State official accuses L.A. Coliseum Commission president of lack of transparency, running ‘an imperial presidency’

An appointee of Gov. Jerry Brown has accused the president of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, county Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, of failing to be transparent and running “an imperial presidency” as leader of the government panel.

The appointee, Bill Chadwick, also accused Coliseum staff of failing to be forthcoming when he asked questions about the qualifications of a person eventually selected to assist the panel in talks with the NFL. During a January meeting, Chadwick asked the staff how the person’s name came up.

The Coliseum Commission’s chief administrative officer, Robert Osborne, replied: “I can’t answer that question right now.” Ridley-Thomas then cut off Chadwick’s questioning of Osborne.

Chadwick said the commission staff could have answered that question. Chadwick said he was later told that the job candidate had earlier met with Ridley-Thomas in his office with Osborne and a county lawyer.

“I’m sorry, sir, that’s not right. That’s just not right, and that bothers me, terribly,” Chadwick told Ridley-Thomas at last week’s commission meeting, referring to the failure to disclose the information at the January meeting. Osborne declined to comment.

Chadwick also raised concerns about Ridley-Thomas serving as president of the three-member Coliseum Commission for more than two years. In recent years, the panel has not conducted the annual rotation among representatives of the state, city and county, as has been the long-standing custom.

The last state representative to be president of the Coliseum Commission left his position in 2012, and county officials have held the president’s seat since then. County Supervisor Don Knabe became president in June 2012, and Ridley-Thomas succeeded him in March 2014.

Chadwick has been on the commission 14 years, including one as president.

State officials agreed with Chadwick’s concerns. “The state has concerns about the commission’s ability to operate transparently,” said Nancy Vogel, a spokeswoman for the California Natural Resources Agency, which has oversight of the state-owned land on which the Coliseum sits.

“We support Commissioner Chadwick’s proposal to follow long-standing tradition and rotate the chairmanship of the commission as well as to clearly define processes in an adopted set of bylaws,” she said.

During the commission meeting last week, Ridley-Thomas said he interpreted Chadwick’s questions as an attempt to “besmirch” the job candidate who would consult with the commission’s negotiating team in trying to land a second NFL team to temporarily play at the Coliseum. Chadwick denied that charge, saying that he has no problem with the candidate, Jerome Stanley, a former Coliseum commissioner, but that his questions should have been answered.

“All facts relevant to an issue have to be before this commission so we can make sound decisions,” Chadwick said.

Ridley-Thomas told Chadwick, “Don’t be reduced to being a bully, Bill. That doesn’t work at all.”

“Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean you’re a bully,” Chadwick said.

“No, it doesn’t. It just means that your behavior is unbecoming,” Ridley-Thomas responded.

After the meeting, Ridley-Thomas said Chadwick’s questions implied that “there’s something inappropriate or clandestine going on.” His questions “were inappropriate, period, and it’s not our job to respond to inappropriate questions,” Ridley-Thomas said.

Chadwick said he was incredulous that Ridley-Thomas and commission staff did not directly answer his questions.

“That is a real problem for me. You can’t operate in a situation where material information is kept from the commission,” Chadwick said. “If Mark said, ‘Hey, Bill, I put everybody together, and I thought Jerome would be good to help us,’ I would’ve said, ‘OK.’

“The public has to have confidence in how the commission conducts its affairs, especially coming from the scandal it is coming from,” he said, referring to criminal indictments in an alleged bribery and conspiracy scheme between a former Coliseum manager and rave promoters.

In 2013, a judge rebuked the Coliseum Commission for repeatedly violating the state’s open-meeting law during months of closed-door deliberations on USC’s lease of the taxpayer-owned stadium. L.A. County Superior Court Judge Luis A. Lavin said the commission had an “aversion” to conducting its business in public and could not be trusted to obey open-government laws.

The commission was ordered to pay about $415,000 in legal expenses incurred by the Los Angeles Times and a 1st Amendment group, Californians Aware, which sued for documents related to the USC lease agreement under the state’s Public Records Act. It was one of the largest awards ever granted under the state’s transparency statutes.

Stanley said the dispute wasn’t about his qualifications, but about process. “It wasn’t about me, so I’ll leave it where it is,” he said.

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Al Naipo, a spokesman for Ridley-Thomas, defended how the Coliseum Commission has been run. “There has been nothing but the utmost transparency by the Coliseum Commission,” he said.

Naipo confirmed that it was Ridley-Thomas who suggested hiring Stanley as a consultant for the commission.

A representative for the third member of the commission, L.A. Councilman Curren Price, said the councilman had no problem with Ridley-Thomas chairing the Coliseum panel for the last two years.

“If the majority wants to keep Ridley-Thomas, so be it,” said Curtis Earnest, Price’s chief of staff.

Deputy County Counsel Claudia Gutierrez said she felt the commission had handled the hiring of Stanley properly. “I think the process was proper, legal and transparent,” she said.

ron.lin@latimes.com

Twitter: @ronlin

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