A recent edition of ESPN’s Outside the Lines program explored the stadium financing issue that I’ve touched upon a bit over the last few weeks. While the video doesn’t really cover any new ground, it succinctly portrays why Congress is involved in this case. It seems to involve over half a billion federal dollars.

In the video, Neil deMause offers up his take on the financing, and Randy Levine attempts to defend the Yankees. No matter your opinion on the stadium matter, I’m not so sure I want him speaking for the Yankees, and that relocation threat sounds just as ridiculous live as it does in print.

(Hat tip to Cliff Corcoran)

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While the Yanks’ Friday visit to Congress resulted in nothing too exciting, the Yankees did trot out an old excuse about their new stadium. As Richard Sandomir reported, the Yanks would have moved if they hadn’t gotten a sweet land deal from New York.

Randy Levine, the president of the Yankees, told a Congressional hearing Friday that if the city had not issued tax-exempt financing for the team’s new stadium, it would have left town.

“It’s been no secret for many years” that the team would move if it could not save tens of millions of dollars on financing with tax-free bonds, Levine told the House subcommittee on domestic policy. He added: “There was no shortage of suitors. We see ourselves as a paradigm in professional sports.”

Levine refused to be specific about the other suitors, but when asked after the hearing if New Jersey has wooed the Yankees in recent years he said, “Absolutely!”

Yet again, the Yanks have trotted out this strawman New Jersey argument. For the better part of 14 years, the Yanks have used New Jersey and the Meadowlands as a leveraging tool, and it’s been nothing more than that.

Twenty years ago, New Jersey rejected a measure to fund a potential baseball stadium ostensibly for the Yankees, but George Steinbrenner still used the spectre of New Jersey to threaten Rudy Giuliani throughout the 1990s. More recently, as Sandomir notes, the Yanks have had no contact this decade with Meadowlands officials.

At this point, the Yanks and the City aren’t going to admit any wrong-doing with this questionable land deal, and the City’s coffers will probably never get the money it should have. But the Yanks should really stop trotting out this New Jersey threat. With four million fans making the trip to the Bronx each year, the Yanks aren’t about to decamp to an inaccessible site that isn’t even in New York, and to threaten this non-move is to insult their loyal fans.

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Yankee officials are currently sitting in front of Dennis Kuchinich’s Congressional subcommittee on domesti policy, and Neil deMause is liveblogging the event. For all you good government types, part one is available here on the Village Voice’s website, and the current live log is right here. The issue at stake right now is the land value assessment of the new stadium plot. It appears that the city significantly overvalued it to ensure tax breaks for the ball club.

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While Yankee officials are set to appear before a Congressional subcommittee this week to discuss land-valuation concerns, the IRS has paved the way for the team to wrap up the financing of their stadium construction. The Times reports that the IRS will allow the teams to float tax-exempt bonds. The politicians won’t like it, but the new rule should limit this practice of doling out money to rich entities in the future.

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In a rather tersely worded missive, the AP reports that the Yanks and Cubs may inaugurate the new Yankee Stadium with an exhibition series during the first weekend in April. The official home opener is set for April 16 when the Indians come to town. I wonder which luminary the Yanks will tab to toss out the ceremonial first pitch at the new digs.

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The Yanks have learned that a bad economy is no time to auction off baseball memorabilia. As the AP reported, yesterday’s stadium memorabilia auction was not very successful.

The last ball hit out of Yankee Stadium didn’t leave the auction block Saturday in a memorabilia auction celebrating Bronx Bombers history…It was expected to fetch up to $400,000, but was pulled after offers fell short of the suggested opening bid of $100,000…

A collection of 15 World Series and American League championship rings that once belonged to former Yankees owner Del Webb was also pulled by the Guernsey’s auction house after the high bid of $325,000 fell short of expectations…

About 100 people came to the Garden and bid several hundreds of dollars for baseball card vending machines, pictures of Yankee Stadium under construction and posters signed by Mantle and Joe DiMaggio.

This is hardly a surprising result. People aren’t too keen on spending their disposable incomes on baseball merchandise right now. I’m sure they’ll try again in a few months.

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The level deck of the new Yankee Stadium will not have any seats. (Photo courtesy of The YES Network Message Board)

As Yankee Stadium, above, rushes toward completion, some politicians down in Washington are going to poke their noses into some city business relating to the supposed value of the South Bronx land.

Late last month, Richard Brodsky, a New York Assembly representative from Westchester, journeyed down to Washington to brief Dennis Kuchinich’s House Domestic Policy Subcommittee on the city’s stadium financing deals. Brodsky has contended, among other things, that the city overvalued land to get tax breaks for the ball clubs. Brodsky also charged the city with spending too much and receiving just 15 new permanent jobs in return. Neil deMause had the lowdown on Brodsky’s report.

Yesterday, Rep. Kuchinich spoke in advance of next week’s Congressional hearing on the issue. According to the Ohio Democrat, city officials could face prosecution if his committee uncovers allegations of wrongdoing. Richard Sandomir had more in yesterday’s Times:

Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio and chairman of the House’s Domestic Policy subcommittee, wrote Tuesday in a letter to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that if the I.R.S.’s enforcement arm audited the sworn representations of I.D.A. [Industrial Development Agency] officials, “they could be guilty of perjury if the misrepresentations were deliberately inaccurate.”

He said the agency’s claims about the value of the stadium “cannot be relied on.”

In an e-mail interview on Thursday, Kucinich said that “our factual findings could be the basis for a later agency or court finding of legal liability.”

In the letter and interview, he cautioned that the I.R.S. could roll back the tax-exempt status of some or all of the stadium bonds. He also suggested that the I.R.S. could reject the Yankees’ pending request for tax-free status on an additional $366 million in bonds to complete the financing of the stadium, which is scheduled to open in April.

Basically, this issue come down to the valuation. The Parks Department valued the parkland at just over $20 million; the city’s Economic Development Corporation pegged it at $40 million; and the IDA issued a report alleging a value of over $200 million, well over market value for Bronx land. With this valuation in mind, the team was able to secure a whole slew of tax-exempt loans.

What this means for the team is unclear at this point. The stadium will be open in April, and someone will pay for it. It might be the team; it might be the city; it might be the taxpayers. No matter the outcome though, I doubt the Nets are going to get their new arena quite as easily as the Yanks and Mets secured the funds for their new digs.

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Second Ave. Sagas takes a peak at the current state of the new Metro-North stop at Yankee Stadium. The MTA will, in November, host a hearing to determine fares for this eagerly-anticipated, South Bronx commuter rail stop.

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…then perhaps it will even begin to look like a baseball field too. Sliding Into Home has the latest photos from inside the new Yankee Stadium. The infield is nearly complete. The same cannot be said for the rest of the seating bowl, however. Take a look.

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(h/t Joey H)

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