Supervisor Tom Ammiano has been all over the news recently and has a couple of major accomplishments, including a restaurant-nutrition requirement and legislation that sets standards for care in homeless shelters.
And yet he’s still getting a beating from the Chronicle, which seems to think that something as basic as asking chain restaurants like McDonalds to tell you how unhealthy their food is could somehow harm the city’s business climate.
The restaurant disclosure bill got a lot of press, but the homeless shelter standards was more of a political challenge – Ammiano had to get the mayor, who has been reluctant to admit that any part of his homeless program is a failure, to sign on to the program.
The conditions in the shelters are, and for a long time have been, deplorable. So this may actually make the lives of a lot of human beings a lot better.
And of course, Newsom made a bit point the other day of talking about how he was going to use the city’s rainy day fund to bail out the city’s schools – without ever mentioning the Ammiano was the one who wrote that bill (without any help from then-Sup. Gavin Newsom.)
Ammiano’s going to leave the Board of Supes next year with one of the longest and most distinguished legislative records in memory. He deserves a little more respect.