Mayor Todd Gloria Can't Stand the Rain

A Saturday Extra Edition

While my 2024 election guides may not be published daily (m-f), the process of researching them is time consuming. As a result, some news flies under the radar. So I’ve decided to cook up a Saturday edition this week. Also, today’s headline is because I couldn’t get the Ann Peebles song out of my brain.

Let’s start off with the weather. Neighborhoods throughout the region saw flooding last week. There is likely more rain in store for the coming week, as moisture laden atmospheric rivers move over land. 

Thanks to climate changes, there’s a lot more potential bad weather; a warmer planet means more moisture gets sucked up into the sky. Add El Nino, a cyclic phenomenon in the Pacific ocean where warmer waters add more moisture to atmospheric currents, and the chances of severe flooding in coastal areas increase. My little ol’ weather app indicates rain will start on Sunday and continue all the way through to Friday.  

County, city, state, and federal authorities are all scrambling to direct assistance to hard hit areas. Locally, a lack of investment in infrastructure over decades has hit less wealthy neighborhoods hard. There was video of cars being carried away by flood waters, and dozens upon dozens of homes were damaged.

I guess it might seem cynical of me to mention that press releases from the mayor’s office have dramatically increased over the past days, but I’ll say something anyway. Our government wordsmiths, many of whom are refugees from dead tree media, are working overtime. Two or more proclamations about city efforts are now the standard. One announces that something is going to happen, one or more heralds the action being taken, and one quotes the mayor and public officials praising the task.  

In Todd Gloria’s defense, the subject of San Diego’s infrastructure deficit comes up every time an election nears. It’s a problem as old as the historic divide between a city of flowers and a city of manufacturing. But when it came time to allocate resources, stormwater management got a short shift.

An opinion piece at the UCSD Guardian explains:

• Our fears regarding San Diego’s infrastructure — the layout and quality of our storm drains, debilitating road conditions, and other severe infrastructural flaws — are not misplaced. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria shares these concerns and has previously critiqued failing stormwater management. 

• However, Gloria has not taken any steps toward rectifying the situation and reforming the system’s management. In 2021, Gloria secured approval from the San Diego City Council to allocate $293 million toward upgrading infrastructure across the county, but stormwater management remained low on his list of priorities, ranking fourth on funding. Because stormwater infrastructure is not a publicly prominent societal issue, Gloria directed San Diego’s $5 billion deficit of infrastructure funds toward his “Sexy Street” program, which prioritizes the effectiveness of his campaign over public safety. San Diego politicians who claim to work in the interest of the community should honor that commitment and protect civilian livelihood by, in this instance, advocating for less publicly appealing but vital proposals like reforming storm drains, rather than catering proposed legislative plans toward more prominent societal issues for the sake of effective campaigning.

• Even after receiving a $733 million federal EPA loan nearly two years ago for stormwater infrastructure, the proposed construction plan has yet to be executed, leaving the loan untouched. The city claims that they need much more funding — a grand total of $1.3 billion, to be exact — and 95 years to implement adequate stormwater infrastructure. Storms in San Diego are progressively growing more ferocious, and an insufficient storm drainage system will not only degrade the quality of life in San Diego but continue to threaten the safety of its residents unless significant repairs are made. In order to protect the lives of San Diego residents, local politicians must prioritize the gradual revamping of stormwater infrastructure rather than hinder infrastructural progress for personal interest.

The 57 flood-displaced families at the Village Green affordable housing complex in Rolando all but begged for the city to clear a stormwater channel, according to an article in the Voice of San Diego. Unraveling what happened in recent months is a damning tale of city government failures.

It starts with the Stormwater Department’s annual budget allowing the agency to pursue clearing and maintenance in four of its roughly 200 channel segments each year.  It continues with that agency’s failure to recognize the potential dangers. And it ends with a bogus claim about regulatory restrictions on plant clearing projects making them a drawn out process.

However, beyond shortsightedness, lies the question of money. The scattering of tasks managed by special districts to attract funding, and the downsizing of local government generally in the wake of Proposition 13 choke on revenues doesn’t leave many options when it comes to paying for fixes.

Maybe this year’s bad weather will convince politicians to ask for taxes in some form to accelerate fixing stuff up. These costs have been mounting for years, as local politicians have focused on other, sexier priorities, gaining public approval and (often) less taxation for land owning interests in America’s Finest City.   

Attempts at regionalizing infrastructure upgrades have played into a small cities vs large cities divide. (e.g. El Cajon vs San Diego) Small city politicians are often small minded, and big cities have bigger needs. An attempt, led by then-Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez, to give more populations weight in decision making processes, has failed at SANDAG, the regional authority charged with looking beyond the short term. The conservative consensus that government does more harm than good is at play here.

A combination of past errors and internecine sniping have chipped away at the credibility of SANDAG. Now we're worshiping at the altar of automobiles, and putting off a serious commitment to alternative transportation because it’s deemed to be too expensive. Or because a couple of pinheads don’t “believe” in climate change.

Besides, what would El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells do if he had to tackle long term issues versus blaming the President for a crisis at the border?

Despite his ability to conjure up soaring rhetoric, Mayor Gloria has never been the kind of visionary needed to dig San Diego out of the political muck. He is smart. And he’s a politician determined to burn as few bridges as possible along the way to keep his path to future office clear.

His attempts to break free of the constraints of San Diego’s realpolitik (like the minimum wage fight, where he was burned by business interests), haven’t encouraged him to take the bold and polarizing steps needed for change. No politician can do so without a vocal and organized movement behind them, and that’s not happening in San Diego. We’d rather snipe on social media.

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Saturday Extra Extra Links

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The Dirty Business of Clean Blood by Matt Stoller at the BIG Newsletter

• Last January, the Federal Trade Commission put forward a proposed rule to ban contractual provision that prevent workers from getting a job with rivals, what are known as ‘noncompetes.’ Banning noncompetes is meant not only to help people who work for a living, but also to promote innovation in markets where employees are unable to switch jobs or start businesses. In no sector is that dynamic as obvious as in small clinics of professionals, whether dialysis, fertility, veterinarian, dentistry, or others, that have been rolled up into giant chains.

• So one important consequence of eliminating non-competes would be a revolutionary change in how we get medical care. And indeed, when the FTC proposed this rule, that’s one of the arguments the commission used. More importantly, tens of thousands of people commented, many of them doctors who wanted to change jobs so they could deliver better or more innovative forms of care, but were prevented by a contract with their employer.

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Getting Comfortable With Illegal Strikes by Hamilton Nolan at How Things Work

• The alternative to undertaking illegal strikes is to allow some of the most contemptible, inhuman, corporate-owned Republican state politicians in America to simply erase the ability of working people to stand up for themselves, with the stroke of a pen. 

• Many, many states make it illegal for public employees to strike. Many of them also have laws that say things like, “okay you can negotiate a ‘union contract’ but all you’re allowed to negotiate for is your little pay raise and asking for anything else is not allowed.” Just the most brazen rejection of the basic right of workers to negotiate their own working conditions that you will find anywhere. It is a legal boot on the neck. 

• Will those laws be rolled back one day? Maybe. Perhaps, one day. Or not. Will you spend your whole life hoping that maybe, perhaps, your inalienable rights will be recognized by people who understand their own job description to be to oppress you on behalf of corporate donors? You can wait, forever, or you can decide that you will do illegal strikes if you need to. That’s it.

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Border Trucker Convoy: Greatest (Sh!t) Show on Earth! By Ron Filipkowski at MTN News

• The original incarnation of a protest led by truckers was in May 2022, when organizers planned a convoy to flood Washington, DC to protest against covid restrictions and vaccine mandates. The problem was, by the time the event rolled around and got organized, almost every restriction and mandate had already been lifted. So they were basically were left to protest against things that no longer existed. Then they found out that the streets of downtown DC and traffic was not very conducive to a convoy of large trucks. They continued to get stuck in traffic jams, got separated by red lights, got parking tickets, it was a mess.

• The May 2022 convoy ended up decamped to a parking lot in Hagerstown, MD, where QAnon disciples descended, RJK Jr.'s anti-Fauci books were given away (he couldn't sell them), food was eaten, beer was drunk, songs were sung, arguments and fights ensued, guns appeared, and absolutely nothing was accomplished. They drove around in circles on the beltway, were cursed out by commuters for clogging up traffic, and then it finally fizzled out and dispersed. 

• But this time was going to be different. This time there was a serious cause that would see thousands of truckers flock to the banner. Right-wingers have been told that there is a massive invasion of black and brown people from every corner of the globe pouring across our southern border, and only militias and We The People could stop it. Some of the same people involved in the last one were back again, and the result ended up as pathetically lame as last time. 

• So far.