现在还有点小麻烦...... D.C. At The Bat Who Would Pay for Washington's New Stadium? by Neil deMause If MLB officials are to be believed--and at this point Bud's cabal should have less credibility than Ahmed Chalabi--then by the end of the week, the Montreal Expos will at last be turning in their tricolor M's for W's, as the third incarnation of the Washington Senators. (Or, if you prefer, the second of the Nats.) It's been a long, strange trip for Bud Selig's traveling extortion road show, one that likely would still be going strong, ironically, if D.C. voters hadn't gotten together and kicked out three incumbent council members in favor of three declared opponents of public stadium dollars. With the threat of democracy suddenly at the door--the Backlash Three, led by Disgraced Former Mayor Marion Barry, figure to take office in January--it shook both MLB and D.C. officials loose from their mutual game of chicken, with Jerry Reinsdorf's relocation posse rushing to anoint Washington as the chosen one, while the lame -duck council produced in a matter of days a bona fide stadium plan, complete with one of those waterfront sites that gets the sports pundits drooling. But enough backstory. Now that everybody's cards are on the table, the question to be asked is: After two years of threats, cross-continental junkets, and mess -ing around with Terrmel Sledge's career, what did Bud finally get for his fellow owners? And on the other side of the ledger, what kind of deal are Mayor Anthony Williams and his council cronies proposing for D.C. taxpayers? Including construction, site acquisition, and all the trimmings, the total price tag on Mayor Williams' plan is $440 million. The Washington Post broke down the payments this way: Rent payments by the Expos/Sens/Nats owner: $5.5 mil. a year In-stadium taxes on tickets, concessions and merchandise: $11-14 mil. a year Tax surcharge on large D.C. businesses: $21-24 mil. a year (Note that the total--about $40 million a year--is a bit more than what's needed to pay off $440 million in 30-year stadium bonds. The buffer is there to make the bond underwriters happy, with any excess presumably going toward retiring the bonds early.) Seems straightforward enough, right? The team would pay a small share, baseball fans a somewhat larger one, and the largest hit would be on the corporate bigwigs who'd be sloshing about in the luxury suites. It was this that's allowed Williams' office to claim that "there is no money that will come from the general fund" for the ballpark, while D.C. Baseball echoed that it "will not be paid for by DC residents' tax dollars." In stadium financing, though, nothing is ever that simple. The D.C. stadium plan, in fact, provides a valuable lesson in how to break down a stadium finance plan, and learn which costs really fall on the private side of the ledger, and which on the public. --

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