Environmental report gives Mayor Todd Gloria mediocre marks on ... - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Environmental report gives Mayor Todd Gloria mediocre marks on climate action - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Environmental report gives Mayor Todd Gloria mediocre marks on climate action. Here’s how other elected officials fared

A new report from local environmental groups give most San Diego elected officials high marks for their climate policies, but assigned Mayor Todd Gloria a middling C grade.

The report, which covered San Diego City Hall and the county Board of Supervisors, reviewed elected officials’ votes or positions on key environmental decisions last year.

Gloria and Councilmember Marni von Wilpert, who both scored Cs, were the only sitting elected officials to earn lower than an A or B for what report authors described as mixed records on measures to combat climate change.

Although most officials were graded on votes, the mayor was evaluated on the issues he had weighed in on.

“We felt like he made some progress the last year on climate action, such as adopting an updated climate plan, deciding to make the city’s facilities 100 percent clean energy through San Diego Community Power and making some investments in street redesign,” said Tara Hammond, founder of Hammond Climate Solutions, a climate advocacy, policy and project management organization that prepared the report with Climate Defenders Action Fund and the League of Conservation Voters San Diego.

But she said Gloria also delayed development of a master mobility plan, supported community plans that don’t reduce emissions and led successful efforts to rescind a vote for a mileage tax at SANDAG.

That proposed road-use charge sparked fierce controversy between environmental groups, which said it would create a way to tax electric vehicle users for road use, and local leaders who argued it would unfairly penalize people with long commutes and undermine popular support for SANDAG’s regional plan.

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Randy Wilde, Gloria’s senior climate and environmental policy adviser, questioned the report card’s methodology and said it downplayed or ignored the mayor’s achievements, pointing to the city’s bike master plan, microgrid energy projects and policy aimed at eliminating greenhouse emissions from all city facilities by 2035.

“I think it’s safe to say we disagree with the result, because he’s been the leading climate champion in the region in terms of actual policy,” Wilde said.

Wilde said a draft of the mobility master plan is due for release next month and called criticism of Gloria’s vote on the mileage tax “conjecture not supported by data or placed in the broader political context of actually implementing the plan.”

Von Wilpert declined to comment on the report.

Former San Diego City Councilmember Chris Cate, who was the lone Republican on the council before he left due to term limits, was the sole elected official to earn an F.

The groups calculated the grades by making a list of votes or stances the elected officials took last year.

For the county, that included nine items ranging from divestment from fossil fuels to stormwater infrastructure improvements and adoption of a countywide biodiversity plan.

City council members were graded on their votes on ordinances including a climate plan update, a resolution to end oil and gas drilling in California and a single-use plastic ban, aimed at reducing polystyrene foam pollution.

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All businesses with annual revenue less than $500,000 have gotten waivers, giving small taco shops and pizza parlors an extra year to comply.

Gloria was also evaluated on his support for the city climate plan, as well as for his performance on various community plans, a mobility master plan and other sustainability measures.

The authors submitted all those items to the officials they graded to confirm that they considered those significant decisions. Then they assigned each item a grade of one to three, depending on the impact it would have.

Most remaining council members earned A’s, except for Vivian Moreno, who got a B, and von Wilpert with a C. Among county supervisors, Democrats Terra Lawson-Remer and Nora Vargas earned A grades, while Republicans Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson each received B’s.

Lawson-Remer said the report would help voters distinguish between politicians’ campaign promises on climate change and their actions in office.

“I think it’s very important to have a neutral third party with expertise and credibility say there are elected leaders who deliver and do the work to make climate action real,” Lawson-Remer said.

Hammond noted that the report has limitations, since it measures how officials voted, not what they had accomplished.

“These reflect the votes they have taken, and not the work that needs to be done, and we are still off track for meeting our local climate goals,” she said. “So we look forward to collaborating with our elected officials to get on track to create a just, livable future.”

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