Emails reveal just what Worcester paid Andy Zimbalist $80,000 to do for its stadium campaign

A few weeks back, a reader sent over the results of an open records request they’d filed with the city of Worcester into how much the city government had paid Smith College economist and stadium-subsidy-critic-turned-sometime-stadium-subsidy-cheerleader Andy Zimbalist in 2017 an 2018 to consult on its campaign to build a new stadium to lure the Pawtucket Red Sox to Worcester. The total: More than $80,000, paid out at Zimbalist’s “substantially reduced” rate of $225 an hour.

After taking a moment to reassess my career choices, I decided to file my own open records request for emails between Zimbalist and the man who hired him for the project, Worcester city manager Edward Augustus, to see exactly what he did for that money. The first batch of emails arrived in my inbox last week, and here are some of the highlights:

• That $225 an hour “reduced rate” was apparently reduced indeed: Zimbalist repeatedly refers to his “standard consulting rate” of “$850 an hour,” including one email where he says he doesn’t need to be present for a negotiating session with the team owners, because “I have another consulting gig that I am doing and can expand my hours (at $850/hr).” Definitely nice work if you can get it.
• Zimbalist started off, at least, trying to help Worcester drive a hard bargain on its stadium deal. On January 17, 2018, for example, he wrote to Worcester chief development officer Michael Traynor that “I find the team’s response to be discouraging,” noting that PawSox officials made questionable economic assumptions, didn’t want to share any naming rights revenue or pay ticket taxes, “continue the upward push on stadium cost, AND THEY KEEP THE TEAM CONTRIBUTION AT $30 MILLION.” His conclusion: “I’m not sure what the next step is, but I think we have a lot of lifting to do.” And on March 23, he wrote to city officials warning that building a bunch of new retail storefronts around the new stadium could “cannibalize business from other parts of the city” — something he later acknowledged publicly when I spoke to him that September, though he dismissed the likely actual amount of cannibalization as unknowable.
• Between spring and summer, something clearly changed about the task at hand: By June, Zimbalist is focused on finding ways to sell more stadium bonds to raise additional city cash; by August, he’s responding “Bravo!” to a final agreement that saw the city put in more than $100 million in tax money while the team owners supplied just $36 million, not much more than the $30 million he’d decried in all-caps just seven months earlier. While it’s not clear from the emails what caused this shift — there are a ton of redacted emails from around this time, as the city’s hired-gun lawyer Jeffrey Mullan was getting cc’ed regularly, allowing the city to withhold those records by claiming attorney-client privilege — we can read at least one giant tea leaf: That June, the state of Rhode Island approved $38 million in subsidies for a new stadium to keep the team in Pawtucket. There’s no firm evidence in the emails whether this shifted Worcester officials into get-a-deal-done-now-now-now mode, but the timing is certainly interesting, to say the least.
• By August, as media coverage critical of the deal started appearing — Zimbalist and his city bosses specifically discussed a Worcester Telegram article that month that found no other sports economists who agreed with Zimbalist that this was a good deal for Worcester, as well as my Deadspin piece that followed soon after — Worcester CFO Thomas Zidelis asked Traynor to “loop Andy in on” media queries to make sure everyone is “singing from the same hymnal.” Zimbalist replied by offering to write an op-ed for the Worcester Telegram defending the stadium project, which was published just four days later. Interestingly, the op-ed included a disclosure statement that “I consulted for the city” on the project while his bio noted that he “was a consultant to the city manager for Worcester’s stadium proposal,” implying that he was no longer on the city’s books — though he was paid $11,883.01 for his work for the city for the month of August when he wrote the column, and city officials read over and helped revise it, two things that Telegram readers really should have been made aware of.

So, no guns that are smoking too badly, though that bit about writing an op-ed about a stadium deal without revealing that you were on the payroll of the city government that just signed the deal isn’t great. Mostly it’s interesting as a somewhat-redacted-fly-on-the-wall look at the inner workings of a stadium deal, and how quickly trying to hold the line and cut the best deal possible can turn into self-congratulatory celebrations of just getting a deal done, even if it’s no better than the one that looked crappy a few months earlier. I’ve been promised more emails that may or may not shed more light on the whole affair; I’ll report back once those arrive.

In the meantime, let’s enjoy this news from just yesterday about how delayed construction around the new Worcester ballpark has meant that the city doesn’t have the $2 million a year in new tax revenues it needs to siphon off to pay down stadium bonds, so it covered the gap by selling off public property instead. Bravo!

UPDATE: Just heard back from Zimbalist about his writing the op-ed while still working for Worcester city government: “here’s what I remember. one, I did not share my op ed w/ city officials for approval. two, the worcester telegram was aware of my consulting. three, my role was to get the best bargain for the city in the negotiations.”

I then pointed out that he had written to city officials before submitting his op-ed in August 2018: “I rec’d comments from [city lawyer] Jeff [Mullan] and [assistant city development officer] Steve [Rolle]. I assume that the rest of you are fine with my draft.” Zimbalist’s response to me: “i probably sent them a draft to make sure that I had my numbers right and did not misrepresent the negotiations or did not say anything that was confidential. I did not seek their approval of the editorial stance of the piece.”

Email records show that city manager Ed Augustus replied to Zimbalist’s 2018 email: “I think we can go as is with this Op Ed piece, we can also look at other ways to get the message out with other audiences in mind.”

Still waiting to hear back from the Telegram, will update further if I do.