Enron By the Sea

Irwin Jacobs and SOHO are leading opposing plans to upgrade Balboa Park for its 1915 centennial

2012-01-30T10:08:00.000-08:00

On Dec. 16, Superior Court Judge Judith F. Hayes, in a preliminary ruling, deemed the memorandum illegal for the time being. With final ruling pending, Jacobs declined to comment.

The Battle Over Balboa Park
By Delle Willett
San Diego Metro
January 29, 2012

Balboa Park’s plazas were originally designed like the grand plazas of Europe, accommodating pedestrians, automobiles and pigeons. Over the years, however, the park has literally been taken over by cars with nearly 7,000 vehicles driving through the plazas and promenades daily. With 12 million visitors to the park each year, conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles abound.

This problem has long been recognized, and every plan for the park in the past 60 years has had a goal to remove the cars and return the park’s core to people.

With the 2015 Centennial Celebration of the 1915 Panama-California Exhibition in Balboa Park presenting the perfect opportunity, plans have been developed to make the Plaza de Panama a centerpiece for the centennial, removing approximately 54 parking spaces as well as preparing the park for the additional pedestrians and cars that it will require.

The two major plans being considered are The Plaza de Panama Circulation and Parking Project, presented by The Plaza de Panama Committee, a nonprofit entity formed by Dr. Irwin Jacobs, and the SOHO Precise Plan “Lite” that complies with the existing Balboa Park Master Plan and Central Mesa Precise Plan, represented by Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO) and a coalition of over 20 groups and organizations.

The Plaza de Panama Project is a permanent plan that involves building a bypass road— the Centennial Bridge—from the Cabrillo Bridge through the Alcazar Garden parking lot and on to a new 785-space, paid-parking, underground garage south of the Spreckles Organ Pavilion, topped with a two-acre park; free accessible tram service from the parking structure to the Plaza de Panama, resurfacing the plaza with contemporary hardscape materials, and adding shade trees, benches and replicas of the original street lights. Overall, the project adds 267 parking spots in the heart of the park and provides for increased disabled parking, a safe drop-off area and valet service.

All told, the project will reclaim 6.3 acres of parks and plazas (the Plaza de Panama, West El Prado, Plaza de California and the Esplanade) for pedestrian use only from what are now roads and surface parking lots, and significantly reduce conflicts between pedestrians and cars. This plan has been vetted by CIVITAS, a landscape and planning firm. The project is estimated to cost $40 million. Approximately $25 million of this cost is for plaza and park improvements, the construction of Centennial Bridge and Road, and improvements to the Alcazar Garden parking lot. The underground parking structure is estimated to cost $15 million.

Financing

The project will be paid for by private donations raised by the Plaza de Panama Committee and a self-supporting bond. No taxpayer funds will be required. The bond will be repaid with revenue generated from parking lot charges. The revenue will also pay for operation and maintenance of the garage and free tram service. A study found that the parking structure would generate enough revenue to support a construction bond, operations and maintenance of the structure, and the operation of the free tram.

The Plaza de Panama Committee has agreed to cover all cost overruns to ensure that there is no risk to taxpayer funds. The Committee will spend over $1,000,000 on the Environmental Information Report (EIR). Leading up to the MOU meeting, Jacobs, co-founder of Qualcomm Inc., has already spent over $2 million on public meetings and planning.

The Plaza de Panama Project must be approved by the San Diego City Council. Leading up to the decision by the City Council, a number of other bodies must provide advisory votes on the project. These include the Balboa Park Committee, the Park and Recreation Board, the Historical Resources Board and the Planning Commission.
It is anticipated that the Draft EIR will be completed and ready for public review and comment January 2012; presented to the City Council in summer 2012; and with all approvals in place, construction started by January 2013 with a scheduled completion date of January 2015.

To date the Committee has participated in roughly 90 meetings with citizen groups, Balboa Park organizations and other stakeholders. Feedback has resulted in positive changes to the project from the first meeting, held more than a year ago. Since then, there have been countless improvements made to the project based on public feedback, and there continue to be.

Alternative Plans

On July 19 the city approved a Memo of Understanding (MOU) with the Plaza de Panama Committee, which served as a contract to continue with the Plaza de Panama plan. At the same time, a number of alternatives to this proposed project are also being thoroughly studied in the EIR. The environmental review process will assess potential impacts of the proposed project and alternatives in the areas of traffic circulation, cultural and historic resources, biological resources, and a number of others. Some people believe as is, the MOU puts the city in the position to go with Jacobs’ plan and precludes them using any alternative.

In response to the memorandum, SOHO sued in San Diego Superior Court to rescind the memorandum claiming the city approved the contract illegally before the completion of a state environmental review. On Dec. 16, Superior Court Judge Judith F. Hayes, in a preliminary ruling, deemed the memorandum illegal for the time being. With final ruling pending, Jacobs declined to comment...

California attorney general sues to stop $200 billion regional transportation plan; San Diego has seventh-worst ozone pollution

2012-01-24T12:36:00.000-08:00

Morning Report: Attorney General Rocks San Diego Planners
January 24, 2012
By Randy Dotinga
VOSD

The state attorney general has sued to stop the $200 billion regional transportation plan that makes freeways a priority, saying it doesn't do enough to get drivers out of cars.

"The 3.2 million residents of the San Diego region already suffer from the seventh worst ozone pollution in the country," Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a statement. "Spending our transit dollars in the right way today will improve the economy, create sustainable jobs and ensure that future generations do not continue to suffer from heavily polluted air."

The plan, drafted by a local coalition of governments, sets a blueprint for the next 40 years.

Our story provides plenty of ways for you to understand this ongoing story, including a look at how the state became skeptical of the plan in the first place, a San Diego Explained video about where the money goes, a summary of key issues and a reader's guide to the whole debate.

San Diego County User Guide to Online Campaign Finance Disclosure

2011-12-21T10:36:00.000-08:00

San Diego County User Guide to Online Campaign Finance Disclosure
http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/voters/Eng/proceed.html
What is on this Site?

Campaign finance disclosure reports for all filers who have "local" filing requirements. This includes filings for county offices, county propositions, special districts, and school districts, located or campaigning within the County of San Diego.

Historical campaign disclosure reports going back four years.

What is not on this Site?

State filers. State filings are available on the Secretary of State’s website at http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/campaign/.

City campaign finance disclosure reports. Please contact your city clerk. Contact information for city clerks can be found at the following link: http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/voters/Eng/reports/pubofficials.pdfa>

Candidates who do not raise or spend more than $1,000 are not required to provide detailed disclosure of contributions or expenditures. However, these candidates still have filing requirements. For information regarding those filing requirements, upcoming elections and filing due dates, please vi

Fired administrators allowed to gather more evidenceTri-City Healthcare lawsuit

2011-11-30T11:54:00.000-08:00

This story is interesting since Ray Artiano walked out of his own deposition when he sued me for defamation.

Attorneys allowed to gather more evidence in Tri-City wrongful termination suit
Nathan Scharn
Nov. 29, 2011

OCEANSIDE — A U.S. District Court judge issued an order Monday allowing attorneys to gather more evidence in wrongful termination suits between former Tri-City Healthcare District administrators and their former employer, including trustees of the public health care district.

Judge Thomas J. Whelan ruled that attorneys for the administrators would be able to take depositions from defendants involved in a meeting held at Coco’s Restaurant in Vista on Nov. 20, 2008 regarding the discussion at the restaurant. They were fired in 2009 in an overhaul by the elected board of Tri-City’s leadership.

Whelan concluded that the meeting, attended by an attorney and now Chairwoman Rosemarie Reno and trustees Kathleen Sterling, George Coulter and Charlene Anderson, violated the state open government law called the Brown Act.

The law requires public notice of discussions of public business by a majority of elected officials on a board. At the time, only Sterling, who has since been dropped from the case, and Reno were on the board. Coulter and Anderson had been elected, but had not yet assumed office, which constituted a future majority, Whelan said in the ruling.

“The Brown Act also prevents future majorities from gathering privately to make collective commitments affecting the future of the local agency without public input,” Whelan wrote.

The get-together at Coco’s is not related to another controversial dinner meeting, held at West Steak and Seafood in Carlsbad in May 2010 and attended by Reno, Sterling and Coulter, though that meeting has been a factor in several lawsuits, including criminal hearings.

Much of the Coco’s meeting has been kept secret under Magistrate Judge Bernard G. Skomal’s July 18, 2011 discovery order, which held that the discussion at the meeting fell under attorney client privilege. Whelan reversed that, saying the meeting violated the law “in furtherance of a present criminal act,” the ruling said, and was thus exempt from the privilege.

The depositions could provide significant facts in the wrongful termination suit between the former administrators and the health care district.

Trustees fired nine employees after placing them on paid administrative leave. Then-Chief Executive Arthur Gonzalez received a severance package in 2009 worth as much as $1 million. Seven others sought damages in excess of $100,000.

Earlier this year, former vice president of strategic services Allen Coleman received $385,000 and former vice president of performance improvement William “Terry” Howell received $390,000 in settlements, their attorney Ray Artiano and Tri-City officials have confirmed. The other five employees are still pursuing the lawsuit.

The other employees fired were Suellyn Ellerbe, chief operating officer and chief nurse executive; Robert Wardwell, chief financial officer; Doreen Sanderson, vice president of human resources; Daniel Groszkruger, director of information systems; and Ondrea Labella, director of patient business services.

Whelan denied part of the ex-administrators’ contention that Skomal had erred as a matter of law.

Public Tri-City Healthcare District serves residents in Carlsbad, Oceanside and Vista.

'Dear Tri-City': OC supervisor's NC ghost writer responds to broadside

2011-10-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

'Dear Tri-City': OC supervisor's NC ghost writer responds to broadside
Logan Jenkins
Oct. 25, 2011

A contender, if not the favorite, for my “Poison Pen Letter of the Year” award was received by Bill Campbell, chairman of the Orange County board of supervisors.

The undersigned on the thrillingly cheap shot are RoseMarie Reno, chair of the Tri-City Healthcare District’s board of directors, and Larry Anderson, the hospital district’s CEO.

The target is Leon Page, a Carlsbad resident (and Orange County deputy counsel) who sent a “cease and desist” letter, the precursor of a lawsuit, to Tri-City after the board majority voted to banish two recalcitrant members — Kathleen Sterling and Randy Horton — from closed meetings.

Surely not a regular fan of Tri-City’s follies, Campbell must have been nonplused as how to respond. He quickly passed the venom-soaked letter to Page’s boss, County Counsel Nick Chrisos, who told me he had never read anything remotely like it. (In case you’re wondering, that’s not a compliment.)

On a pro bono basis, I’m offering Campbell a draft of the letter he should send to Tri-City.

•••

Thank you for your letter in which you ask the Orange County board of supervisors to investigate the unethical behavior of Leon Page.

I take it you would like us to probe and punish Page. Judging by the urgency of your complaint, you would consider flogging with bicycle chains a suitable disciplinary measure.

You note that Page has initiated legal actions against two government agencies — Tri-City and MiraCosta College. What Page says is his altruistic “hobby” you evidently see as a form of treason to the public sector.

The merits of Page’s public-interest actions, which he conducts on his own time, don’t appear to matter to you. An attorney on the public payroll should always side with his public-sector “team.”

It’s my understanding, however, that Page sued MiraCosta to claw back money that a high court ultimately agreed was a gift of public funds to an outgoing president.

You focus solely on the “adverse legal interests” Page’s lawsuit visited upon the college, not the public good of a sane precedent to protect agencies from someone who threatens to sue if a contractually limited severance package is not sweetened.

You also imply that Page may be a shakedown artist, a grifter in cahoots with Ron Cozad, a North County attorney whom Page retained for the legal work in the MiraCosta case.

Specifically, you suggest (without proof) that Page is a frontman for Cozad, filing lawsuits against public agencies and then, when lavish attorney fees are awarded, Page taking a secret cut.

You insinuate, again without evidence, that Mr. Page may be on the take from the two banished directors. You also pose the ominous possibility that Page’s real ambition is “to destroy the District’s reputation and operations for the benefit of competing hospitals in South Orange County.”

You take pains to accuse Page and Cozad of shoddy research because they failed to appreciate how disruptive these two board members are and how necessary their exile is from secret sessions even if their absence does deny represenation to the voters who elected them.

To sound authoritative, you cite legal precedents for the summary removal of elected officials and suggest that Orange County’s right to ostracize troublesome pols is threatened if I’m on the same page as Page, so to speak.

Finally, you ask me “to take corrective actions” against Page “and notify us of actions taken.”

Let’s start at the end. No corrective action is planned. Consider yourself notified of that fact. Remember the old saying about throwing mud at a wall? Well, nothing is sticking in the OC.

By the way, I’ve read clippings that celebrated Page for his role in cleaning up the MiraCosta scandal. One Union-Tribune columnist — Loren Jennings perhaps? — tagged Page as a North County Hero of the Year.

Frankly, I consider your arguments bizarre at best; at worst, un-American. (I come from one of the most conservative counties in the nation. We talk like that.)

About the only thing I can say in your favor is that you’re trying to spend as little money as possible in keeping a sinking ship from sinking. Faint praise, I know.

You suggest that we in Orange County should be worried about our freedom to punish disorderly elected officials. We don’t have problems with decorum. We don’t have a board member attending meetings via telephone; another who uses an apparently fake title of “Doctor”; and yet another, a nurse, with a dicey record accounting for pills.

And those last two are among the majority who banned the pair of dissidents.

The way to get rid of bad elected officials is through the polls. If I may be so bold, it isn’t your job to slam the boardroom door on your political rivals whenever you get the willies.

In my humble opinion, you should be grateful that one of the OC’s best attorneys is offering you free legal advice.

Take it!

Otay Water District: A History of Death Threats, Scandal and Sewage-Tainted Water

2011-10-23T17:32:00.000-07:00

A History of Death Threats, Scandal and Sewage-Tainted Water
October 16, 2011
by Rob Davis
Voice of San Diego

The officials' phones often rang late at night or after meetings. It was the early 2000s, and the Otay Water District was roiled by scandal, by accusations of mismanagement, bribery, fraud and self-dealing.

What followed was never good.

Sometimes came only the sound of a single kiss. A warning, police said. The kiss of death.

Sometimes came an ominous message. Rap music, blaring the same threat: Come on, motherfucker, come on.

When agency attorneys investigated, the answer they uncovered sounded like the kicker to a campfire horror story: The calls had been coming from inside — from the phone of one of the district's own board members.

The conflict typified the dark days at what could otherwise be an unremarkable agency with a routine task. But even a decade later, the Otay Water District is hardly unremarkable. It's proven that safely delivering water to 206,000 people from Otay Mesa to Jamul isn't always routine — though its customers may wish it was.

Across the county, more than 20 public agencies like Otay play a key role in daily life. They're middlemen who buy water from major suppliers and deliver it to the taps of homes and businesses. While big suppliers bring water here from sources far away, agencies like Otay maintain local pipes, read your meter and send you a bill every month or two.

They typically do that in relative obscurity. It's why you may not have heard of agencies like the Rincon del Diablo Municipal Water District. But they are powerful entities. Otay has the authority to set and raise water rates. It determines how much developers must pay to connect new homes and offices to the water system. Its board has the discretion to spend millions of dollars on construction. Otay's service territory includes large stretches of a Southern California rarity: Undeveloped land. And it controls the only local water connection between San Diego and Tijuana.

Otay hasn't enjoyed the same obscurity as other water districts here. During the last decade, it's delivered sewage to drinking water taps, tried to squelch criticism with legal action and endured costly litigation from its customers, employees and board members.

Though the board member implicated in those late-night calls a decade ago is gone, death threats have continued even today.

♦♦♦

During the tumult's peak in the early 2000s, a long-time board member got fed up and quit.

The board member, Mark Watton, lashed out against the district's leadership, setting his sights on one man: Otay's board president, a radio station owner named Jaime Bonilla trying to distance himself from accusations of favoritism engulfing the rest of the agency. In a letter to La Prensa San Diego, Watton said Bonilla was right in the middle of Otay's problems.
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"A (hopefully) short sad chapter in the Otay story, and what happens when public officials like these (including Mr. Bonilla) only want the position for their own ego, power and enrichment," Watton wrote.

Now, 10 years after he resigned, Mark Watton runs the Otay Water District. He was the county's highest-paid water official in 2010, in a job that gives him 71 days of leave annually. Add in weekends, and that's almost half the year.

Watton today says that he had it wrong. Bonilla was wearing a wire, working as an informant for the FBI. Watton said he didn't know Bonilla was trying to nab two other board members and a prominent Los Angeles lobbyist in a failed bribery sting. The case eventually fell apart.

"I didn't have the full picture of what was going on," Watton said.

Watton today answers to the district's five-member board.

Its president, still, is Jaime Bonilla.

♦♦♦

Something was terribly wrong with the water in Suite 109.

It was the summer of 2007. Business owners throughout the Fenton Business Center in Chula Vista's Eastlake neighborhood reported that their tap water suddenly appeared yellow. Others said green. They all agreed the water was foul, so gross some were embarrassed to have customers use their restrooms.

The story of what went wrong there unfolds across hundreds of pages of court documents in a case that has stretched on for four years. It's one of several lawsuits that have successfully targeted Otay as a defendant.

In the Fenton case, Otay blamed the problem on stagnant water in the newly constructed complex and told the businesses to flush their lines. It didn't help. When the district came out and checked, they tested the water at a nearby fire hydrant, where it looked fine, not at the businesses' taps. The color lingered for days.

The mysterious cause was unimaginably foul. Worse, it had been happening undetected for more than a year.

The district had been delivering partially treated sewage to drinking water taps since the park opened. People had been drinking and washing their hands in water contaminated by human waste. In lawsuits, they said they'd even brushed their teeth with it and suffered from countless gastrointestinal illnesses without knowing why.

No one noticed at first because the sewage was diluted with tap water. But that summer, Otay began buying more treated sewage to put in its purple pipe system — suitable for lawns but not people. After that, what came out of the businesses' taps was 100 percent treated sewage.

The district had put a potable water meter on a pipe meant for irrigation and missed chances to catch it. Otay didn't re-inspect the facility after discovering one of its inspectors had taken a bribe on another project from a contractor involved in the park's construction.

A civil jury found Otay and other developers had acted negligently. Lawsuits have held the district liable for $3 million in damages, money Watton said will be covered by an insurer, not ratepayers. But the settlements are the latest to inflate Otay's legal bills and leave a thick trail of paper in courthouse files over the last decade.

There came Tom Harron, the district's former attorney, in 2001. He alleged that he was fired because he was white so the newly elected Bonilla could hire Latino friends. Two rival former Otay board members and a former auditor testified under oath in the case that they'd regularly heard Bonilla call Harron "El Gringo" or "white boy" — allegations he denied.

"With Mr. Bonilla," one rival board member testified, "it is not enough to simply put a man out of his job. He wants to just completely annihilate this person."

The district apologized and settled with Harron in 2007 for nearly $700,000.

There came a class of six employees (five white and one black), alleging racial discrimination as the cause of their departures around the same time as Harron. One rival board member said Bonilla had used a slur to describe the fired black employee. The former auditor, then suing the district, testified that shortly before winning his seat, Bonilla had said about Otay: "We got to get rid of all the gringos." Bonilla denied that.

The district settled in 2007 for $371,000.

♦♦♦

This case was terribly flimsy. And it carried echoes of the political retribution that had once clearly defined Otay's dark days.

But this was March 2011, and an attorney for the Otay Water District was making a case for censure to the Chula Vista Ethics Board. One of the advisory group's members, a businessman named Chris Shilling, had run unsuccessfully in November against an Otay board member, David Gonzalez Jr.

The election hadn't been close. Gonzalez, the brother of Red Sox first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, won easily after far outspending Shilling.

Shilling had taken his campaign against Gonzalez to Facebook, on a page with 46 followers. There, he called the district corrupt and accused Gonzalez of stealing campaign signs. They were baseless comments, hardly noteworthy during election season.

But they sure got the water district's attention. Otay pursued legal action. Bonilla filed a complaint with the ethics board to get Shilling booted.

Bonilla didn't do that on his own dime though. The district's ratepayers paid for the agency's attorney to work on the complaint, which purported to come from the agency's board of directors. But the board hadn't agreed to send it. Bonilla told the Union-Tribune that he, Gonzalez, Watton and an attorney had decided to.

Watton said the district got involved because Shilling had noted in campaign literature that he served on the ethics board, making his criticism carry more weight.

"If someone is just out making stuff up and lying to the public, that is of interest to the district," Watton said. "We're not corrupt."

Bonilla later told the board that he'd pay for any litigation himself, according to meeting minutes. But he didn't reimburse the district for its legal expenses.

When the agency's attorney, Dan Shinoff, presented his case to the ethics board in March, he zeroed in on what he called Shilling's malicious critique of Gonzalez and Bonilla. Shinoff, who's paid $250 an hour by the district, appeared to be settling a campaign score. Talking to commissioners, he unfurled an inflated oratory filled with its own baseless accusations.

Shinoff tried to connect Shilling to an anonymous website that attacked Gonzalez. And yet Shinoff offered no proof it was Shilling's site. Shinoff said the criticism was symptomatic of the country's devolving political discourse.

"Somebody's going to be a victim if we continue this in this society," Shinoff told the board, noting the shooting rampage that had left six dead and 13 wounded in Tucson, Ariz. a few weeks earlier.

He said an ethics board member shouldn't be allowed to make such attacks — not with so much at stake. A rebuke was absolutely necessary, he said.

"I urge you with my heart and with my soul for you to do the right thing," he said. "I come from a family of concentration camp survivors. And I can tell you from a very personal perspective, permitting this sort of dialogue only leads to tragedy."

The ethics board dismissed the complaint.

♦♦♦

Customers in the Otay district often have little reason to complain.

They pay some of the county's lowest water rates. In 2009, while other water districts told customers to cut back on their consumption or face penalties, Otay didn't, saying its customers had already conserved.

But this August, customers went berserk. A standing-room-only crowd filled a mid-afternoon board meeting. They were furious about the district's push to guarantee health care coverage for all current employees after they retire.

While other water agencies and government bodies are doing the opposite, Otay was about to increase its employees' retirement benefits. The district had struggled to articulate a clear reason why.

The fight that day was between Otay leaders and the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, and it turned nasty. Just before voting, Bonilla said something that in any other district might've sounded unusual, which evoked memories of the chilling phone messages that he and other agency officials had received a decade earlier.

"You should see the emails we got, threats to our families," Bonilla told the crowd. "It was motivated by this organization."

Fixed-income retirees erupted in howls of protest, bringing the board's discussion to a halt. Retirees were already upset about the retirement benefit boost, concerned it may impact water rates increasing faster than they said they could afford. Now it appeared that Bonilla was blaming death threats on the taxpayers association. "You're going to lie! Shut up!" one bellowed.

Bonilla quickly clarified. The taxpayers association hadn't actually convinced people to threaten board members, he said. They'd just misled the public and gotten people angry.

Two months later, Bonilla cited the anonymous threats again. This time, he was writing to the taxpayers association's board, calling the group's criticism unfounded, misleading and dangerous. Two threatening emails — "You are US enemies and deserve to die," one said — were attached as evidence.

And just as Otay had done months earlier with Shilling, another public critic, the letter concluded with its own threat.

If the taxpayers association's attack continued, Bonilla wrote, the district would sue.

Otay Water District GM Defends $300K Salary
Mark Watton Would Accept Pay Cut If Board Asked
10News.com
July 22, 2011

SAN DIEGO -- One of the highest-paid public employees in California is defending his $301,000 salary as water rates continue to rise.

10News learned Mark Watton, general manager of the Otay Water District, earns more money than Gov. Jerry Brown and spends a quarter of the year on vacation.

Watton, whose agency has 51,000 customers, told 10News, "This job is just like any CEO's job. It's 24/7. I'm never away from email or the phone, and I'm always on these premises.

According to information obtained by 10News, Watton isn't exactly there every day. His lucrative ratepayer-funded salary includes 71 days of vacation. He could take every Friday of every month off and he would still have 18 days of vacation left.

"You're trying to allude or relate us to some type of criminal prosecution going on in other cities. I agree with those prosecutions, but if you want to imply that's the case here, I disagree with that," said Watton.

There are no accusations of wrongdoing at the Otay Water District, but there are questions about Watton's salary.

Watton served on the water board since 1983, at the same time he was a business owner.

"[I] had a real estate company for a while and a waste disposal company," he said.

"You go directly to your position as general manager?" asked 10News reporter Craig Fiegener.

Watton replied, "Yes. I had certificates and coursework to be successful in the endeavor I chose."

"Would you accept a pay cut to help the agency and save consumer money?" asked Fiegener.

"If the board asked me to do that I would," he said.

10News learned Watton assumed his role in 2004. He is not a specially educated business executive.

Watton's compensation came under scrutiny after the Otay Water District approved another 7.7 percent water rate increase effective next February.

Watton's next contract negotiation could happen next month and could include another raise.

San Diego Ethics Commission refuses to release information about its attorney-lobbyists or attorney who works for SEDC

2011-10-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

“You have an excellent reputation in the community; you are an extremely careful person, and I don’t see why your answer should not be sufficient,” Commissioner and retired Judge William Howatt Jr. told Fulhorst.

The ethics of the Ethics Commission
By Dave Maass
San Diego City Beat
Oct 12, 2011

At a September meeting of the San Diego Ethics Commission, the agency’s executive director, Stacey Fulhorst, presented the mother of all catch-22s.

While inspecting lobbyist-activity records, CityBeat had learned that private attorneys retained by the Ethics Commission are also working as counsel for the Southeastern Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), a city redevelopment agency, and as lobbyists for private companies. The relationships seem to present a potential conflict of interest on multiple levels, since the commission both regulates lobbyists and enforces ethics in city government, including SEDC. Asked about this, Fulhorst said the law firm—Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff and Holtz—and the commission have put several firewalls in place.

However, since attorney-client confidentiality covers legal agreements, Fulhorst couldn’t offer proof of these safeguards without first asking the commission’s seven members to release the information.

“I would personally recommend that you do approve a waiver, a very limited waiver of just, literally, a handful of paragraphs, because I do think it’s important to demonstrate to the public that we recognize it would not be appropriate for us to receive legal services from the same law firm that was providing general counsel to SEDC on SEDC matters,” Fulhorst told commissioners on Sept. 23.

Paradoxically, Fulhorst couldn’t show the commissioners the relevant paragraphs because they’d then become public record. Nor could the commission turn to its legal counsel for advice, since the lawyers were the subject of the discussion.

The commission deliberated for 15 minutes on whether an agency that investigates conflicts of interests should be transparent regarding its own potential conflicts. Some members wondered why CityBeat wouldn’t just take Fulhorst’s word.

“You have an excellent reputation in the community; you are an extremely careful person, and I don’t see why your answer should not be sufficient,” Commissioner and retired Judge William Howatt Jr. told Fulhorst.

Some worried about setting a precedent.

“I just think we should be careful with granting such a waiver,” Commissioner Larry Westfall, an accountant, said. “Once you do it, we start to open the door for every little, two-bit newspaper in town to come here and make requests for information, too.”

Some recognized the public interest in releasing the document, but Commissioner and attorney John O’Neill alone saw that as overriding other concerns.

“I think it puts to rest any suspicion there is any impropriety here,” O’Neill said. “I don’t think it helps us to not give the document.”

The commission voted 5-1 (one member was absent) against releasing the information, rejecting Fulhorst’s offer to conduct more research on an issue that wouldn’t have come up a year ago.

With Proposition E in 2004, San Diego voters authorized the Ethics Commission to hire its own legal counsel instead of relying on the advice of the City Attorney’s office. Proponents argued it was problematic for the city attorney to represent both the commission and the city officials subject to commission investigations. They also noted that City Attorney staff are also subject to commission enforcement actions.

For the first five years, the commission employed a staff attorney, but when the lawyer departed last year, the agency decided to contract with an outside firm to allow more flexibility. The Stutz firm submitted a bid and, Fulhorst said, was selected because of the “unique expertise and knowledge” of Christina Cameron, a longtime City Hall staffer specializing in ethics and campaign reform who’d recently earned a law degree. Under the terms of the bid, Cameron would serve as a general counsel, working under the supervision of “associate general counsel” Prescilla Dugard and Leslie Devaney. All three were serving as counsel to SEDC and lobbyists, but the firm agreed that Cameron would be severed from SEDC matters and no longer register as a lobbyist.

In the first half of 2011, the Ethics Commission paid the Stutz firm $48,000 in fees, and another $3,000 to a second firm that handles cases when a conflict arises. During the same period, the Stutz firm collected at least $203,000 from SEDC. As a lobbying organization, the firm represents EverFlow Resources, Staff Pro and Western Towing.

Fulhorst, Cameron and Devaney described to CityBeat many of the physical and procedural measures in place to protect against a conflict. The firm also amended its lobbyist reports following CityBeat’s inquiry to better reflect Devaney and Dugard’s involvement with the Ethics Commission: Each provided less than an hour of legal services in the first half of the year.

Tracy Westen, CEO of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles-based watchdog organization, says he’s less concerned with the specific SEDC issue than he is alarmed to learn that registered lobbyists are providing legal advice to lobbyist regulators.

“Ideally, if you contract for ethics advice with outside counsel, you want that outside counsel to give you independent advice,” Westen says. “But if the outside counsel is also lobbying the city, its advice may tilt in favor of lobbyists in general. Simply recusing themselves from judgments involving a client they’re lobbying for is a good idea, but it does not purge them of pro-lobbyist sentiments.”

Of the 106 complaints processed by the commission in 2010, 38 percent—the largest portion—were alleged violations of the city’s lobbying ordinance, according to the commission’s annual report.

“If a matter were heavily related to lobbying and I felt it was inappropriate to talk to [Devaney or Dugard] because they are registered lobbyists, then I have other partners and other senior attorneys that I can work with if I need to,” Cameron says.

Westen says that’s not enough. “It’s very difficult for a law firm to purge itself of this appearance of a conflict if some partners are lobbying and others are not,” Westen says. “I think the city really needs to go to a law firm that is not doing lobbying.”

Fulhorst says that’s an impractical idea coming from someone “working in academia,” since the “vast majority of law firms” in San Diego are registered as lobbyists under the city ordinance...

Why San Diegans Are to Blame for the City's Problems

2011-10-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

Why San Diegans Are to Blame for the City's Problems
September 30, 2011
by Liam Dillon

About nine months ago, I asked Mayor Jerry Sanders about critics who say he focuses too much on downtown at the expense of the city's other neighborhoods. The mayor stopped me before I finished my question.

"You mean Steve Erie?" Sanders said.

The mayor, who rarely calls out his critics by name, was referring to University of California, San Diego political science professor Steve Erie. Now, Erie has given Sanders much more to work with.

Last month, Erie and two other academics released a book on San Diego city government called "Paradise Plundered." The book, as its name implies, takes Sanders, other city leaders and even residents to task for San Diego's financial and governance problems.

Erie blames weak leadership, a disinterested public and, above all, low taxes as the source of San Diego's decay. I spoke with him about the city's financial problems, his critique of Petco Park and other major development projects and his response to Sanders' criticism.

Erie also made a case for why corruption isn't always the worst thing in government.

I'd like to start with the central premise of your book. You say that San Diego has a shiny exterior and crumbling underbelly, sort of a Potemkin village. Can you explain what you mean by that?

There are really two faces or sides to San Diego. There's the San Diego the tourists see. There's a high-tech industry that spawned the new economy by places like UCSD. That's the public face of San Diego at least in terms of the local PR machine, which is very good at getting the San Diego image out.

The reality of San Diego is on the public sector side. I think on the first page we talk about an increasingly grim and visible civic reality, which is dry rot for public services and infrastructure. That's still largely hidden. You get intimations of it like during the 2003 and 2007 fire when you suddenly realize we have very little fire protection.

The problem with San Diego is that the ocean and the sun are both our blessing and our curse. Obviously, it's a wonderful place to live in if you can afford it. But the problem is, is that it induces sort of a sense of complacency that as long as the sun comes up everything is OK.

You say that San Diegans are as much to blame for the city's problems as its politicians. So why are they, or why are we, to blame?

You have to understand history. The first thing you need to understand about San Diego is that for years it was a military town. Navy Town, USA. That meant a couple of things in terms of the willingness to pay for local services. One is military pay wasn't all that great. Number two there was a sense that Uncle Sam would provide.
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In addition to this military heritage, there's a libertarian culture here that's particularly anti-local government: Local government is a hot-bed of waste, fraud and corruption. You hear this not only from politicians but from voters all the time.

It's very hard to move voters. The only thing I think in this town that will move them is really a grand coalition. It is the elected officials using the bully pulpit. And a united business community actively supporting things. And the media on board. You see that in a place like Chicago. It's a Republican business community. It's a Democratic machine. The Chicago Tribune has hated the Daleys for years. Yet when it comes to raising revenue and taxes for needed public services and investments they all speak with one voice.

Isn't Chicago notorious for being the most corrupt big city in the country?

But it's a better form of corruption than you have here in San Diego. It's systemic corruption rather than ad hoc or personal corruption.

OK.

What I mean by that is, it's cost plus 10 or 15 percent. You just add that on. It's tithing on the part of the machine. And then the services get delivered.

Why should the public stand for that?

Because it works. You just pay more. It works. In San Diego, you pay less and it doesn't work.

But if you look at Chicago's pension situation from a pure numbers perspective, they're in a lot worse place than San Diego is.

But a place like Chicago and a place like Los Angeles, which is also facing pension difficulties now, they tend to have sources of revenue and an ability or capability to raise revenue. Both of those things are lacking in San Diego. In Los Angeles, right, they just took money out of the Department of Water and Power. It was an ATM machine.

The deficit looks big right now, but the ability to solve it within let's say a five to 10 year period is greater in those communities than it is here.

But how is borrowing from the Department of Water and Power or taking from the Department of Water and Power, how is that good government?

That wasn't the question that you asked. That's a secondary problem, right?

Is it the right way to run a government? Is it really a hidden tax on ratepayers? Yeah, it is. But that's the way, until recently, these places have worked.

What's interesting about San Diego is that we were just the first to get caught. Because we were an early and eager underfunder of the pension among other things. If anything I hope that this book will be read as a cautionary tale of what happens when you go down this route.

Is it fair to say you blame San Diego's financial crisis on inadequate revenues?

On inadequate revenues, yes.

Why is that the primary cause?

San Diego is well below the average in terms of spending on a lot of metrics.

It doesn't mean that it's at the bottom. There are others that are at the bottom, too. But on average the other California cities they spend like today 50 percent more on basic services. They don't have unaccredited fire departments. They don't have the smallest police department in the nation of any big city. They don't have roads with potholes where the deferred maintenance is such. So much of the crisis of public services and infrastructure is our unwillingness to spend money on services.

Back in 1972 we were spending just about the average. You'll notice that the trend line begins to diverge, San Diego dropping further and further behind.

Some could say L.A. is the worst case possible. They throw money at government and public services. But, and not to say that any San Diegan would like to live in Los Angeles, but if there were a major fire where would you wanna be?...

The Housing Commission’s ‘Trojan Horse’

2011-08-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

The Housing Commission’s ‘Trojan Horse’
Aug 23, 2011
by Will Carless

In late 2008, as foreclosures flooded the local housing market and the nation's economy hovered on the brink of meltdown, the San Diego City Council scrambled for ideas to tackle the crisis here...

The San Diego Housing Commission responded with a plan: It could buy foreclosures and tackle the city's epidemic head-on. But the commission, which is overseen by a board of unelected appointees, first wanted to be set free.

The agency wanted to buy properties without the City Council's approval. Waiting as long as 90 days for the council to approve the bids would unnecessarily delay highly competitive deals that had to be done quickly, the commission argued.

The City Council agreed. At a March 2009 public meeting, it approved a new policy for the agency, handing it the power to spend public money buying property with radically reduced oversight. Given that this was about fighting the foreclosure crisis, Councilmen Tony Young and Ben Hueso reasoned that cutting down on bureaucracy made sense...

In the two and a half years since that meeting, however, the Housing Commission has rarely used its new power to buy foreclosures.

The agency has bought just eight foreclosed single-family homes and one foreclosed apartment building in that time. That's 45 units out of 756 units the commission has bought or built since then.

Rather than mopping up after the foreclosure crisis, the agency has instead used its new freedom to spend more than $70 million buying non-foreclosed apartment buildings and lending developers tens of millions of dollars to build new affordable apartments.

The commission has been able to make those deals while bypassing the City Council, avoiding the public scrutiny it once would've faced.

Three of the City Council members who approved the Housing Commission's new rules now say they had no idea the power would be used for anything but tackling the foreclosure crisis.

Former Councilwoman Donna Frye called the policy a "Trojan horse" that has allowed the commission almost free reign to build a huge affordable housing portfolio using public money, while facing little public oversight.

Commission officials and the policy's chief proponent, Councilman Todd Gloria, say they made every effort to communicate the far-reaching effect of the agency's new power when the policy was approved...

But the stated motivation for the new freedom, the public hearing in which it was approved and even the report to the City Council all came under the banner of addressing foreclosures. The need for the new power was never fully explained to the City Council or the public. Nor did the agency ever explain how the policy was actually supposed to help it fight foreclosures.

The freedom was also granted at the same time the commission prepared to enter a new era as a heavyweight property investor and developer, an endeavor that was far riskier than simply buying up foreclosures.

The commission's expanding role gave it all the more reason to properly explain the implications of the new rule, said Councilman Kevin Faulconer, one of the three council members who say they were duped.

"The focus of that policy change was clearly on the issue of foreclosures," Faulconer said. "If, in fact, the Housing Commission wanted to go and do something different, what I expect is for them to come and get permission to do so, and then to follow the rules."

In early 2009, few political buzzwords had greater cachet than "foreclosure." Across the city, the wreckage of the busted housing market had created neighborhood eyesores and destroyed family dreams.

At the same time, the Housing Commission was on the move. It had just hired a new CEO, replacing the agency's former leader, Betsy Morris, who had led the agency for 14 years.

New chief Rick Gentry was a veteran of the affordable housing industry and had taken the reins at an exciting time. A massive real estate deal was about to flood the commission's coffers with almost $100 million to spend exclusively on acquiring new property.

That move had been in motion long before the City Council asked the commission for help on foreclosures. Before leaving the agency in 2008, Morris had signed off on a deal to transfer more than 1,300 properties from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development's public housing program to the commission.

The plan was to take out loans against those properties, giving the agency the cash to spring onto the local affordable housing development scene in a big way...

But the commission wanted to make those deals without first discussing them at public City Council meetings. Gentry and Gloria, a former housing commissioner, said that would reduce bureaucracy, allowing the agency to quickly take advantage of the slumping market by bidding on deals.

Being able to make deals unilaterally represented a significant change in how the commission did business. Since the agency‘s creation in 1979, it had been required to bring each of its acquisitions to the City Council for approval.

Changing that requirement faced one crucial hurdle: The City Council had to be convinced that devolving such far-reaching power to the commission was necessary.

Commission officials presented the sea change to the City Council as a minor element of their broader plan to tackle foreclosures...

Spirits were high when the City Council met on March 24, 2009. The Housing Commission had a plan to tackle the foreclosure epidemic, the council was relieved, and the platitudes were flowing...

How would the policy actually address the foreclosure crisis? Nobody asked. And nobody explained it.

In the absence of any explanation, Frye, Faulconer and Councilman Carl DeMaio thought they understood the plan: The commission would buy foreclosed single-family homes that would otherwise fall into disrepair — the boarded-up homes Young had talked about...

Hueso, Young and Gloria were on board, too. They'd met privately with Gentry in the run-up to the meeting. They later said they fully understood what was going on, and knew the change would allow the agency to make any acquisitions without prior City Council approval.

A spokeswoman said Councilwoman Sherri Lightner also knew the policy didn't only apply to foreclosures.

The council's decision to sharply reduce public oversight over the spending of tens of millions of dollars took 27 minutes.

It was approved unanimously.

Now the Housing Commission had more power and more freedom.

Gloria and Gentry said the commission originally planned to use its new power to buy foreclosed apartment buildings to convert into affordable housing. That was part of the agency's plan to address the foreclosure crisis, they said.

But the commission only bought one foreclosed apartment complex and was outbid on another.

Even if the commission had bought more than one foreclosed apartment building, it wouldn't have done anything to fight the foreclosure crisis.

Unlike foreclosed single-family homes being boarded up, foreclosed apartment buildings were hot properties in 2009. They still are today. In San Diego, so-called "vulture investors" have been snapping up foreclosed apartment buildings as soon as they go on sale. That's one way investors have taken advantage of the slumping real estate market.

The commission had really gotten permission to become one of those investors: It wanted the freedom to snap up distressed bargains that lots of other people also wanted to buy.

Someone would've bought those foreclosed apartment buildings anyway. Whether it was the Housing Commission or some other investor made no difference to the city's foreclosure epidemic.

Local housing market expert Gary London said taking advantage of the foreclosure crisis is fundamentally different than helping stabilize the market or aiding struggling homeowners.

"The Housing Commission perverted the foreclosure crisis for reasons of their own profit," London said. "Call it what it is, it has nothing to do with helping foreclosures and to suggest it does is either felony stupidity or downright lying."

Since the 2009 meeting, the Housing Commission has been on a development tear, investing almost $30 million of the public's money to develop six apartment projects from Nestor to Torrey Highlands.

Those deals weren't about boarded-up homes or foreclosures. And they were far more complicated and risky than the simple property purchases half the City Council expected.

Those development deals most concern Frye, DeMaio and Faulconer. They're furious the projects weren't brought to the City Council for a final discussion and vote.

Development projects have a far greater risk of going wrong than straightforward property purchases. Construction can go awry, costs can shoot up and financing can go sour. The commission is largely beholden to the private developer it chooses as a partner, because the developer oversees construction and selects the company that manages the building once it's built.

That developer also receives a fee, paid out of public dollars. On most of the development deals put together by the commission, that fee was $1.4 million...

Washington Post condemns Darrell Issa’s “overreach on oversight”

2011-08-22T17:48:00.001-07:00

Washington Post condemns Darrell Issa’s “overreach on oversight”
Lucas O'Conner
Courage Campaign
August 22, 2011

There are plenty of folks who have been wary of the NLRB investigation into Boeing, including the Washington Post editorial board. They've expressed concern in the past that the case could end up going too far by focusing too much on the specific labor questions involved.

But even with that concern, Darrell Issa has gone way too far for them. In an editorial yesterday, The Post editorial board called out Darrell Issa for overreach and risking the integrity of the ongoing case:

But Mr. Issa and his committee have gone beyond questioning the NLRB’s policy to threatening to interfere with a legitimate — even if misguided — legal proceeding. This month, the panel issued a subpoena demanding a slew of documents involving the NLRB action against Boeing. The committee wants to know how the NLRB’s Office of General Counsel decided to target Boeing and whether it did so in cahoots with the White House or a union. The agency has resisted turning over certain documents it says could jeopardize its ability to pursue its case. Lafe Solomon, the NLRB’s acting general counsel, testified before the committee this summer; the board has also turned over more than 1,500 pages related to the Boeing matter.

As the Post goes on to remind us, many of the documents that Issa's fishing expedition is seeking have also been unsuccessfully sought by Boeing. Issa's wide-ranging subpoena would make those same records public, serving as an end run around the legal decision that Boeing should not have access to those records while the case is ongoing. Not only would Issa's subpoena overrule the court, it would undermine the integrity of the procedings while aiding a specific party in the case. As the Post says, that's "overreach on oversight."

But this is specifically Issa's plan -- to undermine and ultimately close the courthouse doors to workers...

SDUT's Jeff McDonald defends Darrell Issa against "most serious allegations"

2011-08-22T09:18:00.001-07:00

Update:
It turns out that the New York Times was given faulty information by the Assessor's Office, and that there was faulty information in an Issa tax filing. Here are three corrections by the New York Times.

Correction: August 16, 2011http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

An article on Monday about the business empire of Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, misstated the worth of the companies involved in his splitting up of a holding company. The split entailed separate multimillion-dollar companies, not multibillion-dollar ones.

Correction: August 26, 2011

An article on Aug. 15 about Representative Darrell Issa’s business dealings, using erroneous information that Mr. Issa’s family foundation filed with the Internal Revenue Service, referred incorrectly to his sale of an AIM mutual fund in 2008. A spokesman for the California Republican now says that the I.R.S. filing is “an incorrect document.” The spokesman, Frederick R. Hill, said that based on Mr. Issa’s private brokerage account records, which he made public with redactions, the purchase of the mutual fund resulted in a $125,000 loss, not a $357,000 gain.

And the article, using incorrect information from the San Diego county assessor’s office, misstated the purchase price for a medical office plaza Mr. Issa’s company bought in Vista, Calif., in 2008. It cost $16.3 million, the assessor’s office now says — not $10.3 million — because the assessor mistakenly omitted in public records a $6 million loan Mr. Issa’s company assumed in the acquisition. Therefore the value of the property remained essentially unchanged, and did not rise 60 percent after Mr. Issa secured federal funding to widen a road alongside the plaza.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has not published the New York Times' accusations about Darrell Issa's use of his position as US congressman to increase his wealth. The SDUT has, however, launched a vigorous defense of Issa regarding four cherry-picked "most serious allegations."

Jeff McDonald's picks of "most serious allegations":

1) Jeff McDonald accuses the NYT of incorrectly describing the area in which Issa's office is located.

The New York Times writes, "Here on the third floor of a gleaming office building overlooking a golf course in the rugged foothills north of San Diego, Darrell Issa, the entrepreneur, oversees the hub of a growing financial empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars."

McDonald says that even though the Shadowridge Country Club golf course is a "1.5 mile drive from Issa's office," it's wrong to say that the building is "overlooking" the golf course because not enough of the golf course is visible from Issa's particular window. That was sneaky, Jeff. You imply that the New York Times said the gold course was visible form Issa's window. Would you have preferred that the NYT give the exact mileage to the golf course, using decimal points? No, Jeff, that would be focusing on the wrong facts.

McDonald next disputes the statement that the area is "in the rugged foothills north of San Diego." I went to Google maps and saw two areas of rugged foothills very near to Issa's office, to the east and west. When I zoom out a bit, I see huge areas of rugged foothills to the north, east, and south. It looks to me like the NYT got it right.

2) The SDUT admits that Issa's electronics company may be a supplier for Toyota dealers, but tries to make the point that Issa didn't have a conflict of interest when he went easy on Toyota during his investigation of sudden acceleration problems in Toyota vehicles. Does the SDUT believe that Toyota has no interest in or influence over the products that its dealers offer to customers.

The NYT wrote, "But perhaps his clearest statement on the issue [of Issa's attitude about recusing himself] came last year amid Toyota’s recalls of millions of automobiles with dangerous acceleration problems. Then, Mr. Issa brushed aside suggestions that his electronics company’s role as a major supplier of alarms to Toyota made him go easy on the automaker as he led an investigation into the recalls."

3) The New York Times writes, "In one case, more than $800,000 in earmarks he arranged will help widen a busy thoroughfare in front of a medical plaza he bought for $10.3 million."

The SDUT argues that obtaining earmarks for traffic improvements in front of his building actually hurt Issa financially by raising the price of the property before he bought it, and that the NYT was wrong about the sales price. Obviously, the building will continue to have its value enhanced by the traffic improvements. And I'd like to see more information about the history of the building and its changing sales price. It's interesting that the SDUT relies on Ernie Dronenburg, who has been known to falsify his credentials. Why doesn't the SDUT tell us about the $10.3 million figure used by the Times? Where did that figure come from? Clearly, the SDUT doesn't want to do an investigation, it simply wants to make claims without telling the whole story. In my experience, this is typical of the SDUT. Editor

4) "1900 percent profit"
Does Issa's Family Foundation produce "sharp profits"? The NYT says yes. The SDUT implies that this is not true by quoting Issa's spokesman regarding a single transaction. We need more information about this to know for sure. And the SDUT isn't exploring the issue; it's simply quoting Issa's spokesman. Not much investigation going on at the SDUT.

REPORT: Rep. Issa's Ongoing Ethics Problem
Media Matters Action Network
May 20, 2011

This week, it was revealed that DEI Holdings Inc., the car-alarm company founded by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and on whose board he sits, had for years underpaid tariffs on parts imported from China. This is only the latest ethical scandal to taint Issa since he became the chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
Issa Firm Underpaid Tariffs For Years

Issa Sits On Board Of Company That Just Paid $2.5 Million In Back Tariffs. From The San Diego Union-Tribune:

The Vista car-alarm company once owned by Congressman Darrell Issa was paying about half the required tariffs on certain parts it imported from China for years and paid an estimated $2.5 million in back duties earlier this year to rectify the situation.

Issa no longer owns DEI Holdings Inc., although he is still on the board of the company, which is being sold to Boston-based Charlesbank Capital Partners for $285 million in cash. [San Diego Union-Tribune, 5/18/11]

"Issa Said He Was Aware Of The Misclassifications And Participated In Efforts To Resolve Them." From The San Diego Union-Tribune:

In a prepared response to questions from The Watchdog, Issa said he was aware of the misclassifications and participated in efforts to resolve them.

"Once these issues came to the attention of the board of directors, we called for an independent review by expert counsel," he wrote. "My understanding is the company has made appropriate tariff adjustments and disclosures both to Customs and our independent auditors." [San Diego Union-Tribune, 5/18/11]

DEI Did Not Repay Back Duties Until After Whistleblower Filed Complaint. From The San Diego Union-Tribune: "Former DEI executive Mike Wilhelm noted that the disclosure was made a year after the fact, and only after he filed a whistle-blower complaint with Customs on March 14 of this year. 'They weren't going to do it unless I forced them to,' said Wilhelm, a DEI vice president who resigned over the issue in March after 10 years with the company. "Frankly, I became ashamed to work there.'" [San Diego Union-Tribune, 5/18/11, emphasis added]

Whistleblower: DEI "Hired A Consultant" Who Told Them Not To Pay Back Import Duties. From Wilhelm's complaint to U.S. Customs and Border Protection: "Company rejected the advice to legal counsel to file required notice and pay back import duties of ~ $3m (difference between 1.3% and 2.5%) because they hired a consultant who told them that unless there was a whistle blower, they could get away without paying." [Wilhelm complaint to CBP, 3/14/11, via San Diego Union-Tribune]

Expert: "This Company Has Not Been Meeting That Reasonable Care Standard." From The San Diego Union-Tribune:

Minnesota trade consultant John Goodrich said importers played a cat-and-mouse game with regulators to minimize their tariffs until 1993, when Congress passed the Customs Modernization Act. That law placed new responsibilities on companies bringing goods into the United States.

"Importers are now held to a hyper due-diligence level known as reasonable care," Goodrich said.

"This company has not been meeting that reasonable care standard," Goodrich said after reviewing the whistle-blower complaint and the company's financial disclosure statements divulging the problem.

He noted that every duty form states the importer "will immediately furnish to the appropriate CBP officer any information showing a different statement of facts" than those reported on the shipping records.

Goodrich said, "It is difficult to justify that waiting six to eight months to make corrections and to disclose constitutes 'immediately.'" [San Diego Union-Tribune, 5/18/11, emphasis added]

A Businessman in Congress Helps His District and Himself

2011-08-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

A Businessman in Congress Helps His District and Himself
Darrell Issa has been a forceful advocate for business while his own companies thrive.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times
August 14, 2011

VISTA, Calif. — Here on the third floor of a gleaming office building overlooking a golf course in the rugged foothills north of San Diego, Darrell Issa, the entrepreneur, oversees the hub of a growing financial empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Just a few steps down the hall, Representative Darrell Issa, the powerful Republican congressman, runs the local district office where his constituents come for help.

The proximity of the two offices reflects Mr. Issa’s dual careers, a meshing of public and private interests rarely seen in government.

Most wealthy members of Congress push their financial activities to the side, with many even placing them in blind trusts to avoid appearances of conflicts of interest. But Mr. Issa (pronounced EYE-suh), one of Washington’s richest lawmakers, may be alone in the hands-on role he has played in overseeing a remarkable array of outside business interests since his election in 2000.

Even as he has built a reputation as a forceful Congressional advocate for business, Mr. Issa has bought up office buildings, split a holding company into separate multimillion-dollar businesses, started an insurance company, traded hundreds of millions of dollars in securities, invested in overseas funds, retained an interest in his auto-alarm company and built up a family foundation.

As his private wealth and public power have grown, so too has the overlap between his private and business lives, with at least some of the congressman’s government actions helping to make a rich man even richer and raising the potential for conflicts.

He has secured millions of dollars in Congressional earmarks for road work and public works projects that promise improved traffic and other benefits to the many commercial properties he owns here north of San Diego. In one case, more than $800,000 in earmarks he arranged will help widen a busy thoroughfare in front of a medical plaza he bought for $10.3 million.

Six months into chairmanship, Issa isn’t what either side expected

2011-07-31T15:32:00.000-07:00

Six months into chairmanship, Issa isn’t what either side expected
By Ben Pershing
July 11, 2011

When Rep. Darrell Issa assumed the role of chief watchdog of the Obama administration, both sides of the ideological spectrum had big expectations.

Liberals thought the Republican from California would be a media-hungry inquisitor who would stop at nothing to embarrass President Obama. And some conservatives believed he would quickly uncover high-level corruption that must be lurking just behind the White House gates.

Six months into Issa’s tenure as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, neither side’s predictions have proved quite right — although they still disagree about whether he’s doing a good job. And the congressman has been surprised by the experience.

“There’s more job than I expected,” Issa said in an interview last week. “With the limited resources that we have . . . we’ve done about 80 hearings and forums [but] what you find is it’s not even half of what we should have looked into or what we should do. We have a huge backlog.”

Issa helped set the bar high, saying in early January that Obama’s was “one of the most corrupt administrations” of modern times. If that were true, it seemed to follow, scandals should be easy to find.

That has not been the case, though Issa is particularly proud of the work his committee has done on Operation Fast and Furious, a controversial venture by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that targeted Mexican gun traffickers but has been linked to the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Issa has also proposed a broad overhaul of the U.S. Postal Service that would eliminate Saturday mail delivery. And he has pushed to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in workforce costs across the federal government.

“Issa’s style is much more focused than the media perceived it would be. And the White House wanted to make him into something he isn’t,” said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), who chairs an oversight subcommittee.

Although the committee has produced few major investigative breakthroughs, McHenry said it has been hitting “the singles and doubles” that could eventually build into something larger.

“Expectations that you would have an immediate ‘aha’ moment are removed from reality,” he said.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), another subcommittee head, said “there’s a learning curve” for a new chairman but predicted that many of the investigations the committee has underway would bear real fruit by next year.

Democrats paint a different picture.

“Frankly, I think the jury is still out on what kind of chairman he wants to be,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (Va.), a member of the oversight panel. “At times we see the statesman Darrell Issa and other times he has reverted to the very petty, partisan Darrell Issa.”...

$1.8 Billion Loss Spooks Pension Board

2011-07-23T15:29:00.000-07:00

Some board members were miffed that they weren't told about the loss. The U-T paraphrases a pension consultant as saying it "conducts extensive reviews of the investment managers it recommends but routinely excludes some details from their reports to clients."

$1.8 Billion Loss Spooks Pension Board

The board that oversees the county employee pension system declined to invest $100 million with a fund run by a trader [Boaz Weinstein] who lost $1.8 billion in controversial investments three years ago, the U-T reports. According to HFMWeek, a magazine for hedge fund managers, the firm targets net returns of approximately 15%.

Some board members were miffed that they weren't told about the loss. The U-T paraphrases a pension consultant as saying it "conducts extensive reviews of the investment managers it recommends but routinely excludes some details from their reports to clients."

Media stories about the trader and his epic 2008 problems are among the first hits on a Google search of his name.

Allegation in lawsuit: Mayor Jerry Sanders or one of his deputies fired a high-level San Diego whistle-blower

2011-07-17T18:03:00.001-07:00

Salacious City Lawsuit Nears Trial
Jul 17, 2011
by Liam Dillon
Voice of San Diego

The two-year-old allegations are as salacious as they come: Mayor Jerry Sanders or one of his deputies fired a high-level city of San Diego employee because he was helping investigate contracting involving one of the mayor's supporters.

And the lawsuit that makes those allegations doesn't show signs of going away.

Last month, the City Council approved an additional $250,000 to defend the case on top of the $200,000 the city has already spent on outside attorneys. The $450,000 cost doesn't include more than a year of work by the City Attorney's Office before it bowed out of the case. A trial date in San Diego Superior Court has been set for Oct. 7.

The city's outside lawyer, Janice Brown, said the money for her bills is well spent. The former employee's current settlement offer is at least three to four times the entire bill, she told the City Council.

The gulf between the two sides is as wide as the allegations' seriousness.

Former city deputy economic development director Scott Kessler filed suit in July 2009, alleging the Mayor's Office directed him to bend contracting rules to favor Marco Li Mandri, a well-known civic leader in the city's Little Italy neighborhood and a Sanders supporter. Kessler says he refused. Kessler also argues the Mayor's Office ultimately fired him after he gave a copy of a joint FBI and San Diego Police Department investigation he obtained about Li Mandri's involvement in a North Bay parking and business improvement district to the city's Ethics Commission. (That criminal case never came to anything. San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis' office didn't pursue charges in that case, and Li Mandri has denied any wrongdoing.)

Sanders' office says it never told Kessler to improperly favor Li Mandri. It maintains Kessler wasn't laid off for his cooperation with any investigation. Instead, it argues it laid off Kessler, along with numerous other high-level managers, as part of mid-year budget cuts in 2008.

The lawsuit has been contentious and included a rare deposition of Sanders. The mayor has denied repeatedly all of the allegations including as recently as in an interview last week. Brown, the city's outside attorney, said the same to City Council last month.

"We believe that we'll have an opportunity in front of a jury to show that they're not true," she said. "That's why we're opposing it."

But for the last eight months, the case hasn't focused on these scandalous claims. Instead, both sides have fought primarily over an administrative issue: whether Kessler needed to complain formally to the city's Ethics Commission about his firing before filing suit.

This legal defense, Brown said, not only protects the city in this case, but also sets a precedent for any future employment lawsuits against the city. If successful, she said, it could save the city time and money going forward. Brown, who is a former federal Justice Department attorney and former board member of the city's downtown redevelopment agency, added she has cut her hourly rate almost in half to $260 for her work on the case. Through the end of May, lawyers at her firm had spent more than 700 hours on the lawsuit, invoices show.

Settling the case hasn't been an option because Kessler is asking for too much money, Brown added. His most recent settlement offer is for $1.5 million. The city hasn't bothered countering.

"Do you respond to that in real numbers or do we say, 'You're out of the stratosphere?'" Brown said in an interview.

Kessler's attorney, Joshua Gruenberg, said the city should bother with a counter offer. It's typical for plaintiffs to take less than their initial demand, he said. Gruenberg added that he made his first settlement offer in November 2009 for less than $1 million. The cost has increased because of all the hours he's worked since.

"I don't know if I've ever spent more time on a case than this one," Gruenberg said. He added he believed Kessler would prevail in court.

Regardless, both Gruenberg and Brown said they were open to settlement talks before the Oct. 7 trial. A lot of legal issues remain. Gruenberg is trying to depose the mayor for a second time and Brown is fighting it. The question about Kessler needing to make a formal complaint about his firing to the Ethics Commission before filing a lawsuit is unresolved. Then, of course, there's Kessler's actual wrongful termination claims to decide.

Asked if the cost of defending the lawsuit was justifiable, Sanders replied, "I would imagine you would want an attorney defending you if you were sued also."

[Maura Larkins comment: Of course we would, Jerry. But we'd have to pay for it. The problem here is, the taxpayers are paying for your expensive lawyers. You should have settled long ago.]

A bribery scandal is being investigated at the state's Community Care Licensing office in San Diego,

2011-07-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

News 8 Exclusive: State licensing employees accused of taking bribes
Posted: Jun 28, 2011 7:00 PM PDT Updated: Jul 01, 2011 6:10 PM PDT
By David Gotfredson

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (CBS 8) -- A bribery scandal is being investigathttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifed at the state's Community Care Licensing office in San Diego, a division of the California Department of Social Services.

Officials confirm the employment of three state inspectors has been terminated after they were accused of taking thousands of dollars in bribes from operators of local residential care facilities for the elderly.

The state licensing inspectors worked at the offices of Community Care Licensing in Mission Valley. They are identified in court documents as Conchita Valero, Lydia Williams and Christina Nepomuceno.

The employees held the job title Licensing Program Analyst (LPA) and, as such, they inspected and licensed assisted living homes for the elderly in San Diego County.

According to a search warrant dated June 2 obtained by News 8, investigators are now seeking bank records to try to prove that the state inspectors were taking bribes from the owners or operators of several assisted living facilities.

Iris Ramirez, 49, runs four senior care homes in Mira Mesa under the name Ambassador Senior Retreat.

The search warrant alleges Ramirez bought airline tickets to fly LPA Valero and LPA Williams to the Philippines for a vacation, and also gave Valero $2,800 in cash.

In exchange, Ramirez's licenses were fast tracked and "completed in two months or less" instead of the average "five to six months," according to the warrant.

When interviewed by investigators, Ramirez "stated that the airline tickets were a ‘gift'; a ‘thank you' for licensing her facility so quickly," the warrant alleges. Each airline ticket cost $1,044, the warrant reads.

"Ramirez admitted to paying LPA Valero $2,800 cash and that LPA Valero was ‘probably' not documenting deficiencies at the facilities in exchange for the money," according to the warrant.

Contacted at her home in Murrieta, Ramirez told News 8 the airline tickets and the $2,800 in cash were gifts and she refused to answer questions.

"I don't want to say anything more. Sorry," said Ramirez.

Also named in the search warrant is the Eternal Sunshine Care assisted living facility on Quince Street in San Diego's Oak Park neighborhood, owned by Selma Teer, 36.

The search warrant claims Teer had purchased a home in Mira Mesa that she hoped to license as a Community Care facility; and gave LPA Nepomuceno $3,000 in cash.

When Nepomuceno left on medical leave from work, the search warrant claims Teer left the following voice mail message on Nepomuceno's state-issued cell phone:

"(You are) not returning my call. You are not paying my money back. You want a bribe for my application for my license. You lied. You are such a liar. You want a bribe, do your job. You don't do your job; you give me my money back."

In an interview at her Oak Park facility, Teer denied using the word "bribe" in the voicemail message, and said she did not bribe anybody.

"I don't even know what a bribe is. I don't know the meaning of it," Teer said.

Teer told News 8 she believed the $3,000 in cash she paid to LPA Nepomuceno was a loan, and that the payment was set up by her former business partner, Iris Ramirez.

"Iris Ramirez is the one that put me in this position," Teer said. "I'm 100% helping people. So you help people and this is what you get."

The search warrant also names Happy World residential care facility in Poway, once run by 56-year-old Maria Blume; and the Golden Touch III facility in Mira Mesa, formerly operated by Blume's nephew, who gave LPA Williams $5,000 in 2009, according to the records.

Blume initially told News 8 she would answer questions about the bribery allegations, but then did not return a message left on her cell phone seeking comment.

A spokesperson for the California Department of Social Services declined to comment on the ongoing investigation but did confirm the employees in question are no longer on the payroll.

"Each employee has a right to privacy and I'm not going to discuss personnel matters," spokesperson Michael Weston said. "I can just tell you that these three individuals no longer work for the Department of Social Services."

The bribery allegations remain under investigation by the Department of Social Services and no criminal charges have been filed against any of the state employees or the facility operators.

On Monday, News 8 requested access to the public inspection files for all seven assisted living facilities in question. Weston said the records will be made available in the coming days after confidential information is removed.

Mayor Jerry Sanders uses the word "extortion" to describe redevelopment bill

2011-06-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

See also Redevelopment Midnight Deal.

Redevelopment bill passes, threatens local funding
Downtown effort could lose $50 million
By Roger Showley
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
June 15, 2011 http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Downtown's continued redevelopment could come to halt if the Legislature's measure passed June 15 goes into effect, shifting much of the downtown property tax base to local schools...

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders called the votes "an extortion attempt" in the face of attempts by pro-redevelopment cities to work out a compromise that would have yielded funds for the state without killing redevelopment programs.

However, private property rights advocates who make up a coalition called "Stop the Money Pit," hailed the Legislature's action, although it promised "much work to do" in ending redevelopment because of the school-funding option that passed.

The measure was passed after months of consideration of an alternate reform sought by Gov. Jerry Brown, who proposed to dissolve the state's roughly 400 redevelopment agencies.

That measure, not passed by either the Assembly or Senate, would have shifted the redevelopment money to schools, cities, counties and special districts after taking into account existing debt obligations and other contracts.

Brown also hoped the measure would shift $1.7 billion to help close the state's budget gap, now standing at about $10 billion...

An echo of San Diego redevelopment agencies in Washington D.C.?

2011-05-16T12:25:00.000-07:00

Million-Dollar Wasteland: A Washington Post Investigation
Speculators score, District loses in affordable-housing deal
By Debbie Cenziper
May 15, 2011
Washington Post

It sure looked like a good deal at the time.

A nonprofit developer promised to spend millions renovating three rotting apartment complexes in some of the most blighted neighborhoods of Southeast Washington. It would be one of the largest redevelopment projects in years east of the Anacostia River, helping dozens of low-income renters suffering through roof leaks and winters without heat.

In late 2007, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty sent a letter to the D.C. Council touting the developer’s experience, construction team and financing. The council swiftly approved the deal, lending $3.5 million in federal funds to help pay for the renovation of 98 units priced for the poor.

But the project died before a shovel ever hit dirt.

East of the River Community Development Corp. had taken on nearly $8 million in mortgages to buy complexes riddled with leaks, sewer backups, and buckling stairwells, roofs and floors.

Soon after the city delivered the federal money, the group declared bankruptcy and shut down. The District lost millions of dollars while the project was delayed for years.

But one group reaped millions. A handful of real estate speculators, including three previously convicted in a sweeping housing fraud scandal, had sold the complexes to East of the River based on adjusted appraisals written by one of the sellers’ associates, The Washington Post found.

The project is a case study of the breakdowns in the nation’s $2 billion-a-year affordable-housing program, in which extensive construction delays have derailed the development of thousands of homes.

The District’s East of the River project involved an inexperienced developer that cut an ill-fated deal with savvy speculators under the watch of a local housing agency that failed to protect the government’s investment.

Waste and weak oversight are endemic at housing agencies nationwide. A Post investigation found that about $400 million in affordable-housing funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is tied up in hundreds of troubled construction projects, including the one proposed by East of the River...

DA Absent from SEDC Embezzlement Case

2011-05-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

DA Absent from SEDC Embezzlement Case
May 9, 2011
by Will Carless
Voice of San Diego

We've been asked one question a lot in the days since former Southeastern Economic Development Corp. officials Carolyn Y. Smith and Dante Dayacap were charged with embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds: Why didn't San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis prosecute this case?

Back in 2008, when the SEDC scandal was first breaking, Mayor Jerry Sanders announced at a press conference that he had asked Dumanis to investigate the alleged wrongdoing at the agency. Sanders' move came after a city commissioned audit found SEDC's compensation practices had risen "to the level of fraud."

As I pointed out recently, Dumanis has a special Public Integrity Unit that she created back in 2007, before the SEDC scandal broke.

I put the question to Dumanis' spokesman, Steve Walker, in an email.

His response:

The Attorney General's Office is the appropriate agency to handle this prosecution. Since this is a pending case, the District Attorney's Office will have no further comment at this time.

The California Attorney General's Office does prosecute plenty of people accused of misusing public funds. The state AG investigated the wrongdoing at the city of Bell, for example.

Gary Schons, who heads up the local office of the attorney general, wouldn't go into the matter when I called him. He simply said that his office also has a specialty in prosecuting these sorts of cases.

But, while the AG is an appropriate agency to do the prosecution, it's unclear why Walker would categorize the AG as the appropriate agency. In other words, why is the AG more appropriate than the DA's Public Integrity Unit?

The case, which focuses on a clandestine system of bonuses we uncovered in this story back in 2008, fits the stated scope of the unit, which Dumanis created specifically to root out misuse of public funds and corruption by public and elected officials.

Smith and Dayacap were highly paid, high ranking public officials. (Both made far more than the mayor in 2007.)

Why the AG brought the case instead of Dumanis is unlikely to become public.

As a rule, prosecutors don't discuss pending cases because they don't want to give the impression that they're attempting to try the case in the media, said Professor Heidi Rummel, a former prosecutor and expert in criminal law at the University of Southern California.

Prosecutors want "to avoid any potential unfairness or prejudices to the defendant before he has his day in court," Rummel said.

That Dumanis' office isn't prosecuting the case is irrelevant because, as a public prosecutor, she represents the government as much as her colleagues at the Attorney General's Office, Rummel said. As such, she should be as wary of prejudicing the case by what she says publicly as she would be if her office was prosecuting it.

The precaution of not talking about a case extends not just to the case itself, but also to the reasons why a prosecutor did or didn't take the case on, Rummel said.

Complicating the SEDC matter is the fact that the original investigation wasn't done by the DA or the AG or even any state agency. It was done by the FBI, which usually teams with U.S. Attorney's Office to prosecute the subjects of its investigations.

I learned in court on Wednesday that Dayacap had received a "target letter" from the U.S. Attorney's Office more than a year ago. But at some point between then and now, the federal government decided not to prosecute and instead the case ended up at the state level.

(FBI spokesman Darryl Foxworth wouldn't comment on the case either.)

Certainly, the passing-around of the Smith/Dayacap prosecution has confused the two defendant's lawyers. Jerry Coughlan, who is defending Smith, and Marc Carlos, who's representing Dayacap, both told me on Wednesday that they had no idea the Attorney General's Office was involved in the case before their clients were served with arrest warrants.

If I find out any more about why Schons, not Dumanis, brought the case, I'll pass it along.

San Diego budget plan: more prosecutors after library and recreation cuts

2011-05-02T13:54:00.000-07:00

From Libraries to Lawyers: Shifting Budget Priorities
May 1, 2011
by Liam Dillon
Voice of San Diego

San Diego's library system has eroded over the past six years. Mayor Jerry Sanders freely admits it.

"We've taken them down to a very small percentage of what they used to be," Sanders said at a recent budget forum.

Libraries used to be a greater budget priority. While nearly every city department has seen cuts during a decade of San Diego budget deficits, reductions to libraries have been deeper. Its budget has decreased from $38.7 million in Sanders' first budget in 2007 to $30.1 million under the mayor's proposal for next year. Its percentage of the city's day-to-day operating budget will have g0ne down by more than 1 percent, too.

As libraries have lost, others have gained.

In 2007, the City Attorney's Office received $36.2 million, or $2.5 million less than libraries. Its proposed 2012 allocation will be $42.4 million, or $12 million more than libraries. The percentage the attorney's office receives of the city budget has gone up by 0.3 percent since 2007 as well.

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith argues his department's budget has increased because of costs outside his control, such as paying for a share of the city's growing retirement obligations. Beyond the vagaries of the city budgeting, Sanders, City Council members and even a key library supporter defended the city attorney for keeping the city out of trouble and from racking up outside legal costs.

The downside of cutting libraries is clear. They'll be closed. For attorneys, the effects are less obvious. A smaller legal department could mean lost lawsuits, missed opportunities or bigger bills for outside contracts. But as the mayor and council stress the need to protect public safety and other front line city services in a time of continued budget pressure, they'll have to come to terms with the realization that the city's team of lawyers costs increasingly more than its team of librarians.

The City Attorney's Office files or defends lawsuits involving the city, provides legal advice to the mayor, council and all departments, and prosecutes about 35,000 misdemeanor cases a year. Good lawyers cost money, Goldsmith said in an interview. The fact that they have cost more in the past six years, he said, has little to do with him.

Nearly the entire $4 million hike in his budget this year came from costs associated with rising pension and other retirement obligations, an increase he couldn't do anything about. Further, Goldsmith contended his office took that hit more than others because its costs are almost all personnel.

Goldsmith's office has spent less than its budget the last two years. He's left some positions empty and replaced higher paid jobs with lower level ones. Goldsmith also said he decreased costs for outside attorneys, but those savings primarily appear in other department's budgets.

"Each year we've come in with a plan on how we're going to do our fair share," Goldsmith said.

But for some, it's not fair enough. At a recent community budget forum, Sanders answered a written question about a chart that showed the city attorney's budget larger than the library's.

"Please explain how this is shared pain," the question asked.

Sanders responded that attorneys are expensive, and it costs more to hire outside counsel than do legal work in-house...

Bonnie Dumanis: D.A.'s Public Integrity Unit: Not So Public Lately

2011-04-11T18:47:00.000-07:00

The prosecution of Kathleen Sterling is worrisome. Almost immediately after Sterling and other Tri-City Healthcare board members fired a group of administrators in December 2008, powerful friends of the fired individuals began asking Dumanis to file criminal charges against members of the board who voted in favor of the firings. Bonnie Dumanis did not respond to the first two attempts to involve the criminal justice system in the matter, preferring to allow the case to make its way through the civil courts. But apparently the third time is a charm. Does this have anything to do with the mayoral campaign and/or efforts to change the makeup of the Tri-City board?

D.A.'s Public Integrity Unit: Not So Public Lately
April 10, 2011
by Will Carless
Voice of San Diego

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis' website for her recently announced mayoral campaign waxes lyrical about the prosecutor's protection of the public, high conviction rates and strong managerial and organizational skills.

Not mentioned in the list of accomplishments is the District Attorney's Public Integrity Unit, a crack team of lawyers Dumanis set up with much fanfare in the spring of 2007 as a weapon against San Diego's image as a den of political iniquity and corruption.

Indeed, four years after the unit was created, San Diegans would be forgiven for wondering whether it actually still exists. Since the controversial — and largely botched — prosecution of Chula Vista Councilman Steve Castaneda in 2008, Dumanis' team of anti-corruption lawyers has been remarkably low-profile.

Dumanis says the unit has hardly been slacking off. Her office provided a list of 88 public integrity prosecutions since 2007 as evidence that complaints are being investigated. And Dumanis and her public integrity czar Leon Schorr stressed that most of the work of the Public Integrity Unit is investigative and doesn't necessarily result in prosecutions.

But 85 of the 88 prosecutions listed by Dumanis involved rank-and-file public employees, not politicians or elected officials, who were the original stated targets of the Public Integrity Unit. Lumped into the successes of the unit are cases against police officers and city employees, and for attorney misconduct.

In four years, three elected officials have been prosecuted by Dumanis' office and, so far, only one of those prosecutions has resulted in punitive action: Earlier this year former Encinitas Mayor Dan Dalager was fined $1,000 for receiving discounted kitchen appliances from a resident he assisted while in office.

Dumanis proposed the Public Integrity Unit as a new and necessary weapon in the local prosecutorial arsenal, and warned crooked politicians that she would be watching them, and that they'd better behave.

Driving home the point that this was to be a unit that would specifically target politicians, Dumanis said at the same press conference that she would no longer be endorsing political candidates, and that her office would not be used as a political pawn. She later endorsed in several important races, including the 2008 city attorney's race, in which she backed Jan Goldsmith against Mike Aguirre...

In 2008, Chula Vista Councilman Steve Castaneda was also accused by the Public Integrity Unit of using his office for financial gain, but investigators found no wrongdoing by the councilman. Castaneda was then charged with perjury for allegedly lying to the grand jury that investigated him. A jury acquitted him of most of the charges and hung on two of them, which Dumanis chose not to pursue.

Castaneda accused Dumanis at the time of prosecuting him at the behest of his political rival, Chula Vista Mayor Cheryl Cox.

Redevelopment: the well-meaning program for fixing urban ills greatly abused

2011-03-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

Click on title to see links in the original story:

Going to Money Town
Voice of San Diego
March 14,2011

One of the arguments for killing redevelopment: That the well-meaning program for fixing urban ills has since been greatly abused for all sorts of luxuries that stray far from its original intent. In between doling out a couple of sharp elbows to local California politicians and state Republicans, journalist Steven Greenhut delivers a little history in the Wall Street Journal on California's endangered redevelopment and abuses he's witnessed through his career.

· We've been following closely as San Diego and other municipalities around the state have tried to tie up billions of dollars in redevelopment cash before the governor cuts it off. While most places have just carved out the money, some have already begun borrowing it, sometimes at quite a cost. Redevelopment agencies across the state borrowed $700 million in the first two months and a week of the year, compared to $1 billion in all of 2010, the LA Times says.

· It's not San Diego, but it's instructive: NPR's Planet Money recently profiled one Pennsylvania city that sold a lake to help fix its problems, threw in the towel and then got help from a state squad that travels around helping distressed governments.

At this point, it looks like California could use one of those, too, although they might end up spending all their time in Sacramento. (It'd still be cheaper than these guys.)

Former CCDC board member gets $464,750 for "technical assistance" [??] on plan to end homelessness downtown

2011-03-04T11:21:00.000-08:00

Feb 28, 2011
Former CCDC board member gets lucrative consulting contract
Providing "technical assistance" on plan to end homelessness Downtown pays $464,750
By Kelly Davis

Today, the San Diego City Council (sitting as the Redevelopment Agency) will be asked to approve an amendment to a contract with LeSar Development Consultants (LDC) that will pay a total of $464,750 for 15 months of work. The contract, which began in July 2010 and lasts through September 2011, is for "technical assistance" on a plan to end homelessness Downtown within five years. LCD's already been paid $235,000 for work between July and the end of 2010. Today's contract amendment adds $229,750, bringing the total to $464,750.

LDC's president, Jennifer LeSar, sat on the Centre City Development Corp.'s board directors from 2002 to 2009. According to the staff report, LDC was the only respondent to a request for consulting services put out in January 2010. On Jan. 12, 2010, LeSar sent a letter asking the city's Ethics Commission if any conflict-of-interest provisions prohibited her from being paid to provide consulting services to CCDC. She was told it was OK as long as she didn't participate in making the contract.

The contract is being paid with money from CCDC's low- and moderate-income housing fund.

LeSar's hourly rate, according to the scope of services, is $225; Matthew Doherty, who's worked for the San Diego Housing Commission and Corporation for Supportive Housing, has a listed hourly rate of $175. Rachel Ralston, whose resume includes four years as associate editor at the Gay and Lesbian Times before joining LeSar Development in February 2007, is listed at $90 an hour.

LeSar defended the cost and said that her company's per-hour rates are competitive. When I pointed out that Ralston's per-hour rate would come out to $187,200 annually if it were a full-time job, LeSar said I wasn't taking into account the built-in costs of running a business.

LeSar said that LDC's work will create an infrastructure that previously didn't exist for collaboration on homeless services between the San Diego Housing Commission and the county. "We are getting people housing because of this partnership," she said.

Under the contract, LDC was responsible for coordinating last September's "Registry Week," for which 30 teams of volunteers went throughout Downtown to count and survey the street population and create a database that will help get the most vulnerable people into housing, starting with 75 veterans, for whom the Veterans Administration is providing 75 housing vouchers, and 50 mentally ill individuals who will receive Section 8 vouchers and case management services from county mental-health providers.

LDC's role, according to the scope of services, is to coordinate with the San Diego Housing Commission and the county's Health and Human Services Agency to develop a "five-year work plan" for ending homelessness Downtown. The plan includes developing financing strategies, setting annual targets for creating supportive housing Downtown and working on state- and federal-level policy. LDC will also look at the feasibility of holding another Registry Week in 2012, handle PR and community education and outreach and provide recommendations for developing a data system to track and measure the program's progress.

You can download the staff report and supporting documents here.

Logan Jenkins: In a council meeting, what language is too foul? It's a fair question

2011-02-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

I can't believe that District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is getting involved in this case. Treasonous comments are okay, apparently, but don't say "wussies" with a "p".

Logan Jenkins: In a council meeting, what language is too foul? It's a fair question
By Logan Jenkins
February 28, 2011

“Any person making impertinent and slanderous remarks or who becomes boisterous while addressing the council shall be removed from the room.”

So declares the Carlsbad Municipal Code.

On Aug. 24, that genteel standard of decorum was put to a double test.

During the public-comment period, Neil Turner, a retired Army captain and member of the Minutemen, challenged the council to either present charges to the Grand Jury or “become complicit” in treason.

Throughout his three-minute address, Turner was calm, dignified, measured. Mayor Bud Lewis and council listened impassively to a gentleman accusing the president of breaking into and entering the White House. Turner implored the council to heed Lincoln’s words: “To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men.”

In light of the irrefutable facts — President Obama was born in Hawaii; the so-called “birthers” are conspiracy fabulists — one can imagine a hotheaded, patriotic mayor ordering the removal of Turner from the chamber.

No need to worry. Turner’s right of free, even if wing-nut, speech was exercised despite his slanderous — and arguably seditious — message. (He called upon members of the armed forces to resist the “unlawful” commander in chief’s orders.)

Next up to the lectern was Richard Shapiro, a homeless 53-year-old man who believes it’s his mission to spread the raw word that the justice system is corrupt from top to bottom. While he concedes his public diatribes are “an exercise in futility,” Shapiro soldiers on. He’s spoken “a thousand times” before councils from the Bay Area to San Diego, he told me.

The problem is, Shapiro feels the need to use rough language in settings where decorum is highly valued.

On Aug. 24, Shapiro began his address by picking up on Turner’s point about silence. Most people, Shapiro said, are moral cowards, though he used an off-color word that’s often sanitized as “wussies.”

Mayor Lewis, who had been through this R-rated movie before, immediately ordered two officers to grab the speaker. As he was being led away, Shapiro asked off-camera if he could say “heck” or “darn.” (In a subsequent meeting, Shapiro got a rise out of Lewis when he articulated the word “pusillanimous,” a $10 word for cowardly.)

Shapiro will be tried in April for three Carlsbad violations, culminating in the Aug. 24 blowup. Somewhat surprisingly, the District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting the infraction-level case, an indication, one gathers, of the DA’s deep commitment to decorum.

I grant you, Shapiro is a street-wise provocateur, a gloating pain in the gluteus maximus, a homeless man’s George Carlin.

But in my etiquette book, it’s un-American to muzzle him, especially when more loathsome, if smoother, speech slides through like rancid butter.

GOP is ready for Issa's "absolute right"

2011-02-27T13:32:00.000-08:00

Chairman Issa: Oversight for whom?
By Rick Jacobs
February 24, 2011

In the weeks leading to Rep. Darrell Issa’s rise to chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, publications ranging from U.S. News to The San Diego Union-Tribune expressed concerns over whether he was willing to fulfill his new responsibilities devoid of the partisan politics and special interest agendas that had so frequently undermined the efforts of his predecessors.

Having spent the months before his ascent building his media profile alongside the likes of Glenn Beck, and hurling unsubstantiated allegations of corruption and “impeachable” offenses at President Barack Obama, these concerns could hardly have been considered unfounded.

And that was before an article in The New Yorker chronicled the colorful past for which Issa has largely denied responsibility – including his arrests on felony car theft and weapons charges, allegations of embellishing his military resume and reports that he was “under criminal suspicion” for a mysterious fire at one of his businesses.

Still, many Americans were willing to give Issa the benefit of the doubt, to give him a chance to reinvent himself and live up to the standards of transparency, impartiality and accountability to which he has pledged allegiance.

Unfortunately, it’s looking like America would have been better served to go with its gut on this one.

As his first action, the new chairman asked not his constituents, but more than 150 Washington lobbyists – collective contributors of more than $80,000 to Issa’s various campaigns for office – for their investigative and regulatory wish lists. Issa then refused to share the responses with the public. While he eventually caved to pressure from citizen watchdog groups, he posted the letters as a single, unsearchable PDF on his committee website, omitting several responses...

GOP is ready for Issa's "absolute right"
Chairmanship gives the Vista Republican leeway to set the agenda leading to 2012
By Matthew T. Hall
February 19, 2011

It’s power that could go to a person’s head.

It made Republican Rep. Dan Burton issue 1,200 subpoenas and once vainly fire a pistol at a pumpkin (or melon or cantaloupe, accounts vary) to prove a White House aide’s suicide was a homicide and thus discredit President Bill Clinton.

Later, it led Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman to snarl at a colleague arguing a procedural point: “I will have you physically removed from this meeting if you don’t stop.”

That colleague? Issa.

After 10 years in office, Issa has now risen to a place of unprecedented prominence among San Diego County’s Congressional delegation.

The Vista Republican is the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. By deciding which areas of government to investigate for waste, fraud and abuse, he will help spearhead GOP opposition to President Barack Obama and help choose what the nation talks about as the 2012 presidential election nears.

Even as websites like issawatch.com and issafiles.com spring up to second-guess (and aides say smear) him, Issa bristles at any notion he might misuse his position...

How the state got stuck with a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars during the secret negotiations before the redevelopment deal

2011-02-12T10:34:00.000-08:00

Click to see links within the story:
Morning Report: So That's How It's Done
Art's Out, Money's In
by Randy Dotinga
Voice of San Diego

...Documents gave us - and you - a front-row seat to see how the state got stuck with a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars during the secret negotiations before the big downtown redevelopment deal.

In a new story posted later, Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher explains how this is actually a good thing for local schools. "I would have had great concern if there had been an argument that somehow education was going to lose out of this arrangement," he said. City Hall reporter Liam Dillon checked with the school district to see what they think and to provide some caveats.

Also: a former city councilwoman who's now a state senator wants to do away with state subsidies to support redevelopment.

How well have you been paying attention to all this? Check out our opinion section quiz about redevelopment and see how you score.

We've got more about redevelopment in our graphic illustration called the Downtown Money Tree: it shows how the downtown redevelopment agency - whose job is to promote urban renewal - will spend $462.5 million. The downtown library is getting a ton of funding, as is affordable housing. Smaller amounts - but still multi-million-dollar amounts each - go to public art, administration, marketing and consulting...

Walmart PAC donated to vote-flippers’ favored charities

2011-02-07T16:27:00.000-08:00

Walmart PAC donated to vote-flippers’ favored charities
February 4, 2011
by Dave Maass
City Beat

Walmart’s political action committee, San Diego Consumers for Choice, donated to charities supported by San Diego City Council members Todd Gloria and Tony Young, who on Tuesday changed their vote and repealed an ordinance opposed by the mega-corporation.

According to campaign-finance statements filed on Jan. 31, the PAC donated $7,500 to the Jackie Robinson YMCA, where Young participated in a Toys for Tots drive and was a special guest at the annual “Christmas with Character” party on Dec. 18. The Alpha Project, an organization for which Gloria regularly fundraises, picked up $10,000 from the PAC. Gloria volunteered at the city’s winter homeless shelter, which is run by the Alpha Project, on Dec. 15.

The PAC also donated $10,000 to San Diego Earthworks, an environmental organization; Gloria will be hosting Earthworks’ annual awards ceremony in May.

Initially Young and Gloria voted to require that any retailer wishing to build a store 90,000 square feet or larger in San Diego first study the potential economic and environmental impact on the surrounding community. After Walmart produced enough signatures to force an election on the ordinance, Young and Gloria voted with five other councilmembers on Tuesday to repeal it, citing the cost—roughly $2.5 million—of holding the election.

Young and Gloria’s offices say neither had knowledge of Walmart’s contribution. Walmart did not disclose on its paperwork when the donations were made, but the reports indicate most were made between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31. The PAC’s treasurer has not yet returned calls.

The PAC also made a $200 civic donation to the Barrio Logan College Institute, where newly elected council member David Alvarez has worked as an after-school teacher and mentor. The lone dissenting vote on the repeal, Marti Emerald, has also been involved in fundraising for the Alpha Project and served as grand marshall of Earthworks’ Earth Day parade in 2007.

To be clear, we are not alleging that Young, Gloria or Alvarez were influenced by these donations—knowing the city council members and their reputations, we doubt they were. However, we cannot help but note that the donations were made with campaign funds, while Walmart has other vehicles for philanthropy. The contributions may have been an attempt by Walmart to improve its public profile in the community or to access or influence the city council members directly or through their supporters and causes. Of course, the PAC could have been giving purely out of the goodness of its heart, but the fact remains the donations went to these groups specifically rather than other worthy non-profit organizations.

All told, the PAC spent $1.2 million in 2010 using contributions exclusively from Walmart Stores, Inc. These expenditures included $25,000 passed to the Republican Party of San Diego County, and civic donations of $22,500 to the San Diego County Taxpayers’ Association, $20,000 to the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and $1,500 to the San Diego North Chamber of Commerce—all of which are pro-business and have historically supported Walmart...

The Anatomy of a Botched Testimony

2011-02-01T21:09:00.000-08:00

The Anatomy of a Botched Testimony
Voice of San Diego
February 1, 2011
by Liam Dillon

It was an idea without an author.

San Diego City Councilwoman Marti Emerald wanted to know who had gone around the council's back to breathe 20 more years of life into downtown redevelopment.

The guy at the Oct. 12 City Council meeting who had answers was Frank Alessi, the executive vice president and chief financial officer of the city's downtown redevelopment agency, the Centre City Development Corp.

Except Alessi wasn't saying much.

Here's a breakdown of Alessi's testimony to the council now that we have the benefit of three months of reporting and the context from newly released emails. It shows that not only did Alessi fail to respond to many of Emerald's questions, but that a key answer was false.

Emerald started her questioning by wondering if she could trust Alessi.

Emerald: If you were monitoring my comments from before you know how very upset I am about what I believe is a gross breach of trust. Going forward, I'm going to have a very difficult time believing anything that you and your staff have to tell us as a board.

Then she launched into him.

Emerald: Who actually hatched this idea?

Alessi: Well.

Emerald: Whose idea was it? To go behind this council's back and go to Sacramento?

Alessi: I don't have an answer to that. Other than (Assemblyman) Nathan Fletcher was the author of it.

Emerald: He just in the middle of the night came up with the idea? Who did he talk to about crafting this idea to bury it in the budget bill? Was it you? Was it the mayor?

Alessi: I can't speak for the mayor.

Alessi now is CCDC's highest ranking official following the resignation of former interim head Fred Maas in December. Alessi has been with the agency since 1979 and makes $176,800 a year. Ultimately the City Council, as the board of directors for the city's Redevelopment Agency, is his boss.

Emerald continued asking whose idea it was.

Emerald: Fred (Maas)? Who?

Alessi: Unfortunately, Fred, our chairman, is unavailable today. He's back East on personal matters. And he ...

Emerald: So who was involved, once the mystery person came up with the idea, who sat down and came up with the plan?

Alessi: There were several people involved. It's ...

Emerald: They were who?

Alessi: I defer, I would like to defer the answer to that question.

Emerald: Why?

Alessi didn't answer. He just stared straight ahead.

Emerald turned next to Alessi's personal involvement.

Emerald: C'mon I mean it's out here on the table here, you did this, you didn't talk to us, but at least let us know who was involved.

Alessi: Well, I personally was knowledgeable of the information.

Emerald: Were you involved in it?

Alessi: To a degree.

Emerald then began asking him how long he had been discussing the deal. His answer, the most significant he gave to any of Emerald's questions, was wrong.

Emerald: Can you tell us when this idea fell out of the sky or what?

Alessi: There was probably a week or, two weeks ago that was.

Emerald: Two weeks ago, you think?

Alessi: I'm guessing. I mean I can only tell you from my perspective.

Emerald: When did you first learn of it?

Alessi: I believe it's been about two weeks. I don't have ...

But that's not what emails we obtained through a public records request show. Alessi was involved as far back as August, six weeks earlier than when he said he was.

Alessi's answer to council fit the deal's official narrative at the time — that it was only weeks in the making. But that narrative fell apart a few days after Alessi's testimony. The deal's formation began in August, around the same time Alessi got involved...

GOP headquarters abandoned, left in 'mind-boggling' disarray, landlord says

2011-01-27T09:14:00.000-08:00

Jan 26, 2011
Whine and chocolates
GOP headquarters abandoned, left in 'mind-boggling' disarray, landlord says
By John R. Lamb
City Beat

“No one wants to quit when he’s losing and no one wants to quit when he’s winning.” —Richard Strauss

These are shaky times for our beloved friends over at San Diego Republican headquarters, wherever that might be now...

“You wouldn’t believe what they ditched in the trash bin!” said Antoine Georges, who’s owned the building for 20 years. “Thousands of things. Office supplies, staplers— maybe 30 or 40 staplers, the big kind for campaign work—pots and pans, boxes and boxes of stuff, even brand-new live plants! It was just mind-boggling.”

A lively 62-year-old Lebanese man who considers himself fiscally conservative but socially liberal (he says he’s friends with Republican Congressmember Darrell Issa and a cousin of Ralph Nader), Georges told Spin Cycle that he had grown suspicious of his tenants in Suite 107 for some time.

He’d heard rumors that the tenant had wanted to break the lease. Georges said the head honcho of the local GOP, Tony Krvaric, had asked him on several occasions if he’d consider donating the rent as a party gift. Georges said he declined.

Rent checks of roughly $4,500, he said, started coming later and later in the month. The December lease payment, for example, while due Dec. 1, arrived more than three weeks late on Christmas Eve.
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Related to:San Diego Republican headquartersRepublican Party of San Diego CountyTony Krvaric

But the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, activity in the suite seemed to pick up, despite it being a typically down time for campaign events. Over previous weeks, Georges said the local GOP “made up some story” that they were going to remodel the 2,700-square-foot office space. Soon, trucks would show up to haul away office materials, Georges said.

Georges said a truck associated with a paper-shredding company appeared one day and hauled off what he described as “20 or 30 boxes of files.” Added Georges: “I have no idea what was in the boxes. I just know there were a lot of them.”

The final move came just before New Year’s Day, when a GOP employee removed a Republican sign that had been bolted to a wall, placed it in a truck and drove off.

A few days later, Georges said he got a letter from Krvaric, claiming the landlord had breached the lease and that the GOP would like its security deposit back.

Georges laughed. “The place is trashed!” he said. “It needs new carpet. The walls need to be repaired because they literally glued campaign signs to the wallpaper. And they still left a bunch of stuff behind! Empty file cabinets, furniture. And they never returned the keys, so now I have to have all the locks changed.”...

The Governor's Retort: Cities have an obligation to help fund schools

2011-01-25T09:38:00.000-08:00

Click on this link to get the original article with lots of wonderful links: Morning Report: The Governor's Retort
January 25, 2011
Voice of San Diego
by Andrew Donohue

The San Diego leaders fighting Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to kill redevelopment have a simple, digestible argument: Sacramento should get its grubby hands off of our local money and solve its own problems.

Looks like Brown, though, might have just one-upped them.

He's framing the debate in a different way: His plan takes $1 billion away from redevelopment and gives it to the state's ailing schools. Scott Lewis takes that a step further and shows how education was originally supposed to be the very check and balance against redevelopment abuse, but Prop. 13 did away with that.

People like Mayor Jerry Sanders and Councilman Kevin Faulconer have big dreams for San Diego's redevelopment money - things like Convention Center expansions and football stadiums - and are fighting hard against the governor.

"But Brown has now illustrated better than ever before that the money for these dreams comes from education more than anything," Lewis writes. "The state will continue to plow money into education but it's time for downtown and other redevelopment areas to do their part.".

And the Blight Beat Goes On

• Faulconer got six of his colleagues to join him in waving their fists at the governor on Monday night, though they have yet to engage in the last-second redevelopment binges that other cities have enjoyed.

• Our Liam Dillon, meanwhile, is waving his fist right back at the city's downtown redevelopment agency. He's begun our latest public records battle — Blight Watch.

That agency, the Centre City Development Corp., has refused to turn over documents that go to the very core of the agency's continued existence. Agencies have 10 days to turn over documents after a public records request except in extraordinary circumstances. It's been than seven weeks and all we're hearing is that "it's complicated."

We'll be dialing up the pressure this week to ensure that the public records do indeed become public.

• There's another aspect of redevelopment suddenly getting attention now that it's in jeopardy: affordable housing.

One CCDC official recently made the bold claim that his agency had created more affordable housing units than all of Los Angeles' redevelopment areas combined. We fact checked it and here's what we found: A big fat "false."...

A Downtown Blight Out

2011-01-23T12:22:00.001-08:00

A Downtown Blight Out
Voice of San Diego
January 16, 2011
by Liam Dillon

San Diego's downtown redevelopment agency and a consultant have not released their proof that downtown remains rundown despite a promise to do so more than five weeks ago and requirements in state public records laws to release the information within 10 days.

The documents in question are central to the legitimacy of late-night state legislation that removed a key limit on downtown redevelopment.

Under the legislation, the Centre City Development Corp. will grab a substantial share of billions of dollars in future downtown property taxes for public improvements and development subsides.

Downtown, backers of the legislation argue, continues to require those taxpayer subsidies for redevelopment's purpose: improving rundown neighborhoods.

But the state move meant that CCDC no longer had to prove that downtown was rundown, a public process that it had begun to undertake. Central in that effort was a $500,000 study that CCDC canceled after the controversial legislation passed.

The study and the information behind it are key to understanding if boosters would have been able to justify the need for downtown's continued tax subsidies through the standard process.

In its unfinished state, the study asserts that downtown remains rundown. But the document, written by lead consultant Keyser Marston Associates, had yet to include evidence to back up those findings beyond simple crime statistics...

Googins, Faigin battle for first city attorney in Chula Vista

2011-01-17T12:40:00.000-08:00

Googins, Faigin face tough battle for first city attorney
By Khari Johnson, SDNN
June 8, 2010
SDNN

Up to now, the city attorney in Chula Vista was appointed by the city council but Proposition Q — a 2008 ballot measure — changed city charter to make it an elected position and Chula Vistans will go to the polls Tuesday to choose between Glen Googins and Robert Faigin as their first elected city attorney.

With a salary of more than $200,000, the city attorney will be the highest paid position in Chula Vista city government.

Both Googins and Faigin promise to follow the rule of law, claim to be independent and accuse his opponent of being beholden to special interests trying to influence City Hall.

They see the position as an advisor, not policy maker, and share concerns expressed by members of the City Council and Proposition Q opponents that the office has the potential to become politicized and impact legal advice offered to the council and city departments.

But that’s also why both claim he should be elected, not his opponent.

“Obviously, now theoretically they’re more responsible to the people than the city council members,” said current City Attorney Bart Miesfeld, “but day to day responsibilities won’t change,” said

Faigin, a resident of Lakeside, has been the county sheriff’s chief counsel since 2002 and decided to run after members of the South County sheriff’s office told him no qualified candidates sought the position.

Googins opened his private practice handling real estate and development issues in 2004 after 11 years of similar work in the city attorney’s office. Disagreements with then City Attorney Ann Moore led Googins to resign, in the process receiving a $175,000 severance package.

Joseph Casas, the candidate endorsed by the San Diego County Democratic Party, dropped out of the race in March and is currently representing Police Chief David Bejarano against accusations of fraud by a former business partner.

“The downside to turning it into an elected position is that instantly the developers, Corky McMillan, all of those people start pumping money into campaigns because they want to influence city politics,” Faigin said.

By the May 27 financial filing deadline, Googins had raised $33,000 from 100 donors, including teachers, border patrol agents and city residents, but also several lawyers, real estate developers. In addition he raised nearly $1,000 from executives from The Corky McMillin Companies, including company president and CEO Mark McMillin.

Googins endorsers include the Chula Vista Police Officer and Firefighter Associations, former City Attorney John Kaheny, state assemblymember Mary Salas, County Supervisor Greg Cox and The Republican Party of San Diego County, though it is a non-partisan race.

About one-third of donors to Googin’s campaign are Chula Vista residents.

“I’m not promising anyone anything,” Googins said. “Just because I’ve represented developers doesn’t mean I’m going to favor any developers. When I’m with the city, the city’s my client.”...

Sidelining of Chula Vista councilwoman questioned

2011-01-17T12:30:00.000-08:00

Sidelining of Chula Vista councilwoman questioned
City attorney says she has a conflict on police contracts because her adult son is a lieutenant
SDUT
By Tanya Sierra
January 13, 2011

New Chula Vista Councilwoman Patricia Aguilar has a son on the police force, a relationship that has become a city issue amid tense labor negotiations.

Aguilar has been asked by the city’s attorney to stay on the sidelines for decisions involving the police union as her son is Lt. Phil Collum, 40, even though the two do not share a home or finances.

The city wants police to contribute nine percent of their salary to their pensions and forgo a six percent previously-agreed-upon raise. The move would save $2.5 million annually amid a budget crunch.

The city might have to lay off 24 low-seniority cops if police don’t give in. Most of the city’s other employees have agreed to contribute to their own pensions and adjust their pay.

Critics are concerned there may be political motivations for the legal advice concerning contract negotiations.

“I can understand how management would be concerned but the attorney should not be jaded by that kind of perspective,” Councilman Steve Castaneda said. “To come to that sort of harsh and extreme decision to disqualify an elected City Council member on facts that don’t seem to be germane to this situation, I think it is problematic.”

Three members of the council have reservations about the city attorney’s legal advice — Aguilar, Castaneda and Councilman Rudy Ramirez.

Ramirez notes that his brother is on the police force, and that’s never been deemed a legal or ethical issue because the two don’t live together or mix finances.

“I asked, ‘If Pat has a conflict, then why not me?’ and I was told that there was no conflict for me because he was my brother as opposed to being my son,” Ramirez said. “You don’t negotiate by concocting some legal position to affect the negotiations. Especially a labor negotiation where we’re going to have to live together and work together.”

City Attorney Glen Googins, also elected in November, issued the advice letter suggesting Aguilar abstain on police labor issues.

Googins acknowledges that Aguilar has no conflict under the state’s Government Code, but he relies instead on a 2009 Attorney General’s opinion that outlines slightly different rules under common law. That doctrine has a broader prohibition against participation in government decisions that might affect personal interests.

The 2009 opinion found a conflict of interest for a redevelopment agency board member whose son had a corporation seeking a contract with his mother’s agency. That mother and son shared an apartment.

Aguilar, who has so far abided by Googins’ recommendation, said her circumstances are different from those in the Attorney General’s opinion because she doesn’t live with her son and they don’t mix finances. Also, she noted, he is not a direct party to a city contract she would have to approve.

“In my case, my son is affected by the issue of contract negotiation only as a part of a larger class of people affected,” she said. “One is a very direct and the other is not.”

Googins, who ran on a campaign of government transparency, refused to release his legal opinion. Googins promised voters he would make his legal opinions public. But in this case, he said, he was not releasing the document because he has not developed a protocol by which to do that.

The Watchdog obtained the advice letter through another source. It notes that Lt. Collum is a board member for the police union.

“As a board member, he is in a position to influence whether or not negotiations will occur and what direction those negotiations should take,” the opinion says.

Googins would not discuss the opinion, saying it was legal advice between him and his client...

Board reform didn’t pan out for Schwarzenegger

2011-01-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

Board reform didn’t pan out for Schwarzenegger
He appointed people to the very state panels that he had sought to eliminate
By Matthew T. Hall
SDUT
January 15, 2011

Arnold Schwarzenegger stormed into the governor’s office in late 2003 intending to “blow up the boxes” of state government and soon targeted 88 boards and commissions for termination.

He left this month, having eliminated only a few, and one of his last acts involved naming a series of political allies to commission seats with six-figure salaries, including several boards that he wanted abolished.

“Clearly, it was against what he said at the beginning,” said Joel Fox, former president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and an ally in Schwarzenegger’s reform efforts. “I’m disappointed he didn’t follow through and set the example at the end.”

Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear blamed the Legislature for blocking reforms. He said the call to eliminate certain boards was meant to streamline government, not save money, because much of the funding originates outside the state’s discretionary general fund.

He said all of Schwarzenegger’s appointments put “inherently qualified” people on boards that remain relevant.

“They serve a purpose so we have to keep them functioning as long as they exist,” he said.

California’s governor appoints 63 people to 12 boards and commissions that pay from $111,845 to $132,179 a year, according to a review by The Watchdog. They are collectively paid almost $8 million a year.

By month’s end, the list will have 18 vacancies for newly sworn-in Gov. Jerry Brown to fill. A Brown spokeswoman said the governor is closely considering each choice while looking for ways to cut costs.

In his final week, Schwarzenegger drew criticism by appointing six people to positions with six-figure salaries, three to boards he had tried to eliminate.

Two were to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, which pays members $128,000 a year to settle state unemployment insurance disputes. While each member handles hundreds of appeals a month, the board has met 44 times since 2008, or little more than monthly.

Schwarzenegger appointed departing Sens. Dennis Hollingsworth of San Diego and Ray Ashburn of Bakersfield to the unemployment board, and Vicki Marti of Fairfax to the Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board.

He also named Kari Miner, a Sacramento interior decorator and the wife of former Schwarzenegger aide Paul Miner, to the Public Employment Relations Board, which oversees collective bargaining for state public employee unions.

Paul Miner was the point person for Schwarzenegger’s proposal to eliminate hundreds of appointed positions and more broadly reorganize state government.

“No one paid by the state should make $100,000 a year for only meeting twice a month,” Schwarzenegger said in his 2005 State of the State address.

Schwarzenegger’s California Performance Review Commission, which included Fox, proposed scrapping 117 of the state’s 339 boards and commissions.

The governor’s follow-up effort was roundly criticized and abandoned within a month. Later, the state did eliminate a waste board and consolidated boards dealing with geologists and hearing aids...

Nathan and Mindy Fletcher Attend to Rail Transportation

2011-01-14T19:57:00.000-08:00

Nathan and Mindy Fletcher Attend to Rail Transportation
By Matt Potter
Jan. 12, 2011
San Diego Reader

As the ultimate status of San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders continues to intrigue political onlookers, yet another rumored candidate to replace him has come to the forefront. GOP assemblyman Nathan Fletcher (whose official campaign biography, posted on his website, says that “before his election to the Legislature he served honorably in the military, the community and the political arena”) is said by some city hall insiders to have the inside track to collect the big money expected by some to come into the race from corporations seeking to benefit from a possible City bankruptcy and an ensuing orgy of outsourcing and asset sales. Fletcher’s bio, which also appears virtually verbatim on Wikipedia, touts his service as a Marine in Iraq and eastern Africa, where he was a “Counterintelligence/Human Intelligence Specialist.” Regarding his wife Mindy, it notes that the two “are members of Community Bible Church and proud parents of their son Zach.”

Nowhere does it mention that Nathan is the co-owner of a public affairs company, Arrow Advisers, and that Mindy, a hardened political pro who was an ex–PR aide to George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger, now is employed in Sacramento as a senior advisor by the lobbying outfit Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. Fletcher’s most recent personal financial disclosure report, filed last March, says that in 2009 Mindy — whose hiring was announced November 17, 2008, shortly after her husband was elected to the assembly’s 75th District seat — was paid between $10,000 and $100,000. According to its most recent disclosure filing with the secretary of state, Ogilvy, a branch of the big national PR and lobbying firm, grossed $57,800 in fees for its Sacramento lobbying activities during the third quarter of last year, the most recent period on record.

Clients included the American Chemistry Council ($5800), the investment firm the Blackstone Group ($30,000), and California Strategies & Advocacy LLC, working on behalf of the Centinela Valley Union High School District ($6000). Previous Ogilvy lobbying clients have included Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and California Strategies working on behalf of the Los Angeles Turf Club.

California Strategies & Advocacy is a sister firm of California Strategies, run by Bob White, longtime top aide to Pete Wilson when he was San Diego mayor, senator, and governor. A partner in the firm, which has performed consulting work for the City-controlled Centre City Development Corporation and Mayor Sanders regarding a new city hall, is Ben Haddad, another ex–Wilson aide and former staffer to Mayor Susan Golding. Last fall, Fletcher authored a controversial bill signed by then–Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that lifted the cap on spending by San Diego’s redevelopment agency, a move widely seen as intended to assist Sanders and his allies in the downtown establishment build a new taxpayer-financed stadium for the Chargers.

Also of interest is the fact that Ogilvy’s most recent client is the California High-Speed Rail Authority, the troubled state agency tasked with building a taxpayer-subsidized bullet train across the length of the state. In November 2009, the authority gave the firm a $9 million contract to lobby for the project through 2014. Fletcher has been vice chairman of the Assembly Select Committee on Rail Transportation.

Fletcher reported that his Arrow Advisers, which has a mailing address in University City, had a fair market value of between $10,000 and $100,000. He listed one client, United Friends of the Children, as being the source of income greater than $10,000. The board of that Los Angeles–based charity includes L.A. Democratic mayor Anthony Villaraigosa. Both Fletcher and his wife contributed to Jerry Sanders’s 2007 reelection bid. He was listed as partner in Arrow; she was listed as president of the firm. Neither Fletcher nor his wife responded to questions left regarding the disclosures...

The county board of supervisors hasn't had a new member since 1995

2011-01-12T08:54:00.000-08:00

We have some off-the-wall school board members out here in East County (I'm thinking of Jim Kelly), but we have a fine representative on the County Board of Supervisors. I think Dianne Jacob is the most conscientious supervisor on the board.

On the other hand, I think Greg Cox is just one small step above Bill Horn. Why do candidates like these keep getting reelected?

Mary Salas, why don't you run?

Randy Dotinga at Voice of San Diego notes:

"...The county board of supervisors hasn't had a new member since 1995, and if three board members have their way, it'll stay like that for at least a few more years. The U-T says incumbents Pam Slater-Price, Dianne Jacob and Greg Cox are all sending signals that they'll run again in 2012..."

County supervisor races continue to take shape
By Christopher Cadelago
SDUT
January 10, 2011

Supervisor Pam Slater-Price has signaled her intention to seek re-election in 2012, joining an early slate of candidates that includes two board colleagues and a pair of familiar faces.

Slater-Price, who represents the county's District 3, was first elected in 1992. Steve Danon, chief of staff to Rep. Brian Bilbray, is also vying for the seat and has been actively running for several months.

The San Diego County Registrar of Voters office has also received initial paperwork from Supervisor Dianne Jacob, who represents the county’s District 2, and Santee’s Rudy Reyes.

Reyes mounted an unsuccessful campaign against Jacob in 2008 and lost bids for the Santee City Council in 2008 and 2010.

Supervisor Greg Cox, who represents the county's District 1, has made it clear he would run again. Jacob was first elected in 1992 and Cox joined the board of supervisors in 1995.

The Privilege of Not Proving Your Point Publicly

2011-01-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

January 9, 2011
The Privilege of Not Proving Your Point Publicly
Posted on January 9, 2011
by Liam Dillon
Voice of San Diego

San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio argues his major pension reform proposal is legal. He says he's got a legal opinion to back it up. But you aren't allowed to see it.

Former head of the city's downtown redevelopment agency Fred Maas believes there are legal problems with requiring the agency to pay off the previous expansion of the city's Convention Center. Maas says there's a legal opinion to back it up. But you aren't allowed to see this one, either.

"I wish it was available," Maas said.

Both opinions are hidden under a veil of secrecy called attorney-client privilege, a legal protection that can keep lawyers' advice private. The idea is to keep legal strategies and opinions confidential so that a client, in this case the city, isn't disadvantaged in litigation.

But circumstances over the past few months have raised potential inconsistencies in how the city uses its legal privilege. It has allowed city leaders like DeMaio and Maas to make their case without having to show the nuance, risk and complexity that often accompany these types of discussions.

The result is that a key element of public debate on significant topics is left out. The proof.

"The public is certainly entitled to be skeptical of their claim that the opinion supports their position," said Terry Francke, head of public records watchdog Californians Aware.

Both situations would benefit from more scrutiny.

DeMaio has an idea to reduce the city's $2.1 billion pension debt. He calls the concept "pensionable pay" and it's central to his financial recovery plan. DeMaio's plan relies on the city excluding specialty pay, such as extra pay for speaking more than one language, from current employees' pension calculations. Doing so would reduce the city's pension debt without affecting employees' take-home pay.

The councilman, who did not respond to a request for an interview, has insisted this idea is legal. He cited a privileged opinion from the city's outside labor counsel as backup.

"We also have written legal opinion from Mayor's own labor counsel Tim Davis confirming this," DeMaio wrote on Twitter last month.

But others argue DeMaio's idea is analogous to a California Supreme Court decision that said a similar move was illegal. Further, 10 years ago the city settled a lawsuit brought by retirees that argued the city was improperly excluding some specialty pay items from pension calculations.

The lawsuit was based on the same principles that DeMaio's plan hopes to follow, said Michael Conger, the retirees' attorney in that case. Conger believes the settlement means you can't do what DeMaio is proposing.

"When parties resolve a dispute, you can't come back 10 years later and say, 'Did not,'" Conger said.

DeMaio also has been on the other side of the debate. He, along with three other council members, want the downtown redevelopment agency to take over the Convention Center bond debt. Doing so would free up $9.2 million annually to pay for general city services, such as police and fire.

A publicly available November opinion from City Attorney Jan Goldsmith asserts the council can shift the Convention Center debt to the downtown agency, the Centre City Development Corp., if the council makes certain legal findings.

But there's another opinion on the Convention Center debt that's private.

"There's a contrary opinion by our own legal counsel that disagreed with [Goldsmith's]," Maas said.

Goldsmith's opinion on the Convention Center includes many caveats. The city would have to determine that the expanded center benefits downtown and there's no other way to pay for it. The Convention Center expansion was finished more than nine years ago and the city has been paying the bond debt out of its day-to-day budget. Goldsmith's opinion concedes that argument is "difficult to make."

The standard for attorney-client privilege is intended to be clear. Privileged information is communication between a lawyer and his client including confidential legal strategy. Because revealing the city's strategy to its potential adversaries could cause harm, privileged documents are exempt from disclosure under the state's public records law.

But the declaration is not without discretion. Goldsmith's Convention Center opinion, for example includes a reference to the private opinion. Francke said it was "certainly not" normal for one opinion to be public and the other privileged on the same subject.

Former City Councilwoman Donna Frye, whose nearly 10-year term ended in December, said Goldsmith's decisions on attorney-client privilege have been inconsistent, especially compared to Goldsmith's predecessor, Mike Aguirre. Aguirre often was criticized for going the opposite way: making too much information public to the detriment of the city's legal position.

Frye questioned why this summer Goldsmith released a memo publicly detailing the legal complications with Proposition D, the city's financial reform and sales tax ballot measure. Lawsuits challenging the ballot measure appeared soon afterward.

Frye added she believes both the private Convention Center and pension opinions should be released because they address public policy issues, not legal strategy. Further, Frye said, if DeMaio and Maas are to be believed the public already knows what they contain.

"If the conclusion is already known, what is the secret, then?" Frye said.

Goldsmith's spokeswoman said the city attorney was busy finalizing a public memorandum of law on pensions and unavailable for comment for this story.

Of course, there's one way the privilege issue becomes irrelevant. There's nothing keeping the person or agency that receive the legal advice — whether that's Mayor Jerry Sanders, the City Council, CCDC or someone else — from waiving privilege and making the information public. Here, that hasn't happened.

"I'd just say this coyness can't and shouldn't be trusted," Francke said. "If the client here won't waive the privilege, the public is entitled to conclude it has something to hide."

How to Drown 'Enron By the Sea'

2011-01-03T12:50:00.000-08:00

How to Drown 'Enron By the Sea'
January 2, 2011
by Liam Dillon

In September 2004, The New York Times bestowed a nickname upon San Diego that the city has yet to shake: Enron by the Sea.

Though Enron, the famously corrupt Texas energy company, is long gone, the reference to San Diego's financial failures remains. Just last month, the national media revived it when discussing San Diego's reputation in stories about Mayor Jerry Sanders' plan to foist 401(k)-style retirement plans on most new city employees.

Like many folks, I wouldn't mind seeing "Enron by the Sea" go to sleep with the fishes. But how? The most surefire way is to end the city's series of budget problems. Deficits now stretch back a decade and most observers point to 1996, the year the city hosted the Republican National Convention and began underfunding the pension, as the beginning of the city's modern money woes. Budget problems predate the most recent recession, though the economic downturn certainly hasn't helped matters.

Here are five issues the city should address before it can declare victory over the many-headed hydra that is the city budget. All of them will be discussed in one form or another in the coming year.

Solve the Pension Problem

This one is a no-brainer. But as the last six years have proven, meaningful pension reform can be one of the hardest changes to make.

What could happen in 2011, though, is that city leaders could decide what the pension reform endgame looks like. Decide to develop or pursue legal strategies, such as forcing employees to share investment burdens. Decide to cut salaries or exclude certain compensation from pension calculations — if it's legal. Decide to lobby state and federal officials to change rules guaranteeing certain pension rights or for a negotiated bailout.

It's clear that the city's annual pension payment will continue to put a crushing burden on its ability to provide basic services over the next 15 years. City employees also deserve to know when leaders will stop going after benefits that have been promised to them and perhaps stop with misleading attacks.

Also worth noting is the city's $1 billion-plus deficit for another retirement cost: health care. Negotiations on reforming this benefit, which doesn't enjoy the same guarantees as pensions, are expected this year.

Solving the pension problem doesn't mean resolving everything at once. Lawsuits, for example, often take years. But the city needs to develop a clear finish line.

Fix Stuff

To figure out that San Diego is broke, you need to look no further than at what is broken. Estimates of the city's backlog of repairs for its buildings, streets and sidewalks approach $1 billion. Fixing streets alone will cost $377.5 million.

Despite an infusion of new bond money, streets continue to deteriorate to the point that people are filling potholes on their own.

A comprehensive report on the city's maintenance backlog was expected over the summer, but has yet to materialize. Getting a grip on needed repairs will help determine how much San Diegans must pay to maintain the parts of the city they touch and feel every day. The quicker the better. Spending $1 on street repair now, according to an estimate in a recent city audit, will eliminate or delay the need to spend $6 to $14 to fix streets in the future.

Restore Some Services

In summer 2013, San Diegans will celebrate the grand opening of a new downtown main library. As long as it's not a Saturday.

Budget cuts made over the past decade have degraded city services already. Operating hours, for example, at branch libraries have decreased by 30 percent to 36 hours a week over the past decade. The main library now is closed Saturdays.

Restoring at least some of the library hours and other cuts, most notably the rotating closures of city fire engines, will be central to the city's full recovery.

What Will Redevelopment Pay For?

Both our own Scott Lewis and the Union-Tribune editorial board have noted that redevelopment — the subsidizing of private sector development to fix rundown neighborhoods — has become the City Hall flashpoint.

And why shouldn't it? Time and again, people ask me how city leaders can consider $2 billion worth of big building projects while begging for new taxes to keep police officers and firefighters on the streets. The answer always is that redevelopment dollars are separate from the dollars that fund police and fire services, and redevelopment money can pay only for things like schoobraries and Chargers stadiums.

Now, even with downtown redevelopment continuing for 20 years longer than expected there's a growing consensus that redevelopment money still can't pay for everything. City leaders are going to have to make choices, and they won't be happy ones. Have redevelopment money take over debts, freeing up cash for police and fire services, or build a Chargers stadium?

Add lingering questions about the fiscal impacts of last fall's downtown redevelopment state legislation on other city neighborhoods and you have an issue central to San Diego's financial future.

Define the Role of the Public and Private Philanthropy

Catch nearly anyone who has spent time studying the city's budget for long and they'll tell you, most of them privately of course, that the city should charge all residents for trash pickup and collect greater fees for storm water. Together, according to a recent estimate, the city would collect an additional $60 million-plus a year if both fees were in place.

Given San Diego's reputation as an anti-tax city and recent history, both of those ideas don't appear to be coming soon. Still, no current city leader has made a sustained push to explain why San Diegans should consider these fee hikes for equity or other reasons.

At the same time, the role of the private sector in city affairs has increased, though in fits and starts. Funding for fire pits on the city's beaches, a national cause célèbre, now appears to come from philanthropy after years on the budget chopping block. A plan to create a gathering place in Balboa Park relies heavily on private financing. Opportunities for greater direct involvement from the private sector to provide city services, notably through volunteering, exist.

The definition of the city's structural budget deficit hinges on the word "structural." San Diego's structure is such that the city is set up to spend more money than it collects. Though Proposition D, a sales tax/financial reform measure failed in November, the potential fix to the problem remains simple. The city must cut costs, increase revenues or do some combination of the two.

Until that happens, San Diego will continue to drown in Enron's sea of red ink.

San Diego firefighter wins $424,000 from city in court

2010-12-21T12:31:00.000-08:00

San Diego firefighter wins $424,000 from city in court
He claimed retaliation for exposing wrongdoing in San Diego fire department
By Craig Gustafson
December 20, 2010

San Diego firefighter Paul Vandeveld on the job during the 2007 Witch Creek Fire.

A jury has awarded $424,000 to a San Diego firefighter who said he was suspended and denied a promotion in retaliation for blowing the whistle on wrongdoing in the city’s fire department.

Paul Vandeveld, 44, of El Cajon, has worked in the department since 1990 but his career stalled four years ago after he tried to stop his fellow firefighters from harassing a colleague and aided then-City Attorney Michael Aguirre with his investigation into the city’s pension scandal.

He was suspended without pay for 96 hours for sending an e-mail to higher-ups about the harassment and was denied a promotion several times despite being on the department’s “next in line” list to become a captain.
Overview

Background: Paul Vandeveld, a San Diego firefighter, filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the city in 2008 for suspending him and denying him a promotion in retaliation for helping a city attorney investigation into pension issues.

What’s changing: A jury awarded $424,000 to Vandeveld in a verdict Thursday, a majority of the sum represents what he would have made had he received a promotion to captain.

Future: The city is considering an appeal. Vandeveld, a 20-year department veteran, has asked to have the suspension removed from his record so he’ll be eligible for promotions in the future.

The 12-member jury’s unanimous decision called for Vandeveld to receive the difference between what he would have made as a captain versus his current salary as a fire engineer. The jury also awarded him $60,000 in punitive damages and the lost pay from his suspension.

Vandeveld burst into tears when the verdict was announced Thursday in Superior Court, said his attorney Steven Shewry.

“He’s been under exceedingly high levels of stress and humiliation since people started getting named captain ahead of him,” Shewry said. “It’s been pretty tough on him. He’s not an emotional guy but you can see that it’s not all that pleasant every day for a guy who always wanted to be a firefighter.”

The circumstances that led to Vandeveld’s lawsuit began in 2006 when Aguirre interviewed the firefighter as part of an investigation into so-called pension spiking, a practice in which employees are promoted to higher ranks or positions shortly before retirement allowing them to collect larger pensions once they leave.

Shortly thereafter, Vandeveld tried to intercede on behalf of a fire captain who many in the department believed had leaked to a reporter that a battalion chief had been arrested for drunken driving. In his lawsuit, Vandeveld said some firefighters physically assaulted the captain and spray-painted “rat” on his fire helmet...

Former union boss gets $700,000 for lost pension; Judge says the payout wasn't legally necessary

2010-12-20T13:17:00.001-08:00

I see that attorney Ann Smith and Judie Italiano are still working closely. I'm wondering if the pension board was worried about dirty laundry being aired. Ann Smith was closely involved when the illegal pension deal was made, and she knows where all the skeletons are buried.

Former union boss gets $700,000 for lost pension
Judge says the payout wasn't legally necessary
By Craig Gustafson
December 17, 2010

The San Diego city retirement board has awarded a $700,000 settlement to former labor leader Judie Italiano despite a judge’s ruling that she isn’t owed anything beyond her $5,700-a-year pension.

The settlement was approved by Superior Court Judge Joel Pressman because he had no choice once the parties agreed. He expressed concerns, however, that it was “clearly not legally necessary” given his previous decision against Italiano. The City Attorney’s Office also argued the deal wasn’t reached in good faith.

Italiano, former president of the city’s union representing white-collar workers, had been battling with the city and its pension system to restore the annual $86,000 pension she lost in 2007 after the Internal Revenue Service deemed it invalid.

At issue is the city’s past decision to allow labor leaders to include their union service toward their pensions as city employees. In Italiano’s case, she was able to combine her 22 years as head of the Municipal Employees Association — peaking at $114,000 annually — with her nine years as a city typist making about $17,000.

The IRS said the practice, called presidential leave, violated tax law because union leaders aren’t city employees and thus can’t receive credit for union work when it comes to a city pension.

Italiano sued the city and pension system for $1.8 million — the estimated value over time of her combined union-city pension — accusing officials of negligence and making false promises about how much she would have for retirement.

Judge Pressman ruled last month that the city didn’t properly approve the presidential leave benefit so it doesn’t owe Italiano anything but the smaller pension for her nine-year stint with the city.

While the case was still going on, pension and union officials were negotiating a settlement for Italiano. The pension board unanimously approved the deal in closed session Oct. 1 — 45 days before the judge ruled against Italiano.

Pressman reluctantly approved the deal on procedural grounds Monday despite his concerns.

“This court does not see this as a good faith settlement,” he wrote in a tentative ruling. “It is a settlement crafted to give judicial cover to an agreement based on prior illegal acts. This court is not inclined to grant that cover. If the parties choose, the settlement can go forward but without this court’s good faith determination.”

Mark Sullivan, board president for the San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System, said the city and pension system were sued by Italiano on different grounds and the judge’s ruling only cleared the city from damages. He said the board needed to limit its financial exposure by settling the lawsuit.

“The cost to defend ourselves in this action would be pretty close to the amount that we were seeking to settle and there’s no way we would be able to recover that,” he said. “Our goal is to minimize the impact to the trust fund.”

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith said it didn’t make any sense to agree to a settlement given the court’s decision.

“Once again, the pension board has overstepped its bounds,” he said. “Although the judge applied procedural standards, he made it absolutely clear that he is not inclined to grant ‘cover’ for this deal. We have other avenues to challenge the pension board’s side deal and will do so.”

Goldsmith declined further comment, saying he would seek City Council input before making any decision.

Italiano’s attorney, Ann Smith, did not return a call for comment.

Italiano, 64, won’t receive the entire $700,000 settlement. She owes the pension system $250,000 for overpayments she received in the first few years after she retired, a sum that will be subtracted from the settlement.

The remaining $450,000 will be used to purchase an annuity for Italiano that is expected to pay her nearly $28,000 annually for the rest of her life. The settlement also leaves Italiano eligible to receive taxpayer-funded health care in retirement, although it’s unclear if she is actually receiving the benefit.

Before the settlement, Italiano had a $480 monthly pension although she received nothing because the system used the money to pay down her outstanding debt. If the presidential leave benefit had been upheld, she would have received nearly $7,200 per month.

The settlement could fall through if the IRS raises any objections.

Italiano resigned from the union in May 2009 amid an internal investigation into her potential misuse of a union credit card. She repaid nearly $14,000.

David Malcolm: A Plant's Power Over a Man's Life

2010-12-20T12:15:00.000-08:00

A Plant's Power Over a Man's Life
December 19, 2010
by Liam Dillon

The man with the troubled past walked into the downtown San Diego elevator.

In itself, this incident wouldn't be notable. The man walks into lots of downtown elevators. His bank is downtown. So is his business and the top-floor, invitation-only private club he attends where you have to wear a jacket at dinnertime. He lives downtown, too.

This time people noticed. They were about to walk into a meeting on the source of one of the man's greatest triumphs and greatest troubles.

The man in question, David Malcolm, wasn't invited to the meeting.

It had been more than 10 years since Malcolm put together a $100 million deal to buy 165 acres of bay-front land without cash or credit. A man accustomed to crafting big land deals for private gain did this one for the public, snagging one of the few undeveloped urban coastal parcels in Southern California.

"It could possibly be one of the single best financial deals done in the state of California's history," Malcolm said.

It had been more than five years since the deal became the noose that hung his public career and, according to a close friend, nearly killed him. Malcolm pleaded guilty to a felony conflict of interest charge after it was revealed his company was working as a $20,000-a-month consultant for the land's tenant and he didn't leave his public position. Despite the plea, Malcolm maintained that he's innocent or, at worst, an innocent victim. He even successfully fought to get the charge reduced to a misdemeanor and the conviction expunged from his record...

Ever since he became a Chula Vista city councilman 28 years ago, Malcolm's public life and his life as a real estate wheeler and dealer rarely has been without controversy. For 20 years, all the allegations against him — including one in which he was accused of plotting arson to collect insurance money — came to nothing.

Then the power plant happened. The deal Malcolm brokered as chairman of the Port turned over the plant's operations to Duke Energy, a power company in North Carolina. Duke, in turn, hired a company Malcolm ran for $20,000 a month to try to make similar deals happen elsewhere. In essence, Malcolm began working for a major Port tenant.

Malcolm stayed on the Port, which was negotiating tax breaks for businesses, like Duke, operating on Port lands in the South Bay...

Instead, Malcolm was sentenced to 120 days in a county-lockdown facility, probation and almost $300,000 in fines and court fees. His public career was over.

But Malcolm didn't leave the issue alone.

He sued the Port unsuccessfully over its legal advice. Three years after his plea, Malcolm won a fight to get the charge reduced to a misdemeanor and the conviction expunged from his record. The topic remains raw. Malcolm speaks in extended monologues about the case's arcane details...

[Maura Larkins' comment: I have a sense that plenty of public officials betray the public trust even more than Malcolm did, and they never get called to account. For example, Juan Vargas took a lucrative job with an insurance company right when he left his job on the California Assembly insurance committee. And then the voters returned him to office a few years later!

Also, Duncan Hunter is famous for warm relationships with military contractors. I also have sympathy for Malcolm's disgust with public entity lawyers. It seems that they are often chosen because they tell officials they can help them get away with ignoring the law.]

With Malcolm was his cousin Dan Malcolm, an incoming Port commissioner from Imperial Beach. David Malcolm said that he and Dan were "very close," according to a Port memorandum on the conversation. The memo added the environmental director felt uncomfortable discussing the power plant and the conversation ended.

"This information is included only for public disclosure and to avoid any appearance that the District has been cooperating or in any way engaged with David Malcolm on matters related to the South Bay Power Plant," the Port report states.

It's not just future development that's at stake. There's about $60 million set aside to pay for the plant's demolition. The Houston-based company that currently owns the plant, Dynegy, pays the Port rent. Dynegy also is for sale.

The city of Chula Vista wants in, too. Its leaders were the ones who contacted Malcolm, Peace and other South Bay leaders over the summer to get the plant down. Malcolm and Peace helped arrange a meeting with state regulators this fall to push for the plant's closure.

"I had a choice of saying, 'Oooh, I'm not going to call David Malcolm,'" said Chula Vista Mayor Cheryl Cox. "Why wouldn't you call someone who knows as much about it as he does?"...

Last week, that ask came. A Chula Vista councilwoman emailed Malcolm, Peace and others requesting advice for responding to the Port's latest demands...

[Maura Larkins comment: Was that councilwoman Patricia Aguilar?]

Convicted of a Felony, But Not a Convicted Felon

2010-12-20T12:10:00.000-08:00

July 5, 2006
Convicted of a Felony, But Not a Convicted Felon
Voice of San Diego

You'll remember my question about the little present former Port Commissioner David Malcolm received last week from Superior Court Judge John C. Einhorn. In 2003, Malcolm pleaded guilty to violating the state's law against public officials participating in deals in which they have a personal financial interest. He was sentenced to three years probation and he had some fines and other economic penalties.

Like many people who finish their probation time, Malcolm asked the judge to expunge his record. Einhorn agreed and gave Malcolm one more little benefit - he ordered Malcolm's charge to be lowered from a felony to a misdemeanor and then expunged.

I wondered what the deal was. Did this mean that, like Britney Spears' first marriage, Malcolm's conviction was successfully annulled? Does it mean that Malcolm is no longer a convicted felon?

I called the district attorney's prosecutor in the case, Stephen Robinson. He said, essentially, that no, Malcolm is no longer a convicted felon, but he was still convicted of a felony.

My brain exploded after we talked but let me try to put this puzzle together:

Malcolm's recent pardon allows him to have the benefits and privileges that we non-felon citizens enjoy: to vote, to run for office, etc. But Robinson said that certain benefits won't be available to Malcolm. For instance, he can't carry a firearm.

"If, four years from now, I was going to run his criminal record sheet - his rap sheet - it will be there. It doesn't disappear," Robinson said about the criminal conviction. He said that if he was investigating Malcolm again, he could use the "rap sheet" to argue that Malcolm has a history doing such and such.

Now, apparently, it's a normal thing for someone to complete his or her probation and to ask the judge to expunge the record as such. If it's not normal, let me know.

But what's really interesting is the second part of this deal: that Malcolm had his charge reduced to a misdemeanor before it was expunged.

I asked Robinson if Malcolm could now argue that he was never convicted a felony, but, instead he was convicted of a misdemeanor.

"I suppose he can say that. I just look at it from my perspective, which is from the criminal-justice perspective. The conviction still stands," Robinson told me.

My brain just exploded again thinking about it.

Robinson, for the record, had argued strongly against the judge allowing Malcolm's charge to go from a felony to a misdemeanor.

His reasoning seems pretty logical: While a port commissioner, Malcolm agreed to become a paid consultant to Duke Energy and he agreed to put the interests of Duke Energy above those of the Port District.

From the DA:

While actively participating in Port District business that directly benefited Duke Energy, Malcolm was being paid $20,000 each month.

So, it wasn't as if he were urinating in public or committing another such misdemeanor violation. This is a heavy accusation to which Malcolm pleaded guilty.

Again from Robinson's brief:

While occupying this position of trust, he betrayed the people of San Diego for his own pecuniary gain. Malcolm's behavior cannot be described as one or two mistakes. It similarly was not a series of errors that took place over a short period of time or in haste. Rather, Malcolm deliberately and methodically engaged in a course of conduct that put the interests of the people of San Diego second to his own financial interests.

Again, it doesn't appear to be a misdemeanor offense.

I called the judge, who referred me to Malcolm's own court filings. When I get them, I'll share them. We still, after all, are left with important questions: If it's true, as Robinson said, that Malcolm's conviction will always haunt him as a felony, then why would Malcolm want it to be reduced to a misdemeanor before it was expunged? What's the point?

"I'd have to ask him what motivated him to take that two-step process," Robinson said.

- SCOTT LEWIS

San Diego police are sorry they sued the city

2010-12-17T12:08:00.000-08:00

San Diego police are sorry they sued the city
Lorie Hearn
Watchdog Institute
December 16, 2010
By Kelly Thornton

The San Diego Police Officers Association has sued the city several times in recent years, and the city has spent $8.6 million to fight them so far. That makes the city’s own cops its most expensive legal adversary.

Now, the officers are sorry.

The police union has a new lawyer who called two of three lawsuits “frivolous” and has filed two malpractice lawsuits against the attorneys who sued in the first place.

“The San Diego Police Officers Association knows this was expensive litigation for the city and has apologized profusely and we’ve done what we can to make it right,” said the POA’s new attorney, Michael Conger, an employment, business and personal injury lawyer from San Diego. “We’ve gotten rid of any litigation to the city related to this nonsense.”

In total, there are 23 lawsuits filed against the city between 2003 and 2010 in which the city has spent more than $1 million. The POA cases are three of those. For all 23 cases, the city has spent $55.3 million, according to an analysis by the Watchdog Institute, a nonprofit investigative reporting center based at San Diego State University.

One of the three cases brought by the POA was to force the city to pay officers for time spent putting on uniforms and protective gear and answering work-related emails. Another case accused then-City Attorney Michael Aguirre of bribery and extortion related to contract negotiations, and sought his removal from office. A third suit was a spinoff of the second; both alleged that the city’s underfunding of the pension violated police officers’ constitutional rights.

The POA lost all three cases – two at summary judgment, meaning a judge didn’t even think the case was worth going to trial. In the overtime case, a federal jury decided in favor of the city after a six-week trial.

More than 1,000 officers opted to drop any appeals based on advice from Conger. The previous lawyer, Gregory Petersen, an Orange County civil rights and employment attorney, is appealing one of the cases on behalf of about 100 clients who’ve stuck with him.

As the cases dragged on, POA members’ credit cards were charged $20 to 40 a month. To cover legal fees, the organization had to mortgage its headquarters.

“I think they were hurt dramatically,” Conger said of the officers. “They paid Petersen over $2.8 million for the privilege of bringing frivolous lawsuits, and he didn’t win one single motion. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong and doesn’t want to pay a dollar.”

At the same time, the financially crippled city hired an outside legal firm, Latham & Watkins, at up to $750 an hour, because the city had a conflict defending against its own employees...

Mayor of Redevelopment No Longer?

2010-12-13T20:21:00.000-08:00

Mayor of Redevelopment No Longer?
(Click on the link above to get all the links in the story.)
by Scott Lewis
Voice of San Diego
December 13, 2010

Redevelopment is the reason the city of San Diego can consider building a new Convention Center, football stadium and other enhancements downtown at a time when rec centers, libraries and swimming pools are in danger of closing elsewhere.

Cities all across the state use the mechanism for their blighted neighborhoods. But unlike most of them, San Diego does things differently. For one, it allows two nonprofits, fully funded by the city, to manage its redevelopment efforts downtown and in southeastern San Diego: CCDC and SEDC respectively.

And, also unlike other areas, San Diego made its elected mayor the executive director of the Redevelopment Agency -- the entity that oversees not only CCDC and SEDC but the other areas considered blighted in town.

Now, that may change. The City Council is considering ousting him as San Diego's redevelopment leader and hiring a professional manager wake of the mayor's efforts to extend the lifespan of downtown redevelopment without involving the public or City Council.

U-T: We Want Maas Redevelopment
The Union-Tribune made its case for downtown redevelopment this weekend featuring an editorial about, and a Q&A with, the outgoing chairman of CCDC, Fred Maas.

If that didn't give you enough Maas, the man himself penned an op-ed of his own with a now common claim that visionaries like him are only held back by shortsighted "small-town undertakers."

In the Q&A, Maas blasts the proposal supported now by five City Council members that the downtown redevelopment agency take over from the city's ailing general fund, the duty to pay back bonds on the last expansion of the Convention Center - a move that would free up $9.2 million a year.

"We run the risk of bankrupting ultimately over the next 20 years the redevelopment agency. This is not that different from underfunding pensions or from granting benefits without a way to pay for them by raiding our coffers to pay for things that were never contemplated."

Moral: If you don't like something that's happening in the city, compare it to the pension system! But question: Aren't redevelopment efforts eventually supposed to run out of money?

The new City Council president is considering your thoughts on those questions and others as he proposes a new ad hoc committee for redevelopment. And he has set up an email address to collect them: budgetandfinance@sandiego.gov.

Snow? Ha!

The U-T drew a direct line from the major snowfall and incredible collapse of the roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis to the Chargers search for a new stadium (did you see the video of the roof collapse?). Presumably, this adds urgency to the stadium debate there - the Minnesota Vikings are often mentioned in the same breath as the Chargers as possible teams that could relocate to Los Angeles.

Back in San Diego, it was a pretty nice day at the stadium yesterday, as Sam Hodgson's photos prove...

Sulking in San Diego

» Last week, we mentioned a video provoking guffaws across San Diego's political twitterati the last few days. It portrays San Diego as an insecure teenage girl uncomfortable that "the boys" keep making fun of her big pension. It's clearly trying to chide the media for begin so negative while making the case that we shouldn't worry so much about the city's problems, and we should support a new stadium and other projects championed by downtown redevelopment officials and the mayor.

As the U-T summarized, nobody wants to take credit for the flick.

I actually agree with another anonymous commenter, though, who said that the city is better represented by the mother figure in the video - always trying to convince people who are worried here that everything is fantastic. And she does that, even though she regularly admits (even trumpets) how bad things are going to get if we don't deal with our big pension.

With more than 130 lawyers on staff, since July 2006, San Diego spent $34 million on private lawyers."

2010-12-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

Morning Report
by Randy Dotinga
Voice of San Diego
Dec. 9, 2010

In other city finance news, 10News and the Watchdog Institute report that "despite having more than 130 lawyers on staff, since July 2006, the city of San Diego has spent more than $34 million on private lawyers."

And the U-T says about 2,200 current and retired city workers "may be forced to accept significantly reduced pensions or pay a lump sum of as much as $50,000 to keep their current pension."

December 10, 2010
Calculating the Cost of a City's Litigation
by Brian Baxter
The AM Law Daily

San Diego, no stranger to large legal bills, is grappling with $130 million in litigation costs accumulated over the past eight years, according to an analysis conducted by the Watchdog Institute, a nonprofit investigative reporting center at San Diego State University.

KPBS, a media arm of the university, has the details on the Watchdog Institute's findings. One of the more interesting tidbits: although San Diego has 137 in-house city attorneys, including 27 in its civil litigation unit, since 2006 the city has spent more than $34 million on outside lawyers.

Some of those who spoke to Watchdog said that former San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre bears the responsibility for some of those bills. In the spring of 2006, Aguirre threatened to sue two law firms--Vinson & Elkins and Willkie Farr & Gallagher--for malpractice.

Eventually, Aguirre hired his own lawyers--on contingency--for litigation in which he claimed both firms charged excessive fees and failed to meet deadlines on work the firms did related to the city's pension crisis. (A voicemail message left for Aguirre at his office--he now is in private practice after losing a reelection bid in November 2008--was not returned by the time of this post.)

But wasn't Aguirre the one who was fighting to reign in the billing rates of Am Law 100 firms doing work for San Diego, as The American Lawyer reported in November 2008?

In that story, reporter Ross Todd detailed Aguirre's suits against three firms--Vinson, Willkie Farr, and bond counsel Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe--for work they did related to San Diego's financial disclosure practices. Vinson paid $4.35 million to settle its role in the case in June 2008. Orrick paid $2.8 million in a similar settlement a month later. A case against Willkie Farr is pending. (Bryan Vess, a San Diego plaintiff's lawyer trying the case against Willkie Farr, did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did Patrick Swann, Jr., a partner at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps defending the firm.)

Since then Aguirre's successor, former local judge Jan Goldsmith, has told Watchdog that Aguirre's litigiousness contributed to a spike in San Diego's legal expenses and insurance rates. Goldsmith claims that Aguirre lacked confidence in his own lawyers, hired expensive outside lawyers, and made insurers nervous with his "sue happy" mentality.

One firm singled out by the Watchdog Institute for its billing rates is Latham & Watkins. Watchdog reports the firm has received $18 million for work it has done for San Diego over the past eight years, charging up to $750 an hour for its services.

Goldsmith also told Watchdog that when he took office in 2008 he was shocked by the amount of money being spent on outside counsel at firms like Latham.

"It was huge, and it was obvious that we had to rebuild the law firm...and make it to a point where we have confidence to handle these cases in-house," Goldsmith said. "It was a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars to use Latham & Watkins essentially as a division of the city attorney's office."

After Aguirre was voted out of office in November 2008, The Am Law Daily reported that Latham's role as "most-favored-firm status could be jeopardy." Goldsmith described the hourly rates charged by Latham lawyers as "outrageous," and noted that attorneys from his own office made only $49 an hour. Goldsmith told Watchdog he negotiated Latham down to $550 an hour on cases the firm already was handling, ones in which it would have been more costly to start over with new counsel.

A Latham spokesman disputed the hourly rates stated by Goldsmith, telling Watchdog that the firm's discounted hourly rates were closer to $400 per hour, with the current city attorney likely citing figures billed by senior lawyers at the firm. Latham noted its success in recovering legal fees from insurance companies for the city.

"A primary reason why municipal clients engage a firm of the caliber of Latham & Watkins is that we often save them money in the long run," the firm told Watchdog. "The total collections from insurance companies equal or exceed the amounts billed by Latham to the city for work since January 1, 2005--with approximately $18.5 million collected to date." (Latham stood by its statement to Watchdog when contacted by The Am Law Daily.)

Despite the firm's successes, Latham's yearly billings for San Diego have decreased from $11.9 million in 2009 to $2.7 million through October of this year, according to the Watchdog Institute report. Aguirre told Watchdog that the city council--not the city attorney--is responsible for hiring outside counsel. Latham, he told Watchdog, was first hired under his predecessor, Casey Gwinn.

"Isn't it funny how two years later it's still my fault," Aguirre said. "The idea of trying to blame me even two years later is so ludicrous. That just shows you how desperate they are."

The City Is Losing Institutional Knowledge on the Chargers Issue

2010-12-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

...The City Is Losing Institutional Knowledge on the Chargers Issue

More than just football fans should be concerned about Michell's departure and how it fits into the unrelenting Chargers debate.

Downtown stadium or not, the city has to do something about the Chargers. The city loses $12 million a year operating Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley, money that otherwise could pay for police, fire, parks and library services.

Why does the city lose that much money? Because past city officials failed in their negotiations the team. The city struck such a series of bad deals with the Chargers that the team essentially gets free rent and can leave town whenever it wants while the city bleeds tax dollars.

Michell, Rath and outgoing downtown redevelopment head Fred Maas all were key figures in the city's current talks with the team. Soon they'll all be gone — though the city could hire Maas back as a consultant.

Whomever takes that trio's place will be going up against a team attorney who has worked on stadium issues for eight years and in his recent spare time has advised on other crises involving one of the nation's largest private financial institutions, Lance Armstrong's doping allegations and the divorce case with the fate of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the balance.

Five Things to Know About Kris Michell's Departure
December 8, 2010
by Liam Dillon

1. The Mayor's All Grown Up

Yesterday's departure of Kris Michell, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders' top political aide, came with many things left undone...

"I think she was critically important to the mayor," said Phil Rath, a former city policy advisor who is now a lobbyist. "She was intimately involved in all of the major issues. She was the mayor's point person for pretty much everything that is a major issue in our time."...

2. She Was the Mayor's Link to the Downtown Establishment

...Still, Sainz agreed with the premise that Michell provided the link between the Mayor's Office and the downtown establishment.

3. Expect the Mayor to Hire a Political Expert

If Michell was the city's most powerful person you knew nothing about, her replacement Julie Dubick is a little less of a mystery.

She's an attorney, former partner at downtown law firm Seltzer Caplan and has worked as assistant director of the U.S. Marshals Service and with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C. She ran unsuccessfully for school board in 2000. Her biography from that time notes that she was the highest-ranking woman in federal law enforcement when she worked with the Marshals Service.

Dubick joined Sanders' staff when he took office in 2005. Her legal background has allowed her to give the mayor guidance independent of the City Attorney's Office. Rath said Dubick was one of the top lawyers in the city.

"We never trusted (former City Attorney) Mike Aguirre's legal advice because we always thought it was political advice," Sainz said. "Julie provided the legal perspective."

[Maura Larkins comment: Baloney, Mr. Sainz. Julie simply provides the interpretation of the law that suits your agenda.]

Adding to the Porkfest's Questions

2010-12-07T12:25:00.001-08:00

Adding to the Porkfest's Questions
by Randy Dotinga
Voice of San Diego
December 7, 2010

Downtown's redevelopment agency devoted quite a bit of effort to keep the public from seeing an early version of a report justifying its future existence.

The agency stonewalled our requests under public records law, but finally relented and released the draft of a report that aimed to determine whether downtown San Diego was still blighted - rundown - and needed billions in public money to help it recover.

"The study in its current form does nothing but add to burgeoning questions about the deal's legitimacy and the core mission of redevelopment agencies," writes City Hall reporter Liam Dillon.

All this comes in the wake of the secretive late-night pork-barrel deal in Sacramento that greatly extended the life of the redevelopment agency and circumvented the public process that this study was supposed to kick off.

Randy "Duke" Cunningham regrets guilty plea

2010-11-23T09:42:00.000-08:00

Disgraced ex-congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham regrets guilty plea
Nov 22, 2010
CBS Channel 8 San Diego

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - In his first media interview since going to prison, Randy "Duke" Cunningham said he regrets pleading guilty almost five years ago to conspiracy and tax evasion charges, and that he did so on the advice of his lawyers when he was physically and emotionally weakened.

The former GOP congressman from Rancho Santa Fe is serving eight years and four months in the Federal Corrections Institution in Tucson after admitting to taking $2.4 million in bribes from two defense contractors in exchange for steering government contracts their way.

During the nearly hourlong interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune, he also said his visitors have included former Republican Reps. Duncan Hunter of Alpine and Ron Packard of Carlsbad but his only family member who has come is his son. He said his wife, whom is in the process of divorcing him, and their two daughters do not communicate with him.

The 68-year-old former Navy fighter pilot also told the newspaper he fears the prostate cancer that caused him to drop nearly 100 pounds during the scandal has returned.

Upon his sentencing in 2006, Cunningham told a judge his decision to plea guilty was not made under duress. But to the Union-Tribune this month, he said he was pressured by lawyers who said it would costs millions to fight the charges and he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Those lawyers could not be reached for comment, according to the newspaper.

Out of the Loop, in a Snit

2010-11-16T11:43:00.000-08:00

My question: why wasn't Fred Maas investigated at the same time Nancy Graham was investigated? How come she took all the blame for helping developers? Maybe Fred Maas will be investigated now. See video of Maas refusing to answer questions.

City Council members grilled outgoing CCDC leader Fred Maas on Monday about details of a deal that allows the agency to sequester $6 billion more in property taxes for downtown redevelopment.

Out of the Loop, in a Snit
by Randy Dotinga
Voice of San Diego
Nov. 16, 2010

When it comes to running the city, one might assume that the City Council wouldn't just be in the loop, it would be the loop. That would be a bad assumption, as the council learned last month when the city's downtown redevelopment agency worked out a deal with the state to sequester property tax money. The council had no idea what was going on.

The City Council, which thinks the agency went rogue, spent Monday trying to figure out what it didn't know and when it didn't know it. There was plenty of bipartisan agency-slamming and talk about whether the agency's head deserves to keep his job. It's a rather moot point: he's leaving.

Council, City Attorney Feast Again on Porkfest
November 15, 2010
by Liam Dillon

If the state Legislature is where the late-night downtown porkfest gets fattened up, San Diego's City Council is where it gets slaughtered.

For the second straight hearing, council members sliced and diced staff from the city's downtown redevelopment agency, the Centre City Development Corp., about secret negotiations that led to a last-minute state deal to eliminate limits on downtown redevelopment. The deal happened without the council's knowledge even though members were working on a plan to remove the limits themselves.

Last month, the council had requested a timeline of when key players knew about the deal, which allows the agency to collect $6 billion more in property taxes and potentially finance a new downtown stadium for the Chargers. Outgoing agency head Fred Maas, who had revealed previously that discussions about the deal began in August, attempted to do that Monday afternoon.

Maas said he spoke between five to 10 times with local Republican state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, the provision's sponsor and he had briefed others on the deal.

But that — and a bland memo from Mayor Jerry Sanders' office also released Monday — wasn't enough. Councilman Carl DeMaio wanted to know about how the deal began, specifically contact between Maas and mayoral chief of staff Kris Michell. Maas refused to answer. DeMaio, in turn, openly wondered if he could fire Maas.

"I don't think I feel comfortable with Mr. Maas staying until the end of the year," DeMaio said.

Incidentally, Maas had just formalized his resignation effective at the end of the year, as the city is seeking to replace him with a permanent downtown redevelopment chief.

Had that not happened, Councilwoman Marti Emerald said, she might have sought Maas' removal sooner.

"I think there's probably some of what you're hearing too is that maybe it should be an immediate resignation," Emerald said. "No offense to the great volunteer work you've done, but this City Council is trying to repair the damage done by previous councils and mayors in doing deals behind closed doors that have gotten us into a lot of trouble."

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, who also was kept in the dark about the deal, poked a hole in one of the main arguments made by its proponents. City Council, backers say, has the ultimate decision on how and if the city should spend the new money.

But there are restrictions to how that new money could be spent, Goldsmith pointed out. Had the deal not occurred, property tax dollars would have flowed directly to the city's day-to-day operating budget, meaning it could pay for police, fire and other city services. Now the money will be sequestered downtown, meaning it couldn't pay for those services...

Jack Johnson's arrest shows development as a blessing and a curse

2010-11-14T20:03:00.000-08:00

Jack Johnson's arrest shows development as a blessing and a curse
Jack B. Johnson, Prince George's County's executive, was arrested on Nov. 12 as federal investigators served search warrants at the County Administration Building. His wife, Leslie Johnson, was also arrested. Each was charged with evidence tempering and destroying evidence.
By Miranda S. Spivack, Ovetta Wiggins and Carol Morello
Washington Post
November 14, 2010

Development deals have been at the center of Prince George's County's most contentious political fights for decades, the source of its highest hopes and deepest embarrassments.

The wins have included luring the Redskins from the District, creating a tourist and shopping destination at National Harbor and, most recently, persuading Wegmans, the Rochester, N.Y.-based grocer with a cultlike following, to open a mega-store in a county that has long been shunned by upscale retailers.

But the arrests of County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) and his wife, Leslie Johnson, on Friday as part of a federal probe of political corruption in Prince George's are a reminder that the money swirling around big development deals can be both a blessing and a curse.

In a recent interview with The Washington Post outlining his achievements during his eight years as executive, Jack Johnson said he was "very, very proud" of his development record.

Two weeks later, according to an FBI affidavit, the Johnsons were overheard on a wiretap plotting how to rid themselves of a potentially incriminating $100,000 check from a developer and hide wads of cash totalling $79,600. They could each face 20 years in prison if convicted.

"Upper Marlboro has developed a reputation for having a pay-to-play atmosphere, and you certainly don't hear that about other jurisdictions" in the area, said Joel D. Rozner, a lobbyist and former county zoning counsel, referring to the county seat.

The downtown porkfest continues: The $20 Million Subsidy of the Visitor Industry

2010-11-14T12:26:00.000-08:00

The $20 Million Subsidy of the Visitor Industry
November 13, 2010
by Scott Lewis
Voice of San Diego

The Convention Center Corp. this week released the snazzy new drawings of its proposed expansion, which could be the most expensive facility the city has ever built.

The drawings showed the newest feature, meant to give us all chills: They put grass on top of it to make a five-acre park. It's like a gigantic Chia Pet. The Chia Center!

The Chia Center came with a barrage of stats.

On his Facebook page, for instance, Councilman Kevin Faulconer noted one of them: The city collects $20.2 million a year in sales and hotel taxes directly from the business the Convention Center delivers to pay for "police and fire."

"The San Diego Convention Center is the definition of return on investment," he wrote.

Is the expansion the definition of return on investment, though? In plugging the new expansion, the city's Convention Center Corp. said it would bring in an additional $17.1 million in taxes to the city.

Do a little arithmetic and we get to $37.3 million total coming in to the city's day-to-day budget because of this new building.

There's only one problem. Actually, two.

No. 1: The new convention center is expected to cost $50 million-to-$60 million a year in debt payments on the loan the city would have to get to build it.

N0. 2: The city still pays $8.75 million a year on the last Convention Center expansion.

So let's do that arithmetic. That's at least $58.75 million a year for the facility.

That means it's a loss to the city of more than $20 million a year.

Or, I suppose we could call it not a "loss" but a subsidy of the visitor industry of about $20 million a year.

There are basically four ways to pay for this facility being floated.

• I. Raise some kind of special tax. This would be, most likely, a type of rental car surcharge or maybe a hotel-room tax increase. It would require a vote of the people mdash; perhaps even a two-thirds majority. This is not going to happen. They might alternatively put it through the Hotel Government, aka the Tourism Marketing District. We'll see.

• II. Form a new, special, group — known as a business improvement district — just among the businesses that benefit directly from the Convention Center. This would make them all chip in a bit and pay for it — or a good portion of it.

• III. The port district. The port, a government agency, makes its money from hotels and other lease holders on port land. It could, and should, at least chip in. Port Commissioner Stephen Cushman is the mayor's special designate in charge of all things Convention Center expansion.

• IV. The Downtown Money Tree (aka The Porkfest): Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher has now made it possible for billions of dollars of downtown property taxes to stay sequestered downtown into projects that are supposed to spruce up neighborhoods.

I would be willing to bet that they'll go almost wholly for Option IV. Trust me, they will not take this to the voters, so that eliminates the chance for a new tax. (I know, raising a special tax to pay for a special effort! Absurd! What is this, 12th Century England!?)...

Did Ernie Dronenburg falsify his credentials?

2010-11-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

From my personal experience with our newly-elected County Assessor, Ernie Dronenburg, I can safely say that he seems interested in protecting the powerful and has a habit of ignoring the little guy, even when he also has to ignore the law to achieve his goals.

San Diego county results
November 4, 2010
San Diego Union-Tribune
DAVID L. BUTLER 244408 48.86%
ERNEST J. DRONENBURG 255780 51.14%

Election 2010: Assessor, congressional incumbents and more
By The San Diego Union-Tribune
October 24, 2010
Assessor/Recorder/Clerk endorsement

I emphatically disagree with your endorsement of Ernie Dronenburg for San Diego Assessor/Recorder/Clerk (Editorial, Oct. 16). In my professional capacity as the county assessor/clerk/recorder of Riverside County from 1991 to 2004, I have worked with both candidates. David Butler is by far the superior candidate. With more than 30 years of experience in the office as an appraiser, manager and assistant department head, Butler has consistently demonstrated his knowledge of the needs of the office and the needs of the taxpayers of San Diego. His focus has always been on providing excellent public service.

In his candidate statement, Dronenburg states that he was an “assessor 20 years.” This statement implies he was an elected county assessor. The truth is Dronenburg was never an elected assessor of a California county. David Butler is the assessor of San Diego County, and has demonstrated his ability to implement budgetary cutbacks and still get the job done.

Gary L. Orso

Encinitas

The recommendation for Ernie Dronenburg cites Dronenburg’s qualification as a “state-certified assessor.” In fact, there is no such thing as a “state-certified assessor.”

Scott Olsen

Chula Vista...

Frye's Disgust at the Late Night Pork Fest; Marti Emerald stands with Frye

2010-10-15T12:33:00.000-07:00

Frye's Disgust at the Late Night Pork Fest
October 15, 2010
by Scott Lewis
Voice of San Diego

Perhaps nobody was more angry about what happened last week when Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher and the Centre City Development Corp. just decided themselves to extend the life of redevelopment downtown than City Councilwoman Donna Frye.

Not only has she been demanding CCDC begin paying back the loans from the city that got downtown redevelopment started in the beginning, she's also been sticking her neck out for Proposition D, the tax increase paired with 10 financial reforms.

Her alliance with the mayor, once an arch rival, on that has been rather inspiring to see. But like a lot of us, she was startled to learn of the news from Sacramento that the deal had been done.

On Tuesday, she came up with the idea to send the governor a letter asking him to veto the legislation. As it turned out, the governor had yet to sign that part of the budget and she figured that if the city of San Diego officially sent him a letter asking him not to, he actually might not.

But it didn't happen.

Why? I told the story earlier of Councilman Kevin Faulconer grappling with the issue. He, like Frye, was so incensed by what Fletcher did that he just ... well ... couldn't bring himself to undo it.

But that ended up being dwarfed as a display of insecurity by what Council President Ben Hueso did. He had supported the idea of sending the letter to the governor but when the opportunity to try again — after Faulconer killed it — he balked.

Well, he didn't balk. He ran away. Seriously. After expressing his concern about it and saying he thought everyone should relax a little, he called a recess on the meeting and then disappeared. Since he runs the City Council meetings, Faulconer had to take over the dais.

Whatever bug Hueso caught also, then, landed in Councilman Todd Gloria's donut. Gloria suddenly decided that the discussion they'd been having about how outraged they were was enough for him. That is, just them bloviating in council chambers was enough to send a message to the state that they aren't going to take getting undermined like that anymore...

And Frye was angry. When I talked to her on the phone after the tumultuous day, I told her that I thought people might feel like they couldn't trust city leaders right when they're asking people to have faith in their pledges about how extensive the Prop. D reforms will be.

"I don't blame them," she said...."We sat through a very lengthy public process to assure the public that there would be a full blight study and a public process they could participate in. Not only was that not true. But at nighttime, they essentially went behind the back of the redevelopment agency members — which means the public — and completely thumbed their nose at the process and that is wrong."...

Wednesday, the letter went out, authored by Frye and Councilwoman Marti Emerald...

Nathan Fletcher in the dark of night gets stealth stadium deal into California's budget

2010-10-09T15:18:00.000-07:00

In the Dark of Night
Voice of San Diego
Randy Dotinga
October 9, 2010

Should law be patched together in the middle of the night when hardly anyone is watching? Sacramento seems to think so: in a last-minute move that sent local eyebrows skyward, the state legislature slipped a bill into budget negotiations Thursday night that would pave the way for San Diego's downtown redevelopment agency to more easily pay to build a downtown football stadium.

This is hardly a case of simple bureaucracy at work. As we report, the mayor's promised "transparent process" over this issue is now history, and the effect of the deal on the city's day-to-day budget is unknown, just as voters begin considering boosting their sales taxes to bail out the city. On top of all that, "the deal was done in stunning secrecy."

The assemblyman who spearheaded the deal defends his move, saying it's a big job creator, but acknowledges that the county wasn't thrilled about the idea. County supervisors issued statements, with one saying the deal could actually spell trouble for the stadium.

Also: the city attorney says a public vote on the stadium won't be necessary if only redevelopment funds are used to build it. The city's head of redevelopment says this deal will save the city money.

Fletcher: Bill About Jobs, Not Chargers
October 8, 2010
by Liam Dillon

Republican state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher said the word "no" a lot when we spoke on the phone about the last-minute deal that removes a major financial hurdle to the city building a new Chargers stadium downtown.

Fletcher authored a provision introduced and approved in last night's state budget that lifts San Diego's downtown redevelopment cap, a necessary step before the city could build a new Chargers stadium using public money.

Was this bill something you required to support the state budget? No, he said.

Was this bill done to build a Chargers stadium? "Not exclusively, no," Fletcher said.

Fletcher emphasized that lifting the downtown redevelopment agency's cap would affect hundreds of projects, not just a football stadium. He did say a football stadium was the most high-profile effort now being discussed. He said he had been in contact with the Chargers in the last week, along with other stakeholders.

Is this deal similar to the 2009 one the city of Industry received, and Fletcher opposed, to help build a potential football stadium there? No, he said. That was an environmental waiver specific to the stadium, he said. This action affects lots more, Fletcher said.

"It's like comparing apples to carburetors," he said.

Instead, he said, this was all about jobs. Fletcher released a fact sheet saying it would create 110,000 permanent and temporary jobs.

But not everyone's happy. San Diego County, for one.

"The county expressed their opposition to this," Fletcher said.

County leaders had been meeting with city officials to discuss increasing the cap and potential financing for a stadium. In June, the city hired a consultant to examine the need for further redevelopment downtown. The $500,000 study was expected to take 18 months and City Council members had praised it as a public process.

This deal ends both of those things.

Fletcher conceded the process wasn't pretty.

"We can have a long debate on the process," he said. "There's probably fair criticism. I criticize the legislative process frequently, but at the end of the day what we're focused on is the product and the results. If we have the opportunity to take action to get tens of thousands of San Diegans working again, we had to do it."

Report: San Diego County spends less on fire services than neighbors

2010-09-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

Report: San Diego County spends less on fire services than neighbors
Sep 1, 2010
La Jolla Light
By City News Service

San Diego fire agencies invest significantly less in fire and emergency medical services than their counterparts in Orange and Los Angeles counties, according to a study released Wednesday.

The study by the National University System Institute for Policy Research found that fire agencies in San Diego cumulatively spent $152.85 per resident in fiscal year 2009-10, compared to $177.98 in Orange County and $217.71 in Los Angeles County.

The data was culled from the budgets of more than 70 separate fire protection agencies throughout the three Southern California counties, according to the Institute for Policy Research.

Erik Bruvold, the institute's president, said the findings should be "worrisome" to San Diego residents in the wake of the 2003 and 2007 firestorms that destroyed 4,500 structures and caused billions in damages.

"In the seven years since the 2003 firestorm we have seen many important steps toward improving our fire fighting efforts," Bruvold said. "However, the biggest one - significantly increasing investment and the priority placed on fire and EMS among municipal budgets - hasn't been a step that enough local policy makers have embraced."...

How To Be Wiser About Wildfires

2010-09-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

How To Be Wiser About Wildfires
Voice of San Diego
August 30, 2010

This is the season to get the message out that although wildfires can be extremely destructive, they are not like tsunamis or tornadoes: with the right information, people have a chance to make wise choices, and can reduce their risk of losing a home by making the wisest changes they can afford to make. Who wouldn't want to reduce home losses in a wildfire? I think that it could happen in our region, when enough people understand a few basic facts: how homes burn and how to reduce the risk of that happening.

Basic fact number one: Most homes ignite in a wildfire from embers igniting the home itself, or a structure close to the home. A few ignite from superheated air, especially from other burning homes, and even fewer ignite from the actual wildfire flames.

Basic fact number two: there is no such thing as a "fire-safe" plant, but there are "fire-wise" people.

Home Ignition Risks from Wildfires:

Embers: 80 percent of home ignitions in a wildfire are caused by embers landing on the house and igniting the house, due to the home's flawed design and construction. New homes now must be built to standards that will prevent ember ignition. Older homes that have not been retrofitted against ember attack are at high risk.

Live embers can land from a fire five miles away. Fire-wise professionals tell us the only way to protect older homes is to retrofit them to resist ember attack. Some fixes are cheap: installing attic and foundation vent screens and adding screens to tool-shed windows, and weather-stripping garage, sunroom, and shed doors. But wood shake roofing is the greatest hazard of all, and a new roof, or replacing small dimension handrails or exterior stairways with heavy timber or metal, or replacing windows and doors, are expensive.

Heat: some homes are destroyed in a wildfire after igniting from heat radiated from an adjacent burning building. For example, a tool-shed ignites because it had unscreened windows and embers got in. The tool-shed radiates heat up to 2000 degrees then ignites the house. In suburban areas, where homes may be as close as 10 to 20 feet apart, 2000 degrees radiating from a burning home will ignite the adjacent homes. Each home that has been made low-risk will also protect its neighbors.

Flame: Flames moving from the wild-lands across the homesite cause a small percentage of home ignitions, compared to homes ignited by embers. Assume the area for 100-foot around the home is fire-wise. If so, the wildfire flame is too far away to ignite the house. A fire-wise homesite, out to 100 feet from the home, will have non-combustible latticework, decks, sheds, fabric structures and furniture, gravel mulch and fences within five feet of the house, and plants that are lean, clean and green.

If homeowners spent $1,000 a year on the lowest-cost retrofit items — vent screens, weather-stripping, a bit of fencing, etc., — they would reduce their risk a lot in a few years. However, replacing a wood roof, siding or decking, or putting in fire-resistant windows are big home improvements, and some people simply may not be able to do them. One home that is still a high risk can threaten a whole neighborhood. Santa Barbara, after suffering huge home losses from wildfires, now requires these improvements be made as point-of-sale upgrades. Is this something San Diegans should consider? Other models exist: communities could accept donations for non-profit funds to help neighbors who can't afford to do the most important work. This kind of mutual assistance would be very fire-wise.

Homesite Risk Reduction:

How to keep the homesite from igniting? Assure that all the man-made materials for shade structures or furniture near the house are noncombustible, or keep them in storage when not in use, and decide how best to keep the plants noncombustible. No magic plant exists that will protect a home, though some require a lot less work to keep from igniting. Any plant, even the low-maintenance ones, still needs two things in order to not ignite: cleaning and water.

Every year before fire season, cut down dead weeds, remove leaf litter over two inches deep, and clean off roofs. Then keep going: green hedges, beds of ferns and succulents, and some plants like junipers, rosemary, and cypresses build up a dead layer under the green foliage. Clean out all that dead stuff before July, and during fire season remove new buildup is removed. Some plants can be cut very short in the summer and regenerate in the cool wet season. If a plant is too much work to maintain, learn if anything else can be planted that is less work. Make decisions carefully.

A plant list with water needs and cleaning requirements would help people be more fire-wise. Plants need water to be hydrated and resist ignition. Many species need water three times a week, and without it, will dry and die. Dead and dry plants ignite. Others require much less water, and need it less frequently, to be hydrated. If water is limited in your homesite or your budget, less thirsty plants will help you have a low-risk homesite with the water they need, some only three times a month.

For a homeowner with a tight budget for maintenance, plants that require less water and less cleaning, e.g., small trees versus big trees, will have a lower-cost, low-risk landscape. But some people like bigger trees and are able to invest more to maintain a landscape of more high-upkeep plants, and still have a low risk homesite. Both are fire-wise, as long as the homesite is clean and plants are hydrated through fire season.

A Better Future:

These pre-defended homes and communities would be likely to survive in a wildfire. A pre-defended home with a wildfire approaching will need someone to shut windows and, if they have it, to spray aon a fire-retardant foam for extra insurance.

When the smoke clears, we all could return to our lives in our communities, and the charred wildlands would start on its natural post-burn healing cycle. What a different future that would be, than the one we presently anticipate when wildfires threaten. And yes, it is possible, if we choose wisely and make it happen.

-- KAY STEWART, San Diego

Kay Stewart is a California registered landscape architect. Many local experts can help homeowners learn more. Wildfire Zone lists many of them,

MTS exec tops transportation pay list

2010-08-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

As far as I know, all the officials discussed below earned their pay. But I wonder what's so special about transportation? Maybe transportation decision-making requires more objectivity than other fields.

MTS exec tops transportation pay list
By Jeff McDonald
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
August 29, 2010

The man in charge of making San Diego’s buses and trolleys run on time tops the list of transportation executives whose salary and benefits were examined as part of The Watchdog’s ongoing public compensation survey.

Paul Jablonski, who signed a five-and-a-half-year contract in 2008 and is promised annual 5 percent raises, will receive a $414,000 compensation package this calendar year, records show.

The pay package starts with a $279,300 base salary, but includes a series of retirement and other benefits that push him past the city manager of San Marcos, Paul Malone, who topped The Watchdog’s list for municipal administrator compensation at just over $408,000 a year.

The Metropolitan Transit System operates the San Diego Trolley and the city bus system. It also contracts to provide freight-train service in San Diego and Imperial counties.

Jablonski oversees a 2,300-member workforce and a budget of nearly $220 million. In addition to his salary and benefits, he gets 41 paid days off a year, which is among the lowest in the latest survey...

What does Lorie Zapf do for a living?

2010-08-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

Aug 27, 2010
What does Lorie Zapf do for a living?
City Council candidate’s small business was dissolved months ago
San Diego City Beat
By Dave Maass

Back in March, each candidate for San Diego City Council filed with the City Clerk a Form 700, or “Statement of Economic Interests.” Among other disclosures intended to reduce conflicts of interest, the candidate is required to list all sources of income.

District 6 candidate Lorie Zapf listed only one business interest: “Zapf & Associates, Inc.,” a corporation engaged in “consulting, creative, sales” activities. She listed herself as the president and CEO.

CityBeat has learned that Zapf & Associates Inc. has gone out of business.

According to records on file at the California Secretary of State’s office, the corporation was dissolved on April 6, 2010, which means it no longer exists. The corporation had been registered to Zapf’s home address in Clairemont—the same address against which a bank filed a “notice of default” in March that said she and her husband, Eric, were behind on their mortgage payments by several months.

Zapf, a Republican, and her Democratic opponent, Howard Wayne, emerged from the June primary election with the most votes and will face-off in the November election.

On the campaign trail—and on the ballot—Zapf describes herself as a legal advocate and a small-business owner. However, it is unclear what happened to her small business and what, exactly, she now does for a living.

Zapf has also publically described herself as the regional director for Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, a non-profit organization that advocates for tort reform. This position was not disclosed on her Form 700 (as is usually required) and instead Zapf listed CALA as one of her company’s sources of income.

Records with the San Diego Treasurer’s office indicate that in 2008 the couple applied for a Business Tax Certificate, the required document one needs to run a business in San Diego, for Eric Zapf & Associates, Inc.. However, the real estate business (also listed to the Zapfs’ home address) has not yet received the certificate. The treasurer’s office tells CityBeat it has requested more information, though declined to say what information was requested and when the request was made.

Meanwhile, the Zapfs seem to be operating at least one other business under a fictitious name. Eric Zapf claims to be the founder of Wet Kiss Creative, which distributes items such as Slapitz—a “slap on” bracelet-style device that is used to display stuffed animals. He also seems to be marketing a magnetic wall mount under the name Air-Pin.

Companies operating under fictitious names are required to register with San Diego County. Wet Kiss Creative is not listed in the county’s database.

Both Eric and Lorie Zapf are featured on the web site for Eric Zapf Homes & Estates, which provides “full brokerage services.” The website says it is currently being upgraded.

The Zapf campaign refused to respond to inquiries regarding anything related to these issues. Instead, campaign spokesman Matt Donnellan wrote via e-mail:

“You and CityBeat have adopted the role of advocates and agents of former Assemblyman Wayne's City Council campaign. It is absurd to think that we would respond to this thinly veiled inquiry by our opponent.”

Donnellan is referring to investigative reporting published in CityBeat that revealed that the Zapfs had defaulted on a mortgage on their home in Clairemont and that Eric Zapf had defaulted on a second home in Nevada and was delinquent three times on his taxes. Our reporting also uncovered that Zapf had falsely described herself on official forms as holding a master’s degree in business. On top of that, we also published anti-gay e-mails sent by Lorie Zapf and dug into the numerous lawsuits she and her husband have filed even while advocating against frivolous lawsuits.

While Wayne has used some of the reporting to attack his opponent, for the record, none of the information originated with the Wayne camp. The campaign did lend CityBeat a DVD recording of a public forum that featured Wayne and Zapf; it did not result in a story.

The newspaper did not endorse Wayne in the primary—it endorsed Steve Hadley—and has not yet endorsed a candidate for the general election.

Ethics Commission Fines Graham $32,000

2010-08-24T19:20:00.000-07:00

See all posts re Nancy Graham.

Ethics Commission Fines Graham $32,000
Former CCDC President Nancy Graham at an Ethics Commission hearing in May
By Rob Davis
Voice of San Diego
August 12, 2010

Nancy Graham, the former Centre City Development Corp. president, was fined $32,000 Thursday by the San Diego Ethics Commission, ending a two-year saga that derailed nearly $2 billion in downtown projects, drew FBI attention and almost took down the city's downtown redevelopment agency.

Graham, who didn't attend the hearing, was penalized for failing to report some $3.5 million she received from a private business deal done in Florida before moving here in 2005. The commission found that she violated city ethics laws 18 times.

Her partners in that deal, which included the Lennar Corp., paid Graham while she was CCDC's president. But she never reported that income on her annual conflict-of-interest disclosures. Without any stated conflict, she went on to negotiate the terms of a downtown hotel proposed on land Lennar owned near Petco Park.

The issue went unnoticed until I asked her about it in spring 2008.

She told me that the private deal was long in her past, that she hadn't had any interest in the private deal for years. She said she'd sold her interests in N-K Ventures, the business she owned with her former husband.

"I have no interest in N-K or anything they do," Graham told me in 2008. "It is a bullshit argument by either sour grapes losers or other people."

That claim proved false.

In fact, it was Graham's own testimony -- this time under oath, not to me -- that unraveled her changing story. We found a sworn deposition she'd given in 2007. In it, Graham acknowledged receiving $125,000 from the Lennar deal while she was CCDC's president.

At the same time she was negotiating a deal with Lennar, the company was paying her profits from the old business deal.

That drew the Ethics Commission's attention, prompting an investigation that started in the summer of 2008 and ended Thursday night.

A three-member panel of commissioners had proposed fining Graham $25,000. But two other commissioners, John O'Neill and Bud Wetzler, argued for more. O'Neill pointed to Graham's public statements and called them disingenuous. He recalled a statement she made during a day-long ethics hearing in May when she claimed she didn't know that building a hotel near Petco Park would be profitable to its developers.

O'Neill held up a blue post-it note he'd written in his notes about that claim. It simply said: "Absurd."

"The record does show an attempt to deceive," O'Neill said.

Wetzler said Graham's actions, coming at the top levels of the organization, were "one of the most serious of all violations we could have."

"I'm convinced," he said, "that someplace along the line she shifted from accidental to intent."

A $36,000 fine was entertained and rejected; the five commissioners had to unanimously agree, and two did not.

So they deliberated quietly and settled on $32,000 -- less than the maximum $90,000 that could've been levied but more than originally proposed. The fine was unanimously approved.

Graham was fined $4,000 each on two violations: Preparing a staff report on the hotel project and discussing it at a CCDC board meeting. She was fined $1,500 apiece for 16 other violations, including sending e-mails and participating in negotiations about the project.

It's the second-largest fine in the Ethics Commission's nine-year history

The Question on Nancy Graham: Why Was She Hired in the First Place?
By Don Bauder
July 26, 2008

Nancy Graham, who recently resigned as head of Centre City Development
Corp., has left the state, supposedly to be with her ill mother. The
city attorney's office has been investigating her for a month, and now
CCDC will hold its own investigation, supposedly by an outside lawyer.
Questions abound on whether she was at all influential in a developer
named the Related Group getting the nod on a planned CCDC project at
Seventh and Market.

Before CCDC hired her, it should have asked
questions. On Nov. 23 of 2005, I reported in a Reader column that
Graham's successor as mayor of West Palm Beach, Florida, had charged
that she was too cozy with Related Group. She didn't arrive in San
Diego until the following month.

While she was mayor, her signature project was done by Related.
Then she went into the private sector
with her husband (from whom she is now divorced), and did a project
with Related. I have subsequently learned that her ex-husband is still
owed money by Related.

On April 23 of this year, I wrote a column on
the Seventh and Market project; Karen-Huff-Willis, head of the Black
Historical Society of San Diego, and activist Ian Trowbridge,
questioned whether she had been involved in Related negotiations.

Graham told me she had been in some meetings in which an agreement had
not been reached reached, but she did not negotiate the deal. The CCDC
backed up her claim. Huff-Willis this week threatened to sue CCDC. She
says that under Section 1090 of state law, public officials must be
guided by the public interest, not personal interest...

A judge will decide tomorrow whether to count 12,000 ballots that the Country Registrar failed to pick up

2010-07-08T12:21:00.001-07:00

UPDATE:
Barry Jantz sent this news:
From: @FlashReport
Sent: Jul 21, 2010 10:11p
**Breaking News** Moments ago Salas called Vargas and conceded the 40th SD Dem Primary. The recount is over!

Thank you Barry for keeping us up to date!

UPDATE:
Good news: The Riverside votes are being counted, thanks to a Superior Court Judge.
Bad news: Juan Vargas has gained several votes. What's up with this? I am ashamed if, as it appears, roughly half of Democrats in this district either don't know or don't care that the head of the Assembly Insurance Committee took a job as vice-president of an insurance company immediately upon leaving office. But then I wonder: did Republican-leaning individuals ask for Democratic ballots so they could vote for Juan Vargas in the primary?

Thanks to Jim Sills and Barry Jantz at San Diego Rostra for keeping us posted.

ORIGINAL POST:

Was it miscommunication? Or intentional neglect? Why didn't the County Registrar of Voters collect 12,000 ballots from the post office on June 8, 2010? Or why didn't the Post Office deliver them? How did this ball get dropped?

No matter what the outcome of the counting, however, I have come to wonder why so many Democrats would vote for someone as unethical as Juan Vargas. I sure hope Mary Salas wins. Juan Vargas should be running as a Republican.

Did Republicans work for Juan Vargas to sabotage the Democratic primary?

2010-07-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

I can't help thinking that it was very odd that Juan Vargas, who had so few Democratic endorsements, apparently got so many Democratic votes. Or did he? Democrats allow Independents to vote in the Democratic primary. Did some people ask for Democratic ballots to sabotage the primary? I also wonder why the post office delivered ballots late to the Registrar. Did someone at the Registrar intentionally delay the delivery?

Back before he made it official that he was best friends with insurance companies (by accepting a lucrative position in an insurance company), Juan Vargas was already raising doubts about his integrity. Here's an article from 2006 about Juan Vargas, followed by an article about San Diego County Office of Education's Diane Crosier that was written about a week ago.

Lawmaker opposed homeowners' efforts
By Bill Ainsworth
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 4, 2006

Assemblyman Juan Vargas, criticized by some homeowners for opposing consumer-oriented changes in insurance laws, accepted nearly $2,000 for a golf trip and more than $500 in meals from the insurance industry last year, state documents show.

Major insurance companies, including Allstate, Hartford Life and Prudential Financial, paid for Vargas to play golf at exclusive courses, including Pebble Beach, last September, according to state records.

Vargas is chairman of the Assembly Insurance Committee, which oversees legislation affecting the industry...

I am trying to figure out how Juan Vargas was able to be taken seriously as a candidate for public office after his shameless personal gain from insurance companies during and directly after serving as insurance committee president of the California Assembly. My conclusion is that some people and institutions are as corrupt as he is. Here are the endorsements he boasted about on his website:
The United Domestic Workers of America, AFSCME Local 3930

United Nurses Associations of California

Crime Victims United

Coachella Valley Teachers Association

Desert Sands Unified School District Teachers Association

Palm Springs Unified School District Teachers Association

California National Guard Veterans Association

San Diego City Firefighters, Local 145

CDF Firefighters, Local 2881 “California’s Fire Department”

Black Police Officers Association of San Diego

Chula Vista Chamber of Commerce

American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO

AFSCME, Local 3299, University of California Workers

Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña, San Diego

Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, retired

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, retired

Senator Ron Calderon

Senator Waddie Deddeh, retired, Chula Vista, Coronado, Imperial Beach, National City, San Diego

Senator Joe Simitian

Senator Leland Yee

Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally, retired, former Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus

Steven Hernandez, Mayor Pro Tem, City of Coachella

Emmanuel Martinez, Council Member, City of Coachella

John Minto, Board Member (ret.), San Diego Police Officers Association

The list of endorsements for Mary Salas was huge, many times the size of that of Juan Vargas, and included many more elected officials. So how did Juan Vargas manage to get approximately the same number of votes as Salas in the 2010 California Senate 40th district election? I will continue to ponder this question as I mourn the fact that so many Democrats are either ignorant of or tolerant of shocking and inappropriate acceptance of insurance company largess by Juan Vargas.

There Is a Free Lunch, and They're Not Telling You About It
June 27, 2010
By EMILY ALPERT
Voice of San Diego

Top employees at the San Diego County Office of Education have been allowed to avoid reporting gifts despite a California law that is supposed to ensure that the public can peek at who is paying for meals, handing out baseball tickets or giving other gifts to influential government employees.

The office has allowed employees to report their income without revealing gifts, an exception that could obscure important information about who is wining and dining public officials. California law says that gifts are income, no different than the other earnings that top employees already must report on annual statements of economic interests.

The Fair Political Practices Commission urged the County Office of Education to change its guidelines after being alerted to the issue by voiceofsandiego.org earlier this month. Depending on how long the office has failed to report gifts, its employees may need to report gifts they received years ago. Office spokesman Jim Esterbrooks said the agency is updating its guidelines to comply.

Gifts have played a role in a contentious lawsuit filed by a former employee that alleges free meals contributed to a "culture of corruption" at the agency that steered County Office of Education business to specific law firms.

For instance, employees who help oversee legal work for school districts regularly accepted free lunches from an attorney who is frequently hired by their department, according to testimony by employee John Vincent taken as part of the lawsuit. Attorney Dan Shinoff usually paid for the meals, which happened more than once a month, Vincent said.

Diane Crosier, who directs the office's risk management department, was one of the employees that accepted the meals, according to the testimony. Her department controls millions of dollars in legal work for school districts across the county. While Crosier does not decide which attorneys to assign to each legal case, she oversees Rick Rinear, the worker who does. Rinear also went to lunch with Shinoff from time to time, along with other employees, Vincent said in the deposition this year.

Crosier is required to reveal her economic interests to the public because she helps make decisions with a financial impact for a public agency. The County Office of Education does not require Rinear or the other employees to do so.

California law typically requires employees like Crosier to reveal gifts worth $50 or more from a single source annually, so frequent free lunches would likely need to be reported.

Yet Crosier did not report any lunches with Shinoff...

How corrupt does Juan Vargas have to be to make voters turn against him? His lucrative job at Safeco after accepting gifts as assemblyman

2010-07-03T18:38:00.000-07:00

I still have high hopes that Mary Salas will win this contest, but I can't believe there are so many Democrats in the South Bay who would vote for Juan Vargas, who went straight to a lucrative job in the insurance industry when he left the California Assembly and gave up his seat on the insurance committee.

40th STATE SENATE DISTRICT
Vargas maintains 6-vote lead over Salas
Riverside County votes uncounted
By Michele Clock, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
June 28, 2010

State Senate candidate Juan Vargas maintained a six-vote lead Monday over rival Mary Salas in a South Bay Democratic race, but while the vote count is almost over, the dispute may go on for some time.

Not only is a recount likely, but a controversy over uncounted ballots could alter the vote totals from the Riverside County portion of the district.

Updated tallies by the San Diego County registrar’s office from the June 8 primary election in the 40th state Senate District showed Vargas with the same lead he had Friday. Both candidates gained 45 votes in the latest batch of results.

There are 50 absentee and provisional ballots left to be counted in San Diego County.

The district reaches into Imperial and Riverside counties, and registrar officials in both those counties said Monday that they have finished counting votes.

However, questions over uncounted votes in Riverside County could be a wild card. About 12,500 mail-in votes were delivered after the 8 p.m. June 8 deadline, meaning the votes wouldn’t be counted. Elections officials there are exploring whether they have the legal right to count those votes.

There were reports of miscommunication between the county and the U.S. Postal Service, which resulted in the ballots arriving late...

Vargas takes insurance job
Ex-assemblyman's reversal draws fire
By Bill Ainsworth
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE S
December 8, 2006

Profile Juan Vargas

Job as of last Sunday: Assemblyman, insurance committee chairman

Interesting fact: $335,000 in campaign contributions from insurers over the years.

Notable quote: “I'm not going into insurance or finance. I'm just not interested.” (April) New job announced this week: Vice president of California external affairs for Safeco insurance

During his campaign for Congress, Juan Vargas was harshly criticized for accepting $335,000 in campaign contributions from insurers and frequently taking their side while chairman of the Assembly Insurance Committee.

The San Diego Democrat not only disputed that but he went further and said he would not take a job in the industry after leaving office.

Now he has done just that.

Vargas, whose Assembly term ended this week, is the new vice president of California external affairs for Safeco, a Seattle-based company that sells auto, surety and homeowners insurance to 4.3 million customers nationwide...

The Grand Jury's Big Flub

2010-06-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

I can't understand why people don't admit it when they're wrong. Especially when it's obvious to everybody that they're wrong.

Morning Report: The Grand Jury's Big Flub
Jun 17, 2010
Voice of San Diego

It's a pretty stunning number: $679 million.

According to the San Diego County Grand Jury, that's how much the county has saved through outsourcing, managed competition and other cost-cutting strategies. A grand jury report implies that the savings came over 16 months in 2007 and 2008.

The Union-Tribune adapted the statistic in an editorial bashing the city for failing to more fully embrace outsourcing.

But there's a problem with using that number for the 16-month period: It's just plain wrong.

As we show in our latest Fact Check post, the savings actually refers to the period from 1998 to 2008.

The grand jury's forewoman responded to us with this head-scratcher: "I stand by what was written in the report. I have no response to give you, to correct or deny."

Ernie Dronenburg will be opposing county assessor David Butler

2010-06-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

When he was on the San Diego County Office of Education board, Ernie Dronenburg was a firm supporter of Diane Croiser. He wouldn't even acknowledge a constituent's information about problems in the business office at SDCOE. (His attitude seemed to be the same as Sergeant Schultz on Hogan's Heroes: "I know nothing!") He stood shoulder to shoulder with Bob Watkins in refusing to question practices regarding the SDCOE Joint Powers Authority. What was the result of this attitude? Among other fiascos, Dronenburg's inaction resulted in the MiraCosta College Mess.

I figured Dronenburg just wasn't interested in politics. I thought he had been drafted to serve on the SDCOE board when it was being torn apart by crazies. But I was wrong. Dronenburg is interested in politics. Politics as usual. Shame on him.

More Intrigue in the Assessor's Race
David Butler is a 34-year veteran of the assessor's office and currently serves as assessor.
Kelly Bennett
Voice of San Diego
Jun 9, 2010

For the first time since the early 1980s, the county assessor/recorder/clerk post is up for grabs.

And in the obscure race, last night's results brought even more drama.

David Butler, the appointed assessor, garnered 36.8 percent of the vote last night. He'll face a runoff in November with longtime politician Ernie Dronenburg, who snagged 34.2 percent of the vote...

Another deceptive mailer sent to Democratic voters

2010-05-27T10:13:00.000-07:00

The flyer that was mailed to my house sure looks like it came from the Democratic Party; it says in large capital letters, "VOTER INFORMATION GUIDE FOR DEMOCRATS." It contains color photos of Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer.

But Democrats don't support Proposition 16. So why does this deceptive flyer urge me to vote to help energy companies?

I think the flyer was paid for by friends of Pacific Gas & Electric, which is hoping to prevent municipalities from providing energy to citizens. After the energy companies caused the horrible California financial crisis of 2000-2001, they should allow citizens to defend themselves from unscrupulous corporations who are happy to plunge an entire state into crisis in order to increase profits.*

This kind of deception is why voters need good reading and thinking skills, and this deception may also explain why those in power allow (or perhaps encourage?) our failing education system to continue shortchanging children. It's shocking to me that the biggest changes have merely led to privatization of education, not real change. We now have a bunch of failing charter schools in addition to failing public schools. The success rate hasn't changed significantly, and I don't think it will until we change how teachers are evaluated.
______________________________________________
*From Wikipedia:

The California electricity crisis, also known as the Western U.S. Energy Crisis, of 2000 and 2001 was a situation where California had an artificial shortage of electricity. The state suffered from multiple large-scale black-outs, one of the state's largest energy companies collapsed, and the economic fall-out greatly harmed Governor Gray Davis's standing.

Artificial supply shortage was created by gratuitously taking power plants offline for (unnecessary) "maintenance" on hot summer days of peak demand. Rolling blackouts adversely affected many businesses dependent upon a reliable supply of electricity, and inconvenienced a large number of retail consumers. This demand supply gap was further exploited by energy companies, mainly Enron. Enron traders were thus able to sell power at premium prices, sometimes up to a factor of 20x its normal peak value. State cap on retail electricity charges squeezed the industry's revenue margins, causing the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and near bankruptcy of Southern California Edison in early 2001.

The financial crisis was possible because of deregulation legislation instituted in 1996 by Governor Pete Wilson (Republican). Enron took advantage of this deregulation and was involved in economic withholding and inflated price bidding in California's spot markets. The crisis cost $40bn to $45bn...

Would Lorie Zapf bring "strategic fraud" to City Council?

2010-05-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

Would Lorie Zapf bring "strategic fraud" to City Council?
by Pat Flannery
Blog of San Diego
May 24, 2010

Lorie Zapf, a candidate for City Council District 6, is attempting to turn a bust into a boon. Last week Dave Maass of CityBeat broke a story busting her for being in default on her family home in Clairemont. Responding to CityBeat Ms. Zapf tried to paint herself as the champion of all families who are attempting to negotiate a modification of their mortgage with their lender.

Maass asked me for my (real estate) opinion on the veracity of Zapf's claim, that "strategic defaults" are now commonplace. I told him it was "B.S." Lenders do not modify loans for borrowers who have the means to make their payments. Modification is for families who have genuine hardship, not slick real estate professionals like Zapf's husband.

Before responding to CityBeat I pulled the relevant Deed of Trust and the Notice of Default from the County Recorder. The loan on which the Zapfs are in default is an interest-only Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). A quick look confirmed that Zapf's "explanation" to CityBeat was indeed B.S. HELOC rates are already the lowest rates available.

Reporter Maass was now caught between two opinions on "strategic defaults". Mark Goldman, a real estate lecturer at SDSU, was telling him "In order to just have the bank consider your request, they pretty much force you into going into default. There’s a lot of people in that situation.” A classic example of "Those who know, do. Those who profess to know, teach". But the journo handbook requires that reporters call know-all professors.

Then CityBeat asked me to research another Zapf Notice of Default, this time in Las Vegas. Was this too a "strategic default"? So I dug out all the Zapf documents on their property at 2446 Craigie Castle St., Henderson, NV. It is a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom single-family house built in 2004. The Zapfs bought it from the builder, Dell Web of Arizona, on September 10, 2004 for $511,875 as a second home.

It was a "second home" because they used "second home" financing. They got a $417,950 first loan and a $52,277 second, both from Countrywide. Wife Lorie would have to be intimately involved. A husband can't get "second home" financing without a wife's full cooperation. Their combined 1st and 2nd loans, $470,277, was 92% financing. That kind of loan-to-value ratio is not available for investment properties. If Eric rented out this property as an "investment", he defrauded his lender and Lorie was equally responsible. Yet that is exactly what Lorie told Channel 10 they did. She said it was an investment property, owned by her husband...

Ethics Official Says Nancy Graham's Actions Had 'Appearance of Corruption'

2010-05-21T16:04:00.001-07:00

Perhaps Gil Cabrera wasn't the right person to head the San Diego Ethics Commission. He has made a career defending those accused of white-collar wrongdoing. Now that he's gone, the Commission is at last going after real corruption rather than small mistakes in reporting campaign finances.

* San Diego news, analysis and conversation.
* Government

Ethics Official Says Graham's Actions Had 'Appearance of Corruption'
May 20, 2010
Voice of San Diego
By ROB DAVIS

Sitting a few feet from Nancy Graham, one of her former bosses testified Thursday of how hard the former Centre City Development Corp. president worked in San Diego. Came in early, CCDC chairman Fred Maas said. Stayed late.

When voiceofsandiego.org first raised questions in 2008 about Graham's undisclosed financial ties to developers doing business downtown, Maas gave Graham the benefit of the doubt, he told the San Diego Ethics Commission at a daylong Thursday hearing. She was the agency's president, he said, and he held a "kinship" with her.

Maas recalled asking Graham directly about the financial relationship: Did she know where her past business venture's income came from?

"I was told absolutely not," Maas said. So he stood up for her.

Then VOSD reported that Graham earned more than $3 million from a Florida development deal. Lennar Corp., which paid her from that deal, owned land in downtown San Diego, the site of a proposed hotel that Graham was negotiating about.

Graham never reported receiving those millions on her annual conflict disclosure forms here. If she did, she would've had to recuse herself from negotiations designed to clear the way for a hotel on the land adjacent to Petco Park. If the hotel had been built, Lennar and another developer would've made about $100 million...

Are the Port District and the Convention Center giving away public money?

2010-04-05T18:35:00.000-07:00

UPDATE:
04/07/10
The Union-Tribune is negotiating for the Port District
by Pat Flannery

In hiring Ron Powell, a veteran Union-Tribune reporter as its spokesperson, the Port District hired the ability to get friendly editorials to run in the U-T at critical moments like today.

This is a critical moment for the Port District's North Embarcadero (Cruise Ship Terminal) plan.

It needs to pull off another switcheroo.

Powell joined the San Diego Evening Tribune back in the 1970s. He was with the Union-Tribune from 1991 until the Port hired him last year. He knows the San Diego political game. He knows the strategic use of a U-T Editorial.

The "hitch" that Powell and his old friends at the U-T want to "un-hitch" for the Port District, is a Coastal Commission requirement of legal indemnification by the Port District.

The deal before the Coastal Commission calls for "the port to indemnify the Coastal Commission for all costs related to any lawsuits that might be filed against the project". The Port wants to "amend the amendment" to eliminate the indemnification clause and the U-T is trying to help. What are friends for?

04/05/10
Are the Port District and the Convention Center giving away public money?
by Pat Flannery
Blog of San Diego

At its monthly meeting tomorrow the Port District will be asked to consent to the assignment and assumption of a lease from Fifth Avenue Landing LLC (FAL) to the San Diego Convention Center Corporation (SDCCC).

"SDCCC entered into an agreement to purchase FAL's leasehold interest in September 2008 and paid FAL $1 million for a one-year due diligence process. SDCCC now desires to acquire FAL's remaining leasehold interest for $13.5 million. FAL will finance SDCCC's acquisition by providing a $12.5 million deed of trust secured by the leasehold interest. SDCCC will pay FAL $1 million at the close of escrow and make annual payments of $500,000 for up to five years. Consequently, SDCCC is requesting District consent to the assignment of a portion of the FAL leasehold interest to SDCCC, the grant of a new Amended, Restated and Combined (ARC) lease to SDCCC and consent to a lease encumbrance."

Here is the published Agenda. On page 4 of 9 it shows that FAL's option to lease the land in question from the Port District, expires this Friday, April 9, 2010. After Friday Fifth Avenue Landing LLC will have nothing to sell. In fact, on page 4 of 9 it is also clear that a sale escrow must close by Friday.

It would appear therefore that the Port District and the Convention Center are giving Fifth Avenue Landing LLC a big fat present of $12.5 million of taxpayer money. They are trying to rush this deal through and close it by Friday, when all SDCCC has to do is wait until next week and it can have a whole new Port District lease for nothing. Is that what is going on?...

I called and asked both the Port and SDCCC whether the lease or option being "negotiated" in closed session tomorrow is the same one that is being decided upon in open session tomorrow. Both declined to answer...

Apart from a closed session action being taken on the same day as an open session action on the same matter, there are huge unanswered questions regarding the value of the leasehold interest being purchased by SDCCC from Fifth Avenue Landing LLC.

Recent press reports have described that interest as a "land interest" when in fact it is a "leasehold interest". Was the press misinformed? It may not even be a leasehold interest, it may only be an "option" interest. We just don't know. Without full disclosure of the actual lease document or the lease option, it is impossible for the public to know the value of what is being purchased by SDCCC for $13.5 million of taxpayer money.

I was today informed by a reputable title company that a lease on this property, if one exists, has not been recorded at the San Diego County Recorder's Office. Is the County Recorder hiding it? If so, on what authority?...

San Diego County cheated poor out of medical benefits

2010-02-06T23:09:00.000-08:00

R.J. Wingo
Sam Hodgson

R.J. Wingo's $86,000 Bill
February 5, 2010
KELLY BENNETT and DAGNY SALAS
Voice of San Diego

After a burst appendix left R.J. Wingo with an $86,000 hospital bill, he applied for a county program that pays health care costs for people who can't afford them. He was repeatedly denied, but eventually sued the county and won.

...The emergency appendectomy cost $86,000 -- an unfathomable sum for Wingo. He'd never made more than $30,000 a year, he said.

...He said in court records he barely met his personal expenses each month on his income of $1,286 from Social Security and his pension and had nothing left over to pay for medical coverage.

Wingo applied for County Medical Services, the county's healthcare program for adults who don't qualify for other aid and can't afford their own care.

The county denied him because he made too much to qualify. The bill went unpaid. Collectors dogged Wingo. His credit score dropped. That still bothers a man who said he always paid his bills on time.

Lawyers putting together a class action lawsuit challenging the county's income limits in the program reached out to Wingo to include him in the suit.

They won.

Unlike most California counties, San Diego didn't allow patients to put some of their own money toward coverage to eligible. The courts changed that, too.

The courts ruled the county would have to increase funding for the programs and forced it to raise income limits, saying the county hadn't fulfilled a responsibility handed down by the state to be the residents' last resort for vital care. The county had drawn a bright line -- anyone making more than $802 a month didn't qualify.

The county raised the limits to $1,078 per month for a single person. It concluded that a single person in San Diego could cover rent and utilities for about $497 a month, and spend $60 a month on transportation.

That still didn't help Wingo.

An appeals court ruled the county's income limit was still too restrictive and the county was forced to raise it again. Last year, it was nearly $1,500. For residents earning more than that who can't pay for their own medical care, the county adopted a cost-sharing option.

But the big win hasn't resulted in a flood of new participants.

Even though the number of eligible residents expanded, the county made it harder for them to get into the program...

A Goliath among corrupt cities

2009-09-02T03:14:00.000-07:00

A small group of developers and attorneys with City Hall connections glommed on to a program for poor neighborhoods and used it to build luxury hotels and fancy shopping centers in the richest parts of town, draining $90 million per year from the city's budget and racking up $5 billion in debt. Cash poor, the city's bridges, sidewalks and sewers were literally crumbling...

Did you think the above paragraph was talking about our San Diego Development Corporations?

No, it's about Kansas City. Here's more:

The oddest couple in politics
My brief, unhappy career working for the mayor of Kansas City and his eccentric wife -- the unofficial co-mayor
By Joe Miller

Kansas City is a Goliath among corrupt cities. From its earliest days as a muddy sin stop on the banks of the Missouri River, through the years when "Boss Tom" Pendergast ran the town with a greedy fist, to the 1990s when a near quorum of its City Council was indicted on criminal charges, K.C. has been at the forefront of graft.

For the last decade, the city has been caught up in a pork fest -- all of it perfectly legal -- the likes of which are unequaled in any American city...

Lifeguards leave MEA for Teamsters

2009-08-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

Lifeguards Vote to Leave MEA
Voice of San Diego

The city of San Diego lifeguards voted today to leave the Municipal Employees Association and join The International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The vote completes a more than five-month long push to remove the lone public safety agency from the mostly white-collar MEA.

Lifeguards wanted more say in their affairs, said Ed Harris, a lifeguard sergeant who pushed for the change.

"We want to sit down at the table," Harris said. "Under the Teamsters model, they don't go to the city without the lifeguards being there."

Harris is also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against former MEA head Judie Italiano, who the MEA refered for investigation to the district attorney for personal use of union credit cards. In his suit, Harris contends Italiano misused union funds.

"Both the lawsuit and the move to leave MEA were for a desire to get better representation," Harris said.

The vote splits lifeguards into separate supervisor and rank-and-file bargaining units.

Scott Chadwick, the city's labor relations manager, acknowledged today's results and said he planned to brief Mayor Jerry Sanders within the next couple days.

The contract MEA negotiated on behalf of the lifeguards could continue for up to two years, Chadwick said, but the city now is obliged to negotiate with lifeguards again. Chadwick said it was "too early to tell" if there would be changes.

"We look forward to working with the Teamsters and representatives of the lifeguards," Chadwick said.

The lifeguards' supervisory unit voted 14-5 in favor of joining the Teamsters, and the rank and file voted 37-28.

-- LIAM DILLON

Thursday, August 20, 2009

San Diego Ethics Commission will hold hearing on CCDC's Nancy Graham

2009-08-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

No wonder Mayor Jerry Sanders refuses to reappoint Gil Cabrera to the Ethics Commission. Cabrera is actually investigating!

Case of CCDC's Graham set for ethics hearing
Commission also fines lobbyists
By Craig Gustafson
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
August 13, 2009

Nancy Graham:
Position: Former CCDC president
Tenure: Hired at CCDC in December 2005, resigned in July 2008
Salary: Was paid $248,000
Background: Lawyer; former partner in N-K Ventures LLC, which was involved in the development of urban in-fill projects; former mayor of West Palm Beach, Fla. Faced conflict-of-interest charges due to her development ties.

The San Diego Ethics Commission on Thursday called for a special hearing against former Centre City Development Corp. president Nancy Graham over conflict-of-interest issues.

The commission generally reaches settlements with its investigation targets before reaching the hearing stage that Graham's case has now reached.

The investigation began a year ago, shortly after Graham resigned from the nonprofit city agency amid criticism over undisclosed business ties to developers Related Cos. and Lennar Corp. Both had business before the agency.

The probe focuses on her relationship with Lennar, which was one of several developers trying to build a 1,929-room Marriott hotel at Ballpark Village, just east of Petco Park. Lennar eventually pulled out of the project, but not before Graham became involved.

At issue is the Florida development business Graham owned with her former husband. Their company partnered with Related and Lennar on a Florida condo project, which netted the couple's company more than $7 million before expenses and taxes. Graham never reported income from the venture on her San Diego economic-interest forms.

Graham's lawyer, former District Attorney Paul Pfingst, said the dispute with the Ethics Commission is whether Graham should have participated in decisions about the hotel project when Lennar was still involved in it.

“We believe her connection to Lennar is very, very tenuous,” he said. “No one has ever claimed that Nancy Graham has profited in any way from the actions that she took.”

The commission does not discuss or release details of its investigations until they are completed.

A probable-cause hearing – which has only occurred twice in the panel's eight-year history – has been set Nov. 6 to examine the evidence in Graham's case. It is closed to the public unless Graham asks for it to be opened. After reviewing the evidence, the commission would decide whether to dismiss the case or move forward with a second hearing, after which a fine could be levied.

Graham pleaded no contest earlier this year to a separate misdemeanor charge of failing to disclose financial interests on a form that city officials fill out annually. That had to do with her connection to the Florida arm of Related, which won a $409 million urban-renewal project from CCDC in 2007.

In other action, the commission levied $5,200 in fines against 19 registered lobbyists who failed to disclose their activities in a timely fashion. New lobbying laws went into effect Jan. 1, 2008, and the fines show that some are struggling to adjust to broad disclosures of their activities and fundraising.

Among those fined were Ace Parking and Gerding Edlen, the Portland, Ore.-based firm heading up the proposal for a new City Hall complex. They received fines of $700 and $400, respectively.

Commissioner Gil Cabrera said those fined represent a fraction of the city's more than 500 registered lobbyists.

“Overall, though, I think that we should be happy with the number of disclosures that are coming out,” Cabrera said.

The panel also cited the International Association of Firefighters for failing to timely report $25,000 in radio advertising it paid for on behalf of Jan Goldsmith in his successful bid to unseat City Attorney Michael Aguirre. The group was required to report the expense within 24 hours because it was so close to the Nov. 4 election, but didn't disclose it until a week later. The fine was $1,500.

The scapegoats for the San Diego pension fraud are still being prosecuted

2009-08-10T20:30:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: All defendants except Ron Saathoff dismissed in January 2010 by California Supreme Court.

ORIGINAL POST:

These people are not angels, but they most certainly did not act alone in the billion dollar San Diego pension scheme.

So why are they alone in being prosecuted?

Because Bonnie Dumanis, our District Attorney, doesn't like to pick on the truly powerful.

Defendants:
Cathy Lexin, Ronald Lee Saathoff, John Anthony Torres, Mary Elizabeth Vattimo, Teresa Aja Webster, Sharon Kay Wilkinson

Charge: Conflict Of Interest - Specified Officials
Court No.: CD190930
Prosecutor: Stephen Robinson

Synopsis: Six former and current members of the San Diego City Employee Retirement System Board of Trustees are charged with felony conflict of interst following an 11-month investigation. The defendants are Ronald L. Saathoff, John A. Torres, Sharon K. Wilkinson, Cathy Lexin, Mary Vattimo and Terri A. Webster. Each has been charged with felony counts of Government Code 1090. On July 11, 2002 The SDCERS Board of Trustees voted to approve and accept an amended version of a City of San Diego proposal which deferred a percentage of City of San Diego employer contributions and avoided the City's obligation to make a balloon payment to SDCERS as negotiated under the terms of a prior City agreement. The amended proposal included a negotiated enhanced retirement benefits agreement between the City of San Diego and three of the City of San Diego Employee bargaining unions. These unions included the San Diego Fire Fighter's Local 145; Municipal Employees Association; and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 127. Each of the trustees named in this criminal action voted in favor of this proposal and personally benefited as a result of their involvement with the amended proposal.
Custody Status: Warrant issued

Next Court Date: Further Proceedings, Oct 23 2009 9:00AM, Department 26, San Diego Superior Court, Central Division, County Courthouse

New Jersey:

2009-07-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

Mayors, rabbis arrested in NJ corruption probe
Jul 23, 2009
Reuters
By Edith Honan

NEWARK (Reuters) - Dozens of New Jersey politicians, officials and prominent rabbis were arrested on Thursday in a sweeping federal probe that uncovered political corruption, human organ sales and money laundering from New York to Israel, officials said.

The 10-year investigation, dubbed "Operation Bid Rig," exposed influence-peddling and bribe-taking among a network of public officials and a separate multimillion dollar money-laundering ring that funneled funds through charities operated by local rabbis, said the U.S. Attorney's office in Newark, New Jersey.

The cast of the 44 arrested featured Hoboken, New Jersey, Mayor Peter Cammarano, who took office three weeks ago in the industrial city visible across the Hudson River from New York.

Others accused were mayors of nearby Secaucus and Ridgefield, state Assemblymen, a deputy mayor, city council members, housing, planning and zoning officials, building inspectors and political candidates.

"New Jersey's corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation," said Ed Kahrer, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's white collar crime and public corruption program in New Jersey, who has worked on the investigation since it began in July 1999.

"It has become ingrained in New Jersey's political culture," he said, calling corruption "a cancer."

Central to the investigation was an informant who was charged with bank fraud in 2006 and posed undercover as a real estate developer and owner of a tile business who paid off officials to win project approval and public contracts in northern New Jersey, according to documents in the case.

The public officials stand accused of taking bribes for pledging their help getting permits and projects prioritized and approved or steering contracts to the witness...

"The politicians willingly put themselves up for sale," said Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra. "The victims are the average citizens and the honest business people in this state. They don't have a chance in this culture of corruption."

The public corruption uncovered by the informant led him to the separate money-laundering network by rabbis who operated between Brooklyn, Deal, New Jersey, and Israel, authorities said. They laundered some $3 million for the undercover witness between June 2007 and July 2009, authorities said.

"These complaints paint a disgraceful picture of religious leaders heading money laundering crews acting as crime bosses," Marra said. "They used purported charities, entities supposed set up to do good works as vehicles for laundering millions of dollars in illicit funds."

HUMAN KIDNEY SALES

Rabbis accused of money-laundering were Saul Kassin, chief rabbi of a large Syrian Jewish synagogue in Brooklyn; Eliahu Ben Haim, principal rabbi of a synagogue in Deal; Edmund Nahum, principal rabbi of another synagogue in Deal; and Mordchai Fish, a rabbi at a synagogue in Brooklyn.

The probe also uncovered Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, who is accused of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. According to the complaint, Rosenbaum said he had been brokering sale of kidneys for 10 years.

"His business was to entice vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000," said Marra.

Several of the public officials were accused of taking bribes of just $10,000, authorities said. Cammarano, at 31 the youngest ever mayor of Hoboken, was charged with taking $25,000 in bribes, including $10,000 last Thursday...

Taxpayers pay to break-up Democratic fundraiser; compare to Cheryl Cox fundraiser

2009-07-10T17:38:00.000-07:00

Some people just can't stand for anyone to disagree with them. A neighbor was apparently enraged by a Democratic fundraiser in Cardiff, and the Sheriff's department was ready and willing to add dogs and a helicopter to the effort to shut down the party. I suspect the complainer didn't mind the noise of the helicopter since the complaint was not motivated by noise, but rather by politics. It seems the angry neighbor was making plenty of noise himself before the police came, shouting obscenities to party-goers.

Compare this story to the story of a fundraiser for Republican Chula Vista Mayor Cheryl Cox, in which a visitor was arrested, not the hosts. Clearly, fundraisers go differently in San Diego county depending on whether or not you're a Republican like District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and Sheriffs Bill Kolender/Bill Gore.

--- BEGIN POLICE REPORT ---

On 6/27/09, at about 2112 hours, Deputy ***** and *****, Clinician ***** responded to 1366 Rubenstein Avenue, Cardiff, Calif, regarding a Loud Democratic Rally with Loud Speakers.

The reporting party's residence is located on Summit Avenue just west of 1366 Rubenstein Avenue. The reporting party told dispatchers he was willing to sign and wanted deputy contact. It was later learned that the rally was a fundraiser for Francine Busby who is running for Congress.

Upon arriving at 1366 Rubenstein Avenue, Deputy ***** and Clinician ***** walked down a long driveway and found an open front door. They noticed that some type of rally or party was taking place. Deputy ***** asked someone outside where the homeowner could be found. The person told Deputy ***** they were somewhere inside the house.

Deputy ***** and Clinician ***** walked inside and asked another person where the homeowner was. That person pointed at a female later identified as Shari Lynn Barman. Deputy ***** approached Barman and attempted to inform her that the rally was causing a disturbance for one of her neighbors. Deputy ***** noticed Barman wearing a name tag with the first name of Shari written on it. Deputy ***** asked Shari what her last name and date of birth was, so he could document the contact with her and complete his first responder notification.

She refused to tell Deputy ***** her last name or D.O.B. and walked away from him several times. Deputy ***** followed her and continued to ask for her last name and D.O.B. and she refused his request. As Barman walked away from Deputy ***** again he grabbed her wrist to prevent her from walking away. She resisted and tried to break free of his grasp. Deputy ***** attempted to handcuff Barman as she screamed to the crowd of about 25-40 people. The crowd surrounded Deputy ***** and began pulling Barman away from him.

The crowd was successful in taking Barman away from Deputy ***** and they continued surrounding him. Clinician ***** was pushed out of the way by the crowd and kicked on the back of her leg by an unknown suspect. Deputy ***** took out his pepper spray and used it on the crowd which effectively stopped them from advancing on him. Additionally, it gave him an opportunity to go into the crowd and take Barman back into custody. He attempted to handcuff Barman as she struck him several times on his arms and upper torso with her hands.

Another female later identified as Pamela Ann Morgan began pulling at Deputy *****'s arms trying to prevent him from arresting Barman. Deputy ***** arrived and took Morgan into custody which allowed Deputy ***** time to handcuff and secure Barman. Barman was arrested for 243 (b) P.C.-Battery on a Police Officer and 148 (a) P.C.-Obstructing a Police Officer and was later booked into the Vista Jail. Morgan was arrested for 148 (a) P.C., issued a citation and released from the Encinitas Station. Deputy ***** sustained several scratches and minor swelling on both of his arms.

Source of information: Sgt. Jack Reynolds, Encinitas Patrol Station

--- END POLICE REPORT ---

Here's another story about San Diego County Sheriff's department:

Sheriff's Deputy Hired Despite Failed Psych Evals
By KELLY THORNTON
July 10, 2009

Lowell Bruce, a deputy sheriff who fatally shot his wife in their Alpine home in 2006, twice failed the county's psychological evaluations and was rejected for employment by eight other law enforcement agencies, but was ultimately hired by the San Diego County Sheriff's Department anyway.

According to 1993 employment applications, rejection letters from the county of San Diego and other documents contained in a 2007 wrongful death lawsuit filed by his wife's parents, Bruce was told his history of violence was the reason he failed the exams and would not be hired.

Nonetheless, in 1998, five years after failing the evaluations, Bruce became a deputy assigned to the Las Colinas Women's Detention Facility in Santee.

"The county clearly understood and appreciated that he was unfit for duty and prone to violence, but hired him anyway," the 2007 lawsuit said. "Not only did the county recklessly hire Bruce, but thereafter provided him with a Glock handgun, and allowed him to take it home with him ... Bruce was permitted to take that weapon home, and as a result, at least six lives were forever altered."

Those lives included Bruce and his wife, Kristin Marie Maxwell-Bruce, 38, their two young boys, and her parents, Jim and Kay Maxwell.

However, during pretrial motions in June 2008, U.S. District Judge John Houston dismissed the plaintiffs' claim that the county was negligent in hiring Bruce as a deputy. Houston agreed with the county that Bruce "already had psychological issues before the county hired him and that he would have had the same issues whether or not the county hired him."

The psychological evaluations showed a history of physical violence and that Bruce "would tend to resort to violence as a way of resolving interpersonal differences with others," the lawsuit said.

On the second evaluation, which Bruce instigated as part of an appeal, the private psychologist who contracted with the county to perform the evaluation informed him in a rejection letter: "My recommendation, in part, was made due to your history of physical altercations with others and test results which suggest that you lack more creative ways of resolving differences with others. In a corrections setting this behavior and the lack of other means to resolve interpersonal problems, would not be successful."

He was then rejected by the San Diego Police Department, the San Diego Harbor Police, Chula Vista Police Department, the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles Police Department and three public safety agencies in Washington State, according to the county application.

The documents were found by friends of the Maxwells who assisted them in sifting through Bruce's belongings in the weeks after the shooting.

Despite having the knowledge that Bruce failed the psychological test twice, and being rejected by at least eight other law enforcement agencies, he was still ultimately hired by the Sheriff's Department, and went on to fatally shoot his wife, the plaintiff's complaint said.

The lawsuit alleges the Sheriff's Department's of "careless and reckless hiring policies or practices led to the issuing of a gun to Bruce, which then led to the death of Kristin."...

Kristin Maxwell's Lonely Death
Voice of San Diego
By KELLY THORNTON
July 10, 2009

After San Diego County sheriff's Deputy Lowell "Sam" Bruce shot his wife in the face in front of their 4-year-old son, Kristin Marie Maxwell-Bruce was able to walk to the kitchen phone and dial 911.

As she waited for medical help on that December evening in 2006, Kristin was alert and talking -- but it was with some difficulty because the bullet had destroyed half her tongue and the left side of her jaw.

She told her mother she was worried about her teeth; her mother assured her they could be fixed. Upon arrival at the Alpine home, medics found that Kristin's vital signs -- pulse, body temperature, blood pressure and respiratory rate -- were within normal range.

But Kristin's family claims a shocking series of blunders and delays by Sheriff's investigators and medics resulted in a lonely and unnecessary death an hour later for the 38-year-old mother of two.

The evening was capped by a violent encounter between deputies and Kristin's distraught father -- a sequestered witness who was pepper-sprayed, clubbed and handcuffed when he tried to leave sheriff's custody to tell his wife that their only child was dead, according to the wrongful-death lawsuit filed in December 2007 by Kristin's parents, Jim and Kay Maxwell.

"During the last hour of Kristin's life, defendants refused to let her parents see her, refused to let them speak to her or comfort her, and refused to let Jim and Kay Maxwell see, speak to or comfort each other," the lawsuit said. The sheriff's officials "prevented Kristin from receiving proper medical treatment, falsely imprisoned Kristin and the Maxwells, and prevented the Maxwells from association with their daughter in the last hour of her life."

Meanwhile, the shooter, Lowell Bruce, a corrections deputy at Las Colinas Women's Detention Facility in Santee, was never handcuffed, and was permitted to make a phone call on another deputy's cell phone, the lawsuit contends.

Adding to the family's outrage were two discoveries soon after the shooting: Friends sifting through Lowell Bruce's belongings discovered documents indicating the deputy had twice failed psychological examinations when applying to work for the Sheriff's Department in 1993. But despite that initial rejection by the department, and at least eight other agencies, five years later the Sheriff's Department did ultimately hire and arm a man they'd deemed too violent for the job.

Also, at a debriefing about the incident attended by Sheriff's officials, one of the deputies got into a heated exchange with a sergeant, telling the sergeant he "fucked the crime scene up" because he "didn't want to let the ambulance leave."...

San Diego sheriff's department raids Francine Busby fundraiser

2009-07-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, Bonnie Dumanis, this is getting to be a bit one-sided. You prosecuted a young man for trying to take a picture at Republican Cheryl Cox's fundraiser. Let's see how you handle a case of far greater abuse at a Democratic fundraiser. The very least that should be done is to make the caller (who was not a neighbor) pay for the cost of the helicopter and charge him with making a false police report.

Why were a canine unit and helicopter deemed necessary for this action? What on earth did the caller say, if anything, to make the sheriff's department pull out all the stops? Or was it the sheriff's department that overreacted?

Who Was Busby's Party Pooper?
Voice of San Diego
By WILL CARLESS
July 2, 2009

On June 26, at 9 p.m. someone called the San Diego Sheriff's Department and made what the department has described as a "noise complaint." The call resulted in several deputies, a K-9 unit and a helicopter being deployed to a private residence where a political fundraiser was being held for congressional candidate Francine Busby.

The evening ended in chaos, with the host of the fundraiser in jail accused of obstructing a peace officer and battery on a peace officer and several middle-aged guests alleging excessive force by a deputy who they claim shot pepper spray indiscriminately at a crowd of guests.

Of all the questions to surface since that evening, the identity of the mystery caller to the Sheriff's Department, and the nature of his or her complaint remain perhaps the most perplexing. Because the department won’t reveal any information about the caller and won't release any documents or recordings of the incident, the public has no way of knowing if the caller was a disgruntled neighbor, upset about noise from the party, or a political saboteur, intent on disrupting Busby's fundraiser.

For her part, Busby wants to know if the caller was the same person who hid in some bushes on a plot adjacent to the home where the fundraiser was held and heckled her while she made a speech to supporters. She has asked the Sheriff's Department to clear the air by releasing a recording of the phone complaint.

The Sheriff's Department issued a statement saying that it received a noise complaint from an individual regarding the fundraising event. But the department has refused to elaborate on the incident because it is currently under internal investigation.

Sanford Toyen, a Sheriff's Department legal advisor, said the records are exempt from disclosure under the California Public Records Act because they are records of a law enforcement investigation.

But public records law expert Terry Francke disagreed. Francke said while the department may keep the identity of the complainer secret, it is required to make public the basic facts of the complaint under the CPRA.

"Merely using a label like 'noise complaint' is insufficient," Francke said.

Kevin Keenan, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties, said the Sheriff's Department has to play a delicate balancing act between releasing information about what could be a malicious complaint and protecting the privacy of the individual who made the call.

But Keenan said the department could release certain information about the incident -- for example, whether the complaint was made by a neighbor or someone who did not live near the party and could not legitimately make the claim that they were disturbed by it.

"When there's a vacuum of information and a lot of legitimate concerns, it's usually the best policy to get the information out there," Keenan said.

According to the Sheriff's Department, a deputy based in Encinitas was called to the residence on Rubenstein Avenue in Cardiff after the department received the noise complaint at about 9 p.m. on July 26.

About an hour before the deputy showed up, Busby had made a brief speech on the back patio of the large house where the fundraiser was being held.

That speech prompted the mystery heckler to launch his reported tirade.

As Busby spoke to the crowd through a public address system, a man hidden behind trees and bushes on a neighboring lot started to shout obscenities and insults about her policies, said four people who attended the party. The profanity-laced invective went on for several minutes before one of Busby's supporters decided to shout back, Busby said.

"Somebody yelled back at him. Whoever he was, he was hidden in the bushes, we couldn't see him," Busby said.

There are three homes whose gardens back onto the yard where the fundraiser was being held. In interviews, the residents of all three of those homes said they had no idea who might have shouted at the group gathered for the fundraiser. All of the residents said they were Democrats and said they had not heard any noise from the party until the Sheriff's Department helicopter showed up...

Rick Wurts and Marco Gonzalez have memory problems; why did the city help Surf Diva and damage Menehune Surf School

2009-06-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

A Battle Over Surf Camps at La Jolla Shores
By ADRIAN FLORIDO
June 22, 2009

The waves at La Jolla Shores are a beginning surfer's dream. They break far from shore, and the beach's gradual slope means that when they do, new surfers have plenty of time to ride the gentle shallow whitewater all the way to shore.

La Jolla Shores is a surf instructor's dream, too. The scenic strip of San Diego's coast and its oceanfront hotels and boutique shops draw tourists year-round, providing a renewing pool of potential clients.

Those factors make the four surf instruction permits that the city's Real Estate Assets Department issues there the most lucrative of the 13 citywide. Since 2005, when the city first required permits for commercial surf instruction on San Diego's beaches, two companies have shared the sands at La Jolla Shores.

But how the city has distributed those permits in the last four years is threatening to put one of those companies, Menehune Surf, out of business, said Darren Fulhorst, the company's owner. When his competitor, Surf Diva, was granted only two of the three permits it bid on in 2005, the city circumvented the formal bidding process to create a fifth permit at La Jolla Shores, which it granted to Surf Diva, and in the years since has been unwilling to account for how or why it did so.

That decision, Fulhorst said, set the precedent for the city's move to revoke one of his two permits and grant it to Surf Diva when the fifth permit was eliminated during the 2008 bidding process. Last year, Fulhorst's company was awarded only one permit to operate on La Jolla Shores, cutting his operating capacity by half. Surf Diva was awarded the other three.

Gary Jones, the real estate department's asset manager, the city's decision was based on scores given to each of the companies' proposals...

But Fulhorst said the decision to grant one of his permits to his competitor was spurred more by the department's need to formally grant Surf Diva the third site it had created to accommodate the company's demands outside of the formal bidding process in 2005.

In the fall of 2004, the city, in an attempt to regulate the commercial surf instruction operations on the city's beaches and generate additional revenue, asked existing surf camp owners to submit proposals for the limited permits.

Fulhorst applied for two of the four La Jolla Shores permits to accommodate the Menehune Surf Camp and the Ocean Girl surf school, which he had recently created. Surf Diva, which had recently acquired two smaller surf schools operating on La Jolla Shores, applied for three of the four site permits.

In May of 2005, each company was granted two three-year permits. The decision meant that Surf Diva's Australian Surf Academy, which would have been granted the third permit the company's owners requested, would be unable to operate at La Jolla Shores.

That should have been the end of it.

But then a new permit popped up. In a July 11 letter to Surf Diva owner Isabelle Tihanyi, READ property agent Diane Bartko noted that the city had created an additional site, which it called 1A, for the company.

Why that fifth site was created is what Fulhorst has been trying to find out for more than a year, since the end of the 2008 renewal process when he lost his permit. Since then, his operating capacity has been reduced by half, and the investments he has made, like his partnership with a local boutique, and a mortgage on his house, threatened, he said.

Representatives from the Real Estate Assets Department could not account for the decision to accommodate a fifth site permit outside of the formal bidding process in 2005, saying only that it was within the department's authority to do so.

In deciding how many permits to grant at each beach, Bartko said the department only formalizes the recommendations made by the city's lifeguard services and parks departments, which evaluate the beaches and determine how many commercial operations each can safely accommodate.

In both 2005 and 2008, that number for La Jolla Shores was four, and four permits were made available during each bidding cycle. The creation of site 1A in 2005 following the conclusion of the bidding process appears to have been made to accommodate the Surf Diva's third company, although neither city nor Surf Diva representatives would speak about who had requested it.

Marine Safety Captain Rick Wurts, who made that recommendation in both 2005 and 2008, and who would have advised READ on any additional sites, said he could not remember how or why site 1A was created, saying only that the determination of a beach's commercial capacity changes day to day and over time...

Wurts, who in 2005 was also on the READ committee that decided which companies would be issued permits, recused himself in 2008, "in order to ensure that there was an absolutely objective evaluation," adding that "he didn't have a conflict of interest with anything. I could have been a perfectly objective part of the evaluation process."

Marco Gonzalez, an environmental lawyer who represented Surf Diva during the bidding process in both 2005 and 2008, was also unable to recall how he secured the fifth site for his clients in 2005.

"That was a long time ago. I don't remember," he said...

Dean Calbreath hopes Arnold Schwarzeneggar will stop tax breaks

2009-06-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

Tax changes may be key to plugging budget hole
Dean Calbreath
San Diego Union-Tribune
June 21, 2009

With California on the brink of insolvency, Sen. Dianne Feinstein recently recalled the days when, as mayor of San Francisco, she would venture out into the neighborhoods and ask people what kind of services they wanted.

“Do you want more police?” Feinstein would ask.

The answer would come back, loudly, “Yes.”

“Do you want more firefighters?”

The answer would come back, loudly, “Yes.”

“Do you want to pay for them?”

“And instantly,” Feinstein said, “there would be a booming 'No.' ”

Speaking to a crowd of mostly government workers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory late last month, Feinstein said “that's part of the dilemma of (the California budget crisis). And the hard part of it is where the cuts have to come from.”

Feinstein's comments get to the heart of the problem facing Sacramento now. How many schools, libraries, parks and other public services is California willing to do without as we try to close our budget deficit, currently pegged at $24.3 billion?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal before the Legislature is to rely on cuts alone to fix the budget: $5.5 billion from health and human services, $5.1 billion from education and $1.3 billion from the court and prison systems. The rest of the money would come from one-time sales of state assets; borrowing from cities and counties (an idea that infuriates local officials); furloughs, pay cuts and layoffs of state employees; fee increases and cuts in other services.

Schwarzenegger pledged last week to veto any budget that includes new taxes beyond what he has already proposed, which largely consist of increases to the state sales and income taxes.

“To do another tax increase is irresponsible,” Schwarzenegger said.

But if Schwarzenegger really wants to be responsible about putting out a budget, he should re-examine some of the tax breaks that were inserted into the budget last year to gain the votes needed for a two-thirds passage in the Legislature. And he should reconsider some of the taxes that were abandoned during the budget negotiations.

A conference committee of the Legislature last week proposed doing just that: clipping out the tax breaks and adding back the taxes. Despite Schwarzenegger's veto pledge, he should give the panel's recommendations some consideration:

Oil companies. California is the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the country behind Louisiana, Texas and Alaska. But despite our reputation as a high-tax area, California has never imposed severance taxes for pulling gas or oil out of the ground.

That's a stark contrast to the other oil-and gas-producing states, most of which have double-digit severance taxes. The taxes in conservative, Republican-dominated Alaska are at 25 percent, generating so much money that the state is able to pay residents $2,000 per year as a benefit, besides building a war chest for when oil will no longer be available.

The conference committee proposed putting a 9.9 percent severance tax on oil – a proposal that Schwarzenegger supported last year – which would generate an estimated $830 million in revenue.

Joseph Sparano, who represents oil interests as head of the Western States Petroleum Association in Sacramento, argues against the severance, noting that in California, as opposed to some (but not all) oil-producing states, oil companies pay property taxes for the land where they are drilling.

“If you add the severance tax, oil producers would be paying higher taxes than anywhere else in the country,” he said.

Sparano may have a point. But perhaps we could at least lift severance taxes to the point where we'd be on a par with, say, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Wyoming, which now collect far more on their oil and gas than we do, even after taking property taxes into account.

Corporate tax breaks. During the budget negotiations in February, the Legislature inserted three corporate tax breaks that resulted in a total gap of $2 billion to $2.5 billion

Data from the state Franchise Tax Board show that one of the proposals – to allow companies to choose between two ways of being taxed in the state – would largely benefit the 0.1 percent of companies in California that make more than $1 billion per year. Much of the benefit would go to just nine companies, saving them an average of $33 million a year.

“These massive, permanent tax cuts will exacerbate California's persistent budget troubles, requiring deeper cuts in public services or potentially larger tax revenues from California's families,” said a report of the California Budget Project, a liberal think tank in Sacramento.

Another proposal, which would allow corporations to transfer taxes among related companies, would benefit just 0.03 percent of corporations, with the top six companies saving an average of $23.5 million a year.

Auto license fee. Schwarzenegger's first action as governor was to roll back California's fee on automobile licenses, which put a $4 billion hole in the budget. As the budget problems mounted last year, Schwarzenegger was forced to increase the license fee. And now the Legislature is proposing to raise it an additional $15.

The standard argument against raising taxes is that it would discourage people from buying automobiles. But will an additional $15 fee on an auto license really stop Californians from buying a new car? That's doubtful – but it could generate millions of dollars for the health care, education and other services being cut.

Cigarette taxes. The committee is proposing to increase excise taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products by $1.50 per pack, nearly tripling the tax on a pack of cigarettes from 87 cents to $2.37. This proposal would increase revenue by an estimated $1 billion next year.

Esmael Adibi, economist at Chapman University in Orange, who happens to be a smoker, complained that such a tax would be “Draconian” and would fall most heavily on the poor.

But if you weigh the value of helping people quit smoking versus laying off teachers and suspending health care for poor children, it would be hard to call it an altogether bad idea. Even if that proposal were chopped down by 90 percent, to 15 cents per pack instead of $1.50, it would still generate $100 million in revenue, which would be enough to keep quite a few teachers on the job.

The bottom line is that to have a balanced budget, there will be pain all around. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, who supports the tax revisions, said she just wants to make sure “that the shared pain be shared by oil companies and tobacco products, as well.”

Judie Italiano out as manager of MEA, the largest white collar union of San Diego city employees

2009-05-31T12:03:00.000-07:00

Judie Italiano has resigned as manager of the San Diego Metropolitan Employees Association (MEA), and her erstwhile supporters are scrambling to distance themselves from her.

Events have developed quickly since MEA members Linda French and Ed Harris sued Ms. Italiano a few weeks ago.

Italiano Resigns After Investigation Finds Card Misuse
Voice of San Diego
RANI GUPTA
May 29, 2009

Judie Italiano, the longtime general manager of the Municipal Employees' Association, has resigned after an internal investigation determined that she continued to use the union's credit cards for her personal use despite promising not to do so in 2006.

MEA board members said in a letter sent to members today that the union had referred the matter to the District Attorney's Office for "its determination as to whether any crime was committed in the course of Ms. Italiano's breach of trust."

Michael Zucchet, a former city councilman who had been working as a consultant to the group, has been acting as general manager since Italiano was put on leave May 12 as the union conducted an investigation.

Italiano's personal use of credit cards was first discovered in 2006 and was the subject of an internal investigation, a campaign to unseat her, and an investigation by then-City Attorney Mike Aguirre.

In an interview today, MEA President Tony Ruiz said the union subsequently changed its policies to prohibit the personal use of credit cards. Italiano also agreed to pay the association back for personal charges, Ruiz said.

Ruiz said Italiano stopped using the card for personal charges shortly after those charges came to light. But starting in November 2006, she resumed using the union cards for personal charges such as groceries and a casino gift shop, Ruiz said.

Ruiz said he discovered Italiano's personal credit charges when he was preparing his first budget as association president and examined the books kept by office staff. The letter sent to members says Italiano wrote the organization a check totaling $13,903 covering the full amount, including interest, of $6,916 owed in credit card charges, along with $6,987 in annual leave. Those cover charges made through February 2009, Ruiz said.

"We were all taken in by Judie," Ruiz said. "She [said] she would not be doing this type of behavior anymore. We put these policies in place and she agreed to these policies, and she breached our trust."

[Maura Larkins' note: I'm not sure I believe Mr.Ruiz. I think Bud Simpson might be describing the situation more accurately:

"Judie pretty much had the board of directors eating
out of her hand," Simpson said. "She's done a pretty
good job for them and, as a result, she makes sure she
has the executive committee handpicked."

Simpson added that the general membership didn't
appear to care. "Just as long as you take care of us,
we'll forgive minor indiscretions," he said.]

How can this be? Jan Goldsmith is the new Mike Aguirre? Or is Mayor Sanders the problem?

2009-05-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

Fight Like It's 2007
Voice of San Diego

During Mike Aguirre's term as city attorney, nobody dogged him as diligently as John Kaheny.

Kaheny's relentless e-mails sometimes broke news about the city attorney and sometimes spread conspiracy theories more ridiculous than the ones Aguirre was sometimes wont to spin. But always, Kaheny, a former assistant city attorney, was on Aguirre's case and his e-mail list served as an almost daily talking points memo for the ever-growing ranks of Aguirre's dissenters. I don't know that anyone locally has ever so effectively used e-mail, document sharing and media criticism to gore a rival.

Kaheny declared victory months ago when Aguirre lost his re-election bid and he said the network would largely go quiet.

It's back.

In case you hadn't noticed, there seems to be a rising tide of concern about City Attorney Jan Goldsmith along with a growing lack of respect for the mayor. First, months ago Goldsmith infuriated some local opinion leaders and Mayor Jerry Sanders for ruling that the City Council could basically ignore the mayor's recommendations on labor negotiations. This became moot -- this year at least -- when the City Council decided to agree with the mayor unanimously. Nonetheless, the Mayor's Office thought it was a ridiculous opinion and it began to foment unrest about Goldsmith's competence.

Now, Rani Gupta's story Sunday has documented another major rift between the city attorney and mayor.

Gupta reported that the Mayor's Office was struck dumbfounded that its much-championed reforms to the city's controversial DROP benefit for employees would be subject to a vote of those same employees. Where was the city attorney on this?

Key passage in the story:

The news that the DROP changes apparently require a vote of the employees was news to Sanders' office, Chief Operating Officer Jay Goldstone said in an interview last week.

"It was a bombshell that was dropped after the fact," Goldstone said. "I'm not necessarily suggesting we would have taken a different position, but we would have known going in that the imposition was only step one of a two-step process."

Goldstone said it "would have been nice" if Goldsmith's office had told city officials about the requirement beforehand. He added, "I will tell you candidly, they will claim they told us and told our lawyers at least, our negotiators, but we (in the Mayor's Office) were not aware up here."

Several hours later, after a reporter called for comment from the city attorney, Goldstone called back to offer a different version of events, saying a conversation with the city attorney had refreshed his memory about the situation.

Goldstone said that the city's outside attorneys from the firm Burke Williams & Sorensen had talked to SDCERS officials during negotiations and, based on those conversations, had advised that the city had a "very strong argument" that the provision of the city charter requiring a vote didn't apply to the changes the city was seeking to make to DROP.

The City Attorney's Office, Goldstone said, never told city officials or even strongly suggested that changing DROP required an employee vote.

Kaheny, the prolific e-mailer, grabbed the story and sent it to his network with a note essentially hinting at incompetence in the City Attorney's Office (or, maybe worse for Kaheny's group, that the office has yet to restore competence). Since Jan Goldsmith, the current city attorney, has Kaheny to thank as much as anyone for getting the job, this was a potentially hurtful development. If questions about his own abilities to run the office become more mainstream, watch out.

Here was Kaheny's note:

I have no clue what is going on. It appears that the institutional memory was completely destroyed by Gwinn and Aguirre and that Goldsmith hasn't quite figured that out yet.

Wow. Someone in Goldsmith's office responded to Kaheny assuring the curmudgeon that Goldsmith was not to blame and attacking the mayor. Kaheny passed it along. Here was the note:

No John... Jan told them. Joan Dawson delivered the message... Sanders did not want to hear it & Bill Kay told Sanders what he wanted to hear so they moved forward. Kay & his firm are also handling litigation not the City Attorney...

Bill Kay is the city's labor negotiator. Yes, what we have here is a full-throated battle between the Mayor's Office and City Attorney's Office complete with accusations of reckless political agendas and incompetence! I went to D.C. last week and came back to 2007!

Kaheny responded to the anonymous city attorney staffer.

If the City Attorney so advised why was it not it not in writing and made public? Inquiring minds need to know.

Stay tuned. This isn't just insider intrigue. Aguirre was supposedly the main reason the mayor had trouble implementing his reforms and fixes for the city. Now one of the mayor's most prominent initiatives -- to roll back the most controversial of all city employee compensation issues -- might not work and he's blaming the new city attorney.

-- SCOTT LEWIS
May 27, 2009

Lifeguard files suit against Judie Italiano of MEA

2009-05-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: May 31, 2009
The lawsuit detailed below seems to have triggered some defensive maneuvers within the MEA (San Diego Metropolitan Employees Association). All of a sudden the union became interested in allegations that were brought up in 2006 and all but ignored by the board of directors. The union started an investigation, and Italiano resigned.

My question: where is Judie Italiano's faithful friend and attorney, the ubiquitous Ann M. Smith? She seems to be taking a back seat to Michael Zucchet. I guess the directors realize that the Judie and Ann show is over.

ORIGINAL POST:

Suit Filed Against Italiano
Voice of San Diego
RANI GUPTA
May 6, 2009

Two members of the city's white-collar employee union filed suit today against its general manager, Judie Italiano, claiming she misused union funds by charging thousands in personal expenses to union credit cards and made loans to herself, her family and her allies in the union.

The suit was filed by Ed Harris, a lifeguard who is leading a push for the lifeguards to separate from MEA, and by Linda French, who sought to unseat Italiano in 2007. The lawsuit says Italiano breached her fiduciary duties and seeks to have her suspended or removed as general manager.

Among the charges: that Italiano used MEA's line of credit to secure her son's business lease and make a business loan to him. The suit says Italiano made more than $130,000 in personal purchases on the MEA credit card -- including to casinos -- and used $10,000 in union money to buy property "believed to be a timeshare in Hawaii." The lawsuit alleges that Italiano has stopped making payments on a promissory note drafted after the charges were first discovered.

MEA consultant Michael Zucchet said the allegations were already reported in 2006 when former City Attorney Mike Aguirre investigated Italiano.

Zucchet said MEA started an internal investigation into the allegations, hired auditors "and deemed it to be without merit, and took care of what needed to be taken care of."

[Maura Larkins' note: Would this be an investigation by Ann Smith, Judie's inextricably close associate?]

Harris said...the problems cited in the complaint are part of the reason he's seeking to leave MEA.

Did San Diego County make a big mistake by investing almost a billion dollars in hedge funds?

2009-03-16T09:56:00.001-07:00

Jacob's Jaw Dropping Worry Spreads to Other Issues
Voice of San Diego
Scott Lewis
March 16, 2009

This month's Vanity Fair is almost wholly devoted to financial stories...

But most interesting to locals is this story on hedge funds and "why hedge funds are imploding by the thousands..."

Obviously, the story is interesting from the perspective of San Diego County's pension fund, which has something less than a billion dollars now invested in hedge funds. But the story also helps explain one of the attributes of these hedge funds that has apparently caused some alarm among those who oversee the county's retirement system.

You might remember that when the trustees of the pension fund accepted the resignation of their chief investment officer, David Deutsch, they also talked about their potential losses in the hedge fund WG Trading. WG Trading, of course, is under scrutiny from federal prosecutors who accuse its principals of fraud. And San Diego asked for its $78 million back from the fund late last year.

But they can't get the money back for several more months. Why?

From Seth Hettena's story (emphasis mine):

The pension terminated its relationship with WG Trading on Dec. 31 after the hedge fund refused to cooperate with an SDCERA consultant. Under its agreement with WG Trading, SDCERA is not entitled to receive its money until June 30.

Such restrictions on hedge fund redemptions, known as gates, have caught many investors by surprise, including SDCERA. Board member Dianne Jacob, chair of the County Board of Supervisors, requested a review of all similar restrictions SDCERA might face with other investments.

Take note of that word: "gates."

Vanity Fair helps illuminate Jacob's worry about hedge fund gates:

There are many managers who argue that the industry's problems are at least in part of its own making. Says Leon Cooperman, who founded the $3 billion hedge fund Omega Advisors in 1991, after a 25-year career at Goldman Sachs, "Hedge funds have shot themselves in the foot. They have not treated investors correctly." Atop his list of sins: refusing to allow investors to take their money out, which is known in the industry as "gating" investors.

The author explains more about gating later in the story, which focuses on Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund that evolved into a publicly traded company.

Managers who employ gates defend the practice on the grounds that it's within their legal rights, and that selling their positions to meet redemption requests would be unfair to those investors who wanted to stay. But the widespread impression among investors is that managers broke a social contract and are doing it to save their own skins. And there may be another reason for the gates. Fortress's documents, for instance, disclose that "our funds have various agreements that create debt or debt-like obligations ... with a material number of counterparties. Such agreements in many instances contain covenants or 'triggers' that require our funds to maintain specified amounts of assets under management."

In other words, gates may mean that the money invested in a hedge fund simply isn't accessible -- or worse, that the assets simply don't exist...

Tri-City Hospital probe kept secret: Does that prove there's no serious wrongdoing?

2009-03-07T08:56:00.001-08:00

Should San Diego be called "Enron by the see-no-evil"?

Does keeping a probe secret prove that there was no serious wrongdoing? Quite the opposite, I would say.

Tri-City Hospital isn't releasing the probe conducted after CEO Art Gonzalez and eight administrators were placed on administrative leave. My guess is that the board doesn't want to go through litigation which would be expensive for the hospital. My guess is that the former employees don't want a trial, either, because the information in the secret probe would no longer be secret. Instead, both parties want to settle, keep the report secret, and preserve the reputations of both the former employees and the board members who worked with them.

Terry Francke, counsel for Californians Aware, says, "If they did find serious misconduct by these employees, then it becomes a matter of public interest" and the report must be released.

I agree, but in San Diego, wrongdoing is regularly hidden by public entities. Maybe the city should be called Enron by the see-no-evil.

Welfare for the rich: top California officials bill taxpayers for nonessential travel

2009-02-28T13:36:00.001-08:00

Report: Top Schwarzenegger staff traveled on taxpayer's dime
Channel 6, San Diego
Feb. 28, 2009

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A news report says in the midst of a budget crisis, top officials in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration charged taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars for airfare, hotels and meals despite a ban on nonessential travel.

The Los Angeles Times says 10 high-ranking staff members who live in Southern California billed the state for routine trips from their homes to Sacramento.

And Carrie Lopez, the director of the state Department of Consumer Affairs, billed the state for transportation costs to attend a Justin Timberlake concert with her daughter. Lopez said the transportation cost was for a meeting with an energy company executive but the company denies it.

The Times says expense reports and calendars show many of the expenses submitted by top staff were incurred after the governor issued an executive order a year ago requiring state agencies to reduce travel costs because of the budget crisis.

The governor's office says the travel expenses will be reviewed.

Greg Cox defends grants to daughter's employer, Elite Racing Foundation

2009-02-08T10:17:00.000-08:00

Cox defends grants to daughter's employer, Elite Racing Foundation
By Eleanor Yang Su
San Diego Union Tribune
February 6, 2009

County Supervisor Greg Cox is defending his decision to award grants that top $100,000 to the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon while not disclosing that his daughter works for the company that stages the event.

Cox, whose district encompasses much of the marathon route through downtown San Diego, Hillcrest and Mission Bay, helped provide a $12,500 community enhancement grant this year to the Elite Racing Foundation for Children, Education and Medical Research.

He has recommended similar amounts since 1999 for the charity, which co-hosts the marathon with the privately held Elite Racing Inc. Cox also received $750 in campaign contributions from Elite executives in 2007, when he was running for re-election.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported on Sunday that Elite Racing Inc. has been profiting from the marathon while its affiliated nonprofit has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in public subsidies and grants.

Elizabeth Cox has worked at Elite Racing Inc. since August 2002, and is responsible for development and community relations.

Supervisor Cox said he started supporting the marathon a decade ago because it helps boost the local economy and community involvement.

“I wasn't going to penalize the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon because of the fact that my daughter works there,” he said. “Nor was I going to reward them. . . . My decision has been to hold them to the same dollar amount for the past five or six years.”

Cox did not disclose his relationship when voting on the grant awards “because there was no legal reason to,” said Luis Monteagudo, an aide to Cox. Only the financial interests of dependent children and spouses must be disclosed, Assistant County Counsel Tom Montgomery said.

Bob Stern, a government ethics expert, said Cox should have recused himself and allowed other supervisors to recommend and vote on the grant...

UPDATE 1:

Race organizers hire independent auditor
02/06/2009
By Eleanor Yang Su

Background: The for-profit Elite Racing Inc., organizer of the Rock 'n'Roll Marathon, has an affiliated foundation that collected more than $600,000 in public subsidies and grants, according to city and county records analyzed by The San Diego Union-Tribune.

What's changing: Elite Racing's parent company has hired an auditor to look into finances. It has also withdrawn an application for city tourism promotion funds for next year's marathon.

The future: The audit is expected to be completed within three weeks.

...Elite Racing was acquired 13 months ago by a private equity firm, Dickey said, and the new management was unaware that the grants and subsidies were flowing in through the Elite Racing Foundation for Children, Education and Medical Research.

In naming the foundation as a co-host for the event, Elite benefited from a city policy that allows nonprofits to pay about half the cost for police services used race day. Those subsidies have been worth $40,000 to $45,000 a year. County supervisors also gave grants of about $20,000 annually to stage the marathon.

During the past year, the company has reported profits ranging from nothing to $275,000 in its applications to the city and county to stage the event and collect community grants...

Board members at the San Diego Tourism Promotion Corp., the nonprofit entity that will grant an estimated $25 million in hotel fee revenue to promote tourism this year, had mixed reactions about the withdrawn application.

UPDATE 2:

Marathon Organizer Rescinds Application For Tourism Funds
02-06-2009
Metro Networks Communications

The organizer of the San Diego Rock 'n' Roll Marathon has rescinded an application for 375-thousand dollars in city tourism/promotion funds. It has also announced it's hired an outside auditor to investigate questionable payouts associated with an affiliated charity. The actions come after it was discovered Elite Racing Inc. profited from the race while its charity foundation acted as a co-host for the race. The charity has also received over 600-thousand dollars in city subsidies and county grants over the race's eleven-year history.