Numlock Sunday: March 31, 2019 | The Billionaire Boondoggle with Pat Garofalo

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition. Each week, I'll sit down with a writer behind one of the stories covered in a previous weekday edition for a casual conversation about the story they wrote.

This week, I spoke to Pat Garofalo, the author of The Billionaire Boondoggle, a book that came out about two weeks ago that I have not been able to put down.

The book is all about how states and localities throw an inordinate amount of money at sports team owners, casino magnates, big-box retailers and movie producers in the hopes of drumming up their economies. And while their intentions are typically great — economic growth and new opportunities — taken as a whole, this leads to a serious transfer of money from local governments who are struggling to provide even the most basic services to savvy business folks willing to take their money.

Pat and I actually spoke for a pretty long chunk of time — readers of Numlock can probably guess I’m weirdly into this stuff — so I’m actuall…