The Orioles are to begin making their pitch today for the state to pay for millions of dollars in rent discounts and improvements to Camden Yards, placing the dealmaking that brought the Ravens to Baltimore under scrutiny and charging that the Maryland Stadium Authority used "smoke-and-mirrors accounting techniques" to help the football team get a better lease.
Invoking the parity provision in their lease with the stadium authority, the Orioles are asking a panel of arbitrators to order changes that could mean more skyboxes and a new name at the baseball park.
As the team seeks to show that its agreement is inferior to that of the Ravens, the hearing is bound to provide a glimpse into the complex legal and financial arrangements between Baltimore's two major-league sports franchises and their quasi-public landlord.
In one notable example, the two sides are squabbling over whether the Ravens paid $10 million for the right to sell the football stadium's name, as has been widely reported. The Orioles say the Ravens effectively received those rights, later sold as part of a $105 million deal to PSINet, for free.
"That's simply inaccurate," replies Alison L. Asti, the stadium authority's general counsel, who then explained the complicated links among naming rights, a no-interest loan and a legislative mandate that the football team contribute $24 million toward stadium construction.
Through his lawyers, Orioles majority owner Peter G. Angelos says he is asking only for what is contractually his - that is, a lease that is "fairly comparable" to the deal that lured the then-Cleveland Browns to Baltimore in 1995.
The Orioles say the stadium authority should hold up its end of a bargain struck in return for the baseball team's signing a 30-year commitment to the city.
The Orioles' 60-page pre-hearing brief includes sections headlined "The Trauma of the Colts' 1984 Departure" and "The Orioles Remain Loyal and in Baltimore."
"The Orioles did remain, and were concerned that they were giving up bargaining leverage once they signed a long-term lease," says David E. Kendall, President Clinton's personal lawyer, who is representing the Orioles in the parity case. "As a mechanism of fairness, they negotiated the parity clause."
