A drawback of San Diego’s proposal for a Chargers stadium vote on Dec. 15 is that the project "would be more vulnerable to environmental delays and lawsuits," but attorneys yesterday disagreed "about how much more vulnerable," according to David Garrick of the SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE. The accelerated timeline forced San Diego to "abandon one of three ways a project can be exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act: making the ballot measure an initiative by spending weeks gathering signatures from thousands of registered voters." With that off the table, the city "must pursue at least one of the two other possible CEQA exemptions or face conducting an environmental impact report that would take roughly 18 months and could delay construction as long as five years if it triggers litigation." The prospect of such delays "could prompt the Chargers -- even if voters approve the financing plan in December -- to opt for competing stadiums" proposed in the L.A. suburbs of Carson and Inglewood, where CEQA exemptions have "already been secured this year via initiatives." The city’s other two possible routes to avoiding environmental delays are "declaring the project 'categorically' exempt from CEQA, which could also be vulnerable to litigation, or getting a 'statutory' CEQA exemption from the state Legislature, which couldn’t be legally challenged." City officials yesterday declined to say "which exemption they’ll pursue." They only said that their environmental attorney "declared them on 'sound legal footing' -- instead of legally in the clear -- which seems to point in the direction of a categorical exemption" (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 6/10).
"A" FOR EFFORT: Chargers Special Counsel Mark Fabiani said of accusations that the team is sabotaging stadium talks, “Why would we need to sabotage anything? Long ago, we satisfied the NFL’s relocation guidelines. We don’t have to go to meetings and pay lawyers to study proposals. But I do wish the experts were engaged in January, when the mayor came out with his task force; we might be having a whole different conversation." He added, "Oakland and St. Louis basically have been in identical situations and they’ve taken the opposite approach. In short, they’ve been far more sophisticated in handling this than the mayor and his operatives.” In San Diego, Nick Canepa asks, "How sophisticated must you be? Oakland? St. Louis? Carson? Sophisticated?" San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is a politician and he "probably waited too long, although he inherited myriad problems, a new stadium being among them." Canepa: "At least he’s doing something his predecessors didn’t. He's trying" (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 6/10).
