AEG, or Anschutz Entertainment Group, is the current private-sector manager of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Complex, the current home of the Oakland A’s, Oakland Raiders, and Golden State Warriors. AEG took over this role from Spectator Management Group (SMG World) in 2012, and after a heated battle, which saw SMG protest the decision by accusing the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Joint Powers Authority of violating the Ralph M. Brown open meetings act, and blast the Coliseum JPA for deliberate misinformation. Here’s SMG’s Doug Thornton on Zennie62 on YouTube at the time:
Since that rather turbulent period, AEG Management has gone on about the business of taking care of day-to-day operations at the Coliseum without fanfare – or review. There’s no obvious, easy-to-find record of either the Coliseum JPA or the Oakland City Council and Alameda County Board of Supervisors taking a deep look at what’s going on at the Coliseum with respect to AEG Management.
That’s not to say AEG Management hasn’t given an update to the Coliseum JPA; that has been done. But that’s just an update from the point of view of AEG Management. The Coliseum JPA has not given its executive director enough staff resources to do a comprehensive review.
If Coliseum JPA Executive Director Scott McKibben had been able to do a comprehensive review of AEG, perhaps he would have been made aware of the current set of civil class-action lawsuits that have been filed against AEG Management, or the 2014 report that must be said to be damaging.
Lets take them in reverse order:
In 2014, and as the Coliseum JPA had just hired the new executive director in McKibben but still had Deena McClain in that role until he took over that summer, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) filed a violation complaint of “workplace safety or health violation” against AEG Management at the Oakland Coliseum. The document was filed on June 16, 2014, and the fine set at $10,450. The record shows there were three other violations described as “serious” and noted for that year, and they too had fines of just over $7,650, each.
In 2018 Tonja Fuller Bryant v. AEG Management Oakland, LLC is in the court review process and the defendant, AEG Management, has filed a motion to dismiss. According to court records, the judge’s decision on that will not take place until Tuesday, January 15, 2019. There was another similar lawsuit filed in 2017, but it was dismissed. But the question remains: what happened to cause those class-action lawsuits and why was the last one terminated.
This blogger has long held that the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda don’t take running the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum seriously. There should be one person hired by the City of Oakland, who’s responsible for sports, convention, and entertainment facilties development, operation and review, and who is able to assist the Coliseum JPA Executive Director, as needed.
Stay tuned.