L.A. Bond Sale

* I am writing because of my great concern over how The Times covered the recent Convention Center bond transaction (July 28).

This was a story about the largest bond sale in the city’s history and a California minority firm was selected to manage the sale. Your reporter slanted the article in such a way as to make it appear that lobbyists manipulated the City Council to select this minority firm at the expense of the public good. The reporter chose to accept certain arguments on the floor without properly investigating what was actually true or to include council member comments that revealed why the California-based Grigsby Brandford & Co. was chosen to manage the bond sales instead of opening the process to competitive bidding.

In a nutshell, the story told was that lobbyists manipulated the council vote to benefit a minority-owned firm at the expense of the public good. This was simply not the case and a negotiated sale with Grigsby Brandford & Co. will actually save the city up to $30 million compared with having opened it up to competitive bidding.

The question before the council was whether to approve Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky’s committee report to issue a request for competitive bids or to approve the Convention Center Authority’s recommendation to negotiate with a team of bankers headed by Grigsby Brandford & Co. It was not whether or not to pick a black-owned firm.

The lowest interest rate in a bidding situation, in all likelihood, would be higher than that which would result from negotiation. This was not in your story at all. Nevertheless, the article was simplified and slanted by highlighting a statement by Councilman Yaroslavsky calling the action “a disgrace to the democratic process” that had been engineered by “an army of lobbyists.” Eleven members of our diverse City Council voted for the negotiated sale, a substantial majority.

NATE HOLDEN

Councilman, 10th District