SOX FOR TAXPAYERS

This week the Grand Rapids Business Journal did a puff piece on the sale of The Zone, a team memorabilia outlet at the Van Andel Arena.  The article mentioned that The Zone was sold by DP Fox Sports & Entertainment L.L.C., which also owns the Griffins minor league hockey team and the Rampage arena football team both of whom call the Van Andel home.  Unmentioned was that DP Fox is one of the myriad of businesses owned and operated by the DeVoses, one of the Amway clans.  This is an excellent example of how one of the Amway clans, the Van Andels, put up a few bucks to persuade the public to build a facility and then the other clan, the DeVoses, swoops in to profit from the facility by running a business out of it.  Meanwhile, the taxpayers get stuck with the bill for the place, including its upkeep – like the $4.5 million in upgrades the Convention and Arena Authority recently reported it needs to make over the upcoming years.

Three years ago the U.S. Congress passed a bill called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (commonly referred to as “SOX”) that mandated disclosure by publicly-traded companies to their shareholders of all transactions that might favor insiders.  How come the taxpayers don’t get the same disclosure from these “public-private” partnerships they have to foot the bill for, like the Van Andel Arena, the DeVos Place Convention Center, Rich DeVos’s new Marriott hotel that is receiving a $5 million taxpayer subsidy, or his Michigan Street medical towers complex that is getting $18 million or more from the taxpayers?  Why can’t we find out how the Amway clans (or any other private party) turn a buck from the public facilities we build and pay for?  Why don’t our public officials require disclosure to us by those who profit from our tax dollars?