As debate rages in the Nevada Legislature over public funding for a Las Vegas based stadium for the Oakland A’s, fans wait with baited breath. The state government is meeting again on the matter on Monday, and will at some point vote on a bill that would commit up to $380 million in state and county dollars.
At this point, it’s unclear how the vote will go. If the Legislature votes ‘no’, it would throw the A’s proposed move to Las Vegas in serious peril.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Scott Ostler has been covering the situation for months, and joined Murph & Mac on Monday to give his prediction on how the vote will go.
Ostler said he believes it will be close, but if he had to guess, he doesn’t think the funding gets approved.
“I think it’s right on the edge right now,” Ostler said on KNBR. “I think it could go either way. I think in general, if all of the factors were thrown out, they’d vote ‘no’. It’s being rammed down their throat, it was a quickie deal, there’s way too many voodoo numbers involved. There’s too many questions.
“But what I’m hearing and reading is some of the people who would vote ‘no’ on this deal, like the Democrats there who have social programs they want to get through, those programs are being kind of held hostage. In other words, the governor is saying, ‘Hey man, if you vote ‘no’ on the ballpark project, I’m going to vote ‘no’ on your pet projects. So there’s a lot of politicking going on.
“From what I’ve read and heard, it’s not a great deal for Nevada. I think they’d be kind of suckered into it, but it might happen. My sense is that they’re going to vote ‘no’, but it’s going to be close.”
In Ostler’s dream scenario, the proposal gets shot down and the A’s come back to Oakland with their tail between their legs. The City of Oakland then forces a sale of the team.
“My scenario is Nevada rejects they A’s, the A’s come back to Oakland, and they say ‘Alright, we love you, we still love Oakland, we want to work out a deal here,’” Ostler said. “In my scenario, the mayor says ‘No, we don’t want to talk to you. We’re not interested in dealing with you anymore, we don’t like the way you do business, we don’t like the way you deal. You didn’t deal with us honorably before, and now you’re coming crawling back. And, no, we don’t want to talk to you.’
“In that case, the Oakland A’s would basically be screwed. They’d have no place to go. There’s no other cities ready for ball right now…The city could say ‘we’re not going to lease The Coliseum beyond next year.’ So they would be stuck, and they would be forced to sell now without a ballpark deal or anything.”
Listen to the full interview above. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch Murph & Mac weekdays from 6 – 10 a.m. on KNBR 104.5 / 680 and streaming live on KNBR.com.
