Gavin Newsom

Whew! What a Best of Party last night!

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What a splendid Best of Party last night at Club Six down in the inner Mission in San Francisco. Almost all of this year’s Best of winners were there, more than 300 of them, to pick up their Best of certificate, and to pose in a group photo that will stand as one of the year’s most eclectic gatherings in San Francisco and certainly the Best San Francisco photograph of 2006. (We will publish the photo in next week’s Guardian).

There was Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White, Kathi Kamen Goldmark and Sam Barry from the Rock Bottom Remainders, Chris Middlestadt of the Fruit Guys, the best beer-soaked bingo brigade, local heroes Tony Kelly of thick Description Theater, Barry Hermanson and the Greenaction Gang of closing-down-the-Hunters-Point-power-plant fame, (Marie Harrison and Bradley Angel), the best drag queen who plays the accordion, Breda Courtney of the Best Bloomin’ Thespians, Robin and Joe Talmadge and Cinder Ernst from World Gym, the Primitive Screwheads (best goofy gore), Press Secretary Peter Ragone and other reps from the mayor’s office (yes, Mayor Gavin Newsom did win an award, the best mayor we love to hate), best neighborhood newspaper publisher (Ruth Passen of the Potrero View), and scores more of the city’s best and brightest and most diverse.

The Keeping it Real with Will and Willie gang were there from the Quake (Comedian Will Durst, Ex-Mayor Willie Brown, producer Paul Wells) to accept their award as the “Best Herb Caen column on the radio.”
They exemplified the spirit of Caen by being “visible” at the party (a key Caen quality in his man about town role at the old Chronicle) and by talking genially to everyone who came in range in the massed crowd, including some who have tilted politically with Willie through the years. Caen had to do that, whether he liked it or not, because he was a target and a celebrity wherever he went. One key difference is that Will and Willie, out on the town regularly, can comment and do their reviews the next morning. Caen’s nocturnal adventures were always in his column a day later in the morning Chronicle. Caen also had l,000 word columns. Will and Willie have three hours every week day morning, from 7 to l0 a.m. in prime time, and can handle lots of live interviews in the studio or on the phone. Most important, Caen could only hint at his political proclivities, but Will and Willie announce they are Democrats and go after Bush and the war and local sacred cows with great glee.

This morning, Will and Willie led off their show on 960 the Quake with a report on the event, which they obviously enjoyed. My journalistic point: There will most likely never be another Herb Caen in San Francisco, or probably on any other daily paper, because he was a creature of another era, the hell-for-leather competitive newspaper wars in San Francisco, which were some of the most colorful in the country. Once the old Hearst Examiner and the old Chronicle formed a JOA in l965, they had no more real use for Caen but the Chronicle kept him on because of his ability and reputation. The Chronicle family owners were always nervous and often agitated about Caen and his enormous influence but they really couldn’t do much about him. Now, with the new Hearst Chronicle as the dominant daily here, with the coming of Singletonland in the Bay Area, no publisher has any use for a powerful independent talent such as Caen, particularly a strong union voice. Al’as.

The Caen formula lives

Will and Willie demonstrated the point again in this morning’s show with a snapshot of Caen’s San Francisco with a nostalgic interview of Mort Sahl, who Caen helped make a celebrated fixture at Enrique Banducci’s Hungry I. They were making the most of the fact that Sahl was reemerging in San Francisco and opening tonight at the Empire Plush Room (Willie said he would in the front row). And Sahl responded with some good political jokes: The Democrats are proving they can defeat Democats, he said of the Lieberman race. But can they defeat Republicans? Jerry Brown is putting Oakland “up for adoption.” On the Mel Gibson incident, Sahl said there was talk in Hollywood that he would now be boycotted. But Sahl quoted Jack Warner of Warner Brothers about an earlier star: “He’ll never work in this town again– until we need him.” And Sahl mused at one point, “Just how many wars are we fighting today.”

Sahl also had some news. Banducci was alive and well in Hayward, sharp as ever. Sahl lived in San Francisco and Sausalito for many years and is now living in LA and working regularly. The I in Hungri I stood for Intellectual. ON and on, making the point on the show that Sahl is back. Hurray!

Back on the monopoly journalism front

Just in: story from the Mercury News by Pete Carey with the arresting head: “Area’s new media king is having fun, industry leader started with one small paper at age 20.”

He quoted Singleton as telling a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Seattle in April, on a podium he shared with McClatchy’s Gary Pruitt,
“We do a lot of things because they’re fun.” Impertinent questions: who else is having fun as Singletonland comes to town? Is there no way that any of the reporters covering Singleton on any of his papers can utter a discouraging or realistic word about his form of discount journalism, or find someone who can do? (Carey, incidentally, a veteran reporter, has done the best job of covering the sale of Knight-Ridder and subsequent developments).

The newspaper unions have been quiet and have not even commented on what happened to their offer to buy the Merc and the other McClatchy castoffs. And the few statements they have issued took the line of the Hearst unions in San Francisco in dealing with its monopolizing issues: lay low and wait till negotiations on the next contract (when, from my point of view, it may be too late.) The Merc employees are working without union contracts. The crunch will come when Singleton starts “consolidating” and making the deep cuts in production and newsrooms and quality that he must do, sooner or later, probably sooner, with his mountains of debt, his unmanageable forest of papers and presses, and his “lean Dean” cost-cutting modus operandi. Stay tuned. B3

The vanishing Tenderloin

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Casey Mills in beyond Chron has a nice little tidbit on how Gavin Newsom’s press release endorsing the little-known Rob Black for District Six supervisor conveniently omits any mention of the Tenderloin.

Newsom, it’s time to end the Sunshine wars

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EDITORIAL For months now, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s press office has been fighting with Sup. Chris Daly over a series of internal memos that Daly claims ought to be public record. The memos involve the mayor’s position on tenant legislation that would make some kinds of evictions more difficult.
Daly had to take the case to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, which held a hearing and deliberated for more than an hour before finding the Mayor’s Office in violation of the law. And still, Daly — an elected official — couldn’t get a copy of the memos.
Then on July 29, Guardian reporter Amanda Witherell confronted Newsom outside a town hall meeting in the Richmond District. The mayor said he wasn’t even aware of the details of the battle — then promptly ordered his press office to release the records (see “Sunburned,” page 15).
Good for Newsom — but why did it take this long? Why did Daly, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, and no doubt the City Attorney’s Office have to spend so much time on a fight that clearly made no sense?
Unfortunately, this is symptomatic of how the Mayor’s Office — and so many other city agencies — is handling public-records requests: it’s a struggle for anyone to get anything.
A handful of aggressive, single-minded activists like Kimo Crossman, who is trying to get records on the city’s wi-fi negotiations, have been driving the Mayor’s Office and City Attorney Dennis Herrera crazy with reams of document requests. Why? Because they’ve asked for some simple, basic stuff — and have been refused. Thousands of hours of city time have been wasted fighting battles that don’t need to be fought.
Newsom can put an end to a lot of this pretty quickly. He should announce that he’s told the press office to comply immediately with every public-records request unless there is a clear, serious reason to withhold the information — and he should make it clear that he wants to be personally informed any time a request is denied so that he can make the final determination.
Newsom should also direct every city department under his jurisdiction to follow the same policies and support reforms in the Sunshine Ordinance to end all of these delays. SFBG

Sunburned

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› amanda@sfbg.com
The Mayor’s Office of Communications has for months been fighting with Sup. Chris Daly and several unrelated activists over the release of public documents. By denying and ignoring Sunshine Ordinance requests — including some by the Guardian — the office has garnered a reputation for secrecy that has transformed a disparate group of activists into a united force pushing the boundaries of the city’s landmark open government law.
The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force (SOTF) on July 25 found the MOC in violation of the Sunshine Ordinance on two counts, but the mayor’s spokespeople defied its decision and refused to release seven pages of MOC e-mails that Daly requested. Jennifer Petrucione, who spoke for the mayor at the meeting and left before a final decision had been reached on one of the violations, told the Guardian, “I was contemptuous of the process.”
Her view and that of mayoral press secretary Peter Ragone, as they explained to the Guardian, is that the voluminous nature of some requests and the political motivations of document requesters like Daly violate the spirit of the Sunshine Ordinance, which voters passed in 1993 to encourage public access to how decisions are made in city hall. Instead of disclosing documents, the MOC has found loopholes in the broadly written law permitting them to hide information.
“We have the right to withhold certain documents if they are recommendations,” Petrucione told us July 28, even though the task force generally supports disclosure of such documents. In another case of ignoring a request, she chalked it up to an accident: “That was not us trying to avoid Sunshine, it was us doing it too quickly and overlooking things.”
While both Ragone and Petrucione insisted it’s their policy to release everything they can, even if it’s logistically difficult given the volume of requests they receive, they’re still having a hard time producing documents in a timely fashion. So some activists have reacted to early inaction with ever more voluminous and complicated requests.
The day after we discussed the MOC Sunshine Ordinance policies with Petrucione and Ragone, Mayor Gavin Newsom appeared at a town hall meeting in the Richmond, where we asked him about the dispute with Daly’s office. “I haven’t been privy to the details,” he told us. “I would like to see us readily provide whatever information is being requested. I said, ‘Peter, just send all the information, even in the spirit of the ordinance. We have nothing to hide.’”
Two days later, Petrucione called the Guardian to say the mayor had ordered her office to release the disputed documents after all. She told us, “You guys want to make an issue of it, so we decided to just put them out there.”
BURIED DOCUMENTS
The disputed e-mails requested by Sup. Daly involve Ragone’s purchase last year of a tenancy in common (TIC) from which two disabled residents had been evicted by a landlord evoking the Ellis Act, as first reported by the blog www.beyondchron.org.
Daly was curious if there might be any connection between Ragone’s new digs and Newsom’s vetoes of proposals that would have protected tenants from those kinds of evictions. Daly’s office filed an immediate disclosure request for any documents regarding evictions or condominium conversions.
After the MOC initially responded that they didn’t have any such documents, which Daly’s office didn’t believe, the issue dragged out over four months in front of the SOTF, with the MOC eventually turning over about 25 relevant documents but withholding seven e-mails, with Petrucione citing Section 67.24 of the Sunshine Ordinance: “Only the recommendation of the author may, in such circumstances, be withheld as exempt.”
Daly appeared at the meeting to speak on his own behalf. “I’m not attempting to have a gotcha on the Mayor’s Office. I’m attempting to form a decision,” he said.
The task force doesn’t have the power of subpoena or investigative authority — its members can’t look at the e-mails and decide if they’re public — so the matter was referred to the Ethics Commission, which does. Petrucione, who had the documents at the meeting, could have just handed them to Daly. She told the Guardian, “We’re not concerned about what the e-mails say. We’re trying to adhere to the letter and the spirit of the law.”
In fact, the documents contained only mildly embarrassing information, with a pair of e-mails from Petrucione plotting ways to overshadow the news of Newsom’s tenant protection veto last September by releasing word of the veto late on a Friday and coupling it with a high-profile announcement of San Francisco’s Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, “which will bury any interest in the Ellis release.”
But the MOC’s resistance to disclosure — both to Daly and to activists also seeking information during that same time period — has only served to galvanize those seeking public records.
ACTIVISTS’ SUNRISE
Everyone starts with a little kernel of concern, a reason to wonder or worry about what those elected officials are up to. Kimo Crossman last year wanted to know more about the sketchy municipal wi-fi deal with Google and Earthlink that Newsom was proposing. After hitting initial roadblocks when making requests for specific information like a copy of the contract, Crossman started asking for reams of documents, anything remotely related to the TechConnect plan. His concerns have now expanded to disaster preparedness issues and finally to the Sunshine Ordinance itself.
Last week at the SOTF meeting, where Crossman is now a regular member of the audience, he filed a complaint that the mayor had not provided the opportunity for public comment at a Disaster Council meeting June 5. After reviewing video and transcripts of the meeting and hearing Petrucione’s evolving explanations, the task force found a violation.
Crossman — who at one time was being considered for “vexatious litigant” status by city officials who wanted to tone down his voluminous requests — was pleased and said, “I thought it was a success that the mayor was held accountable to Sunshine just like everyone else in the city.”
Perhaps the violation will inspire the Mayor’s Office to fulfill the outstanding records requests of other citizens, like Wayne Lanier, who had a little home improvement issue.
About a year ago, Lanier and a few of his neighbors repaired the sidewalk around a few trees and planted some flowerpots in front of their homes. Then the city slapped them with a $700 tax, under the Occupancy Assessment Fee for Various Encroachments.
The ordinance was introduced by the mayor and passed the Board of Supervisors in July 2005. It was designed to tax property owners who eat up the public right-of-way with stairways and fences, but the ordinance became what Lanier likes to call the “tree and beauty tax.”
Lanier wanted to know what kinds of meetings and discussions had led up to this ordinance, so in March he sent a Sunshine Ordinance request to Newsom. “I requested his calendar prior to July,” Lanier told the Guardian. “A very simple e-mail request under the Sunshine act.”
Lanier says he has yet to receive an answer to his request, let alone any correspondence or acknowledgement from the Mayor’s Office that they’re working on it. Later, he had concerns about avian flu, where he was again rebuffed in his attempt to get documents.
THE PRICE OF DELAY
The frustrating stories of Crossman and Lanier eventually caught the interest of Christian Holmer, who championed their causes and set out with Crossman on a project they think could streamline the practice of releasing public documents.
Holmer is the secretary of the Panhandle Residents Organization Stanyan Fulton, which has a Web site compendium of all the Sunshine Ordinance requests he knows about. He posts a running countdown of how many days each request has been outstanding, as well as details on the runaround and excuses he receives from city officials.
His goal is to standardize how various departments produce documents and make them more easily accessible to the public “in as few keystrokes as possible,” as he puts it. And to do that, he’s made lots of Sunshine Ordinance requests, which MOC officials argue are too onerous for them to deal with, particularly given Holmer’s lengthy, heavily annotated e-mails, which he fires off to a variety of city departments on a daily basis.
As the many city reps who receive these e-mails will attest, it can take well over an hour to read the entire contents of one e-mail, only to find out it includes enough attachments to keep the reader busy for the better part of a day.
Petrucione and Ragone, who have received Holmer’s request for the mayor’s daily calendar but not yet answered it, cite the difficulty in figuring out exactly what Holmer wants. However, even the Guardian’s simply worded requests for that same information, as well as documents related to the recent health care measure, weren’t filled by the timelines set out by the ordinance.
Ragone says his office is just trying to keep up with the deluge of document requests. He raised the possibility of reforms, such as a designated Sunshine Ordinance officer or standardized form, but the MOC hasn’t formally proposed any.
Matt Dorsey of the City Attorney’s Office is wary of standardizing the system: “I don’t think the law should create a barrier — a ‘you didn’t sign this so I don’t have to answer it’ situation.” SFBG

The press censors the press

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Well, well. Today’s Chronicle/Hearst had some big stories on its front page, including a story by its City Hall reporter headed “SF Residents asked to volunteer for a day.” The lead: “Mayor Gavin Newsom today will call on all San Francisco residents to take time out and give a day to their city.” And there were at the top of the page some teaser heads, “After 25 years-still want your MTV? C. W. Nevius on Mel Gibson’s tirade. Bruce Jenkins on baseball’s busy day.” And a big across- the- front – page story, framed in yellow with a white sun, saying, “If you thought last week was hot…More heat, rising ocean, loss of snowpack forecast by the state for 2l00.” Nifty. All legitimate stories.

But way inside on the business page was the hottest local story for San Francisco, the region, and the newspaper business. It was Hearst’s joyful policy announcement story headlined “Bay Area papers cleared for sale to MediaNews, Federal agency’s antitrust review ends with approval.” Our earlier two blogs pointing out the lousy Hearst coverage (and lousy coverage by the other papers involved in the deal) must have done a bit of good. I emailed the obvious questions in my blog to Hearst, but Hearst didn’t reply and Hearst and the other participating papers didn’t answer the questions in their stories, but they did do a bit better with the DOJ story. At least, after I chided them for leaving out a key point in their minimalist stories reporting how a federal judge refused to grant a temporary restraining order in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto suit, they asked Alioto if he and Reilly were going to press on with their suit. They are, as I reported exclusively on my blogs. Finally, Hearst et al did publish this fact in their stories. The Mercury-News put it as the last paragraph to its story.

However, the stories by Hearst and the other participant papers read as if nobody ever bothered to check the court documents in the case or at least the Alioto reply memorandum in support of his motion for a temporary restraining order.
What Alioto argued is that Hearst and MediaNews (Singleton), and the other billionaire partners (Gannett and Stephens), have no use for facts nor principles in their move to regional monopoly. Case in point: Back in 2000, when Reilly tried to block Hearst from buying the family-owned Chronicle and shutting down its own Examiner and establish a morning monopoly, Hearst argued that there was no reason to fear a newspaper monopoly in San Francisco because competitors from other Bay Area cities, such as the San Jose Mercury-News and Contra Costa Times, would provide serious competition.

“Specifically,” Alioto stated, “Hearst argued that all of the Bay Area newspapers compete with each other in the Greater Bay Area, and that this competition, both actual and potential, has a tempering effect on the behavior of the competing papers.”

Now, of course, Hearst is arguing the opposite-that these outlying papers are not competitors with the Chronicle and never will be. Alioto pointed out that Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, in ruling against Reilly and for Hearst in that case, agreed with Hearst’s argument and quoted extensively from Walker’s decision. Alioto continued that, “at the very least, this court ought to hold a hearing on a motion for a preliminary injunction, if not a trial, to find out why Hearst and the other defendants are now ignoring and running away from the position taken by Hearst in the prior lawsuit.”

Alioto also pointed out why the contention of Hearst et al that there will be no allocation of markets and anti-competitive behavior is “ludicrous on its face.” Let me give you the precise quote that ought to have been in every honest story on this case:

“Although defendants disclaim the existence of their agreement to allocate markets, and Hearst professes that it will have no role in the combination’s subsequent stewardship of Bay Area newspapers, the claim is ludicrous on it face. Hearst cannot expect this court or anyone else to believe that it is shelling out $263,200,000 simply to buy and deliver the Monterey Herald to its Bay Area competitors to gain an interest in its competitors’ markets outside the Bay Area, without receiving any assurance or reaching any understanding that it will be protected against future competition in the Bay Area from its new partners. Such a claim strains credibility to say the least. Indeed, the role of Hearst in this combination, coming to the aid of its competitor MediaNews, can be explained most logically and cogently only by Hearst’s participation in the combination alleged in the complaint. Otherwise, Hearst’s motivation is truly mystyifying and Byzantine. If ever Occam’s razor ought to be applied, it is here.”

Let’s have a show of hands. Has anyone seen this quote and point, or a summary thereof, in any Chronicle, Contra Costa Times, San Jose Mercury News, Monterey Herald or Associated Press story, or any other Hearst/Singleton/Gannett/Stephens/McClatchy paper anywhere in the country? The larger question: will you ever see this quote as the suit plays out and the messy facts begin to emerge about one of the sorriest chapters in American journalism?

Today, John Simerman of the Contra Costa Times reported breathlessly, in a story headlined “MediaNews looks to set standard for papers online,” that Media News “hopes to harness its newfound Bay Area newspaper dominance on the internet into a regional website that aims to be a model for how old guard newspapers can work and make money online.” He also reported that MediaNews was in “very preliminary” talks with Hearst “about a joint Internet venture that could be run under the BayArea.com name.”

I suggest they first learn to cover local news.

Repeating: one city monopoly is now becoming regional monopoly and the monopolizing powers are now censoring the news toward that end. Alas, that is a terrible harbinger for Bay Area communities, for journalism, and for the free press provisions of the First Amendment. Let us all hoist a Potrero Hill martini for Clint Reilly and Attorneys Joe Alioto and Daniel Shulman.
Check the story yourself and in particular the Alioto/Shulman filings. Click here. B3

Newsom’s loser

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By Tim Redmond

Gavin Newsom is endorsing Rob Black, a former aide to Michela Alioto-Pier, for supervisor in District Six. That’s an obvious — and entirely predictable — slap at the incumbent, Chris Daly. But I’m with Randy Shaw on this one; he points out in Beyond Chron that Daly is still immensely popular in the district and that almost nobody in the South of Market area has ever heard of Rob Black.

The San Francisco Sentinel reported somethat effusively on Black’s press conference with the mayor. There’s also an interesting (again, effusive) story about Black and a response from Daly’s office that makes it look like Black shot off his mouth without checking his facts.

WEDNESDAY

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JUlY 26

EVENT
Disabilities Act anniversary

Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco, and the Mayor’s Office on Disablility invite you to a celebration of the 16th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, with keynote speaker Mayor Gavin Newsom, food, fun, and entertainment. (Deborah Giattina)

11 a.m.-1 p.m.
City Hall, South Light Court
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF
Free
(415) 554-6789

MUsic

Will Bernard Trio

Kicking off the North Beach Jazz Festival on Wednesday evening are 20-plus free jazz performances. My pick for opening night is the funky jazz trio led by guitarist Will Bernard, who has worked with the best of the best in jazz and funk including T.J. Kirk and Robert Walter. His work in Walter’s 20th Congress made the keyboard master opine that “he is one of the greatest musicians I’ve come into contact with.” (Joseph DeFranceschi)

8 p.m.
Magnet
1402 Grant, SF
Free
(415) 271-5760
www.nbjazzfest.com

{Empty title}

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› tredmond@sfbg.com
I started down Valencia Street around 8:30 last Thursday morning, trying to get to Mission and Embarcadero for a 9 a.m. radio show, and I caught up with two other bicyclists at a red light around 23rd Street. None of us said anything, but we rode more or less together for a couple more blocks, then picked up a few more riders here and a few more there, and by the time we hit Market Street, there were probably 15 of us, riding along in some sort of impromptu Critical Mass–style convoy. We (carefully) ran lights together, rode around cars together, and somehow, I think, psychically watched each other’s backs. I was on Market Street during rush hour, and I actually felt almost safe.
It was a San Francisco moment, one of those instances of accidental community that make you remember why this is the world’s best city. And while the greedheads keep trying to ruin it, we can still dream of making it better.
That’s what this Best of the Bay issue is dedicated to: a celebration of all that is wonderful in San Francisco and the Bay Area — and a vision of what it could be, maybe even might be, if we can wrest control of the future from the people who brought us the high-rise boom, the war against fun, dot-com development, Gavin Newsom, and the $2,000 studio apartment.
It could be, it can be, and sometimes it is — the city of the future. SFBG

Don’t move the mayoral elections

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The Board of Supervisors is slated to vote July 25th on a plan that’s attracted little press attention, but could have a profound impact on San Francisco politics. Sup. Jake McGoldrick has proposed a charter amendment that would move mayoral elections to coincide with presidential elections. The idea, McGoldrick says, is to increase turnout: In 2004, when John Kerry was running against George W. Bush, more than 70 percent of San Franciscans voted. When Matt Gonzalez ran against Gavin Newsom for mayor in 2003, only 55 percent showed up at the polls.

It sounds good, and generally, we’re for anything that increases voter turnout. But there are some real tricky questions about this proposal, and there hasn’t been enough public discussion around it. So the supervisors should vote against placing it on this fall’s ballot.

Our main concern with the plan is that it might diminish local interest in the mayoral contest. When the presidential race is at the top of the ticket, and likely a U.S. Senate race at the same time, the news media tends to focus on those campaigns, and the public’s attention is focused on them, too. The advantage of having a San Francisco mayor’s race in what is otherwise an off-year for elections is that all the energy in local politics centers on a high-stakes local campaign (The district attorney’s race is also on the ballot, and that might totally get lost in the presidential-year madness).

Some critics oppose the plan because, in practice, it would give the next mayor – at this point, probably Gavin Newsom – an additional year in office. That shouldn’t be an issue, really: This is about more than one mayor, and more than one year. It’s about the future of politics in the city.

It shouldn’t be about the Democratic Party, either. Some people worry that party money – always big in a presidential year – will flow to the anointed Democratic mayoral candidate, drowning out the voices of (say) a Green candidate, or a democrat who didn’t get the party’s nod. Maybe – but maybe all the money will go to the top of the ticket, and there will be less local cash spent on the San Francisco mayor’s race. And the power of the Democratic Party in a presidential year didn’t stop Ross Mirkarimi – a green – from getting elected supervisor from District Five in 2004.

Both supporters and opponents of the plan are trying to calculate how it would help or hurt progressive candidates, but there’s another factor here. Mayoral races are about more than just winning. The 1999 campaign, in which Tom Ammiano lost to Willie Brown, was a turning point in progressive politics in San Francisco. The runoff between Gavin Newsom and Matt Gonzalez in 2003 created an immense outpouring of community activism and brought thousands of new people into local politics. In a presidential year, some of that excitement – which is, in the end, crucial to any progressive movement – might have been diffused.

We don’t see any clear mandate or case for making the change right now, and we see some serious downsides. After extensive hearings and public debate, we might be convinced that this is a good idea, but that hasn’t happened yet. So for now, we urge the supervisors not to place it on the November ballot.

Don’t move the mayoral elections

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0

The Board of Supervisors is slated to vote July 25th on a plan that’s attracted little press attention, but could have a profound impact on San Francisco politics. Sup. Jake McGoldrick has proposed a charter amendment that would move mayoral elections to coincide with presidential elections. The idea, McGoldrick says, is to increase turnout: In 2004, when John Kerry was running against George W. Bush, more than 70 percent of San Franciscans voted. When Matt Gonzalez ran against Gavin Newsom for mayor in 2003, only 55 percent showed up at the polls.

It sounds good, and generally, we’re for anything that increases voter turnout. But there are some real tricky questions about this proposal, and there hasn’t been enough public discussion around it. So the supervisors should vote against placing it on this fall’s ballot.

Our main concern with the plan is that it might diminish local interest in the mayoral contest. When the presidential race is at the top of the ticket, and likely a U.S. Senate race at the same time, the news media tends to focus on those campaigns, and the public’s attention is focused on them, too. The advantage of having a San Francisco mayor’s race in what is otherwise an off-year for elections is that all the energy in local politics centers on a high-stakes local campaign (The district attorney’s race is also on the ballot, and that might totally get lost in the presidential-year madness).

Some critics oppose the plan because, in practice, it would give the next mayor – at this point, probably Gavin Newsom – an additional year in office. That shouldn’t be an issue, really: This is about more than one mayor, and more than one year. It’s about the future of politics in the city.

It shouldn’t be about the Democratic Party, either. Some people worry that party money – always big in a presidential year – will flow to the anointed Democratic mayoral candidate, drowning out the voices of (say) a Green candidate, or a democrat who didn’t get the party’s nod. Maybe – but maybe all the money will go to the top of the ticket, and there will be less local cash spent on the San Francisco mayor’s race. And the power of the Democratic Party in a presidential year didn’t stop Ross Mirkarimi – a green – from getting elected supervisor from District Five in 2004.

Both supporters and opponents of the plan are trying to calculate how it would help or hurt progressive candidates, but there’s another factor here. Mayoral races are about more than just winning. The 1999 campaign, in which Tom Ammiano lost to Willie Brown, was a turning point in progressive politics in San Francisco. The runoff between Gavin Newsom and Matt Gonzalez in 2003 created an immense outpouring of community activism and brought thousands of new people into local politics. In a presidential year, some of that excitement – which is, in the end, crucial to any progressive movement – might have been diffused.

We don’t see any clear mandate or case for making the change right now, and we see some serious downsides. After extensive hearings and public debate, we might be convinced that this is a good idea, but that hasn’t happened yet. So for now, we urge the supervisors not to place it on the November ballot.

Olympic schemes

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By Steven T. Jones
Kudos to Sup. Gerardo Sandoval for his voicing skepticism about whether San Francisco should want to host the Olympics in 2016, as Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing. Also, a belated shout out to the two voices over at the Chronicle who aren’t cheerleading over an idea that could be financially disastrous for the city. Clearly, the city’s rich and powerful like this idea, but this is also the same constituency who demanded that every city initiative be subjected to an economic impact analysis. It seems only fair that they subject this idea to the same sort of scrutiny.

Homes for whom?

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› steve@sfbg.com
“Inclusionary housing program” is a bureaucratic term that seems to invite mental drift. And when the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use Committee considered updating the program’s standards July 12, there was enough mind-numbing economic and regulatory minutiae to sedate the standing-room-only crowd.
But there were also diamonds in that jargony rough. For one thing, San Francisco is now poised to finally force housing developers to spend more of their astronomical profits on housing that sells or rents for far less than the city’s equally obscene housing market dictates. And that’s been made politically possible by an unlikely deal that has downtown developers such as Oz Erickson, affordable housing activists including Calvin Welch, the market-friendly Mayor’s Office of Housing, and progressive Sup. Chris Daly all on the same side.
In the process, a city-commissioned report has lifted the financial veil from big-money housing development in San Francisco, revealing that those who build the biggest high rises require a profit margin of at least 28 percent — or a take-home profit of about $250 million — before they’ll take on a project.
“It used to be illegal [usury to seek such high interest on loaned money], so 28 percent is a sobering number,” Welch said at the hearing.
The public good likely to come from this ordinance — if the current compromise can hold for a few more weeks — is a fairer system for getting people into below-market-rate (BMR) units, policies designed to encourage more housing construction for a wider income mix, and ways to involve more developers and phase in the program so as not to disrupt ongoing projects.
But before we get too deep into the program’s details, let’s take a step back, because the backstory of how we got to this compromise is an intriguing tale with important political implications, particularly for downtown’s current public enemy number one: Chris Daly.
The story really began last summer when the developers of those big new luxury high-rise condos known as One Rincon Hill were trying to get their final approvals. Daly and many of his constituents were concerned that this lucrative project didn’t include enough community benefits or BMR housing.
So the supervisor stepped in and negotiated with the developer a $120 million deal with a huge low-cost-housing element. In the end, the developer agreed to provide affordable units equivalent to about 25 percent of the project.
That’s more than double the city’s current inclusionary housing requirement, which mandates that 12 percent of the units be available below market rate. The requirement rises to 17 percent if the units are built off-site, and developers can pay the city a fee in lieu of doing the actual construction.
The deal got Daly thinking: If the Rincon developers could afford 25 percent, then others probably could too. So he used some of the developer’s money he’d extracted to fund a study looking at how increasing the mandates to 20 and 25 percent would impact housing construction in the city.
Last fall, the Planning Department and Mayor’s Office of Housing assembled a technical advisory committee — made up of cochairs Erickson and Welch and a mix of for-profit and nonprofit developers plus community representatives — to work with the study’s consultants.
Daly put his efforts in the form of an ordinance last October. Sup. Sophie Maxwell also had introduced legislation to strengthen the inclusionary housing program, which has been combined with the Daly legislation. And Sup. Jake McGoldrick last fall introduced legislation to apply the program to buildings of five or more units (it now applies to buildings of 10 units and more), and his ordinance is now being considered along with the Daly-Maxwell legislation.
“This is about housing for everyday people in San Francisco,” Daly said at the July 12 hearing, which was attended by the three supervisors, city staff and consultants, top developers, and a large crowd of housing activists wearing “Housing Justice Now” stickers.
That volatile mix produced a surprising amount of unanimity and compromise (although the Land Use Committee ultimately decided to push the matter back a week to work out some details). Just a few days earlier, when the consultants’ numbers first came in, the measures had seemed headed for an ugly showdown between the progressives and downtown.
The report by Keyser Marston Associates analyzed how much the city can ask for before developers just say no. It was a wake-up call in many respects, showing that San Francisco developers and their financers expect at least 18 percent profit margins for small projects and more than 28 percent for big ones.
For starters, that means that no private developer will build new rental housing in San Francisco, because the profits aren’t high enough. The report also says that developers will avoid putting affordable units in their luxury condo towers; it makes more economic sense to build them off-site or to pay into the city fund instead.
Doug Shoemaker of the Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH) said his office has learned a lot from the study, particularly about how the in-lieu fee could be adjusted to make BMR housing construction a more attractive option for developers.
“It’s created a bias for developers to just pay the fee,” Shoemaker said, noting that his office increased the in-lieu fee by 15 percent on July 1 and indicating that further increases could be on the way. In fact, one requirement of the ordinance is for the MOH to regularly update fees to reflect evolving market realities.
Yet there was also a potential kiss of death in the report, which ran the numbers and found that developers wouldn’t pursue projects that met the 20 to 25 percent inclusionary housing standard that Daly was seeking.
Daly and his housing activist constituents understood that the report — which was issued just five days before the hearing — would likely translate into a mayoral veto of the legislation, allowing Mayor Gavin Newsom to claim it would hurt the city’s economy and housing needs.
“What we were confronted with last Friday was political death,” Welch said.
So Daly lowered his requirement to 15 and 20 percent respectively and agreed to compromises that grandfather in projects now in the pipeline and ease up the standards on projects that work within their current zoning.
“We do support the compromise,” Matt Franklin of the MOH told the Guardian.
But for Daly the legislation is about more than percentages. For example, it also creates standards for marketing the BMR units to prevent fraud, allows lower-income residents to qualify for them, and requires off-site BMR units to be within one mile of the project.
Daly, a tough former housing activist known for sometimes taking strong and unbending progressive stands, told the Guardian that this deal is consistent with his approach: “Yes, I’ll push the envelope, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take a good deal.”
The July 12 hearing demonstrated that this was a deal being grudgingly accepted by all of the usually polarized sides.
“We, by and large, support this legislation,” Erickson — the Emerald Fund developer and San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association board member who cochaired the committee — said at the hearing. He also added, “I think it’s doable. I think it’s not going to kill development.”
Yet he also emphasized that the development community is giving all it can: “Fifteen percent was a compromise and we were very reluctant to see it go from 12 to 15 percent.”
Welch also said the compromise was painful for housing activists, who were hoping to get more BMR units out of market-rate housing developers and were astonished at the huge profit margins that are expected by developers and those who finance their projects.
“I think we have been successful at coming up with public policy that meets the needs of developers and low-income residents,” Welch said at the hearing.
Later he told the Guardian that the inclusionary housing update is designed to promote the kind of housing — BMR units for those making just less than the median income — that is also being created by the controversial practice of evicting tenants from apartments and converting those units into condos.
“What this does is help prevent the rental stock from being converted by [tenancies-in-common],” said Welch.
Developer Mike Burke took issue with the criticism of developers at the hearing. “It’s not a guarantee of a 28 percent return. It’s a fair return based on a substantial risk.”
Yet housing activists note that developers already anticipate delays and other financial risks when constructing their financial models, so many developers actually make more than 28 percent on their projects, a fact that the consultant’s report acknowledged.
Eric Quesada of the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition called on city officials to adopt as tough a standard as possible, using that as a starting point to a broader discussion.
“We need to dig deeper to look at what the goals of San Francisco are for housing,” he said. “This is the ceiling of what we need.” SFBG

Newsom’s pal Daley

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Gavin Newsom happily hosted Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on a working tour of the city today, but as Willie Brown (who is no stranger to cronyism and corruption charges) pointed out on the Will and WIllie Show this morning, Daley might not be the person who an ambitious young Democrat really wants to be linked to right now. Several of his close associates were indicted last year on corruption charges, and a relative was indicted in January.

So far, although the Cook Country Republican party has tried, none of this has stuck to Daley. But you might want to watch those photo ops, Gavin.

Continuing bike battles

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By Steven T. Jones
OK, this entry is just adding some touch-up work to the one below: “Bike battles continues.” I’ve heard some firsthand reports from last weekend’s mini-confrontation between Mayor Gavin Newsom and a bicycle community upset over how the Gav didn’t keep his promise to seek a compromise to the Healthy Saturdays measure he vetoed a couple months ago. Newsom won’t even meet with the bike people to discuss things (big surprise…we hear Newsom is checked out and has been cancelling his regular department head meetings and other gigs. Why? Well, there are nasty rumors about that, which I’ll try to share with y’all asap). But getting back on topic: bike activists gathered to ambush Newsom at the Conservatory of Flowers, where he was to be privately honored for his veto by Coalition for Park Access (ie access to the museums in the park by car, not the park itself). Apparently, the event was not meant for pubic consumption, but the Examiner somehow got it and printed it, much to the event organizers’ dismay. Newsom tried to sneak in a back door, but a camera wielding activist stopped him and got some great pictures (which we’re running in this week’s paper, check ’em out). “I don’t like photos,” our telegenic mayor reportedly said as he blocked the camera with his hand, Hollywood-style. Bike activist and SF Party Party member Ted Strawser summed it up this way: “We are still hoping for the Mayor to show some leadership on this important issue. However, Wednesday’s veto celebration, capping two months of silence, may not bode well. This may not be the last time that Park Advocates get a ‘tell it to the hand’ gesture from Mayor Newsom.”

Bike battles continue

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By Steven T. Jones
It was two months ago this Saturday that Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoed Healthy Saturdays, which would have extended the Sunday Golden Gate Park road closures through the weekend. At the time, he did the political thing and said he was looking for a compromise. But since then, he’s done nothing to follow up or even agree to meet to bike advocates. Yet he did find time on Wednesday evening to get feted by opponents of the measure, who called strangely call themselves Coalition for Park Access, at the Conservatory of Flowers. A few bicyclists got wind of the event and showed up to protest, but their bigger effort will be tomorrow when they show up at the Conservatory of Flowers at 1:30 to educate parkgoers how the mayor is all talk when it comes to creating car-free reactional spaces.

P.S. Anti-bike zealot Rob Anderson — whose lawsuit challenging the city bike plan has temporarily halted most bike projects in the city — lost his mind when he heard about the Wednesday protest, calling on the mayor to remove Bike Coalition executive director Leah Shahum from her seat on the MTA board. Luckily, he was heckled down by members of the PROSF listserve, who informed him that MTA members serve fixed terms and can’t be booted simply for exercising the free speech rights that Anderson himself so often (and irritatingly) proclaims.

“Oympic Dreams”

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By Sarah Phelan

Gotta love that unfortunate “Oympic” typo on the front page of the Chronicle’s article about Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Olympics.

Especially since “oympic” is an anagram for “Myopic”.

Oymp, oymp.

Healthy Compromises

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Sup. Tom Ammiano and Mayor Gavin Newsom took another step today towards making health care accessible to all uninsured San Franciscans.
The San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance, which Ammiano and Newsom announced their joint support for July 11, offers access to comprehensive medical services, while requiring that medium and large business meet minimum spending requirement on employees’ health care.
While the agreement is optimsitic, it wasn’t reached without compromise on the employer spending mandate.
From July ’07, when the ordinance would become law, until Jan. 2008, employers will have to provide healthcare for employees who work 12 hours or more. That requirement tightens to 10 and then 8 hours, in Jan. ’08 and Jan.’09, respectively.
Meanwhile, medium sized businesses, (20-50 employees) have until March 31 2007, to start making mandatory payments, (which amounts to about a $1 an hour per worker.
Other tweaks: employers won’t have to make health insurance payments, if their employee has coverage elsewhere (through a parent, a spouse, or presumably another job), but the employee decides who pays.
Of all three compromises, the 12-10-8 compromise spells the greatest danger for the local labor pol (what if stores cut workers’ hours to 11 each per week?)
A special Budget and Finance Committee meeting is set for Monday July 17 at 1pm, and the full Board will discuss it July 18, with a final vote expected on July 25.
With Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Michela Alioto-Pier continue to stand on the sidelines? Will Mayor Gavin Newson step inside the county supes’ chambersn? and How many signatures does the business community need to get a referendum on this matter launched by August 9? Stay tuned.

Ammiano’s health care plan is fair

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OPINION Universal health care. These days, most people want it, but no one wants to pay for it.
But like it or not, we all share in the expense of providing health care. We pay for it directly in our health care premiums or indirectly from higher costs for goods, services, and taxes. According to the activist group Health Care for All, “We spend over $6,000 per person in the US — two to three times the amount spent in other countries that insure everyone and have better health outcomes.” Our health care system, if you can call it that, is currently based on a corporate, for-profit model that increasingly leaves large numbers of people uninsured — and they must rely on taxpayer-subsidized public health programs.
Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing for universal health care in San Francisco, and there are three ways on the table to fund it.
The Committee on Jobs, Chamber of Commerce, and Golden Gate Restaurant Association champion a plan in which all businesses pay a set fee, whether or not they are providing health care for their employees. Under this plan, large businesses that are not providing health care for their employees will save big money. Small businesses — and every business already doing the right thing — would subsidize the minority of large businesses that don’t provide health care.
In fact, 63 percent of the projected $50 million in revenue raised by this plan would come from businesses with fewer than 20 employees. A full 80 percent would be paid by employers with fewer than 50 employees.
The local papers say Newsom supports a voluntary plan. I assume that means employers can choose whether to pay. I’m surprised anyone would propose this with a straight face. Most employers do provide health care. This legislation is about those that don’t. They haven’t volunteered to pay for their own employees’ health care; why would they pay for a city plan?
Then there’s Sup. Tom Ammiano’s proposal.
Ammiano’s plan includes a minimum spending requirement for health care services for all employers with 20 or more employees. Small businesses with less than 20 employees (the vast majority of registered businesses in San Francisco) don’t have to pay anything. Of the three proposals, Ammiano’s seems the fairest to the majority of employers that already provide health care.
The Committee on Jobs tells us that small businesses will be hurt by this plan. I’m always suspicious when a well-funded organization that exists to lobby for the interests of the largest corporations in San Francisco leads with an argument related to the impact to the small business community.
The SFSOS thinks that any decision on Ammiano’s health care plan will be made “predominantly by people who have never worked in retail business, never managed a staff, nor ever had to make a payroll.”
I operated a temporary employment business in San Francisco for 25 years. Ammiano’s plan levels the playing field for all businesses.
For the record, many of my former colleagues within the small business community provide very generous health care benefits. Employees in small businesses, after all, are like family. Many small business owners think that those who do not provide health care have an unfair competitive advantage.
If we’re going to have universal health care, everyone should pay. SFBG
Barry Hermanson
Barry Hermanson is running for state assembly in District 12 on the Green Party ticket.

Prop. A reality check

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com
The greatest irony of Proposition A’s failure last month seemed to be what took place just a few short weeks after the June 6 election.
Prop. A would have budgeted $30 million over the next three years to fund violence prevention services for at-risk populations, such as anxious teens looking for a break from order during the warm summer months. It was a clear response to the city’s headline-grabbing homicide rate, which has continued its stubborn ascent this year, making life politically difficult for Mayor Gavin Newsom, District Attorney Kamala Harris, and the Police Department.
But with the mayor and the cops in opposition, the measure lost by less than a single percentage point. And just two weeks later, 22-year-old Andrew Ele — known among his friends as DJ Domino — was shot and killed at a bus stop near 24th Street and Folsom. Ele was a regular teen-outreach volunteer at Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, a San Francisco nonprofit that helped run the Prop. A campaign with Sup. Chris Daly.
On June 20, as Ele waited for a bus with his brother André, a gunman walked to the middle of 24th Street and fired several shots at each of them before escaping in a waiting white Mazda MPV, the Police Department told the Guardian. André survived with non-life-threatening injuries, but Andrew was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The police still don’t know who killed Andrew, but as we’ve reported previously, the department hasn’t had the best luck with recent homicide investigations. As of January 2006 police had made arrests in fewer than 20 percent of the homicide cases that were opened the previous year, and the district attorney’s office has managed to file charges in only a fraction of those cases.
BACK TO THE BUDGET
The day after the election, the San Francisco Chronicle framed Prop. A’s failure as a big political win for Newsom rather than what it really was: an enormous letdown for groups such as Coleman Advocates that are offering something other than increased law enforcement. The $30 million may not have immediately improved DJ Domino’s chances of remaining alive, but neither did $18 million the city paid police overtime last year prevent a Mission bus stop from being filled with bullet holes.
The issue of violence prevention is still alive, though, and it surfaced again during the recent budget negotiations.
The press release accompanying the mayor’s late-May budget proposal for the next fiscal year boasts that Newsom set aside $2.7 million for violence prevention and intervention, which he combines with $7 million the board supplemented for the current fiscal year. Featured more prominently in the press release is his bid for 250 new cops — and yet more money to pay them overtime.
However, the board’s budget committee, chaired by Daly, found $4 million more for violence prevention, including $1 million to save the Trauma Recovery Center, which assists victims of violent crime and was close to shutting down in November for lack of funds. Not to be outdone, the mayor unveiled “SF Safe Summer 2006” last week, just as the Guardian was putting together this story, which includes an expansion of the Community Response Network, a Police Department program.
The budgetary give-and-take reflects the city’s growing frustration over a homicide rate that has at times resulted in tense Police Commission meetings. Last month a meeting at the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center — held the day after Prop. A failed — was commandeered by Western Addition and Bayview–Hunters Point residents angry over a perceived failure by the city to respond to chronic gang and street violence. (Police Chief Heather Fong and Sup. Sophie Maxwell were literally shouted down at the meeting.)
The campaign for Prop. A forced the city to address its ongoing philosophical divide on how to face off against violence. More cops or more outreach? More patrols or more job training? More overtime or more murals?
“Their approach is suppression,” Coleman Advocates youth coordinator José Luis said of law enforcement. “They get rats; they send in informants. They don’t want to use prevention.”
Luis knew Ele for eight years and said the latter used to help provide security at drug- and alcohol-free hip-hop shows that cops in the Mission eventually stopped.
“[Ele] on countless occasions jumped into a brawl and stuck his neck out to stop it,” Luis said of the events.
Ele, who often performed at clubs in the city with the DJ troupe Urban Royalties, had big plans for his life. He was going to record an album at CELLspace in the Mission once construction of a recording studio was completed there. Then he’d planned to teach young people how to spin and record hip-hop themselves.
THE OTHER APPROACH
CELLspace is a 10,000 square foot warehouse on Bryant Street that has for the last several years served mostly as an outpost for industrial artists. Locals know it best for the acrylic bombs that cover its exterior honoring fallen graf heads and Mexican revolutionaries. The building hosted dance parties for teens in the ’90s, but they were eventually shut down by the city.
By 2003, however, CELLspace had recharged its outreach efforts, slowly building an administrative staff, acquiring grant money, and implementing new after-school programs. Staffers are working with ex–gang members and specifically targeting recent Latino immigrants, who are often recruited by gangs.
“Those of us who sort of grew up in street culture, we have more experience with what could work now,” said CELLspace’s 25-year-old executive director, Zoe Garvin, who was born and raised in the Mission.
The place is brimming with ideas. There’s talk of outfitting a low-rider car with a biofuel engine and solar-powered hydraulic suspension. Staffers are building low-rider bikes and collaborating with other Mission-based groups to teach kids screen printing and break dancing. They even have a class for skaters, but the ramps that quietly appeared a couple of months ago at the Mission Flea Market, across Florida Street on the west side of the warehouse, will soon have to make way for a moderate-income housing complex, Garvin said.
CELLspace, she said, would have applied for Prop. A funding, but is looking elsewhere now. The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice in early July passed over their $600,000 grant application, which would have funded a street outreach and case management program for 18- to 24-year-olds.
“I think we’ve done a really good job creating a sanctuary in here,” she said. “You have to be careful how you do it. You can’t just hire anyone.”
While the city eventually found money for community-based organizations through the budget process, it’s doubtful the debate over how to take on street violence issues will cease.
“Something like Prop. A,” Luis of Coleman Advocates says, “was long overdue.” SFBG

Amalgamated health care

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› sarah@sfbg.com
Mayor Gavin Newsom has taken credit and sought the national spotlight for a plan he touts as an innovative way to deliver universal health care access to the city’s uninsured. Yet Newsom has consistently ducked the vitriolic public debate over how to the pay for the plan, which a companion measure by Sup. Tom Ammiano would cover with a controversial employer mandate.
But as the measures were headed for the first of at least two hearings before the Board of Supervisors (on July 11 after Guardian press time), a board committee and Newsom’s public health director, Dr. Mitch Katz, finally made it clear that Newsom’s plan can’t stand alone, as much as the business community would like it to.
“The two pieces of legislation were created to and do fit together,” Katz said at a July 5 Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee hearing. “One can’t successfully move forward without the other.”
Katz made the comments after budget analyst Harvey Rose said the mayor’s plan doesn’t contain a specific funding mechanism. Rose’s admission prompted Sup. Ross Mirkarimi to characterize the mayor’s proposal as “a one-winged aircraft that doesn’t fly.” Sup. Chris Daly added that “It’s time to be up front that [the San Francisco Health Access Plan] only works if it has significant contributions from outside sources, including Ammiano’s plan.”
Neither Newsom nor his spokesman Peter Ragone returned repeated calls for comment on the issue. The Mayor’s Office also has not fulfilled a June 22 request by the Guardian for public records associated with the plan in violation of deadlines set by the city’s Sunshine Ordinance.
“Celebrating one resolution while pooh-poohing the other is disingenuous, because if they don’t work together, nothing works,” Mirkarimi added at the hearing, shortly before he, Daly, and a mostly mute Sup. Bevan Dufty voted to combine both proposals into one health care plan: the San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance.
“After today’s meeting,” Ammiano wrote in a follow-up press release, “I’m confident that the citizens of San Francisco and the media will understand that the Worker Health Care Security Ordinance and the Health Access Program are one comprehensive health care plan, and are now codified as such in a single bill.”
The decision to amalgamate left small business owners voicing fears over the economic impact of the employer spending mandate, which would raise an estimated $30 million to $49 million of the $200 million cost of providing health care access for San Francisco’s uninsured.
As the controller’s Office of Economic Analysis points out, most of the financial burden of the employer mandate “falls on businesses with 20 to 49 employees, since these firms currently are less likely to offer health care benefits to their workers.”
With the cost of covering 20 full-time employees’ health care estimated at $43,000 to $65,000, many business owners fear the mandate will result in layoffs, economic downturns, and the erosion of their already marginal profits.
Although the controller predicts a “nearly neutral impact” on the city’s economic picture — a loss of 60 to 590 jobs from staff cuts or business closures mitigated by 140 to 250 new health care–related positions — small businesses worry about the controller’s “moderately adverse impact” prediction for employers who currently aren’t offering health care benefits at mandated levels.
“It’s going to add another $50,000 to my already high health care costs,” John Low, who runs a small company in the Tenderloin, said at the hearing. San Francisco Soup Company owner Steve Sarver claimed the mandate could force him to abandon expansion and hiring plans: “Projects that I was borderline on, I’m now going to go toward eliminating those jobs.”
As written before the July 11 hearings, the mandate would kick in January 2007 for large businesses and the following January for small businesses. Mirkarimi says the board should be “extremely sensitive” to the small business community’s concerns.
“The business community knows best how to speak about profit margins. Right now, an employer spending mandate is the only option in orbit. If there are other options, great, but so far all we’re hearing is nothing but distortion,” Mirkarimi told the Guardian. He said the proposal by some downtown leaders to increase the sales tax by a half cent — an alternative to Ammiano’s mandate — comes from “the same community who would sabotage any attempt to enact a tax-based funding mechanism.”
Mirkarimi told us the mayor’s plan was “prematurely pitched through the media on a national stage,” while Ammiano’s legislation, “which is really the heart and soul of the plan, has struggled to get any notoriety locally.” Mirkarimi told us he hopes Newsom will directly address small business concerns — including the reality that his health access plan can’t work without Ammiano’s mandate.
“The mayor needs to make an effort to show small business that he intends to mitigate the negative financial side effects of his plan. But what is the mayor’s communication? And why is he relying on the Board of Supes to fill in the blanks? The mayor needs to exercise leadership, to admit that for his plan to work somebody has to pay, and decide who that somebody is going to be, then build confidence that he has adequate answers. But right now, he’s deflecting that responsibility onto the board.”
Dr. Katz, who was a member of the Universal Healthcare Council that created the plan to offer health access to all the city’s uninsured residents, said he neither hopes nor believes that all 82,000 of the city’s uninsured will enroll.
“We hope that large employers continue to chose commercial health insurance,” Katz said at the meeting, noting that 95 percent of businesses with more than 100 employees already have commercial health insurance.
“If people enroll in a commercial health insurance plan, the city doesn’t get the revenue, but we also don’t get costs,” said Katz, who believes the city can offer health access to all uninsured residents without building additional health centers.
“All existing clinics and facilities have shown a desire to join the program and accept people,” Katz said, noting that the $104 million the city already spends on San Francisco’s uninsured is on the lowest-income individuals, plus a minute subsidy to small- and medium-size business but no subsidy for large businesses.
“Most of SF’s 82,000 uninsured residents are getting care right now, but not in a rational way,” Katz explained. “I look at how much capacity could we add to health centers by only paying for additional providers, like nurses, doctors. And the answer is a lot. We’re not doing evenings or Saturdays, so we just need to open for more hours and hire more doctors, nurses.”
Acknowledging that the Department of Public Health already saw 49,000 uninsured residents last year, Katz said that doesn’t mean that people are getting what he calls “rational care.”
“So when we create a system, we’ll create a demand,” he said. “It’s not just the woman with a bad cough who comes in, but now she’ll also get a pap smear.” SFBG
For coverage of the July 11 hearing and other updates on the health plan, visit www.sfbg.com.

Olympic dreams

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By Steven T. Jones
So, Mayor Gavin Newsom tells the dailies that San Francisco is going to pull out all the stops to snag the 2016 Olympics, using Hunter’s Point to house the athletes and staging the games at a delux Candlestick Park (ie public subsidies for the 49ers new stadium). No wonder so many people worried that the new Bayview Hunter’s Point Redevelopment Area might be used to line the pockets of big corporations and developers instead of benefitting the people of the southeast. But Newsom tries some win-win spin by offering to let poor folks have the 4,000 apartments he wants to build when the athletes are all done — 10 years from now. A question: if we have the resources to build a bunch of publicly subsidized apartments, why don’t we do so now? Make no mistake, this is about our mayor’s ego and political ambitions more than the interests of city residents, particularly those of the southeast, which have already endured more than their share of capitalism’s hidden costs.

Downtown’s deceptions

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By Steven T. Jones
The rancorous debate over providing health care to all San Franciscans finally comes to the Board of Supervisors for a vote tomorrow, culminating a truly ugly political spectacle. The business community has aggressively gone after the measure’s sponsor, Tom Ammiano, angrily accusing him of not listening and not caring.
Now, it’s understandable that some small business people on the verge of going under would be upset about having to give health coverage to their employees. It’s a legitimate concern, but it’s also a valid point that Ammiano’s measure makes: providing a living wage and health coverage to employees is a reasonable cost of doing business in this city, and if you can’t afford to do these things, then your business plan doesn’t really pencil out, sorry.
This might have been a good political debate to have, but unfortunately, the issue has been sullied and convoluted by the intentional deceptions of a few downtown groups (notably the Committee on Jobs, Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce), distorted and inaccurate presentations of the issue by the Chronicle and Examiner, and the political cowardice of Mayor Gavin Newsom.
If you’ve been reading the Guardian then you know that the “Newsom plan” was simply one component of the “Ammiano plan,” not the workable stand-alone plan that the dailies and business elites tried to present it as (by itself, Newsom’s plan didn’t pay for itself and it threatened to make the number of uninsured in the city grow by providing the perverse incentive for businesses to drop their employees’ health insurance in favor of cheaper but less comprehensive access to city clinics). Even the dailies finally got around to saying the two plans relied on one another last week after playing up the deceptive competition for weeks.
Here’s the bottom line: Ammiano’s plan got eight co-sponsors because it was an honest attempt to deal with a serious problem using an approach (employer mandates) popular with most citizens (as shown by 69 percent of the people voting for a statewide mandate in Prop. 72). But downtown has done nothing but obstruct and obfuscate the issue. And they’re loud and have tons of money, so they’ve managed to bring out Newsom’s most cowardly instincts and they’ve cowed the media into bearing false witness to what’s going on.
Will they also peel off a supervisor or two who have already pledged their support? I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

{Empty title}

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› tredmond@sfbg.com
Just about everybody in the “respectable” news media is going to call Sup. Chris Daly’s latest charter amendment a crackpot idea, so I might as well join the crackpots right now. I think it’s wonderful.
Daly wants to require the mayor of San Francisco to appear once a month at a Board of Supervisors meeting and answer questions. That’s it — no decisions get made, no policies change. The mayor just has to stand up in public, in front of the district-elected legislators, and explain himself.
It’s a longstanding tradition in England, where the prime minister has to show up at Parliament for “question time.” It makes for outstanding politics and great TV. It’s often pretty rough: The PM gets interrogated by the opposition and fires back. When the smoke clears, the public knows a little more about the government’s policies, and the nation’s chief executive is a little more accountable.
Imagine if G.W. Bush, who doesn’t like press conferences, embodies the imperial presidency, and hates having to answer in public to anything, had to endure question time before the House of Representatives. Imagine Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee or John Murtha asking him about the war. (For that matter, imagine Bill Clinton avoiding impeachment by hashing the questions out in front of a Republican Congress long before it ever got to that.)
There’s a lot to like about parliamentary democracies, and one of the best things is the relatively weak executive branch. Question time in England helps keep the prime minister under control.
And of course in San Francisco mayors are pretty powerful and tend to be pretty aloof. Willie Brown just ignored critics. Gavin Newsom talks to the press but doesn’t get into active debates that much. So it wouldn’t hurt the mayor — any mayor — to have to spend an hour a month in a public session responding to the supervisors’ questions; it wouldn’t hurt the city either. It would do wonders for fighting the inclination toward secrecy in the executive branch. And you know you’d want to watch.
Yeah, Chris Daly is not a fan of Gavin Newsom, and the political consultants working for the mayor will have all sorts of reasons to call this a personal attack and an assault on separation of powers (if not on the very nature of American democracy). But come on — if the prime minister of England can find time to handle this while leading one of the world’s great powers, the mayor of San Francisco can fit it into his tight schedule.
Onward: The deal that gives Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group control over most of the Bay Area dailies is now complete — and already there’s word that Singleton and the Hearst Corp., which owns the ostensibly competing San Francisco Chronicle, will be doing a joint web venture together.
From the June 29 Contra Costa Times:
“MediaNews executives revealed the company is discussing with Hearst Corp. a joint venture to begin a new Web site involving the Bay Area online products of the Times and Mercury News; of the MediaNews publications in the Bay Area; and of the Hearst-owned Chronicle.”
Monopoly marches on.
Funny: I didn’t see anything about this in the Chron. SFBG

Don’t give the tides to PG&E

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EDITORIAL It’s been three years since former supervisor Matt Gonzalez suggested that the city build a tidal energy plant, but the mayor is finally catching on. Gavin Newsom told the Chronicle editorial board last week that a new study shows San Francisco could generate a phenomenal amount of electricity from Ocean Beach waves and the tides under the Golden Gate Bridge. If it can be done without disturbing marine life, it’s a great idea — as long as the power stays in public hands.
The legal and philosophical case is simple: Nobody owns the tides, the wind, or the waves. The energy contained in these renewable resources is and should always be in the public domain. Economically it’s clear: Once the power plant is built, the energy would be free — and could be a tremendous boon to the city’s treasury and to local business.
Politically the issue is even stronger: San Francisco is the only city in the nation with a congressional mandate to operate a public–power system, and any new energy resources the city taps should be used to help extract residents and businesses from under the expensive private–power monopoly of Pacific Gas and Electric Company. So why is the mayor even considering other options?
According to the Chronicle’s Phil Matier and Andrew Ross, the mayor’s staff is looking at the possibility of allowing PG&E (or “a little-known Florida firm, operating as Golden Gate Energy, that has already landed a federal license to bring the ocean technology to the bay”) to build and operate the plant. That would be a near perfect repeat of the Hetch Hetchy scandal, the deal that kept public power generated from public water at a publicly built dam in a public national park (Yosemite) under the private control of PG&E.
The Board of Supervisors needs to weigh in on this quickly with a resolution stating that no private company can develop, control, or profit from energy generated through wind, tides, waves, or any other renewable resource in or around the city of San Francisco. And if Newsom tries to treat the Golden Gate tides the way his predecessors treated Tuolumne River water, it will be the worst moment of his political career. SFBG

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