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Monday Morning Quarterback: All about Prop A

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Some of you may recall the highlight we posted on the San Diego Union-Tribune’s opinion pieces regarding Proposition A (Prop A), which passed last month when put to the voters of the City of San Diego. After reading yesterday’s Monday Morning Quarterback, we felt it necessary to highlight the main article rather than post the entire issue.

In the article, AGC Executive Vice President Jim Ryan calls on John F. Kennedy as a shining example of facing adversity, and laughing at it. The quote Mr. Ryan uses is a particularly powerful passage from JFK’s Profiles in Courage: “A man does what he must in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures, and that is the basis of all human morality.” 

What began as a call to action has culminated in Mr. Ryan’s celebratory piece, relishing in the decisive victory of Prop A, which he also acknowledges as a victory for the voice of the people. The article has been copied below so that all of those who had their fingers crossed on June 7th can relive the historic moment. The full edition of this week’s Monday Morning Quarterback is available here.

San Diego’s State Senate and Assembly Democratic Representatives Need to Reread John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage

By Jim Ryan, Executive Vice President

“Well…..Senators Kehoe and Vargas, and Assembly members Atkins, Block and Hueso…it is time to reread John F. Kennedy’sProfiles in Courage. The scheme, crafted by State Building Trades head Bob Balgenorth, to defeat Proposition A, the City of San Diego’s Fair and Open Competition Ordinance, did not work. As the elected representatives of this City, you need to have the courage to represent your constituents and lead the repeal of SB 922 and SB 829.

Let me explain……

SB 922 and SB 829 were conceived in some back rooms in Sacramento in an effort to stop the voters in San Diego from passing Proposition A, the Fair and Open Competition Ordinance. The scheme was fairly innovative, but had one major flaw…the voters in San Diego…your constituents…. saw right through the scheme.   We have been told that the following details what happened.

STEP #1 Balgenorth, Gonzalez, and Lemmon Outraged with Voters in San Diego County

In June and November of 2010, voters in Oceanside, Chula Vista, and the entire County of San Diego, voted overwhelmingly to adopt Fair and Open Competition Ordinances (FOCO) that prohibited those public entities from requiring union-only Project Labor Agreements on their public construction projects. The FOCO initiatives simply allow all contractors….those with union agreements and those without union agreements to compete…no contractor is excluded due to their labor relations policies.

Bob Balgenorth, Lorena Gonzalez, head of the local AFL CIO, and Tom Lemmon, head of the local Building Trades Council were outraged!!!

STEP #2 Signatures collected for a City of San Diego FOCO

As we entered into 2011, it became apparent to those outraged officials that a coalition of construction trade associations in San Diego, including AGC, was collecting signatures to place a Fair and Open Competition Ordinance on the ballot that would apply to the City of San Diego. We are told that the outraged Balgenorth, Gonzalez, and Lemmon decided they needed help to stop this whole effort. They met with legislators and conceived SB 922. The plan was to quickly pass this bill in the fall of 2011 before the coalition could turn in the signatures to put a City of San Diego FOCO on the ballot. The thought was that the coalition would “pull” the initiative effort because SB 922 supposedly stopped state funding for local construction projects. (hmmm… pulling the initiative was wishful thinking on the their part).

Well…that did not work. The signatures were turned in a day or two before SB 922 was introduced. Once the signatures are turned in, there is no way to stop the ordinance from going on the ballot. The ordinance qualified and FOCO was scheduled for the June 2012 election…the next scheduled election in San Diego.

STEP #3 Change in Strategy

Well…what started out as a bill to simply encourage FOCO supporters to pull the initiative from the ballot then switched to the basis of their campaign to defeat the initiative. Balgenorth, Gonzalez, and Lemmon, decided to beat the City of San Diego FOCO at the ballot box based on the threat of denying the citizens of San Diego funding of construction projects if the voters dared pass a Fair and Open Competition Ordinance. In fact, this Spring, they went back to the Legislature and convinced you to pass SB 829 which allegedly strengthened the “you are going to lose State funding” argument.

STEP # 4 Campaign Promises Made

As part of passing SB 829 in April, we are told that Balgenort pledged to invest “whatever it takes” to use the threat of loss of state funding to defeat the FOCO initiative, which was now called Proposition A.

A significant investment was made…somewhere around $1,300,000, most of which came from a union slush fund in Sacramento. The unions in San Diego contributed very little to the No on A Campaign.

We are also told that legislative leaders were told that if by some chance the City of San Diego FOCO passed, that Balgenorth, Gonzalez, and Lemmon, had a backup plan to take out the initiative through filing a law suit.

STEP # 5 FOCO PASSES by 16%

Well….after all of this effort, the voters in the City of San Diego saw through the scheme and overwhelmingly voted in favor of FOCO…….by just over a 16% margin. Hmmm!!!

STEP # 7 City of Vista Supreme Court Decision 

On election night, Lorena Gonzalez repeatedly pledged that since it appeared the voters did not respond to Bob Balgenorth’s campaign, a lawsuit would be filed that would take Proposition A out. We assume this lawsuit depended on the Bob Balgenorth winning a case called the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, AFL CIO v City of Vista.

Well…. the California Supreme Court issued a decision last week and ruled in favor of the City of Vista. While this case had to do with prevailing wage it also had to do with the rights of Charter Cities. Our legal experts feel that Prop A has always been sound legally and this decision enforces that theory. The decision significantly strengthens the charter city “home rule” provisions of the state constitution.

So…….Senators Kehoe and Vargus and Assembly members Block, Hueso, and Atkins……now is the time to get some courage. The battle over Fair and Open competition in San Diego was lost by Bob Balgenorth and his associates. It’s time for you to lead….SB 922 and 829 were designed to create a campaign issue and they failed. Listen to your constituents and get 922 and 829 off the table.

Perhaps this quote from Profiles in Courage is appropriate……“A man does what he must in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures, and that is the basis of all human morality.”

If this quote does not inspire you, how about the fact that over 750,000 of your constituents in the San Diego County have voted for the various Fair and Open Competition Ordinances!!!!!”

Prop A: San Diego Union-Tribune Says Yes

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Two days ago the San Diego Union-Tribune released an editorial detailing their support for Proposition A, a measure on the upcoming June 5 ballot. As the title of the article (Vote for Prop A: Don’t let the bullies win) indicates, the Tribune has come out in support of the proposition, which would “…ban the city government from compelling the use of union-friendly project labor agreements…”

After interviewing both pro- and opponents of Prop A, the paper was able to definitively say that not only is Prop A good for San Diego, but that it is good for California. The article details how Prop A is a battle to maintain constitutionally guaranteed rights which were recently attacked by lawmakers in Sacramento. You may recall that SB 922 was recently voted into law in California, effectively mandating PLA participation in state-funded projects. It seems as though SB 922 and Prop A (if it passes) will clash in their implementation and there will be intense arguments over state funding at the local level.

The article was also discussed in this week’s Monday Morning Quarterback from AGC.
Full text of UT article:
On June 5, San Diego voters will decide on Proposition A, which would ban the city government from compelling the use of union-friendly project labor agreements on construction projects, except when such bans would lead to the forfeiture of state or federal funding. PLAs mandate the use of union compensation practices and job rules.

In an interview with the U-T Editorial Board last week, portions of which are featured on the cover of today’s Opinion section, critics of Proposition A made several arguments.

They said that PLAs are a cost-saving management tool that should be an option for any government. They noted their widespread use in the private sector.

But Proposition A doesn’t preclude PLAs. It just says they can’t be mandated. And if they are such a smart tool, why are they only used in the public sector at the behest of union-allied politicians and in the private sector to win union peace and head off “greenmail” – the use of the environmental regulatory process to tie up projects for years?

Critics said that since the city of San Diego had never used a PLA before, Proposition A amounted to a policy response to a problem that didn’t exist. They also noted that a newly enacted state law that forbids giving state construction funds to charter cities with PLA bans could cost the city tens of millions of dollars every year.

But that state law shows that Proposition A is in fact addressing a very real problem: the power of unions in California. The evidence is clear that union-allied Democrats in the Legislature acted to intimidate voters in San Diego and other charter cities. And the evidence is far from clear that the state law is legal. Charter cities have fundamental rights guaranteed by the state Constitution. Legislation that effectively punishes individual citizens for the political decisions made by their local governments is also suspect under the federal Constitution.

We acknowledge that Proposition A puts state construction funding at risk. Former Councilwoman Donna Frye points out that Mayor Jerry Sanders’ administration considered the funding threat significant enough that it was mentioned in a disclosure document for an upcoming bond offering.

But this bullying of local governments and taxpayers should not be accepted as a legitimate tactic, especially when the law used to execute the bullying is so susceptible to a court challenge.

Beyond that, the concern that Proposition A addresses – that union-allied elected city officials could began mandating PLAs – is real. Such a local union power play would be nothing new.

For four years, union-allied City Council members helped stall the implementation of a 2006 voter initiative meant to downsize city government by creating “managed competition” between private companies and government workers to provide city services. Union-allied members of the San Diego school board pushed through a version of a PLA for projects built with the $2.1 billion Proposition S bond approved in 2008 – after never mentioning their intentions during the campaign for the measure.

If we can pre-emptively block such power plays, let’s do so. The U-T San Diego Editorial Board urges a yes vote on Proposition A. Don’t let the bullies win.