San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG)

SANDAG is the regional planning authority for San Diego County, codified as a Joint Powers Authority under California Public Utilities Code §132351.1 (composition) and §132351.2 (voting) and consolidated by Senate Bill 1703 (2001–2002 session). PUC-1 PUC-2 SB1703 Its twenty-one-member board adopts the Regional Transportation Plan every four years (determining which freeway segments widen and which transit corridors extend), allocates the county's Regional Housing Needs Assessment targets to its cities, and administers TransNet — the county's half-cent transportation sales tax — directing decisions over more than $20 billion in transportation funding across thirty-year horizons. DB Inferred: given that funding scale, a single director's vote on this board plausibly moves more public money than most votes that director casts in their primary office — a characterization of relative dollar-weight, not a documented fact, and no body has measured or ruled on it. DB

The board's twenty-one seats are fixed by statute, not negotiated: one primary seat for each of the county's eighteen incorporated cities, one additional seat for the City of San Diego on account of its population, and two seats for the County Board of Supervisors. PUC-1 The City of San Diego's two seats are, by statute, the Mayor and the Council President; the County's two are a primary and a secondary supervisor chosen by the Board. PUC-1 No director is elected to SANDAG, none serves a fixed SANDAG term, and there is no SANDAG recall mechanism — directors answer to the appointing body. PUC-1

Routine business is decided by a "tally" vote — one voting seat, one vote, with passage by majority of the twenty voting seats (the eighteen cities, the County, and the City of San Diego's second seat each cast one). PUC-2 On any contested matter, §132351.2(b) permits any two member agencies, immediately after a tally, to call for a weighted vote that distributes one hundred votes across the member agencies in proportion to county population share, capped at fifty for any single agency and floored at one. PUC-2 In the weighted vote the City of San Diego votes as one member agency (its two seats pooled): at roughly 42% of county population DB its proportional share under that formula is about forty-two of the one hundred votes — below the fifty-vote cap, so the cap does not bind for San Diego — and the other eighteen member agencies divide the remaining votes; passage then requires at least four agencies in agreement and at least 51% of the weighted total. PUC-2