When a new lease of Anaheim’s stadium to Angels’ owner Arte Moreno was being drafted over the past months, nobody appears to have been negotiating on behalf of the City.
(Read this Voice of OC story — and this OC Register story, if you can get past the paywall — for recent background about the deal.)
Why Arte Moreno wants to let Curt Pringle make HIM out to be the bad guy is beyond me.
As Councilwoman Kris Murray, ever-loyal to Anaheim uber-lobbyist Curt Pringle, appears to have been in charge of negotiations, “no one negotiating on behalf of” the City of Anaheim may be literally true. The game of Murray and her Council cohorts since at least January 2012 has been to give away as much of the city’s revenue stream as possible to private enterprise. She’s negotiating, all right — but it’s only by the twisted logic that any amount of money taken from taxpayers to wealthy interests benefits the city can she be said to be negotiating on the city’s behalf.
(Murray does this at the same time as she demonstrates her fiscally conservative bona fides by making a big show of squeezing every last penny out of small public interest non-profits who come to them hat in hand. Because, without this juxtaposition of treatment of rich vs. poor, maybe these giveaways to the likes of Arte Moreno and Bill O’Connell and — most of all — middleman Curt Pringle just wouldn’t be obscene enough.)
The proposed stadium lease (which you can read here — PDF warning) is so bad, surpassing even the previous monstrosity, that it is doubtful that Moreno even asked for all of what he got. In fact, let’s make that a challenge: let’s have Kris Murray and her crack negotiation team publicly identify anything and everything that Moreno asked for that he did not get. My bet is that, unless he wanted the City to provide him dancing girls to rock him to sleep every night, this lease gives Moreno far more than he asked for. (And if he did ask for all of this, it may only be because he was first assured that it was his for the asking.)
And why not, from Murray’s perspective?
This isn’t her money she’s forking over — and her bet is that enough of it will come back to her in campaign contributions (and more importantly “uncoordinated” independent expenditures) to keep her on Council and beyond. And if by some chance she loses — well, a lot of wealthy people owe her a lot for her service, and it’s good form (in recruiting future people like her) for such debts to be paid. Murray has already gotten some nice private sector positions to supplement her income; maybe Arte Moreno will show his thanks on down the line. (Not that there’s an actual arrangement of such a sort, of course; that would be wrong. Worse than wrong, it might be provable.)
So, once again, Anaheim’s Council acts as if they were using public money to bribing wealthy private interests for their personal and political gain — whether or not they are technically doing so.
How can you tell that the Council is trying to slip one over on an unsuspecting public? The secret, as in all farce, is timing. Get ready for this:
They released news of what may be a final vote on this massive giveaway on a Friday night — a Friday night that began a three-day weekend — with the Council meeting beginning on the afternoon of the next working day.
This, for the benefit of our less-attentive readers, is Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend. Lots of high-level movers and shakers — as well as lower level moved and shaked — are out of town. (Sole voice of reason on council Mayor Tom Tait is apparently among them — and I wonder whether he even knew that this was coming before he left.) So by releasing new of the vote on Friday night, the Council Murrjority made sure that even if a gutty ragtag band of activists could get together to oppose this massive giveaway of public funds, few people would be listening to us until Tuesday — when they’re going to be pretty busy.
“Stacking the deck” doesn’t even begin to describe what they’re doing. People don’t pay Curt Pringle the big bucks to play fair! They don’t want a public debate over this; they want to do the equivalent of slipping the public a sedative and having it wake up in an icy bathtub missing a kidney.
“Surprise! We just leased PRIME REAL ESTATE to a developed to DO WHATEVER HE WANTS WITH for a term of 66 YEARS! Here’s the number of the emergency room; you’ll need dialysis.”
The only real question is whether the public will be outraged over this.
It should be. I’ll review the lease arrangement later today or tomorrow. For now, let me just provide you with a short snippet from the Voice of OC story on this sorry development:
Beyond full naming rights over the team, franchise owners under a proposed framework for negotiating a separate land lease would also get a 66-year lease of the stadium land, including a 50-acre parcel called the “Stadium District,” for free.
Under that arrangement, the city would be freed from spending about $600,000 annually for stadium upkeep, according to a staff report.
The land lease outline being considered next week could allow team owners to keep all tax revenue, such as hotel room taxes and sales tax generated from developing the area.
The land around Angel Stadium is estimated to be worth $300 million.
With the land lease, the owners could develop a range of tax revenue generating businesses, including hotels and shops.
The focus of coverage thus far has been focused on the fact that the lease agreement will finally allow Arte Moreno to remove the name “Anaheim” from the name of the Angels altogether.
That’s just the insult, folks. There will be lots of time to focus on the insult.
For now, pay attention to the injury. Very little will be coming into city coffers for the rest of this century from this prime real estate — and the prime real estate surrounding it. The City needs money — and it will not get it this way.
If the City of Anaheim owned a bunch of solid gold bars, like those in Fort Knox, and decided to just give them away to a developer while claiming that the City would eventually profit from the deal — wouldn’t that piss you off?
Wouldn’t you at least have wanted to see a full debate about it?
Well, that is in essence what’s happening on Tuesday.
Focus on the injury. Focus on preventing the injury.
This story will, as probably doesn’t even require saying, be part of a daily (or even more than daily) series on the topic stretching through at least Wednesday. So fasten your seat belts.
The timing of this thing is absolutely disgraceful.
Mayor Tait is isolated in this council, but is he so isolated that he appears not be informed of the steps of this negotiation process? You’d think that city staff would timely prepare reports for the entire council to review, including deadlines.
I don’t know what he knew and when. If it was discussed in closed session, he wouldn’t have been legally able to leak it — and so (I’d think) he wouldn’t have. Not everyone on a City Council is so scrupulous about that. Mattsy gets his information somewhere, eh?
How much wholesale surrender of City assets will it be necessary to observe before somebody mentions the word “recall”? Will there be anything left to save by then? What’s next on der Pringle’s ‘fire sale’ agenda for the City? A sale / leaseback giveaway on City Hall?
It’s ODD (certainly not FUNNY!) that the City’s counterparties in these ‘negotiations’ have examined, analyzed, and probably modeled THEIR financing for DECADES ahead to build their shopping lists,( why does the attendance FLOOR for the $2/ seat payments to the City JUMP to 3 million in 2021?) yet as our supposed ‘stewards’ on the dias get by with limp, vague assurances about the ‘important percentage of Tourism District revenues’ to the city?
We’ve SEEN their Santa Claus hats – Where are THEIR analyses? Where are THEIR numbers? WHY does the CITY have to GIVE AWAY (oh, I’m sorry, lease for a whole $1!) the WHOLE package UP FRONT and ASSUME THE FUTURE RISK, when alternate strategies exist, such as discretionary incremental LOAN forgiveness based on RESULTS for City revenues, etc. exist?
I think the City needs to have better representation of the RESIDENTS interests,and I’ll be happy to sign as many petitions as is takes to get some.
The pdf describes an MOU, not an actual lease. The only binding provision is to extend the opt-out window (flexibility for the Angels that is extremely valuable) to 2019.
I can’t fathom why section 7 of the MOU isn’t memorialized separately as an amendment
to the 1996 lease. That’s seems odd.
Can Moreno move by Feb 2017? If not why give up that advantage?
Does your first sentence imply that there will be significant difference between them, given the article’s subject of questionable release/vote scheduling? My curiosity was also piqued about the few provisions tagged ‘binding’ and why the urgency? Given Moreno’s previous modus operandi using what was OMITTED from the agreement vs INCLUDED, I wondered if the 30- day ‘walk away’ of 8-b would let Moreno achieve (something?) and then walk, with the rest only smoke. But that over – thought, just like trying to get rich by merely mimicking Warren Buffets stock buys, is probably a false trail, since one will never, sadly, get a timely view of the WHOLE picture, neither will we here. Will the Council?
The deal may already have been done. If that’s true the MOU is just window dressing.
“Why give up that advantage?” So they can claim that their hand was forced and that they had to take a bad deal — of course.
The “66 years of parking lot control for $1/year” (or whatever it is) is signed separately. That one may be able to go forward. And once it does — well, how much less in the stadium to Anaheim or anyone else once Moreno owns the parking lot — including the ability to tear it up and build something new — until roughly 2080? Yes … 2080!
What do you think, David — did Moreno ask for all of this and more, making him the villain, or does the City Council just really want to throw this stuff at him for their (mostly) private purposes?
My question was indeed rhetorical as I sense that something of great value was handed away, seemingly just for the right to re-negotiate. The City can’t claim their hand was forced because in the end they could keep that original date and the Angels stay.
“…did Moreno ask for all of this and more, making him the villain, or does the City Council just really want to throw this stuff at him for their (mostly) private purposes?”
Who knows? It doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether or not the deal is good for us citizens of Anaheim. The land deal is completely different and looks like another stinker. I wonder if Pringle will be Moreno’s land use/entitlement “consultant.”
Upon further reflection, I wonder why the two issues aren’t inexplicably linked. It sure looks like if the development agreement is made the Angels could still walk in 2019 AND Moreno could keep or sell off the development rights (including another of those disgusting tax rebate deals) to an assignee. For all we know a transfer has already been figured out behind the Katella Curtain.
Red flag.
Oops. “Inextricably” linked. Although the whole mess is inexplicable on the face of it. Somebody’s pulling the strings on this. And no, I’m not a mind reader. It really is an easy deduction. Nobody is this dumb.
Dave Zenger for the win.
No the Angels cannot move before 2016-17, who the Hell is building them a stadium in this economy, without RDA money, when we now have enough studies to know the sports teams are losers for the cities that host them? Giving them more time to negotiate gives them wiggle room, holding them to the lease has them over the barrel and gives us the advantage.
No the lease is the most valuable real estate in the area (well over $100 million worth) is not tied to the team, so Arte can hold up deals, sell off the team and have the new owners come negotiate for their own goodies or threaten to leave, etc. Why would we do this? if we simply stick with the current agreement they are on the hook to us, we could maybe even get back some of the BS concessions we gave up thanks to the ridiculous Tom Daly negotiation, and threaten to lock them out of our stadium unless we get our name back etc. THE ANGELS HAVE NOWHERE TO GO!
We cannot prove a link between Pringle and Moreno, although I would bet la enforcement might if we can show enough of a pattern over time of quid pro quo, instead I understand Tom Wood (former City Manager) is the consutant for the Angels, but I would bet Curt is not far behind, given Tom’s son works for Pringle and is helping spin the ARC streetcar project. like father like son, look for them both at the same pork trough.
We need to be there Tuesday, with news trucks.
OK — Zenger gets to write one installment of this series, if he wants to.
All good points, but studies only help when Councils acknowledge them or bother to read them! Do ours? Some of those studies were already around for the last go round! I forgot the source, but saw online where DETROIT is building a $444 M Downtown Hockey Arena! Yes, DETROIT! For all I know I could wake up to find Gov.Rick Perry simultaneously shaking Moreno’s hand while he pats his own back for luring another CA business to TX! lol.
San Antonio Angels? Why not? If you give Arte another 2.5 years to make a deal.
the team sucks and the dogs and beers cost to much..clippers are right around the corner
Hi
So this is the other side –
The rich guy need $150,000,000 for infrastructure at Angel Stadium or the place will fall down and after all we do need a baseball team. I guess that is what the majority wants.
Next
Arte wants to build offices, retail space and food courts which will bring in people and money year round.
This means thousands of year round jobs and taxes for the state, city and county.
The city of Anaheim has supported these type of projects in the past.
Flip side seems ok and inline with most business deals with cities, counties and states.
Mikey
Do you know why a city like Anaheim sometimes promotes such projects?
Generally, it’s because they drive money into the city’s coffers.
How does this one add money into the city’s coffers? Please explain your answer.
Oh baloney. The place isn’t going to fall down.
Arte doesn’t want to build anything. He just wants control of the development rights. And he got them for free. Plus almost 100% of all future tax revenues on undeveloped land.
The latter means the rest of us have to pick up the tab for municipal services future development requires.
Unfortunately, there is no flip side.