Proposition C Wins

Published: Wednesday, June 4, 2008 1:53 AM PDT

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Proposition C, the initiative that revamps the city of San Diego's auditing structure, is on its way to passing easily, garnering 63.38 percent of the voting with 97.3 percent of precincts reporting.

I caught up with Councilmember Donna Frye, who has been a vocal anti-Prop. C advocate these last few months.

She attributed Prop. C’s likely passage to its relatively new arrival in March as well as high spending on the part of "business as usual folks" such as the hotel industry, restaurant associations, the Lincoln Club of San Diego County and the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation.

"We were outspent probably 9-to-1, that’s a real hard factor to overcome, especially if you’re a short campaign," she said. "This was a relatively short campaign because this wasn’t placed on the ballot until March. A lot of information was put out and lumped together -- A, B and C -- so we were able to do some mail, but not nearly as much as I would have liked."

The measure had the support of a wide array of support. Here's a snippet from an earlier story we did about the measure:

Supporters say the auditor's independence from both the executive and legislative branches is key, which they say Prop. C ensures.

Vincent Mudd, a member of the Charter Review Committee, which in 2007 made the recommendations which formed the basis of Prop. C., said an auditor can be a victim of a bad city council just as easily as a bad mayor.

"The key is that as long as the independent auditor can't be hired and fired by the same person, that person would have a good level of independence," Mudd said.

-- LEA YU