With all the crazy that’s been injected so far this summer into the Sacramento Kings arena deal, you’d think that an agreement with construction unions on labor to build the thing would be relatively uncontroversial, right? Of course not: Yesterday a spokesperson for a coalition of nonunion contractors grabbed the mic at a mayoral press conference, warning “there will be a fight” and vowing to give money to the arena referendum campaign. It’s getting impossible to keep track of the sides here without a scorecard; I can’t wait until the Dead Men of Dunharrow arrive.
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The part that kinda made me laugh about this is that the agreement specifies that 60% of the workers they hire will be from the “Sacramento Region.”
How in the world can they possibly enforce that? Seems like all someone needs to do is rent an apartment in West Sacramento, and they’re in. And, of course, West Sacramento — being in a different county and all — has zero financial at stake here anyway.
But even at that, how would this 60% requirement be enforced? Are they going to hire “location police”? It’s idiotic. People can see right through it.
To keep this in perspective, Sac has fewer than 500,000 residents, but the area officially has 2.3M people. 1.8M people live in the Sacramento region, and have no financial stake in this at all. It’s a meaningless provision, not even enforceable. Add to this that there is no contract yet, and this makes it even less meaningful. It’s just a way for goobers to feel good about this, and accomplishes nothing else.
And 70% of apprentices, too. BFD.
What is starting to come to light now is that the modifications to CEQA that Steinberg is proposing should benefit the Warriors owners about as much as it should benefit the Kings owners. So think about that for a minute: The new Kings owners are primarily former part-owners of the Warriors.
To me, this suggests a strategy: What if half of California’s NBA teams suddenly threatened to move out of CA if CEQA is not modified? Does this mean anything to other CA cities that are trying to build new sports facilities? Is there precedence here? What about San Jose, which is already making some noise about replacing the Shark Tank? What about the A’s and Raiders?
It’s not a huge leap of logic to link all these ideas together. It suggests a strategy on the part of team owners.
It’s easier to link the Warriors and Kings here, since the current owners of one of those teams was a major share-holder in the other until very recently. Of course the Warriors and Kings are working together on this.
Yes, it’s all speculation on my part. I admit it. But come on; how much of a stretch is this? And it doesn’t hurt that both Sacramento and San Francisco are pretty large cities.
Chris Hansen donates $100,000 to support arena opposition in Sacramento, then decides to bury the gathered signatures when he’s unmasked, and then he donates another $50,000 (ok, he pays probably $49,999.95 of that) to the coffers for the Cal FPPC organization. Meanwhile, the form 410 that would actually disclose who directed the “Citizens for a Voice in Government” money to the signature gathering still isn’t online. http://www.sos.ca.gov/prd/forms/410.pdf