Exactly three months ago, we reported that a new Mariners bailout was likely and that the owners’ pitch for more public money could be coming soon (see “Get Ready for the $29.95 Hot Dog,” SW 2/25). Last week it arrived at the plate. According to several stories in The Seattle Times, the Mariners ownership has been making the rounds at the Public Facilities District—the quasi-public body overseeing construction of the new ballpark—sounding out board members as to how to secure some more taxpayer dollars.

The ink is barely dry on the last “commitment to the community” that we got from the Mariners. The public contribution to the baseball stadium was supposed to be “capped” at $372 million (which is the amount of bonds that King County issued back in 1997 to fund construction). The Mariners pledged to put up $45 million and cover all cost overruns.

However, the stadium has since become the most expensive in the history of humankind. It’s currently running more than $100 million over budget, with the riskiest and most expensive portion—the retractable roof—not even completed.

This apparently has the team owners rethinking their two-and-a-half-year-old “pledge” and lusting for more public money—most specifically, the tax revenues that are being used to cover the stadium bonds.

Due to the booming economy, those taxes—chiefly sales taxes and a special restaurant/bar tax—have brought in more than enough to cover the county’s annual debt service in the last couple of years. At the end of 1998 there was almost $9 million left after the stadium payments had been made, and Nigel Lewis of the King County Finance Department estimates that there will be about $13 million to $14 million of extra money in the account by the end of this year.

That money would serve as a politically easy way to boost public stadium payments, without actually raising anyone’s taxes—the county would simply be taking money that we’re already paying and funneling more of it to the team.

But from the standpoint of fiscal responsibility, this gambit . . . has none. After all, the taxes are supposed to be coming in comfortably above what’s necessary, especially this early in the 20-year life of the bonds. The county deliberately used conservative revenue estimates when it issued the bonds in order to be sure that the county’s budget would be protected.

And while the annual debt service will continue to rise through the next two decades, the performance of the local economy can’t be predicted. “It’s possible you have excess dollars in any year,” says King County’s bond counsel Jay Reich. “But you still have a huge liability coming due in future years, for which you don’t know how much you’re going to collect.”

The latest numbers from the state Department of Revenue suggest that things are likely to get tighter for the county very soon. When they issued the bonds, officials assumed the stadium-earmarked taxes would grow at about 4 percent to 6 percent a year. While growth in 1998 turned out to be nearly 8 percent, state forecaster Byron Angel predicts the growth rate will slow to only 4.2 percent by 2001.

Still, as we’ve learned countless times in the past, when sports teams are the issue, prudence, rationality, and sound public policy are no obstacle. The ball is rolling, and the game is under way—though this one has been thrown way in advance.

The script that the team and the Public Facilities District are going to follow was made quite obvious in the Times stories. We will be solemnly told that “there were mistakes made by everybody,” as PFD board member Sue Taoka put it; that the weather drove up construction costs; that the Mariners insisted on a good sound system because they “wanted to make sure every spectator could hear game announcers.”

The Seattle City Council and the King County Council have already rushed in with preemptive resolutions, declaring that there will be no more public money for the ballpark. But faced with a threat of team bankruptcy or departure, there’s little doubt they’ll cave in. Whatever paltry leverage our elected officials might once have had over the Mariners has evaporated, now that the world’s most expensive baseball diamond is sitting in the middle of the city. In the end the team owners will get whatever they want. And they would be fools not to ask.

Scratch!

However reckless the whole baseball stadium financing plan looks now, at least public officials did one thing right: They did not rely on people choosing to help fund the stadium.

For while the sales taxes and restaurant taxes in King County are all throwing off tons of cash, the two revenue sources that are actually voluntary—that actually give you a chance to express your support for the new stadium—are both doing miserably.

Sales of Mariners license plates, for example—each of which contributes $28 towards the stadium—have fallen off a cliff. Two summers ago, the state Department of Licensing was moving more than 1,000 of the new Mariners plates a month. Then it dropped into the hundreds. Last month, only 57 were sold.

Meanwhile, the baseball-themed lottery games are also struggling. The state lottery was obligated to contribute $3.2 million toward the stadium last year (an amount that increases annually). But the baseball-themed Scratch tickets that are supposed to generate that money have already come up short. During 1998, the state earned only $2.5 million from selling “Batter Up Bucks” and “My!Oh!My!” cards. The difference has to be made up from the rest of the state lottery revenues (which otherwise would go to the state’s general fund).

Lottery spokesperson Heidi Hutchinson points to “product maturity and team performance” as the culprits. Lottery officials intend to lobby the state Legislature for the right to cover the stadium obligation with any sort of game, not just those with a baseball tie-in.