Thanks to a reader for the link. Lananna is the former UO coach who, after UO lost the public bidding for the 2019 Championships to Doha, cut a deal with corrupt IAAF President Lamine Diack for 2021. Links to some previous stories on this are here. Ken Goe has the…
Posts tagged as “Vin Lananna”
Here. More on Lananna here.
Lananna, who’s on the UO payroll for several hundred large, asked the Governor for $40M in state subsidies. He’s now got $10M. If you think that’s the end of it you haven’t read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, or Ken Goe’s update in the Oregonian here.
The Oregon DOJ held up Tracktown’s $10M grant from Travel Oregon for a full year by requiring that they provide a budget and a disclaimer that there were no legal issues, despite the FBI investigation. UO and Tracktown told the press that the Feds hadn’t contacted them. Lananna didn’t tell GC Kevin Reed?
The budget and reporting requirements are now hilariously out of date, and Lananna and Reilly’s admission is scrawled out in pen:
What could go wrong? Rumor has it that UO has now appointed an administrator to deal with it all. I wonder who is paying their salary.
The full grant of $10M in state funds is here: https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/OR212018_FE.pdf.
10/8/2018 – Tracktown / Oregon21 replaces Vin Lananna with Niels De Vos as head of IAAF 2021 championship
But not to the public – just to the university. Brad Schmidt has the story in the Oregonian: The NCAA approved a new rule Wednesday that decodes the financial influence of shoe companies in collegiate sports, eliminating a glaring shortcoming in disclosure requirements highlighted this spring by The Oregonian/OregonLive. That change,…
7/27/2018 update: The RG’s Austin Meek reports today that Travel Oregon is claiming the federal investigations into the awarding of the 2021 IAAF championships to Tracktown will not prevent Travel Oregon from giving them $10M in state funds:
“It is Travel Oregon’s perspective, barring DOJ counsel to the contrary, that language included in future contracts referencing ‘pending investigations’ relates to any investigations in which the successful applicant/awardee is named as the subject or otherwise included as one of the subjects of that investigation,” [Travel Oregon spokesperson Linea Gagliano] said in a written response provided to The Register-Guard.
The Oregon DOJ declined to comment. Meanwhile there’s still no budget for how Tracktown/Oregon21 proposes to spend these state funds.
7/25/2018: Back in early 2016, after some serious log-rolling and arm-twisting, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill to raise the hotel tax and have the Oregon Tourism Commission, a.k.a Travel Oregon, run a grant process to give Vin Lananna’s Tracktown at least part of the $25M in public money that John Kitzhaber and Kate Brown had promised them. For a taste of the politics, here’s Saul Hubbard in the RG:
Cash trail leads to track subsidy
Posted Jan 5, 2016 at 10:01 PM
When Vin Lananna, president of TrackTown USA, and Paul Weinhold, president of the University of Oregon Foundation, first contacted then-Gov. John Kitzhaber in mid-2014 to request a $40 million state subsidy for TrackTown’s bid to hold the 2019 track world championships in Eugene, they were met with coolness and skepticism, newly released emails show.
After Lananna gave an in-person pitch to Kitzhaber on July 7, Kitzhaber economic policy adviser Vince Porter sent a scathing assessment of the request to the governor and his top advisers.
Talks should continue, Porter wrote, but “there are a lot of hurdles to get over before it becomes much more than a pipe dream.”
Nonprofit TrackTown’s request contained “probably as much as $20 million that we would never want to consider subsidizing,” he added. “I don’t think the state should be even considering something larger than $20 million” to help fund the event in Eugene, he wrote.
The subsidy request — which would require three-fifth votes in both chambers of the Legislature — also was met coolly by Salem’s two most powerful legislators, Senate President Peter Courtney and House Speaker Tina Kotek, both Democrats, Porter’s emails indicate.
Yet, only five months later, Kitzhaber publicly pledged to “use all the means at my disposal to deliver the financial support needed for the championships” in a video message he sent — along with then-Secretary of State Kate Brown — with TrackTown’s team to the International Association of Athletics Federations bid meeting in Monaco in late November.
For the first time in that video, Kitzhaber endorsed a specific amount: the full $40 million. Getting the governor to publicly state the $40 million was a priority for TrackTown, Porter’s emails show.
What happened between Kitzhaber’s initial resistance and his endorsement? His campaign coffers were swamped to overflowing with donations from people who want the track world championships held at the UO’s Hayward Field.
The emails show that Kitzhaber’s apparent reversal coincided with almost $400,000 in campaign contributions he received during a 42-day period in September and October 2014 from athletic apparel giant Nike, its co-founder Phil Knight and its CEO Mark Parker, as well as four members of the UO Board of Trustees. …
He has, however, resigned as TrackTown President, right in the middle of planning for the 2021 IAAF Championships, and a federal investigation. Ken Goe has the scoop here: Lananna led the successful bid for the 2021 World Outdoor Championships, which are scheduled to be at Hayward Field. The bid is…
2/20/2018: Austin Meek has the latest on the Lananna and Tracktown in the RG here. No word yet on whether the feds are also interviewing the UO Foundation CEO Paul Weinhold, who also played a key role in the IAAF bidding, as reported by Diane Dietz in the RegisterGuard back in 2014: The…
Elon Glucklich has the news in the RG, here. Just kidding about the Bach part. Springfield’s city government is actually giving the money to bail out money-losing TrackTown USA and its well paid executives.
2/27/2016: Saul Hubbard has more in the RG here:
A last-minute change by the Oregon Senate on Friday to a proposed increase in the state’s lodging tax left Lane County lawmakers fuming.
The change, adopted because of pressure from Portland area Democratic senators, would erode further the size of the tax increase, meaning a smaller pot of new revenue for tourism-related ventures across the state.
It also could make it more difficult for the tax increase to cover the full $25 million subsidy that will be requested for the 2021 World Track and Field Championships in Eugene.
Under the latest amendments, the state’s lodging tax would increase to 1.8 percent, from 1 percent now, for four years. It would then drop down to a 1.5 percent permanent rate. …
I’m not sure why the legislature is considering even this, given that on Jan 14 Diane Dietz quoted Lananna as saying he can make this work without state subsidies:
Not getting the lodging money would be a big challenge to TrackTown’s goal of bringing 2,000 athletes from 214 countries to Eugene for a nine-day event in August 2021, Lananna said.
But coming up empty-handed in the February session would not stop TrackTown, he said.
“Are we going to go ahead? We’re absolutely going to go ahead. (But) don’t ask me what the next step is. I don’t know.”
And here’s what the Oregonian’s Jeff Manning had on Jan 10:
Track Town is not backing off its contention that it eventually needs $40 million in public funding to stage the event. Backed by the formidable political power trio of Nike, Phil Knight and the University of Oregon, it has plenty of clout in Salem.
“But we don’t have to get there today in this short session,” Lananna said. “We’ve got five years to bring people around.”
… It’s a lucrative arrangement. Even at part-time, Lananna gets paid $440,000 a year, including some deferred compensation, by the university. Track Town and related entities paid him another $334,300 annually, according to the non-profit’s tax return.
On top of that, Nike pays Lananna $30,000 a year as part of a long-term consulting contract.
… “I heard through the grapevine that you are working on possible plans for an IAAF proposal,” then interim UO President Scott Coltrane wrote in an Aug. 26, 2014, email. “Can you give me an update and briefing via telephone when convenient?”
After talking to Lananna, Coltrane immediately emailed his top lieutenants clearly concerned about whether the UO could fulfill the promises Lananna was making. “Yikes,” Coltrane wrote in the Aug. 28 email. “Have any of you seen any proposals for what specifically is being proposed for new housing for rehabilitation of residence halls?”
2/23/2016: House passes IAAF subsidy, UO won’t waive fees on public records
Online at the Register Guard tonight, and in print tomorrow. There’s no way to adequately summarize this, read it all here. Vin Lananna’s take is ~$800K a year, from 2012 to at least 2021. Lananna also owns a private media company that will be in on the championships. And while Lananna is making…
11/26/2015:
The BBC has the latest from the IAAF headquarters – in Monaco, of course. Apparently the IAAF will replace his Nike money by paying Coe a salary, in an effort to reduce the IAAF’s longstanding system of bribes, kickbacks, and side deals:
The British press is now asking why public money was spent on lobbying the IAAF members to elect Coe. And British MP Damian Colin’s parliamentary hearings will be on Dec 2. Report here: