{"id":109681,"date":"2025-08-01T07:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/109681\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T07:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T07:37:08","slug":"due-diligence-is-for-losers-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/109681\/","title":{"rendered":"Due diligence is for losers \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2018, more than 78%<\/a> of San Diego voters were convinced to double the mayor\u2019s salary and raise City Council members\u2019 salaries by 60% \u2014 and to set them up to receive regular future raises by linking the positions\u2019 pay to the salaries of state Superior Court judges. The author of Measure L, attorney Bob Ottilie, said the previous pay of $100,000 for the mayor and $75,000 for the council was simply inadequate to attract the kind of high-quality governance<\/a> that City Hall needed after 20-plus years of pension scandals, real estate ineptitude and poorly vetted decisions.<\/p>\n

Seven years later, a case can be made that Measure L itself is one more example of a civic mistake. The City Council\u2019s stunning rush to judgment this summer on Mayor Todd Gloria\u2019s complex, high-stakes plan to salvage the city\u2019s disastrous acquisition of the 101 Ash Street office tower \u2014 by converting the building into 247 \u201caffordable housing\u201d units \u2014 is not evidence of high-quality governance. It\u2019s the opposite. And what makes this mistake even worse than many of those seen since the mid-1990s is that the deal\u2019s flaws were uncovered and widely known before it was approved, not after the fact.<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s understandable why Gloria would want to make the best of the Ash Street mess. Perhaps something good can come out of the city\u2019s baffling 2016 decision to acquire the decrepit building without any seeming awareness that, in 2014<\/a>, a consultant for its previous owner had called it fundamentally obsolete and cited asbestos contamination. But especially since Gloria supported the deal as a City Council member \u2014 and very much joins then-Mayor Kevin Faulconer on the list of civic officials who completely failed at due diligence \u2014 one would think that might lead to caution.<\/p>\n

Instead, as U-T Watchdog reporter Jeff McDonald detailed in a July 27 analysis<\/a>, Gloria urged the council to quickly approve a complex $267 million deal \u2014 one that \u201crelies almost entirely on public funds and loans backed by tax credits\u201d \u2014 without following best practices recommended for major real estate decisions outlined in a 2021 city audit. These include giving the City Council and public adequate time to review terms and obtaining an independent property condition report. The city released key financial documents just days before key decisions were to be made \u2014 and, incredibly, no detailed condition assessment was made public.<\/p>\n

The eye-opening details don\u2019t stop there. Instead of being subject to competitive bidding, the deal was awarded to a partnership that includes a Gloria political appointee who sits on the city\u2019s Planning Commission. On its face, this presents a conflict of interest, especially given the partnership\u2019s request for an environmental regulation waiver that might otherwise trigger commission review. And while Gloria and his staff depicted the deal as having smart safeguards, if it fails, taxpayers could end up on the hook to forgive a $45.6 million city loan.<\/p>\n

What you hear isn\u2019t a lone siren going off in the distance. It\u2019s a deafening cacophony of warning bells. But on Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously<\/a> for the deal, with Council President Joe LaCava dismissing skeptics and critics as \u201cwallowing in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calling this hubris doesn\u2019t do it justice. It\u2019s more akin to a belligerent embrace of civic amnesia. It brings to mind William F. Buckley Jr.\u2019s famous line from the 1960s: \u201cI would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard.\u201d After this week\u2019s display by Gloria, LaCava and the rest of the City Council, San Diegans can be forgiven for thinking they\u2019d rather be governed by the first 10 people they encounter in a visit to 7-Eleven.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: July 31, 2025 at 11:56 AM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2018, more than 78% of San Diego voters were convinced to double the mayor\u2019s salary and raise…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":103767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,6083,1269,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-109681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-editorials","12":"tag-opinion","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}