Key Issues in the Mayor's Race

With a week to go before the November 19th special election to replace Bob Filner, a number of distracting issues, such as attendance, have made for idiotic campaign commercials.  In reality, the city is facing a number of issues that require resolution.

Continuing Pension Reform

The new mayor will need to vigorously defend Proposition B, which was a step towards reforming pensions and limiting the future liability of San Diego's taxpayers.  As we have seen on the state and federal level, the failure of the government to defend its position in the courts can nullify the will of the vote of the people or legislature.  Mike Aguirre and Kevin Faulconer are committed to reforming San Diego's pensions, Aguirre certainly more so.  Unfortunately, the former city attorney doesn't stand much of a chance.  David Alvarez has opposed a 401(k) style pension reform for city workers, proposing a cap on benefits instead.  Nathan Fletcher's position is to howl that Faulconer wants to deprive widows of public safety officers of their pensions.

Continuing Managed Competition

City workers have won a number of managed competitions with private industry, so why bother with the process?  Because the competition forces the government to look at its costs and produce savings.  Despite some flaws each round of managed competition resulted in the city government coming up with ways to reduce costs.  Further oversight and revisions of the process to ensure that the savings materialize are needed, but only Kevin Faulconer whole-heartedly supports the process.  Fletcher and Alvarez both oppose the process.  We need a mayor who will do the hard work to ensure this process saves the taxpayers' dollars and only Faulconer is committed to the process' success.

City Streets

For better or worse, the city government is responsible for the condition of most public roadways in the city.  Our streets are in horrible shape.  Faulconer correctly ties the ability to fund street repairs to the budget woes caused by pension underfunding.  He proposes some reasonable steps to make streets better, including using capital funding for maintenance; but the money still has to come from somewhere.  Fletcher and Alvarez both pledge street repair, but have little specific to say on their respective web sites.  Alvarez also supports more capital funding for street maintenance, but his over 20 page blueprint has surprisingly little to say on a topic I consider of high importance.

Barrio Logan Zoning and the Shipbuilding and Repair Industry

I covered this issue earlier.  Yesterday, I signed a petition to put the re-zoning up for a vote.  I think this industry is extremely important for good jobs in San Diego.  Removing the support services to shipbuilding in the buffer zone is a first step towards killing off this industry.  I don't trust the motives of the Democrats involved in this plan.  I find Faulconer arguing to save jobs in this industry.  Fletcher's attacks on Alvarez on this subject are disingenuous as Fletcher has no real plan.

There are certainly other subjects, like medical marijuana, but I don't think the candidates differ significantly or the subjects are as important.

What You Should Be Reading

• The U-T has a nice feature that allows you to match your views with those of the four top candidates and get a score.  My scores were Faulconer 62%, Aguirre 50%, Fletcher 29%, Alvarez 27%.

In Other Good News for San Diegans

In addition to the vote on Walmart, Lorie Zapf tweets that the City Council also voted to move forward on managed competition. Channel 10 News reports:

The San Diego City Council Tuesday approved a plan to bid out the functions of its Fleet Services Department, which maintains more than 4,000 city-owned vehicles, including police cars and fire truckss.
. . .
The city is also putting out its printing division for bid. The mayor said last month that street sweeping, road repair and some functions of the Public Utilities Department will come next.

As I have said, even if the city division wins the bid, they can only do so by instituting savings. Either way, the taxpayers win.

City Hall and the Tea Party - 2011

This is my first post cross-posted to sdrostra.com. Dave Maass asked me earlier about what I thought the Tea Party would be watching locally in 2011. As the unofficial chief ideologist, I thought the question deserved an answer. (By the way, no one selected me, in a decentralized organization, people just do the job that needs to get done. Shared vision is the glue that keeps the Tea Party together, not a party organization.) Here is what we will be watching:

City Hall. Will the politicians at City Hall vote themselves new digs, without a vote of the people? Will they have the audacity to put it on the ballot, where I predict flaming defeat? This will be a litmus test for the new and more evenly balanced council. Rumors that this boondoggle might move ahead are in print.

Pensions. Despite a small bit of good news from this morning's paper, the pension problem is the main fiscal problem facing the City of San Diego. Regardless of the faux-fabulous headline: BUDGET GAP SHRINKS, the actual fact is that the city has 67.1% of the funding needed to close a $2.14 billion gap (technically, the unfunded actuarial liability), up from 66.5%, hardly cause for rejoicing, or even a headline for that matter. My headline would have been: Tiny Progress on Pension Funding. During the November campaign, Howard Wayne performed a public service by explaining that the employees are not contributing to their own pensions to the extent allowed by law and that increasing these required contributions would be an ethical and legal way to close the gap. Even though I endorsed Lorie Zapf, I want to give credit when Democrats positively contribute to the dialog. Carl DeMaio has been doing a good job of pointing out other ways that the city can deal with this funding crisis, with ideas like freezing pay increases and not calculating certain benefits as part of base salary. Perhaps this sounds a bit arcane, but this is the hard work that needs to be done to legally and ethically meet the city's pension obligations without increasing taxes. But the other key component is the number of employees. This brings us to another key issue.

Managed Competition. The issue of managed competition makes my blood boil, because it is a proven way to reduce the costs of city services, but it has been obstructed by left leaning council members since 2006. Often times, even when the city department wins the competition, the taxpayers still end up winners because to win the competition, that department streamlines its own operations. Today's U-T offers a glimmer of hope in this area, with Mayor Sanders announcing details of competing street sweeping and public utilities. The article only identified 134 full time employees impacted. Certainly a start, but much more needs to be done. We will be watching.

Lorie Zapf. Someone we will be watching is new council member, Lorie Zapf. (Disclosure: I live in District 6.) Lorie campaigned on reigning in non-essential spending, including dealing with the pension problem, to focus on public safety. She has largely disappeared from the radar following her election, although she did do a phone interview with LaDona Harvey on KOGO. The rumor around her possible support for a new City Hall is driving me nuts because it is so plainly contrary to her stated campaign positions. I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer, even though staffer Brian Pepin left me a voice message. This, from an initial inquiry before Christmas. My honest concern is that Lorie is beholden to business interests who helped get her elected. Nothing wrong with business, per se, but here in San Diego, they tend to team up with government in sweetheart deals not in the public interest. Speaking of potential deals,

Charger Stadium. I am a Charger fan, but I don't want the city subsidizing their stadium, nor the Padres, for that matter. Professional sports are businesses that should make a profit, period. It is not up to us, as taxpayers, to make them profitable. We will be watching the city council's actions. The shenanigans of our Republican mayor don't leave me confident that we can just trust the government on this one. So who will be the new mayor after the 2012 elections?

Carl DeMaio is a council member whom we will be watching. I have really loved much of what he has done over the last year, see the link. However, I have heard some private grumblings among Tea Party activists about him, so I will be digging deeper.

That's it, there are certainly other things to keep an eye on, but B-Daddy's Book of Management, Rule #2 is "The commodity in shortest supply is management attention." It behooves us to keep our eyes on the most important issues.

Carl DeMaio - Local Hero

Carl DeMaio took on the unions today and delivered 138,000 signatures to put a managed competition measure on the ballot today. He did so after taking a bus ride highlighting the city services that have been cut back due to the ongoing budget issues, precipitated by the pensions imbroglio. He was, of course, opposed by the city's unions along the way. As I have said before, reducing the city payroll is only way out of our budget mess in the long run. Of course, what would a little Tea Party style activity be without some union thuggery, mild though it might be in this case:

There was a brief scuffle as a man dressed as Pinocchio thrust his long nose in DeMaio's face. Police had to break up the crowd.

I note that Carl DeMaio endorsed Lorie Zapf, despite the mortgage issues.