By Geoff Page
Over the past several years, the City of San Diego has made a concerted, and somewhat stealthy effort, to build a shield around itself to insulate those in charge from the rest of us. The control the city exerts over citizen access to government is classic authoritarianism. It seems the Democrats in control don’t mind borrowing tactics, normally associated with the most despicable of historic regimes, and Republicans, throughout history.
This shield consists of three pieces, the city’s Communications Department, the Public Records Request system, and the push for community planning group reform. The first two are currently entrenched, the third will be by next year.
There was a time when citizens could contact departments within the city and receive responses and sometimes documents with no problem. People could establish cooperative relationships with some city personnel willing to be helpful. That has come to a complete end.
The Communications Department
Standing completely in the way of any communications with city personnel now is the 38-person strong, $6,492,591 behemoth, the Communications Department. When you send an employee an email asking for information or if you call and leave a voice message, they immediately punt you. They refer you to whoever is assigned to their department from the Communications Department.
There are 19 people designated as “media contacts” in the Communications Department but you do not have to be a member of the media to get the same treatment as the media. These people literally speak for 33 city departments. The department list and assigned media contacts can be seen here . https://www.sandiego.gov/blog/media-contacts-city-departments
The cost of 38 Communications Department personnel listed in the 2023 city budget is $5,374,972 of the total $6,492,591 budget. The labor cost consists of $3,259,467 in salaries and wages and $2,115,505 for Fringe Benefits.
Fringe benefits for the city are considerable. Half of the $2,115,505 in Fringe Benefits is “Retirement ADC.” The ADC abbreviation is for “actuarially determined contribution.” This is the amount an employer must contribute each year to fund pension plan liabilities over time. In the current Communications Department budget, it totals $1,156,862.
Thirty-eight more people on the city’s retirement rolls, many of whom are doing jobs department personnel were once expected to handle as a part of their jobs. That is, answer questions from the public. Deal with the citizens they work for.
Here is the list of Communications Department personnel by title:
1. Communications Technician – One person was in the 2022 budget, not in 2023
2. Department Director – one person
3. Deputy Director – one person
4. Graphic Designer – two people
5. Multimedia Production Coordinator 2021 – three people; 2022 – four people; 2023 – five people
6. Multimedia Production Specialist – one person
7. Program Coordinator 2021 – three people; 2022 – six people; 2023 – seven people
8. Program Manager – five people, one increase from 2022
9. Public Information Officer – three people
10. Senior Management Analyst – one person
11. Senior Public Information Officer – seven people
12. Supervising Public Information Officer – five people
A trusting citizen might think a “Communications” department would be a good thing, there to help the public, providing the clarity people want from government. You know, working for the public, not for the people in charge. That is not what San Diego has.
This department’s unstated and unwritten manifesto is to protect city government from the citizens, portraying the city always positively while providing as little real information as possible.
So what are the problems?
The biggest problem is that the city has inserted a person between you and a knowledgeable city employee and forced you each to talk through that person. That is not the way to communicate effectively. The person in the middle, the Communications person, only has expertise in, well, communications. They are only there to make sure that the response has nothing in it that might reflect poorly on the city. That’s what we are paying millions for.
Time is another problem. Asking questions and getting responses take longer because these have to go through the third person. Because the person you are dealing with does not have any expertise in the area you have a question about, you need to make an extra effort to get across an understandable question. If there is a follow up question, this starts all over. If you ask too many follow up questions, they simply declare they have answered the question and sign off.
When you ask for documents, the automatic response is to go through the process of a Public Records Request.
Accountability is what is lost. No one can be called to task for anything. When employees had to face the public, they had to be accountable. Now, they can hide behind the media contacts. There is no doubt that city personnel love this system for just that reason.
In the end, what value are the Communications people adding for San Diegans? None. The only value they add is for the people running city government, $6,492,591 of public money to shield the city from the public it is supposed to be serving.
Public Records Act
The 1968 California Public Records Act, or PRA, requires the government to make records available to the public when requested. Exceptions exist where privacy or public safety concerns exist. Here is what the PRA states:
(c) Each agency, upon a request for a copy of records, shall,
within 10 days from receipt of the request, determine whether the
request, in whole or in part, seeks copies of disclosable public
records in the possession of the agency and shall promptly notify the
person making the request of the determination and the reasons
therefor. In unusual circumstances, the time limit prescribed in this
section may be extended by written notice by the head of the agency
or his or her designee to the person making the request, setting
forth the reasons for the extension and the date on which a
determination is expected to be dispatched. No notice shall specify a
date that would result in an extension for more than 14 days.
The city routinely violates what is described above. At about the ninth day of a request, the city will almost automatically send an email stating it needs an additional 14 days to satisfy the request. The PRA allows for an extension “In unusual circumstances.” Apparently, the city believes almost every request is an unusual circumstance.
Requesters have to wait 24 days, or five weeks, to get a response. Not all the time, of course, but it is very common. But, even after violating the intent of “unusual circumstances” to get five weeks to respond, that may not be enough. The city very often sends additional emails noting more extensions not provided for anywhere in the PRA.
The system is set up for delays. Requests must be worded perfectly to get what is wanted. If not, additional requests are necessary taking more time. Incorrect documents are produced costing more time. These things can be avoided talking to an actual person, but that is no longer possible.
These delays make it unnecessarily difficult for people trying to obtain information. A request becomes an onerous, time-consuming effort. It becomes discouraging, which is built into public systems on purpose.
The City’s Public Records Request (PRR) system itself is built on a falsehood.
The city takes the position that their PRR system is an efficient way to keep track of documents and information flowing from the city. The big problem is the PRA has nothing in it about being a recording system for all document requests and releases by government. There is nothing in the PRA stating a PRR was the only way a citizen could ever obtain any information from the city.
The PRA simply lays out the rules for public record requests and the rules for government compliance. It was created to force government to release records it may not want to release voluntarily. But, using the PRA for requests that are not at all controversial or difficult to fulfill, simply to keep track of everything, is an abuse of the law. This is not about record keeping, it is completely about control.
One of the several justifications for the Communication Department personnel is that they are needed to respond to the large volume of PRRs that come into the system. The irony is that the only reason there is such a large volume of requests is because the city is abusing the PRA requiring a formal request for anything and everything. It is a self-fulfilling system.
Community Planning Groups
Reformation of the community planning group, or CPG, system is the third piece of the shield not fully in place officially, but in reality, has already begun working. In this case, the word “reformation” means gutting.
Simply stated, the main reason for CPGs has always been to review land use in their community and provide the city with recommendations. This meant reviewing specific projects planned for their area. Coming before the local planning group was a requirement of the permit process, it was a box that had project developers had to check. This gave the community notice of a new project and a forum to see the proposed plan and discuss it.
That has already changed.
In The Rag’s September 20, 2022, story, “The End to San Diego’s Community Planning Groups As We Knew Them,” (https://obrag.org/2022/09/the-end-to-san-diegos-community-planning-groups-as-we-knew-them/) contained the following two poison pills showing how the city has gutted CPG land use review.
Now, Council Policy 600-24 states:
The City will endeavor to document CPG recommendations, including project review recommendations. The City will endeavor to notify CPGs of discretionary permits or actions located within their area.
“endeavor to document and “Endeavor to notify” the planning groups. Endeavor only means to try.
It is a completely ambiguous word.
Before this, the city always notified CPGs of projects in their areas, The city would send blueprints of projects for detailed review. Now they plan only to “endeavor.”
The city also said this:
Private project applicants are not required by this policy to present their application before CPGs, although the City encourages applicants to conduct robust engagement with CPGs, the community, and project neighbors. Because CPGs are independent of the City, the City does not consider CPG hearings to be hearings as defined in California Government Code section 65905.5.
Applicants are “encouraged” to engage with CPGs instead of being “required,” which has always been part of the actual permitting process. Why would applicants spend the time and money to attend CPG meetings and make presentations to groups that are no longer part of the permit process?
The local CPGs, the OB Planning Board and the Peninsula Community Planning Board are already finding they are not receiving notice about projects in their areas.
A bit of a sad symptom of the reformation is how much CPG attendance by government representatives has dropped off. The OBPB, PCPB, and the Midway group all have a portion of their monthly agenda devoted to government reports. Representatives for various city, county, and state offices and others such as the San Diego Police Department attended regularly at one time.
Not anymore. The most notably absent are the city government representatives. The feeling is akin to a lame duck. The CPGs are no longer viewed as worth spending time on because the city has made them irrelevant to city government.
All the CPGs have to apply for certification by the city sometime either at the end of 2023 or sometime early next year. Until that happens, the sitting CPGs are in limbo, irrelevant. The first CPG elections to take place under the new system will be very interesting to watch. Because they have made membership on a CPG much more onerous, willingness to participate, which has always been a challenge for all CPGs, will suffer even more.
A person might think a reformation of a flawed system would result in a better system. Or, the word might conjure up The Reformation – capital R – where reform meant change or die horribly. No person is dying here but a system with a long history of citizen participation in their communities is doing just that.
The city needs opening back up. Departments need to answer citizen questions. The Communications Department needs a drastic reduction, if not elimination. Reserve the PRR system for serious, complicated requests. In today’s world, sending documents by email takes little time or effort. Free up city employees for things like this.
Doing all of this will not only make the city more transparent, it will also save money. Like the $6,492,591 we are spending now for people to ask one person a question who has to ask another person for the answer so they can then relay back what the other person said to the person asking the question. Seems we could save the money and eliminate the middle person.
Fabulous in depth summary. I call them the Unholy Trinity….but, can also explain the Mayor/Council/Developers/and Union contracts to pay for all to run ‘up the ladder” to next position. No one allowed to dissent.
Great article. What do we do to address it? Seems half the city council is running for re-election unopposed. What can we do to stop them from making things worse? Genuine question- if there’s something I can do to realistically help things, I’ll do em. I say realistically help things, because I know that most forms of political advocacy are essentially wasted on our willfully ignorant city leaders.
Exactly
WHAT DO WE DO TO ADDRESS IT?
Everyone I know in town is fretting.
Are we totally powerless in the face of special interests,
with Mayor Gloria being paid by all of them?
Good grief if so.
Sewer Group Job 721 (@2016), SD City team was fairly responsive prior to and during the work. Once the project was over, however, the calls for (heavy equipment damage) repairs to the roads and curbs fell on deaf ears.
The city was going to bail on street resurfacing after our utility undergrounding was completed a few years ago. They were going to try and say the streets were fine. The first segment, the center portion needed to be temp paved bc it was so bad to drive on while the rest of the neighborhood was being done. My wife was on them for a year, contact with several city people, before they finally conceded and redid the surface.
Good for her! But, isn’t it a shame to see the effort it takes? Anyone who discourages easily is lost.
Geoff, thank you for this terrific analysis. The CPG situation in District 3 is intriguing. Gloria staffers have said publicly that North Park and Uptown are “competitive” CPG areas; that’s a euphemism for “we want those CPGs gone.” Alternative “slates” have already formed. But there’s a hitch. D3 incumbent Stephen Whitburn is up for re-election. If Gloria succeeds in overturning the North Park and Uptown CPG elections and installing his minions, Whitburn’s three challengers (I’m one of them) will call him out: Do you support the Mayor’s assault on local democracy, or do you stand with your constituents? Stay tuned.
Thanks, Kate. That CPG business in North Park and Uptown seems to be the most interesting one of all. City Hall wants to control those areas because developers want at them. I admire anyone challenging Whitburn, go for it.
Thanks, much appreciated. Today’s U-T story on CPGs suggests the Uptown and probably North Park CPG elections will be overturned. So what happens when Gloria’s unelected minions are seated? They still are required to hold public meetings and hear public comments. I’ve served on NPPC; I know how formidable community members can be when they’re furious, they know the rules, and they watch for procedural errors, as they should. These unelecteds also will be required to run for election. They will soon see that they are in the predicament of the dog that caught the bus.
Reading about the City of San Diego Shield reminds of my 24-year career trying to preserve the natural environment from greedy land developers. The County of San Diego had to hire a squad of biologists, sound engineers, traffic analysts, groundwater geologists, soil scientists, landslide geologists, and me, the token archaeologist and architectural historian to review all discretionary permits in order to protect forests, endangered species, scenic areas, Native American religious sites and scientific properties from bulldozers all the while keeping humans away from excessive noise (trains, traffic, machinery) and landslides. All the while, platoons of lawyers, engineers and realtors threatened our lives and employment security. This played into screaming permit applicants who routinely telephoned the single man assigned to play gatekeeper. He had at his command a telephone bank to rout the calls, but what people did not know is he also kept wads of cellophane, bells, sound forks, tubes of beans, and a jar of glass marbles to assist in “managing” irate telephone calls. He gave the callers about one minute before paper began to crumple, bells rang, metallic sounds and glass began to clink. No matter what the caller said, he would insert the words, “We seem to be having a bad connection, call me back in ten minutes and let’s try again.” After terminating the calls, he wandered off to drink coffee and talk to the relevant urban planner for answers. This formerly approved government method is how public comments were handled before I departed government service.
You hit a homerun on this one Geoff.
When it comes to open government and community involvement Todd Gloria has been a disaster.
Geoff your work begs many questions from where are our council representatives, especially Council President Elo-Rivera, who fashions himself as an equity warrior, on this issue? Do they care or are they happy to run cover for the mayor? Why isn’t the hallowed out local media demanding greater transparency about City department performance and spending?
The budget for the Communications Department is staggering. At least now we know where some of the money goes.
It is disheartening to see the Dems are as bad or even worse than the Sanders and the Chamber of Commerce crowd of past administrations, when it comes to sharing information with the public. It might not make much of a difference but, as a life long Democrat, I have switched to “no party preference” in an attempt to let the local and state Dems know they are turning off what used to be their base.
Welcome to the “no party preference” crowd, DiegoK. Personally, I think everyone should be in this group.
Sean Elo-Rivera is an ideologue, and elected politicians of any ideological persuasion can be, and almost always are, dangerous.
Wow!
This reminds me of trying to give public testimony at the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Washington,
DC.
First, good luck even finding out when and where the
meeting is.
Second, good luck getting on the schedule. If you do succeed in this,
you are given two minutes, then the microphone is shut off.
Thanks very much, Geoff, for the research and time you put into this really important article. All of San Diego should appreciate your efforts on behalf of all residents and taxpayers. I hope to see much more of this from you. Thanks again.
Thank you for the kind words, Paul.
I fully concur with Paul Krueger. Outstanding article by Geoff. Fantastic job!
Yep, excellent peeling back of the onion, Geoff! Thank you. So depressing, this miasma of municipal manipulation. I am a committed advocate of CPGs, wherever they are, as the actual mouthpiece of a community, and they are being especially sidelined in San Diego, it seems. I fret for their lost power, and can only hope local citizens will surge forward to reclaim it! It is SUPPOSED to be your voice, so you must insist on your representation! :-)
Thank you Geoff Page. And for those of you playing along at home:
Daniel Ellsberg in a speech once explained how those who are charged with keeping secrets become convinced that they are smarter and more capable than those who don’t have that information. He discussed how secrecy creates a feedback loop in which officials inside a secrecy bubble start to believe that they are invincible. They become subject to groupthink and so are increasingly unwilling to recognize legitimate criticism or concerns from those outside the bubble. He made clear the dangerous and corrosive power of governmental secrecy, something he had experienced, and then rejected, in himself.
Ellsberg also was unflinching in asserting that most governmental secrecy is not necessary. “Most secrecy is not directed at keeping secrets from external nations, enemies, allies, or otherwise. It’s to keep secrets from Americans, Congress, and public courts. They’re the ones that have the votes and write the budgets,” he said at a Harvard Law School Human Rights Clinic event in 2011. “They’re the ones whose blame is to be feared.”
God, how I miss that guy.
Really…there are just so many things that are not the same and never will be. It’s call impermanence.
Geoff, this is a fabulous breakdown and analysis of the system I’ve been curious about, and you have confirmed my suspicions in clear and in-depth ways.
Incredible piece, Geoff. I had no idea of a 38 person Department of Communications. You beautifully tie it to the PIRA and community planning groups evisceration. The first question that came to my mind is: Do other cities have such a Department? Of such a size?
I will send it to the faculty of my old school – “of public affairs” faculty hoping that some faculty will become interested and do more research and contact the chair to see if the School could organize a forum on it.
Thank you! Nico Calavita
Great, Nico, anymore information on this would be wonderful. I had that same question in mind about other cities.
I think it’s worth mentioning to readers that even though nothing takes the place of a copy, inspection, in theory, must be granted immediately: “Public records are open to inspection at all times during the office hours of a state or local agency and every person has a right to inspect any public record, exempted as otherwise provided.” (Gov’t Code section 7922.525.)
Also, that the agency has a duty, when asked, to assist the requester in identifying the records, describing them, and accessing them. (Gov’t Code section 7922.600.)
What has been your experience in requesting to inspect (not copy) and having the city identify and help you access the records?
Paul, I can speak to what has happened to me in my quests for Public Records by request. The City may or may not reply at all. If the City does reply, it does so only after taking the maximum amount of time available to them legally, and then the Communications Department, that Geoff speaks of, will make additional generalizations about your request. More times than not the Communications Department will redundantly parrot the same excuse that your request does not match the organizational structure in which the records you’ve requested are kept. After you alter your request to accommodate them, the City will sandbag (or SANDAG as we like to say) the secondary request, once again for the maximum time available to them legally, and then Communications Department will reply with further generalizations of why they just cannot supply the information that you’re requesting. That is, if they apply at all.
So your next step, is to file a complaint with the San Diego Ethics Commission, which is comprised of the Mayor, the City Attorney, and the City Council President. If your request implicates either or all three of these wolves guarding the hen house, then you haven’t a snowballs chance in Hell.
Then you can make a PRR with Newsom’s hand selected and appointed Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office. The Attorney General’s website will send a confirmation form-letter email notifying you that they have received your PRR. And there your matter will die forever. Bonta’s Office is unavailable by phone and they refuse to reply to any emails.
So if by this time if you have not grown exacerbated and given up altogether, your can hire an attorney at your own expense.
Simply put, by design, there are no enforcement mechanisms nor penalties for City, County and State Officials to break the PRR law especially with Roy Cohn, or I mean Mara Elliot acting as City Attorney.
Good point, Paul, I have not tried that angle. I got so used to city offices being inaccessible because of COVID that this did not occur to me. My guess, however, it that “immediately” to them still means five weeks.
Geoff,
Once again thanks for the excellent article & analysis.
Now, the difficult question is this: what strategies can the community enact to pressure city administration to be responsive and hold them accountable?
What are some strategies some of you in the community have successfully used?
Suggestions anyone?
We can start by utilizing the wonderful resource that is the OB Rag to educate and adopt strategies that have worked in the past.
1.) Patch together a coalition of activist organizations throughout the city, county and then state to pool resources and to form a unified front.
2.) Host our own town halls in every district, invite elected officials that will inevitably refuse to show-up exposing them for who they really are
3.) Advocate for Rank Choice Voting and bypass the council, county supervisors and State to get Rank Choice Voting on the ballot as an initiative
4.) Support and advance Open Primaries and bypass local and county party leaders to get this initiative on the ballot as other states are now
5.) Support the Anti-Corruption Act
6.) Eliminate, through another ballot initiative, the ridiculous restrictive requirements that are impediments for San Diegans to run for City office that have been legislatively enacted as an by the parties and their incumbent sycophants
This is for starters. America’s greatest strength has always been the unity we’ve found through our diversity and harnessed for the public good. The citizenry have all of the ingredients to solve our own problems, despite the 2 parties and 5 corporate media giants that have been dividing and conquering us.
I think we start by electing people to city council who will not be one of the mayor’s toadies. Collen Cusack for one would be great. Someone needs to get to city hall and bring a crowbar to open things up.
My experience trying to ring information out of the federal government through Freedom Of Information Act requests was to persist in asking, persist, then persist some more.
Eventually, the excuses run out and some often vital information can show up – info that can be used in court, for example.
This is absolutely what it takes, Tessa, lots of persistence and patience.