County commissioner on Rays owner’s $1B tax ask: “May God have mercy on the soul of anyone that supports this”

Tampa Bay Rays execs and Hillsborough County leaders have finally released details of how they would come up with the public’s share of a proposed $2.3 billion stadium, with a breakdown by tax source. The total public expense on construction costs — i.e., not counting tax and land breaks — is now down slightly from $1.15 billion to $1.001 billion, with the money coming from:

• $272 million from the county’s Community Investment Tax 0.5% sales tax surcharge that was passed after voters were told it wouldn’t be used for stadiums
• $268 million from county hotel taxes
• $132 million from county cash reserves, which could come from existing funds for economic development and catastrophic/disaster response, among other things
• $30 million from the county stormwater relief fund, or maybe from federal disaster aid, depending on which source you believe
• $224 million from the city of Tampa via the Drew Park Community Redevelopment Agency, a TIF district that siphons off property taxes from the area around the proposed stadium and redirects it to development projects (the stadium development site itself will be county-owned and exempt from property taxes, which could cost between $250 million and $1.7 billion more)
• $74 million from reply hazy, ask again later

Okay, so that’s not entirely complete details, given that the last spending item remains ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, but it’s more than we knew before. And the reaction from Tampa-area officials and residents to where the city and county would come up with a billion dollars for Rays billionaire owner Patrick Zalupski has been less than overwhelmingly positive:

• “At this point I have to rescind all of the positive things I’ve said about the new Rays Ownership,” wrote Hillsborough County commissioner Joshua Wostal on Facebook. “They have have outright lied not only to my face but also the public at multiple meetings. This is them now asking literally for your property taxes. May God have mercy on the soul of anyone that supports this.”
• “The taxpayers don’t want this,” said one local during a county commission public comment period on Tuesday, while another said, “We were disappointed, but we were not surprised,” saying he’s ready to sue the county if CIT money is used for a Rays stadium. A consultant hired by the county delivered an opinion this week that the CIT money is fair game, but that won’t stop people from trying their luck at lawsuits, as the latter public commenter noted: “Roll the dice, you want to play hard ball, let’s play.”
• Tampa councilmember Charlie Miranda, who wore black suits, black shirts, and black ties to City Hall for months to mourn “the burial of the taxpayer” after the city paid to build the Buccaneers a new stadium in 1998, is repeating his sartorial choices this year, vowing, “I’ll be wearing black — including black socks and everything — until this is all over.”

Others were less funereal in their responses, with Tampa councilmember Lynn Hurtak saying that maybe Zalupski’s $1 billion ask could be seen as more a starting point for negotiations, not the final deal. “My job is to listen and see what we can do,” Hurtak said. “And if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.” That’s fair, though it’s also fair to ask what “if it works” means — giving Zalupski $1 billion in tax money plus possibly more than $1 billion in tax breaks plus close to $1 billion in free land would work great for the Rays owner, but certainly less so for Tampa residents if they ever want to see that money again.