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Politics

San Diego City Council Fine Tunes 'Reform Before Revenue' Initiative

By Alison St John / Reporter
Published August 2, 2010 at 11:28 AM PDT
This story was published more than 13 years ago.
San Diego City Council Fine Tunes "Reform Before Revenue" Initiaitive
The San Diego city council met briefly this morning to sort out final details of a ballot measure that would allow the city to raise the sales tax half a cent, but only AFTER certain conditions had been met.

The San Diego City Council met briefly this morning to sort out final details of a ballot measure that would allow the city to raise the sales tax half a cent, but only after certain conditions had been met.

The conditions include pension reforms and specific steps toward outsourcing some city services.

San Diego’s City Attorney Jan Goldsmith told the council he will not have the "reform before revenue” ballot measure ready for their approval until Wednesday. That’s just two days before a Friday deadline to get it on the November ballot.

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Goldsmith said the city auditor would have to certify all the conditions had been met before the State Board of Equalization would agree to implement the tax.

“None of the conditions may be excused for any reason,” Goldsmith said, “including, but not limited to, inability to meet the conditions due to legal restrictions, or other unforeseen circumstances.”

Councilwoman Donna Frye said after the meeting that the list of reforms she drafted would not include attempts to reform legally vested pension benefits.

“What we did is try to craft this in a way that it could be accomplished without litigation,” she said. “So that you didn’t get into the debate about vested versus non-vested benefits.”

The reforms do include requiring elected officials and non-union employees to pay their own pension contributions, rather than the city.

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Another condition establishes a program whereby city employees could choose to change from a defined benefit plan to a 401K pension plan. Goldsmith said the IRS may or may not approve this, but as long as the City Council agreed to it, the condition would be met.

San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio also wants the council to take a vote on Wednesday to decide whether or not to overturn the Mayor’s veto of a separate ballot measure: the initiative to build a new city hall.

DeMaio, who is against both a sales tax increase and a new city hall, said he is concerned that some council members might change their minds and decide to vote for a new city hall without taking the issue to the voters.

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Politics San Diego Government
Alison St John
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.
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