Monday, April 25, 2011

Tom Schieffer, Dodgers Monitor.

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Today, Major League Baseball announced that it has appointed J. Thomas Schieffer to oversee Dodgers operations during this period of tense relations between baseball and Frank McCourt. Schieffer, a former President of the Texas Rangers, has a great deal of political experience as well, having served as an ambassador to both Australia and Japan under President George W. Bush. From the Commissioner:
We are very fortunate to have someone of Tom Schieffer's stature monitor the operations of the Los Angeles Dodgers on behalf of Major League Baseball. Tom is a distinguished public servant who has represented the nation with excellence and has demonstrated extraordinary leadership throughout his career. The many years that he spent managing the operations of a successful franchise will benefit the Dodgers and Major League Baseball as a whole. I am grateful for Tom's acceptance of this role.
Importantly, Schieffer's role will be one of oversight, not control. The whole "takeover" thing? So last week. Bill Shaikin notes that the Commissioner was careful to comment that Schieffer's powers extend to "all of the franchise's related entities," not just the operation of the team itself.

Why does that matter? Well, to say one owned the Dodgers used to mean one owned the franchise, the Stadium, the surrounding acreage, et cetera. Under McCourt ownership, however, ownership has been splintered into a small galaxy of interrelated companies. You might recall this chart:




As you can see, things are a touch complicated. The significance of this array is that it's going to be awfully difficult and time-consuming to trace the dealings of and relationships between all these entities. That Schieffer's role extends to monitoring all aspects of Dodgers-related operations suggests the Commissioner's Office wants to keep very close tabs on how cash flows through the McCourt Enterprise.

For weeks, the speculation was that Bud Selig possessed a willingness to allow McCourt ownership to die on the vine. His passive approach apparently discarded once Frank McCourt took a $30 million personal loan to cover payroll, however, the Commissioner now appears intent on having a much better seat for the potential unraveling of the McCourt era in Los Angeles.

Last season was mostly swallowed by the circus surrounding the divorce of Frank and Jamie McCourt. The 2011 season, not even a month old, is itself in grave danger of being eclipsed once again by drama in the owner's box. This time, however, it appears to be Frank McCourt and the Dodgers headed for a breakup. That is, if Commissioner Selig has anything to say about it.
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18 comments:

  1. Can someone smarter than me please explain what the difference between oversight vs control means in this case. Thanks

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  2. Does this mean a consortium of silent new owners of the Dodgers, among them George W. Bush???

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  3. Does this mean the Dodgers are getting a closer?

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  4. The Owner's Box

    If there's is one thing Bud Selig could accomplish is to banish Frank and Lasorda from sitting next to the dugout. It drives me nuts and looking at those two idiots has caused me to boycott the Dodgers as long as the practice continues.

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  5. Would you mind replacing "Jamie's Worse" with "Jamie's a c**t!"? :)

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  6. Re: to iknownothing..

    “Oversight” is just a polite word for caretaker until the Dodgers are put for sale and sold. Frank McCourt will of course sue to block any sale of the Dodgers, but he may be a little busy with some other stuff, like taking out over $140 million from the Dodgers’ equity (ie loans with the Dodgers as collateral) and not paying any taxes on the huge amount of equity he took out. The IRS is going be curious on some of the McCourts shennanigans in how they claimed these loans to fund their lifestyle was not looked upon as income, ditto for paying their sons salaries for work not done..

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  7. You do not have all of the tax issues correct and there are several other tax issues that have not yet been understood by the media and therefore have not been discussed by anyone other than members of the IRS Audit team! Distributions of loan proceeds not in excess of basis is not a tax problem. There are several tax strategies that have occurred that could be criminal in nature.

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  8. Taking out loans as the Dodgers as collateral, while using those loans to either pay for personal residential properties, building $14 million dollar swim pavilions on one of their properties, charging the Dodgers for personal expenses, or deducting much of their household expenses as part of the loan, is going to raise some serious eyebrows with the IRS.

    Yes, technically, the loans aren’t income for the McCourts, and if they sell the club they will have to pay tens of million in cap gains taxes, (which of course is at a lower rate), however it raises some questions about the McCourts, when they were taking $4 million and $2 million in annual salaries, (I assume Jamie didn’t get a salary after she was shitcanned) while not paying income taxes because they were stating cap gains loses and deductions from operating the Dodgers.

    The problem isn’t not paying taxes on some of the major loans, but not paying income taxes, (I assume they were paying some huge property tax bills) on the many of huge bills for monthly upkeep and splurges like Jamie’s wardrobe, which should be considered as disposable income.

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  9. Josh, I meant to CC you on an e-mail about this I sent out to a number of other bloggers but forgot ... it occurs to me that yesterday's he said/she said about MLB's approval of the Fox TV deal tells us an awful lot about McCourt's mindset: for him, any delay in approval is the same as a trip to bankruptcy court.

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  10. Thanks for sharing this nice post. I will keep your article in my idea.

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