« Update #79: Battle Continues | Main | New plan to replace Nassau Coliseum touted as a win-win, must be approved by residents, but questions linger »
June 23, 2011
Republicans Support Massive Debt Increase
The Capitol
by Richard Brodsky
The former Assemblyman, noted critic of Yankee Stadium, and surprising Atlantic Yards mute weighs in on Nassau County's plan for a new Nassau Coliseum.
The county has the highest property taxes in the world, is nigh on bankrupt, has a control board running its finances and has a bus system close to shutting down. Therefore, the Republicans who control the county Legislature just approved a referendum to allow the borrowing of $400 million to build a new home for the local ice hockey team, the New York Islanders, to be paid back by those same beleaguered property-tax payers.
This follows another Republican’s successful initiatives to build three new sports facilities with taxpayer money. Mayor Michael Bloomberg structured $10 billion or so worth of deals for the Yankees, the Mets and the Brooklyn Nets. With Republicans like these, who needs Socialists?
The economics of taxpayer-built sports facilities are almost always awful, with taxpayers receiving little or no benefit in return for massive outlays of public dollars.
...What Mangano and his allies have figured out is that the electorate and politicians go slightly nuts when professional sports and government intersect. All the ideological purity and defining political slogans go out the window. There’s a real pattern of distressed and broke governments cutting schools, hospitals and libraries—you name it—but finding the money to build a stadium.
...The real question is whether Nassau voters will drink the same Kool-Aid. In what passes for political strategy, Mangano has scheduled the referendum for August 1, apparently on the theory that there will be little public debate, the press will not pursue the reality of the deal, nobody will be around and a targeted get-out-the-vote effort can muster enough support to pass it.
NoLandGrab: Why are stadium referenda and public hearings ever held in November? That's a rhetorical question.
Posted by eric at June 23, 2011 11:11 AM