Wednesday morning, Hillsborough County commissioners will hear from the county attorney about whether they can remove board members from the Tampa Sports Authority.<\/p>\n
The board is under scrutiny as the manager and landlord of municipality-owned sports stadiums and arenas, including Raymond James Stadium. Earlier this month the TSA board sent a letter to Hillsborough commissioners saying current tenants and their renovation needs, including the Bucs, should come first before financing a new Rays ballpark. The TSA won\u2019t vote on any part of the deal but can advise bodies like the county commission that will ultimately vote on a final term sheet.<\/p>\n
The current framework includes more than $700 million in taxpayer money from the county, nearly $200 million from Tampa, and an additional $100 million from the Drew Park Community Redevelopment Agency, which would be raised from a portion of property taxes in the area surrounding the proposed Dale Mabry ballpark and adjacent 100-acre, mixed-use development.<\/p>\n
On the table is the use of millions of tourist tax dollars to help fund a ballpark at the current location of Hillsborough College, across from RayJay.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the month, Hillsborough commission vice-chair Christine Miller asked the county attorney\u2019s office to provide a report on how to remove board members of the TSA. In a memo posted to the county agenda packet for the commission meeting on Wednesday, the county attorney’s office said the enabling legislation that created the TSA has no mechanism to remove board members during their term.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike certain other special districts to which the BOCC makes appointments, the TSA Act does not contain any provision regarding removal of TSA board members,\u201d the memo says, without attribution to anyone at the office. \u201cThe TSA Act fails to provide any authority for removal of TSA board members, but simply provides that the term of each TSA board member shall be 4 years or until a successor shall be appointed and qualified, the BOCC does not have the authority to remove a TSA board member before the expiration of the member\u2019s respective 4-year term.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shot to the TSA board from Hillsborough commissioner Christine Miller injects more politics into negotiations to build a new stadium for the Rays.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’d like to direct the county attorney’s office to review and advise the board on its legal authority,\u201d she said during a commission meeting on June 2nd. \u201cAll available mechanisms to remove a Hillsborough County-appointed member of the [TSA] midterm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also this month, Tampa attorney Jared Willis, who’s also a state-registered lobbyist for the Mayernick Group, but with no registered ties to any company affiliated with Rays ownership, sent a letter to the TSA board saying four members have financial conflicts surrounding a deal and should’ve recused themselves when they publicly said funding for improvements to RayJay should be prioritized.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they need to do the right thing and resign,\u201d Willis said last week in an interview with 10 Tampa Bay News reporter Kristen Barbaresi. \u201cI really think that those board members should take a look at their actions and they should look at their failure to disclose unsworn statements and that they should do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of those members, civil engineer Joe Robinson, unloaded in front of the Tampa City Council last week, during a community redevelopment agency meeting, saying he wants an investigation as to why the board is drawing so much heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you attack Joe Robinson, I\u2019m gonna retaliate,\u201d he said. \u201cI am being sent negative attacks\u2026 that I’m trying to profiteer from something that I am not even close to.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, the TSA sent us a memo from its general counsel stating that the allegations are unfounded and that no board member, including Robinson, has a conflict of interest as those stadium negotiations continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wednesday morning, Hillsborough County commissioners will hear from the county attorney about whether they can remove board members…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[15349,61590,629,22641,135,137,136,3213],"class_list":["post-311188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-board-members","tag-christine-miller","tag-hillsborough","tag-hillsborough-college","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-tsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}