Who really owns the Padres? That question has remained unanswered since John Moores and Larry Lucchino proposed in 1996 that San Diego city taxpayers subsidize the team's venture to build a downtown baseball stadium. The …

It's just what local convention-center boosters don't need to hear right now: a big software outfit based in Fairfax, Virginia, has canceled its San Diego conference for 1450 analysts and customers. WebMethods, Inc., an e-business …

Over the past year, novice investors learned the hard way that the stock market can be a tricky place to make money. Yet judging from their recent financial disclosure filings, San Diego County elected officials …

For most San Diegans, the mayoral race of the year 2000 was right here at home, between Judge Dick Murphy and county supervisor Ron Roberts. More than $3 million was lavished on the campaign by …

Las Vegas developer Irwin Molasky won't be a player at this year's Kentucky Derby after all. Molasky built -- along with the late Cleveland-raised mobster Moe Dalitz and Barbara Walters's ex-husband Merv Adelson -- the …

The Federal Communications Commission is using an old censorship case involving San Diego's KGB, now owned by Texas-based Clear Channel Communications, as an example of how not to run a radio station. Last week, the …

John C. Funk, a Harvard-educated environmental law attorney with the law firm of Weston, Benshoof, Rochefort, Rubalcava MacCuish in Los Angeles, represents some of the biggest companies in California, including the ubiquitous Allied Waste, the …

If Arizona senator John McCain's campaign-finance reform bill outlawing soft money becomes law, one big-spending San Diego diet-drug outfit may not be happy. Metabolife, founded by Michael Ellis and Michael Blevins, once convicted on charges …

With all the trouble in the Balkans these days, you'd think that the Predator, that unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, produced by La Jolla's General Atomics, owned by billionaire brothers Neal and Linden Blue, would …

In the movie, a fictionalized version of Spilotro, played by Joe Pesci, is seen to murder a character closely resembling Tamara Rand, a San Diego real estate woman in 1975 in the kitchen of her Mission Hills home.

Sixth District city council candidate Peter Navarro is making headway in his investigation into how those huge Union-Tribune signs got on the back of Qualcomm Stadium overlooking the busy I-15 and I-8 interchange in Mission …

Insiders say it isn't surprising that the San Diego Taxpayers Association has endorsed the city's latest ballpark-financing scheme, even though it's heavily subsidized by city taxpayers. Association president Mary Ball, whose name appears below the …

Campaign fundraising in San Diego County never ends. Immediately after election day last November, politicians of every stripe were out, hat in hand, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from a host of wealthy donors …

Ex-San Diego city councilwoman Valerie Stallings, forced to resign in January after admitting her failure to report a raft of gifts from Padres owner John Moores, has filed her leaving-office financial-disclosure statement as required by …

There are two local connections to the grisly murder of two professors at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. San Diego's Hannah Essery is the 80-year-old grandmother of James J. Parker, one of the two Vermont …

A diet doctor is gunned down in an alley outside his storefront clinic, and it looks like the kind of murder case San Diego homicide cops loathe: the professional hit, with a lengthy list of …

Toilet-to-tap, that less-than-appetizing plan to convert raw sewage into drinking water, was banished from the San Diego City Council's agenda after a storm of public controversy erupted more than two years ago. But this week …

With polls showing sagging public support for a taxpayer-funded downtown baseball stadium, the last thing ballpark backers would seem to need now is one of their own calling for higher taxes. Ever since 1998, when …

An alleged drug dealer from San Diego is acting as his own lawyer in a Providence, Rhode Island, federal court, where he's charged with moving thousands of pounds of marijuana from California to Rhode Island, …

After Larry's death, Kelley moved into Crown Manor, the lavish eight-bedroom mansion with 17 bathrooms on the Coronado beachfront that Larry had built for Shelia. Then, in April 1999, the couple had a son.

The taxpayer-funded San Diego Association of Governments is spending $60,000 on a consultant who will arrange focus groups and conduct a poll regarding extension of the so-called "Transnet" sales tax. The half-percent sales-tax addition, earmarked …

Atkinson owned more than $200 million of Qualcomm stock, according to the financial disclosure statement he is required to file. Qualcomm, which already has various technology agreements with UCSD, lobbied hard for the institute.

Fallen mayor and radio talk-show host Roger Hedgecock is being sued by a Pacific Beach neighbor who accuses him of encroaching on her property, unlawfully bulldozing a line of Italian cypress trees, and threatening a …

On October 26, 1999, the county Board of Supervisors voted to approve a $644 million, seven-year contract to "outsource" the county's computer and telephone operations. The move was heralded by the supervisors as a bold …

Members of the San Diego City Council and their staffs have filed their so-called "assuming office" financial disclosure statements required by law. Mayor Dick Murphy reports owning a couple of rental units in his old …

While she was mayor last year, Susan Golding picked up more than a little spare change on the side. According to her leaving-office disclosure statement filed late last month, Golding collected greater than $10,000 from …

As of Friday, December 8, an enormous portrait of Susan Golding still loomed over disembarking passengers at Lindbergh Field as they made their way across the pedestrian bridge to the parking lot. The tardy removal …

The San Diego Unified School District board last week shot down by a 3-2 vote a proposal by boardmember Frances Zimmerman to televise the board's meetings, despite editorial endorsement of the idea by the Union-Tribune, …

The never-aging Dick Clark, who began his career 44 years ago in Philadelphia as the host of that TV teen dance party, American Bandstand, and its forever-popular "Rate-a-Record" segment, has made millions, mostly by merchandising …

Developer C. Samuel Marasco, whose controversial $192 million plan to develop a commercial complex and pedestrian bridge across the San Ysidro border into Tijuana was hastily approved by a lame-duck city council late last month, …

Controversial city-schools administrator Anthony Alvarado is in line for a lucrative new contract, according to sources at the San Diego Unified School District. Alvarado, the ex?New Yorker and right-hand man to Superintendent Alan Bersin, is …

The election of Republican Darrell Issa to North County's 48th District congressional seat is setting off rapture among car-alarm lobbyists. Until recently, Issa was president of Vista's Directed Electronics, maker of the famous "Viper" anti-theft …

After Hedgecock's victory in the spring of 1983, Shepard became the crown prince of San Diego political consultants. He triumphed again that year in Hedgecock's campaign for voter approval of the downtown convention center.

As Susan Golding leaves the public payroll for the first time in her more than 19 years as city councilwoman, state bureaucrat, county supervisor, and San Diego mayor, friends are bidding her adieu. Next Wednesday, …

Union-Tribune editorial writers, their credibility shredded by years of unquestioning support for the Chargers' ticket guarantee and the downtown Padres stadium deal, took some major hits on election day. Unlike the days of yore, when …

Word comes from North Carolina, of all places, that lame-duck San Diego mayor Susan Golding is secretly attempting to fill a key city-hall vacancy before she leaves office at the end of the year. The …

Cash from that big-money push against school-board member Frances Zimmerman financed by Padres owner John Moores, his downtown real estate partner, Republican Malin Burnham, and Qualcomm mogul Irwin Jacobs, among others, has made its way …

For years, Mel Shapiro, a retired accountant who spends much of his time as a watchdog of the goings-on at San Diego's city hall, suspected that the city council was not being straight about what …

Some interesting San Diego business connections are coming to light as a result of the controversy over who paid for those TV spots against school-board member Frances Zimmerman. A venture-capital fund called Sorrento Associates -- …

When word broke two weeks ago that a group of local fat cats was paying for more than half a million dollars' worth of TV ads against San Diego Unified School District boardmember Frances O'Neill …

Dick Rider, the taxpayer-activist who went to court back in 1997 in a failed bid to throw out the now-controversial Chargers stadium deal, is out with a cutting critique of the San Diego Taxpayers Association's …

Contributions to the campaign of county supervisor Ron Roberts, a San Diego mayoral hopeful, from county data-processing contractors keep rolling in. According to disclosures made public last week, employees of Science Applications International who gave …

The politicians of San Diego have a well-earned reputation for laundering campaign contributions. In the past six years, no less than five major funding scandals have erupted, resulting in a series of five- and six-figure …

Hollywood is promising a forthcoming movie about a famous scam artist who currently lives in San Diego, and now they can add a new twist to the story. Barry Minkow, who did a seven-year stretch …

Although their team may be scrambling for stadium money, Padres honchos Larry Lucchino and Charles Steinberg have put together enough cash to buy a luxurious La Jolla Shores condo together. According to a deed filed …

Pat now even talked of divorce. “I think she would have divorced him,” Smith went on, “if he had not agreed to stay out of politics. But Nixon wanted to go on, and without her it wouldn’t work. "

How trustworthy are the editorials of the San Diego Union-Tribune? In at least one case, according to the Columbia Journalism Review, not very. A lengthy expos� headlined "Media Money" in this month's edition of the …

Letter from Judy McCarty to John Moores and Larry Lucchino."The roses are beautiful! There's too much said for the sake of argument…. Please accept my gratitude on behalf of the citizens of San Diego."

Last week's admission by ex-U.S. Customs officer Mike Horner that he had forged an internal memo cited by 60 Minutes in an April 1997 expos� of alleged corruption among high-ranking customs officials here may not …

New Yorker Jay Emmett, the Padres boardmember who pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from his alleged role as bagman in the Westchester Theatre Mafia scandal, is listed as giving $250 to the San Diego …