Posts Tagged Stadiums

Pittsburgh has joined the list of cities with community benefits agreements.

The controversy around the public financing of the new Yankee Stadium heated up this week as a New York State legislator and a member of Congress put the squeeze on the team and New York City officials who helped finance the $1.3 billion stadium.

Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky revealed that his summer-long investigation into the public financing of the new stadium shows that the city's job creation figures and property tax assessments might not be up to par.  And Rep. Dennis Kucinich, chairman of the Subcommittee who has held two previous hearings on the use of tax-exempt bond financing for stadiums said:

"In the case of the new Yankee Stadium, not only have we found waste and abuse of public dollars subsidizing a project that is for the exclusive benefit of a private entity, the Yankees, but also we have discovered serious questions about the accuracy of certain representations made by the City of New York to the federal government."

If you've been watching the antics around the development of the new Yankee Stadium, it shouldn't be a surprise that another controversy has taken place.

Our friends at the Partnership for Working Families (PWF) and its affiliate organizations do amazing work. So it’s not surprising they are winning big victories – most recently in Pittsburgh and San Francisco, and hopefully another in San Jose this fall.

Fed up with public funding going to stadiums instead of services that benefit the whole city, a coalition of good government, park advocacy and community groups sent an open letter yesterday to the New York City Congress