AROUND TOWN: Economics of Braves ballpark batted about

After presenting the findings of a new report on Truist Park and The Battery Atlanta's economic impact to the Cobb Board of Commissioners last week, the Atlanta Braves Tuesday morning continued its full-court press effort to end the debate over the stadium.

In a ballroom at TK Elevator’s tower at the Battery, the Braves hosted Andrew Zimbalist, the Smith College economist who was hired by the team to conduct a recently released impact study.

Zimbalist described the genesis of his work for the Braves, saying Braves Chairman Terry McGuirk called him to pitch the idea. McGuirk spoke about two reports issued in recent years. One was the 2018 report from Georgia Tech’s Center for Economic Development Research, which argued the stadium would create a “halo effect” of economic development in Cumberland worth nearly $19 million per year. The other was authored by Kennesaw State University's J.C. Bradbury, whose report earlier this year found that the county has an annual revenue shortfall of nearly $15 million, or $50 per household, from debt service and operating costs on the stadium.

McGuirk reportedly asked “we want to know what the reality is,” per Zimbalist.

Zimbalist’s lead finding is that by 2046, the county is expected to see a return on its initial investment of between $19.6 million and $125.6 million. He sees the stadium deal as a net win for the county, though his report was not as optimistic as the Georgia Tech analysis. 

Bradbury, perhaps the most dogged critic of the public-private deal between Cobb and the Braves, was never mentioned by name in Zimbalist’s Tuesday talk to Braves front office execs, Cobb Chamber officials, politicians and others. But he was certainly the elephant in the room.

“I'm trying to wrap my head around our local economist from Kennesaw State University, sadly representing an amazing university, but that comes out and says the 5,500 folks that report to those jobs today mean nothing, because they would have been working somewhere else,” said former Cobb Chamber Chairman John Loud during the Q&A. “… How can another person with such esteemed titles come in and look at an environment like that with all that's going on … to sit there and say, there's no significant economic viability and impact and benefit to the community?”

Referencing Bradbury, Zimbalist remarked, “I guess he shall remain nameless.”

“I don't know exactly what motivates the nameless individual, but I suspect that once you've stated a position publicly, whether it's been in a journal article, or whether it's been in a newspaper or a television interview, once you've stated it, you have some involvement and want to defend it,” Zimbalist said.

Bradbury himself has trashed Zimbalist’s report on Twitter, accusing him of being a “shill” for the Braves.

In response to the shill comment, Zimbalist said, “I've worked for the other side much more than I've worked for the owners.”

The Journal rang Bradbury to get a response.

“Yes, he has played both sides before, whenever he is paid,” Bradbury said. “Whichever side pays him, particularly to go against the consensus opinion, he tends to think it's a good stadium. He has done this before.”

Bradbury said a key difference is that his report released earlier this year summarized findings from peer-reviewed studies he’d conducted.

“It's possible he could be paid to do it, and come up with entirely correct conclusions,” Bradbury said. “Having studied this subject, and read his report, it is beyond terrible. I am nothing short of embarrassed for him. This is terrible, terrible work that would not survive peer review.”

Zimbalist said Bradbury must have “something else going on that’s motivating what he’s doing.”

Bradbury said he’s been a Braves fan his entire life. He lives 10 miles from Truist Park and watches every game.

“Why on Earth would I make it my mission to somehow say this is a bad deal? That doesn't even make any sense. No one's paying me to say this,” Bradbury said.

At the same time, Zimbalist was speaking at TK Tower, Bradbury was, ironically, at the chamber's headquarters for a meeting of the Development Authority of Cobb County, a board he was appointed to by Commissioner Keli Gambrill. Bradbury said he didn’t even know Zimbalist was in town.

“I was over at the chamber. Nobody asked me to walk across the street, not surprised,” he said.

Zimbalist said Bradbury used “old data” and only looked at the first few years of the stadium and the Battery’s existence. Projecting the impact in the long run, he said, is more appropriate.

Yet Bradbury said projecting the impact in future decades is “wishful thinking” and “hopeful speculation.”

Zimbalist also said Bradbury leans too heavily on old research that found publicly financed stadiums were bad deals for taxpayers. In the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, stadiums were getting 70-80% of funding from taxpayers, and surrounding them with parking lots. Truist is different, Zimbalist said, because it was about 40% publicly funded, and is surrounded by the mixed-use development that is The Battery Atlanta. 

“I criticized the new football stadium in Buffalo, New York, I think you've got to look at, the devil is in the details, you got to look at the details of each situation and appraise it freshly,” Zimbalist said.

David Rubinger, publisher of the Atlanta Business Chronicle, who moderated Tuesday's talk, asked Zimbalist if these clashes were a common problem — asking three economists a question and getting three different answers.

“There is disagreement amongst economists, as there is in every walk of life,” Zimbalist said.

The two economists have history together. For more on that, see “Atlanta Braves’ Ballpark Figures Foment Economist Brawl” from Sportico.

CAMPAIGN MODE: It’s become clear by now that Cobb County government has been carefully and methodically rolling out a campaign in advance of something for the better part of a year now.

It started late last summer as a series of hearings on the county’s workforce and maintenance shortfalls. Department heads dutifully took to the lectern, hat in hand, to describe the staffing crisis plaguing their offices. Solemn county commissioners took in the figures and stories, intoning that something needed to be done.

Those hearings resulted in total requests from staff of some 658 new employees and $178 million in new spending — headline-grabbing figures painted as concerning omens by proponents of East Cobb cityhood.

Then last month, the county unveiled the results of a $128,000 pay study which found — you guessed it — county workers aren’t being paid as much as they’d prefer. (Who is?) Aptly named Evergreen Consulting’s findings said 70% of employees are making less than the market “midpoint” — the median pay rate for their position.

Chairwoman Lisa Cupid, meanwhile, said in remarks to the Cobb Chamber this month she would soon unveil a budget with a $17 per hour minimum wage for county workers.

The county’s not yet said what those pay bumps would cost, nor did it have an estimate handy when we last asked how much revenue it expected to gain from its 10.5% projected tax digest growth this year.

But the campaign continued this week courtesy of the county's mouthpiece, Ross Cavitt, who stars in a new video on “Budget and Workforce Challenges.”

Cavitt referred to the long string of presentations from staff, saying, “Those presentations presented a troublesome picture of understaffed departments losing experienced workers, struggling to keep up with this rapidly growing county.”

One might think, Cavitt says, that the steadily growing tax digest has grown the county’s coffers at a healthy clip. The net digest grew from $27.6 billion to $36.2 billion from 2016 to 2021 alone.

But not so fast, he adds — floating homestead exemptions mean a significant amount of cash the general fund could be collecting is staying in homeowners’ pockets.

So what is to be done?

As the county (by way of Cavitt) sees it, the problem has been driven by Cobb historically enjoying “one of the lowest millage rates in the metro (Atlanta) area.” Now it’s got an ever-growing demand for more and better services, without the means to pay for it — so goes the argument.

Cupid and her colleagues are expected to unveil their upcoming year’s budget next Tuesday, with final approval held in July. Time will tell what that budget holds in store, but so far, the winds are pointing firmly in one direction.

TRUMP ON EVANS: Monday evening, former President Donald Trump did a "tele-rally" with east Cobb attorney Jake Evans. Evans and Dr. Rich McCormick have challenged each other in the runoff for a chance to be the Republican nominee in the 6th Congressional District. In the phone call, Trump urged listeners  to turn out and vote for Evans. (By the time you see this, we'll likely know the winner.)

What follows are Trump's comments: 

"He’s a great guy. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s really something. His family is exceptional and he is exceptional, so I just want to ask you to get out and vote for Jake. He has my complete and total endorsement, as we say, and with your vote he will be a warrior for the MAGA movement and for the United States Congress. Jake will fight for your Georgia values, and those are very special values indeed, and for our America First agenda like no representative you’ve ever had. As a highly respected Georgia attorney, very, very respected actually, Jake has been a fearless defender of our Constitution. He took a big risk, his entire career actually, to fight for election integrity for Pennsylvania's illegal and unconstitutional election law changes all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In addition, as the lawyer fighting for Republican candidates, Jake has gotten not one but two elections here in Georgia overturned for cheating and fraud. And as chair of the Georgia Ethics Commission, highly respected, he hit Stacey Abrams with the biggest ethics penalty in Georgia history."

(The Journal asked the Abrams campaign if they cared to respond to this allegation, but did not receive a response by press time.) Back to Trump: 

"If you want a congressman who will go and take the fight to the radical left, Jake is your man. He’s also been a tireless champion for religious liberty, as many of you probably know, defending Christian churches against discrimination and anti-religious bigotry from the Democrat-run cities and all over the country. As your next representative in Congress, Jake will be sure to secure our borders. We had the best borders, the safest borders ever recorded in recorded history, can’t say before that, but in recorded history nobody’s ever had numbers like we produced on the border. And that means stopping drugs and stopping so many other things, including illegal immigration, restoring American energy independence, and we became energy independent. Think of where we are now. Look what happened in a year and a half. It's a disaster for our country. And we stopped the wave of violent crime unleashed by the radical left. Jake is strongly for law and order, and he will support our police officers 100 percent. There will not be defund the police with Jake, so Jake will be your congressman. I think he will do an incredible job. The media’s been very tough on him, meaning a lot of ads have been taken out, and they're just false. It's a very unfair situation, but it is what it is. He’s a good person, he's a great gentleman and he’s got a great future, so I support Jake Evans, and again he’s a MAGA warrior. Get out and vote tomorrow for Jake and I appreciate it. Take care of yourself, I'll see you soon. Thank you."