The City Attorney Says the Stadium Authority Is Not Part of the Charter Review

Why That’s Indefensible

Recently, the City of Santa Clara approved a major deal: the Santa Clara Stadium Authority (SCSA) voted to accept a roughly $6.4 million reimbursement agreement tied to hosting Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium. Anyone who follows Santa Clara knows that the SCSA has a massive impact on daily life in this city.

So I was stunned on Wednesday, October 22, when I asked the Charter Review Committee which subcommittee would review the SCSA and the city attorney told me that the SCSA will not be included in the charter review because it was formed via a joint-powers agreement (JPA). Mr. Googins acted like this was no big deal.

This is a huge deal. The SCSA owns and manages one of the city’s biggest assets on behalf of residents—influencing council decisions, city staff workload, city finances, contracts, public-private partnerships, and public trust—yet it’s being excluded from the city’s core governance overhaul because what appears to be a legal technicality.

An Unjustified Exclusion

The Santa Clara Stadium Authority (SCSA) has been operating for over a decade, and its decisions shape major city functions. It didn't exist when the city’s charter was written, and so the relationships between the council and the board, and between senior staff and the SCSA, have never been clearly defined. Are there any conflicts of interest? How are they resolved? One body has an ethics code and oversight, at least on paper; the other does not. How does that work? The public has never been told how the two overlap, diverge, or work together. Excluding SCSA from this charter review is indefensible.

Why the JPA Argument Falls Short

Yes—the SCSA was formed as a JPA. But in practice its decisions touch nearly every area of city governance. Will this charter, which establishes city structure, simply pretend the SCSA doesn’t exist? That’s either legal myopia or a deliberate choice to keep the status quo, shielding SCSA and its partners from role clarification, routine ethics oversight, transparency safeguards, and the public-trust reforms we hope the new charter will create.

What the Charter Review Must Include

The public—and the Review Committee—should demand:

• Explicit inclusion of the SCSA: The charter must either name the SCSA or include an addendum covering its oversight, ethics standards, conflict-of-interest rules, and relationship to the city.
• Governance language that covers the Authority: Sections on the Council, City Manager, boards & commissions, public meetings, finances, elections, and conflicts should explicitly reference how the SCSA fits.
• Political spending & ethics transparency: The review must address how deep-pocketed interests—like the San Francisco 49ers or related entities—may influence the Council, the SCSA, or senior staff. How will the city deal with current and future political spending on elections, apparent conflicts of interest, and majority voting patterns that appear to favor big spenders? Right now, the city remains silent on all of that, but it needs to address these current and future challenges to public trust. The city should study how other jurisdictions have handled independent expenditures, improved transparency, and instituted robust recusal protocols and resident-driven oversight.
• Equal oversight for all city-linked bodies: Even though the SCSA is a JPA, the charter should require that any entities created or controlled by the city meet the same ethics, transparency, and disclosure standards as the rest of city government.
• Built-in transparency and accountability: The charter should mandate audits, regular disclosures of contracts and vendor relationships tied to the SCSA, and regulation of lobbyists. It should ensure the conflict-of-interest code is current, review non-disclosure agreements, and improve transparency.
• Oversight structures that last: The charter must embed ethics codes and oversight structures for both the Council and the SCSA so they are durable and a priority. If the SCSA remains excluded, the structural problems identified in the Civil Grand Jury report Outplayed will continue—and the SCSA will deliver less than what the people of Santa Clara deserve.

A Test for Voters

If the final charter revision comes without addressing the SCSA's role, structure, and oversight, then voters are being asked to approve a governance framework that ignores a key part of the structure of city government. Given the scale of the stadium enterprise, the money involved, and the political stakes, this is simply unacceptable.