Best Sports Stadium Name Ever?
The new Mets stadium is called Citi Field thanks to a $400 million contract with ailing financial conglomerate Citigroup.
Now two New York City councilmen would like to amend that name to "Citi/Taxpayer Field." As the New York Times' city room blog reports:
In 2006, Citigroup signed a 20-year, $400 million contract to name the Mets' new stadium in Queens Citi Field. As recently as last week, the troubled financial-services conglomerate said it had no intention of backing out of the deal for the new stadium — the replacement for Shea Stadium, which is being demolished.
Well now, with Citigroup getting a second multi-billion-dollar rescue from the federal government, two City Council members would like to see Uncle Sam get some credit.
The two councilman, Vincent M. Ignizio and James S. Oddo, both of Staten Island, called on Tuesday for the stadium to be renamed Citi/Taxpayer Field. The two men will soon be the only Republicans on the 51-member Council; the only other Republican, Anthony Como of Queens, was recently defeated in a special election.
"Perhaps a name change is in order, since it will be the taxpayers of the country who will foot the bill for not only part of stadium, but for the company itself," Mr. Ignizio said. "The taxpayers are spending billions for this company to maintain its operations and deserve the recognition for their largess."
Of course, as reason has pointed out, nearly every stadium's name could be amended to include recognition of the contributions from long-suffering taxpayers.
