San Diego's two mayoral candidates tackled questions put to them by both reporters and citizens at a two hour forum hosted by KPBS and a consortium of San Diego media last night. Former police chief Jerry Sanders and councilwoman Donna Frye sparred over special interests, taxes and privatizing city services. They kept the mood civil, but they staked out very different positions on how to solve the city's problems. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.
In a race where a new beginning is what San Diego voters are all looking for, Donna Frye and Jerry Sanders each tried to tar the other with the same brush, saying their challenger represents the old guard.
FRYE : My opponent represents the old San Diego, the people who brought us Susan Golding and Dick Murphy, they are now trying to bring us Mr Sanders
SANDERS : Old San Diego is one special interest group- labor- providing four hundred thousand dollars of her campaign funds.
Sanders and Frye are treading new territory . Old assumptions about how to run the San Diego have crumbled under the scrutiny of federal investigations, and the city is at a turning point. Both candidates know negotiating with the city's labor unions will be key to making the billion dollar pension deficit manageable. But they disagree on how to go about it. Frye says she'll simply stop paying the benefits straight away.
FRYE The employees are not coming back to the table, no matter what you believe , the best way to deal with the pension benefits is to make sure that you cease to recognize those benefits that were illegally grants.
But Sanders doesn't include the millions of dollars in savings from rolling back benefits in his plan.. He says only the courts can decide that
SANDERS : Councilwoman Frye on day one will expose the city to litigation that will last for the next several years . You cannot unilaterally stop paying benefits that she voted fro by the way and say that you're going to stop em cos you don't like em any more.
Frye has taken the risky step of saying she w would ask voters to pass a half cent sales tax to help bolster the city's bottom line. Sanders favors financing the debt with pension obligation bonds, once the city gets back into the bond market. Sanders has insisted he will not include taxes in his plan, saying it would be unfair to ask San Diegans to pay for the mistakes of its legislators. But he qualified his stance somewhat last night , saying there may come a time when voters would be willing to agree to a tax for specific purposes.
SANDERS : Down the line when we have got the city streamlined in structural budget order, if taxpayers want to look at a tax increase for infrastructure for increased public safety that'll be up to taxpayers to go out when they have faith and confidence in the city of San Diego, which they do not have now.
Before asking voters for a new tax, Sanders would ask them to change the city charter to allow him to privatize some city jobs like property management and maintenance
SANDERS The city of san diego can achieve at least 10 million dollars in savings by doing very targeted outsourcing FRYE I believe that setting up yet another bureaucracy to oversee these contracts just to make sure they're doing their work, that costs a lot more money
The candidates were faced with a major challenge for any politician : responding to several questions with a yes or no answer.
Do you support needle exchange ? yes yes, Do you support minutemen? No No Do you think your campaign has gone negative at all? SANDERS: No I don't .. FRYE Yes I think that his has
Sanders has called Frye's plan illegal, and an ill conceived sham.But Frye has lobbed a few backhanded compliments at Sanders herself. Here's her response to a question about whether Sanders might make an effective mayor if he won.
FRYE I think he would be effective at issuing pension bonds to deal with the city's debt and pushing the debt off to future generations..
Frye and Sanders also differ radically on redevelopment.
SANDERS; She's trying to cover up the record of regulation, new fees 500 dollars increases per housing unit instead of talking about the real issues which is streamlining the process, FRYE growth and development needs to pay its fair share I will make sure that it does my opponent will give it away,
While Frye accuses Sanders of getting 30% of his campaign funding from developer interests, Sanders points to the money labor interest have poured into Frye's campaign. He said labor will pay 100 thousand dollars for TV ads in these last few days of the campaign.
A wild card on the table is the relationship that each candidate has with activist city attorney Mike Aguirre. Polls suggest voters approve of the job Aguirre is doing, however controversial his actions, and he has been the dominant force in San Diego politics for months.
SANDERS: I applaud Mike Aguirre for some of the things he's done he's stepped into a power vacuum and he's been relentless but I think he needs to shift gears now I think Mike needs to become part of team seeking solutions so we can start moving forward as a city again.
FRYE: and actually Mike has become part of a team that is solution oriented which is why the city attorney has endorsed my plan as the only plan that is sensible and will get the city back on track.
Voters will decide next week which of two very different strategies, and very different personalities, has the best chance of breaking the log jam at city hall . Alison St John, KPBS news.
