The San Diego Association of Governments has been under fire for poor forecasting and potentially deceiving the public about revenue projects from Proposition A.
At the February 24th meeting of SANDAG, the San Diego Association of Governments, the Board of Directors comprised of the 18 jurisdictions of San Diego County, heard an explanation of the bad forecast used to anticipate revenue generated from Proposition A, the 1/2 cent sales tax increases which failed on the November 2016 ballot.
Ray Major, SANDAG’s head of technology services and chief economist, explained through a series of power point slides the problems which he has uncovered in the formulas used by the agency to forecast revenues and other economic indicators. Only having been in the post for a little over a year, Major described finding a problem with the Retail Sales Tax estimates, which generated the emails the Voice of San Diego published in their story.
The Board took this opportunity to express their concerns and request an independent investigation into the details surrounding who knew what and when and why the Board had not been made aware of the mistake much sooner. [Read more…]