Don’t Even Think About It

Published January 10, 2010

Brett Favre is playing well, the Vikings won the NFC North, and life is pretty good for football fans in Minnesota. So naturally, the lobbying to build a new Vikings stadium is heating up (“County’s out of Vikings home hunt,” Jan. 5).

The price tag for the latest stadium proposal is near $1 billion. The Vikings have pledged $200 million to $250 million of that, leaving taxpayers to foot most of the bill — this despite that economists widely agree such subsidies benefit very few people (mostly the team owners) and do little for the overall economy.

With the state’s office of Management and Budget projecting a $4.4 billion deficit for the next biennium, how can any legislator think using taxpayer money to finance a new stadium is “the right thing to do”?

Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate welfare at the same time they are dealing with a stagnant economy and a huge budget deficit.

John Nothdurft, Chicago, Ill.
The writer is the budget and tax legislative specialist for The Heartland Institute.

This letter to the editor was originally published in the Pioneer Press.