In our interview this week, Larry Turner, the police officer running for mayor, told me that while the Police Officers Association won’t endorse him, every single officer would be voting for him.
But the San Diego Police Officers Association did not like a few things he said in that interview. Turner suggested future city employees, including police officers and fire fighters, don’t need the same pensions current ones expect. And though the city has far below the number of officers it needs, a mayor could make up some of that gap by hiring non-sworn personnel to handle crime scenes and other less dangerous situations.
He also said they were paid enough but maybe not well enough to compete with agencies that automatically raise wages.
POA has refused to endorse him but also never really said anything about him. He told me that was because they were afraid to upset Mayor Todd Gloria. Jared Wilson, the president of the union, sent over this statement about Turner’s interview.
“San Diego Police Officers have historically been underpaid and overworked compared to agencies throughout California. For decades, this has led to a high turnover rate which comes at a fiscal cost to taxpayers. When turnover rates are high, and staffing is low, there is a direct impact on public safety. To hear Officer Turner say police officers are paid well, should have pensions reduced, and our critical mission can be accomplished with less sworn police officers is inaccurate, dangerous, and disrespectful to the men and women who work side by side with him every day and put their lives on the line to protect this city,” he wrote.
A representative of Turner’s campaign said he didn’t feel I represented his words well in this post about the interview. So here’s exactly what he said.
Turner said some “grownup decisions have to be made here” about the city’s financial position.
“These guys have known the train is coming and is going to crash into us with the pensions, you know, with blowing money on their special projects,” he said.
I asked him if he thought pensions should be renegotiated.
“Yeah. Not the people that have already been hired, though. I mean, we’re going to grandfather them in, we’re going to keep the promises we made,” he said.
Me: “So you’d like to restart the discussion about future employees getting a different guaranteed benefit?”
Turner: “Yeah. I’m down for that. Yeah. Something more sensible. It’s something that’s just been, ‘Hey, since everybody else already has it, we’re going to keep doing this.’ Now we got to rethink that.”
Me: “Even police and fire?”
Turner: “Yeah. Everybody. I mean it. The military did that a while ago.”
I don’t know what we’re even debating here. He said it very clearly. And there are a lot of people who would agree with him, including the last cop to be mayor, former Mayor Jerry Sanders, who was police chief and notoriously got voters to agree to get rid of pensions for future employees. Though, even he refused include future cops in that.
Of course, because he didn’t actually talk to employees before doing that he broke the law and the city had to restore all those pensions.
It was a whole thing.
Chief Was a Vaccine Objector
Turner also dropped an interesting tidbit: New Police Chief Scott Wahl was one of the police officers who objected to the mayor’s mandate that the police be required to take the Covid vaccine with few exceptions.
“Our current chief was one of the guys that held out and said, ‘I’m not, you know, this is wrong.’ You know, for you to make us do this now after we’ve already been out there saving lives for little, you know, you put us last on the list, but now to demand it. That was just a bad way to sell it,” Turner told me.
The unexpected outing of Wahl as one of the objectors to the vaccine was intriguing to me. I requested comment from Wahl on what that was about and did not get a response.
How Turner Would Close the Deficit
I was glad to hear Turner get into some discussion about actual tradeoffs when it comes to the city’s budget deficit. It’s projected to last and get worse over the next few years. He did the normal thing about waste and corruption and hand-waving about how much money you could squeeze out of the system with efficient management.
He opposes the ballot measure that would add a 1-cent sales tax for the city of San Diego. The city only gets one of the cents of sales tax you pay and this would be the first one just for the city. As Tigist Layne pointed out this week, it’s all the rage this fall.
I asked him then how he would close the deficit next year. Here’s what he said.
“There’s a lot of funds that are available we’re not tapping into yet. So, in special project funds that are set aside, I’ve been told there’s between $800 million and $1 billion sitting in those in small accounts between a hundred thousand and, and several million dollars for each one. They’re all earmarked for specific things: A library or a pool or whatever it might be, those are not being touched at all. All that would take is if the City Council was going to be honest and fight hard about it, they could just vote to free up those funds,” he said.
This is a low-key super controversial thing to say. He had just railed against using one-time funds to cover the ongoing budget needs for the city. These funds are the definition of one-time funds. They are sitting in accounts, yes, waiting to be deployed for all kinds of future infrastructure projects the city has promised residents for decades. Maybe a bathroom in a park or a bridge replacement.
If you have any feedback or ideas for the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org.
While I was yelling through my phone at Mr Turner towards the end of the interview I really appreciated his candor. That was a great interview and it was great to get such straight forward answers.
August Collier
Larry Turner is a Nazi.
Sunbreak Ranch… “Arbeit macht frei”