1 week Ago
San Diego City Council members are raising concerns about Mayor Todd Gloria calling the spending plan he released April 15 a “draft” budget instead of a full-blown “proposed” budget ready for debate and haggling.The mayor’s subtle shift in terminology appears to begin the next front in an ongoing war between the mayor and council for control and influence over the city budget.The new battle comes at a crucial time, with the city facing deep cuts and potentially significant employee layoffs for the first time since the aftermath of the Great Recession 15 years ago.
The council took steps a year ago to consolidate its power by reshaping budget review hearings held each May and by creating new opportunities to debate spending decisions and restore cuts proposed by the mayor.One year later, the mayor is for the first time characterizing his spending plan as a “draft,” and he’s saying he’s likely to substantially change it with his release of a May 14 document called the “May revise.”That timing could seriously diminish the importance of the council’s budget review hearings, five all-day events scheduled for May 5-9.
It may also make for a compressed budget-approval timeline that would limit council and public input.The council is scheduled to finalize the city’s budget June 10, just 27 days after the May revise.“It feels like it throws the entire process out of whack,” Councilmember Kent Lee told the mayor during a public hearing last week.
“If we just spend our time discussing what’s in this proposal, we’re likely going to miss a chunk of things you’ll bring forward in May.”Lee said he’s particularly worried that turbulence in the national economy caused by tariffs and other factors could force Gloria to scale back revenue projections and propose even deeper budget cuts come May 14.“What’s worrisome for me is that trying to analyze it becomes very difficult for us on this council,” Lee said.
“This may not be the floor of what we are expecting. Telling you what our concerns are now may not equate to what you might put on the table in May.”Councilmember Henry Foster, who chairs the council’s budget committee, also raised concerns.
“What was presented on April 15 was titled a ‘draft budget,’ and the language notably avoided referring to it as a ‘proposed budget,’” said Foster, questioning whether Gloria may have violated the city charter.Article 7, section 69 (c) of the city charter says that “the Mayor shall present the proposed budget to the Council and the public no later than April 15.” The word “draft” does not appear anywhere in the charter’s budget section.
Gloria said he believes he fulfilled the charter’s requirements because he presented a full spending plan where proposed revenues and expenses are equal.But he has also expressed an interest in revamping the budget process to make April 15 less important and the May revise more so.“I’m trying to move us to describing that as the true budget introduction,” Gloria told The San Diego Union-Tribune on April 14.
“This is a draft proposal.”Gloria acknowledged that the charter forces him to go first and release a spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year on April 15 each year. But he said economic data at that time is notably inferior to what he will have in mid-May, when revenue numbers for the first three quarters of the fiscal year are available.
“This is intended to start a conversation,” he said of the April 15 document. “It will likely shift substantially as we get additional economic data.”Gloria said the changes might be particularly large this year because of economic turbulence nationally and worldwide.
The mayor described input from the council and public in early May as factors he’ll consider when creating the budget, instead of as opportunities to change the budget he has already released.“We will get the public input and the council member input and the IBA’s review, and then we’ll put something together that is more reflective of where all parties are at,” said Gloria, referring to the city’s independent budget analyst.Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego, said he sees both sides in the debate.
The mayor is justifiably worried about unusual economic turbulence that makes it hard to come up with reliable revenue numbers for the upcoming fiscal years.“I don’t think it’s as much a power grab by the mayor as it is a recognition of the economic conditions,” Kousser said last week. “The broad brushes of the budget will likely have to be re-drawn.
”But Kousser also empathized with the council, which could face a week of comprehensive budget hearings that may not end up mattering all that much.“For legislative hearings to matter, there needs to be actual policy at stake,” he said.Gloria has another tool he could use this year to boost his own power: the powerful, but rarely used line-item veto.
That allows the mayor to make nearly unlimited adjustments to the final budget that the City Council approves, and the nine-member council can only override such a veto with a supermajority of six votes.Gloria hasn’t used the line-item veto since he was elected in 2020. But each of his predecessors, ever since San Diego adopted the “strong mayor” form of government in 2006, used it at least once: Jerry Sanders, Bob Filner and Kevin Faulconer.
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