Free Republic

The city will petition the U.S. Supreme Court in a drive to exhaust every legal avenue before removing a giant concrete cross from public property on Aug. 1, the city attorney said Thursday. The city will ask the high court to review Wednesday's decision by a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel to turn down the city's request to stay a federal court decision against the cross. U.S. District Court Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. found in May that the city was demonstrating an unconstitutional endorsement of one religion over others by maintaining the 29-foot cross in a municipal hilltop...

Judge halts Mount Soledad cross transfer          By Jennifer Vigil and Karen Kucher UNION-TRIBUNE 12:41 p.m. September 2, 2005 JAMES BAIRD / Union-Tribune As votes were counted in the July 26 special election, the setting sun illuminated the cross on Mount Soledad. SAN DIEGO – A Superior Court judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order barring the city from transferring the Mount Soledad cross to the federal government under the deal voters overwhelmingly approved in San Diego's July special election. Judge Patricia Yim Cowett issued a tentative 34-page ruling in the case, which questioned the constitutionality of Proposition...

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...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed records from 12 current and former San Diego city officials in a criminal investigation of the city's pension fund and financial disclosures, documents released Wednesday show. The U.S. Justice Department asked for a trove of documents on pension underfunding and possible conflicts of interest on the pension board. The demand for e-mails, phone logs, minutes of board meetings, contracts and other records extends back to 1996, the year that the city decided to cut contributions to its pension plan and, at the same time, increase retirement benefits. The disclosures come less than...