JEFFERSON CITY  •  The potential economic impact of building a new stadium for the St. Louis Rams will be examined at a Missouri House hearing slated for Monday.
Dave Peacock, one of the St. Louis businessmen who has been spearheading the project for Gov. Jay Nixon, is expected to testify.
Peacock is part of a two-man team that has proposed a 64,000-seat, open-air stadium on the Mississippi River, just north of downtown St. Louis, in an effort to keep the Rams in the city.
Monday's meeting was called by House Government Oversight and Accountability Chairman Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City. House Speaker John Diehl, R-Town and Country, asked Barnes to analyze the stadium's costs and benefits.
In his weekly newsletter, Barnes called his committee's work "a limited inquiry that will not reach whether government should finance a new stadium. Just because something may profit the government does not mean it should be done."
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The new stadium would cost nearly $1 billion, with as much as $405 million paid by taxpayers.
Most of the public money would come from extending payments that now go to pay off debt on the Edward Jones Dome. Of that, the state pays $12 million a year for Dome debt and upkeep.
The bond extension could provide $300 million to $350 million for the new stadium project, according to preliminary estimates. The rest of the public money would come from "support" from the Missouri Development Finance board and from brownfield tax credits, according to the preliminary plan.
The Nixon administration contends the current stadium bonds could be extended without a vote of the Legislature. Some legislators oppose that approach and have filed bills to prevent Nixon from proceeding on his own.
Either the Legislature or voters would have a say under .
"It is about checks and balances," Silvey said in a recent letter that he wrote and tweeted to a critic of his bill. "It is about whether one man, in this case the governor, has or should have the ability to put the other six million Missourians in debt without a vote of the people or their representatives."
The Rams were bound by the team's lease at the Edward Jones Dome to stay in St. Louis until 2025. But local officials failed to keep the dome in the "top tier" of NFL stadiums, as required by the lease, allowing the Rams to go year-to-year.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke has announced plans to build an 80,000-seat stadium in the Los Angeles area.
Nixon asked Peacock, former president of Anheuser-Busch, and Robert Blitz, an attorney for the Edward Jones Dome, to come up with a plan to keep the Rams in St. Louis.
The public hearing will begin at noon in a basement hearing room of the Capitol.
The St. Louis-area legislators on the committee are: Reps. Robert Cornejo, R-St. Peters; Courtney Curtis, D-Berkeley; Penny Hubbard, D-St. Louis; Gina Mitten, D-St. Louis; and Rob Vescovo, R-Arnold.
(Silvey's bill is .)
