By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; B01
D.C. Council members said yesterday that they will seek to implement their own price cap on a new baseball stadium after a consultant told them that a cap offered by Mayor Anthony A. Williams does not protect the city against cost overruns.
The council's move came on the eve of today's scheduled vote on a critical stadium lease deal with Major League Baseball. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D) said that to persuade her colleagues to approve the lease, she will introduce emergency legislation to implement a cap drafted by the council.
"There is concern by legal counsel that this is not a firm cap," Cropp said of the documents the mayor offered last week. "The council needs to act on something that is responsible and limits the city's liability."
The eleventh-hour complication threw the Williams administration into a final flurry of lobbying as mayoral aides scrambled to work with the council to draft the new legislation.
The legislation, Cropp said, would cap the city's payments for labor and materials for the ballpark at $300 million, along with an additional $20 million that MLB promised in December. Williams (D) offered the same cap last week, but council members said the mayor's cap has loopholes.
The council is also considering capping the project's entire cost at between $589 million and $630 million, council members said. Emergency legislation would require nine votes among the council's 13 members for approval.
"The key will be how they write the provision," mayoral spokesman Vince Morris said. "If they write it in such a way that they attempt to undo what we already agreed to [with baseball officials], then we'll have problems. But if they come up with something that strengthens what we already agreed to, then there's no problem, and we can go forward."
Cropp told her colleagues during the closed-door debate that by approving a cap and the stadium lease, the council would pressure baseball to either accept the deal or reject it, council members said. But Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and others said they were concerned about the legal ramifications of signing off on a lease contingent on a cap created by the council.
The lease agreement is critical to the future of the stadium, which is scheduled to be built near South Capitol Street SE and the Navy Yard along the Anacostia River. The council was supposed to vote on the lease in December, but Williams asked Cropp to withdraw the document from consideration because he lacked majority support. Members have expressed concern about the rising cost, which has increased from $535 million to about $667 million.
Major League Baseball has filed a claim with the American Arbitration Association, which assigned former Detroit mayor Dennis W. Archer to mediate the standoff. Archer's involvement ended two weeks ago when Williams submitted a revised stadium lease to the council that contained new commitments from baseball officials. Among those was a promise to help fund a youth academy in the District.
If the council does not approve the lease today, baseball officials might choose to pursue full arbitration, which could take up to six months to resolve.
With the lease agreement in limbo, several other critical elements related to the Washington Nationals and the construction of the stadium are being held up. For example, Major League Baseball has delayed the sale of the franchise to an ownership group.
The council met for more than two hours yesterday behind closed doors with Peter C. B. Bynoe, a consultant retained last week from DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. Although Williams had submitted documentation last week that he said capped the ballpark costs, Bynoe told council members that the plan contained potential loopholes, members said.
Under Williams's plan, the city agreed to a "guaranteed maximum price" contract with the three companies that will build the stadium: Clark Construction Group, Hunt Construction Group and Smoot Construction. But Bynoe said the price could grow if the city were to issue change orders that alter designs during the construction process.
"We're trying to determine how we can effectuate a cap that has real meaning," said Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7), who is considered a swing vote among mayoral aides. "We want to approve our own cap and let them conform the lease to that."
David A. Catania (I-At Large) said the cap offered by the mayor "will just postpone the day of reckoning until the true costs are known. This is not a cap on the costs but an accounting sleight of hand."
It was unclear last night whether Major League Baseball or the construction companies would agree to the terms created by the council. The council will hold a regularly scheduled private breakfast meeting today during which more details could be discussed before the public legislative session. Several messages left with baseball officials were not returned last night.
Cropp appeared determined to put the lease to a vote. During the council's closed-door meeting, which grew louder as it progressed, Cropp could be heard admonishing her colleagues.
"I'm sick of this," she told them. "Every time we move somewhere, you keep adding something else. I'm sick of it. I want you people to either vote it up or vote it down."
Asked about her stance after the meeting, Cropp said: "We need to do something. We're getting to the point where if we do not act, the council is adding to the potential cost overruns."
The day began well for the Williams administration when it was revealed that President Bush's federal budget included $20 million to renovate the Navy Yard Metro Station, which needs to be expanded to handle the crowds expected for games at the new stadium. Council members had been concerned about whether the city would be forced to pay the expansion.
But that victory for the mayor was quickly overshadowed by the council's meeting in the late afternoon.
"There is a lot the mayor has not delivered," said Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large), another swing vote. "There's a lot of work left to be done."