Posts by Susan Duerksen
San Diego wasted $500k on consultants; more scrutiny needed as quest to privatize landfill continues
By Susan Duerksen | March 24, 2011 |
A consulting firm received $500,000 to handle the botched sale of Miramar Landfill, as the San Diego City Council
learned in a budget revision this week. On the heels of that costly failure, Mayor Sanders has already launched into another effort to privatize the landfill.
CPI is urging the City to adequately evaluate the viability, costs and consequences before continuing the headlong rush to outsource the vital public service.
Greenberg Traurig consultants were hired for $500,000 before basic questions were ans Read More
CPI: We are Wisconsin
By Susan Duerksen | February 23, 2011 |
It’s about power, not the budget. Threats to democracy in the Midwest
The attack on public employees spreading through the Midwest threatens middle-class working people across the nation. Big-money and corporate interests are out to destroy collective bargaining to solidify their control of political and economic life in this country.
The rash of proposals targeting public employee unions (in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and a dozen more states) isn’t about budgeting – it’s about political power – as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman explains and Indiana’s governor admitted yesterday.
The teachers’ and other public workers’ unions of Wisconsin already agreed to Gov. Scott Walker’s demands to cut their benefits. He insists on ending their right to negotiate at all. Read More
Deceptive ballot measure would repeal the Living Wage Ordinance.
By Susan Duerksen | April 15, 2010 |
This week, even as we celebrate the 5th anniversary of San Diego’s Living Wage Ordinance, special interests are ramping up a stealth campaign to kill the Living Wage.
City contractors and developers are pushing a deceptively named ballot initiative that would repeal and outlaw the Living Wage Ordinance.
The Living Wage Ordinance is under attack! Don’t give money or your signature to the misnamed “Competition and Transparency in City Contracting Initiative.” Read More
Deceptive ballot drive to kill the Living Wage!
By Susan Duerksen | February 19, 2010 |
A misleading campaign has begun for a San Diego ballot measure that would reverse a decade of CPI progress for workers and their families, including the Living Wage Ordinance.
City Councilmember Carl DeMaio, with funding from contractor groups, is collecting signatures for a November ballot initiative that would force privatization of city services and make San Diego the only city in the U.S. to ban Living Wage laws. Read More
We’re In This Together
By Susan Duerksen | Published in voiceofsandiego.org | September 29, 2008 |
One thing the collapse of the financial markets makes clear: We are all in this economy together.
When working people can’t make ends meet — and can’t pay their mortgages — the house of cards falls down on all of us. When people in our community are struggling to scrape by on poverty wages, it’s everybody’s problem, and not just for humanitarian reasons. Locally as well as nationally, a healthy economy depends on strong middle-class jobs with paychecks that cover the bills.
The city of San Diego recognized this basic economic truth in 2005 when it adopted a living wage law. As with similar measures in about 120 other cities and counties, the law says companies that have contracts with the city must pay their workers at least a “living wage,” one that is enough to meet basic living expenses. In San Diego, it’s about $13 an hour this year — still a low wage but significantly more than minimum wage. Read More
Smart budgeting: Classrooms come first
By Murtaza Baxamusa, Susan Duerksen | Published in San Diego Union-Tribune | May 13, 2008 |
San Diego Unified has many options besides layoffs
The San Diego Unified School District board will vote this afternoon on laying off more than 900 teachers. The consequences of that vote will ripple far beyond the careers of those educators and into San Diego’s economic future.
Investment in public education is prudent financial planning. A community’s business climate and economic strength are directly tied to education spending levels, smaller class sizes, student access to technology and well-trained, innovative teachers, numerous studies have shown. In a Brookings Institution survey, three-quarters of corporate managers said local education quality was the top criterion when they decide where to locate.
Especially now, as working families face the corrosive effects of a recession, it is critical to ensure — not jeopardize — a quality education for our next working generation. Read More
