Since joining with labor union owned City Councilmembers to push a sales tax increase, the Mayor appears to be losing credibility at lightning speed in an attempt to somehow justify increasing taxes by $100 million per year.
In just the past week, he’s been continually called out in the media for peddling falsehoods about the sales tax proposal.
First, the most utterly hilarious:
“Our pension payments after 2012 will start going down instead of up.”
Um…not quite Mr. Can’t Get Out of Office Fast Enough, er, Sanders. Voice of San Diego says:
“The mayor was mistaken. The pension system’s most recent projections say the city’s payments will increase every year until 2025, peaking around $500 million, and then start to fall.
Oops! Just a minor mistake. Trust the Mayor, his comments were “obviously not meant to deceive” according to his spokesperson.
Well how about this other myth he’s been touting? The one where he says if he’s not satisfied with reform progress, he can prevent taxes from even being increased.
The Union-Tribune isn’t so sure.
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders’ strongest argument for Proposition D is that he finally has a “hammer” to guarantee that cost-saving reforms actually will be implemented as part of an ambitious budget compromise in which taxes are raised.
But does the mayor really have the hammer he says? City Attorney Jan Goldsmith doesn’t think so.
Uh-oh. The Mayor appears wrong again.
As the editorial explains, the auditor makes the determination of whether reforms have been met. But in making that determination, the auditor “is to review documentation from the mayor ‘and any other information necessary to determine whether the reform measures have been met.'”
I imagine that this would include information provided by the labor-union dominated City Council, no? The U-T mentions that even a mayoral veto “can be overturned on a 5-3 council vote.”
So if we believe that City Attorney Jan Goldsmith is correct, “Sanders’ leverage isn’t nearly what he has argued.”
Given his recent spout of falsehoods and inaccuracy, a smiling handshake and a “trust me” from a Mayor in the middle of a credibility crisis seems to be a less and less viable strategy to sway voters.
For the sake of taxpayers, let’s hope the mayor keeps up these unintentional contributions to the anti-sales tax campaign.