Three New Filings Answer City’s Effort
To End Litigation
Litigation against the Downtown ballpark increased by three new lawsuits when opponents answered a validation lawsuit filed by the city last month intended to resolve all litigation concerning the project.
Both the city and the San Diego Padres said they weren’t surprised by last week’s actions, which bring the number of outstanding suits challenging the $453 million ballpark to 11.
“We see no merit at all to the papers filed by the (ballpark) opponents,” said Assistant City Attorney Les Girard. “It’s clear they are doing this more for delay purposes and may not even believe there’s any merit to their arguments.”
Bruce Henderson, a former city councilman representing one of the defendants, Libertarian Party chairman Edward Teyssier, said his client’s challenges are relevant and go to the heart of the city’s most recent ratification of dozens of contracts with the Padres taken on March 6. Henderson contends the city has built its ratification of earlier contracts on a house of cards, one the courts will find invalid because of the involvement of former councilwoman Valerie Stallings.
Stallings, the former 6th District representative, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors in January and resigned from office. Stallings admitted to accepting gifts from Padres owner John Moores and not reporting them in her public disclosure statements, and for not disclosing those gifts and voting on actions involving the Padres.
“The contracts that Valerie Stallings voted on and which involved John Moores and JMI Realty are void and don’t exist,” Henderson said.
In addition, Henderson contends in the legal answer that the city did not comply with state law when it failed to complete and attain certification of an environmental report on the project before the November 1998 election on Proposition C. The measure was approved by nearly 60 percent of voters citywide.
Mountains Of Paper
Richard Rider, a familiar foe to other large city projects and a Libertarian Party member, also filed an answer to the city. In his response, Rider contends the city’s action is flawed in that it does not specify all the contracts it is seeking to validate.
“The city’s summons makes only a general reference to many unspecified ‘contracts,’ ‘agreements,’ ‘ordinances’ and ‘resolutions,’ , seemingly a stack of documents so high a show dog couldn’t jump over them,” Rider said.
“The goal, ultimately, is to get the city to renegotiate the deal and put it back on the ballot,” he said.
Rider, along with two other Libertarians, challenged the city’s use of lease revenue bond financing to expand the San Diego Convention Center. The case made its way to the California Supreme Court before justices found in favor of the city, but the litigation delayed the center’s construction for about three years.
Carol Wallace, president of San Diego Convention Center Corp., said the delay caused the city to lose 75 conventions and $700 million in direct delegate spending according to an updated analysis.
Rider responds the delay actually saved the city more than $1 million because the city obtained a much lower interest rate when the bonds were issued.
Rider, who has run for several public offices, was successful in a legal challenge to a 1988 half-cent sales tax proposition approved by voters to build new courts and jails.
The third answer to the city’s validation lawsuit came from Harvey Furgatch, a former San Diego Unified Port District commissioner who has filed legal challenges against the agency over its participation in the ballpark project.
Stanley Zubel, Furgatch’s attorney, said he filed two motions last week, a demurrer that alleges the city’s action doesn’t meet certain legal requirements and a motion to strike, also based on alleged legal mistakes by the city.
Zubel contends the city fails to specifically identify all the matters that it seeks to validate, and that such an action isn’t possible because the city failed to file it within a 60-day statute of limitations.
He also said the city’s request for the costs of the suit from any challenges if it prevails violates the state’s laws covering such actions.
Furgatch previously challenged the Port District for what he said was its unlawful contribution of $21 million toward the originally estimated $411 million ballpark. While the case was dismissed in Superior Court, Furgatch appealed, and is awaiting the state Appellate Court’s ruling.
Disclosure Of Information
Furgatch also filed suit against the port for alleged violations of the Brown Act, the state law covering closed sessions by government agencies and the state’s public records laws.
Although the port prevailed on the Brown Act allegations, Furgatch won his case involving public records. Judge William Pate ruled April 17 the port illegally withheld documents concerning its involvement. The port has already turned over 3,320 pages of documents regarding the project, Zubel said.
While the city and the Padres have prevailed in the courts over the ballpark, opponents say they are optimistic of getting a ruling that will eventually cause the city to put the ballpark back to another public vote.
“There needs to be a legitimate, fully informed vote,” Teyssier said, adding such a vote should comply with the city’s charter and require a two-thirds majority to pass.
Construction of the ballpark in the East Village section of Downtown was halted in October after interim funding provided by the city dried up. The city said it was unable to issue $225 million in bonds for its share of the project because of the Stallings investigation and outstanding litigation.
The ballpark, originally scheduled to open in April 2002, is now projected to be completed by mid-2003. That assumes all litigation is resolved by late summer, permitting bonds to be issued.
