Guest Column
by RYAN PURDY
On a stormy Saturday, Councilmember Carl DeMaio held a Town Hall to discuss his plan to balance the city’s budget and reform the pension system in front of a standing room only crowd at the North Clairemont Library. DeMaio touts his Roadmap to Recovery as a comprehensive five year financial recovery plan that will restructure the city’s budget and long term finances to save the city $1 billion dollars over five years.
Fresh off of spearheading the resoundingly successful “No on Prop D” campaign (Prop D would have increased the San Diego City sales tax by half a cent for the next five years), DeMaio’s plan naturally does not include any tax or fee increases. Instead he emphasizes comprehensive pension reform, reforming city salaries and labor contracts and competitive bidding on city services. You can read more here.
The room DeMaio presented in could have only fit 40 people comfortably. Yet there were 60 or more people in all, some standing around the edges of the room and all the way out into the hallway. The room was largely full of people who were unabashed Carl DeMaio admirers, but they brought with them a notable mix of hope and pessimism with regard to implementing reform.
The specter of reflexive union opposition to reform dimmed the hopes of some in attendance, despite the unions suffering a sweeping defeat in San Diego on November 2:
- Prop A passed–setting in granite even more San Diego County’s already-in-place ban on the use of Project Labor Agreements on County construction projects.
- Prop D failed–the sales tax increase initiative backed and financed largely by unions to preserve their pension status quo.
- Lorie Zapf prevailed over the heavily union financed Howard Wayne for the open San Diego City Council seat in District 6.
So it was somewhat curious that some in the crowd let their understandable realism about the unions’ knee-jerk resistance to reasonable reform become tinged with pessimism. Consequently, DeMaio took a lot of tough and skeptical questions from an otherwise friendly crowd. He handled the questions with great patience and mastery of details. Anyone who has seen Carl speak would be unsurprised by his fluency with budget figures, but he also demonstrated a solid knowledge base of the legal implications of his proposals.
DeMaio seemed to eventually win over a skeptical man who identified himself as a former bankruptcy lawyer. Former San Diego Councilmember Bill Mitchell was also in attendance. Along with the former bankruptcy lawyer, he served as the Co-Skeptic-In-Chief at the meeting. Bill’s main point was that occasionally good measures get passed and don’t get implemented. DeMaio countered that if these reforms don’t get passed or implemented, he’s going to put them on the ballot at the earliest possible juncture.
DeMaio slipped twice, referring to the City Council as the “Labor Council”. Of course, given the current composition of the Council, six pro labor votes versus two pro business/fiscal responsibility votes (DeMaio and Kevin Faulconer), it seemed an apt description of the Council. At the moment it is indeed a “Labor Council” and not a “City Council”. Just ask Wal Mart, which is struggling to open a supercenter in San Diego in the face of union backed opposition on the Council.
DeMaio comes off as the City of San Diego’s Paul Ryan, the engaging budget wonk and Congressman from Wisconsin on the Budget Committee who has a “Roadmap” of his own. DeMaio’s willingness to travel the city with a mobile billboard contrasting the pensions of a Four Star General and a city librarian separates his numbers driven persona from Ryan’s. DeMaio is not afraid to market his ideas with a flair for the dramatic. Prop D lost 38% to 62%, so DeMaio clearly knows how to hit a nerve.
DeMaio’s next Townhall regarding his Roadmap to Recovery is Monday evening. Concerned San Diegans sacrificed staying dry and warm to hear DeMaio on Saturday. Monday evening we will see if concerned San Diegans are willing to sacrifice watching the Chargers versus Broncos as DeMaio’s “Roadmap to Recovery” Town Hall in east San Diego goes head to head with Monday Night Football at nearby Qualcomm Stadium.
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Ryan Purdy has been involved in local politics since he moved to San Diego two years ago. He currently does development for a local university and a political consulting firm.