A Good, Just, And Sustainable City

The most important question for any city is not whether it will be a “big league” city, but whether it will be a good, just and sustainable city. The measure of a good city is justice and flourishing for all persons, not the presence of the NBA.

Billionaires become billionaires by taking much more money than the value of their own labor from the value of other people’s labor. The Oklahoma billionaires who own the OKC Thunder could easily build an arena for the team they own and from which they profit, but that is not how they became billionaires.

They became billionaires by taking as much as they could from others, and now they are attempting to take as much money as they possibly can from the people of Oklahoma City or else they will take our NBA team to a better market.

I keep seeing and hearing from our city leaders supporting the continuation of a regressive sales tax to build a new NBA arena that Oklahoma City is the 42nd ranked market in the country and that there is no way we can compete with other markets and keep the OKC Thunder unless we pay $850 million in public funds to keep them because the ownership of the Thunder has so many other options.

Isn’t the reality of teams going to a market that actually can support them part of how free market capitalism works? Funny how the same billionaires who tout the free market when it works for them want a cent of every dollar we spend to support them so they can be on the public funds dole.

I have yet to see any convincing evidence that building a $900 million basketball arena by raising $850 million from a regressive sales tax will contribute anything to decreasing poverty or raising the median income for persons living in Oklahoma City. The Dec. 12 vote to fund a new arena is being promoted as a continuation of the sales tax that funded the OKC MAPS projects, but this is the first time the sales tax has been proposed to fund a stand-alone project that will have such a large direct benefit for one corporation.

Let’s take a look at who has and who has not benefited from the various MAPS projects since 1993 that have been funded by a regressive sales tax. We often hear talk and see figures from those who tout the many billions of dollars of economic impact that the MAPS projects have created [estimated to be $7 billion by OKC Chamber in 2019 before MAPS 4], but who is actually benefiting from this economic impact?

One place to begin is by looking at OKC poverty rates and median household income in 1993, and the years since, compared to now. What has 30 years of a regressive sales tax actually done for the poor in Oklahoma City and for raising median household income? The answer – not much at all.

It would seem that many billions of the dollars of economic impact would make a sizable dent in OKC’s poverty rate and that the median household income in Oklahoma City would have risen significantly, but poverty rates have remained flat, and inflation adjusted median household income in the city has also not increased.

It would appear that the billons of dollars of economic impact from MAPS projects are not trickling down to the poor or enhancing the household income of average folks in OKC, nor would it seem that the presence of an NBA team has done anything to lower poverty rates or to increase median household income in OKC.

There is no denying that many people are collectively making many billions of dollars from Oklahoma City’s MAPS projects and from the presence of an NBA team in Oklahoma City, but it is not moving the poverty or median household income needles in our city.

Given that the poor and those who are middle income pay a higher percentage of their income on sales taxes than the wealthy, in a just scenario they would be seeing a much higher return on their MAPS investments than is actually the case.

As we think about the impact of spending $850 million of the people’s money taken from them with one of the most regressive forms of taxation, there are so many projects and priorities that would benefit the people of our city much more than the public funding of a new basketball arena.

In the hottest year of what will become the hottest decade in the hottest century in the history of humanity on earth, with all indicators providing evidence that the climate crisis is rapidly accelerating, let it be known that the No. 1 priority for the economically and politically powerful in Oklahoma City is to build a nearly $1 billion basketball arena using the people’s money.

This is OKC playing its fiddle while the earth burns. This is OKC trying to re-arrange its deck chairs into a “big league” sports arena while the ship of humanity sinks into climate chaos.

In relation to ecological sustainability – one of the most urgent challenges facing humanity and the world in all of history – Oklahoma City ranks 179 out of 200 cities in the United States. When will Oklahoma City become a “big league city” for sustainability? If only the leaders of Oklahoma City were as serious about preserving a livable climate for all life on earth as they are about preserving our NBA basketball team.

Oklahoma City could have invested in a trolley system and train system that actually take people places instead of driving around in circles. We could have invested in making Oklahoma City the center of renewable energy production, research, and innovation for the country. We could effectively end homelessness and lift every person in Oklahoma City above the poverty line.

With $850 million of truly public investments, Oklahoma City could go a long way towards becoming a good, just, and sustainable city, but we seem to be prioritizing being a “big league” city that provides unjust profits for the wealthy and powerful instead.