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Editorial

Getting beyond JROTC

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EDITORIAL The racial achievement gap is the most important issue in the School Board race, but JROTC is the most politically divisive. The ballot initiative that seeks to save the military recruitment program will be used to attack progressives, and there’s a real risk that San Francisco will wind up sending a terrible message to the rest of the country.

This madness needs to stop. The School Board needs an alternative to JROTC that includes all the elements that make the program attractive to kids and families, without the military baggage. The outlines of that sort of plan are being discussed widely, and there’s a fairly good consensus emerging about how such a program could be put together. The mayor, the supervisors and the school board ought to be working together, now, to make it happen.

The Junior Reserve Officer Training Program costs the San Francisco schools about $1 million a year, and it’s a bad way to spend the money. Pentagon officials are very clear about the purpose of high-school JROTC: it exists to lure young people into the military. Recruiters take full advantage of the opportunity — JROTC enrollees are barraged with pitches to join up, and even after they’ve left the program, the recruiters keep calling.

The queer community is properly angry about our local tax dollars going to encouraging kids to join the military at a time when the armed forces won’t allow lesbian or gay people to serve openly. But even after "don’t ask, don’t tell" is abolished, as it probably will be during the Obama administration, JROTC is the wrong sort of educational activity for San Francisco kids.

Supporters say the program offers leadership training and a sense of community — but if the best leadership and community building the San Francisco public schools can offer is through a program that instills the values of the Army, there’s something seriously wrong.

So the school board did the right thing in phasing out the program.

But right now, the only thing the district is offering as a replacement is an ethnic studies program — a wonderful and deserving part of the curriculum, but not one that carries the same qualities that made JROTC popular. The substitute for JROTC ought to have some physical elements, ought to involve special training — and be set up to lead toward public service careers that don’t involve enlisting in the armed services.

The idea that’s been floated out by numerous School Board candidates involves some sort of emergency-response training for students. The idea would be to teach kids how to handle the aftermath of a disaster, like a major earthquake: participants would learn CPR, first aid, emergency communications, search-and-rescue and other skills that not only will be useful, but critical when the inevitable quake hits. The Fire Department already runs a very successful citizen-based Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT), so the infrastructure is in place. The Police Department has a cadet program for high school graduates, and it could easily be adapted to train younger kids for emergency response duties.

The program would get students outside, involve physical exercise, and, yes, uniforms and badges (which the JROTC participants love). It could be a successful recruitment tool for careers in the Fire Department and Police Department (and since many of the JROTC kids come from communities of color, the result might be more diversity in those two agencies). We’d much rather see local kids encouraged to become cops than directed into the military.

There’s $1 million on the table. Mayor Gavin Newsom, to his shame, supports JROTC — but if the school board stands firm and the leading candidates make it clear that they will not go back on this decision, then there’s no reason the mayor, the police and fire commissions, NERT, and the school board can’t move forward — today — with a credible alternative that will take the political wind out of the issue. JROTC is, and ought to be, dead in San Francisco. It’s time to move on.

Pelosi can’t duck the next Bush war

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EDITORIAL The last time the George W. Bush administration began the saber-rattling that would take the nation into war, the Democratic leadership in Congress was afraid to say a word in opposition. It was that period of fear-driven politics just after 9/11, but even then, the evidence was pretty clear that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had never attacked the United States. And every intelligent observer around the world predicted (correctly) that invading Iraq would be an expensive, bloody, and ultimately counterproductive nightmare.

Now there’s talk about sending US troops to Georgia to help the Georgian army fight the Russians. (There are, according to the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, 127 military trainers and advisors already in that country.) This time, there’s nothing resembling a national security threat; it’s just Cold War madness bubbling up again. And once again, there’s a resounding lack of protest from the leaders of the Democratic Party.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) joined the two top Republicans in the House, John Boehner of Ohio and Missouri’s Roy Blunt, in issuing a militaristic and aggressive statement that reads, in part:

"The bipartisan leadership of the US House of Representatives stands united in condemning — in the strongest possible terms — the recent Russian invasion of the sovereign state of Georgia. The United States is committed to Georgia’s absolute sovereignty."

The speaker herself, according to her press office, has said nothing further on the matter. She has not, for example, said she would oppose sending US troops to the region.

The US news media has done a terrible job of covering the geopolitics of the conflict, but if you read the British press, particularly the UK Guardian and The Independent (London), and you review what progressive think tanks are saying, you get a very different perspective. This isn’t simply a case of Russian aggression. As J. Victor Marshall, of the Oakland-based Independent Institute, put it in a piece that’s posted on sfbg.com:

"There’s no real doubt that Georgia began the latest conflict by launching an artillery barrage against South Ossetia’s main city the night of Aug. 7, though it claims to have been provoked by armed militants from the tiny region’s 65,000 people."

That’s not to say Russia reacted properly, or that the United States shouldn’t condemn the invasion. But the situation is a lot more complicated than the simple spectre of Russian tanks attacking a purported US ally.

And the prospect of the United States getting involved in that conflict — with American soldiers fighting Russians — has the potential to ignite a serious military conflagration.

Pelosi can’t be allowed to duck this time. She needs to come out strongly and say that she will not support sending combat troops to Georgia and will work to cut funding for any such military adventure.

And now, the controller’s big lie

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EDITORIAL Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will get a huge political windfall if the San Francisco Controller’s Office moves forward with a wildly inaccurate estimate of the cost of the Clean Energy Act.

In an Aug. 7 letter sent to the Department of Elections, Controller Ben Rosenfeld wrote that the costs to the city of acquiring PG&E’s local distribution facilities are "likely to be in the billions of dollars." That’s a scary figure, the sort of information PG&E will use to attack the measure. In fact, the company is already sending around flyers calling this a multibillion-dollar proposal.

But it’s completely untrue.

For starters, the Clean Energy Act never mandates that the city buy PG&E’s facilities. The charter amendment, which is on the November ballot, sets aggressive goals for renewable energy and directs city officials to study the best way to achieve those goals. Since public power agencies around the country are leading the way on renewables — and since PG&E has already said it can’t meet even the state’s weak clean energy mandates — the city ought to be looking at taking over the business of selling retail power to residents and businesses. But buying out PG&E’s old system might not be the best way to pursue public power.

But that’s just one flaw in the controller’s reasoning. Because even if San Francisco did buy out PG&E, there would be little or no cost to the city at all.

To understand that, you have to look at the realities of how the measure would work. The Clean Energy Act would authorize the city to issue revenue bonds to buy electric power facilities. Revenue bonds aren’t backed by the taxpayers; they are paid off entirely through a dedicated income stream. So unless the city can prove in advance with a detailed study that buying out PG&E would bring in enough money to cover the costs, there’s no way Wall Street would ever buy the bonds.

In other words, there is no possible scenario under which the Clean Energy Act could cost the city money. The opposite is almost certainly true: public power cities all over the United States make money — often large amounts of money. And our figures have always shown that San Francisco would net millions, maybe hundreds of millions, in revenue from buying out PG&E.

We called Peg Stevenson in the Controller’s Office to ask her about this, and she agreed with us: revenue bonds don’t cost the city any money. Buying out PG&E with revenue bonds wouldn’t cost the city any money. So why does the analysis say the measure could cost billions? "That’s not how I expect people to read it," she said.

But that’s exactly how people will read it. And it’s grossly misleading.

PG&E is already on the attack, and costs will be a huge part of its campaign. In fact, in a July 24 letter to the controller, David Rubin, PG&E’s director of service analysis, argues that the company’s San Francisco system is worth $4.18 billion.

The letter states that PG&E "has not done an inventory of its system" — in other words, the figures Rubin cites are just estimates. And the method PG&E uses to calculate the fair market value of the property is economically and legally dubious, at best.

PG&E insists that the only way to establish a price for the city to pay for a takeover is a method known as "replacement cost new less depreciation." The idea: the city would have to pay the price that it would cost today to replace all of PG&E’s equipment, much of which is old and was purchased (and paid for by the ratepayers) long ago.

The state Board of Equalization, which sets the value of PG&E’s property every year for tax purposes, doesn’t use that method. The board bases its valuation on what’s known as the rate base — the amount of invested capital state regulators allow PG&E to earn a return on. By that standard, the system is worth less than a quarter of what PG&E is claiming (and when tax time rolls around, you can bet the utility isn’t insisting that its property ought to be assessed at a higher value).

Stevenson said the Controller’s Office might replace the term "in the billions of dollars" with a more specific figure. If that’s the case, taking PG&E’s word, and accepting the wildly inflated $4.18 billion figure, would be a clear violation of the public trust.

The Controller’s Office needs to change its statement to reflect, at the very least, the fact that no city money is at risk and that there’s a reasonable assumption that the end result of a public takeover of PG&E would be increased revenue. It should say: "The costs of purchasing or building energy facilities would be substantial — but those costs would be covered entirely by the revenue from operating the facilities. The net cost to the city would, at worst, be minimal and the potential exists for the city to bring in significant new revenue to offset taxes and general fund expenses."

That, at least, is a true and accurate statement.

PS: The supervisors should hold hearings on the economics of this measure and demonstrate how lucrative public power is for cities — and how cheap for ratepayers. Public power is cheaper. Two charts below (PDF) show how public power is consistently less expensive than PG&E’s private power. The first one looks at utilities in California; note that SMUD, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, has significantly lower rates than PG&E. The second one, from the American Public Power Association, shows overall rates for public and private utilities state by state.

The relevant line shows public, private and co-op rates, average per kilowatt-hour. Note that public power in California is about one-third cheaper overall.

California ……………….10.9…….15.3……..11.5

www.scppa.org/Downloads/Rates/chart1.pdf

http://appanet.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/PDFs/utilityratecompstate2006.pdf

PPS: We’ve seen these shenanigans from the Controller’s Office for years; see our 1982 story (PDF) on how PG&E forced a misleading statement onto the ballot.

PG&E’s first big lies

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EDITORIAL The San Francisco Chronicle reported Aug. 2 that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is almost certain to miss the state’s deadline for increased renewable energy generation. It’s a pretty modest goal: 20 percent of the company’s electricity is supposed to come from renewable sources by 2010. But PG&E is nowhere near on track.

But the company is well on its way to spending a record amount of money to block San Francisco voters from passing the Clean Energy Act, which would allow the city to develop renewable energy on a schedule that would meet much more aggressive goals. A political front group funded by the utility has already mailed out or paid operatives to place on doorknobs tens of thousands of flyers packed full of lies about the proposal. It’s the earliest we’ve ever seen a full-scale ballot campaign get underway — the election isn’t until Nov. 4. By then the barrage of PG&E misinformation will reach a fever pitch.

So it’s not too early to start evaluating the campaign rhetoric and exposing the most ridiculous of the lies.

PG&E is starting out with four basic themes that will probably form the center of the fall campaign. The main attack will be economic — the measure, PG&E will say, is too costly for these tough economic times.

The information the company’s flacks are putting out is so blatantly inaccurate that it’s hard to take any of it seriously. Here’s what the utility is saying:

•<\!s> The Clean Energy Act will cost $4 billion and raise electric rates by $400 per household. That’s based on two complete fallacies, and even by PG&E’s standards, this has to go down as one of the worst lies in local political history. For starters, PG&E is assuming that the city will decide to buy out its old local distribution system (that’s not mandated in the Clean Energy Act; there may be smarter ways to get into the renewable energy and public power business). But even if the city did buy the system, there’s no way it would cost close to $4 billion. The state Board of Equalization appraises utility property every year, and PG&E’s own appraisers participate in the discussions. Last year the BOE concluded that all of PG&E’s local property — including a big downtown office building — was worth about $1.2 billion. PG&E, to our knowledge, has never attempted to have that figure (and thus its own tax bill) increased to $4 billion. Without the office building, which the city would have no need to buy, the actual distribution system is probably worth closer to $800 million — putting PG&E’s number off by a factor of five.

The $400 per household figure is based on the cost of paying off $4 billion in bonds — but all the Clean Energy Act does is give the supervisors the ability to issue revenue bonds. Unlike typical general obligation bonds, the revenue bonds would not be backed by taxpayers, and would be repaid by the money the city would make selling retail electricity. And the only way the supervisors would move to take such a dramatic step as an eminent domain action to seize PG&E’s distribution system is if the figures show that the city can pay off the bonds without raising electric rates.

•<\!s>The act would give the supervisors a blank check to issue bonds without voter approval. Actually, it would just give the board the same authority the Port Commission and the Airport Commission already have — the ability to issue revenue bonds — just revenue bonds — to fund renewable energy and utility projects. If the projects make no sense economically, investors won’t buy the bonds anyway. So only well thought-out projects with a clear revenue stream are even possible. Lots of public agencies have this authority, and it’s rarely misused.

•<\!s>Electric rates would go up. Nonsense — every public power city in Northern California has lower electric rates than San Francisco. PG&E has some of the highest rates in the nation. Public power is always cheaper.

•<\!s>The city will lose $20 million in tax revenue. Yes, if the city were to take over PG&E’s distribution system, the city would no longer collect the tiny pittance it currently gets as a franchise fee. The fee is the lowest in the state and among the lowest in the nation (and is set in perpetuity). The revenue from a public power system would more than make up for that loss.

PG&E is terrified by this proposal, so nervous that it started a massive campaign months before the election. There will be more lies coming, most of them attempts to scare the voters into thinking that the Clean Energy Act is expensive and risky. We’ll debunk them as they come along. In the meantime, the supervisors ought to hold hearings on these issues, particularly the cost issue, and ask the Board of Equalization’s experts to come and testify — so that PG&E’s lies can be exposed to the broadest possible audience.

Going green requires cooperation

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EDITORIAL There are some clear and compelling things San Francisco needs to be doing to protect the environment and reduce its carbon footprint, such as converting to renewable electricity sources and promoting alternatives to the automobile. But as the past couple of weeks at City Hall have demonstrated, city officials are letting petty politics interfere with working together to do the right thing.

Obviously, the most important step toward combating climate change is to convert the power portfolio of city residents to renewable energy sources. Nobel laureate Al Gore challenged the entire country to move toward 100 percent renewable power sources within 10 years during a landmark speech July 17.

But days later, when Gore appeared at the Netroots Nation convention in Austin, Texas, to repeat the challenge to the assembled bloggers, fellow guest speaker Mayor Gavin Newsom came out against the San Francisco Clean Energy Act, which would set even more modest goals for conversion to green power sources.

Newsom’s reason, as Sarah Phelan and Janna Brancolini explain in this week’s Green City column, is fear of provisions in the legislation that call for studying — just studying — public power options for achieving these goals. Considering Newsom has repeatedly told the Guardian that he supports public power, it’s disgraceful that he’s so beholden to Pacific Gas and Electric and so mindlessly adversarial toward the Board of Supervisors that he would oppose setting high green power standards.

But Newsom isn’t the only one playing this game. Board president Aaron Peskin is trying to scuttle Sunday Streets, which would temporarily close six miles of roadway to cars as part of an international trend to promote carfree spaces, simply because it was Newsom who proposed it (see "Pedal power," 7/23/08).

True, Newsom is a newcomer to the carfree movement — having spent years blocking proposed street closures in Golden Gate Park — but his conversion was warmly embraced by progressive groups such as Livable City and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and should have been supported by Peskin and other supervisors.

Meanwhile, the city is doing little to fight the ongoing court injunction against bicycle projects even as required environmental work on the Bicycle Plan falls behind schedule. In connection with a July 21 hearing on that delay, both Planning Director John Rahaim and City Attorney Dennis Herrera have called for reform to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and for changes in how the city interprets traffic impacts under the act.

"It’s truly ironic that an activity that is inherently environmentally friendly is being challenged under an environmental law," Rahaim said of bicycling as he testified before the Land Use Committee. He’s right. City officials should aggressively move forward with the local reforms under consideration and push the bureaucracy to keep the Bike Plan on the fast track.

Meanwhile, our state legislators should work to amend CEQA to exempt pedestrian and bicycle improvements from costly and time-consuming environmental impact reports and our federal representatives should start laying the groundwork now to ensure next year’s big transportation bill reauthorization promotes alternatives to the automobile.

As a gesture of cooperation and goodwill, Newsom should come out and support Sup. Chris Daly’s latest proposal to close Market Street to automobiles, which would greatly speed up public transit, improve pedestrian safety, and create an attractive bicycle boulevard in the heart of the city.

The idea was first pitched by former mayor Willie Brown and has already been studied and vetted by the city bureaucracy. This could be the first big cooperative project between the board and the Mayor’s Office, a team effort against the forces of the status quo. And if it is successful, just imagine what they could take on after that.

What the candidates need to tell us

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EDITORIAL The traditional kick-off date for fall campaigns is Labor Day, but in San Francisco, the candidates for supervisor have been in full campaign mode for months now, and some of the races are beginning to take shape. As political groups start making endorsements, it’s worth looking at what’s at stake here — and what the candidates ought to be talking about.

For starters, it’s going to be a crowded fall ballot, and there’s the potential for a broad progressive coalition to come together around a clear agenda for the future. Among the proposals headed for the ballot are an affordable housing plan, a green energy and public power measure, two new tax plans that focus on bringing in revenue from the wealthy, and a huge bond act to rebuild San Francisco General Hospital. All of the progressive candidates should be backing those measures and working together for their passage.

But the candidates also need to offer long-term solutions to the serious problems facing San Francisco. This is a city under enormous pressure, and unless some dramatic policy changes take place, San Francisco will continue its rapid slide toward becoming a city of and for the very rich.

A few items that ought to be on every progressive candidate’s platform:

•<\!s>The city’s energy future. The fall ballot measure, the Clean Energy Act, will lay the groundwork for a sustainable local energy policy, although the supervisors will have to aggressively push the key element: creating a city-run electric utility. As long as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. controls the local grid, San Francisco will never meet its environmental goals. Rates will remain high, conservation will be an afterthought, and PG&E will resist any type of renewable program it doesn’t control. The candidates need to make clear that they’re committed to a full-scale public power system and tell us how they will move the goals of the Clean Energy Act forward.

•<\!s>The housing crisis. San Francisco’s housing policy today is utter insanity. If it continues, the city in 10 years will look nothing like it does now. The middle class will be gone. Families with kids will be a vanishing species. Tens of thousands of people who work in this city — and keep its economy going — will be forced to live far away. Fancy new towers filled with millionaires will destroy entire neighborhoods and displace the city’s remaining blue-collar jobs.

The affordable housing ballot measure is a good first step, but much more is needed. Solutions aren’t easy, but they start with one premise: the city doesn’t need any more housing for the rich. Affordable-housing programs that set aside, say, 20 percent of new units for non-millionaires are a losing game because they accept as reality the prospect of a city where 80 percent of the residents are millionaires.

San Francisco needs a comprehensive policy that forces the city to meet its General Plan goals, which call for 64 percent of all new housing to be available at below-market rates. We need to hear how the candidates would make that happen.

**The structural budget deficit. San Francisco is a wealthy city, but there’s never enough money in the budget for the level of services residents want and need. With the exception of the rare boom years, the city has always had a revenue shortfall. Sup. Aaron Peskin’s two tax measures could bring in another $50 million per year — no chump change by any means. But the city needs about $200 million more per year to make the numbers balance. The candidates need to talk about where that will come from.

**The Muni meltdown. You can’t have a transit-first policy without effective transit, and Muni’s in trouble. Budget cuts are a big part of the problem, but the city needs a modern transit program — and that’s barely even on the drawing board. How are the candidates going to fix one of the city’s most important services? Will the candidates support the long-overdue completion of the city’s bicycle network and other bold efforts to decrease reliance on the automobile?

**The war on fun. As the city gets richer, it gets more uptight. Street fairs are under attack. Clubs are facing police crackdowns. Permit fees and red tape are making it almost impossible to hold events in Golden Gate Park. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has a ballot measure to make some of the permitting easier, but what are the candidates going to do to end the Gavin Newsom–era attack on arts and entertainment?

There’s much more: The police aren’t solving homicides. Small businesses feel utterly ignored by City Hall. The Planning Department is run by developers. The list goes on. And the next Board of Supervisors will need to address all those issues. Over the next few months, the candidates that want the progressive vote need to give us some clear explanations of where they stand.

Newsom and the Clean Energy Act

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EDITORIAL A progressive measure that would make San Francisco one of the greenest cities in the nation will be on the ballot this fall. It’s designed to lower energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and promote green-collar jobs. It has all the elements that Mayor Gavin Newsom has been talking about in his high-profile speeches, press conferences, and celebrity appearances. It’s a perfect vehicle for a mayor who wants to stand out as a candidate for governor of California. It has the backing of some of Newsom’s close allies, like state Sen. Mark Leno.

That’s why Newsom ought to support the Clean Energy Act.

The charter amendment, sponsored by Sups. Aaron Peskin and Ross Mirkarimi, seeks to make San Francisco more energy independent. It sets ambitious goals for renewable energy and would put the city on track to create its own public power system. It’s not a radical measure — in fact, it’s milder than we would have liked. It doesn’t mandate an immediate takeover of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s facilities. It doesn’t turn the Public Utilities Commission into an elected body. And no matter what lies PG&E puts out, it won’t raise electric rates or cost the taxpayers money.

It does, however, mandate that the PUC look at the best ways to ensure that by 2017, 51 percent of the electricity used in the city comes from renewable resources. By 2040, that number should be 100 percent. And the evidence from across the nation shows that the best way to promote renewable energy is to shift from private control of utilities to public power.

Again, that’s hardly a radical notion: more than 2,000 cities in the United States have public power. Palo Alto is among them; so are Alameda and Santa Clara. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District provides reliable service to Sacramento County at rates 30 percent below what PG&E charges customers in adjoining areas — and SMUD has one of the best records in the nation for promoting conservation and renewable energy.

Of course, the very existence of any sort of plan to consider energy alternatives for San Francisco seems to terrify PG&E. Already the giant private utility is pulling political strings and retailing outrageous lies to try to scare the supervisors away from placing the charter amendment on the ballot. And we expect to see a savage, multimillion-dollar campaign against the measure this fall.

That’s because PG&E wants no hint of competition, no chance that the city might actually consider the benefits of public power. It’s no secret why. When you look at the facts, compare how public and private systems have fared in the past decade, and line up the financial figures and the prospects for sustainable energy policies, public power wins.

The biggest misinformation PG&E is putting out these days involves the cost of creating and running a public power system in San Francisco. The company is throwing out numbers like $4 billion, and suggesting that the taxpayers would be on the hook for all of it if the city tried to take over the company’s system.

For starters, there’s nothing in the Clean Energy Act that requires a takeover. It might turn out to be more prudent, for example, to slowly build a new city-owned infrastructure. More important, if the city did decide to buy out PG&E’s wires, poles, and meters, the cost would be nowhere near what the company is claiming.

How much is the system really worth? Well, one way to find out is to check the assessed value, the figure the state uses for property-tax purposes. And as Amanda Witherell reported July 2 (see "The dirty fight over clean power"), the state says all of PG&E’s property within San Francisco city limits is worth only $1.2 billion — and that includes the company’s downtown office complex, which is worth at least several hundred million. So the actual cost of the system might wind up at less than a quarter of what PG&E claims.

And none of that money — none — would come from taxpayers. The PUC could issue only revenue bonds, backed by future electricity sales, to finance any buyout or construction. No tax money would ever be in play. And our past analyses have consistently shown that the city could buy out PG&E’s system, cut electric rates, and still wind up with a sizable surplus every year.

Newsom is aware of all of this, and has said that he’s willing to consider supporting public power. Now there’s a measure heading for the ballot that would also mesh with all of the mayor’s environmental goals. The only argument against it is that PG&E — in the past a backer of the mayor — doesn’t want it to pass.

Newsom needs to support the Clean Energy Act. If he doesn’t, it will demonstrate that he lacks the backbone to stand up to special interests — and has no business running for governor of this state.

A kickoff press conference on the Clean Energy Act will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, July 22 on the steps of City Hall.

Support SF’s Clean Energy Act

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EDITORIAL The long-awaited charter amendment that would transform San Francisco’s energy policy will come before the Board of Supervisors within the next few weeks. The measure, known as the Clean Energy Act, deserves strong support.

The proposal is fairly simple, but far-reaching. It includes ambitious targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and a mandate that the city shift to entirely renewable electricity by 2040. That would turn Mayor Gavin Newsom’s green city rhetoric into enforceable reality and put the city where it ought to be — in the forefront of global efforts to end reliance on fossil fuels.

And the sponsors of the charter amendment, Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, realize that the only way the city will ever get serious about sustainable energy programs is to get rid of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s monopoly and shift to a publicly-run local utility.

The measure would, for the first time, create a detailed municipal energy policy and put control of the city’s energy future in the hands of city officials, not those of a private corporation. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission would have a mandate to ensure that by 2017, 51 percent of the electricity used in the city came from renewable sources. By 2030 that number would rise to 75 percent, and by 2040 the city would be seeking a 100 percent renewable portfolio. (Energy from the city’s existing Hetch Hetchy hydroelectric project would count as renewable power, and since Hetch Hetchy already covers a significant percent of the municipal load, the targets are entirely reasonable.)

The PUC would have to prepare a report every two years advising the supervisors on how it is moving to meet the targets.

The measure also directs the PUC to come up with a plan to put San Francisco into the business of retail electric power. That’s something activists have been pushing for since the 1920s. The federal law that gave the city the unique right to build a dam in a national park additionally mandated that San Francisco use the electricity from the dam to establish a public power system. The city has been in violation of the Raker Act for some 90 years now. As we’ve reported in numerous stories going back to 1969, the city built the dam in Yosemite and managed to construct a world-class municipal water system — but PG&E, through bribery, corruption, and political influence, hijacked the dam’s electric power. Although San Francisco is the only city in the nation with a federal public-power mandate and one of the few that owns and operates a major public hydroelectric project, residents and businesses are still stuck with PG&E’s soaring rates and lousy service.

And PG&E — which uses fossil fuels for much of its power and operates a nuclear plant — won’t make even the state’s mild mandate of 20 percent renewable energy by 2010.

Public power cities all over California have lower rates and better service. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, one of the largest public power systems in the state, is a national leader on renewable energy and conservation efforts. And public power makes tremendous economic sense: a municipal utility would bring tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars per year into the city’s coffers. That money could be invested in solar, wind, and tidal energy, and some could go to reduce the structural budget deficit that haunts City Hall every year.

PG&E is already nervous about the prospect of a renewable energy and public power measure passing this fall, and has cranked up a campaign of lies and misinformation. The news media are already starting to pick up the pro-PG&E stance — the San Francisco Business Times is running a "poll" on public power that leads off with the tired old claim that "San Francisco can’t make the buses run on time. But it can find power to keep the lights on?" (A bit of reality here: urban bus systems are tough to run because they lose money. Public power systems make money. The lights stay on in Sacramento, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Alameda, Santa Clara, and a lot of other cities — and the people who live there pay less, get more reliable service, and are more likely to see reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.)

Six votes are needed to put the Clean Energy Act on the ballot. Any supervisor who doesn’t support it will forever be known as someone who puts the interests of PG&E ahead of the needs of San Francisco, the nation, and the planet.

Peskin for DCCC chair

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EDITORIAL The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee was the sleeper election in June: The Mark Leno–Carole Migden–Joe Nation contest for state Senate got a lot of attention, and the Bayview–Hunters Point redevelopment project got a huge amount of money, but only a small percentage of the voters got to the bottom of the ticket and chose the 24 people who will set policy for the local Democratic Party for the next two years. But a progressive slate won a significant number of seats. Now the DCCC has become a heated political battleground, with two candidates vying to become party chair.

The incumbent, Scott Wiener, leans toward the more moderate wing of the party, although he’s taken progressive stands on some issues. The challenger, Sup. Aaron Peskin, has the strong backing of many progressives.

The race has gotten a bit nasty: Sup. Chris Daly, a Peskin supporter, has sent out e-mail threatening the political future of committee members who don’t vote the right way. Both sides are lobbying furiously, with Leno helping Wiener and progressive leaders pushing Peskin. Right now it’s too close to call the election, which takes place later this month.

We’re not happy with the level of animosity here. We recognize that this isn’t the presidency of the United States, and that, thanks to the influence of the reform slate, the DCCC chair is no longer as powerful a position as it was in the days when the late Phil Burton and former Mayor Willie Brown controlled the party with an iron hand. And with the committee this closely split, neither candidate will be able to run an effective party operation this fall without working with both sides. So this shouldn’t be a political bloodbath.

We also recognize that neither candidate is perfect. We’ve disagreed with Peskin on a number of key issues, including Home Depot, and frankly, it’s not ideal to have the president of the Board of Supervisors also running the local Democratic Party.

But like any political contest, this ought to be decided on the issues — and on the future of the San Francisco Democratic Party. And Peskin is the clear choice.

If the DCCC did nothing but raise money, register voters, and push Democratic candidates, this wouldn’t be such an important fight. Weiner has done a perfectly fine job of keeping the party well funded and, under his tenure, 15,000 new Democratic voters have joined the ranks. But the party also endorses candidates and takes stands on ballot measures, and in close races — as some of the key battles will be this fall — the party’s support (which includes party money) can be significant.

And while the chair has only one vote, and can’t decide endorsements unilaterally, the person who runs the local party has a fair amount of influence over how money will be spent and how DCCC slate cards are managed; if the job didn’t matter, these two people (and their powerful allies) wouldn’t be fighting over it.

Peskin is on the right side of all the key fall contests. He’s backing progressive candidates for supervisor in the swing districts (John Avalos in District 11, Eric Mar in District 1, and David Chiu in District 3). He supports the housing justice initiative, is the cosponsor of the public power charter amendment, and the sponsor of two progressive tax measures. Wiener supports Ahsha Safai, the candidate of downtown and Mayor Gavin Newsom, in District 11. He hasn’t taken a position on public power, and told us he has "significant concerns" about the cost of the affordable housing measure, although he supports both of Peskin’s revenue proposals.

Wiener has been a reasonable and fair person as chair. But the issues matter. And if the San Francisco party is going to become a center for progressive activism, if the DCCC is going to be willing to challenge the state and national party and its leaders when necessary, take in the mayor when he’s wrong, and push the party to the left, putting a more activist progressive in the top slot is crucial.

It’s still possible a third candidate could come along. But for now the choices are Peskin and Wiener, and we urge progressives on the panel to support Aaron Peskin.

PS: As Amanda Witherell reports on page 14, PG&E is madly, desperately fighting to keep public power off the November ballot and is using every misleading figure and dirty trick possible. So the DCCC chair has to be willing to stand up to PG&E without hesitation or doubt.

Newsom’s backwards budget

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EDITORIAL The San Francisco city employee union that represents front-line workers has come up with a remarkable document. It’s an analysis by the city controller, requested through the office of Sup. Aaron Peskin, that shows how many jobs have been added or cut in the past 10 years, broken down by bargaining group.

Since almost all San Francisco employees, including managers, are unionized, and different categories of workers have different unions, the analysis paints a clear picture of where hiring has taken place and where job cuts have hit hardest. It is, in many ways, a snapshot of the budget priorities of Mayor Gavin Newsom. And as Sarah Phelan reported this week on sfbg.com, here’s what it shows:

As direct public services have been hacked up and eliminated, as homeless shelters close and nursing services for elderly shut-ins vanish, the city has hired a whole lot of new high-paid managers.

In fact, in the past decade, the city has added 334 high-level jobs, paying an average of $140,000 a year. That’s a 45 percent jump. Under Newsom’s administration, during tough budget times, 166 new managers have been added. In this year’s budget alone, Newsom is calling for 52 new managers.

Professional and technical jobs increased by 781 positions, a 23 percent rise.

Front-line jobs, on the other hand, have grown by less than 10 percent.

Of course, the city needs managers and technical staff. Some of the new positions are entirely legitimate and justified. But these high-level jobs are also where political cronies are placed, and management jobs in this city have always had a political patronage element. And when the budget is deeply in the red, it doesn’t make sense to lay off the people who are doing the day-to-day work and hire more people to supervise a reduced staff.

Let’s look at the numbers. The total tab for new managers amounts to about $46 million a year. The increase — just the increase — in management positions in this year’s budget would total $7.8 million. That would save a lot of services: Newsom shut down Buster’s Place, the city’s only 24-hour drop-in center for the homeless, to save $300,000. Keeping public health nurses to serve sick seniors would cost only a few hundred thousand more.

The daily newspapers have ignored this story so far, but it’s the blockbuster of the budget season. It shows where the mayor puts his priorities, what he really cares about. He’s got exotic positions like a director of sustainability, in his own office — which is a wonderful idea, but with a budget deficit of more than $300 million, is it really worth $160,000 a year? (Don’t we already have a Department of the Environment?) He’s got people out at the airport who collect six-figure salaries and do very little visible work. And yet he can’t manage to keep basic services for the needy — services that can make the difference between life and death on the streets — from vanishing in a whirlpool of red ink.

Peskin has made some noise about cutting high-end jobs instead of rank-and-file positions, but with the budget coming to a head soon, that ought to be one of the top priorities. In fact, the board’s Budget Committee ought to issue a challenge to the mayor: before another homeless program is cut, before another public health service is eliminated, before another city agency that does on-the-ground work to help low-income people is gutted, Newsom should demonstrate, job by job, why so many $140,000-a-year positions are critical to the city.

The other glaring problem with the budget is that it includes no plans for increased revenue.

Newsom is happy to blame Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for terminating aid to cities, but let’s face it: with Republicans in Sacramento and Washington DC, San Francisco is going to have to solve most of its problems on its own. This is nothing new; Newsom should hardly be shocked by it.

If the mayor wants his budget to be taken seriously, he should immediately announce that he’s supporting Peskin’s two revenue-generating measures on the November ballot and do all that he can to help them pass. Then he can add another $50 million or so to his budget, based on the projected revenue, and save a lot of crucial services that are now facing the ax.

Avoiding a Lennar meltdown

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EDITORIAL Millions of dollars in campaign money kept Lennar Corp.’s plans for southeast San Francisco alive. But the financial news isn’t looking good for the giant homebuilder — and the San Francisco supervisors ought to be worried.

Last week, Sup. Chris Daly released a document he obtained from the Redevelopment Agency showing that the city had quietly sought a $25 million grant from the state Department of Housing and Community Development to cover a projected loss in Lennar’s Hunters Point Shipyard project.

The problem: increased construction costs, trouble in the financial markets, and unforeseen environmental issues have eaten up all the money that Lennar and the city had made available for infrastructure improvements on the site. That means the roads, water and sewer pipes, and other basic stuff that project will need to go forward are no longer adequately funded. Without an influx of state money, the city argued, the whole shipyard project would either be "drastically reduced in scope" or put on hold for another two or three years.

"Without the requested $25,021,079 Infill grant allocation, our infrastructure project faces a serious risk of being mothballed," city officials wrote. As Sarah Phelan reported at sfbg.com, the state rejected the application last week.

The shipyard project is the first piece of Lennar’s grand-scale Bayview Hunters Point redevelopment — and it’s already in serious financial trouble. The same issues that are causing problems at the shipyard will be in play when Lennar starts work on the 10,000 new housing units now approved for the Bayview–Hunters Point redevelopment area. Construction costs will be even higher in a year or two. The end of the mortgage crisis is not yet in sight. As Daly told us, the shortfall in the first part of the project "casts a very large shadow on the mixed-use development envisioned under the conceptual framework on Proposition G."

Then on June 8, a Lennar subsidiary that’s working on redeveloping the Mare Island Naval Shipyard property filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That project is now in limbo as the development consortium — facing economic pressure and unable to get the necessary financing — seeks protection from creditors. Combined with the fact that Lennar’s bond ratings continue to tumble (Lennar debt was downgraded again June 10), San Francisco officials ought to be asking the obvious question: can this Miami-based developer actually pull off this project? Or is it possible that after all of the political debate over the Lennar plan, the lack of adequate affordable housing, the future of the 49ers, the toxic contamination of the site, and everything else, the entire massive project could collapse because Lennar doesn’t have the financial ability to finish it?

This, of course, is one of the inherent problems with the traditional redevelopment model. The city essentially will be giving a huge piece of public land to a single private company that will then be responsible for building an entire new neighborhood with homes, offices, stores, and parks. In theory the developer will make enough money to stay afloat until construction is finished — and the property taxes in the area will increase enough to fund necessary infrastructure (schools, roads, bus lines, water and sewer service, and other public amenities). But if the developer goes broke, the city is left hanging.

That’s what’s happening in Vallejo, where a city that already has serious financial problems is facing the possibility that environmental cleanup at Mare Island will grind to a halt, and that a $6 million municipal service fund — paid for in part by Lennar — could suffer.

The prospects for San Francisco could be far worse. Suppose the city goes ahead and transfers public land to Lennar — which then goes into bankruptcy. Would that city land be treated as a private asset and given over to whatever creditor or vulture fund picks up Lennar’s ghost?

Fred Blackwell, the director of the Redevelopment Agency, won’t return our phone calls, but the supervisors need to hold a hearing on this and force him and Lennar to provide some answers. The board needs an independent audit of Lennar’s finances, either by Budget Analyst Harvey Rose or an outside consultant. And until the city knows for sure that the developer can actually handle this project, the entire redevelopment process for Bayview–Hunters Point needs to be put on hold. *

A vote for public power in November

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EDITORIAL Working with environmentalist cover, Mayor Gavin Newsom and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. have moved aggressively to derail a move that would have given the city control over some local power generation. Instead, the mayor is now pushing to keep Mirant Corp. running the one electricity plant that still operates within city limits.

The politics of the deal are complicated, but the driving force is clear: PG&E didn’t want the city moving even a small step toward public power, and as usual, the big utility is getting its way.

The power plant deal proves exactly why Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin should move forward with a November charter amendment for public power.

As Amanda Witherell reports, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has been trying for years now to win approval for three city-owned combustion turbines that would generate electric power at a plant at the foot of Potrero Hill. The idea: the turbines, also known as "peakers," would generate enough power during peak-use periods to convince the state to shut down the dirtier Mirant Plant.

Many environmentalists opposed the proposal, saying that the city shouldn’t be building any new fossil-fuel plants. That’s a legitimate argument. But California’s Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), the agency that controls the electric grid, insisted that renewable energy alone wouldn’t provide enough reliable power for San Francisco, and said the only way to shut down Mirant was to put in the peakers.

PG&E has been trying for months to derail the peakers — not, of course, out of any concern for the environment, but because the city would own the power plants. At first Newsom stuck by his PUC — but after seven PG&E lobbyists came into his office and gave him the facts of life (see "PG&E offers Newsom a blank check" at sfbg.com), he backed down. And now, after meeting with the CEOs of PG&E and Mirant, Newsom is pushing the worst possible alternative: he wants to retrofit the Mirant plant and let the private company operate its own peakers.

Same fossil fuel plants in the Bayview. Same type of air pollution. And the facility would be owned by a private company.

The supervisors need to reject this proposal with extreme prejudice — and the environmentalists who fought the city peakers ought to be just as loud in their opposition to Mirant’s retrofit.

The good news is that this ridiculous Newsom–PG&E deal ought to put the focus at City Hall back on public power, because that’s the only way to create a really green power profile in San Francisco.

Matthew Wald, who has coved energy policy for decades, wrote an interesting piece in the New York Times June 8 discussing why no private company wants to invest money in technology that would reduce carbon emissions from power plants. "Cutting carbon dioxide emissions is a fine idea, and a lot of companies would be proud to do it," Wald wrote. "But they would prefer to be second, if not third or fourth."

That’s because no private utility wants to take the risks and try something new that another company could then copy. In economic terms, carbon reduction is a public good — it’s something that benefits everyone, and nobody has the exclusive right to make money off of it. Private companies have been notoriously bad at investing in public goods.

But that’s not how public power agencies work. A San Francisco power agency would have every motivation to develop and use technology that saves consumers money or protects the environment. There’s no issue of profits to protect; in fact, one of the mandates of a city agency should be reducing carbon emissions and promoting renewable energy.

We have always been sympathetic to the concerns that the city-owned peakers would emit greenhouse gases. But if the city owned the plants, the city could shut them down anytime, whenever enough renewables were available. Mirant won’t shut down anything that is bringing in cash.

Mirkarimi and Peskin are working on the details of a public power measure, but the outlines ought to be clear: it should mandate that the SFPUC create and implement a plan to put the city in the retail power business, in compliance with the letter and spirit of the Raker Act — and get rid of PG&E and Mirant. The supervisors should put that on the November ballot.

A fall revenue measure

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EDITORIAL If you think the June ballot was busy, wait until November. San Francisco will be electing six district supervisors. The mayor and organized labor are going to be pushing the mother of all bond acts, roughly $1 billion to rebuild San Francisco General Hospital. There’s likely to be a public power charter amendment mandating that the city mount a real effort to take over the electric grid. There will probably be a major affordable-housing initiative that includes a set-aside for low-income housing and perhaps some affordable-housing bond money. It’s shaping up as an election that will change the city’s direction for years to come — but there’s still a crucial piece missing.

There’s no money.

Public power will, of course, generate vast amounts of new revenue, but not immediately: the process of setting up the system and fighting Pacific Gas and Electric Co. in court could drag out for several years. That, of course, is all the more reason to get started — if the city had done this years ago, we wouldn’t have a budget crisis today.

But in the meantime, right now, San Francisco needs cash — and there needs to be a November ballot measure that brings in new revenue to pay for more affordable housing and to save the services Mayor Gavin Newsom is cutting.

It’s tough to pass new taxes in California. Most of the time, state law mandates a two-thirds majority vote by the people to enact any new form of taxation. But it’s a bit easier when the supervisors are up for election; on those ballots, the threshold is only 50 percent. And with at least four tightly contested supervisorial races bringing out voters, labor bringing out the troops for the General Hospital bond, and the Democratic Party pushing to get voters out for Barack Obama, the turnout should be excellent.

So if there’s ever a good time to try to pass a tax measure, November 2008 ought to fit the bill.


All sorts of tax proposals have floated around City Hall in recent years and some of them — for example, a higher real-estate transfer tax — were defeated at the ballot. Some groups will oppose any tax proposal, and it’s hard to find constituencies that want to work hard for higher taxes.

So the key to crafting a revenue measure is to ensure that it’s as progressive as possible, and that it takes into account the concerns of those small businesses and homeowners who aren’t rich and can’t afford huge new levies. We see two good options:

1. A city income tax. This hasn’t been seriously discussed since the 1980s, but it ought to be. California law bars cities from collecting traditional income taxes — that is, San Francisco can’t tax the incomes of everyone who lives here. But in 1978 the state Supreme Court ruled that cities can tax income earned from employment in the city. The upside is that a San Francisco employment income tax would hit commuters, a huge group who use city services and don’t pay for them. The downside is that people who live here but work, say, in Silicon Valley would escape the tax.

But overall, income taxes are the fairest method of collecting revenue, and a city tax could be set to hit hardest on the wealthiest. The city could exempt, say, the first $50,000 of earned income, levy a modest (say, 1 percent) tax on the next $50,000, then increase the marginal percentage so that people with enormous salaries pay as much as 2 or 3 percent.

The beauty of this: most of the people who paid the top-end income tax would simply write it off their federal income taxes — meaning this would be a direct shift of cash from Washington DC to San Francisco. And it would come primarily from people who have already received a huge tax windfall from the Bush administration.

Yes, some people would cheat. Some businesses would try to claim their employees all really worked out of a satellite office in another city. But New York City has a municipal income tax. So does Philadelphia. They manage to deal with the cheaters. The supervisors at least ought to consider the idea.

2. A new business tax. Almost everyone agrees that San Francisco’s business taxes are unfair. The city places a flat tax on businesses — a small merchant pays the same percentage as a giant corporation — and some partnerships, like law firms, get away with paying no city taxes at all. The best way to fix that may be to create a single, progressive business tax (probably on gross receipts), with no loopholes, that exempts the first $100,000 or so and actually lowers the levy on small businesses while significantly raising it on big ones. Most small businesses would get an actual tax cut while the big guys would pick up the tab.

Together, a tax package like this could bring in the $250 million a year or so the city needs — and some of the money could go to cutting, say, Muni fares or reducing the sales tax so working-class San Franciscans would pay less.

Almost everyone at City Hall knows the current tax system is unfair, regressive, and inadequate. We’ve been calling for the supervisors to do something about it for years now. November 2008 seems like an excellent time.

Hold out for Hunters Point

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EDITORIAL In the late 1980s, Mayor Art Agnos put forward a plan for development at Mission Bay, which at that point was an underused plot of land that used to be a Southern Pacific railroad yard. He negotiated with the developer, Catellus Corp., and cut what he insisted was the best deal the city could possibly get. He insisted that any more demands — for, say, increased affordable housing — would have so damaged the project’s finances that nothing would ever be built.

Development opponents took the issue to the voters — and the mayor’s plan lost. Catellus promptly came back with a much sweeter deal.

It’s worth remembering that lesson, because next week voters will be faced with a stark choice for a massive Hunters Point–Bayview redevelopment plan. Mayor Gavin Newsom and his allies say the city has squeezed major concessions from the developer, Lennar Corp. The San Francisco Labor Council and two community groups have forced Lennar to sweeten the pot even more (see "Assessing the deal," page 11). At this point, the city’s supposed to have the best deal it can possibly get.

But with all due respect to the Labor Council, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), and the San Francisco Organizing Project, it’s not good enough.

The battle — which is shaping up as a very close contest — involves dueling ballot measures Propositions G and F. Prop. G is the deal Newsom and Lennar are pushing; it would give the financially troubled developer the right to build 10,000 new housing units, office and retail space, and a new football stadium, along with 300 new acres of parks, in one of the city’s most economically depressed areas. Some of the new housing would be available at below-market rates. Prop. F raises the ante a big notch: it would require that half of all Lennar’s housing be available to people making less than the median area income, which is $75,000 for a family of four.

For the record, it’s worth noting that the new concessions labor got would never have happened if Sup. Chris Daly and a group of Bayview–Hunters Point activists hadn’t placed Prop. F on the ballot. In fact, organized labor wasn’t terribly involved in the redevelopment project until a couple of months ago. That’s when Lennar’s team of political consultants realized that they might be facing a shellacking at the ballot June 3.

The polls show that Prop. F is very popular — and for good reason. It’s a simple proposal that makes excellent intuitive and practical sense. As housing activist Calvin Welch likes to say, San Francisco doesn’t have a housing crisis — the city has an affordable-housing crisis. Multimillionaires don’t have trouble finding places to live. And unfortunately, much of the new housing being built in this city is targeted to the very rich: typical market-rate one-bedroom condos start at around $500,000 and soar quickly into the millions. The rest of the city is getting forced out, and the dramatic, profound gentrification is transforming San Francisco.

Even the city planning department recognizes what’s going on: the Housing Element of the city’s General Plan states that 64 percent — nearly two-thirds — of all new housing ought to be affordable.

But the vast majority of the residents of Bayview–Hunters Point could never afford the vast majority of the new housing units Lennar wants to build. Prop. F seeks to address the deep imbalance in the proposed housing mix.

Lennar is squealing, saying it can’t possibly make the project pencil out with that much affordable housing. The company’s political team pushed the Labor Council to side with them, and in exchange for endorsing G and opposing F, labor got some worthy goodies. The level of what Lennar calls affordable housing is now higher than 30 percent — but when you actually look at those numbers, only about half of the 30 percent is truly affordable to the neighborhood residents who face being forced out of town. There’s also a new job training program and a mandate that new businesses allow their staff to unionize through a simple card-check process (although the city would almost certainly mandate that anyway).

But the bottom line is that the deal labor cut doesn’t meet what ought to be the standard for all new housing in San Francisco. Even after all the concessions, roughly 70 percent of the new units will be available only to rich people. That’s not acceptable in a city that is rapidly losing its artists, writers, musicians, immigrants, students … just about everyone who makes San Francisco such an exciting place to live is now an endangered species. And labor’s deal fundamentally does nothing to change that.

Vote yes on F and no on G. And if Lennar won’t build enough affordable housing, let’s scrap this deal and find someone who will. *

The peakers vs. Mirant

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EDITORIAL In the late 1960s, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District made a terrible decision and began building a nuclear power plant. Rancho Seco started generating power in 1977.

But over the next 10 years, environmental activists put pressure on the elected board that runs SMUD — and in 1989, the public power agency shut down the nuke with 11 years left on its operating license.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. built Diablo Canyon nuclear plant about the same time — but despite massive public protests, it’s still running today. That’s a big difference between public power and private utilities — and its one the San Francisco Supervisors need to recognize as they debate power plants in the southeast part of town. Because right now, two big private power companies are setting the agenda for the city’s energy policy.

And if they’re in control, the environment will be the loser.

Over the past several weeks, Mayor Gavin Newsom has met with representatives of PG&E — which is desperately trying to keep the city out of the retail electric power business — and Mirant Corp., which seems quite happy to keep operating its power plant at the foot of Potrero Hill. And as a result, the mayor has changed his position, is backing away from a plan for three city-owned power plants, and is prepared to offer the worst possible alternative: he wants to retrofit the dirty Mirant plant and keep it running.

That’s unacceptable, and the supervisors need to reject it.

The background on this issue, for those who haven’t been paying attention, is fascinating and a bit complex.

For years, residents of the southeast neighborhoods have been trying to shut down the Mirant plant, which runs a natural gas-fired turbine and three diesel-powered auxillary generators. California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), which manages the state’s electricity grid, has balked at removing the only large-scale generating facility within city limits, saying San Francisco can’t bring all of its power in from outside.

Until recently, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission — with Newsom’s blessing — has proposed that the city operate three natural gas turbines, known as peaker plants, that would run only when demand for power is high. Cal-ISO says the peakers would fulfill the in-city reliability requirement, and if they’re built, the Mirant Plant would be shuttered.

The peakers (which the city already owns, thanks to a lawsuit settlement) are fossil fuel plants and release air pollution — not as much, the city says, as the Mirant plant, but not zero. So environmental justice activists want to stop the new plants, saying the city can make do with conservation, new renewable energy facilities, and a new power line across the Bay. So far, Cal-ISO disagrees, but the activists are pushing the city to try harder to make the state accept a greener option.

So PG&E and the environmentalists are both trying to stop the supervisors from approving the peakers. PG&E sees them as public power, and is funding a sophisticated lobbying and direct-mail campaign against the city peakers.

That effort has turned Newsom around: as Amanda Witherell reports on page 15, the mayor is apparently prepared to offer a new plan that would scrap the city-owned peakers in favor of retrofitting the diesel units at the Mirant plant. PG&E would bring more cables into the city and would work on conservation efforts.

Conservation is fine, and PG&E ought to be pushing those efforts anyway. But the proposal makes no sense.

For starters, all evidence suggests that even after a retrofit, the Mirant plant would still generate fossil fuel pollution, quite possibly more than the city peakers. So the southeast would continue to get dumped on, with no significant relief. And the plan would leave PG&E and Mirant in control of generating and distributing power in the city.

We’re sympathetic to the environmental justice arguments, and we’ve been consistent in our position that the city shouldn’t build or operate new fossil fuel plants unless the scientific evidence shows they’ll be cleaner than any reasonable alternative. We would much prefer that San Francisco refrain from any new fossil fuel sources and rely instead on a completely renewable portfolio. But for all the problems we have with the peakers, they would, at least, be owned by the city.

That’s a crucial issue: if San Francisco controls the plants, San Francisco can turn them off any time, the moment the city’s renewable efforts convince Cal-ISO that the peakers aren’t needed (or even before that, if we want to risk a legal fight with the state). If a private company owns the generators, the plant will continue to run as long as it makes money.

If there’s a credible way to avoid any fossil fuel generation, we’re all in favor. But if the choice is between the peakers and retrofitting Mirant, it’s a no-brainer. And the real lesson here is that the supervisors should be moving forward with Sups. Mirkarimi and Peskin’s charter amendment to create a full public power agency at City Hall. *

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

When the ruling on same-sex marriage came down, I was in upstate New York, hanging out with my brother, who runs a small construction outfit in a working-class town. His employees are the people Democratic leaders worry about; a generation ago they were called "Reagan Democrats." They make extremely un-PC jokes and insult each other with terms that would make most San Franciscans cringe.

And you know what? They couldn’t possibly care less about same-sex marriage.

"The people in my crew have families to feed and payments to make on their houses," my brother told me. "They don’t care who marries who. It’s the most ridiculous issue in the world." (My brother, who got married on his lunch hour wearing overalls covered with concrete dust, also told me years ago that "marriage is like a horse with a broken leg; you can shoot it, but that doesn’t fix the leg." You get the picture).

Yes, there are gay couples living in his little community. The framers and roofers treat them like everyone else. The construction workers are not remotely disturbed about queers being threats to their traditional values or marriages. And they’re all voting for Obama because they’re sick of the war, sick of the recession, sick of the cost of health insurance, sick of the politics in Washington DC, and ready for something totally different.

I thought about all of that when I came back and read the San Francisco Chronicle stories repeating the old argument that same-sex marriage could be the bane of the Democrats in November. It’s the same thing Rep. Nancy Pelosi says about all kinds of social and economic issues: we can’t go too fast. We might piss off some swing voters.

Sure, you might do that. And I’m not a pollster, and my focus group, as it were, is fairly narrow here. But I don’t think I’m wrong when I say that among rapidly growing numbers of Americans, gay marriage is becoming pretty insignificant as a wedge issue. I used to say that in 20 years, people would look back at this era and wonder what the foes of marriage equality were thinking. Now I suspect we’ll only have to wait 10 years, maybe less, before this is totally accepted in the mainstream of American society.

When somebody like Mayor Gavin Newsom takes the lead on a civil rights issue like this, I think it’s pretty crass to question his motives. But you can’t dispute the outcome: Newsom may have been acting out of pure principle or out of political calculation. But in the end, his career is now tightly tied to an issue that is part of the future. He will never have to say he was sorry about this, and all of the weak and trembling little Democrats who are wringing their hands will all look like idiots one day. One day very soon.

If Newsom wants to be governor, this can only help him — but it won’t be enough. My brother’s point is that the country is in a deep recession, the economy is a disaster, economic inequality is ruining the American Dream, and social issues aren’t going to carry the day. A politician who won’t tax the rich to improve the lot of the poor and the middle class, who won’t offer comprehensive economic solutions, who has nothing to say to people who make their living building houses when the housing market is in free fall … that politician’s going nowhere. *

The real energy-policy choice

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EDITORIAL According to City Attorney Dennis Herrera, if San Francisco wants to see the Potrero Hill power plant, which spews pollution over the southeast part of the city, close down next year, the city’s going to have to operate its own fossil fuel plants in the neighborhood. Some environmentalists say that’s not true — that the city could develop enough renewable energy and use existing backup systems to obviate the need for the so-called peaker plants.

Opposition to the plants comes from the Sierra Club, Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi — and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Even for people who spend an inordinate amount of time studying energy policy, it’s a confusing mess of a situation — and San Francisco, of all cities, shouldn’t have to be facing it.

The peaker dilemma exists for a reason: San Francisco has allowed private-sector companies like PG&E and Mirant, which owns the existing Potrero plant, to control the city’s energy systems. The good news is that the fight over the power plants is driving a new move for public power — a move that ought to bring together the public interest activists on both sides of the plant divide.

Sups. Ross Mirkarimi, a peaker foe, and Aaron Peskin, a peaker supporter, plan to introduce a Charter Amendment mandating that the city’s Public Utilities Commission create a plan to establish a retail power agency in San Francisco. The amendment would provide the badly needed kick start to get city officials to act on San Francisco’s historic mandate for a municipal electricity system.

Peskin and Mirkarimi may not agree on the three peaker plants the PUC wants to site at the foot of Potrero Hill, but they do agree that PG&E is up to no good here. The giant private utility desperately wants to keep the city from developing its own electric power plants: the city peakers would be competition for PG&E and would open the door for the city to get more directly into the electricity business. Although the fliers put out by the "Close It Coalition," funded by PG&E, talk about environmental issues, that’s just old-fashioned greenwashing. PG&E is building similar combustion turbine gas-fueled generators all over the state.

Why should this be the city’s only choice?

If there’s going to be a fight over energy policy in San Francisco, it ought to focus on the real long-term questions: Who should control the local grid, and the future supply of electricity, and the decision over how much of the local portfolio should be in renewable resources? Should PG&E continue to hold that power, or should the city take it over?

The movement for public power is exploding all over California. In Marin County, a group called Marin Clean Energy is mounting a sophisticated campaign for a community-controlled power agency that would use 100 percent renewable power. The South San Joaquin County Irrigation District is trying aggressively, against a full-scale PG&E political assault, to buy out PG&E’s distribution facilities and create a new public power system. Stockton is looking at becoming a public power city.

San Francisco is pursuing CCA, but needs to do much more. This is, after all, the only city in the nation that has a mandate under federal law to sell retail electricity.

If the city had created a public power agency years ago, the peakers wouldn’t be an issue. San Francisco would have been able to develop more extensive renewable power sources, create a long-term energy plan, and concentrate on shutting down fossil fuel plants instead of building them.

But whatever the outcome of that fight, it’s time to think about the future — and the future is community-owned energy programs. That’s the choice that ought to be on the ballot in November.

PS: Stop the presses — has Newsom buckled to PG&E? The mayor at the last minute May 13 has orchestrated a delay in the peaker vote — at the behest, we hear, of PG&E, which is begging the mayor to do anything to stop public power. Now he wants to retrofit the Mirant plant. That’s an unacceptable option and needs to be rejected.

Newsom axes sunshine

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EDITORIAL Shortly before he left on a trip to Israel last week, Mayor Gavin Newsom quietly vetoed a bill that would have greatly expanded public access to the workings of San Francisco government. The supervisors need to override that veto as quickly as possible.

The measure, by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, seems so simple that it’s hard to imagine why it would be controversial. Mirkarimi wants the city to audiotape or videotape any meeting of any public agency at City Hall, and post that tape on the Web within 72 hours.

That would make it much easier for people following local government actions to see or hear the actual testimony and discussion at board and commission meetings, most of which take place during the day when people with jobs can’t attend. The Board of Supervisors meetings are televised, as are most board committee meetings, but dozens of other agencies meet regularly with few people attending and virtually no press coverage. And there’s no easy way to find out exactly what went on at those meetings.

Posting the recordings on the Web is part of a larger agenda promoted by sunshine advocates who want to see the city use easily available and inexpensive modern technology to promote open government (see Sunshine in the digital age, 3/12/08). Among their proposals: at the very least, post and stream the audio portion of all meetings on the Internet. Most meetings are already recorded anyway, and all the meeting rooms are equipped with recording gear. But those recordings aren’t easy to access. The only way to get a copy of the proceedings is to send $10 for a DVD and $1 for an audiotape to the city, then wait a week for your media to arrive in the mail. How hard could it be to put that material on the Web?

Sunshine activists want to go a lot further. They suggest, for example, that every document and e-mail created by a city employee be sent automatically to a public server where it can be viewed over the Internet. And if there was adequate wi-fi service at City Hall (there isn’t), bloggers could post video of the meetings themselves.

Mirkarimi’s bill didn’t go anywhere near that far. All he asked was that the meetings that take place in rooms equipped for audio or video taping be recorded and that the files be placed on the Web. The total cost was pegged at $131,000 per year, but the city’s cable-TV franchise deal would require Comcast to pay $55,000 for the necessary new equipment. So the final tab would be only $72,000 a year. That’s such a minuscule percentage of the city’s $5 billion budget that it fits into the category of what Mirkarimi calls "decimal dust."

And yet in an April 30 veto message, Newsom said he found the cost too high. "I would urge the Board of Supervisors to hold off on new spending initiatives" until the next budget cycle, he said.

That’s crazy. We recognize that money is tight, but Newsom has pushed all sorts of new programs and initiatives that cost more than $72,000. In fact, he spent almost twice that much ($139,700) gussying up his office back in January.

Four supervisors voted against Mirkarimi’s bill: Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd, Jake McGoldrick, and Michela Alioto-Pier, so Mirkarimi appears to have seven votes to override the veto. It will take one more — one more supervisor willing to stand up for open government — to make this program happen. It’s embarrassing to see neighborhood supervisors voting against sunshine. Call the four and demand they vote to override. Chu: 554-7460. Elsbernd: 554-6516. McGoldrick: 554-7410. Alioto-Pier: 554-7752.

The feds raid San Francisco

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EDITORIAL On May 2, the day after thousands demonstrated for immigrant rights — exactly one month after Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sup. Tom Ammiano stood in front of the cameras and announced a new initiative to promote the city’s sanctuary policy for undocumented residents — federal agents swept into the city and arrested workers at El Balazo restaurant as part of an immigration enforcement raid.

It was bitterly ironic: much of the excitement of the large May Day rallies in San Francisco came from the diversity of the crowds and the connections among labor, antiwar activists, and immigrant-rights groups. The raid reflects the ongoing disaster that is US immigration policy under President George W. Bush — arresting and deporting restaurant workers tears up families and communities, is a colossal waste of money, does nothing about the economic issues driving immigration, and damages the San Francisco and California economies. But it’s tough to get leading Democrats to take a strong stand on the issue: both Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have ducked tough immigration questions during the presidential campaign.

And while San Francisco’s Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, was against the fence and called it a "terrible idea," she hasn’t said a word in public about last week’s immigration raid in her home city. Neither has Sen. Dianne Feinstein or Sen. Barbara Boxer.

There’s only so much San Francisco can do to block the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The local sanctuary law bars city officials from in any way assisting ICE in apprehending undocumented immigrants, and Newsom and the Police Commission should direct Police Chief Heather Fong to investigate and ensure that there were no San Francisco law enforcement resources used, directly or indirectly, in the raid.

But local activists can do a lot to stop this insanity, using the sorts of political alliances we were encouraged to see forming at the May Day events. For starters, the antiwar, labor, and immigrant rights groups should call on Pelosi, Feinstein, and Boxer to denounce the raids and demand that ICE stop terrorizing California workers.

The next ugly high-rise

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EDITORIAL The San Francisco Planning Department is preparing for a new set of zoning rules that could allow a 1,200-foot high-rise office building — half again the height of the Transamerica Pyramid — near First and Mission Streets. It’s part of the devil’s bargain for the new Transbay Terminal, and it badly needs to be reined in.

The proposal for gigantic new towers is the city’s way to finance reconstruction of the terminal, which ought to be the central link in a regional transportation network that combines buses and high speed rail downtown. It’s a worthy project — and an expensive one. Estimates for the new terminal run around $1 billion. And neither the city nor the state have that kind of money right now.

There’s a reason for that, of course: Californians have been living for decades in a fantasy world, a place where grand public achievements — like a great park system, a great public university system, new trains and roads — can be built and maintained without anyone having to pay for them. Once upon a time, tax money built this state’s preeminent public institutions; now even the mention of higher taxes sends Democrats and Republicans alike scurrying for political cover.

So the only way San Francisco officials can see to pay for the monumental new train and bus station — a facility, we’re told, that could rival Grand Central Terminal in New York — is to sell off the skyline. Gerald Hines, a Texas developer, is prepared to pay $350 million for a single plot of land near the terminal — if he can build a massive high-rise there. The same goes for the rest of the public land around the site: the higher the buildings the city will allow, the more cash that comes in for the project. Since this is San Francisco, affordable housing will be part of the payoff.

We support the Transbay Terminal project, and we support more affordable housing — but this isn’t a good deal for the city.

For starters, we’re not at all convinced San Francisco needs another giant office tower, much less a complex of giant buildings choking a corner of South of Market. Who are we trying to attract to the city? The giant outfits that can pay the high rents to fill these buildings are not doing much for the local economy. In fact, small, locally-owned businesses create most of the new jobs in this city. And while Dean Macris, the former planning director who is still a development advisor to Mayor Gavin Newsom, loves big high spires, a lot of us find them hideous. That ugly tower on Rincon Hill, which has nothing but housing for the very rich, is a blight on the skyline. Why would we want more of the same?

This week’s presentation will be the beginning of a long process that needs to end with a rational development plan (a transit village with a heavy mix of affordable housing?) that’s driven by the city’s needs. And San Francisco officials need to take a hard look at whether auctioning off the skyline is the only way to fund the Transbay Terminal.

Pelosi and the moth spraying

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Correction: Rep. Sam Farr has raised questions about the moth, but has not at this time introduced legislation to de-list it.

EDITORIAL A Santa Cruz County judge has put a temporary halt to the state’s plan to spray chemicals from the air over Bay Area cities in an ill-conceived effort to eradicate the Light Brown Apple Moth. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed to hold off on the spraying until further studies are done on the environmental and health issues.

But the proposal to dump tons of an artificial pheromone called Checkmate over urban areas with millions of residents this summer is not dead: the governor still insists that some sort of eradication plan is needed, and California Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura is warning lawmakers that billions of dollars are at stake.

But the entire issue could be obviated with congressional action, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi needs to take the lead.

Checkmate disrupts the mating cycle of the moth. Nobody knows for sure what effects it will have on humans, but the Checkmate containers have strict warning labels about health hazards. And the stuff will be contained in tiny plastic capsules designed to release it over weeks, or even months. The capsules themselves can be inhaled, possibly causing respiratory problems. There’s no doubt this is a danger, particularly for children.

The legal and political issues are complicated, but it appears that there are only two effective ways to halt the spraying at this point. Either the Santa Cruz legal ruling has to hold up on appeal (tricky, since the governor can declare an emergency and override environmental law), or the federal government has to change the way it looks at the moth.

The moth is a threat to agriculture — but almost certainly not as serious a threat as state and federal authorities claim. Schwarzenegger says the tiny insect, which likes to lay its eggs in a wide variety of plants, will devastate the state’s agricultural industry. But many entomologists say the bug has probably been in the Bay Area for years, and that the state’s crops have not suffered. In fact, in other places where the moth is established (Australia and New Zealand, for example), its impacts have been fairly mild.

The problem is that the feds have listed the moth as a major agricultural hazard. Under international treaties, produce from areas where the bug is established can’t be exported. There’s a simple way to solve this: Congress can de-list the Light Brown Apple Moth. Rep. Sam Farr (D–Monterey) has introduced a bill to do that. But time is short.

Pelosi, however, has the ability as speaker to push this to the top of the agenda and get a bill passed quickly. Mayor Gavin Newsom and the supervisors should call on her to do that — now.

Meanwhile, Oakland is preparing its own legal action. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera and other Bay Area city attorneys should be doing the same.

PG&E’s attack on CCA

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EDITORIAL It’s a bit odd (if not terribly surprising) that the San Francisco Chronicle ran a front-page story April 16 on public power and alternatives to Pacific Gas and Electric Co. — and almost entirely ignored what’s going on in the paper’s hometown. And it’s striking (if, again, not surprising) that the story, by Kelly Zito, allowed a dubious expert from the University of California at Berkeley, who never supported public power and generally supports private sector and deregulation efforts to undermine, without rebuttal, the community-based anti-PG&E efforts.

But in the midst of this journalistic train wreck was the nut of a fascinating story: PG&E is on the ropes as communities try to find more renewable energy supplies — and is fighting back in ways that are demonstrably illegal.

There’s a message here for San Francisco, where plans for community choice aggregation are moving along slowly but steadily. The giant private utility will be trying to sabotage the efforts here, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera needs to be moving — now — to make sure there’s no illegal interference.

The focus of Zito’s story was Marin County, where there’s an active and aggressive move to create a CCA (community choice aggregation) system that would replace PG&E as an energy supplier in 11 cities. The program would function as a buyers’ co-op, purchasing electricity in bulk for all of the businesses and residents in those communities, then using PG&E’s lines to transmit the power to customers. Marin is pushing the environmental angle: PG&E uses at most 12 percent renewable power, and Marin Clean Energy can offer consumers 100 percent green power. While that option might cost a bit more (an additional $5 per month for the average customer) Marin’s CCA also says it can offer a 50 percent renewable option that meets or beats PG&E’s rates.

The Chronicle‘s expert, UC Berkeley professor Severin Borenstein, is quoted as saying that it’s risky for cities to get into the electricity business. But that’s just horse pucky: cities have been in the power business for as long as there’s been electric power. In the Bay Area, Alameda, Palo Alto, and Santa Clara all have established successful public power agencies — and all have cheaper rates than PG&E.

The state law authorizing CCA programs bars PG&E, a regulated utility, from lobbying against their implementation. In fact, in hearings before the state Pubic Utilities Commission, the company promised it would be neutral toward CCAs and wouldn’t try to discourage its customers from joining the public programs.

But in the Central Valley, where a group called the San Joaquin Valley Power Authority has been trying to create a broad-based CCA, PG&E has admitted it illegally tried to scotch the deal. Lawyers for the SJVPA filed a complaint with the CPUC, and on April 10, PG&E settled in a way that clearly admitted guilt. The company agreed to cease its illegal lobbying and pay the SVJPA $450,000 in legal fees.

It was a significant victory for public power — and San Francisco needs to make it clear right now that it will fight just as vigorously to stop PG&E interference in its own CCA efforts. The CPUC is accepting comments on the settlement, and Herrera should file a statement supporting SVJPA, in effect putting PG&E on notice that it will face immediate, furious legal action if it dares try to undermine a San Francisco CCA. Herrera also needs to put a legal team together to prepare to fight PG&E as the city’s own plan moves forward.

It’s embarrassing that San Francisco — the only city in the United States with a congressional mandate to run a public power system — is behind Marin County and the Central Valley in getting its own CCA up and running. But the process is moving forward€. And the city needs to be starting its own marketing campaign to inform the public that cheaper, greener power is on the way.

Marin has been sending out fliers showing how effectively the CCA can replace fossil-fuel and nuclear generation with greener energy options. The county has clear information about lower prices and consistent efforts to fight global warming. San Francisco is lagging here — and it’s time to get on the stick.

The floating peakers

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EDITORIAL The political fight over siting four city-owned power plants is heating up, and creating strange alliances. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission wants to put three of the plants — which are small natural-gas-fired turbines — in the southeast part of the city, adjacent to the pollution-belching Mirant power plant at the foot of Potrero Hill. The commission argues that the city-owned plants would run only at peak hours (thus the term "peaker plants") and would generate lower carbon emissions and noxious fumes than Mirant does. Supporters of the plants argue that the state’s Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), which controls the electricity grid, won’t allow Mirant to shut down unless the peakers are in place.

Sup. Aaron Peskin says the peakers will not only reduce emissions, but will give public power a kickstart. But Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, who normally supports Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plans, opposes the plants on environmental grounds, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly, who say the southeast has been a toxic dumping ground for years, appear to be siding with her. Add to this the cost of building a structure to house the turbines, which has varied from as high as $500 million to as low as about $250 million, and you have a confusing mess.

But as Amanda Witherell reports in this issue, there’s another solution, one Mirkarimi floated several months ago: why not put the peakers on barges and site them offshore?

It’s a fascinating idea. Floating power plants are common all over the world; Manhattan alone has more than 30. Putting the plants on a barge would, by some estimates, cost half as much as building a home for them on land — and they could be moved around so no one neighborhood has to suffer all the impacts. (The plants, for example, could spend some time in the Marina, maybe upwind of Mayor Newsom’s house, so the southeast doesn’t have to take all the emissions.) If the city follows its own plans and builds enough renewable energy to obviate the peakers in a few years, they could easily be shipped off and sold elsewhere. Or the city could lease them to other communities (bringing in some nice cash) when they aren’t needed here. And floating plants won’t face the serious seismic issues that plants on the unstable southern San Francisco shoreline do.

There are, of course, other issues with this, including the obvious problem of putting barges in the bay, which the Bay Conservation and Development Commission would probably object to. And where, exactly, would they go? This might not be the best idea in the end.

But given the lack of good options here, this is at least worth a second look. Mirkarimi needs to push his resolution calling on the city to review that option. It’s well worth a full study. In fact, the board ought to put all final consideration of the combustion turbines on hold until the SFPUC looks at the barge proposal.

A solar plan that works

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EDITORIAL Solar energy makes so much sense in San Francisco that it’s crazy this city didn’t figure out years ago how to get at least a quarter or more of its power from the sun. And it’s crazy that now, with the financial benefits of solar power improving, the technology improving, and the environmental mandate getting more profound by the day, the city still doesn’t have an effective citywide solar program.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, who wants to be known as a green mayor, has a solar proposal on the table that environmental groups like the Sierra Club are reluctantly supporting. But a lot of the supervisors have serious questions — and so do we. At its most basic, Newsom’s plan is a shift of solar resources from the public sector to the private sector and does little to promote a sustainable long-term energy policy.

There’s a way to do solar right in San Francisco, and we can outline a basic blueprint.

1. Start with all the interested parties. Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, with Newsom’s support, created a Solar Task Force in San Francisco — but none of the supervisors were invited. The Sierra Club wasn’t invited. None of the public power advocates were invited. Instead, it was dominated by solar industry people, with Pacific Gas and Electric Company along for the ride, guaranteeing that the proposals would run into political static.

2. Make it work as part of a public power plan. The future of San Francisco’s energy policy has to start and end with the notion that PG&E won’t be the long-term supplier of commercial electricity. The city has a community-choice aggregation (CCA) plan, and any solar programs should be designed to enhance and work with that plan.

3. Don’t shortchange public generation. Newsom is asking the city to take money away from a public-sector plan, which pays for solar panels on city-owned buildings, and shift it to a private-sector program, which would subsidize homeowners and commercial landlords who want to install solar panels. We’re all for encouraging solar on homes and office buildings, and we recognize that current state and federal law are skewed toward private projects. But the city has a huge interest in building its own generation capacity: city buildings now use Hetch Hetchy hydropower, and every kilowatt that can be replaced with solar frees up Hetch Hetchy power for retail sales to local homes and businesses and increases the financial rewards of public power.

4. Use the Berkeley model for private parties. The city of Berkeley is pursuing an excellent program. Homeowners and businesses would be able to borrow money from the city at very low interest (a city can raise capital at around 3 percent these days) to install solar panels and would pay the money back over 20 or 30 years through increased property taxes. This would cost the city nothing, encourages solar installations — and still leaves room for subsidies if they turn out to be necessary.

5. Look at using CCA to buy solar panels in bulk and install them free. Eric Brooks, a public power advocate, suggests this idea, and it’s a good one. A city power agency could buy panels and offer them free to property owners, with the energy going into the city grid. The residents and businesses would see their power bills drop, and the city would see environmental and financial benefits.

6. Demand two-way meters. PG&E doesn’t allow property owners to bank power that they generate beyond what they use. That means the owner of a solar system that’s actually generating surplus money is giving power free to PG&E. The city ought to be pushing for a change in state law to demand two-way electric meters. And as part of a public power plan, San Francisco could allow homeowners and commercial landlords not only to cut their power bills to zero but also to bring in cash by installing solar-generating systems.

7. Recognize that PG&E is part of the problem, not part of the solution. PG&E doesn’t want public power. The company doesn’t want widespread solar generation. In fact, the giant private utility has no incentive to do anything that keeps it from making money by selling power over its lines. You can almost judge a solar plan by one standard — if PG&E is OK with it, it must be a bad idea.

The supervisors are right to question Newsom’s plan, and in the end, they should reject it — and create a new one that meets the key tests of an effective long-term energy program for San Francisco.

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