Only one “Best run” city (seattle) built a stadium, but, three of the “Worst run” cities (Miami, St Louis and – oooh the creme dela creme – Cleveland!!) all have built stadeeumms.

In conclusion, those cities who are management-challenged are three times as likely to have built one of these things, but, those who are led by smart people appear to build these things far less frequently.

Why would that be?

But, perhaps this is chicken/egg stuff – you know maybe the stadium is the cause and the quality of the civic management is the effect. Now, in that case, maybe smart people avoid the relative “opportunity” of managing cities which have a stadeeumm and in so doing, leave the decsion making in *those* communities to, shall we say, less gifted individuals.

Come to think of it, Oakland might be a great confirmation of that particular hypothesis . . . . . I should ping my friend Matt Artz who now covers Oaksterland politics and see what he thinks of this notion.

According to the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan tax research group out of Washington D.C, Fremont is amongst the 10 worst large (pop > 200k) cities IN THE COUNTRY when evaluated on the combined state, county, and city sales taxes – this list of dubious distinction includes – Birmingham, AL (10%), Montgomery, AL (10%), Long Beach, CA (9.75%), Los Angeles, CA (9.75%), Oakland, CA (9.75%), Fremont, CA (9.75%), Chicago, IL (9.75%), Glendale, AZ (9.6%), Seattle, WA (9.5%) and San Francisco, CA (9.5%).

But this little factoid isn’t going to make the press.

Why is that?

Reference :

http://taxes.about.com/od/statetaxes/a/Sales-tax-rates-highest-and-lowest.htm