Mayor to Take Political Agenda on Road

Faced with the defeat of her major City Hall initiatives this year by a “mindless smorgasbord of silliness,” Mayor Maureen O’Connor on Thursday outlined a revised political agenda that will take her around the world on a personal political mission.

In doing so, the mayor acknowledged that her much-debated tactic of announcing she wouldn’t seek reelection in two years backfired.

O’Connor, talking to a luncheon audience of the city’s Hotel Motel Assn., said she thought that, “by doing the altruistic thing,” and saying in her State of the City address last January that she wouldn’t run again for mayor, she would be able to promote her package of City Hall reforms without the taint of a conflict of interest.

But she’s had little success with that plan. “Hopefully, I was going to have some reforms, (but) that didn’t happen,” O’Connor said in response to a question from someone in the audience of about 150.

Critics of O’Connor suggested that she was effectively abdicating her responsibility as mayor by announcing plans to travel to Paris, Mexico City, New York, Japan, Switzerland and Germany in the coming months.

“It’s government by photo opportunity,” Councilman Bob Filner said. “She started on a garbage truck, and then it was a taxi, and now she’s on a jet. She’s basically said, ‘I give up on governing. I’m going to other countries. Goodby, guys, I give up.’ I expect, by the time she leaves, she’ll be on a rocket.”

In both her speech and in answers to audience members and reporters afterward, the mayor said she has not given up completely on her reform package and still believes fundamental structural changes are needed at City Hall because of the advent of City Council district elections.

“I have two years left to figure out what to do with that package,” she said.

Among the reforms she advocated were strengthing the powers of the mayor; limiting terms of the mayor and City Council to two and creating so-called ethics measures, ranging from new campaign contribution disclosures and financing to revolving-door provisions limiting former city officials from being lobbyists before the city.

Almost without exception, the reforms and measures were defeated or blunted by a City Council majority or left to languish in City Council committees.

“I, like any politician, can take my losses,” she said in her speech. “I cannot, however, sit idly by and watch the San Diego tradition of stability, civility and community be destroyed by a mindless smorgasbord of silliness.

“Unfortunately, this council reinvents priorities every day,” O’Connor said.

The mayor said her response will be to embark on foreign trips to emphasize international trade and tourism for San Diego, promote the idea of a binational airport with Mexico on Otay Mesa and exchange ideas and views with mayors of large cities throughout the world on battling drugs and homelessness.

It is an agenda heavy on personal diplomacy without direct reliance on the City Council to carry out her initiatives. And it is based on a belief that San Diego’s economy and presence must become more global. “I have to do what I can accomplish as an individual,” the mayor said after her speech. “I’m trying to unify the community behind my agenda.”

O’Connor, following through on a trip she announced last January, will visit Japan later this month as part of a contingent that includes the Chamber of Commerce and the city’s Economic Development Corp. The mayor said she will be a guest of Akio Morita, co-founder of the Sony Corp., for part of the time.

She also will visit Nippon syndicate, which is challenging for the San Diego-based America’s Cup and is Japan’s leading institute dealing with major economic issues.

In October, the mayor will travel to Mexico City with Councilman Ron Roberts, to meet with Mexican officials, including President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The main topic, the mayor said, will be the idea of building a binational airport with Mexico on Otay Mesa.

The Mexicans have been cool to the idea of sharing an airport, which San Diego officials hope could be an alternative to crowded Lindbergh Field. O’Connor, who visited Switzerland while on vacation last month, said she wants to use the Basel-Mulhouse Airport as a model for Otay Mesa.

That airport is shared by France, Germany and Switzerland. The mayor said she has asked the director of Basel-Mulhouse to visit San Diego and talk to Mexican and American officials. In addition, O’Connor said she hopes to lead a delegation of Mexicans and Americans to Basel to study the tri-national airport.

In November, the mayor will visit New York City at the invitation of Mayor David N. Dinkins to attend an “urban agenda” conference of big city mayors to discuss, among other things, the problems of drugs and homelessness.

Later that month, O’Connor said she will travel to Paris and Strasbourg in France as a representative of the U.S. Conference of Mayors at an international drug summit.

To prepare for the New York meeting, the mayor said she will convene a local “neighborhood drug summit in San Diego to see what more can be accomplished locally.”

Filner, one of O’Connor’s most vocal critics on the council, said he was glad to hear the mayor still has a political agenda because “we haven’t heard from her since January . . . at least we have some sense there is an agenda.” He said he applauded her for trying to promote international trade and tourism, but not the way she intends to do it.

“We elected a mayor, not a secretary of state,” he said. “The problems of governing this city aren’t going to be solved by going to Japan and France. They are going to be solved by talking to the City Council, (which) she has refused to do.

“She has abrogated her responsibility to govern this city. . . . You don’t do that by taking off on a jet plane.”

Filner said San Diego has many problems that the mayor hasn’t helped to resolve. He ridiculed her for calling for a state of emergency last year because of rampant drug-related violence in the city, but “we didn’t get one idea from her for solving the problem; we haven’t had one idea from her on managing our growth.”

He contended that the binational airport idea will go nowhere. Filner said it took 14 years of negotiations to make a second border crossing on Otay Mesa a reality and said it would take many more than that to create a binational airport.

“The reason there’s only one (in Basel, Switzerland)is that governments find it difficult to suddenly turn over their sovereignty to another government,” he said. “She will meet with the president, and he will be polite and schedule some meeting for eight or nine months down the road, and that will go on years.”

As for O’Connor’s contention that the council has slid into a smorgasbord of silliness, Filner said that, although it is true that a majority of the council has rejected her reform proposal and other ideas, such as a five--year budget plan, it has been a different majority each time.

“She’s talking as if it’s one majority, but it’s been a different set of people on(different issues),” Filner said. “She couldn’t get the support of most because she didn’t work with anyone.”