By Tim Redmond
The mayor is speaking to the press again. Oh goodie.
First, Hank Plante of KCBS TV gets a sit-down interview that’s stunning in its lack of substance. Newsom gets all pissy and defensive about his trip to Hawaii, says he doesn’t read the newspapers and complains about inaccurate reporting without ever saying what’s inaccurate. (I like Brock’ suggestion at sfist:
Why couldn’t Newsom tell CBS 5’s Hank Plante, “Yeah, I took off to Hawaii. And what, hooker? Somebody hold my earrings.”
Then when Plante finally starts asking about the budget deficit, the mayor totally ducks and won’t say anything except that it’s going to be a lot of work to resolve.
Then the mayor’s office kicks the press out of a department head briefing on the budget and follows it up with some brief public remarks that show:
1. Newsom would much rather downplay this and say it’s no big deal, and
2. There’s no serious talk about raising new revenues (except from selling off the city’s rental housing stock and creating lots of new condominiums) and
3. Every department is being asked to cut 20 percent and prepare for as much as 30 percent cuts — but that’s going to mean really, really ugly decisions that Newsom can’t possibly make. For example, the Sheriff can only cut 20 percent by letting people out of jail — many of them the same people who Newsom’s new police chief, George Gascon, just put in jail with his much-lauded Tenderloin busts. Then the Tenderloin crackdown will become a joke, because nobody arrested will actually do any jail time, because the city can’t afford to lock them up. Oh, and there won’t be enough cops to arrest them, anyway — unless Newsom has Gascon pull cops out of other, richer neighborhoods to patrol the Loin, which may be a fine idea but will create such political backlash among Newsom’s allies that he won’t dare do it.
And closing fire stations seems to be political poison, so the mayor won’t want to do that.
Which means public health and human services and rec-park will have to cut way more than 30 percent to save police and fire, which means we won’t really have much of a public health, human services or rec-park system any more.
4. The mayor is doing nothing to prepare the public to face the fact of life — we’re going to need significant tax increases, or we’re going to see the devastation of the public service sector in this city.
Welcome back, Gavin.
Oh, and by the way: The last chief executive I remember saying that he didn’t read the newspapers was Ronald Reagan. Great role model. Either Newsom is lying (which I suspect; I can’t believe the mayor of San Francisco actually avoids reading the daily newspaper) or the guy is more out of touch, arrogant and clueless than even I am willing to believe.