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Opinion

CJC just criminalizes the poor

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OPINION Two SF police officers stood; another was in the car at the curb, door ajar, lights flashing onto the sidewalk. It was 3:00 p.m. and the lights, the three police officers, and the squad car were all focused on one small man huddled next to a shopping cart and a torn Hefty bag, shining steel handcuffs glittering off his deep brown wrists. The man said nothing as they arrested him. His "crime": sitting, standing, sleeping while houseless in San Francisco.

It’s illegal to be houseless in the United States. In fact, arguably it’s illegal to be poor in a nation that has somehow equated urban messiness with the presence of youth, adults, and elders sitting, standing, and convening in public and cleanliness with emptiness and the lack of people, color, and things. Since the new $2.7 million Community Justice Center (CJC) — a.k.a. the poverty court — opened in San Francisco, police have been out in droves drumming up customers.

There are so many wrong things about the CJC, beginning with criminalizing people in poverty just for being poor. As a poverty scholar and formerly houseless child and young adult who was incarcerated for the sole act of living without a home, I can say for a fact: it didn’t matter how many times you arrested me or my Boricua houseless mama — it didn’t take us out of homelessness. In fact, it made our situation more compounded, more complicated, more intractable.

The city is grappling with a $350 million budget deficit — it has been cutting back and closing vital emergency services for houseless people, like the Tenderloin Resource Center (TARC) and Caduceus, for example, which does truly revolutionary work with houseless folks who struggle with a psychological disability.

But I think one of the most terrifying aspects of the CJC is the institutionalization of a new form of criminalized service provision. This stems from the idea that the delivery of services, advocacy, mental health, physical health, and housing are somehow more urgently needed, deserved, or valid if they are triggered by arrest and adjudication.

At the hour of 3:00 p.m., near the corner of Hyde and Larkin streets, the system was triggered by Richie, a 56-year-old who used to hold down a construction job until he was laid off. Arresting him didn’t get Richie a job. The CJC didn’t get Richie a job. But, the folks there would argue, they referred him to job training and a temporary shelter bed. And guess what? Other organizations that didn’t arrest Richie also referred him to job training and a temporary shelter bed.

My mother and I didn’t get affordable housing, mental health services, or access to free child-care for my infant son because I was arrested.

Acts of revolutionary legal advocacy, art, support networks, and political awareness, like the ones I learned through the Suitcase Clinic, POOR Magazine, WRAP, the Coalition on Homelessness, and People Organized to Win Employment Rights, were what took me out of the sorrow and desperation and depth of struggle of poverty.

Criminalization, arrest, and adjudication of people in poverty really accomplishes only one thing: it brings the prison industrial complex to a neighborhood near you. *

Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia is the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing up Homeless in America and the cofounder of POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork.

Pitting poor against poor

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OPINION In 2004, California voters passed Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), to fund the expansion of community-based mental health services. MHSA is funded through a 1 percent tax on the portion of a taxpayer’s income in excess of $1 million. It was a form of uniquely appropriate progressive taxation, making the rich pay for all the ways they test our sanity, made especially acute today in the wake of foreclosures and job losses.

Today, Gov. Schwarzenegger is leading a bipartisan assault on Prop. 63, which funds an array of needed services in California and San Francisco. By placing Proposition 1E on the May ballot, the governor is asking voters to divert MHSA money to pay for the budget deficit. This maneuver ignores the fact that California is a safer, saner place because of the act — 200,000 people are now enrolled in mental health services who were not in 2004.

The proposition pits the poor against the poor, making mental health consumers pay the price for the budget deadlock in Sacramento. Mental health services are designed to improve the lives of communities by minimizing the potential for homelessness and hospitalization. Prop. 1E, pitched as a two-year measure, leaves effective programs in the lurch, threatening resources in every neighborhood.

MHSA funds programs for youth and families affected by street and gang violence, queer youth showing early signs of mental health issues, and residents in supportive housing. One of its key accomplishments has been the expansion of resources designed to reach consumers in culturally appropriate ways, with an open process, allowing communities to design solutions to their own problems.

"After Prop. 63 was passed, people with untreated mental health needs saw a glimmer of hope," remarked James Keyes, who serves as a member of the San Francisco Mental Health Board. "In San Francisco alone, we were able to do workforce training, prevention, and housing retention among people with mental health concerns. These innovative programs might not be with us if Prop. 1E passes."

For whatever short-term savings Prop. 1E might provide, the long-term consequences are disastrous. The costs of untreated mental illnesses affect our public health system. Those who never get care, or who lose care, will likely find their jobs, housing, and relationships in peril, and will rely on the remaining (and much more expensive) threads of the social safety net.

Vote No on 1E and send a message to the state government that long-term budget solutions start with Prop. 63’s logic — progressive taxation on those with the most ability to pay. Letting the governor and the legislature cut essential survival services to balance the budget sets a horrible precedent. If voters let them get away with it, they will surely target poor people every time the budget is deadlocked. *

James Tracy works with Community Housing Partnership.

Do the right thing, Dianne

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OPINION At the end of World War II, approximately 36 percent of American workers belonged to a union. Today that number has shrunk to about 12 percent, lagging behind the world’s other industrial democracies. But now, with a Democratic president in office, we have a realistic chance of enacting the most significant piece of labor legislation in decades, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect the right of workers to organize into a union.

The opposition, of course, is well organized and well funded. Opponents will spend more than $200 million to defeat the bill in the Senate. They will argue that EFCA is just a special interest bill that helps big labor. But the truth is that the legislation should be part of the long-term economic recovery plan and is key to rebuilding the middle class.

In 1980, average CEO pay was 42 times that of the average blue-collar worker. By 2006, CEO pay had grown to 364 times the average blue collar worker’s pay. A survey of median weekly earnings in 2007 revealed that union workers make 30 percent more than their nonunion counterparts, and are 59 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage than other workers.

The key EFCA reform, and the one that has generated the most controversy, is called “card-check.” Under EFCA, if the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finds that a majority of employees have signed written authorization forms designating the union as their collective bargaining representative, the union is certified.

Opponents of card-check often argue, erroneously, that EFCA will deprive workers of their right to a so-called secret ballot. In fact, EFCA preserves both options, but it places the choice in the hands of workers, not employers. Moreover, the history of these “secret ballot” elections shows that they are often anything but democratic. Too often employers use their power over unorganized employees to intimidate them into voting against the union. Such documented employer tactics have included mandatory attendance at antiunion meetings, one-on-one meetings, threats to close the business if the union wins the vote, and harassing or even firing workers engaged in organizing activity.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has an 87 percent lifetime voting record from the AFL-CIO and has co-sponsored EFCA in the past. But now, with EFCA finally within reach, she has announced that she is looking for a “less divisive” option.

Say it isn’t so, Senator.

For many years progressive activists have had concerns about Feinstein, even going as far as to seek her censure at a state Democratic convention two years ago. In 2007, the party leadership reminded the activists that although she may stray occasionally, Feinstein is really a good Democrat who shares our basic values and commitments. There was no censure.

But workers’ rights is no side-issue in our Democratic Party. Economic justice is the issue. This is a moment of truth for Feinstein — and all of us who are her constituents have an obligation to help her get to the right answer.

On April 28 at 7 p.m. at the LGBT Community Center, the SF Labor Council, Pride at Work, and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club are sponsoring a community briefing on our campaign to urge Feinstein to support working people. Join us. *

Robert Haaland is the co-chair, SF Pride at Work. Rafael Mandelman is president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.

 

No balance in two-year budget

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OPINION There’s no more important decision made by the Board of Supervisors than that of the city’s annual budget. Every year the board sets the city’s priorities by appropriating more than $6 billion. In good economic times, the board uses the budget process to set new policy directions for San Francisco. In bad times, the annual budget is the board’s only real chance to save vital services by making targeted appropriations while strategically reducing other parts of the budget.

That’s why a charter amendment to have only biannual budgeting is a bad idea.

The fact that a two-year budget is being pushed by the Newsom administration and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce should give progressives pause. Unfortunately, downtown forces have successfully used the worst budget year ever to woo some progressive budget stakeholders.

Their argument sounds good on its face. A multiyear budget would help smooth out the highs and lows, requiring City Hall to deal with pending fiscal emergencies sooner. It would also mean every other year off from having to spend all that energy turning people out to endless budget meetings and lobbying to save the programs we care about.

But the way a two-year budget would actually play out would mean that progressive budget stakeholders would have only half the opportunities for budget input through the generally more responsive Board of Supervisors. Meanwhile, the Mayor’s Office would be able to centralize more power without having to get annual approvals from the board. In other words, a two-year budget would make the Office of Mayor even more insulated from the public and members of the board on the decisions that affect us the most.

Additionally, two-year budgets would be unwieldy and inaccurate. Over the past nine years of out-year projections by the Controller’s Office, the average difference between the projected and actual surplus or deficit was nearly $250 million. For example, last year the controller estimated our 2009-10 budget deficit would be about $46 million. This year it’s pegged at $438 million. Of course, as our real revenue data comes in, this number will surely change again. Unfortunately, we won’t know how much revenue we received for this upcoming budget year until we are a month or two into the following fiscal year.

There are serious flaws with our annual budget process. In difficult years, the mayor has too much unchecked power to make mid-year budget changes. Earlier this year, Mayor Gavin Newsom enacted a $118 million budget package that included tens of millions in health and human service cuts and more than 400 layoffs without approval of the Board of Supervisors. Meanwhile, when a majority of board members voted to cut pork from the mayor’s budget, he was able to avert that cut with his veto pen.

Leaving the decision about millions of dollars’ worth of service cuts in the middle of the year turns the democratic budget process — with checks and balances between the mayor and board — on its head. Correcting this problem with the current budget process would surely be a worthwhile effort.

Meanwhile, we must stay focused on this year’s budget process to preserve as many of the vital services as we can. *

Sup. Chris Daly represents District 6. Ed Kinchley is a labor activist.

 

Reject the Fisher Museum

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OPINION The Presidio Trust Board and the National Park Service in December rejected Gap Inc. founder Don Fisher’s proposed art museum in the Presidio. They complete their review of his second offer next month. They should reject the second offer as well, and the game will be over.

Fisher and his family should stop trying to convince the Park Service to bend its rules. They should set aside their pride and their own preferences in deference to those of the Park Service and the city of San Francisco. They should announce their decision to move forward with the city to find a location in the city proper.

Most of us in the Presidio’s neighborhood communities do not agree with the seven trust board members that developing a cultural theme park in the Presidio is a good idea. It was introduced by the board only in response to the unsolicited proposal by the Fishers in April 2007. These board members, Fisher’s former colleagues — who are mostly real estate developers — were appointed by former President Bush. President Obama will have his own appointees on the board by June, in time to make the final decision on the Fisher museum.

We don’t want an extravagant $50 million new gathering place in front of the Fisher museum — something the Fishers have offered to help pay for in exchange for permission to build where they want.

We cannot bear the thought of the series of traffic signals inside the park, near the Spanish El Presidio and the 160-year-old U.S. Army Post. The trust says those traffic signals, along with garages in the Presidio, would be needed to manage the daily visitors added by the Fishers’ museum. No national park in America has traffic signals.

Nor do we want the lineup of traffic and signal lights required outside the park, at entrances and on nearby residential streets, that the trust says would be required. The city would, I expect, refuse the federal trust’s request to change city traffic controls to support a museum — one that city officials want to see downtown.

The public will pay another million to respond to the Fishers continued effort. It will end in defeat, if the federal government follows its own review processes — or in a glaring corruption of those processes if it succeeds.

I urge the individual appointed members of the Federal Presidio Trust Corporation and National Park Service officials to reject the Fisher offer next month. Two years and $2 million is enough of our treasure to spend in responding to the unsolicited proposal.

I urge the public to attend the trust hearing April 16, 6:30 p.m. at the Presidio Golden Gate Club. Support the Fisher museum outside the park, and oppose it in the park. *
Donald S. Green is former executive director of the Yosemite Restoration Trust and vice chair of the Presidio Neighborhood Work Group of the SF Board of Supervisors.

The JROTC horror show

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OPINION I wish that the adults who want to keep the JROTC program in San Francisco public schools would stop throwing the JROTC students under the bus and blaming the bus driver.

In particular, I’m referring to the March 24 Board of Education meeting, where a resolution about JROTC by commissioners Jill Wynns and Rachel Norton was presented as a first-reading agenda item, which, under our rules, denotes that it should be referred to committee for further discussion. There usually isn’t any public commentary on first-reading items because that can occur at the committee meeting, then at the full board meeting when the item is returned for its second reading.

This is the first time that any discussion of JROTC has been on the agenda this year. But adults and kids in support of the program have been turning out to board meetings regularly. And while I’ve been president, the board has offered deference to the JROTC students, moving public comment earlier in the meeting nearly every time the students have shown up.

Before the March 24 meeting, supporters and opponents of the program were warned that it was only a first reading, that public comment would not be taken out of order, and that each side would have five minutes to make its case. Every elected official who planned on attending was informed of those rules. The ridiculousness that ensued as the board’s business and meeting carried on late into the evening came from, and was promoted by, selfish adults interested only in media attention and not concerned about whether this program can be sustained, in its current format, in San Francisco’s public schools.

The yelling and grandstanding by the adults for nearly three of the students’ allotted five minutes was an embarrassment to everyone. And those adults who stepped in front of the children — uninvited — then had the nerve to blame the Board of Education for not bending to their will.

The issues with this program are real — the teacher credentialing, the cost of the program to the district, the accessibility for all students desiring to become potential first responders for their neighborhoods and school sites in case of a municipal emergency, and, of course, the military aspect. The Board of Education, I believe, has to look beyond the glitz of a program that have been with us for eons and beyond the TV sound bites that grossly distort the facts. I’ve been moved to the middle on this issue because of the inflammatory behavior from people associated with both ends — the extreme ends.

I am hopeful that many of you will join me in looking carefully at the alternatives at hand, alternatives that would allow all students to participate. Come to the committee meetings, be informed, ask your questions, and be open to hearing something new.

But put aside the angry accusations and condemnations toward those who want to do the right thing for our children just because they don’t jump when you say they should. *


Kim-Shree Maufas is president of the San Francisco Board of Education.

Pricing women out of health care

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OPINION While California faces some of the most challenging economic times in recent history, many residents are losing their jobs — and as a result, their health insurance. And businesses of all sizes are struggling to make ends meet, which often means slicing employee benefits.

As more people are forced to turn to the individual market for their health insurance, women in California are at a distinct disadvantage. Under a practice known as gender rating, health insurers are allowed to charge higher premiums based on a person’s gender. Consequently, many women pay higher premiums than men for identical coverage. This unfair and discriminatory practice affects more than 1 million California women who currently purchase their health plans on the individual market — and undoubtedly prices many more women out of health coverage altogether.

A recent survey by the National Women’s Law Center showed huge variations in premiums charged to women and men for the same health care coverage. In some cases, women paid premiums that were slightly higher than what men paid for the same policy. But in other cases, women were charged more than 50 percent more — and as much as 140 percent more — for identical health plans.

Gender rating violates the California Constitution’s equal protection guarantees and goes against the state’s good public policies that favor preventive health care and affordable health coverage for all Californians.

While insurers argue their insurance rate differentials are based on the actual cost of providing health care to women (even for plans that do not include maternity care), gender rating is a relatively new phenomenon. Gender rating was not significantly used by the state’s top insurers until mid-2007, according to a preliminary analysis from the California HealthCare Foundation. Surely the cost of caring for women has not increased exponentially in the past two years, while medical expenses for men have remained stagnant.

In pricing women out of affordable health care coverage in the individual market, we set in motion a series of events that harm women, children, families, and entire communities. Uninsured women are less likely to receive preventive care. They’re most likely to discover, and seek treatment for, serious disease in the later stages of an illness. One serious disease or illness could potentially bankrupt an entire family and pose a health risk to the community. In addition, the costs of caring for uninsured women ultimately fall to either the local or state government, draining already strained public resources.

More than 40 years ago the insurance industry voluntarily abandoned the practice of using race as a rating factor for setting health insurance premiums, despite their arguments that those premiums were also based on actual health care costs. Ten states across the country have already outlawed gender rating, with no negative consequences to the rest of the insured in those states. Without a doubt, it’s time to do the same in California. *


Sen. Mark Leno represents the third Senate District, which includes Marin and parts of San Francisco and Sonoma counties. He is the author of Senate Bill 54, which would prohibit the practice of gender rating in California.

Real set-aside reform

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Whenever conservative elements within San Francisco’s political mix put forth measures that carry the moniker "good government," liberals, progressives, and those of us concerned that good government serve the people rather than the corporations should take notice.

Last year, one so-called good government measure usurped the right of four members of the Board of Supervisors to check a mayoral veto by putting a measure on the ballot at the last minute. The reform imposed a requirement that hearings be held before the supervisors put any legislation on the ballot.

Never mind that empirical evidence shows no correlation between the route to the ballot and the quality of measures; good as well as crap has made it onto the ballot and into law from all origins. Never mind that there were other ways to ensure that voter-initiated ordinances were amendable and flexible. Downtown wanted to crimp the power of the Board of Supervisors and our neighborhoods and, with the help of some progressives, succeeded.

They’re back at it again, as government grapples with revenue shortfalls caused by the second Great Depression, a depression caused by the economic policies championed by our local conservative/moderate coalition. We are seeing another effort at good government that would only benefit those who wish to destroy popular public services, to enable Reaganism, and to wipe away much of the public sector.

In order to secure a dedicated, reliable stream of funding, activists have run campaigns to create set-asides for various public programs. The earliest funded the San Francisco Symphony during the first Great Depression. Since then, programs that carry great public appeal, from the Children’s Fund to the Open Space Fund to Muni have been given set-asides by the votes.

The proposal on the table now would change the way the city handles budget set-asides, ostensibly to allow greater flexibility during tough times. It would allow the Board of Supervisors, under certain budgetary shortfall conditions, to dip into funds earmarked for particular purposes. But the result would be dangerous to the ongoing essential function of government. And the proposal would prevent the voters from solving a problem created by our City Charter — the inability to do multiyear budgeting.

What this city needs is a way for voters to express their long-term funding priorities and to hold the feet of elected officials to the fire in funding those priorities — but in a manner that accounts for the vicissitudes of the economy.

The reason the city can’t do multiyear budgeting without a Charter set aside is that any regular ordinance passed by the board and the mayor can override any other ordinance. One way to approach the problem: amend the charter to create a new class of ordinance, one that would allow for multiyear budgeting. This class of ordinance would need to be classified as a multiyear budget ordinance when proposed, and would require either a vote of the people or a super majority at the Board of Supervisors and a mayoral signature to enact.

The multiyear budgeting ordinances would govern subsequent years’ budgets and could be overridden only with a super-majority vote, and only under conditions of economic hardship. In normal times, the city could set longer-term spending priorities for projects and priorities that last longer than one budget year, as well as those areas that are important to San Franciscans year in and year out. *

Marc Salomon is a neighborhood activist in San Francisco.

The livin’ on concrete

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Editor’s note: The Second Annual Poetry Luchador Battle of ALL of the Sexes on Valentines Day was a multi-generational, multi-lingual, multicultural ash-up of art, gender, poetry, wrestling, language, and theatre brought to you by the favorite revolutionary poets, media-makers, poverty scholars and cultural workers at POOR Magazine. As cosponsors of the event, we’re proud to run the winning poem. The second- and third-place winners are at sfbg.com.

When you walkin’ thru the downtown, and lookin’ in around, you see the

down of humanity, who was once somebody’s baby, layin’ down on the

concrete, street, on the ground

And do ya dare to care, and say what you want to say, step on and stare —

Double standard mind warped thinkin’, not my problem, this is where —

Ya got it wrong, think you are strong, move along, but its your

conscience layin’ there —

Cuz it is what it is — what it is — what it is

Livin on concrete —

What it is — what it is — what it is

Livin on concrete

So, call it whatever you wanna call it — at a distance

But in reality, it’s a casualty of a capitalist existence

Thru the food chain of command, it’s the plan of the man

So step off — shut the fuck up, walk on by, why take a stand?

And be grateful for what you got, even if ya been just tossed a bread crumb

Cuz the hypocrisy of democracy’s leavin’ nothing for that street bum —

What it is — what it is — what it is

Livin on concrete —

What it is — what it is — what it is

Livin on concrete

NIMBYism ideology, no apology, psychology

Haven’t ya realized, ya been hypnotized, homogenized, desensitized?

To a typical, statistical, egotistical psychology

To accept, the neglect and disrespect your own humanity

What it is — what it is — what it is

Livin on concrete —

What it is — what it is — what it is

Livin on the street.

So call it whatever ya wanna call it!

V.L. Hain is a PoorNewsNetwork staff writer and member of the WelfareQUEENS, a performance and media advocacy project of POOR Magazine.

It’s a depression. Let’s get cracking

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By Calvin Welch


OPINION It’s time we called it what it is: this is a depression. And we need to figure out the politics of the new age we are entering, especially in cities, which will be the ground zero for economic hardship.

While President Obama and the media continue to use euphemisms (the "subprime mortgage collapse," "the recession," "the credit crunch") for fear of causing a panic. But the recent tsunami of lost jobs and frozen credit, coupled with the long-standing structural problems of nearly 30 years of Republican magic-of-the-marketplace economic policies — shrinking real incomes for 90 percent of Americans, an obscenely expensive healthcare system that neither businesses nor workers can afford, and an outmoded and deadly carbon-based energy system — have created a new global depression, one the experts said could never happen again.

The current global depression differs in three important ways from your grandparents’ (or great-grandparents’) depression.

First and foremost, this depression was worldwide from the start. Although made in America, the global financial capital system infected the world economy one trading day after it affected ours. Second, the Great Depression was agricultural- and industrial-based, hitting small towns and the countryside the hardest. The current depression is financial service-sector based, and will hit cities and suburbs the hardest, especially the housing, real estate ,and retail sectors. Since the nation is far more urban than it was in the 1930s, our depression will put far greater strains on our urban politics and life-supporting social services to low income people, than anything that occurred during the Great Depression. Finally and saddest, this depression comes at a time when organized labor is weak, divided, and confused.

San Francisco leaders seem unequal to the challenges confronting us. Recently Mayor Gavin Newsom has come up with the usual policies that transform a bad recession into an even greater depression: cut urban health and human services, lay off city employees, and massively accelerate speculation in condo conversions in the midst of cratering real estate values and zero mortgage lending while providing an anemic stimulus proposal for a handful of small businesses that pay their workers very little and are no longer capable of providing health care.

But in the land of the blind, the one-eyed person is king. What is the progressive answer to these mindless proposals? The usual default answers: no cuts, no layoffs — and silence on all the other issues confronting us. This simply won’t do this time. Its not about the budget, folks, it’s about the economy.

We need to start talking with each other — now — about how we rebuild a sustainable urban economy that runs on renewable energy, provides health care for our people, and houses us all. Lets get cracking. *

Calvin Welch is a community organizer and resident of San Francisco.

It’s a rainy day – today

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OPINION As San Francisco’s health and human services face unprecedented loss of funding under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s glaringly disproportionate budget cuts, forcing layoffs of city and nonprofit health care workers who work on the frontlines of a strained system, now is the time when the moral implications of budget decisions mean the most.

The midyear cuts alone have eliminated HIV/AIDS services for an estimated 2,660 San Franciscans. Many core health service programs are wrestling with the reality of closing their doors entirely when the next round of cuts arrives in June. As the city scrambles to come up with any and all possible solutions, Supervisor Chris Daly has introduced an amendment to the Rainy Day Fund that would offer up a much-needed safety net for San Francisco’s vital services.

Currently, San Francisco’s Rainy Day Fund contains a provisional trigger focused on protecting the San Francisco Unified School District during tough times. When the Controller’s Office identifies the need and pulls the trigger, Rainy Day Funds can be appropriated at the discretion of the mayor and the Board of Supervisors to offset the costs of maintaining education during the upcoming budget year.

Daly’s clause, which would take effect in years when the city’s deficit exceeds $250 million, would provide a similar safeguard to public health and human services, services that are no less critical than education but tend to bear the brunt of budget cuts during challenging economic times.

Some have argued that we should save this money for the (perpetual) "next year," with the timeless hypothetical that it could get worse. Yet for those who may lose their lives this year because of colossal cuts to vital services, this argument offers little consolation, and in fact begs the question of how we define a rainy day to begin with. While city workers are being asked to cut salaries and business leaders are being asked to support new revenue, now is the time to reach into our reserves to protect the programs that protect lives.

San Francisco’s HIV/AIDS services have become, in many ways, models for the rest of the country, yet the years of battling for and finessing of these services seem to be taken for granted as we brace ourselves for the possibility of losing them overnight. Strained as our safety net may be, it still provides much of the best care available for those at risk of or living with HIV/AIDS, and in these complex budget discussions, we have yet to hear a consideration of what it would cost to reconstruct such a landscape of services.

Finding solutions to this year’s budget crisis will not be easy. It will require a complex solution, and even with givebacks by city workers and even with new revenue, there will be significant cuts to programs. We need to think about all of the possibilities and understand that it will take extraordinary measures to protect a model health care system. Now is the time when San Franciscans need access to their safety net. Today is a rainy day, and baby, it’s cold outside.

Stephany Joy Ashley is on the steering committee for the Coalition to Save Public Health, an executive board member of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, and the harm reduction coordinator of the St. James Infirmary.

Is inequality making us sick?

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OPINION The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class gets squeezed. It’s gone on so long, we hardly get angry anymore. But we do get sick.

Several recent studies indicate that the life expectancy gap between the most and least deprived Americans has widened since the early 1980s, paralleling the growing economic inequality during the same period. And, if the past is an accurate gauge, today’s economic crisis will only make things worse.

The wealth-health gradient is evident everywhere, even here in San Francisco. According to the SF Department of Public Health, rates for congestive heart failure are 42 percent higher in the Sunset than St. Francis Wood/West Portal; 131 percent higher in Mission/Bernal Heights, and 279 percent higher in Bayview/Hunters Point.

Contrary to myth, it’s not the CEOs who are dropping dead from heart attacks; it’s their subordinates. And it’s not violence or drugs that are the biggest killers in poor neighborhoods but chronic diseases.

Some point the finger at our broken health insurance system. But studies suggest medical care accounts for only about 15 percent of our health gap. That’s because health care repairs our bodies when they break down; it doesn’t affect what makes us sick in the first place.

What about making healthy choices? Don’t the poor smoke more and eat unhealthy foods? True — it’s hard to eat well if you live in a food desert like the Bayview, where there are no supermarkets. But even after correcting for individual behaviors, health inequalities remain. Poor smokers are more likely to get sick than rich smokers.

Many factors affecting health have little to do with individual behaviors. They include exposure to lead and other toxics; the quality of schools; the outsourcing of jobs; proximity of parks; the wages and benefits companies pay; exposure to discrimination; secure, quality housing; affordable preschool … When these conditions are distributed unequally, so is our health.

A century ago, U.S. life expectancy was about 48 years. Much of the 30-year increase since is due not to new drugs or medical technologies, but to improved living conditions. The abolition of child labor, the eight-hour workday, housing and sanitation codes, and other reforms won working Americans a bigger share of our growing prosperity.

By 1976, thanks to civil rights, Medicare, and other progressive policies, economic inequality had reached a 20th century low. The health gap between rich and poor, as well as that between whites and African Americans narrowed between 1966 and 1980.

Then we reversed course. While most European countries were providing paid parental leave, universal preschool, four or more weeks of paid vacations, and guaranteed health care, the United States, starting with the Reagan administration, cut taxes on the rich, slashed social programs, and deregulated business and banking. Economic inequality in the U.S. is now greater than it’s been since the 1920s. The consequence? The health gap is growing again too.

The wide class and racial inequities in the U.S. and the health inequalities they drive are not natural. They are the products of social policies that we as a society have made — and can make differently. We once did. Solutions lie not with new drugs or technologies, but our political priorities.

Larry Adelman is executive producer of the documentary series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? (www.unnaturalcauses.org ) Find out more about the health of San Francisco neighborhoods at www.thehdmt.org and www.healthmattersinsf.org.

The future of a giant landlord

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OPINION The business model of CitiApartments is in crisis. The local landlord giant faces an avalanche of foreclosures, with almost 20 percent of its units being returned to lenders and dozens more properties in danger. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal blamed the credit market for the losses — but tenants standing up for their rights were a factor, too.

San Francisco renters have complained for years about the company’s practice of buying rent-controlled buildings then driving out tenants in order to re-rent their units at higher rates. In the past few years, tenant organizing has brought attention to CitiApartments’ aggressive tactics and put a kink in the company’s plans.

For years, CitiApartments has been accused of harassing tenants, with tactics ranging from illegal buyout offers to physical intimidation to intrusive surveillance. Tenants report living for months without walls and elevators, struggling with leaks and health hazards, with CitiApartments refusing to make repairs. Such problems are no accident: CitiApartments success depends on getting long-term tenants to move out.

Yet tenants are not sitting idly by. A campaign of tenants and advocates, CitiStop, has been educating new CitiApartments tenants about their rights. Over time, tenants have become less afraid and increasingly in touch with tenant advocates and lawyers. Tenants have pursued hefty private lawsuits and are also working with City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who is suing the company for numerous violations.

This campaign has had real results. Tenants are refusing to let CitiApartments force them out. And the organizing effort has helped defend rent control for all San Francisco tenants — CitiApartments owns such a large share of the apartment rental market that it is able to artificially raise rents citywide.

Normally foreclosures are bad news for tenants who have to deal with large banks unfamiliar with San Francisco tenant law. But in the case of CitiApartments, even bank ownership is an improvement. However, UBS, CitiApartments’ lender, has already made its first serious blunder by allowing CitiApartments to continue managing the buildings the bank now owns. UBS should seriously reconsider this decision, given CitiApartments’ track record.

The long-term fate of the buildings is an open question. An ideal solution would be for the city or a nonprofit to take over ownership of the buildings with the goal of providing permanent, affordable housing.

Though CitiApartments’ distressed mortgages are ideal candidates for federal aid, this option must be pursued carefully. It would not be helpful for the government to invest in these buildings based on CitiApartments’ claims that the company can recoup the money using the same flawed model that caused the problems in the first place. But as long as we avoid that trap, we have a great opportunity to meet the city’s pressing need for affordable rental housing.

CitiApartments’ business model has not been working for tenants for a long time, and now it is not working for CitiApartments. It is time to abandon speculative rental schemes and start prioritizing fair, equitable housing. *

Jane Martin is vice chair of SF Pride At Work and an organizer with the CitiStop Campaign.

Save the Rainy Day Fund

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The scope of the economic challenges facing the country is overwhelming. We all hope that the new stimulus package proposed by the Obama administration, coupled with the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector, will revive our economy. In California, the state is confronting an unprecedented $42 billion deficit; State Controller John Chiang has made clear that this could mean suspending tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants, and other payments owed to Californians unless a solution is found.
In San Francisco, with an estimated $560 million deficit for the upcoming fiscal year, the city is facing what may be the worst financial crisis in its history.

While the federal government can authorize deficit spending, essentially by printing more money, to address the crisis, the California Constitution and the San Francisco Charter both require the adoption of balanced budgets. Deficit spending is not an option to solve our local budget and economic problems.

Fortunately, in 2003, San Francisco voters adopted Proposition G establishing the Rainy Day Reserve Fund. After the lessons learned from the dot-com bust, Prop. G established an economic stabilization fund for San Francisco. The Rainy Day Fund employs a simple formula to save money for when it’s most needed: in any year when the city collects more than 5 percent more in tax revenue than it collected in the previous year, the city reserves half the extraordinary revenue growth for a "rainy day." The city can withdraw up to 50 percent of the funds from the Rainy Day Fund when an economic downturn yields less tax revenue to the city than the preceding year. The fund currently has $98 million in savings.

Last year, for example, the mayor and Board of Supervisors allocated $19 million from the Rainy Day Fund to the San Francisco Unified School District, which helped avoid 535 teacher layoffs in the face of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s education cuts. This year, it is likely that the mayor and the board will be able to withdraw some $45 million to offset the serious deficit.

These budget policies have helped preserve the city’s excellent credit rating, paving the way for low-cost debt issuance for critical projects like the rebuild of San Francisco General Hospital. However, it is important to understand that the city’s fiscal woes are a combination of cyclical and structural problems.

San Francisco’s structural imbalance between revenues collected and the cost of vital health, public safety, recreation, and social services needs to be addressed through revenue enhancements and comprehensive tax reform, not by spending the entire Rainy Day Fund as a quick fix. According to most forecasts, the recession is likely to continue through at least early next year, and San Francisco is likely to continue to experience fiscal problems.

Currently, there are discussions in City Hall about going back to the voters to revise the Rainy Day Fund to allow the fund to be fully depleted in a single year. I believe that would be a mistake. The Rainy Day Fund is an essential piece of the city’s overall financial strategy, and I strongly urge my former colleagues on the Board of Supervisors and the mayor to preserve the integrity of the fund. If used as originally intended, the fund will help maintain vital programs and help alleviate the impact of budgets cuts to our most vulnerable populations over the long-term as we work to right the ship in the face of this perfect economic storm. *

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for 14 years and was the author of Proposition G, which created the city’s Rainy Day Fund.

Where federal banking money should go

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OPINION The federal government is shelling out hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up failing financial institutions, with no end in sight. Taxpayer money is going to commercial banks and insurance companies that took outsized risks and participated in extraordinarily complex financial transactions, motivated by no purpose beyond the hunger for profits. They were allowed to engage in this destructive behavior despite being among the most heavily regulated companies on earth. This is a terrible mess, and we’re all paying for it.

Yet there is one type of financial institution that remains unsullied by the current crisis – community development financial institutions, or CDFIs. CDFI is an official federal designation given to community loan funds, credit unions, and community development banks that have a mission first and foremost to address the financial needs of working people and low-income communities.

To be designated a CDFI, a financial institution must go through a rigorous screening process administered by the Treasury Department and prove that its core mission is to bring about economic benefits for the underserved and that it’s accountable to the communities it serves. In the Bay Area, active CDFIs include the Northern California Community Loan Fund, One California Bank in Oakland, and my own organization, Opportunity Fund.

CDFIs make microloans to new and emerging small businesses. They offer fair and non-predatory mortgage loans to first-time homebuyers, often combining their loans with homebuyer counseling. And they finance the construction of new affordable rental housing, health clinics, and social service facilities. Opportunity Fund, for instance, has invested more than $120 million into some of the most troubled neighborhoods in the Bay Area, with a loan loss rate of less than 1 percent. And we have somehow managed to do this without the use of complex derivatives, credit default swaps, or exotic mortgage products. We have done it by taking prudent risks on hardworking people who deserve a chance.

Unlike lenders motivated by greed and empowered by questionable financial "innovations," CDFIs are generally in much healthier financial condition than their mainstream counterparts. Despite being regulated by nothing more than our mission to make our communities better, we are not in need of a bailout.

We are, however, forcefully and unapologetically asking for a major share of any economic stimulus that Congress approves.

If the treasury can pour $700 billion (and counting) into corporations that pushed the envelope way too far in pursuit of profits, surely it can and should inject $5 billion or $10 billion into CDFIs, which will invest that money in our neighborhoods and into a better life for those who are struggling most right now.

The Treasury Department invests in CDFIs through its CDFI Fund, so this stimulus can be administered with no new bureaucracy. Furthermore, we are ready to put the money to work right away instead of salting it away like many banks did with the first round of bailout money. Opportunity Fund has identified $50 million in shovel-ready affordable housing developments that we could finance immediately if we had the capital, and our sister organizations also have real deals in their pipelines.

Let’s work together to make sure that this time around some of the money in Bedford Falls goes to Jimmy Stewart, and not all to Mr. Potter.

Eric Weaver is CEO of Opportunity Fund (www.opportunityfund.org).

Housing is economic stimulus

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By Paul Boden


EDITORIAL Change is certainly in the air these days. A president who understands that the phrase "economic recovery" is more then just a buzzword for tax cuts and bailouts for corporations and wealthy people represents perhaps the biggest, and some would argue the most important change — and it offers an opportunity for struggling communities.

President-elect Barack Obama has promised to create the largest public works construction project since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. He has talked about funding work on everything from schools to sewer systems, from green jobs to ensuring that every American has access to a college education. All this is incredibly good news for the country as a whole.

My concern is that homelessness has received very little mention, although more than 3 million people experience homelessness every year. Family homelessness, in particular, is on the rise, with 16 cities (out of 25 surveyed in a recent report) reporting an increase in the number of families forced out of their homes. And yet there seems no clear plan for using economic recovery programs to restore the draconian cuts in federal affordable housing funding. Since 1983, those programs have been reduced by $54 billion a year. And there’s no plan to show how addressing homelessness can and should be part of the economic revitalization of local communities.

Many of us watched in despair as our issues were ignored during the campaign debates and in the party platforms. Homelessness is the No. 1 issue locally, yet it was all but ignored nationally.

But the country has now elected a president who understands what it means to respect the work of true community organizations and allow for local voices to be at the table when decisions are made that have an impact on our lives.

Local Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and Housing Development Corporations (HDCs) already exist in many communities. The credible ones will work in partnership with community members and organizations to combine a federal reinvestment in affordable housing with economic stimulus activities that benefit everyone — street-level space for creating new local businesses, job training connected to positions created in the development and management of the new business and housing units, the use of (and training in) smart green technology in all development.

Tax dollars invested in affordable housing stay in the local economy. Many of the jobs created remain long after the construction phase is completed.

Economic recovery plans are being made now, as federal departments are hiring staff and priorities are being set. Congress, despite the lessons learned from the banking bailout, is in a rush to release funds without much detail. We need direct petitioning from local communities. We need calls demanding that a share of economic recovery funding be given directly to local organizations to develop desperately needed housing and community spaces, using accountable local hiring requirements and safe green building practices.

It’s on all of us locally to come together and make the call.

Paul Boden is director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a coalition of West Coast social justice-based homeless organizations.

The decimation of public health

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OPINION Crisis seems omnipresent these days.: it’s hard to find a newspaper that doesn’t carry the word in a headline at the top of the business section, or even on page 1. But a liquidity crisis seems a lot less solid when compared to the kind of crises faced by people in a society without health services.

San Francisco has developed a strong mental-health infrastructure, with respect for mental health consumers’ viewpoints and rights.

As an alternative to confinement — a coercive practice that can alienate patients — this city has acute diversion units: houses that serve as recovery centers for people in psychiatric crises. Psychiatrists manage medication, and nurse practitioners conduct health screenings, as you’d expect, but this is just the beginning of a broader approach to mental health. Residents work with professionals to develop their own treatment plans. They meet for discussion groups and trainings on topics that affect their ongoing mental health, like relapse prevention, symptom management, and medication education.

Participants help cook and clean to prepare themselves for independent living. Every year, 1,400 San Franciscans use these units.

We also have created culturally competent services. In immigrant neighborhoods and at San Francisco General Hospital, we have services in Spanish and Asian and Pacific Islander languages — services that help prevent the problems that can occur when native-language support is unavailable.

And the city has embarked on a grand experiment: Healthy San Francisco is designed to provide health care — before things get to crisis level — for any city resident who lacks insurance.

Unfortunately the crises have collided. These programs, along with dozens of others, are slated for closure next month as part of the city’s emergency rebudgeting response to our economic crisis. Half our acute diversion units will close. Hundreds of monolingual San Franciscans will lose services in Chinatown and the Richmond District, and General Hospital may lose half the Asian languages with which it can communicate with mental health consumers. New Leaf will cut therapy for 50 gay clients with combined mental health and addictive disorders. The sexual assault trauma recovery center will close.

Healthy San Francisco will be gutted. Staffing has not increased sufficiently to provide high quality care for all patients, and SF General will downgrade service by replacing skilled nursing jobs with less-skilled positions. Some RNs will be eliminated, LVNs will be replaced, certified staff will be replaced by noncertified staff, and clerks with medical training will be reduced to clerical work.

These are just examples. Cuts were made so hastily that nobody yet understands their full extent. But budgets — for all those digits and decimals that smack of hard economic truth — exist in the nebulous apparition of What May Be. And what may be, may yet be changed.

This month, the Board of Supervisors has the opportunity to change this future, and to protect the health and, in some cases, the lives of thousands of San Franciscans. Public health will receive cuts: that’s a sad truth of a faltering economy. But these cuts need be neither as numerous nor as deep as the current plan.

By reallocating funding from less essential programs to our most vital services, and by giving San Franciscans the option to vote on new revenue in June, the supervisors can respect the priorities of a city that cares about the well-being of its ill, its injured, and its uninsured.


Alysabeth Alexander works with La Voz Latina. Jennifer Friedenbach works with the Coalition, and SEIU Local 1021 activist Ed Kinchley is a member of the Coalition to Save Public Health.

The class of 2008: an agenda

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OPINION Every few years, San Francisco’s political landscape is remade. But we, the new arrivals of the Board of Supervisors’ Class of 2008, know that the last decade of district elections helped ensure that the supervisors truly represent our neighborhoods and our shared San Francisco values.

Despite various efforts by special interests to paint us as out of step with everyday San Franciscans, the very strength of our campaigns was that they were rooted in the lives of actual residents who understood the choices before them. We campaigned on the best of our experiences — neighborhood activism, labor and community organizing, running nonprofits and small businesses, and championing public education and police accountability.

Despite our different districts and diverse constituencies, we rallied voters around real San Francisco values — the faith in the role of government to protect the most vulnerable and bring forth justice and equity; the trust in grassroots democracy and neighborhood-based activism; the pursuit of a safe and clean environment and sustainable development; the belief in the sanctity of immigrant, labor, and LGBT rights; the dignity of working families, seniors, and people with disabilities; and the pursuit of housing justice and economic opportunity for all.

While the Class of 2000 paved the way on many of these progressive values, we enter public office ready to build on this foundation while rising to the new and enormous challenges of today. San Francisco is not just facing a fiscal crisis; we are facing a quandary in which city government cannot do all that it aspires to do.

Our agenda is no less ambitious for the crisis we are in. It is because of the crisis that we need to create opportunity, direction, and hope where there is violence, confusion, and despair. Our San Francisco values mean that we will tackle public safety by addressing the root causes of violence by seeking rehabilitation and restorative justice and push for real police reform by promoting the kind of community policing that is built on relationships between neighborhood residents and the police.

Our San Francisco values prompt us to make our city budget more transparent. We will initiate new programs only with the certainty that important services are not cut in the process. We will do our best to protect critical frontline city workers from privatization and layoffs.

We will work collectively to maintain the city’s commitment to its public schools; promote public transit; foster sustainable development and new affordable housing connected to green and well-conceived public infrastructure; promote community choice aggregation and public power based on renewable energy; support local businesses and the hiring of San Francisco residents; safeguard our sanctuary city to make sure that immigrants can live free from fear of ICE raids; and fight to keep our vital neighborhood services working and our parks, libraries, and senior centers thriving.

We are committed to ushering in a new tone of cooperation and unity in San Francisco. Despite the enormous challenges and contending political views within the city family, we will work to ensure that our neighborhoods always win out over special interests. After all, politics is about improving the lives of everyday people. We look forward to working with you in this noble effort.

Supervisor John Avalos represents District 11. Supervisor David Campos represents District 9. Supervisor David Chiu represents District 3. Supervisor Eric Mar represents District 1.

Mayor Newsom’s YouTube hypocrisy

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OPINION Mayor Gavin Newsom’s "State of the City" YouTube fiasco — in which city SFGTV employees helped create 7.5 hours of non-mandated programming — is complete hypocrisy.

While the mayor touts technology and transparency of his efforts, he has opposed using available technology to broaden access to public meetings in City Hall, even though that is now mandated under the Sunshine Ordinance. Why are we getting Internet speechifying, rather than transparent access to City Hall meetings?

If you’ve ever wanted to listen in on what are now essentially secret, backroom policy discussions and decisions being made in San Francisco’s City Hall, you’re not alone.

If you’ve ever imagined being able to hear those conversations — while you’re sitting at home or in your office, during your drive to work, while on Muni/BART, enjoying a java in your favorite café, or really anywhere — the technology is already in place. You could use your iPod or MP3 player, or listen to a podcast, similar to using Books on Tape.

Right now only about 30 of the 80-plus regular City Hall meetings are televised and posted online for on-demand or downloaded viewing. Some of the remaining 50-plus meetings are at least audiotaped, but they require awkward and costly procedures to obtain them.

In an effort to increase transparency of San Francisco’s government, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi introduced legislation earlier this year to expand the recording mandate and require online posting within 72 hours after a meeting. Currently only policy bodies must audiotape their meetings, but Mirkarimi’s mandate extended the recording requirement to other City Hall agency and departmental hearings, and to lesser-known passive meeting bodies. It was such an obvious and popular idea that the Board of Supervisors overwhelmingly supported it and subsequently overrode Newsom’s veto.

Newsom continues to claim the enhanced transparency mandate would be too costly, but simple research has shown that the city has all the equipment, contracts, and staff in place to implement Mirkarimi’s transparency mandate today. In fact, any laptop or $40 digital recorder can make the recording, and posting online is similar to the few steps needed to upload a YouTube video.

It appears the mayor just doesn’t want anyone to see the sausage he’s making, unless he can script and control it. Other City Hall bureaucrats blocking this include Jack Chin, head of SFGTV; Angela Calvillo, clerk of the board; and Frank Darby, Calvillo’s administrator of the Sunshine Task Force. They all raise spurious complaints, pass the buck, and refuse to discuss reasonable accommodations, apparently following mayoral prohibitions despite the board’s veto override.

The Sunshine Ordinance requires all civil servants to prioritize compliance over any other duties when there is a conflict, and failure to obey the law is official misconduct.

It’s sad that Newsom, city employees, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera are doing everything they can (by action or by ignoring these daily violations) to prevent the ability of the media and the public to have this transparency. Needless to say, with the looming city budget deficit, our interest in following these detailed machinations is at an all-time high.

We should demand that City Hall’s foot-dragging cease, by implementing Mirkarimi’s legislation immediately.

Kimo Crossman is a government watchdog and a member of San Francisco’s Sunshine Posse. Crossman can be reached at kimo@webnetic.net. Open government advocates Joe Lynn and Patrick Monette-Shaw contributed to this report.

An open letter to the archbishop

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Dear Archbishop George Niederauer:

On Dec. 3, in the face of a national outcry against the passage of Proposition 8, you defended the role you played in its passage, which included giving a video interview to the pandering Web site marriagematterstokids.com, in which you intoned that "the successful, millennia-long model of marriage is between a man and a woman…. And the introduction of another model seems to us to go against the success of that model."

But beyond just words, you directly persuaded the Mormon Church to join the fight, which that church said it would not have done absent your encouragement. As San Francisco’s highest Catholic prelate, what you say and do matters, not only to the loving members of your flock whose lives you have disrupted, but to voters throughout the state. Now, adding insult to injury, you are crying "victim."

Please do not pretend that your own right to free expression is at stake because we are protesting your actions. No one denies that you have a constitutional right to speak out on issues of public policy, just as we have the right to protest your hurtful conduct. Your statement that we should just agree to disagree over gay marriage, and stop hurling obloquies like "bigot" and "pervert" at one another, is the very essence of sanctimony. You did not agree to disagree before you acted to invade the bedrooms of consenting adults whose partnerships in no way impinge on your own rights. Your entreaty now for respectful discourse is simply a crusader’s demand for surrender and conversion.

You stated in your interview to marriagematterstokids.com: "Societies, nations, states do not create marriage; marriage is antecedent to that … The society, the government comes along later, and is not meant to revise or redesign marriage."

What sanctimony. You have designed marriage politically in exactly the manner you pretend to eschew. If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t have one. Teach against it until your voice runs out. But have the ecumenical restraint not to legislate your morality. And please do not profane the sacrifices of abolitionists and civil rights activists by falsely equating their efforts to expand people’s rights with your efforts to restrict them.

You may bridle at the term "bigot," but there is no better term to describe the prejudice you tapped to help repeal the hard-fought gains of same-sex couples. Assuring yourself that you are "tolerant" does not make it so. The Catholic Church behaved ignobly in failing, until 1967, to take a firm stand in support of interracial marriage. You have advanced no argument against gay marriage that people did not also advance against interracial marriage. It pains us to have to call you — our homophobic friends, family members, neighbors, fellow parishioners, and clergy — bigots. But let the term fester in your ear until you are delivered from your bigotry — or we are.

This is not a polite debate. Nor is it a mere culture war. It is a war for fundamental rights and human dignity. We will fight until we win. And you will be left to explain once again why you were on the wrong side of history.

Ben Rosenfeld

Ben Rosenfeld is a civil rights lawyer in San Francisco.

7.5 better ways to balance the budget

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OPINION In Mayor Gavin Newsom’s seven-and-a-half-hour YouTube series on the state of our city, he spends barely 30 seconds addressing the budget deficit.

Newsom’s mid-year budget cut plan is completely out of touch with the fundamental priorities of our city. At a time when residents are feeling the impact of the recession in their daily lives, the mayor’s plan guts our public health safety net by slashing programs that serve seniors on fixed incomes and by reducing frontline healthcare workers.

What’s more, the mayor’s mid year cuts leave untouched his bloated senior staff and protects management-heavy departments around City Hall.

So, in response to the effort to balance the budget by slashing tens of millions in health services for the city’s neediest, a coalition of health workers, health providers, and patients are putting forward alternative ways to address the city’s budget problem that are worth our time and thought.

Among the ideas offered by the Coalition to Save Public Health are the following:

1. Start at the top, not at the bottom. Since the mayor first took office, the number of highly paid managers has skyrocketed while the number of employees providing basic city services has stagnated. It’s time to tighten our belt at the management level and eliminate all but the most essential positions that pay more than $100,000 per year.

2. Practice what you preach. In November 2007, the mayor announced a non-essential hiring freeze to deal with the budget crunch. Newsom then promptly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring new senior staff including highly paid and duplicative special assistants for climate control initiatives, "neighborhood empowerment," and a new greening czar. All new staff hired since November 2007 who are paid more than $100,000 should be cut.

3. Cut duplicative programs. The city spends more than $10 million per year on small business outreach and economic development. The Mayor’s Small Business Assistance Center duplicates those services and costs nearly $800,000 every year.

4. Listen to the voters — cut the Community Justice Court. Proposition L was rejected by more than 57 percent of the San Francisco electorate. It’s time to listen to the voters and preserve revenue by cutting current-year funding for the CJC.

5. Save on spin, spend on substance. A recent controller’s report found that the city spent more than $10 million in salaries for public relations and public information staff, including funding for seven people in the Mayor’s Office of Communications last year. The mayor should cut all unnecessary PR staff and reduce his spin operation to two people.

6. Cut the fat, not the bone. Both police and fire unions are due for 7 percent pay increases. As the city cuts salaries or lays off staff across the board, the mayor should work with the board to reopen fire and police contracts.

7. Eliminate unnecessary drivers. For years, the Fire Department’s battalion chiefs have relied on "chief’s aides" to chauffer them around the city. The estimated cost for these positions is more than $2 million.

7.5 Cut in half the city’s contribution to the opera and symphony. In the current year, the city is contributing close to $4 million in General Fund revenue to the operation of the opera, symphony, and ballet. We can’t afford to subsidize organizations with enormous endowments while we slash services for people in need.

Aaron Peskin is president of the Board of Supervisors.

Sensational trans-bashing at SF Weekly

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OPINION SF Weekly published an article Nov. 26 with the headline "Border Crossers." The subhead explained the thesis: "Long rap sheet? No problem. Transgender Latina hookers in SF are successfully fighting deportation by asking for asylum."

The title successfully encapsulates the Jerry Springer-like journalism masquerading as a feature article in an alternative weekly in San Francisco. While I would normally just dismiss this as another example of how SF Weekly is turning into the National Enquirer, the article is important in that it reveals the intense discrimination transgender immigrant women who do sex work face in San Francisco — and unfortunately, quite possibly jeopardizes an incredibly essential legal protection.

The writer, Lauren Smiley, apparently believes she has unearthed a shocking secret: that transgender women may receive asylum in the United States based on intense discrimination in their home countries. So trans immigrants can avoid deportation even when they have been arrested for prostitution and have rap sheets.

As Smiley notes, immigration judges and asylum officers have the discretion to grant asylum when a transgender woman presents a showing of a well-founded fear of persecution based on gender identity. Even Smiley admits that transgender women face violence and intense discrimination in their home countries; however, what Smiley finds the most egregious is that some small subset of the asylum-seeking women have been prosecuted for sex work.

What Smiley single-mindedly ignores is the astonishing statistics that show an unemployment rate of more than 50 percent for transgender women of color, and perhaps even higher statistics for undocumented women in San Francisco. Instead of pointing to the well-documented obstacles transgender women face in employment, Smiley interviews one transgender woman who was able to get a job as evidence that transgender women really do not have to be "hookers" to survive. (Yes, she really did use the word "hookers".)

Without any context or analysis, Smiley quoted Dan Stein, president of the "Federation for American Immigration Reform" (FAIR) as a credible critic of the practice of granting asylum to immigrant transgender women. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently officially designated FAIR as a hate group, but nowhere in her article does Smiley mention that the organization is considered one of the least trustworthy, if not laughable, sources for information on immigration.

What concerns me most is not the cheapness of the shot, but rather that — like so much sensationalist journalism — a piece like this gives fuel to right-wing activists like FAIR. Even Smiley notes that the Republican Party has included in its platform an end to the practice that has literally saved many lives.

What is even more astounding is that last year, Smiley received an award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for an article about how doctors were using a new treatment for transgender children so that they wouldn’t develop into their biological sex until after puberty — which would give those kids the choice to transition later.

Yet in the Nov. 26 piece, when describing the landmark case of Geovanni Hernandez-Montiel, who was the first to get asylum based on gender identity, this award-winning writer frequently refers to Giovanni using the male pronoun "he." While I would not expect most journalists to give a nuanced perspective on Giovanni’s gender identity, I do expect a journalist who has received an award from an LGBT media watchdog group to allow for a more fluid understanding of Giovanni’s gender. I called Smiley and she acknowledged that she should have better described FAIR. When I asked her about the other problems, she simply said I should write a letter to SF Weekly.

In San Francisco, can’t we expect and demand better?

Robert Haaland is co-chair of SF Pride at Work, a LGBT labor organization. Alexandra Byerly is program coordinator, EL-LA Program Para Trans-Latinas. Nikki Calma is a member of the Commission of the Status of Women. Cecilia Chung is chair of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission

San Francisco needs a New Deal

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By Christopher D. Cook and Eric Quezada


OPINION On the night the voters spoke, word began filtering through Palm Pilots and iPhones about sweeping budget cuts likely to carve a hole in vital city programs. It’s ugly: massive cuts to the Department of Public Health and numerous social service programs. As usual, programs helping those most in need are getting cut the most. Why aren’t we instead raising revenue from those who have the most?

In this year of "change," we need a fundamental shift in our city’s taxing and spending priorities — a bold New Deal for San Francisco that enlarges the public pie that everyone’s scuffling over, and that creates green jobs and new housing opportunities targeting poor neighborhoods and districts.

It’s time to get serious about taxing and redistributing wealth to stimulate new economic opportunities. The passage of Propositions N and Q — expanding real estate transfer and payroll taxes — is a good start. We need to tax wealth in new ways that replenish the local economy, creating green living-wage jobs with health care and opportunities for small businesses and community-serving groups.

City leaders can make San Francisco a model of good sense by demanding that our wealthiest citizens and corporations help fund a program that creates jobs and economic opportunity for the rest of us. Particularly in the city’s eastern neighborhoods, Districts 9, 10, and 11 (and parts of 6), poverty and economic stress are rampant and families are pressed to their limits — unable to afford health care, working multiple jobs, living in overcrowded apartments, and often in shamefully dilapidated housing conditions.

With home prices declining but rents and foreclosures skyrocketing, the city needs to help thousands of working-class residents who provide vital services — teachers, service-industry workers, and cash-poor immigrants — to remain in San Francisco. Now is the time to prioritize production, public infrastructure, education, and cooperation for the common good; our economy needs a stimulus based on solidarity and collective good.

We’re being presented with false scarcity and false choices — do we cut housing or health care to meet the budget? Few are asking the key question: why don’t we have more money to work with, in this vastly wealthy region?

In an earlier New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt imposed a 90 percent tax on upper income brackets — making it virtually illegal for people to earn so much more than others. Locally, city leaders should explore a gross receipts tax on large firms; new taxes on luxury and high-priced items, such as SUVs, second homes, yachts, and other extravagances; perhaps revive the push for a downtown business tax levied on large firms in the financial district; and a truly progressive income tax harnessing revenues from high-income folks.

People can argue over where the money should go. But it’s brutally clear we are in an age of deepening inequality, widening economic stress, and environmental limits. There’s no room for huge disparities — no room to continue allowing extra-wealthy individuals and corporations to consolidate their gains at the expense of the rest of us. We must renew the fight for public wealth — now. *

Journalist and author Christopher D. Cook is a former Guardian city editor, and a local activist. Contact him at www.christopherdcook.com. Eric Quezada is executive director of Dolores Street Community Services, and was recently a candidate for District 9 supervisor.

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