Vivian Moreno

The Sign Lie: How a Yellow A-Frame Hides a $30M Police Raise Published

San Diego doubled parking meter rates in January 2025 and sold it as deficit relief. The Independent Budget Analyst confirms $18.4M of the resulting revenue reimburses the General Fund — $8.6M of it to Police. The Police Department's General Fund grew $30.5M in FY26 to fund labor agreements Mayor Gloria signed in June 2023 and June 2024 — long before he proposed the rate hike. Sworn officer count fell 9.88 over the same period. The visible $1.8M repair allocation — the part with the yellow A-frame sign on it — is 6% of the take. Three of five Grand Jury accountability recommendations were ignored entirely; the fourth (community-planning-group governance) was inverted. He signed the raises first. He sold the rate hike second.

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 Money Machine: How a Lincoln Club-Founded PAC Buys Democratic Votes on San Diego's City Council Published

**A MathPolitics Investigation -- The Council Files, Part 1**

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 Developer's Democrat Published

In 2018, the Building Industry Association backed a Democrat. In 2019, that Democrat cast the deciding vote to kill inclusionary housing. In 2020, the building industry named her Public Official of the Year.

The D8 Machine Published

As Moreno is termed out in 2026, the same seven donors who funded her rise have already written checks for her successor. The candidate changed. The money didn't.

On Saturday The Library Is Closed: How San Diego Chose The Budget Crisis Published

The Council Published

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

The Gloria Machine Published

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

The Madaffer Axis: Two Firms, One City Hall Published

The Revolving Door: Regulators for Hire Published

Three San Diego officials — Marcela Escobar-Eck (Development Services Director then Atlantis Group), Gil Cabrera (Ethics Commission Chair then Airport Authority Chair and New San Diego PAC), and Frank Urtasun (Sempra VP then Housing Commission Chair then Port Commissioner) — who ran a city regulatory, ethics, or housing body and later lobbied or consulted the same arena, two of them rotating back into appointed office. A bipartisan revolving door, documented evidence-first.

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.

The Airbnb Play Published

One disclosed $100,000 behested payment to build a skate plaza in Encanto sits inside a $3.8 million Airbnb campaign to defeat a San Diego vacation-rental tax that would have raised up to $133 million per year. The payment was legal, the disclosure proper — the math is the scandal.

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 Price of No Published

Raul Campillo took $14,779 in post-election donations from lobbyists and developers — then voted against their interests on the biggest deals in San Diego. Three weeks after his dissenting votes, the Council President removed him from the committee where those votes were cast.