Could the Angels lose their Angel Stadium lease? New state audit to probe land deal
What if — and this is a very big if — the Angels found themselves without a place to play beyond this season?
The state auditor is set to launch an investigation into the failed Angel Stadium sale and whether the Angels have complied with the current stadium lease, two state legislators announced Wednesday.
The audit was requested by Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) and Assemblymember Avelino Valencia (D-Anaheim) and approved by the Legislature this week. Valencia formerly served on the Anaheim City Council.
“Our audit request will ensure we examine any actions in the past and how they can inform and bind future decision making,” Umberg said in a statement. “It’s the least we can do to reassure the residents of Anaheim that we are on their team.”
The agreement settles a two-year-old dispute, providing the Angels with financial relief while granting the city the right to build a fire station on Angel Stadium property.
The Angels’ lease extends through 2029, and the team has options to remain at Angel Stadium through 2038.
In the audit request, Umberg and Valencia cited “deep concern” that the team has withheld revenue owed to the city and failed to comply with stadium maintenance requirements stipulated in the lease. In an interview, Umberg said he had no firm evidence the Angels had not lived up to the lease but believed an independent assessment was necessary.
“On behalf of the taxpayers, that’s an important thing to know,” he said.
Said Angels spokeswoman Marie Garvey: “Angels Baseball is in full compliance with the stadium lease, and under current ownership, we have spent approximately seven times more than what the lease requires in capital improvements and maintenance.”
Mike Lyster, the spokesman for the city, said Anaheim regularly audits the lease as a whole as well as the payments and capital spending required of the Angels.
“Our last full audit found general compliance with the terms of the lease,” Lyster said. “This lease has been one of the most thoroughly reviewed and talked about in our city. But we welcome any additional review and look forward to working with our state partners.”
In 2019, the Anaheim City Council agreed to extend the Angels’ opt-out clause in the stadium lease by one year, so the lease remained in effect when the stadium deal collapsed. The city publicly announced the agreement as a one-year lease extension, which would have left the Angels homeless when the deal died.
The Anaheim city council will meet Tuesday to try to figure out next steps in the deal to sell Angel Stadium land to Angels owner Arte Moreno.
In 2022, after the FBI disclosed allegations of corruption against then-Mayor Harry Sidhu, the city council killed the deal in which Angels owner Arte Moreno and his company would have bought the stadium property, renovated or replaced the ballpark and surrounded it with a village of homes, shops, restaurants, offices and hotels.
Umberg said he would like the audit to determine whether Anaheim would have the right to enforce the Angels’ 2018 decision to opt out of the lease and rescind the 2019 agreement, based on Sidhu’s since-admitted criminal activity. That, Umberg said, could terminate the Angels’ lease and put the city on fairer footing in negotiations for a new sale or lease deal with the team.
Umberg said the audit is expected to take several months. The city and the team say there are no active discussions about a new stadium deal.
Any decision to terminate or renegotiate the stadium lease would be up to the city council, not state legislators. That city has not publicly expressed any interest in terminating the Angels’ lease.
Does Umberg trust the Anaheim City Council to do what is best for the residents of Anaheim?
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred should be concerned that the big-market Angels continue to struggle with no end in sight under Arte Moreno’s ownership.
“We have a different city council from the one that was around in 2019,” he said, “and I have great optimism that they will do the right thing for taxpayers.”
In 2023, Sidhu signed a plea deal that acknowledged he “provided confidential negotiating information belonging to the city … so that the Angels could buy Angel Stadium on terms beneficial to the Angels” and kept that disclosure secret from the rest of the city council. The FBI affidavit said Sidhu planned to ask the Angels for a $1-million contribution to his reelection campaign.
Sidhu pleaded guilty to obstructing a corruption investigation, wire fraud and making false statements. He is scheduled to be sentenced in December.
Neither the FBI affidavit nor the plea deal alleges the Angels did anything wrong.
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