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Balboa Park Conservancy Avoids Confrontation Over Transparency

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By Doug Porter

Activist David Lundin and others were in attendance last night at the Balboa Park Committee Board meeting ready to ask serious questions about the Balboa Park Conservancy, the group now charged by the City of San Diego with trying to salvage the 2015 Centennial Celebration.

Responding to charges made earlier that the Conservancy was violating its own charter by failing to have two annual public meetings, the group claimed their reports made in meetings of the Balboa Park Committee fulfilled the requirement.

Alas, hopes for a window into the Conservancy’s inner working were dashed last night as, for the first time in more than seven years, the meeting was cancelled in its entirety because quorum of the Balboa Park Committee Board failed to appear.

After a 30 minute wait the Board chair announced the cancellation, saying it was “illegal to open the meeting, even for informational or no-action items.”     [Read more…]

Last Call for the GOP Obamacare Apocalypse

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By Doug Porter

It’s no secret the national Republican campaign strategy for 2014 revolves around the demonization of Obamacare. Given the party’s inherent structural advantage (gerrymandering + off year turnouts) in the upcoming midterm elections, problems with the healthcare insurance program could be spun as mandate for repeal.

Now, facing growing public acceptance and a run of good reviews, the GOP is getting desperate. The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report yesterday asserting only 67% of HealthCare.gov enrollees had paid their first premium. Reuters news is reporting today about  Republican plans to use Senate confirmation hearings for Sylvia Burwell, Obama’s pick to replace Kathleen Sebelius, to “re-energize their election-year attacks on his signature healthcare initiative.”     [Read more…]

Who’s Funding the Competing Minimum Wage Initiative?

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By Doug Porter

Seriously. We need to know. UT-San Diego and KPBS have run stories about an initiative in the works proposing an increase in the minimum wage that’s less than the one currently under consideration by the City Council. In fact, the “increase” it purports to offer wouldn’t affect 93% of businesses small and large in the city via loopholes large enough to drive a truck through.

It takes serious money and/or a large grass roots organization to collect signatures for a ballot initiative. Essentially you’ve got to get 100,000 people to sign a petition in the hope that 68,000 or so will be recognized as valid. The shipbuilders association spent somewhere south of a half million dollars to get their measure killing the Barrio Logan Community Plan on upcoming the June ballot. The 2012 Proposition B Pension Reform backers spent over a million bucks.

Yet the person who is the “face” of this competing measure, Blanca Lopez-Brown only came up with 159 qualifying signatures on the nominating petition for her 2013 candidacy for a city council seat. She placed fifth in that special election (1,084 votes). And money? Doesn’t have any to speak of. So this begs the question, who’s really backing this initiative?   [Read more…]

Carl DeMaio’s Pity Party Plays Well With Fox News

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By Doug Porter

Congressional candidate Carl DeMaio has a real talent for manipulating the news media. Yesterday he teamed up with Fox News columnist (and former Bush Press secretary) Dana Perino to let the world know about the vast left wing conspiracy attacking him because he’s gay.

Using examples from his failed mayoral campaign of outliers who tried to make his orientation an issue with right wingers, the Perino story builds to a crescendo incorporating the LGBT community and the left in general marching lockstep into the current congressional contest, united to smear and defeat his “true campaign message of hope.” It’s a pity party writ large and the story is playing well with the ‘GOP is persecuted’ set.

As is usual with Carl, it’s a boatload of crap. There are actual facts in the Fox story, but they’re spun completely out of context. The people making noise about his sexual orientation in the current congressional race are his socially conservative GOP brethren.   [Read more…]

DA Bonnie Dumanis – Keeper of the Flame for San Diego’s Power Elite

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By Doug Porter

The race for District Attorney in San Diego has heated up in recent days, with incumbent Bonnie Dumanis actually showing up for a debate in Del Cerro after skipping events in Oceanside and La Jolla earlier this month. She also appeared at a Ramona Tea Party multi-candidate forum on Saturday, reportedly wearing a straw cowboy hat.

UT-San Diego gave Dumanis their editorial blessing this weekend, saying “She deserves re-election to a fourth term,” before acknowledging that she might have picked up some “baggage” over her 12 years in office. While that “baggage,” which includes a campaign finance scandal and an over-zealous (and failing) campaign against medical marijuana is of interest, it’s the broader accusations that Dumanis has politicized the District Attorney’s office that merit your attention.   [Read more…]

Convention Center Expansion Facing Ballot Box Challenge as Costs Rise

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By Doug Porter

When it was decided that San Diego needed more convention space, local politicians and hoteliers came up with a creative funding plan bypassing the need for public electoral input. Now changes in the economy and delays in the construction are forcing consideration of “certain adjustments” that could end up increasing costs beyond what funds are expected to be available via that scheme.

Attorney Cory Briggs, along with good-government advocates Diane Coombs and Pedro Quiroz, Jr., have filed paperwork needed to launch an initiative to hold San Diego’s mayor and city council fully accountable for the cost overruns on the proposed Convention Center expansion.

NBC7 News reports city financial experts are deeply concerned over rising costs as construction is held up by legal challenges to the financing scheme make their way through the appellate courts. Those concerns were expressed to the City Council via a little noticed March 25 memo from CFO Mary Lewis and Tony Heinrichs Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Public Works/Ulilities.   [Read more…]

Distract, Deny, Distort and Deceive: The Fight Against A Minimum Wage Hike for San Diego

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By Doug Porter

City Council President Todd Gloria appeared before the press yesterday to announce a proposed November ballot initiative increasing San Diego’s minimum wage, along with a path for workers to accumulate paid sick days.

Gloria’s role in pushing this measure dates back to his call for a “meaningful” increase in the minimum wage during the State of the City speech in January. The big unanswered question for local scribes was “how much” would constitute “meaningful.” We now know the magic number to be $13.09, achieved in three stages by July 2017, should voters approve. But it’s negotiable.

In keeping with Plato’s dictum, “those who tell the stories also hold the power,” UT-San Diego (owned by a hospitality industry magnate, whose business model depends on low wages and government subsidies) is all over this today with a front page story, an “explainer” and, (ta-da!) an editorial denouncing Gloria and blaming California Democrats for the leftovers of the Great Recession.   [Read more…]

Toxic Contaminant Releases in Barrio Logan Confirmed – Another Reason to Support the Community Plan

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By Doug Porter

The release of a statewide list of census tracts most impacted by pollution by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CEPA) will add to the controversy surrounding two ballot measures presented to San Diego voters in the upcoming election.

A story in today’s Los Angeles Times, along with a scalable map, provides a dramatic assessment of impacts by types of contaminants within neighborhoods throughout the state. The CEPA report gives advocates for the Barrio Logan Community Plan hard evidence supporting their contentions concerning health problems caused by the current mix of industrial and residential uses.

Opponents of the Community Plan have dismissed health claims about industrial pollution as the cause of asthma and other health problems, blaming nearby freeways for contaminants. The CEPA study clearly indicates a serious problem with the release of toxic contaminants– as opposed to diesel particulates– into the air specific to the Barrio Logan area.   [Read more…]

Happy Earth Day! I’ll Take Some Carbon Emissions with a Side of Hate

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By Doug Porter

I remember Earth Day back in 1970. It was a bi-partisan affair – Democrats AND Republicans. It even included hippies AND radicals (a big divide back in those days), although lefties were a little suspicious that this national event focusing on the environment was a plot to sap the the energy of the anti-war movement.

Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson (D) and California Congressman Pete McCloskey (R) were the public face of the movement which was focused on a day of national teach-ins. The idea was to make environmental protections part of the national consciousness. It worked.

The events around the country on Aprill 22, 1970 spurred the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.   [Read more…]

The Banana Republic of San Diego: Quest for a New Football Stadium and Lower Wages

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By Doug Porter

Another week has passed and UT-San Diego has published yet another article telling us what to expect in the coming months as our local plutocrats hammer out plans for a new gladiator arena, er, football stadium.

Past failures to achieve a consensus were brushed aside by Chargers special counsel Mark Fabian in this weeks fish wrap, attributed to “the kind of political instability that is more typical of a banana republic than of a major American city”. I’m sure former Mayor Jerry Sanders (2005-2012) is thrilled by that characterization.

This week we learn of a Joint Powers Authority (Think SANDAG, or the Airport Commission), with a “working scernario” envisioning a county-wide 2016 ballot measure tapping local treasuries for the expected “taxpayer contribution common in the construction costs of every new National Football League stadium in recent years.”   [Read more…]

DA Bonnie Dumanis’ Re-Election Campaign Gets Petty

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By Doug Porter

Things must be going poorly for incumbent District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis in her re-election campaign. While she hasn’t been accused of involvement in the unfolding campaign finance scandal stemming from a foreign donor’s quest to turn our downtown waterfront into another Miami, a whiff of ‘something’s not right here’ remains in the air.

Her re-election effort is facing a stiff challenge from a well-funded opponent who’s managed to nail down endorsements from a large majority of law enforcement-related groups and nearly two dozen former assistant DAs. And her latest gaffe won’t help matters much.

Yesterday, challenger Bob Brewer announced the endorsement of Father Joe Carroll, whose high profile blessing of Kevin Faulconer was well received by voters during the recent mayoral contest. It should have been a blip on the radar of the campaign. Now it’s not.   [Read more…]

Taxi Medallions: San Diego’s Licensing Program for Exploiting Immigrants

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By Doug Porter

While lots of local politicos are willing to give at least lip service towards increasing the minimum wage or creating affordable housing, the abject lack of interest in rectifying a government sponsored system of exploitation in the local taxi industry is staggering.

The medallion based system of licensing currently in place in San Diego, wherein drivers pay for the privilege of leasing a vehicle that may or may not be roadworthy, insures consumers of two things: scarcity of service and higher fares. This form of regulation might have made sense 80 years ago in New York city when it was started, but today a privileged few and the politicians they fund are the only beneficiaries.

Of all things revealed in a 2013 San Diego State University/Center for Policy Initiatives study–the unsafe working conditions, the dangerous vehicles, the exploitation of drivers–it would appear that Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s response will be limited to the vehicles themselves and, perhaps, record keeping issues.   [Read more…]

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