Mayor Jerry Sanders has nominated Boston securities attorney Stanley Keller to serve as the monitor in San Diego’s return to fiscal credibility.
In a settlement reached in November, the Securities and Exchange Commission found that the city committed securities fraud for failing to report multi-billion liabilities in pension and retiree health care costs. The city agreed to hire a monitor for three years to oversee its reform efforts and report back to the federal regulators.
On Tuesday, Sanders is scheduled to ask the City Council to approve a three year, $4 million contract for Keller. The move would allocate $2 million for the monitor through the end of this fiscal year, which wraps up on June 30.
The proposed ordinance would take $1.4 million of that from the city’s emergency reserves, which have been repeatedly tapped as the city has struggled to pay the bills of attorneys, auditors and investigators.
The SEC mandated that the monitor conduct annual reviews and recommendations on the city’s financial disclosure processes, including the hiring and training of employees and its disclosures to credit rating agencies. Reports are to be issued within 120 days of the monitor’s engagement and within 60 days of each anniversary of the hiring.