Yankees, Mets Stadium Projects Get More Tax-Exempt Bonds

Sure, the city is facing lower tax revenues and will cut from city agencies' budgets. But when the Yankees and Mets need additional tax-exempt bonds to complete their new stadiums, that's okay! The NY Times reports, "The city also plans to issue $341.2 million in additional tax-exempt bonds on behalf of the Yankees and Mets to complete the stadiums, whose combined cost is about $2.2 billion. The teams are responsible for paying off the bonds, but they pay tens of millions of dollars less in interest because payments to bondholders are exempt from city, state and federal taxes." The teams need the additional bonds because costs have gone up. And since the city and state are paying for hundreds of millions in infrastructure ("parks, garage and transportation improvements"), it turns out, unsurprisingly, that those infrastructure costs have gone up, too. The Independent Budget Office tells the Times, "The additional costs that have emerged make it quite likely that that the city’s net benefit number is now negative.”