Mayor Jerry Sanders held a small roundtable discussion with community newspapers to promote and defend Propositions B and C on Tuesday, Oct. 3, at the Town and County Hotel. Sanders played a pivotal role in authoring the propositions as has championed them as part of his broad fiscal reform plan for the city
Sanders began the meeting by saying that he campaigned on these goals and had promised to accomplish them once elected as mayor. He said he quickly moved to get the measures on the November ballot, since the next opportunity would not be until June 2008.
“I didn’t want to wait that long,” he said.

PROPOSITION B
Proposition B proposes an amendment to the charter that would require voter approval for any increase in retirement system benefits for public employees.
“Obviously, we have huge pension problems,” Sanders said, “and those pension problems reflect the fact that the deals were made and nobody really knew about the deals.”
Sanders said that according to the proposition, city management, staff and labor unions would have to campaign for any future pension increases. Each party would have to include an actuarial statement that would show how the proposed increase would affect the pension system in the future and how the city would pay for those increases.
“It gives the voters the opportunity to say ‘Yes, this makes sense, we need to do it,’ or ‘No, it doesn’t’,” Sanders said.
He noted that a similar system is used in San Francisco and has worked well.
Proposition B opponents, including the San Diego Firefighters association (IAFF Local 145) and the San Diego Police Officers Association, have claimed that they will not get the increases needed to stay competitive in the work force.
According to Sanders, pension increases in San Francisco have gone to the ballot numerous times over the last 20 years and received increases when they were justifiable and funded. As for unions, many have suggested a pension tax that would not require a public vote.
“My position is the tax payers have already paid once, why should they pay again for something that both labor and city management knew was not realistic in the future,” Sanders said.
Still, many labor unions oppose the proposition, arguing that pension increases will not be needed for a long time down. Sanders responded that that is precisely why the city needs it.
“People will forget about this in 10 years,” Sanders said. “They’ll forget about this problem that we had and they’ll start doing this again. That’s the union’s job is to ask for stuff and we’ve not seen any reticence on the part of City Council to adopt it and we should say no “” we don’t have the money.”

PROPOSITION C
Proposition C proposes an amendment to the charter that would allow the city to contract services traditionally performed by civil service employees if determined to be more economical and efficient, while maintaining the quality of services and protecting the public interest.
According to Sanders, 90 percent of government costs come from labor.
“The only way to cut expenditures is by slimming the city down,” Sanders said.
Sanders explained that he had promised while campaigning to work with staff, unions and consultants to come up with a new and improved business model for running every part of the city within three years.
Sanders said he hopes that managed competition in the city would be as successful as it has been in San Diego County, where county employees won 13 of 17 contracts for bid, saving the county tremendous amounts of money.
“I would hope the city employees would win 100 percent of the contracts out for bid,” Sanders said.
According to Sanders, trash, water, wastewater and general fund employees could conceivably be effected by managed competition. He added that he hopes to save 20 percent in each department, most likely by eliminating mid-level management and supervisors, not line-level workers.
Sanders also promised that public safety workers, such as police officers, firefighters and lifeguards, would not be subjected to managed competition.
When asked about the possibility of companies offering money in exchange for city contracts, Sanders pointed to the independent citizens review board, which would be comprised of seven members. Four of the members would be private citizens with professional experience in at least one of the following areas: finance, law, public administration, business management or the service areas under consideration. However, those individuals would be not be independently elected, instead the mayor would appoint them with City Council approval.
The remaining three members would comprise city staff from the mayor’s office, City Council and the city auditor or controller.
The board’s decisions relating to bids would be sent to the mayor, who could either accept and pass on to the city council for approval, or deny. According to Sanders, the decision is ultimately up to the review board.
“It takes that political side out of it so that you can’t have that corruption,” he said.
When asked about the possibility of costs ballooning after contracts are written, such as the case with the Kroll Report that was initially estimated at $250,000 and ended up costing the city $20 million, Sanders said changes have been made in the contracting department.
“I don’t know who wrote that contract “” obviously it wasn’t a very good contract,” Sanders said.
He added that the proposition also includes new monitoring criteria that would require quarterly reviews and audits of contractors performing city tasks. But Proposition C opponents argue that the city does not effectively monitor the contracts out right now.
“They’re absolutely right, we couldn’t.” Sanders said of past monitoring. “That’s the reason the very first [review] we did was the contracts department. That entire departments has changed now.”
Sanders concluded by saying that for too long the city avoided tough issues, such as pension and budget. It’s time to face the tough issues, he said, whether they want to or not.