New regulation of sports associations is necessary to ensure that government subsidies are used for the benefit of players, New Power Party (NPP) legislators said yesterday, proposing a new sports association law that would mandate transparency and ban lawmakers from serving as association heads and board members.
“The accounts between the Sports Administration and the different associations are in a mess,” NPP Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said, citing inconsistent figures on ticket sales and subsidies.
The draft bill would require associations to register as “public interest associations” rather than as “civic associations,” forcing them to make revenues and meeting minutes public.
Civic associations are required to file financial reports with the Ministry of the Interior, but are not obligated to make them public.
The legislation would also ban lawmakers, politically appointed government officials and local government heads from serving as association heads and board members, in a major departure from similar bills proposed by the Sports Administration and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書).
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator John Wu (吳志揚) is the president of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL), Hsu said, adding that many other public officials have seats on sports association boards.
“It should not be allowed for an official to be responsible for supervising the Sport Administration in one capacity, while applying for Sports Administration subsidies in another,” Hsu said, adding that guaranteeing the rights and benefits of players was also an important goal of the legislation, following controversy over players’ rights to select their own coaches prior to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
“The National Sports Act (國民體育法) has fallen into disrepair, while the Civil Associations Act (人民團體法) does not have an adequate set of standards, making Sport Administration management and civic society’s supervision of sports administrations difficult,” NPP Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) said, calling for the establishment of a binding, independent arbitration system to resolve disputes between players and associations, that would enable player unions to avoid expensive lawsuits.
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