July 27, 2006
D.C. stadium could top $700m
The D.C. mayor's office has announced that the city could be forced to spend between $44 million and $98 million in additional public funds if the current plan to build parking garages for the Washington Nationals stadium isn't finalized by mid-August.
That would boost the total public cost of the stadium to around $700 million, and mean that the last-second spending cap extracted by dissident city councilmembers wasn't worth the paper it was hastily scribbled on. Under the current fallback plan proposed by D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi, the council would have to vote to approve the additional funds, but given that the city would be in default of its lease with the Nats if it didn't build the parking, fat chance of the council saying no.
What's that you say? Why didn't the council stand up and set a firm spending cap before signing the lease obligating it to build whatever the Nats ownership demands, regardless of the cost? What kind of party-pooper would have proposed something like that?
