Here's one link I thought deserved some special attention -- a story from the Washington Post detailing what went wrong with the Virginia's apparently failed bid for the Expos:
Gov. Mark R. Warner had joined key lawmakers in balking at Virginia's plans for financing a new 42,500-seat stadium. But baseball negotiators, hungry for political certainty, had presented a radical idea: Could Virginia officials simply agree to give the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue expected from the ballpark to baseball or team owners, who would then finance the ballpark themselves?
I know how I would have answered this request: Get lost.
Warner's insistence that Virginia would not allow the stadium to be financed with "moral obligation" bonds (the impasse that led to the above proposal from MLB) was an act of political self-preservation. Remember, this is a governor who pushed through a package of tax increases in a year when the state's economy was rebounding, and the state budget ended the year with a budget surplus.
If Warner had committed the state to a significant financing package, and the state eventually had to make up for a revenue shortfall, Warner would have a dubious political legacy to defend as he seeks higher office -- first in Virginia (don't doubt he'll make another run at the U.S. Senate), and then possibly nationally (don't doubt the appeal of a Southern Democrat on a presidential ticket).
UPDATE: Bill Collins, the former telecom executive who for almost a decade led the charge to bring baseball back to the Washington area, is laying the blame for the loss of the Expos to D.C. at the feet of Governor Warner. The hang-up, those moral obligation bonds:
But the deal derailed when Warner, a longtime baseball supporter who was once an investor in Collins' ownership group, balked at a financing plan that would have pledged the state's "moral obligation" to support the bonds, said Collins."It killed any chance we had of dealing with Major League Baseball," Collins said in an interview Wednesday.
When baseball executives learned in a meeting just days ago that Warner was insisting on a different financing mechanism, "that was the day Major League Baseball had the blood drain out of their faces. ... Until then, there had never been any conversation that he wouldn't support it."
I'm not exactly the Governor's biggest fan, owing to the fact that he hiked taxes for Virginians while the budget was roaring back into surplus, but I can't fault him for this call. Warner, before he was a politician, was a businessman (and one of Collins' partners in the Virginia group before he was elected Governor). If he wouldn't committ the moral obligation bonds, there must have been some indication somewhere that there was a chance the state would be left holding the bag.
Welcome to one of those moments when the right decision, and the most politically expedient decision, were one in the same.
We;ll see how that Southern Democrat appeal works out for John Edwards in a little while.