Guy Houston, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Executive Director-Elect, former Mayor of Dublin and GOP California Assembyman (R-Livermore from 2002 to 2008), who leapfrogged the top two candidates for the position (one Mark Hart, the Pittsburgh Steelers Chief Financial Officer, the other Scott McKibben, the former boss of The Rose Bowl and the current A11 Football League Commissioner) was identified in this space as being sued in a civil lawsuit for defrauding a group of senior citizens of $300,000, and after working for four years to try and get the case dismissed, wound up going to trial in 2007, and settling out of court.
Now, an even closer look reveals that Guy Houston was the focus of even more shady dealings that, overall, call into question how the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Joint Powers Authority is being ran. Overall, owners of the Oakland Raiders, The Golden State Warriors, and the Oakland Athletics, as well as their fans, and sponsors of signage and naming on the Oakland Coliseum itself, should be extremely concerned with what’s going on at the JPA that would lead to these developments.
Reportedly, Guy Houston’s tenure is to be ratified at a Friday, October 17th 8:30 am meeting of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Joint Powers Authority, but what’s coming down the information pipe regarding how the JPA got to the point of selecting a man with so much baggage he needs his own sidecar to handle it is a mystery at this point in time. Some are pointing fingers at The Hawkins Company, the head-hunting organization that gathered the resumes of qualified candidates for not doing the proper research. Others are putting the blame in the lap of Oakland At-Large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, who has remained silent to this blogger’s calls and texts, and focused on her current employment and on running for Mayor of Oakland, where polls have her out in front as of this writing.
But the fact remains that Guy Houston’s the first executive director candidate for the JPA to come in with a large, dark cloud of scandals over his head. In addition to the elderly fraud case, the San Francisco Chronicle reported the following in 2004 as did the Santa Monica Daily Press:
In 1993, the State Department of Corporations issued a “desist and refrain” order against Fred Houston, Guy Houston, and their investment company Winning Actions, for selling securities without a license.
In 2004, and sadly, Houston and his brother Eric settled a $250,000 lien that was brought on their property and because the family business filed for bankruptcy, threatening the Fremont Bank’s ability to collect on a $204,000 loan that was issued to Wining Assets by pledging the assets of Valley Capital Investment and Mortgage, the brothers real estate brokerage firm.
And the SF Chronicle specifically reports:
And in a deposition in his father’s bankruptcy proceeding, Houston acknowledged being very involved in a partnership called Houston Napa Development. The partnership bought a piece of land in Napa County that was expected to be developed as part of a golf resort, but the resort was never built and the property was ultimately sold.
Investors in the Napa partnership allege the property was sold and their money was rolled over into another partnership without their knowledge. That venture, named The Investment Partnership, is where the investors say their money was lost.
And then there was the 2007 elderly fraud scandal. In the last installment on this issue this blogger reported:
Specifically, Houston was the focus of a civil lawsuit where he was accused of defrauding seniors, specifically Plaintiffs Gerald Stefanski of Dublin, Samuel and Joann Story of Concord, and Carol Tomasa, who filed the lawsuit in 2004. According to various news sources, the plaintiffs invested in the Houston family’s Winning Action Investments, and included businesses called the Investment Partnership and the Houston Napa Development.
In late June of 2007, Houston went to trial under the claim that the then Assemblyman from-San Ramon helped his father defraud the elderly out of $340,000 in investments. Calitics blog reports this quote: “his father, Fred, falsely represented the security of their investments, failed to disclose the risks, repaid themselves while abandoning their investors and failed to account for where the investors’ money had gone in a confusing series of transfers among business entities…There is a “pattern of irregular and incompetent financial transactions consisting of unexplained money transfers back and forth between the various schemes, and between the Houstons personally, without apparent disclosure to or authorization from the investors,” according to court documents.”
In other news reports, Houston’s counter was to blame his father and said that he too was one of the bilked investors.
But several very damning news accounts counter his claims, proving, via referencing court documents, that both Guy and his father worked as a family business and that there was no evidence of the separation of activities he claims to have existed.
The revelation of this lawsuit in 2007 wrecked Guy’s planned move to challenge CA-11 representative Democrat Jerry McNerney, and because GOP donors did not want to deal with any more “culture of corruption” claims that had come to tarnish them to that point.
And if that wasn’t enough, according to Inside Bay Area Buzz in 2010, the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum JPA is apparently set to have as its head in Mr. Houston a person who, as a GOP legislator in September of 2008, was the focus of an Oakland-based protest where working parents, child-care providers and kids rallied to get a budget passed. The key? Guy Houston, Assemblyman Guy Houston, R-Livermore, who was called on by the protestors to be a leader “stand up and reach across the aisle… and do what’s right for children living in your district.”
But while Guy Houston seemed to drag his feet on helping the working poor while as a GOP Assemblyman, he had no problem at all voting not to close a tax loophole that allowed those who buy planes and yachts to avoid paying taxes.
That, folks, is the man the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum JPA has picked to run its organization. One has to wonder how all of that will come to bear on that large real estate deal called Coliseum City? Can Houston be trusted not to get his family’s real estate business involved in it, and avoid looking like he’s trying to make some side money for himself?
To be clear, this blogger, me, does not enjoy issuing such an expose, but the bottom line is that I’m personally sick and tired of Oakland, and its lone sports business organization, the JPA, being the laughing stock of the national sports business community. Warriors Onwer Joe Lacob told me Oakland has leadership challenges. This makes him look dead on correct.
It makes me sick to my stomach to go to NFL Owners Meetings and see other municipal governments that are well-organized and ran bring Super Bowls to their regions, and Oakland goes unknown, save for my work in 2000. I care about my city of Oakland, and I’m really upset that it seems some others don’t share my drive to make things better.
This has gone on long enough – it’s time to right the ship. It’s not personal Mr. Houston, it’s only the business of getting the JPA right.
Stay tuned.
Zennie Abraham | Zennie Abraham or “Zennie62” is the founder of Zennie62Media which consists of zennie62blog.com and a multimedia blog news aggregator and video network, and 78-blog network, with social media and content development services and consulting. Zennie is a pioneer video blogger, YouTube Partner, social media practitioner, game developer, and pundit. Note: news aggregator content does not reflect the personal views of Mr. Abraham.