Mayor's Office admits no plan for dealing with budget shortfalls due to convention center

Rich Riebeling told Metro Council last week that the Mayor's office is not going to deal with the question of making up a $14 million deficit caused by plans for the Music City Center until they consider the 2010-11 budget at the end of next spring (council will probably vote to approve the convention center long before those talks begin):

It seems curious to me that Mr. Riebeling would speak about reassigned old convention center funds as belonging to the new convention center, given that they were reassigned when the old one was paid off. Once the facility was paid off, by definition, those funds are unencumbered so, unless the charter creates a permanent convention center fund, why would we assume that those revenues automatically go to an unbuilt new convention center? It sounds like accounting tricks and mind games to me.