Good morning from Hillcrest.
- The bargain is on the table this morning for the San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System board: keep the pension plan’s current accounting rules and strengthen the pension plan or change the rules and likely save city jobs. How much difference could an arcane rule change make? About $30 million to the city’s bottom line. The U-T’s opinion page says keep the rule and don’t repeat mistakes of the past.
- Pension controversy is not just a San Diego thing, as evidenced by the dust up over the Metropolitan Water District’s pension plan. A North County water agency is trying to drum up opposition to the proposed increase in pensions for district employees. The U-T is urging the water district to start over.
- Bob Watkins alert! In today’s turn, San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob says “something needs to be done” about the Airport Authority chairman and his Chargers ticket expensing and non-conflict-of-interest-filing ways. She stopped short of calling for his resignation.
- To follow on last week’s big news, KPBS discusses San Diego’s stance on medical marijuana. The region’s general marijuana supply took a big hit when drug investigators found a “football field” worth of pot in a county forest.
- New blog San Diego Rostra is asking if San Diego City Council District 1 is now solidly democratic.
- The U-T says no one should expect a quick resolution in a lawsuit against the city of San Diego filed by La Jolla homeowners whose property was damaged by landslides two years ago.
- In National City, a mayoral aide at the center of a conflict of interest controversy had her pay grow 43 percent in two years.
- The city of Oceanside laid out next year’s proposed budget cuts for the first time.
- To end where we started, the city’s retirement board postponed hearing an appeal by former union boss Judie Italiano who is seeking a restoration of her $86,000 annual pension.