The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors has been asked to contribute roughly $600,000 in annual possessory interest tax to pay down debt on a proposed new downtown arena. Last year, the Board approved that amount for the Railyards deal. The assumption is that it would do the same in 2013. But it hasn't yet done so, causing some heartache.

The angle the Bee's excellent arena writers take in Sunday's story is that it has not yet been nailed down. But once you read the story, it becomes apparent that it's a mere formality. County executives are on board, and the supervisors who agreed to the concept last year remain interested in such a deal. Phil Serna, one of the supervisors, wants to arrange for parks funding to be included in the deal; that wasn't a dealbreaker last year, and I can't imagine it would be this year, either.

The important thing is that this can't really be voted on until we know if the Kings are staying. That's going to be the case with a lot of these financial deals: the NBA is forced to make a leap of faith that all of the votes in favor of an arena deal that looked like this in the past will continue into the future. There's nothing to suggest it will change, and Seattle is dealing with a bit of the same (non-binding votes on financial concepts).

So the key here, again, is not that something isn't nailed down. It's that everyone agrees it'll likely be approved.