February 24, 2005
Colts stadium springs eternal
It's back! Barely one week after the Indiana state legislature killed a bill to finance a new stadium for the Indianapolis Colts with money from legalized slot machines, an assembly committee approved a new funding plan, which will now head to the House floor.
The new bill would use a mix of funding sources, including: a 1% hike in casino taxes, increased hotel and car-rental taxes, diversion of existing state tax money from sports and convention facilities, a $10 ticket surcharge, and new taxes on player salaries and on luxury-suite sales. Unlike the earlier bill, it does not include money to expand Indianapolis' convention center into the site occupied by the Colts' current stadium - even though that was supposed to be the point of this whole exercise to begin with.
In terms of public cost, there are some promising features to this proposal compared to the last one - the ticket and luxury-suite surcharges, for example, would be expected to largely come out of the Colts owners' bottom line. (If you need an explanation of why, leave a comment below and I'll try to explain it.) Still, with the stadium alone carrying an expected $687 million price tag, there's still bound to be plenty of cost to go around.
Neil,
I have a different question I hope you can answer. Why is it that it seems like every new stadium proposed has a retractable roof? What is the selling point of these, other than adding a couple hundred million dollars to the price tag, increasing operating costs, and shortening the lifespan of the venue. Maybe the last part just answered my question, but there has to be some dirty secret hiding in there.
Posted by stm on February 24, 2005 10:25 PM
Some possible answers: 1) They ensure that fans won't ever have to be cold in the winter; 2) They ensure that fans won't ever have to be hot in the summer; 3) If you attach your stadium to a convention center, somebody might use it to hold a big meeting in, maybe; 4) They look really cool, and you the team owner aren't the one paying for it, so why the hell not? (The last one is probably the most important.)
Posted by Neil on February 24, 2005 11:48 PM
What's the response from the Colt's players regarding the increase in payroll taxes? Couldn't this hurt their ability to sign free agents if they'll pay more of their salary in taxes than other teams? Assuming this is the case, it's just as possible that Indianapolis has the lowest tax rate for players salaries and this would just even the field?
Posted by Mark Huntley on February 25, 2005 09:47 AM
It looks like Indiana has a flat-rate 3.4% state income tax, so this would make it 5.4% for Colts players, which is still pretty low, yeah. Not sure how legal this would be, though - haven't other states considered special player taxes, only to be told you can target taxes to specific occupations?
Posted by Neil on February 26, 2005 07:00 PM