Sinking Tax Dollars

You have to applaud Dallas' Lazarus Property Corp.'s audacity. The real estate development company appears to have snookered the City of Arlington into investing millions of tax dollars in swampland. It appears that tomorrow, the city council will vote to create a tax increment reinvestment zone around the company's land in north Arlington. The 2,000 acre tract lies north of the Trinity River between Farm Road 157 and Texas 360, near the city landfill. Most of the land is in the flood plain and is unusable in its current state.

"It's been a long time and very, very slow and tedious," Mayor Robert Cluck told the Star-Telegram. "I think a developer would lose money without the zone." Huh, well, gee, doesn't that tell you something? If the project was economically viable, Lazarus would not need corporate welfare to convince it to do it. So here are city leaders publicly admitting to investing tax dollars in a project that makes no economic sense.