Questions for L.A.'s downtown stadium deal

With this negotiation coming to a head, the city's elected leaders need to focus on what matters — protecting taxpayers against undue risk and residents against excessive environmental impact while trying to chart a course to revive the city's troubled Convention Center — and to be clear about what doesn't. The council's goal cannot be to refuse any risk whatsoever, nor can it be to hold out for a stadium that creates no traffic or need for parking. It must balance the potential gains for the city in terms of jobs and tax revenue against the predictable impact of building a 72,000-seat stadium in the heart of downtown.

Some close observers of City Hall, especially those too accustomed to disappointment, see Friday's session as window-dressing. AEG and its chief executive, Tim Leiweke, are lavish contributors to political campaigns and powerful players in Los Angeles politics. Having helped promote and elect the city government, AEG now stands to reap the reward of its investment — a view widely shared among City Hall's many critics. In a city where cynicism is often rewarded by results, there is no denying AEG's influence, experience or expertise in negotiating deals. As a result, this deal cannot be made based on a simple trust in AEG. Indeed, one thing we can safely predict about Friday's session is that council members will try to score points with constituents by beating up the company, and then, later, will vote in favor of the proposal.

But theatrically railing against the deal is just as self-interested as supporting it in return for political backing. The proposal needs to be evaluated on its merits: how much it can do for the city and whether those benefits outweigh the costs, risks and inconveniences that it will certainly entail. In evaluating whether this proposal balances those factors adequately, here are half a dozen areas that the council would do well to inquire about and consider deeply:

1. How much risk is there to taxpayers? When AEG first presented the idea of a downtown stadium, it proposed that the city issue $350 million in bonds for the project, the debt service of which would be paid by the taxes generated from the project itself — property taxes, along with the sales taxes generated by every Styrofoam finger or bobble-head doll sold inside the stadium; that mountain of pennies would gradually pay off the stadium rather than go to city services. As the deal has been negotiated, however, the overall amount of the bond has steadily fallen and the use of taxes has shifted to the city's advantage. Now, the proposal before the council puts taxpayers on the hook for $195 million, with AEG carrying a separate bond of $80 million to build parking garages (AEG would then own those garages, on land it would lease from the city for $500,000 a year).