San Diego's Independent Consultant Delivers Annual Report

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published April 1, 2008 at 7:37 PM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

The Independent Consultant hired by San Diego to help restore Wall Street's confidence in the city, presented his first annual report to the council today. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The Independent Consultant hired by San Diego to help restore Wall Street 's confidence in the city, presented his first annual report to the council today. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The City of San Diego ended up paying $20 million for the Kroll consultants report during the height of its financial crisis. Stan Keller was hired last year for $4 million as an Independent Consultant to help implement the Kroll report. Keller told the council the bill for his services comes in under budget -- a little less than a million dollars for the first year of his three year contract.

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Keller: Put another way, saving the city a million dollars, that's not an April fools' joke. There's a million dollars for you to hire more internal auditors.

Keller says the mayor's office needs to hire more internal auditors to strengthen internal financial controls. City Attorney Mike Aguirre accused Keller of supporting a change that will allow the mayor to continue to appoint the city 's internal auditor. But Keller defended the proposed reform, saying in his professional opinion, the city is becoming more fiscally responsible.

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.