VOC Badly Misrepresents James Vanderbilt on Stadium

It’s always a sad day when I have to take on the generally laudable Voice of OC, but that seems to be part of the role we have to play in the current blogosphere ecology now that they seem to be taking Mayor Aitken’s lead a bit too much. I finally read this story from last Friday entitled “How Trashed is Angels Stadium” — been busily obsessed with work and convention-watching-and-reading — and it’s just too wrong to escape comment.

Here’s a long quote from the VOC’s story, copied for purposes of criticism under fair use, that I have to take apart.

Former Republican Mayor Tom Tait said in a Thursday phone call that the audit will clarify what he believes is written in plain spoken English in the lease agreement – the Angels are responsible for any maintenance of the stadium.

“Any work that needs to be done on deferred maintenance is their responsibility,” he said, adding he is hopeful elected officials will use their commissioned assessment to get the Angels to pay for any needed repairs.

Not everyone agrees.

Former City Councilman James Vanderbilt said in a Friday morning phone interview that the language of the agreement is vague and the team has met its obligations.

“It doesn’t really spell out what maintenance means, and so it’s open for interpretation and I guess the problem is when you have that kind of ambiguity and I guess enough lawyers, you can argue that you did fulfill your obligation,” he said.

Vanderbilt added that the definition of a first-class stadium has changed.

“If you wanted to hold the Angels’ feet to the fire, then they’ve got a tall order to fill to meet that first class stadium status and I don’t know if there’s a definitive definition that the Major League Baseball defines that as,” he said.

In October 2022, City Attorney Rob Fabela shared similar sentiments to Tait.

“If there’s a number out there that represents the amount of capital repairs and improvements needed to maintain Angel Stadium in good condition repair equal to a first class professional baseball stadium, Angels are responsible for that – subject to the capital reserve contribution the city makes,” he said at the time.

The first two paragraphs are fine — and what Mayor Tait says about the plain wording of the lease agreement with the Angels is accurate: the Angels are responsible for maintenance, even though the City Council can usually be convinced to bent to the demands of Anaheim’s most influential interests for public funds, previous agreements be damned. Then it goes way south.

But that’s not what he says. Read it: I put it in bold.

Former Councilmember James Vanderbilt is trotted out as opposing Tait’s view of the contract terms: quoting him as stating that “the language is vague and the team has met its obligations.”

Vanderbilt says that the contract doesn’t spell out what “maintenance” means. OK, but I’d argue that at a minimum it spells it out sufficiently (I’m not looking up whether it is a defined term) to be enforceable. Contracts don’t always need to spell out every term, especially when a term has a defined meaning in an industry — as Tait (being in construction and dealing with contracts) knows quite well.

But Vanderbilt’s quote is not about what the contract term means, but about whether the Angels are able to challenge it. And of course they are able to challenge it. There’s some ambiguity, they have an army of lawyers, and not only does Anaheim not have that legal firepower but both the Mayor and the Council majority has motivations not to fight the well-heeled team in court. They may be able to win such a case — but that doesn’t mean that, without that firepower, they actually have the better case!

Vanderbilt then adds that the term “first-class stadium” may be ambiguous as well. And, here again, yes it may be, to some extent. But there are also some very good tools for judges to use to assess the term’s meaning — such as how has it been used in previous negotiations between the parties and throughout the industry. (Not just in baseball, but in other sports as well.) And here again, Vanderbilt doesn’t make the definitive assertion that the VOC imputes to him that “the team has met its obligations,” something that actually would contradict Tait’s view, but only that the Angels have a potential case to make. Sure they do! But the City — should it decide to safeguard taxpayer money to which it is entitled — also has a good case to make: probably a better one, based on contract analysis principles such as superfluity.

I hate to say this, but this is really shoddy journalism, unworthy of VOC. It should recognize that their being a creature largely of Wylie Aitken and his political peers gives them responsibilities well beyond just putting up a disclaimer about the existence of a relationship. This looks like they are trying to help Ashleigh Aitken in her re-election campaign (and the state or federal legislative campaigns presumed to follow) by giving her cover to cave into the Angels demands — whether she seeks that help or not — by excusing in advance her giving into Arte Moreno the way she gave into Disney.

If Vanderbilt (who, unlike Tait, is not a lawyer) really did contradict Tait in the strong terms that VOC claims — and no, “the Angels can bring a case” is not something that even Tait (to whom I have not spoken about this story, although we talked years ago about his general view) would dispute — then that belonged in the article. Raising theoretical possibilities based on supposition does not cut the mustard. And while Hosam Elattar wrote the article, this is the sort of critical assertion on a major issue that it was incumbent on Editor Norberto Santana to verify himself. Put up the evidence that Vanderbilt thought that the Angels’ case was prohibitively strong or take down the assertion that Vanderbilt was contradicting Tait. The Voice should not be in the business of giving politicians cover to yet another giveaway.