C’mon Lerner Family. Was it not enough that the city paid $600M-plus for the stadium, in which you play games frequently, without issue? Now you refuse to pay rent, and demand damages of the city? For real? You’re kidding, right?
I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.
Simply amazing. The Lerner family may soon be more hated in DC than the Bush family, and that’s saying something.
Also, there should be (but probably won’t be) serious ramifications to the DC City Council members who voted to give the greedy Lerner bastards $600 million in gifts without bothering to hire lawyers capable of writing a contract that didn’t suck.
And people why I get cranky about public financing for sports stadiums…
I really want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they have a reasonable claim, which is entirely possible, especially given how well the District conducts business, but I find it very hard. Unfortunately, as part of the corrupt MASN situation, MLB appeared to have mandated the Lerners use the Peter Angelo$ playbook as well.
As much as I’d like to think this is legitimate, you don’t withhold rent unless you’ve got a serious problem, and $3.5M is serious dollars. Withhold part of the rent, surely, but all of it? That’s just insane.
I heard Mayor Fenty on WTOP while making my free Chick-fil-A sammich run. Hizzoner did not seem terribly concerned and acted as though it would be worked out. Privately, we can only speculate what he is thinking.
There’s some interesting things in that article. On page two of the web article is this:
“Instead of turning over the tax money as soon as the bulk of full- and partial-season ticket packages were sold last winter and spring, the Lerners are making payments on a game-by-game basis, the sources said.”
The thing that would be most interesting on that (at least to accountants and those of us who suffered through startups and consultancies) is how they are realizing their income. When I was at my last job there was some internal conflict over when they realized revenue. Receiving the money from the customer wasn’t enough; it wasn’t realized till the contract was completed.
Are the Lerners recognizing those sales as realized revenue once they sell the non-refundable ticket? If so, and they’re not paying the city at that time, that’s pretty sleazy.
As far as the rent withholding, I’d be a lot more sympathetic to their position if there was any mention of putting the money in escrow.
Overall I’m with you, Joseph – public funding of venues for the enrichment of private organizations never seems to work out well for the taxpayer. If their business can’t float on its own why are we supporting it? “Jobs” is often the answer but they never seem to be jobs anyone would want or couldn’t find around the corner at McD’s.