Politics Report: County Won’t Interview Labor’s Preferred Staff Leader

Labor leaders have taken a major interest in the drawn-out choice of the county of San Diego’s new chief administration officer and many of them were furious Friday when news leaked that supervisors had decided not to advance the candidacy of Cindy Chavez, a supervisor on the board of Santa Clara County and the former leader of the South Bay Labor Council.

Background: The County offered Chavez the job more than a year ago, on March 29, 2023 – the same day then-County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher announced he would resign from the Board of Supervisors. An MTS employee accused Fletcher, who was chair of MTS, of sexual assault and harassment and the board decided to restart the search for its most important employee. (Fletcher has said his interactions with the employee were consensual and has sued her for defamation.)

Chavez’s hiring would have been the climax of a methodical decade-long effort led by the largest union of county employees SEIU 221 and the United Domestic Workers, Local 3930. Along the way, they had pushed the county and persuaded voters to implement term limits on supervisors. They had helped Fletcher get elected and then the majority of the Board that he led. That Board implemented progressive policies and now they wanted a leader of the county who would see them through.

Fletcher had helped bring it all to fruition only to almost let it completely unravel right as they were close to entrenching the whole project.

The county has a history of management leadership from a more technocratic and financially conservative tradition and internal candidates are expected to have a chance at the job.

The news: For Chavez to have gotten the offer last year but not even get an interview this year means at least one of the five members of the Board of Supervisors changed their minds. I could not figure out who.

“We are unable to comment on the CAO candidate pool nor are we able to disclose which candidates have been considered,” Nora Vargas, the chair of the Board of Supervisors, told me in a written message.

Brigette Browning, the leader of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council told me she was shocked and sent over this written statement.

“We all thought we had a new County Government, but the only thing new is now apparently a so-called Democrat is teaming up with big corporate interests and the right-wing to reinforce the status quo. We don’t need the same old County Government that punished workers, rigged decisions for corporations and turned a blind eye to poverty. We need a CAO like Cindy Chavez who is pro-worker, pro-choice and pro-change. Cindy Chavez deserves an interview and anything less just shows San Diego that when it comes to their County Board, the new boss is the same as the old boss,” Browning wrote.

It ain’t over: The county won’t begin interviews until next month and there will be more decision points along the process.

Unions and Public Power

Dispatch from MacKenzie Elmer: The ongoing war between public power proponents and San Diego Gas & Electric looked more like a battle between the municipalization advocates and union labor Thursday.

Each team’s respective poster-bearing players – with signs that read either “fire SG&E” or “municipalization is union busting” — took turns encumbering the live feed webcast of the City Council Rules Committee’s public comment period. But almost no one from a labor union spoke in favor of the proposed government takeover of the energy grid. Proponents had hoped the City Council would consider putting up a ballot measure and spare them the burden of collecting signatures.

Nate Fairman, who represents electrical workers of IBEW Local Union 465, which holds a contract with SDG&E, told the City Council to reject the ballot measure, calling it a “direct threat” on union jobs.

Dorrie Bruggemann, campaign manager for Power San Diego, argued their proposal is pro-union and that state law requires new public utilities honor the union contracts of their previous private employer. But it wasn’t enough.

It was clear the lack of union support was the death knell for public power this round.

“This is not one of those things you just throw on the ballot and let voters decide,” said Council President Sean Elo-Rivera. “You can’t just tell workers they’re going to be OK. That’s not how it works.”

Elo-Rivera said he had told public power advocates they needed to work with labor and make sure they felt comfortable with the proposal.

“Not only are they not comfortable today, it sounds like those conversations haven’t happened,” he said.  

The committee’s councilmembers – who decide what potential laws get put before voters with city support in November – basically balled up public power proponent’s proposal and tossed it in the trash. Now Power San Diego must make a mad dash for the thousands of signatures they need to independently get the measure on the ballot. Without major funding, it will be a monumental volunteer undertaking.

The actual issue: Is the public power movement union busting or not? SDG&E reps were quick to notify me I posted the wrong state law on X pertaining to this alleged required honoring of union contracts. But I found the right code eventually. In 2020, unions got the legislature to guarantee their contracts would be honored for at least three years when a utility transitions to new ownership.

Labor secured that change as Pacific Gas and Electric slipped into bankruptcy following the wildfire sparked by their equipment which destroyed Paradise, California, in 2019. A movement to municipalize PG&E gained momentum, and unions worried about their contracts.

“We were terrified those contracts were going to get ripped and shredded,” Fairman told me. “So we advocated for language that, in case there’s a change in ownership… contracts would be honored.”

But the legislation didn’t go far enough, Fairman said, and it’s so new it’s never been tested. The legislation doesn’t dictate how the new owners of a labor contract would honor pensions workers saved up under their previous employer, Fairman said. 

“They can’t just copy-paste the working conditions … of a very old, complex 100-year-old collective bargaining agreement (with SDG&E),” he said.

Barry Moline of the Municipal Utilities Association says he worked on that new law amid advocating for a potential public takeover of PG&E. He said there was never a doubt union contracts wouldn’t be honored.

“That argument is B.S. Every public power utility in California is unionized and there’s no effort to circumvent any union,” Moline said.

Speaking of Ballot Initiatives

Former Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman blasted San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria Friday for not having signed on to support a ballot measure to reform Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure passed amid concern about prison overcrowding that reclassified some felonies as misdemeanors.

Zimmerman posted comments Gloria made during his State of the City speech a few months ago, where he blamed Proposition 47 for many city ills.

“We must respond to the reality that Prop. 47 has created and improve the law so it achieves its intended purpose. So, tonight, I am announcing I will be supporting statewide action this year to amend Proposition 47,” he said.

The issue: The mayor has not yet endorsed a ballot measure that Californians for Safer Communities says it has collected enough signatures for to add to the November ballot. It would make repeated theft a felony, regardless of how much was stolen and add penalties for dealing lethal drugs.

The mayor’s team says something is coming: “The mayor is continuing to work with stakeholders on a potential compromise vehicle that will have a strong chance of ensuring substantial reform happens this year. The submission of signatures for this measure lends these discussions even more urgency,” said Rachel Laing, the mayor’s director of communications in a written message.

He’s Into Stormwater Tax Though, Maybe

For weeks I’ve heard the mayor was extremely frustrated that Council President Sean Elo-Rivera had pushed a new parcel tax for flood control and stormwater mitigation. This week, the City Council advanced a proposal that could go on the ballot in November though they punted on just how much the tax would be and other big questions.

The mayor is on board.

“Mayor Gloria is supportive of making investments in stormwater infrastructure and of the process under way now to determine the best path forward to secure funding. He and the Council President are completely aligned that we must upgrade our system to ensure our communities are prepared for climate change,” Laing wrote.

On the Sports Arena’s Historic Significance

I’ve had several people ask me about the city’s Historical Resources Board and staff review of whether the Pechanga Arena is historically significant. So I was glad the U-T explained it well. In short, Midway Rising, which plans to redevelop all the nearly 50 acres under and around the arena, has to study the historic impact of their plans just like they must evaluate the environmental impact.

They did that study and the resulting report indicates the city will decide the arena is historically significant and, if they do, it doesn’t mean it can’t be demolished. It just means they’ll have to “mitigate” what’s lost. “Hey kids, who wants to go look at the monument to the old arena that used to be here!”

My beef: The report glosses over the deeper history of the land, which I wrote about two years ago. The arena itself is something of a monument to the city’s 20-year effort to eradicate the first of two racially integrated neighborhoods in the northern part of San Diego. The federal government built the Frontier Housing Complex and Linda Vista to handle a small part of the massive demand for housing before the United States entered World War II.

Homelessness was everywhere and San Diegans had been resisting the construction of new housing. I know, how strange, right?

The housing at Linda Vista was preserved. You can still see the rec center (Skateworld), churches and many of the original homes. Point Lomans, however, hated Frontier from the beginning and the city evicted the last tenants of those homes in 1962 and city leaders had no plans for the land. They looked for something exciting to put there like an amusement park. Disney wasn’t interested so they did an arena.

The city officially remembers Frontier as a blighted group of “temporary” homes. But the people who lived there remember it as a real neighborhood.

It is certainly a choice for the city to insist that the arena be remembered and its loss be “mitigated” and not the Frontier neighborhood, with its three schools, rec center and many churches and its bold willingness to let Black and Brown people live there.

The city’s report follows true to the city’s long disdain for this neighborhood. “The International Sports Arena was the most important catalyst in the Midway neighborhood’s transformation from WWII housing into a lively entertainment and commercial hub.”

It wasn’t just “WWII housing.” Frontier’s housing lasted much longer and if families had been allowed to buy it, like in Linda Vista, it would still be there. However, in April 1962, the city sent final eviction notices to 256 families still living in Frontier and, 50 years later, when the school district sold the old Barnard Elementary built for Frontier kids, we lost everything associated with the once lively and diverse neighborhood.

The city has never mitigated that loss.

If you have any feedback or ideas for the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org.