Freebies for Officials

It’s springtime, when flowers bloom and city officials are required to disclose their personal financial dealings. There’s lots of money to be made in beer. At least that seems the conclusion best drawn from the disclosure statement filed by Christopher Wayne Cramer, a member of the City-owned San Diego Convention Center Corporation board. His interest in Associated Microbreweries, Ltd., proprietor of the Karl Strauss Brewing Company downtown, is reported to be worth more than $1 million. As cofounder and chief executive of the business, he makes more than $100,000. Still, no matter how well-heeled, Cramer wasn’t above taking a few freebies, including a $150 lunch and races at the Del Mar track from U.S. Bank in July and a $100 “senior management dinner on Hornblower” from Carnival Cruise Lines a year ago last month.

For her part, Virginia Jackson, boardmember of the City’s Horton Plaza Theatres Foundation, got two tickets to the opening night of Boom worth $78, four tickets to Culture Clash in AmeriCCa ($156), and three tickets to Storyville ($132), all thanks to the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

On the sports front, deputy city attorney Emily Ragland Garson got a $260 ticket to a Chargers game from E.S.Q. Services, whose business activity is listed as “photocopy services.” Christopher H. Goodman, on the board of the San Diego Data Processing Corporation, got a $300 Chargers ticket from KPMG LLP, the big accounting firm. Police captain Mark Jones got a $250 dinner ticket to the Alonzo Awards and one worth $140 to the Lamplighter Awards from the Downtown San Diego Partnership, a business lobbying group.

Cindy Hedgecock, a member of the Mission Bay Park Committee and wife of ex-mayor Roger Hedgecock — the onetime liberal Republican who was forced from office and onto the conservative radio talk show circuit following the J. David Dominelli scandal of the 1980s — reported receiving between $10,000 and $100,000 as a corporate officer of Worldwide Community Forum, Inc., her husband’s media management outfit. She valued the company’s net worth at between $10,000 and $100,000. The firm also owns real estate worth more than $1 million, according to the filing. In addition, Hedgecock reported getting between $1000 and $10,000 for managing real estate for Shore Management, Inc.

And then there was Jayne Janda-Timba, a member of the Wetlands Advisory Board and an associate at Rick Engineering, who reported that her spouse received between $10,000 and $100,000 from state unemployment.