RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Republicans have been busy cutting unions out of tax-supported initiatives across the country, and it has proved popular. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who successfully took on state worker unions last year, proved it by winning a labor-led recall election.
But in right-to-work Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell has made exceptions.
After McDonnell forced a major northern Virginia transit project to back off a union-friendly labor agreement, he trumpeted $4 million in state incentives for the National Football League’s Washington Redskins, whose players work in a “closed shop” as members of the NFL Players Association.
Before that, he had approved state incentives totaling $3.5 million for Steven Spielberg’s production of “Lincoln” starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Tommie Lee Jones and Sally Field, filmed on location in and around Richmond last fall. The Screen Actors Guild represents the stars who command big box office dollars, and other unions represent movie crews.
McDonnell defends the football and movie enticements as economic development projects that repay initial investments many times over. The $6 billion project to extend the Washington Metro system’s Silver Line to Dulles International Airport, he said, is a much different proposition.
“What we can’t do is drive up the cost of a project that’s already about the most expensive public works project in the country — $250 million a mile — and a project labor agreement would have increased that,” McDonnell said.
He had threatened to withhold $150 million from the second phase of the project to link the nation’s capital with one of the East Coast’s busiest airports unless the labor agreement is ditched. On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority relented.
McDonnell wasn’t acting alone. The GOP-ruled General Assembly this year passed legislation banning project labor agreements favoring unions. McDonnell signed it into law.
The last GOP president to receive substantial support from unions was Ronald Reagan, a former SAG president. Unions reliably provide substantial on-the-ground aid for Democrats, canvassing neighborhoods and getting friendly voters to the polls on election day. Political contributions from unions overwhelmingly favor Democrats.
But why should unions for pipefitters or heavy equipment operators or carpenters get a cold shoulder while those for athletes and actors who are household names and earn more in a year than most working stiffs make in a lifetime get a warm embrace worth millions in state tax dollars?
“I don’t think that’s an appropriate comparison at all,” McDonnell told The Associated Press, “but thanks for the fine question.” And the interview was over.
The Redskins have been based for 41 years in Loudoun County, an affluent Washington, D.C., suburb about 25 miles west of the capital. Virginia’s incentives, McDonnell says, ensure the team won’t leave Redskins Park — a complex including four practice fields, training and sports medicine facilities, corporate and coaches offices on 160 picturesque acres — for D.C. or Maryland, both of which romanced the team. Its home stadium, FedEx Field, is in Landover, Md., near the D.C. line.
Virginia’s total incentives for its beloved Redskins top $6 million when $2 million from Loudoun County over four years and $400,000 from the city of Richmond are included. In return, the team will expand and upgrade Redskin Park and hold its three-week preseason summer camp in Richmond for eight years beginning in 2013.
Democratic state Sen. J. Chapman Petersen lives in northern Virginia and is a Redskins fan and season ticket holder. He’s proud that the team made Virginia its home for 41 years, and he takes his son to Redskins Park to watch the team’s workouts. But he believes McDonnell got snookered.
“The Redskins have been and will be a very profitable business. The chances that they were leaving Loudoun County were zero,” he said. “They weren’t going to leave because our taxes, corporate or personal, are much lower than either D.C. or Maryland.”
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Bob Lewis has covered Virginia politics and government since 2000 and is a member of the News Media Guild.
