Loudoun County officials are willing to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to build a baseball stadium and subsidize team owners if Major League Baseball moves the Montreal Expos to a site beside Dulles International Airport, backers of Virginia's bid said.
Revenue from a proposed Loudoun tax on game tickets and an array of county tax breaks are central to Virginia's financing plan. But they have been discussed little in public, and officials said they cannot put a dollar amount on the benefits Loudoun would receive in return.
With league officials' decision on where to put the Expos expected soon, the upsides baseball would bring to Loudoun -- and the price it would exact from the county -- are getting new scrutiny from boosters and critics.
Bruce E. Tulloch (R-Potomac), vice chairman of Loudoun's Board of Supervisors, said the ballpark would be an engine -- "quite frankly, a Ferrari," he said -- for the county's economy. It would create jobs, attract businesses and spur residential construction near the stadium, all of which would pump up county finances, he said.
But Supervisor James Burton (I-Blue Ridge) predicted that the economic development benefits of hosting a major league team would prove insignificant, and he said siphoning off tax proceeds collected by the county to fund the ballpark's construction would undermine the stadium's value to Loudoun taxpayers.
The struggle over Virginia's stadium financing plan, and Loudoun's role in it, is about more than baseball. At issue is just what role governments should play in subsidizing the private keepers of the nation's pastime.
That question is especially relevant in Loudoun, which, as the nation's fastest-growing county, has been wrestling with growth and rising tax bills. It is also a central issue in the District, where voters in last week's Democratic primary threw their weight behind three D.C. Council candidates who, given other pressing city needs, opposed public financing for a ballpark.
Virginia's stadium plan counts on Loudoun supervisors to impose a 10 percent ballpark admissions tax, then pass the more than $300 million in expected revenue over 30 years to the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority. The county also would hand over admissions taxes on events other than baseball games at the park and give the authority local sales tax revenue from stadium spending, according to the authority, which was created by the General Assembly to lure a team and finance and build a ballpark.
Team owners would get 40 percent of whatever's left after the authority covers its yearly debt payments and other stadium costs.
The county also would forgo property taxes on the $360 million ballpark, home to what would become one of the county's largest private employers, according to the plan.
Academic experts who study the impact of stadiums on communities said proponents of public investments -- whether via government grants, tax pass-through arrangements or other special tax agreements -- dramatically overstate the payback residents can count on from big-time sports complexes.
The D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission has argued that a new downtown stadium would generate 2,100 jobs. An analysis commissioned by supporters of Virginia's bid and performed by George Mason University professor Stephen S. Fuller, meanwhile, says a ballpark would produce 2,671 jobs.
Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economics professor, said independent studies show that stadiums are generally a wash.
"You shouldn't expect any job creation at all," Zimbalist said. "You should expect an economically neutral outcome." He added that while some places might see a slight positive impact, others could see a decline.
