March 08, 2009

Brodsky v Levine III: Yet another Yanks stadium hearing

If you were dying to hear how Friday's hearing by New York State Assemblymember Richard Brodsky into the Yankees' stadium deal went, I didn't go, but apparently there was lots of shouting, which should surprise no one. Yanks president/former city deputy mayor Randy Levine apparently brought some of the documents that Brodsky had subpeonaed, but not all, meaning we may yet have to go through more of these hearings.

Brodsky also revealed at the hearing that he's signed on in support of an assembly bill to require that 7% of tickets be kept "affordable" at sports facilities that receive public benefits. Reading the bill itself reveals that "benefits" is defined as "any direct or indirect grant of funds, tax reducations, tax preferences, subsidies, payments in lieu of any tax or tax obligation, or any other form of public support," which seems to cover all the basis; "affordable" is defined as "within the economic ability of persons whose income is at or below the area median income for a four-person household to purchase tickets without economic hardship," which is a bit more vague. A potentially bigger problem: What with StubHub serving as teams' official ticket reseller, many of those "affordable" tickets would likely be snapped up by scalpers and resold at unaffordable prices — that is, if the teams didn't just scalp them themselves.