Opinion: The best team Enron could buy

The owners of the Houston Astros were thrilled less than three years ago when Enron signed a $100-million, 30-year contract for naming rights to the Astros' new baseball park. Tuesday, the Astros took the first legal steps toward changing the ballpark's name. For some reason, "Enron Field" has lost the cachet it enjoyed during Houston's recent boom times.

"The Houston Astros have been materially and adversely affected by the negative public perception and media scrutiny resulting from Enron's alleged bad business practices and bankruptcy," an Astros official said as the team sought help from a New York judge.

Perception? Alleged? The Astros are being too nice to Enron.

Maybe that's because, despite its bankruptcy, Enron on Jan. 22 paid the Astros $108,000 to retain its 14-person luxury box for the coming season. Enron also paid $90,000 for 35 2002 season tickets. Neither Enron nor the Astros mentioned whether the luxury suite or box seats will occasionally be made available to former Enron employees who no longer can afford to attend Astros games now that their life's savings have evaporated.

The Astros are hardly alone in the embarrassment resulting from the associations Enron bought for itself. For example, Mark Wohar, the Enron professor of economics at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, told the New York Times he has taken "a little bit of ribbing" and no longer is certain that the financing for his faculty position still exists. At Rice University in Houston, a $5-million deal with Enron, including endowed chairs for professors specializing in e-commerce and risk management, has been jeopardized.

Of course, the biggest scrambles to escape the taint of Enron money are taking place in Washington, D.C., and various state capitals. Listening to members of several congressional committees deliver sanctimonious lectures to executives from Enron and Arthur Andersen, you'd never guess that most of the lecturers put Enron money in their pockets, too.

Enron got a lot more for its money in Washington than its name on the side of a ballpark. Recipients of Enron's campaign contributions, consulting fees and board directorships created laws (such as the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995) that allowed Enron to exploit unregulated markets, tax loopholes and shields against litigation. Recipients of cash from Andersen and the other major accounting firms blocked regulatory reforms that would prevent the kinds of conflicts of interest in which Andersen became enmeshed by serving simultaneously as Enron's auditor and major consultant.

The professors and baseball executives who received Enron money are showing their embarrassment now. But most of the politicians who did Enron's dirty work seem to be beyond shame.

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