Editorial: Suit Unmasks Motives

We feel for the city. We really, really do. Let's face it-they literally have to deal with our crap. But suing the UC Regents proves they aren't the innocent victims in our fractured fairy tale town. Their disingenuous behavior reveals money-grubbing motives, burns bridges with the university and only puts them deeper in the budget hole than they already are.

The most recent lawsuit may seem banal enough-it doesn't demand any money, asking UC to include more detail in the Long Range Development Plan and its projected impacts on the surrounding community. Reasonable, right? Wrong. This lawsuit will provide a springboard for the city to launch its assault on UC's coffers. Any future project up will be free game for Berkeley to find fault with it and issue lawsuits with more tangible gains. While requesting "specifics," the council hopes to slap UC Berkeley with an injunction that would halt, among other things, the renovation of Memorial Stadium.

Unless in possession of a working crystal ball, it's rather difficult to provide an accurate assessment of the effects of projects that haven't been conceived yet. What Mayor Tom Bates is asking for is a logistic impossibility-which is probably the reason they're going for that in the first place. It will put the university at a political disadvantage and leave it prone to more legal attacks by city government.

Berkeley's council seems to expect UC Berkeley to either pay for all its services or support itself entirely. This is impossible. The only UC campus so autonomous from its hometown is UC Davis. The Aggies boast their own sewage system and fire department, but with acres of grass and catatonic cows, the campus is practically large enough to be a city itself. This is unimaginable in our sardine-can city-but apparently the town thinks UC can bend the laws of physics to its will.

Don't think for a minute the City Council-and suit mastermind Bates-doesn't understand all of this. The timing of the lawsuit-right after they find out they're deep into a deficit-is suspicious, to say the least. They're actually quite candid on why they're trying to shaft the university. As Councilmember Dona Spring put it, "We have to go to court to get this funding for us, because we're just in a horrible deficit."

How much more obvious can they be? This isn't about principles, no matter what tale our media-hogging mayor spins to supporters. This isn't about equal footing with the university. And it isn't really about the LRDP. It's a calculated move to squeeze money out of UC Berkeley because the city's parking ticket income is running low.

Bates' role in this sordid little power play cannot be understated. As the lawsuit's principal proponent, he stands to gain much publicity for his reelection campaign. The man has a veritable obsession with positive coverage-who can forget his juvenile theft of thousands of Daily Cal issues when it endorsed his opponent?

His wife, State Assemblymember Loni Hancock, has long supported exercising more control over the state-run universities. In fact, the last time a city council tried to sue UC Berkeley was under her direction as mayor of Berkeley. Bates may be the center of this legal hailstorm, but Hancock may have more than a little to do with it.

Publicity isn't all the mayor will gain from engaging UC in budgetary battle. The same day he broke bread with Berkeley businessmen, he announced his intention to run in the next election. These Berkeleyites would be more than happy to see the city turn this lawsuit into a lucrative venture. But the university should be more than just a pork barrel to municipal government.

UC Berkeley brings so much to the city that cannot be quantifiable, along with all the tourists, business, publicity and parking tickets. Where would it be without the university? Likely just another small town dwarfed by the more glamorous San Francisco-and with a budget deficit they couldn't easily fix by sapping money from a public educational institution.

If the City Council wants to regain any of the integrity it may have once possessed, they should suck it up and deal with their problems the old-fashioned way. The city is sinking irretrievable $250,000 into this lawsuit-why waste so much on this misbegotten adventure? They should focus on putting their $3.5 million windfall to better use than burning it on a political maneuver that will have long-term repercussions for the city and its relationship with UC Berkeley.

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