Terra’s Pledge (TJ River Edition)

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Welcome to the Voice of San Diego podcast and partnership with News Radio 600 Kogo. I'm Scott Lewis, the CEO, and energy of that voice of San Diego. And she leads our restroom bureau. She's Bella Ross. Hi, Scott. It's been a while. I've been on kind of a toilet coverage hiatus. Yeah. But we are so back. We are back. We'll get into that. And he puts full slices of tomato on his tacos all the time. He's Jacob McQuinney. I have no idea what this means. You will find out shortly. It feels like most of your intros, there's some precedent to them. No. This is unprecedented. We saw full slices of tomato on a taco, and it made me laugh. Oh, okay. Like, not just like a chunk of tomato, like an actual full slice. Well, that's, I guess, to each their own. And joining us this week, she's an economist and known friend of Jane Fonda, the chair of the board of supervisors of the county of San Diego. Tara Lawson, Riemer, hello. Hello. Thank you for coming in. The Jane Fonda thing, that's real? You're friends with Jane Fonda? She's, yeah. She's great. Okay. She's awesome, actually. Okay. I didn't know this. Yeah. Yeah, when she runs, she's like, Jane Fonda's coming down. You want to meet her? Pretty much. Give me $500. Okay. So do you have an opinion on the Viet Cong? I was born, like, way after that. No, she's only, she's a 90s kid. We can talk about free trade deals in the 90s, right? Yeah, we can definitely talk about shutting down the WTO. Actually, we have to not do that. Let's not talk about free trade deals in the 90s, okay? That's specifically parameter. We ended up doing like 20 minutes when I had her on one time, and people are like, why did you talk about this? Scott, I'd love to come back and only do like a whole hour on trade. That's 90s. these policies. Hey, I mean, Trump is in China right now. They're talking about trade. It's very topical. Coming up on this show this week, San Diego City Council this week rejected a proposed global settlement on the trash fee. They want to go to the ballot if they have to. We'll explain the big bet they are placing. And we'll talk to Madam Chair here about the big reform package she's pushing and all the things happening at the county. Stay tuned. Well, we're not going to be able to do a show without mailers. I got a question for you, Madam Chair. When you, when somebody does a mailer on your behalf, but you didn't have any role in it, is it uncomfortable? I think you leave a lot of kind of normal boundaries about personal space behind when you decide to run for office. Okay. So, you know, you just got to expect you're at the beach and trying to surf and drop in on someone and they're going to know. It's you. So you've got to be careful about that and that people are going to do mailers about you for and against you.

Maybe. I don't know. AI is already. This feels like a genuine art. Honestly, yeah, this feels very human. What do you think? What's your review? You've got a lot of experience in this world. You grew up with mailers. I used to review mailers before we ate dinner. Yeah. effective? Is this effective? I think it's pretty effective because they're quoting real things. You cite facts. You cite quotes. Well, it's it's mailers season. If you've got mailers, I'm collecting them, of course. Send them to me. Scott atvoicedsendago.org and we'll do that. Now, on the trash tax this week, there was a big vote. So the Lincoln Club, remember, is raising. Signatures, gathering signatures to force it to a vote, a repeal of the city's monthly trash tax, trash fee for the 200,000 or so households who receive city trash service. Now, the other households already pay private haulers to take theirs. That fee obviously goes on property tax bills, and it's been controversial. And there's this whole effort to repeal it. But there's also a lawsuit going on saying that the city misled voters when they got permission to do the trash fee, saying it would only be $25 to $30 per year. month and instead, you know, was almost double that. The bait and switch. Yeah, that's what Raoul Campillo. That's what Marnie von Wilpert cited. That's what Henry Foster has talked about, that like if they would have just kept that number, maybe they would support the, this fee. And I'm sure people would be much less angry, right? Yeah, that $15 across the line. So, uh, there, that, the lawsuit and the repeal effort. bundled together, and there was a settlement that sounds like the mayor and council president Joe La Cava worked on to try to make a deal. and say, we'll lower the fee to what they said it would be. We'll pay the lawyer's fees for Mike Geary, former city attorney, who's leading the lawsuit, and we'll pay back the Lincoln Club subcommittee that raised the signatures. And it'll lower the fee, but they'll keep the fee, and they decided against making that deal. So we're basically talking. a budget deficit or a potentially much larger budget deficit, or everything stays the same. Right. Those are like the potential outcomes here. Yeah. And the settlement would have allowed them to, would have created a deficit, but.

A small one, but they're taking a chance on this potential repeal effort that maybe, just maybe it won't pass. They're going for broke, literally. I think they would disagree that it's a small one. So lowering the fee would create, they say, about a $50 million additional deficit. And so they're already having trouble closing, as you know. Right, right. Smaller than losing it entirely. Exactly. And so that's the big gamble. They're saying, like, we're not going to just. They're being offered this idea, just lock it in at a lower rate. It'll raise in the future, but you got it, you're guaranteed. That'll be the way things are forever. Or roll the dice at the ballot in November. And they're thinking is, look, 50% of the city or whatever already pays private haulers, so they're maybe not going to be that sympathetic to the other. single family homes that are getting this service, that they should repeal it, and that they'll be receptive to the worry and the campaign that says, if you do this, you're going to really crater the budget and lay off cops, lay off firefighter. Like the cops will actually get involved in this one. They'll be like, yeah, we got to not do this. So that's the gamble. I can already see the mailers with the headline we wrote, Meteor coming for the city budget. I'm curious. Obviously, the council voted this down. I'd heard that there were people who just didn't show up who may have actually supported that settlement. Well, Henry Foster didn't go, and he would have, it sounds, I think, based on what he said, would have supported lowering the fee. But here's an interesting one. Marnie von Wilpert was there and appears to have supported the opposite, didn't want the settlement. And she was one who said, like, this was a bait and switch. Like, we shouldn't have raised it that much. Hmm. Okay, so. rhetoric meets vote. I think she's running for office. She probably didn't want to upset some of the people that are helping her try to get to Congress. Yeah. All right. So you don't have to weigh in. But you see these game theory dynamics a lot. Like what's going on here? What would you do? Would you make that bet? I'm just grateful that I'm at the county with a lot more resources and we're pretty excited about our budget that's coming out. That's not going to have any layoffs. And in fact, we're going to be able to bring on some new folks to make sure people get their health care in a more timely manner. So I'm... Feeling some feels for my poor colleagues at the city, but we're really proud of the work we're doing on the budget of the county. That was artful. Did you see how she's just like, I'm not getting involved with that. Good stuff. Well, let's see if there's something you could get involved in here. We have noticed that the candidates for governor have entered next level dork. How would you say it? Like they are just dorkdom. Dorkiness. Yeah. They are reaching new heights of dorkiness. It is very special. Let's start the first one. So this is, this is, Xavier Becerra did a interview with KTLA. And he's running for governor. You'd think he'd be ready for the spotlight.

It, you know, he didn't seem like he was. So let's roll tape, KTLA, Channel 5 in L.A. This is the start of our interview with Xavier Becerra in Highland Park. By the way, this is a profile piece. This is not a gotcha piece, right? Well, look, I think these questions are fair. It's in order to learn about you as a candidate. So long as it's about the profile. I don't know how you define profile, but I'd like to begin the interview. The way I describe profile is you talk about all the things that I've done, things I want to do, and along with some tough questions. But not only tough questions. As a guy who has... You know, worked with female journalists for a few couple decades now. One thing I know they love is when the subject of their reporting tells them what to do. It's always very welcome. Right, right. But how often do we see that? We see this all the time with somebody who's very, very novice with reporters. Like, you know, like, what are you doing? You're trying to do a hip piece or something awkward? But you have those conversations off the air. Well, and incredibly, this is not the first time a governor candidate. This cycle has totally, like, In an interview, we had the Katie Porter incident earlier this year that really, I would say, kind of torpedoed some of her momentum going into this primary. So you would imagine that the last thing a candidate would be doing is trying to reenact that fireball that Katie Porter had. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have a contest here. Let's see which one is the most awkward. So now this is Republican candidate, Steve Hilton, and he is. He's reporting from beautiful Barstow, and here was his moment in the sun. So we just did a great town hall here in Barstow. Very special because Gloria Romero, my running mate for Lieutenant Governor, it's a hometown. Her family were here. It was great. And look, Barstow, Hubbard the West, but very importantly, why am I holding a Barstow Street Taco right now? Because I just bought it at this historic location. Check it out. The original Del Taco. There it is. My Barstow Street Taco, I'm going to enjoy. See you soon. See, Jacob, there was a full slice of tomato on that, quote, street taco. It was like a garnish. It was like set on top of the taco. Now, I will say two things or three things here. There's no way he thought Barstow was great. I'm sorry. There's that guy.

has no interest in ever going back to Barstow again. I guarantee that. Nobody who talks like that is very excited about Barstow. I don't think anybody who talks like that should ever say the word Barstow. Like Barstow Street Taco, that should not come out of that guy's mouth, ever. All right. So Street Taco, that's the other part. Obviously, that's an insane definition of a quote, street taco. Well, I was really distracted by the fact that it was clearly like a crunchy shell and he was calling it a street taco. So that's a hard misnomer. Right. And then the third part is, I bet that is a delicious. thing to eat. But it's just, yeah, it's not a street taco. Not a street taco. It's a different. Everybody said, why would you eat Taco Bell or Del Taco? Those are just different things. It's like what, it's like a donut. It's not, it's not a street taco. It's not a taco stand. It's a different thing. Right. I mean, Del Taco makes hamburgers. That's probably why they had that sliced tomato. Yeah. They ran out of the diced ones. Right. Exactly. All right. All right. Now, the third contender for the most dorky. Governor candidate experience this week is Tom Steyer. So he appeared with the Foo's Gone Wild host. What is it, Mr. E? Mr. E. Yeah, Mr. E. And so this was great. There was a whole section, you know, of like what he thinks about ice and all that stuff. But then he got real. And here's Mr. E interviewing him in what looks like L.A., right? It looks like it, yeah. We got a lot of fools in prison watching right here and millions of fools across all fools gone wild platforms. I'm going to press you on an issue here. A lot of fools are saying that you invested in private prisons. What do you got to say about that, fool? 22 years ago, they were right, I did. And over 20 years ago, I realized it was a mistake. And I didn't just get rid of the stock. I actually have spent the last 20 years working to end the era of mass incarceration in California and moving for rehabilitation and treatment. So we've worked continuously for the last 20 years. The most important rehabilitative justice organization in this state is called... smart justice. They looked at every candidate, but they endorsed me. Because I realized that just like Paul on the road to Damascus, when he was the biggest opponent of Jesus, and he decided, oh my God, I should be the biggest supporter of Jesus, I took that mistake and said, that's a wake-up call to do the right thing. My mom taught in prisons. My uncle went to prison. I understand that this system can be destructive. We need it to be rehabilitative. We need to give people treatment. Of course we want our streets safe and we want violent criminals off the street. But the fact is we were in a period of racist mass incarceration and we need to move to a period where we give people a second chance, where we get them a chance to go back to society and be successful and give them the support so that can happen.

You know you're running for governor of California when you compare yourself to an apostle of Christ. All right. Now we got all way in. So we've got... Oh, wait, there's another moment. Let's pull this up. Yeah, this is a bonus clip from that Tom Steyer interview. So at the end of the interview, Mr. E asks him for a sock check to see how tall his socks are. Yeah, it's a popular thing in kind of the Chicano Cholo culture. But let's talk about the real issue here, homie, because we all know the higher the socks, the down of the fool. Sock check, homie. Here we go. Oh, damn, this fool's invited to the carn and assada, dog. Sox higher than gas prices. Nobody's socks go higher than Tom Steyer. Dude, he said higher than the gas prices. Yeah, higher than the gas prices. Okay, nobody's socks go higher than Tom Steyer. I mean, they were like brushing the knee cops. Well, that means, so he doesn't wear socks like that, right? So that means they prepped him and they're like, we're going to, and he goes and like, where do I get some tall socks? No, I'm going to give him credit for this one. That was he pivoted off a hard question to talk about his own credentials. He had the right socks on. He's a prepared guy. It's true. It was quite artful. It's true if you're going to, you could do the Xavier Becerra route where you're like, are we going to do all negative questions here? Or you can do the Tom Steyer thing and be like, I'm just like, Peter. I'm Paul on the road to Damascus. It is funny. You know, one note when it comes to Fus Gone Wild is the guy, is mystery, the guy who runs that account is clearly kind of more of a left kind of lib. sort of guy. But his audience, whenever he posts anything that's kind of like progressive, his audience is all just like, you know, screaming about how the Republicans, like that whole comment section on Instagram is all like Sheriff Chad Bianco for governor, sheriff Chad Bianco for governor. And so it's hard to imagine a guy who's like personal beliefs are as far apart from the audience he's cultivated. It is really a fascinating dynamic there. All right, my vote for Mo's Dorky was Hilton. It has to be Hilton. So good. Del Taco, Street Tacos. Bella? I think I agree. Although the sock thing is a major contender, I think that it was pulled off a little bit better than the taco thing. Very smooth. I don't think he really pulled off the taco thing. Well, I would disagree. I think that Hilton is British and there is a degree of dorkiness that just goes along with being British. Like just the fact of being in Barstow as a...

British. He could have just said the word barstow and that's just like dorky, but I don't think that his dorkiness rises that far above the median dorkiness of a British person. When it comes to Tom Steyer, I mean, I kind of got to give him a little bit of credit just because that was such a gambit. Yeah. Like going out and having an assistant like run to Walmart and buy the highest socks they could find. It's pretty funny. It's good. It was certainly for me, Xavier Becerra. I mean, that was just such an inartful. And again, because of the stumbles that Katie Porter had, it was, come on, dude. You had to be prepared. Like, Tom Steyer, you can handle tough questions. Roll with them. Use it as an opportunity to make something positive at him. All right. Oh, yeah. For me, when you call a taco made with a crunchy shell, a street taco, game over. Do you have a candidate in the governor's race? Nope. Really? Mm-mm. I think there's a couple good ones. People must be asking you all the time what to do. I mean, I hope voters can think for themselves. Do you have like a range, like of acceptable ones? I'll tell you some folks that are off my list, like Mahan. Yeah, hard no. What's that? You know, I think that I can go through some like all the, some of my top contenders, right? Like, so Katie Porter, I think she's right on on challenging the worst abuses of like rich corporate. I'm not going to say the word, but the folks that are just taking us all for a ride and taking all our money and leaving the rest of us high and dry. But I think Xavier Becerra has really good governance experience and sort of maybe not as aligned on his vision, but I think he could get stuff done. I think Villargooso is really good at putting coalitions together, like working with partners, bringing the community along, a co-governance model that I think is really important. So I think all three of them bring something. And I just not trying to elect a bear a tech bro. I had you pegged as the billionaire, like, class trader. I thought you might be into that. But Tom Steyer doesn't pass the sock check for you. No, I love, I mean, that's what I'm saying. Like, maybe I'm going to go with Tom Steyer just because he is, no one's socks go higher than Stiers. That's a good line. I mean, like, if that's on my mailer, like, done. You can't argue with that.

All right, before we get into a couple more county things, so the budget season at the city is kind of nuts. They have a major deficit they're trying to close. There's a lot of things at stake. Arts organizations, obviously, freaked out and furious. There's rec centers. cutting back hours. There are libraries hours at stake. There's a lot of feelings about all these things. And then you did your own reading and found some other stuff. I did my own research, Scott. Yeah, you did the reading. And I revealed the truth, which is that the city, in the independent budget analysts report on the proposed budget, so this is not like the actual budget. document, which is basically unreadable. I've accepted. The IBA report, that's like just on a silver Graham Platner for you with information. But I found that there was an extensive list of public restrooms that were being proposed for closure, at least 38 public restrooms in downtown Babboa Park, Mission Bay, and at local beaches, which... Years ago, back in 2021, I wrote a story about the lack of public restrooms in San Diego and how that had contributed to multiple virus outbreaks over the years, both hepatitis A in 2017 and a Shigella outbreak in 2021. And around that time, Todd Gloria had promised... that he was going to open a public restroom within a five-minute walk of anywhere downtown. And we have not really talked that much about public restrooms since then. You know, they come in and out of the public consciousness in terms of like political discourse every now and again. But last year there was a little bit of talk in the budget about cutting some restrooms, but it was a much smaller amount than we're seeing here. This is pretty significant. To put it in scale, of those places you listed, this would be. well over half of the public restrooms available. Right. So you have, there are 64 public restrooms currently in downtown Balbo Park, Mission Bay, and at local beaches. Some of these are portable restrooms. Some of them are kind of specifically for the homeless population. So they're like the funding sources are disparate. But. This is just interesting to me because these are areas that are very heavily trafficked by tourists, by everyday San Diegoans. Thinking about cutting rushrooms in Balboa Park, which are, there would be cutting six out of the 17 permanent rushrooms. It's particularly interesting considering... People are so upset about paying for parking about Boa Park. But there was this idea sold to people that they were going to, that money was going to go back into the park. And now we're seeing these very direct service cuts within the park. And so we're recording this on Wednesday, May 13th. And the mayor's May revise comes out today. There was a little bit. We got a little bit of a sync preview this morning. But the full document will come out later. And it seems like some of these restrooms might.

be restored in the final budget, but it's unclear exactly what form that is going to take. So one thing I don't like is when we have to couch this discussion is like, well, it's... leads to disease and stuff because that's all true but also we all have to go to the bathroom yeah and it's it's really anxiety provoking and everything to not know where to go to not have a place to go and it's just awful it's still awful downtown like everywhere i walk you know i've learned that if you see a group of flies nearby you need to like avert you need to go a different direction because you're going to hit with some some pretty nasty smells it's like and it's just it's least two or three times on any given long walk i don't know you walked over from the county did you can counter any no flies no flies okay good job so you know like this is just it's just a functioning community especially one that welcomes people from all over the world needs to have places to go to the bathroom and you don't need to freak out about it i've gotten so good that i like i'm like a spy when i show up at a at a at a public area because i can figure out where the bathroom is immediately and know that i've got some option uh over there but it's a you know and i'm just a normal dude i don't have any health problems or whatever. And it's long been like a legit acknowledged problem. Like you said, Gloria promised to put a bathroom within a five-minute walk of anywhere downtown. And a lot of that was prompted by like a half dozen reports as you wrote in this piece, both from grand juries and from, you know, researchers at STSU that say, hey, this is not only a pain for people, but it's a public health, you know, crisis, essentially. One of the things you noted here, and I'd love to get Supervisor Lawson Reamer's. take on this was that the IBA report suggested that the six portable restrooms downtown which primarily serve on house people should be funded funded by the county instead of the city. These were, I guess, deployed in 2023 in response to public health concerns by the county. What do you think? Do you think the county, I mean, there's long been talk of from City Hall that, you know, the county should be picking up more of the tab here. Todd Gloria has been very, very pointed in that. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing I love about that is that there's an IBA. There's an independent budget analyst who's able to actually provide an independent perspective, including data on a silver Graham Platner so people can make heads or tails of the budget. So power to the IBA. Come on now. They got to go. What did you think? Do you think you should have to pay for that?

I'm open to having a conversation. I mean, really, I think it's important to be open-minded that hasn't come to me. Yeah. But I wouldn't put it in the no category. I think it's worth a conversation. But again, for me, the real kind of takeaway is really important to have a different perspective and have an IBA that can communicate. Yeah. So you're interested in an IBA? I'm interested. All right. I think we just got to do it. We've got to get into this. All right. There's your segue, Scott. Let's go. The independent budget analyst at the city of San Diego was put in place in 2004 when the city switched from a city council manager form of government to the strong mayor form of government. And the county of San Diego is proposing, at least via the chair, Tara Lawson-Riemer here. A major reform that would go on the ballot in November that would bring the county a number of changes. Now, I'm going to do a summary, and I want you to grade the summary, okay? Am I grading on entertainment value, brevity, or accuracy? All three, an index. Okay. An index of sort. So. A lot of people are talking about, and we will have to discuss, the extension of term limits for county supervisors from two terms to three terms. That's become kind of a main issue there. I don't think it's the most interesting one, and I've tried to make that point. There are three other sort of main things going on. One, is an IBA. You want to create an IBA position, which as Bella made the point, when you look at budget documents at any of these entities, the school district, the county, the city, is really hard to process all of the information and understand it. And the IBA will do that and propose alternatives and other things. Second, You want to make it so that the county supervisors get to have a say in top management hires and fires, right? Yep. And then third, you want to reform and rebalance the relationship between the county supervisors and the staff of the county where you can ask for information and help develop initiatives and changes with county staff directly. Right now, there's a non-interference sort of. law that you are not allowed to do a lot of things with interacting. Or it's unclear what you're allowed to do with city staff. How do I do? I'm going to give you two grades. One is on a curve compared to all the other reporting happening on this matter in San Diego County. Definitely an A minus. In terms of like actual accuracy, like going through the measure like piece by piece, maybe a C plus. Dang. Okay. All right. But you know, Curze are good, right? Curse are good. Entertainment value, A plus, right? Always. All right. Let's get into the C plus. What was the worst thing I described? I think there's a couple of things that are really important that got missed there. So first of all, the addition of an independent program auditor, so it's not just the independent budget analyst, but also someone potentially...

in the way it's structured in the measure, it could be its own office or it could be combined with the budget office, where they'd be able to audit programs and say, okay, dollar for dollar, is the money we're spending on homelessness making an impact or is it not? And should we cut this program because it's not effective or should we scale it up because it's actually moving the needle? Yeah. And that kind of insight into whether our dollars are being well spent is really important because if it's just coming from... you know, the people who are doing the work, I think most people who are doing the work are going to tell you they're doing a pretty good job. So that's a piece that you didn't mention. Definitely accurate on the IBA and, you know, the vision for it and looking at the city, but also the congressional budget office and other places that have. I know an independent voice to provide that. Another piece that I think is really key on the term limits in particular is the big shift that is kind of driving everything would be creating a framework. It would be the first step and a two-step process to put term limits on all county electeds, particularly the sheriff and the DA, but really all county electeds. It would only be the first step of that process. The second step would be you'd have to get enabling legislation in Sacramento. But it's a one-two. You have to do both. So you've got to understand kind of the whole term thing, like in that context. Can I give you a little background there? So the county supervisors used to not have term limits. Progressive groups and labor unions got together around 2010, passed. the law that said that a charter reform that said that the county supervisors would be limited to two terms. But they left out the other four main countywide elected offices, the treasurer tax collector, the assessor, the sheriff, and the DA. And those there are state laws that say what those offices should, at least for three of the four, right, that say like that they can't have, it's a state guided. process. And so you're saying this would say like we want two, three terms for them as well. Exactly. And we want the state to change the law. Exactly. And so that's a piece. And then another part of this I think is really important is we don't have an ethics commission at the county. So except. If you're a staff member and there's a complaint against you, there's an ethics commission, but if there's a complaint against me or my colleagues or the tax collector or the share for the, there's nowhere to go. Wouldn't it go to the FPPC? Depends if it's narrow. I mean, the FPPC has narrow authority over like the specific things within their jurisdiction. Yeah. And that's true for. all the entities like the AG could investigate, the DA, but there's no one who's just job it is, is to say, hey, we got an allegation, we're going to.

do the initial legwork to figure out if there's a there there and then report publicly. And it's not meant to replace the FPPC or the DA or the AG. They're the experts on enforcement, but someone should be the front door. If you've got an ethics complaint against an elected official, like, where do you go? You know, most people don't know is it. which of these, all these other entities you might want to knock on and call? Like, you should be able to call the county and call the Ethics Commission and say, hey, I have some concerns. They should call us, actually. Yeah. They should call Lisa. Yeah. Lisa. All right, let's go through a couple. So let's talk about the Ethics Commission just briefly. So the city of San Diego, I remember when it was created in 2002 or something, the Ethics Commission was created. And... It was sold as this big anti-corruption effort. And it does important work, but it's almost all about the particulars of campaign finance. Was the donor to a committee that might send a mailer out? Was it, you know, did it disclose its donors properly? Did it, was the type big enough on its disclosure? You know, that's where you send those complaints. And there's fines like $5,000, $20,000 or whatever. But it's a pretty, it's kind of following all that paperwork. There's some elements of conflict of interest they get involved with sometimes, but that's like maybe feels like 5%, 2% of what they do. It's mostly about that. Would this have a broader mandate, do you think? It's pretty broad. And I think it's important to note in all of this that all these changes, and we actually mention a couple more because they're really interesting, all these changes are pretty broad. You know, we really looked at this as a rebalancing. Like how do we ensure that the constitution of the County of San Diego allows for more accountability to voters, more accountability to the elected supervisors who are there. You know, I'm supposed to not just be. pushing paper around on the dais, but making sure the programs that we've promised to implement actually are effective, make sure that that governance is really working for the people of the county. But it's also a constitution, right? It's not meant to get into the nitty-gritty of exactly all the levers because... I know that new circumstances emerge and things evolve, and you don't want to be so locked in that you wrote it wrong, like one sentence is wrong, and then you've got to go to the voters because it doesn't make any sense for the problems you've encountered. So we tried to create, like, lines in a coloring book and are proposing as well. to have an implementation task force that's composed of community members that will then be working with the board over the next couple years to really figure out exactly how to implement all these changes. Got it. Well, let's ask about the controversial one, the term limits. So you are right now operating in your four colleagues on the board of supervisors under a two-term limit.

this is your second term, correct? Mm-hmm. And so this would say this changes it to three terms for the existing one. And having it apply to existing supervisors who are in office now has been a particular spark. you know, provocative point for some. So Senator Catherine Blakespeare told me, quote, it's unquestionably a self-serving power grab. It gives us all a bad name, she said, and basically made the point like I could support this whole thing if this applied to future supervisors instead of the current ones, that there's this whole image that you are just trying to stay involved in the board of supervisors longer. Well, very honestly, being eight months pregnant, I'll tell you the third term feels real hard. So I don't know about that. That's not, frankly, not really on my radar. But we did go back and forth and think a lot about that, kind of like what makes sense. And at the end of the day, we're trying to propose. give to voters options for structural changes to make governance work in San Diego County in a more effective way for the people of San Diego County. And we didn't want to make it political. We didn't want to make it about specific people. So, you know. It was like, okay, we'll do exempt the supervisors, but then do we exempt all the other county-wide electeds? And then we're saying, okay, any attempted term limits on the other county-wide electeds won't apply to any of them. And, you know, it goes in effect in 50 years from now. So that was a real drawback of sort of kind of thinking about excluding individuals that are currently serving. But I think from my point of view, the real kind of. determining factor was just the core point that voters deserve a voice. And this is not about me deciding, like, should we have term limits longer or shorter? It's about us giving voters an option. And at the end of the day, if they think I'm doing a bad job, they're going to vote me out, even if I did decide to run again, which I don't know that I would. You know, you may not necessarily need the votes of the other two county supervisors. Currently, there's a three, two. Democratic majority on the board, but given the heartburn that the fact that this new three-term limit would apply to sitting board supervisors has, you know, taken, has had on not only people like Joel Anderson, but also people like Blake Spear. I mean, Is nixing that and having it just apply to future supervisors something that you're considering? Is it something you would consider? We've had a lot of conversation. I went to the broad coalition. Remember, this is, I didn't write this by myself, right? There was 39 groups that participated in the drafting. And I think some of the best ideas did not come from me at all. They were, you know, community partners who said, like, let's make sure this gets in the mix. And there's a couple things. I think there's a real concern that.

exempting sitting electeds would exempt all those other electives I mentioned who would then essentially have terms for life because they would they've already been elected and they would have no term limits so that would be a huge problem and I think the other piece that I felt pretty convinced by was just like we should stand on principles like Are we doing the thing that we believe is right and giving voters like option to reform our county in the right kind of way to make our county government work for folks? And it's my obligation to give voters that choice. And voters don't. like it, they'll vote it down. And I mean, I think I believe in democracy in a pretty fundamental way. And I think voters are smart and they're going to make the choice that they think is right. But I can't, I shouldn't take things off the table just because you're scared that someone's going to say something mean about you. Is there not a way to write this in such a way where it doesn't apply to the sitting officials but then could apply to the sheriff and these other individuals? I don't know, Belle, maybe should have come to my long, long meetings with county council, but we couldn't find a path. I think she probably would have. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think very big picture. We've, we have tried so hard to kind of take all this feedback and then make it legal and kind of, which is hard, you know, it's in a lot of the changes. There's a lot of, you know, a lot of what we also did in all this was say, hey, county council, this charter hasn't been updated in a kind of a holistic way for decades. Are there other things you see in here that are redundant, that are making your job difficult? So they went through with a pen and made. red lines. So it's been a very kind of thoughtful, collaborative, inclusive process and trying to do the best we can to put something on the table for voters that tries to effectuate the core goal, which is rebalancing power away from just a bureaucracy that kind of self-perpetuates and towards voters, towards the public, and towards the supervisors that were elected. And all the pieces are, you know, a design to, oh, sorry, Scott, I forgot. Other thing that I wanted to talk about, public defender. I think that was like another piece. I remember I said I want to come back to something else that's important. The measure would also allow the public defender to be appointed and report directly to the board. We have the few, like the fewest direct reports of essentially any county in the state of California. And what that means is that you've got an elected sheriff, elected DA.

probation reports directly at a board and the public defenders like buried in the bureaucracy so there's not the public safety group doesn't work very well because of that so kind of trying to write right size, like the level of accountability for people with different kinds of jobs that are important to the public. As we saw with like Measure E and the current, you know, furor about the trash tax, trashed fee, excuse me, it seems like people's trust in government is at kind of an all-time low. I'm curious, you know, given the fact that there has been such frustration or worry about this third term limit is losing out on potentially voters rejecting this whole package of things that you think are important, is potentially losing out on those because people oppose a third term limit for sitting board of supervisors members? Is it worth it? I agree that people's trusting. I mean, trust in government is really not high. It's very low. And I think a lot of that's driven by what's happening in Washington, which I think trickles down to all of us. And that is actually one of the reasons that I was so motivated to make these charter reforms, is that we're looking at, I think, a complete assault on the Democratic state, like the notion that we even have. any kind of accountability at all. You know, the Congress even has a voice. I mean, it just feels like it's totally been collapsed under Trump. And we at the county level have had to step up and had to step up with programs, have had to step up and figuring out how to like protect people's access to health care, have had to step up on trying to figure out how to like defend our immigrant community and like protect rule of law and protect people from being kidnapped and protect people to be able to eat. and not, you know, end up with no, like literally, like no food in their cupboard because their food benefits got cut. And I think it's in that context, they're saying that, you know, all of Washington, I think, is failing us and we need to do more locally, which requires our government to work more effective locally. And so I do think that that is the right context. And I think, you know, I do think you're asking the right question. You're in the right space of like, how do we restore faith in government? So I can't say that your particular... like solution is like the correct or an incorrect one. But I certainly agree with the overall principle that all of this has to be about how do we make government work better for people. Sure. But if these reforms are so important, why not adjust the thing that seems to be stressing people out the most to give them a better chance of passing?

I mean, like I said, I was very open to that. You know, like I'm not attached at all to whether I would even run again, frankly. So that was certainly something I took to the coalition and it got shot down by community partners for a variety of reasons. But I certainly thought it was worth having that conversation. Let me ask you about another point in there. So one of your own... direct reports is, of course, the county chief administrative officer. You, one of the proposals is that you would have to sign off on, as a board, her top or their top hires, and that you could trigger a firing of some of their top officials if you wanted to, correct? Yep. So as, you know, I think as a manager, whatever, having somebody sort of, um, be able to veto, because you judge the CAO on their success, on their outcomes, on what they're working on, and to also then, like, decide or hinder who they're able to hire to pull that off, I think is it kind of upsets the balance in some ways of, like, the executive board relationship. If my board said, like, I have to sign off on everything you do or your hires, I'd be... I'd be kind of mad about it. Is there, can you help me understand why that's important? Yeah, it's really important. I think it's probably, in my view, one of the most central pieces of what this is all about, which is really about checks and balances and about public accountability. So a good way to, a good analogy is Congress has to approve cabinet appointments. Yeah. And that's what it really, really modeled it in. you know, you can't just appoint anyone willy-nilly. You need to have some kind of confirmation process to make sure that this hasn't gone, like, completely off the rails. But we've tried to be very moderate about what that means, which is to say they still... report to the CAO, but there's a process where you would be confirmed by the board and then if someone has just gone way sideways and you'd have to have a four vote super majority to remove them. We looked at more... I'd say more aggressive rebalancing measures, particularly like moving a lot of those direct reports to directly report to the board of supervisors. As I mentioned, we have really the fewest direct reports of any other county. So I don't think your analogy around you running your staff is a very good one because most counties, all those positions that we've identified as like subject to confirmation processes actually report. port to the board and are hired by the board in other counties. So in different positions. Give me an example. You like the director of health and human services and other, like some other counties reports to the board. So you've got some fiscal offices that like report to the board and don't report to the CAO. And we looked at that and we think, no, that's, we want the CEO to build a run.

the county in an effective manner. But we also want to make sure that there's checks and balances and also a public process. And this definitely came from community partners saying with a lot of frustration over really critical positions that they felt like just got sprung on them. They didn't get any input. And I agreed. You know, I agree. It wasn't my idea, but I strongly support it because. We, as board members, we pass policies, but I don't go to my voters and say, I did my job because I, you know, got three votes on a piece of paper. You know, my voters expect that those policies that pass are being implemented. The way you're describing it is the way that... Some people, like Trump, have described a deep state that there's this, that he wants to do something or that people want to do something, that the mandate is there to do something, but that there's a bureaucracy that, as you said earlier, self-perpetuates and stops those things from happening. Do you believe that's the case? I'm not so conspiracy-minded. I don't think it's intentional. I think it's about how do you hire the right qualified people for a job as opposed who are aligned and who come with the right background. Not that we have folks who are kind of intentionally always trying to thwart the work. But I mean, Scott, you know of all people, right? Like if someone said, it's passed a policy that you should have a podcast, but then... You didn't get to choose the podcast person. The outcome of what that podcast might be would be. totally different than the vision or the policy that was passed initially. And that's certainly been the case for quite a number of really important initiatives. I mean, we had this housing blueprint that I think went totally off the rails. The board was pretty clear on the policy direction, but the implementation just like went way sideways. I could go through all sorts of examples. And it's really about delivering for voters on implementation that actually makes a difference. I can't just say, well, we thought it was a good idea and we directed staff. So don't be mad at me if staff did it different than I thought. It's my job, right? As chair of the board, it's my job to make sure that the county really is delivering for people. It's not my job just to. push paper around. So I do think it requires that love, that kind more accountability and more checks and balances and more input on the front end, both from the public and from the supervisors.

I'm curious, I want to touch on this, getting rid of this non-interference policy. What does, in your eyes, what does the county governance look like without that kind of policy? That was the reason for Scott C-plus, because that's not part of the reforms. We're not getting rid of the non-interference policy. Not getting rid of it, but you're addressing it. On recommendation from county council, they felt like they needed to add clarifying language. And I said to them, I'm like, I don't want to change the policy. But if you think it needs clarification, that it's not an amendment, it's just a clarification. And for legal reasons. I think there's value in that because it has been difficult to implement that. And because the way it was previously written was a whole bunch of you can't, you can't, you can'ts, you can't. But not you can, you can, and it felt like it would be much more effective if it was clear both like what you can't do and what you can do and provided really frankly like better. a better picture for staff and for the supervisors, or else you're kind of operating in a, in a climate of like a lot of ambiguity that does not lead to good decision making. So what you're saying is that the supervisors still can't directly interfere with county staff, but there will be clearer outlines for what they can do. Exactly. So, for example,

We supervisors cannot, and I believe should not be able to, directly tell county staff what to do. There's reasons for that. There's good reasons, right? Like, we're a board. We govern as a board. Our decisions have to be made by a board majority. So you can't have individual supervisors going around, like directing staff. That's not going to work. It has to come from a three-vote majority. But on the other hand, you know, if... you pass a policy and then county staff doesn't fully understand it because they don't live inside your brain and they come and ask for clarifications or they hit roadblocks and how to implement it. We had an example of on homelessness where we passed a policy of the board. We wanted to implement a program really focused on LGBTQ, queer youth because they're the highest. percentage of homeless youth. And county staff really struggled with implementation. They kind of ran into some barriers. And they didn't come back to us and say, hey, we've run into some barriers. How could we, can we get some feedback and get some input so we can make sure that we're moving what you passed as a board? They just didn't do it because they were like, well, we don't know how. It's too hard. Like literally don't know how to talk to you. Like, we don't know how to implement this policy you passed. Therefore, we're going to not implement the policy. And that's not good. And we didn't know this, actually, until community partners came to us and said, where's the RFP for this? Like, where's this program? I don't know. We thought it was being implemented. But they hadn't come back to us because they said, well, we don't know what we're allowed to do. So the purpose of this is to say, hey, Obviously, if you're going to run a county, you need to be involved in some kind of dialogues on like you pass a board policy. It's a couple pages. But that's complicated stuff. Like how do we implement it properly? And that we want to make sure that the staff knows that that's safe. And then they're not like afraid to come talk to the supervisors in doing that. Yeah. Well, I want to switch topics. a little bit. So thanks for spending all that time. This is the core audience for governance reform discussion, I think, right? I love it. So, but another thing. It reminds me con law. Yes. We've been talking and reporting a lot about the signatures that have been gathered and turned in to put a measure on the ballot in November that would raise the countywide sales tax by half cent. Go to a bunch of different things, child care, health care, fire protection. But the... A top one has been the Tijuana sewage issue and the crisis at the border. And it seems like you guys take turns on who's the lead sometimes of the Tijuana sewage crisis. You've obviously been involved a lot in the issue. And it's been a little bit alarming, at least for me, that...

it hasn't been clear what $80 million or so per year would be spent on if the tax passed to, as they say, solve the Tijuana River sewage crisis. What do you think about what you would say if somebody said, well, what will it do to stop? the crisis or to stop the to fix the crisis yeah i appreciate that um i think it uplifts some of the governance challenges in california right like they're they're an independent measure and they got to write what they're right and we are on the county side you know doing all this work to put together plans in place um so we have options so i'll and that's of course can't be in the measure like we're right in our plans so this is great i'm excited to talk a little bit about that so a couple things um First of all, I'm just really grateful to have Vice Chair Paloma. I mean, sorry, Chair Pro Tem, Paloma, Geary on the board now because she is just so fierce and so expert in this. And it's been a little lonely on the board for a while on this issue. And I could not ask for a better partner to lead the fight. And she's come with just so much experience and expertise to say, hey, like, these are things we need to do. in what order um so we have this tijuana sewage subcommittee and we are moving forward we're beginning the process now of putting together the like a whole bunch of options packages of specifically you know would you have third level treatment primary treatment, where would you divert the river to, what are some different cost structures, would it be a private public partnership, how would you fund it, the maintenance? So that's underway. We're anticipating, it's a long process to do. So we think that will be done in 18 months. There will be a huge public engagement process with lots of choices. So that's happening. But a couple things I can say just right off the bat is that we know there's some good groundwork that's been laid by the IBWC. So they have a proposal already baked that's ready to go off the shelf. It would be $300 million and then ongoing maintenance. to divert the Tijuana River, and that would deal with 85% of the sewage, which is huge. It's not 100%, but we know that that would be very quick, and we could get that done right away, and it would take care of the sewage that's in the east part coming. from the east in Tijuana. Now, it does not address the Punta Bender issue, but it does address, like, the biggest source of untreated sewage coming into the United States. So that, I think, is clear. So if you think about the crisis as like this sort of giant funnel, Tijuana's higher than San Diego altitude-wise. There's so many homes that aren't connected to sewage.

rains or even now when it doesn't rain, it all flows into the Tijuana River Valley. And so what you're talking about is as like a kind of funnel that you could take care of a big chunk of it if you implemented that plan. Yeah, 85%. And I want to... I guess I'm supposed to have my people negotiate with your people to give you like the exclusive preview of something cool. But anyway, I'll just do it now on the air. So Nadbank reached out and said, hey, if you guys are able to put real money in. We think we could match up to 50 million a year. I'm sorry, Nav Bank? Yeah, the North American Development Bank, NAD Bank. So if you guys have real money, we think we could put in 50 million a year on the Mexican side to match whatever you're spending on the U.S. side, which is huge. Like, we've really had so much challenge mobilizing any kind of investments on the Mexican side. The NAD bank is not kind of... constrained and handcuffed by Mexican politics. So I think if this revenue measure passes, it won't just give us as the county the resources we need to make those investments on the U.S. side. It would also, there's work to be done. Like we're in the process right now of negotiating a partnership agreement with an ad bank and man, these things take forever. So I don't want to. over promised, but certainly they called, they called us and said, hey, like, if you had real money, we think we'd get up to 50 million a year on the Mexican side. So this, we're in this climate. We talk about trust. This climate is so filled with, like, all of these things that are promised from high-speed rail to, you know, construction projects, we wait for and wait for, wait for, and it just, it is always so hard to do anything. And I guess when it, when this sort of comes up, it seems like money is not the hardest part. Or is the county capable of tackling an infrastructure challenge as big as the Tijuana River sewage crisis? Well, first of all, one of the things I really like about the measure is the way it's written. The funds go into a lockbox. They actually don't go to the general fund at all. They have to be spent on exactly what's listed in the measure. I took a careful look at it. 22% of the funds would go to the Tijuana Sewage Crisis. And that is just a separate pot. There's an auditor that's for that pot of money. There's a Citizens Commission that oversees that pot of money. And that's really important. I think to your question before around public trust is say, hey, It's on paper, like exactly how this money is going to be spent. And then there's an oversight committee that's only charged with overseeing this money. That's really key. And then the second piece of this is, you know, what can the county do with it? And when you look at, you know, the investments that the county has made in infrastructure over the last, you know, few decades.

I think we have actually a pretty good track record on infrastructure. You know, our stormwater investments have been very solid and reliable and have moved the needle. I think we need to do more, not less, on those stormwater investments. You know, we run, you know, we need to. Unfortunately, I think we probably need to invest even more than we have already in a lot of our public safety infrastructure, but we run all of our 911 facilities. You know, people have a lot of confidence in our fire department and Cal Fire. Those are all county investments. All our emergency services, those are county investments. So I think you can look across the board at the county investments that we... frankly, take for granted, especially on like wildfire safety, and say, hey, you know, these are actually pretty reliable. Yeah. Let's say this measure passes in like 10 years, how confident are you that this issue will be solved? Exactly 10 years. We do have one pledge at the table, Scott here has pledged to in 10 years surf. at the mouth of the Tijuana River. Would you join him in that pledge? Are you this confidence that the county can? No matter what. We're going to go. And we just got to hope it's okay by then. Like how comfortable. If this revenue measure passes. Yes. Just, yeah. So, no, no, no, I love this. Let me do this, like, let me like really do the math. So it's be 18 months to two years to kind of put all the options together, get public feedback. Then you've got another about year and a half to go through and kind of look at the financing models and get that all past. I'm already just stressing for Scott now. And so, he's getting sweaty over here. Like three and a half. Then you've got to do a build. You know, it's always, you know, We're going to get an estimate of five years. It'll be like seven. I think I could do 10, Scott. So you feel like, will you join me in the pledge that will go out no matter what? I will join you in the pledge that we will surf NIB at the mouth of the Tijuana sewage. The clean, the very clean Tijuana River. Isn't there a great break right there? It's just so dirty. It's like Surge was telling me about it. Yeah, yeah. It's a really good break. Um, you have to take a shortboard. It's not a long board. It's not a long board break. You better, you better, you better, you have 10 years to get good. Um, but I think if the measure passes all, it's, it's definitely something you can do. Right. Well, I have a, I have a super important question for you, like considering all the things you talked about, very important. Um, people on the internet seem to love circulating screenshots of your dating out profiles, which frankly is the thought of that. keeps me up at night, so I do not envy you. But I have to ask, as a fellow dating app user, what does it like to be a public official on Hinge or any of the apps? I mean, I can't be worse than for everyone else. It's just like the apps are terrible. Do you get people like sending you messages like haters, fan supporters, like love what you're doing at the county? You know, um,

It's, I will say, it is interesting. Like if people are like, oh, what do you supervise? Because what does your job title say? Supervisor. Like, oh, what are you supervise? You know, like building maintenance. So. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're like the soup at a building. Yeah. You had the best line in there. There was the, there's things you should know about me, colon. and it said, I'm six months pregnant, which may be the best thing you should know about somebody that's ever been put in one of those lines. It just seemed like germane information. Yeah, really, really, I think kind of critical information. Well, yeah, because they have an option where it's like interested in kids. I have kids. I don't know about kids, but they don't have an actively pregnant option. That's right. You got to take the initiative to make sure information is clear. Well, for the daters. Transparency at its finest. You know, I hope your days on hinge are. numbered Tara. I really do. And you're on Hinge? Unfortunately, yes. I hope your days are numbered as well. Thanks, Carl. We're going to get out of this. Both sitting in the purgatory of love, huh? Tara Lawson-Rimer County, Board of Supervisors Chair. Thanks for joining. Thank you.

Thanks for this in The Voice of San Diego podcast, the most popular public affairs podcast recorded in San Diego. I'm Scott Lewis, CEO, and editor-in-chief at Voice San Diego. Bella Ross is our social media producer, Jacob McQuinnies, our education reporter, and Andreas Sanchez Villafanjas, the managing editor. Matt Scraby is the producer of this show. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week. Put this on your calendar. Our next member coffee event is Wednesday, July 29th at 9.30 a.m. Talk with our own Lisa Halvestat and meet other voice of San Diego supporters. Members who give $50 or more have access to this event and more. You can donate now at vosd.org slash member coffee 2026. Sign up for member coffee on our event page after making your donation.