San Diego Still Catching up on Audits

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published March 24, 2008 at 12:45 PM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

San Diego city's long delayed 2006 audit is now approved, but the national credit rating agencies still are not ready to restore the city's credit worthiness. The city has been barred from the public

San Diego city's long delayed 2006 audit is now approved, but the national credit rating agencies still are not ready to restore the city's credit worthiness. The city has been barred from the public bond markets since 2004 because of inaccurate financial accounting and for hiding its billion dollar pension deficit. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The City of San Diego's chief financial officer, Mary Lewis, jokes that she's considered contacting the Guinness Book of World Records to see if the City of San Diego has broken all records by getting four audits approved in one year. San Diego now has its 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 audit's approved.

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But Amy Doppelt of the Fitch credit rating agency says the city must produce its 2007 audit before the negative credit watch is removed from its rating.

Doppelt: Because the audits until today have been pretty far behind, and now they are just a little bit behind. And then there is the murkiness going forward as to what the housing market will mean for the city. So it's really a mixed bag.

Mayor Sanders says he hopes to have the 2007 audit approved before the end of the year.

In the mean time he will propose borrowing $100 million privately from Bank of America to finance spending on years of deferred maintenance in the city.

Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John

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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.