TEXAS IS ONE of the few states in the country without a state income tax. And that benefit, while envious, puts residents in the dubious position of funding public education through property taxes – a system that has spawned the despised “Robin Hood” law to create the illusion of equity in a system that is inequitably funded from the get-go.

Now, as area teachers woefully add up all the children left behind because of lack of educational and programming funding, one of our most famous citizens has the nerve to ask the city of Dallas to build an edifice for his sports team – at an estimated cost of $600 million. That’s right, while our property taxes rise ever higher to fund a subpar education system, one of Dallas’ most privileged and successful entrepreneurs has his hand out for a city-funded development project.

As with the American Airlines Center rhetoric, this proposal touts an increase in job opportunities, tax revenues and the revitalization of downtown. What stays unmentioned, however, is the fact that four professional sports teams, a world-class symphony and a proposed new basketball/hockey arena were not enough to successfully convince Boeing to relocate here. I guess mentioning that failure would expose the more-jobs myth for the emperor’s new clothes that it is.

Sure, mostly out-of-towners will pay for the stadium in their rental car and hotel taxes, but sometimes those consumers are locals with cars in the shop or Dallasites who want a Dallas weekend getaway with room service. And the conventioneers, who’d much rather be in New Orleans or San Antonio anyway, thank you very much, just might be convinced to go there instead of Dallas.

And if raising taxes on rental cars and hotel rooms is such a great source of untapped revenue, why aren’t we doing it to eliminate the “Robin Hood” law, or to give the cops a raise or fix more roads faster. Why haven’t we asked the professional sports team owners to build a new school for every stadium or arena we build for them?

Corporate subsidization of the cost through naming rights is not the antacid that makes the project digestible, either. I’m sure the out-of-work Enron employees would have much rather had something in their bankrupt retirement and pension plans than see their employer pay for the privilege of calling the Astros’ home Enron Field. I know the employees of American Airlines would prefer that their employer’s management eliminate the vanity-plate American Airlines Center to lessen, even slightly, the pay cuts and loss of benefits demanded from their employees to stay out of bankruptcy court.

Call my cynical, but I have a pretty good feeling that before long, Jerry Jones and company will have wrangled a new stadium out of Dallas. Probably one with a dome in some very favorable, as-yet-undeveloped location that’s just begging to cure Dallas’ ambitions to play in the destination-city big leagues.

I have just one more thing to say to those who think that it’s OK for a financially successful local resident to ask the city to pony up for an enterprise that will increase his wealth and the success of his business, instead of paying for it himself…

Nasher Sculpture Center.