Anaheim residents might get a rare look at city council members’ plans for Angel Stadium after two separate corruption probes highlighted the shadowy inner workings of city hall’s dealings with the Major League Baseball team.
It comes as top city executives have privately met with Angels representatives and real estate consultants to discuss the stadium and go over the Surplus Land Act – a state law governing selling public land.
The latest scathing state audit on Anaheim found the stadium lease first negotiated in 1996 limits revenue the city pulls in from the ballpark and doesn’t give officials the right to inspect how the taxpayers’ biggest asset is maintained.
[Read: CA Auditors: Anaheim Doesn’t Know if Angel Stadium is Trashed]
This week, Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava called for officials to discuss the next steps with the Angels amid increasing criticism from state officials, residents and former city council members regarding Anaheim’s response to a slew of investigation findings in recent years and mounting questions from the press.
“We have outside individuals like our state senators and state assembly members who have opined on how the city has responded to the Angels over the past 30 years,” Rubalcava said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“We have actually been doing a lot of work despite what many of our friends outside of the city have been saying about the way that this council and also staff has been reacting to some of this stuff.”
Still, Rubalcava says it’s time for her colleagues to map out a plan for Angel Stadium.
“I’d like to start being proactive on how we decide as a council that we’re going to move forward at looking at how we are working with the Angels’ owner,” she said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“We haven’t really had the discussion as to whether or not we are going to have a negotiation with the Angels or what is the strategy for moving forward and directing staff to do what we want to get done on that property.”
State Assemblyman Avelino Valencia (D-Anaheim), who pushed for the state audit along with State Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), said there’s been an uneven relationship between the city and the Angels for years.
“Partnership to me, reflects a balanced approach to a situation or a problem, or in this case, an agreement that is fair to both parties. That just hasn’t been the case,” Valencia told Voice of OC editor in chief and publisher Norberto Santana Jr.
[Read: Santana: Anaheim Can’t Afford to Play With the Angels]
Rubalcava and the rest of the city council members did not respond to requests for comments Wednesday.
Her public comments came a couple weeks after former Mayor Harry Sidhu was sentenced to two months in prison, a year of supervised release and fined $55,000 for destroying records about the now-dead Angel Stadium land sale and lying to federal investigators about providing a team consultant critical negotiation information.
[Read: Disgraced Former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu Sentenced to Two Months in Prison]
The sale collapsed after federal agents in sworn affidavits that became public in spring 2022 alleged Sidhu rammed through the stadium sale to try and get $1 million from the ball club – campaign support that Sidhu’s lawyers told a U.S. District Judge the former mayor never got.
Rubalcava also called for an update on what upgrades were needed at Angel Stadium.
Her request for the assessment update comes less than a month since Voice of OC reported that it has been roughly two years since city council members first contracted for the study yet there have been no public updates from officials on when it would be completed.
[Read: How Long Does it Take to Figure Out If Angel Stadium is Trashed?]
What’s Next For The Angels & Anaheim?
Rubalcava isn’t the only city council member talking about the future of Anaheim’s relationship with the Angels in the wake of the audit.
Mayor Ashleigh Aitken penned an open letter to Angel’s owner Arte Moreno last week stating that she wanted to have an open and honest conversation about the future of Angels baseball in Anaheim after the state auditor’s report on the stadium lease
“Past councils and the Angels have endlessly quibbled over vague, nearly 30-year-old lease terms and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees. I am not interested in relitigating the past,” Aitken wrote.
“I welcome the chance to come together to talk about the future of Angels Baseball in Anaheim, guided by and respecting the process that has been laid out for us.”
The mayor said in her letter that the conversation should start with establishing a good faith relationship and that negotiations should go through a public process and follow state law as well as take into account community input.
She also wants the city to have full access for inspections of the stadium and for the Angels to invest in schools, parks, affordable housing and open space as well as the ball club to recognize Anaheim “prominently as the team’s location and partner.”
“We appreciate Mayor Aitken’s letter and the desire to strengthen the relationship between the City and Angels Baseball. We look forward to a new season at the Big A and the future of Angels Baseball in Anaheim,” said Marie Garvey, a spokeswoman for the Angels, in a Wednesday text message.
Garvey did not respond to questions on future negotiations between the Angels and Anaheim – including if the ballclub would put Anaheim back in the team name.
In a rare public disagreement on Tuesday, Councilwoman Natalie Meeks criticized the mayor for writing the letter without getting input from her fellow council members.
“The letter also outlined very specific deal points for future negotiations regarding the stadium and the team. I was disappointed that the letter was sent without the input or concurrence of her council colleagues,” Meeks said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“We all know that the go out it alone approach did not prove successful as evidenced by the previous failed stadium deal.”
Meeks said a new agreement with the Angels could be the next big project in Anaheim but it has to be done collaboratively.
“So many are quick to be critical of the current state of affairs surrounding Angel Stadium – Sacramento, the media, even former council members and others. They’re forgetting where we were and what this council has addressed the last several years,” she said.
“Moving forward the negotiation process is very important to me and I look forward to working with my colleagues, the city manager and his team, and the Angels to develop a framework and advance negotiations but we have a lot to do before we get there.”
Meeks also said officials have to engage with residents to determine the city’s priorities for future agreements with the ballclub.
Aitken said the city’s charter makes her the spokesperson for the city and that she consulted top city executives about her letter and made it clear that she was writing on her own behalf – not her colleagues.
“I am certainly allowed to voice my personal opinions on what I think is one of the biggest issues we are going to be confronting in the next couple of years,” she responded at Tuesday’s meeting.
“If there is any concern by my council colleagues or if there is any concern by the public about my opinions, I am pretty forthright about them and I’m happy to talk to any of you about my personal opinions at any point.”
Aitken has rarely responded to Voice of OC’s request for comments on Angel stadium in recent months.
Private Meetings, Angel Stadium & The Surplus Land Act
Meanwhile, top city staff and Angel executives met privately in January with a real estate consultant to discuss a state law regarding selling public land – sparking questions if another land sale is in the works despite city officials adamantly denying any negotiations about the stadium.
[Read: What’s the Future of Angel Stadium?]
On Feb. 5, Anaheim officials announced that Angels Baseball extended their lease of Angel Stadium to 2032.
On Feb. 10, top city executives including City Manager Jim Vanderpool, Assistant City Manager Greg Garcia, Deputy City Manager Ted White, City Attorney Rob Fabela and more met with state auditors to discuss the findings of their probe into the stadium lease.
On February 20, Aitken and Councilwoman Kristen Maahs separately and privately met with the real estate consultant Kosmont Companies to go over the Surplus Land Act and Angel Stadium, according to both their online calendars.
In an email last week, city spokesperson Mike Lyster said those meetings were part of individual briefings to go over the Surplus Land Act with council members and that Angels representatives weren’t present at the meetings.
“The meeting with the Angels was held as a courtesy for the tenant of the stadium to share the current status of the Surplus Land Act. No Council members attended that briefing, which included city staff, Kosmont and Angels representatives,” Lyster said about the January meeting with city executives.
The meetings on the Surplus Land Act are taking place after State Attorney General Rob Bonta fined Anaheim officials close to $100 million for violating the state law in 2022 over the now canned land sale.
A few weeks later, federal agents filed sworn affidavits in Bonta’s land act case against Anaehim, with FBI agents alleging Sidhu tried to ram through the sale for a $1 million in campaign contributions from the Angels.
In response, State Senator Tom Umberg wrote two bills that were signed into law regarding Surplus Land Act Violations.
One of the laws, SB-34, requires Orange County’s public agencies to resolve any violations of the surplus land act within two months before they can sell the land
“The reason it’s only Orange County is because the other cities went nuts,” Umberg said last month in a phone call.
The other, SB-229, requires government agencies to publicly discuss a Surplus Land Act violation, giving residents a two weeks notice prior to the deliberation.
“The genesis of that,” Umberg said about the bills, “was the sale of Angel Stadium, and what was revealed in the Voice of OC.”
Editor’s note: Ashleigh Aitken’s father, Wylie Aitken, chairs Voice of OC’s board of directors.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.