Qualcomm's Jacobs fishing for funds for Fletcher

shirleyberan: thank you Shirley but you should really thank Don for giving us this forum and for always being so polite and such a gentleman.
— September 8, 2013 5:15 p.m.

Qualcomm's Jacobs fishing for funds for Fletcher

Don: Remember this from April 2012 http://bit.ly/1aWviz3. If you read it carefully you will recognize the 5-year labor deal Filner claimed credit for in his first few months - sans the POBs. Otherwise the 2011/12 labor deal reads almost exactly the same as the implemented 2013 labor deal. That means that a comprehensive deal, including the POBs, was struck between Filner and the City unions in 2011. Without that ticket he could not have been elected. It doesn't matter what you and I think about POBs, that's what the City unions want. When the time is right they will use the argument that the Muni Code obligates the City to introduce them, which it does. They convert actuarial liability to real liability.
— September 8, 2013 8:57 a.m.

Qualcomm's Jacobs fishing for funds for Fletcher

HonestGovernment: I can see you are as intrigued by Irene McCormack's motivation as I am. I doubt there was anything personal between her and Filner. It was just teasing and by all accounts she teased him back. She's a big girl. There had to be something more. Why did she take a $50,000 pay cut to come work for him? Because she had the hots for a 70 year-old guy? Hardly. She went from a $175,000 permanent job with the Port to a non-civil service political appointee job at $125,000 with a new mayor? She had been with the Port for eight years and was very influential there. Why would she do that? The dots that connect are (a) SDCERS and (b) Cory Briggs. First, SDCERS: it manages both the City's and Port's pension schemes. Her 8 years pensionable service with the Port are portable (no pun intended) to the City and visa versa. The City and Port share the same investment manager and both need Pension Obligation Bonds (POBs) to secure their funding. That is paramount. Scott Chadwick is the City's HR Director. He is the ring master for the City and its unions. She really came to work for him. Her job was to ensure that Filner followed through on his pre-election promise to implement POBs. She made sure she had his ear and reported back to Chadwick and Zucchett that he would likely drag his feet on his POB promise. They were livid. They talked to Fletcher. Fletcher was ecstatic. Filner's fate was sealed. Second, Cory Briggs: he and McCormack had "negotiated" together over Port legal issues for several years. They had come to know each other well. They had perfected the art of no-holds-barred bargaining together. Cory assured Bob that she was a safe hire. Bob had no idea who she really was. He thought she liked him. Only women understand just how dumb men can be. Both Cory and Irene knew from long experience that the unions control the flow of money downtown and on the waterfront. They want POBs and that must come before there is money for anything else. The moment Bob mentioned support for the Convention Center Expansion Zucchett and Chadwick knew that he just didn't get it. You can't have a CC expansion and POBs. Bob thought he could play them. The question now is whether Fletcher can deliver or go to the guillotine like Filner.
— September 8, 2013 2:57 a.m.

Qualcomm's Jacobs fishing for funds for Fletcher

HonestGovernment: I could look it up but I doubt they are in any way connected. There were too many people in the room for it to be misunderstood. By hurling such an offensive personal remark on her way out the door with her real boss, Scott Chadwick, she was reflecting these people's utter contempt for elected politicians. She should try doing that in the private sector.
— September 7, 2013 10:50 a.m.

Qualcomm's Jacobs fishing for funds for Fletcher

Thanks Don but if I'm "right on the mark" it's not because I'm particularly clever it's simply because I stick to first principles: the city is run by city employees, who care only about their pensions. It is certainly not run by elected politicians - whom they despise. The key man is always the city's human resources director. Nobody get's that job without being carefully trained over a long period of time by the city unions. Note the key part played by Scott Chadwick in Filner's ouster. Their chief "plant", Irene McCormack, knew she had a job with Scott Chadwick at HR when she walked out of that mayoral meeting making her now infamous "panties" remark on the way out the door. The fact was that at that moment, and every moment, the HR director, in this case Scott Chadwick, wields more power than the mayor. In the old City Manager days the HR director became the City Manager as a matter of course. Jack McCrory is a good example of that carefully managed progression. McCrory had been at HR for 15 years before becoming Susan Golding's "pick" for City Manager. Her Faustian deals with the unions, through their well-trained man McCrory, were what brought us MP1 and MP2 and the city pension funding disaster. Full marks to Nathan Fletcher for figuring all this out without ever spending an hour at City Hall. In many ways he is like Susan Golding, opportunist to the core. He has forged a new deal between the city unions and Jacobs' Qualcomm empire. It brings with it the Jacobs-funded KPBS and the Voice of San Diego, who will dutifully sing his "progressive" praises like a Greek Chorus. The City unions bring their own sycophant third-rate "newspaper" called CityBeat for free. As speech writers and spin artists he has recruited some of the most unscrupulous socio-politico "climbers" in town e.g. Rachell Laing (now new best friends with Lorena and Cory) guided from behind the dark curtain by Irwin Jacob's very own Merlin-the-puppeteer, Gerry Braun. Pretty soon all the smart money in town will abandon Faulconer in droves to join the new union/business cartel modeled on the old familiar power circle under the City Manager form of government. There has just been a change of business bosses that's all. The Jacobs' Family have taken over from the Price Family. Filner was doomed to be our only real taste of a Strong Mayor form of government. It lasted for all of 6 months. Faulconer on the other hand will vainly try to form a competing coalition out of an old Lincoln Club, a rudderless U-T and a tired Republican Party run by Tony Kvaric who is essentially a technocrat who does not understand "the vision thing". The bottom line is that we will get whatever city services the unions can afford after the employees make sure their city pensions are securely funded. That's the new deal.
— September 7, 2013 5:23 a.m.

Qualcomm's Jacobs fishing for funds for Fletcher

enzo: try running a big unionized organization like one of America's eighth largest cities in a way contrary to the wishes of its employees and see how long you will last. Six, eight months at the most. We are already paying into the city pension fund many times what it would take to fix the roads and the pension system is still dangerously underfunded. It is surviving on a pipe dream "actuarial assumption" of 7.75% return on investment. The shortfall is then simply charged to the city as an "unfunded liability". How long can that go on?
— September 6, 2013 7:36 p.m.

Qualcomm's Jacobs fishing for funds for Fletcher

Yankeedoodle: I will vote for Coons no matter what. I only wish I knew a few dead men that might wish to vote for him too. I just wanted to underline what little democracy there is left given the power of the people we employ to run the city because of how few of us bother to understand how it all works. Have you ever wondered how a tiny number of people like the city firefighters can have so much political power? How is that?
— September 6, 2013 7:25 p.m.

Qualcomm's Jacobs fishing for funds for Fletcher

enzo: Mike Aguirre doesn't have a chance because he doesn't represent either side in this battle and there is no middle ground. This is between Faulconer and Fletcher. It is a battle for control of the city's borrowing power. It is not neighborhoods vs. downtown development. That is just election talk. It is about using the city's limited borrowing power to save the city's frail pension system vs. borrowing to build an unwanted stadium and/or convention center expansion. Elections are like war, you can't see the battle for the smoke. The city employee unions thought they had the matter sown up with the defeat of DeMaio only to find out that Filner was making the same mistake Aguirre is making now: thinking that running this city is about anything other than city employee pensions. Of all people Aguirre should know that. Fletcher figured it out and that is why he will be your next mayor.
— September 6, 2013 6:01 p.m.

Qualcomm's Jacobs fishing for funds for Fletcher

Don: I'm glad you see Fletcher for what he is, an amoral opportunist. What I would love to know is what he has promised the MEA and the safety unions. My guess is that it is pension obligation bonds. Securing their pensions is their number one priority. Filner made the fatal mistake of not appreciating how powerful the MEA and the safety unions really are. They are very different from the Labor Council, of which they are not even members. Briggs, Marco and Donna were merely their willing agents. Now that Lorena is gone this distinction, which she somehow managed to hide, will become much clearer. It is already emerging in their different endorsements. The marriage of Jacobs' money with the raw power of the MEA and safety unions will be impossible for Faulconer to overcome, no matter how much money is poured in by the Republican old guard. He will never be mayor and even if he did he would be unable to govern. Sanders was unique in that he was an ex city employee and knew the score. Todd Gloria had to take a back seat to their ex-marine, soldier-of-fortune, mayor-for-hire, Nathan Fletcher, simply because these union bosses ordered him to. City union bosses have run this town for decades and will continue to do so well into the future. It was they, not the downtown business interests, that decided Filner had to go, because he would not give them what their well-chosen ambitious hit-man, Nathan Fletcher has now pledged his very soul to deliver. The key Faustian promise can only be the security of the city pension system which may well be at the expense of some downtown development pet projects. It will require another u-turn by Nathan, this time on his midnight redevelopment deal. Every penny will need to go into the General Fund if the city employee pension system is to be securely funded.
— September 6, 2013 5:15 p.m.

Hueso, Emerald reconfirm statements on DeMaio behavior

Ponzi: I have been active in the House of Ireland, a constituent member of the international houses for over 30 years and can confirm the timing you mentioned. I know exactly what happened. We all do. David Cohn gets anything he wants from the City and will eventually get the Balboa Club and his paid parking garage adjacent to his two restaurants. He already has the exclusive right to valet parking in the Park. I got a copy of his lease. Irwin Jacobs is merely doing what his friend is asking him to do.
— August 31, 2013 4:38 a.m.