News & Opinion Archives — Page 50 of 154 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 22, 2011

tredmond@sfbg.com

Calling for painful spending cuts, it turns out, is the easy part. Calling for relatively painless tax increases requires real political courage.

— The New York Times, March 13

The Times is hardly a crazy socialist rag; it’s always been the voice of the establishment, more Democrat than Republican but never even close to radical. The Gray Lady certainly can’t be accused of fomenting class warfare.

But in a calm, measured tone this week, the paper made the exact point about New York State that some of us whose politics lean a bit more to the left have been making about San Francisco.

The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, has presented the state Legislature with an all-cuts budget. The Times suggests that the wealthier residents of the state should share just a small amount of the economic pain. Extending a surtax on high earners would be more than tolerable, the paper notes:

“A couple with $350,000 in taxable income would simply continue to pay an extra $3,500; a couple with taxable income of $1.5 million would continue to pay $31,800 more. Those payments would be more than offset by the federal tax breaks those same taxpayers got with the recent renewal of the Bush-era tax cuts.”

Of course, in New York, as here, those state tax payments are deductible from the already-too-low federal income taxes the rich are paying.

It’s too much to ask that the San Francisco Chronicle pick up that line; the Chron, out here on the Left Coast, is far more conservative than the stodgy old Times. But you’d think that in a city where Republican voter registration is below 10 percent, that local officials — including a mayor who calls himself “progressive” — would be able to go at least as far as a moderate national newspaper.

Because the argument is pretty simple and basic.

Cuts in public services fall hardest on the poor and middle class. Families that can afford to join a private club don’t have to worry when hours at the city pools are cut back; their kids learn to swim anyway. People with good health insurance can try to ignore the conditions at San Francisco General Hospital. Private school parents think the size of classrooms in the public schools isn’t a big factor in their lives.

But it all comes back to haunt us, every one of us, in this city. When the number of beds in General’s psych ward is cut from 80 to 20, more people with severe mental illness are out on the streets. Cutting public schools not only makes class divisions more deeply entrenched, it damages the city’s economy.

As the Times says, painful cuts are easy. Taxing the rich never seems to be on the table

Shut down Diablo Canyon

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 22, 2011

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EDITORIAL The six-unit Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was designed to withstand the strongest earthquake that geologists said could reasonably be predicted for the region near northern Japan. It was designed to withstand the largest tsunami that the experts expected. It had triple backups to keep the reactor cores cool in the event of a natural disaster.

But, as is often the case with spectacular catastrophes, nothing went according to plan. The earthquake was far stronger than anyone figured was possible. The combination of the flooding and the shaking overwhelmed all of the emergency systems. The radiation releases are already severe enough to cause significant causalities — in the best case scenario, the danger already far exceeds that of the Three Mile Island fiasco. In a wide array of worst outcomes, large geographical areas could be uninhabitable for hundreds of years — and 39 million people living in and around Tokyo could be at risk.

The news comes just as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has been asking state and federal regulators for permission to renew its operating licenses for the two reactors at the Diablo Canyon plant. The licenses expire in 2024 and 2025, but the utility wants to front-load the process and get approval quickly to operate the plant for another 20 years.

That’s a bad idea on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start.

The plant sits almost on top of the Hosgri Fault, which has the same dangerous characteristics as the fault outside of Sendai, Japan. And geologists just discovered another fault running 300 yards from the plant gates. PG&E says the plant is designed to handle a 7.5-level earthquake, which is the greatest tremor anyone can foresee for those faults. Remember: nobody thought the 9.0 Japan quake was possible either. The truth is, even the best experts are only making guesses.

Then there’s the fact that Diablo continues to generate, and accumulate, highly radioactive waste — and there’s no place to put it. So spent fuel rods containing plutonium (among the most toxic substances on earth) sit in the bottom of a glorified swimming pool — which, the utility’s experts tell us, is perfectly safe. (Remember: executives at the Tokyo Electric Power Company said the same thing about the waste material at Fukushima Dai-ichi.)

The reactors were designed to last 30 years; the relicense would push their lifespan far beyond that, increasing the likelihood of an accident. And the company has a long history of safety problems, human error, and outright lies. (Remember: these are the same folks who said the pipelines under San Bruno were safe.)

Let’s face it: there’s no possible way for anyone to be certain that the plant isn’t vulnerable to an unexpectedly strong earthquake. And the damage that of a serious accident to a nuclear plant 150 miles north of Los Angeles could cause is incalculable.

PG&E has asked the California Public Utilities Commission to allow it to charge ratepayers $85 million for relicensing studies. State Sen. Sam Blakeslee (R-San Luis Obispo), a research geophysicist with a doctorate in earthquake studies, wants PG&E to conduct extensive tests on the new fault before applying for new licenses. That’s a start, but it’s nowhere near enough.

This plant should never have been built, and California is lucky that it’s survived so far. The quake in Japan is a harsh reminder of how inherently dangerous nuclear power is — particularly in densely populated areas. The CPUC should refuse to allocate a penny for anything except a study on how quickly the plant can be shut down, for good.

Conning immigrants

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 22, 2011

1

By Lauren Rosenfeld

news@sfbg.com

To many of his clients, former immigration attorney Martin Guajardo seemed capable of performing miracles. He claimed to have unique access to judges and immigration officials. He wore slick Italian suits and drove a Rolls Royce. When other attorneys couldn’t help Victor Jimenez, a Mexican waiter from San Mateo, Guajardo promised to save him from deportation for a $15,000 fee.

Jimenez figured that since Guajardo charged high fees and had won tough cases in the past, he must be worth the money.

But Jimenez did not know that Guajardo had been charging clients six to nine times the market rate for services he allegedly failed to deliver. And when Guajardo was forced to resign from the California State Bar two years ago, he illegally continued to advise clients, according to documents filed in a civil lawsuit by the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office.

"The purpose of this case is to put a stop to one of the largest immigration frauds in the Bay Area," said Deputy City Attorney Josh White.

In November, the city filed suit to stop Guajardo from practicing law, seek civil penalties, and demand repayment of unearned fees. It targets the last two years of a three-decade career — after Guajardo resigned from the State Bar of California with disciplinary charges pending. The suit alleges that Guajardo practiced law after his effective disbarment and failed to notify clients he was no longer a lawyer. Additional defendants in the case include the law firm Immigration Practice Group and Christopher Stender, a San Diego attorney who allegedly covered for Guajardo.

Immigration Practice Group closed its doors in San Francisco soon after the city filed the case, and Guajardo vanished as well. He has not responded to the charges filed against him and no one, including Stender, claims to know where he is. Stender declined requests for comment, but in a February declaration for the case, he stated he was unaware of Guajardo’s whereabouts.

In December, Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, a private firm that filed a class action lawsuit in conjunction with the city’s case, organized a free legal clinic for Guajardo’s former clients. "The line was out the door and around the block," Orrick attorney Mike Aparicio said. "There were hundreds of people."

When the city began an in-depth probe into immigration fraud in San Francisco two years ago, Guajardo soon dominated the investigation. It is usually difficult to build solid fraud cases because victims are often afraid to come forward, and the state bar couldn’t do anything more about Guajardo because he is not a member. But the City Attorney’s Office had the resources and the will to pursue the case.

"We built a network of contacts — nonprofits, academics, private attorneys," White said. "Virtually 100 percent of them had known Guajardo was continuing to practice without a license."

Nora Privitera is a staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and an expert witness in immigration fraud trials. She said Guajardo made a powerful impression on people and gave them false hope.

"When people are desperate, they suspend disbelief," Privitera said. "Hope is like a drug."

Jimenez and his partner, Macrina Mota, have lived in the United States for more than 20 years. They panicked at the thought of deportation and being separated from their six American-born children. Jimenez worked 15-hour days as a waiter to support the family and was willing to sacrifice anything to keep them together.

Guajardo secured a work permit for Jimenez and appealed his case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. While collecting additional fees over the years, Guajardo assured Jimenez that the case was in process and that the court "just takes time," according to Mota. So it was a complete shock to her when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents came to the couple’s home, arrested Jimenez, and told Mota she had to turn herself in to immigration officials the following day. Guajardo failed to tell Jimenez he had in fact lost his case and faced immediate deportation.

"Guys like Guajardo are worse for immigrants than immigration authorities," said Angela Bean, a private immigration attorney who works with some of Guajardo’s former clients. "When he couldn’t get more blood out of the turnip, he’d let them go."

Mota and her children had trouble paying rent after Jimenez’s deportation in December 2008. They were evicted from their home and moved to a shelter for five months. The trauma devastated the couple’s oldest daughter, who attempted suicide shortly after her father’s sudden deportation.

"That was the worst nightmare my family ever lived," Mota said. "Guajardo knew we had a big family. He gives you a lot of hope, and you believe it because you have six kids. You don’t want to be torn apart."

Mota said Guajardo was a powerful presence in court and knew how to work the room, but he was sometimes more humble during private meetings at his office. As a Mexican American and the son of California farm workers, Guajardo appealed to many clients’ cultural roots. He often wore traditional guayabera-style shirts and conversed with them in Spanish.

"He had all the opportunity in the world to empathize with clients who had similar backgrounds," immigration attorney Angela Bean said. "He was in a unique position to understand their issues and fears — but instead he exploited those fears for his own economic advantage."

Bean said some of Guajardo’s clients mortgaged their homes to pay fees that reached tens of thousands of dollars. One victim was Jagdeep Singh, a convenience store cashier who lived in Contra Costa County with his U.S. citizen wife and children. Guajardo told Singh to stay in the United States and promised he would obtain a green card, according to Singh’s declaration for the case.

"Sometimes we waited three to four hours to see him," said Singh. "He didn’t seem to know the details of my case very well. He asked me to pay more money every time I came to meet with him."

Singh borrowed from relatives, spent his savings, and contributed large portions of his salary to pay Guajardo $95,000 over the course of three years. He later discovered that the best chance for his case was to voluntarily return to India.

The state bar disciplined Guajardo three times in the 1990s for taking thousands of dollars from clients while neglecting to take action in their cases. Documents filed in the lawsuit claim that he refused to refund fees for work he promised but never performed.

The class action lawsuit also alleges that Guajardo sexually coerced female clients. In the case of one woman whom Bean characterized as a domestic violence victim, he "filed frivolous petitions that had no hope of success and instead ‘engaged in a pattern of sexual misconduct with her over the course of nearly six years,’ " according to the suit, which quoted from several other lawsuits involving Guajardo.

Finally in 2007, the state bar brought multiple charges against Guajardo "alleging that he continued to charge excessive or unconscionable fees for inadequate representation," according to the city’s lawsuit.

With the threat of disbarment looming, Guajardo voluntarily resigned in 2008 — but not before changing his firm’s name from "Martin Resendez Guajardo, A Professional Corporation" to "Immigration Practice Group (IPG)" and making Christopher Stender the CEO.

But IPG and Christopher Stender were just fronts for Guajardo, who continued to run the show, the city alleges in court documents. Plaintiffs say Guajardo maintained control over their cases and never revealed that he was ineligible to practice law.

On March 18, a judge approved the city’s motion for a preliminary
injunction barring Stender and IPG from doing any legal work on
Guajardo’s behalf and requiring them to notify his clients that he’s
ineligible to practice law.

Attempts to reach Guajardo were unsuccessful, and city officials say they don’t know where he is or if he has retained an attorney. Stender’s attorney, Kristin Caverly, told the Guardian: "We are not able to provide comments to the press at this time given the ongoing litigation."

White said that an important goal of the civil suit is to get the word out to immigrants so that they look into attorneys’ backgrounds before hiring them. "If clients had gone to the state bar website," White said, "they would have seen that Guajardo resigned in April 2008."

Smart meters, stupid company

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 22, 2011

9

news@sfbg.com

Smart meters seemed like a good idea at first glance — a little wireless device that, unlike it’s dumb analogous predecessor, would track precise readings of household energy usage in real time, identifying wasteful activities and helping consumers make informed choices about conservation and consumption.

Considered a crucial first step in enabling a smart grid that would modernize the existing power grid for the information age, the technology was touted as offering potential benefits such as cheaper service, fewer new power plants and transmission lines, cleaner air, and more reliable services.

But Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s $2.2 billion program for installing smart meters has now become the subject of caustic criticism by thousands of customers and activists as the culprit for skyrocketing rates, adverse health effects, and threats to privacy.

Since deployment began in California in 2009, consumers have mobilized to halt the spread of the devices, demanding further studies of the technology and options for those who don’t want to join the rush toward a wireless world. Thirty-three local governments have called for moratoriums on the installation of the devices.

The California Public Utilities Commission, which in 2006 authorized the state’s investor-owned utility companies to install more than 10 million meters in California, has done little to quell the storm of protests and concerns. But that began to change March 10 when CPUC President Michael Peevey announced that the agency would require PG&E to develop an opt-out proposal for consumers within two weeks.

Prefacing the decision with an observation that almost every speaker against smart meters the CPUC heard from was a PG&E customer, Peevey called out Northern California residents as the main opponents to the program.

“I am directing PG&E to prepare a proposal for our consideration that will allow some form of opt-out for customers who object to these devices, at a reasonable cost to be paid by the customers who choose to opt-out,” Peevey said at the hearing. “Obviously I cannot prejudge how this commission will evaluate any such proposal by PG&E, nor can I predict what PG&E itself will propose. But I think it’s clear the time has come for some kind of movement in the direction of customer opt-outs.”

But the announcement did little to quell the opposition by the scores of customers, local governments, health professionals, and advocacy groups that claim it undercuts the true concerns while simultaneously opening another avenue the utility behemoth could profit from.

“Admitting to the problem is the first step to resolving it,” says Joshua Hart, executive director of grassroots organization Stop Smart Meters!, which has been at the forefront of the rebellion. “But we obviously think a ton of things were left out of this.”

The makeup of the meter haters spans interests and ideals, from Tea Party conservatives to liberal environmentalists. Their unifying trenchant criticism of Peevey, who was president of Edison International and Southern California Edison Company until 1995, has only increased with each meter installed. PG&E has already replaced 74 percent of its analog electrical meters and 83 percent of its gas meters.

Resolutions critical of PG&E’s smart meter deployment have been passed by many Bay Area cities and the counties of Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo. Assemblymember Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) introduced a bill in December 2010 that would create a statewide system for opting out.

Although PG&E officials didn’t return repeated Guardian calls about the controversy, they have told other media outlets that the meters are completely safe and installation is continuing as scheduled, despite the growing furor.

BABY STEPS

A total of 670,000 meters are planned for San Francisco, and installation has already begun in the Marina and Richmond districts, much to the dismay of many residents. During a series of public meetings at the CPUC since 2010, dozens of people regularly line up to ask for alternative options and conclusive, third-party studies on the technology.

Speakers mainly consist of those claiming to suffer from exposure to electromagnetic fields, a condition known as electrohypersensitivity (EHS) that causes headaches, nausea, fatigue, and ringing in the ears. Sufferers liken themselves to canaries in coal mines and say smart meters are just one aspect of larger problem: understudied, overhyped wireless technology.

“The bottom line is it’s a debacle that been rolled out without any public input, without any long-term study,” Hart said. “This is the wireless technology industry being too greedy and going too far.”

Smart meters emit less powerful electromagnetic fields than many smart phones, but activists worry about the effects, both cumulative and on those with EHS, a condition recognized by the Swedish government. But here in the United States, few experts outside of holistic and alternative health circles take it seriously as a health threat.

Hart pointed to the recent publication of a study by the National Institutes of Health finding cell phone emissions affect brain activity, calling it the “smoking gun.” But most scientists found the report inconclusive about how that stimulation affects the brain.

Yet the activists have held regular protests lambasting PG&E for endangering their health and invading their privacy. “This is forced installation of untested devices on an unwilling public,” Carol Page of Marin County told us at a large Feb. 24 protest outside the CPUC meeting in San Francisco. “It’s time this commission stopped enabling and started regulating.”

CPUC officials have said there was no need for additional analysis of the program, arguing that the meters are safe and that installation is a routine procedure allowed under existing utility contracts.

But the venerable consumer watchdog The Utility Reform Network (TURN) has long-opposed the program, focusing primarily on its cost and privacy threats from the data that is being transmitted. Hundreds of customers have contacted TURN to complain about the meters, and the group says Peevey’s policy change misses the mark.

“It’s certainly a step in the right direction, but the devil is going to be in the details,” TURN spokesperson Mindy Spatt told us. “We would review any proposal to charge customers very carefully. We don’t want to see them have pay again.”

She said PG&E’s consumer outreach efforts have been “abysmal,” and TURN supports a moratorium on smart meter installation.

“We are not hearing from any people who are benefiting from it,” Spatt said. “We are hearing from people who are upset about it, and we remain unconvinced that these meters offer any benefits commensurate with their costs.”

TURN’s website offers a flyer that reads “Do Not Install,” which customers can print and place on their analog meter. Wellington Energy, the company performing installations, has respected the signs, Spatt said.

“The flyer is still getting tons and tons of play,” Spatt said. “PG&E has done nothing to address customers who say that the smart meter is unwanted and unwelcome. We are very anxious to see what sort of an opt-out they can offer.”

Although the flyer conveyed a direct message to utilities, some chose the more radical route of blocking installation physically. In January, two women, one a grandmother, were arrested in Rohnert Park for blocking a Wellington truck carrying a load of smart meters.

Sandi Maurer, founder of the EMF Safety Network, believes the movement from the CPUC falls short of taking real action addressing the threat of harmful electromagnetic frequencies to the environment and human health.

“We really need a moratorium while we study the health impacts and have evidentiary hearings where we could determine whether they are safe,” she said. In December 2010, the EMF Safety Network’s request for the CPUC to open an investigation into smart meters was denied.

CUSTOMER DISSERVICE

One smart meter claim the CPUC did investigate was the allegation that the new meters weren’t accurate, following up on more than 600 complaints from customers that their energy bills shot up after the new meters were installed.

The Structure Group, a Houston-based consulting company, tested 750 smart meters and 147 electromechanical meters and concluded that they worked fine. But the study also found that PG&E didn’t properly handle the complaints.

“PG&E’s process did not address the customer concerns associated with the new equipment and usage changes,” the report said. “Some customers interviewed during this assessment did not consider their complaint resolved, despite indications from PG&E and the CPUC that the customer agreed with the resolution.”

As a demonstration of how the program could have been rolled out differently, one needs only to look up the road to Sacramento. The publicly owned Sacramento Municipal Utilities District has installed 184,000 meters and encountered little opposition.

“I’ve seen what’s happening in the Bay Area and we haven’t seen anything like that whatsoever,” SMUD spokesperson Chris Capra said. “I’m amazed at the difference in our customers compared with customers around the country. “

Capra credits the relative embrace of the meters to the method SMUD used to mobilize them. Before installing any meters, SMUD build its wireless network. Then SMUD installed 78,000 trial meters in two separate areas — one in close-quartered downtown and one in suburban areas — to see how the meters behaved under topographical and proximity challenges. Then it led the meters through automated trials doubled with traditional manual reads and found that they were 99 percent accurate.

“We wanted to be certain before we began with full deployment,” Capra said. “We had estimated reads, manual reads, and made sure everything is functional. “

But some problems go beyond customer service. Along with health and safety concerns, critics remain unconvinced that the smart meters live up to their purported benefits to consumers, even though they’re the ones paying for the program.

“If I wanted to monitor my usage, I could go buy an in-home electricity monitor myself and just plug it in,” Maurer said. “For utilities to say we absolutely need this technology to reduce energy costs is false.”

Privacy advocates warn the meters could erode the privacy of daily life unless regulators limit data collection and disclosure. In a joint filing in March 2010, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation urged the CPUC to adopt rules to protect consumer’s energy usage information.

“Smart meters generate more information in formats easier to share and analyze, which is part of the future of energy utilization,” said Jim Dempsey, vice president of public policy at CDT. “That being said, some significant questions remain.”

Smart meters collect 750 to 3,000 data points a month per household. This detailed energy usage data can indicate whether someone is at home or out, how many people are in the house, and if they are using particular appliances. In effort to stave off data mining by marketers or hackers, CDT and EFF urged the CPUC to adopt comprehensive privacy standards for the collection, retention, use and disclosure of consumers’ household energy data.

Smart meters represent a worst case scenario in terms of security, Dempsey warned. Not only do they lack sufficient power to execute strong security software, they are easily accessible and installed in numbers large enough that a few may not be missed if they are stolen. The safest way to protect cyber security is to assume from the outset that they will be attacked.

“You are not going to stop technology and the benefits,” said Dempsey. “It’s hard to say we should not take advantage of something that gives us more information, but you need corresponding security. It’s not too late to adopt the privacy rules, and we certainly hope that the commission will do that soon.”

CDT and EFF say that utilities collecting the data from smart meters must set rules specifying in advance how data will be used. Disclosing information to marketers and government agencies should be restricted.

“Smart meters really do penetrate into the ways we live in ways that no other technology is doing now,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at EFF. “It’s a special circumstance because there isn’t anything else like this that is in everyone’s home.”

STUDYING METERS

As opposition increased along with the installations, further requests for investigation into the program were filed. In July 2010, Huffman asked the California Center for Science and Technology to analyze whether the federal safety standards were sufficiently protective of public health, a move that was supported by fellow Assemblymember Bill Monning (D-Carmel) and the City of Mill Valley.

In December, Huffman also introduced Assembly Bill 37, directing the CPUC to offer an opt out alternative to customers who did not want smart meters and to disclose important information to the public. However, like the ordinances passed throughout the state, the move was largely symbolic and wouldn’t be implemented until the time most installations would have been completed in 2012.

The report released by the CCST in January analyzed the threat posed by smart meters, concluding that additional research was needed to accurately gauge the potential threat and had found “no clear evidence that additional standards were needed to protect the public from smart meters or other common household devices.”

The report has since served as a reference point for both PG&E and the CPUC as evidence of safety of the meters. Nevertheless, consumer groups dispute the findings.

“We need investigations from a truly independent third party, not an industry-promoting group hired by PG&E,” Maurer said. “We need evidentiary hearings on the health impacts of microwave facilities. Every time someone buys a new wireless router on a cell phone, it’s a drop in the bucket of more wireless technology. But [with smart meters] we’re talking about a massive increase of the density of these wireless emissions.”

The CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates was also unconvinced by the CCST’s conclusion. It noticed that the report did not fully explore issues related to cumulative exposure or from multiple co-located meters, as would be the case on apartment buildings and close quarters typical in San Francisco.

A California Senate bill imposing restrictions and revisions on utilities regarding their handling of smart meter information passed in February 2010, and in June the CPUC announced it had adopted a framework requiring utilities to modernize security standards, but details on upgrades have not appeared.

For now, protesters remain focused on pressuring regulators to stop the installation and they plan to keep up the fight for as long as needed.

“It is shock and awe to get the meters installed before people figure out that they are being scammed,” Hart said. “Until there is a moratorium called, we are urging people to resist. Stopping smart meters is just one part of the battle against the telecommunications companies.”

Sacramento needs a foreign policy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 22, 2011

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OPINION “The country is rich, but not so rich as we have been led to believe. The choice to do one thing may preclude another. In short, we are entering an era of limits.”

Presidential candidate Jerry Brown said that in 1976. Thirty five years later, second-time-around Gov. Jerry Brown has a profound opportunity to finish the thought — by pointing out that we can no longer afford follies like the Afghanistan war.

Any reluctance Brown might feel about discussing foreign policy — an area of responsibility clearly not assigned to the states by the founding fathers, or anyone else’s fathers — must be weighed against his understanding that when it comes to budget matters, the buck stops at the California statehouse — and the other 49 state houses. The feds can print money, but the states can’t.

California famously faces an immediate budget deficit in the $25 billion range. This, while the federal government burns through taxpayers’ money on a war that even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledges as insane. He recently told an audience of West Point cadets: “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

The National Priorities Project puts the current cumulative cost of the war to California taxpayers at $48.5 billion. The $110 billion Washington plans on spending in the upcoming year pencils out to another $14 billion from California taxpayers, while they deal with what the California Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates will be an annual $20 billion state budget shortfall through 2015-16.

Brown, then, has everything to gain from a serious domestic redirection of funds now squandered in this war, yet runs little risk in going out front for a national movement in that direction. After all, it’s not just Robert Gates having second thoughts: A CNN poll found the U.S. population opposing the war by a 63 percent to 35 percent margin last December. Last month, 24 of the 53 members of the California congressional delegation voted in favor of a budget amendment to cut all but $10 billion of the war’s funding, with the remaining money to be used to withdraw troops.(Jackie Speier voted for; Nancy Pelosi against.) The California Democratic Party called for “a timetable for withdrawal of our military personnel” well over a year ago, and last month the Democratic National Committee told the president to get a move on in ending this war.

When Brown first became governor, best-selling author Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock had posed the question of whether the country was suffering from too much change, too fast — a type of thinking the new governor appeared very much in tune with. In the interim, Naomi Klein has written a less known but probably more important book called The Shock Doctrine. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman describes the “shock doctrine” as an ongoing effort to exploit “crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing” a “vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.”

As the governor of the largest state in the union, with the nation’s biggest deficit, Jerry Brown is in a unique position to influence the national debate by simply pointing out the elephant in the room: A healthy portion of the nation’s economic crisis will melt away if we will just do today what the secretary of defense says we should do tomorrow — get out of Afghanistan. 2

Former Massachusetts state legislator Tom Gallagher is a San Francisco writer and activist.

Sunshine superheroes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 15, 2011

1

Norwin Yoffie Award for Career Acheivement

TIM CREWS

One midsummer day in 2007, Sacramento Valley Mirror editor and publisher Tim Crews noticed smoke billowing into the air several miles away. A duck hunters cabin on an expansive Glenn County farm compound was ablaze. By the time the fire engine sirens had sounded, Crews was on his way there to find out what was happening.

The twice-weekly Sacramento Valley Mirror, which has a circulation of 3,000, is run by a small staff on a shoestring budget — but Crews’ tenacity in the wake of the cabin fire has shown that it doesn’t take a multimillion dollar budget to practice hard-hitting, investigative journalism that has an impact. If it hadn’t been for Crews’ comprehensive series, “Who Killed Bud?,” Ivan “Bud” Foglesong’s death in that fire might never have come under the microscope.

Following a yearlong investigation, the coroner’s office ruled the death a suicide. “One of the lieutenants told the widow, ‘We think Bud just went in there and poured a can of gas on his head and set himself on fire.’ ” Crews said. But he didn’t buy it. “I said to them, why would he do that? “

With some digging, Crews learned that the man who perished in the fire had been a commercial pilot. Prior to that, “he’d been a military attaché, trusted with the nation’s highest secrets,” Crews said. “No drug or alcohol problems, physicals all the time. Not your typical unstable guy.”

Using public records as well as information gathered through his own research and interviews, Crews published bits of information in the Valley Mirror that local law enforcement had apparently missed. There was ongoing strife between Foglesong and the district attorney’s son, which had flared into violence directed at Foglesong at least once. The D.A. was Foglesong’s brother-in-law and a neighbor on the family compound where the cabin burned. Crews talked to the nurses who gave Foglesong emergency medical care just before he died — telling them there had been an explosion. Crews spotlighted inconsistencies within the investigative reports, key evidence that went missing, and the demolition of the burnt cabin without a permit.

Faced with the dilemma that the evidence didn’t add up, the sheriff coroner issued a new death certificate, characterizing it as an accident instead of a suicide. The Valley Mirror stories kept coming.

“Finally, the sheriff coroner, after two years, convenes a coroner’s inquest,” Crews recounted. That hadn’t happened in Glenn County in 40 or 50 years. “The coroner’s jury came back in an hour, 9-6 for death at the hands of another.” The investigation is now at the state level.

The “Who Killed Bud?” series is just one example of Crews’ journalistic grand slams. A different D.A. lost his bid for reelection, largely due to Valley Mirror coverage: “[He] said at a domestic violence meeting about a domestic violence victim, ‘Lying bitch deserved to be beaten.’ So we ran it in 40 point, top story,” Crews said, “because it tells you very drastically what the establishment’s attitudes are toward women. That just cannot be.”

Other stories have landed him in hot water. Crews once spent five days in jail for refusing to give up a confidential source who told him that the new assistant sheriff had stolen a low-quality firearm. Crews has won numerous journalism awards and will be honored with the Norwin Yoffie Award for Career Achievement at the James Madison Awards ceremony. But his raw reportage has made enemies, too — including some within the local legal system. With his propensity to sue government agencies when they violate the California Public Records Act (CPRA) by withholding public records instead of honoring his sunshine requests, this dynamic has spelled trouble.

“His entire philosophy is to exploit the relatively strong public records laws in this state in order to provide his readers with the real deal on local government behavior,” said Tom Newton, general counsel of the California Newspaper Publishers Association. “He doesn’t take no for an answer.”

Indeed, Crews prides himself on standing up to the powers-that-be. “Young reporters say, ‘What’s the most important word for journalists?’ And I say, ‘After compassion, defiance.’ “

Yet the Valley Mirror now faces $100,000 in legal fees because a local judge — once the subject of a Valley Mirror exposé — ruled that Crews’ lawsuit against the Glenn County Board of Education for violating the CPRA was “frivolous.” The steep price tag reflects the price of attorneys hired by local government to take on Crews in court.

“This newspaper can no more afford to pay a $100,000 judgment than a fly,” Crews said. “It’s ruinous.” The case is on appeal, but he views the ruling as “a very well orchestrated attempt to crush a paper that uses the CPRA aggressively. Because in fact, most of the conservative members of the community, including some in Democratic ranks, regard open government as just unwieldy and not good. Just not good for people to know all these things.”

The case is on appeal. But if the ruling holds, it could set a very bad precedent, said Terry Francke of the watchdog group CalAware. “It puts any newspaper in a small county in a very perilous state,” he said.

Outside of court, Crews still enjoys a great deal of support and admiration — including from Foglesong’s widow. “Because of Tim, this thing is going to get solved,” said Jan Foglesong, who has since moved to Mississippi, where her husband was buried. “Because of him, we’re getting a little justice for Bud.” (Rebecca Bowe)

Legal Counsel

DUFFY CAROLAN

Duffy Carolan is a lawyer who understands how newspapers work. A journalism major at California Polytechnic State University, she started her career selling ads at the Fremont Argus and writing columns for the Alameda Times-Star. So when she graduated from the University of San Francisco Law School, it’s no surprise that she wound up doing media law.

Her first law job was at the Oakland firm Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May, where she worked with previous FOI Award winners Tom Burke and John Carne. In 1998 she moved to Davis, Wright, Tremaine, where she specializes in libel, privacy, and communications law, representing many of the major news media outlets in the Bay Area (including the Guardian).

But Carolan is proudest of the work she’s done — pro bono — for the Chauncey Bailey Project, which brought together reporters and editors from numerous newspapers and TV stations to help investigate the murder of the former editor of the Oakland Post. She helped the group get access to key documents and fought a gag order that would have limited the ability of the news media to obtain information.

She’s handled a lot of big cases, but it’s the little stuff that keeps her going. “What I enjoy most,” she said, ” is my daily interaction with reporters and the really small things that make their jobs a little bit easier.” (Tim Redmond)

Journalist

PETER BYRNE

Investigative reporter Peter Byrne says his award-winning, multipart series “Investor’s Club: How the Regents of the University of California Spin Public Funds into Private Profit” wouldn’t have been possible without the California Public Records Act.

“It’s the backbone of investigative journalism,” he said of legislation that allowed him to obtain 12,000 pages of records and databases from UC, the California Public Employees Retirement System, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

Byrne’s research determined that UC invested billions of dollars into risky private equity funds and companies in which the regents in charge of making investment policy held significant financial interests. The story led UC Regent Richard Blum, who is married to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, to step down from the investment committee. It got the state Senate ordering an audit of the regents’ financial practices and the regents promising to appoint a union member to sit on the investment advisory committee that oversees UC’s $60 billion-plus portfolio.

Byrne said he stumbled on the idea to do this series while giving a presentation at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism about an investigation of Feinstein’s 2001-05 conflict of interest, which was due to Blum’s stake in two major war contractors.

“I talked to the students about research techniques and public records,” Byrne said, recalling how protests against UC raising fees were going on at UC Berkeley at the time. “And a few students said, ‘Why don’t you look into Mr. Blum in his capacity as a regent?’ “

As Byrne dug into his research, he began to realize that UC had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in business deals that Blum Capital Partners was also investing in.

Byrne admits he reads thousands of pages of financial data that would make most people go crazy. “I’m like an idiot-savant. I enjoy reading them and finding the tidbits and putting them altogether.” (Sarah Phelan)

Citizens

ALICIA LEWIS AND ASHLI BRIGGS

Alicia Lewis and Ashli Briggs, recipients of the Citizens Award, had no idea that recovering documents from a Dumpster on the California State University, Stanislaus campus would land them at the center of a media spectacle.

When the university announced that GOP icon Sarah Palin had been selected to speak at the campus’ 50th anniversary celebration, Lewis and Briggs raised objections on Facebook while sunshine advocates filed requests under the California Public Records Act for a copy of Palin’s speaking contract.

Instead of honoring the information requests, CSU denied the existence of any such documents.

But Briggs and Lewis discovered portions of the elusive contract after getting word that something fishy was going on. The campus was shut down for a furlough day yet there was clearly activity inside one building — and people were pitching things into a Dumpster, an anonymous tipster told them. “We both kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s go down there,’ ” Briggs recalled.

Lewis said she never expected to find anything in the trash bin, but had to satisfy her curiosity. “We decided to pop open that lid,” she recalled. “It was overwhelming that there was actually important stuff in there.” Amid bags of shredded documents were pages four through nine of Palin’s contract, still intact.

State Sen. Leland Yee, who was among those seeking information, held a press conference with the two, and ultimately, the lucrative details of Palin’s contract were revealed.

“Anytime you put truth or information out there to be judged, you allow people to make their own assessments,” Lewis said. “And they can’t do that if the information isn’t out there.” (Rebecca Bowe)

Organization

LLOYD CHAPMAN AND THE AMERICAN SMALL BUSINESS LEAGUE

Small businesses make up 98 percent of all companies in the United States, employing the bulk of the population. But for decades, big, wealthy operations have been the recipients of federal money designed to go to small businesses.

For 20 years, Lloyd Chapman, president of the American Small Business League, has relentlessly worked to wrench from the government documents that reveal the diversion of billions of dollars a year in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 companies and other large businesses.

Chapman said he entered this line of work “out of necessity,” frustrated after watching behemoth defense corporation Lockheed Martin win a small business contract over a legitimate small operation.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, Chapman learned that 600 large businesses were listed in the federal government’s small businesses database. He succeeded in prompting a series of investigations and the exposure of billions of dollars in fraud and abuse in federal small business contacting programs. His work has spurred more than 500 news stories.

Chapman says the solution is simple: stop awarding small business contracts to large corporations.

“It’s deficit neutral,” he says. “No new taxes. Just stop giving contracts to Fortune 500 companies.” (Heather Mack)

Journalist

AMY STANDEN

Last summer, KQED reporter Amy Standen was fishing for a story when she started to uncover some startling information on methyl iodide, a pesticide that was recently approved by California regulators for agricultural use. Standen spoke with an advisory panel of eight scientists about the health risks of methyl iodide and the discrepancy between the exposure levels the state and the scientists believed were safe.

The scientists’ anger at the Department of Pesticide Regulation’s decision to green light its use prompted Standen to start combing the highly technical documents used in the deliberation process.

“All I was ever doing was to understand, how did this happen?” Standen said.

The DPR, a part of the California Environmental Protection Agency, resisted releasing documents, but Standen kept pushing. “The deliberative process exemption to the California Public Records Act was a particular obstacle,” she said. “It was used to exclude exactly the sorts of documents that would have answered the central question: how were those exposure levels reached?”

She eventually was able to review the documents, noting that the opposition to it made “what we did get all the more valuable.”

Thanks to the evidence Standen uncovered, showing potential safety risk of exposure to methyl iodide and how the agency rejected the advice of its own scientists, environmental groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the approval. (Carly Nairn)

News Media

ASSOCIATE PRESS SACRAMENTO BUREAU

November was an especially demanding election season for the four reporters at the Sacramento bureau of the Associated Press. In addition to the reporting on day-to-day activities in the state Capitol, they were charged with making sense of a variety of statewide campaigns. And at the same time, Judy Lin, Don Thompson, Juliet Williams, and Samantha Young worked as team to release a series of remarkable stories on the secretive practices of the state Legislature.

“We made the open records issue and sunshine issues a top priority and [this recognition] is the result of that,” Williams said. “Open records and freedom of information are a tenet of journalism and something we strive for all the time.”

When the Legislature passed the Public Records Act, it exempted itself. So the four reporters pressed public officials over the secret records and their tendency to hold closed meetings. Lin and Williams attempted to gain entry to a private lunch called by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for all 120 lawmakers to discuss solutions for the state’s profound challenges. The fallout of the refusal led to the governor’s pledge to keep future meetings open. Other stories by Young highlighted the murky compliance with public records requests. Thompson probed the excessive use of public funds by lawmakers on themselves.

Sacramento bureau editor Tom Verdin told us: “The credit goes to the reporters. I am fortunate to have a really strong and dedicated crew.” (Asaf Shalev)

Beverly Kees Educator Award

STEVE O’DONOGHUE

It’s not an easy job to train the next generation of journalists. Media professionals have seen the number of available jobs slashed in the last decade, along with salary levels. School newspapers have been shuttered by budget cuts and censored by overreaching administrators.

But a few notable educators have persevered, infusing thousands of young people with the desire to keep the populace informed. Steve O’Donoghue has devoted his life to that task, teaching for 33 years in Oakland, mostly at Fremont High School, where he founded the Media Academy and was the advisor to the student yearbook, newspaper, and magazine programs, as well as teaching media courses.

“I had seen scholastic journalism programs shrink in the schools and traditional organizations that had supported advisers and students shrivel up,” O’Donoghue told the Columbia Scholastic Press Association in 2008, when he received an award for his lifetime of work.

He added: “The world of scholastic journalism that had embraced me when I was a new teacher, assigned to a subject I had no training or preparation in, was gone. At the same time, I knew there was a greater awareness of the struggles of journalism in the schools on the part of the profession, and more resources to train and assist advisers than ever before.”

After retiring from classroom teaching in 2004, O’Donoghue worked at the Center for the Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University, his alma mater. He also served on the Journalism Education Association’s board in Northern California for many years and helped create JEA’s national curriculum for mentoring journalism students. (Steven T. Jones)

Electronic Access

HOWARD MINTZ AND JULIA PRODIS

San Jose Mercury News legal affairs reporter Howard Mintz and crime reporter Julia Prodis won this award for their use of blogs and Twitter in court — an area where public access has been reduced thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision to limit cameras in courthouse hallways and inside courtrooms.

“There’s an advantage when there are no cameras — there’s that much more craving for information,” Prodis said, noting that Mintz kick-started the Mercury News’ new media effort when he launched a blog in 2010 providing daily coverage of the federal challenge to the controversial Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

“Howard’s blog got us started, and mine took us to a more sensational level,” Prodis said. At one point, Prodis wrote 70 blog posts in one day after she got permission from a judge to cover a love-triangle/murder-for hire case that lasted two months and eventually found Los Gatos businessman Paul Garcia, gunman Lucio Estrada, and Miguel Chaidez guilty of murdering restaurateur Mark Achilli.

“The judge approved, but only if we caused no distraction to the jury,” Prodis recalled, adding that she was concerned that a laptop keyboard would make keyboard sounds. “So it was really great that one of our managers went to Fry’s, bought an iPad, and handed it to me.”

The D.A.’s office followed her blog, as did the family of the accused. “A community of people who never spoke to each other in the courtroom became fully engaged on the blog,” she said.

“People want immediacy,” she added. “Especially in the courts — they want something right now.” (Sarah Phelan)

SPJ Awards dinner It’s not too late to purchase tickets for the March 16 James Madison Freedom of Information Awards banquet in San Francisco. For more information, visit spjnorcal.org/blog and scroll to “26th Annual James Madison Freedom of Information Awards.”

Behind the tweets

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 15, 2011

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steve@sfbg.com

A Guardian review of the voluminous e-mails and other public records behind the proposed Mid-Market tax exclusion zone shows how public officials and private power brokers promised millions of dollars in benefits to Twitter and greatly expanded the tax-exclusion zone to unrelated properties with little explanation, concern over impacts, or understanding of how it would affect city finances.

The result was a proposal that could cost the cash-strapped city more than $17 million — a cost that even the city’s fairly conservative economist Ted Egan told the Guardian isn’t justified for many of the properties that were included in the proposal, particularly the large commercial office buildings along Market Street and the small businesses in the Tenderloin.

“It’s giving taxes away to properties that are going to fill up anyway,” said Egan, who recommended several changes to lessen the proposal’s cost, even though he supports giving a tax break to Twitter and thinks the deal will be a net positive if it stimulates business development as much as its backers hope.

The proposal would exempt companies in Mid-Market and the Tenderloin from paying the city’s 1.5 percent business payroll tax on any new jobs they create for six years. It was sweetened even more for Twitter — city officials promised the company a new Muni line, police foot patrols, and various other tax credits and exemptions to improve Twitter’s cash flow, the documents show.

The Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development worked almost full-time on the deal for several months to keep Twitter from following through on its threat to leave town. Indeed, OEWD staffers don’t even acknowledge that the tax break is a loss to city coffers, arguing the city would lose money if Twitter leaves and keeping the company here will increase property taxes and rents in the Mid-Market area.

Yet there is little in the documents to indicate how real that threat is or whether the legislation will convince the company to stay here, and Twitter hasn’t responded to inquires from the Guardian or other media outlets.

Egan pointed to a reason for Twitter to leave that hasn’t been part of the public discussion to date. The city’s payroll tax applies to stock options — and Twitter would be on the hook for as much as $40 million in taxes if the company goes public. But he said that could be addressed more directly without the broader giveaway.

OEWD head Jennifer Matz said she trusts Twitter executives and “they are out the door if we don’t do this.” She also said she disagrees with Egan that the city is giving away more than it needs to and “there is no question in my mind it will bare its fruits.”

Yet she also acknowledged the difficult precedent this deal is setting and said she’s already fielded regular calls from other companies asking for their tax break. “I’ve had multiple conversations like that,” she said. “We tell the other businesses, ‘we’re sorry.'”

Not everyone shares her faith in the power of tax breaks, with progressives and the city’s biggest public employee union opposing the deal. Critics have said Twitter is a rich company that is essentially trying to shake down city taxpayers, despite previous assurances to remain here. After then-Mayor Gavin Newsom made one of many visits to the company on March 10, 2009, Twitter officials wrote on the company blog, “We assured Mayor Newsom that as Twitter grows, we’ll continue to keep our headquarters here in San Francisco.”

That all changed the next year as Twitter officials looked to expand and relocate into the SF Mart building at Market and Ninth streets.

“OEWD staff has been actively engaged with Twitter since February of 2009,” Matz wrote in a Jan. 18 memo to Sup. Jane Kim soliciting her support for the tax breaks.

But it wasn’t until October 2010 that records show the deal really taking shape. According to memos from Matz, Twitter CFO Ali Rowghani met with Newsom and told him that the company’s top choice for a new headquarters location was SF Mart (which also happened to be where Newsom’s campaign for lieutenant governor was headquartered at a discounted rent) but Twitter’s concerns were “public safety, transportation, neighborhood conditions, [and] cost.”

The memos show Newsom returned to Twitter on Oct. 29 with his chief of staff, Steve Kawa, Police Chief Jeff Godown (then assistant chief), and Matz — promising not just the payroll tax break and enterprise zone tax credits but 18 hours a day of police foot patrols in the area and the creation of a new Muni express line, 47A, between the Caltrain Station and the Twitter headquarters.

None of those costs are being figured into the deal. Matz said the new Muni line was a service restoration that has already been approved but not yet funded, and that the foot patrols would simply be absorbed into the police budget. These are just a few of the many guesstimates and unaccounted for costs in this highly complex deal.

EXPANDING THE GIVEAWAY

Throughout the month of January, new properties kept getting added to the district by various people, from OEWD staffers to Sup. Jane Kim — who greatly expanded the district and refuses to answer Guardian questions about why — and Randy Shaw, who runs the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and the Beyond Chron blog and has been a vocal tax-break supporter.

“Payroll tax thing is going to happen and Randy Shaw wants us to add the Uptown Tenderloin Historic District!” OEWD’s Amy Cohen wrote on Feb. 2 to a real estate consultant with the Northern California Community Loan Fund.

None of the requests for expanding the tax exclusion zone included an explanation of why that property should be in — and in each case they were added to the area without question. The only possible exception was when the Warfield Building was added Jan. 7 after OEWD learned Burning Man was seeking to rent headquarters space there. Yet Burning Man founder Larry Harvey told us it planned to move to mid-Market with or without the tax break, and that it is now negotiating for a different building, although the Warfield remains in the tax exclusion district.

“Can you add 875 Stevenson to the boundaries and send the revised map? Thx,” one OEWD staffer wrote to another on Jan. 13.

“I want to add one more area: I want to go halfway down the block between Fifth and Sixth grabbing everything heading east up to the Cityplace properties,” Matz wrote to another OEWD staffer on Jan. 14.

New properties were being added right up to the point that the legislation was introduced on Feb. 9. The day before, Shaw wrote to Matz and OEWD’s Amy Cohen telling them that the owner of the Hastings Law School garage “should get the exemption if he thinks it might help,” and that property was added. Cohen then gave Shaw credit in an e-mail to UC Hastings CFO David Seward: “We’re going to put your properties in. Randy is good with it!”

Even some OEWD staffers seemed surprised that the tax exemption area had grown so far beyond its original borders. “Wow, when did the entire TL get thrown in?” OEWD Project Manager Lisa Pagan wrote to Cohen in a Feb. 8 e-mail.

But Matz defended the expansion and said it wasn’t as willy-nilly as it appears. “There was a lot more conversation than was reflected in those e-mails,” she told us. “The boundaries evolved due to more thorough thinking.”

Yet she acknowledged it’s tough for skeptics of the deal to determine why properties were included, whether political favoritism played a role, or who stands to benefit from the decisions.

As OEWD staff prepared memos for the mayor and supervisors on Jan. 13, they also discussed talking points for the media and how to share credit for those outside City Hall. As Cohen wrote to another OEWD staffer, “Randy Shaw — we are crediting him with coming up with the idea. He told me he talked to a bunch of people, including supervisors, and got lukewarm reception.”

That assessment runs contrary to how proponents have publicly claimed the idea has enthusiastic support in City Hall. Indeed, it wasn’t until Egan’s report came out one day before the first public hearing that proponents of the deal started discussing why they had expanded the boundaries so far.

QUESTION OF ALLEGIANCE

For those who aren’t simply fiscal conservatives who automatically support corporate tax breaks, the wisdom of this deal relies on whether people believe Twitter is headed to Brisbane if its demands aren’t met.

“The real question is do you believe Twitter is leaving if they don’t get this,” Egan said. “It’s impossible to say.”

He’s convinced that the high stock option price tag would be enough to cause most companies to leave town. But OEWD seems to just take corporate claims at face value, as it did when Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said he needed $128 million in public subsidies to hold the America’s Cup boat race here (see “The biggest fish,” Nov. 30, 2010) only to later agree to a greatly reduced public subsidy.

Even the two supervisors who are sponsoring the legislation, Kim and Board President David Chiu, don’t seem to have had the opportunity to assess the deal free of OEWD’s advocacy for a company that has refused to share any financial records with the city.

Matz set up phone conversations between Twitter’s Rowghani and Chiu and Kim on Jan. 21, sending the two supervisors an e-mail that day recommending they ask three questions of Twitter: why the company needs the tax break, whether it would commit to keeping its entire headquarters here, and what community partnerships it would commit to.

She then sent Rowghani an e-mail that same day letting him know what the supervisors would be asking and what they wanted to hear. Matz told him both supervisors support the deal “but need to hear from you how and why payroll taxes moves the needle for you.”

Matz told us she sees nothing wrong with coaching Twitter.

“It was more like facilitating a first date between friends,” Matz said of sharing information with Twitter. “I was simply trying to facilitate a productive conversation.”

Drafts of a community benefits package were watered down to please Twitter, the documents show. Language claiming that Twitter will try to hire more San Franciscans who don’t have four-year college degrees became a pledge to work with city officials on “a mutually agreeable program to train” those individuals.

In the end, even Matz admits that the community benefits agreement is too weak and vague: “We want to work with them in making that stronger,” she said.

Shaw, the records show, functioned almost as a de facto member of the OEWD staff, strategizing with officials while writing articles in Beyond Chron.org that tried to retain a thin veneer of journalistic objectivity, such as “Landmark Measure Would Revitalize SF’s Mid-Market and Upper Tenderloin Area,” which he wrote and forwarded to Matz on Feb. 8.

“Article is perfect. This is game-changing, largely for the signal it sends about the city’s commitment to improving the area,” she wrote in response.

FACTS AND FICTIONS

In addressing progressive critics of the deal, Kim said she greatly improved the proposal before agreeing to sponsor the legislation, insisting that its duration be reduced from eight years to six, its boundaries be expanded, and the payroll tax exclusion be limited to new jobs that a company creates rather than all its employees.

Yet the documents show that OEWD had been developing two options for the legislation, total jobs and “net new jobs,” since well before Kim got involved.

The OEWD also sold the deal to supervisors and the public during the month of January with figures it couldn’t support — such as repeatedly claiming that the creation of 300 jobs at Twitter would create 400 additional jobs and $174 million in economic activity. Yet when the OEWD finally checked those figures with Egan on Feb. 2, he wrote that “it is only 100 additional jobs” and “not sure where you get $290,000” as the economic value per job.

Yet for the OEWD and the other proponents of this deal, the record shows a determination to get the deal done — and then make it sound good. “Make the narrative as strong as possible,” Cohen wrote to Matz on Feb. 1, passing on the concerns expressed by Kim’s office. “Ultimately, we need to be able to show that this is not a net loss, it is a net gain.”

But behind the scenes, the actual cost to taxpayers of retaining Twitter is being obscured by a variety of financial mechanisms and budget decisions by city departments.

Even Kim’s shortening of the program brought new demands by Twitter. In a Feb. 9 e-mail from Matz to Chiu and Kim, she wrote, “Twitter told me that they agreed that the six-year time frame works only if 1) their short term cash flow issues are addressed and 2) the exemption for stock options is extended to eight years.” So Matz said she would “noodle on other financial mechanisms, including Mills Act Historic Tax Credit and New Market Tax Credits.”

The public won’t get a chance to weigh in on these details. On Feb. 4, when an OEWD staffer wrote to Matz that the City Attorney’s Office recommended the legislation call for another public hearing after OEWD develops rules and regulations for implementing the policy, Matz replied simply, “No!”

The song of Ghetto Girl

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 15, 2011

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OPINION Editor’s note: POOR Magazine, one of my favorite publications, holds an annual benefit on Valentine’s Day featuring a “Battle of ALL the Sexes” poetry slam. This year’s event, hosted by Alexandra Byerly, had a mixed-martial arts theme and was held in an eight-foot cage built by artist Will Steel in the Submission Gallery in the Mission District. Judges were La Mesha Irizarry, Devorah Major and Laure McElroy. I agreed to publish the first- place winner, which follows. Find the second and third place winners on sfbg.com on the Politics blog. (Tim Redmond)

By Jewnbug

(this Battle came from the battle: Educated Ghetto Gurl vs. The Society)

Educated ghetto gurrl

born in a place

conditioned for death

raised on government cheese

parents targeted to be dope feens

houseless n hungry

society wants me to be ignorant

but ain’t no dummy

got wize to tha mizeducation

of yo surveillance

projects

public skools

prizions

U.S. military enlistings

never assimilating or listening

stay thug life

resisting

rising to tha top

singing ghetto supastar!

Consciousness

cultivated underground

can’t afford yo brand name labels

making my fashion talk of tha town

rebel with a cause

speaking out against

yo policies, protocalls, laws

prohibited my native tongue

pigeon

slang

Ebonics

U ain’t my god

n I ain’t yo son

speaking too loud too fast

causing lyrical whiplash

I smash on u

U thinking u more dignified

cuz I rock a shoelace fo a belt on sum jeans

please!

U put me down

then capitalize on my swagger

like, “that’s hella ghetto”

I don’t play tho

no diplomatic tactful rage

straight up in yo face

u label me

trouble maker

that’s code for

truth teller

fo real for real

no faker

I know tru essence of success

despite the mess

of yo civilized vest

my interest to do more then survive

manifest

came when I held my head high

with no shame

yea I’m from the ghetto

n I’m doing big thangs

educated ghetto gurrl

she was kung fu fighting

she was always writing

educated ghetto gurrl

puttin’ whole society on trial

n bringing them to their knees

Unregistered lobbyist

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 15, 2011

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tredmond@sfbg.com

In 2007 and 2008, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. paid former Mayor Willie Brown a total of $480,000 for consulting work. Since Brown has never been utility lawyer, it’s almost certain that money has bought political advice and access.

Brown is also working for the owners of the Fairmont Hotel, which wants to tear down one of its towers and build as many as 180 luxury condos.

His public affairs institute shares office space with one of the most powerful lobbying firms in town. He meets with or talks regularly with the mayor and members of the Board of Supervisors.

Yet unlike dozens of others who seek to influence public policy for hire, Brown is not registered as a lobbyist at City Hall.

On the surface, it’s a fairly modest issue — all Brown would have to do to comply with the letter and spirit of the city’s law is to fill out a form, list his clients, and reveal which officials he’s been talking to. It would take him 10 minutes.

But the fact that someone who is widely acknowledged to be among the most influential power brokers in San Francisco refuses to disclose whom he’s working for leaves city officials and the public in the dark — and raises a long list of questions about the effectiveness of the city’s ethics laws.

There’s a reason city law requires people who seek to influence city officials for money to disclose what they’re up to. When elected officials, commissioners, or department heads meet with advocates, they need to know who’s paying the bills. If, for example, Sup. Jane Kim has breakfast with Brown (which Brown himself reported on in a recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle), she needs to know: Does he have a client with an agenda? If he asks her to meet with someone, is he just looking out for the interests of the city — or is he pushing a paid special interest?

When Brown has dinner with Mayor Ed Lee (as he did several weeks ago) the voters need to know: Is this dinner companion pushing the mayor to make policy decisions that might help a private interest?

THE RULES

The definition of “lobbyist” in city law is designed to avoid putting special requirements on advocates who push issues on their own or for purely political reasons. A neighborhood activist pushing for a stop sign or better police patrols doesn’t have to register. Neither does a restaurant owner looking for a permit to put tables on the street. The only people who have to register are those who represent a client who pays them more than $3,000 in any given three-month period.

Lawyers are exempt if they’re contacting city officials purely about specific pending litigation or claims. Labor leaders are exempt if they’re talking about wages or benefits for their union members.

The requirements aren’t onerous. Lobbyists simply disclose their clients, the issues they’re working on, the city officials they have contacted, and any campaign contributions they’ve made.

There’s no doubt Brown meets the financial threshold in at least one instance. Documents on file with the state Public Utilities Commission show that PG&E paid him $280,000 in 2007 and almost $200,000 in 2008. And although Brown is a lawyer, there’s no indication that he is representing PG&E in any litigation against the city.

On the other hand, PG&E is fighting hard to derail the city’s community choice aggregation program. Is Brown part of that effort? There’s no way to know.

It’s clear he talks to local officials regularly. Most members of the Board of Supervisors we contacted said they had talked to Brown at some point in the past year. “He called me to ask how he could help with the local hire legislation,” Sup. John Avalos told us. “I told him he could call (then-Sup.) Bevan Dufty. He said he would, but I don’t know if it ever happened.” Sup. Sean Elsbernd told us he speaks to Brown about “the state of local political dynamics,” but said he can’t remember being lobbied on any particular issue.

Insiders say that’s typical — Brown rarely lets anyone know exactly what his interests are. “The talent of Willie is his ability to create plausible deniability,” one city official, who asked not to be named, told us.

But when Brown is involved, things have a funny way of happening. Take the Fairmont Hotel.

FRONT OF THE LINE

The Fairmont’s owners, who include the Saudi royal family and a group of American investors, want to tear down one of the hotel’s towers, eliminate several hundred hotel rooms, and replace them with high-end condominiums. That requires a city permit — legislation by former Sup. Aaron Peskin limits the number of hotel rooms that can be converted to condos and requires applicants to submit to a lottery for the right to convert.

The Fairmont applied for a permit in 2009, and won tentative approval. But in October 2010, the Planning Commission refused to certify the project’s environmental impact report. With no valid EIR, the permits expired, meaning the hotel would have to go back and reenter the lottery, with no guarantee of success.

So the Fairmont owners are seeking special legislation that would allow them to submit a new EIR without going to the back of the line — in essence, an exemption from the lottery. So far there’s no champion on the Board of Supervisors, and the hotel workers union has been dubious about the project, fearing it will cost union jobs in the long run.

But early in March, Mayor Lee quietly submitted his own legislation to the board, offering the Fairmont everything the owners want.

Who’s working for the owners? Willie Brown.

Bill Oberndorf, part of the local ownership group, told us Brown was an “advisor” to the project. “Nobody in the city has more knowledge about how to get things done than Mayor Brown,” he said.

So did Brown talk to Lee before the mayor introduced his Fairmont bill? And isn’t that a valid question? At press time, Lee’s office hadn’t responded to my questions. But if Brown was a registered lobbyist, he’d have to report that information.

Who else are Brown’s clients? Since he doesn’t register, there’s no list. But there are some clues.

For example, the headquarters of the Willie Brown Institute is situated at One Market Plaza, Suite 2250. That’s the same address as Platinum Advisors, the high-powered lobbying firm founded by Darius Anderson. Among the firm’s clients: AECOM, the engineering and construction giant, which has a $147 million contract on the Chinatown subway project; PG&E; and Sutter Health, which wants to build a $1 billion hospital on Van Ness Avenue.

Others who lobby regularly at City Hall don’t always register. Rob Black, who works for the Chamber of Commerce, is a constant presence.

Black told us the chamber used to be considered a “registered lobby entity” that was required to report all contacts with public officials and the issue involved. But the Board of Supervisors changed that law last year, requiring lobbyist registration only from individuals who are paid at least $3,000 per quarter for lobbying. Furthermore, the definition of lobbying doesn’t include attending or speaking at public hearings or writing letters. So while the SF Chamber’s Black, Steve Falk, and Jim Lazarus all lobby city officials, Black said, none have exceeded that threshold. “If we hit the monetary threshold, we’ll start filing individually,” he said.

The fact that Brown is a lawyer doesn’t excuse him from registering, said Ethics Commission director John St. Croix “If someone is paid specifically to lobby government, they should register,” St. Croix said.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi told us that the city needs to take a look at the lobbyist registration law to make sure that everyone who has private interests is properly registered.

Elsbernd said that others — particularly labor leaders and union staffers — also regularly lobby but don’t register. And while the law may allow them to skate underneath (like Black), there’s a huge difference between, say, Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson appearing at City Hall and Brown meeting with city officials.

When Paulson appears, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind whom he represents. The same could be said of Black. Although the chamber has many members, it’s clear that he’s pushing the interests of the big-business community.

On the other hand, Ken Cleaveland, public affairs director of the Building Owners and Managers Association, is duly registered with the Ethics Commission.

Brown — as is his typical practice — didn’t return my calls seeking comment. But by flouting the rules, he’s able to operate completely behind the scenes, influencing policy decisions in secrecy, with no accountability whatsoever. That’s a violation of the exact reason the lobbyist registration laws exist.

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 15, 2011

16

tredmond@sfbg.com

The numbers in the Twitter tax-break deal just keep getting bigger. And the politics keep getting stranger.

City Editor Steven T. Jones went through hundreds of pages of city records on the Twitter negotiations; the results of his investigation are in this issue.

But two elements jumped out at me right away. One is that San Francisco officials seem be really bad at negotiating with private companies. It’s now clear that billionaire Oracle CEO Larry Ellison took the city to the cleaners on the America’s Cup deal, demanding (and getting) millions of dollars in extra concessions that the Board of Supervisors never approved. And talks with Twitter aren’t a whole lot better.

Then there’s the size of the tax break.

When this was first presented, proponents argued that the city’s 1.5 percent payroll tax would discourage Twitter from staying in town and expanding its workforce. I’ve always said that’s ridiculous; the tax amounts to such a modest business expense that no honest corporate executive would ever say it was a factor in a hiring or relocation decision.

Ah, but that’s not what’s really going on here. The documents show that Twitter isn’t just worried about the annual payroll tax. It’s all about what happens when the company goes public — and many of its employees become very, very rich.

See, the city’s payroll tax also applies to stock options. If, as city economist Ted Egan estimates, Twitter winds up after its initial public offering with a market capitalization of $12 billion (entirely possible), and 25 percent of that money goes to employees as stock options (entirely possible), then the Twitterites (350 or so now and maybe another 300 in a few years) will walk away (after costs) with $2.7 billion.

That’s about $7.7 million for each current employee — although the folks at the top will get a whole lot more than that.

So several hundred instant multimillionaires and possibly a couple of instant billionaires. People who will vault into the income and wealth bracket that has been radically undertaxed in this country for many years.

For the $12 billion company, it also means a payroll tax liability of $40 million. And that’s got Twitter all a-twitter.

Let’s be honest here: A number like that is not chump change, and might convince a CEO to leave town. But it’s also politically tricky. Who wants to go out there and argue that a company that rich, with all those rich employees, can’t pay taxes on its windfall?

The payroll tax exemption is supposed to create jobs. This is another league altogether — and it has nothing to do with job creation.

So let’s have that discussion, shall we? Forget the puny tax on weekly payroll and this rapidly-growing tax-free zone in the Tenderloin. Cut to the chase: should San Francisco exempt Twitter from the IPO stock options tax? That, at least, is worth fighting about.

The lobbyist loophole

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 15, 2011

1

EDITORIAL As the stories in this issue show, open government laws are critical to democracy. Without the city’s sunshine law, we wouldn’t know how the proposal to give Twitter a tax break ballooned into a major giveaway. Without the sunshine laws, Tim Crews, the embattled publisher of the Sacramento Valley Mirror, wouldn’t have been able to use his small paper to hold public officials accountable.

That’s why the laws on the books need to be enforced — and sometimes strengthened. One example in San Francisco is the lobbyist registration requirement.

Here’s the problem: Former Mayor Willie Brown, who now works for at least two major outfits with business before City Hall. As Tim Redmond reports on page 10, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. paid Brown some $480,000 in 2007 and 2008. And although Brown is a lawyer, nobody can honestly believe that was for legal work. He was clearly paid to give the embattled utility political advice and to pull political strings. And PG&E has major interests at City Hall — San Francisco is trying to set up a community choice aggregation system that PG&E opposes, and (of course) the utility has spent almost 90 years trying to block public power in this town. There are dozens of other city issues, from facility safety to the franchise fee, that affect PG&E’s bottom line.

Has Brown tried to influence city officials on behalf of the utility? The public has no way to know. By law, any individual who lobbies for a private client (and earns more than $3,000 a quarter doing so) has to register with the Ethics Commission, reveal his or her clients, and report on all contacts with city officials. Brown has never done that.

Brown also works for the owners of the Fairmont Hotel, who want the right to convert hotel rooms to condos. Mayor Ed Lee just submitted legislation giving the hoteliers what they want, and Brown is Lee’s political mentor. Connection?

The public has a right to know who’s trying to do what deals behind closed doors; that’s why the city has a lobbyist registration law. The voters have a right to know whether lobbyists are giving money to elected officials; that’s why the law requires registered lobbyists to itemize those contributions. But it’s not always honored — and as Brown shows, it can be openly defied. And nothing happens.

Part of the problem is that the Ethics Commission has been far too lax in pursuing enforcement of the laws. The agency lacks the resources to do serious investigations. As a result, its director John St. Croix told us, all the staff can do is respond to complaints. But even with the limited money it has, the commission can do a lot more. Public hearings on the failures of lobbyist registration and campaign contribution reporting would be a good first step. And how hard would it be to cross-check campaign filings with lobbyist filings to see which lobbyists don’t properly report their contributions? A simple computer program could do that in a few minutes.

The commission also needs to do a better job making its funding case to the supervisors. The utter lack of serious enforcement of laws involving powerful interests doesn’t instill confidence in the agency.

But the law is also vague in parts, and the supervisors need to fix it. A clearer definition of “lobbyist” is a clear mandate. And enforcement needs to be increased. Willful violation of the state’s Political Reform Act is a misdemeanor crime. Violating the city’s lobbyist law should be too.

Alerts

Andrew Lam

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March 15, 2011

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WEDNESDAY 16

Anarchist salon and potluck

Get together with other anticapitalist and establishment-challenging folk at this month’s anarchist salon, a monthly gathering and conversation followed by a potluck social. This month’s focus is on radical mental health and wellness.

7–-9:30 p.m., $2–$5 suggested donation

Station 40

3030B 16th St., SF

Screening plus potluck

Enjoy a special screening of A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, an alarming documentary about the pervasiveness of crude oil in our everyday lives — from the products we buy to the food we eat.

7:30–9:30 p.m., $5 suggested donation

Humanist Hall

390 27th St., Berk.

www.humanisthall.org

THURSDAY 17

International media conference opener

The UC Berkeley two-day conference “Crossing Boundaries” looks at new media and the shape of international news in this age of Internet and cell phone reporting. Speakers include Alan McClain of WikiLeaks, Joaquin Alvarado of American Public Media, and many more. Conference continues on March 18. Check the website for schedule.

9 a.m.–7 p.m., $150–$250

Sutardja Hall

UC Campus, Berk.

www.crossongboundaries2011.org

FRIDAY 18

Amnesty International conference opener

Celebrate 50 years of high-impact activism by Amnesty International with an all-weekend event featuring an array of notable guests including Joan Baez, Steve Earle, Christy Turlington Burns, Jahi, and many more — and that’s just day one. Conference continues March 19 and 20. Check the website for schedule.

8 a.m.–5 p.m., $40–$125

Fairmont Hotel

950 Mason, SF

(202) 509-8194

www.amnestyusa.org

SATURDAY 19

Girls rock!

Join Bay Area Girls Rock Camp, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering girls through music, and its after-school program participants for a rockin’ recital spotlighting the culmination of 10 weeks’ worth of hard work. Fifty-five gals in 12 bands showcase their original songs written at the camp. Enter the drawing for an extra $5 for a chance to win sweet new ax — a cherry red Gretsch Electromatic guitar. Proceeds go to ensure that the after school program continues to rock on.

1–3 p.m., $10 suggested donation

Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts

1428 Alice, Oakl.

www.bayareagirlsrockcamp.org

Antiwar demonstration

Protest the war in Iraq on the eighth anniversary of the occupation. Gather at the U.N. Plaza with your signs and radical spirit, then march to two boycotted hotels and demand an end to the “war” on working people.

Noon– 4 p.m., free

UN Plaza

Seventh and Market, SF

www.answersf.org

Facebook: National Day of Action Against the Wars

MONDAY 21

World Water Day

Wise up, get down, and take action — learn more about local and global water issues with live music, live painting, dance performances, spoken word, and more. Proceeds benefit water projects in the Bay Area and Kenya.

6:30–9:30 p.m., $10–$15

The New Parish

579 18th St., Oakl.

www.baylaurelproductions.com

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

The dead fish plan

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 8, 2011

0

By Patrick Porgans

news@sfbg.com

The recently formed Delta Stewardship Council, charged with protecting the San Francisco-San Joaquin Delta Estuary, released a draft report in February with more bad news about the possible fate of aquatic species.

A number of the fish, which have been the focus of national attention, are already listed as threatened or endangered under the provision of the Endangered Species Act.

This preliminary finding comes after more than $10 billion has been expended over the course of a decade by federal and state officials — who have insisted that their plans would not only restore estuary fisheries but would double the populations of endangered species such as salmon.

But CALFED — the joint federal/state effort — failed to restore fish populations, and now the state says some species may never recover. So it’s hard to have a lot of confidence in the new agency.

The draft report was released by DSC’s executive officer, Joe Grindstaff, former director of CALFED’s Bay-Delta program. At one point, in 2007, Grindstaff acknowledged: “Fundamentally, the system we designed didn’t work.”

That’s an understatement. Tens of millions of fish have been killed by government-operated projects pumping and exporting water from the delta. More than 50 million fish were considered “salvaged” — saved from the pumps — but millions of them also wound up dead. And there are tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, more that are unaccounted for.

Ironically, this unfathomable loss occurred while officials were engaged in several failed fish-doubling plans that spanned decades, cost the public billions of dollars in borrowed money, and contributed the California’s deficit-ridden budget crisis.

And now there’s a new plan, crafted by the same people who bungled the last one. It’s projected to cost as much as $80 billion and take another 90 years to complete.

According to the draft plan, “the funding needed … is large. Capital expenditures required for the delta in the next 10 to 15 years could range from $12 billion to $24 billion, with a high estimate of $80 billion. The annual operating costs of the … council are unknown.”

We’ve been here before. Critics argued from the inception of CALFED that it was doomed to fail because, like the new council, it was composed of many of the same agencies that caused the estuary to become imperiled. And it has, in fact, failed. When I called to find out its status, Eric Alvarez, a spokesperson for the new delta council, responded that CALFED “no longer exists in the conventional sense. It does not have a staff or a location.”

The first draft report of the new council provides some key preliminary findings, all of which ignore the essence of the problem.

First, it states that “California’s total water supply is oversubscribed. California regularly uses more water annually than is provided by nature.” It’s true that California’s water resources are oversubscribed — but that’s the result of the government’s failure to prudently appropriate the water we have.

Next it says, “California’s water supply is increasingly volatile” — a fact that has been made worse by mismanagement.

“Even with substantial ecosystem restoration efforts, some native species may not survive,” it adds, noting that “there is no comprehensive state or regional emergency response plan for the delta.” It doesn’t mention that state officials have had 50 years to come up with such a plan, and have consistently failed.

“Even with substantial restoration efforts, some native species may not survive,” the plan states. “Expert opinion suggests that some stressors are beyond our control and the system may have already changed so much that some species are living on the edge…. In addition, habitat conditions for some species may get worse before they improve.”

That’s an astonishing admission coming, in effect, from the same government agencies that once promised they would double fish populations by the year 2002.

The fact is that anadromous fish and other pelagic species populations, which depend on the delta estuary, have reached alarming all-time lows.

How did the salmonid and other endangered species reach what may be the point of no return? It’s simple — the delta pumps that send water south to irrigate arid land, as approved by CALFED, are by their very nature fish- killers.

According to data from the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG), from 1984 through 2006 an estimated 22 million fish were killed at the State Water Project’s Delta pumping facilities alone. That works out to an annual average of nearly 1 million fish killed as a result of SWP’s water exports from the delta.

And that’s just one pump. The federal Central Valley Project, which also sucks up delta water, provides estimates of federally-listed Chinook salmon and steelhead loss, as well as estimates for salvage rates of delta smelt, Sacramento splittail, and longfin smelt.

Data obtained from government sources indicate that from the period of 1980 through 2002, 54 million fish were salvaged from the SWP Skinner Fish Facility and the federal project’s Tracy Fish Facility. That averages out to 2.4 million salvaged fish, or five per minute, 365 days per year.

What happens to the salvaged fish? Nobody knows for sure. The DFG recently disclosed that it has never conducted a quantitative analysis or study on the topic.

The numbers would not be good. The salvaged fish are placed in tanker trucks and transported from the pumping facilities and dumped back into designated locations in the delta, where eagerly awaiting predators have a daily feeding frenzy. According to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife 2008 report, “salvaged” Delta smelt, which in some years ranged as high as 5 million, are typically written off as dead.

Ironically, in all that time the responsible officials have yet to be held legally accountable for even one dead fish.

Gascon’s conflict

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 8, 2011

2

EDITORIAL There’s a good reason that not too many police chiefs become district attorneys. Obviously, not a lot of cops have law degrees, but it goes beyond that. The district attorney is supposed to monitor the police, to investigate criminal behavior by cops, to make sure the people out on the streets aren’t doing anything that will screw up cases in court.

But that didn’t bother former Mayor Gavin Newsom (who apparently doesn’t think that conflict-of-interest statutes apply to him). Newsom appointed Gascón to the D.A.’s job despite some serious concerns about the operations of the Police Department — and problems at the SFPD have blown up yet again. Four times in the past two weeks, Public Defender Jeff Adachi has released videotapes showing undercover cops entering residential hotel rooms without a warrant. The videos appear to contradict the information that the officers presented in their written reports, and the pattern of conduct has caused interim Chief Jeff Godown to suspend the entire undercover narcotics unit at Southern Station.

It’s also caused the District Attorney’s Office to undertake an investigation. And no matter what comes out of that inquiry, it will be fatally tainted by the fact that Gascón is, in effect, investigating his own operation.

Gascón hired Godown, who came from Los Angeles. He was, until just three months ago, in charge of the department that’s apparently running amok. The problems that have surfaced didn’t just emerge the day Gascón left; for all practical purposes, they are his problems, coming from his department, growing and festering under his watch.

A serious investigation would not only look at the actions of this one handful of officers, but at the command structure and climate that allowed this sort of behavior to become routine. It would look at the chain of command all the way to the top — that is, to the chief. To Gascón.

The D.A.’s office can’t possibly get this right. If Gascón finds wrongdoing on the part of these particular officers, the officers will no doubt seek to have the investigation and any prosecution set aside on the grounds that the former chief was a conflict. If he finds no wrongdoing, it will look like a cover-up.

This is only the first of what could be a long series of conflict problems with Gascón’s office. Put simply: the former chief can’t effectively monitor the police department, particularly if there are allegations of misconduct that come from the era when he was in charge.

There’s no easy way around this. Gascón could (and probably should) recuse himself and his office, and ask the attorney general to conduct the investigation. But the A.G.’s office doesn’t have a great track record on taking over local cases like these. His only real alternative is to hire an independent outsider — the equivalent of a special prosecutor — to handle all cases involving the police department. That would be expensive, but it’s the result of the unfortunate, highly unusual situation that Newsom and Gascón created.

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 8, 2011

1

Tredmond@sfbg.com

Back in the early 1990s, when the city was hurting for money even more than usual, Sue Hestor, the environmental lawyer who is always full of good ideas, called me up and suggested that the city start charging banks a fee for every storefront ATM. "They have turned the public sidewalks into their bank lobbies," she said. ATMs can lead to congestion and are magnets for crime; why shouldn’t the banks (which made a lot of money replacing human tellers with machines and costly private space with public property) help pay for some of those impacts? After all, banks escaped most local business taxes.

I ran that one up the old flagpole, and got nowhere. Back then, the city attorney was Louise Renne, who wasn’t known for aggressive approaches to revenue generation; she immediately told me it wasn’t legal. Back then, at least nine of the 11 supervisors were guaranteed to vote against anything that would offend big business.

A few years later, Tom Ammiano, who had become the only supervisor serious about brining in new money for San Francisco, suggested that the city put a tiny tax on transactions at the Pacific Stock Exchange. A similar tax in New York City had brought in millions. The exchange quickly marched up to Sacramento and got the state to outlaw the idea.

Down in Los Angeles, they’re trying to put a severance tax on oil production. Great idea. Too bad (not really) we have no oil wells here.

Lots of good ideas. It’s time for some more.

Things in San Francisco are really, really dire, and the district-elected supervisors are far more open to progressive approaches to the budget crisis. And if you’re willing to stipulate — as I am — that San Francisco has a revenue problem as much as a spending problem, and that the rich and big businesses are radically undertaxed, then its time for a comprehensive look at the ways this city might bring in some more money.

There are some nice concepts floating around. David Chiu, the Board of Supervisors president, is talking about reforming the city’s business tax. Sup. John Avalos tried to put a nickel-a-drink impact fee on alcohol wholesalers. Sup. David Campos thinks downtown should help pay for Muni service. I still like the notion of a city income tax.

But what we need is a long list of options — a complete guide to how a charter city and county in California in 2011 is legally allowed to raise money.

Dennis Herrera, the city attorney, is a smart guy; he’s figured out all kinds of ways to use his office to go after polluters, scam artists, and crooks. I suspect that with a bit of a nudge, he could help develop a few dozen legally sound ways to tax the wealthy individuals and institutions. That ought to be priority one for the Budget Committee.

I’m not sure what would work best, and nobody else is either. But we ought to have all the options.

Waste not

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 8, 2011

0

sarah@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has delayed consideration of a city waste disposal contract while officials investigate a broad range of questions ranging from logistical considerations to whether to break up Recology’s current garbage collection monopoly.

Is it feasible to move the city’s entire infrastructure for waste and recycling to the Port of San Francisco? Would it be more sustainable to barge or rail the city’s trash directly from the port rather than drive it across the Bay Bridge to Oakland every day? Considering that recyclables get shipped from Oakland to Asia anyway, why not send them by barge rather than truck? Or is that idea just an empty gesture since recycles, mostly paper products, consitute only 10 percent of the waste stream?

Some of these questions are being studied as part of a survey the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) is trying to complete by April, others as part of a longer-term investigation by the Department of Environment (DoE). At LAFCO’s Feb. 28 meeting, commissioners requested a survey of how other jurisdictions in the Bay Area procure trash collection, hauling, and disposal contracts.

Although the studies differ in scope and duration, both were triggered by a Feb. 3 Budget and Legislative Analyst (BLA) report that revealed that the annual cost to ratepayers of San Francisco’s waste system is $206 million. Yet only the $11 million landfill contract is being put out to competitive bid (see “Garbage Curveball,” 02/08/11).

The BLA report revealed that a 1932 ordinance intended to address territorial disputes around trash collection and transportation in San Francisco ultimately gave Recology (formerly NorCal Waste) a monopoly on all post-collection recycling, consolidation, composting, long-distance transport to landfills, and waste disposal contracts. The report triggered a political firestorm by recommending that the city replace existing trash collection and disposal laws with legislation that would require competitive bidding on all waste contracts and that rates for residential and commercial trash collection become subject to Board of Supervisors approval.

Faced with these recommendations, the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee asked Feb. 9 for a two-month delay on DoE’s proposal to award Recology a 10-year contract to dispose of San Francisco’s municipal solid waste at Recology’s Ostrom Road landfill Yuba County when its contract at Waste Management’s Altamont landfill expires.

DoE officials predict the WM contract will expire in 2015. But company representatives estimate the contract will last much longer, based on reduced volumes that San Francisco has been trucking to Altamont.

Sup. John Avalos, a LAFCO commissioner, requested that the LAFCO study include a map to give folks “a visual” of landfill locations throughout the greater Bay Area. “And there’s been an interesting discussion about the use of barging,” Avalos said, pointing to the flotilla of barges involved in building the Bay Bridge, which could be repurposed when that jobs ends. “A new maritime use could help the port raise revenue and reinvigorate other maritime uses on its property.”

At that point in the hearing, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, the vice chairman of LAFCO, floated his “alternative barge plan,” under which only recyclables would get sent across the Bay to Oakland. Noting that he has met with Port Director Monique Moyer and Office of Economic and Workforce Development staff, Mirkarimi said that “the port is not equipped to deal with solid waste. But it is equipped to deal with recyclables, so this is something we should pursue.”

But Sup. David Campos, the chairman of LAFCO, clarified that the survey should still include a study of barging all trash. “Barging is complicated, but this is about providing basic information,” he said.

Records show the port reached out to DoE in 2009 with a letter that identified rail (but not barging) as an environmentally sustainable mode for moving waste from the city to its next landfill site.

In a June 23, 2009 letter to the DoE, Moyer and David Gavrich, president and CEO of the SF Bay Railroad (SFBR), stated that “rail directly from the port can not only minimize environmental impacts, it can provide an anchor of rail business for the port and a key economic development engine for the Bayview-Hunters Point community and the city as a whole.”

Recology’s trucks currently collect and haul about half the city’s waste to its recycling center, which sits on port-owned land at Pier 96. After the recyclables are offloaded for processing, the trucks haul the rest of the garbage through the Bayview and back onto the freeway to Brisbane, where it is loaded onto bigger trucks that haul the trash over the Bay Bridge each night to WM’s Altamont landfill near Livermore.

“It would seem most efficient to not double- or triple-handle the waste but to put it directly onto rail at the port instead,” Moyer and Gavrich wrote in 2009. “Collection vehicles could then go directly back out onto their routes, reducing time, fuel, emissions, and traffic impacts.”

The pair noted that SFBR and its affiliate Waste Solutions Group have used rail to haul more than 2 million tons of waste directly from the port in the past 15 years, using gondolas and 12-foot high municipal solid waste (MSW) containers on flat cars. They included an aerial photo showing Recology’s central recycling facility at Pier 96 and the extensive rail infrastructure and barge options that surround the facility.

But DoE never got back to them, Gavrich recalled last week as he fired up a SFBR locomotive and rode the rail tracks that crisscross the 20-acre port-owned facility that lies between SFBR’s outfit, Recology’s Pier 96 recycling facility, and the bay that is currently home to idle barges and rail cars that sit rusting a stone’s throw from the economically depressed Bayview.

“All that’s needed is two to four acres for an excellent transfer station,” Gavrich said. “Barge and rail access could not be better. It’s just waiting to be developed.”

In February, DoE officials told the Budget & Finance Committee that they had looked into and rejected barging as an option. But it turns out they did not conduct an official study. “There hasn’t been a study to date,” DoE’s Assmann said March 7, when the Guardian requested DoE’s barging report. “We had a discussion about it, but no formal policy.”

Assmann noted that DoE asked waste management companies that bid on the city’s landfill disposal contract to include a barging option. “But nobody did,” Assmann said, referring to Recology and Waste Management, the two finalists in the city’s landfill disposal contract bid process.

Assmann said DoE is currently doing a long-term study into three transportation and facilities options for waste using port facilities: the first option would involve moving the entire infrastructure for waste and recycling to the port. The second would be to use the port as a transfer facility for garbage, and truck, barge, or rail haul garbage from the port. The third would involve barging recyclables only from Pier 96.

Assmann notes that the majority of infrastructure for the city’s waste system is at Recology’s Tunnel Road facility on the San Francisco-Brisbane border, a situation he claims would make it impossible to design, permit, finance, and build new facilities at the port before 2015.

But Barry Skolnick, WM’s vice president for Bay Area operations, told the Guardian that 2016 is a more realistic estimate of the landfill expiration date. “At the current disposal rate, we do not believe San Francisco will exhaust its disposal volumes under the existing Altamont landfill contract until 2016 at the earliest,” Skolnick said. “There is plenty of time for the Board of Supervisors and LAFCO to explore best practices and options for its collection, recycling, composting, transferring, and residual waste disposal services.”

Skolnick noted that WM discussed extending the Altamont contract at the Budget & Finance Committee hearing and the LAFCO hearing, and is proposing to extend the city’s current contract by several years.

“We are preparing a proposed three-year extension of the disposal agreement for San Francisco’s review this week,” Skolnick said. “The extension would involve a price increase for disposal but less than the disposal rate offered under the proposed Recology rail haul to Ostrom Road in Yuba County. The three-year extension would provide disposal at the Altamont until 2019 or 2020.”

But Assmann noted that Recology, which currently pays the port $1 million a year to lease Pier 96, wants to expand its Brisbane facility on Recology-owned land. “We have offered to analyze [the Brisbane expansion] option,” Assmann said, estimating that a new transfer facility would cost $40 to $60 million, while a new integrated facility would cost $200 to $450 million.

“If the infrastructure moved to the port, that would have big positive implications for the port,” Assmann said, acknowledging that the port would lose money if Recology relocates entirely to Brisbane. Plus, Brisbane might demand fees from a new facility, he noted. “But consolidation would save ratepayers money in the long run because the operation would become more efficient.”

Unlike the LAFCO study, DoE won’t have its report ready by April, when the city needs to decide on the landfill contract.

“Our proposal is to look at the bigger picture,” Assmann said. “If the board approves Recology’s landfill contract, we’ll still go ahead and do it. The board can always delay its landfill decision. But this looks at infrastructure the landfill agreement won’t impact.”

DoE recommends working with Recology to implement a pilot program to barge recyclables from Pier 96 to the Port of Oakland as it studies long term infrastructure options including locating infrastructure at the port, Assmann said. DoE also recommends that the proposed plan to award Recology the landfill contract and facilitation agreement remain the same “since our analysis shows (and the port concurs) that all options for utilizing the port for any kind of landfill transportation would require a permitting process that would last a minimum of five years and a total timeline of at least seven to nine years.”

So far, the landfill contract has not come before the full board because of delays and continuations at the Budget & Finance Committee. As Judson True, legislative aide to Board President David Chiu, recently observed, the process over the last few months has raised more questions than answers, including unexpected angles such as how the port can be better utilized and the implications of the 1932 refuse collection and disposal ordinance. “We need to get these answers before we can move forward,” True said. “We all have a lot of work to do before we can figure out what’s best for the city and pick a path.”

But Gavrich hopes history doesn’t repeat itself and that Chiu shows some leadership on the garbage contract hornet’s nest. “There are so many compelling reasons and benefits for the city — but that hasn’t stopped the city from doing the wrong thing in the past,” Gavrich said. Gavrich pointed to 2007, when all members of the board except Sup. Chris Daly voted to give the sewage sludge contract to Recology even though its bid was $3 million higher than the competitor, S&S Trucking.

A Dec. 14 2007 San Francisco Chronicle article by Robert Selna quoted Mirkarimi as saying that a key reason for awarding the contract to Recology was that it was a union company. “That’s the elephant in the room,” Mirkarimi said, framing the board’s decision to go with Recology as being about “the devil we know.” Selna recently left the Chronicle to work as Mirkarimi’s legislative aide.

Mirkarimi’s recent suggestion that LAFCO explore barging recyclables as a pilot program has Gavrich worried. “Saying let’s explore simply barging recyclables makes no sense. It’s a fraction of what makes barge/rail haul economically viable.” Gavrich said. “It would put a greater burden on the ratepayer than the economic and environmentally inefficient system they have in place at Pier 96. The port should get the deal. It would be a cash cow.”

The fight for KUSF

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 8, 2011

8

By Irwin Swirnoff

OPINION For almost 34 years, KUSF (90.3 FM), has provided unique and varied local programming that truly is the audio representation of the qualities that make San Francisco such a special place. A place where diversity is honored and given a voice. A place where art, culture, and music are given a platform to tell stories, evoke emotions, and unite a wide range of people.

With shows in more than a dozen languages and every imaginable musical genre, era, and region represented on its airwaves, KUSF stood as one of the most respected college and noncommercial radio stations in the country.

Beyond its wide scope of music programming, KUSF provided crucial cultural and public service programming that served so many communities and cultures in our city that are all too often marginalized. Chinese Star Radio was the only radio program in Cantonese for the large and vibrant Chinese community in San Francisco. Disability and Senior News Report provided in-depth reporting on pressing issues facing these often overlooked and neglected parts of our community.

On Jan. 18, at 10 a.m., all those voices, all those communities, and all those services were silenced and squashed. In a secret deal behind the back of the community, the University of San Francisco sold KUSF’s transmitter to the University of Southern California in a deal that also involves the large media conglomerate Entercom.

It went down like a hostile corporate takeover. The DJ on air wasn’t allowed to sign off. Armed security entered the station as every lock in the studio was being changed. As stewards of a scarce public resource, USF has an obligation to the community. It’s time for the university to take a step back from this deal and allow for a mutually beneficial solution that will keep community radio alive in San Francisco.

It’s become clear that USF had no idea what an irreplaceable public resource it was killing when it entered this sneaky deal that would afford USC with its sixth territorial radio station as it aims to create a monopoly on the left side of the dial and extend its fundraising capacities deep into the Bay Area.

It’s obvious that this is a bad deal for the city of San Francisco. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the San Francisco Democratic Party, and the USF Faculty Association have passed resolutions condemning the deal. Outspoken support has come from a wide range of city and state leaders, including state Sen. Leland Yee.

No one is arguing USF’s right to liquidate an asset. All we are asking is that the community be involved in this decision and be given the first opportunity to purchase the transmitter.

This is not a done deal. Our petition to deny the transfer has been filed at the Federal Communications Commission. Serious questions about the legality of this deal are being addressed, and the next several weeks and months will allow us time for negotiations to help save community radio in San Francisco.

This is not about a format change. It’s about a community being robbed of its voice. We are committed to this fight and need everyone in San Francisco to join us in saving this crucial community asset. Now is the time to speak truth to power.

Guardian contributor Irwin Swirnoff has been the musical director at KUSF.

For safety’s sake

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 8, 2011

6

rebeccab@sfbg.com

A federal investigative hearing on the deadly Sept. 9, 2010 San Bruno explosion triggered by the rupture of a high-pressure Pacific Gas & Electric Co. pipeline was all about getting answers — but it has also sparked new questions.

For instance, why didn’t the San Bruno Fire Department have maps of the 30-inch gas line running beneath the neighborhood where the blast destroyed 37 homes and killed eight people? Why did PG&E’s records list that section of pipe as seamless when the federal investigation revealed that it actually consisted of shorter pieces of pipe, called pups, welded together? Why has PG&E been unable to produce records of close to 30 percent of its pipeline infrastructure, proving that the lines are in decent shape? And does the paperwork it has produced contain reliable information?

These shortcomings speak to a broader issue gaining attention as more fatal pipeline ruptures grab headlines. On a national scale, at least 59 percent of onshore gas transmission pipelines were installed before 1970, according to a report issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Pipeline Safety, making most of the infrastructure a minimum of four decades old.

Pipelines everywhere are getting older, and in some cases, weaker. Yet there tends to be a lack of awareness about the risks associated with the subsurface transport of hazardous materials, and as the San Bruno disaster demonstrated, there is often a lack of communication between utilities, local governments, and property owners about minimizing the risks.

These gaps are especially apparent in the process of approving new development projects. Tried-and-true systems are in place for indicating to contractors where they should and shouldn’t dig to avoid making direct contact with underground infrastructure, but that information seldom takes into account what condition a pipeline is in. The general assumption is that the pipeline operator (in this case, PG&E) is keeping up with maintenance, and that it’s safe to dig. Yet with the gaping questions surrounding PG&E’s infrastructure in the wake of the San Bruno blast, there’s a new level of uncertainty.

Pipeline safety isn’t just a problem for utilities and pipeline regulators to worry about, according to a report issued by Pipelines and Informed Planning Alliance (PIPA), an initiative led by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), which brought together more than 100 experts in the field. It should also be on local governments’ radar when they’re making decisions about land use. Yet in San Francisco, this level of awareness seems to be absent.

According to PIPA, “Changes in land use and new developments near transmission pipelines can create risks to communities and to the pipelines.” The hefty report contains an exhaustive set of best practices for planning near pipelines, many specifically targeting local governments. Priority No. 1 for local planning departments should be to “obtain mapping data for all transmission pipelines within their areas of jurisdiction … and show these pipelines on maps used for development planning.” The report also suggests taking special precautions in areas spanning 660 feet on either side of a gas-transmission pipeline; creating systems of communication so information can be readily shared between local governments, utilities, and landowners; and identifying emergency contacts who can halt dangerous excavation activities in case something goes wrong.

The Guardian sent e-mail queries to the Planning Department and Department of Building Inspection (DBI) to find out if the city was adhering to any of the practices recommended by PIPA as the best ways to ensure safe planning near pipelines. Reached by phone, a spokesperson from Planning told the Guardian, “DBI is where you need to call.”

But DBI spokesperson Bill Strawn said, “Those questions you were asking really don’t fall into the Department of Building Inspection’s jurisdiction.”

Strawn added that the issue of underground infrastructure is not really taken into account when building permits are issued. “We don’t go to the [Public Utilities Commission] or [Department of Public Works] or PG&E” for that kind of information, Strawn said. “That would be the responsibility of the property owner, and the plans they submit to us don’t include that kind of utility information.”

PG&E is scrambling to meet a March 15 deadline imposed by the California Public Utilities Commission to turn over records proving its lines are intact. Until it can prove the integrity of its system either on paper or through costly, high-pressure water testing, the condition of some lines is unknown. PG&E did not return calls for comment.

In San Francisco, a densely populated urban hub on an earthquake-prone peninsula where major development projects are being permitted all the time, these issues are particularly pressing. Charley Marsteller, former chair of San Francisco Common Cause, certainly thinks so.

Last December, Marsteller penned a letter to a well-respected geotechnical engineer, raising a question about pipeline safety in light of California Pacific Medical Center’s plans to construct a massive hospital at its Cathedral Hill site on Franklin Street. According to a map of underground gas lines published by the Guardian (See “PG&E’s Secret Pipeline Map,” 9/21/10) using several sources of data, a PG&E gas main appears to run beneath Franklin.

Marsteller was worried about whether excavation for CPMC — or other projects requiring excavation, or even simple contractor digging — could cause vibrations that could affect that pipe.

“As CPMC digs its 100-foot hole, and due to the massive construction vibrations, is there not a risk that the PG&E gas pipeline is at risk of rupture?” he wanted to know.

The engineer, who preferred not to have his name published, responded in an informal letter that “it is indeed possible that soil movement generated by excavation and/or foundation construction could rupture a deteriorated gas main.” He added that while he wasn’t familiar with the details of CPMC’s or other excavation projects on Franklin Street, he did know that the area in question “consists of relatively weak soil” underlain at depth by a geologic feature called the Franciscan Formation, made of sandstone and fine-grained, sedimentary rock.

Yet no one seems to be giving this question any kind of professional attention or study. Eerily, Marsteller seems to be the only person in San Francisco who’s asking what happens if a major excavation project is permitted nearby a corroded pipeline — and he says he hasn’t received much of a response from the “rather blistering memos” he’s fired off to planning commissioners and members of the Board of Supervisors to ask about it. “I’m very concerned that we’re not suspending contractor digging proximate to a pipeline,” Marsteller said, until PG&E can offer proof that the lines nearby excavation projects are in good shape. Whether these issues will ever be considered as part of the local planning process, Marsteller predicted: “The answer is, no one ever thinks about this.”

Excavation damage accounts for nearly one-quarter of pipeline “incidents” nationwide, according to the federal Office of Pipeline Safety report. Yet safeguards are in place to prevent these things from happening.

When the Guardian initially phoned the Planning Department to ask about digging near pipelines, the phone call was returned by the Department of Public Works. Anytime a street excavation project is planned, DPW’s Gloria Chan explained, a notice of intent is issued 120 days beforehand to PG&E, AT&T, the Public Utilities Commission, and any other stakeholders that might have something running underground. Projects are then designed to integrate existing lines. “Sometimes the information we get may be 40 years old,” Chan said. Through a mandated process called USA Service Alert, people go out to physically mark where the underground infrastructure begins and ends on the project site before a contractor starts breaking ground.

That same process occurs with private development projects, explained Alan Kropp, a geotechnical engineer with the firm Alan Kropp & Associates. Kropp said it’s left up to a private contractor to work out the technical details for digging, which are governed by a set of regulations. “If you’re one foot away or three feet away, most pipes don’t care,” Kropp said, but he acknowledged that if a pipe is deteriorated, there could be instances where digging a normally safe distance away could still pose a problem.

“Almost all the time, the system works well,” Kropp said. As for the condition of the pipe, Kropp said, that information generally doesn’t guide project decisions. “It’s really up to the owner of the pipeline,” he said. “They would be the ones in control of that information.”

Alerts

Andrew Lam

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March 8, 2011

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WEDNESDAY 9

Rally for safety

The corner of Ellis and Ashby streets in Berkeley is one of the most dangerous corners in the city for pedestrians — averaging about one hit every 14 months. Furthermore, efforts to make it safer by installing flashing beacons and other improvements have only been met with bureaucratic red tape. Rally to demand that city transportation and Caltrans get it together and hasten this painfully slow process to make this corner safe.

7:45 a.m.–8:15 a.m., free

Malcolm X Elementary School

1731 Prince, Berk.

jk.mxsafety@gmail.com

THURSDAY 10

Film screening and discussion

Watch the political documentary Nasser 56 — the black-and-white film depicting the tumultuous period of 1956 when controversial Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser seized the Suez Canal from its European owners. Stay afterward for a discussion on the parallels between that historic event and the recent youth-led Egyptian uprising.

7:30–10 p.m., $6 suggested donation

ANSWER Coalition

2969 Mission, SF

www.ANSWERsf.org

Talks on union busting

Attend this forum and learn more about the current assault on the working and middle classes going on all around the country as wealthy corporations receive tax breaks while workers face losing their benefits and the right to bargain collectively. An array of speakers will be on hand, including professor George Wright of Skyline College, radio journalist Maria Hall, Charlie Rachlis of the Department of Public Health, and more.

6:30–8:30 p.m., donation requested

Center for Political Education 522 Valencia, SF

www.upwa.org

The truth about pirates

Far from the Disneyfication of singing pirates with eye patches and parrots is the reality of criminal exploits on the Red Sea. Piracy in Somalia has gotten much press these days, but so little is actually understood of this complex situation. Professor Audi Samaritan, chair of the geography department at the University of Minnesota, will help you understand the relationship between modern-day pirates and the global political economy, conflicts over resources, and the disintegration of the Somali state.

6:15-7:45 p.m., $5 suggested

Niebyl Proctor Library

6501 Telegraph, Berk.

www.priorityafrica.org

SATURDAY 12

Naked bike ride

Join the World Naked Bike Ride, a worldwide protest of the world’s dependency on the oil industry. Wear as little or as much as you feel comfortable — grass skirt, wookie suit, or nothing at all — and ride whatever set of wheels you like, as long as it doesn’t have a gas tank. Whether on a fixie, roller skates, blades, tricycle, or unicycle, you will surely enjoy this leisurely tour of the city, which winds past the Palace of Fine Arts, Lombard Street and beyond. Facebook the event to stay informed about changes to the route.

11 a.m., free

meet at Justin Herman Plaza

Market and Embarcadero, SF

Facebook: World Naked Bike Ride San Francisco

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Chiu’s challenge

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 1, 2011

4

steve@sfbg.com

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu launched his mayoral campaign Feb. 28 with a pledge to bring San Franciscans of all political stripes together around a common agenda. It’s a message that has also been sounded by other mayoral candidates, but one in which Chiu is in a unique position to try to deliver on this year.

“This campaign, at its heart, is going to be how we come together,” Chiu told a crowd of hundreds gathered at City Hall for the announcement. Later he told the crowd, “This campaign needs to be a beacon to the rest of the world about who we are as San Franciscans.”

Chiu appeared to be reaching out to progressives more than the other mayoral candidates have so far, emphasizing how he doesn’t own a car and wants make big improvements to Muni and the bicycle network, valuing “diversity and social justice,” calling for “community-based budgeting,” and saying that “we have to have a conversation about how we can creatively fund affordable housing.”

“We are at our best when we come together for our shared progressive values,” Chiu said.

But then he quickly noted that over the past decade, “City Hall has been a bit dysfunctional.” That was a time when progressives controlled the Board of Supervisors and there was a downtown-backed mayor, and Chiu decried how the two sides didn’t work well together. Yet now, with Chiu as board president and Ed Lee as interim mayor — an appointment Chiu helped engineer — “the tone at City Hall has changed.”

Perhaps that’s true, but the thorny issues that divide the city and defy simple solutions remain in play: bridging a $380 million budget deficit after years of deep cuts, creating jobs without worsening the city budget picture, controlling employee pension costs, reforming Muni and addressing traffic congestion, bringing cleaner energy sources online, and increasing the affordable housing stock.

These are all issues that President Chiu and Mayor Lee will have to deal with this year if Candidate Chiu is going to be able to credibly claim that the new tone at City Hall can actually translate into policies that work and bring people together.

And there won’t be consensus in the community on all of those issues; at some point, Chiu will have to take a side.

RHETORIC AND REALITY

All the mayoral candidates argue for coming together around common-sense solutions, a trope that clearly polls well with voters.

Leland Yee welcomed Chiu into the race while emphasizing his own kumbaya message: “My commitment is to run a different kind of campaign for mayor — to work with other candidates to present real choices and options for voters.”

Dennis Herrera, whose mayoral campaign announced its endorsement by Sup. Scott Wiener during Chiu’s kickoff event, said, “I look forward to working with him toward my goal of making San Francisco a city that works and one that lives up to its great promise”

And Ting told a gathering of his Reset SF group over the weekend, “It’s time for San Francisco city government to be as creative and innovative as the rest of San Francisco. And it’s going to take all of us to make that a reality.”

Even political consultant David Latterman, who usually works with downtown-backed candidates but is working on Chiu’s campaign, told us, “I’m just so tired of that left-right divide. I don’t think this city is served well by those wars any more.”

But Chiu is uniquely positioned to turn that rhetoric into a reality at City Hall — if it’s possible. Over the past two years, he took the lead on challenging bad budget proposals from the Mayor’s Office and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, only to back down in the end and make compromises that many of his progressive colleagues opposed. Similarly, he spent months working on a business tax reform measure that would have raised city revenue without costing private sector jobs, only to abandon it in the face of big business opposition.

This year, some progressives are banking on Chiu to deliver on their issues and have offered his mayoral campaign their early support.

“He’s willing to take bold moves to make Muni continue to improve,” MTA Commissioner and cycling activist Cheryl Brinkman told the gathering.

“There is no one running for mayor who has David’s zeal for social and environmental justice,” Fei Tsen, chair of Chinatown Community Development Corporation — a core Chiu constituency — told the gathering.

“I think he’s the right choice for low-income communities of color,” Planning Commission Christina Olague said at the event.

Sup. Eric Mar, the only elected official at Chiu’s kickoff, told the crowd that “David Chiu has shown he has the ability to bring communities together,”

But the rest the progressive community, from elected officials like Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and Sup. David Campos to the leading advocates for renters, environmentalists, and the social and environmental justice movements, are still waiting to see what happens this year. Many are disappointed that Chiu is pushing tax breaks for Twitter and other corporations rather than progressive budget solutions, as well as putting moderate supervisors in control of some key board committees.

In an era of fiscal desperation, it may not be possible to bring progressives and downtown together around a common agenda. But if Chiu wants to try, voters are likely to learn whether that approach works even before they head to the polls in November.

The mayor’s race: beyond compromise

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 1, 2011

0

EDITORIAL The race for mayor is now fully underway, with eight candidates declared — and at least four are fighting for the progressive vote. It’s a remarkably open field — and the fact that there’s no clear frontrunner, no candidate whose money is dominating the election, no Willie Brown or Gavin Newsom, is the result of two critical progressive reforms: public financing and ranked-choice voting.

In fact, those two measures — promoted by the progressive, district-elected supervisors — have transformed the electoral process in San Francisco and undermined, if only somewhat, downtown’s control.

As Steven T. Jones points out in this week’s issue, the leading candidates are all sounding similar, vague themes. They all say the city can work better when we all work together. That’s a nice platitude, but it reminds us too much of President Obama’s promise to seek bipartisan consensus, and it’s likely to lead to the same result.

On the big issues, the Republicans don’t want to work with the president, and big downtown businesses, developers, and landlords don’t want to work with the progressives. In the end, on some key issues, there’s going to be a battle, and candidates for mayor need to let us know, soon, which side they’re going to be on.

Sup. David Chiu, who entered the race Feb. 28, may have the hardest job: he actually has to help balance the city budget. As board president, he’ll be involved in the negotiations with the Mayor’s Office and the final product will almost certainly carry his imprimatur. It’s unlikely the progressives on the board will agree with the mayor on cuts; it’s much more likely that some will seek revenue enhancements as an alternative. Whatever Chiu does, he’ll be on the record with a visible statement of his budget priorities.

We’d like to hear those priorities now, instead of waiting until June. But either way, the remaining candidates, particularly those who want progressive and neighborhood support, need to start taking positions, now. What in the city budget should be cut? What new revenue should be part of the solution? What, specifically, do you support in terms of pension reform? How would you, as mayor, deal with the budget crisis?

Every major candidate in the race has enough familiarity with city finance to answer those questions. None should be allowed to duck or resort to empty rhetoric about everyone working together.

The same goes for community choice aggregation and public power. There is no consensus here, and will never be. Either you’re for public power and against Pacific Gas and Electric Co., or you’re opposed, weak, or ducking — all of which put you in PG&E’s camp.

There are many more issues (condo conversions, tax breaks for big corporations, housing development, help for small business, etc.) on which there has never been, and likely never will be, agreement. The people who make money building new condos will never accept a law mandating that 50 percent of all new housing be affordable (although the city’s own Master Plan sets that as a goal). The landlords will never accept more limits on evictions and condo conversions.

We’re all for working together and seeking shared solutions, but the next mayor needs to be able to go beyond that. When the powerful interests refuse to bend, are you ready to fight them?

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 1, 2011

3

tredmond@sfbg.com

I’ve been trying to think of a good metaphor for the public-employee pension story, a way to explain what’s going on without making it so complicated that it becomes a battle of political slogans. Here’s what I’ve come up with.

Imagine you and your friends all work at a resort hotel, and you’ve been there a while, and you approach the boss and say it’s expensive to live in the area and you want a raise. But your boss isn’t handing out any more cash — he wants to hire his girlfriend for a cush job, and he wants a promotion in the resort chain, so he has to keep the bottom line tight.

But he can’t afford to lose the group of you, so he offers a deal: no raise, but you and your coworkers can eat lunch free at the resort restaurant. It’s a painless offer for him; the restaurant is booming, so much cash coming in that nobody will notice a few free meals. Still, it’s a benefit you didn’t have, so you accept.

Then a year passes, and resort traffic drops off, and the price of lunch food goes way up, and the guy who handles the books at the restaurant has been skimming and pocketing a big chunk of the proceeds — and suddenly, the free meals aren’t so free for your boss. So he starts pointing fingers at you, telling all the other diners that it’s unfair you get to eat free. The cry goes out: “No free lunch!” He starts to demand that you pay “your fair share.”

Now: you realize like everyone else that the resort is in financial trouble, and you’ve already accepted unpaid overtime and fewer work days. You also realize that a couple of your greedier friends have been taking extra sandwiches home in their pockets and they need to knock it off.

But the huge chain that owns the resort is still doing fine; the percentage profits off the top never change. No cuts there. And your free lunch isn’t “free”; it’s part of your pay. And you suspect that at some point, the economy will pick up and the restaurant will be flush again — and if you give up your benefit now, you’ll wind up with no raise and no lunch either.

But somehow, it’s all your fault. You are the ones bleeding the resort dry.

Look at it that way, and the picture is a little different.

Should Lyon-Martin be saved?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 1, 2011

0

OPINION Last month, when the startling news broke that Lyon-Martin Health Services, a community health clinic that serves primarily queer women and transgender people, was about to close its doors forever, the community rose up even before the official announcement was made.

Within hours of first hearing the news, more than 150 clients, former clients, and members of the community gathered at an emergency town hall meeting to fight to save the clinic. People testified about what Lyon-Martin had meant to their health. Many expressed fears it would close and anger that they hadn’t known the clinic was in trouble.

To their credit, two members of the board of directors and interim Executive Director Dr. Dawn Stacy Harbatkin came to the meeting to answer questions from the community. This powerful meeting transformed and dramatically altered the outcome. In response to the opposition, the board backed off closing the center for at least a month and promised the community that there would be at least a month to find ways to save the clinic.

However, the board members also explained that the clinic was in serious trouble and needed to raise more than $500,000 to stay open. By the end of the meeting, a "Save Lyon Martin" coalition was born.

Within a week, more than 700 community members came to a fundraiser that raised more than $60,000, and within a month, more than $300,000 had been raised.

But at the same time, some have asked: should we save Lyon-Martin?

It’s a legitimate question. Over the past two years Lyon-Martin expanded its services, almost doubling its staff and patient load. However, the management failed to build the infrastructure to accommodate these changes. One of the known factors that led to the current situation was Lyon-Martin’s inability to stay current with its Medi-Cal billing, and there was a significant loss in revenue as a result. A substantial amount of debt is owed to the IRS and a long-term bank loan. Given the financial problems, some say, we should close the clinic; other community health clinics could simply incorporate the 3,500 patients served by Lyon-Martin.

While it’s true that the financial issues are troubling, and that hard questions need to be answered, dumping 3,500 patients into a public health system that has been cut to the bone over the last few years would be a disaster in San Francisco. The clinics that serve queer and transgender people are already stretched to the limit. No other place in the city has the capacity and culturally competency to serve this population.

Lyon-Martin has taken on the mission of caring for a group of low-income, mostly uninsured patients who have rarely, if ever, gotten culturally competent care. Almost 90 percent of Lyon-Martin patients are uninsured; 87 percent have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty line; 17 percent are homeless; 33 percent are people of color.

As a transgender person who has received poor and even hostile treatment by a health care provider, it doesn’t surprise me that in a recent survey more than 50 percent of transgender individuals reported that they have had to teach their health care providers about transgender health care. More than half of lesbians, bisexual, or transgender people report that they avoid health care for fear of discrimination.

In this context, closing Lyon-Martin is simply not an option.

We have many questions about how Lyon-Martin got into this situation and what needs to be done to avoid it happening again. We want the community to have stronger oversight over this important resource. We want people held accountable. But most of all, we want to ensure that we continue to have access to the excellent care that Lyon-Martin has provided to so many of us.

On March 2 at 4 p.m. at the Budget Committee of the Board of Supervisors, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi will be holding a hearing addressing these questions. We hope you can join us.

Gabriel Haaland is a member of the Save Lyon-Martin Health Coalition, and a former transgender client of Lyon-Martin.

Tasers vs. talk

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 1, 2011

1

rebeccab@sfbg.com

At a Feb. 23 Police Commission hearing, San Francisco interim Police Chief Jeff Godown told the civilian oversight board he wanted to investigate Tasers as a less-lethal weapon for San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officers. Speaking to a room crammed full of community advocates who had turned out to rail against the idea, Godown seemed to try to preemptively address a concern that opponents were sure to raise during public comment.

“This is not about mental illness,” the chief said. Along with police commissioners who favored the Taser proposal, Godown drove that point home several more times throughout the evening, stressing that Tasers were not being sought as a law enforcement tool for dealing with violent, mentally ill individuals. Nevertheless, he said situations could potentially arise in which the stun guns would be used against the mentally ill, if officers were authorized to carry the devices.

At the end of a marathon meeting, SFPD won approval to spend 90 days investigating Tasers and other less-lethal weapons as possible additions to the police arsenal, which now includes pepper spray and batons as well as firearms. Advocates raised concerns ranging from misuse of the devices to accidental deaths caused by Tasers to documented overuse of the weapons in communities of color. The SFPD, meanwhile, emphasized that it saw Tasers as a way to improve officer safety while limiting the use of lethal force.

SHOOTING THE MENTALLY ILL

Throughout the discussion, concern about the use of Tasers as a tool against the mentally ill persisted despite the chief’s assurances. “Like it or not, these issues are intertwined,” said American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Police Practices Director Allen Hopper. He referenced comments made by former Police Chief George Gascón, who now serves as district attorney.

On Jan. 4, SFPD officers fired twice at Randal Dunklin, a wheelchair-bound, mentally ill man who was brandishing a knife outside the city’s Department of Public Health building. Dunklin allegedly stabbed an officer and suffered a nonfatal gunshot wound to the groin after he had tossed the knife. In press comments delivered in the aftermath, Gascón said the situation illustrated why the SFPD ought to carry Tasers.

“Not only was that not an appropriate circumstance for the use of a Taser, there were so many things wrong with the way police handled that situation,” Hopper said, referencing a YouTube video of the shooting that served to highlight key differences between the official police account and the events caught on tape.

Dunklin was the third person in recent months to be shot in an altercation with officers. Vinh Bui, who was 46, was fatally shot in Visitacion Valley in late December 2010. Michael Lee, who was 43, was fatally shot in a residential hotel in the Tenderloin a few months earlier. Both had a history of mental illness.

Police Commissioner Angela Chan told the Guardian that in light of these tragedies, she became concerned that the first commission meeting of the year initially featured a discussion about Tasers.

“I thought, this does not make any sense,” Chan said, because commissioners hadn’t yet looked at creating a specialized police unit for dealing with psychiatric crisis calls, a move she’d urged the department to consider. The commission schedule was rearranged to reflect her concern, and Chan rushed to book experts for a detailed presentation about crisis intervention training (CIT). In a unanimous vote at the Feb. 9 meeting, the police commission approved implementation of CIT.

The specialized policing technique is patterned after the so-called Memphis model, which originated in Tennessee in 1988 in the wake of a public outcry that arose when white officers gunned down an African American man with a history of mental illness.

Memphis model policing emphasizes de-escalation, which is quite different from the everyday command-and-control method cops are trained to use against suspects. Under this model, officers are taught to consider things such as the tone of voice they are using to communicate with the mentally ill person, the distance they are standing from them, and how the individual might respond to their behavior. Whenever it’s safe to do so, officers are encouraged to allow the mentally ill person the time they need to calm down.

Samara Marion, an attorney and policy analyst with the Office of Citizen Complaints, traveled to Memphis to witness CIT officers on duty. “I was absolutely impressed,” Marion said. “It is community policing at its best.”

CIT has been credited with a dramatic reduction in officer-involved shootings against the mentally ill in Memphis. Randolph Dupont, a clinical psychologist and professor at the Memphis-based School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, told the Guardian that studies had shown mentally ill people who dealt with CIT officers were more likely to be in treatment three months later than those arrested by non-CIT officers. “Mental health is a community issue,” he said. “You don’t want it to be a police issue to resolve.”

In San Francisco, the program envisions training about 20 percent of the police force to create an elite unit of CIT officers, selecting those who are more experienced and have better track records in dealing with the public. Once in place, 911 dispatchers would alert CIT when SFPD receives calls involving psychiatric crises. On arriving to the scene, a CIT officer would be responsible for taking charge of the situation and directing other officers.

This is the second time an attempt was made to move forward with crisis intervention in San Francisco. In 2001, the department implemented generalized crisis training to all officers instead of intensive training for a specialized unit. However, that low-level effort was canceled last year due to budget cuts.

While CIT won resounding support from the community, the Feb. 23 discussion about Tasers drew tremendous opposition, with around 50 advocates speaking out against the plan. Hopper’s criticism, echoed by several mental-health providers, was that SFPD’s campaign for Tasers sent a mixed message and threatened to overshadow the CIT effort by seeking a quick fix based on a tool instead of a tactic. And rather than moving toward the goal of de-escalation set by CIT, Hopper said, the use of Tasers could exacerbate a situation instead, making it more dangerous for everyone involved.

“The Police Department — we think to its credit — has recognized that [addressing] mental health issues is a departmental priority,” Hopper said. “We think it’s putting the cart before the horse to give police Tasers before they put that plan into effect.”

A mental-health advocate who said she is “living the Kafkaesque world of a family dealing with mental illness” urged the commission to hold off on talking about Tasers until after CIT had been implemented, saying the two were closely connected.

“If you vote to purchase Tasers, you’re undercutting the message that they need to learn de-escalation,” another mental-health advocate noted.

Yet Marion said she thought adequate time was being allotted to study less-lethal weapons, and did not think this would undercut the CIT effort. “As long as the department continues to be motivated and engaged, I don’t see it being a problem,” she said.

Chan told the Guardian that the day after the Feb. 23 commission hearing, Godown phoned her to say he remained committed to CIT. Although she voted to allow police to move forward with investigating Tasers, Chan said her final support would depend on the success of CIT.

“If CIT is not doing well … I am going to be strongly opposed to any adoption of any pilot program,” Chan said. “I do prioritize one above the other.”

DEATH BY TASER?

A Taser is an electroshock weapon that can administer 50,000 volts through two small probes, disrupting the central nervous system and bringing on neuromuscular incapacitation.

While Taser proponent Chuck Wexler, a researcher who spoke at the hearing, emphasized that Tasers “are for saving lives,” studies have shown that the risk of death or serious injury increases under certain circumstances. Someone who is Tasered while fleeing police can suffer serious injuries if they can’t break their fall. There are dangerous implications for people whose heart rate is accelerated due to cocaine or methamphetamine, and as the Memphis Police Department learned many years ago, Tasers don’t mix with flammable substances, like an alcohol-based pepper spray that has since been discontinued.

“Lots of times it’s not about the product itself, it’s about … risk factors,” said Maj. Sam Cochran, who worked with Dupont in Memphis to create CIT. “Under some circumstances, things can happen very fast.”

Safety concerns are heightened when it comes to the mentally ill. It’s common for people experiencing psychiatric episodes to behave violently, speak incoherently, and ignore commands, creating the kind of scenario where law enforcement would likely opt to deploy a Taser. According to an extensive research inquiry on Tasers published by the Braidwood Commission on Conducted Energy Weapon Use, Tasers can be especially dangerous when used against people who are delirious.

“First responders should be aware of the medical risks associated with physically restraining a delirious subject or deploying a conducted energy weapon against them,” according to Dr. Shaohua Lu, who is quoted in the study. “They likely have profound exhaustion and electrolyte changes before delirium kicks in. At that stage, any additional insult (e.g., struggling or fighting) can lead to the body just giving out, resulting in cardiac arrest and death.”

Since 2004, when the city of San Jose first equipped officers with Tasers, seven people have died following police Taser deployments. At least one was mentally ill.

MaryKate Connor, a mental-health provider who founded the now-defunct Caduceus Outreach Services, told the Guardian she didn’t think the police officers could separate the issues of less-lethal weapons and tactics for handling the mentally ill. “The promise of the CIT program, whether the police want to acknowledge it or not, is that this is a huge cultural shift,” she said. “It’s not about finding a new weapon. It’s about finding a less lethal way to respond, period.”

Joyce Hicks, director of the Office of Citizen Complaints, sounded a similar note during the hearing. “No weapon can substitute for sound tactics,” Hicks said.