The May 4 U-T report showing that the city’s 2022 estimate of how much a new trash collection fee would cost 200,000-plus affected single-family homes was far lower than it should have been — due to many basic calculation errors — is one more body blow to the credibility and reputation of Mayor Todd Gloria and City Hall.
The $23 to $29 a month estimate presented to voters in a successful attempt to persuade them to narrowly approve letting the city charge these homes for trash collection has given way to a $47.59 fee the city is poised to implement — that is, unless a miracle strikes and a majority of affected parcel owners and tenants navigate a suspiciously difficult voting process and object to the fee. Given how many people this civic train wreck will directly hurt, it appears the trash bait-and-switch has supplanted the purchase of the decrepit Ash Street office tower as the worst city scandal in at least 20 years.
The case for this assertion only grows upon considering city officials’ characterization of this gross deception as “an honest mistake.” Anyone who has paid attention to such “honest mistakes” in California over the years knows that the mistakes always lead to outcomes favorable to the politicians running the government body that made them — in this case, providing cover to City Hall’s desperate attempt to add a new revenue source to help it pay its staggering pension bills. Yeah, sure, they’re all “honest mistakes.”
A key point: If something like this happened in the private sector, the fact that the mistakes were “honest” wouldn’t insulate those responsible from severe consequences. Under federal securities laws, companies that make material misstatements or omissions in a stock prospectus or other financial representations can be found liable even without evidence of ill intent or bad faith. Claims of incompetence may shield responsible parties from criminal charges but not civil penalties. A private firm caught doing what the city has done would have been hammered by the Securities and Exchange Commission and be at dire risk of costly private lawsuits.
This only adds to the case that the right thing for Gloria to do is to start from scratch and come up with a new trash fee policy — one that is free of so many mistakes, “honest” or otherwise. But San Diegans shouldn’t get their hopes up. Such a decision would require the sort of good judgment that has been missing on this issue for three years.
