WASHINGTON -- NFL Network has obtained a letter from NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, dated May 18, 2009 and detailing the full financial disclosure the union is seeking in the ongoing labor negotiations.
In the letter, the contents of which were confirmed by a league source, the NFLPA asked for each team's total operating income, total operating expenses, profit from operations, other income/expenses, income before provision for income taxes, provision for income taxes, net income, cash and investment assets, dividends and other distributions to owners and their families, and financial statement notes.
A league source said the NFL has offered to have aggregate team financial statements reviewed by a mutually agreed upon independent auditor and verified for the union.
"We've made more information available in the course of this negotiation than has ever been made available in decades of collective bargaining with the NFLPA," NFL general counsel Jeff Pash said Wednesday morning. "Far more information. And we've offered to make even more information (available), including information that we do not disclose to our own clubs."
On the issue of full transparency, NFLPA president Kevin Mawae said, "Anyone that reports that we've gotten that information and rejected it is simply not telling the truth."
Smith, in the letter, emphasized to Goodell that "as the party who opted out of the deal, the burden is on the NFL to demonstrate any insufficiencies in the current contract."
