Austin City Store: A Taxing Place?

Lee Leffingwell writes in regarding funding for the Austin City Store, which we discussed in our live-blog of the budget adoption Monday. (We said, "Leffingwell's iterating that no tax dollars were used to subsidize snowglobes, just mainly hotel taxes. Wait, that's a tax …") The council member says:

One thing: On the City store deal - what I said was '...there was never any Austin taxpayer money involved..." (very careful in that choice of words.) Of course it was "taxpayer money", but no Austin taxpayers paid it - unless they were in the "doghouse" and had to go spend the night in a hotel and therefore paid the hotel tax for a room there.

The point was that there would be no benefit to Austin taxpayers by closing the store -- the money saved could not be used (by state law) for any other purpose.

Remember kids, the company store closes Sept. 29. Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya …