What San Diego Needs Is Its Very Own Billionaire

By Steve Rodriguez

Let me offer an interesting proposition. What the City of San Diego government needs, above all else, is its very own billionaire.

Yes, San Diego needs billions of dollars, but first things first. To eventually get a sufficient number of those billions of dollars, we first need to find a special billionaire—a disrupter sort of billionaire who, along with his posse of brash assistants, can come into town and shake up our government operations and thereby save lots of money.

Our San Diego City government is in desperate need of more revenue to update infrastructure, pay off fiascos like the 101 Ash Street transaction, eliminate the pension debt, find money to pay first responder salaries, and for the never ending drain of addressing the homeless situation.

Accordingly, you might believe a well-meaning San Diegan like myself would pray for the heavens to miraculously open up and dispense billions of dollars, enabling City officials to cover all costs. However, that is just fantastical thinking. Rather, I seek the kind of realistic action only a mercilessly efficient billionaire can accomplish. As an aside, I do not favor revenue raising plans like increasing parking fees and adding a trash pick-up fee. Those plans, though realistic, are too small scale. We need to think in much bigger ways so that the City bureaucracy is forced to become an efficient, streamlined, and responsive machine saving tons of taxpayer money. Based on what I see at the national level, only a kick butt billionaire can accomplish this feat.

So, here is what I suggest… the City of San Diego must scour the world and find a billionaire tech entrepreneur (civic experience not preferred) willing to spend exclusive time in our fair city while devoting time, energy, and a ruthless attitude to investigating all aspects of our municipal government. In doing so, this billionaire—someone arrogant enough to break things and throw cautious common sense to the wind—should be able to uncover tremendous waste, inefficiency, and corruption. These complex times call for a disrupter billionaire who can treat the City of San Diego like a giant sofa for so long collecting coins and assorted detritus under its cushions. This billionaire and his team can throw off all the sofa cushions, turn the giant sofa upside down and let all the coins and junk fall out. He can then get rid of the metaphorical cookie crumbs, expired lottery tickets, and TV remotes found lingering under the cushions, and use the captured coins to start paying for an efficient City government.

The White House is a fine example of this idea. President Donald Trump has employed billionaire disrupter Elon Musk to bring chaos to the operations of several government agencies and find federal levels of waste, inefficiency and corruption. And Musk is apparently doing a fantastic job. He said so himself at a recent Oval Office appearance where he lectured the country on our government bureaucracy’s poor performance. Did he offer proof of his own performance? No, he did not. Did he offer exact monetary figures? I did not see any. But one needs to understand – Musk is a billionaire and must be accorded the benefit of the doubt. This is an unwritten rule of the new “Age of the Billionaires.” Nowadays, billionaires not only live lavish lifestyles, they also exert an influential say in our government proceedings. How did this come about? How is it we Americans must now treat billionaires like omnipotent kings accountable to no one? Who knows? All I know is our city must hurry and get a billionaire of its own before all the good ones are taken by other City governments.

Warning! Nice guy billionaires need not apply. As evidenced by Musk, a penchant for talking tough, acting macho, and exercising arm salutes normally associated with fascist regimes should be included in the hiring criteria. A tendency to push workers to exhaustion, as Jeff Bezos does with Amazon warehouse employees, must be seen as an asset.

There may be a price to be paid for the privilege of hiring this individual. Naming rights seem to be a thing with billionaires. It’s an easy way of demonstrating power and authority, and billionaires, bless their hearts, need these types of reassurances. For example, our billionaire president recently re-named the Gulf of Mexico, Musk rebranded Twitter as X, and billionaire Illinois governor JB Pritzker has proposed Lake Michigan become Lake Illinois. So local residents need to be ready for community name changes like Google Jolla, Zuckerberg Beach, or even Cuban Heights. This, however, is a small price to pay for good government.

I say we immediately form a search committee to find a Musk-type billionaire who can get this city squared away. Encourage the billionaire to run wild, unencumbered by the mayor, as well as the laws us mere mortals must follow, so he can turn over the San Diego sofa and allow us to see what falls out. What could wrong?

Sister cities? Fine tradition. Bro’ Billionaires? Great new concept.