Report: Arlington Baseball Stadium Likely to Cost Taxpayers More Than Promised

Brett Shipp and Mark Smith expose a case of over-promising and under-delivering in Arlington, with regard to the recently announced proposal for a new Major League Baseball stadium to house the Texas Rangers.

Though city officials "touted a '50-50' private-public partnership to build a proposed $1 billion retractable roof stadium for the Texas Rangers," Shipp and Smith report that "taxpayers may instead pick up to 80 percent of the tab…"

The $500 million of proposed taxpayer money would come from an extension of the half-cent sales tax that's helping pay for AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys. "But an analysis by WFAA-TV reveals that besides extending a half-cent sales tax, and levying hotel and car rental taxes, the approved agreement also includes millions of dollars of additional tax revenues that could flow to the Rangers," according to Shipp and Smith.

The extra taxes would come from an "admissions and parking tax" from the "Master Agreement" approved last month. That extra tax "allows for a 10 percent surcharge on event tickets and up to $3 additional surcharge on parking," and circumvents a state law that slows cities to use such taxes to build stadiums.