But when its implementation was allowed, its record was strong. This is from the U-T San Diego overview just after Filner took office:

“Publishing services: Slashed costs by 30 percent and eliminated 12.5 positions. Implemented in July 2011. Annual savings: $967,000

“Fleet maintenance: Reduced costs by 13 percent and eliminated 80 positions. Full implementation pending procurements for outsourced services that were part of employee bid. Annual savings: $4.2 million

“Street sweeping: Trimmed costs by 12 percent and eliminated 8.75 positions. Will be fully implemented this month. Annual savings: $559,000

“Miramar Landfill operations: Slashed costs by 31 percent and eliminated 11.5 positions. Not yet implemented as labor negotiations continue. Annual savings: $5.6 million

“Street and sidewalk maintenance: Cut costs by 7 percent and eliminated 14 positions. Not yet implemented as labor negotiations continue. Annual savings: $875,000”

‘Managed comp’ likely to be big issue in mayor’s race

Now Filner is gone, and a February special election looms to replace him. Republican Councilman Kevin Faulconer, an ardent supporter of “managed comp,” is likely to make a big deal of the issue going forward. Plans thwarted by Filner involved bidding to provide trash service — something that could save San Diego taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in coming years were it privatized.

His Democratic opponent, Councilman David Alvarez, has a rich — some would say redolent — record on the issue.

This is from a column I wrote in May 2010 when Alvarez was making his first bid for city office.

“[Ben] Hueso is leaving his District 8 seat to run for the Assembly … . In recent weeks, the U-T editorial board has met with candidates seeking to replace [him]. … [C]andidates from local political semi-dynasties – Felipe Hueso and Nick Inzunza Sr. – offered the usual doublespeak on outsourcing, talking about ‘doing it right’ and making sure it actually saved money.

“But the candidate considered the front-runner – David Alvarez – essentially said he wouldn’t support implementing ‘managed competition,’ period. How arrogant can you get?

“Maybe this is how Alvarez got to be the unions’ favorite over the dynasty candidates – he most boldly stated his intent to nullify the public’s vote on outsourcing. But at least he didn’t play semantic games – or tell the U-T editorial board something different from what he told other groups.”

Candidate says he will honor voters’ ‘intent,’ not their blueprint

So now young David Alvarez is one of the two finalists to be mayor — and he still isn’t pretending he likes “managed comp.” In an interview Friday on U-T TV San Diego with former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock, Alvarez refused to say he would implement the reforms that voters endorsed.

Instead, he said he would honor voters’ “intent” by pursuing increased government efficiency.

Feel free to groan. And groan and groan some more.

By Chris Reed

It doesn’t take long before the L.A. Times’ profile of new San Diego Mayor Bob Filner in Sunday’s paper makes it clear that we’re in for a piece that poses as a warts-and-all portrait but is more akin to hagiography. I know and like the reporter who wrote the piece, Tony Perry, who is an outstanding war correspondent when he’s not covering San Diego. But I’m surprised that Perry largely buys Filner’s narrative that he’s a well-meaning liberal trying to shake up a backwards city, and that if he’s brusque and a bully, it’s always for the greater good.

This is a good angle with a powerful hook. But the narrative is fundamentally wrong. Under Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders and with an increasingly pragmatic Democratic-majority City Council, San Diego has made great strides since 2005. It’s in much better shape than most big cities in California. Perry doesn’t mention this until late in the story after first giving Filner room to insinuate the city is in the hands of a corrupt elite.

San Diego also has been an innovator in public-employee benefits reform and making government more efficient, with both efforts endorsed by voters. Perry doesn’t mention that Filner has made clear he will sandbag the push for efficiency — i.e., smaller government. Is this what a heroic populist does? Defy the electorate?

Cherry-picking to serve the Noble Filner narrative

But the problems with the profile don’t end with its failure to challenge the false premise of Filner’s narrative. There is lots of cherry-picking of facts to serve the narrative.

Starting with the lede:

“SAN DIEGO — Under a pro-business Republican mayor, it was a no-brainer: allocating millions of dollars each year to buy national advertising for the tourism industry — a major economic driver in this vacation mecca.

“Then Bob Filner got elected, and he had questions: Why couldn’t Sheraton and Hilton buy their own advertising? And why should the cash-strapped city lavish funds on an industry that pays low wages to bottom-rung employees like maids and bellhops?”

The problem with this is the policy wasn’t driven by the “pro-business Republican mayor.” It’s been a bipartisan policy embraced by the San Diego City Council, which has a Democratic majority. The story goes on …

“The new Democratic mayor also thought the city attorney should provide him with legal guidance on the matter in private, not in front of reporters.

“So he crashed Jan Goldsmith’s news conference.

“‘You not only have been unprofessional but unethical,’ Filner scolded the city attorney, ‘and I resent it greatly that you’re giving your advice to the press.'”

Just who was ‘unprofessional’?

The problem with this is that Goldsmith is elected, not a mayoral appointee, and unless the issue is a sensitive legal negotiation over personnel, contracts or real estate, he has an obligation to talk to the media about pressing city issues. He is the attorney for the city of San Diego — not the attorney for the mayor of San Diego. If the article had brought up that point, Goldsmith becomes the good guy — and it’s obvious who’s being “unprofessional.” But no — we’re following Filner’s narrative.

However, here is where the profile goes most off the tracks:

“Confrontation has long been a Filner political trademark. At congressional hearings he regularly derided Veterans Affairs officials over poor care, making him a favorite of veterans groups.”

So we are reading a long piece about the abrasive liberal who is trying to force constructive (allegedly) change down the throat of a resistent city, and we look back at his actions on behalf of a key constituency during his 20 years in Congress. So isn’t the most important takeaway here that Filner’s badgering of the VA accomplished nothing? That the VA he so challenged and derided is the most criticized federal agency of all? That his management style did nothing to stop a disliked agency from becoming a pariah agency?

If you’re writing a piece about a mayor struggling to get his way with the leadership style he used as a congressman, of course.

And if you’re writing about Filner’s political history, isn’t it worth at least mentioning in passing that perhaps the most memorable fact about Filner’s 20 years in Congress was his channeling of hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign finances to his family bank account by using his then-wife as his paid campaign treasurer? Well, no — not if you’re treating Filner’s narrative about his nobility as an accurate framework.

A civil rights hero on another crusade? Or an ineffective bully?

I think the reason Filner gets such favorable treatment is obvious in the final third of the article, which repeatedly notes Filner’s work as a courageous civil-rights activist a half-century ago. The implication is that he’s still a courageous champion of the powerless, no matter what he does.

“Filner honed his approach in the 1960s as a Freedom Rider in the segregated South. He spent two months in a Mississippi jail, refusing to pay bail. He knew the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez and says they taught him that conflict and confrontation are often necessary to accomplish change.

“On one of his congressional websites, Filner posted the mug shot from his arrest in Jackson, Miss.”

But sometimes a bully is just a bully. And sometimes righteousness spoils into obnoxiousness.

“Filner and Goldsmith have sparred over medical marijuana, city pensions, Port Commission appointments, even over whether to allow seals on the beach in La Jolla. Filner unveiled a budget that would cut 13 jobs at the city attorney’s office — more than in any other department — including that of Goldsmith’s top assistant. After several acrimonious meetings, Goldsmith refuses to let any of his staffers meet with the mayor without a witness.”

That’s amazing. And if you heard the stories about Filner’s abusive behavior toward those he considers the “little people” around him, you’d say it’s wise.

There’s also this detail about Filner that is omitted that undercuts the profile’s main narrative: The top assistant of Goldsmith whom Filner targeted is Deputy City Attorney Andrew Jones, an African-American who had the temerity to disagree with the non-lawyer mayor’s legal analysis in a meeting. How does Jones, a soldier turned lawyer, feel about it, according to a published report?

Filner to black city attorney: Go sit in the back of the room

“’He’s (verbally) attacked me in closed session to the extent that at one point he asked if I would sit in the back of the room,’ said Jones, who is black. ‘I, of course, considered it something similar to asking Rosa Parks to sit in the back of the bus. I was extremely offended by it but in deference to my boss I decided not to make a big deal out of it. But clearly he has a problem with me. I’m not sure why.'”

But as the profile wraps up, it seeks to leave no doubt that that’s not the real Filner. The real Filner? He plays civil rights anthems! Oh, the humanity.

“One recent night, radio station KPRI-FM invited Filner in as a guest disc jockey.

“Among his selections was ‘We Shall Overcome,’ by Mahalia Jackson. Filner recalled being arrested in Jackson, Miss., and summoned to meet the police chief; he thought he might be in for a beating, or worse.

“‘As I was walking to his office, I heard in the back all my fellow Freedom Riders singing “We Shall Overcome,” and it gave me courage to face that police chief,’ he said. ‘It was the music, it was the music, that gave me the courage to keep going.'”

All you can do is groan. How long is Bob Filner going to get away with current behavior because of past performance? Maybe forever.

Or maybe just until someone with a smartphone catches him savaging an underling who gets in his line of fire. Then we’ll finally have our overdue “have you no decency, sir?” minute in San Diego.

By Chris Reed

In 2006, San Diego voters gave a landslide win to a ballot measure that would force groups of city workers to compete against private firms for the right to provide city services in a process known as “managed competition.”

For four years, union supporters on the City Council stymied the adoption of the innovative reform. One of those supporting this undemocratic delay game, Councilman David Alvarez, told me flat-out that he didn’t care what the voters wanted when he was a first-time candidate in spring 2010.

Finally, later that year, when a moderate Democrat, Tony Young, took over as council president, managed comp was implemented. And just as expected, it produced millions in savings in a series of bid processes in which city workers — who knew how much waste there was and how to root it out — won every one of the competitions.

Filner: First lies, now obstruction

Now, however, Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders is gone. His replacement, Democrat Bob Filner, has made clear he doesn’t care what the voters want. First, the former congressman was caught fragrantly lying about what managed comp had wrought in San Diego.

“To illustrate the pitfalls of managed competition, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner has repeatedly cited the devastating effects the competitive bidding process has had on fleet services, the city division in charge of maintaining 4,000 vehicles including fire engines, garbage trucks and patrol cars.

“On at least three occasions, Filner has described a Nov. 27 visit he made to see the mechanics in fleet services. Each time he said the division had its workforce slashed through managed competition and that long lines of broken-down vehicles have resulted, forcing employees to arrive to work early to do the repairs on their own time. He’s touted it as an example of how ‘we have cut the level of service so drastically as to cause us problems.’

“The basic premise of his story — that cuts made through managed competition have decimated fleet services — is untrue. The city has yet to implement the proposed changes, according to internal memos and public testimony from two members of the mayor’s staff.”

Now he’s taking steps to kill it with the old tactic of bureaucratic delay — which he pretends is actually a period to examine the process and make it better.

San Diego’s other dramatic reform of recent years — the June 2012 vote by city residents to end defined-benefit pensions for most new city workers — is under assault by an obscure state agency, as CalWatchdog has been detailing. In an interview Wednesday, City Attorney Jan Goldsmith told me that he doesn’t think Filner can impede that reform, since it’s now part of the City Charter, the equivalent of San Diego’s constitution.

A true believer, not just a stooge

But don’t underestimate Filner’s readiness to go the extra mile for organized labor. With some elected Democrats — such as as San Diego state lawmakers Ben Hueso, Toni Atkins and Marty Block — their devotion to unions seems transactional. They’re doing what they have to do to get elected and re-elected.

However, Filner, a child of the 1960s, appears to truly believe that whatever unions want is automatically the equivalent of social justice. And if that means undercutting the will of the voters of the city he leads, he won’t hesitate.

Hip-hip hooray.

By Chris Reed

What happens when a veteran congressman with a history of anger management issues and an apparent disinterest in understanding how city government works becomes mayor of California’s second-largest city?

San Diegans are finding out as they deal with their city’s own “Anger Management” show provided for nearly three months by impulsive, confrontational 20-year veteran House Democrat Bob Filner.

Filner’s narrow November victory over Republican City Councilman Carl DeMaio was a huge disappointment to reformers both locally and nationally, who had watched DeMaio work with more traditional Republicans to help turn San Diego into a laboratory for libertarian-minded efforts to change some of the basics of local government. DeMaio was the major sponsor of Proposition B, the pension reform measure city voters passed in June 2012.

As expected, Filner has tried to reverse course. He’s blocking efforts to further privatize or downsize city departments through a “managed competition” in which groups of government workers bid against private firms for the right to provide specific city services. Filner also offers no complaints about a rogue state agency’s efforts to prevent San Diego from implementing Measure B’s radical changes in retirement benefits for city workers.

Anger mismanagement

But Filner’s behavior — far more than his policy changes — has dominated the headlines for months. At age 70, he is a perfect example of the adage that a leopard can’t change his spots. And so the same politician who menaced a Dulles Airport worker and taunted an Immigration and Naturalization Service guard while a congressman has kept in character — first as a bizarrely abrasive mayoral candidate and now as mayor.

Jan. 8 showed Filner at his worst. At a City Council meeting that afternoon, the mayor tangled with Todd Gloria, the council chairman and a fellow liberal Democrat, over appointments to a regional planning board, the San Diego Association of Governments. A matter that could have been handled with a prior phone call turned into a theater of anger, as Filner said Gloria couldn’t get his facts straight and mocked both SANDAG and the office of City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, a Republican.

That night, Filner remained in bully mode. At a meeting with medical marijuana advocates upset with a city crackdown on dispensaries, Filner called Goldsmith “a little guy” whom he would “intimidate” to get to end the “persecution” of dispensaries.

But as Goldsmith explained the next day, Filner had the unilateral power to stop tough code enforcement efforts. The mayor didn’t need to “intimidate” the city attorney. He just had to tell code compliance officers and police to change their priorities. Filner did so without apologizing to Goldsmith for his shrill broadsides.

Bob Filner makes like Kanye West

This week saw the mayor at his most Filnerian, with the issue the City Council’s 2012 approval of a de facto room tax that city hotels impose on guests to pay for national marketing campaigns trumpeting tourism in San Diego. Filner wants to renegotiate the deal and has refused to release the funds the “fee” has generated, and hoteliers are pursuing legal action. The mayor says the deal is bad for the city — and also that hotels should pay more and provide better benefits with a “living wage” policy. Instead of consulting with Goldsmith, Filner has relied on the advice of a lawyer he hired for his staff.

On Wednesday, Goldsmith held a press conference to give his views on the dispute and the potential fallout for the city. Filner crashed the event and took the podium to give his own press conference — in Goldsmith’s office — in which Filner repeatedly denounced the city attorney for daring to believe the mayor’s tactics were flawed.

“It would have been nice, Mr. Goldsmith, to have a memo,” Filner said. “It would have been nice to have advice. I am your client. That’s privileged communication. You not only have been unprofessional but unethical in this press conference. And I resent it greatly that you’re giving your advice through the press.”

Goldsmith’s response: “I hope in the future we’ll know about these issues and get consulted in advance, but if I read them in the newspaper and they’re wrong, I have to comment on them.”

This incensed Filner: “I have no obligation to inform you of any policy decisions I make. You have the obligation as my attorney to give me private and privileged communication. I do not have to advise you on my policy considerations, but you have the right, you have the obligation to defend me in any court action and to give me advice in a privileged fashion, not to announce your own policy on your own.”

But Goldsmith is not Filner’s attorney. Goldsmith is the attorney for the city of San Diego, obligated to look out for its interests, and someone who is so well-regarded that he was re-elected in 2012 without opposition.

Filner’s stunt led the local news. It also triggered a torrent of comment on social media, with one Twitter commenter comparing it to the moment when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift when she was given the best female video award at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

By Chris Reed

SAN DIEGO — As I wrote for CalWatchdog just after last month’s election, there was a strong chance that successful reforms with a heavy libertarian flavor were going to be blocked going forward here in California’s second-largest city with the election of paleoliberal Bob Filner.

This weekend, Filner made it all but official, expressing skepticism about continuing with managed competition, a hybrid form of outsourcing in which units of existing government workers compete against private providers in bidding for the right to provide city services. This came with the city poised to make its biggest savings yet on bidding for trash collection, notoriously bloated when handled by a government.

The twist is that Filner is opposed by a fellow liberal, newly installed City Council President Todd Gloria, who likes the money that managed comp frees up for the city’s many other needs.

An additional twist is that government worker units, which are given a 10 percent bidding edge, have won all five of the competitions so far.

Here’s a comprehensive U-T San Diego story from Sunday laying out how managed comp works and the Filner-Gloria divide.

Here’s an editorial imploring Filner not to sabotage a government success story.

Here’s the other Filner angle that everyone is watching for. So far, he hasn’t come close to blowing a gasket. But it is what people expect to happen, given his history.