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January 14, 2009
Yanks stadium cost passes $2B, subsidies near $1b
Field of Schemes
by Neil deMause
There were plenty of fireworks at today's Assembly hearing on the Yankees and Mets stadium projects, but behind all the smoke lay a giant bill for the taxpayers. Stadium-boondoggle expert Neil deMause was on hand for all the action, both for his own site and the Village Voice's Runnin' Scared blog.
Today's New York state assembly hearing on the Yankees and Mets stadium projects can best be summed up like this: City economic chief Seth Pinsky complained about hearing chair Richard Brodsky calling the city's procedures "Soviet-style," then later quoted Edward R. Murrow to implicitly compare Brodsky to Joe McCarthy; and Brodsky, in his closing statements, offered to take on both Pinsky and Yanks president Randy Levine in a fistfight. Not, in other words, one of democracy's finest moments.
The real story, in any case, came after Levine, Pinsky, and almost everyone else had gone home: Economist George Sweeting of the Independent Budget Office presented new detailed estimates of how much the new stadiums are costing taxpayers in subsidies, and how much the teams are benefiting. I'll be updating my stadium cost spreadsheet [PDF] with the new numbers shortly, but in the meantime, some highlights: The total cost of the Yanks' new stadium is now well north of $2 billion, with taxpayers picking up $854.7 million of that tab; for the Mets, the cost to the public is now a mere $371.5 million. And that's without even counting the fact that neither team will pay property taxes, ever, thanks to a nifty tax dodge involving public authorities and 99-year subleases. [Emphasis added]
Runnin' Scared, When Elephants Fight: Not-quite-liveblogging the Brodsky Yankees Hearing
Part 1 of deMause's running commentary.
Runnin' Scared, Brodsky Hearing: IBO Says Mets, Yanks Stadiums Costing Taxpayers $1.2 Billion
And Part 2, featuring the IBO's subsidy bombshell:
Without going into details (check the IBO's website for those), the totals come to a total public subsidy for the Yankees of $854.7 million, more than half a billion of which will come out of state and city coffers; for the Mets, the total subsidy is $371.5 million, with the state and city on the hook for about $230 million. And this, it's worth noting, is without counting any lost future property taxes. Levine would probably turn orange at this point, but he, along with most of the rest of the onlookers, has gone home.
More coverage...
NY Observer, IBO: New Yankee Stadium Costing City, State $528 M.
AP via SILive.com, Lawmaker offers to fight Yankees prez over stadium
The president of the New York Yankees asserted repeatedly at a combative hearing Wednesday that the team's new $1.5 billion stadium — backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies — is a good deal for the city, and he accused a lawmaker who offered to fight him of grandstanding for headlines.
The legislator, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, lashed out at team president Randy Levine and city economic development chief Seth Pinsky, challenging both to a "civil, in-your-face fistfight" over public financing of the stadium.
...The subsidies for the stadium have sparked outrage in the middle of a global economic meltdown that has crippled the city's budget and cut thousands of working-class jobs while the Yankees doled out hundreds of millions of dollars for new players. The team, which last season failed to make the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade, signed pitchers CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett and first baseman Mark Teixeira to contracts totaling $423.5 million.
AP via International Herald Tribune, Yankees feed at taxpayer trough because they can
I don't live in New York, so I'll leave it to the taxpayers there to be outraged or simply figure that's not a bad price for entertainment. But at a time when the unemployment rate is at a 16-year high, Americans are losing their jobs at the fastest rate since World War II, and cities and states are struggling for enough money to provide the most basic services, I'd lean toward outrage.
NoLandGrab: AP sports columnist Tim Dahlberg should indeed be outraged, since Federal taxpayers will be picking up the tab on several hundreds of million in subsidies for the Yankees and Mets.
Posted by eric at January 14, 2009 8:45 PM