Former El Paso Mayor John Cook denies Wilson’s claim he ordered delay of ballpark bonds

Former Mayor John Cook denies directing city employees to delay the sale of ballpark bonds, contradicting what former City Manager Joyce Wilson said in a previous email.

The delay of the issuance of the bonds ultimately cost the City $22 million. “I can absolutely say I never did give that directive to anybody,” said Cook in an interview Tuesday.

In an August 2013 email to City Attorney Sylvia Firth that outlines the chronological order of events that led to the delay, Wilson said Cook and then Mayor Pro Tem Ann Lilly gave her the green light to hold off on issuing the bonds until after the May election for Mayor between then ballpark supporter Steve Ortega and Oscar Leeser.

“Several council members raised concerns about the timing of this activity in relation to the upcoming general election, specifically because of the ongoing controversy over the project… Specifically no one said that a delay would be harmful to the financing or project costs. Further, I advised the former mayor and (mayor) pro tem of this request and both concurred it was better to hold off until after the general election if it was practical to do so.”

When ABC-7 told Cook someone appeared to be lying because he and Wilson’s accounts were different, he responded: “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God. That’s the best of my recollection.”

Lilly was the Mayor Pro Tem in May 2013 and also denies Wilson’s timeline of events, even saying she never even had a conversation with the former City Manager about the issuance of the ballpark bonds.

“I don’t know anything about it. I don’t remember anything because I wasn’t involved. I would never ever give any instruction like that because I am not well versed in bonds and securities. I gave no instruction and I can’t imagine that she’d (Wilson) ask me because she knew that wasn’t my strong suit,” Lilly said in a phone conversation on Tuesday.

Ortega said he did not ask for or know the City would delay the bond issuance for his election. His supporter and former City Rep. Susie Byrd has also told ABC-7 she did not know of the city’s plan to delay. Current City Rep. Cortney Niland, another Ortega supporter at that time, has not responded to ABC-7’s repeated attempts to reach her for comment.

An examination of the events leading to the issuance of the bonds shows waiting about three weeks until after the May 11th mayoral election to approve the debt amount was the main culprit in the City landing an unfavorable financing deal.

The City Could have began the process to issue the bonds by May 1st because it had cleared a legal hurdle in a ballpark-related suit on March 28th and finalized a required public notice period on April 30th.

Instead the City Council did not approve the debt amount of $52.8 million until May 28th, nearly three weeks until after the May 11th election. After that, the City was tangled for weeks in talks with the contractor CF Jordan and the baseball team ownership group MountainStar Sports Group, according to WIlson’s email. CF Jordan advised the City it could not construct the ballpark for the approved amount and MountainStar agreed to increase its commitment by an additional $12 million. By the time that process wrapped, the Council did not approve issuing the bonds until June 18th and by that time the market was starkly different than in early May when it was ripe for record-low interest rates.

“The bond market went into an erratic spiral within 48 hours of the June 18 meeting, followed by the July 4 holiday week during which markets were closed and/or underwriters advised we should not sell. So we could not go to market prior to the week of July 8 – or 3 weeks after the June 18 action,” Wilson said in the 2013 email.

If the city would have moved to sell the ballpark bonds before the May election, it could have gotten a better interest rate and come out millions of dollars ahead. Instead, it faced an ugly market in June, July and August and it got a bad deal and lost a lot of money.

Niland has tried to blame the unfavorable financing deal on the advice of First Southwest, the City’s financial advisor. But Leeser and other officials have said First Southwest never advised the City to delay but instead warned the City of the risks to do so.