Can I please have $400 million? I need to know by August 1, because if you can't do it, I'll find someone else who will. Need more time to think about it? To figure out how you're going to finance the loan you'll need in order to show me the money? Tell you what. I'll make you a deal. If you can do the math, analyze the long-range implications, consult your advisors, and you decide in my favor, I'll reimburse you for any expenses you incur in the process. But if you decide against me, the costs are on your balance sheet, not mine.
What idiot would take that deal? Apparently, Charles Wang is hoping we will. We being the taxpayers of Nassau County.
The $400 million in question is the amount of the bond Nassau County will have to float in order to finance a new Coliseum and minor league baseball park at Mitchel Field. Wang projects that the new complex will throw off at least $14 million a year in sales, as well as additional tax revenues from those sales, which will largely offset the debt service.
Whether or not that is true, and whether or not the project is a good or bad deal for Nassau, incentivizing us to make sure the vote goes his way seems like a stacked deck to me. Wang should either cover the costs of the referendum, however it turns out, as an investment and a show of good faith, or the county should finance it on the merits of the proposal. Paying off financially strapped taxpayers to effect a particular outcome feels suspiciously like graft.
Don't we already have enough of that kind of problem in Nassau without entering into bondage to make that sort of thing official?
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