In the wake of controversy over the county board chair using taxpayer dollars to poll-test potential ballot measures, Supervisor Joel Anderson is pitching reforms that would govern the use of county funds for polls.
Anderson wants county lawyers to review and approve proposed questions, plus the scope of work and compensation for polling firms hired by county leaders.
His proposal, set for a board vote on Tuesday, also calls for poll questions, results, participant demographics and contract details to be posted publicly online within 30 days after the poll is completed.
Anderson said Chair Terra Lawson-Remer’s recent use of a reported $40,000 for a poll floating county governance reforms spurred his proposal. Anderson – and a San Francisco-based election law attorney who spoke to Voice of San Diego last month – both raised concerns with some questions in the poll.
“I think moving forward to make sure that no one’s making any mistakes, whether intentional or otherwise, I want to see it go before our county counsel that they can approve it to make sure that we don’t have any complaints against us,” Anderson said.
Anderson also argues that the polling funded by Lawson-Remer’s office should have been more readily available.
Voice obtained detailed polling and procurement records in March, more than a month after a Jan. 28 public records request. In early March, Lawson-Remer’s spokesperson notified Voice her team had posted charter survey and revenue measure poll presentations on her county website.
Lawson-Remer’s office said she already followed the rules Anderson’s seeking to set – and supports them.
“Supervisor Lawson-Remer has gotten every question for every community survey — including the survey on charter reform — pre-approved by county counsel. Everyone should,” Lawson-Remer’s office wrote in response to questions from Voice. “She also shared the questions and the results of this survey in December 2025 with both Supervisor Anderson and the public.”
Anderson’s office, meanwhile, said the supervisor himself didn’t get to see the polling until this spring – and that his staff only saw a high-level Power point presentation about it during a meeting with a staffer for Lawson-Remer in December.
Anderson spokesperson Matthew Phy said his office spent weeks seeking the polling from Lawson-Remer’s office after Anderson requested to review it himself.
Lawson-Remer’s office later clarified that her office shared initial documents with Anderson’s office in December but that it took time to get legal clearance from the county counsel to share it with Anderson due to turnover in the office late last year and early this year.
Anderson said that struggle helped motivate his proposal for policy reforms.
“That poll was conducted with public money. It should be available for the public, and it should be in a reasonable timeframe,” Anderson told Voice.
In response to questions from Voice, Lawson-Remer’s office said she agreed.
“(Lawson-Remer) is supportive of establishing a clear process for getting questions approved by county counsel and a reliable timeline for publicly posting results. She has run into so many hurdles with both getting community surveys into the field and getting approval to share results because there is no clear process — it would be great to not need to reinvent the wheel every time,” Lawson-Remer’s office wrote in an email.
Her office also suggested she might propose strengthening Anderson’s pitch by proposing training for staff on how to ensure surveys are unbiased and accurate and potentially, to seek an opinion letter from the state Fair Political Practices Commission to ensure the county’s policy follows state and local laws.
“Supervisor Lawson-Remer thinks having a policy framework for conducting community surveys is a fantastic idea,” her office wrote.
Oh gee, how would it look if Terra didn’t agree. While she wants to change the term limits.