Daily Business Report: Thursday, September 11, 2025
La Jolla group countersues city of San Diego in independence drive
By Dave Schwab | Times of San Diego
A nonprofit group seeking to make La Jolla an independent municipality has countersued the city of San Diego in an escalating battle over whether to put the issue on the ballot.
The Association for the City of La Jolla told residents at a Sept. 2 public meeting that they’ve filed an action seeking to have the city’s suit voided. That legal action, known as an anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) motion, was taken in response to a lawsuit brought by the city against the San Diego County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), a state agency regulating the creation, expansion, and reorganization of local government agencies.
The grassroots association’s anti-SLAPP motion argues that the city’s lawsuit is “a meritless attempt to obstruct democratic participation and silence a public-interest effort through costly litigation.”
Blowing Up the Water Authority Isn’t Off the Table at LAFCO
By McKenzie Elmer | Voice of San Diego
Dismantling San Diego’s biggest water broker could be what local boundary referees recommend later this year in the face of ever-rising water rates.
That’s just one of a menu of options that San Diego’s Local Agency Formation Commission, known as LAFCO, will analyze in what’s known as a municipal service review of the San Diego County Water Authority. Reviews like this can inspire further action by the commission, endowed with legislative powers to break up or consolidate cities and government services.
“The commission has to weigh in … on agency’s level of accountability to its constituents present and future,” said Keene Simonds, executive officer of San Diego’s LAFCO. “And, as a part of that, does LAFCO believe restructuring, whether in the form of governance or boundaries, is appropriate?”
Newsom strikes climate deal extending California cap and trade, boosting oil production
By Maya C. Miller, Alejandro Lazo and Jeanne Kuang | CalMatters
California legislative leaders in the wee hours of Wednesday morning reached an agreement with Gov. Gavin Newsom to extend the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction program, known as cap and trade, through 2045 — a contentious expansion that for weeks stewed in backroom discussions, held up other critical legislation and roiled insiders.
Democratic leaders in the Assembly and Senate also struck compromises on bills to increase domestic oil production in California through new drilling permits and rehabilitating a defunct offshore pipeline; establish a state fund to monitor pollution mitigation in disadvantaged communities; re-up the state’s wildfire liability fund by $18 billion; and join neighboring states’ utilities to create a shared electricity market to sell California’s excess clean power.
The mountain of deals comes after a chaotic scramble of last-minute closed-door negotiations among Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, which frustrated lobbyists and angered rank-and-file members, some of whom said they felt iced out of the conversations.
