Bloomberg Unloads A Whopper About "Privately-Funded" NYC Ballparks

The Yankees and Mets are enjoying their brand new ballparks as the 09' season gears up. Unfortunately it is has become a lot harder for the fans to see their games as ticket prices have skyrocketed.

Don't tell that to Mayor Bloomberg though, he could care less about who is able to pay and who is not. As he says, baseball is a business and that's that. Although that is a cold assessment, I agree that professional sports is a business, it is just a shame that the Yankees and Mets business model doesn't include their less-than-wealthy fans. Bloomberg couldn't stop there though and he decided to at the very least, seriously mislead the public about how much taxpayer funds paid for those fancy new ballparks.

From The NY Daily News:

Yankees' principal owner George Steinbrenner and the Wilpon family for the Mets should be praised for their willingness to "go and make those investments" in the new parks, Bloomberg added.

"We put next to nothing into these two stadiums," Bloomberg said of public funding to support the ballparks, even though tax-free bonds paid for most of the construction costs.

Critics have charged that city spent hundreds of millions for neighborhood and transportation improvements around the ballparks. Bloomberg said "they fundamentally were done with private money."

The only investment Steinbrenner and the Wilpon's made was cajoling city officials into giving them hundreds of millions of dollars in municipal bonds and tax breaks. With a combination of schmoozing and threats to move to New Jersey. Bloomberg is either lying to us with those remarks, or he has no clue about our city's finances. Which one is it Mr. Mayor?

Citi Field No More?

The joke surrounding the new ballpark in Queens is that Citi-Field should be renamed City Field. With all of the taxpayer money going to Citigroup, there has been plenty of criticism surrounding their $400 million dollar deal with the Mets to name the new stadium for the next twenty years. Now it appears that Citigroup is finally getting the joke, and changing their tune.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Citigroup Inc., eager to quell the controversy over how lenders are using government bailout money, is exploring the possibility of backing out of a nearly $400 million marketing deal with the New York Mets, say people familiar with the matter.

Officials at Citigroup have made no final decision about whether to try to void the 20-year agreement, which includes naming the Mets' new baseball stadium after the bank, say these people.

In a statement Monday, Citigroup said that "no TARP capital will be used" for the stadium -- referring to government funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Yes, it isn't a change in company policy but the confusing words have more meaning than what they lend to believe. Pat Kiernan calls them ridiculous for the statement because one dollar is just as good as the next. Of course reading between the lines shows that the beleaguered banking behemoth is ready to cave to popular sentiment on this issue. Now if they can start serving the interests of the shareholders taxpayers in everything that they do, that would be real progress.

Mayor Pressured Out Of Suite-Heart Deal At New Stadiums

Mayor Bloomberg was looking forward to having a free luxury box at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field this year, but that is just not in the cards for him and his staff anymore. Approximately $2 billion dollars has been shelled out or asked for from the city (meaning us, the taxpayers) to finance both new ballparks. Of course that is a lot of money, especially when it could have been used to save programs needed by the poor and to curtail rising property tax rates. So the Mayor wanted to paid in the some fashion. Now that enough pressure has been applied, he is shying away from that pricey perk.

From NewsDay:

NEW YORK - Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration will forgo luxury boxes at the new Yankees and Mets ballparks, the city said Tuesday after months of criticism about its handling of the stadium projects.

The administration has worked out a new deal with the Yankees to get extra money, instead of a luxury box. A separate and similar agreement is being worked out with the Mets for their new park, a Bloomberg spokesman said.

Senior Bloomberg aides had fought hard to get the luxury boxes, describing the perk in internal e-mails as "a big issue to the mayor" during negotiations with the teams in 2006.

That battle for the boxes only recently came to light as state and federal lawmakers launched investigations into how the teams and the administration went about making those deals.

Of course, Bloomberg is only doing this because he is running for re-election. He doesn't want New Yorkers to see him for who he really is, an out-of-touch plutocrat that cares nothing for the average New Yorker. To him, it is all about image and nothing in terms of actual substance. He'd rather see the ballparks built with our money than people getting real economic relief. As Assemblyman Brodsky says, "This whole thing has been an embarrassment."

Yankee Stadium And Citi Field Still Drawing Ire

Yankee Stadium may not have a corporate name, but the deed to the ballpark should be split up among the taxpayers. That goes for Citi Field out in Queens as well, along with a new name. Citibank may only be spending $20 million a year for twenty years for the naming rights, but with their bailout, that name needs to change. Perhaps we can make a deal and call it Irresponsible Corporate Banking Field....or just City Field for short. As Gothamist points out, both teams need to give back.

The Yankees have opened their wallets and committed $243.5 million to two players this week. That’s nothing new for the club, who routinely lead the league in payroll by a wide margin. Coincidentally, the team also went to New York City this week and asked for $259 million in tax-exempt bonds to finish their new Stadium in the Bronx. This is on top of original financing of the $1.3 billion deal, which was also done almost entirely with tax-exempt bonds.

Meanwhile in Queens, the Mets, whose payroll is modest in comparison to the Yankees but still among the highest in baseball, have also received plenty of tax-exempt financing for their new stadium. On top of that, they will receive $20 million a year from Citigroup, an entity that U.S. taxpayers had to bail out a few weeks ago, for the naming rights to the new building.

In this current economic climate, the actions of both teams are offensive. It is bad enough that they have raised ticket prices to levels that ordinary fans can’t afford. But with huge deficits on the federal, state and local levels, their use of tax-exempt financing deprives the public of desperately needed revenue.

Gothamist wants them to stop asking for more money out of city coffers and I whole-heartedly agree. Moreover, I think they should give back ALL the money they have taken since the thought of new ballparks in NYC began. Don't worry though, there is something in it for them as well. With the money returned, the Mets and Yankees can make it up by taking away the free luxury boxes for city officials and sell them at market price.

Gotta have some give and take here, right?

Kucinich Gets Tough On Dubious NYC Eminent Domain Projects

Say what you want about Dennis Kucinich, but one thing you may not deny is that he is a fighter. His latest quest focuses on publicly funded stadiums and the illegalities that surround them. New York is at the center of this investigation, as both the new Yankee Stadium and the Mets' Citi Field are costing taxpayers over $2 billion together. Also, the proposed and extremely controversial Atlantic Yards Arena hasn't even started going up yet costs Brooklyn dearly every single day that Ratner occupys that land. Kucinich wants to look at the details of these projects and see what we can do to put an end to the corruption that inevitably clings to these gargantuan 'public' facilities.

From The Atlantic Yards Report:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who chairs Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, yesterday announced a hearing to be held September 18. It follows up on two public hearings the subcommittee held last year (3/29/07 and 10/10/07) that looked more broadly at some of the policy issues.

No witness list has been announced, but I assume someone from the New York City Industrial Development Authority, whose Seth Pinsky was on the hot seat July 2, will be among those present.

While no legislation has been proposed yet, the Subcommittee's concern may put pressure on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to clarify and finalize a proposed rule regarding PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes) to finance sports facilities. That rule could stymie tax-exempt funding for the Atlantic Yards arena--or the city and state could succeed in getting the arena grandfathered in under the ruling that allowed funding for the two baseball stadiums.

AY goes into more details about PILOT plans and ways of getting rid of them. If Kucinich can make small amendments to the tax code so that the rich robber barons of major league sports will have to pay for their own stadiums, then he gets major props from me. It is long past the time when city funding for sports arenas is put to an end and Kucinich is the man for the job to get it done. Sure, he's not the most likeable guy in the Democratic caucus (especially when it comes to running for President), but he sure is a fighter for the little guy...and that is what counts.