Dodging Truth on Baseball? D ...
During the Nov. 17 public meeting about a publicly subsidized baseball stadium, one Charles County resident told the county commissioners that she had dropped off packages a week earlier filled with her research findings on such a facility.</br></br>Shortly after the meeting, she spoke with commissioners President Wayne Cooper (D) only to find out that not only had he not been given the information, he didn't remember hearing her speak of it during the meeting. Were the commissioners listening? I would be willing to bet the packages were never opened.</br></br>I asked Commissioner Al Smith (R-Waldorf) after the meeting why he thought this facility would be successful here when these things haven't been in other areas. He told me he didn't want to hear about failures elsewhere because he believed in its success here.</br></br>1. County Administrator Gene Lauer's projected average income of the jobs that would be created by this stadium was approximately $33,000 per year. He quickly rattled off the job positions this included -- the baseball players' salaries was one. How many of the players will actually be Charles County residents and will contribute to our local economy? Was this position intentionally included to boost the positive effects of such a facility? 2. While Lauer and his staff responded in a general, combined format to questions raised by opponents about traffic, noise and other issues, no mention was ever made about the information supplied to them that contained the independent economists' negative findings on the economic impact of a publicly subsidized sports facility. Why wasn't that addressed?</br></br>I guess Commissioner Robert J. Fuller (D-St. Charles) addressed that issue at the March 8 work session when he said the county government wasn't in the business of business, it is in the business of providing entertainment for its residents. In a meeting I had with Cooper in January, he told me that he wanted, as president of the board of commissioners, to bring his business expertise to the table. I can only assume he decided this expertise was not required in making this decision.