The Public Authorities Control Board, a state panel controlled by New York Governor George Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, is scheduled to vote Wednesday on the proposed West Side stadium, which is also the centrepiece of New York’s 2012 bid for the Summer Olympic Games.
But Monday Silver said that there’s too much confusion and too many lawsuits about the West Side Stadium that won’t be settled until June 2 at the very earliest. He says they should wait until after this Wednesday to settle the whole funding question for the state.
Meanwhile Pataki vowed Monday to bring the proposal to a vote on Wednesday. Pataki said the $2.2 billion stadium needs to be approved before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) makes a decision in July on whether New York will win its bid. Pataki said, “I don’t think a lawsuit is a reason to postpone a vote. This is New York and people are always suing pro or con”.
Pataki also said it was important to go ahead with the vote to “send a sign to the Olympic committee…that we have overcome this last hurdle”.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a strong booster of the stadium and the Olympic bid, says the pursuit of the stadium should not be slowed by litigation. “I don’t think postponing really solves any problems whatsoever. The earlier the better”.
Meanwhile, elected officials, civic organizations, and community leaders travelled to Albany, New York’s state capital, to deliver 25,000 letters to Pataki, Silver and Bruno asking them not to spend $1 billion in taxpayer money on a West Side stadium and to invest instead in New York’s more critical priorities.
According to a media release “the Governor and Mayor Bloomberg have proposed that State and City taxpayers contribute more than $1 billion to the construction of a Jets football stadium. This is by far the largest taxpayer subsidy to a sports franchise in American history. To make matters worse, the Jets will only pay $250 million for MTA property that the MTA appraised to be worth $923 million, providing an additional nearly $700 million subsidy to the Jets from the region’s struggling transportation system. More than two-thirds of New Yorkers oppose providing a public subsidy to the Jets stadium”.
