Time for a huddle on $12-million

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published June 15, 2007

Under the 1996 deal to provide the Tampa Bay Buccaneers a taxpayer-funded stadium, Hillsborough County also agreed to build the team a practice facility. There was one catch: The government would own it. The trade-off had several purposes: give the team added incentive to stay, bolster support for a referendum to finance the stadium with taxes and give the public an asset it could leverage with the Bucs or any NFL franchise in contract negotiations down the road.

That history should guide the current debate over whether the Bucs are entitled to the $12-million the deal set aside for a practice venue. An offshoot of the team built the facility with private money, and the Bucs suggested recently it might want the public funds to pay for locker rooms and stadium upgrades. That should be a nonstarter. The contract calls for spending the money on a practice field that the authority, in turn, would own. Even an allowance to use leftover funds for the stadium is moot given that the training facility cost a reported $30-million or more.

The Bucs have not asked for the money. But the team is talking with authority officials to explore how to tap the funds without having to hand over its new training facility. Speaking last month to the Times, Bucs executive Eric Land maintained: "We have yet to build a real practice facility." He also has said repeatedly that the Bucs reserve the right to the money for the perpetuity of the contract, through at least 2028. That creates two problems.

First, the idea the Bucs would build a second training field or give up ownership to a sliver of its present site is not within the spirit of the original deal. The contract envisioned "a first-class NFL practice facility" that $12-million a decade ago was considered a reasonable sum to provide. Building another field now would be a waste of money whose only purpose would be to relieve the Bucs from the obligation to hand over something better. That should the jar the team and the authority alike at a time the state, cities and counties are talking about doing with billions of dollars less.

Sitting on the money is not right, either. While entitled to it, the Bucs would not do the community, or their own image, any service. The intent was to put a facility in the ground and hand the keys to the public. The Sports Authority board, which may discuss the matter Monday, should not sit by, either. The agency needs clarity on what the team's intentions are so it can explore its options. Board member Jim Norman, who helped put taxpayers in this predicament in 1996, does not advance that cause by undermining his staff's advice to hold strong. The city of Tampa and the county should get involved, given that these governments are on the hook for the authority's debts. Neither the authority nor its principal tenant should want this issue hanging over their relationship.

[Last modified June 14, 2007, 21:42:11]