Politics Report: It’s All in the Question

The anti-tax-and-fees crowd is having a moment. Conservative politicians past and present are pushing ballot measures to repeal the city’s trash fee and paid parking in Balboa Park. 

City government is solidly Democratic in ways that were previously unthinkable. But these ballot measures — which could cripple the city’s finances — are getting lots of traction. Do they stand a chance?

Right now, it’s impossible to know, because the way the city attorney describes them on the ballot could play a huge role. 

Just ask former San Diego city councilmembers Donna Frye or Carl DeMaio. 

In 2018, DeMaio (who is now in the State Assembly) pushed a repeal of the state’s gas tax. Voters liked that idea. When asked about a repeal in a straightforward manner, roughly half the electorate wanted to repeal the gas tax, according to polling by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The final ballot language, however, was not straightforward. Dan Walters, a columnist at CalMatters, wrote that state officials gave the proposition a “hostile official ballot title.” 

Instead of a question about repealing the tax, the title read: “Eliminates Certain Road Repair and Transportation Funding.” It lost with about 43 percent of the vote. 

For a statewide ballot measure, the attorney general writes the title. For city measures, it’s the city attorney and the city council. 

In 2016, Frye sued the Council for the language it tried to place on the ballot regarding Measure D, a hotel tax she was backing. 

The 2016 ballot had two competing tax measures. The one backed by Frye would have taxed hotels to pay for a new convention center and put money in the city’s general fund. The other would’ve taxed hotels to build a new Chargers’ stadium. 

The City Council put the word “tax” in the title of Frye’s measure, essentially as a poison pill. Councilmembers excluded the word from the stadium measure.

Through her suit, Frye did get a new title, but it still had the word “tax” in it. She lost (and so did the stadium tax.)

When it comes to ballot measures, language doesn’t just matter — it’s the whole thing. 

It will be months before we know if the trash and parking fee repeals make it to the ballot. But only then, once the City Attorney and the City Council get their hands on the words, will we have a better idea of their chances.

First the City Attorney will be charged with drafting impartial language to appear on the ballot. Next, the City Council will approve that language and, in the process, possibly tweak it. 

If former Mayor Kevin Faulconer and current City Council candidate Richard Bailey, who are backing the measures, don’t like the final products, they’ll have the chance to sue. 

Will They Make the Ballot, Though?

The trash repeal has a much better chance of making the ballot than the Balboa parking measure. 

That’s because the trash fee repeal backers are utilizing a provision in the state constitution that allows citizens to try to repeal fees they don’t like.

Under that provision, the trash fee repeal needs far fewer signatures. 

The trash fee repeal effort just needs to get enough signatures to equal five percent of city voters who voted in the last gubernatorial election in order to get on the ballot. 

That’s about 20,000 signatures, as Scott reported back in December.

The Balboa parking measure, meanwhile, is a regular citizen’s initiative that would change city law. It operates under slightly different rules. 

Citizen’s initiatives need enough signatures to equal 10 percent of all registered city voters. That’s about 82,000 signatures, according to the City Clerk’s Office.

The City Clerk encourages efforts which need this many signatures to start at least a year in advance. 

The parking measure backers don’t have a year and they needs a whole lot of signatures. 

The City Clerk must submit ballot measures to the County Registrar of Voters by Aug. 7. But before that, the signatures have to be verified, the city attorney has to write the ballot language and the council has to approve it. 

The anti-tax-and-fees crowd will have to get their signatures turned in well before August to stand any chance of making it to the November ballot. 

It’s Back! Off the Record, 2026

Last year, we had a blast at our big event at Coasterra we called Off the Record. It was for our 20th anniversary, but people had so much fun with the roasts, videos and the novel concept that we should put our phones away for a bit that we decided to do it again.

Here’s the Save the Date video, produced by our excellent partners at Loma Media:

Almost all the tables are sold but you can get a limited number of individual tickets here. If you are interested in sponsoring, please hurry and contact julianne.markow@voiceofsandiego.org.

Phones will be checked at the door. All the money we pull in will go to more investigative and explanatory journalism. All the money that is except for a few expenses like the delicious meals.

About Those County Polls

Lisa Halverstadt focused her story this week on the taxpayer cost of the polls that County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer commissioned to help inform the ballot measure that could transform county governance and a tax increase.

But what did the polls actually show. Here are the slides from the poll about reforming the county Charter (extending term limits, creating an ethics commission, etc.) The poll found that 54 percent of respondents believe the county of San Diego is headed in the wrong direction. That compares to 34 percent who said it was going in the right direction. And 51 percent “disapprove of the county’s job performance.”

In spite of that (or maybe because of it?) 79 percent of respondents were supportive of reforming county governance “to increase public disclosure/government transparency; create an independent Ethics Commission to investigate misconduct; require an elected County Executive; require an independent budget office and auditor; require that a nonpartisan legislative analyst review proposed County policies; require Board approval for County department heads; limit the County Executive and Board of Supervisor members to three, four-year terms; and require no new cost to taxpayers to implement?”

They support the “three, four year terms” limit but aren’t told the limit is two, four year terms now.

Transparency is a hit: “Voters strongly embrace requiring more public disclosure and creating an independent ethics commission,” the summary reads. When asked why they would support the measure “Government oversight/transparency/accountability” was the top line by far getting the nod from 43 percent of the yes respondents far more than the next option down on the list “Helps against corruption/poor ethics” which only got 15 percent.

All this emphasis on transparency and yet when we asked for this document, they refused to give it to us until we threatened to sue.

And the tax measure: Here are the slides from the June poll taxpayers paid for on whether they would want to pay more. They do, according to the pollster, FM3: “Nearly two-thirds think San Diego County government has a significant need for additional funds to provide local services.”

Notes

Guilty! Sometimes it takes a while to see the impact of our work. We dropped what we thought were huge stories in August 2023 about an obviously fake charity taking advantage of a Petco Park/Padres/Delaware North program that allows nonprofits to run concession stands with their volunteers in exchange for 10 percent of the revenue. But we didn’t hear much about it after the stories ran.

Until this week: Noly Ilarde and Martin Rebollo pleaded guilty to wire fraud and more admitting they collected $3.5 million on behalf of their organization Chula Vista Fast Pitch, which was supposedly a girls youth softball league. But it didn’t exist. They acknowledged they put $2 million in their pockets. Before the plea, many many months passed and we didn’t see any impact except for the fake softball league getting kicked out of Petco Park and other minor moves. We wondered if we had something wrong. Did we overestimate the money they collected?

Turns out, we underestimated it: To pull in that much money, Ilarde and Rebollo were managing 25 concession stands every event day for the Padres and Delaware North while paying supposed “volunteers” under the table and below minimum wage. The podcast had Will Huntsberry on as a guest this week to talk about the story. (Just a note, if you see someone collecting $3.5 million for a nonprofit youth sports league, you may need to explore what’s going on.)

Vargas is into the war: Rep. Juan Vargas was one of the few Democrats who helped block the House from setting up a vote to authorize the attacks on Iran. He put out a statement: “Congress has a critical role to play in military operations, and the Administration must abide by the War Powers Act. While I have serious concerns about the Administration’s decisions and approach, we need to have flexibility when service members are actively engaged and – as we have had in the past – options available to respond to such bad actors and humanitarian abuses.”

Frye alleges Brown Act violation: In an email to the City Council, former Councilmember Donna Frye said three members of the Rules Committee violated the state’s open meetings law when they held a press event before a January committee meeting announcing their support for an approach to the Balboa Park parking fee debacle that would suspend the fees for residents. There was also a proposal submitted by Shane Harris to put all the fees up for a referendum. “The actions of the three councilmembers disenfranchised every single person who showed up at the Rules Committee meeting on January 28 to speak on the Balboa Park paid parking ballot measure. The public didn’t know that what they had to say didn’t matter because a majority of the Rules Committee members had already made up their minds.”

If you have any feedback or ideas for the Politics Report or you would be interested in a Chula Vista Fast Pitch t-shirt or other merch, send a note to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org or will.huntsberry@voiceofsandiego.org.

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