Eight years ago, the mayor of San Diego then Kevin Faulconer exercised a new power Few people seemed to know that the mayor had. The municipal council had approved a budget which abolished $ 5 million which he had offered to organize a special election on the future of Mission Valley.
He simply put the money back in the budget.
That day, many of us realized for the first time that, in the high form of the mayor’s government, the mayor’s right of veto gave him not only the possibility of vetoing specific articles in the budget but to shape the budget as he wishes. City lawyers facilitating discussions have made this ultra: “He can do whatever he wants.”
In other words, it was not only an online veto power he had. He had an addition power of line.
The municipal council may have been able to approve a budget with a simple majority, but if he wanted to challenge the mayor on something like that, a supermajority of the council should prevail.
I remember having placed this and one day thinking that it could be a much more important affair than it was.
This moment is now: we could go to the greatest budgetary dead end during the 20 years since the city adopted the large form of mayor mayor. The Council regularly made marginal changes to the annual budget that the mayor proposed – and even these marginal changes have sometimes been fought.
But this year, tensions and disagreement on the budget have reached a new summit. The municipal council and the mayor seem not only to disagree on the priorities of structural expenses and income opportunities, but they also display a severe contempt for each other. The council staff do not report anything about the collaboration they have had in previous years.
Contempt has become so perceptible that the member of the Council Henry Foster, no ally of the mayor is safe, suggested in the most public framework to date, something that has been whispered only in recent years: it is perhaps time to bring the mayor to the council and to take charge.
“I think that the public must also examine the high form of government of the mayor. Because I do not know if it really works in our favor and I think it is a real conversation that the public must consider,” he said on Monday during a budget hearing where the mayor and his main financial deputies have revealed that they should take $ 10.1 million in reserves just to balance the budget of the next year.
The member of the Vivian Moreno council noted that they did not have to dive in reservations like this even in the aftermath of the economic shock of the pandemic, when the land of tax revenue of the hotel industry is interrupted and mass dismissals began.
Litigation zones: The Council seems particularly interested in restoring the hours and library hours and the services that the mayor wishes to cut. He wants to find money to do so by eliminating higher management positions and accelerating efforts to impose paid parking in Balboa Park and Misson Bay.
The debate on the growing ranks of city managers – called non -classified because they are not represented by unions and can be hired and more easily licensed – has been particularly difficult. Michael Zucchet, director general of the Municipal Employees Association, or MEA, the largest employee union in the city, tirelessly beat the drum with the number of managers that the city has hired and how much the mayor has been reluctant to reduce one of these posts, even the vacant.
In fact, completely the opposite. The city hired them even during the freeze of the mayor.
“We can count 28 program manager, program coordinator and other non -classified positions hired by the mayor during the” freezing of hiring only for the most essential employees “, in the mayor services which were not non -public security.” Zucchet said at the same hearing. He underlined two managers hired in the communications department, one just in April.
The mayor addressed this controversy not by denying that the list of city directors has increased, but by arguing that it should grow.
In a memo sent to the municipal council on May 4, Deputy Director Alia Khouri stressed that the city had grown so much in the past 15 years, it had no choice.
“Growth, modernization and new programs often require decision -making, judgment and development independent of policies and procedures, and in certain cases, the creation of whole programs or entire departments. These types of responsibilities are designated for unlimited management positions “,” She wrote.
The memo has highlighted other cities where they had proportionally many more non -classified managers than the city of San Diego. But he also highlighted two in California: San Jose and Los Angeles, who both have a lower proportion of employees designated as classified.
Los Angeles has 2.8 times the population of San Diego, but only 2.2 times the number of non -classified employees.
“The proportionality of front -line workers and public workers who lose their jobs compared to non -classified managers is out of control,” said the member of the Council Raul Campillo.
All this could lead to an unprecedented budget response from the council.
“The one who offers that the budget has the most swing and the advice tends to make marginal changes at the end,” said Zucchet. “But I think this year will be unique. A significant number of council members can offer significant changes to what is currently in the proposal. ”
What to monitor: the Municipal Council will send its hopes and their proposals specific to their independent budgetary analyst. Then, the mayor will come with a final budget proposed either ignore or incorporate them – or something else.
Then we will have to see what is going on. If the council wants to reverse a cup that the mayor sets in motion, he will have to find the money somewhere.
But we could very well take a path that we have never seen before: the advice could offer structural changes or make reductions in the positions that exist in the mayor’s budget, then we will see what the mayor does in response.