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DESCRIPTION:Enough Is Enough!\nNo Public Funded Stadium In The Port Of Oakland\nFor 
 Billionaire A’s Owner John Fisher\n\nWednesday Jan 19, 2022 12:00 
 Noon\nAt: Oakland City Hall\nOscar Grant Plaza\n(Wear your masks)\n\nIt is 
 time to call a halt to the A’s billionaire owner John Fisher’s plans 
 for a stadium in the Port of Oakland. Why are Oakland politicians and some 
 union officials pushing spending $700 million for a privately owned 
 stadium, hotels and 4,000 million-dollar condos for the wealthy? We need to 
 stop this racist gentrification project at the port.\n\nOn January 19th, 
 there will be another environmental hearing to approve the EIR that this 
 project will follow the environmental rules. This is another charade. State 
 politicians Nancy Skinner and Rob Banta with the support of Governor Newsom 
 changed the rules to allow the port to be destroyed by the billionaire’s 
 development and for it to be funded by hundreds of millions of dollars of 
 taxpayer money.\n\nWhile thousands are homeless in Oakland, they want 
 Fisher who also owns the GAP and controls the KIPP and Rocketship charter 
 school chains to take more control of the Oakland Community. Community 
 activists and trade unionists will be speaking out against public money for 
 this billionaire’s development scheme.\n\n This project will also destroy 
 80,000 maritime jobs of ILWU and other maritime unions at the port which is 
 critical to the Bay Area. Where will the thousands of trucks park but in 
 the West Oakland neighborhoods. The mayor and the Port Commission and 
 it’s chair Andreas Cluver who is also head of the Alameda Building Trades 
 really don’ t care since they are taking orders from Fisher.\n\n It is 
 time to stop this scam and con game by billionaire Fisher and his rubber 
 stamps.\n\n\nReject the EIR Report\nNo Union Busting In The Port Of 
 Oakland\nWorking Class Housing With Public Funds\nStop Allowing 
 Billionaires to Rip Off The People of Oakland\n\nInitiated by United Front 
 Committee For A Labor Party UFCLP\nEndorsed by Melody 
 Davis\nhttps://www.facebook.com/masslaborpartyusa\n\n\nEnvironmental 
 Advocate Margaret Gordon Turns Against Oakland A's Development\n 
 https://www.postnewsgroup.com/environmental-advocate-margaret-gordon-turns-against-oakland-as-development/\n\nOakland 
 Post\nBy Ken Epstein\n\nUntil recently, West Oakland community leader and 
 environmental advocate Margaret Gordon had been on board with billionaire 
 John Fisher’s massive real estate and stadium development project at 
 Howard Terminal, which is public land at the Port of Oakland.\n\nShe has 
 now withdrawn her support and is actively opposed to the development. In an 
 interview with the Oakland Post this week, she said she was involved since 
 the beginning several years ago, working with others to produce a community 
 benefits agreement with the A’s, which the A’s were expected to pay 
 for.\n\nBut the A’s have gone back on their promises, she said.\n\n“We, 
 as a community, should hold everybody to task around the issue of 
 equity,” Gordon said. “The A’s started off talking about equity and 
 ended up putting [all the costs] back on the city. That’s not equity. 
 Unmitigated environmental issues — that’s not equity. I don’t believe 
 they are going to [build affordable] housing — that’s not 
 equity.”\n\nGordon, co-founder of the West Oakland Environmental 
 Indicators Project (WOEIP), has served on the Port Commission and has 
 struggled for decades to reduce the impact of industrial pollutants that 
 cause respiratory illnesses and improve the overall air quality in her 
 community.\n\nShe said her goal in working with the A’s development was 
 to design social justice and environmental justice projects to support West 
 Oakland, Chinatown, Jack London Square area and Old Oakland, four areas 
 that would be most impacted by the massive project.\n\n“We agreed with 
 the City to sit down and do a community benefits agreement, which included 
 education, environmental improvements, housing, jobs, business 
 development,” she said. “We met for almost two years trying to develop 
 our own agreement with the City and the A’s. We finalized our draft, 
 telling them that this is what we want.”\n\nBut then the A’s shifted 
 their position. “All of sudden, the A’s stopped the process. We wanted 
 more conversations as part of negotiations. But there never were 
 negotiations to finalize the community benefits agreement,” she 
 said.\n\n“There were no sit-downs with the A’s or city staff. 
 Never.”\n\nGordon said she was not encouraged by the role of the mayor 
 and city staff in the process. “I don’t see who is going to hold the 
 A’s feet to the fire to enforce community benefits,” not the mayor, the 
 city administrator nor city staff, she said.\n\nShe said city leaders are 
 “so hungry for money and development, as long as it’s not in [their] 
 neighborhood, [they] don’t care,” she said, adding that the A’s and 
 the City should adopt benefits to Oakland that are “fair and equitable, 
 or stop lying and saying you’re doing community benefits.”\n\nShe said 
 poor people, African Americans, Latinos and others are not going to benefit 
 from this project. “I don’t see them building affordable housing next 
 to the million-dollar townhouses. I just don’t see it.”\n\nPeople took 
 tours of the Howard Terminal area in December, and it dawned on them that 
 the plans were to create a “whole new city within Oakland,” an 
 exclusive gated new city for rich people\n\n“They decided to release the 
 Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) during the holidays, minimizing 
 public input,” she said. “The staff, the City of Oakland, they 
 obviously don’t care [about community benefits], otherwise they 
 wouldn’t have written the EIR the way they did,” said 
 Gordon.\n\n“They keep talking about equity, but they’re not practicing 
 equity. This [Environmental Impact Report] is evidence of that. This is all 
 problematic.”\n\nMany of the needed mitigations have not been addressed, 
 Gordon continued. The stadium would be built where thousands of huge 
 semi-trucks are parked now at Howard Terminal, but the City and the A’s 
 still haven’t said where said where the truck parking will be moved, 
 meaning they may be going back onto city streets, polluting residential 
 neighborhoods.\n\nNor have the officials offered solutions to the large 
 traffic jams that will be produced by the development.\n\nNot only will 
 Oakland residents not get community benefits, they will also end up footing 
 the bill for a lot of the project, Gordon continued.\n\n“We the public 
 are going to end up paying for the infrastructure,” she said. “This is 
 going to use public money.” Over $800 million in public funds will be 
 used on the project.\n\n“The A’s should be paying for this. The rich 
 people who are going to be moving over there should be paying for this,” 
 said Gordon.\n\n“I am not surprised to hear that the A’s have reneged 
 on promises made to the community,“ said Paul Cobb, publisher of the 
 Oakland Post. “The A’s want hundreds of millions of taxpayer money, but 
 they don’t want to pay for community benefits like every other developer 
 does.\n\n“They renege on affordable housing and then turn around and 
 bully our elected leaders by saying if they don’t get what they want, 
 they will leave. Our elected leaders should end this drama now. They need 
 to focus on jobs, homelessness, public safety and real issues affecting 
 Oakland residents, not the ongoing give-and-take sham game played by the 
 A’s.”\n\nOakland Planning Commission will conduct a public hearing on 
 the Final EIR For Fisher’s Stadium\nThe on January 19, 2022 at 3:00 pm. 
 During the hearing, the Planning Commission will consider whether the Final 
 EIR was completed in compliance with State law, represents the independent 
 analysis of the City, and provides adequate information to decision-makers 
 and the public on the potential adverse environmental effects of the 
 proposed Project, as well as ways in which those effects might be mitigated 
 or avoided. Meeting information can be found here. 
 \n\nhttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/82519936593\n\nOr One tap mobile :\n\nUS: 
 +16699006833,,82519936593# or +14086380968,,82519936593#\n\nOr 
 Telephone:\n\nDial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current 
 location):\n\nUS: +1 669 900 6833 or +1 408 638 0968 or +1 346 248 7799 or 
 +1 253 215 8782 or +1 301 715 8592 or +1 312 626 6799 or +1 646 876 9923 or 
 888 475 4499 (Toll Free) or 833 548 0276 (Toll Free) or 833 548 0282 (Toll 
 Free) or 877 853 5257 (Toll Free)\n\nWebinar ID: 825 1993 6593\n\nOpen 
 Letter to the City Council: Tell the A’s to Stop Abusing Oakland\nStop 
 this madness now! Tell the A’s to pay their fair share or get out of 
 town! Give them no public money for a ballpark. None! If Howard Terminal is 
 so much a better deal than the Coliseum, where a ballpark could be built 
 for little or no public money, let the A’s billionaire owner pay for it. 
 If the A’s don’t like that deal, let them 
 leave.\nhttps://www.postnewsgroup.com/open-letter-to-the-city-council-tell-the-as-to-stop-abusing-oakland/\nPublished 
 21 hours ago on December 12, 2021By Oakland Post\nThe A’s have been 
 pitting cities against each other to leverage more public money for a 
 ballpark.The A’s have been pitting cities against each other to leverage 
 more public money for a ballpark.\nBy Post Staff\n\nThe City of Oakland is 
 in an abusive relationship with the Oakland A’s.\n\n\nThe A’s tell the 
 city, “Give me what I want, and I will stop hitting you.” The city 
 bends and the A’s demand more and hit the city harder. We, the voters 
 must come to the aid of their elected leaders. Please intervene and tell 
 our elected leaders to stop allowing the A’s to bully them. Just say 
 “NO” and walk away.\n\nAfter all the city of Oakland has done to 
 demonstrate their desire to keep the A’s in Oakland, including offering 
 over $500 million of public funds for development of the Howard Terminal 
 ballpark, the so-called ‘rooted in Oakland’ A’s have made an offer on 
 a Las Vegas ballpark site at the Tropicana Casino. 
 https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/sports/nevius-as-should-just-skip-oakland-charade-head-for-vegas/\n\nClearly, 
 the A’s have been pitting cities against each other to leverage more 
 public money for a ballpark.\n\nStop this madness now! Tell the A’s to 
 pay their fair share or get out of town! Give them no public money for a 
 ballpark. None! If Howard Terminal is so much a better deal than the 
 Coliseum, where a ballpark could be built for little or no public money, 
 let the A’s billionaire owner pay for it. If the A’s don’t like that 
 deal, let them leave.\n\nWho needs a team that is so uncaring that they 
 arrogantly demand diversion of public funds to them, or they will 
 leave?\n\nTaxpaying residents of Oakland have suffered long and hard with 
 homelessness and crime. They need public funds devoted to those problems, 
 not a baseball park. At a point where the city has empaneled a blue-ribbon 
 commission to actively consider increasing business taxes for every 
 business in town to pay for revenue shortages, it is outrageous to consider 
 giving the A’s public money and tax breaks to build a baseball 
 stadium.\n\nThis is especially galling when there is perfectly good 
 property at the Coliseum that could be the site of a new ballpark without 
 the need for all the public money the A’s are demanding for Howard 
 Terminal.\n\n“Our job is to feed people,” said Keith Carson, president 
 of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, at a recent hearing on whether 
 Alameda County should contribute public funds to the Howard Terminal 
 project. Carson is absolutely right. The City and the County have great 
 needs that should take priority over giving public money for a 
 ballpark.\n\nBut the arrogant and hostile ways the A’s treat the public 
 does not stop with city taxpayers. The A’s recently increased their 
 season ticket prices and eliminated discounts previously offered to their 
 fans. But the fans did the appropriate thing. They stopped buying tickets. 
 During a recent playoff run, the A’s had fewer than 5,000 fans at their 
 games. According to public reports they ranked 29th out of 30 teams in fan 
 attendance.\n\nOur elected officials should follow fan responses to the 
 greed and arrogance of the A’s. The A’s must pay their own way. Do not 
 spend public dollars on baseball parks. Do not let them bully and abuse our 
 elected officials.\n\nIf they choose to leave, “let the door hit them 
 where the dog should have bit them.”\n\nGAP & A'S Owner John Fisher's 
 Wealth Went Up By $1 Billion During Pandemic-Who is John Fisher? 
 Billionaire A's owner won't talk, so we spoke to over 20 people in his 
 orbit.\nhttps://www.sfgate.com/athletics/article/Who-is-John-Fisher-Inside-the-world-and-16315323.php\n\n\nGAP 
 & A'S Owner John Fisher's Wealth Went Up By $1 Billion During 
 Pandemic-\nWho is John Fisher? Billionaire A's owner won't talk, so we 
 spoke to over 20 people in his orbit.\nJohn Fisher, owner of the Oakland 
 A's.\nAlex Coffey\nJuly 14, 2021\nUpdated: July 15, 2021 1:13 p.m.\n\nIn 
 late 2019, the Oakland A’s held an all-staff meeting at their offices in 
 Jack London Square. An unfamiliar face was present, someone whom many 
 employees had never seen before. It was John Fisher, the owner of the team. 
 \nFisher introduced himself by making a tongue-in-cheek comment about his 
 own reputation and told the room that the purpose of his visit was to show 
 he “exists,” multiple attendees recalled. The joke fell flat for the 
 many staffers having their first real interaction with the person who signs 
 their checks.\nMultiple attendees remember something else Fisher said at 
 the meeting. “A lot of people know me as that ‘cheap owner,’” one 
 current employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity recounted, adding 
 that the comment was “so weird.” The interaction provided a brief 
 window into Fisher’s perception of his tenure with the team. He has long 
 been known for his reticence, which makes it difficult to ascertain exactly 
 how — or whether — he processes any criticisms. Does it bother him that 
 he has a reputation for being cheap? Does he even know that reputation 
 exists? \nThe meeting in late 2019 was proof that he did. Once it was over, 
 Fisher retreated back to the life of silence for which he is known. He 
 keeps a low profile, even at A’s games, where he often sits in the 
 Diamond Level seats a few rows behind home plate. Fisher likes to dress in 
 street clothes: jeans and a polo, maybe a long-sleeved collared shirt with 
 a cap on and a credential around his neck. The multibillion dollar man is 
 right there, in plain sight — visible to anyone watching the game from 
 home — and seamlessly blends in. On occasion, he even wears a camouflage 
 cap.\nIn the team media guide, Fisher’s only mention is at the very top 
 of the front office directory, a simple name and title, with no headshot or 
 biography. When MLB approved a sale of the A’s franchise to an ownership 
 group headed by Fisher and his former managing general partner, Lew Wolff, 
 in 2005, Fisher wasn’t present for the photo op.\nAnd 16 years later, 
 Fisher is nowhere to be found as A’s President Dave Kaval attempts to 
 sell the city of Oakland on a $12 billion Fisher-led development at Howard 
 Terminal. The plan has vocal supporters and detractors, who, broadly 
 speaking, can only agree on one thing: Fisher’s absence, his reluctance 
 to say anything at all in this moment, is bewildering.\nFisher, through a 
 spokesperson, declined comment for this story. Instead, we spoke to more 
 than 20 people in his orbit, hoping to learn more about his background, his 
 decisions as A’s owner and his insistence on keeping quiet. \nFisher grew 
 up in San Francisco, where he earned the nickname “Harpo” from his 
 parents. All three of Don and Doris Fisher’s boys were stubborn, but 
 John, the youngest, had his own particular brand of stubbornness. He 
 wasn’t just vocal; he was persistent. He would harp.\nDoris joked in 
 Don’s 2002 autobiography “Falling Into the Gap” — which was 
 originally only distributed to close associates — that it was a waste of 
 time to say “no” to her youngest child because he would figure out how 
 to get what he wanted. Don, a billionaire businessman who co-founded Gap 
 Inc. with his wife, came to believe that his son's ferocity could be a 
 familial asset someday.\n“Stubbornness is necessary for athletics and 
 business,” Don wrote in the autobiography. “The will to hang in and 
 never quit – unless something else makes better sense – is 
 essential.”\nIn 1983, Don approached John — a recent graduate of 
 Princeton University who’d been dabbling in conservative politics and 
 real estate — and asked him to instead manage the family’s investments. 
 This was one of those moments, Don was making clear, where something else 
 made better sense.\nBut John’s response per “Falling Into the Gap” 
 was obstinate and, depending on how you feel about the A’s stadium saga, 
 a bit ominous. “I don’t know anything about the investment business – 
 and I don’t wanna know anything about the investment business,” he 
 said. “I want to build things. I want to be an entrepreneur and I want to 
 build businesses or build shopping centers or whatever it may be.”\nJohn 
 Fisher did indeed take over the family portfolio, a consequential decision 
 that came to a head in 1998, shortly after the family formed the investment 
 group Sansome Partners. That year, the Fisher family, under John’s 
 direction, bought about 235,000 acres of redwood and fir timberland in 
 Northern California from Louisiana-Pacific Corporation. \nThe Fishers knew 
 it would be risky getting into the timber industry, particularly if 
 conservationists soured on them for leaning into environmentally hazardous 
 practices. John felt the family’s intentions were pure, and in a move 
 that will read as unfamiliar to A’s fans, decided to adopt an 
 “open-book policy.”\n“We had nothing to hide, nothing we weren’t 
 willing to talk about,” John said in his father’s autobiography. “... 
 We felt if we went out and got great people to work for us, if we employed 
 what would be thought of as exemplary environmental actions, and if we 
 became certified and had an open line of communication with people in the 
 community, that would go a long way toward reducing the level of hostility 
 and conflict that existed in the North Bay [over logging issues].”\nIt 
 didn’t go that way. According to Don, activists in Mendocino County 
 portrayed the Fisher family as “filthy rich,” a not-untrue assessment, 
 and dubbed their clear-cutting practices environmentally irresponsible. 
 Around the time the Fishers were getting into the timber industry, Gap Inc. 
 and seven other retailers were sued for human rights violations at their 
 garment factories in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands. The suit, 
 which was filed in 1999, alleged that factory workers were required to work 
 overtime without compensation, were subjected to a hazardous work 
 environment and were subjected to other intimidation tactics such as 
 illegal threats of deportation. The case was settled in 2002, but only 
 after Gap Inc. reportedly attempted to block other retailers from settling. 
 \nHuman rights activists joined environmental activists and protested in 
 front of Gap stores all over the world. One protester chained herself to 
 the front of a store on 34th Street in Manhattan. Another got ahold of the 
 family’s address and splashed black paint on the walls of their home. Don 
 was concerned, as he wrote in his autobiography, about the optics.\n“The 
 media publicity and protests created a lot of anxiety for our customers and 
 upset the Gap employees dramatically, who felt it affected our business as 
 well as our reputation as a company,” he said. “I couldn’t believe 
 how badly I’d underestimated the kind of public scrutiny we would have 
 with this investment and the kinds of protests that would happen,” he 
 indirectly remarked about his son’s investment strategy.\nWorkers from 
 the African country of Lesotho who made clothes for Gap participate in a 
 demonstration outside a Gap clothing store on New York's Fifth Avenue, 
 Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2002. The trio joined other Gap clothing plant workers 
 from several countries to protest low pay and working conditions.\nRichard 
 Drew/AP\nThe late ’90s debacle appears to have informed Fisher’s 
 current ultra-private posturing. That includes Sansome Partners, which has 
 a bare-bones website that doesn’t even list Fisher on its “team” 
 page, as well as Fisher’s previously reported dark money political 
 donations.\n“He wasn’t shy when I met him,” Guy Saperstein, who was 
 part of the A’s ownership group from 2005 to 2016, said when contacted by 
 this reporter. “He’s very friendly and very personable and very 
 likable. I don't know why the Fishers are reticent with the public. Maybe 
 it's a long-term family way of operating.”\nFisher is 60 now. He, like 
 Saperstein, joined the A’s ownership group in 2005, though he’s owned 
 more than 80% of the team since 2016, per Forbes. For 16 years, he’s run 
 the A’s with the same stubborn persistence he once exuded as a child. In 
 his tenure as owner, he has kept the A’s payroll within the bottom half 
 — and frequently the bottom quarter — of all 30 MLB clubs. And he has 
 steadfastly tried to secure a new ballpark rather than rebuild at the 
 Oakland Coliseum site (there have been six different attempts at relocating 
 during his tenure). \nA familiar line from Kaval, who largely speaks for 
 the organization, is that it’s now “Howard Terminal or bust” for the 
 A’s. The reasoning isn’t so clear, just that a rebuild at the Coliseum 
 site is not a possibility. Saperstein said that former co-owner Wolff 
 floated the idea of rebuilding on the Coliseum site early on, but Fisher 
 was reluctant to do so then, too.\n“Lew wanted to do it, to just build a 
 new stadium right on the same site,” Saperstein said, “which would have 
 been a lot easier and faster. John wanted to build the stadium downtown, 
 which involved a lot more environmental regulations, and would be a lot 
 more of a complicated transaction. So, there was a disagreement there, and 
 that may have contributed to Lew's decision to get out (of the ownership 
 group), but I don't know that for sure.”\nThat’s not all, Saperstein 
 noted. He said Wolff wanted to rebuild the Coliseum, then build 
 “intensive housing” around it. “That would basically fund the 
 stadium, which I thought was a very viable plan,” he said. “But John 
 disagreed with that from the beginning. That plan never went very 
 far.”\nIn an email to SFGATE, Wolff, now 85, responded to Saperstein’s 
 assertions — though he did not fully address them. We’re including the 
 full email below.\n“While a dear friend, Guy Saperstein does not speak 
 for me,” Wolff wrote. “John truly wants to do something magnificent for 
 Oakland, at the Coliseum and at Howard Terminal. Both my age and my 
 resources were such that it was time for John (who is a very knowledgeable 
 real estate person) to assume the next steps in getting the A’s to a 
 great new venue. John and his family have made wonderful investments 
 throughout the Bay Area. All demanding the highest quality possible. The 
 Fisher Museum, the Gap, the San Jose Earthquakes and so much more. I know 
 that if the Howard Terminal project is approved, Oakland will have perhaps 
 the most beautiful and most recognized baseball park in MLB. We all realize 
 that Oakland has many issues that need attention. \n“The Howard Terminal 
 plan, in my opinion, will afford the City and the region an economic engine 
 that will touch and benefit numerous needs of the community. I think we 
 live in a time where ‘the Process has, sadly, become the end product.’ 
 Where process can lead to implementation — great benefits both direct and 
 indirect benefits can occur. I have known John and his family for several 
 decades and they are committed to enable great, quality endeavors to 
 happen. They are proven implementers!!! Finally, I know John would much 
 rather be able to see his ball team as close to his home as possible. Go 
 A’s."\nWhen asked in a follow-up email to clarify whether he wanted to 
 build intensive housing around the Coliseum, and whether Fisher disagreed 
 with such an idea, Wolff demurred: \n“I simply wanted to get a new, 
 compact ballpark built in Oakland,” he responded, before noting that 
 there’s a “17 story Marriott” that he’s developing in 
 Oakland.\n\nAfter failing to secure a draft environmental impact report 
 during their first three relocation attempts (Coliseum North, Pacific 
 Commons and Warm Springs), Wolff and Fisher found more luck in San Jose, a 
 promising site they could both get behind. In 2012, they announced a 
 proposal to build a ballpark in San Jose called Cisco Field, but the 
 Giants, who said they had territorial rights in San Jose, objected.\nIn the 
 early ’90s, the Giants had their sights set on San Jose. With the 
 blessing of former A’s owner Walter Haas — who had territorial rights 
 to San Jose at the time — the Giants came to an agreement with the city 
 of San Jose to move their franchise there in 1991. But the agreement was 
 rejected by the city's voters in 1992.\n“The Giants then took that 
 expression of goodwill by the Haas family, and they have steadfastly tried 
 to keep the A's out of San Jose,” Saperstein said. “Now, they have 
 absolutely no right, in my opinion, to do that. [Former Commissioner] Bud 
 Selig allowed them to do that. I made jokes, like, ‘I wonder what they've 
 got on Bud Selig?’”\nSelig, when contacted for comment by this 
 reporter, declined to elaborate on the topic, only reiterating that San 
 Jose was the Giants’ territory. The A’s have long maintained that the 
 permission Haas granted the Giants in the early ’90s was contingent on 
 the Giants eventually relocating to San Jose. \n“I had to explain to 
 (Fisher), in a very painful process, why that couldn't be. And he and Lew 
 were so decent about it,” Selig said. “They understood that territorial 
 rules just couldn’t be relaxed. A lot of owners would have really been 
 difficult. They were not. They were unhappy, and I understood that. But I 
 have so much faith they’ll work out a new ballpark in Oakland, because it 
 is John Fisher.”\nSelig’s optimism doesn’t pair with Fisher’s 
 general unwillingness to spend money on much of anything, even though the 
 value of the A’s franchise has more recently skyrocketed in spite of poor 
 attendance numbers.\nOwning the A’s wasn’t always so lucrative. A few 
 decades ago, Saperstein attended an A’s game with the Haas family, who 
 oversaw the organization from 1980 to 1995. Saperstein asked Walter Haas, 
 the chairman and CEO at the time, how he was able to run the A’s with the 
 revenues and payroll they carried.\n“And he said, ‘Well, you don’t 
 mind losing $15 million a year,’” Saperstein said. “Of course, $15 
 million a year then would be $50 million a year now. The point is, they 
 were subsidizing the team. They were getting huge attendance with those 
 players. I think one year they did 2.9 million fans, and they still lost 
 $15 million. They got tired of it. Even rich people don't like losing 
 money.”\nFisher’s management of the A’s payroll and operating costs 
 is almost certain to yield a massive profit whenever he does sell. The 
 A’s were valued at $180 million when they were acquired by Fisher’s 
 group, and today they are valued at $1.125 billion by Forbes. Multiple 
 people who work closely to Fisher described a reluctance by the owner to 
 invest his own capital into the team — more specifically, a reluctance to 
 lose money on a year-to-year basis — almost as if on principle, despite 
 the fact that the A’s valuation (like many pro teams) has steadily grown. 
 It should be noted that this year, the A's rank 23rd in MLB in payroll, per 
 Cot's Baseball Contracts, but for 12 of Fisher’s 16 seasons as owner, the 
 payroll has ranked 25th or lower.\nFor Saperstein, witnessing the tight 
 budget and constant spending cuts as part of the ownership group was 
 painful, and certainly not a principle worth adhering to. He grew attached 
 to players like Josh Donaldson. When the A’s traded Donaldson to the 
 Toronto Blue Jays in 2014, Saperstein began to mull over the idea of 
 selling his interest in the team.\n“I went ballistic,” he said. “I 
 couldn’t believe it. This guy had done everything you'd ever asked a 
 baseball player to do. ... He was everything that the A's stood for. To 
 trade him just blew my mind. I called Lew, and I said, ‘I can't take it 
 anymore. I just cant take it.’ It just became too hard for me to see that 
 happening again and again.”\nFisher’s cost-cutting reached new lows in 
 May 2020, when the A’s became the only MLB organization that publicly 
 refused to pay minor leaguers a $400 per week stipend after their season 
 was canceled. Like some other teams, the A’s furloughed a significant 
 amount of employees on both the business side and the player development 
 side of their organization, but also cut pay for all employees who had a 
 salary above $60,000. In October, many of those furloughed employees were 
 informed that they wouldn’t have jobs with the team in 2021.\nThe A’s 
 ended up reversing course on their decision about the minor leaguers, but 
 only after significant backlash. They’ve since been criticized for their 
 Fyre Festival-esque food offerings served to affiliate clubs.\nMultiple 
 people within the organization say that internally, there is still great 
 respect for general manager David Forst and vice president of baseball 
 operations Billy Beane, but after 2020, an “us versus him” sentiment 
 towards Fisher has emerged among some baseball operations employees. \nRick 
 Magnante, who had worked for the A’s as a scout, coach and minor league 
 manager since 1996, was part of the furloughed staff in 2020 and was 
 ultimately let go after almost 25 years with the organization. He said 
 A’s employees “without a doubt” were suffering from low morale when 
 the decision to forgo $400 a week stipends became widely known. “We 
 always stressed leadership,” Magnante said. “We finally paid our minor 
 leaguers, but almost after we were shamed into it. Why not be at the 
 forefront? Why not get the cutting edge? That's kind of who we are.\n“I'd 
 like to think that we could have paid the minor leaguers their $400 stipend 
 through September. It’s not a lot of money, but it makes their life a 
 little better – you could’ve been their hero. You could've built 
 loyalty.”\nGeneral manager David Forst, executive vice president of 
 baseball operations Billy Beane and managing partner John Fisher of the 
 Oakland Athletics sit in the Athletics draft room June 3, 2019.\nMichael 
 Zagaris/Getty Images\nThe A’s, like most professional sports teams, keep 
 their books private — but according to a Forbes estimate, Fisher’s net 
 worth has risen more than $1 billion since the pandemic began. A month 
 before the A's mass furloughs, Gap Inc. stock plummeted to $5.65 a share. 
 As of July 14, shares closed at $31.00. Per SEC filings, Fisher owns 18% of 
 Gap Inc., a position worth roughly $2 billion. The increase in value of Gap 
 Inc. shares, in tandem with the A’s organization’s growing valuation, 
 suggests that Fisher is able to afford additional investments in the team 
 despite low attendance and revenue numbers from 2020 and 2021. (As 
 ProPublica recently reported, many sports owners are also able to write off 
 millions in tax savings by citing the amortization of their purchase; 
 Fisher wasn’t listed in the report and declined an interview request with 
 this reporter, so we don’t know whether he’s utilizing this legal 
 loophole.)\n“The furlough was tough,” Magnante said, speaking about 
 ownership in general. “You could kind of understand it, but when you're a 
 business that never has to open up your books, nobody knows what ownership 
 really makes, so who are they to be trusted? How can I expect to get an 
 honest answer from them? Are they telling me they're losing money, or are 
 they telling me they're not making money?”\nFisher’s cost-cutting while 
 his purchase’s valuation increases leads to an inevitable question: Will 
 he eventually cash out and sell? The A’s have publicly repeated that the 
 team is not for sale, but that doesn’t mean much. Perhaps Fisher’s last 
 hurrah is this ballpark project, whether it be at Howard Terminal or Las 
 Vegas or elsewhere. A ballpark development wouldn’t just serve as a 
 money-maker for Fisher; it would be his long sought-after shot at the type 
 of entrepreneurship mentioned in his father’s autobiography. This could 
 be, at least in his eyes, a chance to carve out his own billionaire 
 legacy.\nBut that’s just an inference. Even those closest to Fisher are 
 unsure of when he would finally sell, or why he’s opposed to rebuilding 
 at the Coliseum, or whether he’d give up on his quest for a new ballpark. 
 \nThe truth is anybody’s guess, because John Fisher isn’t going to tell 
 us. \nAlex Coffey (@byalexcoffey) is a freelance reporter based in New York 
 City. She previously wrote human interest stories about baseball and 
 basketball for The Athletic. Before that, she wrote human interest stories 
 for the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Seattle Mariners.\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2022/01/12/18847324.php
SUMMARY:Enough Is Enough! No Public Funded Stadium In Port Of Oakland For Billionaire A’s Owner
LOCATION:Oakland City Hall\nOscar Grant Plaza
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2022/01/12/18847324.php
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