The Governor handled more than his fair share of tough questions when taking them from the public Friday but when he was asked about helping the Chargers there was no hesitation in his answer.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido and handled several questions surrounding the budget crisis now facing the state.
At the end of the discussion, a man in the audience who identified himself as a member of the carpenters union, asked the governor about getting state help to build a new stadium in San Diego like the city of Glendale Arizona.
“We here in San Diego we find ourselves with a similar problem. We want to build a stadium in the city of San Diego,” the man said. “Are we going to receive any help from the governor’s office?
The answer? Uh, no.
“Because of our financial situation that we’re in, we’re not about to go and say yes we’re going to help financially build a stadium. It wouldn’t make any sense,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. "People would be outraged about that. They would immediately come and say ‘ So you’d rather build a stadium and go and have the football players go and have a good time while at the same time we have homeless people, what are you going to do with that?'”
“It’s very tough to have the state get involved,” Schwarzenegger said.
San Diego isn't alone in the issue. There is a call to build a new stadium in the Bay area as well as a new NBA arena in Sacramento. “All over the place they want to build stadiums,” the governor said. ”The state of California is not in that business.”
He suggested the issue be handled on the local level with either a tax measure or a public/private partnership.
