A crack has appeared in Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s universal anti-tax stand.

Now will be interesting to see if it widens enough to allow, say, a tax hike for a Chargers stadium.

Since he’s been in the executive office, the mayor has been rather bullish on taxes. He opposes the proposed half-cent transportation sales tax measure placed on the November ballot by the San Diego Association of Governments. He put the kibosh on the idea of a mega-bond aimed at addressing the city’s huge infrastructure deficit that would have raised property taxes. (This paragraph has been updated. The original post wrongly stated Councilman Mark Kersey pushed the mega-bond.)

And he repeatedly stressed that his plan to build a stadium in Mission Valley would do so without raising taxes, never mind that he pledged to spend $200 million in city taxpayer funds on it.


× Mayor Kevin Faulconer talks about the Chargers in his State of the City address.

The mayor’s office says Faulconer supports a new tax proposal from Councilman Mark Kersey — a levy on recreational marijuana (if it is legalized by state voters). The council this past week voted 5-4 to place Kersey’s proposal on the ballot.

Faulconer’s pot tax position makes me wonder whether he’s warmed up to the Chargers’ November initiative to raise hotel taxes for their stadium-convention center plan. A lot of people are wondering whether he’s headed in that direction now that his friends at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce have endorsed the team’s downtown stadium plan. The mayor, of course, isn’t saying.

A lot of Faulconer’s other allies and friends — hoteliers, Republican council members — are harshly critical of the Chargers plan, so it doesn’t seem he’ll be able to make everybody happy in this case.


Politically, Faulconer has more room to move since he won re-election outright in the June primary. Still, it would require finesse to back a tax increase, even one largely on out-of-towners, after he has dismissed others for road repair and infrastructure — his stated top priorities.

Faulconer has long said his decision will be driven by whether the Chargers’ initiative protects taxpayers. If he believes, his analysis will be in great demand.

Something’s missing

The SANDAG transportation tax hike proposal has drawn support and opposition that doesn’t fall along typical party and philosophical lines. Some Democratic and Republican officeholders and organizations they tend to be friendly with support it, others do not.

This past week, the local chapter of the Sierra Club came out against it, contending it doesn’t do enough to curb greenhouse gases because not enough is spent on transit, among other things. The San Diego County Taxpayers Association backed it, maintaining it improves transit and transportation overall and cuts commute times.


Citizens for a Better San Diego, which is campaigning for the initiative, announced the taxpayers association’s support, and while its release points out the measure would raise $18 billion, it never mentions the half-cent sales tax increase.

Vouchers Pt. II

Last week, I did a lengthy item on an interesting story in the Voice of San Diego about how county Office of Education employees attended a meeting where some were “prepared to air their workplace grievances.” Writer Ashly McGlone said they showed up to a session that had a party atmosphere where $100 vouchers for school books and supplies for two nearby stores were given out, ostensibly to water down dissent.

The Office of Education took issue with the Voice story, and my summarizing it, contending it failed to include information that would have given a different picture of events. Music Watson, chief communications officer for the Office of Education, listed several points in an email and out of fairness I’m going to relay some of them here. According to Watson:

--The meeting at Hazard Center in Mission Valley had a broad agenda, which was sent out in advance and had seven items. The first was “Student/Staff Celebration of Learning” and the last was “Vouchers.” Among those between were “ELD Shadowing Data and Next Steps,” “Specific Agenda Solicitation Response and Additional Staff Q & A,” and “Coming Attractions (brand launch, organizational survey, Learning Walk III.)”


“So while employees may have been ‘prepared to air their workplace grievances and get answers,’ that was within the context of a larger meeting that had been planned well in advance,” Watson wrote.

--The story “leaves the impression that people came to a Q&A session and were turned loose to buy, rather than being allowed several hours to shop after participating in an all-staff meeting. That is patently false and terribly misleading.”

--In the story, Watson told the Voice that the narrow time frame for purchases only on that day of the meeting was in order to better screen purchases on-site. In the email, she said she gave an additional reason: “The time frame for using the vouchers was intended to take advantage of the fact that Momentum Learning staff were already at Hazard Center, home to the two stores where vouchers were to be used. ...”

--An Office of Education email was quoted in the story that doubted “our internal business office would be okay with this type of scenario.”


Wrote Watson: “The line about internal business not being okay with a certain scenario is incredibly misleading. That was in reference to people paying any amount over the voucher amount. Her story, as written, implies that the employee was saying internal business wouldn’t be okay with vouchers at all.”

Still, Watson admitted it was “a situation that we admittedly would handle differently next time.”

Tweet of the week

Goes Kimberly Hunt (@10NewsHunt)

“Officer JD De Guzman’s Sgt. is clearly crushed saying JD’s answer was always ‘I got it Sarge!’”