Mayor Todd Gloria gives his 2022 State of the City Address at the San Diego Convention Center on Jan. 12, 2022. / Photo by Adriana Heldiz
During an election-year State of the City Speech Wednesday, Mayor Todd Gloria outlined his 2022 agenda, and at least for now it doesn’t include any of the tax measures aiming for the November ballot.
Gloria outlined the need for more money in multiple policy areas in which there are already potential ballot measures in the works: libraries and parks, stormwater, and transit. In each case, though, Gloria steered clear of mentioning whether he’d lead on those measures – or even if he’d support them.
After the speech, Gloria spokeswoman Rachel Laing confirmed that was by design. The mayor is not getting involved on any of the would-be ballot measures at this time.
Mayor Todd Gloria and Deputy Chief of Staff Nick Serrano walk toward city staff after the State of the City address on Jan. 12, 2022. / Photo by Adriana Heldiz
“The mayor is not getting out in front on the various citizens initiatives that are still in the conceptual phase,” she said. “He’ll evaluate each measure carefully once they’ve qualified for the ballot.”
The potential ballot measures, though, each represent key points of the agenda he outlined Wednesday.
Gloria, for example, described the city’s stormwater liability. The city last year estimated it had a $2.3 billion gap in the next five years between the money it expects to have, and all the infrastructure it needs to fix. Stormwater – the city’s flood management system – accounts for $1.7 billion of that gap.
Wednesday, Gloria said stormwater needs called for a massive fix, in the same way the Pure Water system the city is building to provide an independent water source.
“This is the kind of all-hands-on-deck approach we need to repair our stormwater infrastructure,” he said. “The fee we charge to maintain our pipes, culverts, drains and treatment facilities hasn’t been updated in almost 25 years, and as a result, we’ve fallen far behind on critically needed improvements to protect our beaches and waterways.”
City staff monitor Mayor Todd Gloria’s State of the City address on Jan. 12, 2022, at the Convention Center. / Photo by Adriana Heldiz
He did not say, though, whether he supported an attempt this year to put an initiative on the ballot to pay for those “critically needed improvements.” The Council’s environmental committee voted last year to work on a measure that could go on the 2022 ballot. Council President Sean Elo Rivera told us last month it’s still in the Council’s plans.
Parks and libraries supporters last year announced their own initiative to increase funding for city infrastructure, and while Gloria touted his goal of streamlining city funding for city projects from parks and libraries to roads and rec centers, he didn’t mention the ballot measure.
And while he announced that he’d launch a “collaborative, regional working group” of governmental agencies to bring as much money from the new federal infrastructure bill to San Diego, he did not mention the initiative, spearheaded by unions and environmentalists, to raise sales taxes to pay for regional transportation projects like roads, transit and freeways.
That initiative has done the most to leave what Gloria called “the conceptual phase.” It was endorsed by the San Diego County Democratic Party last month, and paid workers have been collecting signatures since just after Thanksgiving. Dan Rottenstreich, the consultant managing the initiative, said they have tens of thousands of signatures in hand already and are certain they’ll qualify by May 11 when they need to submit them.
“Democrats are fired up about it, the business community is fired up about it, everybody knows we need to do something about infrastructure, transit and traffic in this town,” he said. “We can’t wait any longer. We have the resources we need to qualify for the ballot and then some. I’m confident we’re going to qualify for the ballot, and then we’re going to win.”
Regional transportation would suffer a considerable setback if it doesn’t. The just-passed transportation plan for the county that Gloria voted for in December is already counting on voters approving a ballot measure next year, and for it to bring in more than $10 billion for new projects. It’s expecting voters to pass another similar measure on the 2024 ballot, and another on the 2028 ballot.
Prior to Gloria’s mum approach to tax measures this week, it was specifically his long-standing willingness to support revenue-increasing efforts that Michael Zucchet, head of the Municipal Employees Association, said separated him from other local leaders. On election night in 2020, Zucchet said he hoped Gloria would usher in a new era in which the city was honest with residents that they couldn’t get a world-class city on the cheap.
“Something has to fundamentally change in San Diego,” he said. “Citizens have been told for a generation that they don’t have to pay for trash pickup, that they don’t have to have the same taxes and fees as other cities not just in California, but in San Diego County, that we can do more with less. The fact of the matter is, we can’t. We want to have the best streets, the best parks, the best public safety, all at a discount. Something’s got to give here. The city is not in good shape right now. There’s going to be a fundamental decision, are we going to be the bigger city Todd has articulated, and we have to grow the pie with projects he’s talked about, or to grow revenue, or to reprioritize what we want to do as a city.”
Aguirre Will Sue the Chargers, NFL
We’ve written and talked about St. Louis’ incredible legal victory over the NFL and Rams owner Stan Kroenke. The city, county and sports complex of St. Louis sued the NFL and Kroenke and settled for $790 million, with attorneys pocketing $275 million of it.
The NFL and Kroenke settled for a lot of reasons but they faced enormous pressure after a judge allowed the St. Louis attorneys to start deposing NFL owners and searching through their records.
The settlement must be, by far, the most significant accomplishment of any effort by a city to hold the NFL accountable for moving a team after a city expends public resources to try to keep them or accommodate them. And many of us here in San Diego looked at it with happiness for our compatriots in St. Louis.
But it felt like something only actual big cities could pull off. And the city of San Diego, unlike St. Louis, had explicitly agreed never to sue the Chargers for leaving San Diego, in its 2004 revised lease with the team.
One guy thinks that’s not a problem for the city. Former San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre, whose career is mostly about public interest lawsuits like this and the potential settlements they deliver. He said he was inspired by the St. Louis lawyers’ work.
A fan holds up a sign at a 2015 Chargers-Dolphins game at Qualcomm Stadium. / Photo by Jamie Scott Lytle
This week, Aguirre alerted the city he planned to file a similar suit on behalf of taxpayers Jan. 21. It’s not clear who the plaintiff will be in the case, specifically, but Aguirre did offer the role to the Politics Report. We declined.
Aguirre had previously argued to us that the lease the city signed with the Chargers was illegal and thus void. But now he said the St. Louis case opened his eyes. And the lease has nothing to do with the target of a lawsuit here
“I wasn’t smart enough then to think of this,” he said.
St. Louis argued that the NFL had for years established a de facto contract with cities. They would no longer just move teams out of cities at their unilateral discretion. They would make the process a city could take to keep a team clear. St. Louis followed the process and spent nearly $20 million trying to keep the team through that process. But then, the lawyers argued, they discovered that the NFL and the Rams had no intention of respecting that process.
The NFL argued that its team relocation policy wasn’t a contract at all. The judge disagreed and set up a potential blockbuster trial where the city would try to prove that the Rams intended to leave the city no matter what, essentially misleading the city and violating the NFL policy and its de facto contract with cities. St. Louis wanted $4 billion.
Aguirre said it doesn’t matter that the city agreed never to sue the Chargers, this same violation occurred here. That at some point, the Chargers had no intention of staying here. The city’s lease may not have been violated but the contract with San Diego as a whole had been.
“We’re a third-party beneficiary. They have to act in good faith,” he said.
It still is not convenient that the city agreed not to sue the Chargers or NFL if the team moved. The new contract had been signed to keep them in San Diego for just three more years at a minimum.
“The City hereby acknowledges and agrees that the NFL shall not be liable to the City with respect to any such activities,” reads the lease.
Notes
Case rates may be peaking: Christopher Longhurst, the chief medical officer, at UC San Diego Health gathered some graphs Friday that seem to indicate “we are sliding down the omicron slope” — COVID-19 infections in San Diego may have peaked.
The fire: We very much hope the fire at the home of County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher and former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez was a random accident. Police say it is “suspicious.” We hope because the implications of arson are grave. No political system can be productive, or fair, if leaders face assassination attempts. Even if attacks don’t succeed, they deliver intolerable trauma to public life. If they do succeed, the consequences are horrific and destabilizing.
If you have any ideas or feedback for the Politics Report, send it to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org or andrew.keatts@voiceofsandiego.org.
MONTREAL – A Quebec political party has voted to support one of its members facing backlash for saying that racialized people are regularly disparaged at the provincial legislature.
Québec solidaire members adopted an emergency resolution at the party’s convention late Sunday condemning the hate directed at Haroun Bouazzi, without endorsing his comments.
Bouazzi, who represents a Montreal riding, had told a community group that he hears comments every day at the legislature that portray North African, Muslim, Black or Indigenous people as the “other,” and that paint their cultures are dangerous or inferior.
Other political parties have said Bouazzi’s remarks labelled elected officials as racists, and the co-leaders of his own party had rebuked him for his “clumsy and exaggerated” comments.
Bouazzi, who has said he never intended to describe his colleagues as racist, thanked his party for their support and for their commitment to the fight against systemic racism.
Party co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said after Sunday’s closed-door debate that he considers the matter to be closed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access.
The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes.
“This meeting was an important next step considering the moment in history we find ourselves in,” Democratic Del. Cia Price, the committee chair, said during a news conference. “We have urgent threats to our freedoms that could impact constituents in all of the districts we serve.”
The at-times raucous meeting will pave the way for the House and Senate to take up the resolutions early next year after lawmakers tabled the measures last January. Democrats previously said the move was standard practice, given that amendments are typically introduced in odd-numbered years. But Republican Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said Wednesday the committee should not have delved into the amendments before next year’s legislative session. He said the resolutions, particularly the abortion amendment, need further vetting.
“No one who is still serving remembers it being done in this way ever,” Gilbert said after the meeting. “Certainly not for something this important. This is as big and weighty an issue as it gets.”
The Democrats’ legislative lineup comes after Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, to the dismay of voting-rights advocates, rolled back a process to restore people’s civil rights after they completed sentences for felonies. Virginia is the only state that permanently bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting unless a governor restores their rights.
“This amendment creates a process that is bounded by transparent rules and criteria that will apply to everybody — it’s not left to the discretion of a single individual,” Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, the patron of the voting rights resolution, which passed along party lines, said at the news conference.
Though Democrats have sparred with the governor over their legislative agenda, constitutional amendments put forth by lawmakers do not require his signature, allowing the Democrat-led House and Senate to bypass Youngkin’s blessing.
Instead, the General Assembly must pass proposed amendments twice in at least two years, with a legislative election sandwiched between each statehouse session. After that, the public can vote by referendum on the issues. The cumbersome process will likely hinge upon the success of all three amendments on Democrats’ ability to preserve their edge in the House and Senate, where they hold razor-thin majorities.
It’s not the first time lawmakers have attempted to champion the three amendments. Republicans in a House subcommittee killed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights in 2022, a year after the measure passed in a Democrat-led House. The same subcommittee also struck down legislation supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal an amendment from 2006 banning marriage equality.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted 16-5 in favor of legislation protecting same-sex marriage, with four Republicans supporting the resolution.
“To say the least, voters enacted this (amendment) in 2006, and we have had 100,000 voters a year become of voting age since then,” said Del. Mark Sickles, who sponsored the amendment as one of the first openly gay men serving in the General Assembly. “Many people have changed their opinions of this as the years have passed.”
A constitutional amendment protecting abortion previously passed the Senate in 2023 but died in a Republican-led House. On Wednesday, the amendment passed on party lines.
If successful, the resolution proposed by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring would be part of a growing trend of reproductive rights-related ballot questions given to voters. Since 2022, 18 questions have gone before voters across the U.S., and they have sided with abortion rights advocates 14 times.
The voters have approved constitutional amendments ensuring the right to abortion until fetal viability in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Vermont. Voters also passed a right-to-abortion measure in Nevada in 2024, but it must be passed again in 2026 to be added to the state constitution.
As lawmakers debated the measure, roughly 18 members spoke. Mercedes Perkins, at 38 weeks pregnant, described the importance of women making decisions about their own bodies. Rhea Simon, another Virginia resident, anecdotally described how reproductive health care shaped her life.
Then all at once, more than 50 people lined up to speak against the abortion amendment.
“Let’s do the compassionate thing and care for mothers and all unborn children,” resident Sheila Furey said.
The audience gave a collective “Amen,” followed by a round of applause.
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Kennedy, a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration.
He and Trump have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies.
The expected appointment was first reported by Politico Thursday.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations around the ingredients in foods.
With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food healthier in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. In a nod to Trump’s original campaign slogan, he named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”
It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.
Kennedy’s stance on vaccines has also made him a controversial figure among Democrats and some Republicans, raising question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. Kennedy has espoused misinformation around the safety of vaccines, including pushing a totally discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.
He also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health.
HHS has more than 80,000 employees across the country. It houses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the National Institutes of Health.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
