A third amendment by Cropp passed Tuesday calls on Natwar M. Gandhi, the chief financial officer, to analyze the cost of the project once more. If the new estimate is more than $100 million above Gandhi's previous estimate of $530 million, the mayor would be required to choose a less expensive location for the stadium. Officials of business groups said yesterday they support that provision, too.
"Business has never thought that there should be a blank check for a stadium," Hill said. "The more people that are going to take a look at it and really scrub the numbers, the better."
D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp presented amendments to legislation to finance a baseball stadium.
(Manuel Balce Ceneta -- AP)
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Metro Business: Coverage of Washington area businesses and the local economy.
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But the legislation did little to ease the concerns of some smaller business organizations and individual companies about the impact of a tax. Those groups argue that by taxing based on revenue, rather than profit, the ballpark fee would exact a particularly high toll on mid-size companies with low profit margins.
The mayor's representatives had expressed willingness to adjust the bill to address those problems, but there were no such amendments Tuesday. "What we want to do is to start looking at those cases individually to see if there's anything that could be done to ease the impact," Lang said.
It was little solace to businesses that argue they would be hit particularly hard.
"We're extremely disappointed that they want to proceed in taxing health care to pay for baseball," said K. Edward Shanbacker, executive director of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, which represents doctors in the city.
Dudley Dworken, president of Curtis Chevrolet-Kia, said the District ballpark tax would put him at a disadvantage to suburban auto dealers. He said he is inclined to pay for the fee by tacking it onto the bill for each car he sells; he estimated that it would amount to $75 per car.
"It's totally unfair," Dworken said. "I love the city, and have been totally supportive of the city, but I don't think the city has been supportive of us."
