Politics

San Diego Still Paying for Mistakes

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published July 20, 2009 at 2:24 PM PDT

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

San Diego is still paying for the mistakes it made seven years ago when the city failed to disclose its billion-dollar pension deficit to investors. But a monitor, who reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission, says the city is cleaning up its act.

Stan Keller is a Boston attorney who closely follows everything the city of San Diego does to keep Wall Street informed of its fiscal health. He reports his findings to the SEC.

It’s part of the settlement the city had to accept after it was found hiding damaging information from investors in 2002 and 2003.

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Keller told the city council that the city’s web page for potential investors in city bonds is an improvement. “It’s not just numbers,” he says, “or what has been referred to by the SEC as analysis that ends up being not much more than elevator music, but getting behind the numbers and explaining what they mean.”

Keller says the city’s audit committee, which is more independent of the mayor’s office, and includes citizen experts, is a good step forward.

The city is spending around $40 million for software called "One San Diego," that’s supposed to strengthen the city’s financial controls, but still isn’t working properly.

Keller, who will finish his three year stint as monitor next year, says he likely won’t charge the city more than $2 million for his services. http://www.kpbs.org/news/2008/jun/13/aguirre-to-present-council-with-malpractice/Previous consultants hired to help extricate the city from its legal turmoil charged $26 million.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.