Quote:
Originally Posted by troutman
[/I]From April 16th:
http://goldwaterinstitute.org/articl...x-coyotes-sale
Goldwater’s scrutiny of a new Coyotes sale will likely center around what kind of arena management fee the city might pay a Jamison group or another owner and whether some portion of a sale is aimed at helping a new owner absorb some of the hockey teams’s $20 million in annual losses.
“A subsidy is a subsidy,” said Sitren.
The watchdog group previously sued the city of Phoenix over a $97 million tax break given to the original developer of the CityNorth commercial complex next to Desert Ridge Marketplace. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled the future government subsidies to businesses need to have some public purpose and make sense to financially to economic benefits.
The Goldwater group has not challenged two $25 million payments approved by the city of Glendale for the NHL to run city-owned Jobing.com Arena. The NHL has owned the Coyotes since 2009 and the franchise loses $20 million to $25 million. Skeptics say Glendale payments are to help the NHL deal with the Coyotes financial losses as well as to run the arena.
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I don't disagree with the lack of economic benefits, but that's really not an issue that's at play here.
The bolded line really sums up why GWI doesn't seem like a credible threat to this deal in two ways. First, they aren't competent enough to draft a document that actually states what the AZ Supreme Court has ruled. I mean c'mon guys if you can't be bothered to proof your own press releases why should we take you seriously?
Second, if I deciphered the sentence correctly I don't see how GWI can successfully argue that the standard has not been met (and it seems to be a deferential standard) absent some sort of smoking gun document.