Letter: Due diligence lacking for stadium

To the Editor:

Congratulations are due to every Minnesotan as we are again thrown into the stadium-building business.

What it really means is a taxpayer funded, temporary government make-work project to keep union labor off lawmakers’ backs. It was passed off as being paid for by gaming, which is also known as a poor man's tax, and sold to the taxpayer as a good investment by one of our local representatives.

Why government is involving taxpayers in a private business — especially for a billion-plus-dollar-a-year industry. What are the moral and economic implications of confiscating private resources to pay for it?

The line we are given is that it will create jobs and bring in money to the hotel and restaurant industry. But we have yet to see an economic impact statement on just how much more revenue this boondoggle will generate — or when that will end up back in the pockets of the rest of us.

Maybe were just supposed shut up, pay our taxes and feel good about having a brand spanking new retractable roof building. Which by the way will cost more than Jerry Jones tax payer funded spectacle that seats over a 100,000 Cowboy fans.

Our other temporary representative portrays the building of stadiums to a "quality of life." If you consider the wild screaming, drunken disorder and mayhem quality, long with the on-field taunting and the occasional inference of players with the law, it's questionable that this is good quality family entertainment.

Add in concussions, something that will never go away from the sport no matter what kind of technology is created for protective equipment. There’s a pending class-action lawsuit by former players that sacrificed their bodies for the cause now having trouble remembering what they did five minutes earlier.

What is the future of the sport and where was the due diligence on the decision?

No one should ever delude themselves into thinking this had anything to do with being conservative.

Kent Klinger

Wabasha

Tags: opinion, letters