20 Years of Impact: Voice’s Investigation that Exposed and Reshaped an Agency

It began — like so many of our investigations — with a single story. 

In October 2016, reporter Andrew Keatts discovered some funny math built into an important countywide tax measure. 

In 2004, voters countywide approved a half-cent sales tax increase to fund transportation projects. Officials at the San Diego Association of Governments, which administers the tax, had told voters it would bring in $14 billion in revenue. 

Keatts discovered the funding models had been wrong. Buyers weren’t buying in the ways forecasters had predicted. The tax wasn’t generating nearly as much revenue as officials said it would. 

That had implications for another ballot measure at the time — Measure A. Measure A was another countywide sales tax measure that promised to bring in billions. Only county officials were using the same faulty forecasting for Measure A.  

That first story was bad enough — but it was complex and it didn’t lead to a major scandal on its own. The stories that followed did. 

Only one of two conclusions could be drawn from Keatts original reporting: SANDAG officials had mistakenly done a bad job coming up with their forecasts and didn’t realize it. Or they knew the forecasts were wrong and used them for Measure A anyway. 

Keatts stayed on the story. And he ultimately proved that forecasters had discovered their errors. They brought those mistakes to their bosses. And their bosses did nothing. SANDAG kept right on using the same faulty predictors without telling their governing Board of Directors. 

Keatts proved it using emails.  

When a staffer emailed one chief SANDAG economist about the errors he responded “Omg.” In a second email, he wrote, “Wtf.” 

Officials knew their predictions about an active ballot measure were faulty and used them anyway. They knowingly misinformed voters.

That was the story that broke open the dam. Voice reporters wrote multiple follow ups over a period of months. An investigation ensued and confirmed Voice’s reporting. Just one week later, the agency’s director was forced to resign. And Keatts was named San Diego’s Journalist of the Year.

Then-Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez also sponsored legislation, eventually signed into law by the governor, which changed the makeup of SANDAG’s governing board and creating an independent auditor for the agency.

The investigation also had a hand in massively reshaping SANDAG. After the longtime director stepped down, the governing board hired Hasan Ikhrata. Ikhrata was like a lightning rod at the agency and said that past leadership had purposefully avoided difficult conversations — as it did with the tax revenue forecasting. Ikhrata, though he’s gone now, ushered in a new era that leaned into difficult conversations at SANDAG.