San Jose is trying to sniff out Giants infiltration of an anti-A's group
By Craig CalcaterraSep 5, 2012, 2:02 PM EDT
Confused? You won't be, after the next episode of Soap!
While San Jose's hopes for bringing the A's baseball team to a downtown ballpark remain in limbo, the city is toughening its stance toward opponents of the move from Oakland … Last week the city filed for a court order allowing it to examine the organizational structure — and any Giants ties — of Stand For San Jose, a community group whose lawsuit over the proposed ballpark has raised questions about the San Jose plan's viability.
I'm generally pro-A's-to-San Jose, but I'm struggling to think of why it's at all relevant if the Giants are behind some community group which opposes the A's move. They're overtly hostile to the move already, to the point where they've threatened litigation. If they're also covertly hostile, so what?
The answer is politics, of course, as I'm assuming there are politicians in San Jose who would find it in their best interests to paint opposition to their stadium plans as some corporate conspiracy. But why that justifies the use of pubic legal resources to sniff such associations out is beyond me.
Fine, there may be a legal standing argument to be made — the litigation against San Jose was allegedly initiated by San Jose residents — but unless the Giants are absolutely stupid, even if they were secretly behind a push to stop the move, they'd do what every other litigant in history has done and get some bona fide local residents on the case to establish standing.
And my pro-A's-to-San Jose leanings aside, I'm sure there are a LOT of people in San Jose who don't want the A's there, especially if it means the use of any kind of public money or land. So it's not like any and all opposition to this stuff is a sham.