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July 6, 2008
Hot dog clause in financing of new stadium gives taxpayers heartburn
NY Daily News
by Juan Gonzalez
This was an excellent preview of some of the issues covered this past Wednesday in State hearings presided over by Assemblyman Richard Brodsky. It was not included in this past week's NoLandGrab coverage, but it is now.
Questionable promises of jobs in exchange for public funding, efforts to use an IRS loophole for financing a sports facility and requests for additional public financial support are all things that the Yankees and Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner have in common.
Call it the secret Hot Dog Giveaway.
The Yankees could be allowed to operate up to 25 vendor pushcarts outside the new stadium as part of a secret provision the team negotiated with the city and state for parking garages being built with public financing.
The "hot dog" clause - never made public until now - would kick in if the Yankees don't get 600 free year-round parking spaces.
That little goodie is just one ofseveral revelations buried in thousands of pages of documents and e-mails about the stadium project that city officials recently gave Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester).
Brodsky, who heads the assembly committee that oversees public authorities, demanded the documents after learning last month that the city's Industrial Development Agency was backing a Yankee request for $366 million in additional tax-exempt financing to complete the Bronx project.
The new request comes on top of the $942 million in taxexempt bonds the Yankees have received.
Brodsky has scheduled a public hearing today on the entire project. It islikely to be the toughest public review the $1.3 billion stadium has received.
"The more you see of authorities like the IDA, the more you realize they act like old-style Soviet commissars," Brodsky said. "No one has elected them, they're not accountable to anyone, and they operate in secrecy."
Posted by steve at July 6, 2008 6:15 AM