Nevada district judge James Todd Russell issued a ruling yesterday against the state teachers’ union that is trying to put a referendum on the November 2024 ballot to overturn the state’s $600 million subsidy for a stadium to bring the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas. What this means for the future of the A’s relocation is, well, it’s complicated, and first will require some backstory:
When the union-backed group Schools Over Stadium set out to try to overturn the stadium funding bill, it was presented with a problem: By law, Nevada referendums can’t be used to abrogate contracts, which is what much of Senate Bill 1 was set up to arrange. So instead, they crafted a referendum that would take a laser focus on just the sections of the bill that provide funding for the stadium — since the bill says that Clark County can’t sell stadium bonds until the taxes listed therein are expected to “reasonably generate sufficient revenue,” the theory goes, a pending referendum would put any bond sales on hold until the voters voted. (Or bond buyers would get cold feet in anticipation of the referendum, which would amount to the same thing.)
A couple of A’s lobbyists sued to block the referendum on the grounds that it wasn’t fair to try to overturn just part of a bill and that the ballot measure was, as they put it, “argumentative.” Russell, though, ruled only that (as the San Jose Mercury News put it) it was “confusingly written and incomplete,” leaving the union group with two choices: appeal, or rewrite the petitions and resubmit them by the filing deadline next July. And one of those appears to be the plan:
“While the decision is disappointing, it’s not uncommon,” said Alexander Marks, Schools Over Stadiums’ spokesperson. “Schools Over Stadiums will appeal this decision to the Nevada Supreme Court and/or refile the referendum petition. As the judge pointed out, there’s plenty of time before the signature deadline in July of 2024.”
In short, there are lots more steps before we see whether this referendum will ever see the light of day, not to mention whether it can succeed in blocking Clark County from selling stadium bonds, even if it eventually passes.
Meanwhile, MLB owners are meeting next week to vote on approving the A’s relocation. It would certainly be unusual for this to go to a vote without having the require three-quarters of owners in the bag, though not entirely unprecedented, given what happened when Bob Lurie tried to move the San Francisco Giants to Tampa Bay in the early ’90s. I’m not putting any money on Trevor May and David Samson holding more sway than the power of owners-club fraternalism, but if you gave me odds, maybe.
Judge James Todd Russell can go straight to he’ll for siding with the lobbyists for the absurd A’s stadium over the teachers union. There are well in excess of $500 million in desperately needed renovations and expansions at Clark County Schools. Clark County teachers have been working without a contract for 3 months and CCSD shows no indication that teachers will ever receive another contract. The political influence of big money interests are diverting resources from key investments in education and infrastructure to the most ridiculous pork barrel projects imaginable like a multi billion dollar baseball stadium on Tropicana or $500 million in repairs to Chase Field. It is amazing that barely 20 year old Chase Field and Miller Park are so decrepit that they should be replaced, or at a minimum, be renovated at a cost of $500 million. The real repairs needed are to the spineless and corrupt politicians and judges that cave to wasteful desires and are bought by the billionaires.