The title above is about perfect because the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda allowed the Oakland - Alameda County Coliseum Authority to take just $7 million for a naming rights agreement for the Oakland Coliseum that was worth much more, and let them do it even as Overstock.com is involved in, to this day, and with the same County of Alameda in a court battle where the County seeks $15 million in damages over alleged fraudulent pricing practices by the company.
The deal - which in a very irresponsible editorial, the Oakland Tribune actually, strangely, praised - was done netting no better monies than were raised in 1998 for the Network Associates Coliseum naming rights deal.
That was at $7 million.
If now former Oakland City Attorney John Russo is correct about the City of Oakland taking actions and making decisions that are "morally questionable," then it seems the Overstock.com naming agreement falls into that category.
Something is clearly wrong. This blogger has asked not one, but three Oakland City Auditors to look at the Oakland Coliseum, and each one, from Norma Lau to currently and sadly Courtney Ruby has come up with some kind of excuse.
Ruby's claim is lack of resources, but that didn't stop her from looking at the ABC Security issue, or fiscal issues over at the City Administrator's Office last year.
For some political reason, the Oakland Coliseum is shielded and protected from real scrutiny from most organizations, save for the Alameda County Grand Jury.
Last year, the Grand Jury looked at the Coliseum, but only from the narrow point of view of the failure to hire a full-time executive director. The Coliseum Authority balked at the need for one, and also brushed off calls for the kind of long range planning that was done by the Oakland Coliseum before the Authority existed.
Really, it did.
In a report that you can see with a click here, the Coliseum Authority wrote:
The Authority disagrees with this finding. This recommendation will not be implemented directly by the Authority for the following reasons: The Joint Powers Agreement under which the Authority operates by agreement of the City of Oakland and The County of Alameda as well as the Management Agreement among the Authority, the County and The City, delegates limited power to the Authority. The Joint Powers Agreement's stated purpose is to issue bonds to construct and acquire public capital improvements at the direction of the City and The County...
Let's stop there for now.
Doesn't "The Joint Powers Agreement's stated purpose is to issue bonds to construct and acquire public capital improvements at the direction of the City and The County" call for long range planning? Of course it does.
It's too bad the Alameda County Grand Jury didn't call on this blogger to testify, not that I asked them to do so. But, when I worked as Economic Adviser to Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris, Bob Quintella, who was then the President Of The Oakland Coliseum, with Peerless Coffee head George Vukasin as chair of the Coliseum Board, took me on a mini-tour of his office, complete with a presentation of a large map of the property the Coliseum owned, and future plans for its use.
The Business Plan written by Ezra Rapport, the Oakland Deputy City Manager who brought the Raiders back to Oakland, that was prepared for the Coliseum Authority in 1996, and read religiously by this blogger, called for not just an executive director, but for some kind of planning activities to be done.
Also, the original resolution that formed the Coliseum JPA, called for the addition of a 20-person board of private sector people, on top of the current eight public officials. But that part of the resolution has never been enabled.
In other words, the elected officials don't seem to want the input of Oakland and Alameda County's private sector. Otherwise, why have such a provision go 15 years without being implemented?
The operation of the Oakland Coliseum Complex raises a lot of questions, and another is this: why is documentation referring to "ongoing litigation" with the Golden State Warriors no longer available online?
Just another question.
Stay tuned. This is a mess.
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