July 27, 2006
Yanks billed taxpayers for lobbyists
When the New York Yankees successfully extracted $400 million and change in taxpayer money for a new Bronx stadium earlier this year, everyone knew that it was their big-money lobbyists who'd helped grease the skids for the deal. But the big money the Yanks were spending, it turns out, wasn't their own: As I report in this week's Village Voice, George Steinbrenner & Co. have used city money to pay for their own lobbyists to pressure city and state officials to approve the stadium plan.
The trick is in a lease clause granted by then-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2001, during his final week of office. That clause allowed the Yanks (and the Mets) to deduct up to $5 million a year in "stadium planning" costs from their rent payments to the city. And in addition to such items as lead architect's Earl Santee's $350-an-hour fee and consultant meals at the team's own Stadium Club, the Yankees apparently decided that hiring well-connected state politicos to talk up city and state officials qualified as a "planning cost" that the public should be billed for.
Neither the Yankees nor city officials have been willing to comment on these revelations, though the city Parks Department and comptroller's office did confirm that neither of their agencies, which had oversight on the lease, bothered to audit what the Yankees were doing with their "planning" deduction. (In particular, Yankees president Randy Levine ducked calls from my Metro NY colleague Patrick Arden, which is a shame, as I'd love to know what Levine, a former Giuliani deputy mayor, thinks about the fact that city residents paid 30% of his salary for the time he spent working to screw them out of public parkland.)
I'll be following this story in the coming weeks; in the meantime, you can contact current mayor Michael Bloomberg at the usual place.
Great reporting, Neil. Thanks for your efforts.
Posted by: joejoejoe on July 27, 2006 08:03 PM
