Field of Schemes

November 30, 2004

The season of giving

It's a weekday, so it must be time for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's daily snipe at Madison Square Garden owners Cablevision for opposing his $1.4 billion Jets stadium plan. Today's theme: Christmas, the season of giving. "I trust, in the end, they'd be with the holiday spirit," said Bloomberg yesterday, saying he hoped Cablevision would reconsider its opposition to the stadium and "you'll find everybody getting on board." Hey, there's a tack that Viktor Yanukovych hasn't tried yet!

First in war, first in peace, last to make up their damn minds

Today's the D.C. council's long-awaited vote on the $440-million-to-$614-million-or-so Washington Nationals stadium, and according to press reports, the bill is expected to pass. Or maybe not.

The drama, as usual, comes courtesy of council chair Linda Cropp, who seems determined to find a way to make her mark on the stadium bill without actually saving the city any money. Yesterday, Cropp announced that she planned to vote for the stadium - and then promptly sent a last-minute letter to her council colleagues offering still more changes to the bill. Cropp's latest plan would reduce the "ballpark tax" on D.C. businesses by cutting out the funds for libraries and other community programs added by Mayor Anthony Williams earlier in the month to buy the votes of recalcitrant councilmembers; Cropp says she'd introduce legislation to fund these projects by other means in January, after the stadium issue is settled.

What this means for the final vote count is anyone's guess. Councilmembers Jim Graham and Sandy Allen have indicated that they likely wouldn't vote for the bill without quid pro quos for their districts; the Washington Post, though, speculates that stadium opponent Phil Mendelson could switch his vote to "yes" if the business tax is reduced, which with Cropp would still provide the necessary seven votes for passage. Or Cropp's latest proposal could be rejected, and Graham and Allen could cast the deciding votes. Or the council could be planning to bring in M. Night Shyamalan to write a special surprise ending!

In other news, the Washington Post editorializes today that though the stadium deal leaves D.C. with all the risks and MLB with the windfall profits, the city should build it anyway. Meanwhile, Dorothy Brizill of D.C. Watch raises concerns that land acquisition for the stadium could cost three to four times as much as the $65 million the mayor has budgeted for it, given rising land values in that area. Does anyone hear $700 million?

November 29, 2004

One ballpark, slightly used, cheap

Baseball stadiums typically cost upwards of $400 million to build, but what are they actually worth to own? For an answer, look no further than Toronto, where the SkyDome has been sold again, this time to Rogers Communications, owners of the Toronto Blue Jays, for $30 million (Canadian).

Jays CEO Paul Godfrey called it "an opportunity for us to acquire a tremendous asset at an extremely attractive price," and he's not kidding: That's a 73% discount from the $110 million that Sportsco paid for North America's first retractable-roofed stadium in 1999, and a whopping 95% off SkyDome's initial $600 million price tag (most of which was footed by the good people of Ontario). Cities that are counting on taking possession of their stadiums in lieu of getting paid back on stadium "loans," take note - you listening, St. Louis? How about you, Washington, D.C.?

November 25, 2004

And not one penny more!

The idea of a cost cap on the Washington Nationals stadium - first suggested a while back by D.C. councilmember Jim Graham, then dropped when he got some library baksheesh - is back on the table. Sort of. Council chair Linda Cropp has said she'll introduce a bill on Tuesday asking city CFO Natwar Gandhi to conduct a second cost analysis of the proposed stadium; if it exceeds his first one by more than $100 million, the bill would require moving the stadium to a cheaper site.

Which is all well and good, except that Gandhi's first cost estimate back in October already pegged the stadium at $530 million, up from Mayor Anthony Williams' initial $440 million proposal. With Cropp tacking on an additional $100 million buffer, this means that Cropp's "cap" would still allow the stadium to run up as much as $190 million in cost overruns. Even mayoral spokesman Chris Bender seemed embarrassed by this figure, telling the Washington Post: "To go that far over budget is fiscally irresponsible to the public."

November 24, 2004

Bloomberg charges unfair campaign spending (no, really)

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg just can't stop talking about those Cablevision anti-Jets stadium TV ads. In the latest of his daily missives on the subject, Bloomberg insinuated that the cable company might be violating campaign-finance laws by, well, criticizing him in public just before an election year:

"Jim Dolan said the other day, I think, that he would like to make sure that I don't get re-elected or something to that effect," Bloomberg said. "He's saying somebody else would not build the stadium, somebody else would not develop the whole West Side."

If so, Bloomberg said, the city Campaign Finance Board, which monitors self-imposed limits on campaign spending, "is going to have to decide when it's real lobbying and when he's part of somebody's campaign."

Of course, Bloomberg can be excused for being a little hazy on campaign spending laws, given that he chooses not to obey them.

D.C. pols: Follow the TV money

Dissident D.C. councilmembers are opening a new front in the Washington Nationals stadium war, with five members asking the council's auditor to investigate the team's proposed TV deal. Under the much-rumored but as-yet-unfinalized plan, the Nats and Baltimore Orioles would form a regional cable network, with O's owner Peter Angelos getting 60% of the proceeds in exchange for waiving his nonexistent territorial rights to D.C.

"Just imagine what the Washington team could do if it had the $46 million a year that the five most valuable baseball teams receive on average in media revenue," the Gang of Five wrote to auditor Deborah Nichols. "The new team could contribute substantially to the financing of the new stadium, relieving the public of some of its financial burden." Of course, there's nothing stopping the new team from doing that anyway, but it is a weird footnote to this deal that the biggest winner from D.C.'s proposed stadium subsidies could end up being Peter Angelos.

Up in Montreal, meanwhile, where the Nationals were - in fact, still technically are, until baseball owners finally get around to voting on the move - the Expos, there's a 28-years-young debt-ridden stadium suddenly unwanted by either its tenants or its owners. The province of Quebec is scheduled to turn over Olympic Stadium to the city of Montreal in 2006, but the city wants no part of it: "Knowing that the government gives grants of $22 million per year to operate the stadium, well, we're not ready to put that kind of money into it, we just don't have it," Montreal executive committee Michel Prescott told the CBC. But surely such a thing would never happen to a new stadium, right?

November 23, 2004

St. Louis bond ratings downgraded

Another day, another stadium-related bond rating downgrade. This time it's St. Louis County's bonds for the new Cardinals stadium, which Moody's has knocked down from Aa2 to Aa3. The problem in this case isn't so much what a lousy investment stadiums are as the voter referendum passed earlier this month that seeks to force a public vote on whether to make payments on the bonds; that vote could take place next April, or not at all, depending on how a court rules.

Ron Artest to blame for 9/11, cancer

And in the "What does it mean for me, Al Franken?" department, we have Orlando Sentinel columnist David Whitley speculating that the recent NBA brawl could hurt the Magic's campaign for a new arena:

The Magic were not in Detroit on Friday night, but they will take a hit. When you're trying to build a new arena, the last thing you need is horrific scenes of what might happen there.

Especially when they play into the unspoken reason some don't want a new arena. It's the color and lifestyle of the performers who would be in it.

To be fair, Whitley does have a point (and does note that for most arena opponents, the only color they see is green, as in -backs). The coverage of Ron Artest's visit with Pistons fans has been filled with allegations about the "hip-hop lifestyle" and other similar code words; and without a doubt, one reason more people get up in arms over stadium deals than over ridiculous subsidies to, say, Boeing has to do with the color of the millionaires' skin. (Not to mention why people complain more about "millionaire players" than "billionaire owners" - present company excluded, of course.) That said, arguing, as Whitley does, that arena opponents are likely to run ads claiming "Build a $200 million arena; get the riot for free!" sounds a bit like something out of Mike Bloomberg's paranoid delusions.

This just in: They held a press conference today to announce that D.C.'s baseball team would be called the Washington Nationals, and a Pistons game broke out.

Citing better fiscal management, Standard & Poor's has raised Washington, D.C.'s bond rating from A-minus to A. Fitch Ratings, however, is holding its rating steady at A-minus, citing "high debt levels" likely to be exacerbated by "plans for debt financing a new baseball stadium and economic development in the Anacostia area." Of course, Fitch has already proven itself to be a bunch of stadium naysayers.

Construction on the new St. Louis Cardinals stadium has been unexpectedly halted by order of the St. Louis fire department, which says there wouldn't be enough room between the stadium and the adjacent I-64 highway for emergency vehicles to get through. The Cards management says it's working to resolve the concerns; it'll be interesting to see if this holds up construction long enough to put the planned April 2006 opening in jeopardy.

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and Cablevision chair James Dolan may be the "public diptych" of the Jets stadium battle, according to (who else?) the New York Times, but the Jets themselves are certainly playing an active behind-the-scenes role in stumping for that $600 million in public funds they're asking for. The latest revelation, again from the Times: The Jets have been lobbying hard in the state legislature to repeal Cablevision's $11 mil-a-year property-tax break on Madison Square Garden, in revenge for Cablevision funding the anti-Jets-stadium campaign. This may be a first: two sports teams simultaneously lobbying for an end to public subsidies, at least for the other side. Thank god for lack of ruling-class consciousness!

In other Gotham news, U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, a likely mayoral candidate in 2005, got on the Betsy Gotbaum tip yesterday, saying that a Jets stadium could leave the city on the hook for $267 million in cost overruns. (Presumably arrived at by guesstimating a 20% overage typical of similar projects; public advocate Gotbaum also estimated $150 million in inflation since the project was first planned in 2001, plus a billion or so more dollars in other unaccounted-for subsidies.) The mayor's office insisted that the Jets will pay all cost overruns; it's unclear, though, if this includes overruns on the platform and roof that would be built with public money - and if not, how it would be determined which costs get assigned to which partner.

Lots of news today, but it's my birthday, so I'm exercising my prerogative to go to bullet points:

The city council neglected to issue an official proclamation, but clearly today was Hold An Anti-Stadium Press Conference Day in New York. Taking it from the top:

So way back in September, someone alerted me to a story about a proposal being floated by Sacramento County Sheriff Lou Blanas, which would use a complicated set of rezoning initiatives and private land donations to fund a new arena for the Sacramento Kings. I thought about mentioning it here at the time, but ultimately decided against it because it just sounded so screwy - it was being pitched by the county sheriff, fer chrissakes, and from all accounts the financial model was never going to fly.

So, naturally, yesterday Kings owners Joe and Gavin Maloof officially endorsed Blanas' arena proposal, having apparently had their arms twisted by NBA commissioner David Stern.

The basics of the sheriff's plan: The city of Sacramento would annex 10,000 acres of neighboring North Natomas, which would open up the area, now mostly farmland, to development. Since this would presumably send property values in the area skyrocketing, local landholders would be asked to, in exchange, donate 20% of their land to a foundation, which would in turn sell it raise cash (an estimated $600 million) for a new arena.

Needless to say, the prospect of generating $600 million out of thin air - "It's not going to cost the taxpayers a dime," Blanas declared yesterday - sounds too good to be true, and there are plenty of questions remaining about Blanas' plan: What guarantee would the city have that the donated land would really fetch that much in sale price? What would be the environmental costs of allowing development in a floodplain that's home to endangered species? Would opening North Natomas to development just cannibalize development that otherwise would go to existing sections of Sacramento, thus depressing land values elsewhere? Nothing so far this week in Sacramento's one daily, the Bee, about any of these issues; with any luck, the alt-weekly News & Review will be more on the ball.

One question, at least, has been answered by the Bee: Why the heck is the county sheriff involved? Blanas, it turns out, is a "close friend" of local developer Angelo Tsakopoulos - who just happens to own about 14% of the land that would be opened to development. Ah, California - things never change.

Still more fallout from Election Day: The new leaders of the Florida House and Senate are thought to be more amenable to giving the Florida Marlins a $30 million sales-tax break toward a new stadium. (The Miami Herald article linked here actually says $60 million, but that just means $2 million a year over 30 years, which comes to $30 million in present value. Stupid innumerate journalists.)

The Herald goes on to note that "the main sticking point in the Legislature is likely to be whether the subsidy is a rebate or a handout." All together now: Whaa? The English translation follows a paragraph later: As the bill is currently written, the Marlins could take a $2 million rebate even if they didn't collect $2 million in sales taxes, which is apparently even a bit much for Florida legislators. If this gets straightened out, it would remove one item from the pile of unanswered questions about the team's now-$420 million stadium proposal.

Give New York mayor Michael Bloomberg credit for one thing: He understands how important it is to have a well-defined villain. Yesterday the battlin' billionaire went after Knicks and Rangers owner (and Jets stadium foe) Cablevision for the second time in a week over its full exemption from city property taxes, a subsidy that Mayor Ed Koch and Governor Hugh Carey granted then-Garden owners Gulf & Western way back in 1982, in exchange for a promise not to move the teams out of town - it wasn't until later that anyone noticed that no one had bothered to set an end date. "They say that they care about the city," Bloomberg declared yesterday. "Well, if they cared about the city, why don't they forgo their tax breaks?"

Oddly, two city councilmembers were holding a City Hall press conference to call for the repeal of MSG's tax exemption at the same time Bloomberg was lashing out against it across town - but, according to the New York Times, the mayor "declin[ed] to throw his support behind the proposal to repeal the tax abatement," instead charging that Cablevision should give it up voluntarily. One theory is the one I raised the other day, that Bloomberg secretly loves the tax abatement, since it allows him to paint the most deep-pocketed opponent of his own stadium-subsidy deal as a hypocrite. The other would be, I suppose, that the mayor just feels it doesn't count if you have to ask for it.

Anyway, its role in the ongoing stadium war aside, local budget watchers who've been griping about the MSG tax break for decades have to at least be amused that someone's finally paying attention. "When that tax exemption was first passed, the general understanding was that it was going to be temporary," says Doug Turetsky of the city's Independent Budget Office, which annually includes repeal of the MSG tax break in its yearly wish list of city budget reforms. "Maybe time is catching up with it." (Turetsky also observes, as an aside, that the tax-break legislation is contingent on major-league basketball and hockey being played at the Garden - something that's clearly not happening right now, and that's even before the obvious Knicks jokes.)

Finally, as promised, this week's Village Voice has my rundown of Bloomberg and Governor Pataki's attempts to evade legislative oversight of the Jets stadium plan. Representative quote, from State Senator Liz Krueger: "The state of New York's budget operates like a slush fund, because that's how it's been set out by Governor Pataki, and the legislature hasn't stopped it. When Chairman Gargano seems to imply '$300 million there, $300 million there, I can find that in the petty cash drawer,' it disturbs me immensely, but he may be right."

Much ado about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's $1.4 billion Jets stadium plan in recent days, though nothing so concrete as indication how it'd be paid for:

Zimbalist also took a shot at Bloomberg's continued efforts to evade legislative oversight of the stadium project, concluding, "If the stadium's economic benefits are as obvious as Joe Namath asserts, the project's supporters should have no problem with standard democratic operating procedures and full disclosure." I'll have more on the attempted Jets end-run in this week's Village Voice - out tomorrow afternoon on the Voice website, Wednesday in dead-tree format.

An investigation by the Washington Post has found some likely additional costs for D.C.'s Expos stadium project - $174 million worth. Added to the initial projected $440 million cost, this would bring the final price tag to an estimated $614 million, which would put it in the running for most expensive baseball stadium ever built.

According to the Post's study of internal government documents, the bulk of the new costs would be nearly $100 million in new transit costs, including expanding the Navy Yard Metro station that would serve the new park. The Navy Yard station currently serves just 3,000 to 4,000 riders daily, a small fraction of what would be expected for an Expos game, as has just seven fare gates compared to 20 at the existing RFK Stadium stop.

Asked about the discrepancy, D.C. baseball aide Stephen Green suggested - presumably with a straight face, though the Post didn't say - that overcrowding would actually be a good thing, as it would force fans to walk from the next station and possibly patronize nearby stores and restaurants. Not to mention the potential positive impact on other area businesses.

Though D.C. council chair Linda Cropp has sold her latest plan as substantially privately financed - $350 million in private funding for the stadium, $150 million public funding for land and infrastructure - the main elements of Mayor Anthony Williams' original sweetheart deal would remain in place. The gross-receipts tax on businesses (slightly reduced) would now be directed to pay the land and infrastructure costs, while the in-stadium taxes on tickets, concessions, and parking would, according to Pearlstein, "go to the [private] partnership to cover interest payments on the money borrowed to build the stadium at rates 3 percentage points above what the city would pay."

So where's the "privately funded" aspect, you ask? The private developers - fronted by a guy, one might want to note, who was formerly attorney for a developer who got into a lawsuit war over another public-private development partnership - would be putting up $70 million in cash as well. But as we discussed on Thursday, through the magic of depreciation, that investment would be more than paid back through the largesse of the federal treasury. Pearlstein again:

The main difference between Williams' plan and Cropp's, in other words, is that Cropp's would deflect about $10 million a year in expenses from D.C. area businesses to federal taxpayers - all while creating a guaranteed 10% return on investment for a private developer, and higher interest rates for the banks handling the stadium loans.

New York city council speaker Giff Miller - a likely mayoral candidate in 2005 - has largely kept a low profile on the city's Jets stadium plan, aside from a few snarky remarks about the project's hazy financing scheme at a council hearing back in June. This week, however, he's taken on Mayor Michael Bloomberg over one aspect of the plan: The signing of an as-yet-unreleased agreement with the International Olympic Committee that, Miller charges, could leave the city on the hook for billions in cost overruns.

As first reported by newyorkgames.org last month, Olympic host cities are typically required to assume all responsibility for the cost of staging the games, and to indemnify the IOC from any additional expenses. While the state legislature approved a $250 million Olympic slush fund in 2001, there are fears that that could quickly run dry, especially considering that this summer's Athens games went at least $3 billion over budget.

Though Bloomberg is set to deliver a signed agreement to the IOC by next Monday, so far it's been entirely negotiated in secret, which Miller charges is illegal. "If some or all of the financial burden is going to be put on the city, that needs an open public review in front of the city�s elected legislature," Miller spokesman Steve Sigmund told the New York Observer's Blair Golson. To which could be added: Yeah, that and a lot of other things.

New Jersey state senate president Richard Codey, set to take over as acting governor once James "I am a gay American" McGreevey steps down next week, has proclaimed that he wants to build $850 million in new stadiums at the Meadowlands sports complex for the New York Giants, the MetroStars, and an unspecified minor-league team. Codey was vague about financing details beyond indicating that the teams would be asked to pay the bulk of the cost: "The Giants have indicated to me that building a new stadium is their first option. I've said to them, if they pay for it, they can run it."

As you may recall, the MetroStars have been working on a $160 million soccer stadium plan in Harrison, N.J. (across the river from Newark), but Codey declared those talks dead this week, saying, "The county doesn't want to back these bonds." Harrison Redevelopment Authority director Peter Higgins retorted that this was "nothing more than a temporary setback." As always, take all this with the requisite grains of salt until you can see the green of somebody's greenbacks.

Okay, now this is just getting plain screwy. One day after D.C. mayor Anthony Williams and council chair Linda Cropp were at each other's rhetorical throats over their competing Expos stadium proposals, the two appeared on the verge of a deal yesterday, with Cropp saying she'd support the mayor's bill so long as it included the possibility of substituting some private financing in the future, while Williams said of his recent nemesis: "I think Linda is in good faith looking for ways to limit the District's financial exposure in this project, and ... I fully endorse that." A vote on a re-revised stadium bill could now come as early as next week.

The key to Cropp's private-financing plan appears to be a tax shelter similar to those known as LILOs (lease-in, lease-out) and SILOs (sale-in, lease-out), in which local governments effectively sell the depreciation rights of public assets to private companies. (Governments can't take advantage of depreciation because they don't pay taxes.) These have been among the more infamous tax loopholes of recent years - in one instance, a company got a tax break for leasing streetcars in a town in Germany - and Congress has eliminated many of them over the past year or so. Cropp's plan might yet remain legal, however, as the private developer would be leasing the stadium to the team, not directly back to the city.

In any case, it's important to recognize that using depreciation would still be a public subsidy of another kind. As Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice said to me yesterday: "Instead of sending a bill to D.C. taxpayers, they'd be sending a bill to federal taxpayers."

More details on D.C. council chair Linda Cropp's latest stadium proposal, courtesy of the Washington Times: A real-estate consortium would spend $350 million to build a stadium for the Expos, then lease the stadium to the team until the debt was paid off. The obvious question, then: Since the present deal with MLB says that all stadium revenues go to the team, do these real-estate folks somehow know how to pay off $350 million in debt with $5.5 million a year in rent? Or would Cropp's new deal require renegotiating the rent and/or split of stadium revenues - which would be a great idea from D.C.'s perspective, but would likely cause Bud Selig's combover to hit the ceiling.

One answer could be, as the Times indicates, that Cropp envisions the private consortium as being eligible for "federal tax credits of up to $35 million per year in exchange for taking the financial risk of building the stadium." The Washington Post describes this as "a tax shelter that relies on a loophole in the federal tax code to generate tax benefits for a private investor claiming depreciation on a public facility" - none of the economic development experts I've been able to contact so far has known what this is about, but I'll keep checking.

(Interestingly, the Post also indicates that Cropp's new plan would allow the developers to collect "revenue from ticket and concession taxes." If that includes both the proposed surcharges and existing taxes, then this would amount to an additional public subsidy of $60 million or so.)

The lawyer-turned-real-estate-exec who heads up the private group, Richard Gross, should be well aware of the pitfalls of privately financing stadiums while still meeting teams' extortionate lease demands: He ran the company that was initially hired by the St. Louis Cardinals to seek private investors for their $387 million stadium. That search ultimately ended in failure, with the Cardinals themselves fronting $230 million of their own money for the project.

Back on Mayor Anthony Williams' side of things, meanwhile, the Washington Post has got ahold of the list of tens of millions of dollars worth of quid pro quos that the mayor has promised to various council members in order to secure their votes for his original stadium proposal. Among them: $45 million in library funding (in exchange for Jim Graham's vote), $40 million for commercial development in Southeast D.C. (for Sandy Allen's vote) and $2 million in laptops for McKinley Technical High School students and $10 million for a hospital feasibility study (for Vincent Orange's vote).

"Everybody understands that this occurs," opposition councilmember David Catania told the Post in disgust. "What makes it incredible is that they would put it in writing. Everyone realizes votes are bought off, but this takes it to a new level."

With all the drama in our nation's capital - not to mention the other drama in our nation's capital - I neglected to report on the results of the arena referendum in Wichita, where voters narrowly (51.5% to 48.5%) approved raising the county sales tax by 1% for 30 months to fund a $184.5 million minor-league sports arena. The county vote was strictly advisory, however - the state legislature still needs to sign off on the sales-tax plan, which several legislators see as unlikely given the divided electorate in Wichita: "If there's a dispute," state representative (and modern-day warrior) Tom Sawyer told the Wichita Eagle, "the Legislature tends to say, 'hands off.'"

In other election-related news, Jay Weiner of the Minneapolis Star Tribune has the final tally on spending in the battle over the Dallas Cowboys stadium referendum: Cowboys backers $5.1 million, opponents $43,328. With friends like these, who needs economists?

As of 11 am, WTOP radio is reporting that the D.C. council's scheduled stadium vote today has been cancelled. Reports WTOP's Neal Augenstein: "[Councilmember Harold] Brazil says that [council chair Linda Cropp's] plan did not go over well this morning, and Cropp did not have the support she needed, so Brazil says Cropp has taken the issue off the agenda. Council sources say it could be more than two weeks before a vote is taken."

The Washington Post reports that Cropp's new plan would use the mayor's Southeast D.C. site, but a new financing plan in which private developer would pay for $350 million of the stadium cost, with D.C.'s role limited to $150 million in land and infrastructure. She claims that at least one private developer is interested in such a plan.

D.C. law requires two votes separated by 30 days to pass a funding bill, and D.C.'s agreement with MLB expires December 31, so the council has another 22 days from today in which to hold its initial vote.

Last-minute developments going into today's D.C. council hearing on an Expos stadium:

Twenty-four hours to D-Day, and the D.C. stadium picture is still as clear as Anacostia River mud. Now council chair Linda Cropp says she doesn't have enough votes either to pass her alternative plan for an Expos stadium, telling the Washington Post: "I have five or six, including myself." (Seven votes on the 13-member council are needed for passage of a bill.) Mayor Williams, who's set to deliver a televised address tonight at 8 pm, is thought to be at least one vote short for passage of his plan as well - at least one councilmember, Adrian Fenty, opposes both bills - which leaves the potential for a deadlock, or at least some frenzied horse-trading, come tomorrow's council vote.

The key element chilling the council's feet, it appears, is the ever-increasing cost estimates for the mayor's stadium plan - depending on who you believe, the likely total has soared in the last few weeks from $440 million to $530 million (D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi), or $550 million (the revised bond total presented by Williams to the council last week), or $600 million (Cropp). Jim Graham, a potential swing voter on the stadium deal, told the Post this weekend that he'll back the mayor's plan if it includes a $500 million spending cap and ensure that any additional revenues go to library funding - otherwise, "the other plan looks very attractive to me."

If $500 million still sounds like a lot of money, well, at least one councilmember agrees with you. "Quite honestly, they are basically the same proposals, just different sites," Fenty told the Post. "What it comes down to is choosing between a $450 million publicly financed stadium and a $350 million publicly financed stadium. Major League Baseball is a collection of wealthy owners who can pay for this themselves. I'm hearing the same constituent feedback on Cropp's proposal as on the mayor's: that there are better priorities for taxes."

Those cranky economists, meanwhile, continue to line up to decry stadium spending as a waste of D.C.'s money, in op-eds and, yes, blogs:

The media rumor mill is going nutso in the wake of D.C. council chair Linda Cropp's bombshell announcement of an alternate stadium plan for the Expos. News radio station WTOP reports that council stadium czar Jack Evans thinks Cropp has the votes to pass her proposal; Evans also told the Washington Times, "Whatever Linda wants to do, I have no doubt it will pass." WTOP also insists, without naming its sources, that MLB has threatened to move the team to Northern Virginia if D.C.'s original $500-million-plus plan is cashiered.

Taking the team across the Potomac would be tricky at best, though: D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams' contract with MLB gives him until December 31 to come up with an acceptable stadium bill - and the Virginia Stadium Authority goes out of existence on that same date. It's possible that the Virginia legislature could extend the authority's lifespan, but that would take the governor calling a special session, all for a shot at building a stadium that no one can agree how to pay for - if D.C. doesn't get there first. Like I said, it's possible.

While the war of threats and counterthreats rages - Washington Post sports columnist Michael Wilbon calls Cropp "a complete fraud" guilty of "bait-and-switch idiocy," with a detour to lash out at "the stupid junk I read from academics who spin their silly obstructionist excuses on what stadiums don't bring" - it's worth noting that Cropp's bill isn't exactly a slam-dunk for D.C. residents, either. It would save the cost of acquiring land in Southeast D.C., sure - $83 million worth, according to Cropp - but it would also mean using up a existing parcel of city land that could otherwise be used for other projects. (Notwithstanding reports that the parcel is badly contaminated with lead - Cropp insists this can be cleaned up for about $20 million, but it's unclear if that's included in her bill's cost estimates.) At this point, D.C. residents might be best served if the team ends up in Virginia: Baseball would still be just a Metro ride away, and somebody else could manage the headache of how to pay for it.

Well, that was certainly a turd in the punchbowl. At 12:30 this afternoon, D.C. council chair Linda Cropp unveiled her alternate Expos stadium plan this afternoon, projecting that moving a new baseball stadium's site to near the present RFK Stadium would save the city $83 million, which could be used to trim the city gross-receipts tax that's been irking local businesses so. "While many want baseball, it is not at any cost," said Cropp (hear her yourself here), later telling reporters that she'd be willing to risk losing the team if MLB balks at the new deal.

Mayor Anthony Williams, who'd reportedly spent the last few days trying to dissuade Cropp from presenting her alternative plan, responded by getting all pissy. (Hear him yourself here.) "This is going to blow the thing up," declared the mayor, adding: "The dream of having baseball back in Washington is at risk. It is in jeopardy. I can't emphasize that enough, so I am trying to raise the volume. We have waited 10, 20, 30 years for this and now it is in jeopardy."

Continued the mayor, who apparently hasn't even read what his own website says about who has final say in the D.C. budget process: "We made a commitment, and we have to live up to our commitment, particularly when the going gets tough. ... This is a horrible message we are sending to the business community and our citizens that if I make a commitment that as soon as things get rough, we're not going to do it."

Three opposition councilmembers - Carol Schwartz, David Catania and Phil Mendelson - have already said they'll back Cropp's alternate bill at Tuesday's council meeting. Williams has scheduled a community cable TV address for Monday night (he's promised time for an opposition rebuttal as well); asked by reporters today if he thought he still had the votes to pass his bill, he replied, "It is an uphill struggle." While it's too soon to tell yet if the wheels are coming off D.C.'s stadium deal, that ominous rattling noise can't be making Bud Selig very happy.

As promised, New York's Empire State Development Corporation issued its official plan for the proposed $1.4 billion Jets stadium in Manhattan; as probably should have been anticipated given the previous paper trail, it's a Rube Goldberg scheme of subleases and payments in lieu of taxes that could break new ground in end runs around legislative approval.

Here's the basics of the plan, as ferreted out with the help of Good Jobs New York analyst Stephanie Greenwood. The Jets would fund $800 million worth of the project, $150 million via a G-3 "loan" from the NFL (really more of a grant, since it can be "repaid" with visiting teams' share of luxury-seat sales), and another $400 million through tax-exempt bonds that would be paid off by the team via property-tax PILOTs, using a tax-law dodge first described here in July. As for the remaining $600 million, this would still be split between the city and state, but with a catch: If the state legislature fails to authorize its $300 million, it would be up to the city to cover the entire tab.

The city's tabloids immediately jumped on this as the big news of the day, with the Daily News proclaiming "City poised to give Jets 300M more" while the New York Post warned, "City Tab For Jets' Stadium Could Double." According to those who've read the fine print, though, the headlines missed the real story: The state is promising to find other, back-door ways of reimbursing the city in this instance - say, increased state payments toward city transit costs - that wouldn't require legislative approval, in effect conducting yet another end run around public oversight. As Richard Gottfried, the state assemblymember who represents the proposed stadium site, told the New York Sun: "This is an outrage. Even if the Legislature refuses to support the plan, the governor intends to use some kind of three-card monte so the city picks up the state's share of the plan."

After several months of inactivity, the Jets stadium plan - and the greater multi-billion-dollar Hudson Yards redevelopment project that it's a part of - appears ready to kick into high gear again. Earlier this week, the New York Times' Charles Bagli laid out a rough timetable for the stadium approval process:

Washington, D.C.'s WTOP news radio is reporting that D.C. council chair Linda Cropp is about to announce a competing plan to Mayor Anthony Williams' $540 million Expos stadium bill. Cropp's plan would move the stadium site to the current parking lot of RFK Stadium, for an estimated savings of more than $100 million in construction costs. With Williams' bill widely believed to be holding onto a slim two-vote margin - one of whom is Cropp - and just four days left before the council is set to vote on it, this could make things very interesting indeed.

More on yesterday's D.C. council votes on the now-$550-million Expos stadium bill: The legislation was actually passed by two committees, economic development and finance, each by the same 3-2 margin. As expected, athletic supporters Jack Evans and Harold Brazil voted in favor (each sits on both committees); stadium critics David Catania, Kathy Patterson, Adrian Fenty, and Jim Graham all voted no. The one wild card, lame-duck councilmember Kevin Chavous, voted "yes" twice after having previously been noncommital about the stadium bill.

There are also new details on the war of words that broke out in Councilmember Evans' finance committee meeting, when the committee chair exploded in a profane tirade during Catania's introduction of the 17th of his 20 proposed amendments to the bill. As the Washington Times' Eric Fisher tells it:

The economic development committee meeting that followed was less rancorous, possibly in part because committee chair Brazil allowed Graham only three minutes in which to speak and introduce amendments. Though Evans said the bill may still be modified before it goes to an expected vote of the full council next week, Graham was unappeased, telling the Times: "Absent significant details of this revised bill, absent financial certifications we need from the chief financial officer, we're completely in the dark on this. I want this process to slow down. This is not the way to do business."

New York state's quasi-public Empire State Development Agency is expected to officially approve its plan today for a $1.4 billion New York Jets stadium in Manhattan, which with any luck will mean a few more crumbs of information regarding the still-largely-mysterious financing scheme. Today's New York Daily News reports that the Jets stadium would avail itself of tax-exempt government bonds (which we already knew) and that "the Metropolitan Transportation Authority no longer would be responsible for paying any debt service for building a platform above the rail yards for the stadium" (which we never knew was an issue). A more important question is where the state and city will find the money to fill the $950 million hole in the funding plan for the stadium and the accompanying Javits Convention Center expansion, something we've been waiting to hear about for nearly two years now.

Undaunted by such minutiae as a missing billion dollars, Mayor Michael Bloomberg continued to praise the plan. "We have a city of eight million people, the world's second home, people come from around the world, and we can't stage an event with more than 30,000 people," said Bloomberg of New York, which is home to two 50,000-plus-seat stadiums. "You can't grow doing that. You take a look at all of these other cities and they all recognize that and they're all building these big facilities." The number of U.S. stadiums built in the last 17 years with as much capacity as the Jets' planned 75,000-seater: Two, the Denver Broncos' Invesco Field, and the Washington Redskins' FedEx Field, which was built in suburban Prince George's County.

The Washington Expos stadium bill blew past its first milepost today, passing the D.C. Council Finance and Revenue Committee by a 3-2 vote. David Catania, one of the dissenting councilmembers, presented 20 separate amendments to the bill, 19 of which were summarily rejected. (The one that made it: Addition of the word "nonbinding" to the baseball team's input into stadium design.)

Among Catania's rejected proposals were: requiring the team to play at RFK Stadium rather than a new facility; capping the public stadium costs at $500 million; requiring that team owners pay at least 20% of construction costs; requiring that stadium employees receive a living wage and health benefits; requiring that at least 500 tickets per game be distributed to local kids through the D.C. parks department; and dedicating $1 per ticket to help fund city improvements. Committee chair Jack Evans rebuked Catania for daring to propose revisions to the deal worked out behind closed doors by Mayor Anthony Williams and MLB, charging at one point: "You know the ramifications. You know it could kill the deal, and I can't let you do that."

That didn't take long: With the Bistate 2 sales-tax hike going down to defeat in yesterday's balloting, Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt has declared that "we need to think in terms of a new stadium" once the team's lease on Arrowhead Stadium expires in 2014. "We have to look at it in the cold light of day, but at some point, the lease is going to run its course. It has 10 years to go, so if it's a 42-year-old stadium, what kind of shape is it going to be in?" Both the Chiefs and Royals have another ten years to go on their existing stadium leases.

On the eve of his Expos stadium bill's markup by the D.C. city council, Mayor Anthony Williams has made last-minute revisions to the financing package. The new provisions, as reported late this afternoon by the Associated Press:

Remarked eternally humble D.C. City Administrator Robert C. "Dobbs" Bobb of the new financing plan: "It means that we've listened well." According to a poll conducted last week on behalf of the No D.C. Taxes for Baseball Coalition, 66% of D.C. voters oppose building a stadium with public funds at all; you be the judge of Bobb's listening skills.

Three days after owners of the San Jose Earthquakes postponed yet again their decision on the team's future, local banker Tony Amanpour withdrew his bid to buy the soccer team. Amanpour's reasoning: "My whole offering was contingent on a new stadium. I couldn't risk $2.5 million of [my investors'] money." That $2.5 million deposit was initially due last Friday, but would have been contingent on a new stadium deal being approved by next June - so it's not clear exactly what Amanpour's investors would have been risking, except eight months of riding the stock market with their cash. In any case, the Earthquakes are now back where they started in August, with possibilities of the team playing next season in Houston or San Antonio, or remaining in San Jose.

D.C. mayor Anthony Williams has insisted that his stadium tax on local businesses couldn't be spent on other city needs, because business leaders wouldn't agree to it - but now they're starting to balk at paying so much for the stadium as well. D.C. Chamber of Commerce President Barbara Lang says she'll withhold support of the mayor's stadium plan unless it's re-jiggered to reduce the burden on small businesses (already being discussed by the D.C. council) and reduced in length from 30 years to four, to provide "seed money" for the stadium, with the rest of the nut being paid out of the city's general fund. The council is scheduled to mark up the mayor's bill tomorrow, assuming that civil war hasn't broken out by then.

Much intrigue this week surrounding developer Bruce Ratner's proposed New Jersey Nets arena project in Brooklyn, all of it reported in the Brooklyn Papers, the only news outlet still following this story on a weekly basis:

The news watch never stops: Yesterday's Baltimore Sun included yet another recap/analysis of last Thursday's D.C. stadium hearing. Along with some juicy quotes (Marion Barry: "This deal is the biggest stick-up since Jesse James and the great train robbery"; University of Virginia law student Michael Licalsi: "People are saying I support baseball but I don't support the stadium. That's almost like saying, 'I support virginity but I don't support abstinence'"), the Sun piece contains one observation I hadn't seen before: Many of the current D.C. councilmembers are expected to run for either mayor or council president in 2006, and so may be wary of casting pro-stadium votes that could later become campaign issues.

Over at the Washington Times, meanwhile, the normally level-headed Eric Fisher has an analysis piece asserting that failure to pass a stadium bill would mean "no hope of a Washington team" (though he anticipates the Expos might still move the D.C., at least on temporarily) and subject the city to "national embarrassment." So let me make sure I got this straight: Does that make Fisher anti-virginity or pro-abstinence...?

Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory, explaining why he's glad to be spending $240 million in public money on an arena for the new Charlotte Bobcats franchise, owned by (and named for) billionaire Bob Johnson:

Arlington, Texas voters will go to the polls tomorrow - actually with early voting a lot of them have gone already - to decide the fate of the Dallas Cowboys' $650 million stadium plan, half of which would be funded by Arlington taxpayers. Like that other election, it's expected to be close: A poll commissioned by the Cowboys shows voters supporting the stadium plan by 52-44%, with those who've already voted backing it by 52-46%. That's close enough to get the superstitious wondering aloud if the fate of the vote could hang on the result of yesterday's Cowboys game - Dallas ended up beating Detroit 31-21.

A better predictor than football scores might be the 100-1 Rule, which simply states that teams that outspend stadium opponents tend to win referenda; those that don't generally lose. As of last week, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones had spent more than $5 million on pro-stadium ads and lobbying, while opponents had raised just over $40,000.

What kind of world are we living in, where you can't even believe the threats of your local soccer team? As you may recall, anymore. Can't anybody here set a deadline? As you may recall, back in August the San Jose Earthquakes owners set a deadline of September 17 to decide whether to find a local owner or move the club to either Houston or San Antonio; then on September 17 they pushed that back to the end of October, to give local businessman Tony Amanpour more time to put together a purchase offer. So, here it is November. What did Quakes president Alexi Lalas have to say last Friday?

Back in August, Lalas had responded to criticism that the team was just setting arbitrary deadlines to try to shake loose $50 million in local stadium funding: "If we've been at fault for anything, it's for not adequately expressing our urgency." Keep working on that, Alexi.

Thanks to Andrew Pate, Trevor Mills, Mason Brown, Brian Borawski, Diane Firstman, Josh Safran, Matthew J. Wiegand, Save Fenway Park!, the NYC 20-Never Campaign, and all our anonymous donors for their generous help in making this website possible. Drops of water turn the mill...