Free Republic

Working for the city of San Diego must be very dangerous. Fourteen of every 1,000 people employed by the city end up applying for a disability retirement. Compare that to the rest of the nation, where 0.5 of every 1,000 workers applies for the benefit. Either working for the city is 28 times more dangerous than other gigs or something's askew. How about this: More than 22 percent of the city's retirees are collecting a disability retirement. That means they've abruptly stopped working and started collecting at least half of their salary for the rest of their lives -- an...

SAN DIEGO -- As he prepared to leave office Friday — only eight months after getting re-elected — Mayor Dick Murphy said he never wanted a second term in the first place. The 62-year-old former judge said a "combination of duty and flattery" convinced him to run again. Now, Murphy is leaving to give the city a fresh start in the midst of a federal probe of San Diego's deficit-ridden pension fund and with a federal jury deciding the fate of two councilmen accused of corruption. A July 26 election is expected to produce a November runoff between the top...

SAN DIEGO - City Councilman Michael Zucchet has been logging long days in court, where his federal trial on charges of accepting illegal campaign money from a strip-club owner is finally set to go to a jury as early as Tuesday. On Friday, he is scheduled to take over as interim mayor of a city that has long prided itself on clean government. Or maybe he won't. San Diego, stung by a string of embarrassing scandals, is facing a fundamental question at a time of deep legal and financial trouble: Who's in charge? Voters are mulling who should replace Mayor...

One of the three major credit rating firms ratcheted the city of San Diego's credit rating down another notch Friday, yanking the city to the investment quality of a mid-sized city with a troubled economy. Although the nation's seventh largest city as a whole continues to flourish economically, political and budgetary unrest continue to wilt the city government's once-vibrant credit worthiness, Fitch Ratings analysts concluded. A statement from Fitch cited the continued lack of audited 2003 and 2004 financial statements and the numerous ongoing investigations into city business as the reason for its fourth action on San Diego's credit rating...

Now that criminal charges have been filed against former and current pension-fund trustees, some San Diegans feel the city has hit bottom. There is nowhere to go but up. Not so. Individuals and institutions in a downspiral only hit bottom when they realize the depth of their problems. And San Diego is still in la-la land. The magnitude of the city's pension and health-care deficits is significantly understated by the mainstream media. The dung is far deeper than citizens realize. You read that the pension deficit is $1.37 billion and the health-care deficit is $500 million. Nonsense. Those numbers are...

NBCSandiego.com Roberts Makes Decision About Running For Mayor Murphy Will Leave Office On July 15 POSTED: 11:40 am PDT May 4, 2005 UPDATED: 11:57 am PDT May 4, 2005 SAN DIEGO -- County Supervisor Ron Roberts announced Wednesday morning that he would not seek the San Diego mayor's office. Roberts, who has unsuccessfully run for city mayor four times, made the announcement at 11 a.m. at the County Administration Building in San Diego. Instead, Roberts said he would focus on his re-election to the County Board of Supervisors... Roberts said that he was not ready to endorse any candidate for...

Mayor just made a statement that effective in July, he will step down as Mayor of San Diego.

Four million copies of Time magazine hit the streets today naming San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy one of the three worst big-city mayors in America. Murphy defiantly dismissed the designation and counterpunched the country's top-selling news magazine from his driveway yesterday. "People should be proud of what we have accomplished in this city," he said. "Tell Time magazine that they just don't understand what's going on." Murphy said more negative national news won't affect tourism or the city's faltering financial outlook, but he said it could jeopardize business recruitment and the chances of being picked as the headquarters for the...

Bad pension moves and accounting irregularities have made a mess of San Diego's finances, but is California's second-largest city on the brink of bankruptcy? Depends who you ask. Some pundits and some bankruptcy lawyers say it is. Not surprisingly, Mayor Dick Murphy and current and former top city officials insist it isn't, and some municipal finance experts agree. Meanwhile, Wall Street credit-rating agencies and other informed third-party observers show little sign of bracing for San Diego turning into the next Orange County, which became the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history in 1994. Standard & Poor's Ratings Services suspended...

8:10 p.m. March 8, 2005 SAN DIEGO – The San Diego City Council on Tuesday rejected a plan to transfer the property atop Mount Soledad, including its 43-foot-tall cross, to the federal government to be designated a national veterans memorial. The panel voted 5-3 not to transfer the property to the National Parks Service, a last-ditch effort proposed by two San Diego congressmen to stop the removal of the cross from Mount Soledad. Advertisement The cross was ordered moved after federal judges twice declared the sale of the city land to the Mount Soledad Memorial Association unconstitutional because it favored...

SAN DIEGO – San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre called Tuesday on Mayor Dick Murphy and members of the City Council to conditionally accept findings of his reports on the city's debt-ridden pension plan. The request was the first of eight recommendations Aguirre described as "an integrated plan" and "the things we need to get us out" of current problems. The second of two reports on the pension deficit – released by Aguirre on Feb. 9 – alleged "substantial evidence" that Murphy and the council committed civil violations of federal securities laws. Murphy has denied the allegations in the report,...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - The new city attorney has issued a scathing report accusing the mayor and City Council of violating federal securities laws by hiding key information about the city's troubled finances. Mayor Dick Murphy disputed the findings and said City Attorney Michael Aguirre had no jurisdiction to investigate the alleged violations. "Mr. Aguirre's allegations are untrue, irresponsible and defamatory," Murphy said. "Mr. Aguirre is not the SEC. This is only Mr. Aguirre's opinion." The Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors offices are investigating whether city officials concealed important information about San Diego's finances while selling more than...

Employees in the city of San Diego's treasurer's office – ground zero in federal investigations of city finances – destroyed numerous records last month, prompting a warning from City Manager Lamont Ewell yesterday. The destruction of records was revealed yesterday by City Attorney Michael Aguirre, who said he learned from an unnamed city employee Thursday night that about 20 people in the treasurer's Financing Services division dumped whole files into recycle bins and erased e-mails. The news spurred a terse e-mail from Ewell to "all city employees," warning against the destruction of documents that might be sought by federal investigators...

SAN DIEGO -- The state Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to consider whether the city of San Diego violated its charter by allowing a write-in candidate to run for mayor, ending one of several lawsuits challenging the November election. The lawsuit, filed by an attorney who supported third-place finisher Ron Roberts, had sought to nullify the election and force a runoff between Roberts and Mayor Dick Murphy, who won the election and began a second term Dec. 8. Thomas McKinney, a lawyer who works in the office of Roberts supporter John Howard, argued that San Diego should have rejected Councilwoman...

More people voted in the San Diego mayor's race for write-in candidate Donna Frye than for Mayor Dick Murphy, according to a review yesterday of disputed ballots, but it would take court action for her to be declared the winner. At the end of a full day of ballot examination, county elections workers ... had reviewed 4,854 ballots cast for Frye that were not included in the official results of the Nov. 2 election. Those numbers alone, likely to rise as the ballot review continues today, would put Frye 2,746 votes above Murphy's official total. The ballots were disqualified because...

The hearing is just about the start. John Howard's case will be heard by the 4th Circuit to determine if there should be a new election, if Donna Frye's write-in candidacy was invalid and other related issues.

SAN DIEGO -- A city councilwoman said Wednesday she would not be deterred by the messy legal battle surrounding her write-in bid for San Diego mayor, suggesting that a long fight may lie ahead. Donna Frye said that she is weighing "about 30" legal strategies and may be willing to pay for a recount. "Patience is power," she told reporters. "In a democratic society, things take time and things sometimes become uncomfortable for people. It's nice to have the easy solution, the happy ending, for everything to go quickly and easily, but it doesn't always work out that way." Frye...

SAN DIEGO -- A lawyer seeking a new mayoral election for San Diego told a federal judge Tuesday that the city violated its own charter by allowing a write-in candidate to run for mayor and a new vote should be held between the top two finishers in the primary. Blair Krueger argued that the city clerk never should have permitted voters on Nov. 2 to write Councilwoman Donna Frye's name on a blank line below the two men who finished first and second in the March primary -- incumbent Dick Murphy and San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts. "There's a...

News Advisory: Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, a group of retired ambassadors and senior military officers, will hold a Morning Newsmaker news conference Wednesday, June 16, at 8 a.m. EDT at the National Press Club (Zenger Room), 13th floor, 529 14th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. The topic will be "The Need for Change in U.S. Foreign and Defense Policy." The group includes former ambassadors Jeffrey Davidow, William DePree, Charles Freeman Jr., William Harrop, Arthur Hartman, H. Allen Holmes, Samuel Lewis, Princeton Lyman, Jack Matlock Jr., Donald McHenry, Richard Murphy, David Newsom, Phyllis Oakley, John Reinhardt, Ronald Spiers, Nicholas Veliotes...

Feds looking at city finances (San Diego) Pension fund said to be a focus of investigation Federal authorities have begun investigating San Diego's city finances, including recent disclosures of errors and omissions in documents used to sell more than $2.3 billion of the city's municipal bonds. Sources familiar with the probe, which also focuses on the city's troubled $3 billion pension system, say lawyers with the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Securities and Exchange Commission have begun interviewing people familiar with the city's finances. FBI agents also are beginning to collect documents as part of the investigation, according to the...