We were very pleased to see that our post from earlier this week was cited by Rob Boston at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In his latest editorial on Ken Ham’s defense of Ark Encounter’s murky financing, Boston writes:

Lo and behold, I’ve come to find out that two champions have arisen in our defense. Susan L. Trollinger and William Vance Trollinger Jr., who are both professors at the University of Dayton, challenged Ham’s claim that he’s not receiving any state subsidies.

 

“While Ham would like readers to focus on these semantics, we should look at something else Ham says: ‘The Ark Encounter was built by donations and bond issue [emphases ours] – no state money was used,’” wrote the two on their blog. “Bond issue. It sounds straightforward. Boring even. But nothing could be further from the truth.”

 

The Trollingers added, “As we have reported numerous times, in 2013 the town of Williamstown – a few miles from the Ark, with a population under 4,000 – gave Ark Encounter $62 million in Tax Incremental Funding. Over the next thirty years, the Ark will apply 75% of its property taxes toward repayment of these bonds. This is a remarkably sweet deal, made sweeter by the fact that if the Ark sinks, the taxpayers and the investors (and not AiG) will be left holding the bag.”

 

That sort of puts things in a different light.

Boston notes that he has not yet read Righting America at the Creation Museum, but when he does, we hope he’ll review it!