SANTA CLARA — In the wake of a Santa Clara County civil grand jury report critical of two councilmembers who accepted football tickets from the San Francisco 49ers for a tour of Levi’s Stadium, the city will now limit the tours.
In November 2021, Santa Clara City Councilmembers Raj Chahal and Karen Hardy attended the 49ers vs. Rams games to get a better sense of stadium operations, they said. While the city owns Levi’s and the council makes decisions on issues like how late music acts can play, the day-to-day stadium management falls to the 49ers.
Chahal and Hardy’s visit sparked concerns over whether the pair had violated both city and state laws around accepting gifts, though both have repeatedly attested the visit was solely for informational purposes.
Last year’s scathing civil grand jury report, titled “Unsportsmanlike Conduct,” recommended the council adopt a policy around stadium tours, and on Tuesday night, the council voted 4-3 to limit themselves to two tours in a 12-month period of Levi’s Stadium and the Santa Clara Convention Center. Mayor Lisa Gillmor, Vice Mayor Kevin Park and Councilmember Kathy Watanabe cast the dissenting votes.
While allowing elected officials to tour the city-own facilities has created widespread public backlash, City Manager Jovan Grogan said they’re critical as the council is “charged with setting policies and financial expenditures connected to these very significant facilities.”
“Having the ability to at a very high level have a limited amount of operational tours to have a general understanding of how the facility works I think does benefit the public because it provides you with knowledge that you otherwise would not have to conduct the duties that you’re elected to conduct,” he said.
Councilmember Suds Jain called a Levi’s Stadium tour he took in January 2022 with Councilmember Anthony Becker “eye-opening.” Jain said they both purchased tickets to the event to avoid side-stepping any gift laws and he never even saw his seat.
“These operational tours are very important for us to see how the seat-builder license holders get access to these buffets and how the parking works and the traffic flow and the security there at the stadium,” Jain said. “It’s absolutely essential to have these tours if we’re going to make decisions about these facilities.”
But not everyone on the council agreed.
Gillmor and Watanabe pointed toward the way the last city manager, Deanna Santana — who was fired by the council in 2022 — handled operational tours.
Watanabe said the full council took a tour before a U2 concert and it was noticed as a regular council meeting where the public could attend for a majority of it.
“All the councilmembers were there, there was no worry about Brown Act violations, there was no worry about individual meetings with stadium managers and what would be discussed,” she said. “That’s another part of my concern is by the way this is structured, you are validating meetings with councilmembers of the stadium management.”
Several councilmembers have been criticized for taking regular closed-door meetings with 49ers lobbyists over the last few years.
Gillmor said the new policy “lacks transparency” and is “ripe for abuse.”
“It smells,” she said. “It really does. I think if we want to be above all of this and be transparent, open, ethical, reasonable and show our public that yes we’re doing their business, not just to make us happy and attend an event we like and we get to pick two a year. It should be an organized tour.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com