Real won't talk to county

(by Leigh Dethman and Amelia Nielson-Stowell desnews.com 5-4-06)

Real Salt Lake officials are giving Salt Lake County the silent treatment, despite the fact that the county holds the purse strings to $35 million in public money to build a stadium for the soccer team.

Still reeling after their financial secrets were leaked to the media last week, the team said Tuesday that it won't continue talks with the county until county officials make a "sincere and earnest" attempt to initiate discussions.

"We just don't feel we can negotiate with the county in good faith at this point, given what's transpired in the past five days," Real spokesman Tom Love said. "We want to know if they're sincere about this at all. The ball is in their court, and all options are open before us."

Real and county officials had been scheduled to meet today, but the team canceled those meetings and is waiting to hear from the county to further discussions on funding options for the 22-acre, $145 million Sandy stadium, set to break ground in August.

"This sounds like a bad high school date," Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon said. "All along, we've been trying to sit down with them and come up with a plan that makes sense. If they're not interested in sitting down and working with us, it's not a one-way proposition. Any negotiations require two patrons, not one."

Several County Council members agree.

"They are old documents," councilman Jim Bradley said. "My impression was it was not privileged information or marked confidential. If all they need is an apology, boy, I'm sorry."


Team officials have been in talks with the county and Sandy to funnel roughly $45 million in public money toward land and infrastructure costs on the south-valley site. Real is asking the county to pitch in $35 million from hotel room taxes and wants Sandy to provide $10 million in redevelopment-agency funds.

Last Wednesday, Corroon planned to hand over the team's financial data. However, Real officials told him in a closed-door meeting that they would file a formal objection. Two days later, the Deseret Morning News obtained the documents, which showed the Major League Soccer team is losing millions and needs the proposed stadium to stay afloat.

The leak, team leaders insist, broke the law and their trust by violating a confidentiality agreement.

"We told them we wouldn't pass those numbers around, but they were public documents," said Doug Willmore, the county's chief financial officer. "We'd like to see a copy of these supposed agreements."

Corroon agreed, and said he didn't think there was a confidentiality agreement.

But Real officials say they have the e-mails to prove it. E-mails between team and county officials were stamped "confidential" and included phrases like "please be aware that any dissemination or copying of this information is strictly prohibited," Love said. Verbal agreements were also made that again labeled the documents as privileged and protected them from disclosure, he added. Real officials would not provide the e-mails to the Deseret Morning News because they said the messages contained the proprietary information the team believes never should have been made public.


As for county officials' reiteration that the documents are public, "They certainly did not say that to our face or in any meetings we have had," Love said.

Real planned to file two appeals on Tuesday with the District Attorney's office. One would appeal the mayor's approval of the public-records request and another would seek to find out who released the team's internal-operating model.

Those documents, Real says, were released illegally because of the proprietary financial content they contained, which puts Real at a competitive disadvantage with other sports teams.

"It would not have been provided had we thought for a second that it would have been released to the public," Love said. "We're not afraid at all for that information to be in the hands of decision-makers and leaders."

Confidentiality agreement or not, the state's public-records law trumps all, said Joel Campbell, co-chairman of the National Society of Professional Journalists Freedom of Information Committee. The Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office ruled last week that the financial documents were, indeed, safe to release under the public-records law.

"They can sign all the confidentiality agreements they want," said Campbell, who is an assistant professor of journalism at Brigham Young University. "You can't have an agreement that goes contrary to the public-records law."