In Oakland’s sports facilities past, city managers and now chief administrative officers, the people charged with running the day-to-day operations of the City of Oakland, have always been a visible presence in the media. Thus, it’s logical to expect a press conference with Oakland’s current CAO Edward “Ed” Reiskin talking about the Oakland A’s work with the City of Oakland to build a new ballpark at Howard Terminal, but Ed Reiskin’s been invisible, at least to date. That’s completely out of character for a city with a proud history of competent, innovative, city managers and administrators.
In the case of the Oakland Raiders move back to Oakland from Los Angeles, Assistant City Manager Ezra Rapport and City Managers Craig Kocian and Henry Gardner before him were dual point-people on the project, with Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris as the City’s boss. Then, as Craig Kocian left, Robert Bobb took his place.
The story of Robert Bobb is legendary because Mr. Bobb wanted to turn Oakland into a place with top-knotch sports venues that regularly hosted Super Bowl games and other high level events. But he was countered by then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who, in May of 2002, fired Robert simply because he sought to build a Downtown Stadium for the Oakland A’s at the site where Square is headquartered today, Broadway and Thomas L. Berkley Way.
Think about that.
And in the example of The Golden State Warriors and Coliseum City, Fred Blackwell (now CEO of The San Francisco Foundation) held several titles including Assistant City Administrative Officer, while negotiating with the team on an arena for Downtown Oakland, and with the Raiders on Coliseum City.
And in the example of the effort to build a stadium for the Raiders under Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, she initially had Claudia Capio, then with the title of Assistant City Administrative Officer, as her point person. But when it was clear that assignment wasn’t the best use of Claudia’s talent, Libby pivoted to, well, herself. And for reasons best known to her, the Mayor called on sports consultants who did not live in or know Oakland for input behind the scenes.
She did, however, dispatch then Oakland City Administrative Officer Sabrina Landrieth to help staff the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Joint Powers Authority, but outside of that, no one has filled the place of point person on sports facilities issues, or an issue. Given, the past pattern, it’s logical to expect the still-relatively-new CAO Ed Reiskin to be the next point person. But no.
Not only has Ed not been out talking about the A’s at Howard Terminal, a Google News search shows Ed’s received something like 11 items of press content for the entire time he’s been in place as Oakland’s daily chief. By contrast, Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong has five times the news posts over the past three months, alone.
That can’t be by accident.
Where’s Ed Reiskin? Libby brought him over to Oakland from San Francisco. Now, she’s hiding him. What’s up?
Stay tuned.