Field of Schemes

April 30, 2005

Colts hit $600m stadium jackpot

It's all over but the shouting: After a rollercoaster day during which the Indianapolis Colts stadium deal looked to be on the brink of collapse, the Indiana legislature voted yesterday to approve a $900 million bill to build the Colts a new stadium and expand the Indianapolis convention center. As was previously reported, the stadium itself would cost about $687 million, roughly $635 million of which would be paid for by taxpayers - making it instantly both the most expensive stadium and the largest sports subsidy in U.S. history. (Unless, that is, the Jets somehow get their faltering $2 billion stadium underway first.)

To pay for all this, Indiana will use a mish-mash of different revenue streams: a 3% hike in hotel taxes, 2% increase in car rental taxes, hikes in Indianapolis-area restaurant taxes, and new ticket taxes, plus $11 million a year in existing state tax revenues. It's a staggering amount of money to be putting into an NFL stadium, especially considering that the trend has been going the opposite direction, with teams like the Washington Redskins and New England Patriots recently contributing two-thirds or more of the cost of their new stadiums.

The tax hikes still need to be approved by the Indianapolis City-County Council and local suburban counties, but these are minor hurdles compared to getting the stadium bill through the legislature. So congratulations, Colts fans: You just got yourself another guaranteed 30 years of football. Now you better enjoy it, because you'll be paying for it not just at the ticket window, but every time you order the Rise & Shine Duo at your local Bob Evans.

Fire, police unions slam Jets deal

Nothing fills a slow news day like a press release, a lesson that's been ably learned by the coalition opposing the $2 billion New York Jets stadium plan. The Hell's Kitchen/Hudson Yards Alliance (with major funding by Madison Square Garden owners Cablevision, but a broad array of community groups as members) launched a seven-day campaign blitz on Thursday, with yet another new website and a daily press briefing on better uses for the city's money than spending $625 million on a new football stadium.

Today's news item: The city fire and police unions are pointing out that the $300 million in "PILOT" payments that Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to use for the project could instead be used to raise salaries for city employees now working without contracts. As Newsday reports:

Until February, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his aides said the money would come from the capital budget, which cannot be used for day-to-today expenses, such as salaries.

Now, the administration wants about $300 million in special revenue from real-estate taxes, called PILOTs, to be used for the project, which includes a new stadium for the Jets. ... The PILOTs are not part of the capital budget and can be used for either day-to-day or capital expenses, Preston Niblack, deputy director of the Independent Budget Office, said Friday.

The mayor's office responded that a new stadium would mean "nearly a billion dollars in new tax revenue over the next 30 years to pay our firefighters, cops and teachers" - but the Independent Budget Office says otherwise.

April 29, 2005

Minneapolis mayor: Sorry, that's not my table

More details are out on the Minnesota Twins stadium proposal:

Including land and infrastructure, the stadium would cost $444 million, of which the Twins would pay $125 million, plus any additional cost overruns.
The Twins would pay stadium operating costs in lieu of rent (paying rent would mess up the county's plan to use tax-exempt bonds, thanks to the feds' 10% cap), and would receive 100% of all stadium revenues - including naming rights, even though the building itself would be owned by the county.
If the Twins are sold the year the stadium opens, the owners will kick back 18% of the sale price to the county, with that figure gradually scaling back to 1.8% in the tenth year of the new stadium's operation. The Twins also promise to make "affordable tickets" available, though the actual agreement doesn't spell out how many or what "affordable" means.

As things go, it's a pretty standard socialize-the-costs, privatize-the-revenues plan - which is to say, a pretty lousy deal for the public. Asked why Twins owner Carl Pohlad couldn't kick in more of the construction cost, as teams like the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals have done, team president Jerry Bell responded: "Primarily the size of the market dictates that." Uh, Jerry...

Meanwhile, the nascent Twins deal is starting to cause problems in the Minneapolis mayor's race, which pits incumbent R.T. Rybak against Hennepin county commissioner Peter McLaughlin for the endorsement of the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party (what we in the rest of the U.S. would call "Democrats"). While McLaughlin is expected to cast the county board's deciding vote on the Twins plan on Tuesday, Rybak, knowing how his party members feel about corporate subsidies, has bent over backwards to avoid taking a position on the plan, saying only: "I think the county should pass the best possible plan they can and send it to the Capitol and get in line behind higher priorities like public safety, education, health care and transportation. I don't ask them to come over here and play City Council member, and I don't go over there and play County Board member."

April 28, 2005

Twins stadium: The saga continues

More from Week 1 of the newly reanimated Minnesota Twins stadium brouhaha:

Strangest Argument For A Publicly Funded Stadium, First Runner-Up: Longtime stadium booster Sid Hartman of the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes: "A new stadium will revitalize downtown Minneapolis. In recent months, T.J. Maxx closed its big store in the IDS Center and Saks Fifth Avenue converted its store in Gaviidae Common and is now operating a discount center. City Center is having serious problems renting, and a number of other small businesses have left downtown. Those important downtown real-estate taxes could bring in less and less income and put more burden on the city homeowners if downtown Minneapolis doesn't remain prosperous." How a publicly owned stadium that won't pay real-estate taxes would help matters here, Hartman didn't say.
Strangest Argument For A Publicly Funded Stadium, Winner: Writing of a plan that would be three-quarters paid for by the public via a sales-tax hike, Hartman's colleague Jim Souhan writes: "The deal is proportionate. Twins owner Carl Pohlad will pay $125 million. You'll pay less than you leave in the tip jar at Dunn Bros." This follows the Twins line that the stadium tax amounts to "three cents on a $20 purchase" - true enough, but those pennies would add up to a whopping $353 million, or $320 per Hennepin county resident.
Strangest Twins Related Headline: "Site of Twins' future ballpark doesn't smell like garbage," San Jose Mercury news.

After a raucous initial meeting on the stadium plan on Tuesday, Hennepin County commissioners agreed to put off a vote until after more public testimony next week. "There'll be plenty of time for the public's input," said commissioner Mark Stenglein - at the same time as he and the three other stadium proponents on the seven-member commissioner vowed not to allow a public referendum on the issue.

April 27, 2005

Star-crossed reporting

What is it about newspapers named the Star? Here's Pete Grathoff of the Kansas City Star delivering the softball of the week in an article on prospects for a new K.C. Wizards stadium:

But can funding be found for a stadium to be built in this area, considering that Bistate II went down in flames just last November?

Many who favor a stadium say yes, if it included adjoining youth soccer fields.

Now there's a shocker: Stadium proponents think stadium funding can be approved! The rest of the story went on to recount the pro-stadium forces' claims of the economic boon that would result from a new soccer stadium - which, according to Grathoff, the Wizards "can't survive financially" without. Number of stadium-funding critics cited in the Star article: zero.

The Florida Marlins stadium bill, virtually left for dead a few days ago, was approved by the Florida House yesterday by a 90-26 vote, after a pro-stadium legislator tacked it on to an existing economic development bill. The resulting legislation would provide $2 million a year ($60 million total, or $30 million in present value) in subsidies for a new Marlins stadium, $2 million a year for a new or renovated arena for the Orlando Magic, $2 million a year for four baseball spring training sites, $5 million a year to counties with convention centers, and $1.2 million a year for a NASCAR museum in Daytona Beach. (The City of Mermaids, sadly, wouldn't get a dime.)

The battleground now turns to the Florida Senate, where senate president Tom Lee has been just slightly critical of the Marlins' stadium demands. And the current Senate bill also differs in several respects from the version that passed the House, so even if the Senate passes a stadium bill by the end of its session - a week from Friday - there may not be time to reconcile both versions and get a final bill approved.

As you may recall, the last time the New York mayor's office was asked to testify on why Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks he can spend city payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) on a Jets stadium without city council approval, they sent a guy who didn't know the answer. Yesterday, city lawyer Michael Cardozo finally showed up to testify - and testify, and testify - on the matter of the PILOT slush fund. According to Stephanie Greenwood of Good Jobs New York, who claims to have actually stayed awake for the entire hearing, this is what transpired:

Not that much of this is likely to matter in the long run for the Jets, since the two guys in the smoke-filled room are still the ones in control of that stadium process. With the Nets, Yankees and Mets - not to mention the usual parade of big non-sports developers - lining up for city funds, though, whether the mayor has the right to spend money without council approval could end up looming large indeed.

With billionaire Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad making his official pitch yesterday for a $478 million stadium in downtown Minneapolis - $353 million of which would be paid for by county taxpayers - more details and hints of what's to come are leaking out in the Twin Cities media:

One eager convert to the stadium cause looks to be St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter Aron Kahn, who described the Twins plan as one that "appears so simple, so deferential to the state treasury, that even longtime opponents of publicly financed stadiums had trouble getting their ire in gear" - only to turn around and later quote state senator Jane Ranum, a "longtime critic of stadium subsidies," as saying it's "totally incomprehensible" to propose public stadium funds during a state budget crisis. Sounds to me like she's got her ire on quite well.

San Diego mayor Dick Murphy unexpectedly resigned yesterday amid a deepening pension-fund scandal, and his deputy mayor is about to go on trial on federal corruption charges. Fortunately, the L.A. Times has its finger on the pulse of what's important about this story: What does this mean for the Chargers' stadium plans? The answer, according to Chargers stadium lobbyist Mark Fabiani: "In such extremely uncertain circumstances, it's a real challenge to persuade investors to put their money in San Diego. But we're a long way from giving up, we still have meetings scheduled, and we still have parties who are interested" in the team's proposed 60-acre private development project that would be built on public land.

Aside from the Chargers' p.r. line, what does the Times have to report? Well, Donna Frye, the city councilmember who staged a write-in campaign for mayor last year, losing only when some of her voters' ballots were disqualified - I tell you, this story just gets better and better - "has consistently opposed a new stadium for the team," and plans to run again in a special election this November. Unless the city council chooses, as it can, to instead just appoint someone as mayor for the next three years. Really, it's hard to see how a political system like San Diego's could ever become mired in scandal, isn't it?

I owe half an apology to the New York Times: Contrary to what I wrote yesterday, the New Jersey state legislature may not have any say over the plan for a new Giants stadium. (No one seems to know for sure, including legislators themselves.) It still would have been nice if the original Times story had at least mentioned that the state legislature exists, rather than acting as if the stadium authority were the state's final decision-making power - but maybe governors using public authorities to get around the democratic process is just too commonplace for the Times to consider it news anymore.

There may be a break in the Florida legislative standoff over sports subsidies. After House finance committee chair Fred Brummer said he'd block action on state subsidies for the Florida Marlins and Orlando Magic, he now says he'll allow the Magic bill to go through - but only if it's scaled back from $100 million to the $60 million in sales-tax rebates that other state sports franchises get. (This is the same state subsidy that the Marlins already got once, but are asking for again now that they're under new management.) It's unclear whether the downsized bill will face a better chance of passage before the legislative session ends in two weeks; Gov. Jeb Bush would say only that he'll "keep an open mind" about it.

Man, it really is the weekend for misleading stadium headlines: "Twins, Hennepin have stadium deal" reports today's Minneapolis Star Tribune, but the plan - to be officially announced at a press conference tomorrow - is the same 0.15% sales-tax hike that was rejected by the state legislature last year. The main difference: The stadium's projected cost has been reduced from $535 million to $478 million by eliminating a retractable roof.

One roadblock has apparently been cleared in the fight over the Indianapolis Colts' $900 million stadium proposal: Indianapolis mayor Bart Peterson has agreed to let the state run the stadium authority that would run the project. The battleground now turns to the state legislature, which has until the end of its legislative session next week to decide on approving the package of hotel, car-rental and restaurant taxes that would fund the project.

Sometimes you just can't trust the Paper of Record. "New Meadowlands Stadium Is Approved for the Giants" was the headline in yesterday's New York Times, after the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority voted to approve the team's new-stadium plan. (Authority president George Zoffinger, who reportedly opposed the deal, abstained.) But what the accompanying article failed to mention is that the New Jersey legislature still must sign off on the deal, and plenty of legislators don't sound too happy about it.

"We are on the hook somewhere. I can guarantee it," state senator Stephen Sweeney said of the plan, which would have the Giants paying to build the stadium, while the state provides free land and swallows the remaining $124 million in construction debt on the existing Giants Stadium. "It gets to our priorities and what we need to do. If we are broke and we don't have any money for our schools, is it more important to build a stadium or to build a school?"

The San Antonion city council has approved $21 million in city bonds to fund renovations to the Alamodome and 13 new youth soccer fields, as part of an attempt to lure an MLS team to town. San Antonio Express-News columnist Carlos Guerra points out that the enticements would also include free rent for the team, 80% of naming-rights money, and all revenue from tickets, concessions, parking and merchandising. And given that MLS officials have insisted that its teams need soccer-specific stadiums, not multipurpose domes, Guerra wonders: "Will we get an MLS team that will lock up the Alamodome for a sweetheart price and call it home as it builds a loyal fan base? And then, will the franchise demand its own publicly funded soccer-specific stadium and all its revenues if it is to survive?"

As reality sinks in that George Steinbrenner really is serious about trying to tear down Yankee Stadium, more voices of discontent are starting to be raised about the Boss's new-stadium plan. Today it's a call to arms from Newark Star-Ledger columnist Steve Politi, who writes:

MLB commissioner Bud Selig was back earning his keep yesterday the best way he knows how: making move threats for teams whose owners would rather not be the heavy in stadium negotiations. "We like a team in South Florida," Selig told a group of newspaper sports editors. "We want to keep [the Marlins] there. They're optimistic. They need a new stadium. ... Look, they've got a tough crowd, but we love South Florida and I'm hopeful they'll get a new stadium. There is certainly no keeping them there without one."

New York state assembly leader Sheldon Silver joined his state senate colleague Joe Bruno yesterday in insisting that a Jets stadium vote is "highly unlikely" before the International Olympic Committee makes its 2012 host selection in July. (Silver has said this before, of course, but every time he does it makes fresh headlines.)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg retorted that "the option of waiting until after the Olympics is not a realistic option. I don't know whether we drop out or just say to them, 'Thank you very much for your consideration,' but I don't know why we'd want to embarrass the country and ourselves." Bloomberg may not have much of a choice: The Daily News reports (answering my question from yesterday) that Silver and Bruno can each table a stadium vote once, which should be enough to delay it until after the IOC makes its pick on July 6.

Looks like state legislative leaders may have found an excuse to put off a vote on the $2.2 billion New York Jets stadium plan until later this summer. Gov. George Pataki had been insisting he'd put the matter to a vote of the Public Authorities Control Board at its May 18 meeting, but state senate majority leader Joseph Bruno - who controls one of the three votes on the PACB, which must approve projects unanimously - now says the board may not be able to vote while there's pending litigation. (New York City public advocate Betsy Gotbaum yesterday filed her own lawsuit against the sale of state land for the stadium project, bringing the total number of pending lawsuits to three.)

The subtext here is that Pataki wants the plan voted on before the July vote on where to place the 2012 Olympics, since it's widely anticipated that New York won't get the bid, which would likely deflate any lingering momentum for the Jets stadium project. Bruno and state assembly leader Sheldon Silver, meanwhile, would love to avoid a vote until then, so that they aren't forced to veto the stadium plan and then be accused of "killing the Olympics." Pataki can place the issue on the PACB agenda, but it doesn't appear that he can force a vote; stay tuned on this one.

In related news, three of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's challengers say they'd build an Olympic stadium in Queens, not Manhattan, if New York were to win the bid. How a Queens stadium would be paid for was left as an exercise for the voters.

That's from the Seattle Times' in-depth investigation of what went wrong with the 1995 renovation of the Sonics' KeyArena. The $120 million rebuilding of what was then the Seattle Coliseum was funded in part by $74 million in bonds from the city of Seattle, but with a creative twist: The city would receive an annual share of naming-rights and luxury-suite sales, which the team projected would be more than enough to pay off the public's debt.

It didn't quite turn out that way. Suite rentals dipped after the renovated arena's first few years, thanks in part to competition from new taxpayer-subsidized stadiums for the Mariners and Seahawks. The city has now lost money on its arena bonds for six straight years, with no indications that the future will be any brighter.

All this should reinforce a point that I try to make at every opportunity: Sports stadiums and arenas rarely bring in enough new revenue, in the long term, to pay off their construction costs. There are exceptions to be sure, but not enough to make sports facilities anything less than a very risky investment - in fact, the whole reason the Sonics ended up going to the city for stadium funds was because banks had rejected providing private loans for the project.

"There was a huge risk," former Seattle councilmember Jane Noland told the Times. "The deal was based on a best-case scenario rather than an average scenario. It was a steamroller, and nobody wanted to think about a bad case, much less the worst case."

The transit-advocacy group the Straphangers Campaign has followed through on its threat to file suit against the sale of state rail yards land to the New York Jets - and they've got some company. The city Transport Workers Union announced today that it was joining the Straphangers Campaign and the New York chapter of Common Cause in suing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, charging that it failed to get the best deal for city transit riders when it agreed to sell the land to the Jets for $280 million last month. The Jets land deal already faces a suit by Cablevision, which had its bid for the land rejected by the MTA despite being worth about $160 million in up-front cash.

If you want an object lesson in the many ways that a stadium plan can gang aft aglay, look to Florida, where the Marlins' bid for a $60 million state stadium subsidy has hit another roadblock. Last Wednesday, a key state senate committee had approved the team's subsidy request - along with an extra $1.3 million a year for the Orlando Magic and $1.2 million a year for a NASCAR museum in Daytona Beach - but two days later, House finance committee chair Fred Brummer announced that he wouldn't even put the Marlins' plan to a vote in his committee, a move that would effectively kill the proposal.

"I don't see any reason for it to be heard," Brummer told the Associated Press. "It's got to have something going for it for us to use working family's [sic - doesn't the AP have copy editors?] tax dollars and I've seen nothing in the bill that this is a good use of tax dollars."

As House speaker Allan Bense has said he won't force committee chairs to hear bills over their opposition, Brummer now has effective veto power over the Marlins' stadium bid. There's still another few weeks left in the Florida legislative session, so presumably Brummer will be hearing from team lobbyists eager to find out the price of his vote; maybe he and Sheldon Silver can form a support group.

When a big business like a baseball franchise wants to generate some favorable press coverage, it has a tried-and-true ace up its sleeve: Identify a sympathetic reporter, then provide them with a "leak" of the information you want to appear on the front page. If all goes well, in the excitement over getting an exclusive, they'll happily repeat any claims you make - and no one will be able to say otherwise, since you're the only one who knows what your plans look like.

That's just what the New York Yankees did this weekend, with Daily News reporter T.J. Quinn providing a two-part look at the team's plans to raze Yankee Stadium and replace it with an $800 million structure in a public park across the street. Quinn's prose was breathlessly effusive, describing the new stadium design as "designed to dazzle," with "the old frieze hanging from the roof like copper lace" and the limestone exterior providing "the view Babe Ruth had when he went to work in the house they built for him."

Reading between the Yankees' p.r. lines, there was some new news here, but it was harder to ferret out, and still leaves many questions unanswered:

Much else is unclear about the Yankees plan, including how the city and state's $300 million would be funded, what legislative approvals would be necessary, and whether the Yankees would receive such hidden subsidies as using their own property taxes to pay off stadium bonds. The News reports only that the Yankee management hopes to have a memorandum of understanding with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg by "around May 1"; as has been made clear by the Nets case in Brooklyn, this would only be a starting point, mostly interesting because it would finally give the public a chance to scrutinize the plans more directly, unfiltered by the Yankees' p.r. machine.

And speaking of the public, Quinn writes: "Perhaps best of all for the parties involved, there is no significant opposition to the project." It may not be "significant" yet, but the natives are certainly getting restless.

WTOP radio is reporting that when the Washington Nationals take the field tonight for their first home game, the field will be known as "Armed Forces Field at RFK." (The D.C. baseball minions are presumably printing up a giant banner to drape over the entrance right now.) WTOP confusingly reports that "the deal includes $6 million invested by the military for recruitment kiosks and other signage within the stadium, but does not constitute buying the naming rights outright"; also confusing is how this is any better than the original "National Guard Field at RFK" deal that Sen. John Warner complained was a bad use of public money during wartime.

Well, that didn't take long: Barely a week after the New York Giants sued the state of New Jersey over the collapse of stadium talks, the two parties have announced last night that they've agreed to a stadium deal. It's as yet a bit unclear how the two bones of contention - the future tax issue and the Xanadu issue - were resolved, though the New York Times does report that the Giants will still pay the entire $750 million stadium construction cost plus $6.3 million a year in rent payments, while the state will provide land, pay off $120 million in outstanding debt on the existing Giants Stadium, and pay for $30 to $40 million in infrstructure. A morning news conference is scheduled, so we should find out more then.

The latest incarnation of the Indianapolis Colts stadium-funding bill looks to be running into some trouble of its own. The president of the Indianapolis City-County Council is threatening to kill the deal if Gov. Mitch Daniels insists on the project being controlled by the state, not the city: "The council is going to be in a position of voting for five tax increases, but we're not going to control the governing authority. To me, that's a deal breaker." And it turns out that the Colts still haven't agreed to two elements of Daniels' plan: a $3-per-ticket tax, and the use of revenues from non-football events to help pay stadium bonds. "Essentially," explained Capitol Improvements Board President Fred Glass, "there is a $6 million [per year] gap in money needed to fund this project."

Of course, is blood is the coin of the realm here, General Blum might just have some competition.

New York state's Empire State Development Corporation gave its formal blessing to the Jets' $2.2-billion-and-counting stadium plan yesterday - a development that should surprise no one, since the ESDC is the state agency that's behind the stadium plan to begin with.

The state agency that everyone is watching remains the Public Authorities Control Board, which has three voting members - whose names no one ever bothers to mention, as they are effectively controlled by Gov. George Pataki, state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver and state senate leader Joseph Bruno. Since PACB votes have to be unanimous, and the stadium can't go forward without PACB approval, this effectively gives Silver and Bruno veto power over the stadium.

The Jets clearly hope to put the screws to Silver and Bruno in coming weeks: Yesterday, Jets president Jay Cross warned that if the stadium isn't approved by the end of May, he won't be able to order the steel that would be needed to have the place ready in time to host the 2010 Super Bowl, and said he expects the PACB to vote on the plan before then. That sounds like wishful thinking, though, given Bruno and especially Silver's recent comments - Silver yesterday snarked to the Times' Charles Bagli: "I understand they're trying to close a deal. It doesn't mean I have to give it a lot of credibility."

Meanwhile, Pataki last night signed into law a 2005 budget that doesn't include money for the state's share of the stadium costs, which would seem to blow a $300 million hole in the project budget. (Though there's still the possibility the governor could try to make under-the-table payments to the stadium via the New York City government.) And last month's sale of state rail yards land to the Jets is officially on hold until at least May 10, after the judge in Cablevision's lawsuit against the deal threatened a restraining order if the parties tried to move ahead before then. If it's not quite time to punt, the Jets are certainly still facing third and long on their stadium plans, and the clock is running down.

The Washington Nationals don't play their first home game until later this week, but already someone has thrown out the first lawsuit. Bob Siegel, who owns land on the site targeted for the Nats' new stadium, has filed suit in D.C. court to block the use of eminent domain to take land for the project, on the grounds that D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi lowballed his land cost estimates to keep them under $165 million. (If costs go higher than that, the D.C. council is legally obligated to look for a cheaper site.) Siegel had previously threatened to take his case to the Supreme Court if necessary; between this and the Kelo case, there could be still some interesting times ahead for the D.C. stadium battle.

If it sounded awfully convenient to me that D.C. CFO's estimate of land costs for the planned Washington Nationals stadium was just $4 million under the plan's legal limit, apparently I'm not the only one: Several members of the city council are now asking for a do-over of the land valuation, charging that Gandhi severely underestimated the likely cost.

While the assumption has been that the D.C. stadium is a done deal, this could still get interesting - remember, this is now the anti-stadium-majority council in place, the one that the stadium bill was rushed through in order to avoid. Kwame Brown, one of the newly elected councilmembers, was quoted by the Washington Post as asking Gandhi: "If you tell me the cost is $77 million and the true cost becomes $140 million in the end, where are those additional dollars going to come from?" The Post didn't say if Brown got an answer.

Prospects look even dimmer today for the Florida Marlins' $60 million stadium-subsidy request: Not only is state senate president Tom Lee saying he's sick of giving money to sports teams ("The Marlins, unfortunately, come into this debate now against the backdrop of other proposals that haven't panned out as promised," said Lee yesterday), but now even Dolphins Stadium owner Wayne Huizenga has backed off of threats to evict the Marlins in 2010 if no new stadium is built. The way this is going, it's only a matter of time before David Samson starts setting deadlines again.

Though the $2 billion New York Jets stadium plan keeps picking up endorsements from people who have no say in the matter - Al Sharpton and famed therapy-cultist Lenora Fulani being the two most recent - it's still not doing so well with the two men who control its fate: state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver and state senate majority leader Joe Bruno, who each hold veto power via their seats on the state Public Authorities Control Board. In an interview yesterday on sports-talk WFAN radio, Silver reiterated that he's still not sold on the plan: "To me, every time I think about and see an ad for the stadium and the whole West Side development, I keep saying 'What about downtown, what about all the commitments [to redevelop lower Manhattan]?'" Silver wondered aloud if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority got full value for its land in last week's sale to the Jets, and added that Cablevision's lawsuit against the sale "now slows [the stadium] down."

Concluded Silver: "The mayor is absolutely right in advocating for what he believes in. I just think that the bulk of the public doesn't agree with him on this point." Silverology is a tricky business, but it certainly sounds like the assembly leader plans to stick to his guns on holding off on a PACB vote until after the 2012 Olympic bid is decided in July.

Robbins also notes that a previous MTA land sale, of the old New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle, was scuttled by the courts in 1989 when a state judge ruled that it was illegal to offer to rezone land in order to boost the sale price. The coming legal battles over the Jets stadium could yet make Westway look like a visit to Judge Wapner.

Looks like the Florida Marlins may be headed for another disappointing April in their annual quest to squeeze the Florida legislature for $60 million in stadium funding. After an exuberantly pro-stadium House legislator tacked on additional subsidies for spring-training facilities in the state, enthusiasm for the bill has notably waned, with Gov. Jeb Bush now saying that passage of a Marlins subsidy is a "stretch."

Adding - insult to injury? fire to the flames? one of those - state senate economist Ross Fabricant testified yesterday that "every single study indicates that there is no positive economic benefit - net positive economic benefit - for publicly funding professional sports teams or stadiums," said, an economist who works for the Senate budget office. City of Miami lobbyist Ron Book told the AP that he was "not worried," and that he had plenty of experts who could say stadiums would provide a positive economic impact. Well, sure - they're just a checkbook away.

Our pals at the Indianapolis Star (Editorial Writers Division) have nominated themselves for this year's Dumbest Reasons to Build a Stadium list. To wit:

Yes, we're being blackmailed and our elected representatives don't see any reason to stop it! Now there's a reason to applaud.

As expected, Cablevision has filed suit against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's sale of its West Side rail yards to the New York Jets, charging that the agency violated its "legal and fiduciary duties" by doing so. (Among the specific charges: That the MTA accepted a lower bid, that it accepted a bid contigent on zoning changes after previously saying that was against bidding rules, and that it did not allow enough time for bids.) In an interesting twist, the suit includes an affadavit from former MTA chair Richard Ravitch calling the bid process illegal - Ravitch has become one of the plan's more prominent opponents of late, getting to play naysayer to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's stadium boosting in a lengthy (though not especially revelatory) article in last week's New Yorker.

Across the Hudson, meanwhile, the New York Giants fired their own legal salvo, suing the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority to stop construction of the neighboring Xanadu entertainment complex and force the authority to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain Giants Stadium as "state of the art," as required in the team's lease. As the state already sued the Giants over these issues after new-stadium talks broke down last month, this isn't expected to change things much - and, in fact, Jersey sports czar George Zoffinger declared: "I welcome the Giants' lawsuit. Now an independent third party will settle once and for all the state-of-the-art issue."

It's official: The proposed New York Jets stadium has now hit an estimated price tag of $1.925 billion - and that's without including the $280 million the Jets have agreed to pay for the land. Furthermore, Jets sources tell Newsday, "the city's payment for the platform has risen from $300 million to $375 million. The state's cost for the roof remains budgeted at $300 million." This is the first I've heard of the city paying for the platform while the state pays for the roof (previously the two were to split the whole cost), but whatever - in any case, it means that Mayor Michael Bloomberg will have to dip even deeper into his public-money slush fund to get this project (literally) off the ground.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the extension of the #7 subway line in the works to get people to the stadium - which the MTA board cited as a main reason for voting for the Jets plan, since the city was offering to pay for it - has now hit an estimated cost of $2.1 billion, only $2 billion of which the city has agreed to pay for. Asked who would be responsible for cost overruns, city budget director Mark Page replied: "I'm not sure that there's a sort of yes-or-no answer. It's a proportion of the M.T.A.'s capital plan. The city is obviously one of the sources in the M.T.A.'s capital plan." That would be more of a "we have no idea" answer.

Alert the horsemen: MLB and Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos have finally agreed to a deal to compensate Angelos for having to live next door to the Washington Nationals. While the basics of the deal - the two teams will share a new, jointly-owned cable sports network, and Angelos will be indemnified by MLB if he can't get $365 million when he sells the O's - there were two significant last-minute developments:

As for other ramifications, they remain much the same: Losing control over much of their TV rights (Angelos just has to pay "fair-market value," which is expected to be determined at $25 million a year or so) could cost the Nats some future revenue, which would in turn be expected to reduce the sale price MLB will get for the team later this year. (Cue the violins for George Steinbrenner's wallet.) And, of course, it means that long-suffering D.C. fans will be able to watch Nationals games on TV, starting with Monday's opener - though given their team's offseason acquisitions, that might not help so much with the suffering.

The latest proposal to publicly fund a new Indianapolis Colts stadium, courtesy of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels: A 1% surcharge on restaurants in the Indy metro area. (Actually, notes the Indianapolis Star, the governor's plan "would mean an extra tax on fast-food bills, formal restaurants tabs and even fried chicken from a grocery store deli counter," but those are all "restaurants" to a tax lawyer.) In a twist, the tax would be optional for counties to implement, but if they do, they could keep half the proceeds for their own projects. The remaining half would raise an estimated $22 million a year, which would pay off maybe a third of the estimated $900 million public cost of the stadium and an expanded convention center; the rest, speculates the Star, would likely come from new hotel and car rental taxes and from existing state sports taxes.

Meanwhile, two new polls are out on the public's thoughts on this whole mess: An Indy Star poll found that 57% of adults statewide oppose using tax money for a Colts stadium, but that 52% of those in the metro area would support it. (The poll didn't ask about specific sources of tax revenue.) In the other one, our old pal Mark Rosentraub - the stadium economist and author who you might remember for taking MLB money to do an economic impact study of a new San Diego Padres stadium - was hired by his hometown Colts to do a poll of what locals thought the "intangible" benefits are of having the team in town. His conclusion: "Hoosiers say the intangible benefits of the Indianapolis Colts are worth to them in excess of $80 million a year, and they're prepared to spend $66 million a year for those benefits."

Looking at the study itself (PDF file here), that's not exactly what they said: The actual question was, "Do you think the value of the Colts being in Indiana is worth $7 per month to you?" (Followup questions narrowed it down to more or less than $15 a month and $4 a month.) I'm sure Rosentraub got his math right, but I'm equally sure that not many Hoosiers sat there with the pollster on the phone to calculate how much $7 a month amounted to in total public dollars per year; or considered whether they'd prefer to have their $7 a month go to a new stadium or, say, schools. I don't know what the research is on how the units used in polls like these affect responses, but I'm sure that they do - there's a reason, after all, that long-distance phone companies don't talk up their "six-dollars-an-hour" plans.

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...