Constant Ballot Measures: Too Much of a Good Thing

Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs seems now to recognize that it’s pointless to continue his effort to hound developers of Los Angeles’ proposed sports arena out of town.

On Thursday, after the developers offered to provide a guaranty that will cover any deficiencies to the city treasury, Wachs declared himself to be “searching diligently for a way to proceed with construction” of the facility. In the meantime, he offered to delay “at least for a few days circulating petitions” for the initiative he filed earlier this week requiring voter approval for the use of public money for professional sports facilities.

That’s good news for the city and the dreary Convention Center neighborhood where the facility would be built. And it’s a wise move for Wachs.

He made political hay with his loud and persistent attacks on this deal for the proposed new home for the Lakers and Kings sports teams. But after developers met his objections, making public their contracts with the city and promising to make up any revenue shortfall to the city, even Wachs seems willing to entertain the notion that this deal is a good one.

Negotiators for the city and the arena developers will be working hard in the coming weeks to nail down language that protects city taxpayers. That should be the end of the story.

Yet even though Wachs has declared himself more comfortable with the sports arena, he still appears convinced that city officials will be a party to fleecing taxpayers where future sports facilities are concerned. Wachs says he may rewrite his initiative to exclude the arena project.

That approach, in our view, leads to the peculiar conclusion that our elected representatives are either so inept or so unscrupulous that voters, the vast majority of whom are uninterested in public finance, are better able to judge the economic gains and risks to the city of projects large and small.

The city of Los Angeles, like the federal government, is a representative democracy for good reason. Elected leaders are, or become, generally more focused and better informed on matters of government finance and operation than most voters. That’s why the council and the mayor have the authority to allocate existing tax revenue, which is how the city intends to finance the $70 million in bonds it will float to acquire and prepare the arena site.

Councilman Wachs contends that professional sports ventures can pose such a risk to the city treasury that they merit voter scrutiny. But by requiring a referendum on possibly any public expenditure involving professional sports projects, including those the council can itself authorize, Wachs will more likely encourage the sort of parochial behavior that voters too often display when polled on spending for schools, roads and libraries: If it doesn’t directly benefit them, forget it.

That result could doom plans to renovate the Coliseum; it could even foreclose the hosting of a soccer World Cup since that event might require a facility “spruce-up” by the city. Surely that’s not what Wachs intends, nor is it in the city’s long-term interest. The far better course would be for Wachs to withdraw his initiative. City officials should be up to the task ahead. If they demonstrate they are not, that’s when voters should flood the polls.