A major-league boondoggle for Montreal

On Wednesday, Montrealers awoke to see snow on the ground and hear a forecast of a high temperature that would feel like 3 degrees Celsius.

It was three weeks into the major-league baseball season. Boosters of a proposed new ballpark say Montreal has proven it’s a baseball city by filling (or this year, half-filling) the indoor Olympic Stadium for a couple of pre-season games. But on Wednesday, none was heard waxing poetic about the pleasures of taking in the summer game in an open-air ballpark.

You can’t blame Montrealers if they feel confused about the new city administration’s position on the stadium project.

Last November, they voted against incumbent mayor Denis Coderre, who had undertaken a stealth campaign to build public enthusiasm for baseball before hitting taxpayers with a bill for a new ballpark.

Yet two weeks ago, there was new Mayor Valérie Plante, posing Coderre-like in an Expos cap on Instagram the day before a private meeting with promoters of the project, after which she announced, “I’m in.”

Plante reiterated her campaign promise not to commit any public funds to the project without consulting citizens in a referendum. We’ll get to that farther down.

The closest thing we have to a detailed proposal for the stadium is a 2013 feasibility study on the website of the promoters, Montreal Baseball Project.

The study was commissioned from Ernst & Young Orenda Corporate Finance Inc., a sponsor of the project. Not surprisingly, the study, like others commissioned by private promoters seeking public financing for sports facilities, concludes that major-league baseball in Montreal would be “financially viable.”

But that’s only if the province commits $335 million (in 2013 dollars), or one-third of the estimated total cost of a new ballpark. To keep costs down, the stadium would be roofless. And while one of the project’s leading promoters, Stephen Bronfman, has said “we don’t need a cent from the city of Montreal,” the study says the project would involve additional, undetermined “municipal infrastructure costs.”

Construction would not begin until the promoters landed a major-league franchise; by then, inflation would increase the cost.

Also not surprisingly, the study concludes that the public investment would eventually be profitable because it would generate new economic activity, including tourism, and tax revenues.

But that investment choice would come at the expense of more pressing needs. And independent studies — that is, ones not commissioned by financially interested parties — suggest that spending public funds on major sports facilities is a poor investment economically.

Here’s sports economist Andrew Zimbalist in a 2009 interview: “All of the independent, scholarly research on the issue of whether sports teams and facilities have a positive economic impact has come to the same conclusion: One should not anticipate that a team or a facility by itself will either increase employment or raise per capita income in a metropolitan area.”

For one thing, “most of the spending at a stadium or arena is from residents of the metro area; as such, it is simply redirected expenditure within the local economy, e.g., from the bowling alley or restaurant to the ballpark.”

For another, “much of the income generated by the team leaks out of the local economy, as

owners and players save a substantial portion of their earnings in the world’s money markets or spend their income outside the host city.”

Well, at least Montreal voters would have their say on the baseball boondoggle in Plante’s referendum, right?

Yes — after a campaign favouring the wealthy interests behind the project, because of a loophole in Quebec legislation: none of the rules governing campaign financing for other provincial and municipal votes apply to municipal referendums.

So, for the ballpark referendum, there would be no legal limit on campaign spending by the promoters. They could legally accept donations in any amount, from any source — including corporations, associations and non-residents. And they would be under no legal requirement to disclose the sources.

If Plante didn’t know that when she promised her referendum, then when she said “I’m in,” she didn’t know what she might be getting herself into — along with Montreal taxpayers.