{"id":390568,"date":"2026-07-08T13:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T13:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/390568\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T13:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T13:29:08","slug":"analyst-auditor-would-be-independent-of-county-bureaucrats-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/390568\/","title":{"rendered":"Analyst, auditor would be \u2018independent\u2019 of county bureaucrats \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Re \u201cWill county voters believe truth or \u2018alternative facts\u2019?\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandiegouniontribune.com\/2026\/06\/26\/will-county-voters-believe-truth-or-alternative-facts-in-november\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">June 28<\/a>): The Union-Tribune\u2019s editorial on the county charter reform debate blurs an important distinction about what \u201cindependent\u201d means.<\/p>\n<p>The proposed budget analyst and program auditor aren\u2019t intended to be independent of our elected Board of Supervisors. They\u2019re intended to be independent of the county bureaucracy whose budgets and programs they\u2019re reviewing.<\/p>\n<p>Today, supervisors often have to rely on information prepared by the very departments they\u2019re responsible for overseeing. That\u2019s not the best way to ensure accountability. No organization within the government bureaucracy should rely solely on people grading their own homework.<\/p>\n<p>An independent budget analyst and program auditor would provide supervisors \u2014 and the public \u2014 with objective information outside the normal county chain of command. That doesn\u2019t diminish the board\u2019s authority; it gives elected officials better information to do the job voters elected them to do.<\/p>\n<p>Independent from the bureaucracy. Accountable to the public. That is real reform.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Wendy Gelernter, Pacific Beach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re \u201cWill county voters believe truth or \u2018alternative facts\u2019?\u201d (June 28): The Union-Tribune\u2019s editorial on the county charter&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1564,975,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-390568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-opinion","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}