I genuinely didn’t think the Sacramento Kings arena-funding petition drive story could get any crazier than yesterday, but here we are:
Sacramento’s arena boosters want Chris Hansen to do more than apologize for financing an effort to derail the project. They want him to shred the signatures his money funded that could send the arena plan to the June 2014 ballot.
In a letter sent Monday, members of the DowntownArena.org campaign asked Hansen to “not allow these petitions” to be used in the arena vote effort. The letter can be found here:HansenLetter.pdf
To get how screwy this is, keep in mind that it’s not like Hansen has a pile of petitions sitting in his garage that his own hired henchmen went out and collected. No, he just gave a whopping big check to the group that is collecting signatures, which put it in its bank account, then used it to help hire signature-gatherers. Who gathered signatures, presumably from people who just wanted to sign the petitions and had no idea who paid for the people carrying them, but now those specific signatures should be somehow tracked down and shredded because EVIL HANSEN MONEY.
Anyway, it all makes for a great publicity stunt for the Kings arena backers, I suppose. And the letter is pretty amusing to read, what with its references to Hansen as the “true owner” of the signatures. I bet the lawyers were giggling as they wrote this one.
It’s a long running theme that money is money, but in this case they want to do what they can to capitalize on Hansen offering his apology. It’s about as equal a weak argument as “I did it 5 weeks after the heat of the battle and regret it, so I won’t give any more”.
I tried to obtain the form 410 (which registers the “Citizens for a Voice in Government, Major Funding By Investment Manager” recipient committee) which was supposed to be filed within 10 days of Hansen’s donation and the FPPC person thought they’d receive a copy on Monday. I’m sure there’s ways to hide it, but the form says the principal officer (or at least top 3 officers of a group) should be listed. There’s a part of me curious if the move was so poorly planned re: disclosure requirements that Loeb and Loeb passed the money along to a PAC that we’ll find was run by Hansen.
Of course, it’s equally (if not more) likely that we’ll find it’s a one-off PAC created for the purpose of providing an intermediary and it was controlled by the listed treasurer. The name of the PAC/org doesn’t quite fit all the requirements so it’s possible it was designed to get the 410 rejected to cause further delay. Investment Manager doesn’t exactly describe Hansen’s interest in a Sacramento initiative to vote on sports funding. http://www.fppc.ca.gov/forms/410.pdf
So…. will the arena backers also be requiring signatures gained through donations from labour groups and businessmen who stand to gain from the construction of said arena be annulled?
Thought not.
It was a mistake for Hansen to support this the petition at all, let alone fail to file the appropriate paperwork. But suggesting this somehow disqualifies the signatories is ludicrous – something the lawyers drafting the letter know only too well.
What a PR win for the sports subsidy community! Too funny.
Bill Simmons made a great point in his recent article: the NBA is not going to expand for a long time because they don’t want to dilute the huge amount of TV revenue they are about to get in 3 years from the next major network/cable network contracts, and don’t want to take the risk that the values of franchises (which have exploded in the last 2 years) stall because there is 32 that exist instead of 30. Even if he never did this Seattle was not going to get a team for decades, so this is his last shot, and the odds are it’s going to fail.