DeMaio turns options into recommendations; labels critics 'insiders'

By SCOTT LEWIS
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Frequent guests at any event hosted by Carl DeMaio learned some time ago to bring along a large briefcase, backpack or wheelbarrow -- they're surely going to go home with plenty of documents.

But keeping San Diego's power brokers from taking those piles of facts and figures directly to the trash may have become DeMaio's biggest unexpected challenge this year.

Or was it unexpected? No one threw anything away because they were bored by it; instead, DeMaio said, they became uncomfortable with change. He's accustomed to people denouncing his work, he said. And then he's accustomed to them eating their words.

The head of a for-profit Mission Valley based company called The Performance Institute, DeMaio burst onto the local scene with the help of a ready-made network of local power brokers. He immediately issued a flurry of grave admonitions about the city's budget and began work on recommendations to streamline San Diego government.

But for a guy once embraced by many prominent locals, it might have been somewhat startling to see some established city stakeholders -- both liberal and conservative -- unceremoniously reject his work. And a chorus of sometimes technical and sometimes degrading invectives met the 219 options -- "only options," he clarifies -- he and his staff presented to the city.

But nothing really stopped. Now DeMaio and his staff have filtered through their own 219 options and come up with five actual recommendations:

• Put on the ballot and support an amendment to the city's charter that adds a Balanced Budget Accountability Provision. DeMaio said it would end what he calls the "intentional underfunding" of the city budget -- an insider shifting of funds from department to department after the City Council has approved the final version.
• Put on the ballot and pass another amendment to the city's charter that creates an employee incentive fund. Under the proposal, if city workers find ways to save money in their departments, they receive 25 percent of it, 25 percent of it goes to a general fund used to support innovative initiatives and 50 percent of it would stay within the department to be used for a one-time expense.
• Embark on a "bid-to-goal" competition program for city services. DeMaio says it's a "crime" to spend $12.5 million, or $8,800 per car, on the police department's auto maintenance. It's not privatization or outsourcing, DeMaio said. City employees would compete with outsiders to offer 24-hour service for the police fleet. The same type of competitive service bidding could work for park and golf course landscaping, he said.
• Lower the costs of staff for the City Council and mayor's office. Some of the most poignant criticism of DeMaio came when he compared those budgets to similar ones in places like Atlanta and Phoenix. Critics hammered him for using the wrong numbers from Atlanta.
  The numbers from Phoenix, however, were quite valid, he said. And they should shame San Diego's legislators into lowering their costs.
• Streamline the city's organizational chart by consolidating all help centers to one "311 Call Center" that citizens could access for all their needs. This is DeMaio's favorite recommendation, he said.

A broad organizational restructuring would also ensure that all information technology functions report to a single office. Now, he said, "bureaucracies love to have their own fiefdoms," maintaining their own information technology support staffs. He would eliminate three-quarters of the boards and commissions as well, he said.

Altogether, it's far from an immediate savings of between $60 million to $100 million that DeMaio says is needed to keep the budget whole. But he says another five concrete recommendations are on the way.

"Maybe it's the right message but the wrong messenger," said Chris Niemeyer, the executive director of the Lincoln Club of San Diego County.

Niemeyer said many in his organization knew of DeMaio's work blowing the whistle on what turned out to be a multibillion-dollar deficit in the budget of then-California Gov. Gray Davis. DeMaio is a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation, and he divides his time between San Diego, Washington, D.C., and Sacramento.

So when DeMaio showed up on San Diego's scene, they saddled up with him.
Soon, the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and the San Diego County Taxpayers Association began sponsoring some of The Performance Institute's events.
Then they stopped.

DeMaio said they got nervous. But representatives of both organizations say that they still think some of the options DeMaio compiled are valid. And both say they've done their fair share of criticizing City Hall this year.

"Where it began to break down was the implementation of the plan we had formed," said Lisa Briggs, executive director of the Taxpayers Association. Briggs said DeMaio acknowledged mistakes in the 219 options but then neglected to correct them. Briggs said she and her staff are loath to present anything but the most credible of suggestions.
"My concern was that if we have even minor problems, what does that do to the credibility of the report?" she said.

Mitch Mitchell, vice president for public policy for the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, said in a recent interview he merely wanted to focus on changes that could take place in the immediate budget cycle -- many of The Performance Institute's options don't. And DeMaio's unwillingness to acknowledge mistakes was something the chamber couldn't accept, either.

That doesn't even cover the criticism he's gotten from city officials that his options are not unique, not necessarily realistic and subject to labor laws you can't just change.

"I agree, when you're bought by the unions, it's not as easy as it sounds to get these things done," DeMaio said. He said he'd give reluctant unions simple ultimatums.

And he's not going anywhere, he said. He'll pay for ballot initiatives if the council ignores him. He'll draw a line in the sand for mayoral and council candidates. He's happy in San Diego, he said.

Next year, he's going to do the exact same analysis of the county of San Diego, he said.