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Politics

State Panel Investigating San Diego County Supervisor

By Alison St John / Reporter
Published May 4, 2010 at 12:31 PM PDT
This story was published more than 14 years ago.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors controls a $5 billion budget and makes decisions affecting your health and safety. They oversee services that range from prosecuting criminals to feeding the poor. Learn about your supervisor’s priorities and how the group spends your money.
Who's Supervising San Diego?
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors controls a $5 billion budget and makes decisions affecting your health and safety. They oversee services that range from prosecuting criminals to feeding the poor. Learn about your supervisor’s priorities and how the group spends your money.
State Panel Investigating San Diego County Supervisor
California’s Fair Political Practices Commission is investigating San Diego County Supervisor Pam Slater Price for her failure to report free tickets she received from the Opera. Slater Price has earmarked $3 million to the Opera from her discretionary funds of public money.

California’s Fair Political Practices Commission is investigating San Diego County Supervisor Pam Slater Price for her failure to report free tickets she received from the Opera. Slater-Price has earmarked $3 million to the Opera from her discretionary funds of public money.

The state’s Fair Political Practices Commission keeps an eye on the more than 100,000 elected officials in California. San Diego County Supervisors Pam Slater-Price is now one of just 450 politicians under investigation at the watchdog agency.

Slater-Price has said she and her staff were under the impression gifts from non-profits did not need to be reported. Once the failure to report the tickets came to light, she said she would pay back their value.

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Roman Porter of the Fair Political Practices Commission says the agency decided the issue is worth investigating.

"Just admitting the guilt and paying something back doesn’t necessarily absolve someone of any further action," Porter says. "We’ll just have to see what the facts of the circumstances are."

Slater-Price accepted about 20 tickets over the past four years. She could be fined up to $5,000 per violation.

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Politics Regional GovernmentsCalifornia
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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