Ever since Tampa councilmember Bill Carlson announced a few days ago that he’d be willing to consider casting a swing vote for a Tampa Bay Rays stadium if the city’s share came out of a different pot of property tax money, I’ve been engaged in a weird, slow-motion discussion with Carlson on the former Twitter about what exactly his plan is, and how it could possibly save Tampa any money. It started out like this:
Calling my report “false” while linking to the same WUSF report I had linked to is a choice, certainly. But I tried again, asking, “You propose eliminating $180m in CRA and CIT funding and substituting $180m in TIF funding for ‘publicly owned infrastructure.’ Could that be used toward the (county-owned) stadium? If not, who would cover the resulting $180m stadium funding gap?” To which Carlson’s reply, in its entirety, was: “The city is not involved in the financing.”
This brings us to yesterday, when the Tampa Bay Times reported:
Carlson said the city would provide an $80 million advance payment to the development district, paid in four annual $20 million installments, at the Rays’ request. He did not specify which city funds would be tapped for that money.
Carlson has yet to explain how sending $80 million to be used for a Rays stadium district is not being “involved in the financing,” though it’s possible he’s making a distinction between stadium financing and stadium district financing. (Carlson has insisted that any money under his plan would only go for “public infrastructure,” but didn’t answer me when I asked if that could include infrastructure for what would be a county-owned stadium.) Carlson also confirmed to the Times that, contrary to what he said on X, his plan would indeed kick back property taxes to support the Rays project, justifying it as “with the property taxes being generated, we can put some of that back in for the infrastructure.”
There are several possibilities here:
- Carlson doesn’t understand how money works. This seems unlikely, given that Carlson is currently in his eighth year on the city council, and at least understands tax increment financing districts enough to write a proposal about how to use them. Elected officials, though, keep falling for the Casino Night Fallacy that taxes paid by a development project don’t cost anything for a local government to give up, so we can never rule out stupidity. For his part, Carlson tweeted on Monday, “You’re not dealing w an amateur here. I have been against these deals for years and I can see through BS on both sides,” which would leave us with…
- Carlson is trying to pull a fast one. Before he was elected to the council, Carlson ran a public relations and marketing firm, and it’s entirely possible this entire tax switcheroo is meant as obfuscation, to convince the public that he’s cutting a better deal when he knows he’s not really. His X debating style certainly seems to follow the classic PR principle of “if you don’t like the question you’ve been asked, answer a different one that you wish you’d been asked,” so it’s very possible he knows what he’s doing. Unless…
- There’s something here Carlson isn’t telling us. Maybe he really has come up with a way of spending city property tax money without spending city property tax money, despite that being not how tax money works. Or he’s figured out a way to use the city’s spending on things completely unrelated to the Rays project, without team owner Patrick Zalupski noticing that he’d be out $180 million. And he just hasn’t explained which it is yet, or where he plans on getting the $80 million down payment, because he’s really really busy, and also the dog ate his laptop keyboard.
All we do know for sure is that Carlson is proposing to withdraw $180 million in city sales and property tax spending on the Rays stadium project, and substitute $80 million in some money from somewhere plus some amount of other money from future property tax receipts — and we also still don’t know who covers any shortfall if those property tax revenues fall short. As for why Carlson is being so obscure, we’re ultimately left with the epistemological dilemma that prompted Hanlon’s Razor, but I for one don’t have enough evidence to say whether that conclusion applies here. It’s a fine line, indeed.
I prefer Theodore Sturgeon’s law… except in that he underestimated the degree to which everything is crap. This stadium ‘deal’ being a fine example.
America’s reverse Robin Hood culture just keeps rolling along. As does much of the rest of the western world come to think of it.
The goal here is clearly not to get a good (much less great) deal for city and county taxpayers. It is to make the deal somehow look just barely viable enough to get passed. After that, who cares what happens to the great unwashed.
They will pay. Or they will sell/lose their houses/condos to someone who will.
It doesn’t matter to Zalupski & co. Clearly it doesn’t matter to Carlson either.
I think Hanlon’s Law works in most cases, but when we see many different well-educated and well-informed people making the same “mistake” over many opportunities and many years, then I think the most likely explanation is that these people simply do not see the problem the way we do.
We believe that their job is, among other things, not to waste public money on projects that do not benefit the public. We believe that partly because they say that they believe that and because we were taught in school that the US is a democratic republic with checks and balances.
They do not see it that way.
I have been trying really hard to get a “like” function activated for comments, specifically for comments like these.
Facts.
Terrific point. Yes, a like button on comments would be beneficial.
I cannot figure out if Bill Carlson is an idiot or stupid.
Lookit what I did!
Tell the rays no. They can leave if they want.