New York—A revealing report on dodgy deals for the new Yankee Stadium currently under construction was released Tuesday by Assemblyman Richard Brodsky. According to Brodsky taxpayers and ticket buyers are the losers in this plan that provides hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies for the project.
He criticized the commitment of between $550 and $850 million in taxpayer investments being granted due to a groundless threat that the Yankees would leave New York otherwise.
A thousand new jobs were promised, but few actually materialized. The report explains, “In exchange for $500 million to $1 billion in public subsidies, proponents of the new Yankee Stadium deal claimed there would be significant economic benefits to the people of the City and the State.” In exchange, the Stadium project will actually only create 15 new permanent jobs, and little in private investment. In the Yankee’s documents, it appears they included the temporary construction jobs in that number, which violates the right for subsidies.
Brodsky also criticized the city for failing to protect New Yorkers, those essentially paying for the stadium, from excessive ticket price increases in the deal. The Yankees will in turn keep 96 percent of profits from ticket sales, with the remaining 4 percent for the State.
Mayor Bloomberg, defending the use of public resources, told the Associated Press (AP) that, “We want these kinds of facilities here. Having new stadiums is as important as other things in terms of, not just the spirit for the people who live here, but our economy.”
He pointed out that other U.S. cities have also used public resources to build stadiums.
“The state and the city put in a relatively small amount for infrastructure, which is incidentally the job of the state and the city,” Bloomberg told AP. “That’s what we’re supposed to do.”
But Brodsky isn’t sold. “This stadium is being built by the people of the city and the state of New York and in return they are getting almost nothing,” Brodsky said standing a couple of blocks from Yankee Stadium at the construction site.
In his report he states, “ Critics on both the left and right have decried these taxpayer subsidies as socialism, wasteful, corrupt, anti-free enterprise, and unfair to average citizens whose economic struggles are undertaken without public subsidy. Yet the phrases “economic development”, “job creation”, “growth” etc. retain enormous political power.” The statement continues, “A real analysis of these subsidies has yet to be done.”
Other issues raised by Brodsky in the report include:
• The City manipulated the assessed value of the Stadium to meet the need for an IRS tax exemption. They compared the property value to Manhattan sites rather than in the Bronx
• A luxury suite was secretly acquired by city officials, and there is no policy for its use.
• New York City Industrial Development Agency (NYCID) may have violated existing law in its creation of massive amounts of public dept, and its failure to assure public benefits from the massive taxpayer investment.
The report is based on previously secret and undisclosed Yankee, City, and IRS documents. Brodsky, a Westchester Assemblyman and Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Corporations, Commissions and Authorities will present the report to the United States Congress this Thursday, September 19th in Washington.
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