Let’s give Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis some credit. DeSantis vetoed a proposal that would give the Tampa Bay Rays $35 million in funding from the state government to help construct a new spring training facility in the state.
DeSantis correctly believes that taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize professional sports venues. It’s not an essential role of government, nor is it an effective use of money. And while his position on the matter is spot on, his framing could have been better; he didn’t need to bring the Rays’ virtue-signaling tweets about gun control into the debate.
Economists generally agree that taxpayer-funded stadiums aren’t effective in generating economic growth for communities, as the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis points out. It’s a form of corporate welfare that benefits millionaires and billionaires at the expense of working people; that’s especially true when regressive means, such as a county sales tax or car rental tax, provide public funding for a new stadium.
And it’s even worse when the Rays are the ones who need a spring training facility in Florida. The onus should be on them to find a place to play and pay for it themselves. Major League Baseball holds spring training in two states: Florida and Arizona. Half the teams are in the Grapefruit League in Florida, and the other half play in the Cactus League in Arizona. The Rays are in the Grapefruit League, like the rest of the American League East.
Thankfully, DeSantis realizes this is a waste of money regardless of how the Tampa Bay Rays tweet.
“I don’t support giving taxpayer dollars to professional sports stadiums, period,” DeSantis said in a press conference late last week. “At the end of the day, that was just the decision that was going to be made.”
However, during the same press conference, DeSantis also said that he didn’t want to subsidize companies’ political activism after the Rays posted tweets favoring gun control.
“Companies are free to engage or not engage in whatever discourse they want, but clearly, it’s inappropriate to be doing taxpayer dollars for professional sports stadiums,” he said. “It’s also inappropriate to subsidize political activism of a private corporation. So I think, either way, it’s not appropriate.”
The Rays shouldn’t use their social media platform to advocate gun control; they’re a baseball team, not a politician or a gun control advocacy group. But the real issue is that this organization wants to take millions of dollars from the working people of Florida — not tweets.
Individual companies shouldn’t get special treatment from the government, period. We don’t have a free market economy if the government favors certain businesses over others.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.
