Was the Jan. 16 report that a frustrated City Council was eager to challenge Mayor Todd Gloria’s handling of budget headaches genuinely good news — or a self-serving smokescreen?
Actions speak louder than words, and here’s what they say: Both the council and the mayor are eager to keep playing their roles as the revenue collectors for the pension-first city-state. They deny responsibility for the fact that budget deficits of more than $1 billion are expected through 2030. They shrug as mandatory annual payments for generous pensions surge past $500 million. They don’t care that in 2012, 66 percent of residents voted to contain pension costs by reducing retirement benefits for most new hires. They somehow see state courts’ eventual decision to throw out Proposition B for violating procedural rules as vindication.
Here’s who disagrees: Hundreds of thousands of San Diegans who don’t buy City Hall’s argument that Proposition B’s failure was actually a net positive because it helped the city attract and retain talented workers.
The factions in charge never acknowledge that the city functioned well enough in the years the measure was in effect. They also never acknowledge the absurdity of that fact that when belt-tightening is required, elected officials’ first targets are often library and recreation center hours — not employee compensation costs.
This bad faith is on display in the stunning bait-and-switch that City Hall is preparing to execute on trash collection fees, which would sharply increase revenue. In 2022, voters were told that ending free trash service for the nearly 300,000 households protected by a 1919 city law would lead to monthly bills of $23 to $29. In recent days, with no apologies for this successful deception from any of the deceivers, city leaders unveiled and lined up behind a plan to charge $53 a month, with a follow-up 22 percent increase to $65 a month in 2027. As part of the plan, they intend to hire 130 more employees — which will only fuel the continued ballooning of the city’s annual pension payment.
The idea of hiring a contractor to provide services at half or less of the cost without creating additional pension obligations — entirely plausible based on what’s happened in other local cities — has never even come up. This mindset must be challenged. It’s time for a bipartisan coalition of fiscal moderates to push back against a status quo that shows over and over that it cares most about keeping labor happy. A possible starting point would be a signature-gathering push for a measure banning the supersizing of the city’s trash work force and requiring the use of private workers instead.
Advocates need to sweat the details, however, to avoid an encore of the Proposition B debacle. There is little reason to doubt common sense would prevail at the ballot box. But it would only prevail at City Hall if the coalition running the show is unable to use the courts to maintain a broken status quo.
