Candidate for
Council Member; City of San Diego; District 2

PULL THE PLUG ON SPECIAL INTERESTS! END DIRTY MONEY POLITICS!

Bought and paid for politicians of both major political parties are robbing us taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars every year! It must stop! It's time we took our government back from the labor unions and big businesses who have joined up to finance the election of politicians who represent them and not us.

When I ran for City Council in 1998, my campaign slogan was "PULL THE PLUG ON CORPORATE WELFARE!

Some prime examples of Corporate Welfare:

• The Chargers Ticket Guarantee, which has cost us over 36 Million Dollars.

• The giveaway of the Naval Training Center is estimated to have cost us between 500 and 700 million dollars.

• Below Market Lease Rates on Public Land to Sea World, various Hotels, Golf Courses, Restaurants etc. are costing us tens of millions of dollars a year.

The phrase Corporate Welfare didn't take into account the recent rise of Labor Union political power in City politics. Now we're faced with Union lackey council members giving free rein to Municipal Labor Unions to loot the City's pension program at an estimated cost of hundreds of millions of dollars and a ruined City credit rating. And Corporate Welfare continues on unabated.

I don't think I should have to "sell out" to any of these special interests to raise money in order to get elected to City Council!

I want to be a Council member who will represent ALL San Diegans, not just a few deep pocket special interest campaign contributors.

You might ask; Is is possible to change this sick system?

CLEAN MONEY CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

You bet it is. I discovered the answer in my 1998 City Council campaign when I met with a group called the San Diego Alliance for Clean Elections whose mission it was to stop the undo influence of special interests on elections by ending dirty money politics. Called Clean Money Campaign Finance Reform, it is a system where the voters own the politicians.

Under a Clean Money System a candidate promises not to take political campaign contributions from anyone. Nor will the candidate be able to spend his or her own money.

Instead the candidate will be provided with a minimum amount of public funds to enable the candidate to get his or her message out.

The estimated cost for you to own your own politicians, both Mayor and all Councilmembers is about $3 per year per registered voter. Not bad since you've paid about $7 per year for the Chargers Ticket Guarantee and about $800 per yr. for the Naval Training Center giveaway.

While its possible to estimate the costs of public financing of elections in the City of San Diego ($1.7 million per year) its impossible to estimate what special interest dirty money politics will cost all of us now and in the future.

For more information on Clean Money Campaign Finance Reform in San Diego check out the web site of San Diego Alliance for Clean Elections, http://www.sdace.org.

COMMUNITY CONTROL OF DEVELOPMENT

I fervently believe in the community's right to control its own destiny. If the residents and property owners do not exercise that right the community will be destroyed by greed in the form of developers running rampant.

In the early 70's the community character of Ocean Beach was being destroyed by an influx of cheap poorly constructed curb cut apartment buildings. The so called Huffman Boxes. Picture parking in the concrete front yard and two to three story flat stucco box in a neighborhood of one story houses with front yards and porches.

Since this was prior to Prop 13, property taxes were based on the highest and best use (apartment building) not on the actual use, ie beach cottage. This meant that if an apartment building was built on your block your house property taxes would go up to match the taxes of the apartment building. Not only unfair, it also acted to drive out the elderly, and low income homeowners who had to sell their property because they could no longer afford to live there.

As luck would have it, I had just graduated from law school and had become introduced to the community and environmental movement just starting at that time. Before I knew it I was a leader in the citizen effort to stop the rape of O.B. Since no process existed to hold hearings on development we had to create our own. We formed the Ocean Beach Community Planning Group (OBCPG), a group not recognized by the City, since they had never heard of community planning.

The OBCPG held weekly steering committee meetings which analyzed development projects and prepared reports. Our monthly community meeting which was held in the local school auditorium was in the form of a spaghetti dinner then question and answer session. All decisions were made at this meeting by a vote of the people present and the steering committee was instructed as to what its next task was.

Because of this open structure we soon attracted people who had various causes and concerns. Soon we were discussing issues relating to seniors, health care, students, bus service and many other issues not usually thought of as having to do with development. It was out of these meetings that the idea of a Community Plan came into existence.

Soon the City adopted the idea of local community planning groups. At the time we felt that it was a cooption of our process as the City now had administrative control and limited our agenda to purely planning areas of discussion.

As a City Council candidate I have pledged to empower our local planning boards and give them veto power over local projects subject to a two thirds overide by the City Council.

GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE; YOU MAKE THE DECISIONS!

Registered Voters In District 2 Make All Major Decisions

People are always asking me as a Council candidate how I would vote on various issues. I tell them it is not important what my opinion is, but what their opinion is. I do not believe that I should be the one to make anything but routine procedural decisions. All major questions should be decided by a vote of the registered voters in my district.

Our political process is sadly lacking in allowing people to exercise their individual right to make decisions. As an officeholder I do not want to be put in the role of a political father. Voters are not children who need others to make decisions for them. It is a matter of basic respect. Your self respect should drive you to accept only a system that empowers you.

Respectfully I offer a system in Council District 2 that would empower you to make all major decisions. This could be done through my Council office. My office would collect materials on both sides of any issue and allow you, a District 2 registered voter to vote either in person, mail or on a secure internet connection. If public hearings were desired they could be held by your local Planning Board. I would then vote on this matter at Council and would pledge to vote the way District 2 voted.

People ask me when they hear this proposal, am I not giving up my power and perogative. I tell them definitely not. It is empowering to me to be able to support you. I then can fight for you 100%.

Such a system would put power in your hands and take it out of the hands of your so called representatives who seem to have a poor record of actually doing what you want and acting in your best interests.