B-Daddy's San Diego Proposition Guide

My ballot came in the mail over the weekend; since I am a resident of the City of San Diego, it included both the city and county propositions. Here's my run down on the initiatives, and I have to admit, it wasn't that tough. Before we start, I have to give a shout out to Richard Rider, who has been submitting arguments against tax increases for as long as I can remember, at least going back to 1985, when I was first stationed here. He worked on the argument against Proposition J and they are great and will be quoted.

One more shout out, to BallotPedia, a wealth of information about initiatives.

On to the props - I am not using the official titles, my shortened and more accurate version. Don't like my characterizations? Tough, get your own blog, free speech rocks.


Prop A - Prohibits Project Labor Agreements - YES

". . .the county shall not require a contractor on a construction project to execute or otherwise become a party to a project labor agreement as a condition of bidding, negotiating, awarding or performing of a contract."

Labor unions use project labor agreements to set wages on government projects at the union rate. This discourages firms that don't employ union members not to bid and DRIVES UP PROJECT COSTS. This is an easy call. San Diego County already has a law like this on the books, but if the Board of Supervisors shifts left, this could be repealed, so the amendment is needed as part of the county charter.



Proposition B - Makes Deputy City Attorneys Like Civil Servants - yes

This basically says that all of the attorneys below the elected City Attorney can only be fired for just cause, to "protect them from politics." Everyone is for this, even Todd Gloria AND Carl DeMaio, so I guess I should be too. It would certainly prevent the loss of attorneys we saw under Mike Aguirre. But I wonder if we will see a City Attorney bemoaning the fact that no one in the office will do what he says. B-Daddy gives this a yes, barely.





Proposition C - Waiting for Godot - Yes

This proposition is to allow the Pacific Highlands Ranch to continue development even though the current ordnance requires them to wait for Caltrans to finish the I-5/SR-56 interchange. This is currently scheduled for 2020. Of course you have to vote for this. Below is a picture of one of the things not to do while waiting for Caltrans to finish anything on time:

By the way, and speaking of Caltrans, if you were stuck in traffic today, you can thank Jerry Brown, who seriously set back our freeway building programs when he was governor previously.


Proposition D - "Temporary" One-Half Cent Sales Tax - NO NO NO

I've blogged about this extensively, do I really need to say more?





Proposition J - More Taxes for Government Schools - NO

The usual suspects are making the argument that the government schools need more funding and they promise to only spend it on classroom learning. This measure reminds me of Proposition D, they make a big deal of how well the school district will manage the extra money, but do nothing up front to address their prior fiscal mismanagement. Basically, they want to find a way to pay for a teacher salary increase of 7% that starts in 2012 along with other increased benefits. As Richard Rider and others also point out, per pupil spending has increased about 34% since 2003.


Make sure you vote, get those ballots in the mail early. There is little going on that should change our mind. If I missed a local proposition in your area, Richard Rider has some recommendations always guaranteed to keep your taxes low.