For many people, Carl DeMaio burst on the scene as a councilman with extreme ideas for tearing down the city's services. After all, fewer than 20,000 people have ever voted for DeMaio in a city of 1.3 million. But before taking office he was already well on his way to his questionable ethics and bogus numbers.
In the spring of 2004, DeMaio and his Performance Institute, along with his friends at the Reason Foundation released the San Diego Citizens Budget Plan. The plan was initially popular, until the facts started evaporating:
The errors in DeMaio's reports included wrong information about the San Diego firefighters' contract and inaccurate budget totals for the Atlanta mayor's office and the Baltimore City Attorney's Office, which The Performance Institute used for comparisons with those in San Diego.
In short order, the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, and Mayor Dick Murphy abandoned Carl's failed plan. Indeed, "
the institute's research and credibility" were questioned as a result.
Now, in recent months DeMaio hasn't had any problem being confronted with comprehensive explanations of why he's lying: he's just kept right on going. So what did he do back then when his numbers fell apart?
"In reality, our numbers are right, and if we know that these reforms are right for San Diego, we have no option but to continue to go on, to continue to fight," he said.
In other words: Forget accuracy, the point is the fight. Now that DeMaio is trying again, his numbers are just as ugly.
Five months and several budget updates since we started getting improved numbers on the city's pensions and budget, he's still running on a budget plan
based on inaccurate numbers -- with no apparent interest in presenting a budget plan based on the current economic situation.
Meanwhile, the supposed savings from his Proposition B have been steadily evaporating as months have gone by. First it was more than $2 billion. Then it was less than $1 billion... but only after DeMaio's allies decided that inflation no longer exists. And even the little bit left over
isn't actually likely to happen.
What we have then is an entire career built around numbers that can't be trusted. Numbers that DeMaio doesn't even care about getting right as long as he gets a soundbite. In fact, he'll take it a step further and take credit for *good* numbers, even if they aren't his to claim. It was just this week that Mayor Sanders
called him out for exactly that:
"He probably takes credit for my weight loss," he said. "He probably takes credit for the weeds I pulled in the backyard last week. It’s all bulls---."
Sanders went onto say DeMaio’s claims that the city is wasting millions of dollars aren’t true.
"I am not a candidate for anything so I don’t have to make up things," he said. "I don’t have to be on a political doomsday tour to make people think it’s worse than it actually is."
So even while DeMaio claims the budget isn't actually getting healthy again, he's falsely claiming credit for it.
San Diego's tried using bad numbers to budget before. That's how we became Enron by the Sea in the first place. Why would we want Carl DeMaio to direct the sequel?
