Politics

S.D. City Parking Board Volunteers Must Now File Conflict Of Interest Forms

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published January 12, 2010 at 7:57 AM PST

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

Volunteer members of community parking boards in the City of San Diego will have to file conflict of interest forms, under a code adopted by the City Council.

San Diego has six parking districts and the parking boards manage almost half of the parking fees collected by the city.

The City Council has been hesitant to force volunteer parking boards to file conflict of interest forms. Council members were concerned that it would discourage people from volunteering for boards. Also, the City’s Ethics Commission said it does not have enough resources to enforce more conflict of interest codes at the city.

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But the city is now under pressure. The state’s Fair Political Practices Commission has written to San Diego twice, saying the city must change the code before March 15, 2010.

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith said local community parking boards sometimes control large sums of public money.

“I looked at the web site of Uptown Partnership, for example," Goldsmtih said. "And they spend a lot of public money. This council and this city needs to require that they file their conflict of interest forms.”

The chair of the La Jolla parking board stepped down in 2007 after an allegation that he had a conflict of interest.

The City Council acknowledged many volunteer board members may be taken by surprise by the new regulation, but they voted to comply with the state’s demand.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.