Use Rangers ballpark money for schools? LOL

Stop it already with the sanctimonious claims that $1 billion proposed for a new Texas Rangers ballpark in Arlington would be better spent elsewhere, like on public schools.

The television lights had barely been turned off at Friday’s news conference announcing the ballpark plans when skeptics began saying stuff like this.

Of course there are better ways of spending that much money than on a place for talented and athletically fit young millionaires to play games in front of crowds who pay high prices to benefit vastly wealthier team owners and the conglomerate of wealthy people known as Major League Baseball.

Public schools, and their decidedly not-wealthy teachers, would be a great place to start.

But we, the people who channel our discretionary spending so we can watch the games, won’t do the same for schools and teachers.

Texas should spend more money on schools. Even the state Supreme Court said so less than two weeks ago, but at the same time the court refused to make the Legislature pay.

We’ve even built high walls around school funding so we won’t be tempted. The financing for a new air-conditioned, retractable-roof ballpark is a good example.

The taxes that will pay for the ballpark, assuming Arlington voters approve it like they readily have in the past, are not available for spending on schools.

There’s a half-cent sales tax that raised almost $28.2 million last year, a 2 percent hotel occupancy tax that brought in $2.2 million and a 5 percent car rental tax that contributed just shy of $710,000.

That’s more than $31 million a year, a small sum compared to Arlington ISD’s $501 million general fund budget. Still, it could make a huge difference.

But state law does not allow sales taxes to fund schools. The hotel room tax and car rental tax are allowed under a narrowly drawn state law that permits them for such things as sports venues.

The Arlington taxes are being used now to pay off bonds that helped build AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys.

But when there’s no venue to pay for, those taxes go away. They can’t be shifted to schools, because we’ve told ourselves we can’t do that.

Schools are funded mostly by local property taxes and by direct allocations of state tax revenue. If our legislators were so inclined, they could allow more revenue sources for schools, but they are not.

It would not be from hotel taxes or car rental taxes, because the tourism industry wants those funds spent on things that boost tourism.

We’ve made this money available for stadiums and ballparks and little else. That’s who we are.

This story was originally published May 23, 2016 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Use Rangers ballpark money for schools? LOL."