Sports provide a lesson in St. Louis economic development

ST. LOUIS — Like a batter who let a hanging curveball pass without a swing, Andrew Wheaton missed an opportunity.

In a court hearing Monday, the deputy city counselor was arguing that the guaranteed basic income project in St. Louis serves a public purpose and is therefore constitutional. The program, pushed by Mayor Tishaura O. Jones and passed by the Board of Aldermen in 2022, uses federal money from the American Rescue Plan Act, as well as $1 million donated by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. It gives $500 monthly checks to about 540 people for 18 months; the recipients must be parents of public-school students.

“There are hundreds of families relying on this money,” Wheaton said in court, “and the city as a whole is benefiting from it.”

In June, attorney Kimberley Mathis filed a lawsuit on behalf of two St. Louis residents seeking to upend the program. The families who were chosen by lottery to be in the program started receiving their checks in December. Mathis has sought a temporary restraining order to stop the program and protect taxpayers who would rather see the money spent some other way.

The guaranteed basic income idea is a bit like the wildly popular and successful federal child tax credit, which gave Americans with children payments during the pandemic to help support families and prop up the economy. There are dozens of cities across the country with similar pilot projects, with monthly payments ranging from $350 in New Orleans to $1,000 in Los Angeles. The goal is to help families stay in their homes amid rising rents and to improve local economies.

Wheaton, in both legal filings and oral arguments before Circuit Court Joseph Patrick Whyte, compared the payments to the tax subsidies used to build Busch Stadium and the Dome at America’s Center. In both cases, public money was handed over to billionaire sports team owners with the promise of future economic nirvana.

If that was constitutional, then giving money to parents to help reduce housing instability and boost public safety “absolutely” has to be constitutional, Wheaton argued.

It’s a winning argument, but here’s where Wheaton missed on the pitch: Throughout the hearing, Mathis referred to the payments as “free money,” implying the recipients might spend the money on frivolous purchases, such as plane tickets or jewelry.

Mathis was at least suggesting a version of the argument that some politicians have used in calling for cuts to public aid programs, such as food stamps and Medicaid. The suggestion is that poor people don’t know how to properly spend their money.

When rich people get free money from the state, it’s called economic development. When poor people get free money, it’s welfare.

“There is no evidence there is any economic stimulation,” Mathis said of the guaranteed basic income program. At least with the public sports stadiums, she said, there are reports suggesting future economic gains.

At that point in the hearing, here’s the question I wanted Wheaton to ask: What if the poor people receiving $500 a month spent some of their money on Cardinals tickets?

The Missouri Supreme Court said in 2006 that giving money to a wealthy owner of a Major League Baseball team is constitutional because of the economic activity it would generate. Part of that economic activity is people buying tickets and going to games.

“If the primary intent of the public expenditure is to serve a public purpose, the expenditure will be considered legal,” the court wrote in that case.

It follows, then, that a person using their guaranteed basic income payments to go to a Cardinals game would also fulfill a public purpose — helping create that “trickle down” economic development promised when the city granted tax subsidies to team owners.

Wheaton stopped a little short of that argument. He focused more on the issues that mattered to the Board of Aldermen, such as housing and public safety. He might not have quite hit a home run, but the judge didn’t issue the temporary restraining order from the bench, as some expected him to do.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Whyte told the attorneys at the end of the hearing.

His decision could come in a day, a week or longer. As he mulls his ruling, perhaps, he should take in a ballgame. It doesn’t take long to spend $500 at Busch Stadium. And while the judge sips his beer and chomps on his nachos in the tax-subsidized stadium, he can look around and ponder the question:

Are any of the folks around me contributing to a public purpose in the same way that I am?