Madison Square Garden’s owners fired a salvo at a former ally, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, over her call for hearings today on the arena’s controversial $11.5 million annual tax break while ignoring $1 billion in subsidies to other teams.
“With a more than $50 billion city annual operating budget, it is strange that Speaker Quinn would focus on MSG’s abatement, which pales in comparison to the more than a billion dollars in benefits recently granted to all other pro sports teams in New York City,” read a statement yesterday from Garden President Barry Watkins.
A proposed resolution to rescind the Garden’s property-tax break goes before the council’s Finance Committee today.
If approved, it would call on the state Legislature to end the free ride in place since 1982, when the arena’s former owners threatened to move the Knicks and Rangers to New Jersey.
But Garden officials accused Quinn of jumping the gun on the future of the tax break because of ongoing talks with the state to replace the aging arena with a new facility at the Farley Post Office location.
“We have previously communicated with the mayor and agreed to discuss this issue with him at the appropriate time,” Watkins said of the Garden’s willingness to take up the tax break with City Hall once the arena’s future is known.
The Garden is owned by Cablevision, which until now had resisted any suggestion of ending its property-tax break.
A consultant hired by the Garden plans to tell city lawmakers today that the value of the property tax break is a fraction of what other teams receive in public benefits.
The consultant, Thomas Hazinski, will testify that the Yankees alone will get $600 million in public support, including “$144 million in foregone property taxes,” according a study by the city’s Independent Budget Office.
Attempts to reach a spokeswoman for Quinn yesterday were unsuccessful.
Council Finance Committee Chairman David Weprin defended the move to end the tax break, saying the Garden has reaped $300 million in savings since it was enacted.
“When it was negotiated with the city in 1982, it made sense. There was a real question whether the Knicks and the Rangers would leave,” Weprin said. “Today, the Garden is profitable, and even if we don’t want them, the Knicks aren’t leaving.”
The Garden’s tax breaks came into focus several years ago when Cablevision financed a campaign to block construction of a West Side stadium for the Jets, which had the backing of the Bloomberg administration.