Virginia's bribe

I didn't know about this, and I'm amazed:

Gov. Mark R. Warner had joined key lawmakers in balking at Virginia's plans for financing a new 42,500-seat stadium. But baseball negotiators, hungry for political certainty, had presented a radical idea: Could Virginia officials simply agree to give the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue expected from the ballpark to baseball or team owners, who would then finance the ballpark themselves?

Members of the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority rushed to secure assurances from Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore that such handouts -- totaling about $1 billion over 30 years in one scenario -- were legal. Projections showed that once construction costs were covered, hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue could be left over for baseball or team owners to pocket, authority Chairman Keith Frederick said.

That's worse than a tax incentive to move a business -- it's handing over a tax power to a private entity. Besides, wasn't that money supposed to go to making the improvements necissary to get everyone to and from the stadium?

Posted by rj3 at September 29, 2004 12:45 PM

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