Brown vetoes CivicSD bill

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill Thursday that would have added new oversight to the city agency that oversees downtown and other neighborhoods.

The bill, AB504 by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, would have required many of Civic San Diego’s decisions to be ratified by the City Council.

“This legislation imposes statewide rules on local land-use planning that are intended to address a dispute in one jurisdiction,” Brown said in his veto statement. “These are issues that should be determined at the local level.”

Gonzalez said the nine-member board, appointed by the mayor and City Council, should have its many actions approved by the full council as a way to give the public more say-so in the details.

One of CivicSD’s directors, Murtaza Baxamusa, sued the city and the agency earlier this year challenging the agency, a nonprofit public benefit corporation owned by the city, and had a hand in crafting Gonzalez’ bill.

Gonzalez, a former labor leader in San Diego, said the dispute will now “play out in a courtroom,” but she plans to reintroduce the bill “with some minor changes” next year.

“The downtown interests and developers who have shut out workers and communities for the last 40 years can hire an army of lobbyists if they like but I will not be deterred from what’s right,” Gonzalez said in a statement.

The local hotel workers union, Unite Here 30, and San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Union Council have previously objected to some CivicSD decisions on environmental grounds and referred to workers’ rights that should be guaranteed. But the agency has said its powers do not allow such issues to be considered during design review.

Some developers have overcome labor issues by signing project labor agreements, and no labor objections were filed with the city or CivicSD. Developers have generally defended CivicSD’s authority as an efficient way to gain approval for downtown projects.

Gonzalez’ bill would have required council approval of all discretionary projects and allowed appeals of zoning changes and other permits for residential projects of 50 or more units, hotels with 50 or more rooms and commercial developments of 25,000 square feet or more.

Her reference to “an army of lobbyists” alluded to the Downtown San Diego Partnership and Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce’s hiring a well-connected lobbying firm in Sacramento, the Crane Group, at a cost of $30,000 to urge the bill’s veto.

Partnership President Kris Michell said extensive background information was provided to the Crane Group, but she did know how that material was shared with the governor’s office. She said CivicSD exercises greater architectural design review than elsewhere in the city. As for labor issues, she said those should be dealt with in a citywide policy, not in downtown alone.

However, she said she would reach out to Gonzalez to discuss any future bill that might be introduced.

Gonzalez spokesman Evan McLaughlin said conversations have occurred previously with the partnership and that Gonzalez would be open to talking to its representatives again.

While Gonzalez disagreed with Brown’s characterization of the bill as pertaining only to a “local issue,” no other city or county has an agency like CivicSD.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer thanked the governor for his veto, and said his action reaffirms “the ability of cities to control how their neighborhoods grow.”

San Diego set up the Centre City Development Corp. in 1975 to oversee downtown redevelopment and after the state dissolved redevelopment agencies in 2012, it was renamed Civic San Diego and took on the job of winding down redevelopment projects in other parts of the city.

It also focuses on planning in Encanto and has won federal tax credits to help local businesses and developers to improve the area.