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Testimony of Good Jobs New York
Submitted to Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión
Regarding the Proposed Yankee Stadium Project
Dan Steinberg
December 12th, 2005
I’m Dan Steinberg, Research Analyst for Good Jobs New York, a joint project of the Fiscal Policy Institute with offices in Albany and New York City and Good Jobs First, based in Washington, DC. Good Jobs New York promotes accountability to taxpayers in the use of economic development subsidies.
Considering my arrival and registration to testify at 5:40 pm, it was very discouraging that I and so many others were not permitted to testify at your public hearing on Monday, December 12th. The commitments made by the Borough President, the Parks Department, and the Yankees to foster community involvement in the planning process were further undermined by the fact that so many local residents, many of whom came directly to the hearing from work, were sent away at the door.
Good Jobs New York believes that the Yankees should be able to upgrade their stadium and that they should do so with union workers. But the community has a right to say not on our parkland, and as fiscal watchdogs, we have an obligation to say not with taxpayer dollars.
This testimony will focus on why the Yankee Stadium project as currently proposed is a wasteful expenditure of public resources—tax dollars that should be used to pay for education, maintenance of existing parks, police and fire protection, housing, and other vital services provided by the city. But first it is important to question how this project moved so quickly before the community had the opportunity to participate in the planning of their own neighborhood.
The major safeguard we have for parks is known as the public trust doctrine. It’s a legal principal we inherited from English common law that holds public parks to be so sacred, that cities (even New York City) are not permitted to de-map them without approval from the state. Unfortunately, our state legislature quietly complied with the city to alienate these parks without consulting or notifying this community. By doing so, this community lost leverage in terms of negotiating with the city and the Yankees and were done a great disservice by their elected officials.
Even with the recently presented changes, the plan to replace these parks is inadequate and consequently facing fierce opposition from community groups. First, these parks will mostly be lost in the name of parking garages, which will add over 3,000 parking spaces and generate more traffic in an area plagued by high asthma rates. It is disingenuous for the Yankees in their Draft Environment Impact Statement to argue that the reduced seating capacity of the ballpark will result in less overall traffic. Aside from the fact that the same document assumes attendance will increase by 20 percent following the completion of the stadium, most planners would agree that the increased number of parking spaces will be the most influential factor in terms of how many people decide to drive to games. Also, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement concedes that some of the new parkland will literally be in the shadows of the new Yankee Stadium and noisy due to the proximity to the elevated tracks. Most troubling is the fact that the five acres of open space being proposed along the river, wedged in between freight rail and the Deegan, had been identified as an ideal location to relocate the businesses being evicted from the Bronx Terminal Market.
Returning to the economics of the project, the consensus among planners and economists on the issue of subsidized stadiums is astounding—spending public money on stadiums is a direct transfer of wealth from taxpayers to owners and players. Because the West Side Stadium was such a far-fetched, astronomically expensive idea, most of the media seems to have assumed the Yankee Stadium project is some sort of bargain. It’s not. I encourage you to look at the tally compiled by journalist Neil DeMause in his Village Voice article on November 14, 2005. He estimates the project will cost taxpayers almost $500 million due to the fact that the city and state won’t be collecting rent, property taxes, sales taxes on construction materials, taxes on the bond interest, but the state will be paying for parking garages and the city will foot the bill for new parks.
It was initially reported that the state’s contribution of $70 million for the parking garages would be reimbursed through parking revenues from the new facilities. But the EIS says that the garages will cost $234 million and the city is now in the process of contracting out the garage construction to a private company which will be entitled to future parking revenues.
It is appalling that garages contributing to increased traffic in a neighborhood with notoriously high asthma rates would be eligible for so many additional subsidies, especially the programs intended to stimulate economic activity in low-income communities (Empire Zones, Empowerment Zones, and the New Markets Tax Credit Program). According to the DEIS, the new parking facilities would only generate 23 permanent jobs[1] and parking prices could increase to $25[2] (RFQ p. 4). So what warrants the state’s contribution of $70 million, not to mention the other potential benefits listed in the Request for Proposals, such as sales, mortgage recording, and real estate tax exemptions, and tax exempt financing from the IDA?
Whenever the possibility of renovating the stadium is raised, we have heard that this would be an economic hardship for the Yankees. Meanwhile the city is bracing for multi-billion dollar budget gaps over the next few years, and we are prepared to shower this project with subsidies.
I urge the Borough President to carefully consider the alternative scenarios put forth by community groups and to withhold support for any stadium project that utilizes public subsidies.