An Eleventh Goal for Mayor Murphy:
Linking Trade and Quality of Life in a Cross-Border Vision

San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy has so far not offered any vision or set of policy goals for the border or the city's relationship with Tijuana and Baja California. He also has not appointed any senior-level policy staff to these matters and appears to have no plans to do so.

(He does have an excellent bilingual staff, and he did meet recently with Tijuana Mayor Francisco Vega de Lamadrid to highlight the need for a binational aqueduct and a solution to the clogged border ports-of-entry.)

Dick Murphy is a very smart man. He is also an astute politician, sensitive to community opinion but willing to get out front when he thinks leadership might do some good. So what's up with the mayor and the border?

The charitable view is that he knows enough to realize what a complicated place the border is and how difficult it is to make progress. Not wanting to do harm, not knowing how to do good, and not being the type to pretend that he's doing something when he isn't, he does nothing. It's also likely that he doesn't want to get distracted from his "top ten" priorities, which are mainly concerned with big quality of life issues in San Diego.

That's refreshing in a way, and the beginning of wisdom, but it isn't enough. During his campaign, he said he didn't want to have a border office that no one took seriously. Instead, he would appoint a border council and meet with it every few weeks. The council's job would be to identify good opportunities for cross-border collaboration.

That still sounds like a good idea. There are plenty of talented people from both sides of the border who would help to implement it, especially if the focus was on joint projects to enhance sustainable development in the region, linking trade with quality of life.

Over the past decade, San Diego and Tijuana unfortunately have not made much progress in developing our capacity for trading with the rest of the world, but we have made great strides in degrading this region's quality of life. Wherever we look - roads, highways, ports of entry, airports, water and energy supplies, housing, open space, beaches and bays - both sides of the border face crises of sustainability.

It's time to ask what we can do to work more effectively on these problems together as a cross-border region. The Mayor of San Diego should help to lead this effort. It might even help him with his "top ten" priorities.