San Diego, CA - The San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council and the Fans, Taxpayers and Business Alliance have challenged Mayor Dick Murphy, the San Diego City Council and Mr. Spanos, owner of the San Diego Chargers to resolve the current lease issues and to prepare the stage for an appropriate public discussion on the Chargers future in San Diego, including a potential new stadium for the City, if the Chargers can make their case to the public. Representatives of these groups presented the challenge at a press conference today in front of City Hall.

The groups are increasingly concerned about the lack of movement with regard to resolution of the Chargers issues and what is amounting to a stalemate that may lead to costly and avoidable litigation. The current financial exposure to the City under the ticket guarantee is estimated at between $75 million - $100 million. For the City to pursue the path of litigation, the potential cost of the remaining ticket guarantee is beyond the means of the City, even if they were to win, which is unlikely.

Speakers at the news conference included:

• Jessie J. Knight, Jr. - President and CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce
• Jerry Butkiewicz - Secretary/Treasurer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council (AFL/CIO)
• Dan Shea - Co-Founder of The Fans, Taxpayers and Business Alliance (FTBA)
• Several members of the business and labor community

"We understand the difficulties that occur with regards to negotiations of this nature, but we the citizens, the fans, and, the business and labor communities, have a right to know that we are moving toward finding a positive resolution to this situation, and, that tens of millions of tax dollars are not at risk due to misguided notions that litigation will serve us better than arbitration," said Jessie J. Knight, Jr., President and CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Specifically, the three groups called on the City and the Chargers to consider the following steps:

• The Chargers should eliminate the ticket guarantee for this season.
• The Chargers should refund to the City all money paid under the ticket guarantee so far this season - a total of more than $3.6 million to be refunded by the Chargers to the City immediately.
• The Chargers should eliminate the ticket guarantee entirely for next season as well.
• For this season, and for next season, the Chargers should pay the city $1 million a year in rent.
• The City and the Chargers should begin binding arbitration proceedings on the trigger and the termination fee. The Chargers and the City should agree on a respected judge to serve as the arbitrator.

The City has indicated that it opposes arbitration because they would lose legal rights. Speakers at the news conference disagreed with that assessment citing the following:

• First, binding arbitration is a well-accepted way to resolve disputes before court proceedings begin and the relationship between the parties is completely destroyed. Business and labor both use arbitration regularly, and arbitration is perfectly suited for the dispute between the City and the Chargers. Arbitration is a speedy way to figure out the answers we all want to know: Can the Chargers trigger? How much do the Chargers owe the City if they leave town?
• Second, the City has already agreed to binding arbitration with the Chargers in another context - involving disputes arising out of the Americans with Disabilities Act. So the City obviously does not have an objection in principle to binding arbitration.
• Third, we understand from sources around City Hall and in the media that, over the last several weeks of negotiations, the City has offered to enter into binding arbitration with the Chargers over the termination fee issue. So the city is willing, apparently, to arbitrate the termination fee issue. We believe that the trigger should also be arbitrated, and we don't understand how the city can object - especially since the City has offered to arbitrate the termination fee issue and has already agreed to arbitrate with the Disabilities Act issues.

If litigation is selected as the method to solve the problem, the existing ticket guarantee will kick in and the City will pay, not the Chargers. Arbitration is a smart move for the City, both to avoid the ticket guarantee problem, and, the expensive costs of litigation, for which no other city in the nation has prevailed in a fight of this nature.

All three groups at the news conference agreed that both sides need to give more than they intended to end this fiscally dangerous game. The groups called on the Mayor, City Council and Mr. Spanos, for the sake of America's Finest City, to end this unfortunate impasse, and, start anew. There is a resolution to this problem, let it go to the community and let the community decide if there is a new stadium in the future of San Diego.

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