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August 22, 2008
The lesson of Field of Schemes: political reform needed
Atlantic Yards Report
This is the eighth and final part of a multi-part interview (conducted May 28) with Neil deMause, the Brooklyn-based co-author of the book Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit, and writer of the companion web site. He testified at a 3/29/07 Congressional hearing that questioned taxpayer financing of stadiums, convention centers, and hotels.
Q. What’s the lesson of the book? Do you have general reform advice--what should cities, states, or the federal government do?
A. It’s easy if you’re the city or the state or the federal government: you stop giving money… It’s within federal government’s power to stop tax-exempt bonds from being used for stadiums right now. You just pass a law telling the IRS don’t do that anymore. The federal government could shut down subsidies for sports stadiums and for other ridiculous deals, luring companies from one state to another.
There’s this thing I mentioned in the book. [Rep.] David Minge’s proposal, why don’t you just pass an excise tax on corporate subsidies, so if Ratner gets, say, a billion in subsidies for this project, then he has to pay federal taxes on this project, that would suddenly make it a lot less lucrative. Congress could do that in a second. They are not.
Cities could say No, it’s not worth it to us, that it would be nice to have a basketball team in Brooklyn, but not that nice. All this is within the power--it’s not that hard to do. The problem is, what do we as private citizens do when the government is not making decisions based on the public interest but making decisions based on the private interest.
Posted by lumi at August 22, 2008 4:13 AM