Leading off today: As you may recall,
I was critical of state Sen. Tom Libous over the weekend for sticking his name on Empire State Games promotional material as a sponsor of the event despite the fact that the money involved came out of our pockets rather than his.
I promised at that time that I would give Libous or his staff a chance to respond to my e-mail questioning the propriety of using taxpayer dollars to promote his name, and I'm happy to say that I received a response this morning from Bijoy Datta, director of public affairs in Libous' office.
Here's the unedited text of Datta's response:
"We here in Greater Binghamton are lucky to live in one of the best sports towns in the State.
"We have a lot of great teams and events that some bigger or comparable cities, like Rochester, Syracuse, Albany or Scranton, don’t have.
"We have the Double-A Binghamton Mets, who’ve featured MLB superstars Jose Reyes and David Wright on the right side of the infield just a few years ago. Unfortunately, we almost lost minor league baseball a few years ago. But, thanks to Senator Libous’ needed intervention to help solve a bad stadium deal made decades ago, we were able to keep minor league baseball in Binghamton for at least ten more years.
"We have the AHL’s Binghamton Senators, who’ve recently featured NHL starters like Jason Spezza and Ray Emery. Ottawa was very clear that it would’ve never sited the team here if Senator Libous hadn’t secured more than $5 million in Senate Grants to make needed improvements at the decades-old Arena. We made such an impression that Ottawa just announced last year that they’d renewed their contract and will stay another five years.
"We have the PGA Champion’s Tour Dick’s Sporting Goods Open that brought fan favorites like Craig Stadler, Tom Kite and Fuzzy Zoeller to En-Joie Golf Course in Endicott last July. When the B.C. Open ended a couple years ago and it looked like we’d lost pro golf for good, Senator Libous fought like heck to secure $1.5 million in Senate Grants over three years to help make the new tournament possible.
"We have Division I sports at Binghamton University. Since no D-I team could reasonably play in the outdated old gyms, Senator Libous helped secure $30 million to construct the state-of-the-art BU Events Center. And, one of these years, we’re going to make March Madness.
"We have some of the most talented young athletes that play here, too. We saw some of the world’s best young baseball players at the World Youth Classic. Senator Libous helped make that tournament possible during its tenure by securing $75,000 in Senate Grants over three years.
