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Should conservatives celebrate OKC's big league status?
Why would any conservative celebrate regressive taxes to support billionaires who kow-tow to Chinese Communists and politically correct causes?
Bill Christiansen for Tulsa Mayor
Another day, another mendacious attack mailer from Dewey Bartlett Jr. If I had known there were enough Tulsans who objected to rising city budgets, county tax initiatives, the City Hall move, the Great Plains Airlines bailout, and accepting Federal stimulus money to justify a mail piece targeting those concerns, I...
The Olympics: Worth it for the host city?
The Summer Olympics are over and host city London goes back to life as usual. What physical and emotional legacy will the 30th Olympiad leave behind? Photographer Joe Pack and filmmaker Gary Hustwit has been traveling to former Olympic host cities to explore that very question, in preparation for a...
Tulsa District 9: G. T. Bynum ethics complaint
I received an email Monday containing an anonymous ethics complaint that had been filed against Tulsa District 9 City Councilor G. T. Bynum. The text of that complaint, with links to relevant documentation added by me, can be found on the jump page for this article. (For your reference, here...
Tulsa Metro Chamber's 2011 election manifesto
Here is the Tulsa Metro Chamber's "candidate priorities" -- effectively the Chamber's "manifesto" for the 2011 City of Tulsa election. Candidates seeking the endorsement of and funding from the Chamber's PAC (TulsaBizPac) were interviewed and questioned about these issues. I have added bold font for emphasis on the most controversial...
John Wright and Owen Laughlin passed the NBA giveaway test
In two statewide primary races, the leading Republican contenders were both members of the Oklahoma Legislature in 2008. The top candidates for the GOP nominations for Lieutenant Governor and State Treasurer were on opposite sides of the 2008 expansion of the Oklahoma Quality Jobs Act to include professional sports franchises,...
Ballpark assessment plaintiffs petition for summary judgment
It's opening day for the Tulsa Drillers at Oneok Field, and some of the downtown property owners who are forced to pay for its construction filed a petition today for summary judgment in their lawsuit to overturn the assessment for the Tulsa Stadium Improvement District. The case against the ballpark...
Barbecue conversations: The Fields Downs Randolph building
Photo by Daniel Hickman. On Saturday I went to a barbecue with lots of good food and a wide variety of people. One of the highlights of the day was a lesson in the economics of downtown preservation and demolition. In the midst of a political discussion across the...
Kathy Taylor not running for re-election (UPDATED)
Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor has issued a press release saying she will not be running for re-election. She will hold a press conference at 5:30 at the Tulsa Press Club. More as it develops. UPDATE 6:15 pm: Taylor spoke very briefly and did not answer questions. She spent a minute...
IDA looks at downtown Tulsa; City seeks bids for downtown services
Last fall, Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor asked the International Downtown Association to send a team to study our downtown, and in particular to look at the city's arrangement with Tul-Center, Inc., the arm of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited (DTU) that has handled downtown services since the current business improvement district was...
The luxury box bubble bursts
The Wall Street Journal reports that the economic downturn is hurting corporate sources of revenue for sports teams and venues, including luxury boxes, club seats, naming rights, and other forms of sponsorship: In a case of monumentally bad timing, this year three of the biggest names in pro sports --...
How much should a ballpark cost?
Note: I've received word that Thursday morning's Tulsa Development Authority meeting involving Will and Cecilia Wilkins and Novus Homes LLC's exclusive negotiating agreement has been moved to the 10th floor of One Technology Center (the new City Hall). One of the questions raised in my column this week is about...
OKC to rest of state: "Thanks, suckers!"
Basketball boosters were quite happy to say that a relocated NBA franchise would belong to the whole state, when they were convincing credulous legislators to vote for $60 million in corporate welfare to the billionaire owners of the Seattle SuperSonics (the subject of last week's column in UTW). Now that...
A round-up of river tax ponderings and imponderables
If the Vision 2025 Sales Tax Overview Committee is as diligent and vigilant a watchdog as we're being told they are, how did they miss noticing that the arena was going to go way over budget when there was time to prevent the crisis? If Hurricane Katrina caused the arena...
Corporate subsidies a "doomed strategy"
Kevin Adams (whose article The Tulsa Time Blues you should read or re-read before you go to the polls) calls our attention to a couple of articles that question the economic development "strategy" which is guiding tomorrow's billion-dollar sales tax vote. Here are the lead paragraphs from a story in...
On the arena: Fisking the Whirled
A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to make a point-by-point reply to Julie DelCour's opinion piece about the downtown sports arena and convention center in the Sunday Whirled. He thought it seemed a bit one-sided. [I started it back then, but to be honest, it wore me out,...
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