In what can be viewed as a good sign for both St. Louis County taxpayers uninterested in funding a new stadium initiative and those hoping to keep the Rams in St. Louis, a senior aide to Governor Jay Nixon called the office of Steve Stenger, a St. Louis County Executive last week, and revealed Nixon's belief that St. Louis County's participation "would not be necessary in the stadium deal," according to a report from David Hunn and Steve Giegerich of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Could the move by Nixon to remove taxpayer funding simply be a thinly veiled effort to see that the Rams stay in St. Louis?
"But Jim Shrewsbury, the Nixon-appointed chairman of the Edward Jones Dome Authority, said the move by Nixon's office is all part of the plan to persuade NFL owners to keep the St. Louis Rams in town," write Hunn and Geigerich.
"An owners committee has been meeting for weeks about moving a team to Los Angeles, after a 20-year absence from the market. Stan Kroenke, owner of the Rams, is a front runner among three teams bidding to leave. He announced in January that he is building a glamorous, $1.86 billion stadium on the old Hollywood Park Race Track in Inglewood, Calif."
The Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers have also come together on proposed stadium initiative outside of Los Angeles.
"But, during the NFL's annual owners meeting last week in Phoenix, several key owners insisted they would protect local markets from losing teams - if, that is, those markets can present their own stadium proposals with concrete financing plans."
Which seems to be the main problem in St. Louis at the moment.
"Opponents of tax-payer funded stadiums have argued vehemently that a decade-old law requires separate public votes in St. Louis city and county before any tax dollars are used to build new stadiums," Hunn and Geigerich report.
"Right now, the state, city and county each help pay off nearly $300 million in bond debt used to build the Jones Dome 20 years ago. The state pays $12 million a year, the city and county $6 million each."
Nixon's own two-man team proposed the $985 million open-air stadium on the Mississippi riverfront, which they said depended on approximately $450 million from the NFL and Kroenke, along with "tax credits, seat licenses, and as much as $350 million up front from an "extension" of the existing bonds."
Stenger has maintained that he would support county taxpayer dollars going toward a new stadium initiative without a public vote. Without the tax dollars, which amounts to $6 million a year, per Hunn and Giegerich, it's difficult to see how the difference could be made up on the proposed $985 million arena.
Mike O'Mara, "a St. Louis County council member, labor leader and Stenger political ally," per the report, supported the notion of giving the electorate an opportunity to vote on the matter, but told Hunn and Giegerich that the council had not been consulted by Nixon's office.
Jeff Aboussie, an officer at the St. Louis Building and Trades Council referred to the proposal as "without a doubt the largest construction project" in the region and said Nixon's unilateral decision "could derail the deal and that would present a huge problem for us."
