The whole process exposed a vindictive, punitive attitude that permeates the majorities of the House and Senate and which demonstrates that settling personal feuds trumps community well-being in the setting of policy.
Go back to the legislative session of 2005 when Real Salt Lake owner David Checketts was negotiating with hotel and resort magnate Earl Holding to purchase the land between State and Main streets and 600 South and 700 South blocks to build a professional soccer stadium in downtown Salt Lake City.
Mayor Rocky Anderson and the City Council - Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning members alike - approved a plan that would have used up to $18 million of available Redevelopment Agency money to condemn the land and pay for needed infrastructure to make the dream of a Salt Lake City professional soccer team a reality.
But the majority of folks in the Utah Legislature did not want the liberal Anderson to bask in the glory of bringing a professional sports franchise to Salt Lake City. Folks involved in those negotiations remember legislators saying they would not allow Anderson such a positive legacy.
Legislators were unabashedly angry at Anderson for his role in a lawsuit by environmental groups blocking the Republican-favored Legacy Highway in Davis County. And they were aghast at Anderson's proposed ordinance to protect gay people from discrimination in the workplace.
An environmentalist and an advocate for gay rights - nothing can cause apoplexy in the Legislature as quickly as that combination.
So language was inserted into an RDA reform bill sponsored by Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, that specifically barred RDA funds from being used for soccer stadiums or sports venues. The bill was to become law that April, so Real Salt Lake had no chance of getting a deal done that tapped RDA money.
Then, a year later, the Legislature had no problem earmarking hotel and motel taxes for a sports complex, as long as Salt Lake County promised to use the money for a professional soccer stadium in Republican-friendly Sandy. So legislators changed the RDA bill again, adding another type of device, a Community Development Agency fund, which could be used for sports venues, including soccer stadiums.
The Legislature continues to show disdain for Anderson and a proclivity for punishing his city. Take, for example, the dispute between Salt Lake City and its neighbor in adjacent Davis County, North Salt Lake, over pristine land within Salt Lake City's borders but owned by North Salt Lake that the latter wants to develop into residential housing.
Salt Lake City, through its zoning, has the legal right to prevent construction on the land. So the Legislature now has a bill that would take away that right and give North Salt Lake the ability to unilaterally pull it out of Salt Lake City's control and do with it what it wants. But the bill will have a quick expiration date so that it will only affect Salt Lake City in this single instance.
The Legislature doesn't want to put other cities in the position of having this happen to them.
And the relationship between Salt Lake County and Sandy, whose own soccer plans dissolved with County Mayor Peter Corroon's decision not to use the county's hotel tax revenues for the stadium, is strained largely due to Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan's cozy relationship with legislative leaders, who have a bill to divert restaurant sales tax money from the county to its cities, benefiting Sandy.
