The Pima County Board of Supervisors should pass a resolution on Tuesday reauthorizing a Pima County Sports and Tourism Authority. Its mission would be to promote amateur athletics and retain and expand professional sports in our region.

A Pima County Sports Authority, active in the early 1990s, had as its primary mission replacing the Cleveland Indians, which had held spring training in Tucson since 1945. That group was instrumental in attracting the Colorado Rockies to train at Hi Corbett Field in 1993. However, when that task was complete the authority lapsed. Improvements to Hi Corbett Field for the Rockies were financed by the Pima County Stadium District, which was authorized in 1991.

In 1995, a group of business people formed the nonprofit Southern Arizona Sports Development Corporation to pursue the creation of a stadium for two major-league baseball teams for spring training beginning in 1997. Tucson Electric Park was financed with almost $38 million in bonds. Pima County's bed and car-rental taxes are dedicated to retiring that debt.

It is unfortunate that the Pima County Sports Authority had such a myopic mission in the 1990s.

However, our community has a second chance to get sports right and we encourage the supervisors to direct a reformulated authority that has a broad development mission.

Action Tuesday would allow the board to advertise for three weeks before approval of the authority. When enacted, a working group of business leaders that has been looking for ways to preserve spring training in Tucson would become the interim authority, said County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry.

The group would be charged with:

● Developing amateur sports opportunities and facilities, including practice and tournament facilities in Tucson for sports like soccer, baseball and softball.

● Preserving and enhancing spring training and minor-league baseball in our community.

The authority would disband after the Legislature approves state statutes that create a permanent authority for Tucson similar to Maricopa County's — the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority.

Pima County's regional authority eventually would determine and ask for voter approval for a dedicated funding source for projects. It is premature to support or oppose any revenue resources until a return on our community's investment is analyzed.

The Maricopa authority uses rental car and hotel bed taxes, sales taxes and professional football players' income taxes to help fund new stadiums and renovations for existing stadiums and spring-training sites in the Phoenix area.

The Maricopa authority is, as Huckelberry notes, "our major competitor."

The business group that Huckelberry would turn to for the interim Pima County Sports and Tourism Authority is led by Jack Camper, president of the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. Huckelberry said the business community would lead the effort.

"We don't need to reinvent the wheel," Huckelberry said. "This is a broadly diversified group that represents the community and the business interests of the community, and that's fine with us."

Huckelberry noted that the business group has been working with the University of Arizona, Pima Community College and all constituent groups whose help will be needed to take sports opportunities here to a new level.

"You know spring training is an economic development engine, but so is amateur sports," said Huckelberry. "Groups could be coming in here spending for restaurants, lodging from throughout the region for sports tournaments and events."

Not having such an authority has put Pima County at a competitive disadvantage with Maricopa County. Other cities of similar size and even smaller than Tucson and Pima County have similar bodies.

For instance, Sarasota, Fla., spring-training home of the Cincinnati Reds, population 370,000, has a nonprofit authority that takes on various sports leadership roles.

In Tucson, such an authority must take a comprehensive approach to Southern Arizona's sports needs and opportunities, from peewee through professional levels. We are encouraged that the resolution would requires 25 percent of any revenue the authority might receive to be dedicated to amateur and youth sports.

We support the re-establishment of a Pima County Sports Authority and the longevity of spring training in Tucson. However, the authority must not become a single-issue entity.