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 Congress should end the "economic war" among the states, said Arthur J. Rolnick, senior vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
Advocates pointed to the collapsed Interstate 35W bridge in that city as they argued for a ban on the use of tax-exempt financing for sports facilities.
"The Minnesota Twins got public funding approved for a new stadium just the year before the I-35W bridge collapsed," said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and a Democratic presidential candidate.
The Interstate 35W bridge collapsed Aug. 1, killing 13 people and injuring about 100.
Professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey estimate that the total public subsidy for stadiums opened from 1990-2006 is around $12 billion, Harvard University professor Judith Grant Long said. But when she added costs for public subsidies for land, infrastructure, capital improvements, municipal taxes and forgone property taxes, Long came up with a figure of $18.5 billion.
"There is absolutely no evidence that $18.5 billion in public benefits have been generated since 1990 to compensate," she said.
Altogether, the public has spent $27 billion on building, land and infrastructure for 167 major league sports facilities between 1950-2006, she said.
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 Congress should consider banning the use of tax-exempt financing for stadiums, advocates said. Approximately $10 billion of tax exempt bonds have been issued to fund major league sports facilities for the 82 new facilities opened from 1990 to 2006, Long said.
State and local governments will always have a hard time saying no to sports club owners and fans, and millionaire sports club owners are going to keep coming back to ask for public money, Rolnick said.
"And who can blame them?" he said. "As long as governments are willing to hand over limited public resources, these teams would be foolish not to accept them."
The Bush administration has no position on this issue, said Eric Solomon, the Treasury Department's assistant secretary of tax policy. And the Treasury Department does not have the regulatory power to prohibit the use of government bonds to finance stadiums.
However, "Congress could consider banning tax-exempt bond financing altogether," said Solomon, who pointed out that the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., introduced legislation to do that in 1996.
[Associated Press; by Jesse J.
Holland]
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