Arena Vote Looks Like a Good Goal but Isn’t

An election on the downtown Los Angeles arena is a bad idea.

It sounds good, an exercise in direct democracy: “Let the people decide.” But that’s not the way it will work out.

Expect the usual incredibly expensive, completely phony California-style initiative campaign, financed by sources whose true identity is revealed only when the final financial reports are filed--after the vote.

Anti-arena forces will protest a giveaway to billionaires.

Pro-arena people will characterize their opponents, correctly or not, as riding a stalking horse for Hollywood Park gambling interests who want to extend gaming throughout the Southland.

The complexities of the arena deal--its costs and benefits--will be ignored. Worse yet, the initiative will set a precedent of citywide voting on public-private projects such as low-cost housing and others whose proponents need city help but can’t afford to play the high-priced initiative game.

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Hoping vainly to persuade Councilman Joel Wachs to drop his anti-arena initiative, people speaking for the facility’s developers, Philip Anschutz and Edward Roski Jr., held a tell-all (or almost tell-all) news conference Wednesday.

Representatives of their new political-public relations consultant, Joe Cerrell, lugged heavy boxes, filled with copies of 250-page contracts, into the Los Angeles Room of L.A.’s venerable downtown sanctuary of jockdom, the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

These were the leases, the very leases I have been demanding to see for weeks, the leases that supposedly contain the guarantee that the arena’s two main tenants, the Kings and the Lakers, will play there for 25 years. That’s the time needed to pay off the $70 million in municipal securities the city is contributing to the $300-million project.

I couldn’t wait to see them. I felt the same sense of anticipation that gripped me when I watched Geraldo open the safe in Al Capone’s old hotel on live TV.

The arena team gave us more than Geraldo did, which was nothing. I didn’t have time to read all the pages, or even most of them, before writing this. But from what I could see, the contract really does seem to bind the teams to play in the arena for 25 years. Or, as a summary accompanying the contract put it, “The terms of the agreement are for 25 years and there are no early outs or termination rights for the Lakers or Kings.”

There appears to be only one way out: The teams can escape the lease if the arena company doesn’t start work on the facility in the next several years. That seems unlikely, since the developers want to begin construction as soon as possible for an opening in 1999.

On Wednesday afternoon, even that ambiguity appeared to have been removed when Robert J. Sanderman, president of the arena operating company, strengthened the developers’ guarantee to repay the city bonds if arena revenues fall short.

He said the firm will pay a major national private financial institution to guarantee repayment of the city’s securities--comparable to posting a bond or buying an insurance policy.

This eliminates any risk to the taxpayers--at least any risk identified so far by Councilman Wachs or any other arena critic. It is exactly what Wachs asked for at a news conference Wednesday morning.

All that remains now is for the city negotiators and the arena team to work out the final wording.

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This should be done at the negotiating table and not in the context of an initiative campaign.

Wachs said his initiative is aimed only at professional sports teams, requiring a vote of the people before public funds are used to build or remodel their facilities.

But its implications go far beyond that.

If there is an initiative on government helping finance the arena, why not a similar vote on other Los Angeles public-private enterprises?

The possibility of this is especially disturbing to leaders in poor communities who rely on a combination of government and private funds to build apartments in the inner city.

I talked to Sister Diane Donoghue, a nun who heads the Esperanza Housing Corp., which has built many excellent low-rent apartments for the poor amid the slums. Many of her tenants are immigrants who work in the nearby garment district.

She said “it is not a big stretch” to envision initiatives on projects like hers. “When it comes to putting it to a vote, the people on the bottom will always get shortchanged,” she said.

Worthwhile big projects could be subjected to similar votes. One that comes to mind is the Alameda Corridor high-speed rail line from the harbor to downtown, which may provide thousands of new jobs.

Wachs’ crusade, which forced the developers to greatly improve their deal, now threatens to inflict permanent damage on the city’s plans for economic revival, and on the lives of some of its poorest residents.