Whichever side of the debate over public funding for the
Miami Dolphins’ renovation of Sun Life Stadium you were on, the biggest
frustration all sides can share is that the way the measure died left no
closure on the issue.
That means the stadium won’t look like this:
Thousands of people had already cast their votes in a public
referendum on taxpayer-support stadium renovations when the clock ran out on
the accompanying state bill on Friday. It wasn’t voted down by the Legislature.
Speaker Will Weatherford simply declined to bring it for a vote.
The immediate consequences are that Super Bowls 50 and 51 (no
silly Roman numerals for me) are almost certainly going to San Francisco/Santa
Clara and Houston. The long-term issue is whether Sun Life Stadium should get a
major overhaul. It was built in 1987 and at some point it’ll outlive its usefulness
unless hundreds of millions of dollars are invested in it.
Should taxpayers contribute to that renovation along with
the billionaire owner of the Dolphins? Is attracting a handful of Super Bowls
and college football championship games a good return on investment for the
public? If the stadium referendum had gone to a referendum this month, up or
down, the answers would have been delivered.
Win and the Dolphins get the money with an endorsement from
the public.
Lose and owner Stephen Ross knows he can’t go that route, at
least for many more years. So he’d have to accept the stadium the way it is, or
go for a less ambitious renovation with private funding.
A partial roof wouldn’t motivate me to attend games anyway.
I’ll stand in 90-degree heat or the rain to watch winning football.
Even a vote in the Florida House (the Senate passed it)
would have brought more closure. It was telling that the opposition included many
representatives from Miami-Dade County, which stood to benefit the most from
the Super Bowls and other events the renovation aimed to attract. But we’ll
never know whether it truly had enough support from elected officials.
The bottom line was that one man, Will Weatherford, blocked
it. The speaker position changes on a regular basis. The Dolphins can try again
when they have more friendly leaders in Tallahassee. The problem is they didn’t
get an answer as to whether the public truly supports them.
In politics, as in football, there’s always next season.
