggerio doomed a viable solution — maybe from the beginning.

Instead of a united front by the three top political leaders, the owners got greedy and tried to manipulate the division of the state’s Democratic leaders.

Democrats Raimondo, Mattiello and Ruggerio are as aligned as Iraqi ethnic groups Kurds, Sunnis and Shias. Yes, they are all Democrats, but their trust and ability to co-govern often fails.

“Trust and reliability are the key ingredients in any public-private deal. Polls show about 60% of Rhode Islanders opposed the project which reflected in part a lack of trust in elected officials. The owners grew not to trust Rhode Island pols because of the way the process and negation unfolded at the State House,” Gary Sasse of the Hassenfeld Institute tells GoLocalProv.

 

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