County supervisors had a very busy Thursday…and a baby on board for the action.
With her five-week-old baby in tow, Chair Terra Lawson-Remer presided over major votes on the county’s budget, two November ballot measures, a move to make secret board subcommittees less secret and more.
Here’s a rundown.
The tax pitch: Board Democrats advanced a countywide half-cent sales tax measure pushed by a coalition of labor groups and advocates. The November measure would raise a projected $400 million to $450 million annually.
Up to 60 percent of funding could support child care and health services for children, health care for uninsured or underinsured people, food aid and more. Nearly 18 percent could back public safety services, wildfire prevention and crisis response.
The line item that’s gotten the most attention is the nearly 23 percent that would go toward combating the Tijuana Rivers sewage crisis. As our MacKenzie Elmer previously reported, plans to address the sewage crisis are still TBD.
The governance overhaul: Board Democrats took a crucial second vote to place a controversial county governance reform measure on the ballot. The November measure would rebalance power at the county, giving supervisors more sway over day-to-day county operations and budgeting.
The big budget vote: The board unanimously approved a nearly $9.2 billion budget that relies on county reserves to maintain services and avoid layoffs as they grapple with Trump administration-backed cuts and public safety reform measure Proposition 36. KPBS noted that the county added dozens of new public safety positions to address new costs and work tied to the reforms.
As the Union-Tribune and a San Diego County Taxpayers Association report have highlighted recently, the historically financially flush county will face tougher decisions in the years to come.
The now not-so-secret subcommittees: After multiple fails, the board unanimously approved an amended version of Supervisor Joel Anderson’s proposal to require agendas, minutes, meeting streaming and other transparency measures for board subcommittees that have until now played out behind closed doors. The policy finally passed with Vice Chair Monica Montgomery Steppe’s tweak to exempt subcommittees “established to address sensitive subjects, including those related to juveniles” from new public posting rules.
More food for the people: The board voted unanimously to approve Montgomery Steppe’s proposal to hold additional food distribution events to aid people at risk of losing assistance. KPBS has more details.
Very important baby news: Lawson-Remer took to social media to share photos of her and her baby on the county dais together.
“Today I returned to chair one of San Diego County’s biggest meetings of the year — with major votes on our budget, accountability reforms, and essential services for our region,” Lawson-Remer wrote on Instagram. “Working moms belong in every room where big decisions are made.”
Oh, and one more wonky Wednesday thing: Supervisors voted 4-1 on Wednesday to approve a long-wanted policy to mandate affordable housing units in projects in the county’s unincorporated areas with at least 10 units. (Union-Tribune)
Meanwhile, County Keeps Eyeing Tax Hike Options
As backers of the countywide sales-tax hike rally behind their November measure, county leaders are continuing to lay the groundwork for other plans to pull in more revenue.
Our Lisa Halverstadt reports that county bureaucrats earlier this year quietly extended a contract with consultants to help two board members explore options for a county-backed measure to pull in more cash through mid-2028.
The up to $320,000 contract initially called for research, poll-testing and full report by the end of May to help inform a subcommittee led by Lawson-Remer and Montgomery Steppe.
Lawson-Remer and Montgomery Steppe describe the extension as a responsible move to help the county continue to explore options amid uncertainty tied to federal cuts – whether or not the sales-tax measure passes.
Republican Supervisors Jim Desmond and Anderson aren’t thrilled with it and Anderson now wants to force more transparency on consultant work.
Tax Hikes by Initiative Still Possible … for Now
The city of San Diego and the county dodged a bullet Thursday in the leadup to the deadline to put statewide initiatives on the ballot. As reported by Politico, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association had qualified an initiative for the ballot that would have ensured tax increases for special purposes needed two-thirds of the vote.
That includes initiatives. Not only that, it would have retroactively thrown out any tax increases for special purposes that didn’t get two-thirds voter support.
Background: It has been law for decades in California that if a government puts a tax increase on the ballot for a special purpose – say a new stadium, or convention center – voters must approve it with two-thirds support.
But in 2017, the California Supreme Court ruled citizens initiatives don’t fall under that part of the California Constitution. That created a new and now popular path for groups wanting to increase local taxes without the burden of trying to persuade more than two-thirds of voters to support them: they ran signature-gathering campaigns and put them on the ballot.
The initiative to kill that: However, as Politico chronicled, several developers that helped fund the measure to close this loophole were most concerned about the so-called mansion tax in Los Angeles. In marathon negotiations this week, labor unions, business groups, legislative leaders and others agreed to pull the initiative after Los Angeles leaders agreed to make changes to the mansion tax that would exclude the sale of big apartment buildings.
The deal was done but Howard Jarvis leaders weren’t on board and still wanted the initiative to go forward. They made a last-minute compromise: It would go forward but without the language that would throw out tax increases already passed. It would not be retroactive.
That spared the city of San Diego from having to stop collecting its hotel room tax from Measure C in 2020 and spares the new countywide sales tax initiative going on the November ballot.
South County Report: What’s Heading South
Speaking of the county’s budget, Supervisor Paloma Aguirre says some of those dollars will head south and offer much-needed relief from the sewage-infested Tijuana River.
In this week’s South County report, our Jim Hinch reports supervisors will allocate $20 million to unspecified cleanup projects along the river. They’re also setting aside $2.5 million to help fix a notorious hot spot.
More South County: Hinch reports that there’s movement on a proposed sports, retail and hotel complex development along the Chula Vista bayfront. Despite the Port of San Diego entering into a two-year contract with the developer, Hinch’s sources remain skeptical of their ability to deliver the large-scale project.
Read the South County Report here.
In Other News
- San Diego city officials announced that a proposed ballot measure to ban paid parking will no longer appear on the November ballot and will instead be reviewed as a potential ordinance by the City Council in late summer. (Union-Tribune)
- Oceanside residents will vote whether to increase their sales tax by half a percent, in a new November ballot measure, which would make the sales tax rate one of the highest among San Diego county cities. (CBS 8)
- San Diego police arrested a suspect in a cold case murder that occurred in Balboa Park 27 years ago. (NBC 7)
- Ahead of San Diego’s hottest months of the year, a new interactive tool developed at UCSD will show you if you live in an area vulnerable to extreme heat and where to access resources. (Union-Tribune)
- A 9-foot great white shark was spotted off the coast of La Jolla Shores on Tuesday, marking one of the first sightings of what scientists say could be a particularly sharky summer with the El Niño year bringing in warmer waters in the Pacific. (NBC 7)
The Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt, Scott Lewis and Fiona Bork. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña.