| During a public hearing on Monday, April 20, a proposal came up that I strongly oppose and once you read my concerns, I hope that you will join in my opposition.
The bill proposes to use our hard-earned tax dollars to help the city of Hartford pay back a $60 million loan that was taken out to build a new stadium for the Hartford Yard Goats.
At the time, Connecticut residents were promised that no state taxpayer dollars would be used to fund this project.
Raised Bill No. 1132, AN ACT CONCERNING THE ADMISSION TAX, does anything but keep that promise.
If this proposal passes as is, all tickets sold at the new stadium in Hartford will include an additional charge called the “admissions tax,” like most admission tickets sold in Connecticut. However, in this specific case the money earned through the additional charge would go to paying back the City's $4.2 million-a-year stadium debt.
I think we can all agree that using state tax dollars for a baseball stadium doesn't make sense – especially when cuts to safety net funding for services such as funeral honors for veterans, autism care, and nursing homes have been proposed this year in response to our enormous deficit.
Allocating state dollars to a randomly selected economic development project – a baseball park - just isn't good policy. The owners of the new team merely wanted to move this stadium from one city to another – an unnecessary project.
The bill is currently under consideration of the legislature's Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, of which I am a member. I will continue to keep you informed as we get further into the 2015 legislative session.
Vincent Candelora
State Representative
86th General Assembly District
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