Full-court press

Given how way out left the socialista Portland City Council has become, you would think that redoing the Moda Center to make the Trail Blazers happy would be a nonstarter. After all, pro sports teams are billionaires' playthings; they can afford to build and maintain their own toys.

But no, this week we learn that there's serious talk of forking over nine figures out of the city's "climate" sales tax pork barrel to gussy up the hoops palace, and thereby keep the team from moving to another city. How fixing the basketball arena saves the planet is yet to be explained, but I'm sure they'll come up with something. Or maybe not. That tax has been such an obvious all-purpose slush fund that maybe they'll stop even pretending it has anything to do with ecology.

As always, there are flies in the ointment. Steve Novick, the universally acclaimed lifelong genius who's a swing vote on a lot of matters on the City Council, sounds like he's not going for the idea. Not that he won't sell out to the Blazers. But he'll probably dream up a whole new tax for us all to pay to fund it. This is what he does.

Meanwhile, over at Multnomah County, the lame duck commission chair, Jessica Chevy Vega, says she too is excited to be pumping tax dollars the Blazers' way. Of course, she tells us this five minutes after she wails that the county is in a budget crisis and needs a bigger transfusion of everyone's hard-earned dough, stat.

And down in Salem, the pitch to the state legislature is "We just want what you've promised Major League Baseball." Which pencils out to nine figures as well. In effect, the state's been told it's going to lose big money one way or the other, and so they might as well not lose the Blazers, too.

In the end, it sounds like the team is planning to pay nothing and commit to nothing while the taxpayers pay the bill for the arena re-do. If you live in Portland, you'll be paying it two or three different ways. Even old Chris Deadly, the former Blazer, is hesitating to jump on the bandwagon just yet.

I'll confess, my ardor for the Blazers has faded over the years. Bill Walton and Maurice Lucas are dead. The talent the Allens have put on the floor has been second-rate for many years running. At the moment, they've lost six games in a row and are swooning toward tanking territory for another year. The head coach they unwisely brought to town is under federal indictment, accused of being a mobster. Some apparently rich guy is about to take them over, and what little anybody knows about him doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that things are going to get better any time soon. 

If I were an elected offiicial, I'd tell the Blazers what Tom Potter told them when he was mayor years ago: that there is no public money of any kind available for the foreseeable future. But that's just me. The elected representatives we actually do have are no doubt racking their brains trying to come up with a way to get the team the half-billion-plus without anybody noticing. 

Don't worry, Portland, Raymond Lee is handling this. It's going to be great.