Monday, March 26, 2007

If You Build it, They Will Launch? 

Filed As:  Budget and Tax

"If you build it, they will come" and variations of this line from the movie Field of Dreams has been used to justify taxpayer-financed construction of professional sports stadiums for years. Now, as the Washington Post discussed on its pages this Sunday, Governor Richardson and a number of leading New Mexicans and civic boosters in and around Las Cruces have been pushing a taxpayer-financing of a proposed $225 million spaceport in order to allow billionaires like Richard Branson to start commercial space flights.

While it is being sold as an economic development tool, the plan requires a significant hike in New Mexico's economically-problematic gross receipts tax. With more than three-dozen of these spaceports either complete or under construction, New Mexicans need to understand just how speculative this type of "economic development" really is.

• posted by Paul Gessing
• 6:14 pm
• 0 comment