Messing with the wrong Mariner

While the debate is going to rage about how wasteful it is to spend hundreds of millions on an arena in Baltimore, has anybody noticed that the City is going out of its way on this arena deal to screw one of its leading corporate citizens?

Sure, everybody has their own opinion of Ed Hale, but does it really make any sense to bring substantial financial ruin upon the only franchise that has called the Baltimore Arena home for the last 28 consecutive years? Of course it doesn't. Only a hard-headed, on the take idiot would come to the conclusion that you should tear down the current venue, kick out the current tenants, and build a brand new venue with the same crappy traffic and location problems as the old venue.

But of course, the person they are screwing is Ed Hale. And he has the money to do something about it. And it looks like Ed Hale is going to go into business for himself:

With Baltimore possibly building a new arena on the site of his team's home, 1st Mariner Arena, Blast owner Ed Hale will be looking for a new place to play - or he might just build one himself in Baltimore County. "I knew this could eventually happen," he said of the arena building site. "I've looked at UMBC and Towson University for possible places to play, but they don't work [because of small capacity]. And I've looked at possible sites in Baltimore County to build an arena - to privately build an arena - outside the city that would seat from 12,000 to 15,000. A nice size for our team and small concerts. And I've already had calls from people in Baltimore County with property who have said, 'If you want to do it, let's go.'" Hale said he will look into all of his options, including a lawsuit, if he finds he is severely damaged. "[The Blast] was never taken into account," Hale said when asked about the city's decision to build a new 18,500-seat arena on the 1st Mariner site. "We've been there for 20 years. Bernie Rodin brought the team to town in 1980, and we're not relevant? I've been a pretty good citizen. I've never asked for anything, and not one thing has been given to me."

So let's follow this. The city really had two options here. They could choose to build the arena in a new location, then tear down the old arena and sell the extremely valuable real estate for downtown redevelopment. Or, they could tear down the old arena and build a new one on top of the land, leaving the city without an arena and screwing over their one leaseholder.

By choosing option # 2, the city has created an interesting dilemma. If Hale goes through with his plan, now the Baltimore area will have two brand new arenas that will potentially be in competition with each other for some of the same shows, some of the same attractions, and some of the same sports teams. And on top of it, the Hale venture is going to probably be more accessible for the dollars of suburban families that will be needed to make either arena profitable. Does that make any business sense at all for the city of Baltimore?

Instead of doing the right thing and crate a situation that benefits all stakeholders, the city is going to do the boneheaded thing and engender negative feelings and potentially a direct competitor to their brand new arena enterprise. It makes me wonder if anybody on Mayor Dixon's staff truly understands the rules of business and the rules of economics....

The Tool and his Arena

Baltimore's favorite toolbox Dan Rodricks once again pipes in with his tired argument about how important it is to build a new arena in downtown Baltimore:

As for the nattering negativists who will surely say this is a dumb idea, that it will never work, that Baltimore will never get this and never get that - well, blah, blah, blah. We've heard it all before. Mr. Grumpy-Gills really should treat himself to the big picture sometime. I know. It's hard. You've grown accustomed to thinking weenie and being cynical. After all, that's part of our national culture, and the condition has long been acute here in Baltimore...

...But, really, the many of you who think small, and who make a hobby of ridiculing Baltimore and taking glee at the city's flaws, you who today think building a big, new arena on the site of our old, dumpy-but-still-bookin'-dates one is a foolish idea - you really need to get out more.

Seriously, the city has changed and is continuing to change. News flash: It's getting better. You should swear off blog entries, power down your PCs and get out of your basements for a day. Take a walk downtown.

Seriously, Rodricks needs to lay off the bong water and get real. Baltimore has sky high crime, with crime still at near crisis levels on a per-capita basis. Taxes are out of control. The Mayor is on the take. Schools are falling apart and failing to educate people. But Rodricks, in his infinite wisdom, thinks the most important thing to do is building a friggin' arena.

It takes a sports columnist, Rick Maese, to bring any common sense to the pages of the Baltimore Sun on this issue:

It's handy and it's dandy. Easy to fold and easy to hold. When you see your favorite politician, pass it on. When you see your local sports team owner, be sure to share. Because here it is for the very first time: The definitive, dead-on, no-excuses checklist.

If your city can't check off each of these items - ahem, pay attention, Baltimore - then maybe it should think twice before throwing public money at a sports arena or stadium.

And Maese goes on to list several common sense things that should be required to be in place before the city of Baltimore spends one penny on the construction of this new arena.

Somebody in Baltimore needs to get their priorities straight. Better schools, better roads, and safer streets are more important than a brand new sports arena. An arena is a symbol, yes it's true. But only an idiot like Rodricks would place more importance on spending hundreds of millions on a symbol, then spending money to truly reform the city's needed substance.

Of course, the city has other problems too, which I'll address in my next post.

Setting the Bar Lower

Somebody call Dan Rodricks because his dream might come true. But probably not for the reasons he thought it would be:

Representatives of the WNBA have met with Mayor Sheila Dixon to discuss the possibility of moving a franchise to Baltimore once a new downtown arena is built, Dixon said today.

The mayor also said she'd like to see the new facility built on the same downtown site where the 14,000-seat 1st Mariner Arena stands.

Dixon mentioned the possibility of attracting a women's basketball franchise after being asked if a new arena should be large enough for an NBA team.

"I think we need a larger arena," she said. "But I don't think we should rely on attracting the NBA."

The idea is now for the city of Baltimore to use taxpayer dollars in order to build an arena for a WNBA team? Seriously? That's how low the bar is now set? The WNBA is barely a blip on national sports radar. If the league wasn't subsidized by the NBA, the league would have gone under years ago for lack of interest and poor play. But do you really need an arena to hit these numbers?

The NBA founded the women's league and has traditionally subsidized it to cover operating losses. Average attendance has remained relatively stable in recent seasons, though at 7,742 in 2007, it fell more than 3,000 below the league's 1998 peak. ESPN recently extended its television deal with the league through 2016.

Should Baltimore be concerned with building a new arena for what is basically a low-level sports outfit that would draw no differently than the Baltimore Blast currently do in the antiquated facility? Absolutely not. But knowing that Mayor Dixon and the City Council often have misplaced priorities. Despite her past record and the fact that she is basically radioactive right now, I expect this to be priority # 1 for Dixon and her cronies.

Baltimore does need a new arena. They do not need to spend a penny of taxpayer dollars on it. If the city thinks that it needs a new arena to keep the Blast and to draw a WNBA team.....well, call Ed Hale or get Dan Rodricks to do a fundraiser, because only somebody devoid of rational thought would think building a small facility for that reason with taxpayer dollars is a good idea.

Get Real

Mark Newgent touched on this earlier, but while we're on the subject of violating the public trust, who is surprised by this development?

A development team including a contractor with whom Mayor Sheila Dixon had a relationship was chosen last year for a $200 million project in Southwest Baltimore, even though an independent city panel urged that the contract be awarded to another firm.

The redevelopment of Uplands, a boarded-up apartment complex off Edmondson Avenue, has been described as one of the largest projects of its kind on the East Coast. Dixon recently acknowledged having a personal relationship in 2003-2004 with a developer who later got a stake in the deal.

Amazingly, there are people stepping up to take the bullet for Dixon on this one:

Selection of the developer came a few months after Dixon took office as mayor, but city officials said she played no role in influencing the outcome of the process. Several residents said they, not Dixon, were the ones who advocated reversing the panel's decision because they opposed the team initially recommended for the site.

Sorry, but I call shenanigans on this one. Because in all reality, does anybody really believe that city officials who work for the Mayor are going to keep the Mayor out of the loop on such a high profile project? Because I certainly don't. And even if Dixon had "no role in influencing the outcome" of the selection of Doracon, there are ways for the Mayor of the city to influence the outcome without influencing the outcome.

Who does Dixon think she's fooling anymore?

Crime Fighting by Press Conference

Well, this charade did little to solve gun violence in Baltimore:

The mayors of Baltimore and New York announced Wednesday that the two cities will start sharing information about illegal weapons they seize, creating a database that gets around a congressionally imposed restriction on information local departments can obtain about guns seized outside their borders.

Federal law gives cities only limited access to the national database that tracks guns used in crimes. The mayors hope that other cities along the Interstate 95 corridor will sign on, and by sharing the information they will be able to spot trends in regional gun trafficking that they say are invisible to them under the current system.

"This is the kind of system that the federal government should be doing, but they aren't," said New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, speaking at a news conference in the atrium of City Hall. "Cities are fighting crime in isolation. Congress has a treasure trove of data and we are not allowed to see it."

So....how is this going to stop people from being killed in our streets? It's not. The use of "illegal guns" by criminals in an illegal fashion is still illegal. Do these liberals really think that by sharing data that they are going to "solve" the use of illegal guns?

If the mayors of these cities, which does include the violence-plagued cities of Baltimore and Annapolis, are so hellbent on fixing crime, let's actually see something done to fix the problem. Change policing strategies. Get tough on crime. Encourage vigorous prosecution of accused criminals. Implement Project EXILE. And don't do dumb stuff like buy Segways like they did in Annapolis at the expense of actual crime fighting. Our friend Brian Gill has numerous examples of the idiocy in crime-fighting in Annapolis.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns is not interested in solving crime, but is merely a fringe group in favor of further restricting the rights of honest Americans to own firearms. Their discussion of "illegal guns" is nothing more than trying to put lipstick on the pig that is their crime fighting strategies. Many of the cities involved with Bloomberg and his cronies have severe crime problems. Maybe if they spent less time having press conferences and more time trying to fix the problems in their cities, these "illegal guns" wouldn't make as much of a difference...

Mayoral Task Forces states the obvious

A Baltimore Mayoral Task Force has come to an obvious conclusion; table gaming, not slots, is where the money is:

A mayoral task force report says one of the best long-term ways to reduce Baltimore's highest-in-the-state property tax rate would be to use revenue from legalized gambling - not just the slot machines currently under debate but full-scale casinos.

State leaders have spent a decade debating slot machine gambling, only to decide to let citizens settle the issue in November's election. Table games have long been considered a political non-starter in Maryland.

One of the best things for the City of Baltimore could be the proposed 17-cent across the board Property Tax cut for all residents of Baltimore.

As somebody who has long been a proponent of table gaming instead of just legalizing slots, I think that this is a step in the positive direction. However, the likelihood of such table gaming happening in Baltimore (or any other locale in Maryland) anytime soon is pretty dim. This is something that is rather unfortunate, when you consider that table gaming can produce jobs, tourism, and revenue to the city of Baltimore and a state of Maryland in a way that does not pillage the pocketbooks of Maryland taxpayers. It's just unfortunate that nobody in Annapolis wants to look at such a common sense alternative...

Dan Rodricks and his usual misplaced priorities

Baltimore has a sky-high crime rate. It has a declining population. It has a horrific drug problem. Among national leaders in the transmission of STD's. A declining infrastructure for transportation. And a criminally negligent and incapable school system.

Of course Dan Rodricks doesn't care about any of this because it's more important that we build an arena for an NBA or NHL team.

Now this would have been cute once, to ignore actual priorities for problems the city really needs to address and talk about an arena. But now that he has harped on the arena again and again and again, I wonder why Rodricks thinks it is so important.

Urban liberals like Rodricks usually complain about corporate welfare that benefits multi-million dollar businesses and their owners. Rodricks' insistence to prioritize the financial support of such corporate welfare over better schools, lower crime, and safer roads is a criminally stupid and misguided way of organizing one's priorities.

The Scream Team

Here's a picture from today's Sun that only those who accept failure and disappointment could love....



Left to right that's City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Mayor Dixon, Congressman Elijah Cummings, Baltimore City Councilwoman Rikki Spector and Gov. O'Malley.

Well, at least when things fail to get better and they all (theoretically) share the blame, they'll always have the memory...

Rewarding Failure

Consider me less than surprised that the Sun endorsed Sheila Dixon this morning. Which includes this curious paragraph:

Among her rivals for the mayor's job, Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. and Del. Jill P. Carter have rightly pointed out that Ms. Dixon has to take responsibility for some of the failings of the administration of Martin O'Malley. By her own account, Ms. Dixon was his partner in progress - but the city's vacant housing stock and staffing problems at the Police Department haven't much improved since the two joined forces in 1999.

So, if Dixon was O'Malley's "partner in progress" while he was mayor, does that not also make her O'Malley's "partner in catastrophic failure" for the city's financial mismanagement, corruption, and skyrocketing crime rate over the last eight years?

Once again, the Sun editorial board proves itself to be out of touch by rewarding failure. Much like the Sun's enthusiastic endorsement of Martin O'Malley's undeserved promotion after years of failure as Baltimore's mayor, the Sun should not be so quick to reward O'Malley's right-hand in the City Council with the ability to continue O'Malley's unfortunate legacy.

Fighting Crime through stupidity

This is asinine:

Baltimore could become the first big city to publicize names, photographs and home addresses of people who are convicted of shootings or other gun-related crimes, the latest twist on a national crime prevention trend of exposing names of certain types of criminals.

Legislation that Mayor Sheila Dixon introduced in the City Council last week would direct the Police Department to create a database for gun offenders that is similar to the existing online statewide sex offender list. She said she would like the names to be public, and offenders would have to register with the department, in person, every six months or face a misdemeanor charge and possible jail time.

Other cities - including Chicago, San Francisco and Boston - that have seen increases in gun violence in the past few years are considering similar measures for gun offenses, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police endorsed the concept at its annual conference in Boston last fall. New York City began a registry this year, but it is not open to the public.

"This will help inform the community about some of the activities taking place in their neighborhood and hopefully will act as a deterrent to people not to get involved with illegal gun activity," Dixon said in an e-mailed statement. "I am hoping people will just think twice about picking up a gun because of the risk of the registry and the long-term stigma attached to being placed on it." She expects a hearing on the bill Aug. 8.

This reminds me of a line spoken by Lt. Kaffee in A Few Good Men:

Thank you for playing "Now Should We or Should We Not Follow the Advice of the Galactically Stupid".

The naïveté of Mayor Dixon's plan is so mind-numbingly amazing that it is astounding that she has ever been elected to City-wide office. Is Dixon so out of touch that she really believes that a "long-term stigma" is really going to stop a repeat offender in a city like Baltimore? Where 300 people are brutally murdered every year? Is Dixon so out of her mind that she really believes a gun registry is going to stop violent crime on the streets of Baltimore.

It is complete lunacy like this that is the reason that big city streets, except in rare instances such as Giuliani-era New York, see dramatic decreases in violent crime. Instead of dealing with real solutions to reduce crime, such as increasing police or using tough crime fighting strategies, cockamamie ideas such as this are proposed instead. It is mind-numbing to consider that city leadership would rather reduce crime through stigmatization and computers than by actually arresting criminals, prosecuting criminals to the fullest extent of the law, and getting them off the streets.

More proof that it doesn't really matter who wins this upcoming Mayoral election...

An Odd Comment

This series of statements from this morning's Sun is just odd:

Mayor Sheila Dixon said yesterday that she replaced her unpopular police commissioner because she "wasn't feeling that drive like I wanted to" and said she was impressed with the way his interim replacement, Frederick H. Bealefeld III, peppered colleagues with engaging and challenging questions during crime meetings.

In an interview hours after she formally announced she had asked Leonard D. Hamm to resign amid plunging support and soaring numbers of homicides and shootings, Dixon confirmed long-standing claims from officers and their union that Bealefeld has effectively been running the department for months.

For this reason, the mayor said Bealefeld's appointment would not signal a change in the strategy to fight crime. But his style could reinvigorate a department struggling with what Dixon called an "out-of-control" murder rate.

So in an effort to turn around crime in the city, Mayor Dixon is appointing the guy who has been running the show while things were going to hell in a handbasket? Is that really the kind of admission that any Executive wants to make? That their department head has been an absentee manager and was replaced due to performance while simultaneously promoting the guy who was in charge while performance was poor?

That's no way to run the Rotary Club, much less a city with a skyrocketing murder rate...

Baltimore's Litmus Test

Laura Vozzella's column today in the Sun has a nugget regarding the vacancy on the Baltimore City Council's 6th District, due to the elevation of Stephanie Rawlings Blake to President of the City Council:

Litmus tests aren't just for Supreme Court nominees anymore. At a hearing tonight, City Council Vice President Bobby Curran said he'll ask all 11 candidates seeking the vacant 6th District seat their positions on the proposed Baltimore smoking ban. Curran, one of 10 people on the council committee that will recommend someone to the full council, said he won't support anyone who doesn't back the ban. "Why do you want to get into public service if you're not going to serve the public?

That's right; the Governor's brother-in-law wants to create a litmus test for candidates who want to fill this seat on the City Council. But how arrogant is it that Curran believes that only people who pass his litmus test are going to serve the public? Is not somebody who supports business who want to allow smoking in their establishment also supporting the public?

Curran's arrogance is incredible, though not surprising in the Democratically dominated City of Baltimore...

Not Well Thought Out

Can anybody explain why Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon needs to plan a three-day public campaign rally jazz festival on a weekend in which the Orioles are in town and, possibly, the Ravens playing a preseason game? Is that a great use of taxpayer dollars for Baltimore residents?