Jobs, jobs, jobs.
That’s the big pitch proponents of the public funding plan for the renovations at the SunLife Stadium are using to try to convince a reluctant electorate to ap
prove $289 million in tourist tax dollars and $90 million in sales tax rebates for the billionaire owner of the Miami Dolphins.
Naturally, because they want to shift the attention away from the Marlins Stadium debacle and the “welfare for billionaires” argument, the “4,000 jobs” they claim will be created by the project has been the focus of the pro-stadium Miami First PAC’s $1 million-campaign, on mailers, in community forums and on TV and radio interviews.
They have happy construction workers of varying races and ages smiling out at us on mailers. Ladra got a new one over the weekend. Her mom got the same one in Spanish. The smiley construction worker on my mailer is black. But the one on my mom’s mailer looks like a Latino.
They have Miami First Campaign co-chairs (read: paid cheerleaders) Jorge Arizurieta and H.T. Smith going on radio TV shows like Michael Putney’s and to community forums and pledging much-needed jobs for the community.
They even have people posing loaded, planted “audience” questions to opposing Dems like Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chairwoman Annette Taddeo asking how she can oppose something that will “create thousands of jobs” for hard working families.
“There is a significant need for jobs in this community,” Arizurieta said on the Putney show Sunday.
But it’s all about making the sale, dear voters.
Because what they don’t say is how on Earth they came up with that 4,000 figure, especially when other stadium projects employ less than half that many people to build from the scratch ground up. One example is the Falcon Stadium plan in Atlanta, which calls for the tearing down of two churches and multiple buildings to build a brand new facility — and promises to create 2,000 jobs, according to a New York Times story last week. The Atlanta Journal Consitution had proponents claiming it would create 30,000 jobs in October. I guess exaggeration is standard in these stadium scams.
They also don’t say that their jobs estimate, as well as economic impact study, was done by the same company hired by the Florida Marlins (and we all know how well that turned out). They also don’t say that their “aspirational goal” of 70 percent local residents for those jobs is just that, “aspirational” — which is a political word used to sell us on the project without really being able to hold them accountable or even pretending that they have to reach that. They also don’t say that most of those jobs will be temporary jobs.
“Construction work is usually temporary,” Arizurieta finally admitted to Putney Sunday, but then he pouted because he was caught. “To qualify them as temporary is a negative. It’s just an unfair characterization,” he said, adding that labor unions will soon come out in favor of the public financing plan.
No, Jorge, to qualify them as temporary is truthful and transparent.
But nothing about this campaign — from the negotiations with Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, to the county insiders involved to the fast-tracked deal to the dramatic, yet faked, deadline (since they could have done this last year with a higher turnout election, which they didn’t want) to the ballot language — has been transparent.
And neither is hiding the fact that thousands of permanent, higher-paying jobs could be destroyed.
Nobody on the Dolphins stadium deal’s high-priced cheerleading squad has mentioned that to get the $3 million in annual state sales tax, legislators in Tallahassee — who may or may not consider the deal this week even as early voting begins today and absentee voters are already casting their ballots — would have to rescind more than $10 million in tax credits given now to a community of foreign investors and international bankers.
Ladra fully expects that this shotgun wedding timeline was intended to have everything tied up in a neat bow both in Tallahassee and on the local referendum before anybody found out about that.
Almost 30 years ago, Florida amended the tax statutes to provide a corporate income tax exemption for income generated from some international banking activity. The exemption for “eligible net income from an international banking facility” was created as an incentive for banks to locate their international banking offices within Florida and to remain competitive with 11 other states, including New York, that had and continue to hav
e a similar tax exemption.
But Super Bowls and football players are sexy. Bankers? Not so much.
“If passed, international banking, an industry with a proven track record of job creation and economic benefit, will be sideswiped so a sports team can add a partial roof and move some seats closer to the field,” wrote David Schwartz, CEO of the Florida International Bankers Association, in an op-ed piece in today’s Sun-Sentinel.
“To put this economic development travesty in sports terms: Eliminating this tax exemption in favor of a football stadium is like trading a Pro Bowl quarterback in his prime for an unproven seventh round draft pick. No NFL general manager in his right mind would do that.”
Cutler Bay Mayor Edward MacDougall went on Sunday morning’s Local 10 show with Putney, opposite Arizurieta, and talked about the sacrificial lamb the Dolphins and Gimenez — with his pal and bill sponsor State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez in Tallahassee — are willing to slaughter to get this “unprecedented deal” done.
“We are talking about jobs that might last a year and a half, and what they are asking is to take away an incentive from a business that has many thousands permanent jobs,” MacDougall said on the show. “We have had a complete rebirth downtown because of international banking. The millions coming into Miami-Dade County by foreign investment is huge.”
And we are talking about jobs that will be lost this week in Tallahassee, if a stadium bill passes, regardless of whether or not the stadium deal passes in the local referendum May 14.
But, apparently, disposable — if Gonzalez, Gimenez, Ross and the rest of the cheerleaders are to be believed.
And they are not to be believed. Because they are already, apparently, lying about the jobs and other pieces of the plan. Or, at least, stretching the truth somewhat.
Even Putney, who is much more impartial than Ladra, has called the campaign a bunch of smoke and mirrors.
“It promises the sun, the moon, the stars plus many Super Bowls,” he said at the end of his 30-minute program, calling it “a little bit of truth, many half truths and a lot of exaggerations.”
He, too, sees the main promise as jobs. Even the mailers, he notes, say “vote yes on Miami Jobs.” Crafty, huh?
“Hey, this referendum is not about jobs. It is about spending millions of tax dollars to fix up a 26-year-old stadium,” Putney said. “Construction workers certainly would get jobs for up to 2 years…but even the Miami First Coalition chair admitted this week he doesn’t know if its going to be 4,000 jobs or 2,000 jobs.”
Then why do all the mailers and the website and the interviews say 4,000? Because it’s the better political number.
And because they are not being transparent.
Said Putney: “Don’t let the Dolphins take your eye off the ball. The jobs at SunLife would be temporary. The debt would not.”
Dolphins stadium tax plan could kill, not create jobs added by Ladra on
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