SD Rostra is sharing this press release because it’s of interest…even with the dangling preposition in the long subhead…
From Rigged Bidding Process Intended to Give Unions Monopoly Building “Agreement” to Unanswered Environmental and Funding Questions Website Covers What Others Have Failed To
San Diego, CA– Today the website San Diego Convention Center Scam was unveiled. This website is dedicated to exposing the waste, fraud, and abuse that underlies almost every aspect of this $600 million boondoggle. The website features groundbreaking exposés on every aspect of this project, most of which have received little if any attention from the media or anyone else in San Diego.
Among the issues covered by the website:
- Is the convention center expansion really even needed?
- Who is running this thing?
- Who will pay for it and how?
- How did the unions get a monopoly Project Labor Agreement (PLA) on this project?
- Are environmental concerns being ignored?
- Was the bid process that chose the general contractor rigged?
- And much more
“When we began looking into this process we had a certain set of presuppositions regarding what this was really about”, said Eric Christen, one of the individuals behind the website. “But what we came away with was an understanding that this process is utterly corrupt through and through and is nothing more than a scam designed to enrich a few while sticking it to the vast majority of citizens, taxpayers, and workers of San Diego. It is shocking.”
The website will be regularly unveiling information intended to keep San Diego citizens and taxpayers up to date on this $600 million scam.
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Link now fixed.
I have not had a chance to review all the material on the website, but it rings true — based on my experience and history with our San Diego Convention Center. This is an awesome effort to open this taboo subject to media scrutiny. The media and the downtown hotels profit mightily from this subsidy, but most San Diegans have little or nothing to show for it.
Even if a detail or two on this website is not totally correct (and I have no indication that such is the case), this is FAR more truthful than the lies that have surrounded the convention center juggernaut up until now.
Don’t get me wrong — the business of conventions IS good for the city. But the degree of the taxpayer subsidies and political skullduggery surrounding this project make the whole giveaway an embarrassment.
Not covered in this website (yet) is the OPERATION of the Convention Center, a hugely inefficient, union-dominated mess approaching the crooked operations of the old New York dockworkers racket.
IF port and city politicians gave a hoot about taxpayers, we’d have contracted out this operation long ago. But they don’t — not when it’s below the radar as far as the media is concerned.