Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit

Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit by Cagan, Joanna. Hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781567511390.

Are you a sports fan distraught over your home teams move to another city? Or someone whose city has just lured a team to your home turf with a brand new stadium? Or maybe you dont follow sports, but as a taxpayer are outraged over cutbacks in school funding and other services. Forget about the false tales of "welfare queens" who supposedly rode around in Cadillacs. Field of Schemes introduces you to some real welfare kings. A used-car salesman turned baseball owner promises to pay for a new stadium out of his own pocket, if the state government just agrees to move a highway to clear the land. Several backroom deals later, the state is raising a quarter-billion dollars towards the stadium costs - and the team owner is getting his stadium scot-free. The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft wants to buy a football team, but only if the state will build him a new stadium first. So he pays the $4 million cost of a referendum - even as his camp spends millions more in advertising to make sure he wins. In exchange, he gets at least $300 million in public money to build his teams new home.