It’s still L.A.’s Coliseum

The panel that oversees the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum had an opportunity in 2007 to work out a long-term lease and management agreement with the stadium’s primary tenant, the University of Southern California, and this page urged the commissioners not to miss their chance. The Coliseum was still making money at the time, but the university was threatening to leave, and without USC football as a guaranteed big ticket every other Saturday each autumn, the commission would have been hard-pressed to turn a profit. USC, two blocks from the stadium, could provide some attention and sense of proprietorship that the joint powers authority of state, city and county representatives could not. The team’s guaranteed tenancy would keep rent payments flowing. But the commission, in its wisdom, opted to stick with its own management team and its own brand of watchful oversight.

That management, and that oversight, have resulted in an end to positive cash flow, elimination of the entire budget reserve, the breach of the commission’s agreement with USC to make necessary renovations, a schedule of poorly supervised dance parties (a 15-year-old girl died of a drug overdose at one such rave in 2010) and a succession of financial scandals involving the stadium’s top managers, as reported by The Times in a series of stories that lay out an unsavory attitude of entitlement and an apparent practice of self-dealing.

Now the commission appears to have come around, presumably because it is running low on options and perhaps because it’s a way to avoid a breach-of-contract suit. An agreement for USC to manage this public asset is still a good idea. But the latest discussions, which a recent Times story revealed were nearing a conclusion, seem to have come out of the blue, with no public airing of terms. Frankly, we worry about the commissioners’ abilities as negotiators every bit as much as we marvel at their lack of oversight skills.

Will this taxpayer-owned national historic landmark be preserved, or will the university be permitted to gut the stadium and rebuild it however it deems appropriate? Will there be provisions to ensure that members of the public are still able to attend events there? To what degree will the commission retain oversight and power to inspect? What kind of naming rights are being granted? It’s public property; the public has a right to know.

The details are important, but the underlying move remains a good idea. The nine-member panel of three appointees each from the state, the county and the city proved time and again it was not up to the task of safeguarding and promoting the public’s investment. With everyone in charge, no one was in charge. But the commissioners still have a public trust, and before they throw in the towel they must demonstrate that they are not merely giving away public property to avoid a headache — and a lawsuit.