"In December, a contracting dispute held up building repairs.

"I hate it," said Romero, who stays in his room all day. "There are cockroaches. The elevator doesn't work. The garage door doesn't work. Sometimes there's no heat, no water. . . . I told my platoon sergeant I want to leave. I told the town hall meeting. I talked to the doctors and medical staff. They just said you kind of got to get used to the outside world. . . . My platoon sergeant said, 'Suck it up!' "

"Suck it Up!" I expect that will be Mayor Sanders' suggestion to the City unions on Monday when this Item comes up for Council approval. Sanders has signed a contract with the Bush Administration's favorite defense privatization consultant, Grant Thornton LLP (who participated in the Walter Reed privatization fiasco) for "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity" privatization services.

The Grant Thornton person in charge of the San Diego account is Mr. Ramon Contreras, Principal, Grant Thornton LLP, 333 John Carlyle Street, Ste 500, Alexandria, VA 22314. It is interesting that Contreras appears on the "Defense and Intelligence" page of Grant Thornton's web site. Here is his resume.

Note that Contreras also happens to be a presenter on "Strategic Sourcing" for Carl DeMaio's Performance Institute. Isn't that interesting! Is San Diego to be the poster child for the takeover of local government by giant Washington-based private "service providers"?

San Diego already appears as a client on GT's "State and Local Governments" page. Grant Thornton considers itself under contract to the City. Here is a letter from Lance Wade, the former Purchasing Director, dated April 12, 2007 purportedly confirming that contract.

However, the City Attorney's signature is required on all City Contracts according to this MOL dated February 11, 2008 and more importantly according to Charter Section 40. The Grant Thornton contract did not receive that signature. It still hasn't. Here is the latest signature page.

The first anybody heard about this supposed contract (outside the Mayor's office) was when on April 4, 2008, Mark Patzman, the Program Manager for Managed Competition, requested the City Attorney's office to "expedite review and approve" a 1472 (the form required to put an item on the City Council agenda) to ratify the supposed Grant Thornton contract referred to in Lance Wade's letter dated April 12, 2007.

In response, Deputy City Attorney Michael Calabrese wrote this letter to Mark Patzman on April 8, 2008. Calabrese explained that he could not approve the 1472 to "ratify" the Grant Thornton contract as "the underlying agreement is invalid for several reasons". Therefore "no agreement exists for the City Council to approve, extend or ratify".

Scott Peters nevertheless put it on the Council Agenda for April 28, 2008, only to "send it back to the Mayor" when the day came. Perhaps he decided to wait until after June 3, not wanting to tangle with the unions over Managed Competition during an election.

Now that the election is over Peters no longer needs the unions. He is playing the rich-man's game again, the (now out-of-the-closet) conservative he has always been. So, he has put outsourcing of city jobs back on the Council agenda for Monday June 23, even though the 1472 still does not have the City Attorney's signature.

If Peters was in the runoff with Aguirre he would be playing the unions' game and sending outsourcing of city jobs "back to the Mayor" to die on the vine. He knows that Joan Raymond's blue collar union, AFSCME Local 127 will be wiped out under Managed Competition. Even the all-powerful MEA will take severe hits, which many people support.

The great irony is that the fate of thousands of union jobs is now in the hands of Aguirre. Why should he fight their battles for them? Peters was their champion. Now he's gone. Their current champion, Ben Hueso, is backing the arch-conservative and Mayor's ally, "Judge" Jan Goldsmith (you can't use that honored title to run for any office)?

Will Hueso protest the fact that this item is even on the Council Docket without having received the City Attorney's signature? Probably not. Will Hueso lead the opposition to this obviously illegal contract? Probably not. He will leave the fight to Aguirre. So, Aguirre could be forgiven for letting the unions stew in their own juice on Monday.

The unions have protested Aguirre's "meddling" in policy. This might be a good time for Aguirre to heed their advice. Calabrese's letter makes the law clear. Hueso and the City Council must now decide to follow the law as outlined by Aguirre, or follow the Mayor in disobeying it.

Click on this picture for a video of the Mayor's Business Office Director, Anna Danegger, speaking before the Budget & Finance Committee on September 12, 2007. She was painfully trying to explain away the slow pace of "reform".

I believe it had more to do with the pending 2008 mayoral election than internal work load. Sanders wanted to give the impression to the city unions that he was not over-eager about Managed Competition. Wrong.

Danegger, a former Grant Thornton employee, is married to David Jarrell, San Diego City's Deputy Chief Operating Officer for Public Works. They are both politically savvy. This is where it gets interesting.

According to the Staff's Supporting Information to Monday's Agenda Item: "the managed competition program issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) on October 19, 2006. Four proposals were received and were evaluated separately for technical merit and price. Grant Thornton was evaluated the best value provider and was awarded a one-year contract." That is what Sanders wants the Council to "ratify".

The mayor sent out an RFP for Managed Competition before the voters passed Proposition C on November 7, 2006. There were 185,688 "Yes" votes (60.37%) and 121,906 "No" votes (39.63%). Sanders and the Republican Party spent over $1 million on the campaign.

The deadline for returning the Managed Competition RFP was November 16, 2006. Anna Danegger was still working for Grant Thornton. She did not leave until November 30, 2006 and started with the City the following Monday, December 4, 2006.

We are expected to believe that this political savvy couple did not discuss the managed Competition RFP while Anna was working for Grant Thornton and David was working for the City.

David earns $168,002 while Anna earns $117,275 i.e. $285,277 between them. They live in Scripps Ranch and have only a $450,000 mortgage - not bad for government workers. One day they will join the thousands of happy San Diego City retired millionaires.

With the help of the Casey Gwinn-trained and establishment-compliant Stacey Fulhorst, Executive Director City of San Diego Ethics Commission, Ms. Danegger got around another little ethics problem. I wonder why Stacey did not consider the husband/wife conflict?

Fulhorst's Ethics Commission's rules provide that an employee "may not influence municipal decisions that are substantially likely to have a material financial effect on an entity that has been a source of income to you within the previous twelve months."

However, Fulhorst and the Ethics Commission conveniently found that "any ministerial work (i.e., not requiring you to exercise discretion) you perform on such matters would fall outside the scope of the prohibition." San Diego City is a nice little "Ministerial" family.

The truth is that you can do just about anything in this town if it is found to be "Ministerial". The Blackwater case is a good example. Here is the full letter from the Ethics Commission to Ms. Danegger.

Why then did Sanders sign an "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity" privatization contract with Ramon Contreras, the Defense Principal at Grant Thornton, who had recently landed a huge $450 million privatization contract with the Department of Justice? Was Sanders "encouraged" to hire a favorite son of Washington, as with Blackwater?

If the City Council rejects this "ministerial" contract tomorrow, I see a repeat performance of the Blackwater case in Judge Marylin Huff's Federal Courtroom. The Hamiltonian Federalists would be proud of their 21st Century counterparts. Unfortunately for democracy a similar movement is afoot in Europe known as the Treaty of Lisbon.

On June 12, 2008, Ireland, alone among European nations, stopped the further erosion of their national sovereignty by rejecting the Treaty of Lisbon 53.4% to 46.6%. The erosion of state and local sovereignty is being done in the United States not by treaty but by compliant local politicians like Jerry Sanders and Federal Judges like Marylin Huff.

Let's see what the City Council decide on Monday - democracy vs. "ministerial" - is local government the next big business franchise?