Dan Steinberg

The worst part about Tuesday's vote on a new tax incentive agreement with MetLife, according to a watchdog group that follows corporate subsidies, may have been the fact that the vote was taken without any public notice other than a story in that morning's New York Times.

Normally, the mayorally controlled Industrial Development Agency publishes an agenda about two weeks in advance of its meetings and holds a public hearing a few days before each. But the new MetLife deal didn't come up in the public hearing last week, and wasn't on the advance agenda for Tuesday's IDA board meeting.

"It demonstrates they were not willing to put it in front of the public, which is sort of to the detriment of the deal," said Good Jobs New York research associate Dan Steinberg. "The city would have had more leverage if the public was allowed to comment on it," he added, since the public's objections would show the pressure that the city was facing to exact greater concessions from MetLife.

For the full Good Jobs statement, see here. The details of the new agreement, passed by the IDA's board, can be found in the city Economic Development Corporation's press release here.

- Matthew Schuerman

The IRS is planning to revisit the financing scheme behind the new Yankees and Mets stadiums because, according to sources cited by The Bond Buyer, the arrangements looked "too much like a private loan." The feds approved those deals earlier this year, concluding that the payments in lieu of taxes that the sports teams would use to pay off the bonds resembled general taxes. Dan Steinberg, research analyst at Good Jobs New York, told us that it is unclear if the proposed regulations would have prohibited the stadium bonds had they been in place earlier (thay almost certainly won't affect them now, just other similar projects around the country), but that yesterday's action "is a reflection of the ambiguities in the IRS decision and how difficult it is for the IRS to make the case that PILOTS are the same thing as tax revenue."

What's the big deal? The new regulations will drive to the heart of the question about whether cities should be allowed to use their power to issue tax-exempt bonds for the benefit of privately owned sports franchises (which don't even make it into the World Series, to boot). And the new rules may imperil Forest City Ratner's deal to finance the Nets arena.

-Matthew Schuerman