Raider Deal-Maker Named to Coliseum Commission

Mayor Tom Bradley is putting labor leader Bill Robertson, the man who negotiated the deal bringing the Raiders to Los Angeles from Oakland a decade ago, back on the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission as part of “a final push to keep the Raiders” playing in the city, Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani announced Wednesday.

Robertson, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation, AFL-CIO, declined to comment. But he had said a few months ago that he would not return to the commission unless he believed that the chances of a new Raiders deal for Los Angeles were promising.

He will replace attorney Stanley Sanders on the commission as one of Bradley’s two appointees to the nine-member group.

Robertson angrily resigned from the commission Aug. 28, 1987, just a week after Raiders owner Al Davis announced a move to Irwindale. Robertson then called the Coliseum’s loss of the Raiders “irreversible and terminal” and even chastised Bradley for not doing more to prevent it. Later, however, the Raiders’ Irwindale deal collapsed.

The Robertson reappointment comes at a time when Oakland authorities are completing a scaled-down second offer to the Raiders to return to the city. On Tuesday night, the Oakland City Council approved the offer by a vote of 6 to 1, and votes are scheduled in coming weeks by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the Oakland Coliseum Commission.

The Raiders, however, have not committed themselves to accepting the Oakland offer, and Fabiani indicated Wednesday that Bradley believes that several months more may elapse before the Raiders decide between the two cities.

Fabiani said the hope now is that the private Coliseum managers, Spectacor Management Group, will reach agreement with Davis in time to allow construction on a massive Coliseum renovation to start at the end of the 1991 season, after environmental and historic preservation studies are complete.

Oakland spokeswoman Carol McArthur said the city retains hope that Davis will negotiate an early end to his team’s Los Angeles Coliseum contract and be playing in the Oakland Coliseum by this fall.