Flush With Their Most Recent Failure, The Local Football Lobby Wants More Taxpayer Money. By Emil Franzi PRESIDENT CLINTON promised he'd end welfare as we know it. Most politicians currently believe welfare payments should be terminated after some specific time period, like two years. The more liberal think five. The Copper Bowl has been on the public tit for seven. This year the Tucson City Council turned down its promoters. May the council not wimp out. Every year the guys who put together this obviously loser bowl game--loser defined as one that can't make it without taxpayer support--tell us it's the last time they'll need public funding. And every year they're back in front of the city council and the Pima County Board of Supervisors with their hands out. This year they asked for $150,000 more from each, down from previous years, but much more than the original $50,000 they got the first time. Here's their argument: The Copper Bowl brings thousands of people to town who spend millions with local businesses, and the city gets its money back from the local sales taxes. The county has no sales tax, so clearly that pot doesn't get re-filled--but, hey, it's good for business. Better for some than others. The guys in the pennant business and the owners of restaurants near the stadium do better than the craft shop on Ina Road or the appliance store on the south side, proving John C. Calhoun's immortal definition of the difference between tax consumers and tax producers. But this assumes you take the statistics given by Copper Bowl boosters at face value. They claim their event generates enough visitors to spend over $150,000 in city sales tax. At 2 percent, that's $7 million to $10 million. Really? We've heard from phony experts before, on every subject from the O.J. trial to CAP water. To generate $10 million in taxable revenue would require 10,000 extra folks each spending $1,000. Hard to believe we get that many high-rollers. And that they all stay and eat and spend only in the city. Because the teams don't. They've had reservations at Loews Ventana in the county. And the high-rollers generally head for the teams. The city doesn't get a nickel back on those dollars. How many outsider dollars spent in December have nothing to do with the Copper Bowl? Tucson has a ton of winter visitors every December--that's why they're called winter visitors. How many people here for other reasons--from seeing the Desert Museum to visiting Aunt Maude--got shoved into the bowl game count? How many bowl game tickets are sold to Phoenicians who come in for the game and don't spend squat? The guys with their hands out are not just a group of civic-minded do-gooders. Like most promoters, they're in for a piece of the action. Copper Bowl offices are in Williams Center--hardly the low-rent district. And there's a staff to put things together. They get paid to hustle us, folks. Funny thing, but the Copper Bowl staff's payroll about equals the amount of the handout they want. For several years Weiser Lock sponsored the Copper Bowl. Weiser announced their pull-out some time ago, so the Copper Bowl people knew it well in advance. They still have no sponsor, yet they want continued taxpayer funding. The GOP majority among the county supervisors is not only planning to cough up their share, but, in another off-the-wall move by Supervisor Ed Moore, is willing to pay the city's share too--if the city will reimburse the county from all that mythical sales tax revenue. Supervisors Mike Boyd and Paul Marsh, after publicly swearing off being sucked in by Moore's wacky schemes, fell for one yet again. Reminds some observers of Lucy setting up the kick for Charlie Brown. But the supervisors' recent clown act was good for raising one point: How do you verify which dollars are being spent by Copper Bowl fans and which dollars are being spent by ordinary out-of-towners? Answer: Short of roadblocks and ID bracelets, you can't. A simpler solution, if we want to continue subsidizing football, would be to have the city and county take over Copper Bowl sponsorship. This is where the supposed benefit is--all that TV exposure so Bubba and Cissy will pack up their trailer because they just realized it's warm here in the winter. Run it the way we do the Community Center--at a loss for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many--and hope some of it will trickle down. And take those folks at the Copper Bowl office and put them on the city payroll. They want taxpayer money, let 'em become civil servants. Then we might finally get a chance to look at the books--and the real numbers. And maybe we could force the teams to stay in hotels that are in our town.

		© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth