San Francisco Chronicle

Newsom’s road-closure veto

-
0

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom showed a colossal lack of political courage May 15 when he bowed to pressure from a few rich socialites and vetoed a program that would expand one of the city’s most popular and successful recreation programs.

Newsom, apparently changing course at the last minute, rejected a Board of Supervisors plan to close a section of roadway in Golden Gate Park on Saturdays. The six-month trial program would expand on the existing Sunday closure, which brings thousands of walkers, bikers, and roller skaters — and yes, fans of the De Young Museum — to the park to enjoy a rare car-free urban experience.

As of last week, Newsom insiders were telling us the mayor had decided to sign the legislation. But Dede Wilsey, a wealthy patron of the museum, was pushing hard to block the proposal. On May 9, the San Francisco Chronicle weighed in on the side of the museum, running a misleading editorial accusing the supervisors of defying a vote of the people and giving Newsom more cover for a move that will undermine his national image as an environmentalist.

In his veto letter, Newsom argues that the issue needs further study — though that’s exactly what this plan would be: a six-month study period. And, like the Chronicle, he insists that the voters have spoken on this issue — as if a pair of confusing ballot measures that were all tied up with the museum and the garage six years ago should be the final word on this issue. He also calls it "divisive" — meaning, presumably, that unless Dede Wilsey and the museum crowd like something, the mayor can’t be a leader and take a stand.

The whole thing shouldn’t be difficult. The De Young’s board has argued that closed roads mean smaller crowds, but the museum’s own figures show that’s untrue (see "Dede Wilsey’s Whoppers," 4/19/06). Museum attendance on Sunday, when the roads are closed, is higher than on Saturday, when cars clog the area. (With so many people flocking to that part of the park, it’s no surprise some of them decide to stop by the museum.) Besides, when the museum won permission to build an underground parking garage in the park, garage supporters, including financier Warren Hellman, promised that the added car access would make it possible to close the roads on Saturdays — and today, to his credit, he’s arguing in favor of the plan.

In New York City, which is even more congested than San Francisco and has far worse parking problems, a Republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has managed to close roads in Central Park not only on Saturdays but also on weekdays.

It’s too late to change Newsom’s mind, but the supervisors can still override the veto. One of the four who voted against the plan will have to switch to get the eighth vote for an override, and the most likely candidate is Bevan Dufty, whose district includes plenty of road-closure enthusiasts and who is up for reelection this fall. Call him (415-554-6968) — and don’t let him wriggle out of this one. SFBG

A few questions for the publishers

-
0

OPINION The MediaNews Group, which proposes to buy the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, the Monterey Herald, and 30 Bay Area weekly newspapers, is paying a 20 percent premium over the price McClatchy paid Knight-Ridder for those same publications less than two months ago. Antitrust regulators in the US Justice Department, who must decide whether to go to court to try to block the transaction, will want to know why.

There are two possible explanations. One is that MediaNews, which already owns or controls eight daily and three weekly newspapers in the Bay Area, thinks the deal will yield economies of scale, allowing it to operate its newly acquired properties more efficiently than Knight-Ridder was able to. Another explanation is that MediaNews’s dominance of a restructured market will enable it to raise advertising rates.

From the standpoint of antitrust, the first reason is completely benign. Antitrust regulators will be very concerned, however, if they suspect the second explanation: that MediaNews paid a premium because its competitive position in the Bay Area newspaper market — where its circulation will rise from approximately 290,000 predeal to more than 800,000 postdeal — will permit it to raise rates.

MediaNews’s share of the Bay Area daily newspaper market will be somewhere north of 65 percent if the McClatchy sale goes through as planned. While that is a high degree of market concentration — and almost certainly would have drawn a challenge from the Justice Department 20 years ago — it is likely to be seen today as inconclusive.

Why? Because these newspapers compete not only with each other but also with Craigslist, eBay, Yahoo!, Google, and numerous other Internet-based businesses (not to mention television and radio) offering help-wanted ads and real estate and auto listings, as well as display advertising.

But another aspect of the McClatchy-MediaNews deal is not so easily dismissed. I’m referring to the role of Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, which will be MediaNews’s primary competitor in the Bay Area.

As part of the deal, Hearst will also become a MediaNews investor and partner. The questions the regulators will ask are these: Why Hearst of all possible investors? If Hearst’s only function is to be a source of investment capital for a deal between McClatchy and MediaNews, why not use other investors whose participation would raise no competitive issues at all? Why use the one company that has the resources and incentive to object to the deal and whose participation creates at least the risk of a lessening of competition?

Whatever the answer, the public is entitled to have the Justice Department or Federal Trade Commission hear it and make its own judgment. Although filings with Justice in such "pre-merger reviews" are generally confidential, let’s hope that McClatchy, MediaNews, and Hearst, which are all in the business of making information public, will elect to tell their readers what they’re telling government regulators. SFBG

Peter Scheer

Peter Scheer, a lawyer and journalist, is executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition.

Business ethics 101

-
0

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Marcoa Publishing seems to be at the top of its game. The San Diego–based company bills itself as the "nation’s largest publisher of advertising-supported, local business publications."

It rarely misses an opportunity to remind prospective advertising clients and employees alike about its exclusive contract to print industry-specific guides and an annual membership directory for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, of which it is also a member and business partner.

In fact, Marcoa’s San Francisco offices are located just four floors below the Chamber in the heart of the Financial District, at 235 Montgomery St. But what the oldest Chamber of Commerce in the western United States may not have known is that its "exclusive publisher" is being investigated by the California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) for possible violations of the state’s labor code.

And now the question is: Does the business community’s biggest booster have a blind spot for dubious ethics?

Paula Ceder went to work as an ad sales specialist for Marcoa’s SF office from her home in November 2004. But despite the fact that she quickly became the San Francisco office’s top seller, she realized that Marcoa had no interest in reimbursing her for business expenses. High-end salespeople regularly spend thousands of dollars a year making personal contact with their clients — money that employers generally reimburse.

It’s perfectly common, and in fact legally required, for employers to reimburse workers for such expenses. And Marcoa has even promoted the claim that it offers expense reimbursements in its job postings on Monster.com.

But by the time Ceder left Marcoa, in August 2005 — having worked much longer than many former Marcoa employees — she told the Guardian she had accrued $2,500 in reimbursable business expenses. Over that nine-month period, she didn’t meet another employee who’d received reimbursed expenses, meaning former Marcoa employees could still be awaiting thousands of dollars in compensation. Marcoa did, however, claim to offer a taxable $10 "parking bonus" for each ad contract that the sales specialists managed to sell. But even then it took her four months to get the "bonus," Ceder said. Some ad buyers can commit as much as $12,000 to a two-page spread.

"As soon as I went to work for Marcoa, it became clear that there was no program for expense reimbursement, and I was aware that that was against the law," Ceder said recently. "That was entirely different than any experience I had ever had. Had I known I was going to have that experience, I would have never gone to work for them."

Section 2802 of the state’s labor code reads: "An employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer."

Believing she’d never see the money, she approached the California Labor Commission, which ruled in her favor and granted her $1,693 of the expenses in January. At the hearing, Marcoa CEO Stewart Robertson told the administrative judge he would produce the company’s policy regarding expenses. He never did.

During her tenure, Ceder had managed to squeeze a substantial raise out of Marcoa, due mostly, she said, to her top performance. But she said others weren’t so lucky.

Ceder said she concluded that the company not only failed to maintain any sort of policy regarding expenses but also seemed to systematically shortchange workers, from declining to pay simple business expenses to withholding commission payments for months on end or never making the payments at all. Salespeople often earn a percentage of each ad contract in the form of commission as an incentive to sell, which Marcoa portrayed as a significant part of its compensation package.

"My entire point for pursuing a claim for myself was not to receive my expense reimbursement back, although it’s always nice to get the money you put out," Ceder said. "My aim was twofold: One, to have the state investigate and prosecute Marcoa, so that the result of that investigation and prosecution would be an across-the-board change in Marcoa’s current noncompetitive business practices. And second, to get the Marcoa story out into the public."

Former Marcoa workers we interviewed appeared to corroborate Ceder’s claims.

Mario Sarafraz worked as a salesman at Marcoa for 13 months, but he’s worked elsewhere in sales for 17 years. He said he only "tolerated" Marcoa for so long because he liked working closely with the hotel and restaurant industries for the company’s semiannual Business Meetings and More publication.

"Everything else was a nightmare from the beginning," he said. Sarafraz claimed he never received a single commission check, and added that even in a profession where workers move on quickly, Marcoa "had an extremely high turnover rate."

Virtually everyone we talked to said the sales staff had to share two old computers and the company didn’t allow them access to the database of businesses that had purchased ads. Repeated phone calls to businesses that had already grown disenchanted with Marcoa were common, they complained.

A former office manager who asked not to be identified said she believed the Chamber was largely kept in the dark about annoyed advertisers waiting for sometimes long-delayed publication dates and embittered former Marcoa employees.

Carol Piasente, the Chamber’s vice president of communications, said the group had no comment and that the issue was a "personnel matter between Marcoa and their employees." Steve Falk, the Chamber’s CEO and a former publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote in an e-mail that he "had not heard any complaints about Marcoa" but failed to respond to follow-up questions. No one at the Chamber would confirm whether the group received annual fees from Marcoa for revenue generated from ads placed in Chamber publications.

"It was by far the most shady company I’ve ever worked for," one saleswoman, who also requested anonymity, said. "They turn and burn employees like you would not believe."

Although she too became a top seller for the company, she said she never received commission and never saw her last paycheck.

Dean Fryer, a spokesperson for the DIR’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, told us that agency officials pursue an investigation based on the case’s merit.

"On all cases that involve wages due employees, we’ll move forward to collect those wages," he said. "Our primary goal is to collect money due employees."

In Marcoa’s San Francisco office of 10 or so employees, sales can reach anywhere between $1 million and $3 million annually. The company also publishes industry, relocation, and real estate guides in at least four other major cities, including San Jose, Dallas, Austin, and Houston. Elsewhere, Marcoa publishes local resource guides for new trainees at 80 of the nation’s military installations, according to the company’s Web site.

Marcoa’s San Francisco publisher Bart Lally and CEO Robertson declined to respond to a series of detailed e-mail questions.

"Marcoa absolutely believes that it is in compliance with all relevant labor laws," Robertson wrote in an e-mail. "However, we are not going to provide specific responses to any of your questions."

Sarafraz insisted it’s not his nature to complain.

"As far as training and having a working system, I’ve never heard of an organization so out of place," he said. "Every organization has shortcomings. But these people just didn’t care." SFBG

Mirkarimi resolution takes on merger deal

-
0

[Urging the U.S. Attorney General to consider the antitrust implications of the proposed acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc. by the McClatchy Company]

Resolution urging the U.S. Attorney General to consider the antitrust implications of the proposed acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc. by the McClatchy Company

WHEREAS, On March 13, 2006 the McClatchy Company agreed to a deal to purchase Knight Ridder Inc., the second-largest newspaper company in the United States; and
WHEREAS, The McClatchy Company has announced plans to sell twelve of the Knight Ridder newspapers, resulting in the MediaNews Group gaining ownership or control of three major Bay Area newspapers: the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, and the Monterey County Herald, and twenty-nine other Bay Area community newspapers; and,
WHEREAS, The thirty-two newspapers that MediaNews Group would gain control of have a total daily circulation of 524,210; and,
WHEREAS, MediaNews Group would gain ownership or control over every major daily in the San Francisco Bay Area except for the San Francisco Chronicle; and,
WHEREAS, The owner of the San Francisco Chronicle-the Hearst Cooperation-is partnering with MediaNews Group in this acquisition; and,
WHEREAS, The acquisition of the Knight Ridder newspapers was apparently not opened to all qualified bidders; and,
WHEREAS, Such a consolidation of media ownership could deprive Bay Area readers of the quality and depth of news coverage that more varied ownership offers; and,
WHEREAS, The MediaNews Group’s proposed acquisitions could also hurt advertisers by a diminution of print and Internet media outlets and a likely increase in advertising rates that a single owner in the market could demand; now, therefore, be it
RESOLved, That the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco urges the United States Attorney General and the California Attorney General to carefully consider the antitrust implications of the proposed acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc. by the McClatchy Company, and the McClatchy Company’s proposed resale of thirty-two Knight Ridder newspapers to the MediaNews Group.

How to fight Singleton’s monopoly

-
0

EDITORIAL Six members of Congress wrote to the Bush administration last week urging a full Justice Department review of the pending deal that will give one company — the Denver-based MediaNews Group — control over virtually every daily newspaper in the Bay Area. The letter is a signal that federal regulators may be unable to simply duck this merger — but it will take a lot more pressure to block it.

As we reported last week, MediaNews, run by Dean Singleton, is planning to take over the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, the Monterey Herald, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. That would mean every big central Bay Area daily except the San Francisco Chronicle would be owned by one company. And to make it worse, Hearst — the New York City–based owner of the Chron — has signed on with MediaNews as part of the deal: Hearst will buy the Monterey and St. Paul papers, then immediately trade them to MediaNews in exchange for stock in some other MediaNews ventures.

The implications are staggering. The deal sets the scene for an unprecedented level of local media consolidation — and could lead to a scenario in which all the business, advertising, and even editorial functions of almost every Bay Area daily would be run out of one central office.

Reps. Zoe Lofgren, George Miller, Anna Eshoo, Ellen Tauscher, Barbara Lee, and Mike Honda wrote: "We are concerned that this transfer could diminish the quality and depth of news coverage in a Bay Area of more than 9 million people." That’s a good concern: Singleton, known as "lean Dean," is known for ruthless cost-cutting and is likely to reduce news staffing at all of the papers to save money. He’s also likely to take advantage of a virtual monopoly on daily print to jack up advertising rates, hurting businesses and consumers.

The letter quotes Reps. Mark Kennedy and Jim Oberstar of Minnesota as noting: "A monopoly in the newspaper industry is certainly no less dangerous, and is perhaps more so, than in any other American industry." Which is exactly the point: When control of something as essential as civic information is in the hands of too few people, it’s a direct threat to democracy.

It’s clear that the Internet has made daily newspapers less powerful and less essential. But in the Bay Area (and in most of the country) there’s simply no Web alternative that can do the work of a daily paper. Real watchdog journalism requires a staff — reporters to go to meetings, to challenge politicians, to stay on top of City Hall — and so far, nobody’s found a financial model that allows that to happen purely online.

So the threat of one single entity controlling news and information to such a huge extent ought to be a major issue across the state, particularly in the area where MediaNews has most of its holdings. We’re glad that some members of Congress are pressuring the White House, but we don’t really expect Bush’s Justice Department to mount a full-court press on this one. That effort is going to have to come from the state and from local government.

We’ve asked both Democratic candidates for governor about the issue, and both at least showed some interest. Phil Angelides didn’t seem to know much about it until we clued him in, but he said he was "concerned." He needs to do better: A strong statement opposing the deal would be a good start. Steve Westly is friendly with the Newspaper Guild folks in San Jose and has supported their efforts, but he has also stopped short of a blanket statement that the merger must be derailed. And neither the current attorney general, Bill Lockyer, nor either of the major contenders for the job (Jerry Brown and Rocky Delgadillo) has said much of anything.

However, state senator Carole Migden expressed some interest in holding hearings in Sacramento, and that ought to happen immediately. Lockyer should be asked to explain what he’s doing to stop the deal — and the publishers should be asked to reveal the details of the merger and their future plans (see "A Few Questions for the Publishers," page 7).

Every city in the Bay Area should take this on too, starting with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which should hold hearings and pass a resolution demanding that Lockyer block the deal.

Only serious grassroots opposition can prevent this monster of a media monopoly. There’s no time to waste. SFBG

PS Where were Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos on the congressional letter? We’ve left word with their offices, but haven’t heard back as to why they didn’t sign it.

Single town?

-
0

Like Clear Channel radio stations, many smaller papers would have little or no staff, nobody to answer the phone, nobody to take local tips and cover local news … they would be nothing but shells of once-thriving community newspapers.

This map, prepared by the San Jose Newspaper Guild, shows all of the newspapers that will soon be owned by Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group. MediaNews started out with 11 papers, and the addition of 33 Knight-Ridder papers will give the Denver-based outfit a total of 44 daily and community papers in the Bay Area.

Most of the daily newspaper coverage of the deal (including the coverage by Knight-Ridder and MediaNews papers) has focused on the four biggest papers involved and ignored the smaller papers altogether — a sign, perhaps, that neither chain cares that much about community publications.

Currently owned by MediaNews: (1) Alameda Times Star; (2) Fremont Argus; (3) Hayward Daily Review; (4) Marin Independent Journal; (5) Milpitas Post; (6) Oakland Tribune; (7) Pacifica Tribune; (8) San Mateo County Times; (9) Tri-Valley Herald; (10) Reporter (Vacaville); (11) Vallejo Times-Herald.

Currently owned by Knight-Ridder, soon to be taken over by MediaNews: (1) Alameda Journal; (2) Almaden Resident; (3) Berkeley Voice; (4) Brentwood News; (5) Burlingame Daily News; (6) Campbell Reporter; (7) Concord Transcript; (8–11) Contra Costa Newspapers (Contra Costa Times, West County Times, Valley Times, San Ramon Times); (12) Contra Costa Sun; (13) Cupertino Courier; (14) East Bay Daily News; (15) El Cerrito Journal; (16) Antioch Ledger-Dispatch; (17) Los Gatos Daily News; (18) Los Gatos Weekly-Times; (19) Montclarion; (20) Monterey County Herald (not shown); (21) Palo Alto Daily News; (22) Pleasant Hill/Martinez Record; (23) Piedmonter; (24) Redwood City Daily News; (25) Rose Garden Resident; (26) San Jose Mercury News; (27) San Mateo Daily News; (28) Saratoga News; (29) Sunnyvale Sun; (30) Salinas Valley Advisor (not shown); (31) Walnut Creek Journal; (32) West County Weekly; (33) Willow Glen Resident. MediaNews owns 29 other California publications.

Stop Singleton’s media grab!

EDITORIAL At first glance, it looks like one of the oddest deals in recent newspaper history: McClatchy, the Sacramento-based newspaper chain, buys the much bigger Knight-Ridder chain, then sells two of the Knight-Ridder papers to MediaNews Group, run by Dean Singleton out of Denver, and two to the New York City–based Hearst Corp., which owns the San Francisco Chronicle. Then Hearst immediately sells its two papers to Singleton’s shop, in exchange for an equity share in MediaNews operations outside of the Bay Area.

The upshot: MediaNews will take over the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times, along with some 33 small-market dailies and weeklies, which, combined with the 11 Bay Area papers the chain already owns, will give Singleton control of every major daily newspaper in the Bay Area except the Chronicle.

It creates the potential for a newspaper monopoly of stunning proportions — and threatens the quality of journalism in one of the most populous, educated, and liberal regions in the nation. Singleton, known as "lean Dean" for his cost-cutting moves, is likely to slash staffing at papers like the Times and the Merc, consolidate news gathering, and offer readers less local news.

In fact, in its most recent annual report, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, MediaNews outlined its strategy for profitability. "One of our key acquisition strategies is to acquire newspapers in markets contiguous to our own," the report states. This so-called clustering strategy allows the company to consolidate advertising and business functions as well as news gathering. "We seek to increase operating cash flows at acquired newspapers by reducing labor costs," the report notes.

In other words, a smaller number of reporters will be doing fewer stories, which will run in more papers. This, Luther Jackson, executive officer of the San Jose Newspaper Guild, argues, "means cookie-cutter coverage and fewer voices contributing to important public policy debates."

There are deeper concerns with this deal — including the possibility that Hearst and Singleton could be forming an unholy alliance that would nearly wipe out daily competition in the Bay Area.

The whole mess has its roots in the decision by the Knight-Ridder board several months ago to put the company up for sale. It was the kind of decision that demonstrates the problems with treating newspapers like baseball cards, to trade on the open market: Knight-Ridder was quite profitable, ran some of the better newspapers in the nation, and had a reputation (by chain standards, anyway) of being willing to spend money on the editorial product. But the stock price wasn’t quite high enough, and a few big shareholders (who weren’t satisfied with 20 percent profits) were complaining, so the entire company went on the block.

McClatchy, a well-managed company that has the Sacramento Bee as its flagship, wanted some of the Knight-Ridder papers — but only the ones in fast-growing markets. So after submitting a winning bid, the McClatchy folks starting looking for ways to dump the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, the Monterey Herald, the St. Paul Pioneer-Dispatch, and some 20 smaller community papers in the Bay Area.

But why, exactly, is Hearst getting involved? Well, Peter Scheer, a former antitrust lawyer who runs the California First Amendment Coalition, has some theories. The first possible reason? Hearst has plenty of cash on hand, and the deal would allow MediaNews to avoid having to seek as much financing from bankers.

More likely: Hearst — through the Chronicle — would have been Singleton’s only local competitor, and is the only significant political player in California that could have pressured regulators to oppose the deal. The arrangement, Scheer says, turns Hearst from a potential foe into a partner. Already the two companies have announced they may seek to share distribution systems. And there may be other plans in the works.

In fact, one of the most interesting ideas about the deal comes from a former Chronicle assistant managing editor, Alan Mutter, who writes a blog called Reflections of a Newsosaur (newsosaur.blogspot.com). Mutter suggests that the deal might lead to the end of real newspaper competition in the Bay Area, for once and for all. "Hearst," he speculates, "hopes at some point to work with MediaNews to extricate itself from the costly problem posed by the San Francisco Chronicle, which is widely believed to be losing about $1 million per week."

The idea: Down the road, Hearst merges the Chron with MediaNews — or, if the Justice Department won’t allow that, the two companies enter into a joint operating agreement. A JOA works like this: The two companies share all printing, business, sales, and distribution operations, run two theoretically separate newsrooms, and at the end of the day split the profits. The Chron and the Examiner were run for years under a JOA, and it was terrible for readers: With no economic incentive to compete, both papers stagnated. But it can be the equivalent of a license to print money.

"Unlike some publishers who shun JOA relationships," Mutter notes, "Dean Singleton has embraced them — and seems to be making them work — in places like Denver and Detroit. Is the San Francisco Chronicle next on his list?"

Imagine what a near-complete monopoly of Bay Area dailies in the hands of a notorious cost-cutter would mean. For starters, we can count on more standardized, conservative politics (at least the Knight-Ridder papers opposed the war). Perhaps all reporting and editing would be consolidated into one newsroom, in San Francisco or San Jose. Like Clear Channel radio stations, many smaller papers might wind up with little or no staff, nobody to answer the phone, nobody to take local tips and cover local news … they’d be nothing but shells of once-thriving community newspapers. They would have abandoned the crucial local-watchdog role of a daily newspaper (and made life more difficult for the few remaining independents).

The fact that this is a possible, even likely, scenario is alarming. In short order, one company could control every major daily in the Bay Area (except the Examiner and the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat) — fixing prices, sharing markets, pooling profits, and keeping ad rates artificially high and the quality of journalism abysmally low.

Have there been discussions around this? What is Hearst’s real interest here, and how does it jibe with Singleton’s dream of a massive regional "cluster"? Until we know the answers, the MediaNews-McClatchy deal should never go forward.

It’s almost too much to ask that the Bush administration, which loves big-business mergers, give it a thorough review. But the California attorney general has grounds to challenge it too.

AG Bill Lockyer completely ducked on the deal that merged the two largest chains in the alternative press, Village Voice Media and New Times. He can’t be allowed to duck this one: There must be a detailed, public investigation, and the newspaper chains must come clean and release the details of the deal. The two leading Democratic candidates for attorney general, Jerry Brown and Rocky Delgadillo, need to make this a top issue in the campaign. It should be an issue in the governor’s race, and every city and town that’s affected, including San Francisco, should pass a resolution against the merger. SFBG

PS Local arts and community organizations on the Peninsula are alarmed about the deal for another reason: Knight-Ridder contributes millions of dollars a year to those groups. Will Singleton continue that tradition?

Bay Area Congressional letter to DOJ re. KR sale antitrust concerns 

The right housing fees

-
0

EDITORIAL The San Francisco Chronicle has finally noticed what we reported a month ago: The Board of Supervisors has effectively put in place a moratorium on new market-rate housing on the east side of the city. We hear that city planners are looking for loopholes to undermine the temporary ban, but the intent of what the supervisors did is clear: Until there’s a detailed and valid review of how new high-end condos and lofts impact blue-collar jobs and low-income housing, the developers will have to let their demolition and excavation equipment idle.

Meanwhile, Sup. Chris Daly is moving to increase significantly the amount of low-cost housing that private developers have to build to win permission for future projects. Daly’s legislation is a good start and sets the right tone for the debate, but the board should go even further.

The Daly plan would apply to almost all new market-rate housing built anywhere in the city and would take effect whenever the moratorium ends. It would require most developers to offer 15 percent of the units of any project for less than market rates, and that number would jump to 25 percent if the affordable housing was built on another site. In other words, a builder who wants to put up 500 luxury condos in SoMa would have to build 125 affordable units somewhere else in the city.

That’s nice, but it’s not enough.

The city’s own general plan makes it clear that 72 percent of all new housing needs to be affordable to moderate- and low-income people. And the planning process for the eastern neighborhoods has still offered no proposals for how to make that happen.

At the same time, of course, the plans to intensely develop an area poorly served by transit and generally bereft of public infrastructure and open space utterly ignore the fact that it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create real neighborhoods (instead of clusters of heavily fortified, gated buildings).

Daly’s got the right idea: Developers are making a fortune building million-dollar condos in San Francisco, and they can well afford to give the city a whole lot back. But it’s worth taking a longer approach here and considering the price of bringing as many as 100,000 more people to SoMa, Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, the central waterfront, and Bayview–Hunters Point — and figure out who is going to pay for it.

Daly could start by asking for a detailed independent study of what it really costs a developer to build new condo units in the city and what the current profit margins are. Then take the city’s affordable-housing needs, the need for public-sector development, and the estimated new tax revenue and compare: Can fair taxes and requirements on the developers raise enough money to meet the city’s needs?

And, if not, we get back to the question this paper has been asking for over a year: Why are we building any new market-rate housing, anyway? SFBG

 

{Empty title}

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

Editor’s notes

I used to say San Francisco politics was a contact sport, but these days I think it’s more of a steel-cage match, which is generally fine with me. I have no beef with blood sport, and most of us are consenting adults who chose of our own free will to participate in this high-stakes game. But even ugly fights have unwritten rules, and one of them is that you don’t make disparaging comments about people’s gender, race, or sexual orientation. It’s just not OK.

I mention this because there’s a pretty serious furor in the queer community over an attack by developer Joe O’Donoghue on transgender activist Robert Haaland.

Ol’ Joe, who also likes to think of himself as a poet, is fighting with Haaland over Proposition D, which would bar the city from sending some mentally ill people to Laguna Honda hospital (and would, as an aside, rezone lots of city-owned land for private nursing homes). Haaland works for the big city-employee union, Local 790, which is campaigning against Prop. D; O’Donoghue, who is a major backer of the measure, has decided to personalize the campaign. In a lyrical missive that’s been widely distributed, O’Donoghue refers to "our transfigured Robert" and (in the not-so-subtle cloak of biblical language) suggests that Haaland is a bitter and angry human being because he was born a woman. Another letter refers to Haaland as "Robbi" and threatens to donate to the Prop. D campaign the same amount of money as the city had to pay to Haaland to settle a transgender police-harassment case. It’s actually pretty vicious stuff.

Some queer leaders are arguing that there ought to be a city law banning political "hate speech," which is entirely the wrong approach: You can’t outlaw any kind of speech without bad First Amendment problems. But we all can, and should, tell O’Donoghue (whose political statements are getting increasingly mean-spirited and personal) that he’s crossed a very big line and that if he’s going to pull shit like this, he’s no longer welcome in local politics. The guy has a lot of campaign money to throw around, and it’s tempting even for folks on the left to take it. But every decent San Franciscan ought to tell him to take a hike.

Now this: I’ve enjoyed all the historical stuff in the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner about the 1906 earthquake, but everyone’s leaving out one of the best parts. It was the failure of the private Spring Valley Water Company to maintain its pipes that helped doom firefighting efforts — and that was a big factor in the passage of the Raker Act, which gave the city a public water system. Of course, the Raker Act also required us to run a public power system, which (as I’ve probably mentioned a time or two) has been blocked by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. all these years.

And this: The axes are falling with fury over at the Village Voice, where longtime Washington bureau chief Jim Ridgeway — one of the top alternative press reporters in the country — was canned the first week in April, and writer Jennifer Gonnerman resigned. Sydney Schanberg, the Pulitzer Prize–winning media columnist, had already left, and the Bush Blog had been canceled. All of this drew the attention of Democracy Now, which did a lengthy report April 13. They even got me out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to join the East Coast discussion. Somehow, though, nobody from the Phoenix-based New Times crew that just bought the Voice was available for comment. Chickens. >SFBG

For a full transcript, go to www.sfbg.com.

Real tolerance

-
0

OPINION On March 24, 2006, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to pass a resolution opposing the message that a group called Battle Cry for a Generation was set to deliver the following Friday on the front steps of City Hall. The appearance of Ron Luce’s teen program at the site had nothing to do with the group’s apparent reason for being in the city, which was to promote Christianity amid smoke machines and rock bands at SBC Park. Luce decided to rally on the steps of City Hall specifically because gay marriages had been performed there two years earlier.

The intent to somehow purify the steps with prayerful teens, the quick response by citizens of San Francisco, and the meaning of that entire encounter was lost completely as local journalists and former politicians rushed to smear the Board of Supervisors with labels like "clueless" and "intolerant."

In doing so, John Diaz at the San Francisco Chronicle and Joanna Thigpen at the San Francisco Sentinel both missed an opportunity to summarize for their readers the meaning behind the meeting of two groups. Instead, both city leaders and organizers of the counterprotest were admonished for their lack of tolerance.

For those in need of a working definition of tolerance, the American Heritage College Dictionary offers the following: "The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others." The key word within that sentence is recognize, which is hard to do if all you do when the Christian right comes to town is stay home and fume. Engagement (another version of recognition) is also a value, one that walks hand in hand with tolerance as the citizens of this fair city go forward in search of bigger and better expressions of human and civil rights. Showing up and shouting back don’t indicate intolerance. And staying away doesn’t display tolerance, just benumbed passivity.

Curiously, the charge was made that by issuing resolutions and press statements, both Sup. Tom Ammiano and Assemblymember Mark Leno were attempting to stifle Battle Cry’s right to free speech. Supervisor Ammiano’s office, which was the primary sponsor of the resolution, was contacted by neither the Chronicle nor the Sentinel. What he would have pointed out was that no one in city government made any attempt to silence anyone. The resolution was simply the progressive community’s proverbial two cents thrown into a debate Battle Cry started when the group assembled on City Hall’s steps. No public official ever came close to opposing Battle Cry’s right to frankly indict both queers and women who have chosen abortion or who support its legality.

Civic engagement like the sort displayed by Ammiano and Leno is what makes this city a haven for those who could not get tolerance for themselves, on their own terms, elsewhere. Far from impeding the right of Battle Cry to spread a message of hate disguised as love, we are forwarding the rights of speech to those whose voices are still being suppressed by fear and hate disguised as Christian love and tolerance.

Elizabeth Creely
Elizabeth Creely works with the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights.

‘Winner’ takes all

-
0

IF YOU CONSIDER  it amazing that New York Times best-selling author Augusten Burroughs was able to maintain a lucrative job in advertising while consuming enough alcohol nightly to poison a small town (see the opening pages of Dry), consider the talents of Evelyn Ryan, who, through the ’50s and ’60s, not only supplied America’s merchants with enough advertising jingles to last the century but also raised a family of 10 while avoiding the wrath of a husband who also consumed enough alcohol nightly to poison his own small town. Unlike Burroughs, Ryan never really did get rich off her advertising campaigns – she won just enough prize money to keep her family fed and housed, and her husband never quite made it into rehab. But her daughter, Terry Ryan, did write a winning memoir about her mother’s startling and subversive stay-at-home career conquering the jingle contests popular at the time. And this weekend Ryan’s memoir hits its own jackpot, as the Jane Anderson-directed film of the book, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, opens. Anderson (the TV director of Normal, as well as the 1961 segment of If These Walls Could Talk and When Billy Beat Bobby) turns the perky pre-post-feminist into a model of good-humored heroism.

The leaf doesn’t fall far from the tree. Despite her recent diagnosis with stage-four cancer, Terry Ryan, a tech writer and cartoonist who lives in Noe Valley with her longtime partner, Pat Holt, former book review editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, amiably entertained journalists from a room at the Ritz-Carlton a few weeks back. She said she was incredibly happy with the film, though she can barely remember it; she says she was too amazed by Julianne Moore’s re-creation of her mother to concentrate. The most difficult aspect of the whole project, she says, was the death of her mother, which led to the discovery of the vast jingle archive she used for her memoir research. In her papers, Terry Ryan also found evidence of her mother’s real poetry – witty rejoinders to poems by the likes of Edna St. Vincent Millay – as well as the rhymes that paid the milkman and the mortgage, like "For chewy, toothsome, wholesome goodness / Tootsie Rolls are right – / Lots of nibbling for a nickel / And they show me where to bite."

Like her resourceful mother, the younger Ryan is also a poet (published), and, following in family tradition, she too found her way to the contesting world. One of her most memorable wins? A Bay Guardian cartoon contest more than 25 years ago. (Susan Gerhard)

‘The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio’ opens Fri/30 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock, in film listings, for showtimes.

1...272829Page 29 of 29

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org