New Stadium Will Host Good Shell Game, if Not Good Baseball

Washington Watchman Mike Licht passes on an item in the Examiner on the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. The article reports that the Commission botched a deal to put art—craft, sculpture, site-specific yadda yadda—in the new baseball stadium. Here's the long and short of it: The Commission couldn't fit $850,000 under the stadium construction cap, so the item for the 2008 city budget was billed to general obligation bonds—the idea being that the Commission would then own the art and lend it to the Nationals at no cost. Councilor Kwame Brown, who has "oversight of the arts commission as chairman of the economic development committee", oversaw right through this clever ruse. Now, the stadium has no art and the Commission is out $850,000. Whoops!

Licht is quoted in the article as saying that the Commission's play was an "absurd attempt to get around the spending cap." Or, in site-specific terms, an error. In brighter news, the 2007 Nationals may not turn out to be "historically bad" in the final analysis. I'm sure Charles is thrilled.