Posted: 12/06/2010 07:51:20 AM PST
Updated: 12/06/2010 07:52:00 AM PST
Controversies surrounding
Dan Fenton, the CEO of Team San Jose, just won't go away.
As if two civil grand jury investigations, a default notice filed by San Jose for overspending his budget, an unfavorable report from the city auditor and growing impatience by the City Council with Team San Jose's problems weren't enough, now comes word that Fenton and his group -- which runs the city's convention center and downtown theaters -- may be sued.
Don Lessem, the organizer behind "Genghis Khan: The Exhibition,'' which ran from late May through Nov. 1 at the Tech Museum, said that after weeks of stonewalling by Fenton, he's suing Team San Jose for not paying $170,000 of a $300,000 guarantee the group gave his company verbally and in writing.
Together with a group of Bay Area Mongolian-Americans (Khan, of course, was Mongolian), Lessem plans to hold a news conference Monday morning in front of Team San Jose's downtown headquarters to announce the lawsuit.
"I have offered Dan Fenton, Team San Jose CEO, installment plans, and even to forego additional gift shop sales income due us, simply to make sure they honored their legal commitments. They refuse,'' he wrote Mayor Chuck Reed in a November e-mail.
"I have no option but to sue, to alert other international exhibition organizers, and to take my grievance to the ... media.''
Lessem, who has been in the exhibit business 16 years, called Team San
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Jose's behavior "unprecedented.''
In an e-mail to the Mercury News, Fenton characterized the issue as "a disagreement,'' saying "full payment has already been tendered and ... no additional amounts are due."
If all of this seems like a scene from the movie "Groundhog Day,'' you're right.
Last year, Team San Jose attracted widespread industry condemnation after Fenton announced an exclusive agreement with San Jose Teamsters to do work at the convention center that previously had been split with the San Francisco local. His own board was blindsided by the move and subsequent negative headlines.
In fact, San Jose's reputation with convention and trade show groups became so problematic that Fenton and two board members were forced to fly to Dallas to mollify customers and leaders of the Exhibition Services & Contractors Association.
Fenton's national reputation, as one industry leader involved in that brouhaha told IA, is well-known: "Dan Fenton rarely ever says anything officially that you can hold him to."
Internal Affairs is an offbeat look at local politics. This week's items were written by Tracy Seipel, John Woolfolk, Tracey Kaplan and Scott Herhold. Send tips to internalaffairs@mercurynews.com, or call 408-271-3638.
http://www.mercurynews.com/internal-affairs/ci_16765961?nclick_check=1
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