Owners Approve Revenue-Sharing Plan

Major league baseball owners voted Thursday to provide financial assistance to their most needy clubs through an interim revenue-sharing plan that will begin this year if the players’ union approves.

Randy Levine, management’s lead negotiator, presented it to the union as part of a collective bargaining proposal that contained significant new elements and seemed to move the sides significantly closer.

Neither Levine nor Don Fehr, the union’s executive director, would discuss details of the bargaining proposal, but The Times learned that it:

--Removes the adjustable tax system that had been tied to industry revenue and which the union considered unacceptable.

--Reduces the previously proposed tax rate from 50% to 40% and raises the payroll threshold at which the tax would be triggered from $44 million to $46 million.

The threshold would be increased yearly by 7%, reaching a $56.3 million high in 2001, the final year of a six-year proposal, which is a year less than previous management proposals.

--Continues to accept the union’s proposed 2.5% tax on salaries in the first year and lowers from 5% to 3% management’s previous response to a second year salary tax.

While significant differences remain on threshold and rate, management’s third proposal since Nov. 15 (the union has made two) seems to make compromise more viable. It contains the most dramatic changes, perhaps, since the long dispute began--certainly since the pace began to accelerate this spring.

Fehr described the revenue-sharing plan--which Levine said he hoped to negotiate on a permanent rather than interim basis as part of an overall labor agreement--as superior to the owners’ previous Fort Lauderdale plan.

Acting Commissioner Bud Selig, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, said the plan will provide “substantial help” to the small-revenue clubs and benefit all clubs by improving competitive balance.

The plan required 21 votes and was approved 26-1-1. The New York Mets voted against it, and the Baltimore Orioles abstained.

A management official said a complex formula, reworked Wednesday night to reduce the impact on large-revenue teams and make it more palatable to the union, which contends that the large-revenue teams drive the salary market, basically comes down to this:

--Every club would contribute 15% of their local revenue to a central fund.

--Of that, 85% would be redistributed to all clubs, and 15% reserved for the neediest teams based on yearly revenue.

--A total of about $38 million would be transferred from the largest to the smallest revenue teams if the plan is approved for 1996, with that figure increasing to $58 million in the second year of the two-year interim plan--and to $70 million in a third year, if it becomes permanent.

--Based on the 1994 revenue figures management is using, seven clubs, including the Dodgers, would cough up the $38 million in ’96 at an average of $5.4 million, with the New York Yankees paying about $6 million.

--Another seven clubs--including the Brewers, Montreal Expos, Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals--would be on the receiving end. The rest would get back what they contributed.

A stumbling block was removed when WGN and TBS, the two superstations looking to lower their payments to baseball because of lower ratings and revenue, agreed to an unspecified increase “for the good of the industry.”

Revenue sharing in the past has amounted to equal distribution of national TV and marketing income. Visiting clubs also receive a portion of gate receipts. The union has long argued that owners should solve their own economic problems through redistribution rather than putting the burden on the players via a cap or tax.

“Hopefully the union will see that we’re trying to get our own house in order,” said a National League official.

Baseball Notes

The owners unanimously approved the sale of the St. Louis Cardinals from Anheuser-Busch to the group headed by William DeWitt Jr. for $150 million.