Supervisors OK new panel to scrutinize San Diego’s $2.2B in contract spending

A San Diego County ballot measure to raise taxes could be coming — and supervisors continue to lay the groundwork for voters potentially to weigh in.

Two supervisors are deputizing themselves to conduct a top-down review of county contracts, hoping to find ways to squeeze savings from the $2.2 billion spent each year on outsourcing work and services.

The review will be performed by a subcommittee helmed by Supervisors Paloma Aguirre and Joel Anderson.

For months, Chair Terra Lawson-Remer has warned the county needs to bring in more revenue, potentially through a ballot measure, to avoid cuts to its spending and programs.

For its current-year budget, the county had to erase a $138 million deficit.

Soon, new requirements for administering federal programs like Medicaid and food stamps could add to future budget gaps, with the county estimating new costs of up to $300 million each year.

During a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, Anderson said a review of county contracts could give elected officials peace of mind, should they decide to put a ballot measure to voters.

“If down the road additional revenue’s required, we can at least look in the mirror and say we did everything in our power to make sure we didn’t have to change the revenue,” Anderson said.

Aguirre and Anderson say the duties of the subcommittee will include a review of whether the work done by contractors could be put out to bid again or brought in-house to be performed by county staff.

Additional scrutiny will focus on county contracting practices, how the county tracks contract performance and whether more contracts could be awarded to local businesses.

“Our goal is not to disrupt services or take a sledgehammer to contracts,” Aguirre said. “Our goal is to take a scalpel and carefully examine where we can save money, improve performance and strengthen service delivery.”

Supervisors have already set up a separate subcommittee to examine how the county could bring in more revenue.

In October, that panel moved to hire an outside firm to identify the county’s revenue options and help draft a ballot measure ahead of launching a public relations campaign to sway voters.

Such subcommittees largely work outside of the public view, which in part led Supervisor Jim Desmond to cast the lone vote against the creation of Aguirre and Anderson’s subcommittee.

“I don’t feel that they’re transparent enough, and they leave highly technical issues to politicians instead of the professionals,” Desmond said. “If we really wanted to conduct a review of our contracts and agreements, we should utilize our professional staff.”

On Tuesday, supervisors backed a second measure, that one proposed by Desmond, aimed at a review of another area of county spending: homelessness.

Desmond wants to explore a county-commissioned audit of homelessness spending across the region, to build on two other recent reviews of homelessness spending.

Last year, an assessment from Deloitte found that county homelessness contractors often didn’t spend all of the money provided to them and that key metrics were not getting tracked by county officials.

Another statewide audit found widespread issues in measuring the effectiveness of homelessness programs in California.

“Taxpayers see these failures, and they’re frustrated,” Desmond said.

Under his measure, county staff will have 90 days to report back to supervisors on the feasibility of the county-led, region-wide audit of homelessness programs.