New York state assemblymember Richard Brodsky claims he’s found a “smoking gun” showing that New York City officials tampered with land value assessment of the Yankees‘ new stadium, to allow them to use their PILOT scheme to get tax-exempt financing. Of course, Brodsky’s claimed this before, but this time he has a point: E-mail records he obtained from the city show that a city tax assessor submitted a land value of $26.8 million on March 10, 2006, then 12 days later came back with a figure of $204 million – accompanied by the note, “Here is the write-up with the changes you requested.”
There are other curious nuggets in the e-mails that suggest funny business in the city finance department – for more, read Juan Gonzalez’ piece in today’s Daily News, as well as my own followup article on the Village Voice website. The upshot: The IRS is now going to have to decide on whether to audit the city’s assessment, and then, if they find “material misrepresentations,” whether to toss out the bonds’ tax-free status. If they do, CC Sabathia could be the least of the Yanks’ expenses.