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March 03, 2005
Miller, Bloomberg in steel-cage legal tussle
The combustible combination of stadium politics and a New York mayoral race continue to, well, combust. Yesterday city council speaker Gifford Miller, a Democratic mayoral candidate who's running well behind longtime stadium foe Freddy Ferrer in the polls, stepped up his own opposition by introducing a bill to block the mayor from taking developer PILOT payments to the city and spending them on his proposed Jets stadium without council permission. Even several stadium supporters on the council endorsed Miller's bill, saying the mayor shouldn't be allowed to evade the normal budget process - making it more likely that Miller could get the bill passed over a certain mayoral veto.
The mayor's law department, meanwhile, issued a terse statement that in its opinion, not only is the mayor's PILOT end run legal, but any attempt by the council to block it would be illegal. The statement cited Section 20 of the state's General City Law, a long, general section that deals with the powers of cities to make contracts and spend money, but doesn't appear to say anything about what the mayor can or can't do without the council's say-so. (Though it does helpfully authorize the establishment of "sanitaria, dispensaries, public baths, and almshouses.") It's looking more and more likely that this is ultimately going to end up in court.
In even worse news for the mayor, state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, who can effectively veto the stadium via his vote on the state's Public Authorities Control Board - yes, the New York state system of governance is completely ridiculous, I know - lambasted the Jets' West Side plan yet again yesterday, telling the Daily News: "The argument now is, build the stadium or lose the Olympics, and that is not a conceivable approach. You don't want to spend over a billion dollars of resources on speculation." (Of course, Silver also said he's mostly opposed to a West Side stadium because he's worried the accompanying sea of office towers would divert tenants from lower Manhattan, even though the commercial development is a separate piece of legislation that Silver has no say over - but whatever.)
Silver said he'd prefer building a stadium in Queens, which is an idea that's building public momentum, but right now has neither a site nor any financing plan. In any event, though, it looks increasingly likely that nothing's going to move on the Jets stadium until July at the earliest, which should keep the city's plans for new homes for the Nets and Yankees on hold until then as well. If he doesn't win re-election, Bloomberg may end up running out of time to get any of these deals done before he's asked to go back to being a plain old everyday billionaire.
You want to talk about Captain Ahab and Moby Dick syndrome with Mayor Bloomberg, the West Side stadium and the Olympics. Why does Bloomberg seem so obsessed about getting the Olympics? NYC is not some Southern backwater like Atlanta that felt it needed to use the Olympics to declare itself a major city (considering all the complaints that arose about how the games were run the holding the Olympics probably backfired on Atlanta's reputation). I am sure Montreal residents still appreciate making debt payments from 1976. Greece threw a two week party ringing up the "credit card" for $8.6 billion (for a country with a per capita GDP of $19k half the US), and now is stuck with the maintenance of facilities for sports nobody participates in. Holding the Olympics in NYC will not boost tourism because anybody not associated with the Olympics will definately not be visiting when it is held, and probably most of the natives will leave town to avoid the gridlock and headaches. This whole adventure seems to be driven by Mayor Bloomberg's ego. Why does he need to pump up his ego anyway? He founded from nothing one of the most successful news services in the world worth multibillion dollars.
Posted by Michael Kim on March 3, 2005 03:38 PM
This case just keeps getting more interesting every day. What is going to happen next? Who is going to be the next character to enter the picture? I can't wait to find out.
Posted by Michael Richter on March 4, 2005 08:25 AM
Don't forget about Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, head of the NYC 2012 private organization behind the whole Olympic campaign. He's a public figure using the powers of a municipal office (which issues zoning variances) to push a private agenda. It's a total abuse of the public trust. He's a lawyer, so he should know more about conflicts of interest. I guess he cut his Professional Responsibility classes while at Northwestern Law.
I actually found a NY Magazine article through Google in which Doctoroff admits this quest is a personal obsession:
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/realestate/urbandev/features/9307/index2.html
And it began long before he was appointed to his current position. The Olympic plan isn't about what's best for NYC. It's about a rich man's personal ego fulfillment. Doctoroff attends one soccer game during the 2000 World Cup and decides that NYC HAS to host the Olympics. It's a pet project.
It's all about these two egomaniacs, Bloomberg and Doctoroff, two wealthy men from the business and investment worlds respectively, who are used to having their way and are just obsessed with pushing their ill-conceived agenda onto the public. It's disappointing because one would expect two men so well-acquainted with the business world to be more concerned with concepts such as return-on-investment and long-term vision than with courting a two-week, one-time sporting event that will come and go and be forgotten in a NYC minute.
Posted by Guy B. Jones on March 4, 2005 09:51 AM
Doctoroff may be concerned with return-on-investment, but it's not the city's: Until recently he owned land in the stadium redevelopment district, and several developers he's close to still have major real-estate interests there. The World Cup anecdote makes for a nice story, but I doubt that's really his only motivation here.
Posted by Neil on March 4, 2005 11:46 AM
Slight correction, the World Cup game that Doctoroff saw was in 1994, not 2000, there was no World Cup that year.
Posted by Jonathan Judd on March 7, 2005 02:17 PM