N E W S R E L E A S E

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 3, 2004

Citizens' Budget Project Launched for the City of San Diego

A leading local think tank, advocate groups, and civic leaders to engage San Diego citizens in a performance audit of the city

San Diego, CA - The Performance Institute will spearhead a project involving local civic leaders to evaluate the size and scope of the City of San Diego's short-term budget deficit and long-term liabilities. The "San Diego Citizens' Budget Project" will conduct a comprehensive "performance audit" of each city agency and department and offer a real set of options for reforming the city government to reduce budget costs while improving the quality city services.

The San Diego budget deficit is currently projected to be in the range of $50-70 million with compounding long term budget liabilities reaching into billions of dollars due to skyrocketing costs for the city employees' salary, pension, and other benefits. Moreover, the City of San Diego must be prepared to contribute billions for long-term infrastructure investments by 2030.

The San Diego Citizens' Budget project will include two public Town Hall Dialogues, one on March 12 which will outline the extent of the city's budget challenges and one on April 27 which will review recommendations for reform. For the past two months, a research team of government reform experts has been conducting a comprehensive review of the city budget to determine where cost savings and performance improvement reforms can be made. The results of their "performance audit" will be revealed in a report set for release on April 12 with cost saving and reform options from thirty city government agencies.

At the completion of the research and public dialogue portions of the project, a set of recommendations will be made for consideration to the Mayor and City Council for the next budget debate-and beyond. While saving tax dollars is important, the goal of the project is to create dialogue among city officials, stakeholders and citizens of San Diego that will ultimately result in a balanced city budget that provides for an even greater quality of life for every San Diegan.

"We see a real opportunity to engage citizens in San Diego's budget process. Too often, the city's budget is compiled by city workers who are not thinking creatively about how to do more with less. Our project firmly believes that San Diegans can actually pay less but get more from their city government if we make substantial reforms," said Performance Institute President Carl DeMaio. "We seek big change in the way city government operates, not only by offering cost saving ideas but by facilitating a public process to build political will for government reform."

The Performance Institute received praise for similar projects it conducted earlier this year for the State of California. Performance Institute President Carl DeMaio led a bipartisan group of former state elected officials (including Kathleen Connell, Lucy Kilea, and Matt Fong) in authoring the Roadmap to Reform-a state budget reform package released in 2003. More importantly, the Institute outlined specific ways to balance the state's massive budget deficit in its groundbreaking California Citizens' Budget Plan that catalogued billions of dollars in cost savings in the state government-many of which have become the centerpiece of the budget plan offered by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Performance Institute foresees the San Diego Citizen's Budget to be equally enlightening and informative-but involving more emphasis on citizen input.

The Performance Institute is the nation's leading government reform think tank-recognized as an authority on performance-based management practices for government agencies. More information is at www.cagac.org.

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