City Beat

Seattle officials released the outline Thursday of a proposal to build a new NBA arena in the city.

The arena would be funded with $300 million in money from San Francisco hedge fund manager Chris Hansen and a group of investors, along with $200 million in bonds issued by the city of Seattle and King County. Those bonds would be paid back by rental payments from arena tenants and tax revenue generated by the facility, said Mayor Mike McGinn.

As for which NBA team is in Seattle's sights, McGinn said he was not speaking with the league and was leaving that up to Hansen. Officials said the arena would not be built without an NBA tenant.

Mayor Kevin Johnson finally has an opponent.

Sacramento bounty hunter and four-time mayoral candidate Leonard Padilla told me today he is definitely running against Johnson after pulling candidacy papers from the city clerk's office on Tuesday. Padilla's main campaign issue: the arena.

"I don't want the Maloofs (who own the Sacramento Kings) given one red cent, much less a quarter of a billion dollars," he said, referring to a proposal for the city to lease downtown parking to help finance a new sports arena.

Fellow Bee reporter Tony Bizjak and I will be hosting a live online chat at 6:30 tonight, fielding your questions on the city's ongoing push for a new arena.

Bizjak and I will be at City Hall, where the City Council will debate whether to have city staff continue talking to private companies interested in leasing downtown parking, a key peg in the city's proposed financing deal for a new arena.

Tonight's chat will be followed by another forum tomorrow at noon, when I'll be wrapping up the council's vote and the next steps in the arena process.

Join the chats here on the City Beat blog or at sacbee.com/live to share you comments and questions.

Sacramento Supervisor Phil Serna said today he is not running for mayor, ending weeks of speculation that he might take on Mayor Kevin Johnson.

In an email sent to the media, Serna said he wanted to remain focused on "job growth in places like McClellan Business Park, Downtown Sacramento and the Power Inn Corridor, and I'm dedicated to protecting the American River Parkway."

"Running for mayor now would put campaigning over continuing to give my attention to these and other priorities," he said. "I'm not prepared to do that."

The City Council appears ready to overwhelmingly support moving forward with the arena process tonight - with one councilman predicting the vote could be unanimous.

City staff is asking for permission from the council to dive into deeper talks with the 10 private firms interested in leasing downtown parking, the key piece of the financing plan for a new sports and entertainment complex. Tonight's vote is seen as an incremental step in the arena process, setting up a pivotal Feb. 28 meeting at which the council would vote to approve or reject the facility's full financing plan if one is cobbled together by then.

While four council members voted last week to place the parking element on the June ballot - a move that likely would have killed the arena deal - at least one of those council members said he will vote in favor of moving forward tonight.

Marriage rights activists are stepping up their pressure on Mayor Kevin Johnson to join dozens of other elected officials in supporting gay marriage.

Supporters of gay marriage were expected to drop off 338 signatures this morning at City Hall urging Johnson to join the Mayors for the Freedom to Marry. Despite telling reporters last week that he would read the pledge, Johnson still hadn't read it as of this morning.

"Sacramento is one of the most diverse cities in America and a city like ours needs leaders willing to stand up for all of us," Sam Catalano, president of the Stonewall Democrats, said in a statement. "Supporting marriage equality helps make our city stronger both socially and economically. We are all exceptionally hopeful that Mayor Kevin Johnson stands on the right side of history and we eagerly await his response."

In what would likely be the make-or-break moment of the city's work toward building a new downtown sports arena, city officials are hoping to seek City Council approval of a financing plan for the facility at the Feb. 28 council meeting.

That meeting will come two days before an NBA-imposed deadline for Sacramento to have a funding plan or risk losing the Sacramento Kings. While all sides have been working on the financing "term sheet" for weeks, City Council approval of the plan on Feb. 28 is likely the step the NBA is looking for to be convinced an arena plan is a reality here, officials said.

That term sheet will not only include the city's contribution to the $387 million project, but would also involve contributions from the NBA and/or the Kings, private arena operator AEG and the facility's development team.

A report by the City Auditor indicates many city employees have witnessed fraud, waste and abuse by co-workers - leading officials to recommend the creation of a whistleblower hotline at City Hall.

In a report issued this week, City Auditor Jorge Oseguera's office wrote that establishing a whistleblower hotline could save the city millions of dollars each year. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) estimates that "a typical organization is estimated to lose 5 percent of its annual revenues to fraud," according to the auditor's report.

If that's the case, Sacramento could be losing $30 million a year to fraud, the auditor says. If the auditor's office handled the hotline with current staffing it would cost about $9,000 a year. Hiring a new employee to handle the hotline - an option that would allow the office to handle more calls - would be an estimated $200,000 a year.

For quite some time, opponents of Mayor Kevin Johnson have sought a candidate to challenge the mayor in the June primary. While no one has formally stepped up, talks appear to be getting more serious behind the scenes.

Those talks are being charged by a poll released nearly two weeks ago - found here MayoralPoll1-31-12.pdf - that showed fewer than half of those surveyed would vote to re-elect the mayor. More than half wanted to elect an unnamed "someone else."

The poll was clearly put together - and then distributed to the media - in an attempt to convince a candidate to run against Johnson. It was funded by the Sacramento Building Trades Union.

To say Joe and Gavin Maloof appeared upbeat before tonight's Kings game would be an understatement. We just don't know yet if they're upbeat about the arena situation.

The Maloof brothers were happy to field a few questions from me on the atmosphere leading up to tonight's nationally-televised game with Oklahoma City. But a team spokesman said they wouldn't respond to questions about the arena situation because there isn't a plan to talk about yet.

Joe and Gavin watched as their team finished its pre-game warm-ups. They sat in their luxury box, with Joe eating a steak and Gavin sipping a soda. Their mother, Colleen, sat by their side.

Three of the 13 private firms that had expressed interest in leasing city-owned parking to help fund a new arena have been eliminated from the process.

Teams needed to "demonstrate strong financial resources and have a parking operator that has substantial experience managing both on and off-street parking assets," according to a city staff report released today.

Among the teams eliminated were local firm Revitalizing Sacramento LLC, made up of local parking operator Aaron Zeff and developer Larry Kelley. Bainbridge ZKS and CMB Export LLC were also crossed off the list.

A lot of attention has been paid the past few days to Seattle's interest in the Kings. But there's news out of Anaheim this morning that shows Orange County still wants the Kings, too.

Lance Pugmire of The Los Angeles Times reports Anaheim officials and owners of that city's Honda Center arena broke ground Wednesday on a $20 million upgrade of the facility.

Honda Center owner Henry Samueli said he is "just waiting and standing on the sidelines" as Sacramento's arena work unfolds. Last year, in an attempt to lure the Kings to Anaheim, Samueli offered millions in upgrades to the arena, plus financial assistance to the Maloof family, owners of the Kings.

Labor unions - those influential groups that have powered many a City Council campaign - aren't thrilled with the council's decision Tuesday night to place a charter review commission on the November ballot.

Hours after the council voted 7-2 to move forward with the ballot measure Tuesday, the president of the city police union told City Manager John Shirey he was suspending negotiations between his union and city officials. Other unions are worried about allowing an outside commission to dive into - and potentially rewrite - the way the city is governed.

The police union's argument is about dollars and cents. Mark Tyndale, president of the Sacramento Police Officers Association, said he was concerned about the cost of a commission and that he refuses "to consider further concessions that will only be used to fund the commission."

Mayor Kevin Johnson's latest strong mayor plan goes head to head with a proposal to create an elected charter review commission at tonight's City Council meeting. And the mayor is making it pretty clear where he stands.

Johnson told reporters this morning he thinks "the charter commission idea needs to be dumped." Councilman Kevin McCarty has proposed placing the creation of a charter commission on the November ballot.

"I don't think it's in anybody's best interest and I feel like it's a reaction to the initiative that I brought forward," the mayor said.

Mayor Kevin Johnson expects negotiations on the funding plan for a new downtown Kings arena to intensify, now that 13 firms have expressed interest in leasing the city's parking operations.

The mayor told reporters this morning that the city is "on track and in striking distance" of developing a financing plan for the $387 million arena. City officials are hoping to raise as much as $200 million for the project from the leasing of downtown parking garages, spaces and enforcement.

With more than a dozen firms expressing interest in those parking assets, the mayor said "it's going to be constant negotiations with (arena operator) AEG, the Kings and the NBA and all the interested parties" as the sides work on a funding plan before a March 1 deadline. If a plan does not materialize before then, the NBA has told the Maloofs - the family that owns the Kings - that they can explore moving the franchise.

Following a federal appeals court ruling today that California's same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional, Mayor Kevin Johnson said he would look at a petition signed by dozens of statewide politicians that promotes marriage equality.

While the mayor said he "certainly respects" the court's decision today, he repeated his personal belief that "marriage is between a man and a woman." But, he added, "I strongly oppose discrimination when it comes to our constitution."

Johnson has been urged by the Stonewall Democrats club to join the Mayors for the Freedom to Marry, "a bipartisan coalition of over 100 United States mayors dedicated to promoting marriage equality in their communities, state, and our nation."

An open records advocacy group is suing the city after being denied emails and other communications regarding last summer's volatile City Council redistricting process.

The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) filed a suit Friday in Sacramento Superior Court demanding emails between City Council members related to redistricting between April and August of last year.

Peter Scheer, CFAC's executive director, said "we're hoping to open the door on some of the crucial exchanges" between council members as the redistricting process unfolded. He said the city denied a Public Records Act request for the emails, citing a "deliberative process exemption" that allows the withholding of records revealing advice given to elected officials from staff aids and others.

The City Council is scheduled Tuesday to consider Councilwoman Sandy Sheedy's request to place a measure on the June ballot asking voters if they want to use public parking assets to help finance a new sports arena.

Sheedy pulled the item from the agenda last month when Councilman Rob Fong was unable to attend that council meeting. While Fong is not expected to support Sheedy's request, he has played an integral role in the city's ongoing arena fight and Sheedy wanted her colleague present for the ballot measure debate.

There still appears to be limited support on the council for a June vote on the arena. Besides Sheedy, only Councilman Darrell Fong has expressed support for the vote.