December 10, 2008
By Hartford Business Journal Editorial Board
While most of the major cities that were involved in sale and leaseback arrangements have come clean about their potential exposure to termination agreements, several have not given complete information about the potential cost to taxpayers.
Hartford falls into that category, according to The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that monitors fiscal policy at the federal, state and local level.
According to the foundation, state and local entities engaged in sale and leaseback deals involving more than $500 million in Hartford transit assets between 1988 and 2003. The termination fees on those deals, if any, would be only a fraction of that. For both Atlanta and Los Angeles, that fraction was 13 percent. For Washington, D.C., it was 49 percent.