{"id":524526,"date":"2026-01-18T06:27:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T06:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/524526\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T06:27:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T06:27:13","slug":"the-citys-real-structural-deficit-is-the-deficit-in-honesty-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/524526\/","title":{"rendered":"The city\u2019s real \u2018structural deficit\u2019 is the deficit in honesty \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Todd Gloria\u2019s State of the City address on Thursday made a credible case that San Diego is making progress<\/a> on some key issues.<\/p>\n

Gloria cited a nearly 14% reduction in unsheltered homelessness based on the point-in-time count by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, a reduction in downtown tent encampments and the opening at H Barracks of the city\u2019s largest Safe Parking site for people living in vehicles. He also noted that for the third straight year, the city had issued housing permits at a pace that nearly doubled the city\u2019s long-term average \u2014 and that San Diego, already one of the safest big cities in the nation, saw crime fall significantly in several categories last year.<\/p>\n

But Gloria\u2019s contention that the city was doing an impressive job in dealing with what a press release called \u201cthe structural budget deficit \u2014 the result of decades of underfunding and deferred decisions, while costs and demand for services rose\u201d is preposterous.<\/p>\n

Yes, the city cut its deficit<\/a> of $318 million by about $270 million. Yet the duplicitous bait-and-switch<\/a> that the mayor and a majority of the City Council used to win approval of trash fees on 220,000-plus homes \u2014\u00a0 fees that were far higher than what voters were told in 2022 when they narrowly cleared the way for their being assessed \u2014 will hang over City Hall for years. And, if anything, the imposition of parking fees at beloved Balboa Park was even more unpopular among San Diegans.<\/p>\n

Why? Because residents who have paid attention over the decades know that what Gloria calls the \u201cstructural deficit\u201d that led to his push for the fee hikes is not caused primarily by benign factors. It\u2019s caused by elected officials\u2019 decision to ignore the public\u2019s specific directions in favor of policies favorable to public employee unions. This is made obvious by a Jan. 10 U-T story<\/a> showing the city would have to pay \u201ca record-high annual pension payment of $563.2 million\u201d because of what the pension board\u2019s actuary called \u201cextra salary increases above and beyond our assumptions during many of the past seven years.\u201d<\/p>\n

That mandatory payment would be far smaller if City Hall heeded the 60% of city voters in 2006 who rewrote the City Charter to authorize outsourcing<\/a> of many services, only to see the potent money-saving tool mostly be put on the shelf ever since. That number would also be far smaller if the 66% of voters who in 2012 supported ending defined-benefit pensions<\/a> for most new city hires had been heeded after state courts threw out the ballot measure on narrow technical grounds.<\/p>\n

City voters saw the present nightmare coming and acted to address it. That they were ignored shows San Diego\u2019s most important \u201cstructural deficit\u201d is the deficit in honest leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Todd Gloria\u2019s State of the City address on Thursday made a credible case that San Diego is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":524527,"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-524526","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":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115914686007618446","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524526","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=524526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}