ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling that Mercedes-Benz Stadium in downtown Atlanta is exempt from property taxes.
A group of Fulton County taxpayers sued the Fulton Board of Tax Assessors in 2017, the year the new home of the Atlanta Falcons opened, challenging the board’s determination that the stadium property should not be taxed.
The Georgia Court of Appeals dismissed the suit in 2018 because the stadium – like its predecessor, the Georgia Dome – is owned by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, a public entity.
In appealing to the state Supreme Court, the taxpayers argued the state statue governing the Georgia World Congress Center Authority’s tax-exempt status is unconstitutional.
The defendants in the case countered that the board’s determination that the new stadium would be tax exempt was based on legal agreements the Falcons Stadium Company and the World Congress Center entered into prior to construction of Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
“In its order dismissing the case, the trial court addressed each of the appellants’ claims and found that the petition lacked any legal basis for recovery,” Justice John J. Ellington wrote in a unanimous 34-page opinion.
The lawsuit over the tax-exempt status of Mercedes-Benz isn’t the only legal challenge to the stadium taxpayers have mounted. In 2015, the Georgia Supreme Court dismissed a suit challenging the issuance of $200 million in bonds to help finance the $1.4 billion stadium.
Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game will be played in Denver next month instead of Truist Park in Smyrna.
ATLANTA – A small business advocacy group is suing Major League Baseball for moving next month’s All-Star Game out of Georgia.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in New York, Job Creators Network is seeking either an immediate return of the game to Truist Park in Cobb County or the payment of $100 million in damages to local and Georgia-based small businesses.
Major League Baseball moved the All-Star Game to Denver in response to passage of controversial legislation by the General Assembly last March putting new restrictions on the voting process in Georgia.
The law replaces the signature-match verification process for absentee ballots with an ID requirement. It also restricts the location of drop boxes and prohibits non-poll workers from handing out food and drinks within 150 feet of voters standing in line.
Critics say the law will disproportionately affect minorities and low-income Georgians. Supporters say it will restore public trust in elections.
“MLB robbed the small businesses of Atlanta – many of them minority-owned – of $100 million,” said Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the Job Creators Network. “This is a knee-jerk, hypocritical and illegal reaction to misinformation about Georgia’s new voting law.”
While the $100 million projected economic impact of losing the game has come into question as potentially overblown, the plaintiffs say previous All-Star games have generated $37 million to $190 million for their host communities.
Besides losing revenue from ticket sales and concessions, more than 8,000 hotel room reservations were canceled.
“Small businesses in this community had valid contracts relating to the All-Star Game and other events, the result of two years of planning,” Ortiz said. “All of that was ripped away by fear and misinformation spewed by political activists.”
Ortiz said Colorado and many other states have more restricting voting laws than Georgia.
