Silver delays stadium vote
BY GLENN THRUSH AND PRADNYA JOSHI
STAFF WRITERS
May 23, 2005
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has yanked the West Side stadium off this Friday's agenda of the Public Control Board and requested that the mega-project be shelved until June 2.
The move, which came as no surprise to stadium backer Mayor Michael Bloomberg, pushes the decision on $300 million in state financing for the project back to barely a month before international Olympic officials are due to decide the host of the Summer 2012 games.
It also comes just four days before the self-imposed June 6 deadline Bloomberg set for the decision Monday. That's the date Olympic officials will release a preliminary report on the host cities.
A spokesman for Silver said the speaker wanted to delay the vote pending the outcome of a June 2 court hearing on a lawsuit filed by stadium opponents.
"When did New York walk away from taking shots and trying to get things?" an exasperated Bloomberg asked reporters during a Bronx news conference. "Think about what kind of society we're changing into here. We're giving up before we even start? I don't think so."
The news came on the heels of a new report doubting the administration's estimates of public sector costs for the project.
Some 106 economists, including a Nobel laureate, signed an open letter against the proposed $2.2 billion stadium. The letter, circulated by the National Taxpayers Union, which has promoted libertarian-like views on smaller government and lower taxes, said the public subsidies proposed for the stadium will not generate economic benefits.
"Sports stadiums do not increase overall entertainment spending but merely shift it from other entertainment venues," said the letter. In addition to occupying "prime waterfront land," the group noted that the public subsidies are "unnecessary."
Silver last week noted that more than $1 billion in subsidies will be provided.
The city and state governments have proposed providing the New York Jets with $600 million to pay help pay for the stadium.
In addition, $450 million in property-tax payments will go toward paying down the bond debt rather than city services. And the group noted that city and state will have to pay for roadway and other improvements in the area.
Bloomberg yesterday that the stadium, in addition to helping New York's 2012 Olympic bid, will give the city additional benefits such as expanded convention center space and construction jobs.
"It's jobs; without it, the whole West Side is not going to be developed for a very long time and no responsible city planner would tell you to the contrary," Bloomberg said in comments to the media.
The letter was signed by several professors and economists at think tanks, including Donald R. Davis of Columbia University, Jeffrey Miron at Harvard University and Vernon Smith of George Mason University, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics.
