New Rangers stadium: "one of the worst public projects anyone could imagine"

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ARLINGTON -- City of Arlington officials have touted a “50-50” private-public partnership to build a proposed $1 billion retractable roof stadium for the Texas Rangers.

A WFAA-TV investigation, however, has found taxpayers may instead pick up to 80 percent of the tab, which amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars more than initially promised by city leaders.

Last month, the Arlington City Council unanimously approved a “Master Agreement” to ask voters to extend sales, car rental, and hotel occupancy taxes that have been used to build AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys.

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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.

Tucked in the agreement is a clause called the "admissions and parking tax" that allows for a 10 percent surcharge on event tickets and up to $3 additional surcharge on parking. State law allows cities to collect and use the taxes to build their stadiums. Arlington’s agreement, however, allows the Rangers to use the admissions and parking tax revenues to help pay their half of the construction costs.

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If collected for the 30-year life of the stadium, that’s $500 million dollars.

Allowing the Rangers to collect the same tax could mean an additional $10 million in revenues, or $300 million in revenues over 30 years to pay of the Rangers’ share of stadium construction costs.

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Basically, with the way the agreement is worded, the revenue from this tax can be used by the owners to pay off the stadium. Apparently Jerry did it with the Cowboys and the Rangers will use it to pay off a lot of their stadium debt. What is worded a 50 50 public private deal is more like an 80 20 deal. Such a bullshite deal. Taxpayers get so shafted with these stadiums.