By Alexandra Mendoza
Leaders in San Diego gathered Tuesday, April 10, to urge the Board of Supervisors to side with California.
San Diego County could join in the federal government’s lawsuit against California’s ‘Sanctuary State’ laws, much to the displeasure of local advocacy organizations.
The American Civil Liberties Union has asked Board of Supervisors Chair Kristin Gaspar to remove the proposal, which they have called “an attack” on immigrant communities, from next week’s agenda.
“There is no need for them to vote in support of Trump’s lawsuit against the State of California,” said Norma Chávez-Peterson, executive director of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties.
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Supervisors Nathan Fletcher and Joel Anderson announced Thursday a joint proposal to create an advisory committee to help improve the public’s access to government and its documents.
The proposal the Board of Supervisors will consider Tuesday includes recommendations that the committee focus on several issues, including the creation of a new public records portal where all requests and responsive documents can be collected, stored and made available to the public; an archive for easier access to historical records; new email retention policies, and ways to make the county’s system for processing public records requests more efficient.
The proposal recommends appointing Anderson and Supervisor Nora Vargas to the committee and calls for the group to produce regular progress reports and make final recommendations to the board of supervisors within 180 days.
When Dianne Jacob arrived on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors in 1993, she received a less than warm welcome from the incumbent supervisors and entrenched county bureaucrats.
A Jamul resident and former Spring Valley elementary teacher, Jacob had jousted with the county for more than a decade, objecting to a few development projects in East County. She also campaigned as someone who would challenge the status quo and bring more accountability and community focus to county government.
She laid out two initiatives during her first address at a board meeting: one, to bring a citizen-based budget approach to a county that was on the verge of financial ruin and, two, to shutter the El Cajon jail nicknamed the “Styrofoam palace” and instead reopen the East Mesa jail, which was sitting vacant while costing the county about $2 million a year.
Due to ongoing safety concerns about COVID-19, the three new members of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors will take the oath of office Monday in three separate virtual ceremonies, county officials announced.
Cox Communications will air the three, 20-minute ceremonies on channels 24 or 19, an
Tension among members of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors sometimes reached a fever pitch in 2020.
Faced with a global pandemic and a divisive election year that would determine the political balance of the board, disagreements among the county’s five supervisors often played out in public.
Despite those conflicts, the board was able to navigate some of its biggest challenges in 2020, including becoming one of the first counties in the country to declare a local emergency in response to COVID-19 in February and later passing a $6.5 billion annual budget the largest in county history.
While every board member deserves some credit for that, one board member most often functioned as the board’s peacemaker: Supervisor Greg Cox. Cox chaired the board during a year unlike any other in his 26-year tenure on the board.