Regime change in America's Finest City

San Diego's city politics is finally getting interesting, in the Chinese curse - "May you live in interesting times" - sense of the word.

Mismanagement of San Diego's pension plan is one of the factors which made "America's Finest City" ripe for takeover by an insurgent non-establishment mayoral candidate this year. While things are slowly heating up in the mayoral vote count fiasco, over at the pension board the pot has come to a full boil and blown the lid off.

The pension board is apparently one dysfunctional organization. Board member Diann Shipione has done this city an enormous public service by spotlighting the underfunding problems with the pension fund. Apparently, she has few friends among her fellow board members. The rest of the board had agreed on a plan to arrest Shipione and have her removed from a private meeting. The plan never was implemented but one wonders just what was going through their heads when they agreed to it. Did they think they were a condo association board?

Meanwhile, San Diego's just elected city attorney, Michael Aguirre, a long-time local anti-establishment activist, has discharged the board's legal counsel and made himself the board's attorney. The former City Attorney had permitted the board to retain private counsel, which perhaps wasn't such a bad idea considering the bang up job the city did making sure San Diego's election rules make sense.

Can the Marines be far behind?

-tdr