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Seattle officials lobbied against arena funding
By Randy Ellis
Staff Writer

The current and former president of the Seattle City Council lobbied Washington state lawmakers last year against helping fund construction of a new NBA arena in various cities in the greater Seattle area, testimony has revealed.

“I’d say I probably talked to half of the members of the Seattle delegation,” Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin testified in a deposition released this week. He was a council member at the time and became president five months ago.

Seattle Councilman Nick Licata, who was president in 2007, said he also lobbied against providing substantial public funding.

Licata said he encouraged lawmakers not to “make a large public investment.”

The SuperSonics’ Oklahoma owners have accused Seattle city officials of duplicity. The owners contend city officials privately sabotaged their efforts to obtain a new arena that could have made the team economically viable while publicly accusing the owners of failing to make a good faith effort to keep the team in the Seattle.

Conlin said city council members wanted the Sonics to stay in Seattle's KeyArena and believed construction of a new arena in Bellevue, Renton or some other nearby location would not be in the city's best interest.

"Well, our preference is, we think that KeyArena is an excellent facility,” Conlin said of his discussions with lawmakers. "And so we suggested that KeyArena was a very good place to maintain the basketball team. And that, in, fact, if you built another arena, that that could potentially not work well for the region in terms of having two competing venues.”

Seattle Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis said he also talked to Washington legislators about the Oklahoma owners' efforts to obtain public money to finance a new arena in the Seattle area, but said he would not characterize his discussions as lobbying.

"I did not ask them to take an action one way or another,” Ceis said.

He said he told lawmakers that if they did fund a new arena, he hoped they would also provide financial assistance to the City of Seattle so it could meet its debt obligations on KeyArena.



Seattle officials lobbied against arena funding | NewsOK.com