CEO of the Association of Taxpayers resigns, former CEO of the Housing Commission appointed – San Diego Union -Tribune

Haney Hong resigned after nine years as president and chief executive officer of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association and was replaced interim by the former president and chief executive officer of the San Diego housing committee, Rick Gentry.

Mike McLaughlin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Taxpayers Association, announced the change on Monday and said in a press release that this decision was in force on February 28.

Hong, who said he had won about $ 300,000 per year as part of his last contract, will remain an unpaid volunteer to help the transition. Gentry signed a one year contract for $ 150,000.

In a telephone interview on Monday, Hong said he had taken a three -month sabbatical leave after signing a three -year contract last year, which gave him time to think about his future. His sabbatical leave ended last week and Hong, 43, said that his decision to leave was based in part on spiritual reflection, the desire to spend more time with his two young children aged 3 and 5 and the feeling that the time had come.

“The taxpayer association has just won after winning a victory,” he said. “All the sales taxes that we have supported have adopted, except one, and all the people to whom we have opposed have failed. We had a big election and I went up as high in the sabbatical leave. »»

Hong also said that his goal in the past nine years was to transform the organization, and he considers this objective to be achieved.

“I kept the promises I made to the people who hired me,” he said.

On a more personal note, Hong said that he had started to convert to Catholicism at the end of last year, fulfilling an agreement with his wife to have one faith in their household after having children.

“There is a beautiful line in the Catholic faith where your first vocation is your spouse and your parents, and I must give this reasonable diligence,” he said. “And I was doing a lot of prayer and I thought, you know, my children also really need me too.”

Hong also said that the time was felt that the mayor of San Diego, Todd Gloria, began a new term, and he felt confident with the taking of Gentry.

Gentry, which has signed the Association of Taxpayers for two years, resigned from the city’s housing committee in February 2022 following a controversy involving the purchase by the commission of two prolonged rest hotels to shelter homelessness and the subsequent discovery that a broker involved in one of the purchases had a financial interest in the property.

Before his resignation, Gentry had been with the 14 -year -old housing committee and supervised its transition from the accent placed on affordable housing at the shelter and homeless housing.

Since leaving the housing committee, Gentry has managed the consulting company Rick Gentry LLC, which, according to him, has had local and national customers.

“It’s nothing of great value, but enough to keep me busy,” he said.

Gentry said that he had enthusiastically accepted the offer to temporarily lead the taxpayer association when he was offered the position last week.

“This is a good thing for me, and I think it’s good for the organization so that they don’t have to move too quickly,” he said. “In the meantime, they need someone who is an” old hand “, who knows the community, knows the organization and will be a kind of stable hand on the bar while it crosses this temporary period.

“” Interim “means that I don’t need to be there for five or 10 years, but if it’s a year or more, we will see,” he said about his future in the position.