Oakland News: Joe Tuman Exploring Run Against Kaplan; Coliseum JPA, AEG, NFL

Oakland’s Joe Tuman called to explain that he’s not really running against Oakland At-Large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan yet, but that he’s filed papers that would allow him to establish a bank account, and set up the necessary legal infrastructure to run for office – against Kaplan, if he decided to do so. Taking on Rebecca is something that’s on his mind, but Joe’s playing it safe, trying to assess his chances of winning.

Also, Joe did not call the Tribune; the Tribune called him. So my apology for playfully blasting my friend in Joe in the last blog post on this issue.

But, to me, that’s a losing approach, not being forceful in your intentions; if you passionately want something, you go for it. Period. The desire drives everything else, because people will get behind anyone who believes in what they’re doing without equivocation. This is something I also told Joe when we talked. Regular people don’t like iffy candidates. The one thing you can say about Rebecca is she’s not iffy.

Score a small one for Kaplan, here. Sorry Joe. Gotta be honest.

This is another way of saying I’d like to see Joe run because I believe he can do a great job if he gets to City Hall. This is not against Rebecca, but for Joe. But Tuman has to have a burning, Hulk-like desire, and laser beam focus to make it happen. Otherwise, forget it, because time waits for no person.

Oakland Coliseum JPA To Re-Do Vote Friday

I understand the Oakland – Alameda County Coliseum’s set to “redo” the vote that originally gave AEG the go-ahead to negotiate a contract to be the new manager of the Oakland Coliseum Complex. The first vote held April 20th was controversial because Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty basically told fellow Coliseum JPA Board Member Mary Warren how to vote on the issue because she said “no” leading Scott to tell her to say “yes.” That’s a no-no.

I guess this time someone’s going to tape Scott’s mouth shut, and also make sure Mary says the right words. But if she says what comes out of her mouth, deal with it. My issue is that the Coliseum JPA set up a kind of pay-to-play situation that SMG did not know about, and the Oakland Tribune’s Angela Woodall was suddenly too scared to point to because she didn’t want to piss off her source after her wayward Twitter tweet accusing the JPA of looking like Tammany Hall, the corrupt political organization of New York in the 1940s.

Sadly, Woodall would rather tee off on me that look at the truth about the JPA and the Coliseum in depth.

We have a lot of fiscal and physical problems at the Coliseum Complex, and the JPA has not adressed many of them. Moreover, we have an Oakland City Auditor who claims she’s too busy to look at the Oakland Coliseum, but she’s not too busy such that she can’t look at Oakland Fox Theater Developer Phil Tagami’s personal life, wondering how a person who’s given so much to Oakland earns a living.

That’s the Oakland we live in today.

The fact is that, because of the State Of California’s raid on Redevelopment, we’re looking at an environment where private sector interests have more power than ever to wave cash, or be invited to wave cash, to win projects. That’s scary.

If California State Controller John Chiang forces his request for the Coliseum JPA to give back to the State the $3 million in Oakland Redevelopment money that was to be used for the Coliseum City project, then what’s the JPA going to do?

The Coliseum JPA will turn to AEG – that’s why it was mentioned that AEG was going to give $3 million to Coliseum City – it was a replacement for the money the State is poised to take. See? SMG didn’t get wind of that until it was too late.

Why California Governor Jerry Brown doesn’t think through the long-term implications of his more controversial actions before he does them is beyond me, but in this case, he’s really led an effort that’s going to wreck California cities’ ability to make sound, clean development deals that aren’t “pay to play” and don’t look like they were done in secret.

If the Coliseum JPA wanted a manager / developer, instead of a manager, the RFP should have been written to say so and given SMG a chance to match AEG. And for those who wonder why I care, SMG’s Doug Thornton is a friend of mine, who I dearly want to see win this thing. Doug’s a straight-shooter, saved the Superdome from almost certain destruction, and is well very respected by the National Football League – light-years more so than AEG is to be totally frank.

Just being honest, I’m also giving a BIG NFL HINT to the Coliseum JPA. They can ignore me, as they usually do, but they will do so at their own peril. In fact, they would be idiots to do so. The Coliseum JPA has no idea what kind of road they’re going down, but I do, and it’s not a pretty one for future sports business relationships.