Are you ready for some football? Although Michael Phelps currently dominates the sports pages, most Texans are anxiously awaiting the start of another season of Dallas Cowboys football. This will be the last year the Cowboys will play in Irving’s Texas Stadium. After that, team owner Jerry Jones will move the team into a state-of-the-art football cathedral constructed of steel, glass, and high-def jumbotrons. It is going to be a sight to behold.
Given that the Dallas Cowboys are the second-highest grossing team in the NFL, you can imagine the competition among various communities in the Dallas area to secure the new stadium. City council members from several DFW localities were frantically crunching numbers in a pitched battle to see who could funnel the most taxpayer money into the coffers of The Dallas Cowboys Football Club, L.L.C. When the dust settled, the City of Arlington was declared the “winner,” and the new stadium is under construction as we speak.
Building a world-class sports facility these days is not cheap, and as you’ve no doubt heard, everything’s bigger in Texas. The construction costs were originally budgeted at $650 million, $325 million of which is being paid by Arlington taxpayers. In order to raise the funds, Arlington increased local sales taxes. Evidently, though, the few additional pennies per transaction weren’t enough to cover the city’s commitment, so naturally the city council looked for cost-cutting opportunities. At some point early in the process, they realized that buying the land from its existing owners on a voluntary basis would be way more expensive than simply taking what they wanted, so they resorted to eminent domain.
The stadium project was originally pitched as the Kelo case was winding its way through the court system. Foolishly believing that the Supreme Court would rule in favor of protecting private property rights, the city rushed the plans through the approval process prior to the announcement of the Kelo decision. Obviously, they needn’t have worried. The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of large-scale theft. In the wake of the Kelo backlash, the Texas state legislature passed SB62, a bill ostensibly designed to restrict the use of eminent domain in Texas. But even this was not enough to derail the stadium project – the bill contains an exemption written specifically for the Cowboys. The eminent domain seizures went through without a hitch.
Of course, governments must compensate the victims of eminent domain seizures, and the City of Arlington did indeed pay homeowners what it unilaterally decided was “fair market value.” According to the Dallas Morning News, Arlington has tentatively agreed to sweeten the $1.8M already paid for 26 disputed properties by another $868,250.
Wow! $2.7M dollars is a lot of money! It certainly sounds like a generous offer, until one takes the extra step of dividing $2.7M by 26 homes. Once the high-powered math is complete, we discover that the city is “offering” homeowners an average of $104,000 per home. The median home price in Arlington is $127,000. And sure enough, in many cases the prices received by the former homeowners were not enough to pay off their remaining mortgage balances. But here’s the real kicker – the City of Arlington provided their eminent domain victims with trailers to transport their personal effects. The city then provided them with a tax statement for the service, since the provision of “relocation assistance” is considered taxable income!
But of course one must always consider the “greater good.” So what if some people were taxed for the privilege of being kicked out of their homes and now have to pay mortgages on houses that lie somewhere beneath the 30-yard line? There’s football to be played, man! Not just any football, either – we’re talking about the Dallas Cowboys! And it’s not like the former Arlington residents aren’t getting anything out of the deal. They will have the satisfaction of knowing that they helped make the fabulously wealthy Jerry Jones marginally fabulously wealthier. And you just can’t put a price on that.
Go Cowboys.
P.S.: Check out the following quote from team owner Jerry Jones, available on the official stadium website. “I never felt that I owned the Dallas Cowboys. I know what a feeling of ownership feels like if you own a car, or a house, or some land….”
