Politics

Big Money Pouring Into Campaign For Prop. A

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published October 22, 2010 at 1:52 PM PDT

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

The latest campaign contribution disclosures reveal hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised to pass Proposition A, a measure to ban union-only bids on county public works projects.

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Filings with the County Registrar of Voters reveal a political action committee has raised $100,000 in the last week to lobby for Proposition A.

Proposition A is the only local measure that every voter in San Diego county will have on their ballot this November. It bans so-called project labor agreements on county construction projects.

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Non-union contractors oppose such agreements. Their political action committee, the Campaign for Fair and Open Competition, has already spent $180,000 to lobby for the ban. The latest report shows a last minute contribution of $95,000 dollars from Associated General Contractors of San Diego and $5,000 from Pacific Building Group.

Meanwhile the Labor Council of San Diego and Imperial Counties, which opposes Proposition A, says it has not spent anything to defeat the measure.

The Labor Council failed to defeat a similar initiative in Chula Vista in June, in spite of spending more than half a million dollars.

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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.