David Chiu

Will San Francisco voters give Muni more money to serve a growing population?

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Beating up on Muni and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is a perennial pastime for many San Franciscans, who will be given the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are this November. Will they be willing to give Muni the money it needs to serve its growing ridership, even at the cost of other city programs and priorities?

The Board of Supervisors yesterday [Tues/22] voted narrowly to place Sup. Scott Wiener’s Muni funding measure on the fall ballot. It would increase General Fund contributions to the SFMTA as the city population increase, retroactive back to 2003 when the current rate was set, giving the agency an immediate $20-25 million boost to serve the roughly 85,000 new residents the city has added since then.

“For too long City Hall has been slow to prioritize transit funding,” Wiener said in a press release. “We are a growing city, and we need to take firm steps to ensure that our transportation system keeps up with that growth.  Improving transit reliability and capacity and making our streets safer are key to that goal.”

While everyone says they support Muni — even David Looman, the proponent behind the Restore Transportation Balance initiative that seeks more SFMTA funding for cars, which will also appear on that ballot — Wiener has been the rare strong advocate locally for actually giving the agency more money.

Mayor Ed Lee created a $10 million hole in the SFMTA budget by demanding the repeal of charging for parking meters on Sunday this year, and then he dropped his support for a local increase in the vehicle license fee this year, prompting Wiener to introduce his Muni funding measure, which the mayor would have the authority to terminate if voters approve a VLF increase in 2016.

A $500 million general obligation bond transportation measure backed by Lee and the full Board of Supervisors will also appear on the November ballot, but it will go mostly to cover Muni’s capital needs, not the growing demands on its operating budget.

Wiener’s Muni funding measure yesterday barely got the six votes this charter amendment needed to qualify for the ballot: those of Wiener and Sups. London Breed, David Campos, David Chiu, Malia Cohen, and Jane Kim (Sup. John Avalos was absent).

In recent years, there’s been a rift in the city’s progressive coalition between environmental and transportation activists on one side and affordable housing advocates on the other, who sometimes battle over city funding they see as a zero sum game. So it will be interesting to watch how the politics surrounding this measure shape up going into the fall campaign season.  

“Let’s Elect Our Elected Officials” rejected at the Board of Supes

At today’s (Tue/15) Board of Supervisors’ meeting, members of the board voted 6-5 against placing a proposal on the November ballot that would create special elections when vacancies arise on the Board or in the Mayor’s Office.

If approved by voters, the measure would have immediate impacts on San Francisco’s political landscape. Board President David Chiu is vying for a seat in the California Assembly against Sup. David Campos, which will leave a vacancy on the board one way or another. 

But Sup. John Avalos, who authored the charter amendment proposal, noted that “this measure is not about any existing mayor or any existing supervisor.” Instead, Avalos described the measure as a bid to make city policy more democratic. 

“It will allow voters to decide who fills vacancies in special elections,” Avalos said.

As things stand, when a supervisor’s seat is vacated, it’s up to the mayor to appoint that official’s replacement. When a mayor’s seat is vacated, a much more rare occurrence, it’s up to “a small minority of people – us,” to appoint the city’s top elected official, Avalos said. “This shapes how decisions are made, often behind closed doors.”

Taking this question to voters via special election would ultimately be more democratic, he added. “If you are on the fence on this measure, I hope you can still send this ballot measure over to the voters,” Avalos told his colleagues.

Sups. London Breed, Katy Tang, and Scott Wiener each spoke in opposition to the idea.

“It’s not a perfect system, but no system ever is,” Breed said. “I’m not sure what problem we’re trying to solve with changing the charter.”

Wiener sounded a similar note. “There are various ways you can do it, and no way is necessarily better or worse,” he said of the current system for appointing vacancies. “I don’t see how the system that we have is in any way broken.”

But Sup. David Campos chimed in to challenge that framing. “The question before this board is not, what is the best system? … The question is a lot simpler than that,” Campos said, “Since we are talking about democracy. The question is: Will we give voters in SF the opportunity to decide for themselves what the best system is? Let’s not you and I pre-judge what the voters are going to say.”

In the end the measure failed six to five, with Sups. Mar, Avalos, Campos, Chiu, and Jane Kim voting in favor.

Supes to vote on Avalos’ “Let’s Elect Our Elected Officials” measure

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote tomorrow (Tue/15) on whether to submit a charter amendment to the ballot that would require a special election in the event of a vacancy on the Board of Supervisors or in the mayor’s office.

As things stand, the mayor holds the power to appoint someone to fill a vacant seat on the board. But Sup. John Avalos’ proposed ballot measure, unofficially dubbed “Let’s Elect our Elected Officials,” would shift that decision-making power to the voters. The measure needs six votes to pass.

If it wins voter approval, the measure would also likely have a significant impact on the city’s political landscape in the immediate future.

Sup. David Campos, who is co-sponsoring the initiative, is currently vying for a seat in the 17th Assembly District against Board President David Chiu, a narrow race that will leave a vacancy on the Board one way or another. If Campos, one of the board’s most progressive members, is elected, Mayor Ed Lee would presumably appoint someone to his seat with a rather different political bent.

The ballot needs an additional three votes (beyond its three sponsors) to reach the necessary six votes necessary for approval by the Board, and “it’s sort of up in the air at the moment,” according to Jeremy Pollock, Avalos’ legislative aide.

Some supervisors are reluctant to go against Lee by limiting mayoral power. Opposition from Sup. Katy Tang, herself a beneficiary of the current rules when she was appointed by Mayor Lee in February 2013, has also had an effect of the amendment’s approval.

But supporters of the bill are hoping the overall benefits of the measure will lead the supervisors to approve it.

“John sees this as a good government reform that takes some power away from the mayor and the Board and gives it to the voters,” Pollock said, with the hope that it would also work to discourage backroom deals.

Another potential issue raised over the approval of the measure is the cost of special elections, though it appears to be a relatively minor concern. According to the San Francisco Department of Elections, a special election for supervisors costs roughly $300,000 (a drop in the ocean given the city’s multi-billion dollar budget) and around $3.5 million for a citywide election, a substantial sum but also a relatively minor worry given the rarity of vacancies in the mayor’s office. Some might argue that given the importance of the mayor’s duties, that’s a small price to pay to allow the voters to have a say.

In addition to its main rule change, the measure includes a few other provisions, such as making an exception for the proposed rule if a regularly scheduled election would be held within 180 days of the vacancy.

It would also provide “that the Mayor appoints an interim Supervisor to fill a supervisorial vacancy until an election is held to fill that vacancy,” with the key addition that the interim supervisor would be ineligible to compete in that election.

That’s no small stipulation, given the sweeping historic success of incumbents in board re-elections. (Since 2000, when district elections returned, Christina Olague is the only incumbent who failed to gain re-election after being appointed.) Avalos appears set on plugging all holes with his proposed legislation, and it’s now up to the board to place it on the November ballot.

City agencies defend their slow response to Airbnb’s illegal rentals

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More information has been coming out about how Airbnb is used to convert San Francisco apartments into tourist rentals — including an interesting study reported by the San Francisco Chronicle last weekend — in advance of next month’s hearings on legislation to legalize and regulate short-term rentals.

But questions remain about why the city agencies in charge of regulating such “tourist conversions,” which have long been illegal under city law, have done so little to crack down on the growing practice. For more than two years, we at the Guardian have been publicly highlighting such violations, which have finally caught fire with the public in the last six months.

Even Mayor Ed Lee — who has helped shield Airbnb from scrutiny over its tax dodging and other violations, at least partially because they share an investor in venture capitalist Ron Conway — has finally said the city should pass legislation to regulate the company, as Sup. David Chiu is trying to do.

But attorney Joseph Tobener, who has represented clients evicted to facilitate Airbnb rentals and has brought a number of such lawsuits on behalf of San Francisco Tenants Union, still can’t get city departments to issue notices of violation even for the most egregious offenders that he’s suing, an administrative prerequisite to filing a lawsuit.

“The Department of Building Inspection and the Department of Planning need to start shutting these violators down by enforcing the existing laws, or we need stricter laws that allow us to pursue our claims without City approval.  Two months ago, we sent our requests to pursue landlords on behalf of the SFTU.  Then, radio silence.  Two months of utter inaction. Someone in charge does not want to see us close the loophole that is allowing landlords to take units out of our housing stock,” Tobener said.

The Chronicle investigation found that in San Francisco, 1,278 Airbnb hosts in San Francisco were managing multiple properties (Chiu’s legislation would limit hosts to their primary residence for just 90 rental nights per year), including 160 entire homes that tourists appear to be renting out full-time. Overall, the paper counted 4,798 properties for rent in San Francisco through Airbnb, 2,984 of which were entire homes, belying the “shared housing” label favored by the company and its supporters.

And even though groups like the San Francisco Apartment Association and SFTU say they have been actively trying to get the city departments to crack down on such illegal uses over the last year, representatives for DBI and the Planning Department say they’ve received few complaints and therefore issued few violations, while also saying they need more resources to regulate the problem, something Chiu’s legislation would begin to help address.

“Our enforcement process is complaint based and we investigate each complaint that is received by our Department (more than 700 per year).  Complaints regarding short term rentals that result in the loss of housing are prioritized for enforcement,” Planning Department spokesperson Gina Simi told the Guardian.

She said that property owners are given the opportunity to correct a violation before being cited, something that she said happens in about 80 percent of cases.

“A case is opened for every complaint received. Since March 2012, we have had approximately 120 enforcement cases for Short Term Rentals.  In each case, notices were sent to the property owner and approximately half (54) have been abated and half (66) are active cases.  Many of these (approximately 30) were received since the beginning of April 2014,” she told us when we inquired about the issue last month.

As for Tobener’s charge that city agencies are dragging their feet and making it difficult for his clients to pursue relief from the courts, she said, “The ability for interested parties to pursue the matter through civil action (for injunctive or monetary relief) following the filing of a complaint and determination of a violation is a process outlined in Chapter 41A, which is enforced by the Department of Building Inspection.  Enforcement under the Planning Code does not allow for interested parties to seek civil action.”

But DBI spokesperson William Strawn said his department hasn’t received many complaints, claiming to have gotten just three total through the end of last year.

“A few weeks ago, per Mr. Tobener, we did receive seven complaints, with documentation, that the Housing Division is still reviewing; and, per [DBI Chief Housing Director Rosemary] Bosque, we also recently received an additional seven complaints – for a current total of 14 – that also are under review and being scheduled for administrative review hearings, as required by Chapter 41A,” Strawn told the Guardian.

But he also pointed his finger back at the Planning Department as the agency that should be handling problems related to the short-term stays facilitated by Airbnb.

“Given that these ‘duration of stay’ issues are Planning Code matters – a point we have made to Supervisor Chiu, and which I know you discussed with the Planning Director {John Rahaim] during Supervisor Chiu’s media availability on this issue a few weeks ago – the role of the Building Department in the enforcement of these types of complaints in our relatively new Internet Age will require guidance from the City Attorney,” Strawn told us.

Indeed, in response to a Guardian question about why the Planning Department seems to have ignored violations facilitated by Airbnb, Rahaim said that his department hasn’t had the resources, tools, and authority to address the problem, even though, “This is an important issue we’ve been hearing about for quite some time.”

Justice delayed is justice denied

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EDITORIAL Members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who try to identify with both the progressive movement and business-oriented Mayor Ed Lee — most notably, Sups. David Chiu and Jane Kim — engaged in a strange bit of self-congratulations during their June 10 meeting, patting themselves on the back for a trio of “progressive” reforms.

Yet in each case, the measures are weaker than they should be and too long overdue — and they have their full implementation delayed for years, while the needs of the people they aim to serve are immediate. What Kim and Chiu presented as a demonstration of political effectiveness on behalf of needy constituents is actually just the opposite. It is political cowardice and not political courage.

The best of the trio of approvals was a measure by Sup. David Campos that finally closes the loophole that allows employers to satisfy their employee healthcare mandate by creating healthcare savings accounts, which they make difficult to use and then pocket the money that remains.

This should have been enacted three years ago when Campos first won approval for it, only to see Lee veto it and Chiu sponsor a watered-down alternative that didn’t address the problem. Even now, in order to win over Sups. Mark Farrell and London Breed to attain a veto-proof majority, Campos had to delay full implementation until 2017.

“I also want to commend Sup. Campos for finding compromise,” Chiu said before joining the inevitable majority, a snide dig at his Assembly race opponent that only served to reinforce Campos’ campaign trail points that Chiu’s compromises are often just sellouts to downtown interests. This watered-down version, albeit better than the last watered-down version, also won unanimous approval.

Another kumbaya moment came with the introduction of a consensus ballot measure for increasing the minimum wage in San Francisco, with the Mayor’s Office and business community finally agreeing with the campaign by labor and progressive groups to increase the minimum wage to $15 — but delaying that implementation to 2018. How much displacement and economic hardship will San Franciscans experience between now than then?

Chiu and Kim also sang the praises of Lee for finally agreeing to finally keep his word and support a local increase in the vehicle license fee to fund safer and smoother streets and more money for Muni. But rather than this year as promised, that measure will be on the November 2016 ballot, pushing it back from prosperous to uncertain times.

At the June 12 Guardian community forum, Sup. Scott Wiener said he may still move forward with his proposed charter amendment to give Muni more general fund money until the local VLF is approved, and we strongly urge him to so do.

“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a legal maxim that this board full of lawyers is certainly familiar with. Their delays of crucial reforms are disgraceful and damaging to the city, and for them to congratulate themselves for doing so is insulting.

Extra! Extra! Sunshine advocates beat the Anti-Sunshine Gang in City Hall

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 By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so the  Anti-Sunshine Gang in City Hall, which for two years has been conducting a nasty vendetta against the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force,  capitulated quietly at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting without a fight or even a whimper.

The capitulation came in a two line phrase  buried in item 28 in the middle of the board’s agenda.  It was a report from the rules committee recommending  the Board of Supervisors approve a motion for  unnamed nominees to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. “Question:  Shall this Motion be approved.”

Board Chair David Chiu asked for approval in his usual board meeting monotone. And the approval came unanimously, with no dissent and no roll call vote and not a word spoken by anybody.  He banged the gavel and that was that. And only a few veteran board watchers knew that this was the astonishing  end to a crucial battle that pitted the powerfuf Anti-Sunshine Gangs against the sunshine forces and the citizens of San Francisco. It was a battle that would decide whether the task force would remain an independent people’s court that would hear and rule on public access complaints.  Sunshine won.

It was ironic and fitting that Chiu presided over the capitulation. For it was Chiu as board president who orchestrated  the deal to demolish Park Merced and then orchestrated the  infamous 6-5 board vote  in September 2010 approving  a monstrous redevelopment  project that would evict lots of tenants, and destroy most of the affordable housing. This was a big deal because the housing crisis was heating up and Park Merced was the largest affordable community in the city and one of the largest In the nation. This is where tens of thousands of young people, young married couples, students and faculty at nearby San Francisco State, older people, and middle class people had come for generations with their families to live in affordable housing in an  “urban park,” as Park Merced promo once put it.

And it was Chiu as board president who was charged by the Sunshine Task Force, along with Supervisors Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, and Eric Mar with violating the Sunshine Ordinance and the state’s open meeting law (Brown Act) when they approved the project with blazing speed.. 

Wiener, Cohen, and Mar were on the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee when they voted on the contract. Literally minutes before the committee vote, Chiu introduced 14 pages of amendments to the contract. The deputy city attorney at the meeting blessed the amendments by saying, gosh, golly, gee, no problem, the amendments do  not substantially alter the contract and therefore the description of the item on the agenda was still apt and the committee could act on it. Bombs away! The full board approved the contract the same day by one vote.

This sleight of hand and pellmell approval process meant that Park Merced was going,going, gone and in its place would be a project that “has no hindsight, no insight, or foresight,” as Planning Commissioner Kathryn Moore was quoted as saying in a scathing Westside Observer column by landscape architect Glenn Rogers. “It is not a project of the 21st century.  It is the agenda of a self-serving developer.”

 The Observer, to its immense credit, was the only media in town to blast away at the project. (Read its coverage and weep, starting with a June piece by Pastor Lynn Gavin who wrote that the Park Merced owners did not disclose to her or her family that they “were going to demolish the garden apartment that was our home.”)  Gavin and her neighbors took the formal complaint to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force and got a unanimous 8-0  ruling condemning Chiu, Wiener, Cohen, and Mar for open government violations.

It was a historic ruling by the task force and demonstrated once again in 96 point tempo bold the irreplaceable value of the people’s court.  The ruling also had impact because it amounted to a stinging  expose of how government often works in San Francisco with big money and big development and how one vote can add gallons of high octane petrol to the housing crisis. It angered the hell out of the six supervisors who voted for the project.

 And in effect, it gave rise to what I call the Anti-Sunshine Gang in City Hall whose response to the ruling was, not to apologize and change their illegal ways, but to start a vicious vendetta against the task force for doing the right thing at the right time.  The six votes were David Chiu, Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, Mark Farrell, Sean Elsbernd, and Carmen Chu. Elsbernd has gone on to Sen. Diane Feinstein’s office in San Francisco and Chu to becoming assessor. But the gang picked up other allies along the way, notably the city attorney’s office.

Two years ago, when the task force members came to the board for reappointment, the Anti-Sunshine Gang retaliated and swung into action by “launching a smear campaign aimed at purging the eight task force members who had unanimously voted to find the violations,” according to Richard Knee, a 12 year veteran of the task force, in a June column in the Observer.  Knee, who represents the local chapter of the Society of Professonal Journalists, also wrote that “the mayor and the Board of Supervisors…made sure that the panel gets minimal funding, staffing and resources, and the board has refused to fill two long standing vacancies, making It difficult at times to muster a quorum since task force members are volunteers with outside responsibilities such as family and work.

“Two year ago, the board’s failure to appoint a physically disabled member forced the task force to take a five month hiatus, exacerbating a backlog of complaints filed by members of the public.This year, Knee wrote,  the start of the appointment process was “farcical and ominous.”  He explained that, at the May 15 meeting of the board’s rules committee, which vets applicants for city bodies, the two supervisors present chair Norman Yee and Katy Tang (David Campos had an excused absence) “complained that there weren’t enough racial/ethnic diversity among the 13 candidates. “That didn’t deter them from recommending the reappointments of Todd David, Louise Fischer, and David Pilpel, all Anglos.”

Before the full board five days later, Yee complained again, “this time that lack of a regular schedule and frequent switching of meeting dates were making attendance difficult for task force members. Either Yee had no clue of the facts or he was lying.” Knee explained that the task force normally meets the first Wednesday of each month and its subcommittees usually meet during the third week of the month.

“Meeting postponements and cancellations are the result, not the cause, of difficulties in mustering a quorum, due to the vacancies—which now number three.

“In gushing over David, Fischer, and Pilpel, at the board’s May 20 meeting, Wiener offered no evidence or detail of their alleged accomplishments and ignored the fact that David has missed six task force meetings since March 2013, including those of last February and April. Until the board fills the other seats, the five remaining incumbents—Chris Hyland, Bruce Oka, David Sims, Allyson Washburn, and yours truly—stay on as ‘holdover’ members.”

Meanwhile, by the next session of the Rules Committee on June 5, the sunshine advocates had rallied and put together an impressive mass of sunshine power. Testifying at the hearing were representatives from SPJ and the journalism community, the League of Women Voters, the ACLU, the sunshine posse, the Library Users Association, the Bay Area News Group, the Inter-American Press Asociation, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the First Amendment Coalition, the  Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Observer and neighborhood activists, and other sunshine allies and FOI groupies. It was quite a show of force. 

SPJ placed a pointed, timely op ed in the Chronicle (“SF Supervisors block Sunshine Ordinance Task Force,” good of the Chron/Hearst to run it but better if the paper didn’t black out local sunshine issues.) Members of the posse peppered the gang with public record requests aimed at tracking skullduggery and they found it. Reps from the groups lobbied the supervisors by email, phone, and personal office visits. And the word that the Anti-Sunshine Gang was back and on the gallop shot through the neighborhoods and around town and into election campaigns and among constituents of the gang.

SPJ and its vigorous Freedom of Information Committee under co-chairs Journalist Thomas Peele, of Chauncey Bailey fame, and Attorney Geoff King  were particularly effective. Peele is an investigative reporter with the Bay Area Newspaper Group, a lecturer on public records at the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and author of a respected book on Chauncey Bailey, a black journalist murdered on his way to work.

The word got around that the supervisors were blocking strong pro-sunshine candidates for the task force and that their first three nominees were the weakest of the lot. Campos, a stellar sunshine advocate, was back at the committee meeting, making the right calls and shepherding the strong nominees along through the committee and the Board of Supervisors.  Great job.

The cumulative weight and force  of the presentations of the nominees and the sunshine advocates made the proper political point:  any supervisor who voted with the Anti-Sunshine Gang was going to face their constituents and voters with the brand of being anti-sunshine and anti- government accountability.  More: they would have to answer some embarrassing questions: Who lost Park Merced? Who voted to turbo charge evictions and middle class flight from the city for years to come? Who tried to cover up the outrage and who did it? And who led the retaliatory vendetta against the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force for doing the right thing on behalf of sunshine in San Francisco?

And so the Board of Supervisors was dragged kicking and screaming into the sunshine of June 2014 and beyond. The supervisors ended up nominating what looks to be one of the strongest pro-sunshine task forces: Attorney  Mark Rumold and journalist Ali Winston from SPJ, Allyson Washburn from the League of Women Voters, Attorney Lee Hepner, Journalist Josh Wolf, and holdover Chris Hyland. Plus Bruce Oka who looks to be a late holdover in the disabled seat. Congratulations for hanging in and winning, hurray for the power of sunshine, on guard,  B3

P.S. l: PG&E institutionalizes City Hall secrecy and corruption:  The pernicious influence of the Anti-Sunshine gang hung heavy over the rules committee.  Tang tried to force every candidate to take a pledge of allegiance to the city attorney. Tang is the kind of neighborhood supervisor (Sunset) who has a 100 per cent Chamber of Commerce voting record. Her city attorney pledge demand was laughable on its face, given the fact that the city attorney refuses to move on the PG&E/Raker Act scandal and thus has helped institutionalize secrecy and corruption in City Hall on a multi-million dollar scale for decades. Which is reason enough for the city to always maintain a strong, enduring Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, to help keep tabs on how PG&E keeps City Hall safe for PG&E and its allies. (See Guardian stories and editorials since 1969.)  

Tang and Yee continued the gang’s hammering on Bruce Wolfe, a worthy candidate for the disabled seat whose main sin was that he was one of the Honorable Eight who voted condemnation.  The gang knocked out Wolfe as a holdover candidate the first time around and they were at it again at the committee meeting. Oka says he wants to resign from the task force but only when the board finds a good replacement. Wolfe, who was an effective and knowledgeable sunshine task force member, is the obvious replacement but he is still on the purge list.  Stay tuned on this one. . 

There are three things that no one can do to the entire satisfaction of anyone else: make love, poke the fire, and run a newspaper. William Allen White, 1917, line atop the editorial page of the Durango Herald, Durango, Colorado. 

Water bottle industry lauds law helping public water systems

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The International Water Bottle Association (IBWA) sent out a press release this week [Tues/10] “applauding” a new federal law aimed at improving public drinking water. Although some might consider this unusual, the bottled water industry sources almost half of its water from municipal supplies.

“We don’t oppose tap water,” IBWA spokesperson Chris Hogan told us. “From an industry standpoint, we, in general, want people to drink water, whether it’s bottled or tap.” 

In recent years, however, both consumers and anti-disposable water bottle activists have chided the industry as wateful and unnecessary bottling and shipping what is basically tap water. “It is really just ‘public water sources’ that they take and sell back to the public,” Tomás Bosque, a member of anti-water bottle advocacy group Ban the Bottle, told us. 

According to the IBWA, 49 percent of bottled water is drawn from public sources. But Hogan said that public water goes through a numerous treatments — reverse osmosis, distillation, micro-filtration, carbon filtration, ozonation, and/or ultraviolet (UV) light — before it’s bottled and sold. “FDA standards for the bottled water are so strict it’s irrelevant where it’s sourced,” Hogan said.

But Bosque is skeptical of the IBWA’s praise of the newly signed federal legislation, which is called the Water Resources Reform and Development Act.  “We would imagine that this act will help streamline the bottled water manufacturer’s ‘purifying’ process thereby providing them with more revenue opportunities,” Bosque wrote in an email. 

The legislation, which was signed by President Barrack Obama on Tuesday [6/10], will increase federal funding to improve public water systems infrastructure.  “Overall, we are eager to see how this act will benefit the tap water infrastructure,” Bosque wrote. “We hope that providing some level of update to the more than 70,000 water systems will increase public awareness of this awesome, free resource and thereby help change behaviors.”

In San Francisco, however, a change in behaviors is inevitable. In March, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ban the sale of non-reusable water bottles on city property. The ban will take effect in October of this year. Hogan said the IBWA is “not pleased” with the ban. “It’s a false argument to make municipal water stronger by banning bottled water,” he said. “They’re really two different things.”

Hogan explained that Sup. David Chiu, the author of the water bottle ban, should have banned other, more sugary packaged beverages — an industry Hogan cited as the bottled water industry’s main competitors — instead of water. Chiu didn’t immediately return our calls, but we’ll update this post if and when we hear back.   

Campos wins veto-proof support for closing the city healthcare coverage loophole UPDATED

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Sup. David Campos appears to have finally succeeded in his years-long quest to prevent San Francisco employers from pocketing money the city requires them to use for employee health care costs after winning over two key supervisors to secure a veto-proof majority at today’s [Tues/10] Board of Supervisors meeting.

His reform legislation on today’s agenda will be amended by Campos, he told us, to win the support of Sups. Mark Farrell and London Breed. The changes phase out the loophole over three years, making 60 percent of the money in employee health savings accounts off limits to employers next year, 80 percent the following year, and not letting employers reclaim any of these funds by 2017.

“Even if we don’t get to 100 percent right away, once you get past 50 percent it’s a done deal, so I feel good about it,” Campos told us, explaining that even the phased-in legislation will immediately discourage employers from using health savings accounts and to instead put that money toward private insurance or city-run programs such as Healthy San Francisco.

The veto-proof majority is key given that Mayor Ed Lee vetoed similar legislation in 2011, later signing a watered down compromise measure by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu that required employers to maintain the funds for two years before taking them back.

Campos said that reform clearly didn’t work, with that total funding left over in the health savings accounts rising from about $60 million two years ago to about $90 million now. That outcome was predicted by Campos at the time, noting that employers had a disincentive to encourage employees to tap the funds.

“It didn’t work. The numbers showed the money still wasn’t being spent, which is what we said would happen,” Campos told us.

Exacerbating the problem was the fact that the federal Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) placed new restrictions on how health savings accounts may be used, fro example banning their use on insurance premiums. Health savings accounts are widely considered far inferior to private insurance at providing quality healthcare, but federal law (ERISA) precluded the city from banning their use by employers to satisfy the city’s health coverage requirement.

Supervisors who haven’t yet committed to supporting Campos’ legislation are Chiu, Scott Wiener, and Katy Tang, but Campos predicted they may sign on now that the measure has a veto-proof majority: “We’re hopeful that with a veto-proof majority, it may be a unanimous vote at the board.”  

UPDATE 6/10: The board unanimously passed the measure on first reading, prompting a sustained standing ovation from the workers and labor advocates who filled the board chambers for the hearing. 

End the open primary experiment

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EDITORIAL

This week’s primary election on June 3 occurred after Guardian press time for this issue, but there’s one conclusion that we can draw about it without even knowing the results: This is a pretty shabby form of democracy that few voters cared about. California’s experiment in open primaries is a disaster, and it’s time for a new model.

Turnout for this election was expected to hit historic lows, and for good reason: There was nothing of any real significance on this ballot, except perhaps for Proposition B on the San Francisco ballot, to require voter approval for height increases on waterfront development projects.

Even the hotly contested Assembly District 17 race between David Campos and David Chiu was simply a practice run for a rematch in November, thanks to an open primary system that sends the top two primary finishers, regardless of party, to the general election.

The system was approved by voters at Proposition 14 in 2010, placed on the ballot by then-Assemblymember Abel Maldonado as part of a deal with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to break a budget stalemate caused by their fellow Republicans. Such horse-trading should have been a bad sign that this change wouldn’t live up to its idealistic hopes.

Its backers promised that it would favor more moderate candidates and reduce negative campaigning, but that hasn’t happened. Indeed, at press time it appeared Gov. Jerry Brown would be facing the most radically right-winger in the race, Tim Donnelly, in November.

What it has instead done is reduce the primary election to a boring and meaningless waste of time and money, turning off voters and creating low-turnout elections that are more prone to manipulation by wealthy special interests.

We at the Guardian are all for greater experimentation in our electoral models. We were big supporters of the ranked-choice voting system that is working well in San Francisco and Oakland. We support even more aggressive models for publicly financing campaigns and reducing the role on private money in electoral politics. Hell, we also support a proportional representation system and other wholesale transformations of our political system.

But while we’d love to see even more electoral experimentation, we also need to recognize when experiments are failing, as California’s open primary system now is. It’s time to try something new.

 

The anti-sunshine gang intensifies its attacks on the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force in City Hall

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By Bruce B. Brugmann   (with special sunshine vendetta chronology by Richard Knee) 

The Guardian story in the current issue demonstrates in 96 point tempo bold how important the glare of sunshine and publicity is in City Hall in keeping the public’s business public. Yet, the anti-sunshine gang in City Hall is intensifying  its savage attack on the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force.

The Sunshine Ordinance established the Sunshine Task Force to serve as the people’s court for hearing citizen complaints on public access, thus giving  citizens a way to get secret records, open secret meetings, and hold government officials accountable. It empowers citizens to be watchdogs on issues they care about.  It is the first and best ordinance of its kind in the country, if not in the world, and its effectiveness is shown by the fact that the anti-sunshine gang regularly tries  to bounce strong members and gut the task force.

Terry Francke, then the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition and author of the ordinance, and I as a founder anticipated this problem in trhe early 1990s and put a mandate  into the original ordinance for the task force to have representatives from the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (a journalist and media attorney) and the San Francisco League of Women Voters, two organizations with experience and tradition with open government issues. Later, the mandate included a representative from New America Media, to insure a member of color for the task force.

 I served for 10 years on the task force and then Mayor Willie Brown made the point about City Hall interference by targeting me for extinction.  He tried several times  to kick me off the task force.  I refused to budge, on the principle that neither the mayor nor any other city official should be able to arbitrarily kick off a member of the task force for doing his/her job. When Willie left office, I left the task force when my term was up  and the principle was intact.

Today, as Richard Knee writes in his timeline and chronology below, the principle is once again under city hall attack. Knee replaced me as the journalist representative  of SPJ and has served under fire  for a record 12 years. He writes that the latest attack is retaliation for a unanimous finding by the task force in September 2011 when Board President David Chiu and Supervisors Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, and Eric Mar violated  local and state open meeting laws by ramming through the monstrous Park Merced redevelopment contract with 14 pages of amendments that Chiu slipped in “literally minutes” before the committee vote.

This was a historic task force vote in the public interest, and a historic vote for open government and for all the good causes. But instead it prompted a smear- dilute-and- ouster campaign by the Board of Supervisors, with timely assists from the city attorney’s office.  The ugly play by play follows. The good news is  that the sunshine forces inside and outside city hall are fighting back, hard and fast, and with a keen eye on all upcoming elections.   Stay tuned. On guard. :

 Special  chronology and timeline detailing the anti-sunshine gang attack on  the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. By Richard Knee)

1. In April 2011, the Task Force voted to change its bylaws to declare that approval of substantive motions required “yes” votes from a simple majority of members present rather than a simple majority of all members, as long as a quorum was present. The quorum threshold remained at six. The bylaws change went against the advice of the city attorney’s office, which pointed to city Charter Sec. 4.104. Suzanne Cauthen and I cast dissenting votes on the bylaw change. David Snyder was absent from that meeting but made it clear that, reluctantly, he could find no reason to disagree with the city attorney’s opinion.

2. In September 2011, the Task Force voted, 8-0, to find that Board of Supervisors President David Chiu and Supervisors Eric Mar, Scott Wiener and Malia Cohen had violated the Sunshine Ordinance and the state’s open-meeting law (Brown Act). Mar, Wiener and Cohen served on the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee, which voted to recommend approval of a Parkmerced redevelopment contract. Literally minutes before the committee voted, Chiu introduced 14 pages of amendments to the contract. The deputy city attorney at the meeting opined that the amendments did not substantially alter the contract and therefore the description of the item on the meeting agenda was still apt and the committee could act on it. The full board approved the contract the same day.

Wiener tried to intimidate the Task Force from hearing the case. His legislative aide Gillian Gillette (now the mayor’s director of transportation policy) told us we had no business telling the board how to vote and that in taking up the matter, we would be overstepping our authority. Her tone of voice, facial expression and body language were clearly confrontational. We pushed back. Bruce Wolfe told her it was inappropriate to prejudge the Task Force’s vote before the hearing had begun. I told her that we were not interested in the LUED Committee’s or the board’s substantive vote on the contract, but we were concerned about the procedural aspect. A complaint alleging sunshine violations had been brought before us and we were duty-bound to hear it. I pointedly suggested she review the ordinance, especially Sec. 67.30, which defines the Task Force’s, duties, powers and composition. She skulked back to her seat, seething.

Chiu’s legislative aide Judson True told us that Chiu’s office had made a mad scramble to get the amendments printed and properly distributed to allow enough time for review by the supervisors and members of the public before the committee’s vote. He and Gillette, citing the city attorney’s opinion, reiterated that the committee and the board had followed proper procedure.

We were incredulous toward their claims that (a) 14 pages of amendments did not substantially alter the contract and (b) there was sufficient time to review the amendments before the committee’s vote. We consensed that there was no reason the committee could not have delayed its vote in order to allow adequate review time.

3. Wiener surreptitiously asked the Budget and Legislative Analyst in late 2011 to survey every city department on how much sunshine compliance was costing it. When we learned about it, Task Force Chair Hope Johnson sent a strongly worded letter objecting to the attempt at secrecy and to the form that the survey took; we felt many of the questions were vague or vacuous.

4. In May 2012, the Rules Committee (Jane Kim, Mark Farrell, David Campos) interviewed Task Force applicants. Committee members pointedly asked incumbents Suzanne Manneh (New America Media’s nominee), Allyson Washburn (League of Women Voters’ nominee), Hanley Chan, Jay Costa and Bruce Wolfe if it wouldn’t have been wise to follow the city attorney’s advice in order to avoid violating the Charter. They responded that while they deeply appreciated having a deputy city attorney at Task Force meetings and certainly gave due weight to the DCA’s counsel, such advice did not have the force of law, they had a right to disagree with it and they believed the bylaw change they had enacted in April 2011 did not violate the Charter.

The Rules Committee voted unanimously to recommend the appointments of newcomers Kitt Grant, David Sims, Chris Hyland and Louise Fischer, and returnee David Pilpel. Campos and Kim voted to recommend Wolfe’s reappointment; Farrell dissented.

Then, citing concerns about lack of “diversity,” Farrell and Kim said the Society of Professional Journalists, NAM and the LWV should have submitted multiple nominations for each of their designated seats. They pointed to language in ordinance Sec. 67.30(a) stipulating that the respective members “shall be appointed from … names” – and they emphasized the plural, “names” – “submitted by” the organizations. And the committee voted unanimously to continue those four appointments to the call of the chair.

It is important to note that this was the first time ever that the committee had made a multiple-nominations demand. Previously, the committee and the board had invariably accepted the single nominations from the three organizations.

The “diversity” argument was a smokescreen. They had already voted to bounce Chan, who is Chinese-American, and Manneh is a Palestinian-American fluent in Arabic and Spanish.

The truth was, they didn’t like the nominees. SPJ had nominated attorney Ben Rosenfeld and Westside Observer editor Doug Comstock. Both as a Task Force member and as a political consultant, Comstock had been a thorn in lots of local politicians’ and bureaucrats’ sides. And Manneh and Washburn had participated in the Task Force’s unanimous finding of violation against Chiu, Wiener, Mar and Cohen.

Upshot: By continuing those appointments, the committee and the board ensured that Manneh, Washburn and I would remain as “holdovers” and the SPJ-nominated attorney’s seat would stay vacant (Snyder had formally resigned). Manneh, citing an increased professional and academic workload, stepped aside a few months later, meaning two of the 11 seats were vacant, and it now took only four absences instead of five to kill a quorum.

5. At the subsequent meeting of the full board, after Campos moved to reappoint Wolfe, Wiener moved to replace his name with that of Todd David. In making his motion, Wiener delivered a scorching, mendacious attack on what was then the current Task Force. Details of the tirade are available on request. The board voted, 6-5, in favor of Wiener’s motion (ayes: Wiener, Chiu, Farrell, Cohen, Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd; noes: Campos, Kim, Mar, John Avalos and Christina Olague). The board then voted unanimously to appoint Grant, Sims, Hyland, Fischer, Pilpel and David.

6. Ordinance Sec. 67.30(a) stipulates that the Task Force shall at all times have at least one member with a physical disability. Wolfe was the only applicant in 2012 to meet that criterion. So when the board ousted him, the Task Force no longer had a physically disabled member. The city attorney advised the new Task Force that to take any actions before a new physically disabled member was appointed could land land the Task Force and its individual members in serious legal trouble. So the Task Force was sidelined for five months, finally resuming business in November 2012 following the appointment of Bruce Oka — who, by the way, is solidly pro-sunshine.

            7. After interviewing 12 of the 13 task force applicants on May 15, 2014, Rules Committee members Norman Yee and Katy Tang complained about a lack of racial/ethnic diversity among the candidates, but that didn’t stop them from voting to recommend the reappointments of members David, Fischer and Pilpel, all Anglos (Campos was absent). Nor were they deterred by the fact that David has missed six task force meetings since March 2013, including those of last January, February and April. They continued consideration of additional appointments to a future meeting, possibly June 5.

At the board meeting on May 20, Wiener repeated his slander of the 2012-14 task force and heaped praise on David, Fischer and Pilpel without offering a shred of corroborating evidence. The board voted to confirm their reappointments, again ignoring David’s porous attendance record.

8. To be seen: whether Rules and/or the board will continue insisting on multiple nominations, and whether it will move forward on other possible appointments. Including Grant’s resignation and the possibility of holdovers, there is a risk that as few as eight of the 11 seats will be filled, meaning three absences would kill a quorum. Sims is moving to Los Angeles but remaining as a holdover for the moment. If he resigns, that could pull the number of fill seats down to seven, meaning two absences would kill a quorum.

The foregoing commentary is strictly personal and not intended to reflect the views of any other individual or organization.

Respectfully submitted,

Richard Knee

Member (since July 2002) and past chairman of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, Freedom of Information Committee

San Francisco-based freelance journalist

(The Bruce blog is written and edited by Bruce B. Brugmann, editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He is the former editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012). In San Francisco, the citizens are generally safe, except when the mayor is in his office and the board of supervisors is in session. You can quote me.  B3

Chiu mailer highlights Guardian praise, despite our Campos endorsement

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Politics is dirty business, and I should never underestimate the willingness of politicians to turn any editorial praise they receive into an electoral advantage, distorting the context as needed, a lesson that I was reminded of this week.

Several Guardian readers have called me this week to complain about a mailer dropped on voters by the David Chiu for Assembly campaign, which includes long quotes from Chiu’s endorsements by the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area Reporter, as well as positive quotes from the Bay Guardian and San Francisco Examiner.

Although neither the Guardian nor the Examiner has endorsed Chiu — we enthusiastically endorsed David Campos in that race, while the Examiner is waiting until the fall rematch to do endorsements — our readers said the flyer left the impression that we had.

Chiu campaign spokesperson Nicole Derse disputes that view. “It definitely did not leave that impression,” she told me. “We were very clear about who has endorsed.” She said the Examiner and Guardian were included because “it’s important to highlight objective sources like newspapers.”

The Guardian quote was from a July 23, 2013 blog post in which I indeed wrote, “It is Chiu and his bustling office of top aides that have done most of the heavy legislation lifting this year, finding compromise solutions to some of the most vexing issues facing the city.”

It was certainly true at the time, although I received a lot criticism for what I wrote from the progressive community, which pointed out how Chiu had maneuvered himself into the swing vote position on key issues such as condo conversions and CEQA reform. And the compromises Chiu forged actually allowed fiscal conservatives to erode San Francisco’s standing as a progessive city while burgeoning his own political resume.

So I ran another blog post to air those concerns, and then we ran a hybrid of the two in the next week’s paper that closes with this line, “In the end, Chiu can be seen as an effective legislator, a centrist compromiser, or both. Perspective is everything in politics.” BTW, in that original post, I also noted that the Airbnb legislation Chiu was working on should challenge his political skills and reputation, and indeed it took many more months to introduce and has been met by a storm of criticism, becoming the marquee political fight of the summer at City Hall.

After that first post, I also heard from Campos and his supporters predicting that the Chiu campaign would use my well-meaning praise to convey support from the Guardian in a misleading way, a prophecy that has now proven prescient.

But I also think that Campos has done a good job at undermining Chiu’s greatest strength in this election, that of being an effective legislator, by hammering on the reality that things have gotten worse for the average San Francisco because Chiu and his allies have been most effective on behalf of the tech companies, landlords, and other rich and powerful interests that are undermining the city’s diversity, affordability, and progressive values.

“Effective for whom? That’s what’s important,” Campos told us during his endorsement interview, noting that, “Most people in San Francisco have been left behind and out of that prosperity.”

Chiu’s campaign counters by overtly and in whisper campaigns saying that progressives can’t be effective in Sacramento, blatantly overlooking the fact that the incumbent he’s running to replace, Tom Ammiano, has been both a consistent, trustworthy progressive, and an effective legislator who has gotten more bills signed than most of his colleagues, even as he takes on tough issues like reforms to Prop. 13 and prison conditions.

And Ammiano hasn’t just said good things about David Campos, his chosen successor — Ammiano has actually endorsed Campos. 

Political power play unseats SF Police Commissioner

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Police Commissioner Angela Chan fought the federal government as they unjustly tried to deport undocumented San Franciscans who were guilty of no crimes, and won. She fought to arm the SFPD with de-escalation tactics instead of Tasers, and won again.

But at the April 30 Board of Supervisors meeting, Chan lost. The board denied her reappointment to the Police Commission, and seven supervisors voted to appoint her opponent, Victor Hwang, instead.

The decision came after heated backdoor politicking by Chinatown political leader Rose Pak, insiders told us. Politicians involved would only speak on background, for fear of reprisal from Pak, yet indicated that Pak felt Chan did not consult often enough with Chinatown interests and focused too broadly on issues of concern to other communities.

Chan gained national recognition for her work against Secure Communities, challenging a provision that allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to call for illegal holds of undocumented persons they’d later like to deport. Pak came out swinging against Chan in the wake of those battles, we were told.

“It’s a sad day for the immigrant rights movement when a strong leader cannot be reappointed,” Sup. Eric Mar said just before the vote.

After Sup. Katy Tang introduced the motion to strike Chan’s name from the appointment, and replace it with Hwang’s, other supervisors noted the obvious elephant in the room — there was not only one vacant seat on the police commission, but two.

Supervisor John Avalos suggested the Board of Supervisors make a motion to request the mayor appoint Hwang himself, allowing for both Chan and Hwang to be appointed.

But Board of Supervisors President David Chiu said he’d asked Mayor Lee that very question to no avail. “It is not something that will happen,” he said. “It is not the practice of the mayor to solve difficult decisions of the board. It’s up to us.”

Sups. Mark Farrell, Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, London Breed, Jane Kim, Tang and Chiu voted to strike Chan’s name from the appointment, and to vote to appoint Hwang instead. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

LAWSUIT FILED TO HALT TECH SHUTTLE PILOT

The road to regulating Google Buses has a new pothole: a lawsuit.

A lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court May 1 demands the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s commuter shuttle pilot program be put on hold while a full environmental review is conducted under the California Environmental Quality Act.

“We know that these buses are having devastating impacts on our neighborhoods, driving up rents and evictions of long-time San Francisco residents,” said Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco and one of the lawsuit petitioners. “We’ve protested in the streets and taken our plea to City Hall to no avail. We hope to finally receive justice in a court of law.”

The suit was filed against the City and County of San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee, the Board of Supervisors, the SFMTA, Google, Genentech, Apple, and a handful of private transportation providers. It alleges the tech shuttle pilot project is in violation of the California Vehicle Code, which prohibits any vehicle — except common carriers (public buses) — to pull into red zones that are designated as bus stops. It also alleges the city abused its discretion and violated the CEQA by exempting the Shuttle Project from environmental review. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

ILLEGAL ANTI-CAMPOS FLYERS TARGETED IN ETHICS COMPLAINT

Several San Francisco neighborhoods over the last week have been targeted with illegal campaign flyers against Assembly candidate David Campos — breaking both state election laws requiring the group and its funding source to be identified and local laws against placing political flyers on utility poles and other surfaces.

Former Ethics Commission Eileen Hansen this week filed a complaint about the guerilla campaigning with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which has jurisdiction over state races.

“I am asking for the intervention of your office into what appears to be a blatant and arrogant violation of campaign finance reporting and disclosure laws in California’s 17th Assembly District Primary Election,” Hansen wrote in the April 30 letter. “As you well know, the political climate in San Francisco is quite sensitive, and nerves are raw. If this violation is allowed to continue, it will have a chilling effect on the entire election and further alienate voters, and potential voters.”

The race between Campos and David Chiu has indeed gotten more heated in recent weeks, but Chiu campaign manager Nicole Derse denies that the campaign has any knowledge or involvement with the illegal campaigning: “We think everyone in this race should be transparent.”

In her letter, Hansen casts doubt on the Chiu campaign’s claims of innocence: “The wide distribution, professional design, and overnight appearance in distant locations strongly suggest that these flyers have been produced and distributed by a funded political organization aligned with Assembly candidate David Chiu, whose aim is to attack and discredit Chiu’s opponent David Campos.”

And she even identifies a leading suspect in this illegal campaigning: Enrique Pearce and his Left Coast Communications firm, which has a history of dirty tricks campaigning on behalf of Mayor Ed Lee and other establishment politicians. Hansen notes that the flyers appeared right after the registration of a new campaign committee, San Franciscans for Effective Government to Support David Chiu. Although the group hasn’t reported any fundraising yet, its contact phone number goes to Left Coast Communications and Pearce, who hasn’t yet returned our calls on the issue.

This campaign stunt in reminiscent of an “independent expenditure” effort in the District 6 supervisorial race in 2010, when Pearce was connected to a mailer supporting Sup. Jane Kim that was funded partially by Willie Brown, again because the supposedly independent group listed his phone number even though he was worked directly for Kim.

The anti-Campos mailers include some nasty and misleading charges, labeling Campos “City Hall’s Hypocrite” by falsely claiming Campos ignored rising evictions until he decided to run for the Assembly and that he was concerned about Google buses but wanted to charge them less than $1 per stop. A third flyer claims Campos “lets wifebeater sheriff keep his job” for his vote against removing Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office for official misconduct.

“This is a secretly funded shadow organization aligned with David Chiu, committing a desperate move that is as illegal and it is false in its claims,” Campos told us, saying he hopes the FPPC is able to stop and punish those involved. (Steven T. Jones)

SUPES CALL FOR INCREASED YOUTH FUNDING

José-Luis Mejia says he’s seen a little bit of everything in his work with transitional-age youth.

A few have died suddenly; others wound up incarcerated. Then there are those who beat the odds by attending top-level universities, opening up their own businesses, or dedicating themselves to public service.

As associate director of Transitional Age Youth San Francisco, Mejia was part of a grassroots coalition that has been working for about two years on crafting a measure that aims to increase funding for youth programs, seeking to give a boost to transitional-age youth services in particular.

It culminated with the April 30 introduction at the Board of Supervisors of a suite of new proposals to support youth programs, including a pair of charter amendments that will appear on the November ballot.

An amendment sponsored by Sup. John Avalos would renew the existing Children’s Fund, renaming it the Children and Youth Fund, and increasing the property-tax set-aside that supports it from three cents per $100 of assessed valuation to five cents. Funding would be designated for programs set up to aid “disconnected transitional-aged youth,” including homeless or disabled youth, unmarried parents, those who identify as LGBTQ or are aging out of foster care, and other specified categories. The amendment would also create a Commission on Children, Youth, and Their Families, to oversee the Department of Children Youth and their families. A second charter amendment would extend the Public Education Enrichment Fund (PEEF), another source of funding for youth programs.

Avalos has strong support on the Board, but the mayor’s office has reportedly been pressuring supervisors not to support Avalos’ measure.

“As we all know, San Francisco is experiencing incredible economic activity,” Avalos noted April 30. “We’re experiencing growth and speculation that is lifting many boats, but not lifting all boats. And some of the people who are not doing so well are children and families.”

The Children’s Fund, and PEEF currently set aside over $100 million for children and youth in San Francisco. The funding sources would sunset if action were not taken to extend them. (Rebecca Bowe)

 

Chiu for Assembly

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OPINION

San Francisco is at a crossroads. While some residents benefit from prosperity, an affordable housing crisis coupled with income inequality make this a time of struggle for other San Franciscans.

Our inclusive, diverse culture that has historically made San Francisco a haven for artists, immigrants, and innovators is at stake. Given this, effective progressive leadership is critical to ensuring that our city remains a place where all San Franciscans can afford to live and prosper. That’s why I urge you to vote for my friend, President of the Board of Supervisors David Chiu, to represent San Francisco in the California State Assembly.

As president, David has demonstrated an inclusive, unifying leadership style that has had a transformative impact at City Hall. He really listens to everyone, and brings people together to address our city’s most critical challenges. He combines rock solid progressive values with a fervent drive to do more than talk — to actually get the big stuff done.

The proof is in the pudding: he’s passed more pieces of legislation than any other current supervisor in every major policy arena, and his colleagues have elected him president three times.

David has delivered consistently on our city’s most critical issue: affordable housing. A tenant in San Francisco himself for the past 18 years, David has fought to protect and expand affordable housing across the city, leading efforts to build more housing for homeless veterans, transitional age youth, and seniors.

He supported rebuilding dilapidated public housing projects that have been in total disrepair. He has supported the strengthening of habitability standards in housing across the board. He led the charge to create a 10-year moratorium on condo conversions and to prioritize victims of Ellis Act evictions for our city’s affordable housing opportunities.

After multiple failed attempts by supervisors over two decades, he passed legislation to finally legalize in-law units, preserving one of our city’s largest existing stocks of affordable housing. David will continue to work to stem San Francisco’s affordable housing crisis in the Assembly, including pushing hard to reform the Ellis Act.

David has been a leader on a host of other important issues. An avid biker who doesn’t own a car, David has spearheaded groundbreaking environmental legislation, banning the sale of plastic water bottles on city property, expanding urban agriculture, and prohibiting the delivery of unwanted Yellow Pages. He’s increased funding for community arts, an issue close to my heart as an artist. He has championed language access for our city’s immigrants, and fought for the reunification of LGBT immigrant families.

Under his leadership, San Francisco is the first city in the country to establish the right to civil counsel for low-income residents being denied basic human rights such as housing, as well as to give workers the right to request flexible and predictable working arrangements to take care of their families. He passed progressive business tax reform that will bring $300 million of new revenues over the next decade.

When it comes down to it, we have two Assembly candidates, David Chiu and David Campos, who share the strongly held progressive values of the Guardian’s readers. I am a longtime supporter of the Guardian and have valued its endorsement in my previous races. The difference lies in style and effectiveness.

I know how urgently San Francisco needs a leader in the Assembly who can bring people together to get significant things done. The challenges and opportunities our city faces demand it. I know David Chiu can do this because he has done it, over and over again, in five and a half remarkably effective years of progressive leadership on the Board of Supervisors.

Please join me in supporting David Chiu for State Assembly.

Debra Walker is an artist who serves on the Building Inspection Commission, recently reappointed to that seat by David Chiu.

Politics trumps police oversight

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EDITORIAL

A proven advocate for the public interest was removed from the San Francisco Police Commission last week. Not only was this a missed opportunity for stronger civilian oversight at a time when the San Francisco Police Department is under federal scrutiny, it raises disturbing implications about how things get done in City Hall.

The Board of Supervisors voted to oust Police Commissioner Angela Chan, voting 7-4 to strike Chan’s name from the appointment and replace it with contender Victor Hwang instead. City Hall insiders privately explained that Chinatown power broker Rose Pak, a friend of Mayor Ed Lee who wields great political influence, pressured supervisors to vote for Hwang specifically because she and her allies wanted Chan to be ousted. Supervisors who could not be relied upon to vote for Hwang were even reportedly cautioned that they shouldn’t be too vocal about their positions.

A civil rights attorney who proved effective and independent as a commissioner, Chan often directed pointed questions at police, for example drilling down on the finer details of officer-involved shootings.

Hwang, also a civil rights attorney, is qualified and respected, but he didn’t need to replace Chan. There’s another vacant seat on the commission — up to Mayor Ed Lee to appoint — so this vote was never about Hwang’s qualifications versus Chan’s. There was room for both.

This was about political patronage, pure and simple. It was about getting rid of an independent voice and replacing her with the former chair of the “Run Ed Run” committee, which urged Lee to break his pledge and run for mayor — a tradeoff that hurts police accountability.

Having two civil rights attorneys on the Police Commission would have sent a strong signal that the city is serious about addressing police misconduct at a time when the SFPD officers are facing federal charges for alleged civil rights violations (see “Crooked cops, March 4).

Supervisors should have called upon Lee to appoint Hwang rather than ousting Chan. Instead, the board majority was unwilling to challenge the consolidated power of Lee and his well-connected allies, who conducted an anti-democratic closed-door lobbying effort.

Board President David Chiu, who is running for Assembly, stated at the meeting that he’d asked Lee about appointing Hwang to the vacant seat, only to be told: “It is not something that will happen.”

So Chiu was unwilling to question the mayor’s bizarre refusal to appoint a candidate that Lee’s own allies were furiously advocating for. Instead of pushing for stronger civilian oversight of police, Chiu and six other supervisors voted to oust a commissioner with a proven track record.

If elected officials are casting votes for personal advancement, or out of fear that they’ll be rendered ineffective as punishment for pissing off the wrong people, then San Franciscans have a big problem: Their local government is beholden to the whims of entrenched power.