August 28, 2006

Oops, we spent it again

The good people of Indianapolis, already on the hook for $635 million towards a new stadium for the Colts, got an unexpected surprise yesterday when it was revealed the legislators who passed the stadium deal neglected to figure out how to pay to operate it once it's built.

As a result, the public Capital Improvement Board will be on the hook for about $10 million a year in new maintenance and operations costs - which in present value comes to something like $140 million in additional public cost, bringing the total stadium subsidy to $775 million. And if neither the state nor the city steps forward to fill the gap with greenbacks, what happens then?

If [CIB head Fred] Glass' plan doesn't win support or doesn't work, it is unclear what will happen next.

"There's no real Plan B," Glass said. "There's no Plan B, period."

Without a cash infusion, he said, the CIB would be insolvent by 2010.