{"id":938,"date":"2011-08-05T08:48:03","date_gmt":"2011-08-05T12:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=938"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:28:48","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:28:48","slug":"nassau-county-cant-pay-unions-but-theres-always-money-to-give-away-to-rich-businessmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/08\/05\/nassau-county-cant-pay-unions-but-theres-always-money-to-give-away-to-rich-businessmen\/","title":{"rendered":"Nassau County can\u2019t pay unions but there\u2019s always money to give away to rich businessmen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yevgeny Shrago<\/em><\/p>\n

While America watched its lawmakers step back from the edge of fiscal collapse this week (in a deal that progressives shouldn\u2019t worry too much about, since future cuts always get reversed by future Congresses), a small-scale drama involving Long Island sports showed exactly where Tea Party priorities lie. \u00a0Edward P. Mangano, the Nassau County Commissioner who willingly put Nassau County into\u00a0receivership<\/a>\u00a0rather than\u00a0raise<\/a>\u00a0taxes, suffered a different kind of setback this week, as Nassau County voters\u00a0defeated<\/a>\u00a0a proposed $400M bond issuance that Mangano put forward to build a new arena for the National Hockey League\u2019s hapless New York Islanders.<\/p>\n

Sports arenas are a terrible deal for most communities. They finance the stadium and pay back the loans, while the owner gets the actual stadium to do with what she will. \u00a0The reason the Islanders need a new arena is that when voters and government officials in Nassau approved the old one, they retained\u00a0ownership<\/a>. \u00a0The new arena would have been\u00a0publicly financed<\/a>\u00a0on a 30-year bond. \u00a0In return, the Islanders would pay a percentage of their revenues to the county every year. \u00a0Unfortunately, if the Islanders revenue remained stagnant or improved only moderately, the return would have still left the county in the red on the deal. \u00a0Opponents of the deal charged that Mangano\u2019s numbers, which projected a 73% increase in attendance, were unbelievably rosy.<\/p>\n

Fuzzy numbers, socialized losses and privatized gains sound like they could have come right out of the political debates on the national stage. \u00a0But Mangano is a Tea Party electee who promised fiscal sense and lower taxes. \u00a0Unfortunately, counties need to pay their debts: when the attendance bump from the new arena subsided, Nassau County residents would have seen their already stretched budget take on a new set of obligations. \u00a0Maybe this is what Mangano wanted though; after all, fiscal crises are a great opportunity to break unions and cut welfare payments, while leaving subsidies to private businesses untouched, all in the name of the \u201cfree market.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yevgeny Shrago While America watched its lawmakers step back from the edge of fiscal collapse this week (in a deal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-f8","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}