The mayor and the council chair signed the deal in September of 2004, and only after that did people actually feign sticker shock at the costs of the ballpark. The council has had that deal amended seventy ways from Sunday in the last 420 days alone. Enough already. Either you want the damn team, or you don’t, and if you did not want to pay for a multimillion dollar park, you should not have whored yourselves out to MLB. But you did, and now it’s time to pony up.
And save me the spiel about how the taxpayers money is better spent on the schools and roads and all that, because the truth is, D.C. hasn’t spent appropriated one red cent correctly in these areas for years. What makes anyone think that they’re going to start appropriating funds correctly after they defeat the stadium deal? The Redskins left D.C., and the schools still sucked. The Wizards moved into D.C., and schools sucked. They want a commuter tax. I guarantee you, commuter tax or no; stadium or no stadium, without proper accounting and responsibility as to how the budget is spent or how the schools and highways are run, the schools will still suck, the roads will still have potholes, and the D.C. council will remain full of poseurs, all pining for the next mayoral election. The same as it ever was, baseball stadium or not.
