In 2010, 68 percent of San Diego County voters did something unusual. You told the people in power to accept less of it. Two terms. Eight years. That was the rule you wrote for us.
And you wrote it the hard way. The 2010 measure wasn’t handed down from this building. It was a voter initiative. More than 70,000 of your neighbors signed petitions, by hand, to force it onto the ballot. Citizens organized citizens, and citizens set the rule.
This Tuesday, April 21, the Board majority is voting to rewrite that rule. It takes three people.
Three Supervisors, sitting in this building, voting to put a term extension on the ballot. Eight years to twelve. An extra four years in the same seat they currently hold. Proposed by the people who would get them. Placed on the ballot by the same.
Yes, voters will have the final say at the ballot box. That matters, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But there is a real difference between a rule that 70,000 citizens fought to put in front of you, and a rule that three officials vote to put in front of you about their own time in office. One of those starts with you. The other starts with them.
I’m not writing to argue whether two terms is the right number or three is. Reasonable people land in different places on that. I’m writing about who gets to set the question, and why it matters that it’s them.
In 2010, the reform came from the outside in. Citizens telling government to accept limits on its own power. What’s happening Tuesday runs the other direction.
This is the Board writing a ballot question about the Board, for the Board. Extending the time they personally can hold the seat they personally occupy. That isn’t a process quirk. That is a conflict of interest in plain daylight, dressed up in the language of reform.
Every sitting Supervisor ran under the current rules. We asked you to hire us for up to eight years. That was the contract. You don’t get to win an election under one set of rules and then, from inside the building, vote to put a new set of rules on the ballot that extends your own stay.
If the Board majority genuinely believes twelve years serves San Diego County better than eight, there is an honest path. The same path the voters used in 2010. Gather signatures. Make the case to your neighbors. Let a citizen movement, not a board vote, carry the question to the ballot.
Anything short of that is three officials placing a question about their own jobs in front of the voters, and hoping the packaging does the rest.
You should notice who’s asking.
Thank you for trusting me with this seat, under the rules we agreed on.
San Diego County District 5 Supervisor Jim Desmond
https://www.supervisorjimdesmond.com/