The board of the Empire State Development Corp. approved by a 6-0 vote the general project plan for a Jets stadium over the 13-acre West Side rail yards. The board is controlled by Governor Pataki, who supports the plan for a New York Sports & Convention Center, and the approval had been expected. The proposal is to go before the Public Authorities Control Board next month.

The voting members of the PACB, as it is known, are an appointee of the governor, John Cape, who is expected to support the Jets stadium; a state senator, Owen Johnson, who is the representative of the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno; and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver. The two non-voting members are Senator Thomas Duane and Assemblyman Brian Kolb. Mr. Bruno’s appointee and Mr. Silver have not been supportive of the stadium.

Yesterday, Mr. Bruno, an upstate Republican, called the Jets plan “extremely controversial” and said: “Many of the people who ought to know in New York City oppose it, and I’m not talking about Cablevision – I’m talking about people in the real-estate business, the development business, citizens.”

“Where I stand is we want to do what’s best for the people in the city and the state, and we think that is still an open question as to what is best,” Mr. Bruno said at Albany.

A stadium would compete for large sports and entertainment events, as well as convention overflow that the Javits Center can’t handle, a market dominated by Madison Square Garden, which said in a press statement: “Taking only minutes to consider a wildly unpopular football stadium plan which requires more than $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies is an outrageous rubber stamp by handpicked political appointees which shows utter disregard for any public input from the taxpayers of New York.”

The Garden’s lawyer, Randy Mastro, wrote a letter earlier this week to the Empire State Development Corp., calling on it to reject the Jets stadium proposal on the basis that the general project plan is outdated and should be subject to further public scrutiny. The Jets submitted its plan to the corporation last November, and Mr. Mastro said it has subsequently undergone significant changes.

“It is unlawful for the ESDC to approve the November Plan without issuing a modified project plan based on revisions in the past three months and submitting the modified project plan to public review consistent with the law,” Mr. Mastro wrote.

The chairman of the development corporation, Charles Gargano, dismissed Mr. Mastro’s letter, saying the changes the Jets made to their proposal in the past few months were minor.

“Today’s action is another positive step in the New York Sports & Convention Center project,” he said. “This is an economic development project that will strongly enhance New York’s ability to attract conventions and conferences.”

The speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, a mayoral candidate, chastised the state corporation for approving the stadium.

“There seems to be no end to the number of backroom deals to steamroll the mayor’s $2 billion boondoggle stadium,” he said. “With today’s Empire State Development Corporation vote, we see yet again how rigged this process has been.”