When it comes to getting public funding for a private development, who you know will get you in the door. But it should be what you know - and what you can establish as cold, hard fact - that gets the deal done.
The fact that Dave Checketts, owner of the Real Salt Lake Major League Soccer franchise, could get in to see such personages as Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, even Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., was enough to get him a hearing for his request for $55 million in taxpayers' money to go toward his $100 million soccer stadium complex in Sandy.
But any expectation he had, or any fears harbored by skeptical taxpayers, that schmoozing alone was enough to get the money has been shown, once again, to be baseless.
RSL may have thought that sharing its financial information with "the county" meant only with top county officials and their accounting consultants, and no one else, and they seemed to want written agreements to that effect.
But county officials have always realized that "the county" means all of its residents, and they properly refused to promise any such secrecy. If that attitude killed the deal, then it killed it.
After seeing that spelled out, again, in Friday's Salt Lake Tribune, RSL officials pledged, again, to give the county, and thus the public, the details on the team's solvency, investment picture and business plan. That's information the county number-crunchers - and any member of the public who is interested enough to digest it - will need to determine if the team and its stadium plan are a good investment of public money and trust.
Of course, the team has been making these promises for months, in public, while still insisting that many details be kept private, lest they fall into the hands of business competitors.
That's always been bunk. RSL may be in competition with other MLS teams on the pitch, but they are partners in the boardroom, and keeping financial secrets from them isn't justified.
The only other people who care are their financiers. Which, in the current vision of the plan, includes Salt Lake County taxpayers. They need to see what they are being asked to pay for.
Salt Lake County taxpayers need to see what they are being asked to pay for.
