Questionable financing for stadium

Charles Stile in The Record puts into words the uneasy feeling I felt about the private fundraising effort announced by Gov. Jon Corzine and state Sen. Ray Lesniak to make the Rutgers football stadium expansion a reality.

The governor was right to strip the project of state funding, given the sorry state of New Jersey’s finances. But his basic character flaw — a need to make everyone happy — has resulted in a flawed approach to the funding the project.

There are several problems.

First, as Stile points out, the Corzine/Lesniak plan creates the potential for influence peddling.

Alumni, students and small businesses are likely contributors. But if those donations are classified as confidential, charitable contributions, what’s to stop, say, auto insurance carriers, utilities, casinos and other state-regulated industries from pumping piles of campaign cash toward the cause?

What about developers, facing trouble with wetlands applications at the Department of Environmental Protection? And how about all those contractors barred from making political contributions by the state’s pay-to-play bans? Here’s a chance to give without fear of penalty — or public disclosure.

In essence, the stadium campaign has the potentail to drill massive holes in efforts to break the grip that campaign donors have on the legislative process. Pay-to-play restrictions, public financing, lobbying disclosure, all go out the window if the same people who are prohibited from contributing to the governor or a senate campaign or who are limited can then give for one of Gov. Corzine or Sen. Lesniak’s pet projects.

The second issue I have with the expansion and the fundraising is that the money could be used to bring back some other, smaller sports or to fund academics. The desire on the part of Rutgers — my alma mater — to be a bigtime football program is understandable.

But Rutgers’ mission is not and should not be to field a great football team. Its mission should be to provide a great learning environment for its students and to expand college opportunities for as many New Jersey residents who want to attend and have the grades and test scores to get in. That would mean finding way to reduce tuition for all, or at least subisidize it to a greater degree for most.

The Scarlet Knights’ mediocre 2007 season should be a reminder that football success is fleeting. The school’s reputation as a quality university should not be.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Baseball’s steroid era in black and white

The Mitchell report is out and it pretty much blasts the slow response of baseball to recognize — or perhaps care — that steroid use was widespread.

Obviously, the players who illegally used performance enhancing substances are responsible for their actions. But they did not act in a vacuum. Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades – Commissioners, club officials, the Players Association, and players – shares to some extent in the responsibility for the steroids era. There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on. As a result, an environment developed in which illegal use became widespread.

Given the list of names (which includes some we’d already heard — Jose Canseco, Gary Sheffield, Matt Williams, Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield — and some we had not — among them Miguel Tejada, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettite, Todd Hundley and Paul LoDuca), the apparent widespread use of steroids by players and the broad responsibility for steroid use, it seems that targeting individual players for pentalties appears senseless.

Ruling out people like Bonds and Clemens from the Hall of Fame — well, that is a difficult question. Do you rule out an entire generation of players? Do you assume that only the small handful of Hall-of-Fame level players wouldn’t have risen to that level without help? Do you penalize Bonds and Clemens? What do you do with Sheffield and Rafael Palmeiro? Mark McGwire? Sammy Sosa?

I wish I had a good answer. I don’t. Baseball, its fans and the press — along with the entire industry that surrounds it — need to come to grips with this simple fact: The last 20 years of baseball history have been tainted.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Runner’s diary, Thursday

Treadmill run this morning — seven miles in 58:11, an 8:16.4 pace per mile. I was wiped by the end, but pleased that I was able to push the pace and extend the distance. Bodes well for a potential half-marathon in the spring.

Music: A mix

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.