December 24, 2002
Dull Sabres
by Bruce Jackson
You would never know it from the Buffalo News, but there really are a lot of people in Buffalo who are not fervid hockey fans and who don't much care about very rich guys for whom ownership of a sports franchise is their bracket's equivalent of having a Hummer for their go-to-market car. For people like that, the current round of posture, pose, dare and whine connected with nursing-home zillionaire Mark Hamister's attempt to get the rest of us to give him a lot of public money is as close to absurd as public policy discussions get around here, which is pretty absurd indeed.
Begin with the vagueness: nobody seems to be able to put a number on how much Hamister wants, or, more accurately, what the various things he wants will cost us over time. I've seen estimates in the Buffalo News ranging from $15 to $30 million.
More important, I can't figure out who, other than Hamister himself, Hamister's good friend County Executive Joel Giambra (Hamister was a big contributor to Giambra's campaign and headed up his get-in-place team once his was elected) and the Buffalo News care whether or not the Sabres go or stay. Hardly anyone goes to their games. Hardly anyone watches them on tv.
Nor is there a line of rich investors from elsewhere hot to scoop up the franchise and move it out of town. The whole NHL is in a sewer, with attendance plunging not only in Sunbelt towns where hockey has no business anyway, but also in traditional hockey strongholds like Boston and Chicago. According to Toronto Globe and Mail reporters David Shoalts ("Fan Erosion neglected at NHL's risk," 21 December 2002) and Stephen Brunt ("Stickhandling over now for Bettman as reality bites," 24 December 2002), NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is locked in massive denial about the gloomy fiscal realities of the current hockey scene
The Buffalo News, which frequently quotes Bettman as if he were a stock analyst rather than a happyface industry front man, came out for the deal in a December 21 editorial, "The Sabres deal: the reality is governmental assistance is part of today's sports world."
Three days later a Buffalo News editorial supported closing two of Buffalo's firehouses because we couldn't afford them. Two months earlier, News editorials argued for a radical restructuring of Buffalo's government that would remove of one of the city's major checks and balances because the change might save $200,000 per year.
The editorial supporting the Hamister handout was endorsed by a huge amount of coverage in stories looking like news and in staff opinion columns.
"Hamister's request is modest in comparison with the $123 million that taxpayers gave the Bills four years ago - or the generous public outlays to sports franchises in other cities," wrote Jerry Sullivan on December 22 ("We need to skate fast to avoid Buffalo becoming a one-sport town"). Sullivan estimated the request at $20-25 million. "If you want the National Hockey League in Buffalo, and if you can't abide the thought of being a one-sport city, the only thing that matters now is getting a deal done." Sullivan goes on to argue that since we overestimated the Rigases, who delivered less than they promised, we shouldn't underestimate Hamister, who might deliver more than anyone has any rational reason to expect.
Several articles in the News argue, or uncritically quote people arguing, that it's only fair to give Hamister the same major concessions and boxes of public money that had been promised to the Rigas family in connection with their ownership of the Sabres. There's only passing notice that the Rigas deal was umbilically linked to the the construction of a huge office building and the creation of hundreds of new downtown Buffalo jobs.
"If will cost us if we want to keep the Buffalo Sabres. It will cost us more if we lose them," Donn Esmonde wrote at the beginning of his December 23 column. There was nothing in the rest of the column about what it would cost us to lose them. Esmonde (who also estimates the price tag of Hamister's requirements at $20 to 25 million) argues that we've already spent a lot of money on the ice palace so we shouldn't abandon that investment because we'll lose what we've already spent. He needs to learn about the fallacy of sunk costs. People who justify future losses on the basis of how much they've already lost are people you want to play poker with; they're people casino owners hope will visit their glittery palaces. But nobody rational makes public or corporate policy on the basis of sunk costs.
Esmonde and Sullivan weren't the only News writers who pointed how much more money Ralph Wilson got for his Buffalo Bills. But Wilson got his deal when the state had a surplus, and not everybody was happy with that distribution of the public's wealth even in those good times. More important, does the fact that Ralph Wilson negotiated a fabulous corporate welfare deal in good times mean we're obligated to provide the same service to every subsequent rich guy who wants to own a sports franchise?
I thought the oddest piece of Buffalo News coverage was a huge page-one creampuff piece by Charity Vogel and John Bonafatti (who estimated Hamister's request at $15 million) showing with charts and numbers that what Hamister was trying to extract from the people around here wasn't nearly as much as what some other team owners had extracted from other people elsewhere in the country.
Unless I missed something important, that's like saying a guy who mugs six people is less of a mugger than someone who mugs ten. What's matters is the fact you're doing this kind of thing at all, not how often you do it or how big you scored when you did.
And that—what effect turning over so huge an amount of public money to a hockey team will have on the state and the region, and whether or not having a second major team in the city of Buffalo is worth the price of that transfer of public funds in these very hard times—is something no public official, no editorial writer at the Buffalo News and certainly not Mark Hamister has touched. The real failure of public leadership in this sorry affair isn't that Joel Giambra is scuffling around trying to shift money into this adventure or that the Buffalo News backs it, but rather that neither Giambra or the Buffalo News has thought we deserved a straightforward display of the facts and issues. Giambra's been hustling, the News has been hyping. That's it.
At least for Buffalo. Elsewhere, the press is taking a more serious look at what's going on here. The Albany Times Union, the daily paper in the town Hamister and Giambra and the Buffalo News hope will provide most of this money for this deal, ran a steaming editorial against it on December 23, "Sabre Rattling." Here are some key passages:
The problem is that Mr. Hamister wants to buy the Sabres with your help. That is, he wants the state to help finance the deal, along with Erie County and the city of Buffalo. The Buffalo News estimates that Mr. Hamister is looking for somewhere between $15 million and $35 million in government money to complete what would be about a $60 million purchase....
This is about a bad idea, yes, but even worse timing. New York is trying to cope with a genuine fiscal crisis. Buffalo and Erie County are in even worse shape on the municipal level. Mr. Hamister needs to understand that government help for his quest to buy the Sabres and keep them in Buffalo ought to be out of the question. State officials ought to tell him so, in fact, starting with Governor Pataki and his point man for economic development, Charles Gargano. The unpleasant truth is that Mr. Hamister himself isn't quite ready for the big leagues....
Tom Golisano, the Rochester billionaire who makes a hobby out of running for governor, could follow through on the interest he's expressed. Without, of course, the city and county money that he, too, was seeking. Another potential buyer might be Warren Buffett, owner of the Buffalo News. The paper, after all, has written editorials imploring its readers to help keep the Sabres in Buffalo by purchasing season tickets.
Buffalo needs more than a pro hockey team, though. It needs jobs, and it needs a larger and more stable tax base.
Any help from Albany should be of the appropriate nature.
copyright 2002 by Buffalo Report, Inc.