Casey Gwinn's comments yesterday about the Chargers and the declaratory relief lawsuit are a reminder of the next inevitable, preventable and predictable financial disaster awaiting the citizens of San Diego. The city's strategy to litigate instead of arbitrate is ill advised and will cost the city millions of dollars. It is noteworthy that Casey Gwinn is the same City Attorney who advised the city to offer Mr. de la Fuente $1000 to settle his case against the city. A San Diego jury later awarded Mr. de la Fuente $94.5 million dollars. Perhaps we need to reconsider his current advice.

Casey Gwinn is termed out and cannot run for City Attorney again, and, will not be around when everyone is scratching their heads wondering how we lost an NFL franchise and are stuck with the largest parking lot in North America. The current offer from the Chargers to contribute $400 million dollars towards the development of Mission Valley will be gone, Division 1 football will no longer be a part of San Diego, and, the Holiday Bowl will not survive. A small price to pay for "appearing" to defend the taxpayers of San Diego, although, no one has ever explained rationally what we are being defended against.

In an odd twist of irony, the very politicians who have railed for years about how bad the Chargers lease is, are now defending the same lease, is this good financial governance or politics as usual? As a result, once again, we call on Mr. Gwinn and Mayor Murphy to explain how this is an intelligent strategy "for taxpayers" to foot the bill for a predictable financial disaster.

This does not mean that the Chargers should get a free ride or be let off the hook for anything, they need to pay their fair share. However, to not consider an offer of a $400 million dollar contribution towards an area that one day will have to be redeveloped anyway, seems a bit foolish. Pardon me for thinking about it in terms of dollars and cents and not political career, but, I don't want to see $400 million dollars go away without doing everything reasonable to secure it.

At any time our political leadership (or lack of) chooses to end this lawsuit they can do so. The lease is a bad lease, it still has the potential to cost the city tens of millions of dollars, the litigation will be long, negative and eat up resources we do not have, and, at the end of the day, we will still lose the Chargers. The current strategy can be circumvented by telling the Chargers to leave and not spend all that money, or, perhaps, use a modicum of business sense and renegotiate the lease so it works for both sides, and, take the $400 million dollars and redevelop Mission Valley in a fashion that helps our city.

Whether you agree or disagree on this issue, it is important that our politicians hear from you. Click here if you want to send a message to city hall.

If you would like to see what Nick Canepa has to say about the subject click here.

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