San Diego's genome

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that San Diego’s switch to a strong mayor style of government begat “a fresh load of scandal, farce, confusion, and dysfunction….”  But can we lay the blame on the switchover?  Does the form of government really control the outcome?  

Not necessarily.  In fact, a recent report on this very subject suggests there is no direct connection between the form of city government (city manager... strong mayor) and how well local government serves the public.  

But we could have told them that, ourselves.  Especially now that – after many decades of doing business under a city manager form of government – we made the switch to a strong mayor system.  Yet even with the changes (we’ll get to them in a minute) San Diego has remained stubbornly true to its own nature.  Our city, it would seem, has a very idiosyncratic genome.  

After all, switch or no switch, can anyone dispute that business-as-usual is still king in our city?  Or that public tolerance for governmental mismanagement – wrongdoing included – is still a defining feature of our go-along-to-get-along town?

You may recall that the wild excesses of robber barons, labor exploitation, business monopolies, inflated stock markets, and gilded-age privileges of the late 19^th century eventually led to Progressive Era reforms focused on driving out government corruption, domination by political machines, and the buddy-buddy spoils system.  

The new formula for squeaky-clean city government? insulate municipalities from the political fray by operating them like a business corporation in the hands of efficient, impartial, professional city managers.

The trouble is, managing a city is not like running a shoe factory.   Or Qualcomm, for that matter.  Running city government – whichever way it's arranged – involves the art and practice of juggling competing and often contradictory interests.  The cloak of reform can't hide the inherent conjoint relationship between a city's administrative and policy-making functions.

Think about it: a unique aspect of city business is the disproportionate amount of time spent on zoning and land use matters and on awarding city contracts.   In daily practice, elected and non-elected city officials make decisions that directly determine who benefits from government actions – who gets heard, who gets overlooked, who gets first dibs on city services, who is permitted to build, who receives the gift of public subsidies, who profits, who will be winners… who loses.

In other words, the business of city government is as political as it gets – which means that corruption, cronyism, and pay-to-play politics are not likely to go out of style.   What's always in flux is the degree of misconduct we're willing to tolerate and the public remedies we're willing to fight for.

Back to the switchover.  Here’s how city government looked pre-2006 – before San Diego voters decided to abandon the city manager system and join the big boys club: 

Back then, San Diego voters elected a 9-person city council comprised of the mayor and 8 council members.  Voters also elected a city attorney.

The mayor was the city council's chief honcho.  He/she attended all public meetings, heard and responded to public testimony, and voted alongside council members on legislative and policy measures.  The mayor did not have the power to veto council actions. 

The day-to-day running of the city was in the hands of a city manager, who was appointed by the mayor and council.  The manager was responsible for the administration of most city departments (with direct control over department directors) and for the preparation of the city’s annual financial plan/ city budget.  He (it’s always been a he) was accountable to the full city council for carrying out city ordinances, programs, and policies but was supposed to be free of political pressure and interference in the daily business of running the city. 

It was a big job.  But sic transit gloria mundi.  Raise your hand if the names of San Diego’s most recent city managers ring a bell: John Lockwood, Jack McGrory, Michael Uberuaga, Lamont Ewell... 

How it came about that San Diego switched from a city manager to a strong mayor form of government is a long and interesting story.  For now, let’s just say that less than a decade ago San Diego was hitting bottom and the tide turned.  Here’s how city government looks today – now that we’ve got a strong mayor system:

On the surface it looks pretty familiar, doesn’t it?  San Diego voters still elect the mayor, city council members (recently upped from eight to nine), and city attorney.  

But you can see that the mayor has become chief honcho in his own right.  He (the past four mayors have been a he) is no longer a legislative official chairing the city council in open public meetings but an official with the power to veto most council actions (he can be overridden by a 2/3 council vote).  The mayor is now the city’s CEO, the chief executive officer ultimately responsible for running city departments, directing city workers, and carrying out city ordinances, programs, and policies. 

It's an ironic twist: the Progressive movement of the early 1900s intended to reduce the corrupting effects of politics on city government through a professional city manager.  Eight decades later San Diegans amended the city charter to take the job of running the city and managing municipal finances out of the hands of trained and credentialed municipal management experts and put control back into in the hands of politicians.  Again in the name of government reform.

Note that the strong mayor amendment gives the mayor authority to appoint a city manager (aka COO, chief operating officer) to manage city business.  But notice that it's fundamentally a politicized position since the COO works for the mayor, is hired and can be fired by the mayor, and reports and answers only to the mayor.

Also appointed to the mayor’s staff is a chief financial officer (CFO), who prepares the city’s annual budget and oversees the city’s financial management.  The CFO, too, carries out the mayor’s agenda and answers only to him.

In this setup, you can see how the flow of official information can be manipulated as it travels between the mayor and the COO, to city departments, and back again to the mayor.  The city council is outside the loop. 

To partially remedy the problem, the city council was given authority to appoint its own financial and policy advisor – the Independent Budget Analyst (IBA).   Although the IBA answers directly to city council members and is not under the mayor’s jurisdiction, the brutal fact is that the IBA’s office depends on the goodwill of the mayor and mayor’s staff for dependable and adequate access to city information and data. 

Take it from superman: information is power.  And when the generation and flow of information is controlled by political players, the opportunities for obstruction, obfuscation, coercion, and the silencing of opposition are intensified.

While withholding of information occasionally raised hackles under the city manager system, under the strong mayor setup it’s a political fact of life for the city council as well as the public.

This bears repeating: it’s not the switchover itself that's the problem.   

Strong mayor charter changes focused on rearranging mayoral power and council power, but the real struggle for a democratic balance of power in our city isn’t between the mayor and council.   It’s between city government and the San Diego public.   

And the public was shortchanged by the way the switchover came about.  The question of public power and public access was sidelined.  Checks and balances in the public interest were truncated.  (You'll find some published comments here about the last round of charter change.) 

Yes, the city charter created a budget analyst for the stranded city council but the office was never sufficiently empowered to be a true public advocate.   

Yes, the charter created a stronger role for the city auditor (a key official charged with keeping the bureaucracy books and conduct clean) but this office was also cut off at the knees by a convoluted system that denies true independence and limits public advocacy.  

Yes, there's an ethics commission, but it has a limited role as a campaign finance watchdog and keeps its distance from the minefield of official breaches, misdeeds, and transgressions.

Lately, we're hearing that the current city attorney – who has unconscionably politicized his office in the service of influential private groups – has new charter changes up his sleeve.  But none of them deal with strengthening the public voice, creating stronger checks and balances, or empowering public advocates.  

The people of San Diego need more than politically-motivated charter changes.  We need to fix the strong mayor system with reform measures devoted to safeguarding and strengthening the public interest.  

More bare facts about San Diego government: how we got from there to here

Around this time last year San Diego’s former mayor Bob Filner was forced out of office.  As it happens, he was the first bona fide “strong mayor” our city has yet seen.

We voters had no choice but to wield our black markers once again and fill in the ballot bubble to select a new mayor.  The winner this time around was Mr. White Bread personified, Kevin Faulconer.  San Diego’s lead newspaper, the U-T,  summed up the occasion in a neat sentence: “At least the day brought us one step further from Our Time Of Scandal And Farce.”

The UT likes to play coy.  They know perfectly well that scandal and farce are what make our city tick.  San Diego is bright and sunny but the truth is, it’s a very shady place.

Last week we followed the bouncing ball and tracked the historical progression that led to the moment when a small village called San Diego became an incorporated city, defined by its own City Charter and governed by a “common council.”  The year was 1850.

Two years later the fledgling city of San Diego went bankrupt. 

A board of trustees took over city management and for the next four decades  administered the city’s operations and finances.  The city grew in fits and starts, cycling through mini-booms and busts.  By the late 1880s San Diego’s attempts at becoming an active player in regional commerce fizzled.  And after years of wild land speculation the city’s bloated real estate market crashed, throwing major investors and developers into bankruptcy and ruin.  

In this depressed economic setting the movers and shakers of the time created a new City Charter, this time with a “strong mayor” system of governance.  

The city eventually emerged from its deep slump, but for the rest of the 19^th century and into the 20^th growth was slow, handicapped by a scarcity of resources – like water, cheap fuel, and/or multiple investors willing to spend big capital.   San Diego was branded a one-horse town, dominated for many years by the bigger-than-life banker/ property owner/ developer/ tourism promoter John D. Spreckels.   A backdrop of power struggles, con games, and political corruption went hand in hand with this company-town reality.  

San Diego got on the municipal reform bandwagon at the tail end of the Progressive Era – a period of sweeping political and social reform that spanned the presidential terms of Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.  

In 1931, following the trend set by other Southwestern cities, San Diego voters threw out their “strong mayor” system and installed a nonpartisan city manager form of government.  Goodbye to political vices.  Hello, responsible management.   The city maintained this council/manager form of government for close to 75 years.

****************

Now we all know that corruption and mismanagement are outgrowths of greed and other human frailties and are not necessarily the consequences of a particular method of running a government.  But blaming a system rather than acknowledging the human factor is often an effective ruse to confuse and mislead the voting public.

In 2004, after several years of pension shenanigans, political unaccountability, and teetering fiscal insolvency, San Diego voters were shanghaied by the downtown elite with claims that our city manager system of governance was the devil and exorcism was the city's salvation.  Voters swallowed the bait and approved a major Charter amendment to resurrect a “strong mayor” form of government.  

And thus did it happen that a fresh load of scandal, farce, confusion, and dysfunction in present-day city government was begotten.

Next time we’ll look at how city government is structured and why a “strong mayor” seems like such a big deal.

A mindful walk through treacherous territory

 Today I’m on a mindful jaunt through America's finest sexiest city.  Not just ordinary sexy but exuberant sexy... in-your-face, over-the-top sexy.  It’s a walk that calls for extra-special noticing (though not much letting go).

I notice that there’s a three-ring circus in town, selling its special merchandise to participants and spectators alike -- an exotic brew of beer-soaked hormones, pheromones, secretions, and sundry other exudations.

It’s being peddled on Fiesta Island at the annual beach bacchanal known as the Over-The-Line Tourney -- a boozy, raunchy, let-it-all-hang-out display of tantalizing semi-bare bodies engaged in personal pleasures and pursuits and not-necessarily-innocent fun and games.

It was widely available at the LGBT Pride Parade – a comparable extravaganza of raunchy, let-it-all-hang-out semi-bare bodies engaged in the celebration of freedom to be and liberation from the shackles of conventional restraints and taboos.

It’s a staple at the upcoming multi-million dollar Comic-Com International – another wild blow-out promoting freedom from (or on behalf of) shackles, alluring and revealing getups, escapist fantasies, and sky’s-the-limit flights of fancy.

We can call it a concatenation of profligate events -- to say it the fancy way.   A magical alignment of the moon and stars -- if you're a romantic.  A capitalist capture of the lucrative business of selling sex -- to be prosaic.   It's a sign of how cosmopolitan, uninhibited, and open-minded we San Diegans are.  We're way cool.

I notice that the same potent brew is fueling another major event in San Diego -- a blaring sideshow about sex… raunch… personal pleasures… liberation from conventional restraints… not-necessarily-innocent fun and games.  The big difference is that the public isn't allowed into this one for a for a first-hand look.

This raucous major event focuses on the sex life of our mayor.  It deals with the

Nancy Reagan, where art thou?

Picture a totem pole.  Now visualize our regional law enforcers -- the city attorney, police chief, sheriff, and district attorney -- stacked head-to-foot up the length of the pole.  Atop them all you'll find the U.S. Attorney.

The name of San Diego's U.S. Attorney is Laura Duffy.  Laura who?  As the U.S. Attorney for the San Diego region, Laura Duffy has the job of investigating and prosecuting violations of federal criminal law, such as political corruption, tax evasion, drug trafficking, human trafficking, organized crime, and so on.   

U.S. Attorneys are instructed to steer clear of partisan politics -- local, state, or national.  It's the law.

But last week, San Diego's U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy engaged in a series of activities that directly affected and advanced the political aspirations of mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio, who boasted:

I'm supported by Mayor Jerry Sanders. I’m supported by the leading Democrat donor, Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs.  Laura Duffy, the U.S. Attorney, donated to my campaign and today commented about her displeasure with the congressman’s (i.e., Bob Filner's) temperament.

Why would U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy violate the ethical, moral, and even legal rules inherent in her prestigious Department of Justice appointment?  Why would she meddle in San Diego's mayoral politics, leaning her finger on the scales to try to manipulate the outcome of the Filner-DeMaio mayor's race?  For a fuller description of the story, click here.

While it's true that San Diego's long history of Ponzi schemers and income tax evaders, of racketeers and fast-talking land developers can seem like a quaint and colorful folktale, the fact is that San Diego's underside continues to be very dark and sinister.

Did you know that the FBI identifies San Diego as one of the nation's top sex-trafficking hubs?  Or that our reputation as the methamphetamine capital of America is still up and running?  Illicit drugs continue to snake like a river around our city, filtering into our schools, local bars, and neighborhood party houses.

So let's ask the question again: why would Laura Duffy go out on a limb to violate… meddle… manipulate… curry favor with Carl Demaio and the Republican Party when there's plenty of bona fide work in our town to keep any U.S. Attorney busy?

Frankly, I'm stymied by this one.  Here is a list of 8 observations (in no special order) – maybe you can figure it out:

1. We've got a Midwestern, lesbian, Republican* Democratic U.S. Attorney -- risking her career to align herself with Carl DeMaio.
2. We've got Carl DeMaio, a shrink government Midwestern, gay, Republican candidate for mayor -- congenitally unable to distinguish truth from fiction.
3. We've got a politically conservative, anti-gay, Catholic, control freak-multi-millionaire hotel and land developer, Doug Manchester -- beating the bushes and breathing fire down the necks of fellow-millionaires and developers to support the campaign of Carl DeMaio for mayor.  
4. We've got John Lynch, Doug Manchester's mirror image partner-in-ownership at the San Diego U-T -- using their daily newspaper as a lethal weapon to mow down any and all opposition to Carl DeMaio for mayor.
5. We've got a rabid leadership team at the Republican Party of San Diego -- exerting inordinate pressure, intimidation, and duress on San Diego's political and business establishment to bludgeon them into falling in line behind Carl DeMaio.
6. We've got a totem pole (I'd call it a shame pole) of ambitious Republican law enforcers – swallowing their integrity and self respect to endorse Carl DeMaio, a person for whom they have expressed great contempt in the past (to her credit, Bonnie Dumanis remains a holdout).  
7.  We've got Johnathan Hale, full-time live-in partner of the man who would be San Diego's first gay mayor -- a bullying, gay newspaper/ media/ events and parties maven, a mystery man who blew into town laden with a checkered past, tussles with the law, restraining orders, multiple name changes, porn-style online ventures, and a knack for throwing magic dust into the eyes of the person with whom he plans on sharing the mayor's office. 
   
8. We've got the full faith and credit of the historically powerful, politically conservative San Diego establishment -- salivating at the thought of putting a zealous proponent of privatized government into the mayor's office.  Even the U.S. Attorney is willing to risk her career to jump on his bandwagon.  The promised rewards from San Diego's very own Candyman must be very great, indeed! 

Remember Nancy Reagan? Just say no!

* Duffy is registered as a Democrat -- which just goes to show you that succumbing to pressure from one's peers can linger long after graduating from high school.    

Civility? we don’t need no stinkin’ civility

Remember when One Book, One San Diego was touted as a way to create community and pull all San Diegans together?  Now there’s a new communal project being broadcast over the airwaves, via editorial essays, and at public forums. The latest rage is called CIVILITY.

In San Diego we all know what civility means: play nice, be polite, don’t get hot under the collar about political issues, no matter how important.  Have strong feelings about the world around you?  Keep them to a whisper.  Better still, just keep your mouth shut.

At the risk of sounding uncivil, I’m going to come right out and tell you this: Mayor Jerry Sanders has betrayed the public.  How? by refusing to separate the communal public agenda from the private financial agendas of the people who brought him to power – the heavy-hitting fraternity of property developers, hoteliers, bankers, sports team owners, and financiers who took up residence in the mayor’s office 7 years ago and should have been evicted.  He never showed them the door. 

At the risk of sounding doubly uncivil I’ll tell you this: by climbing into bed with Carl DeMaio's campaign and supporters, our avuncular Mayor Sanders revealed one of  his least endearing charms – the broken ethical/moral compass he uses to justify a long history of political ineptitude, questionable judgment, and cover-ups.

Before we pursue this subject further, let’s take two steps backwards for some pertinent information about our city and mayor.

Before Jerry Sanders took office as the 30th (give or take) mayor of San Diego, our city was governed by a 9-member city council -- 8 council members plus the mayor.  Under that system the mayor was the leading member of the council but had only a single vote.  (Remember these former mayors? Dick Murphy, Susan Golding, Maureen O’Connor, Roger Hedgecock, Pete Wilson, Frank Curran – they all served as mayor under the previous ‘city manager’ system.)

 Under the old ‘city manager’ system a professional City Manager was appointed by the mayor and council to run day-to-day operations, oversee city departments, develop an annual budget, and be the city's all-around factotum.  During those days the city often scored high points in the category of efficiency and good management.

 In 2005 the city of San Diego switched to a ‘strong mayor’ system.   Under our new system the mayor is the city’s chief executive.  He no longer interfaces with the public at weekly meetings of the city council.  He no longer votes openly on city matters, but he does have a powerful veto (which can be overridden only with a ⅔ vote of the city council).  Under the new system the 'strong mayor' is the titular head of city departments, controls the flow of city information, and puts together the city budget.
 
Jerry Sanders is the first mayor to operate under the new 'strong mayor' form of government.  The way the fable is told, the buck stops at the ‘strong mayor' door.  But it hasn’t worked that way.  During his past 7 years in office, Mayor Sanders conducted the public's business through private deals behind the closed door of his city hall office – well out of reach of constituents who come down to city hall to air their concerns... well out of reach of ordinary residents whose points of view have been -- uncivilly -- ignored.

In an equally destructive abuse of mayoral power, Sanders also ignored his responsibility to ensure honest and effective management of city business.  Instead, he surrounded himself with political operatives and flushed good city management down our faulty city drains by:

• not knowing or caring enough to get a competent, professional city manager to oversee the city’s complex inner workings
• looking the other way as the city’s day-to-day operations and city services fell into disarray from inadequate oversight of city departments, contracts, personnel, projects, and performance standards
• deceiving the public with spurious budgets and fiscal forecasts to whitewash San Diego’s invasive financial and structural problems and keep downtown developers in business

So why did Jerry Sanders endorse Carl DeMaio? Is it because:
a) the mayor likes the councilman’s personality?
b) he believes DeMaio would do a better job as mayor than Bob Filner?
c) he approves of the dubious personal baggage DeMaio will lug into city hall?
d) he depends on DeMaio’s mastery of the art of falsification, prevarication, deception, and amoral glibness to protect his own failures during two terms as mayor?

Yes, you’re right.  It's d.

In exchange for the mayor’s endorsement of DeMaio, DeMaio will protect the mayor’s reputation by hiding the fact that Sanders is leaving the city in abysmal shape, worse than when he first took the oath of office.  DeMaio will guarantee safe passage for self-serving downtown power players and provide them with exclusive rights to occupy city hall.  Was this pact made in heaven or made with the devil? -- you decide. 

Back to civility.  If civility means a sweet smile while you repeatedly lie to the public… if civility means an amiable grin while you’re bullying your compatriots… if civility means fabricating facts to win at any cost... if civility looks like the calculating stage mask pasted on Carl DeMaio’s public face – you can count me out.

But when civility means saying what you mean and meaning what you say… respect for the public process and for tried and true good government principles… promoting public agendas over private agendas… electing a BETTER mayor to replace Jerry Sanders, not the incalculably worse one he cynically endorsed -- you know can count me in.  

 

Running on autopilot

ATTENTION NEXT MAYOR: San Diego is desperate for a leader who possesses the following four attributes –

1. Wide open eyes (to see the whole picture)
2. A truthful mouth (to speak with integrity)
3. A strong hand (to act with resolve) 
4. An outstretched arm (to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people)

History will be the final judge of our current lame-duck mayor and his tenure in office.  So far, the record reveals seven years of incompetent management, conflicted stewardship, revolving doors, political posturing, neglectful oversight, and willful failure to address (let alone acknowledge) the city’s crucial challenges. 

What’s been going on? The city is in arrears for almost a billion dollars worth of deferred maintenance on sub-standard city streets…buildings…sidewalks…storm drains...alleyways.  City facilities like recreation centers and libraries are in the pits.  Pension debt is over $2 billion – each year gobbling up bigger chunks of the city budget.  Water-main breaks plague our neighborhoods.  Skeletal crews of city employees have been spread thin and thinner.  You get the picture.

Wasn't our new “strong mayor” system of government supposed to turn our city around?  In his inaugural address our first “strong mayor” Jerry Sanders declared that the era of delay, deception, and denial was over.  But what did we get?  Less political accountability than ever before.  Less public access.  More pulling-the-wool-over the public’s eyes.  More passing the buck!  

Time to expose the down and dirty secret about what’s really been going on.  For the past seven years of this current administration -- that is, ever since our “strong mayor” form of government became official – city government has been running on autopilot.

Autopilot means no one is at the helm…in the cockpit…behind the wheel…pedaling the bike…minding the store...  

Running the city on autopilot has been a monumental swindle.  It's resulted in a hollow city.  It's caused San Diego to decay from the inside out.

Therefore, we're sending out an SOS.

ATTENTION NEXT MAYOR: San Diego is desperate for a leader (with wide open eyes, a truthful mouth, a strong hand, and an outstretched arm) who will use the position of  “strong mayor” to accomplish two fundamental tasks –

1. Appoint a professional, experienced, well-trained city manager as his/her right hand man/woman -- someone to run the day-to-day operations of the city and restore efficiency, accountability, oversight, and effectiveness to all city departments 
2. Forget the dead-end mindset that's been San Diego’s trademark for far too long.  Turn the city around.  Pour San Diego's pent-up energy and resources into our city's Infrastructure, Institutions, Individuals, and Innovative opportunities.  It's the magic formula for long-range health and productivity.  

COME ON NEXT MAYOR: You've got nothing to lose and San Diego has everything to gain.  Open your eyes.  Never speak with a forked tongue.  Make good use of the "strong mayor" toolbox.  And do right by all of us.

Swindle City

San Diego’s been my hometown for decades and I want the best for it, for my kids and grandkids who live here, for my co-workers and friends and neighbors, and for everyone else I share this city with, whether I’ve met them or not.  

That’s why I hate to admit that San Diego is, at its core, Swindle City -- the spitting image of a limited liability company where no one is held accountable for the actions of others and -- even worse -- where no one is held accountable for his or her own actions.  

In a Swindle City like ours, public resources are routinely transformed into private and/or political capital and profit.  Flowing throughout San Diego history is a non-stop stream of  grifters, scammers, users, and double-talkers.  Experts at shaking down the public.

Starting way back with the behemoth robber baron John Spreckels, our city has been ruled by business magnates, shysters, and seductive con artists who manipulated, controlled, and (mis)appropriated San Diego public assets to enhance their personal fortunes, financial and political.  

Do these names ring a bell?  Aggressive entrepreneurs like Reuben Fleet, 'Pappy' Hazard, and Jim Copley.  Defrauders like John Alessio and C. Arnholt Smith.  Changeling politicians like Pete Wilson and Roger Hedgecock.  Ponzi-schemers like J. David Dominelli and Nancy Hoover.  Underworld dabblers like Dick Silberman, Allen Glick, and Bob Peterson.  Ruthless top officials like Susan Golding.  Greedy wannabe potentates like Alex and Dean Spanos, John Moores, and 'papa' Doug Manchester.  

Not a single mensch among them.

And always, the city’s second-tier elected officials (our city council) are putty in the hands of the masters.  They go along…acquiesce…play the game…protect the hustlers… perpetuate the scam.  

And always, the public never sees it coming.  

But it's back!  It's happening again!  This time two big-time swindles are in the making.  An historic double whammy. 

The first is the initiative on the June ballot with the flimflam moniker, Comprehensive Pension Reform.  It was created by mayor Jerry Sanders and council members Carl DeMaio and Kevin Faulconer.  This ballot measure leaves in place self-serving abuses of the old pension system while scamming the public with a $94 million bill to install an alternative, inferior pension system.

Yet, dutifully signing on to this scam are 3 out of 4 mayoral candidates: Nathan Fletcher, Bonnie Dumanis, and the aforementioned DeMaio.

But stop the presses!  Our termed-out mayor has just given birth to the biggest pull-the-wool-over-your eyes sham of all! 

Today, (he says) I delivered some terrific news about San Diego’s fiscal recovery: After years of cutbacks, we see the light at the end of what has been a very long, dark tunnel. The city’s decades-long structural budget deficit is history.

The depth of this deception takes your breath away.  But the bar has been set very high in our city for hucksters, tricksters, con men, scammers, and fibbers.  This one is surely going for the gold. 

Details and explanations to come.  Meantime...psst...I know a bridge you can buy... 

After ten months of redistricting

By the end of next year (December 2012) the city of San Diego will be swearing in a brand new Mayor.  At the same time City Council members representing Districts 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 will also be sworn in.  Bringing up the rear will be the (reelected, presumably) City Attorney. 

Does this lineup augur substantive improvements in San Diego’s civic health and well-being?  That depends -- almost entirely -- on who will be our next "strong" Mayor.  As for the nine individuals occupying the seats of what will be a reconfigured City Council — their roles will be much diminished.  The difference they will make depends on how many of them are sitting at which end of city hall's political seesaw.  

Much more about that, later.  For now, let’s see what the past ten months of the city’s redistricting process have wrought. 

San Diego’s Redistricting Commission approved a final redistricting plan last week.  The final map divides the city into nine Council districts with (give or take) ~144,000 people in each.  To satisfy constraints of census-based population changes, voting rights law, and recent city charter amendments some communities were shifted into neighboring Council districts and a new (multi-ethnic/Latino empowerment) district was inserted into the southern half of the city.  

Here are some speedy bullet points about the history of San Diego government to help put redistricting changes in a wider context:  

• San Diego was incorporated as a city March 27, 1850 
• The first city government consisted of an elected 5-member Common Council and an elected Mayor, City Marshall, City Attorney, City Clerk, City Assessor, and City Treasurer.  Other officials were appointed by the Common Council
• After only two years the city went bankrupt and the State dissolved the government
• The next several decades saw a turbulence of different government forms
• In 1931 a Manager-Council form of government was created with a 7-member Council comprised of 6 Council members and a Mayor
• In 1963 voters approved increasing the number of Council districts from 6 to 8
• In 2006 voters approved a trial Strong Mayor government
• In 2010 voters made the Strong Mayor system permanent; approved the addition of a 9th Council district; and created the requirement for a 2/3 Council majority (6 members) to override the Mayor’s veto

And that gets us to where we are today.  

The City Charter gives people one month to contest the Redistricting Commission’s final map.  If a successful challenge is mounted, the Commission would be required to produce a new plan.
        That could be a risky proposition for dissenters, who might wind up with a map they’d find even less acceptable than the one they're rejecting. 


Still, there are some pretty irate people out there.  For example, some Rancho Penasquitos residents have been up in arms over how Commissioners drew district boundaries for their Park Village neighborhood.  They're organizing a community forum on September 1 to discuss their discontent and decide on how or whether to mount an official challenge. 
        This unexpected flareup of economic/social elitism within the city's first “Asian influence” district brings to mind an old Life of Riley radio quote: “What a revoltin’ development this is!”  

Then there are the heavyweights from Kensington, whose protests have been prodded not only by economic/social elitism but apparently by political pressure from on high.  (To their credit most, but not all, elected officials had the good sense to keep a low profile during the redistricting process).  
         A challenge from this quarter could easily end up biting them in the rear, so turning lemons into lemonade might be a wiser alternative.

Here’s what the new Council district map will look like if all goes smoothly.