Even Face-Value Tickets Can Be Preferential

Last month, I wrote about how the Green Bay ethics board hadn't met much more than the Packers had won Super Bowls. Well, now that the Packers have won another, it's time for the ethics board to meet again (the last time it met was in 1999).

One thing Green Bay and Pittsburgh officials have in common is their payment for face-value Super Bowl tickets. You may wonder what is wrong with paying face-value for tickets. Usually nothing, especially when face value is an incredible $1,200. But it turns out that this is a bargain, because normal people have to pay far more. Even season ticket holders get a shot at face-value tickets only through a lottery; the rest have to pay astronomical amounts.

It doesn't help that the Packers are talking to officials about an entertainment district on land they own surrounding the stadium, according to an article last week in the Green Bay Press Gazette. But in any event, a lot of business is done between sports teams and local governments.

For the Packers, according to its spokesman, offering face-value tickets to those they do business with is good business.
"Generally speaking, we have many partners and individuals with whom we work that we extend the opportunity to purchase tickets. Elected leaders, at times, are included as well. They are representatives of our community and as a community-owned team, we work with them on a variety of fronts. If we can assist, we’ll try.”

But a village president who turned down the face-value ticket offer said that "he believes it would have been unethical for him to accept such special treatment."

And put simply, that is what it is:  preferential treatment in order to get preferential treatment.

According to a spokesman, Pittsburgh's ethics code does not prohibit officials paying for face-value tickets. Green Bay's ethics code says that officials should use "discretion and the judgment of a reasonable, prudent person,” which provides very little guidance.

In a good ethics environment, there would be open discussion about the ethics of paying for face-value Super Bowl tickets. This is as public a decision as there is. It will certainly make it into the newspapers. Citizens will certainly feel that their officials are being given a special deal. The fact that the cities' ethics codes do not prohibit this should be a minor part of such a discussion, not the excuse.

The fact is that a city's mayor should probably attend the Super Bowl when its team is playing. And he or she shouldn't have to pay $1,200 a ticket, plus transportation, housing, and meals when getting paid $80,000. But the team should not be a benefactor; the city should pay.

Or, perhaps, the city could come up with a creative solution. The team could be asked to send the mayor and a few poor children from the city to the game. Representing the city and doing something special for at least a few citizens might make it a win-win situation. The best way to deal with this is to put it in a contract between team and city, so that it is an expected part of the relationship, not a gift.

Council members could watch the game at a local forum, along with hundreds or thousands of citizens who don't have a big screen to watch it on. There are more ways to represent a community than traveling to the big game.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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