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January 12, 2006
Cropp's wish list
D.C. council chair Linda Cropp's office was kind enough to send over her list of ten conditions for the council to approve a Washington Nationals stadium lease. Drumroll, please:
1) No residential taxpayer will pay anything for baseball.2) No more money shall be allocated for baseball other than the $535 million already authorized and all baseball-related income.3) All local, small and disadvantaged business enterprise contracting and employment requirements will continue.4) The commitment from baseball for local ownership of the team, and, for tax purposes, that the team will be based in the District.5) Land and environmental costs of the baseball stadium will be capped and guaranteed by third parties, such as Major League Baseball, potential owners and/or developers.6) Construction costs of the stadium will be guaranteed so that taxpayers will not face an open checkbook problem. The checkbook will be closed.7) All development rights in the area outside of the baseball footprint, and taxes generated therefrom, will benefit the District and its residents, not baseball.8) The District will have development rights (on top of parking required by baseball) on the baseball footprint, which will be directed to protect taxpayers from any cost overruns.9) The $20 million team contribution to the stadium project budget shall be applied only to previously approved costs within the initial project budget as designated by the Sports and Entertainment Commission, and may be increased by the team’s new owners.10) Certain community benefit obligations of the baseball team will be strengthened or clarified.
Of these, #1 is meaningless (it's not like the city treasury has separate pockets for "residential" and "non-residential" money), and many of the others are trivial. The big-ticket item would appear to be #2 - except the bit about "and all baseball-related income" renders it largely meaningless as well. Right now, the $535 million stadium cap is on gross expenses: The city would, in fact, be getting back about $80 million in Nats rent payments and stadium sales taxes. Changing this to a $535 million cap on net expenses - where everything from team rent payments to player income taxes could be larded onto the $535 million in bond payments - could allow the cost to balloon by hundreds of millions of dollars without technically violating the cap.
Likewise, saying that construction, land, and infrastructure costs "will be guaranteed" sounds great. But guaranteed at what level? The cost as of October 2004, when the stadium was set to cost $440 million? Or last month, when it had ballooned to $667 million?
It's possible Cropp has thought these things through, and is just a sloppy correspondent. Or that the dissident councilmembers - Cropp, remember, has consistently supported the lease deal - know what their demands are, and the council chair just isn't communicating them very well. But if all the council gets for its lease holdout is Cropp's laundry list, it'll barely be worth the stationery it's printed on.
there aren't different pockets, but there are at least two different hands that tax. in dc as i'm sure it is in ny, there are commuters who pay taxes in other forms besides residential taxes.
Posted by asf on January 13, 2006 09:19 AM
Commuter taxes are actually illegal in D.C. Yes, commuters pay sales taxes and the like, but unless you can ensure those are taxes they wouldn't have paid otherwise - that it's money only spent in D.C. because of the stadium, in other words - then that's still money that could have been spent elsewhere, reducing the tax burden on residents.
Posted by Neil on January 15, 2006 11:39 AM