Be nice. Play nice. A public interest message

Maybe you missed the story in the NYT a couple of months ago that characterized certain San Diegans as “aggressively bland…scrubbed of their character… command(ing) so little attention…”

Yes, the description is a dead ringer for our current mayor Kevin Faulconer.  But no, the story wasn't about him.

It was about a new No.1 starter for our  hometown baseball team– left in the lurch three years ago by a wily real estate developer who amassed mega-millions through canny downtown redevelopment deals with obliging city officials and then headed off to Texas with his publicly-subsidized loot.  For former Padres owner John Moores, the public good was hardly the point of his business plan.   

Turns out that the public good was not in the business plan of that other wily profiteer, the one with an equally-practiced eye for lucrative real estate investments.  Doug Manchester gobbled up the city’s sole daily newspaper and macerated it into a silly small-town rag, decimating the stock of local and regional professional reporters in cynical contempt of the public interest.  In the process he'll personally come off many $millions in the black.

How is it that the city of San Diego routinely gets fleeced by real estate developers, by hotelier/ tourism/ hospitality entrepreneurs, by Chamber of Commerce hacks, by well-heeled businessmen and sports team owners and self-promoting downtown partnerships and upwardly-mobile politicians?   

How is it that over the past couple of decades the civic notion of the public good has been trounced and buried in the pileup of downtown money, unsmart growth, and vacuous leadership?  Instead of community benefits we get bland, scrubbed clichés about civility: Be nice.  Play nice.  Don't rock the boat.

Now here's the latest civil warning: The free-for-all massacre of our previous mayor was A-OK but don't mess with our current mayor Kevin Faulconer – the evasive, ever-so-nice guy who's being powdered and groomed as a potential candidate for higher office, maybe even (gulp) California governor.   Haven't you noticed how our public-minded reformers, intelligent thinkers, and anyone else uncivil enough to challenge the status quo get harassed, discredited, and hounded out of town?

So who will risk challenging the policies of civil-tongued mayor Faulconer, one of the most airbrushed, remote-controlled, public relations-created marshmallow fellows our city has yet produced?  San Diego is definitely at a political low point.

Which brings us full circle to an important public-interest message about the San Diego City Charter: There are meetings underway at City Hall to modify our City Charter.  

While it's true that our City Charter is in bad need of cleanup and reorganization,  much of that work can be taken care of by the City Attorney's office.  But if major and substantive changes to the Charter are in the works, we will need an appointed or elected Citizens Charter Commission to do the job, not just a Council Charter Committee.  It may be expensive and time consuming, but to avoid the mischief that's inevitable without open and informed public participation, there's no way around it.

Our City Charter is akin to a government constitution.  It's the fundamental law of the city.  To address the fact that hardly anyone knows why the Charter exists, I recently sent a suggestion to the City Council Charter Review Committee to add a preamble to the Charter.  A preamble?  What's that?  

A preamble is simply a public interest message spelling out the purpose and intent of our city government / City Charter.  It enumerates the guiding principles that underlie San Diego city government and clarifies for people living and doing business in the city what the public good entails.  A preamble could help our city identify its better self and dig itself out from under.

Here’s my stab at what the San Diego City Charter preamble could and should say:

City government is the steward of the public good.  The purpose and intent of the San Diego City Charter is to provide for government effectiveness, efficiency, and fiscal responsibility; ensure government responsiveness to local needs; enable equitable development and environmental justice in our communities; foster transparency, ethics, and accountability in government functions; assure fair citizen participation in the affairs of the City; improve the safety, quality of life, and standard of living of all San Diegans; engage in long-term conservation and sustainable management of our natural resources; protect the integrity of government decision-making; and promote public confidence in city government.

We, the people of the City of San Diego, have established this City Charter under the home-rule provision of the Constitution of the State of California and ordain it as the fundamental law of the City.

(FYI: The next City Council Charter Review Committee is scheduled for Thursday, April 16, 2015 at 2pm in the City Council Committee Room, 12th Floor, City Administration Building (aka City Hall).   The Committee Consultant is Steve Hadley (619) 533-5906 or charterreview@sandiego.gov)

So are they all… all honorable men

 San Diegans are no dummies.  We know what happens to politically independent, outspoken, public-minded individuals who are brash enough to shake things up.  They get maligned, noogied, humiliated, sent packing.  Open your mouth too wide in this city and... you’re dead meat.  

So we're polite and genteel.  Why look for trouble?  Yes, the public gets screwed over and over again but we've learned to turn the other cheek.  Forgive and forget -- that’s our MO.

We swoon over the nice guys, especially the ones with agreeable manners.  Like our avuncular ex-mayor Jerry Sanders, our puckish council president Todd Gloria, our sunkissed mayor Kevin Faulconer -- honorable men beyond public reproach.  Even when they're plotting to pull the rug out from under us.  

I’ll say this as politely and genteelly as I can.  These three guys should be lined up along the wall of our downtown superior courthouse -- TV cameras running at point-blank range -- and publicly charged with inflicting past, present, and future financial, political, and civic harm on the ordinary citizens of San Diego. 

Jerry Sanders, Todd Gloria, Kevin Faulconer, those nice guys handed over exclusive control of the historic, multi-million dollar civic project commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the 1915 Balboa Park Panama-California Exposition to a private corporation stacked with political cronies.

They created a homemade Frankenstein named "Balboa Park Celebrations, Inc."   For over three years Gloria and Faulconer (with Sanders lurking in the Chamber of Commerce back boardroom) abused the public trust and looked the other way as their well-connected cronies sucked million-dollar transfers out of public funds and into this exclusive private enterprise.   

I didn't know what to do, saysTodd Gloria 

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith also averted his eyes from the spurious stunts of this corporate entity, downplaying its specious accounting and yet-to-be-determined legal and financial trespasses. 

But whoops -- the reportedly secretive, arrogant, and incompetent Centennial committee suddenly informs us that they're dropping the ball.  The only grandiose plan they managed to come up with is to leave the city in a royal lurch.  They figure we'll forgive and forget.

Apparently so do Sanders, Gloria, and Faulconer.  Do you remember when these same honorable men tried to push down our throats an unsound and costly private plan to eliminate a few dozen parking spots from in front of Balboa Park art museums by engineering an intrusive bypass-bridge structure and erecting a privately-run parking structure in our world-famous publicly-owned Park?  It took a lawsuit to put a halt to this fiasco.  Didn't we forgive? Haven't we forgotten?

What about when the same official troika spearheaded the creation of a private corporation called the "Balboa Park Conservancy" to privatize Balboa Park management and governance?  Have we forgotten that they transferred control of Park infrastructure, projects, and programs out of public oversight and into the exclusive hands of a stand-alone private corporation?  

"Ironically, no bankruptcy judge would ever force the city of San Diego to transfer control of city assets and public property into private hands.  Yet that is what the Mayor and City Council are doing -- of their own free will.  It's a trickster's story."

But wait!  Jerry Sanders, Todd Gloria, and Kevin Faulconer -- the honorable trio tasked with privatizing basic city functions -- has another notch in its belt.

Maybe you thought that when California governor Jerry Brown ended the decades-old mechanism known as REDEVELOPMENT our city would develop a new approach to planning for urban growth and implementing urban revitalization.  Not so.  Yet again, our nice guys pulled a fast one with another private corporation charged with doing public business. 

Instead of dismantling the city’s preexisting redevelopment mechanisms, our honorable leaders simply melded the powerful downtown redevelopment arm (CCDC) with the city’s southeast redevelopment arm (SEDC) and gave it a new name.   

They call it "Civic San Diego."  This city-owned private corporation wears more than one hat.  It has the responsibility of masterminding the disposition of a $1.7 billion debt and obligation residue left over from CCDC and SEDC.  And it has control over neighborhood and community development in former redevelopment areas.  Moreover, it also has a strong intention to cement and expand its sphere of influence and dominion.   

The city subsidizes the Civic San Diego corporation with millions of dollars from the general fund, yet there is puny public oversight and limited public accountability.  It's the nice guys' version of how to run the city like a private business -- where the public has no voice but foots the bill.

Late breaking news: the honorable mayor Kevin Faulconer and council president Todd Gloria have announced that they’re replacing Frankenstein senior (the discredited "Balboa Park Celebrations" corporation) with Frankenstein junior (the "Balboa Park Conservancy") to  oversee the city’s centennial festivities.  

You may notice that the "Balboa Park Conservancy" -- aside from having rubber-stamped the Laurel Street bypass bridge fiasco -- has a stunningly vacant track record.  Does it feel like a new slap in the public face, bringing onboard another set of unproductive underperformers?   

Will we turn the other cheek?  Will we give another pass to our nice guys?  After all, they are -- aren’t they? -- all honorable men?

Sex and the City

Let’s ease into this subject with a mindful autumn walk.  Notice the days getting shorter... morning air chillier... leaves turning gold on liquidamber trees.

Now notice a fact as unwavering as the seasons -- the fact that sex plays a dominant role in San Diego public affairs.  Hook it up with other San Diego mainstays (uninspired leadership, stunted civic aspirations, free-floating corruption, overinflated egos, corporate welfare, legal-establishment collusion, Republican Party strategy, dubious fidelity among leading Democrats, to name a few) and it wallops a punch potent enough to knock a new mayor out of the ring and force the city into a costly, rushed election to bring in a replacement. 

Of course this is not how the Chamber of Commerce markets our city.  It’s motto: Good for Business - Good for San Diego says it all.  Same for our Tourism Authority, which promotes the city as a clean-cut, open-air paradise: …70 miles of beautiful beaches, countless parks and gardens, and endless opportunities for pampering at one of the areas many spas and resorts… an excellent destination for some quality R+R.

I've noticed that San Diego sells itself as a trophy town of moderation, rectitude, and civility.  But scratch the surface and you’ll discover the other San Diego -- a town constantly preoccupied with commercialized sexual indulgences (move over, Las Vegas). 

• Aren’t we the fun-loving host of the over-the-line tournament, the frisky, sandy weekend of boosted beer, bouncy breasts, and bared behinds? 
• Isn’t the weekend street scene in our redeveloped Gaslamp Quarter every bit as raunchy as the notorious pre-CCDC days of sailor bars, hookers, and peepshows?
• And you wouldn't call our very own glistening rompers and exhibitionists at the summertime Pride Parade chopped liver, would you? 
• How about San Diego’s collection of privately-catered swinging establishments, open to you, me, and the lamppost? 
• And what would you say to hugh-hefner-wannabe accommodations upstairs at the U-T?
• Have you taken the oral history tour of City Hall, a behind the scenes tale of who-did-what-with-whom (or who-was-doing-what-with-himself)?  It starts at the 12th-floor Council Chambers and works its way down.
• And what about our ferociously fought-over 25-foot bayside statue immortalizing a sailor’s frontal assault on an unconsenting female – you know, the one with the woman in a headlock submitting to a forced, full-mouth kiss?  Once named “Unconditional Surrender” nowadays it’s known as felony false imprisonment.

Not bad for an upstanding city like ours that goes ape over tales of a mayor’s clumsy kiss, posterior pat, and too-tight arm around the shoulder.  (For a rare honest response from the U-T take a quick look at what Logan Jenkins has to say.)  Will we entertain similar hysteria over the next round of scandals that are bound to make headlines?

By now most of us who entertained high hopes for what an experienced, old-time liberal mayor like Bob Filner could bring to the city of San Diego have resigned ourselves to the new reality – which looks oddly like the old reality called business as usual.  Surely you've noticed what a busy beaver our interim mayor Todd Gloria has been in setting the clock back to pre-Filner time.  In fact, a time warp engineered by downtown Republicans along with select Democrats has pretty much erased all traces of what almost was but might have been.

Which brings us to the current candidates running to replace Bob Filner. 

Of the four front-running mayoral candidates, only one is being honest with the public about a core issue: the untenable financial state of the city.  The other three have chosen to avoid the subject.  They're choosing to promote the homespun San Diego fable about having our cake and eating it too. 

Mike Aguirre has taken every opportunity over the past couple of months of campaigning to make a simple but crucial point – that a big (and growing) chunk of the city’s general fund budget is set aside annually for payment into the employee pension fund.  This results in a significant reduction in the cash available to pay for routine city services.  This year's required annual pension payment is $275 million -- the bulk of which ($200 million) is eaten up as interest on the $2.3 billion pension deficit that drags the city down.  

Notice this contrast: a mere $55 million is allocated for our roads.  The decision to take from Peter (fire, police, roads, and neighborhoods) to pay off Paul (the City Employees Retirement System) was a choice made by former Mayor Jerry Sanders, abetted by the City Council, so he could fake a balanced budget and claim he had resolved the city’s fiscal crisis before leaving office.

You can hear plenty of campaign chatter about paved roads, upgraded libraries, recreation centers, parks, decent streets (smooth streets, in the words of Nathan Fletcher; sexy streets, per temporary-mayor Todd Gloria), homeless facilities, and other neighborhood needs.  You'll get a deafening silence from the others when Aguirre starts talking about the city's crippling pension problem. 

Aguirre is tackling the difficult financial issues head-on (despite sniping from candidate Fletcher).  The other candidates won’t touch it.  So far, neither has the U-T nor our other news and opinion providers.  Neither have the economic analysts and political gurus who comment regularly on city business.  (I noticed with dismay that then-mayor Filner also steered away from the same time bomb that's already detonating in other U.S. cities.  Detroit, anyone?)

David Alvarez has been denigrated as too young by Democrats who’ve been smitten by Nathan Fletcher.  But notice that there’s a mere three-year age difference between them -- Alvarez is 33, Fletcher is 36.  Notice that interim-mayor Todd Gloria is only 35.   Also notice that Alvarez has an upper hand in understanding how the city works and what makes it tick – an important qualification for anyone wanting to be mayor.  (Yes, I also noticed that the lack of municipal government expertise was a fatal shortcoming in the Filner administration.) 

Others question Alvarez’s independence from the Labor Council, his primary financial backers.  It’s a fair question that should be asked of all candidates running for office: Will you be free and strong enough to balance the demands of your friends and major financial backers with the good of the city at large?  While it seems to me that committed Democrats ought not to distance themselves from the union movement -- the most important ally American working people have ever had -- there's a lot of work to do by Democrats as well as labor unions before they reemerge as comprehensive, progressive, visionary leaders of the future.

Kevin Faulconer blithely sails by without anyone questioning who his keepers are.  He’s best described as San Diego’s retrograde candidate of the 20^th century – a cordial, sunburned, amorphous kind of guy sporting the Chamber of Commerce logo on his sleeve.  He may well have an underside (and who among us does not?) but so far his passive, follow-the-leader style has protected him from getting bitten where it hurts. 

Here’s one good thing about Faulconer: you know exactly what you’ll get… exactly who’ll be whispering in his ear… exactly what his agenda will be… and exactly what you’ll be fighting against.  He’s someone you can depend on to deliver what he and his financial backers know how to do best: the downtown fraternity two-step (one for you, one for me, more for you, more for me).

Nathan Fletcher is a cipher.  He’s been described as a changeling, a switch hitter, a chameleon adept at overnight transformation.  Other than a photogenic face and military boasts (what kind of person capitalizes on the business of interrogating prisoners of war?) you have no idea what you’re getting… who’s whispering in his ear… what his agenda will be.   Trendy clichés spill effortlessly from his lips: innovation... creativity... we put a man on the moon.  But he's like quicksand: there’s no there there. 

Keep in mind that Fletcher was adopted (metaphorically speaking) into the Qualcomm family and reaps the benefits of a well-paid corporate job and faux UCSD professorship. His wealthy and influential backers pave the way for him to scoop up high-profile Democratic endorsements like handfuls of Halloween candy.  We've all noticed that money wields inordinate influence over the political fortunes of seated elected officials as well as most of those who'd like to be.  He's belongs to somebody, but it's not the public.

Fletcher's political message boils down to this: I’m your man, San Diego!  Forget my past voting record!  Look into my eyes and trust me!

Sex and the city... the mayor's race... what's the connection?  There's no mystery to this one.  Sex has great commercial and utilitarian value in our town.  We either pretend not to notice it, or we use it as a political battering ram.  Notice that sex was the weapon of choice for deposing former-mayor Bob Filner.  It's precisely what brings us here today as we contemplate the mayor's race.  

San Diego voters will be making a choice about who will be our next mayor (notice that not choosing is a choice that permits someone else to choose for you).  My advice is to wait a while before turning in your vote.  Keep listening -- but not to the pollsters, not to political pundits, not to anyone's subjective calculus predicting the odds and trying to manipulate the outcome.

What are we listening for? less talk about smooth and sexy streets and a whole new conversation about the unsexy time bomb ticking in our back yards -- our multi-billion dollar municipal pension deficit.  

Any mayoral candidate who pretends he can fulfill his campaign promises of neighborhood improvements and safety protection by shutting his eyes to the way the city cooks the books guarantees bad consequences for all of us.  

I’ve never been good at playing the numbers (neither was my father -- though I named this blog in his honor, anyway).  I know what I've already heard and I intend to keep listening before I confirm my choice for our next mayor. 

Spare us from our good boys

You’ve already read my take on bad boys. Now it’s time to flip the coin and ponder San Diego’s good boys. 

Lately, good boys have been coming out of the woodwork.  You can spot them a mile away by their gee-whiz grins and GQ grooming.  Their toothy, soulful smiles can break your heart.  Of course they’re super-civil and never raise their voices in public.  You wouldn’t hesitate to bring these dewy-eyed boys home to meet your momma. 

Don’t do it!  What you see is NOT what you get from these two-dimensional paper dolls… Stepford wives in drag.  Who are these people, you ask?  

Let’s start with the godfather of them all:

Getting away with murder (part II)

Some of my friends think I pick on San Diego unfairly.  They ask me, Don't all cities have a similar quotient of greed, corruption, mediocrity, deceit, and political blowhards as we have in San Diego?

I won't equivocate.  The answer is...yes. 

So why single out our city? Because San Diego is unique in one peculiar respect: we practice an overweening reverence for gentility.  We lionize propriety.  We relish an identity as America's finest, nicest city.  Some guys might even stretch the description and say we're pussy-whipped.  But the more orthodox label for our singular compliance is civility.

San Diego is obsessed with civility.