Among the many issues being raised by Hillsborough County officials about Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski’s proposed multibillion-dollar stadium complex deal — which includes not actually knowing what additional development Zalupski actually wants to build atop what’s currently a community college campus and when — is the question of whether it’s kosher to use money from a 0.5% sales tax surcharge approved by voters in 2024 after elected officials specifically promised it wouldn’t be used for stadiums. Worse yet, the initial $467 million in projected tax revenues proposed by Rays-lovin’ county commissioner Ken Hagan turned out to be drastically inflated from reasonable expectations, blowing a $200 million hole in the proposed stadium budget that led to the dog’s breakfast of funding ideas that is currently up for consideration.
The Tampa Bay Times ran through the problems with some of the current stadium funding sources this weekend, including:
- More than $100 million in rainy day money, “reserves set aside as a cushion against hard times and that largely come from property tax dollars,” would drain funds that Hillsborough County “would likely look to if a hurricane strikes, the economy takes a downturn or state lawmakers roll back property taxes.”
- $20 million could be diverted from other projects that get scrapped or come in under budget.
- The county has $24 million in its economic development reserve, $10 million in a building maintenance fund, and $10 million in unallocated 2027 budget dollars, all of which could be used for a stadium.
That’s a lot of numbers and a lot of bureaucratic fund-shuffling, and the Times article spends much of its time focusing on how these proposals would use more money raised by property taxes and less by sales taxes to provide Zalupski’s desired $1 billion in county and city cash for his $2.3 billion stadium. (Free land and tax breaks would likely add another $1 billion or more.) But while it’s fun to point out exactly which funds would be drained — “county to steal from disaster relief money to pay for Rays stadium” is an irresistible headline — it’s also ultimately kind of beside the point.
If there’s one truism about government money, it’s that it’s fungible: If you take money from one place, you can always move money from somewhere else to cover the resulting budget hole. (Yes, sometimes there are particular funds that are earmarked for certain uses — hotel taxes that can only go to pay for tourism promotion are a popular one — but there’s almost always enough wiggle room that a local government can take from one budget line to replenish another.) And as a corollary, there’s no such thing as “leftover money”: Any funds that aren’t needed elsewhere can be used to offset other budget needs or, if you prefer, to keep taxes from being as high they would be otherwise. So unless you’re talking about new taxes that are specifically being imposed to fund a stadium project — which wouldn’t be the case for the Rays deal so far — deciding which pocket the public money is coming from is less important than the fact that Hillsborough County and the city of Tampa would be handing over public funds that it then wouldn’t have available for other uses.
And this isn’t just an academic consideration. Rays officials are hard at work trying to make the case that the issue isn’t whether Zalupski should receive $1 billion in tax money, but rather which $1 billion he should pocket:
“Certain funds and forms of funds are more probable than others, and I think that’s what the public officials are working day and night to figure out, which is: What is the right composition of those ingredients?” said Rays CEO Ken Babby.
“How those ingredients are used, and how much of them, I’m going to leave that for the public officials to comment on,” he said. “But I can tell you there is great appetite and desire from all sides to figure this out.”
This is, fundamentally, misdirection, and the Times isn’t doing anyone any favors by focusing on the budget trees and ignoring the overall subsidy forest. (It’s not as bad as the misdirection in the recent column by the Times’ official Rays stenographer Marc Topkin arguing that a new Rays stadium would lead the team to spend more on winning teams, which isn’t how it’s ever worked for any other team before, but it’s still not great.) Tampa and Hillsborough taxpayers and elected officials would do well to stay focused on how much of the bag the public will be left holding, not to mention what the overall size of the bag will be, something that county commissioner Christine Miller noted is still very much a moving target:
“As of today, we have no facts — we have bits and pieces of what those facts might be,” she said. “The absurd amount of ‘what-ifs’ directed to policymakers before we have a deal to opine on does no one in our community any good.”
It’s almost like voting on a multibillion-dollar stadium development project before knowing all the details isn’t a great idea! Rays team execs continue to try to assure county and city officials that that’s crazy talk and this is totally how responsible business deals are done, and they’d better hurry up and approve or else the team will “evaluate alternatives.” This is the choice county and city officials now face: Agree by the end of this month to pay an unknown amount of money for an undetermined project, or else face an unspecified threat to move the Rays to an unknown locale, maybe. Extortion threats used to be so much simpler in the old days.
Move the team out of Florida!