Watchdog says Yankees abusing city coffers
04/10/2007 |
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Crystal baseballs and customized Yankee wool caps, bar tabs at New York's Yankee Stadium and the purchase of team merchandise are being paid for by taxpayer subsidies, a watchdog group said on Wednesday.
Good Jobs New York, which monitors the use of subsidies for construction of the team's new stadium in the Bronx, said receipts filed with the city in 2005 show tens of thousands of dollars in inappropriate expenses.
On two nights during the 2005 post season, for example, the Yankees submitted more than $30,000 in food and bar receipts, according to the group, which obtained the receipts through a Freedom of Information Act request.
"Elected officials are turning a blind eye to the fact that the Yankees seem to have unfettered access to the public trough," said Bettina Damiani, the group's project director.
Other questionable expenses included almost $2,000 for a dozen crystal baseballs, $8,600 in "rivalry" wool caps for home games against Boston and Toronto and just over $2,000 in gifts for corporate clients, the group said.
In 2001, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a passionate Yankees fan, authorized the team to deduct up to $5 million in planning costs from yearly rent payments to the city for five years.
The $1.3 billion stadium is being financed privately, though costs are offset by $663 million in taxpayer subsidies, the watchdogs said.
"We are confident that a Comptroller's audit will find, as it has in the past, that expenses submitted were appropriate," Alice McGillion, a spokeswoman for Yankees, said in a detailed statement.
(Source: Reuters)
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