Baseball strategy meeting tomorrow

January 29th, 2024

Just a reminder that we’ve having a strategy meeting on the baseball stadium issue.  After a brief overview, we’ll be discussing how to stop legislators from giving money to build the new baseball stadiums need by privately owned teams to satisfy the contracts they signed with MLB back in 2021 plus money to the Volcanoes.

If you haven’t yet signed up for the meeting Tuesday, January 30th from 7:00-7:45 pm, sign up here.

We just learned today that the teams’ lobbyists are circulating a letter amongst legislators asking them to sign on to giving baseball teams $27 million for stadiums in Hillsboro, Salem and Eugene. First it was $22.5 million, then $25 million, now it’s $27 million.

The Washington County Commissioners are discussing tomorrow morning whether they should provide $8 million in funding for the Hops’ stadium.  Their discussion is about whether to put it on their agenda for a later meeting. But it will be a real decision point.

We’ve not heard of any of the teams seeking additional owners to help bear the cost of the decisions they’ve made to promise MLB they’d get lovely, new stadiums.  Nor have the billionaire owners of MLB promised to help cover the cost.  After all, why not get the public to cover their commitments?

Please join us. Sign up here

Baseball funding strategy session

January 25th, 2024

Should the state give $25 million to build baseball stadiums for professional, privately-owned baseball teams? This is still on the docket for the February session. We sent you our commentary on it in September: https://taxfairnessoregon.net/20-million-for-the-owners-of-the-hillsboro-hops/. And have done considerable research since, leading to this talking points paper: https://taxfairnessoregon.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TFO-comments-Stadium-Funding.pdf we’ve been sharing with legislators.  But leadership is still a problem.

If we’re going to stop this, we need your help.  We’ve gotten a “no way” response from 30 of the 90 legislators, “I’m all for it” from one and “undecided” from ten.  We need your help in getting commitments from others.

Join us at a strategy meeting to tip the scale.

Tuesday, January 30th from 7:00-7:45 pm

Register in advance for this meeting:

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.