For all the powers of The Post, we can’t predict who will win Sunday’s clash at the Meadowlands between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos.
But the big loser is already clear: the New Jersey taxpayer.
That’s because the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which operates the MetLife Stadium, site of this year’s Super Bowl, is up to its goalposts in debt for its many projects — more than $800 million of it. And guess who’s on the hook for that.
Writing in City Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s Steve Malanga noted that, in its early years, the authority brought in enough revenue to cover its cost and debts. But mission creep and unwise spending soon took over, abetted by very little oversight — and by governors who used it as a giant patronage mill.
“What happened with the Sports Authority,” Malanga tells The Post, “is the kind of legal theft that politicians engineer and the courts endorse.”
The good news is Gov. Chris Christie has clipped the authority’s wings by consolidating different authorities and privatizing the contracts to run the facilities. Already the Sports Authority has shed about two-thirds of its employees. As the Asbury Park Press reported in 2012, “The dismantling of the authority empire has been rapid.”
That’s good news, and the governor deserves credit. But even with this reform, Jersey’s citizens remain stuck with all that debt the authority racked up.
It’s a timely reminder that no matter who wins on the field Sunday, the taxpayers who built that stadium will be paying for decades for this big fat political fumble.