Baseball Before Books?
An editorial argues that the D.C. government has confused "economic development" with true "public benefit" in its expensive quest to build a new baseball stadium.
"It's time to change the lexicon for D.C. government-speak and replace the term 'economic development' with 'public benefit' when assessing the publicly funded projects under consideration by the city's elected leaders."
"Despite the recognized failure to maintain healthful conditions in the schools, the folks in charge of facilities for D.C. Public Schools are looking a lot like Einsteins these days when compared to the gang trying to sell the public on the benefits of building a new baseball stadium."
"A $28 million annual investment by the business community in the public schools, rather than a stadium, would generate real public benefits. The business community as a whole would reap benefits from a well-educated workforce, while a new stadium will benefit relatively few D.C. businesses."
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Let's not be disingenuous...
Maybe there are some legitimate points to be made here and maybe there aren’t, but I wouldn’t know. I didn’t read the article because the headline is so ridiculously detached from reality I can’t take the thing seriously.
The DC stadium would be built using a loan that would be paid off by a special tax on the largest businesses of the city that those businesses imposed on themselves specifically for the stadium because most of them stand to gain financially if a new stadium is built. It’s a little bit like a BID, if it helps to think of it that way.
So what does that all mean? It means, and this is important, that the city doesn’t get the money if they don’t build the stadium. So no, the city could not, in fact, buy books or do anything else with this money. To do so they’d have to impose a totally different, completely unrelated tax.
Let’s debate the stadium on its own merits next time rather than lob disingenuous sound bites back and forth. A headline like this isn't constructive and doesn’t belong on a reputable news source.