What San Diego's Reform Debate Says About County Government | Joel Anderson

San Diego County is introducing a measure to bring more transparency into the county government because the county has a significant budget now and this is a unique measure that could go across California with different counties. Today we sit down with Joel Anderson, county supervisor from San Diego, who opposes this measure and he thinks that this measure could cause adverse effects down the line. With this new charter reform if it's passed we'll see a lot more of my colleagues on go to jail because you're removing the protections that keep people from doing what humans do. They like to take shortcuts. We also talked to him about corruption and accountability to the public especially in these days where we have millions of dollars going into homelessness and spendings in these counties and not a lot of accountability around them. We're throwing money at problems and calling it good and yet these NGOs are getting 30 grand per family and yet they couldn't find places to live. They didn't have enough money. How can that be? And it took me a while to drill down to find out how much money. Joel, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Oh it's my pleasure. There's some major changes happening in San Diego. We want to talk to you about that. There's a new proposal that could change the charter of the county and the county has grown a lot. Apparently there's some thoughts of bringing more accountability. Can you tell us about this proposal? Absolutely. So it's on the ballot this November. It's a charter change. This is probably the biggest vote we've done in over 50 years because we're dramatically changing how the county works. There's some parts that are very good and some parts that I didn't support and I don't support. So one of the elements is they want to change our term limits from two four-year terms to three four-year terms. I think going to 12 years is a good thing. I think that's the right direction. But in this charter change it allows me and my colleagues on the board to do an extra 12 years. They say it's retroactive. I don't believe that's legally correct. I believe that we'll get three more terms. So that means I'd have the potential of being on that board for 20 years and I don't think the voters understand that or want that. The other element is we don't have an FPPC function. That's a political function. Right now the FPPC only applies to counties and entities. There are two million or fewer residents. We're 3.3 million. So we don't qualify to fall under the FPPC. So creating an ethics board is a good thing. That's one of the positives from this. Right now the audit function falls under the CAO and we do audit at the direction of the CAO. They want to bring on an independent auditor but their idea of an independent auditor means that they would report to three members of the board of supervisors. They would get the direction from the board of supervisors and they could be fired by the board of supervisors. And when I think in terms of auditors I rather have seen the auditor report to the citizens and be elected. When you think in terms of cities like Oakland in 12 counties they have an elected auditor. And what I'm worried about is while I trust my colleagues on the board we don't know who's going to be elected next. So if only the board majority gets to decide who gets audited and you had a political enemy you'd want to audit them the year before their election so they go into their election cycle with a nasty audit. And I think that we've seen over history that if you audit long and hard enough you're going to find something whether it's a real merit or not is a different story. And if you had an embarrassing moment you would direct the auditor not to audit the department that would embarrass you before your election. So tying it to elected officials doesn't really give us the audit ability that I believe that we need to get to the crooks of better more effective efficient accountable government. Now in terms of the ethics commission is that to oversee the political side of things? So right now the county falls under the district attorney. Well the district attorney only gets involved if you've committed a crime. Well what if you turn in the wrong paperwork or on the paperwork you didn't include donors and donor information. There's no ability right now for the county to fine you for not doing your paperwork correctly. And in races where you're reading who's donating to whom that's important so that nobody spends more money than they're allowed to win the election pay a fine and call it good. You want to be able to blow the whistle on the person right there so that voters know that they're cheating the system to get it. So that's a very good thing. There's another aspect that brings me great concern. Right now we have in our charter a moat around the purchasing department. I can't go over and sit down with you in the purchasing department and say hey I know you're going to be buying some white cups here. Do you know that my cousin over there have you had a chance to talk to him? He has great white cups that he sells. That's illegal. They're removing that moat and I will have the ability to sit down and help you find a single source contract that potentially could benefit my friends or family. So the board will have access to that is that? Right and it's the wrong direction. And you know even when you have a moat around it you had a supervisor here locally that lost his seat and went to jail over it. And now we're going to remove that so the likelihood of more single source contracts meaning that our constituents are going to pay higher taxes for goods and services that they could get at a better deal if it was bid out. That all could evaporate. The idea that three people would have so much authority is scary to me. And how would they remove that moat? In the charter I'm not allowed to communicate with them. So it makes it easy. I'm not allowed to communicate with you. I can communicate with the CAO and there's four other offices. So the current charter you're not allowed to talk to the purchasing team or the team. Right so we can't we can't bypass the CAO. That's a safeguard for civil servants. This is undue influence on the civil servant. And the other part is right now we hire five people and we have direct control over five people. The CAO of the county is one of them. Which is kind of like the CEO. Chief administrative officer. See the idea of a board is not to micromanage the office in the administration. It's to set the bar. We want to see more done on homelessness and these are the policies we want to see enacted. And then they have to move in and do it. That protects civil service. Because these people are career administrators who outlive us on the board. So those policies that history and and all that knowledge stays with you with the administration as we trade out. In eight years I'll be gone and a new person will come in. The whole county shouldn't be changing every eight years or every 12 years. You want to have that consistency that the roads are being repaired. Homelessness is being addressed. Mental health is being addressed. So the city of San Diego is roughly 1.8 million. Then we're 550. And then the next largest city comes in around 150,000 people. So we're a huge community. The county is responsible for the roads, their infrastructure, their land use, all that stuff. But the county is also responsible for the mental health, for all the restaurant health code. They're responsible for the jails. So even though San Diego PD may arrest you, they'll put you in a facility that the county runs. So we have a lot of responsibilities county-wide, but the number one responsibility is for the roads and infrastructure, for the unincorporated. So those are the things that we do. And having the consistency of civil servants, people who don't lose their job because of their political affiliation, is really important. And yet this new charter reform removes all of that. It says that the Board of Supes would get to approve all these different jobs that are appointed by the CAO. So you started off as the best pothole filler in the world, then you became the foreman, then you became the manager, now you're the department head. And the CAO saw your career and promoted you because you both consistently were there that whole time, as opposed to a supervisor who's been elected for maybe three terms. The other part is the way it's written, it's a title. I could arbitrarily make every employee that title. So if we did that, now for the first time ever, you just wanted to be the best pothole filler you could be, and now you're worried about, are you a registered Republican, Democrat, Independent? What is that going to do? We're turning San Diego County with this charter reform into Talmany Hall. We're encouraging people to use single source contracts. We're encouraging people to interfere and inject politics into everyday, ordinary administrative work that you would expect from a city or a county. For those roles to stay completely out of politics and non-partisan, this will create an avenue for politics to get into there. I served in the State Senate and three of my colleagues went to jail. I'm willing to predict that with this new charter reform, if it's passed, we'll see a lot more of my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors go to jail because you're removing the protections that keep people from doing what humans do. And humans, they like to take shortcuts and they think they're doing the right thing. But when you're sending that white cup contract to your cousin, that's wrong and it shouldn't be done. Maybe the best product, but that's not how it should be done. And Joel, there's more and more corruption cases across the state. You mentioned this county, we were in Orange County, we had a county supervisor that gave a contract to her daughter's non-profit, which was kind of made up and there was like $2 million, something like that was given away. And there's more of these cases in LA, in the Bay Area. Why do you think we're seeing more of these or was it there before? I don't think it was there before. If you don't charge people and pursue them, then people think they can get away with it and then they cut corners. And I think that when you, this charter reform, it's going to make it easier. So I have a joke and I hope I don't offend your listeners, but I tell my staff, I lock my car to help my fellow Christians not sin. You see a criminal walking by, if they see the laptop on my seat, they'll just break the window and steal the laptop. But some of my Christian brothers and sisters, if the door is unlocked, they'll steal it. But if it's locked, they know breaking the window is wrong and they won't do it because it's too much of a decline. When we make it easy for people to do illegal things, we're tempting them to do illegal things. And I think that I won't be supporting this charter reform because I'm afraid that while I'm not worried about my current board, I don't know who's going to be elected after me. And I'm thinking it's not fair to them to put them in a tight spot where it's easy for them to commit a crime. And, you know, a lot of times when you look at business, a person counts the till, you know, the cash register and they're 20 bucks short and nobody catches them. And then five years from now, they owe a half a million dollars because it went from 20 bucks to a thousand bucks. And then they get caught. They never intended to steal and they always intended to pay it back. But it was too easy for them. So these checks and balances are very, very important to help people, like I would say, lock your doors to make sure that people who would normally not steal don't steal. Do you think we have enough checks and balances right now in the state or do you think some things have changed and we're not doing as much of preventing? Well, now I spent 12 years in the state legislature and our audit team was fantastic. I wish that we had followed the auditor's advice more often. And as I understand it, talking to some of the legislators that are serving today who are friends of mine, the governor has been very selective in following auditor's advice. And I was surprised at how well the system worked. And I think that when you have a fully independent auditor that is not incumbent to elected officials, you get a better product and more honest product because they don't care who they offend. Their reputation's on the line. But if an auditor tells you to stop doing this and do this instead and then you choose to ignore it, that's on you. And I think that we're not taking the advice as often as we should. In San Diego, we had a contract and the person stole a lot of the money. So I've had a subcommittee and we've looked at how we do our contracting to see we're supposed to have a network that catches this and yet this person had a single source contract and we didn't even keep all the records. So now that they're trying to prosecute them, we don't even have all the records because the retention plan is less than two years. And they said, well, if we know there's going to be a lawsuit, we'll keep the records. Well, what if the lawsuit doesn't start or the criminal charges don't start for until three years? You're killing evidence unnecessarily. So I have a board letter coming forward in the next month that's going to change our retention policy to five years. And the original was 30 days. When I first got elected, I changed to two years. So now I'm going to go back and say, look, two years wasn't enough. We actually need the full five years. And when you think about it, the IRS, we have a responsibility to keep our records for seven years. So I think aligning county policy with state and federal policy is a good way to go. The other thing is often government is run out of people's garages. You start off in a small town and you don't change your small town practices, although you've become a large community and you really need to update those practices. One of the concerns I have is when you do a public records request, it's incumbent on me to look through my computer to give you the emails that you request. And as a news agency and a reporter, you understand how important this is for transparency. If I don't report it, how are you supposed to know? The only way that person's going to get caught is the person who received the email comes forward. I don't think that's right in the state. When you made a request, it went to the data center. No, we're required. So that's another board letter I'm bringing forward. So over the last five years, I've done a lot of transparency in best practices, board letters, trying to shine a light on it. And you know, look, I work awfully hard. My colleagues work hard. I want to make sure that they get the credit they deserve for working hard on behalf of their constituents. But we have a subcommittee who has no minutes. They have no agendas. They spend half a million dollars and there's no accountability. So I did a board letter asking that they at least post minutes. See, my subcommittees are all done in the boardroom and videotaped. I'm proud of the work I do. I want to make sure everyone in my constituents knows how hard I'm working on their behalf. So when you do stuff behind closed doors, of course, people are going to whisper and say there's conspiracies. And then when you come out with policy that's unbased because no one you've not brought the public with you along the way, they're going to say this is, you know, you're just single sourcing stuff out. You're just taking care of your friends. I don't believe that that's what my colleagues are doing, but I want it to be public. I want to know what's going on. You can't have two people spending money on a board that requires three votes. There's a phenomenon in California and everybody's getting frustrated with the spending on homelessness. And there's a lot of money going in from the counties and billions and millions and billions depending on where people are. And it's funneling into nonprofits. And sometimes these nonprofits are legitimate and sometimes they are not. It's gotten to the point where people are losing trust of nonprofits. My colleagues fondly call them NGOs, non-government organizations. I have the most refugees in my district, western Mississippi. I have roughly 38,000 Chaldeans. I have Afghans, 4,000 Afghans. I have Syrians. I'm the Middle East of the West Coast. I asked the county, I did a board letter to welcome the last round of Afghans. As Biden was shutting down our bases, a lot of those folks served our nation and I wanted to make sure that we had a welcoming place. And I knew they'd come to my district because I had over a thousand Afghans already. And many of them didn't speak English and they're trying to assimilate. So it's always better to go to a community that can help you, that understands your culture and does all that. We had NGOs who are helping them. I was shocked to learn that they were getting, and I forgot the exact number, but roughly $5,000 per month per person. So you have a family of six people, four kids and two adults, that's 30 grand. 30,000 a month. Right. But they weren't getting it because they were calling my office because they couldn't make their rent and eat. See, the NGOs collected that money to help them assimilate and they were keeping the money. So I have no authority over it. So I kept touring the NGOs because I figured my presence would put pressure on them to do their jobs. But you're right. We're throwing money at problems and calling it good. And yet there was no federal oversight. There was no state oversight. There was no county oversight or city oversight. And yet these NGOs are getting 30 grand per family based on the 5,000 per individual. We have 4,000 folks. That's a lot of money. And yet they couldn't find places to live. They didn't have enough money. How can that be? And it took me a while to drill down to find out how much money. And some came from the feds, some came from the state. And then, you know, they were wanting to sign up for county services because they didn't have enough money to feed their family. This is wrong. When you identify people who are stealing like that, they're not stealing from you and me. They're stealing from the poor people who actually need those services. I saw that with the immigration community, but on the homeless side as well. So what we really need to do is have the private sector build out these things and government rent from them. There are things that the government does well, and there are things that we're not. And what I fear about the San Diego charter passing is we're focusing on expanding the things we're not good at, negotiating contracts, and we're allowing elected officials to interfere with that process. And yet, the things that we're good at, we're removing. Joel, while we have you, can you tell us more about San Diego? What's happening there? So one of the greatest challenges we have is we have a neighbor to the south, on the other side of the border, who's dumping tens of millions of gallons of sewage. Not just toilets, but industrial waste as well. And over the last year, Coronado and South Bay, all their beaches have been closed. The seals can no longer go into the ocean. When I say seals, I'm not talking about the animals. I'm talking about the baby seals. Because there's a big training center there. They've had to move their water training away because it's so polluted. People are getting sick from it. The toxic waste that's in the air is overwhelming those communities. For as long as I've lived in San Diego, over 30 years, this has been an issue, but it's at epic proportions. They continue to build in Tijuana without any sewage whatsoever. So they're just dumping it into a canal that leads to San Diego. And they're doing the same thing with industrial waste. And it's really impacting our communities. And it's very toxic. We built a sewer plant years ago to process not San Diego sewage. But Tijuana. But Tijuana sewage to protect our communities. And it only does a third of the waste. And Tijuana hasn't done anything. Now they say they're going to, but the interesting fact that nobody talks about, we have a contract that under emergency circumstances, we can sell them water. We sell them 15 days of water every month because there are always an emergency in Tijuana. I support cutting off their water. If you're going to send us our water back polluted, then you don't get to have water. And if we cut off 50% of their water, I think it would have their attention, but none of the politicians want to do what's necessary to get a bad neighbor to comply. And I'm not talking about the Mexican people. They're wonderful people. I'm talking about their government. Their government are not good neighbors. That pollution is actually impacting a lot of Tijuana beaches too. A lot of those areas on the ocean are not, people cannot. And it's going throughout their city. So if it's that toxic that you can't even breathe it, what's it doing to their communities? When do we stand up for our constituents to make sure that nobody slips their cracks? Zeldin, the head of EPA has been doing a great job, but we need to step it up. We can't continue to let this drag out for time and timing. So one of the challenges is that's not our lane. That's a federal lane. That's an international border. It's not the county's job to do it, but on the same token, nobody else is stepping up. That's one of the biggest challenges for our board moving forward is to stay in our lane, to do what we're responsible for when the people around us aren't addressing the issues the way they should. Somehow the quality of the roads across California has gone down. Especially after the pandemic, what are your thoughts on that? Did the costs go up? Is there not enough money? Well, I think the costs have gone up, but that's not an excuse. I think that it's easy to skip a pothole and give a community something they're asking for. Whether it's parks, whether it's roads, whether it's other infrastructure, it all comes from the same pot. And so it's hard for some electeds to stand up to the constituents and say, we're not going to add new monkey bars. We're going to take care of these potholes. And by the way, in the city of San Diego, the number one complaint I get, I'll have town halls and I represent a big portion of San Diego, the city itself, but I have no authority other than mental health in those areas. They all show up angry about streetlights and potholes. And then I have to refer them to their city councilman because that's their job. In the unincorporated, we get very few complaints because I believe potholes are my job and we're constantly repaving. And one of the things that we do is we'll take pictures before and afterwards and send it. And when I first got elected, I added $18 million to the budget for my district to have new roads. And I was getting complaints and then it dawned on me, we would shut down the road to repair it and you're trying to get your kids to school and now you're late for work. So my staff, we get a list of the roads that are going to be repaired and then my staff goes out of their way to contact those communities and we'll put flyers on their door saying, hey, the road's going to be closed starting on this date, repair, but we're going to have a nice new road for you and we're going to fill those potholes. And so every year I've been elected, I've increased the budget in my district for roads from $18 to $24 million. So people have to figure out, is it county or the city? And across the state, this is a problem everywhere, even in Orange County, people have to reach out and ask for it. And most of the cities and counties have an app where you can tell people. So I asked our roads division, I said, well, how do you know, how do you know what to prioritize? And they said, well, people call and complain. Well, I think a lot of people don't know that they can call and complain. So we went out and did a huge outreach saying, tell us which roads need to be done. And we do it periodically, every month and a half to three months, we send out an email to people saying, hey, let us know so we can get you in the queue. We want to do a good job. But back to your point about how NGOs and nonprofits have taken over governance and they're the ones that are making hay with it. I'm not saying the NGOs are bad. But I think that to your point, there needs to be checks and balances. This is why you don't want to have single source contracts. You want all the NGOs to bid against each other. You know, when I first got elected to the state legislature, I had a issue with Caltrans. And so I posted a on my state website, a hotline for Caltrans. I found out everything that was going on wrong about Caltrans, because there was a person in Caltrans that took pride in their work and were disgusted that leadership was doing such a poor job. Or other people would take a vehicle and go sleep in it. They knew what they were doing, and nobody was doing anything about it. So I got all my tips from the very people, from insiders. And I think that's the way government is. I think that the vast majority of people are hardworking, they take pride in their work, and they're embarrassed by those individuals that aren't doing their job or trying to shirk their responsibilities. So I think that, you know, having those tip lines are important. Having an audit system that's truly independent, that's not owned by the Board of Supervisors or by the electeds. I think all these things are good governance and would lead to a better outcome. And people should come forward when they see something, because there's a lot of people that work for in these NGOs and these administrative offices, government offices that see things, they should come forward. The firm that the DA is pursuing was a non-profit, and they simply scammed the county for, you know, I forgot the dollar amount, but it was a lot. And there needs to be protections. So I agree with you 100%. And all that money they took meant there was less money to help the people that are truly in need. You have actually helped a lot of immigrants, too. And I know people from Iran that have immigrated here, and you've stood up for them. I know you've stood up for minorities from China. You know, there's a persecution going on with Falun Gong, spiritual practice that's persecuted in China. You've taken a stance on that. Can you tell us more about these, and why do you do it? Well, human rights have nothing to do with politics. That's just good. That's just being a good person. And when you look around the world and how people are mistreated, it's wrong. It's flat out wrong. And I can't in good conscience not address those issues. So one of the issues that really got me was I noticed that I think it was either five or seven countries at the time had stopped doing medical tourism with China. You see, in China, if you were going to go and you needed a liver, or a lung, or a heart, you could order it, and they'd have it ready for you. But here in the United States, you have to wait until somebody dies that has a usable organ. And it may take years, may take five years, you may not ever get it. They were taking people who are religiously persecuted, jailing them, taking their blood type, and harvesting their body parts. It's been documented time and time again, and that's why it was either five or seven countries stopped all the medical tourism. We shouldn't be exploiting each other like this. That's not right. And while I wouldn't want to lose a loved one if they could get a new body part, it shouldn't come at somebody who hasn't volunteered it. And when you look at some of these countries and how they treat their residents, when you think in terms of under the mullahs, how people are treated in Iran, when I divested our public pensions from Iran, the practice in Iran at that time was if you were accused of being gay, not proven, accused, they may hang you. If your husband cheated on you, you could be buried to your waist and your children and neighbors stone you to death. This is barbaric. It's not what we believe in. And so I've always taken that stance because I have so many immigrants in my district, so many refugees, so many of these stories were relayed to me firsthand because it happened to a member of their family that I couldn't sit idly by and not. And look, in state government or in the county suit, I'm not negotiating with those countries, but shining a light on those practices hopefully gets others to stop trading with them. Seven countries don't go to China for medical tourism. And that just goes to show the more people know, the less people are willing to accept people mistreating each other and abusing each other. So that's always been important. I also, when I was in the state legislature, wrote a lot of the restorative justice laws. And I was the vice chair of public safety for all those years. And my goal was always to lower the number of future victims. And so where Republicans in the past would not be into restorative justice, because they're saying you're going soft on crime. If a person leaves prison and harm somebody within five minutes, we failed our job because we created future victims. So my goal was always put the focus on no future victims. So we have to do everything we can to restore that person so they don't go back to that life of crime. And when I explained it at the Senate floor, Senator Moorlach and I became fast friends because he understood it. And he had said he didn't want to be soft on crime, but he didn't want future victims. And so he was absolutely terrific. I could always count on his vote when I ran bills like that. But we don't have to accept life as it's given to us. We can have standards and we can raise those standards. You know, I'm old enough to remember 60 years ago that we sent a man to the moon with a slide ruler. We have high-speed computers and we can't fix homelessness. We can't fix roads. We can't fix anything. We can't build a high-speed train. We can't do anything. And yet in, I think it was 2009, I voted on an $87 billion budget for the state of California. Last year, I believe it was over $322 billion. It almost quadrupled in 15 years. Are, is our colleges funded? No. Are the freeways better? No. What, what have we done with all that money? We found new NGOs. They're going to give us a better life and squander our money. We spent tons of money on homelessness and yet has it gotten better? No. Now I, I'm very proud of my district. Uh, over the last four years, I've lowered homelessness in my district by double digits. I'm the only supervisor that has done that, but we spend tons of money on homelessness, but we don't know what's effective, what's not effective. We don't know how much we've spent. We just keep throwing more cash at it, hoping it goes away. But if we can stop the influx coming onto the street, then we have a real chance in removing people. So if you're on the street long enough, it's going to be very, very difficult to get those people off the street because that's their new norm. They don't see, they don't think they're living in a substandard way. That's their new norm. They've accepted it. So my goal has been to go after all the people who have not accepted that as their norm. And that's why we've been able to get double digits off the street. And we've prevented new people from coming on the street. The key is you have to have the social services. Our social workers work with them to get them into permanent housing. Within six months, 62% of the people that are in our safe parking move to permanent housing and their lives are changed forever. And we're catching people before they become like 10 years on the street. Mental health and addiction issues set in. Catching these people early and giving them a path out has been very successful in my district. So the housing first with social workers works. Housing to warehouse people never works. And sadly, too many of our state programs have bought housing. And yet when you visit some of those facilities, their housekeeping are drug dealers going from room to room selling drugs, where the programs that I've done in my district have wraparound services. So social worker gets them on a plan and they move them forward. And we've had tremendous success. If I had gotten 10% off the street, I would have called it a home run. And yet 62% of the people after six months move in to permanent housing. Now, we're not measuring this. It could be six weeks later, they're back on the street. I don't know. But we've noticed over the last four years, double digit reduction. So we know many of them are staying because they're not back on the street, at least not my streets. And you know, everybody could be doing this, but it's so much easier to talk about it, throw money at it and abandon it. The goal is to change people's lives. It's to lower and avoid future victims. If you understand that's the goal, everything falls in place. There has to be trust. You know, I did 343 bills with Dems, more than all the Republicans combined. And I had the most conservative vote. I mean, by far the most conservative vote. Being a conservative was a way of looking at problems. Working together solves problems. And so much of this is knowing the other person, understanding them, and speaking in a way that's respectful. But also, there's not a Democrat I've met that wants more victims. So when I say I want to lower the victims, that's common ground. That's something to build from. But you have to have that commitment, and it doesn't come right away. Relationships are so important when you're talking about good governance. I did a lot of work across party lines, yet I was the first one to light up their bill when I thought it was wrong. But it was never personal. You know, a lot of times you light up somebody's bill, they'd be angry in the moment, and they'd say, hey, let's talk about our next bill that we're going to work on together. And you move past it. But I think today, you get more likes if you're just not civil. If you just say, they're horrible people, I can't work with them. By the way, any elected official that says there are horrible people, I can't work with them, that means their district's going to suffer. Because our districts only benefit when we work together. It takes three votes on my board to be an appropriation to fix the roads in my district. If I can't get that third vote, my roads are never going to get fixed. I got elected to fix roads. I'm the pothole guy. So I have to make it work with my colleagues. And I have to understand what makes them work. See, I figured out what meant, what was important to every one of them. And I offered them that path. I didn't say, hey, nobody asked me why I was doing the bill. Nobody did. Because they didn't give a hoot why it was important to me. They only cared about why it was important to their district and to them. And I knew that, and I appreciated it. And I do that today with what I'm doing. I'm always trying to join author with people, because at least then I have one more vote. So, you know, I think that it's so easy just to say, hey, I want white cups, and you need to vote for it. And then a person says no, and then you get to shout at the moon and say, see, you can't work with these people. That's not going to solve our problems. So we have to change the way we've been doing things in the recent few years and go back to working together and not criticizing people all the time and online, especially online. Well, I didn't say we can't criticize them. Just make sure you're using somebody else's name as a pseudonym. No, I'm teasing. I'm teasing. No, but you know what? Understanding why they're doing what they're doing may lead to a bill or ordinance in terms of San Diego County, an ordinance down the road that's helpful to both. And I think if you don't understand the principles of the people you're dealing with, and I picked on moderates, but too often in the state legislature, all the moderates were doing this, checking the wind on which direction, where you had principal people like Nancy Skinner, who I did a lot of bills with, or Mark Leno, who became a good friend. We knew what made them tick. And if they gave you their word, no amount of wind was going to change them because they were based on principles. And I think too often now, all those principles are subjective and they change with the wind. And if it's truth, it shouldn't change with the wind. The truth is the truth. You can't get away from the truth. It's always the truth. But now we are allowing the ends to justify the means. And I think that that's wrong. This charter change, while there's a lot of good things in it, it fundamentally changes and it allows too much based on the electeds and not on the administration of government. It attacks civil service. And I think that civil service, the reason why we did it was to get away from Talmadge Hall. It didn't matter who you were related to. We focused on who was good at filling potholes and it was merit-based. And now we're shifting back to what party do you belong to? How are you affiliated? And we're only going to hire our cousins. That's not right. That's not good governance. And that's not good at any time. The role of the press is so important because when you think about the three pillars of government, it's not, it's four pillars. So you have the judicial, you have the executive, you have the legislative, and then you have the press. And when the press doesn't show up and when they don't do their job, it's no different than when the judicial doesn't show up and doesn't do their job. This is how we protect ourselves. That's why free speech matters, but it won't matter if you're not going to use it. And I can't tell you how many times I've talked to reporters and I've given them a story and they won't follow up on it. And yet that's the hottest story. Instead, they'd rather focus on doing muck raking over a nothing burger. And so I really hope that you continue to expand and do well because the truth will set us free. I've heard that somewhere. Thank you so much. County Supervisor Joel Anderson from San Diego. It was great to have you on California Insider. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Tell us what you think about this conversation and do you want to see more accountability in your local governments? Make sure to comment or email us at siamak.californiansider.com. We read all of your emails and comments. I'm Siamak Ghorami. This is California Insider. We'll see you next time.