Ballpark money bill strikes out.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

SALEM - The Senate delivered a startling blow Friday to the bid to bring Major League Baseball to Oregon, rejecting a bill that would have provided public funding through the taxes collected on player and team executives' salaries.

The 18-12 vote against the bill stunned supporters who for months had said they could send it to Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who planned to sign it into law. Since May, the bill languished in a Senate committee that refused to vote it to the Senate floor.

Senate Bill 5 would have provided $150 million in state funding for the $350 million overall cost of building a ballpark in Portland - an undertaking that would be triggered if Major League Baseball decides to relocate the Montreal Expos to Portland.

In the days leading up to the Senate vote, advocates expressed confidence that it would pass. But doubts began to grow as the chamber began debating the bill.

Among Lane County legislators, Sens. Bill Morrisette, D-Springfield, and Tony Corcoran, D-Cottage Grove, had earlier indicated willingness to support the bill. But both were among the handful of potential "yes" votes who ultimately voiced opposition when the time came for votes to be counted.

Both lawmakers said doubts about the potential costs to Oregon taxpayers proved too overwhelming.

"They weren't able to make a convincing case that in a default situation, the taxpayers of Oregon and Portland wouldn't have to pay for a bailout," Corcoran said.

Morrisette said he heard too many reasons for doubt in the Senate floor debate, including the assertion that it could cost the state about $2 million to handle financing - a contention rebutted by bill sponsors.

In addition, Morrisette said, he decided to drop his support and vote against the stadium bill in protest of the Legislature's decision not to increase beer and wine taxes - one of his top priorities.

Stadium financing supporters thought that they'd overcome the Legislature's highest hurdle last week, when they came up with a parliamentary maneuver to revive the proposal, which had languished in the Senate Rules Committee after winning House approval.

The bill's supporters had decided to stop waiting for the Senate committee to vote on the stadium bill, and instead convinced a House committee to perform what is called a "gut-and-stuff" parliamentary maneuver. The House Rules Committee last week "gutted" a different measure by stripping out its original language, "stuffed" it with a new version of the Senate-held baseball bill, and passed it.

The new version, Senate Bill 5, went straight to the Senate floor for a vote, bypassing the committee because it already had gone through the Senate's committee process. All the bill required was a simple up-or-down vote by the full Senate on whether to accept the House's changes.

"We had enough votes - last week," stadium lobbyist Alan Tresidder said. "But events unrelated to the bill itself transpired so it didn't have the votes when it was actually on the floor."

It turned out that the bill's declared enemies, most notably Sen. Lenn Hannon, R-Ashland, had more company than the bill's supporters had anticipated.

Hannon delivered a 12-minute speech lambasting the proposal. He criticized the notion that it would help revive the economy by creating 1,500 construction jobs and an additional 1,500 jobs in and around the stadium once it's built. He said if the proposition truly presented a winning economic opportunity, private investors would have stepped up to pay to bring baseball to Oregon.

He said legislators were wrongly being asked to provide a subsidy for baseball, when they would never survive the political heat from constituents should they do the same for a different type of business.

"People would say, `corporate greed at its worst,' ' Hannon said. "Well, I guess it's different with baseball."

Sen. Ryan Deckert, D-Beaverton, said he was convinced the bill had been carefully crafted with adequate safeguards to protect taxpayers from footing the bill under any conceivable circumstance. He urged his colleagues to overcome Oregon's "tradition" of playing it safe when it comes to luring pro sports to its borders.

"We must know that if this bill fails, baseball will not come here," he said.

After the bill did fail, Deckert said he and other stadium supporters would try to find a way to convince at least four opposing senators to change their minds so the bill could be taken up for a second vote today.

If that fails, the bill goes to a conference committee of Senate and House negotiators, who could either leave it to die upon the Legislature's adjournment or amend the bill in ways that might attract more Senate support.