A Stitch in Haste

I almost fell out of my chair:

The Jets and Giants signed an agreement on Thursday to jointly build a stadium complex in the New Jersey Meadowlands, ending the Jets' long and tumultuous attempt to cross the Hudson River, first to a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan, then to a park in Queens.

In signing the agreement to share the estimated $800 million cost of construction, the two teams became equal partners in the stadium complex, the first time in the history of the National Football League that two teams have sought to finance and build a stadium together.
...
[The Jets] famously enlisted the support of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in a bruising battle to build the world's most expensive stadium, on a platform over railroad tracks on the West Side, but it ended in failure.

No taxpayer money whatsoever is subsiding the new stadium. (The State of New Jersey will, however, provide 20 acres of public land to each team for training facilities.)

So much for the fallacy that a sports stadium specifically, or sports entertainment generally, are "public goods" that require tax subsidies (obnoxiously euphemized by some as a "rooting tax").

As I blogged throughout the West Side Stadium circus, just because something is big does not mean it is a public good. If you (the owner) build it, then you can damn well pay for it. And if you (the fan) use it, then you can damn well pay for it too. Leave taxpayers out of it.

Hopefully voters will remember how utterly unnecessary all the wasteful petty politicking over the West Side Stadium plan was, and that, in the end, it truly was nothing more than a pompous and unnecessary vanity project for Mayor Bloomberg.