Austin, TX Closed-Mouthed About Bill for Car-Race Subsidies

But taxpayers will pick up the tab, whatever its size

An event so stupendous, so gargantuan it threatens to shut down all of Austin demands from the city a plan so all-encompassing no one could possibly tell how much it might cost.

Which, judging from the way it has done business with the city, is just fine with Circuit of the Americas, which is bringing its show to the Capital City sometime next week for races Nov. 16-18.

While the public waits for a judge to decide whether it has the right to see how its tax money is involved with the Formula 1 event, Circuit officials aren't quite sure how they might be reimbursing the city and Travis County for turning their sheriff's, police, fire and streets departments over to them for some of that "Laissez les bons temps rouler-ing," the Austin American-Statesman reports today.

The Statesman has so far done a bang-up job making whatever it can public about the European sport of the extremely well-to-do, from junkets offered to city officials to a plan to siphon off some of that free solar development money Austin Energy likes to give away.