Gambit to stop public vote on arena deal paid off

Bill Belichick, it turns out, wasn’t the only one who put together a winning game plan this past week. So did the city of Phoenix management.

Facing an unwanted public vote over its arena-renovation deal with the Phoenix Suns, city leadership dialed up a rather bold strategy — declaring the deal as ineligible for a referendum drive and daring the opposition to go to court to prove otherwise.

The strategy worked: On Tuesday, the Common Sense Phoenix committee announced, rather meekly, that it was abandoning its effort to get the deal before residents for a straight up-or-down vote. This after the opposition had hired a signature-gathering outfit to flood the city and, according to organizers, collected more than 5,000 signatures in the first couple of days alone. It needed about 13,700 within 30 days.

Phoenix gets to savor a big win. Its $230 million Talking Stick Resort Arena renovation deal — at times far from a sure thing — is now secure.

The city’s strategy seemed like one big bet: That Common Sense Phoenix didn’t have the six figures to bankroll a legal fight. Not entirely an easy wager to place given that the group had a similarsized pot of money to launch the referendum drive.

Not easy, too, given that a successful outcome had the matter gone to court was anything but guaranteed. Phoenix’s position that the City Council vote constituted an administrative action — not a policy one that’s otherwise subject to referendum — is a liberal interpretation at best.

The gambit paid off. Common Sense Phoenix folded, although it didn’t offer a reason.

The referendum drive represented the last hope for those who believe the city agreed to a lousy deal. And for the final time, I’ll say it was a necessary deal (the city owns the building, the upgrades are needed, the alternative tenants are between few and none), acknowledging that Phoenix might have exacted better terms by playing hardball with the Suns.

This much is clear: Concessions scored by a couple of City Council members before they would vote yes hardly qualify as notable wins for Phoenix taxpayers.

Take Councilman Michael Nowakowski’s amendment. It called for designating 80 percent of the arena facility revenue — estimated to be $12 million-plus this year — toward public safety. But that’s largely a bookkeeping maneuver. It’s not new or additional funding on public safety; if anything, the Suns indirectly get credited for money earmarked for public safety. An assist by Nowakowski — if only he played for the Suns.

Councilwoman Vania Guevara’s demands were more substantive. She got the Suns to commit $10 million on “community benefits programs” for 2019, including $2.6 million for the early childhood program Head Start. (The Suns in recent years have spent roughly $1.75 million on nonprofit community groups.)

But as Arizona Republic columnist Bob Robb critiques, Guevara essentially strong-armed the team to commit to some of her own pet causes and none of the extra spending benefits taxpayers.

The amendments are instructive in another way. They reflect the political values and interests of individual council members that swayed their decision on the arena-renovation deal — clear and convincing evidence that the council vote amounted to a policy action, not an administrative one.

The next foes the city of Phoenix tries to deploy the same strategy against might want to take notice.