The San Diego County Administration Center, where the Board of Supervisors will take up new charter powers if Measure A is certified. Photo: Tony Webster from Berlin, Germany, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
San Diego County’s Measure A, a charter rewrite that shifts more day-to-day power to the Board of Supervisors, passed with about 52 percent of the vote, the same narrow margin as the county sales-tax measure that shared the ballot, Voice of San Diego reported in a Nov. 9 piece carried by KPBS. Measure A was championed by Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer. Voice of San Diego said it would give supervisors a potential third term, the power to approve the hiring of top county officials and to remove them with a four-vote supermajority, and two new positions that report to the board: an auditor and a budget analyst. It would also create an ethics commission and change the rules on how board members deal with county staff and contracting officials.
The same story focused on the promise now attached to Measure B, the half-cent sales tax that is expected to bring in $400 million to $450 million a year for health care, public safety, child care and Tijuana River work. That tax already has been covered separately. Measure A is the governance change that will shape who controls the money and the people who spend it. Voice of San Diego described it as giving “supervisors and the constituents who support them more influence on day-to-day operations and the budget.”
The unofficial 52 percent figure is a snapshot from Nov. 9, six days after Election Day, not a certified result. The Registrar of Voters will finish the count later. Even so, both Measure A and Measure B were described in that account as having passed, each with a similar share of the vote, which is enough to start a debate about how the new authority will be used when the board takes up hiring, audits and the next budget.
Lawson-Remer’s office has presented the charter changes as accountability tools: an auditor and budget analyst who work for the board, an ethics commission, and a clearer line of authority over department heads. Opponents had argued that concentrating hiring and firing in the board would politicize the professional staff. Those arguments are now behind the election. What remains is how a board with a possible third term, new in-house budget staff and the power to remove top officials will actually run a county that also just took on a large new spending promise.
