Date:
August 18, 2026
30
To:
Board of Supervisors
Title
Restricting Post-Employment Lobbying and Barring County Officials from Insider Trading on Betting Platforms Like Kalshi and Polymarket (Districts: All)
End
Overview
Public service is a public trust. San Diego County (County) officials are entrusted with over $9 billion in taxpayer dollars, sensitive nonpublic information, and the power to make decisions that impact peoples' lives. County ethics rules exist to safeguard that trust by ensuring public decisions serve the public interest, not the wealthy or well-connected. At a time when corruption is running rampant at the highest levels of the federal government, the County must insist on the highest ethical standards for its own officials. We owe it to the public to update our ethics code to address loopholes and new types of insider advantage so no one can monetize the relationships and information they gained while serving the public.
The County should adopt stronger safeguards to prevent former officials from quickly turning their public service into private lobbying work. The current backstop is the state's one-year ban on direct lobbying contacts. As reported in the San Diego Union-Tribune, ten former County employees are currently registered as lobbyists and seven of them registered within two years of leaving County service,i well within the period many peer jurisdictions now consider too short. When officials can leave County service and soon begin lobbying their former colleagues, the public is left to question whether insider relationships and information are being used for private gain.
A one-year ban on lobbying contacts fails to fully prevent insider advantage. It often takes longer than a year for relationships to fade and for policy and procurement cycles to run their course. The "strategic consulting loophole" skirts the ban altogether by allowing departing officials to influence decisions behind the scenes so long as they avoi...
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