New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg’s running for a third term, and assures us that he’s spent the last eight years busily fighting the good fight on behalf of middle-class New Yorkers.
Consider the deal he cut with the Mets and Yankees when they proposed building two new stadiums to replace two perfectly functional ballparks. Neither team pays rent or property taxes on the city-owned land donated for the projects. In fact, the city condemned parkland for the new Yankee Stadium, promising to substitute artificial turf on the roofs of new Yankee parking garages. Stadium construction was financed through $1.9 billion of tax-free municipal bonds and the teams received a indirect subsidy of $640 million to upgrade the roads and train stations around the stadiums. All in all, the Daily News estimates that it adds up to a $1.2 billion check from taxpayers to two for-profit private partnerships. Oh, and the stadiums were built smaller, because limited product commands higher prices. All so the boys of summer can charge $350 (Yankees) or $90-$210 (Mets) a seat to sit twenty rows back from the field (or where I sat for $15 in high school).
Mayor Bhujle would’ve taken a slightly different tack if Steinbrenner or Wilpon had come sniffing around City Hall for taxpayer subsidies. I’d have encouraged the Mets and Yankees to shop their product around. See how much they’d make if they became the Las Vegas Yankees (2006 Metropolitan Area GDP: $92 billion). Or maybe the San Antonio Mets ($73 billion). I’d remind them of the size of the New York market ($1,124 billion) as I summarily threw their asses out of my office. I’d then get back to work, figuring out how I might use that $1.2 billion to get the Second Avenue Subway built faster, or maybe to pay the police better, or perhaps to fix leaky school roofs quicker.
Then I’d feel I’d earned the right to make a commercial like this:
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