Make no mistake about happened in negotiations between the city of Charlotte and the Carolina Panthers: the city entered the process having publicly announced that it was mortally afraid that a future owner would move the team from Charlotte. And the Panthers, being far more astute negotiators than the city, took advantage of this fear to get a sweetheart deal from the city.

As the Charlotte Observer reports:

At the Feb. 8 meeting, the documents show that City Attorney Bob Hagemann told council members that a Panthers representative had said owner Jerry Richardson did not rule out selling the team to someone who could move the Panthers.

Hagemann told council members that Billy Moore, an attorney, told him the council could not wait until its Feb. 18 meeting to decide.

“I said, ‘Does that have anything to do with the Feb. 15 date the NFL has set (for teams to announce they are seeking permission to relocate)?’ ” Hagemann said. “Billy laughed and said I can’t confirm that, but it is very perceptive.”

Faced with an artificial deadline, the city folded when it should have called the Panthers’ bluff.

But there’s much more ineptness than just thaton the city’s part. As Sun tzu said, “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles… if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

The city simply failed to understand its adversary — and in negotiations, the Panthers most certainly are an adversary for the city. Again from the UPoR:

City officials did not press the Panthers on how much money they make – or how much they could afford to spend on renovations.

Kimble said that NFL teams are an asset, and that the city was focused on anchoring the team to Charlotte. The city studied other deals NFL teams have with host cities and tried to make a deal favorable to those agreements.

Wrong approach. What the city should offer depends upon both the financial situation of the Panthers and what the improvements the Panthers were proposing for Bank of America Stadium. In negotiations, it’s almost always to your advantage to have the other guy make the first offer. And the city could simply have said back in October that the city values transparency and would talk to the Panthers only after the team publicly outlines the scope of any proposed improvements at the stadium. Instead the city freaked out about not

And let’s not pretend that the city ever cut a good deal here. It promised the Panthers things it that literally were not in its power to deliver — like state money — and apparently no one bothered to ask the local legislative delegation about whether the General Assembly would allow the city to raise its prepared food tax to cover what the city was promising the Panthers. And in doing so, it undermined the faith that citizens have in the city and destroyed the city’s traditions of good and open government.

Precedent matters. And we now have a precedent for Charlotte City Council to hold secret meetings to raise taxes. We unfortunately also have a precedent for the Carolina Panthers to get at least 70 percent of stadium improvements paid for by the public. Which is to say that when Bank of America Stadium needs replacing — anybody for the city bother to estimate when that might happen? — the Panthers will be be able to argue that they are entitled to have the public pick up at least $700 million of the $1 billion cost of such a new facility.