By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
Only two days before Major League Baseball team owners could vote on the Oakland Athletics’ proposed relocation to Las Vegas to build a stadium on the Strip, a Nevada statewide teachers group has given the owners a legal issue to ponder.
A political action committee called Schools Over Stadiums said Tuesday the Nevada state law authorizing $380 million in government assistance for a proposed $1.5 billion A’s stadium is riddled with five language problems that counter the Nevada state constitution.
As a result, Schools Over Stadiums intends to file a lawsuit arguing that public funding of the Athletics’ proposed 33,000-seat stadium should be overturned. The bill was approved by the state legislature after it was rushed through a Memorial Day weekend and ultimately signed into law by Gov. Joe Lombardo after a special session.
“Attorneys have been working on the complaint,” Schools Over Stadiums spokesperson Alexander Marks told LVSportsBiz.com Tuesday.
Schools Over Stadiums president Dawn Etcheverry, an elementary school music teacher said, “Our commitment to blocking the use of public funds for the stadium project has only grown stronger. We believe SB1 violates at least five sections of the state Constitution which should lead to the bill’s partial or total invalidation.”
Schools Over Stadiums attempted to hold a statewide public vote on the A’s stadium funding, but a judge ruled in a favor of a lawsuit brought by two lobbyists who argued the stadium referendum filing included language problems.
In the most recent legal development, Schools Over Stadiums said the Athletics’ Senate Bill 1 countered these five sections of the Nevada Constitution.
The Athletics have not publicly displayed an actual stadium design. But the team has already appeared before the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board, which has approved spending $1 million in legal costs for review of the A’s stadium.
The team wants to build the baseball stadium on nine acres of the 35-acre Tropicana hotel at the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue.