Monica Montgomery Steppe

The Meter Play: How a $17 Million Contract, a Rigged RFP, and a Punished Whistleblower Built San Diegos Parking Meter Empire Published

Mayor Gloria expanded IPS Groups $17M parking meter empire into residential neighborhoods to backfill a $258M budget deficit. IPS Group (owned by Windjammer Capital PE) benefits from every expansion while communities lose both free parking and their share of revenue. A MathPolitics Special Investigation.

The Empty Drawer: How San Diego County Supervisors Stopped Filing and Stopped Watching Published

The Cheapest Yes Published

Sempra Energy distributed $75K across four intermediary PACs before the 2021 SDG&E franchise vote. Those PACs channeled $392K+ to the mayor and five of six YES-voting council members. All three NO voters received $0.

The Trolley Question, Part 4: Parking Is the Revenue Published

The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority books 43% of its total annual revenue from activities that assume passengers drive to the airport or rent a car at it — $203M of $473M in FY25, audited. The Port of San Diego books 64% of operating revenue from bayfront land-access concessions. In 2019, SDCRAA signed a 10-year Airline Operating & Lease Agreement that gives airlines consent rights on transit/ground-access projects over $350M and commits up to $515M in airline funding for regional transit — $440M of which is contingent on regional matches not yet raised. COVID proved the exposure: FY19→FY21 parking revenue fell 56% while bond debt stayed fixed. Mayor Gloria appoints 3 of 9 voting seats on the SDCRAA board. SANDAG has run 15 airport-transit studies over 40 years and funded none. The AOLA expires in 2029.

The Question Nobody Had to Ask Published

Henry Foster III was fired from the City of San Diego in 2016. Nine years later, as Budget Chair, he co-architected the elimination of his former supervisor's position. The city's ethics framework had no mechanism to surface the connection.

The Council Published

Your one vote is also four votes you didn't cast. The 6-of-9 override almost never comes.

The Secret Subcommittee Published

Since September 30, 2025, Supervisors Lawson-Remer and Montgomery Steppe have co-led an Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Sustainable Fiscal Planning that has met without posting public agendas or minutes. In that time it has produced a $320,000 sole-bidder polling contract, a cancelled lobbyist solicitation seeking a 55-fold increase in transfer-tax authority, and the framework for a 3-2 procedural vote authorizing $56 million in reserves spending. Two newsrooms (VOSD, U-T) have flagged the panel as operating "out of view of the public." This report does not adjudicate the Brown Act question. It documents what the records show.

The Gloria Machine Published

The machine changes party but not behavior: the same lobbyists and developers, now operating through Democratic officeholders.

The Permanent Money: Who Funds Every Side Published

Five unelected institutions — Sempra and its monopoly utility SDG&E, the Sycuan gaming tribe, the Building Industry Association, and the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council AFL-CIO — supply the money behind San Diego politics, funding both parties through party-committee conduits and sponsored independent-expenditure committees. SDG&E's signature outcome: the 2021 6-3 renewal of the gas-and-electric franchise it has held since 1920. The labor left wing is as structurally unelected as the utility/developer/gaming right wing.