Mayor Jerry Sanders held a small roundtable discussion with community newspapers to promote and defend his ballot propositions, B and C, on Oct. 3 at the Town and County Hotel. Sanders played a pivotal role in authoring the propositions has championed them as part of his broad fiscal reform plan for the city.
Sanders began by saying that these were the goals he promised to accomplish once elected as mayor. He quickly moved to get these 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 which would require voter approval for any increase in retirement system benefits for public employees.
“Obviously, we have huge pension problems, and those pension problems reflect the fact that the deals were made and nobody really knew about the deals,” Sanders said.
Sanders said that the pension problems boil down to increased benefits without funding. For a time in the 1980s, the city was paying for retiree healthcare out of the pension fund, which was never supposed to happen, he added.
“I think the issue revolves around [the fact that] we need to take this and give it to the voters,” Sanders said.
The mayor explained that Prop B would require the city, city management and the labor unions 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 pension 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.
A similar system is used in San Francisco and worked very well, he said.
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 approval when they were justifiable and funded. The union solution could be to impose a pension tax that would not require public vote, he said.
“My position is the taxpayers 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 asked.
Many labor unions say that this is unnecessary because there will not be any foreseeable pension increases for a long time down the road. 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 which 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 are from labor, and there are only two options when faced with the financial problems that the City of San Diego has: raise taxes or cut expenditures.
“The only way to cut expenditures is by slimming the city down,” Sanders said. “A tax increase, number one, I don’t think is warranted because we’ve not shown that we can use the money we have effectively and, number, two quite frankly people don’t trust the City of San Diego or the government. They’re not going to vote for a tax increase.”
Sanders said he promised, once elected, that he would begin Business Process Reengineering (BPR), in which representatives from the labor unions, line-level workers and outside consultants who know the industry gather to discuss and forge a new, improved business model for running every city department within three years.
Sanders said he hopes the BPR process of managed competition would be as successful as it has been in San Diego County, where county employees won 13 of 17 contracts for bid, while saving 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 affected by managed competition, which Sanders hopes will save 20 percent in each department, most likely by eliminating midlevel management and supervisors, not line-level workers.
Sanders also promised that public safety workers, such as police officers, firefighters and lifeguards, would not be subject to the managed competition.
When asked about possible corruption, such as companies giving money in exchange for city contracts, Sanders pointed to the independent citizens review board, which would comprise seven members. Four 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. They would be appointed by the mayor with city council approval. The three other members would be city staff from the mayor’s office, city council and the city auditor or comptroller, with no personal or financial interests that would create conflicts of interest.
The board would determine which bid would be most beneficial for the city and then pass that on to the mayor, who could either accept and pass on to the city council for approval, or deny. If denied, the review board would then choose another bid.
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, which began with an estimate of $250,000 and ended up costing the city $20 million, Sanders explained that 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. “I agree it was horrible.”
He also said that changes have been made as far as a new monitoring criterion, which would be performed by city teams and would require quarterly reviews and audits that have not been in place before, Sanders said.
Proposition C opponents say that the city cannot effectively monitor the contracts out now.
“They’re absolutely right, we couldn’t,” Sanders said of past monitoring. “That’s the reason the very first BPR we did was the contracts department. That entire department has changed now.”
Sanders concluded by saying that for too long the city avoided tough issues, such as pension and budget. Now it’s time to face the problems head-on, he said.