Two legislative bills giving billions of dollars in public funding and support to stadium projects were passed in the Utah Legislature this year, both with aspirations of luring professional sports teams to Utah’s capital city. These bills were not without controversy, of course.
People farther from the capital didn’t like seeing state-level taxpayer funding benefitting just one area of the state. One concession the rural representatives got from the “MLB bill,” which will put a new tax on rental cars, was that the eventual professional baseball team would wear the name “Utah” instead of “Salt Lake.”
The “NHL bill,” on the other hand, has no such mandate and authorizes Salt Lake City alone to raise its sales taxes by 0.5% for 30 years to help the Smith Entertainment Group, or SEG, pay for an upgraded Delta Center and surrounding entertainment district. The Salt Lake City Council has until September to agree to the deal, but they also have a small window of opportunity to ask for amendments to it.
Meanwhile, Ryan Smith has already decided that he wants another “Utah” name, perhaps because he’s not from Salt Lake. But given that this $900 million is not, in fact, coming from the state at large but from people living, working and visiting Salt Lake City proper, I think the Council should demand, among other things, that SEG choose a “Salt Lake” name instead.
Matthew Givens
Murray