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Five years later, a scandal that surrounded the San Diego Government Association in 2017 — Resignation Gary Galegos, Executive Director for many years — unforgettable. Gallegos celebrates the fall of SANDAG Efforts to deceive County voters said the county sales tax, Major A, proposed in 2016, is a major transport agency in the region by significantly exaggerating the amount of money that will be incurred in highway and transportation projects over 40 years. Other staff did know that it was a falsehood.
Related revelation It has solidified the image of SANDAG as an arrogant and fraudulent institution that believes it is beyond accountability. Long before Measure A, government officials were years behind forecasting earnings, which previously had strong reasons to be considered ridiculous. They objected to correcting or disclosing bad predictions as they became known. They even proposed an email removal plan that looks like the beginning of a serious cover-up. If SANDAG was a Wall Street company subject to securities trading commission sanctions, scandals would have been a full employment law for white-collar lawyers in Southern California.
More than 15 years have passed since it was revealed that San Diego city leaders worked swiftly and slowly on the city’s finances to deliberately disguise the damage caused by the underfunded pension program decision. Even today, the city that has earned the nickname “Enron by the Sea” continues to exist. I am suffering from a trust gap. Perhaps city officials should follow SANDAG’s lead and pretend that this history never happened. Consider the agency’s response to the confluence of the two recent events.
The first is the release of SANDAG, a revised plan to make the use of public transport to San Diego’s international airport much easier, with an initial cost. $ 4 billion.. The second is Disclosure As a result of internal audit, SANDAG employees have run out of more than $ 300,000 in “inappropriate” and “suspicious” payments for taxpayer-funded purchase cards, and agents say that even if workers are defeated. , Made no effort to pressure workers to follow established rules. This indifference is even more exorbitant than it initially seemed, given that Executive Director Hasan Ikhrata approved hundreds of thousands of dollars in a previous internal audit in 2020. Improper severance pay and bonus payments..
Now that SANDAG has a bold plan of tens of billions of dollars far beyond airport transit plans, will the agility of government agencies regarding public spending affect its credibility and credibility perspective? It’s natural to wonder. Nevertheless, despite repeated requests, SANDAG refused to answer this particular audit question and remarks about the agency through a media aide. An institution that wants to spend tens of billions of dollars on large projects over the next few years, but has faced scandals against false claims in the past? “
Instead, a vague “wrong” answer was provided, and Ikhrata focused on the “awareness” that audits could cause. It’s not perception. That is the reality. SANDAG is still unreliable.
Who agrees? Mayor Carlsbad Matt Hall, a member of the SANDAG Board of Directors. He told the editorial writer that SANDAG is the “worst government” to ignore its rules and downplay what it has done. He says it’s part of the overall SANDAG effort to push a neat “story” about the agency, even when its grand plans aren’t accompanied by realistic business plans that show their viability. said.
In another email interview, SANDAG Board Chairman and first Vice-Chairman Encinitas Mayor Catherine Breakspeare and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria agreed that audits should be watched. However, Blakespear wrote that it wasn’t too much of a problem and she believed that SANDAG’s overall record “gained the trust of the community.” Gloria has taken a more vigilant position. “We have to do better to show that this is a competent, transparent and credible institution.”
Is SANDAG surely trying to do better? Or will there be a political campaign that emphasizes that Hall has long been outliers on the SANDAG issue, ignoring his substantive criticisms? San Diegons need to be very careful. Your stake (billions of dollars) is too high to treat this flap as trivial.
