If Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski’s Plan B now that the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County won’t vote on stadium subsidies by the end of this legislative session is to go get state money first and figure out the rest later, uh, he may need a Plan C:
Sen. Ed Hooper, a Clearwater Republican who leads the Senate budget committee, told reporters that he didn’t think the state should be assigning any money to the effort until local governments reach agreements with the Rays.
“The locals, Hillsborough County and the city, there seems to be some heartburn at the request,” Hooper said Tuesday. “And until they resolve that, I don’t think the state needs to be involved.”
So, would the city and county signing nonbinding memorandums of understanding be enough to get Hooper and other state senators to free up the state funds? Would the Tampa council and Hillsborough County commission even go for that by June 1? And then what would it take to make the nonbinding bind?
Today’s brief Tampa Bay Times report doesn’t go into that level of detail, but Florida Politics hints that the state money could still come via a side door, citing the old “sources familiar with the situation” — which could be anyone from top legislative leaders to the reporter at the next desk — as saying that “the funding will probably still come, most likely through the Public Education Capital Outlay report that is part of the budgeting process.” That would imply using state higher education capital funds to pay for the state’s share of the Rays project on the grounds that it’s really a project about improving Hillsborough College by cramming it into a corner of campus to move it out of the baseball team’s way; this sounds potentially even more controversial than siphoning off disaster relief money to spend on a stadium, but I guess the legislative heart wants what the legislative heart wants, heartburn be damned.
Welp, they got a memorandum of understanding today.
From the totally impartial MLB.com story:
“In a previous draft of an MOU, the Rays offered to pay $1.235 billion — more than half of the ballpark cost — plus all design and construction overruns. They asked then for a $1.065 billion public contribution, with $750 million coming from the county and $251 million from the city.
The terms were different in Thursday’s agreement, with the public contribution capped at $976 million: approximately $796 million from the county and $180 million from the city. The county’s share would include $360 million from the community investment tax (CIT), $263 million from tourist development tax (TDT) revenue bonds plus $40 million from the TDT reserves and $103 million from unspecified “additional County resources from various sources determined by the County,” according to the MOU.”
So they can say, “See, we’ve reduced the amount the public will be on the hook for from $1.065 billion to $976 million. COST SAVINGS!”
BTW, if you said, “Hey, those county contribution source only had up to $766 million and they just said the county’s contribution will be $796 million, where is the other $30 million coming from?” you’ll be told to shut up and sit down by a radio talk show host who shows up to public meetings in a Rays jersey and hat.