Executive Director?s Column:
RGEC Might Actually Make a Difference

It?s amazing, really, but San Diego?s Regional Government Efficiency Commission (RGEC) seems poised to do ?the right thing? for this region?s quality of life when it makes its recommendations to the state legislature on August 1.

It?s amazing because of the commission?s rushed timetable, awkward composition, and the very difficult task it was assigned. (See ?What is RGEC...? )

?The right thing? is to create a stronger regional government, one that can be more effective in tackling our interrelated crises in transportation, housing, and open space.

What we have now in the form of the San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG, is too weak to influence the land use decisions of the local jurisdictions that govern it. We need something with at least a few regional teeth.

The tricky part is providing a regional body with enough authority so that it can be held accountable for regional results but not with so much authority that local jurisdictions lose all control over land use.

One way to resolve this tug-of-war would be to have the regional body elected directly by the voters, and also to require that local land use decisions at least be consistent with this body?s regional plan. That would put the regional plan at the center of public political debate, where it belongs, instead of in the bureaucratic shadows, where it now resides.

San Diego Dialogue Report is published by San Diego Dialogue, a regional community-based public policy center at the University of California, San Diego. To inquire about information in the Report or to participate in our affiliate program, Friends of the Dialogue, please call (858) 534-8638 or send an e-mail to sddialogue@ucsd.edu.

This is the direction in which RGEC seems to be headed. At least this is the conclusion I draw from the interviews in this issue of San Diego Dialogue Report with the four commissioners ? William Jones, Mel Katz, Joe Martinez, and Paul Peterson ? who chair, respectively, the RGEC subcommittees on transportation, governance, land use and the environment, and the Port.

Of course, the Devil is always in the details, and the details are a long way from being worked out. But the momentum is clearly in favor of moving away from a status quo dominated by local jurisdictions toward a system governed more in accordance with regional quality of life standards.

Once RGEC sends its recommendations off on August 1, the legislature is free to reject or amend them. Then, if there are to be any changes in land use authority, San Diego voters would almost certainly have a ballot opportunity to voice approval or rejection.

So nothing is going to change for some time, but change is definitely in the air.