Several years ago, Washington, D.C., “won” a Major League Baseball franchise, the Nationals. City politicians, though constantly complaining about a lack of money even for essential programs, miraculously came up with over $600 million to build a brand new stadium to lure the team.
Now that the team is playing in its new taxpayer-subsidized stadium, the battle over funding is over. But the war over tickets for the mayor and city council members to sit in a luxury skybox and watch the games escalates.
You see, the Nationals have given a luxury skybox to the mayor and another one to the city council. (Just as an aside, doesn’t this deal strike you as sort of like a bribe? It does me.) Anyway, it seems that the Nationals front office sent the tickets for both skyboxes to Mayor Adrian Fenty. And Fenty managed to forward tickets on to only those council members with whom he isn’t feuding. The other council members were left out, causing some hard feelings.
The very same thing happened last year, too.
There always seem to be problems when the bad guys split up the loot.
Well, one council member, Kwame Brown, offers a very simple solution: Sell both the skyboxes to the highest bidder and use the proceeds to help cover budget gaps.
Wow, a D.C. politician actually making sense. That’s a home run!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.