Oakland Moves to Kill Deal With Raiders

The City Council on Tuesday night unanimously expressed its intent to kill the current deal to bring the Raiders back to the city.

Acting at the urging of Mayor Lionel Wilson, the council, on a 7-0 vote, directed that a formal resolution to that effect be prepared for adoption next week.

The reason the council could not act with finality Tuesday was that the matter had not been placed on the agenda with sufficient public notice.

Wilson and Councilman Dick Spees, another original backer of the Raider deal, expressed hope that new negotiations with the National Football League team could fashion a plan that would be acceptable to those opposed to any large financial guarantees by the city and Alameda County that would put taxpayers funds at risk.

But neither Wilson nor anyone else expressed any optimism that such negotiations would be successful. And the consensus among observers here was that Oakland has probably lost the Raiders and the focus of negotiations for the future of the team will shift back to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The Oakland council also directed Tuesday night that the 33,189 signatures collected by opponents seeking a referendum on the deal be held in abeyance until next week’s council vote. Withdrawal of the offer would make a referendum a moot point.

The mood at the special council session was subdued, with neither Raider proponents nor opponents much in evidence. Several opponents of the deal as written said that they would like the Raiders to return to the city if it could be done without risking taxpayer dollars or putting a strain on Oakland’s otherwise scarce resources.

The council’s action came after Raider negotiator Jeff Brooks revealed that the team had never actually accepted Oakland’s revision, reducing ticket sales guarantees by $174 million to $428 million.

Brooks said that the final written version of the revised offer was different from what he had agreed to orally, and the Raiders had not yet decided if it was satisfactory.

This raised the question of whether team owner Al Davis would try to renew negotiations for better terms even after full Oakland and Alameda County approval of the agreement.

On March 12, when Davis agreed to return to the city in response to a $660-million offer, Wilson had said the final agreement would be executed and signed in 10 to 14 days.

But that same night, the mayor and other supporters of what would have been the most lucrative deal ever given a sports franchise anywhere were startled by the degree of opposition at a public hearing. The crowd’s shouts largely favored the deal. But they came mostly from white working people from the suburbs of Alameda, San Leandro and Hayward.

Those who actually testified were mostly Oakland residents and most were vehemently opposed to the deal.

There were 144 witnesses that night and the talk against Davis and the city’s offer to him from a majority was fierce. He was described as “the embodiment of greed” and the offer of public guarantees as “an obscenity.”

At the hearing, which failed to dissuade either the City Council or county supervisors from ratifying the deal, the opponents cried for a popular referendum. Within days, a referendum drive was in full swing. Ultimately, it was to collect many more than the 19,716 signatures required.

Wilson and other city officials fought to head it off, first by arguing that their vote of approval had been only an administrative action, not subject to referendum, and then by revising the deal and arguing that signatures gathered before the revision were not valid.

But nothing worked, and finally Wilson, facing a tough reelection campaign, including two prominent opponents backing the referendum, knuckled under.

“With so many people having signed petitions and so many of our people having spoken,” Wilson said he now favored the referendum.

But Brooks told him the Raiders would pull back from Oakland rather than let the people vote.

At that point, the mayor announced he was asking the council to rescind its approval of the deal in its current form.

Meanwhile, in Sacramento, a Senate committee entered the fray over the fate of the Los Angeles Coliseum on Tuesday, voting unanimously for a bill to require a public vote before any or all of the stadium could be demolished and rebuilt as a means of keeping the Raiders from moving.

A 6-0 vote by the Governmental Organization Committee sent the measure, sponsored by Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), to the Appropriations Committee for more screening.

One proposal being considered by the Coliseum Commission to entice the Raiders to stay is to tear down and rebuild most of the stadium. Of the present structure, the only part to be left would be the peristyle end, which contains the columns and holds the Olympic torch, the senator said.

Torres said that, although he is a Raider fan, he opposes demolition of the Coliseum if that is what it takes to keep the team. Noting that the stadium is both a state and national historical landmark, he said, “At the present time, we are not sure what will happen to the Coliseum. It should be protected in every way possible.”

The bill would require county supervisors to call an election on any plan to demolish any or all of the Coliseum. If the voters opposed changes, the plan could not proceed, Torres said.

Times staff writer Jerry Gillam in Sacramento contributed to this story.