Florida Taxwatch - Gas Plant Deal - Bob Nave

A private nonprofit that describes itself as the eyes and ears of the Florida taxpayer takes a look at the proposed deal to build a new ballpark for the Tampa Bay Rays and redevelop the Gas Plant, and offers some suggestions. We speak with Bob Nave, senior VP of research at Florida Taxwatch. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Gordon Bird here with Beyond the News. Saint Petersburg and Penelas County are going
to be deciding soon on whether togo ahead with the Tampa Bay Rays and
the deal to build a new ballparkand redevelop the gas plant site where Tropicana
Field currently sits. City council MemberLizette Hanewitz asked the nonprofit, privately supported
Florida tax Watch group to research thedeal. Bob Nave is senior vice president

(00:24):
of research at Florida tax Watch andhe joins US Now and Beyond the News.
Bob Nave, welcome, Thank you, Gordon. Well in your report
and you've produced a whole report onthe deal between the city and the county
and the Rays. You're not takinga stand on whether it's a good deal
for the city or county, butyou identify what you see are some of

(00:47):
the risks that are involved for makingthis big an investment. What do you
see as the hazards that could bepart of a deal with the Rays that
need to be covered. I thinkwhen you look at the risks, we
identified two risks in our report.One was that the financial impacts would not

(01:10):
be realized that would create a holein the city or county's budget and put
the local officials in the position ofeither having to raise taxes or cut services
to fill that hole. The secondrisk was the possibility that the Rays might
leave the Penel's County area, andif you remember, last year, they
approached Major League Baseball to explore thepossibility of playing half of their home games

(01:36):
in Montreal, Canada. So withthose risks in mind, we made three
recommendations. One is that the agreementbetween the Rays ownership team and the local
governments include clawback provisions in the eventthat some of the benefits that are expected

(02:00):
don't materialize. The second is revenuesharing. Right now, the only revenue
sharing that goes on is the Cityof Saint Pete gets fifty cents on every
ticket sold, which produces about sixhundred and forty thousand dollars a year in
revenue. We put some charts inthe report that look at the growth of

(02:23):
the Ray's revenue and their overall financialvalue, and up until COVID those both
show a pretty steady increase. Sowe think that the city and county should
pursue revenue sharing to help make surethat those holes in the budget don't occur.

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And then the third recommendation was toaddress the potential that the Rays might
leave Saint Petersburg. In that case, we think the penalty for leaving should
should be pretty staff. And ofcourse, you went through these charts and

(03:06):
you did your research, and youlooked at a lot of factors, including
market size and the fact that theRays are not the Rays have been able
to derive revenue from other sources evenas attendance has been challenging. The circumstances,
of course, were that you wereasked by a member of the council

(03:27):
to take a look at this,and in fact, we're hearing as we
record this that they might be takinga look at this in the month of
May. You have a lot ofcontext from deals that have been done in
other communities. And how hopeful areyou that they'll be able to take these

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recommendations to heart as they sit downand really hash out what the deal should
be. Well, I hope theydo. Having a Major League Baseball franch
guys in your community is a tremendouscultural asset for the community. And then
the interest of full disclosure, Iam a life long baseball fan. I've

(04:10):
been a cardinal fan since nineteen sixtyfour, and I've actually thrown out the
ceremonial first pitch in two Raise games. But I do hope. I think
there's a win win in there ifeverybody looks closely enough. Again, from
tax Watch is concerned, we wantto make sure that the interest of the

(04:32):
taxpayer is well served, and that'swhy we recommended the clawback provisions, why
we recommended the revenue sharing, andthat's to make sure that if the economic
impacts that Victus and hr and Aidentified don't materialize, then there'll be some

(04:53):
sort of money back protection for thetaxpayers. And a little bit of background.
Victis was brought in by the cityto kind of identify and help them
crunch the numbers on what this dealwould mean for Saint Petersburg. So it
is a debate that's going to featurea lot of people. A lot of
individuals and organizations have begun weighing inon it, and we'll do more so

(05:16):
even as we get closer to theeventual workshops in May and possibly followed by
votes. Bob Nayve, Senior vicepresident of Research at Florida tax Watch,
thank you very much for joining uson beyond the news