Miscellaneous

Sean McCarthy never dreamed of working in politics, let alone with his father, Arizona Tax Research Association President Kevin McCarthy. But after spending 11 years away from Arizona, the 33-year-old Air Force veteran and East Valley native has made a home for himself in Phoenix as a senior research analyst at ATRA, with a focus on K-12 financing.

“Fundamentally, what you are doing is you are going into the state general fund and you are appropriating dollars to a private concern,” Sean McCarthy of the ATRA told the Arizona Republic.

Sean McCarthy challenged the Coyotes’ argument that the team is creating new tax dollars by building an arena on a vacant site. “You are not creating new disposable income. You are moving dollars around,” McCarthy said. “You can’t argue that moving dollars from one stadium to another is creating new dollars.”

McCarthy said sports teams need to pay for their own facilities... and the ASU development district where the new arena is proposed already retains property taxes within that district. “It’s already the mother of all property tax TIFs,” McCarthy said.