When Business Talks, Liberalism Goes Out the Door

The strongest argument for secrecy in the Los Angeles sports arena deal has come from liberals who were elected as grass-roots populist reformers and glory in hammering Mayor Richard Riordan for his back-room, corporate style.

Having covered their campaigns, and dutifully taken notes on their promises, I was surprised to hear Jackie Goldberg, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Ruth Galanter raise such strong objections last Tuesday to Councilman Joel Wachs’ resolution demanding disclosure of important parts of the arena deal.

Goldberg, Ridley-Thomas and Galanter eventually joined in the unanimous vote for the resolution. But they did so only after being assured by top council advisor Ron Deaton, the legislative analyst, that the Wachs resolution contained enough loopholes to maintain the secrecy demands of the arena developers and their tenants, the Kings and the Lakers. We’ll see if he’s right.

It was Galanter who was the most eloquent of the three in speaking up for secrecy. “My concern here is that we not put ourselves in a position jeopardizing our ability to work with private commercial interests in the name of public disclosure,” she said.

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As I contemplated the council debate, my mind went back to 1987 when Galanter emerged from the populist activist groups of Venice, which were driven by an almost paranoid fear and hatred of the big business interests that dominated City Hall then--as they do now.

She defeated a powerful legislator, Pat Russell, who, working with Mayor Tom Bradley, won approval for big developments that infuriated Venice activists, whose idea of a good construction project was a sandcastle.

Galanter attacked Russell as too friendly to developers. That platform, along with Galanter’s funky clothes and her complete dedication to recycling, made the new councilwoman seem to be the embodiment of power to the people.

In council Tuesday, however, Galanter--along with Ridley-Thomas and Goldberg--spoke with a pro-establishment voice. Their main point was, as Goldberg put it, that the arena development company and the Kings and Lakers needed secrecy to protect trade secrets or “proprietary” information.

But, checking around later, I found that information about other teams’ sports leases is easily obtained.

That news came from a reader, David M. Carter, a management consultant who taught “The Business of Sport” at the USC Graduate School of Business for four years and who wrote two books on the subject.

Carter, who favors the arena project, said team owners don’t like to disclose the fine print of arena deals because “the deals are so typically one-sided that they favor the franchise owner.” But he said details of various deals can be obtained from a Chicago company, Team Marketing Report, which reports on pro sports leases.

I called Team Marketing Report’s editor, Sean Brenner. He said Team Marketing Report has gleaned from public records and other sources the details of 53 teams’ leases, and put them on a CD-ROM. Included is information about revenue from ticket sales, concessions, luxury boxes and expensive club seating, advertising, parking and team merchandise. The CD-ROM doesn’t report the L.A. arena information yet, but Brenner assured me it will be on a forthcoming edition, available for $395 to anyone who calls his office.

Those are exactly the kind of facts that have been kept from public view by the confidentiality agreement signed by the city and the arena developers.

Later, another hole was shot in the secrecy argument. I learned that all National Basketball Assn. teams are required to file their leases with the league’s legal department. That fact came from a phone call to Brian McIntyre, NBA vice president for communications.

In other words, this isn’t a trade secrecy issue. If there’s a “trade secret,” it may be that the teams are getting a great deal, and don’t want anyone to know about it before the City Council vote.

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So why are Galanter and the other council liberals standing up for secrecy?

They fear they will blow the deal if they hassle the arena developers and the two teams.

The liberals feel they need business, as does organized labor, a political power in the city’s liberal community. They say it will create good jobs, union jobs.

Liberals like big, job-creating projects. But government no longer can afford to build the stadiums, offices, hospitals and other projects that provided so many jobs. Today, only private enterprise can do the job, usually through partnerships with government.

But that doesn’t mean the once-skeptical council liberals must roll over. Let’s have some of that old Venice skepticism that Councilwoman Galanter brought to the council a decade ago.