San Diego leaders confident after meeting with NFL, but Chargers don’t agree

CHICAGO – With the clock ticking on the National Football League’s return to Los Angeles, and the San Diego Chargers insisting they are full steam ahead to relocating to the second-biggest market in the country, leaders from their current home made a case to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell they are ready, able and on the way to approving a new stadium for the Chargers.

And that they can complete their objective in time to keep the Chargers out of L.A., where they are proposing a joint stadium with the Oakland Raiders in Carson as a fall-back plan in case new stadiums don’t emerge in San Diego and Oakland.

During a meeting that lasted a little under an hour-and-a-half on Monday, San Diego leaders updated Goodell, NFL Vice President Eric Grubman and the league’s 6-owner Los Angeles committee on the progress they are making on a new Chargers stadium in Mission Valley.

Afterward, the San Diego group felt they provided compelling evidence they can clear the environmental, legal and funding hurdles needed to get a stadium approved by early next year.

“We feel good about how things went,” said Stephen Puetz, the chief of staff for San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

The Chargers felt otherwise, and immediately issued a statement through lead counsel Mark Fabiani indicating they want nothing to do with the city’s current plan in which a rushed EIR and uncertain vote leaves them vulnerable to missing out on their Los Angeles opportunity.

“Never before in California history has a controversial, billion dollar project relied on environmental review documents hastily prepared in three weeks,” the statement began. “The Chargers have been clear from the start that the franchise will not be the City’s guinea pig for this inevitably ill-fated legal experiment. Remember, these are the same politicians who told us, with disastrous results in court, that the convention center expansion could be financed by a vote of the hoteliers rather than a vote of the people.

“Both history and current polling show it will be extraordinarily difficult to persuade voters to devote hundreds of millions of General Fund tax dollars to a stadium, but in the end any funding plan is going to be dragged down into the quicksand of the City’s legally inadequate environmental review process — a process that will be bogged down in court for years before it is eventually declared illegal.”

Puetz and his colleagues arrived armed with a completed 6,000-page Environmental Impact Report they believe will hold up to public scrutiny and be approved in time for a special January vote.

The Chargers have insisted that, between the EIR hurdles and the reluctance of local voters to approve public financing, the Mission Valley project will either get held up in court for a prolonged period or derailed by vote. The risk of going down that path, they say, would leave them vulnerable to getting squeezed out of a spot in Los Angeles, where a three-team, two stadium race is underway including the Chargers/Raiders Carson plan and St. Louis Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke’s Inglewood stadium proposal.

The NFL could decide by the end of 2015 or early 2016 what team or teams relocate to Los Angeles and what stadium they will play in.

Puetz argues the EIR – which is being aided by outside consultants and city staff working around the clock – will hold up legally with the help of San Diego native and California Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, who promises to expedite any environmental lawsuits filed against the city.

“Any idea that it will be marred in lawsuits for years is just completely not the case,” Puetz said.

Puetz also insisted a professionally conducted survey shows San Diego voters will approve dipping into general fund revenues by a vote of 51-41.

“We believe it will pass,” Puetz said. “The key element is you can’t increase taxes. If you increase taxes as part of this process it will not work.”

The Chargers challenged the results of the survey – especially how it was worded – and say the two surveys they’ve commissioned in which they asked  voters if they would approve the use of $350 million dollars for a new stadium, indicate an overwhelming lack of support.

The question now is, will the NFL hold up a decision on L.A. to enable San Diego to at least get it to a vote?

That was one of the topics San Diego discussed with the NFL on Monday.

“They were very, very interested in our timeline and our process and the certainty that we can provide,”Puetz said. “They seemed understanding of those dates.”

The Chargers, on the other hand, are intent on getting to L.A. And at least at this point, insist they will not get bogged down in San Diego’s plan.