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Yankee Stadium Bonds Request Defended as Good for the Bronx

The Bloomberg administration is defending its decision to seek additional tax-exempt bonds for the new Yankee Stadium, pointing to the new jobs, increased revenue, and parkland the project will bring to the Bronx.

The new Yankee Stadium, scheduled to be ready for Opening Day 2009, has already received $942 million in tax-exempt financing, but the Yankees are seeking additional tax-exempt bonds that would primarily fund “scope improvements” such as a scoreboard, concession stands, and other stadium amenities.

Since the Tax Reform Act was enacted in 1986, private developers have faced more restrictions when trying to get tax-exempt bonds for stadiums. In 2006, the Yankees, with the support of the Bloomberg administration, avoided such restrictions by having the city and state pay off the bond debt with money received from the Yankees, also known as payment in lieu of taxes.

The IRS is in the process of closing this loophole, but city officials are requesting that they not.

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In the Bronx, a Rift Between Two Larrys

It is almost expected in the Bronx that elected officials will seek to have their children follow them into the world of politics. It is also true that yesterday’s friends can quickly become today’s political adversaries.

That seems to be the situation in a City Council race in the northeast section of the borough, covering Williamsbridge, Wakefield and Co-op City.

It looks as if Councilman Larry B. Seabrook is positioning his daughter, Latisha, to succeed him. Mr. Seabrook, who is barred by the city’s term limit laws from running for re-election next year, said that his daughter was looking seriously at running for his seat.

“She has involvement in the community,” Mr. Seabrook said of his daughter, who works as a manager in a city agency.

If she enters the race, she will face a rival for the seat who has been a longtime family friend, former Councilman Lawrence A. Warden.

Mr. Seabrook and Mr. Warden were once so closely aligned politically that they were known widely as “the two Larrys.” They belonged to the same political club. And in the 1990s, when Mr. Seabrook was a state senator and Mr. Warden served in the City Council, the two officials shared office space and often traveled together to political functions.

Mr. Seabrook left the State Senate in 2000 to mount a primary challenge (ultimately unsuccessful) to Representative Eliot L. Engel. Mr. Warden left the Council at the end of 2001, blocked by term limits from running for re-election, and Mr. Seabrook succeeded him in the Council.

After that, the Larrys drifted in different directions.

Mr. Warden, some Bronx Democrats said, was angered by what he considered Mr. Seabrook’s tepid support for his unsuccessful 2002 race for the State Senate.

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