Tempe not fooled by arena-stadium flim-flam; will Vegas?

Congratulations are in order for the good people of Tempe, Arizona.

They might’ve cost themselves an NHL team, but that was a small price to pay to hang on to their wallets.

In a rare setback for billionaire owners and their endless scams to get the public to build them new places to play, the Phoenix suburb decisively turned back a $2.3 billion proposal that included a new arena for the Arizona Coyotes.

This one was a stunner for the NHL and the Coyotes, who thought they had worked their flimflam so well that nobody would notice it was nothing more than another egregious example of corporate welfare.

“The voters seem to understand, deep down, that these things are a bad idea,” said J.C. Bradbury, an economics professor at Kennesaw State University in suburban Atlanta and vocal critic of publicly funded stadiums and arenas.

“Why are we subsidizing sports teams, no matter how much they claim it’s going to spur economic development?” he asked. “It’s like an extended warranty. Once you read the fine print, you don’t want to do it.”

Unfortunately, the owners still have the upper hand in their quest for newer and more profitable sporting venues.

Unlike the situation that played out in Tempe, most have recognized that you can’t put these matters before the voters. Too much risk there. Just ask the Coyotes, who were convinced their proposal would pass easily based on internal polling.

It’s much better to woo the local politicians, get them on board, rather than allow those whose money is actually being spent make the call.

Just look what happened in Nashville, where city leaders recently signed off on a boondoggle that hands the Tennessee Titans a new domed stadium with the largest public commitment ever — a staggering $1.2 billion from local and state coffers.

“Awful. Indefensible,” Bradbury describes it. “The worst deal I’ve ever seen.”

Not surprisingly, the voters in Nashville and Tennessee never got a chance to decide if that’s how they want to spend all that money.

Their money, it should be noted.

Meanwhile, another team is trying desperately to get a huge amount of public funding for a new stadium.

The Oakland Athletics want to move to Las Vegas, and they’ve already announced one site, and then another, for a $1.5 billion stadium on the famed Strip. They started out asking the public to kick in $500 million. When told that was a nogo, the A’s reduced their asking price to $395 million. But there’s still resistance to providing that much money, so the deal has yet to be finalized. No matter what the price tag winds up being, it’s sure to be a bad deal for the taxpayers of Las Vegas and Nevada, according to Bradbury.

“Why does this keep happening?” he said. “It’s not even a debate. All of these are bad projects the public shouldn’t be involved in whatsoever. Yet they keep passing over and over again.”