Don’t Forget Who Owns the Moda Center

I haven’t seen any scientific polling on pubic support for SB 1501 from this year’s legislative session, but anecdotes, like Willamette Week’s highlight of reader opinion, suggest it holds bipartisan opposition. This kind of government intervention into the marketplace typically lacks Republican support, a nod to the free-market heritage of the Reagan era that has come to buckle under the more left-wing economic views of President Trump. The progressive base of the Oregon Democratic Party tends to object to this bill because it’s seen as a public subsidy for the wealthy owners of the Portland Trailblazers.

Part of that progressive indigestion fails to consider the fact that the City of Portland owns the Moda Center. So, it is responsible for its upkeep. Progressives understand that if it were a house, and a frugal, hard-working lower-middle-class couple invested in some rental property, that couple is a “landlord.” In progressive eyes, that entails all manner of responsibilities to meet the needs of their renters.

I can’t vouch for the merits of the Blazers’ demands. I took my kids to a couple of games this year, and the place looks fine to me. Yet, I’m content with Volcanos Stadium in Keizer, Oregon and scratched my head when the much nicer and newer Ron Tonkin Field, where the Hillsboro Hops play, needed to be demolished and replaced by something newer. Maybe my taste is out of step with the marginal spectator sport ticket buyer.

Yet, what we have between the Moda Center and the Blazers is nothing more than a commercial negotiation between a renter and its landlord. If the Moda Center were privately owned, such normal give and take would not entail public subsidy.

So, maybe there is a partisan divide at the root of this controversial bill. How many progressives support the notion of the public ownership of the means of production? Do they like the City owning the Moda Center in the first place? The essence of SB 1501 is really just the State of Oregon bailing out the City of Portland. The Oregon legislature is offering money to buy a stake in this commercial property, as stated quite directly in Section 2 of the bill: “The Oregon Department of Administrative Services, in consultation with the Governor and the Attorney General, is authorized to negotiate and enter into agreements with one or more public bodies to establish a joint authority, the purpose of which is to own and oversee the operations of the Moda Center.”

This bill was more about the City of Portland being subsidized than it was the Blazers. The root cause of the problem is government ownership of commercial property. If Oregon’s market for pro basketball cannot support hosting an NBA team, then it’s not in the public interest to socialize the costs of owning the needed commercial real estate.

There are more efficient means by which Oregon and the City can retain an NBA team: impose less cost on doing business generally. While hyper-focused on whether the state should spend money on nicer locker rooms, policymakers should not lose sight of the possibility that the new owners of the Blazers are even more influenced by the same factors that motivate other businesses to divest from Oregon.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.