Morning Report: San Diego’s Other Confederate Monument

Turns out the city’s got more than one Confederate-friendly monument.

But while city workers were able to quickly dig up a controversial plaque at Horton Plaza this week, another one at city-owned Mt. Hope Cemetery would be a lot more complicated to remove.

The memorial stands above soldiers’ graves on a plot owned by Daughters of the Confederacy organization, writes VOSD contributor Randy Dotinga.

In a new story, Dotinga breaks down the history of the monument and the Mt. Hope Cemetery in southeastern San Diego and checks in with Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, who’s championed recent movements to abandon other relics of the Confederacy in San Diego.

Spoiler alert: She’s unlikely to lead the charge to remove this one.

SANDAG Chief Out

The longtime leader of San Diego’s transportation agency resigned Friday, nearly a year after a Voice of San Diego investigation revealed his agency misled voters on multiple ballot measures and failed to admit to a series of problems with sales-tax forecasts for its transportation program.

The SANDAG board on Friday voted to accept Gary Gallegos’ request to resign immediately. He had initially announced plans to leave by the end of the year but later asked to step down this week.

Gallegos’ resignation followed an outside investigation that found SANDAG officials urged staff to delete emails and hide public records requested by VOSD.

Since VOSD’s investigation, Gonzalez Fletcher has pushed AB 805, a bill meant to overhaul SANDAG leadership and governance. SANDAG leaders have maintained they can handle those reforms themselves, even mulling their own reform measure.

“Gary’s resignation, while difficult, provides an opportunity to continue the internal transformation that the independent examination recommended,” SANDAG Chair Ron Roberts said Friday. “We will now begin a search for an executive director to lead the agency and instill new processes to ensure transparency.”

• Gallegos initially announced his plans to retire in a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with the Union-Tribune’s editorial board. The U-T has posted a transcript of that interview.

What to Watch as the State Legislature Gets Back in Action

State lawmakers are back at the Capitol next week, and they’ve got a lot to work on.

Our Sara Libby put together a helpful guide to the high-profile bills San Diego representatives are hoping to get to the finish line once they’re back in session – from Assemblywoman Shirley Weber’s attempt to reform the state’s controversial gang database to the bill state Sen. Joel Anderson’s co-sponsoring that aims to keep bars open until 4 a.m.

Libby also took a look at recent state attempts to grapple with the legacy of the Confederacy that it faced long before last week’s protests in Charlottesville, Va.

VOSD Podcast: National News Circus Trumping Local Focus

Every day it seems there’s a new White House revelation. National news has been dizzying and all-consuming since the 2016 election.

In this week’s podcast, Libby and Andrew Keatts discuss how that’s affected local news consumption. The duo also talked to Point Loma Nazarene University economist Lynn Reaser about San Diego’s stake in NAFTA negotiations and to VOSD’s Mario Koran about a bombshell admission this week from the district’s school board president.

News and Opinions of the Day

• KPBS finds that San Diego’s set ambitious traffic safety goals but it’s not always letting safety data drive the projects it pursues.

• Police agencies throughout San Diego County reported nearly 50 incidents last year where an officer’s use of force led to serious injury, death or discharge of a firearm. A new report released by the Attorney General’s Office reveals more than 60 percent of those incidents involved the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department had the most incidents. San Diego police reported 14.

• City Councilmembers Barbara Bry, Chris Cate and Lorie Zapf each offered their thoughts on short-term vacation rental regulations in a trio of Union-Tribune op-eds. Stay tuned for another chapter of this long-running saga this fall, likely in October. That’s when city staffers expect to bring another slate of proposed regulations to the City Council for review.

• Add the Navy to the long list of folks concerned about San Diego’s housing supply, The Associated Press reports.

• VOSD contributor Brooke Binkowski isn’t a fan of a new trailer-park themed restaurant downtown. She wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed about it.

• Immigration courts are hearing more cases this year and that’s got some advocates worried that could mean more people are being unjustly deported, the Union-Tribune reports.