From golf course spin to election’s ‘silly season’

I’m amazed at the misinformation floating around these days. It’s a combination of lack of institutional knowledge and election-season spin.

My head was spinning reading the latest about the Newport Beach Golf Course.

Now, I actually like what developer Buck Johns presented to the O.C. Board of Supervisors in December to get approval for taking over the current lease. And as long as the county does its due diligence, all should be fine.

Johns is making improvements to the property, and the county should grant him a 50-year lease extension based on those merits, not “spin” like the course could become an overflow parking lot — or if it weren’t there, the runway would expand.

Let’s face it; the golf course is in a crash zone. The last thing the Federal Aviation Administration, or the county, wants there is an overflow car lot.

In reality, this idea was nothing more than political spin a few years ago — and it is again now.

An emergency landing requires open space. Vehicles filled with gasoline in the potential path isn’t ideal.

And what Newport Mayor Diane Dixon wrote in support of Johns getting a longer lease, “The golf course is an important amenity for the region, as well as providing an important buffer against efforts that would expand existing runways at John Wayne Airport,” doesn’t hold water either.

The 2006 Spheres agreement between the county and Newport clearly states that couldn’t happen without Newport approval, but in reality the FAA has the ultimate say-so here.

Maybe years ago, expansion of the runway was a possibility. Today, too much has grown up around the airport making runway expansion simply not an option, and everyone knows that.

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City Hall refinancing issue

Speaking of Dixon, reading her Daily Pilot op-ed, (co-written by Will O’Neill, member of Newport’s Finance Committee and a city council candidate), where she proposes examining refinancing the Civic Center’s debt, really made my head twirl.

In 2015 Feldman Rolap & Associates presented its independent analysis of early redemption of the city’s 2010B Build America Bonds to the council.

Feldman Rolap isn’t some fly-by-night firm. Since 1996 its “provided independent financial advice and services to all levels of government and nonprofits regarding intricate financing and investment activities,” according to its website.

Councilman Keith Curry stands by Feldman Rolap’s report saying “It would cost the city $21 million more to defease or refund the existing debt. “

The report went into detail as to why the city didn’t issue callable bonds, and that the annual debt service would have been $719,000 higher.

Curry says with a 10-year call date that “would have been a minimum of $7,190,000 or a maximum of $21.6 million more.”

As you can imagine, Curry’s not happy with what the mayor’s proposing and reminded me he “raised holy hell” about this when Councilman Scott Peotter proposed it awhile back.

Curry calls the idea “financially illiterate,” and adds Feldman Rolap would be “debarred from the industry for violating the fiduciary duty rule of Dodd-Frank if they had recommended an out of the money refunding.”

The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, to which Curry refers, is a series of financial reforms, regulations and protections adopted by Congress at the end of the Great Recession.

And, Curry adds, “$21 million is real money being put at risk for politics.”

Whether you dislike Curry or his politics, one thing the guy knows is finance.

He retired as a managing director of Public Financial Management after a 24-year career as a financial advisor to state and local governments, served as president of the National Assn. of Independent Public Finance Advisors and testified before Congress on issues of financial reform and public agency protections.

More important, we’re well past the debate of whether the city overspent on the Civic Center, though political operatives would like to keep the narrative going.

This project’s been discussed and debated ad-nauseam since the idea of a new city hall in 2006, and for years afterward, as it morphed into the Civic Center it is today.

This thing didn’t just materialize overnight; there were countless public meetings about every aspect of this project.

But Dixon didn’t live here then, which accounts for her lack of institutional knowledge.

Getting down to the nitty gritty, what’s this reexamination of the debt really about?

As I see it, it’s all about political spin, nothing more.

Political consultants create issues — even when none exist — hoping the perceived perception they’ve created becomes voters’ reality with their candidate as the solution.

Political insiders jokingly refer to election time as the “silly season.”

But are we now going beyond “silly” and entering the dangerous realm of just plain stupid?

BARBARA VENEZIA lives in Newport Beach. She can be reached at bvontv1@gmail.com.