Like an underwater homeowner on an adjustable-rate mortgage in late 2008, Team San Jose was unfazed by money issues in the months leading up to its being slapped with a default notice. And like a feckless federal regulator, the city official charged with overseeing the local business-union-municipal alliance was upbeat—right up until the report that $750,000 had fallen off the truck.

It looks like the lines between the city’s visitors bureau and the labor-business coalition that runs city-owned facilities is being further blurred, if they exist at all. Until very recently, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, a quasi-public, hotel tax–funded organization, and one of the three entities that make up Team San Jose, operated the SanJose.org website.

The site made mention of Team San Jose as an “innovative public-private” partnership between the CVB, South Bay Labor Council and a group of local hoteliers, who joined forces to streamline the process by which out-of-towners can spend their cash.

In a major reversal of a controversial decision, Dan Fenton of Team San Jose, the group that operates the San Jose Convention Center, has backed down from an earlier decision granting Teamsters Local 287 exclusive rights to set up trade shows at the Convention Center.

While the San Jose Redevelopment Agency struggles to scrounge together enough money to expand and refurbish San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center, Team San Jose CEO Dan Fenton is on his way to Dallas to try and protect the convention center’s existing business.

At the heart of the problem is a contract that the convention center signed with San Jose Teamsters Local 287, granting them exclusive rights to set up trade shows at the Center. The contract is contested by Teamsters Local 85 of San Francisco, which argues that businesses should have the option of choosing who gets to set up their trade shows

Last Tuesday at the council meeting, we spent approximately 90 minutes discussing the Teamsters Union at the Convention Center. Long story-short, this is a labor dispute between two different union locals that will be settled by the National Labor Relations Board. However, in the meantime, the Convention Center (which is the largest source of the City’s hotel tax receipts and drives airport traffic) is getting negative PR which is affecting prospective convention business in San Jose.