Kings, K.J. snub Sacramento groups working to ensure equal community benefits from new arena

On Monday, the Sacramento Kings and Mayor Kevin Johnson kicked housing, environment, local business and fair-wage advocates to the new arena’s curb.

Since March, a group called the Sacramento Coalition for Shared Prosperity has been trying to negotiate a deal with the Kings. Its members want to secure things like well-paying jobs and traffic mitigation as part of the arena deal.

They argue that this is more than fair, since the city is forking over a public subsidy north of $300 million. Just like many city leaders, the group also points to the Staples Center and L.A. Live down south, where developers have given millions of dollars and more to neighborhood groups as part a “community benefits agreement.”

But during a press conference on Monday at the footprint of the forthcoming new Kings home, team officials and the mayor announced the formation of a different group, Sacramento First, to execute and oversee its own community-benefits agreement. Not only were SCSP members not invited, they also didn’t even know about the new group or the event until that morning.

“They’ve sort of not been talking to us,” says SCSP member Tamie Dramer, who also staffs the Sacramento Housing Alliance, a group advocating for fair and affordable housing.

Even though SCSP wasn’t standing behind the mayor at the press conference, Dramer went anyway to distribute material to attendees.

Her fliers explained SCSP’s goals: fair labor practices and sustainable wages for arena and new-development workers; 380 affordable-housing units and grants for more subsidized light-rail and bus tickets for arena employees and money to pay for game-time transit costs; environmental development; small-business loans and compensation for lost revenue during construction; and other community-preservation assurances.

That may seem like quite a list of demands. But SCSP says it’s common.

Down south at the Staples Center, a neighborhood group’s CBA with its developer included $1 million in parks-and-rec improvements, living-wage contracts, an agreement to hire residents within 3 miles of the project and $100,000 for hiring programs, a 20 percent affordable-housing requirement, $650,000 in interest-free loans to build more affordable housing, and many other benefits.

On another Los Angeles project, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy worked with a different neighborhood group and got the University of Southern California to agree to a CBA worth tens of millions in 2012.

“We’re not even asking for close to that,” Dramer says.

The 30 Los Angeles-based neighborhood groups who negotiated the L.A. Live deal are also part of an oversight committee to ensure follow-through by the developer.

SCSP says this is needed here in Sacramento, too, so that Kings officials hold true to any promises. But the mayor’s new Sacramento First group is weighted heavily by a narrow swath of business and development interests with ties to the Kings, plus pro-arena City Hall insiders.

Councilman Allen Warren, who’s voted yes on all the arena financing, plus a Kings lawyer, are Sacramento First’s chairpersons. The group’s members include arena architect firm AECOM, labor unions working on the project, pro-building group and unofficial mayoral-office attack dog Region Builders, chamber of commerce groups, and even Johnson’s chief of staff Daniel Conway.

Will this K.J.-Kings friendly coalition keep other groups like SCSP from achieving any sort of meaningful CBA like the one in L.A.?

“That is not broad community representation,” worries Dramer.“That is them conducting oversight on themselves.”

She remains hopeful, however, that the Kings will listen, even as they were set to increase their negotiating leverage with Tuesday’s council vote.

Sacramento First announced two CBA goals on Monday. For instance, the Kings would up the number of apprentice jobs in high-need communities from 60 to 70, and the new arena would bring over Sleep Train Arena’s existing employees and labor contracts.

Both of those are positives, Dramer says, but they represent relatively minor concessions that fall far short of CBAs negotiated in other cities.

Paulina Gonzalez with the California Reinvestment Coalition, and who also worked on the USC project, says the Kings and the mayor’s move to create a separate CBA group is typical. “That’s one of the tactics I’ve seen time and again,” she says. “It’s a way of addressing the issues when you’re really not.”

A Kings contact for Sacramento First wouldn’t discuss with SN&R why SCSP was not invited to be part of the coalition. Kings vice president of strategic initiatives and former Johnson chief of staff Kunal Merchant did not respond to SN&R’s email. The mayor’s office also did not respond to an email.

Nationwide, CBAs are common for sports arenas. The development of arenas often impact local businesses (read “Not OK on K Street” by Cosmo Garvin, SN&R Bites, page 15, to see how this is already happening on K Street). Poorer neighbors, parking and traffic also change in unexpected ways because of arena projects, and this costs money to the city and residents. That’s why CBAs exist.

Groups sometimes sue developers using the California Environmental Quality Act to get them to negotiate. Dramer’s coalition recently hired local environmental attorney Don Mooney—who recently litigated over the Cordova Hills sprawl project to no avail—in the hopes of encouraging the team to communicate with it.

The group could sue the Kings using CEQA, but its ability to do so will be hindered by a special, eleventh-hour law passed last fall by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.

“We’re researching our avenues, legal and otherwise, for making the Kings talk to us,” Dramer says.