For Giuliani, Championing the Yankees Pays Dividends

Rudy Giuliani occasionally boarded a police boat at his official residence, Gracie Mansion, for an express trip with his entourage to Yankee Stadium. He never ceased to remind New Yorkers that he was the team's greatest fan, and he reveled in generous handling by the team's principal owner, George Steinbrenner -- prime box seats, team regalia, and rare and relatively low-priced World Champion rings that will reap the former mayor some hefty capital gains if he sells them. Giuliani repaid Steinbrenner's favors with an unrelenting city hall crusade to erect a billion-dollar new stadium at taxpayer expense, and was ever ready to endorse the ballclub's steady stream of less-than-credible threats to haul off to the New Jersey meadowlands. Once, Giuliani turned a fallen stadium beam -- no one was around at the time it came loose -- into smoking-gun evidence that the House that Ruth Built needed to be replaced immediately. Most New Yorkers weren't buying it. Like many of his often-grandiose propositions, his dream of a new-and-improved stadium was not realized while he was in office, though Giuliani did manage to approve a $21 million rent reduction for the Yankees, thus making the Yankees' sweatheart lease for the city-owned venue even sweeter.

If anyone still doubts -- post-Kerik -- that a Giuliani White House would be anything other than a case study in cronyism, there comes the relatively little-noticed revelation that Giuliani Security and Safety was listed in 2006 court documents as a security consultant for the stadium. A recent study by the civic group Good Jobs New York picked up this latest instance in which Giuliani, after leaving office, gained a client for whom he had gone to bat as mayor. (During the late 1990s economic boom, large companies got on line for special city tax abatements and were rarely disappointed.)

Titled "Insider Baseball," the report that picked up on Giuliani's consulting work for the Yankees found that the public cost of the stadium project that later came together under Mayor Michael Bloomberg is $663 million for city, state and federal taxpayers -- or $217 million more than the official estimate given in 2006. The new stadium and surrounding infrastructure will cost $1.3 billion in all.

How much money Giuliani's consulting firm has collected from the Yankees isn't known. The court records didn't give an amount, and his presidential camp -- so busy deflecting questions on the Iraq quagmire these days -- wouldn't say. Adding to the mystery, the Bloomberg administration released records related to stadium planning costs for 2001, 2002 and 2004, curiously leaving out 2003, without explanation. Numerous other former officials, or the businesses for which they work, have cashed in on myriad lobbying, consulting or legal fees associated with the stadium project, including the firm that employs former Giuliani police commissioner Howard Safir. (The team's front office is headed by former Giuiani deputy mayor Randy Levine.)

"Our findings do not suggest any illegal behavior or conflicts of interest," Good Jobs New York wrote. "But they do reveal a large, costly redevelopment project that was rushed through the public approval process without meaningful participation from the community or clearly defined benefits to residents and taxpayers. Public faith in government is eroded when private corporations hire former government officials and use their expertise and influence to evade participatory planning and established economic development principles."