New York Times: A Question Mark Looms Over 3 Expensive Projects, by Charles V. Bagli:

More than two years ago, the Bloomberg administration came up with an aggressively creative way to use tax-exempt bonds to finance two of the most expensive stadiums in the world, one for the Yankees in the Bronx and another for the Mets in Queens.

The IRS initially approved the use of the bonds for the ballparks, but quickly issued a proposal in 2006 to tighten the rules governing the use of tax-exempt bonds so that it would be more difficult, and perhaps impossible, for this kind of financing to be used again by profitable, private enterprises like professional sports teams.

Now state and city officials say the proposed rules are jeopardizing what is planned to be the city’s next big sports palace: the $950 million Barclays Center, an 18,000-seat basketball arena for the Nets that is the centerpiece of the huge residential and commercial complex in Brooklyn known as Atlantic Yards….

State and city officials, along with the developer, have been lobbying the Treasury Department in Washington either to block the rule change or, more likely, to provide waivers for projects that had been in the development pipeline before 2006, which would include the Yankees, Mets and Nets. If adopted, the IRS rule would apply to all tax-exempt bonds issued after February 2007.