Here’s another professional sports sucking the public dry piece you won’t read on Super Bowl weekend or around World Series time, which happens to resonate locally. Bloomberg News points out that while Oakland is the fifth most crime-ridden city in America and faces a $32 million budget deficit, the city along with Alameda County pays $17.3 million a year to stage 10 football games (including exhibitions) for the Raiders and to host the A’s at the Coliseum.
And if the Raiders, who desperately want and need to get out of the aging Coliseum, bolt for LA or someplace else? Oakland and the county would be stuck with $145 million in debt, left over from when politicians gave away the farm in 1995 to lure the team back from Los Angeles. Bloomberg News
Politics
