Opponents of Jets Stadium Outspending Its Supporters by 2 to 1
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ALBANY – Opponents of a proposed stadium on the West Side of Manhattan are outspending supporters by more than two to one, according to a report yesterday from the watchdog group Common Cause/New York.
Madison Square Garden and its corporate parent, Cablevision, invested $8.2 million in an advertising and lobbying campaign against the project from January through August of this year, according to the report, citing records from the state Lobbying Commission.
The Jets football team, which would play home games in the stadium, has spent just under $3 million lobbying for the plan during the same period, the report said. The heavy spending by both sides makes the stadium debate one of the most expensive lobbying campaigns in state history. By the end of the year, it could surpass the $12.4 million that hospitals and health-care workers spent last year to head off cuts in the state’s Medicaid health plan for the poor.
As proposed in March by the city and state, the stadium would go up on top of rail yards owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, adjacent to an expanded Javits Convention Center. It is a key part of Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to redevelop the West Side and attract the 2012 Olympic Games to New York City. The stadium would be subsidized with $300 million each from the city and the state.
Supporters say the stadium would revitalize the neighborhood and stimulate the city’s economy, while critics portray it as a costly boondoggle that would increase crime and congestion on the West Side.
“This is a case where you have Goliath against Goliath,” an author of the report, Megan Quattlebaum of Common Cause, said yesterday. In debates over public policy, she said, “it’s somewhat rare that you have two organizations with this kind of capacity to spend.”
The pro- and anti-stadium forces, which also include labor unions, business groups, and neighborhood associations, are buying ads on television and radio as well as hiring dozens of the best-connected lobbyists at Albany and City Hall.
Those working against the stadium on behalf of Cablevision and Madison Square Garden include Senator D’Amato; Patricia Lynch, a former top aide to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver; Arthur Finkelstein, a political consultant to Governor Pataki; and Kenneth Bruno, the son of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.
Among those advocating for the stadium on behalf of the Jets are Michael McKeon, a former top aide to Mr. Pataki; Kieran Mahoney, another of the governor’s political consultants; Jeffrey Buley, counsel to the Republican State Committee, and Louis Tomson, formerly a high-ranking member of the Pataki administration and board member of the Lower Manhattan Development Commission. “It would be easier to list who is not lobbying on this issue than to explain who is,” said the executive director of director of Common Cause/New York, Rachel Leon. “This is a list of incredibly influential lobbyists from both sides of the aisle.”
The authors said their report was meant to help New Yorkers understand who is behind the public-relations blitz.
Mr. Leon said the group’s concern is that the lobbying campaign “will leave regular New Yorkers out in the cold, even though it is their tax dollars that will make or break this project in the end.”
Both sides of the debate defended their investments yesterday.
“Nearly two-thirds of New Yorkers are opposed to the stadium and certainly MSG has helped give that opposition a voice,” said a spokesman for an anti-stadium coalition, Whit Clay of the New York Association for Better Choices.
“We are working hard to counter Cablevision’s smear campaign and to set the record straight,” said a spokeswoman for the Jets, Marissa Shorenstein. “This project is great for New York and New Yorkers.”
“I’m not surprised that the opponents have spent the amount of money they have, given the fact that this project has a great deal of support from the governor, the mayor, the Jets, and quite possibly the MTA,” said a critic of the stadium proposal, Dick Dadey of the Citizens Union. “The proponents have a great deal of power and authority at their disposal to move this project forward….The opponents are trying to get the public on their side and to do that you have to spend a lot of money.”
Common Cause also examined campaign contributions, and found that the owners of Cablevision, Charles and James Dolan, donated $115,300 to various state and city politicians over the past four years, compared to $81,582 from the Jets’ owner, Robert Wood Johnson IV, and its chief executive, L. Jay Cross.