October 28, 2004
D.C.: Money for everybody!
With just hours to go before what promises to be an epic D.C. council hearing, two huge new developments in the Expos stadium controversy:
- D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams has floated a last-minute proposal to create a $400 million"community benefit fund" by establishing a tax-increment financing district around the new stadium. (The actual mechanism, if you care, would be to sell city bonds that would be repaid by TIFs.) Aside from the bizarreness of offering to raise money that would be flowing into city coffers anyway, Williams' plan sounds awfully optimistic: It would be more than three times the size of all of D.C.'s TIFs to date, one of which - the Gallery Place mall - already had to be expanded to encompass a larger area when initial revenue projections proved insufficient to pay off the bonds.
- Meanwhile, D.C.'s chief financial officer has reported that the projected stadium cost would be $91 million more than previously expected, mostly for additional roads and infrastructure costs. "As a result of the increase in project costs, more money will have to be borrowed and debt service will increase," Natwar Gandhi wrote in a letter to D.C. council chair Linda Cropp outlining the expected costs. If accurate, the new expenses would push the project's total price tag from $440 million to about $530 million - more than could be covered by the $500 million in bonds contained in the mayor's stadium bill.
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