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Politics Blog

Herrera to Campos: duck and cover

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Louis XIV’s weakness was liking to hear people sing his praises. Is the same true of Newsom? And is this why he is refusing to meet with immigrant advocates, who have been critical of his sanctuary policy cave-in, and do the right thing for immigrant youth?

Text by Sarah Phelan

City Attorney Dennis Herrera replied today to Sup. David Campos’ request that he tell Newsom that he’s not a monarch. Campos made his request after Newsom said he intends to ignore the Board’s veto-proof amendment to the sanctuary ordinance.

Herrera also replied to Campos’ request that the Juvenile Probation Department could comply with the ordinance’s directive by adopting a proposed policy thqt was drafted by the Asian Law Caucus.

And the answer seems to be yes, Newsom’s not a monarch, and yes, JPD could adopt ALC’s proposed policy, but it all comes down “to the extent permitted by state and federal law,” which sounds like a massive passing of the buck.

Climate Change protests

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Text by Sarah Phelan

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“Human chain” protestors protect grassroots groups from all over the world from hundreds of riot police who turned out to keep climate justice activists from entering the Bella Center where the 15th Conference of Parties was being held.

Alicia Garza, co-executive director of the San Francisco-based People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) sent these photos from protests in Copenhagen. Media outlets are reporting that Danish police arrested about 250 protesters and used pepper spray and dogs to contain crowds in Copenhagen today, as a demonstration against the U.N. climate talks converged on the Bella Center ahead of crucial negotiations at the COP15 summit.

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As thousands of activists held a People’s Assembly outside the Bella Center where indigenous activists and G77 representatives walked out of climate talks, activists hung a banner from the trees which said COP15: Business as U$ual. Many activists said that the wealthier nations, such as the EU, France and the United States were prioritizing business interests over the fate of millions of people around the world who are severely impacted by current and impending climate crises.
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“Via campesina at COP 15” is an international grassroots organization of farmers and workers from around the world who led activists and civil society who were locked out of the COP. COP officials limited the amount of participation from civil society to 1000 people today, and intend to further limit participation to 90 people tomorrow.
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Deck the halls — and hit the deck

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By Tim Redmond

The estimable Gar Smith, longtime environmental writer and editor, sent me a photo that somehow says something about the holiday season, 2009:

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Prison report: Finally, some truth

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just a guy was recently released from a California state prison. For the past year, he covered the prison system from the inside, and continues to comment on prisons, crime and law-enforcement issues.

Kudos to the Orange County Register for writing a piece not completely marred with negativity toward prisoners and for taking an objective view of the fucking mess in California.

I think it’s refreshing that a more mainstream media outlet has actually put out a piece that doesn’t label every prisoner in California (or the country) as an incorrigible ingrate with no future.

What is it going to take for the rest of the state to pick up pieces like this one? Where are the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Diego Union/Tribune? Why is it only small papers or independents and weeklies are telling the truth?

The writers of the OC Register article put the numbers out there for all to see — come on, California spends more than double that of Illinois per inmate. DOUBLE. There is no conclusive proof that this spending is doing shit. Well, it’s definitely doing shit, just not good shit! Lining someone’s pockets somewhere.

Quotes like this in the article crack me up: “Only four guards are assigned to the gymnasium at any given time; they watch from an elevated platform at one end of the floor. Traveling between the bunks, especially at the end of the gym, you are putting your life into the hands of bored criminals. The inmates are so close you can smell their sweat and stale breath.”

I guess the guards are all fresh and rosy and don’t have odors, kind of like when they stopped allowing visits because the swine flu outbreak was just occurring — but didn’t stop anything else, as if the only people that could get the swine flu were the inmates and their families.

Can progressives counter a re-energized Newsom?

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By Steven T. Jones

Since my Dec. 4 blog post about Mayor Gavin Newsom reengaging with San Francisco, there have been more signs that he’s back and trying to take control of the city’s agenda. While that may be preferable to an absentee mayor, it’s probably not good news for the progressives, who have nominal control over the Board of Supervisors but seem to be having a hard time putting together effective political plays.

Newsom dropped in on the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board yesterday and was rewarded with a splashy lead story about how he and Sup. Sean Elsbernd are proposing a charter amendment to reform the city’s pension system. Apparently, the mayor has dropped his petulant approach to the media and is now using the Chron to proactively build public support for a proposal that most City Hall players hadn’t even heard of yet.

Newsom’s recent choice of Tony Winnicker for a new press secretary – a figure far less caustic and divisive than his two predecessors – also probably signals the mayor’s intent to try to play offense for awhile and chip away at the progressive block. Newsom yesterday announced a new sustainable energy financing program for building owners in the city, which he’s pushing in partnership with Sup. Eric Mar – a progressive who was the swing vote earlier this year for approving a controversial solar project favored by the mayor.

None of this bodes well for the progressive movement in San Francisco.

Police showdown today

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By Tim Redmond

The Board of Supervisors vote today on Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s legislation requiring city officials to repay the taxpayers for the cost of police security while campaigning out of town is an early skirmish in next year’s budget battles.

The cops really, really don’t want this to pass, and they’re lobbying hard against it. They didn’t even want to release the annual cost of protecting the mayor and other dignitaries. Chief Gascon is treating this whole thing like the CIA’s black-ops budget — secret, untouchable, a matter of national security.

It’s silly: Yes, Mayor Newsom needs police protection; he’s a big-city mayor who supports same-sex marriage and there are all kinds of nuts out there. And San Francisco hosts politicians from all over the world, some of whom are controversial figures; they need security, too. But I don’t see how anyone’s safety is put at risk when the cops release the gross figures for the cost of that security.

And I don’t see how anyone could reasonably argue that when Newsom (or, say, District Attorney Kamala Harris) is out campaigning up and down the state for higher office, that campaign shouldn’t reimburse the city for police protection costs.

Part of what’s going on here, I think, is Gascon testing his political clout. The new chief has a lot of political capital right now, and he’s twisting arms to see if he can get some of the progressive supes to slide his way on this measure. If that happens, it could be an indication that the chief will be twisting the same arms to avoid any cuts to his budget.

Chances are that Newsom will veto the Mirkarimi bill anyway (at which point it may wind up on the ballot — and wouldn’t that be an interesting campaign?). But the breakdown of the vote today will be fascinating.

Marijuana initiative headed for California ballot?

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By Steven T. Jones
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Californians may vote next year on whether to legalize marijuana. Proponents for the initiative that is primarily being bankrolled by Oaksterdam University founder Richard Lee today reportedly confirmed that they have more than enough signatures to qualify for the November 2010 ballot.

If approved by voters and not blocked by the courts or federal government, the measure would allow California cities and counties to adopt their own laws for regulating and taxing marijuana, even for purely recreational use. Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Californians support legalizing weed.

“It was so easy to get them,” Lee told the Los Angeles Times, referring to the 680,000 signatures that he says they have collected, clearing the 434,000 threshold needed to qualify. “People were so eager to sign.”

The California Secretary of State’s Office must still confirm that the campaign gathered enough valid signatures from registered voters. Meanwhile, Assembly member Tom Ammiano’s AB 390 – which would decriminalize and tax marijuana statewide – will also be considered by the Legislature next year. Its first formal hearing, before the Assembly Public Safety Committee, is set for Jan. 12.

Phil Bronstein likes the (anti-gay) Salvation Army

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By Tim Redmond

The Chron’s Bronstein has a long post today on why he’s going to keep giving money to the Salvation Army, the conservative Christian organization that thinks homosexuality is a sin and fights to keep having to provide benefits for domestic partners.

I get that they do (some) good work. So does the Catholic Church. There are all sorts of right-wing characters who give to charity, serve soup to the poor — and try to make goddamn sure that the world never changes in such a way that the need for charity will decline.

The Army’s supporters say 89 percent of the money goes directly to service. So 11 cents out of every dollar you drop in the red can goes to support an agenda dedicated to bigotry and intolerance that doesn’t belong anywhere in society any more. That’s too much for me.

Public option: Is Pelosi listening?

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By Tim Redmond

Nancy Pelosi lives, breathes, eats and sleeps to elect more Democrats to the House. That’s why she’s so wimpy on tough issues, why she won’t (so far) oppose the troop surge in Afghanistan and why she sometimes infuriates the progressive voters in her home town.

She long ago stopped representing San Francisco; her constituency is the Democratic Caucus — and the consultants who are running campaigns for Democrats in swing districts.

So I hope she’s seen this poll. It shows that the public option is not just good policy — it’s what Democratic voters demand. It’s what could make the difference between a weak effort in the mid-term elections and another strong year for Pelosi’s party and her speakership.

Cops break word, bust UC protesters

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By Sarah Morrison.

Police arrested 65 students and local protesters at 4.40 a.m. this morning inside UC Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall – a building that had been informally taken over by students since Monday of this week.

The protesters, who had been sleeping, studying and holding workshops in the building as part of a larger protest against recent fee increases, faculty furloughs and alleged police brutality hoped to “open the university” to the larger student community through their demonstrations. They have been charged with misdemeanor trespassing and are currently in the process of being released from Santa Rita jail, where they have been held all day.

According to a UC Berkeley spokeperson, the group included approximately 41 UC Berkeley students and 24 individuals not affiliated with the campus. One additional individual, who officials say was being disruptive, was arrested outside of the building, bringing the total number of arrests to 66.

UC officials said they arrested the group to prevent disruptions to the final examination schedule – set to start tomorrow – and to protect the rest of the student population not involved with the 24-hour presence inside Wheeler Hall. They said that the protestors had planned and publicized an all-night, unauthorized concert tonight in the Hall that would include artists and guest DJs.

Yet, the protestors said they were taken by complete surprise this morning, because they thought they had an informal agreement with the police who had been monitoring them since they entered the building at the start of the week. They students had said previously they would leave the Hall when the concert was over, late Friday or early Saturday morning, and certainly before exams started.

“Throughout the week Wheeler has been a fully-functioning university space, where students, professors and visitors have come in, taught and even given lectures,” said UC Berkeley senior Will Reeves. “Police would come in every evening and remind us that we were illegally trespassing but they never made us leave. This created an informal agreement between us and we thought it was okay.”

Reeves, who said that most of the protestors were asleep when police entered the building this morning, added: “Absolutely no one had any clue this was going to happen.”

While no one has yet come forward with allegations of police brutality, some of the students involved said that they thought the situation had been handled particularly badly.

Roey Kruvi, a third year geography student at UC Berkeley was sleeping in the hall when he was arrested this morning. He said he was put in zip-tie handcuffs and taken down to the basement of the hall where he and the other protestors were kept for two hours without any of their possessions.

“We were not allowed to speak to lawyers, we had all our stuff taken from us, and we were kept unaware of what was going to happen to us,” he said, noting that he did not think the police went beyond normal tactics the students had come to expect. “It was a freezing cold room where we were kept and some students had no shoes on. One boy did not even have pants on – he was left in boxers and a t-shirt in the cold all day.”

Kruvi said that it took the police more than four hours to process all the protestors once they arrived at Santa Rita jail, stressing that they were never told clearly what was going on.

As of now, protestors are being released from Santa Rita jail with court dates organizes for January 2010. Many of the students being released will now have to start preparations for final examinations tomorrow. According to UC officials, individuals with prior warrants could not be released until bail was posted.

According to the students, the concert will still go ahead tonight in the form of a protest rally for those arrested. Performer Boots Riley of the Coup is expected to attend.

Coastal Commission denies enviros’ request to yank desalination plant permit

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By Rebecca Bowe

A coalition of environmental organizations argued yesterday that a permit issued to Poseidon Resources to build a massive desalination plant near San Diego should be revoked, because the company failed to provide complete information to California Coastal Commission staff.

At a CCC meeting held in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Chambers in City Hall yesterday, commissioners listened as advocates from the Surfrider Foundation, San Diego Coastkeeper, and the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation, who filed the request for permit revocation, argued that Poseidon purposely tried to mislead CCC staff by submitting incomplete and inaccurate information about technical aspects of its desalination facility.

The CCC granted Poseidon its permit in November of 2007. The 50 million gallon-per- day facility, which is under construction, has drawn sharp criticism statewide from labor and environment groups who argue that the expensive, highly energy intensive plant would contribute to higher greenhouse gas emissions and do nothing to encourage water-conservation efforts. Concerns have also been raised about the harm it could do to the marine ecosystem and the high price tag for tap water cycled first through a power-plant cooling system, and then through the desalination process.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports the construction of the facility as a reliable water source for arid Southern California, and his representatives were in attendance at yesterday’s meeting. Last month, the Metropolitan Water District agreed to subsidize costs for the privately owned and operated plant, and Poseidon will go before the state’s Debt Limit Allocation Committee (which consists of Schwarzenegger, the state controller, and the state treasurer) to request tax-exempt bond status in mid-January.

San Francisco Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who sits on the Coastal Commission, argued in favor of pulling the permit, saying it represented “a proper juncture for us to revisit the issue” and warned that the highly controversial project might be “rife with procedural and structural errors.”

LAFCo: “PG&E’s claims have no basis in fact or reality”

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By Rebecca Bowe

The SF Weekly once made up a story on its Snitch blog about how LAFCo is the Guardian’s imaginary friend (this was back before they had imaginary delivery vehicles). So it’s kind of ironic that LAFCo should be the one to respond to an attack mailer paid for by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. which has quotes from an SF Weekly story splashed all over it.

The PG&E-funded mailer even borrows from the language of that Weekly article, calling CCA a “scheme” after the title of the piece, “Green Scheme,” and telling voters that the program will be implemented “whether you like it or not,” which sounds a lot like a line from the Weekly article, which says, “like it or not, you’re already signed up.” Given all this striking similarity, it’s almost like the Weekly is PG&E’s very own imaginary friend.

LAFCo is the Local Agency Formation Commission, the driver behind San Francisco’s Community Choice Aggregation program, which a “coalition” financed by PG&E attempted to shoot full of holes in a smear campaign we told you about yesterday.

LAFCo’s response to PG&E’s mailer is posted below.

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PG&E Continues Campaign against San Francisco’s Clean Energy Program
Latest Salvo from PG&E is riddled with False Assumptions and Deceptive Marketing

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – On December 9, 2009, San Francisco businesses received a direct mail piece from the “Common Sense Coalition.” In it, the alleged “Coalition” critiques the City’s Community Choice Aggregation plan to provide cleaner, more renewable energy to its residents and businesses through a newly proposed clean energy program to the businesses and residents of San Francisco. Financed by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), the mailer makes several specious economic claims sourced from outdated documents, including a 2007 City Controller’s report. However, that very same report states that the program “has not yet advanced to the stage where any definitive economic impact statement can be made. A detailed economic impact assessment will not be possible until the RFP process is complete.”

The City just issued its own comprehensive and through RFP four weeks ago and responses are due on December 29th. There is no set contract with an energy service provider and more importantly, no structured, long-term rate plan has been formulated. Consequently, PG&E’s claims have no basis in fact or reality.

Brits blame Bremer on Iraq

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Text by Sarah Phelan

Paul Bremer called the shots (based on “pre-agreed Washington policy”), and the Brits were left in the dark in Iraq, according to a British inquiry into the war.

Campos to Herrera: tell Newsom he’s not a king

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Louis XIV didn’t exactly have a good rap as king of France. Is Newsom in danger of becoming Louis’ SF equivalent?

Text by Sarah Phelan

‘We may have a strong-mayor system of government, but it is not a monarchy,” writes Sup. David Campos in a Dec. 10 letter to City Attorney Dennis Herrera, sent the day that the Board’s veto-proof civil rights legislation to restore due process to undocumented kids is supposed to kick in—except Mayor Gavin Newsom has said he intends to ignore it.

“Nothing short of unprecedented,” is how Campos describes Newsom’s posture—as he urges Herrera to issue a written legal opinion on whether the mayor has “the authority to unilaterally refuse to implement the duly-enacted civil rights legislation at issue, where such legislation was reviewed and approved as to form by you and your office.”

Joe Lynn, 1945-2009

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By Tim Redmond

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Joe Lynn with Sup. John Avalos at a celebration of Lynn’s life in August. Photo by Luke Thomas.

Joe Lynn — crusader for sunshine, crusader for honest, ethical government, font of wisdom and knowledge about campaign reform and wonderful, sweet man — died yesterday after a six-month battle with leukemia.

The former staffer at the Ethics Commission was fearless, willing to risk his own job to take on the likes of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. After leaving the commission, he was a frequent critic of its practices.

He was a fighter to the end; a lot of us didn’t think he’d make it through the summer, but he left the hospital, and when I saw him at the Guardian Best of the Bay party in September, he was in great spirits. But his body finally gave out at 5:45 p.m. Dec. 9th.

The web is full of plaudits for Lynn, but one of my favorites comes from Marc Salomon:

Let’s hope that instead of the usual hyperventilating memorializing by politicos, that instead of mourning, they can organize to pass the Joe Lynn Ethics Reform Act of 2010 so that Joe’s passing will not be cause for the clinking of champagne glasses by the elites in their mansions who feel entitled to own San Francisco politics.

Well said. We’ll miss you, Joe.

Losing hope even faster

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By Steven T. Jones
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For more than a year, I’ve been defending President Obama against his critics on the left. They’d complain that he’s enabling hyper-capitalism and the military-industrial complex, and I’ve always urged them to give him time. The problems are huge and the political climate is stormy, so we needed to keep our immediate expectations reasonable and be patient.

But I’m beginning to lose hope.

The escalation of war in the Afghanistan was his third strike. First, he bailed out Wall Street, preserving an inequitable and unsustainable economic system. Then he abandoned his past support for a single-payer health care system, propping up the costly and corrupt insurance-based system. And then he decided to perpetuate the dangerous delusion that our military can make the world safe and secure and turn Afghanistan into a functional, modern state.

And now, as icing on the cake, it looks like Obama is backpedaling on his Afghanistan exit strategy and working with Senate Democrats to give up on the public health care option, leaving a “reform” bill whose most notable characteristic is that we’ll all be required to buy overly expensive health insurance from a profit-driven corporation.

Hope – it was nice while it lasted.

That’s funny, they didn’t mention climate change

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By Rebecca Bowe

“The war with PG&E over clean energy is now fully on folks.”

That’s what local public power activist Eric Brooks had to say in a widely distributed email to alert green-power advocates that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has started a smear campaign against San Francisco’s community-choice aggregation program, CleanPowerSF.

A “coalition” backed by PG&E recently sent glossy brochures to San Franciscan’s mailboxes, and launched a Web site called CommonSenseSF.com. Based on the information provided, it was unclear who, besides PG&E, the coalition members are.

The intent of CleanPowerSF is to reduce the city’s overall greenhouse gas emissions by offering San Franciscans the choice to use 51 percent green power supplied through a program administered by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, instead of buying power exclusively from PG&E, whose electricity sources are primarily fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.

PG&E often mentions climate change in its ads, but the topic doesn’t come up on either the mailer or the Web site. Instead, the message focuses on proposed exit fees that consumers would have to pay if they decided to go back to PG&E after the close of a two-month CCA opt-out period. It calls San Francisco’s CCA — one of the most dramatic attempts at community-wide greenhouse-gas reduction that any U.S. city has taken on — a “costly energy scheme.”

The campaign’s Web site notes that the information is provided by the “Coalition for Reliable and Affordable Electricity, a coalition of concerned consumers, small businesses, labor, community organizations and Pacific Gas and Electric Company.”

A representative from Townsend, Raimundo, Besler and Usher, a Sacramento-based PR firm, confirmed that the Coalition for Reliable and Affordable Electricity is one of its clients.

The person who is handling that client, we were told, is Bob Pence. If that name sounds familiar, it may be because Robert Lee Pence is listed as the proponent of a statewide ballot initiative that would impose a two-thirds majority vote requirement before CCA could be implemented.

The mailer includes a form that members of the public can send in, postage-free, to sign up for an alert when the Board of Supervisors votes on CCA. The address the postcards would be sent to appears to be a mail drop at Mailboxes Etc.

Will Newsom follow Obama’s sunshine lead?

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By Tim Redmond

The Obama administration has begun releasing a complete list of White House visitors. It’s pretty cool — who knew that my old friend David Binder, who did some polling work for the Obama campaign, is now hanging out at the White House?

But it raises a question: If the president of the United States is willing to tell us who is visiting what may be the most secure facility in America, why can’t the mayor of San Francisco tell us who’s coming to see him at City Hall?

No such list has ever been released. The mayor’s appointment calendar is sparse and incomplete.

I emailed the mayor’s press spokesperson, Joe Arellano, to ask if Newsom was willing to become as sunshine-friendly as the prez, but no word yet.

Fun and games, City Hall style

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Text, photos and video by Sarah Phelan

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City Hall looked cold and pretty Tuesday, what with the snow outside.

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And the wedding couples posing for photographers at the top of the stairs.
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Against the backdrop of a glittering Tree of Hope.
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But inside the meeting, things were getting hot and ugly… in that glitteringly controlled way typical of city politics.
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The highlight came Sup. Chris Daly produced a handmade bar graph in an effort to help folks better understand the economic backdrop against which the budget debate plays out.
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Promising to bring more charts to future meetings, Daly displayed a chart that showed how the San Francisco Police Department has enjoyed a significantly larger growth in General Fund support than any other department, including the Health Department. And you can watch some of that fun by clicking on the following video clip:

During Daly’s show and tell, Sup. Sean Elsbernd started mumbling about stunts, and according to the Chron, he subsequently challenged Daly to tackle pension costs, especially related to the Service Employees International Union, promising in return to tackle the police budget. Daly reportedly said he’d take a look at pension reform—so expect even more bar charts in the New Year.

Dufty loses the tenant vote

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By Tim Redmond

Sup. Bevan Dufty, the first candidate to formally enter the San Francisco mayor’s race, just took a big political hit. By voting against a bill that would have protected tenants from unjust evictions, he’s angered one of the city’s largest and most powerful voting blocs.

The bill, by Sup. John Avalos, was important to the tenant movement. It extends to renters in buildings constructed after 1979 the same protections that the occupants of older buildings enjoy. It’s particularly important now, when so many buildings are facing foreclosure; under city law, foreclosure isn’t a “just cause” for eviction, but some tenants are losing their homes after foreclosure actions anyway.

Dufty has never been a great tenant vote, but this one should have been easy. The Avalos bill doesn’t put any more housing under rent control, or limit rent hikes, or impose any taxes or fees. There’s no direct economic impact on any landlords.

I couldn’t reach Dufty for comment today, but if the Chronicle quoted him accurately, his explanation was pretty weak:

Dufty told The Chronicle he would have supported the legislation had it simply addressed foreclosure-driven evictions. He feared that as drafted, the proposed law “would have too many unintended consequences,” particularly when it comes to condominium owners who want to move back into units that have been rented out. The burden on owners who try to evict on that basis could prove too harsh when it comes to time and money, he said.

The problem with that arugment is that owner move-in has always been a just cause for eviction. The Avalos bill wouldn’t change that. You own a condo, you rent it out and you want to move back in, you can evict the tenant.

The real problem here is what landlords think of as “rent-control creep.” Once you start allowing eviction protections on newer buildings, they fear, the next step might be actual rent controls on those buildings. So they fought against the bill.

The landlords have money, and if they see Dufty as their ally, they may reward him with campaign contributions. But the progressive vote is going to be important in the next mayor’s race, and so far — unless Sup. Ross Mirkarimi or Public Defender Jeff Adachi jumps in the race — the progressives don’t have a clear candidate. And while there will be a lot of issues in the race, this will be a big one, and I think the vote will hurt Dufty.

Of course, that assumes there’s a more pro-tenant candidate — and that’s not clear at this point. The others who are widely mentioned as potential contenders are state Sen. Leland Yee, Assessor Phil Ting and City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Herrera has traditionally declined to comment on issues like this, in part because he’s the city’s chief legal officer and has to defend the legislation and also because city law bars him from endorsing candidates or taking stands on ballot measures. But he told me several weeks ago that if he announces for mayor, he will openly discuss any issues facing the city.

When I called him today, he made the same promise again — then told me that he hasn’t announced for mayor yet, and so is declining to comment on whether he supports the Avalos bill. Ting told me he wasn’t familiar enough with the bills details, although, like Dufty, he said he supports eviction protections for tenants in foreclosed buildings.

I’m still waiting to hear from Yee.

“Hit job” on Marin Clean Energy

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By Rebecca Bowe

In a report officially released yesterday, the Marin County Civil Grand Jury tore apart Marin Clean Energy, a community-choice aggregation program that is intended to reduce the region’s greenhouse-gas emissions to address climate change.

The Civil Grand Jury report called the project “costly and extremely risky” and recommended that the whole effort be abandoned. It criticized the program as adding another layer of bureaucracy at a time when resources are limited, and described it as being plagued with uncertainty. The report was titled “Pull the Plug,” and it warned of risks ranging from market volatility to legal costs if Pacific Gas & Electric should take steps to attack the effort once it is launched.

“The county and all participating municipalities of Marin Energy Authority should step away from their adversarial political posturing and seriously work with foundations, federal, state and local agencies and PG&E to foster cooperation,” the Civil Grand Jury report recommended.

The report was released on the same day as the start of the historic United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhapen, and coincided with the Environmental Protection Agency’s ruling that greenhouse gases endanger human health. MEA Chair and Marin County Supervisor Charles McGlashan said the timing was poignant, and called the civil grand jury report “a purposeful hit job by a biased group of conservative people in the county” that is “riddled with errors and misinformation.”

According to McGlashan, energy customers who accept the transition to MCE would automatically begin using electricity that is 25 percent greenhouse-gas-free, as opposed to PG&E’s 15 percent GHG-free power, with no difference in price.

San Francisco Panorama hits the streets

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By Steven T. Jones
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Chris Cook and Lila LaHood of the San Francisco Public Press hawk copies of San Francisco Panorama in front of the Chronicle Building.

There’s a new newspaper in San Francisco – at least for today. San Francisco Panorama is being hawked on street corners around the city for $5 (get ‘em quick because they go up to the list price of $16 after today), perhaps the thickest, best-designed, and most creatively written (or at least the one penned by the most notable writers who aren’t usually journalists) newspaper ever.

The one-time product was produced by McSweeney’s, the literary magazine and publishing house operated out of 826 Valencia by author Dave Eggers, in partnership with the San Francisco Public Press and with financial support from Spot.us, which allows citizens to directly fund good journalism. The San Francisco Chronicle also helped with promotion and distribution.

The cover story on Bay Bridge cost-overruns, written by new journalist Patricia Decker and old pro Robert Porterfield, was overseen by the Public Press – a non-profit news outlet that aims to produce a non-commercial daily newspaper – and its project director Michael Stoll (full disclosure: I serve on the Public Press Steering Committee).

Eggers originally conceived the Panorama project as a way to demonstrate what a vital and attractive medium newspapers continue to be. Or as Stoll told me this afternoon, “If you give people a news product that breaks the formula they’re used to seeing, you’re going to capture their imaginations.”

Police discipline changes on hold, for now

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By Tim Redmond

I picked up a lot of interesting gossip at a Friday night birthday party for Police Commissioner David Onek, starting with the blazing news that former Mayor Art Agnos really wants to get it on with Beth Spotswood, who once called him “hot.”

And Joe Veronese told me he’s “thinking seriously about” running for supervisor in District Two.

But the real news, which I picked up floating around here and there and was able to confirm this week, is that the efforts by Chief Gascon and the Police Officers Assocation to change the cop disciplinary process are on hold, at least for the moment.

Apparently, sources tell me, the chief and the POA aren’t entirely on the same page, and both sides realize that any move to strip the Police Commission and the Office of Citizen Complaints of their disciplinary authority won’t go anywhere with this Board of Supervisors.

So all the parties are back to square one, leaving me to ask, as we did in our editorial (linked above): Why not just give the chief the authority he wants, and leave the commission and the OCC alone?

Resnick and the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM)

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Text by Sarah Phelan

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When I read Lance Williams’ article about a corporate farmer who used his political connections to try and influence the Delta water wars debate, the corporate farmer’s name sounded familiar. So, I checked– and sure enough, Stewart Resnick’s name popped up, only this time in an article that I wrote about the contentious, controversial and ongoing fight about how best to control the Light Brown Apple Moth--and whether the aerial spraying of urban areas with a moth pheromone was ever really necessary.

As the Guardian article about the LBAM debate noted, “Critics of the state’s pheromone spraying program observe that Suterra LLC, which manufactured the spray used over Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, refused to release the full ingredients until it was sued — and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger demanded immediate full disclosure.”

The article also observed that, “These same critics also note that Schwarzenegger, who continues to support CDFA’s LBAM-eradication program, received $144,600 in campaign contributions from Los Angeles–based Roll International owners Stewart and Lynda Resnick (my bold), who control Suterra, Fiji Water, Paramount Agribusiness, and the Franklin Mint.”

“Records show the Resnicks donate broadly, mostly to Democrats — including the gubernatorial campaigns of Steve Westly and Phil Angelides, and US Sens. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama — with a lesser-size donation to Republican presidential front-runner John McCain, proving they play both sides of the fence,” the Guardian’s article concludes.

And as William’s recent article notes, “Underpinning [the Resnicks’] fortune is agribusiness – 70,000 acres of pistachios and almonds, 48,000 acres of citrus and pomegranates – most of it in Kern County at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley, and all requiring irrigation to survive.”

In other words, the Resnicks’ agribusiness empire could be negatively impacted if other countries refused to import their produce, because of LBAM-related fears, even if those fears were unfounded.. Conversely, the Resnicks’ business interests stood to gain if the state mandated the widespread aerial spraying of a synthetic pheromone by a company (Suterra) that the Resnicks controlled.

I’m not saying that’s why the state ended up pushing its controversial aerial spraying plan, until public pressure stopped that plan in its tracks, but it sure is an interesting question

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