Behind the Curtain

San Diego  Time again to check up on the doings of that growing corps of lobbyists working the corridors of power down at San Diego's city hall to get contracts and permits for their well-heeled clients. Year-end activity reports filed in late January show that business has never been better for the city's top practitioners of schmooze. Over at Public Policy Strategies, Kimberly Hale represented Redflex Traffic Systems of Phoenix regarding the "procurement of red light photo enforcement program/contract." Hale also labored on behalf of the taxpayer-funded San Diego Film Commission to "maintain San Diego's film-friendly reputation and streamlined process of filmmaking activities."

For the Barona Band of Mission Indians, which owns a sprawling casino and hotel complex in East County and has repeatedly jousted withthe city over water rights and other development issues, Hale provided unspecified "Intergovernmental Relations" services. She was listed as doing the same for San Diego State University. (Public Policy's founder, political consultant Tom Shepard, a close campaign advisor to Mayor Jerry Sanders, was called in by SDSU last year to help bail out its president, Stephen Weber, from a festering controversy he'd stumbled into over spiking the school's proposed Paseo retail and housing project.) Hale also assisted in the "procurement of EMS contract" for San Diego Emergency Services Enterprise.

The long client list of Craig Benedetto, revered dean of the downtown influence peddlers, is also bristling with lucrative development-related accounts. He's worked to gain "city support" for the Bajagua Project, LLC, whose controversial plan to treat Mexican sewage would