Kalt named in new Yankee Stadium squabble

The New York Daily News is reporting that former aides to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, including current Rays vice president Michael Kalt, pressured the city's property appraiser to inflate the value of the land under the new Yankee Stadium so the Yankees could qualify for nearly $1 billion in tax-free bonds.

According to the Daily News, the city's chief tax assessor put the market value for the stadium site in March 2006 at $27 million, far lower than the Yankees wanted. A Finance Department official ordered him to redo the report. Within hours, he jacked up it up to $204 million.

The appraisal is important because it is tied to how much in tax-free bonds the Yankees could issue. While the Yankees make the payments on the bonds, it is the city actually issuing the debt.

According to the Daily News, on Dec. 22, 2005,  Kalt wrote city Economic Development Corp. officials, "I don't want to get into this much further on e-mail, but we have to take into consideration that the AV [assessed value] is only so high because we're choosing a methodology to support the tax-exempt financing."

Kalt was City Hall's point man for the Yankees project. He knew the Yankees needed a high assessment because the team was planning to pay back $940 million in tax-exempt financing with something called PILOTs - payments in lieu of taxes. The higher the assessment, the more tax-free bonds the team could ask the IRS to approve.

Kalt, now a vice president of the Tampa Bay Rays, declined to comment Tuesday, according to the Daily News. "No one influenced the assessment," Bloomberg spokesman Andrew Brent said.

You can read the whole story here.

Comments

[Thomas]

Peter,

Obviously, you're entitled to your opinion, but I don't think there is any "bullying" here.

Sometimes the "positive" things that are written about the ballpark are entirely inaccurate - posting a correction is hardly a schoolyard brawl. For example, when the Rays tout that a new stadium means an increase attendance for the long term - it's not bullying to point out that new stadiums have exactly no impact on long term attendance.

As far as intimidation goes, the kids over at Merriam-Webster define it as: "to frighten into submission. to induce fear or a sense of inferiority into another". One might reasonably argue it's the Rays that are attempting to "intimidate" by trying to frighten St. Pete taxpayers to submit to funding a stadium that is not needed. One might argue that calling the Trop outdated or insinuating that another city would build a new stadium is an attempt to "induce a sense of inferiority".

So really Pete, who's trying to bully who?

Is it the Rays with their inaccurate propaganda; their billion dollar demands; and the threat of breaking a lease and relocating? -or- Is it a group of citizens that object to any more public subsidies to the team?

[atrulyconcernedcitizen]

Thomas,

Thanks!

[Scaramouche]

Aaron, just wondering: Is anything important happening in ABC-Space or in the anterooms to the Council chambers, or in Ed Strongarm's plush offices or of course the center of the spider web, Mayor Rick's office, that might bear on any "next moves" by the people reaching their grubby little paws out to grab granny's purse and gampa's Social Security check, let alone whatever resurgent economic movement that might be on the Pinellas horizon? The recent silence in that part of the jungle makes me very concerned that a belated "October Surprise" is about to surface.

Hey, I just got a sudden great inspiration! Let's get Kalt to rob Peter to pay Paul! Whattyathinkathat? Fair enough?

[Scaramouche]

And PeterPaulandMary, I really could not care less about a carpetbagger's internal motivations. They may be pure as driven (yellow) snow. But people are known by their actions, bubby, and these guys have conclusively proven that they are acting to try to get the mopes who pay the taxes in this area to do what they and other mobile thieves have done to other cities: Make the whole tax base give them a rough billion-dollar gift, to be paid for out of future tax revenues, which they promise us will, like the CDOs and other "securitizing" instruments they dreamed up to inflate the last bubble, "pay for itself in public benefit." We have heard the same snake oil presentation for millenia, and every new generation has to learn they have been scammed the same hard way. Except where people stand up and say "Wait a minute, the Emperor ain't got no clothes on!" These New York folks have already cost us millions just to diddle with them while they try to find the seams in the defense. Let alone the costs of keeping their leasehold functional. You know, insurance, cops and all that. Paid for out of our tax revenues.

No sale on your phony pleas for "fairness" -- your apparent side is the one with the hidden daggers and nunchuks and butterfly knives and garrottes and poisoned throwing stars and all the other equivalent tools of no-quarter financial-Ninja-screw-the-public-ism.