COMMENTARY
August 9, 2007

San Diego County Proves Government Can Be Business-Minded

By Supervisor Pam Slater-Price, Third District

Christmas arrived early for the County of San Diego.

For the second time this year, the County earned an upgrade to its credit rating. The achievement was not easy or quick. But I’ll tell you the secret; run government like a business. That is, balance your books, pay your bills, borrow wisely, and provide a good service.

When I was first elected to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, the County was on the brink of bankruptcy. It was not the well-run company of top-notch employees it is today and worse still, the community was suffering from a painful recession.

But thankfully, my colleagues and I on the Board of Supervisors introduced reform, accountability and high standards that ultimately restored our fiscal health.

A balanced $4.7 billion county budget and well-managed money means better services to you in county parks, libraries, roads, health inspections, managed open space, environmental protection, animal services, courts, public protection, social services and more.

It’s as simple as that. But when funds are squandered, services suffer. We introduced competitive bidding for county services. We were top-heavy with more employees than jobs and we’ve managed to reduce all of that unnecessary waste of taxpayer money.

Today, the County of San Diego is recognized by Governing Magazine as the “best-run county in California” and the third best-managed county in the nation.

Just this month, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services announced an overall credit upgrade for the County from AA to AA+. They also upgraded the County for its outstanding long-term debt from AA- to AA.  This upgrade included our pension obligation bonds and certificates of participation, used to fund a variety of capital projects.

Improved credit ratings help save taxpayer money by reducing the costs to the County when issuing future debt instruments. No other county in the state of California is rated higher by Standard and Poor’s.

In June of this year, another credit rating company - Fitch Ratings - upgraded the County’s rating to AA+. At that same time, the County of San Diego was also honored with the Golden Watchdog Award from the San Diego County Taxpayers Association for our retirees’ health benefits proposal.

In December 2006, Supervisor Dianne Jacob and I submitted this proposal to help solve the retiree health care cost problem before it became an albatross for the County taxpayers. I’m pleased to report we reached a good compromise in July.

Government must protect taxpayers’ money – even when it’s unpopular with certain special interest groups demanding more. Without change, we could have faced the same predicament that the City of San Diego is now facing.

Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. We are business-minded elected officials and we do not make promises we cannot keep.

Supervisor Slater-Price represents the County of San Diego’s Third District.