Oh well. Looks like the D.C. government is going to build a $500 million stadium for the new Major League Baseball franchise. It will be financed by a gross receipts tax on business in D.C., creating an incentive for businesses to move to the burbs. They will also charge $5 million in rent (only 100 years to pay off the bonds!), sales tax on stuff in the stadium and a 1 percent utility tax on nonresidential customers.
This is likely to be similar to the bonds that built McCormick Place and Soldier Field where the revenue from the project don't cover the costs of financing the project, so city taxpayers pick up the slack.
They should build $500 million worth of affordable housing instead and pay the bonds back with the rent.
In happier news: Happy New Year! (Did anyone else hear a visibly drunk and very funny Mark Giangreco say that someone was smoking a roach on ABC a few minutes before midnight, and hear Janet Davies shush him repeatedly?)
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