Political Sleuth Turns Talents to Newsletter

For years, the mere thought of Matt Potter nosing around in government records has been enough to petrify San Diego politicians, who are well aware of the former reporter’s talents for ferreting out damaging, or at least embarrassing information to be used against them in campaigns.

These days, Potter still can be found amid piles of records, but the politicians can breathe a bit easier. Hoping to find a more commercially productive outlet for his investigative talents and familiarity with public records, Potter has, as he jokingly put it, “gone respectable” by starting a newsletter that will chronicle the activities of local governments throughout San Diego County.

“The work I did in campaigns is a great deal of fun but not the best paying thing in the world,” Potter said. “Putting out something like this newsletter is a way to do what I know best and, hopefully, still be able to make a living at it.”

Targeted toward developers, lobbyists, business leaders and citizen activists, Potter’s newsletter, to be called San Diego Regulatory Alert, will be filled with information ranging from the minutiae to the major goings-on of the more than 50 local governmental agencies throughout the county. The first edition of the biweekly, eight-page newsletter is scheduled to be published July 15.

Potter said he has secured tentative commitments from about 20 clients who will pay $675 a year for the newsletter, a base he hopes to increase to about 100 in the coming months to put his project on firm financial footing.

“I think there’s a real market out there for something like this among trade associations and developers who deal with a multiplicity of agencies or jurisdictions,” said Bud Porter, a local lobbyist. “There are a lot of agencies out there, and if you can find a way to quickly summarize all that, you’re providing a very useful service.”

A 34-year-old former San Diego Tribune reporter, Potter argues that his newsletter will fill a gap in the local government coverage found in San Diego’s daily newspapers. While the major dailies report on major governmental actions, they often do not cover the obscure and often arcane legislative details that are of little interest to average readers but of great concern to those who routinely do business with local governments, Potter says.

“I’m not trying to compete with the major papers on the big stories,” Potter said. “My intention is to give people who have considerably more than passing interest in local government the kind of information that the papers usually don’t cover.”

The newsletter, Potter said, will not have a political point of view, but rather will simply offer a straightforward account of local governmental affairs aimed at the person who wants “a real stripped-down information vehicle.”

A major feature of the newsletter will be a preview of major items to be considered by the various city councils, school boards and other public agencies throughout the county. In addition to culling through the various bodies’ weekly agendas--”an incredibly time-consuming” task, Potter says--he also has developed a network of local government contacts who alert him to major upcoming issues.

“When I began thinking about doing this, I found that one of the biggest complaints people have about government is that there’s no way they can keep track of all or even a fraction of what’s going on,” Potter said. “They read about actions after the fact but have trouble finding out what’s coming up early enough to have a meaningful impact. I hope to give them enough lead time to do that by pulling everything together in one place, so they don’t have to try to track down 50 or 60 separate agendas.”

For instance, some of the items that will be listed in the first newsletter’s calendar are not scheduled to be reviewed by various local governments until September. The calendar’s emphasis will be on subjects such as rate changes for public services, requests for proposals on public construction projects and proposed law changes that could affect development.

“I’m not going to report on every little strip shopping center proposed along El Cajon Boulevard,” Potter said. “But I am going to look for trends or policy changes that could affect how strip shopping centers can be built. Plus, if there’s a plan for a couple million dollar project, the major papers probably aren’t going to carry that. But that’s the type of information that might be of interest to certain companies.”

Brief summaries of governmental actions and other topics, such as the hiring of key municipal employees, also will be included in the newsletter. Because the brevity of those summaries will, of necessity, often cause some major details to go unmentioned, Potter plans to list the telephone numbers of public officials most directly involved with the issues covered so that clients who need additional information can obtain it.

“I don’t see the newsletter as being a journal of record as much as a sort of alerting service,” Potter said. However, if his clients make frequent use of those officials’ phone numbers, “it would be great for me but not so great for the officials,” Potter conceded. “But I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Anyway, they are, after all, public officials.”

Potter’s newsletter currently is a one-man operation, with Potter serving as creator, editor, writer and salesman. Working out of a small one-room office in the Gaslamp Quarter equipped with a desk, word processor, a file cabinet and little else, Potter says that he has been working 12-hour days, seven days a week while preparing to launch the project.

“A lot of people might consider this information to be kind of dry, but I’ve always liked local government, so it’s fun,” Potter said. “Besides, I have some background in digging out information. Just like in campaigns, all of this stuff is public information, but some people might not know how to go about getting it. I’m pretty insistent and I know what public records I’m entitled to see. That makes me a more potent information-gathering source than most people.”

Indeed, to date, that potency has been most in evidence in local politics, an arena in which Potter has earned a reputation as a top “opposition researcher”--a job that, for the most part, involves digging up dirt that one candidate can use against his opponent.

Most recently, Potter worked for San Diego City Councilman Bill Cleator in his unsuccessful mayoral campaign against Maureen F. O’Connor. Information that Potter turned up for Cleator led to the disclosure that O’Connor had not properly reported some of the myriad financial holdings of her husband, multimillionaire businessman Robert O. Peterson, on public disclosure statements required of public officials--a revelation that stemmed from Potter’s ability to work his way through a confusing labyrinth of land deeds, property sale documents and other records.

If his newsletter is financially successful, Potter acknowledges that he probably will no longer have time to dabble in politics, a line of work that he has engaged in since 1982, when he quit the Tribune after working there as a reporter for four years. Earlier, Potter was a news writer for a local radio station, worked for the city Planning Department and was an aide to former San Diego City Councilman Jess Haro.

Saying that he is “prepared to hang in there for at least a year” to try to get the project off the ground, Potter already has long-range plans for possible expansion, including establishment of a system in which individuals with computers could obtain the newsletter simply by telephoning Potter’s office and hooking up with his own computer. Later, Potter also hopes to be able to hire people to help him produce the newsletter and says that he believes that his idea “has a lot of potential to be done” in other counties.

For the present, however, Potter’s goals are more modest.

“If I can just make this one a going concern, I’ll be very happy,” he said. “I think it’s a good idea. But not every good idea makes money.”