San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio today announced his endorsement of the Citizen Power Initiative, a proposed ballot initiative that will ban the practice of allowing taxpayer money to be funneled to politics through public employee unions’ paychecks.

The Citizen Power Campaign (www.UnplugThePoliticalMachine.org) is currently collecting signatures to qualify the Citizen Power Initiative for the November 2010 ballot. Proponents have until mid-April to render nearly 700,000 valid signatures to the Secretary of State.

Carl DeMaio, San Diego’s “City Hall Watchdog” is a long-time advocate of government reform. “We must pass the Citizen Power Initiative if we hope to solve our budget and pension problems. State and local public employee unions helped create these problems by using their enormous political power. They have this power because they can force workers to join and pay for political campaigns. This initiative helps fix that.”

DeMaio is recognized as a national leader in government reform and taxpayer protection initiatives. In 2003, his “San Diego Citizen’s Budget Project” uncovered many of San Diego’s financial problems, and he authored a comprehensive reform plan to fix them. In 2006, he helped to author, qualify and pass a landmark pension reform initiative, requiring future pension benefit increases be put to a public vote.

“Pension costs have reached 69 percent of City payroll,” says DeMaio, “This means that we’re paying more for retirees than we are are for workers providing needed services. This is a direct result of the public employee unions’ political power. The Citizen Power Initiative puts that power back in the hands of taxpayers, where it belongs.”

Comments are closed.