To read the entire editorial, pick up The Columbian Friday.
If you hear that whiffing sound — you know, the sound of a batter swinging at a pitch and missing — it came from Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart’s latest proposal to have the Yakima Bears move here to play ball.
The original proposal to bring the Bears here would be to build a stadium here and have the owners paying 30 percent and the public — in the form of an entertainment tax — pay 70 percent.
Stuart — along with reducing the percentage that would have to come from taxpayers — also had a plan to convince cities like Vancouver to play along. For the first five years that a place would collect the entertainment tax, they’d get to keep the money. Then, they’d have to cut themselves off and begin paying for the stadium.
Cut themselves off? As one person close to these baseball negotiations told us: “That’s like giving crack to a drug addict.”
We simply feel that part of Stuart’s plan is unworkable.
