This has led Mayor Kevin Faulconer, county Supervisor Ron Roberts and other elected leaders to make their case directly to the NFL, explaining why league owners shouldn’t allow the Chargers to flee a town of loyal fans in what they depict as a naked money grab. But a newly released document — a 24-page “term sheet” the city provided the NFL — is undercutting this strategy because it can readily be interpreted as confirming Fabiani’s critique.

Union-Tribune business columnist Dan McSwain notes that the memo …

… didn’t offer many terms at all, especially those required to actually build a stadium.

 

Sure, Faulconer says in the document that the city could borrow $200 million toward stadium construction, while the county might chip in $150 million. …

 

However, the mayor doesn’t propose a timetable for asking his City Council or the county Board of Supervisors to approve any public financing. Sames goes with the public vote Faulconer deems necessary.

 

And, if taxpayers borrow $350 million using lease-revenue bonds, where is the lease? The mayor’s term sheet leaves a blank, quite literally, in the section that discusses the Chargers’ rent for their new stadium, after they presumably raised $750 million or more in private funds to build it.

 

Today the team’s rent is effectively zero. Fully supporting $350 million in municipal bonds requires roughly $22.5 million a year in revenue, assuming a 30-year note at 5 percent interest.

The number of parking spaces is also blank, as are “civic events” each year for which the team couldn’t collect revenue. Aztec games? Capital reserves? Blank, blank.

Controlling the ‘optics’? Or actually pursuing a deal?

McSwain says the lack of specifics shows the “term sheet” to be a political document. Other coverage, such as this account from KPBS, accepted city officials’ contention that the document was a work in progress, not a reflection of the limits on what the city and county can do to provide financial and other help getting a stadium built.

But the KPBS account also included a provocative comment from a local political consultant:

Tony Manolatos, a consultant to the mayor on the stadium, said he wasn’t surprised by the concerns raised in the NFL’s letter because “the NFL works for the Chargers.”

 

“Ever since the Chargers left the negotiating table, the NFL has been serving as their proxy,” Manolatos said.

Manolatos went on to say he believes the NFL wants to stay in San Diego. But to people who have been watching the stadium saga play out, his comments suggest that it’s not just the city putting out “political documents” to burnish its image and control the narrative. It’s also the NFL. Owners don’t want to see a reprise of the national backlash to the specter of the Colts fleeing Baltimore in the middle of the night in 1983.

So they encourage the idea that they are an impartial third party to a dispute between San Diego and the team, and don’t point out the fundamental problems with the city-county’s offer sheet. To use a term from Fabiani’s old profession, it appears that both the league and the city are trying to control the “optics” of the situation — while not appearing to make any progress toward a deal that would actually keep the Chargers in San Diego.

The bonds use money paid to lease the facilities they build to pay off construction and financing costs. The Chargers would presumably be expected to be the main payer of lease fees to the city-county consortium that Mayor Kevin Faulconer and county Supervisor Ron Roberts hope will build the new stadium and keep the team from heading to a stadium proposed for Carson in southwest Los Angeles County.

But the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled that using such bonds for a stadium is legal under state law — a ruling the city quickly relayed to the NFL and to other team owners who have been skeptical San Diego has the wherewithal to build a modern football stadium. The ruling upheld the state trial-court’s decision from a year ago.

The Union-Tribune noted that the ruling …

… may alleviate one of several concerns league officials raised in a Nov. 10 letter to the city’s lead stadium negotiator.

 

City negotiators have been working directly with the NFL since June, when the Chargers terminated stadium talks as the NFL considers whether the Chargers, St. Louis Rams or Oakland Raiders can move to Los Angeles next year. ….

 

City officials say they are drafting a response letter to the NFL that will include an explanation of last week’s appellate ruling, which City Attorney Jan Goldsmith called a significant victory.

 

“Whether you like them or not, lease-revenue bonds are a legal way to pay for public infrastructure projects,” Goldsmith said.

 

Critics say lease-revenue bonds, where city buildings and other assets are used as collateral to borrow money, violate the spirit of state law by skirting the two-thirds voter approval that would typically be required to raise such money.

Mayor has repeatedly promised stadium vote

But just because San Diego can issue the bonds with a public vote doesn’t mean city officials are likely to do so.

The Chargers’ popularity in San Diego is at low ebb as another disappointing season plays out. It has become common for fans of visiting teams from across the nation to out-cheer Charger loyalists at Qualcomm Stadium. Meanwhile, Fabiani, a former Clinton White House aide, has emerged as a lightning rod for fan anger over his repeated caustic attacks on Faulconer and other officials who have lobbied the NFL against allowing a money-making team with a loyal fan base to leave for more riches elsewhere.

When Faulconer seeks re-election next year, his handling of stadium negotiations — and his support for using public funds — will be a big issue. The Republican is likely to face a Democrat who is strongly opposed to public funding. He’s also repeatedly said San Diegans “deserve a vote” on a new stadium.

A possible scenario being discussed on sports talk radio was for Faulconer to seek voter blessing of the lease-revenue bonds in a special election with lower turnout. The theory is that using lease-revenue bonds to fund the city’s share of a $1 billion-plus stadium project would be much easier to sell to voters than raising sales taxes, rental-car taxes or hotel taxes, such as other communities have done to help pay for new arenas and stadiums.

In their coverage, both the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Voice of San Diego don’t appear to think much of the city’s chances. In the U-T’s opinion pages, former Sports Illustrated and USA Today writer Jill Lieber Steeg — a San Diego resident who is married to former NFL executive Jim Steeg, who still has good sources within the league — offered this brutal assessment:

Here is the cold, hard truth, San Diego: You are not the Chargers’ first choice. The Chargers want Los Angeles in the worst way. What can San Diego officials say or do on Monday to keep the team here? NOTHING. …

‘Planning to sneak out of town’

Steeg endorses the theory that the Chargers have not acted in good faith:

When the mayor tried to engage the team in stadium discussions, Mark Fabiani, special counsel to Spanos, told Faulconer to sit tight, that there was no sense of urgency. It is clear now why the Chargers were so quiet: They were planning to sneak out of town and move to Carson. They had hoped to demonstrate to the NFL that there was no interest in retaining them in San Diego.

 

But the mayor threw a monkey wrench into their plans. He announced in his State of the City address Jan. 14 that he was forming a task force of civic leaders to help develop the first “real plan” to build a new stadium and keep the team in San Diego.

 

 

From that moment on, Fabiani, who presumably conveys the thoughts, values and ethics of team ownership, has adopted a scorched earth strategy to get the team out of town. He has tried to manipulate the media and bloggers, unleashing texts and emails written in legalese with incredible ferocity and in great abundance, seemingly around the clock. He has leaked documents prior to important meetings with the Citizens’ Stadium Advisory Group (CSAG) and Eric Grubman, the NFL’s executive vice-president and Los Angeles-point person. And he has ridiculed, attacked and abused some of San Diego’s icons and civic-minded citizens, including Convention Center Chair Steve Cushman, City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, the mayor, CSAG and the Padres, insinuating through a media channel the baseball team was a roadblock in the Chargers getting a downtown stadium. The thought may be it would impact Petco Park for parking and compete for revenue-generating events.

‘The Chargers will not be on board’

The Voice of San Diego is also skeptical the city has a chance of keeping the team, for several reasons. Here is one:

[For the city’s] plan to work — for a public vote to be possible in January, in time to inform the NFL before it decides which team gets to move to Los Angeles — the San Diego City Council would need to begin talking about it in mid-September. And the mayor has said he won’t go forward with that unless the Chargers are on board. Thus, the Chargers would have to be on board by then.

 

The team would have to be fully invested in the effort. A successful campaign in that short of a time frame would require the team’s money as well.

 

The Chargers will not be on board by then, though. The moment the team signals that it is 100 percent committed to getting the mayor’s plan done and passed through voters, Carson leaders will likely drop their push. What’s more, NFL staff is not allowed to work with a city like Carson if a team isn’t leading.

 

The team would essentially have to give up its push for Los Angeles in about a month. All based on the promise … that a majority of San Diegans is willing to support the mayor’s plan.

Selling tickets for a team to be named later

There remain observers who think the Chargers will be stuck in San Diego, whatever their hopes for Los Angeles. The owner of the St. Louis Rams, billionaire Stan Groenke, has a much clearer and easier path to building a privately funded stadium for his team in Inglewood than the Chargers and the Raiders do for building a jointly used stadium in Carson, where financing details remain murky.

But one thing is playing: The NFL is eager to get started in Los Angeles. Fox Sports reported on Friday that team owners were to discuss the possibility of selling season tickets for the 2016 regular season for a Los Angeles team — without even knowing which team or teams will have relocated.

Attention, Rams, Raiders and Chargers fans: You might soon be able to get in line for tickets for your team’s home games next year in Los Angeles.

Even before it’s decided whether your team will actually move there. Sources have told FOX Sports that, at next Tuesday’s special meeting in Illinois, NFL owners will discuss implementing a program to allow fans to make deposits to get on a waiting list for tickets at a temporary stadium in L.A. before the end of the calendar year.

The goal would be to start building a season-ticket base for the 2016 season now, rather than waiting until it’s clear which, and how many, teams will be making the move.

This suggests the San Diego argument that allowing the team to relocate would make the league look bad isn’t likely to have much impact — and that the NFL, as Steeg says of the Spanos family, “wants Los Angeles in the worst way.”

charamelody / flickr

Although the race to land an NFL deal in Los Angeles have long been anyone’s game, some clarity on the potential outcome began to emerge this summer.

Dynamic duo

The competition originally pitted three teams against one another: the St. Louis Rams, the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers. With the Rams and Raiders both former L.A. teams, it seemed implausible that both might return, but league officials had signaled interest in at least two new arrivals. So when the Chargers and Raiders announced plans for a joint stadium development to rival Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s, all bets were suddenly off.

Now, however, a consensus has begun to emerge among insiders. “The likelihood of the NFL approving the Chargers and Raiders moving to Carson has increased,” the Orange County Register reported, “because of the rapidly dwindling chances of San Diego and Oakland to keep the teams, say league executives, sports consultants and the man whose job it is to sell the league on the relocation.”

At a key meeting next month, Raiders/Chargers pointman Carmen Policy — once an executive for the San Francisco 49ers and Cleveland Browns — will make the case to the league’s owners and executives. Policy told the Register “he sees a growing momentum within NFL ownership to give the Chargers and Raiders the green light to apply for relocation for the 2016 season as early as September or October. Policy said the league ‘without question’ will approve the moves to Carson, perhaps before the end of the 2015 regular season.”

San Diego showdown

The move represented a nightmare for the city of San Diego, which has put off Charger requests for a new stadium for roughly fifteen years. The Chargers did not pull the trigger on their plans for an L.A. stadium in the city of Carson until Kroekne announced his intention to build a stadium — presumably for the Rams — in Inglewood. Only at the last minute, “San Diego responded with a concept for a 65,000-seat facility that would be built next to the current Qualcomm Stadium,” as La Jolla Patch noted.

San Diego has scrambled to keep the Chargers — rushing along the would-be stadium’s environmental impact report, and mobilizing the support of Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego. “We want the Chargers to stay in San Diego if the right agreement can be reached,” she said, according to Patch. “As I have said before, if an agreement is reached, I am committed to making sure San Diego can benefit from state legislation that is consistent with what other cities have received for their sports facilities.”

Neither the Chargers nor the Raiders expect their respective cities to come through in the clutch with deals they’re willing and able to take; the Rams, meanwhile, have shown every indication of wanting to split St. Louis.

Calling audibles

As a result, the NFL itself has had to hustle. Whichever teams wind up in Los Angeles in 2016, they’ll all need to play somewhere. None of the current stadium plans would finish construction by then. In order to avoid being caught up short, the league has sought out “temporary venues for the 2016 season for one or two teams relocating to the Los Angeles area,” the Register reported. “USC officials have already said they want to host an NFL team at the Coliseum in 2016. The university’s lease, however, allows only one NFL team to play at the stadium.”

Even securing two temporary venues, however, would simply put off the real problem. “Three teams either want or need Los Angeles but there is only room for one stadium and two teams,” as the Los Angeles Daily News put it. Navigating the situation to a safe landing presents a unique challenge, as simple math suggests one team might be left out in the cold.”

Summing it all up, one league official told the Daily News the harsh truth: “It could get messy.”

The attorney for the Spanos family, which owns the team — former Clinton administration media aide Mark Fabiani — depicts the city of San Diego as disorganized, unrealistic and “unsophisticated” with its plan to have city voters weigh in via a Dec. 15 special election on whether the city and San Diego County should help the team pay for a new $1.2 billion stadium in Mission Valley. Fabiani points to the unlikelihood that the stadium can readily win necessary environmental approvals and questions the soundness of the funding plan, among several concerns.

City leaders, meanwhile, have gone from quietly seething over what they see as bad-faith negotiating by the team to open displays of disappointment and anger. In a recent radio interview, Mayor Kevin Faulconer accused the team of trying to “run out the clock” by delaying meaningful negotiations while pursuing a stadium project in Carson in southwest Los Angeles County.

Faulconer’s arguments appear to be winning the public-relations war in San Diego County, where social media, letters to the editor and online comments largely reflect the view that the Chargers are going through the motions in their talks with local officials while yearning for a chance to play in the far bigger Los Angeles metro market in a stadium they would jointly own with the Raiders, who want to leave Oakland for L.A.

‘Do you want to be in business with them?’

If that local perception becomes a national perception, that could hurt the Chargers’ chances of winning support for relocation from three-quarters of the 32 teams, as is required by league rules. The likelihood that this does become conventional wisdom recently got a big boost from an unexpected source: prominent, popular L.A. sportscaster Fred Roggin.

The longtime KNBC Los Angeles broadcaster made big waves recently by denouncing the Chargers and suggesting that they might not be welcome in Los Angeles if they left San Diego in ugly fashion.

“Given the way they’re conducting business, do you want to be in business with them? If you could pick, would you want to be in business with somebody who is spinning out of control, telling everybody a different story, trying to manipulate?” he said in an interview with 1090 AM San Diego. “We’re not stupid people, and would you want to be in business with someone that you couldn’t trust, that every 35 seconds changes his mind, or you are sitting across talking from him comes up with a reason to walk out of the room? I think that’s going to hurt the Chargers in Los Angeles.”

This isn’t the norm for cities which are being eyed by NFL teams for relocation. In the mid-1990s in Nashville, Tennessee, for example, the rumblings of interest from the Houston Oilers in relocating led to an intense campaign meant to show local enthusiasm, capped by bus-loads of fans showing up at the NFL owners’ meeting where the relocation was approved  — with the minimum number of votes.

On Monday, Faulconer had a 45-minute phone conversation with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell about the stadium situation. Details of the conversation weren’t divulged, but the city’s position — that the Chargers don’t want to give San Diego a chance — has been plain since Fabiani ridiculed the proposal for a Dec. 15 stadium vote earlier this month.

For their part, the Chargers have repeatedly made the case to Goodell and other owners that San Diego has been on notice for more than a decade that the team urgently needs a new stadium if it were to remain competitive in a league where new stadiums with lucrative luxury boxes and first-rate facilities have become common. Fabiani says the idea that San Diego never was given a chance is a historical fiction manufactured by city leaders who can’t get their act together.

A major component in the fight to keep professional football in Oakland and San Diego or move a team to Los Angeles is taxes: Will taxes be necessary to build a stadium?

Team owners want a public subsidy to help build a stadium in Oakland and San Diego. But two new proposals for stadiums in the Los Angeles area are not tied to any tax proposals.

A tax set aside for a football stadium would be a special tax requiring a two-thirds vote. The two-thirds vote provision was placed in the California Constitution when voters approved Proposition 13 in 1978.

City officials are concerned the two-thirds hurdle is too high to clear since voters don’t see using tax dollars for a sports stadium as a top priority.

According to a Contra Costa Times article on Oakland’s effort to improve the Coliseum for the Raiders and major league baseball’s A’s, a city-commissioned poll “found that keeping the A’s and Raiders finished last among 20 spending priorities for the 701 Oakland residents randomly polled. Only 7 percent of those polled were willing to pay significantly more to keep the teams.”

San Diego Chargers

Prop. 13’s requirement for a two-thirds vote for local tax increases for a specific purpose was an issue in San Diego. Mark Fabiani, representing the Chargers, accused the city of trying to work around the state law that required a two-thirds vote, thus putting more pressure on the city to somehow fashion a deal both the Chargers and the voters would accept.

The Los Angeles proposals are expected to pencil out without public money because it is believed the teams could raise hundreds of millions of dollars by selling personal seat licenses that allows for the purchase of prime tickets, a formula that is not probable in smaller markets.

While the Los Angeles proposals do not include tax increases, past efforts to fund a football stadium or refurbish the Coliseum in Los Angeles using tax increases ran into plenty of opposition.

Howard Jarvis

In July 1999 I wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, “L.A., Say No to the NFL Owners’ Greed.” The subheadline was: “No public funds should be expended to bring a football team to the Southland.”

I quoted then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue from an April press conference, “We all understand the reality of taxes in California since someone named Jarvis came on the national scene.”

He was referring to Howard Jarvis, who led the campaign to pass Prop. 13. And as I noted, “Residual attitudes from the tax revolt Howard Jarvis helped foster have local politicians from the mayor on down declaring that no new taxes will go toward refurbishing the Coliseum for the NFL.”

Fifteen years after that op-ed and, with still no NFL franchise in the country’s second-largest market, the NFL may be willing to back off the demand for public funds to establish a Los Angeles team.

Reform or worsen?

Steinberg insists he’s only trying to reform the California Environmental Quality Act.

SB 743, is a gut-and-amend bill by Steinberg is titled, “Environmental quality: transit oriented infill projects, judicial review streamlining for environmental leadership development projects, and entertainment and sports center in the City of Sacramento.”

That’s the long way of saying this is not really a CEQA reform bill. It’s a face-saving way out for Steinberg who has been awkwardly intertwined for more than 13 years with the haphazard development of a new sports arena in downtown Sacramento.

On its way to the Gov

This isn’t a one-off bill. Exemptions from the California Environmental Quality Act were granted a couple of years ago for a proposed stadium in downtown Los Angeles for a pro football team, and for a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara.

But Steinberg’s bill has so much more in it, which have nothing to do with reforming environmental laws:

• The bill would allow the City of Sacramento greater eminent domain powers to seize the downtown property currently in the way of building the project.
• The firm signed to lead construction of the new NBA Kings arena will be required to use unionized labor in the construction of the project.
• The bill will allow only a limited public comment period during the abbreviated CEQA review process.
• Even if there are violations to the CEQA laws found in the development of the arena, mitigation cannot be addressed until the end of the first basketball season.
• The bill would allow arena construction to go ahead even with forseen traffic impacts. Taxpayers will be on the hook when Caltrans decides to send a bill of $100 million-plus for freeway improvements — after arena construction is already underway.

Who voted for SB 743?

In the Senate, eleven Republicans voted with Steinberg to pass SB 743: Sen. Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, Sen. Steve Knight, R-Palmdale, Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, Sen. Jim Nielsen,  R-Gerber, Sen. Minority Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Niguel, Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Escondido, Sen. Tom Berryhill, R-Twaine Hart, Sen. Bill Emmerson, R-Redlands, and Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres.

Assembly members voting for passage of Steinberg’s SB 743 include: Assemblyman Frank Bigelow, R-O’Neals, Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway, R-Tulare, Assemblyman Brian Dahle, R-Bieber, Assemblywoman Beth Gaines, R-Rocklin, Assemblyman Jeff Gorell, R-Camarillo, Assemblyman Brian Jones, R-Santee, Assemblyman Eric Linder, R-Corona, Assemblyman Dan Logue, R-Linda, Assemblyman Brian Maienschein, R-San Diego, Assemblywoman Kristen Olsen, R-Modesto, and Assemblyman Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita.

Republicans voting against the bill were: Assembly members Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point, Allan Mansoor, R-Costa Mesa, Melissa Melendez, R-Riverside, Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga, Brian Nestande, R-Palm Dessert, Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, Rocky Chávez, R-Oceanside, Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia, and Marie Waldron, R-Escondido.

Only one Republican in the Senate voted against SB 743: Sen. Joel Anderson, R-San Diego.

I told ya so

After Sacramento officials accelerated approval on this latest arena deal in March, I contacted Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and asked if he planned on authoring legislation to streamline or bypass the required environmental process for the proposed Sacramento arena. Steinberg’s office denied any plan for a CEQA exemption. However, in order to shoehorn the publicly subsidized arena into downtown Sacramento, this had to be in the cards.

California’s absurdly strict environmental guidelines and restrictions prevent most large scale projects from ever taking place without legislative intervention. But instead of choosing certain projects for exemption, the California Legislature made noise about the need for CEQA reforms, but thus far, has killed any sincere attempts at real reform.

The Spring flip flop collection

Steinberg announced in late April he was authoring legislation to make changes to California’s Environmental Quality Act, including provisions to greatly help Sacramento’s proposed downtown arena.

He introduced SB 731 and said it would “accelerate the pace at which a Downtown Sacramento sports and entertainment complex would proceed through the environmental planning process.”

Sacramento has spent 13 years trying to build a publicly funded sports arena. And Steinberg has been involved every step of the way.

“Many say given how Sacramento officials have already rammed through the term sheet approval in record time, they will also try to ram the development process through, without giving residents and businesses the standard allotted time to question the process and project,” I wrote March 30.

I’ve written nearly 30 stories on CalWatchdog about the Sacramento arena debacle. I’ve provided data and studies showing publicly subsidized arenas never pencil out, leaving taxpayers to continue subsidizing the facilities.

What could Steinberg have used to sweetened the pot for Republicans in order to garner some of their votes for passage of SB 743? No one is talking… yet.