Insider Baseball:
How Current and Former Public Officials Pitched a Community Shutout for the New York Yankees
Online Appendices:
• Read Yankee Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost's affidavit from Save Our Parks et al. v. Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary, United States Department of the Interior et al. Exhibits A and C contain a list of companies that the Yankees have or will retain to perform work vital to the new stadium.
• In 2001 Mayor Rudolph Giuliani authorized the Yankees to deduct up to $5 million a year of "stadium planning expenses" from their rent payments to the city.
Read official documents summarizing which Yankee expenses were subsidized by taxpayers in 2001, 2002, and 2004 . Expenses include lobbyists such as Powers, Crane & Co. and portions of the salaries of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner's children, Hal and Hank.
Read detailed billing documents of various firms hired by the Yankees at the taxpayers' expense:
Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP
Tishman Speyer Development, LLC
• Read the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board's 1997 decision permitting Randy Levine to consult for Major League Baseball while serving as Deputy Mayor.
Read GJNY's February 2006 report on the stadium project:
Loot, Loot, Loot for the Home Team: How the Proposal to Subsidize a New Yankee Stadium Would Leave Residents and Taxpayers Behind.
Timeline
Both the land-use plan and the public
financing for the Yankee
Stadium project have been approved.
The City Council approved the use of payments in-lieu-of taxes (PILOTs) collected from the Yankees to pay back the tax-exempt bonds issued for the stadium. PILOTs are normally a way to reimburse the city for revenue lost due to a property tax exemption. In the case of the new Yankee Stadium, these PILOTs would instead be used to service the debt on the tax-exempt bonds issued for the project in order to satisfy a federal requirement that these bonds be repaid with city tax revenue.
The Internal Revenue Service issued a private letter ruling which determined that PILOTs qualify as "Generally Applicable Taxes," despite the fact that these funds are not collected at a uniform rate and would not be remitted to the city treasury. It is also worth noting that the Bloomberg administration argued before the City Council Finance Committee in Spring of 2005 that PILOT payments are not "the equivalent of tax money."
8/10/2006--Manhattan State Supreme Court Judge Herman Kahn heard arguments from representatives of the New York Yankees and Save Our Parks, a community group suing the Yankees and the City to stop the project. The lawyers for the Yankees argued that a delay in stadium construction would result in a$33 million in rent and $80 million in additional construction costs. These claims were scrutinized in a recent article appearing in Metro.
4/26/2006--The City Council approved the financing plan for the new stadium. See how each Council Member voted.
4/2006 -- A "Participation and Labor Force Mitigation and Community Benefits Program Related to the Construction of the New Yankee Stadium" was signed by Yankee President Randy Levine, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, and three members of the City Council's Bronx delegation. Click here to view the deal.
4/25/2006-- GJNY calls on Council Member David Weprin to postpone Wednesday's City Council Finance Committee vote on the stadium financing structure until it receives approval from the Internal Revenue Service. Click here to read the letter.
4/20/2006--The New York City Independent Budget Office released an update to its analysis of the fiscal implications of the Yankee Stadium Project. Click here to read the update.
4/19/2006--Members of the region's environmental, planning, and fiscal policy community request that the MTA amend its Capital Plan to ensure that a new Yankee Stadium Metro North station be built, but not at the expense of other transit projects. The letter suggests that the $70 million approved by the state for construction of parking garages should be directed to pay for the new train station.
The New York Times had previously called on the Yankees to help finance the new train station, which "could diminish the need for expensive parking garages, and reduce air pollution and congestion, making for happier fans and healthier neighbors." Click here to read the editorial.
4/10/2006--The City Council's Finance Committee held a public hearing regarding the use of PILOTs to pay back the stadium debt. Read GJNY's testimony from the hearing.
4/5/2006--The City Council approved the land-use plan for the new Yankee Stadium.
3/24/2006-- The Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) approved the allocation of $70 million for parking garages to be built on public parkland adjacent to Yankee Stadium. ESDC also approved a $4.7 grant to the Yankees for future maintenance costs. Click here to read ESDC's General Project Plan.
3/14/2006--The board of the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) gave preliminary approval for the use of tax-exempt bonds, sales tax breaks, mortgage recording tax breaks, and a payment in-lieu-of taxes arrangement for the Yankee Stadium project. Click here to view the project materials, including the cost-benefit analysis. Click here to view GJNY's testimony from the hearing.
6/2005--The stadium and parking garages would be located on frequently used public parkland. The New York State legislature quietly seized these parks in June, 2005, allowing the city to dispose of these properties to be used for the stadium and parking garages. Click here to view a legislative timeline that charts the eight days it took for the city and state to seize these parks.
6/2005-- On June 15, 2005, the city's Economic Development Corporation, the Empire State Development Corporation, and the Yankees signed a Memorandum of Understanding detailing the subsidy and land-use commitments relating to the project.
Additional documents and details on the project:
The New York Yankees are building a
new stadium one block north of its existing location at East 161 Street
and River Avenue in the Bronx. The project will also include the
construction of three nearby parking garages containing almost
5,000
spaces. The stadium and parking lots are being developed on
frequently used public parkland, including portions of Macomb's Dam and John Mullaly Parks.
The New York State legislature quietly
seized these parks in June, 2005,
allowing the city to dispose of these properties to be used for the stadium
and parking garages. Click here
to view a legislative timeline that charts the eight days it took for
the city and state to seize these parks.
The project passed through the
city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.
Click here to view a copy of the project's Draft Environmental Impact
Statement. Click here to view
testimony submitted by Good
Jobs New York to the office of Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión.
As currently proposed, the new stadium would
involve a substantial public subsidy. The state would contribute
$70 million for the parking garages and the city would contribute $160 million to
replace the lost parkland (several acres of these replacement parks would be
located on top of the new garages). In addition, the city and state
would not collect rent, property taxes, sales taxes on construction
materials, mortgage recording taxes, and taxes on income from bond payments.
The details of this subsidy are outlined in the
Memorandum of Understanding
signed by the city and its Economic Development Corporation, the Empire State
Development Corporation, and the Yankees Limited Partnership.