Policy

Formula One Racing Gets Tens of Millions from TX Taxpayers

Because it could never make a go of it on its own, right?

|

No one is quite sure how officials arrived at the dollar amount, but state Comptroller Susan Combs cut a $29.3 million check to the group that staged the first Formula One race in November outside of Austin.

The public has been waiting for more than two years to learn exactly how the payment would be calculated and a raft of other details involving its stake in subsidizing an event described in the local media as something close to The Rapture, were it fast, loud and smelly.

No one involved in staging the race has been too sure of how much anything cost taxpayers, not that it seems to have mattered much. The Austin American-Statesman, which did its full share of cheerleading for the event, has carried on a rather lonesome effort in court to try to get to the bottom of some of it.