Dallas Cowboy Stadium Scandal California Connection

A discussion group on the San Jose Mercury News website was discussing controversies swirling about a new billion dollar football stadium that is going to be built in their area.

One of the people opining brought up the Dallas Cowboy Stadium Scandal and added links to my webpages that deal with that issue. They tried to link both to the main page that details what Jerry Jones did to Arlington and comments from around the world that mostly verbalize outrage over the worst case of eminent domain abuse in American history.

A San Jose Mercury News opiner then thanked me for the fixed links and added some interesting information about how Arlington got snookered by Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys, which you can read below....

"Thanks for this, Durango.

The stadium proposal in Santa Clara, California, probably won't require any eminent domain seizures because the land is already in our Redevelopment Area.

But your updated links make clear - or should make clear - to certain stadium boosters here: There is a real human cost to "plopping" an NFL stadium down anywhere. And in our neighborhood, there's a lotta denial on that subject.

Eminent Domain abuses aside, the Dallas Cowboys stadium has another cost as well:

"...After Dallas rejected a $425 million dollar subsidy the City of Arlington taxpayers approved an up to $325 million subsidy to pay for up to one-half of the cost of land acquisition, construction, and infrastructure required for the new Cowboy stadium."

http://business.baylor.edu/Tom_Kelly/cowboys.doc

Let's hope that the development of all of that seized land makes it worthwhile to somebody. Here in Santa Clara, we'll have nothing else to go with our $1B stadium except for a Convention Center and a theme park.

Here's how Arlington will pay that back:

AUSTIN, Texas -- Fitch Ratings has assigned an 'A' rating to the Arlington, Texas (the city) $312.7 million Dallas Cowboys Complex special obligation bonds. The financing is composed of three series:

--$136.9 million tax-exempt special tax bonds, series 2005A;
--$152.9 million tax-exempt special tax auction-rate bonds, series 2005B;
--$22.9 million taxable special tax and revenue bonds, series 2005C.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2005_June_27/ai_n14699827

Turns out that "A" grade is two grades down from AAA, or prime, and that means that Arlingtonians will be paying more to bondholders than they would for AA or AAA bonds.

Sounds like a raw deal to me.

If we hand a cash subsidy over to Dr. John York - we'll be selling bonds just for the privilege.

The lower our own bonds are rated, the more that Santa Clarans, now and in the future, will have to pay back to bondholders.

Golly, I can't wait."