Is Anaheim Looking to Secretly Negotiate Another Angel Stadium Deal?

Anaheim City Council members secretly rejected a lawsuit settlement that would’ve forced more transparency when it comes to any future city stadium negotiations. 

The decision comes less than a year after a couple of damning FBI court affidavits surfaced, alleging the former Mayor Harry Sidhu tried to ram through a controversial stadium sale for $1 million in campaign support from team officials.

The FBI affidavit crushed city hall credibility last year after agents alleged that a small cadre of Disneyland resort area insiders through the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce essentially steer public policy in Anaheim largely behind closed doors. 

[ReadFBI Reveals What Many Anaheim Residents Felt For Years, City Hall is Run By The Chamber of Commerce]

Federal agents also said the former mayor destroyed records to hide from an Orange County Grand Jury investigation on the sale and passed on confidential city information to the LA Angels.

Through his attorney, Sidhu has maintained he committed no wrongdoing and hasn’t been charged with a crime. Team officials also have denied any wrongdoing publicly and pushed for completion of the stadium sale even after release of the FBI affidavit. 

[ReadFBI Alleges Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu Destroyed Angel Stadium Records to Hide From OC Grand Jury]

Before revelations of the FBI corruption probe last May, Anaheim was facing a 2020 lawsuit from the nonprofit activist group, the People’s Homeless Task Force.

The task force alleged the city violated the Ralph M. Brown Act – the state’s chief transparency law – when secretly negotiating the old deal in 2019. 

The task force lost their lawsuit in Superior Court but later appealed, prompting ongoing talks between them and the city. Last year, FBI officials in their explosive affidavit noted that city officials may not have properly disclosed all relevant public records in that lawsuit. 

[Read: Anaheim Activists Take City Back to Court For Shadowy Attempt at Angel Stadium Sale]

Kelly Aviles, attorney for the task force, said local transparency activists weren’t asking for much in their settlement negotiations with city officials  – a signed settlement agreement that Anaheim officials wouldn’t privately hammer out another stadium deal and minimum attorney fees. 

“You don’t have to say that you were wrong, but you have to promise you won’t do it like this again in the future,” Aviles said in a Wednesday phone interview. 

That’s something city officials refused to agree to earlier this year, a decision that was never reported out to the public – even though council members met in closed session to consider the lawsuit in January. 

Based on that refusal, Aviles said it’s fair to conclude that city council members want to leave open the option of secret talks that potentially violate the state’s open meetings laws when it comes to Angel Stadium. 

“Based on the refusal to enter into a very reasonable settlement that says we won’t do it in the future, they want to keep every option open – including things we thought were illegal.”

Aviles is also Voice of OC’s chief public records litigator. 

Mayor Ashleigh Aitken and all other council members did not respond to requests for comment last week.

In late 2019, when the now-dead land sale was being initially approved, two state lawmakers, the OC Register editorial board, many residents and activists lambasted city officials for the rushed sale process. 

City officials unveiled the plan Dec. 4 that year and approved the land sale 16 days later – all without knowing the final cash amount they would get for the land. 

[ReadTwo State Lawmakers Call For Delay of Angel Stadium Land Sale]

After the Peoples Homeless Task Force was gearing up to appeal their loss in OC Superior Court last spring, Aviles said settlement negotiations were taking place between her and contracted attorneys for the city. 

The biggest part of the settlement proposal was promising to publicly construct any future stadium deal and reimburse the task force for $10,000 – a flat fee Aviles said she charged them, while waiving all other attorney fees. 

But, she said, that all abruptly ended in January. 

“There was no feedback from the city council that there was some provision they had concerns with. We had talked definitively that we were really open to work out language,” Aviles said. “We would be open to hammer out actual details and actual language if they came back.” 

The last time the lawsuit was scheduled for a closed session discussion was at the Jan. 24 city council meeting and the city attorney didn’t publicly disclose any action on the item. 

Jeanine Robbins – an Anaheim resident who’s part of the task force – said she’s confident heading back to court. 

“Obviously the Brown Act was violated, so we’re hoping that this one will have a different outcome,” Robbins said in a Wednesday phone interview. 

Former Councilman Jose Moreno said the previous city council – before November’s election – seemed willing to settle the lawsuit. 

“The tone to me is what was the harm in settling this? Minimal attorneys fees, adherence to the Brown Act,” Moreno said in a Thursday phone interview. “So that to me seemed to be the tone – what harm does this do to the city? Nothing really.”

Is Another Stadium Deal Coming? 

A day before that Jan. 24 secret meeting, Angels owner Arte Moreno – unrelated to Jose Moreno – announced he was pulling back on his public announcement last year that he was putting the LA Angels up for sale.

That same day, Aitken said in an email statement to Voice of OC that she was open to discussing a new land sale.

“There have been no discussions since last year. But after the dust settles and when the time is right, I am open to talking about any proposal that would be good for our residents,” Aitken said on Jan. 23.

[Read: Los Angeles Angels No Longer For Sale; Is Another Land Sale Proposal Coming to Anaheim?]

It was the last time Aitken, who campaigned for mayor on a platform of bringing more transparency and reforms to city hall, responded to a request for comment from the Voice of OC. Her father, Wylie Aitken, chairs Voice of OC’s board of directors.

Two months later in March, Aitken told the Los Angeles Times she would be willing to use the previous land sale deal as a basis to restart talks with the Angels.

Anaheim Spokesman Mike Lyster said city officials talk to LA Angels representatives on a regular basis about various issues.

“But there are no active discussions about a future lease or sale of the stadium site,” he wrote in a Thursday email.

The old stadium deal was nearly complete until the FBI affidavits surfaced last May, alleging Sidhu gave Angels representatives critical information during negotiations in his effort to ram the deal through.

Sidhu resigned a week after the probe surfaced. 

[ReadAnaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu Resigns After FBI Reveals Anaheim Corruption Probe]

Shortly after his resignation, city council members canned the stadium sale. 

David Duran, an Anaheim resident who’s part of the People’s Homeless Task Force, said he’s concluded that council members rejected the settlement proposal so they can secretly hammer out another stadium deal. 

“I don’t think that they want to have their hands tied,” Duran said in a Wednesday phone interview. “They don’t want to agree to not violate the Brown Act again – that’s essentially what it was.” 

Now that the city has formally rejected settling the lawsuit with transparency activists,  former City Councilman Jose Moreno said future court proceedings present a real chance for Anaheim to nullify the stadium lease, which was reinstated by Sidhu and his majority in January 2019 under questionable circumstances given what the FBI has presented in public court filings. 

If the lease was nullified, former Councilman Moreno said, that would open it up to be on the market – significantly boosting the land value.

“That would be a powerful outcome for the people of Anaheim.”

Did Officials Violate Transparency Law Again? 

The last time the council members discussed the proposed settlement was Jan. 24, according to a review of meeting agendas. 

And City Attorney Rob Fabela said there was nothing to report out that night. 

When asked for more details – like what the vote was – Lyster reiterated Fabela’s stance. 

“We do not have and are unable to provide details about a closed session item before the Council,” Lyster wrote in a Wednesday email, refusing to say if a vote was taken and what that vote was.

Aviles said the Jan. 24 vote to reject the settlement should’ve been publicly disclosed, despite a loophole in the Brown Act that doesn’t explicitly state city officials have to report out when they reject a settlement. 

“The section does not specifically require them to disclose it, but there’s still that other section that says there should not be a secret vote,” Aviles said.

She said oftentimes city officials only apply the secret vote provision to public sessions and not closed door meetings. 

“No legislative body shall take action by secret ballot, whether preliminary or final,” reads the Brown Act. 

Moreno, the former councilman, said reporting out that vote would’ve been the right thing to do. 

“It would be the ethical thing to do. I raised that issue with the city attorney last year,” Moreno said of various closed session items voted on by council members that weren’t initiating lawsuits or settling them. “He said, ‘Well, the Brown Act doesn’t require it.’” 

At the same Jan. 24 meeting, council members appointed Norma Campos Kurtz to fill a council vacancy left by Avelino Valencia after he was elected to the state Assembly.

Before her appointment, Kurtz sat on the advisory committee for Support Our Anaheim Resort – Disney’s chief campaign spending vehicle in town.

SOAR heavily financed the campaigns of Councilmembers Natalie Meeks and Natalie Rubalcava in last year’s elections. In 2020, they also heavily financed Councilmembers Jose Diaz and Steve Faessel. 

Click here for to read the full article in Voice of OC

California Taxpayers Will Subsidize New A’s Ballpark

As the 2021-22 state budget was being finalized in June of last year, a $279.5 million appropriation was quietly inserted into the massive spending plan before it was sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“Funds appropriated in this item shall be for the Port of Oakland for improvements that facilitate enhanced freight and passenger access and to promote the efficient and safe movement of goods and people,” the budget declared.

Seemingly, the Legislature was responding to numerous pleas from the shipping industry for upgrades to maintain the port’s viability in the face of intense competition for international trade.

However, when the port commission recently approved a list of specific projects the money would finance, its long-suspected true purpose became clear. The money would not be spent to improve cargo-handling, but rather to subsidize development of a new stadium for the Oakland A’s baseball team on a disused container site known as Howard Terminal near Jack London Square.

The money would pay for facilities to make it easier for baseball fans to access the new stadium. They apparently would be the “passengers” the appropriation cited.

The commission acted shortly after the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission officially removed Howard Terminal’s designation as a cargo site.

For years, A’s owners, citing inadequacies of the Oakland Coliseum, have yearned for a new stadium while threatening to move the team if its demands were not met. At one point, the team tried to move to San Jose, but that city was part of the San Francisco Giants’ designated territory and the Giants refused to relinquish it.

Oakland officialdom, having lost the Raiders football team to Las Vegas and the Warriors basketball team to San Francisco, is desperate to keep the A’s in Oakland and a number of potential stadium sites have been explored.

Finally, the city and A’s owner John Fisher, a scion of the family that owns clothier Gap, settled on the 55-acre Howard Terminal site, not only for a new baseball stadium but a $12 billion residential and commercial complex.

The decision didn’t sit well with the shipping industry, which saw it as an intrusion on cargo-handling operations.

As Fisher was negotiating with city officials over the project last year, state Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat who represents Oakland and chairs the Senate Budget Committee, slipped the $279.5 million appropriation into the budget bill and it eventually was approved by the full Legislature and Newsom.

It’s just a tiny fraction of a 2021-22 state budget that approached $300 billion but would have been enough to build affordable housing for more than 500 low- and moderate-income families.

Moreover, it represents two common but unseemly practices in the state Capitol.

The first is using the state budget, which is largely drafted in secret with little opportunity for the media and the public to peruse its details, as a vehicle to deliver goodies to those with political pull.

After the budget and its attendant “trailer bills” are enacted each year, we learn — too late — exactly who has received special attention, either in the form of money or some beneficial change of law.

The second is the slavish attention that California politicians devote to the welfare of professional sports teams and their wealthy owners. Every major sports arena project in recent years has received some sort of help from the Capitol, mostly exemptions from the environmental red tape that other big projects must navigate.

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Vin Scully, Iconic Former Los Angeles Dodgers Broadcaster, Dies at Age 94

Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully, whose dulcet tones provided the soundtrack of summer while entertaining and informing Dodgers fans in Brooklyn and Los Angeles for 67 years, died Tuesday night, the team said. He was 94.

“We have lost an icon,” Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten said in a statement. “Vin Scully was one of the greatest voices in all of sports. He was a giant of a man, not only as a broadcaster, but as a humanitarian. He loved people. He loved life. He loved baseball and the Dodgers. And he loved his family. His voice will always be heard and etched in all of our minds forever. I know he was looking forward to joining the love of his life, Sandi. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family during this very difficult time. Vin will be truly missed.”

Scully died at his home in the Hidden Hills section of Los Angeles, according to the team, which spoke to family members. No cause of death was provided.

“Today we mourn the loss of a legend in our game,” Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “Vin was an extraordinary man whose gift for broadcasting brought joy to generations of Dodger fans. In addition, his voice played a memorable role in some of the greatest moments in the history of our sport. I am proud that Vin was synonymous with Baseball because he embodied the very best of our National Pastime. As great as he was as a broadcaster, he was equally great as a person.

“On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest condolences to Vin’s family, friends, Dodger fans and his admirers everywhere.”

As the longest-tenured broadcaster with a single team in pro sports history, Scully saw it all and called it all. He began in the 1950s era of Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson, on to the 1960s with Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, into the 1970s with Steve Garvey and Don Sutton, and through the 1980s with Orel Hershiser and Fernando Valenzuela. In the 1990s, it was Mike Piazza and Hideo Nomo, followed by Clayton Kershaw, Manny Ramirez and Yasiel Puig in the 21st century.

“He was the best there ever was,” Kershaw said after the Dodgers’ game Tuesday night in San Francisco. “Just when you think about the Dodgers, there’s a lot of history here and a lot of people that have come through. It’s just a storied franchise all the way around. But it almost starts with Vin, honestly.

“Just such a special man. I’m grateful and thankful I got to know him as well as I did.”

Tweeted Puig: “You gave me my Wild Horse name. You gave me love. You hugged me like a father. I will never forget you, my heart is broken.”

The Dodgers changed players, managers, executives, owners — and even coasts — but Scully and his soothing, insightful style remained a constant for the fans.

He opened broadcasts with the familiar greeting, “Hi, everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you wherever you may be.”

Ever gracious both in person and on the air, Scully considered himself merely a conduit between the game and the fans.

After the Dodgers’ 9-5 win in San Francisco at Oracle Park — where in October 2016 Scully broadcast the final game of his career — a tribute to him was shown on the videoboard.

Fans of both teams stopped and applauded Scully before exiting.

“There’s not a better storyteller, and I think everyone considers him family,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He was in our living rooms for many generations. He lived a fantastic life, a legacy that will live on forever.”

Although he was paid by the Dodgers, Scully was unafraid to criticize a bad play or a manager’s decision or praise an opponent while spinning stories against a backdrop of routine plays and noteworthy achievements. He always said he wanted to see things with his eyes, not his heart.

“He had a voice & a way of storytelling that made you think he was only talking to you,” former Lakers great Magic Johnson, a part owner of the Dodgers, tweeted. “Vin was the nicest & sweetest man outside of the booth & was beloved by all of our Dodgers family.”

Jaime Jarrin, the Spanish voice of the Dodgers and a Hall of Fame broadcaster as well, mourned the loss of his counterpart, writing on Twitter: “We’ve lost the greatest chronicler of baseball and any sport. I’ve lost the architect of my professional life, a beloved friend: Vin Scully. I’m experiencing how difficult it is to put my thoughts together now and all I can say is rest in peace, we’ll see each other again soon.”

Vincent Edward Scully was born Nov. 29, 1927, in the Bronx. He was the son of a silk salesman who died of pneumonia when Scully was 7. His mother moved the family to Brooklyn, where the red-haired, blue-eyed Scully grew up playing stickball in the streets.

As a child, Scully would grab a pillow, put it under the family’s four-legged radio and lay his head directly under the speaker to hear whatever college football game was on the air. With a snack of saltine crackers and a glass of milk nearby, the boy was transfixed by the crowd’s roar that raised goosebumps. He thought he would like to call the action himself.

Scully, who played outfield for two years on the Fordham baseball team and briefly served in the U.S. Navy, began his career by working baseball, football and basketball games for the university’s radio station.

At age 22, he was hired by a CBS radio affiliate in Washington. He soon joined Hall of Famer Red Barber and Connie Desmond in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ radio and television booths. In 1953, at age 25, Scully became the youngest person to broadcast a World Series game, an achievement that still stands.

Scully moved West with the Dodgers in 1958. Scully called three perfect games — Don Larsen’s in the 1956 World Series, Koufax’s in 1965 and Dennis Martinez’s in 1991 — and 20 no-hitters.

He also was on the air when Drysdale set his scoreless innings streak of 58⅔ innings in 1968 and again when Hershiser broke the record with 59 consecutive scoreless innings 20 years later.

When Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s record in 1974, it was against the Dodgers and, of course, Scully called it.

“A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol,” Scully told listeners. “What a marvelous moment for baseball.”

Scully credited the birth of the transistor radio as “the greatest single break” of his career. Fans had trouble recognizing the lesser players during the Dodgers’ first four years in the vast Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

“They were 70 or so odd rows away from the action,” he said in 2016. “They brought the radio to find out about all the other players and to see what they were trying to see down on the field.”

That habit carried over when the team moved to Dodger Stadium in 1962. Fans held radios to their ears, and those not present listened from home or the car, allowing Scully to connect generations of families with his words.

He often said it was best to describe a big play quickly and then be quiet so fans could listen to the pandemonium. After Koufax’s perfect game in 1965, Scully went silent for 38 seconds before talking again. He was similarly silent for a time after Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit home run to win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

Scully was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that year and had the stadium’s press box named for him in 2001. The street leading to Dodger Stadium’s main gate was named in his honor in 2016.

That same year, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

“God has been so good to me to allow me to do what I’m doing,” Scully, a devout Catholic who attended Mass on Sundays before heading to the ballpark, said before retiring. “A childhood dream that came to pass and then giving me 67 years to enjoy every minute of it. That’s a pretty large Thanksgiving Day for me.”

In addition to being the voice of the Dodgers, Scully called play-by-play for NFL games and PGA Tour events as well as calling 25 World Series and 12 All-Star Games. He was NBC’s lead baseball announcer from 1983 to 1989.

Scully also received the Commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award, which recognizes accomplishments and contributions of historical significance, in 2014. He became just the second non-player to receive the award, joining Rachel Robinson.

While being one of the most widely heard broadcasters in the nation, Scully was an intensely private man. Once the baseball season ended, he would disappear. He rarely did personal appearances or sports talk shows and preferred spending time with his family.

In 1972, his first wife, Joan, died of an accidental overdose of medicine. He was left with three young children. Two years later, he met the woman who would become his second wife, Sandra, a secretary for the Los Angeles Rams. She had two young children from a previous marriage, and they combined their families into what Scully once called “my own Brady Bunch.”

He said he realized time was the most precious thing in the world and that he wanted to use his time to spend with his loved ones. In the early 1960s, Scully quit smoking with the help of his family. In the shirt pocket where he kept a pack of cigarettes, Scully stuck a family photo. Whenever he felt like he needed a smoke, he pulled out the photo to remind him why he quit. Eight months later, Scully never smoked again.

After retiring in 2016, Scully made just a handful of appearances at Dodger Stadium and his sweet voice was heard narrating an occasional video played during games. Mostly, he was content to stay close to home.

“I just want to be remembered as a good man, an honest man, and one who lived up to his own beliefs,” he said in 2016.

Click here to read the full article at ESPN.com