From San Diego Free Press
June 27, 2012- You can’t have it both ways… The San Diego City Council yesterday refused to fund legal representation for city employees who may be called to testify in lawsuits challenging the recently approved Proposition B, a measure that seeks to fundamentally restructure the city’s pension system. This decision means that Mayor Jerry Sanders, Councilman Kevin Falconer and Councilman Carl DeMaio, who campaigned for and contended that their support of the Pension Proposition was as private citizens, will have to pay their own legal fees. A handful of other city employees were also affected by the decision.
San Diego is facing lawsuits from its unions and the state Public Employment Relations Board, who claim officials violated the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act by failing to negotiate terms of the initiative with labor prior to placing it on the ballot. Since the mayor and these councilmen were among the primary boosters of the measure, the unions contend that their actions amounted to city sponsorship.
Filner’s on fire… Congressman (and mayoral candidate) Bob Filner appeared on Rachel Maddow’s NSNBC program last night to talk about veterans’ issues. He didn’t mince words in his criticisms of the Veterans Administration, saying that their health care system is ‘so bad,’ vets are dying or even committing suicide while waiting for adjudication of claims. Lest you doubt his passion on this issue, here’s the money quote from the program:
“We want to talk about the glory of the war, how patriotic it is, but we don’t want to focus on the costs of war, what happens when these men and women come back. We don’t want to pay too much attention to it, because it undercuts what every government wants, and that’s support for the war it carries out.”
Interestingly enough, the MSNBC blog, Leaning Forward, identified Filner as a candidate for Mayor of San Francisco. We know how that feels, Congressman Filner, as the cable network identified us as being a weekly newspaper in a report aired last weekend.
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