Schools Over Stadiums Explains The “Method To the Madness”

On April 27th, I wrote about the Schools Over Stadiums strategy of appealing the court’s ruling that their referendum needed rewriting in order to pass legal muster. Since then things haven’t gotten a lot better, with the state Supreme Court affirming the judge’s decision just 6 weeks prior to the deadline for submitting over 102,000 signatures.

Faced with this verdict, Schools Over Stadiums announced it will defer until November, 2026 its quest to get a referendum on the ballot that, if passed, would block the A’s from using $380M of tax payer money towards a new stadium.

I reached out to Schools Over Stadium hoping to better understand what happened and why, and what governed their choices along the way. And I will say that it was illuminating. I spoke with Chris Daly, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who now works for the Nevada State Education Association and is a key part of the Schools Over Stadiums crew.

I will open with a mea culpa: in hindsight I do wish I had connected with Daly, or another key representative, before April 27th, so as to write then with at least more comprehension of what was going on and why. I was speculating where I could have been more informed, which while sometimes fair game is also not generally ideal.

Hindsight is a big part of the referendum quest as well. Daly repeatedly noted that perhaps in hindsight, the choices Schools Over Stadiums made did not turn out to be right. But what he was able to explain was how they came to their choices — and also why this immediate defeat is far from a defeat overall.

Let me break down, as best I can, some of the essential pieces involved in how Schools Over Stadiums proceeded at each juncture. as well as what we can expect in the coming 2 years.

The Problem With Resubmitting

When Judge Russell issued his ruling on November 6th blocking the petition and referendum from moving forward as is, Schools Over Stadiums had two options. One was to acquiesce and rewrite the petition to the court’s satisfaction and the other was to appeal Judge Russell’s ruling to the state Supreme Court.

Why didn’t Schools Over Stadiums just resubmit it in November and give themselves 7 months to collect signatures? The reason is largely because the issue wasn’t just that they needed to include the full text of the bill — a cumbersome and costly addition that would have made the petition look somewhat like a chapter from War And Peace, but totally doable.

Also at issue was the 200 word summary at the top. And the problem is that according to Daly, the court offered little to no guidance as to what would pass legal muster. The court felt they didn’t outline the “practical effects” of SB1 sufficiently, but as of right now those effects are largely predictive and impossible to pinpoint precisely and unequivocally.

This means that upon resubmitting its “best guess” the referendum would inevitably be challenged again by the A’s, quite possibly again struck down by a court whose line seemed to be “This won’t work, we won’t really tell you what will, but try again if you like.”

If a second lawsuit resulted in the same outcome, not only would Schools Over Stadiums be in the same position as before but now it would be too late to file and win an appeal in time.

It’s pretty maddening to think the court would strike down a blurb without offering clear guidance on what is needed in order to pass legal muster, but forced to guess how it could explain the “practical effects” of SB1 to the court’s satisfaction Schools Over Stadiums opted instead to challenge the verdict.

The Timeline

Schools Over Stadiums had gauged, internally, that it needed at least 7 weeks to gather signatures. Realistically that was cutting it close but they were confident that given a couple months or more they were good to go.

What they never envisioned was that the courts would take the case, which was requested to be “expedited” due to the obvious time considerations, and not issue a ruling by March at the latest. The ruling came mid-May, conveniently at the point where Schools Over Stadiums was pretty much hosed win or lose — especially lose.

Why did the courts allow the case, and then its own deliberations, to drag on for so long that they pretty much ensured the referendum’s failure for 2024? You can opine that our legal system works far too slowly and is too ripe for legal maneuvering and wrangling. Or you can wonder if the slot machines aren’t the only things in Nevada that are rigged.

We will never really know, but Schools Over Stadiums had calculated that they had, in their mind, a decent chance to win the appeal and that even if they lost they would have time to choose the path of taking their best shot at a resubmission as their Plan B.

The Pending Lawsuit

It’s worth noting that the referendum has never been what Daly considers to be their best avenue to blocking the stadium project. This is partly because we all know that if SB1 is blocked by voters, Nevada’s legislators are fully capable of getting together to pass a new bill — one that might even not specify the problematic 9 acre parcel as a location.

Daly believes the pending lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the bill on 5 different points is still, and has probably always been, the better bet for a roadblock. It’s a bit unclear how winning a given 1 of the 5 points would impact the project’s ability to move forward, but certainly multiple wins would be gold and even a key victory could be impactful.

Daly said he thought each of the 5 stood roughly a “50-50 chance” which, if true, creates dozens and dozens of possible outcomes but one of them — losing all 5 — would have only a 1 in 32 chance. That’s, of course, on a roulette wheel that spins fairly, not one spun by John Fisher and stopped by Dave Kaval.

The Value Of Disrupting

All of the above focuses on winning or losing lawsuits and referendums, but Daly emphasized how Schools Over Stadiums can lose the battle and win the war.

Firstly, they are winning the court of public opinion, with a 20 point gain in public opposition to the stadium project since their work began. Public opinion, and the resulting pressure on politicians especially in an election year, can be significant.

More to the point, what Schools Over Stadiums is successfully doing win or lose in court is to create ambiguity. Will that $380M be available when the calendar turns to 2026? Will they prevail in their lawsuit and if so on which points and to what impact on the project?

Even though the answer “I don’t know” isn’t viscerally satisfying, it is an answer that is frightening to any individual or lending company being asked to finance a $1.5B project. Lenders are intrinsically conservative and risk-averse, and ambiguity is not their friend.

There are many reasons Fisher is having trouble getting (and by “trouble getting ” we mean “he can’t get”) financing in place for the project. One is that the team is valued at $1.2B and Fisher is trying to lure lenders based on the $2.2B the franchise might be worth if the project happens. Lenders don’t want to work from a future hypothetical figure when the current real figure is far lower.

Also, while Nevada’s legislators might have conveniently overlooked how Kaval’s math doesn’t work in a real world where your stadium capacity is smaller than the attendance you need and where “6% of tourists” is a number plucked out of the air without any backing, lenders can do math, will do math, and will rely on the math.

But Schools Over Stadiums may also be playing an integral part in keeping lenders away. The specter of losing the public funding in November, 2024 has shifted to the specter of losing it in November, 2026, creating 2.5 years of uncertainty as how that will play out.

The lawsuit has an unknown outcome and impact, and rarely do lenders exclaim, “Unknown? Where do I sign up and write a big check?” Even absent a clear victory yet at any turn, Schools Over Stadiums feels it is winning by being a disruptive force that has swayed public opinion over time and created uncertainty right as Fisher is desperately trying to line up financing for a project that continues to look like a bad bet.

Hopefully, this helps to explain not only where things currently stand but also how and why we got here on the path we did. I want to close by reporting that Daly was very clear on how influential A’s fans have been in Schools Over Stadiums continuing the fight — he cited the passion A’s fans have, and the partnering work of The Last Dive Bar and the Oakland ‘68s, as a huge part of the reason Schools Over Stadiums has committed so fully to the quest.

Obviously Schools Over Stadiums is doing much of what it does for Nevada’s school children and their “48th in the country per pupil spending.” But A’s fans should know they have a big part in proving there is passion and resolve that Schools Over Stadiums can tap into, be inspired by, and hopefully come through for in the end.

In this clusterfuzzle of a relocation bid, the bottom of the 9th is still a long, long ways away. Stay tuned and know that Schools Over Stadium has a plan — and doesn’t have to win each battle in order to win the war against Fisher, Kaval, the Nevada courts, and every other wealthy and/or corrupt obstacle placed in their way.