Hierarchy of elected venerables

You and I – as ordinary voters living in greater San Diego – have a mind-numbing number of opportunities to elect scads of people to serve as our public mouthpieces. 

We routinely go to the polls or mail in our ballots to select the "public servants" we believe will represent our personal and community interests and improve our well-being.  Keeping up with who's running for what is a daunting job.  

In fact, if we built a totem pole made up of all our elected officials, it would surely reach the clouds, maybe even touch the sky.

Curious about how it might look? 

•  On the bottom level you'll recognize scores of neighbors elected to our city's 30+ community planning groups.
•  A notch above you'll find a layer of School Board Trustees (five from the San Diego Unified School District, more from outlying school districts), squeezed in next to five Community College District Trustees. 
• Pressing down on them would be San Diego's nine City Councilmembers, plus our Mayor, plus multiple other Councilmembers and Mayors from towns and cities throughout our sprawling county.
• Oh yes, on the next layer there are our five County Supervisors.  
• Perched on their heads might be our County Sheriff alongside our County Assessor-Recorder-Clerk.  Oops… almost forgot to leave room for our District Attorney.  
• Up a level and breathing down each other's necks you'll find our elected State Insurance Commissioner, our Superintendent of Public Education, our State Attorney General, our State Controller, and four members of our Board of Equalization. 

Getting a stiff neck? Patience, please... we're not done with our voting obligations yet.  

• Squint up to the next level and you'll see our county's seven State Assemblymembers enviously coveting the spots on which our four State Senators sit.  
• Then focus your binoculars up a layer to the five representatives we county voters send to the US Congress. While you're up there, be sure you notice our two US Senators.  
• And hey! waving to us from the penultimate level, isn't that the Governor?  
• Finally, at the tippy-top of this dense hierarchy of elected venerables you'll recognize a facsimile of the US President – his head bobbling in the rarified breeze.

Theoretically, given the sheer number of representatives we elect to take care of us, we should be the most contented citizens of all time.  Seen from a distance, it's an impressive display.  

But the view up close, at ground level, tells a different story.  As I recently observed about city and county government, many elected officials we ceremoniously induct into this prestigious political club fail us.

It's remarkable how many of San Diego's elected officials have perfected the knack for gliding, sliding, and shimmying their way up the political totem pole, despite leaving behind scant evidence of positive change from their days in city and/or county office.

Fortunately, hope springs eternal in the hearts of voters (my optimistic heart included).

So here I'll repeat myself: "…since it won't be long before we are bombarded online, on TV, in our mailboxes, on our front doorknobs by campaign solicitations and promotional endorsements on behalf of a bevy of candidates badly wishing to claim a seat on ( fill in the blank), shouldn't we know a lot more about the job these candidates are knocking themselves out for?"

Next time we'll pluck out the Board of Supervisors from the middle of our behemoth political superstructure and get some answers to questions about County Government, specifically: Who, When, Why, How come, and What's next?

San Diego's dangling participles

Dangling participle – a piece of a sentence in search of it's true identity.  Here's an example: Sitting in the boss's chair, deadly disease runs rampant among homeless people on the streets of San Diego.

What's wrong with this sentence?  Something's missing.  We can fix it this way: Sitting in the boss's chair, Mayor Kevin Faulconer twiddles his thumbs while deadly disease runs rampant among homeless people….

An equally correct alternative might be: Sitting in the boss's chair, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors lazily ignore their civic responsibilities as deadly disease runs rampant….

Once we get the grammar right, the picture becomes clear.  Locally-elected officials – by choosing to ignore their political duty to protect the health and safety of the San Diego public – permitted a public health disaster to take hold of San Diego's neighborhoods, canyons, and streets.

Instead of taking timely action, they permitted a preventable epidemic to spread far and wide – into Santa Cruz, Arizona's Maricopa County, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City….

There are sins of commission and sins of omission.  We know that pernicious actions by political actors can be punishable offenses.  What about willful complacency and pernicious negligence that result in a deadly outcome?

I've commented on our mayor's reprehensible delinquency in the past. Not much has changed.  Kevin Faulconer, the man who's supposed to be in charge of city affairs, is still incompetent and unequipped for the complex job of running a major city like ours.  He sits at his desk in his 11^th floor City Hall office in a state of suspended animation. At press conferences and speechmaking events he play-acts the role of San Diego's highest-executive elected leader.

But could our dangling mayor have gone AWOL in the face of San Diego's homelessness crisis without tacit permission from certain other elected officials?  To what degree are San Diego County Supervisors also guilty of pernicious complacency… bordering on deadly negligence?  Has their complicity over the past decade compounded our city's and region's dual crises over affordable housing and homelessness?

Here's one of our big problems – County government is practically invisible.  Ask your neighbor, ask your co-worker: What's the point of County government?  Who calls the shots? What impact does it have on our daily lives? 

You might see a lot of shrugged shoulders. How many of us really understand what County Supervisors do to earn their comfortable salaries and pensions?  Is the Board of Supervisors just a cozy, self-satisfied nest for has-been politicians? Or maybe a convenient way-station along the campaign trail for political neophytes and marathon also-rans?

Possibly… but County government also happens to be an essential public entity with the power and resources to improve countless lives in San Diego.  It's worth our attention.

And since it won't be long before we are bombarded online, on TV, in our mailboxes, on our front doorknobs by campaign solicitations and promotional endorsements on behalf of a bevy of candidates badly wishing to claim a seat on the County Board of Supervisors, shouldn't we know a lot more about the job these candidates are knocking themselves out for?  

The more we know about County government, the better our decisions might be about who's best qualified for the job of running it.

Stay tuned.   

Mayor Mayor on the Wall

PART I

Blue ties red ties

We'll start with a trick question: Is Mayor Kevin Faulconer the mirror image of President Donald Trump?  No, of course not! you'd probably say.  

Kevin Faulconer is a pleasant, if unremarkable, go-along-to-get-along San Diego city councilman turned mayor: 

"…born and raised in Oxnard California… learned to speak Spanish in grade school…  San Diego State University… member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity… one year as Student Body President of Associated Students. He and his wife Katherine, a small business owner, live in Point Loma with their two children. Before running for office… executive with the public relations firm NCG Porter Novelli and volunteered  on the Mission Bay Park Committee…" (see Wikipedia)

Red ties blue ties

You might say that Kevin Faulconer is a lightweight Republican who goes down nice and easy in a city like San Diego.  He is decorum incarnate – never an unguarded sneer, never an unscripted rant.  

You might even say that he mirrors Melania Trump more than the Donald.  Melania's insouciant aura serves as a glamorous distraction from her husband's crude and reckless nature.  Likewise, Faulconer's low-keyed persona serves as a disarming distraction from the leadership vacuum on the 11^th floor of City Hall.

Kevin Faulconer's problem is that he's an embarrassment to his constituents.  For how many years did the Spanos syndicate manipulate and extort this mayor?  How many times did they slap him silly while he kept coming back for more?  

But Faulconer's problems go far deeper than being dumped by the Chargers. We've got a mayor who is incapable of taking clear, decisive stands on big civic issues, whether it's a sports stadium, or Convention Center, or racial profiling by city police officers, or actualizing strong environmental programs.  He walks on eggshells, even over keeping our police force out of the immigration enforcement business.  He shuns the stage at city demonstrations and marches.  Ribbon cutting events, that's where you'll usually find him.  (So who can explain why he ignored public outcry and readily mounted the stage to meet and greet at the super-conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference held in San Diego a couple of years ago?)  

We've got a mayor who, since the day he stepped into office, has neglected the city's festering problems of relentlessly worsening homelessness; rising poverty levels; looming budget cuts; a housing crisis that turns rent and mortgage payments into a monthly scramble… 

We've got a mayor who issues limp declarations of Action! Accountability! A New Day in San Diego! in response to the ballooning backlog of street and road repairs, or spiking pension obligations and chronic threat of municipal bankruptcy, or burst water mains and standstill traffic in already overburdened neighborhoods (laughably slated for increased density and development).

In his latest State of the City address the mayor's to-do list is a hodgepodge of sound-bites.  But where are the concrete remedies?  For him, Action means making the city an Official, Regional Autonomous Vehicle Pilot Location.  For him, Accountability means installing jagged rocks under freeway overpasses to get rid of homeless sleepers.  

For him, A New Day in San Diego! might mean the Camp Hope approach of clearing the homeless off the streets and stowing them in a tarted-up tent city at the Mexican border, out of sight and out of mind.  Will this mayor really give his blessings to our very own Hooverville? 

We've got a mayor who has not delivered the goods.  Pleasant though he may be, he lacks the independence, imagination, backbone, and political moxie to do right by our city.

PART II

Once upon a time when I was an active player with the League of Women Voters, the powers-that-be convinced the San Diego public that it was time to become a dynamic metropolis like Los Angeles or Chicago or even New York City.  So voters agreed to replace our purportedly provincial city manager form of government with a strong mayor system.  

Back then the big worry for the LWV was that – in a politically low-energy city like ours – concentrated power in the hands of a strong mayor would decrease public accountability and invite corruption. 

Back then we also worried about how trading in an independent, professional city manager for a political appointee to run city departments, operations, contracts, budgets, and workers would work out.  Turns out we were right to worry. 

Our first "strong mayor" was Jerry Sanders.  He never succeeded in being his own man.  During his two terms in office he dutifully kept the city exactly where it had always been: in the hands of an ossified downtown fraternity of hoteliers, developers, bankers, and assorted business interests.  He persists to this day as a well-compensated mouthpiece for the Chamber of Commerce. 

Our second "strong mayor" was Bob Filner.  He was willing and able to express his independence, imagination, backbone, and political moxie to promote a politically liberal agenda for the city.  But he proved too undisciplined for his own good.  And too threatening to old-guard Republicans.  

As it turns out, he was also too threatening to self-professed progressive Democrats like then-councilman (and current California state assemblymember) Todd Gloria and then-San Diego/Imperial Counties Labor Council secretary-treasurer (and current California state assemblymember) Lorena Gonzalez and her clandestine mayoral ambitions for then-close companion (and current husband) Nathan Fletcher.  In an unprecedented palace coup, the city's first bona fide strong mayor was unceremoniously drummed out of office.

Our third "strong mayor" is Kevin Faulconer.  He's a chip off the old Sanders block.  We are back to waiting for the basic benefits promised to us when we gave up the old city manager government and brought in the strong mayor system – things like transparency, accountability, government efficiency, and dynamic governance. 

We were promised we'd know where the buck stops… we'd know who is in charge.  Do you know who's responsible for what goes on in our city?  Do you know who's in charge?  Do you ever think to pick up your phone to call your mayor?

PART III

We'll wrap up with the trick question: Is Kevin Faulconer the mirror image of Donald Trump?  Of course not! you'd probably still say. There's a world of difference between a public relations puppet and a dangerous, unstable, bullying megalomaniac. 

But look again at the uncanny similarities.  You'll see that neither is doing right by our citizens.  You'll see that, so far, neither deserves the public trust.

Here's the big difference: our mayor is within reach, right at our fingertips.  We elected a "strong mayor" to be in charge, to be accountable, and to be responsible for what goes on in our city.   

We voters need to check our own mirrors, if only to remind ourselves that we elected our mayor to do right by our city.  And it's our job to hold his feet to the fire and not let him forget that HE is where the buck stops.

A well regulated city

right on target

In my previous commentary Poor Mayor Faulconer I used words like inconsequential… vacuous… lightweight… ineffectual… to describe San Diego's current mayor.   Judging from readers' responses, those adjectives seem to be right on target.  

But the nagging question about how a political nonentity like Kevin Faulconer could run unopposed for a second term as mayor with nary a single qualified opponent willing to challenge him – has taken a new turn.

Gretchen Newsom ­– community activist, chairperson of the Ocean Beach town council, rejected contender for a temporary council appointment when Faulconer moved from his council office into the mayor's office – shocked everyone at the recent County Democratic Party convention when she took the stage to declare that she would step into the void and challenge Faulconer in his run for reelection. 

It was a strategic and gutsy decision that ought to put both the labor establishment and the local Democratic Party's stagnant, bumbling, delinquent leadership to shame for coming up empty-handed at a San Diego mayoral election.  

(To be fair, Newsom is not the first person to step forward to challenge mayor Faulconer.   She joins Greg Morales, Latino activist from District 9's Encanto neighborhood, whose candidacy was written up in CityBeat last month.)

Gretchen Newsom's deus ex machina bombshell was a stimulating rush for many San Diegans in chronic despair over the barrenness of our city's political landscape.

I, too, entertain moments of hopefulness that a new generation of smart, principled, thoughtful, outspoken, public-minded, courageous individuals are working in the wings, honing their skills to eventually run for political office.  So what makes me skittish about the present scenario?  

It's not so much the lopsided David v. Goliath odds between financially and organizationally undernourished newbies and a propped-up incumbent mayor heeling to his fat-cat political handlers.  

What's so screwy is that San Diego voters seem to believe that the mayor's job can be done by any Tom, Dick, or Harriet. 

 But in a complex city like ours it takes professional wherewithal and specialized talents to do right by the public.   (Not that our batting record is encouraging.  For a reminder of the long odds in a city like ours, refer back to my report on getting away with murder.)

Up till a decade ago the full city council (which included the mayor) would hire a professionally-trained city manager to oversee city business.  Once we inaugurated a "strong mayor" form of governance the process became more politicized.  The "strong mayor" (Jerry Sanders, Bob Filner, Kevin Faulconer) now has exclusive power to hire and fire a personal manager, directly answerable to him, to oversee city departments.  

a well regulated city

We put our faith in the mayor to hire a trustworthy and qualified manager with integrity and loyalty – not just to the big boss but to the public at large.  It's a daunting job to supervise the whole gamut of public services: police, fire, financial, trash, utilities, streets and sewers, city computer systems, city property, contracts, neighborhood services, planning, construction permits, economic development…   

But faith won't suffice.  Reports from the city's independent auditor show how often the mayor and his second-in-command manager have fallen short in the management and delivery of public services.  

On the list are management failures to adequately regulate/enforce city laws and codes... failure to improve skeletal staffing levels in vital city departments... failure to address the backlog of basic infrastructure needs... failure to eliminate fraud and waste in city contracts... failure to track and manage the undergrounding of power and utility lines... failure to account for misspent funds appropriated for the Balboa Park Centennial celebration... failure to act on accounting discrepancies with Rural/Metro ambulance services... failure to permit in-house monitoring of police sexual misconduct complaints... failure to provide adequate management of capital improvement projects... 

Obviously, running city government is not a job either for professional charlatans whose talent is pulling the wool over public eyes or for well-meaning amateurs with minimal expertise and shaky backup support systems.

Ironically, the cynical vacuum in leadership and vision in the local  political scene has set us up for a dismal choice between an unworthy known and an untested unknown.  We run the risk of drifting into tea party territory where a term-limited shrunken role for government is glorified and the necessity for well-organized, experienced, enlightened politicians is devalued.  Let's not go there.

Poor mayor Faulconer

It's enough to make you cringe, the way they toy with our mayor – those brawny Chargers/ Rams/ Raiders sports team owners, our insatiable hotel magnates, those downtown real estate purveyors, our Chamber of Commerce henchmen.  So many entitled guys diddling with our small-time politicians just for the fun of it, passing the time until they clinch their publicly-subsidized, taxpayer-financed killer deals.

But our mayor is a goodnatured sport.  He wears his what-me-worry grin even when he's left flapping in the breeze, flailing like wet underwear strung up on the clothesline to dry.  One minute limp and aimless.  The next minute puffed up and billowing like a hot-air facsimile of a political contender hoping to score in big-boy Republican Party politics. 

If presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is right about our country’s soul being captured by  mega-rich plutocrats bent on controlling the nation's politics and economy, these megalomaniacs must have done their internships in San Diego.  

Throughout much of our city's history we've been in thrall to a cadre of interlocking big-business elites who manipulate government policy and political leadership with impunity.  It's so ingrained, it passes for normal in this big/small town of ours.

It's why someone as inconsequential and vacuous as mayor Kevin Faulconer – a man whose landmark accomplishment as a city councilmember was preserving beach fire pits – can posture as a big-city politician with no pushback from the public.  It's why he's able to run unopposed for another term in office (the local Democratic Party has a lot to answer for on this front, I'd say).

It's why someone as lightweight and ineffectual as this public-relations-trained mayor is testing the waters for governorship of the entire state of California (ludicrous and insulting, I'd say).

It's why mayor Faulconer was a no-show at  SANDAG's regional planning meeting this month when he should have been there to vocally lobby hard and fierce for transit funding to back up his posturing over a strong climate action plan for the city (put your money where your mouth is, I'd say).

It's why our mayor was listed as a speaker at the recent ALEC conference held in San Diego.  
To refresh your memory: ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Koch brothers/tobacco industry funded conservative conglomerate of legislators and corporate lobbyists who create and promote model bills and resolutions that advance "free-enterprise" objectives like minimizing corporate regulation, reducing taxation, loosening environmental regulations, tightening voter ID rules, weakening labor unions, and promoting gun rights (notice that for San Diego constituents Faulconer hides behind a sun-kissed, politically moderate mask – a man for all seasons and political preferences.  A cynical deception, I'd say).

Bottom line: maybe we shouldn't be feeling sorry for poor mayor Faulconer, after all. 

Maybe we should be feeling more compassion and indignation for ourselves,  the regular people of San Diego: residents and community activists, neighbors and civic caretakers, voters and grass roots reformers.  We're the ones who've been hung out to dry by many of the officials we elect.  And by the people they answer to.  

Think about this: over ten years ago our City Charter was drastically amended to beef up the status of the mayor from head honcho of the city council to chief executive officer of the entire city. 

This "strong mayor" amendment was sold to voters with a promise that San Diegans would henceforth know where the buck stops.  The new "strong mayor" – not some appointed city manager – would be accountable for running the city, for getting the people's work done, for snapping the whip over city departments, for delivering efficiency and excellent performance, for serving the public good.

True to its word, the "strong mayor" amendment freed the mayor from the city council.  Mayor Kevin Faulconer (already attached at the hip to his horse whisperer, ex-strong mayor Jerry Sanders) came into office with considerably more political power – at least on paper – than old-timers like Frank Curran, Pete Wilson, Roger Hedgecock, Maureen O’Connor, Susan Golding, and Dick Murphy, all of whom served as mayor under the bygone city manager form of government.  

But the City Charter "strong mayor" amendment failed to free the mayor from the professional manipulators and ventriloquists who comprise San Diego's ruling junta and who operate under a seemingly irrevocable, never-expiring private contract to use city government for their exclusive financial games and gains.  

A requirement for courage, integrity, independence, and intelligent leadership in San Diego's political arena – that's the only City Charter amendment we really need.  I'm not necessarily a Bernie Sanders acolyte, but the public benefit of a small political revolution in San Diego is pretty obvious.  I'd say.

Progress, San Diego style: Where more gets you less

I've lived in San Diego long enough to remember what things were like "way back when."  And you know what?  Not that much has changed!  

True, there are more people living here than ever before.  More restaurants and bars and multiplex theaters.  More monotonous red roofs rimming bulldozed hilltops in the city's north suburbs.  Many more seals and sea lions hauling out on La Jolla beaches.  

There are also many more sleek highrises downtown (but, oddly, fewer pedestrians on the sidewalks than you might expect – a mere fraction of what you'll find in other urban downtowns).

You'll see many more homeless people sleeping on the streets.  Not so many as in New York or Los Angeles but substantially more than in D.C. or San Francisco or Chicago. 

Also true is that nowadays you'll find much more political clout embedded in the office of our mayor – a result of charter changes finalized five years ago.  The new strong mayor governance system has great potential for making progress toward the goal of increasing the public good.  

But in the world of San Diego politics there's a flip side to everything, including "progress." 

As it turns out, at this moment in our city's history we find ourselves saddled with a retrograde mayor – a former public relations professional masquerading as a public servant while pandering to the financial wellbeing of the Chamber of Commerce/ real estate industry/ good-old-boys-fraternity.  

It would be a good idea to keep close tabs on this evasive mayor, given his tendencies to abuse his strong-mayor authority by promoting private development interests over citywide and community interests.

In fact, mayor Faulconer's recent questionable use of the city's public TV channel to lobby against state legislation curtailing the undemocratic overreach of Civic San Diego (a private real estate development corporation created by Jerry Sanders to preserve and enhance the city's outlawed Redevelopment Agency) erases the line that should separate legal mayoral responsibility from unethical, self-serving political expediency.  

Coverage of Civic San Diego in some local news outlets insinuates that "organized labor" is behind the attempt to rein in the tentacles of the mayor's privatized redevelopment organ.  But in fact, the interests of regular San Diegans and their rights to community participation, representation, neighborhood protection, political accountability, and open and transparent decision-making within their own neighborhoods are threatened by Civic San Diego and the mayor's lobbying on its behalf.

And it's the people's investment in good government that gets abused each time the mayor brandishes his public relations wand to fund and promote a nebulous public/private creation called One San Diego – its branded logo stamped on both the official city website and also on a private nonprofit corporation that he, his wife Katherine, and the former councilman Tony Young are or aren't really  in charge of – depending on when and whom and why you ask.  

Is it just sloppiness and incompetence that causes the lines and boundaries of this mayor's agenda to be slippery and blurred?  Or is the public being massaged into passivity and submission by an adroit PR executive who's got inflated political ambitions?  To repeat myself: it would be a good idea to keep close tabs on this evasive mayor...

As for the question, how much has changed in San Diego since "way back when"? here's what we've seen: many quantitative changes on the outside but few qualitative reforms on the inside.  And when you look around to the right and to the left of the political landscape you'll probably agree that the prospect of real progress in our city is not yet in the offing.

Then again– if and when ethical, strong, and reform-minded leadership emerges in our city – the outcome will be more enriching, constructive, and rewarding than what the self-serving, fossilized San Diego establishment has ever provided... at least from the public perspective.