Brave new world: stadium subsidies.

• Author: Fisher, Anthony
• Position: Brief article

In 2008, residents of Cobb County, Georgia, voted overwhelmingly in favor of funding a $40 million bond to build public parks. To date, that bond has only been funded about halfway. Yet during that same span, the county's public officials thought it wise to subsidize a new stadium for the Atlanta Braves to the tune of $400 million.

The Braves' current stadium, Turner Field, opened in 1996 as part of the Summer Olympics and is widely considered fully functional and modern. But the team (which touts itself as "a fairly major real estate business as opposed to just a baseball club," thanks to a network of publicly subsidized minor league stadiums dotting cash-strapped towns across the Deep South) is planning on opening SunTrust Stadium in Cobb County next April.

Though the Braves'...