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Interview San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders talks corruption and the Strong Mayor form of government Vyuz San Diego December 5, 2005 Jerry Sanders officially took office on Monday as the thirty-fourth mayor of San Diego. He spoke with Vyuz editor Larry Knowles about the challenges that lie ahead, from appointing staff and resolving the pension plan crisis to his working relationship with City Council. What challenges do you envision in the first hundred days of your tenure as Mayor? Well, I think the first challenge is probably the most important one that we’re facing right now: It’s creating a new leadership team for the city. This is the first time it’s ever been done in this city. In the past, the mayor would only pick the personal staff and some policy people, and a press secretary, and that’d be about it.
You know, when you think about hiring a CFO and a Director of Ethics—directors of all these [departments]—it’s a pretty big task to get done in thirty days, or thirty-five days, or forty days. That’s what we’ve really been working on the most. Do you see any roadblocks toward implementing that? No, there’re no roadblocks. It’s just…the only roadblock has been time. Usually for positions like this you’d have the luxury of going after executive searches and having executive search firms going out and helping you do that. And we’ve had to do it in a much more condensed way. I actually went around to a lot of people and asked their advice on candidates, and talked with them. So, I don’t see any roadblocks. It’s just been a time-consuming process. San Diego’s gotten the reputation of being, as one publication put it, “Enron by the Sea.” How can you cleanse San Diego of that reputation? Well, I think there’re several different ways. The first person that we announced hiring, other than my number two, Ronne Froman, a retired Admiral, was JoAnn Sawyer Knoll, who will be our Ethics and Integrity officer for the city. Brand new position. The city’s never had one before. She’ll be responsible for directing the ethics and integrity positions of the city. We’ll be training city employees, listening to complaints from city employees, talking with lobbyists, council members, everyone in the city about ethical behavior. I think that’s an important first step, and I think it’s important to the community. Secondly, we need to get a good Chief Financial Officer in here who is going to help us put processes in place so that we won’t continue making the same mistakes that the city’s made for the last several years. That’s one of the positions we’re working really hard on right now. The third thing—that I think is one of the more critical elements in the whole plan—is we need to have a very honest budget, so people actually see what the budget looks like, see where the money comes from and where it’s going. We need to have a very open process on that, which has not been the case in the past. A follow-up question to your answer. How will the Ethics and Integrity Department differ from the previous department of Dick Murphy? Well, what Dick Murphy put in place was an ethics commission. The ethics commission doesn’t work for the mayor. It’s actually a city commission. Secondly, the commission can only respond to complaints about ethical behavior, and only about elected officials, or appointed officials on boards and commissions, or the highest level of the city. It doesn’t affect the entire rank and file of the city. They can’t go out pro-actively and look at things. I would suspect that we will work closely with them to coordinate efforts, so that we get good coordination and thinking. But, it’s an entirely different process. It’s one thing to implement an Ethics and Integrity Department. How do you plan to enforce ethical standards? This is no different from what I did on the police department. We had an Internal Affairs unit, and another control unit in the department, and we laid out specific expectations for employee conduct, in terms of ethical behavior and honesty. We held people accountable to those. And when they violated that, we either fired them or disciplined them, and that’s exactly what I would expect in the city. You have to lay the expectations out in writing so that people understand them very clearly, and then you have to hold people accountable. If corruption is unearthed on your watch, how accountable will JoAnn SawyerKnoll be, as well as yourself? Well, the voters are going to hold me accountable. I’ll be accountable starting on January 1st—well, actually starting Monday—but, really on January 1st, when I’m the strong mayor. People will hold me accountable for that. One of the things that I’ve never been afraid to do, whether it’s the police department, the United Way, or the Red Cross, is tell the community bad news when it’s there. And I think that’s one of the things you have to do when there is corruption, when there is some kind of conduct that you’re not happy about. You have to make that public so that everybody can watch the process. Are you concerned about popularity during your tenure? Popularity isn’t something that any leader can really be concerned about. I think you have to make good decisions, you have to provide leadership, and make tough decisions. People can respect you, and you might not be as popular with some folks as you would think you would be. You know, it’s not about popularity. It’s about being fair. It’s about being disciplined, and it’s about making tough decisions. Getting back to selecting a good Chief Financial Officer. What kind of a pool are you going to be drawing candidates from? We’re drawing candidates from corporate entities, and we’re also drawing them from other cities. There’re two very different models. There are people who are experts in municipal finances and municipal processes, and there’re corporate CFO’s that are more familiar with the other side. Right now, we’re just trying to get the best person. We’ve got some candidates in both camps that are important. We haven’t decided which way we’ll go yet.Page 1 | Page 2 |
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