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Have San Diego mayor Todd Gloria and the city council been getting away with fiscal murder?

Blind council 

Have San Diego mayor Todd Gloria and the city council been getting away with fiscal murder? So suggest two mid-July reports by City Auditor Andy Hanau accusing the council of being derelict in its duty to stop the mayor and a host of contractors from quietly jamming through six-figure cost increases without public attention. The news comes at an awkward time for Gloria and his fellow all-Democratic council, which is now pushing for voters to bump the city’s sales tax in November up to 8.75 percent.

But how would the loot be spent? “With or without increased funding, the City needs a facility management plan to ensure it spends its limited maintenance funds efficiently,” Hanau’s first report, entitled Performance Audit of Facility Maintenance, states. “With or without increased funding, the City needs a facility management plan to ensure it spends its limited maintenance funds efficiently.”

Andy Hanau: few plaudits in his audits.

The second document, labeled Performance Audit of the City’s Contract Management Process, blasts the council for mismanaging public money it already lavishes on an array of costly contractors, looking the other way as major cost overruns slip by without ostensibly mandatory public scrutiny. “City Council approval provides a critical check on Mayoral power and is required to alter certain contracts as per the San Diego Municipal Code. However, due to staff confusion around Council approval requirements, about 11 percent of contract alterations we reviewed — totaling almost $15 million in changes over the last 7 years — did not receive this necessary approval.”

After-the-fact approvals are also common, the report says. “Departments brought 19 percent of contract alterations totaling nearly $64 million to Council for approval retroactively, creating risks for vendors and City services, and further reducing effective oversight.” Notes the audit: “Retroactive approval, or ‘ratification,’ is an exception that should be used as little as possible. More than one out of four contract alterations we reviewed were brought to Council for approval retroactively or with little time remaining.”

Even a costly new contract monitoring system called Ariba used by the city came under fire: “We found numerous accuracy issues with contract information in Ariba. Many past audit recommendations related to system controls and accuracy remain unimplemented, contributing to persistent issues. The absence of formal documentation and comprehensive policies in contract management has led to challenges in ensuring proper procedures are followed.”

Backers of the sales tax hike insist that it is the only way to cope with a burgeoning backlog of unfinished work. “The longer we wait to fix the building blocks of our government — our roads, our sidewalks, the libraries that need a new roof and the pools that need to be resurfaced — the more expensive these repairs become,” Marni von Wilpert, eyeing a bid for a state Senate seat, told the Union-Tribune in a July 22 write-up.

“If we don’t adequately fund this city’s infrastructure, we’ll be passing on to the next generation a deeper and deeper backlog that will be unfathomable for them to get out of.” But Hanau’s investigators discovered that von Wilpert and her colleagues are in reality blind as to what to fix first, and how much the ultimate repairs will cost. “The City does not know the condition of its facilities or their maintenance needs. The City does not have an asset management plan to maintain the condition of its $7.2 billion facility portfolio. Without an asset management plan, Facilities Services does not clearly communicate facility maintenance needs or the plan to address those needs to City Council.” In addition, “Departments have limited insight into the status of their repairs, resulting in unnecessary delays and unclear expectations.”

Drugged

XJD, a Los Angeles company created by Michael Schlesinger, the local Republican money man famous for his long-running battle with neighbors over development of the now-defunct Escondido Country Club, came up with $919.99 on May 20 to pay for “Mailers Inviting the Public to Attend Fentanyl Safety Workshops,” according to a so-called behesting statement filed June 18 by GOP County Supervisor Joel Anderson. Schlesinger was once sued by the City of Escondido for poorly maintaining the closed golf course during his bitter clash with nearby property owners and residents, but the city later dropped the case. Using an anti-fentanyl event to boost his reelection campaign, Anderson attracted widespread media notice, including a glowing May 14 write-up in the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Opioid abuse has impacted so many in San Diego County,” he told a May 7 Poway library crowd, per the report. “Nobody should lose their life over this.”

Jimmy Ukegawa: strawberries are sweet, higher sales taxes are not.

Photograph by Thomas K. Arnold

Top donor so far to Stop the SANDAG Tax, a campaign fund seeking to defeat a sales tax hike proposal to benefit the San Diego Association of Governments backed by construction unions and multi-national highway and infrastructure builders on November’s ballot, is the Carlsbad Strawberry Company Inc. run by Jimmy Ukegawa, with $5000 on June 6. In the meantime, SANDAG will “continue to monitor” an unspecified “allegation of bully-ing behavior and a toxic work environment,” according to the June 24 Annual Investigations Report of the agency’s Independent Performance Auditor Courtney Ruby...

The U.S. Office of Detention Oversight is out with an April 24 report regarding complaints of a Muslim worshipper at Otay Mesa Detention Center, run for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by private contractor CoreCivic. “One detainee stated that the facility removed the opportunity for Muslim detainees to pray the morning prayer on April 9, 2024,” according to an Office of Detention Oversight April 24 report. “ODO interviewed the facility chaplain, reviewed the detainee’s file, and found on April 9, 2024, the facility allowed the detainee to perform his morning prayer in his cell rather than the dayroom.

Staff made the change due to several detainees complaining about the noise level of morning prayer and related conversations disturbing their sleep. At ODO’s request, facility staff explained the reason for the change to the detainee, and the detainee acknowledged understanding.”

— Matt Potter

(@sdmattpotter)

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