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Politics Blog

Finally, BART police oversight

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By Tim Redmond

It’s taken three deaths, but the BART Board has finally taken the first step toward creating civilian oversight for its 200-member police force. There’s now an actual committee of the board charged with monitoring the cops, and BART Board member Tom Radulovich told us he thinks that the board may actually be ready to start establishing an oversight agency.

I have to say, I love cell phone videos. Best thing that’s ever happened to the BART police. I’ve been calling for civilian oversight for these guys since 1992, and since both of the prior killings we’ve covered happened with no cameras around, BART was able to duck. And since most of the BART Board members were, and are, pretty damn lazy, nothing ever happened.

But now the evidence is clear and obvious, and I hope that the protesters will continue to be vigilant and pressure the board, not just on this one killing but on the structural reforms we need to keep it from happening again.

Newsom’s flip-flop on taxis

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By Tim Redmond

Mayor Gavin Newsom promised in 2007 not to try to undo the system the city uses for allocating taxi permits. Now, he’s doing exactly the opposite.

In an Ocotber 3, 2007 letter to Nathanial Ford, executive director of the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency, and Heidi Machen, director of the Taxi Commission, Newsom outlined his support for a charter amendment that would allow the merger of the taxi panel and the MTA.

But in the face of concern from cab drivers that the measure would be the end of Prop. K, the 1978 law that allows drivers, and only drivers, to use city cab medallions, Newsom wrote: “We are not supportivei of an effort to merge the Taxi industry unless propert guarantees are made to protect Proposition K.”

The letter was also signed by Sup. Aaron Peskin.

So why is the mayor now proposing a measure to privatize the cab medalions, in directly contradiction to the 1978 policy? Wade Crowfoot, Newsom’s liason on transportation issues, tells me:

The Mayor has suggested exploring how to reform the taxi medallion system while preserving the foundations of Prop K. Such reform would involve auctioning medallions with proceeds directed toward enhancing taxi oversight and improving Muni. Importantly, the Mayor has suggested continuing to allow only working drivers to hold the medallions. This provision we believe is the heart of Proposition K– avoiding the the ‘corporatization’ of the medallions and ensuring that the working men and women who drive the cabs possess the medallions. Under this view, tthe auctions of these medallions would be limited to drivers.

Good to hear that he wants to keep the medallions in the hands of drivers — although that’s going to be hard to do when the permits sell for more than $100,000. But in my mind, he’s missing what’s really the heart of Prop. K — the idea that the valuable permits belong to the city.

Peskin doesn’t like what the mayor is doing, either. “My name is on a letter that says we won’t do this, and now Newsom is going back on his promise,” Peskin told me. “I mean, if Newsom and Peskin were both long out of office and somebody else came along and said I’m taking a new look at this, that’s one thing. But this was a widely circulated promise not even two years ago. You can’t do stuff like this.”

UPDATE: I just reached Judge Quentin Kopp, who as a supervisor in 1978 wrote Prop. K. His comment on the mayor’s position:

“That is absolutely not the heart of Proposition K. The intent of that measure was to treat [medallions] as a public asset, with a fee based on the cost of preparing an application. It’s preposterous to say that the heart of Prop. K is anything but that.”

Brown (Willie Brown!) for governor?

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By Tim Redmond

I don’t think so, not really. The former Assembly speaker and SF mayor has never seen himself as a candidate for statewide office. But check out this missive from publicist and person-about-town Lee Houskeeper:

Tonight at PJ Corkery’s memorial in a room full of the usual San Francisco suspects Joe O’Donahue announced that Willie Brown will run for governor. I saw a smile come over his face. After the wake politico’s Don Solem, Annemarie Conroy, Ed Moose, and Warren Hinckle were buzzing that at no time during or after Da Mayor’s moving eulogy for his ghost writer did Willie deny O’Donahue’s statement. He left quickly without comment. . .

Okay, that’s not much of an announcement. But here’s what it is: A backhanded slap at Mayor Newsom.

Brown, who appointed Newsom to the Board of Supervisors and endorsed him for mayor, could have said: Nah, Gavin’s my guy. He could have said, If Dianne Feinstein doesn’t run, Gavin’s my guy. But no; he just smiled.

As if to say: Given the cast of characters, I wish.

Bicyclists sound off

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By Steven T. Jones

San Francisco bicyclists have become increasingly pissed off about the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency’s decision last week to try to remove the bike lane at Market and Octavia. They’ve written angry letters, placed irate phone calls, and will tomorrow be holding a rally at the site during the morning commute.
The MTA’s argument that its needs to remove the bike lane in order to save bicyclists from cars making illegal right turns has been pretty much universally rejected by bicyclists, who say it’s akin to the Vietnam War tactic of burning villages in order to save them.
Meanwhile, city officials have definitely felt the sting, and they’ve repeatedly tried to explain the decision to the Guardian and others, so far without being terribly convincing. Will this protest do anything to thwart city plans to seek court approval for the change in a week? We shall see.

Municipal ID program takes off

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It took more time than it should have, but San Francisco’s long anticipated ID Card program took off today. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who authored the ID card legislation, helped debut the program by receiving his own card at City Hall today.

The card is all-in-one photo identification card that streamlines access to City services and offers discounts at local businesses. The card allows folks to establish borrowing privileges at the library and a family account with Recreation and Parks. Nine banks and credit unions have also stated that they will accept the card to open a financial account.

“The card will help a wide breadth of San Franciscans – children that don’t have a school ID, immigrant workers that want to open a bank account, and seniors that no longer have a need for a driver’s license,” Ammiano stated in a press release.”The transgender people will also benefit from an ID that accurately represents their identities.”

Don’t let the screen door hit ya …

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… where the good lord split ya, as my ma used to say back in Detroit. So I pass on this motherly advice to G.W. on the eve of his “farewell address” (as if we could fare any other way once he’s gone).

Someday, some lucky historian will win the Nobel with her theory of what the hell just happened, and how our society went apeshit — just as we were gaining the scientific knowledge and technological connections to come together and actually fix the world. I’m really hoping this decade saw the last spasm of religious cynicism and entitled hubris, but I think we may have just dodged a Millennial bullet — with, unfortunately, more to come?

In any case, Bush is so radioactively tacky that even typing his name has made half of you roll your eyes and stop reading this. So instead of continuing into tired diatribe — and hey let’s remind ourselves that pretty much the rest of the world went nutso for the past eight years as well — here’s a nice reader-generated vid that may be a bit over the top and overly familiar, but with Willie Nelson on the soundtrack how can you go wrong?

Let’s all “peace out.”

Dufty swings to the right

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Text by Sarah Phelan

Yesterday was the new Board’s first test on two key issues and in both cases, Sup. Bevan Dufty provided Mayor Gavin Newsom with the swing vote he needed.

Dufty’s votes were further evidence that he will likely be swinging increasingly to the right, as the next mayoral race looms on the not too distant horizon.

First, Dufty joined Sups Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd, in voting not to override Mayor Gavin Newsom’s veto of legislation that would have required conditional use permits and hearings when housing units are being eliminated.

Then, he joined the mayor’s usual trio of allies to block an appeal by opponents of a mixed-use project at the corner of Valencia and 14th streets. The project includes 36 homes and three stores and is the first big test case of the new Market Octavia Plan. So, even though CU proponents pitched it as being only a case of seven parking spaces, everyone knew it was about a lot more than that.

At issue was the fact that the Planning Commission had decided to waive the plan’s limitation on construction of parking spaces to one space for every two units.

Opponents of the project argued that decreasing automobile dependency and associated harms, including global warming and traffic congestion, require the political will to stick to progressive policies developed over many years.

But Dufty argued that he did not believe this project is “precedent setting” as he went along with the Newsom administration’s top allies on the Board.

To her credit, Sup. Sophie Maxwell joined the progressive voting block on both these issues, despite having lost the Battle for Board President at the hands of the progressive faction. For a moment, we thought she wasn’t going to: Maxwell initially voted not to override Newsom’s veto. But then she rescinded her vote and voted against Newsom. So double kudos go to Maxwell.

It will be interesting to see if planning staff recommend conditional use permits for the Whole Foods on Market and Dolores and a new proposed condo on Market and Buchanan. If they do, then Dufty, who to his credit gave the project sponsor’s attorney David Silverman a hard time for his divide and conquer-style tactics, may find himself having to eat his “not precedent setting” comment.

And despite Dufty’s very public push back against Silverman, Jason Henderson, Vice President of the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association, feels the D 8 Supervisor ultimately didn’t listen to his own constituents enough.

“Bevan’s giving too much weight to some very loud people who constantly pester him, Henderson said.

Cab fight could be bloody

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By Tim Redmond

So now Mayor Newsom wants to privatize taxi medallions. I get where he’s coming from — selling off the medallions would provide a quick infusion of cash for the city. But it’s the wrong way to raise money.

Right now, the medallions are the property of the city, and they’re available only to active drivers. The drivers who hold medallions, of course, would love to cash in on something they got free. But if the permits go up for auction, the drivers who have been on the waiting list for years will get screwed, the big cab outfits (or their surrogates) will buy up most of the medallions — and a lot of the rest will be bought as speculative investments by wealthy people whose only experience with the industry amounts to occasional rides in a cab when their limo drivers are sick. Cab drivers who actually want to own their permits will have to borrow huge amounts of money (and how many will qualify for $500,000 loans in this market?) and will wind up worse off than they are now.

Making this happen will require a ballot initiative to overturn Prop. K, the 1978 measure that set up the current system. The author of that measure, then-Supervisor and now Judge Quentin Kopp, is likely to mount a major campaign against Newsom’s move.

As a retired judge who still sits on cases, Kopp is limited in his ability to comment on political issues. But when I called him, he did say that when Newsom and Sup. Aaron Peskin were promoting a charter amendment that merged the Taxi Commission into the MTA, “each of them assured me that the intent was not to alter the current system of permit issuance and the requirements for maintenance of a permit.”

He added: “This would require a ballot measure to amend Prop. K, and I reserve the notion of taking a leave of absence for the purpose of assuring the defeat of any such a proposal. If that occurs, it will be consistent with my historical ballot measure activity.”

There’s some dispute about whether the city can implement this without going back to the ballot — the mayor clearly thinks he can. But Kopp could probably create a referendum campaign to undo what Newsom does anyway.

And Kopp will raise significant money and muster the significant political forces still at his disposal to fight Newsom — and knowing Kopp, it will be epic.

Will supervisors support SF’s parking policies?

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By Steven T. Jones

The new San Francisco Board of Supervisors holds its first regular meeting today, following last week’s big leadership vote. The agenda is pretty sparse, but there are two items that will be a big test of the board’s progressive leadership and values.
The first is a veto override on legislation requiring conditional use permits and hearings when housing units are being eliminated. Given that existing units are always the most valuable, this vote will gauge how much support tenants and affordable housing advocates have on the new board – particularly with the potential swing votes of Bevan Dufty and Sophie Maxwell, who the progressive majority would need to override the veto.
The second is an appeal by opponents of a mixed-use project at the corner of Valencia and 14th streets, which includes 36 homes and three stores. It’s the first big project under the new Market Octavia Plan, and the Planning Commission decided to waive the plan’s limitation on construction of parking spaces to one space for every two units.
Parking, and its connection to the city’s Transit First policy, has long been a bone of contention between progressives and the driver-friendly Newsom Administration. But opponents of this project variance rightfully say that decreasing automobile dependency – and all its associated harm, from global warming to traffic congestion – requires the political will to stick to progressive policies developed over many years.
Today’s vote will test the board’s resolve.

Are Lennar’s joint ventures a Ponzi scheme?

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300px-21rampell.xlarge1.jpg
One of the greatest swindlers in American History, Charles Ponzi’s name has become synonymous with any scam that pays early investors returns from the investments of later investors.

Text by Sarah Phelan

I’ve written about Lennar’s rise from a Florida-based small home builder 55 years ago to a nationwide mega developer that was gobbling up land rights and boosting only upward growth, until about two years ago. I’ve also explored its extensive use of joint ventures and limited liability companies and what the economic downturn could mean for Lennar’s proposed developments at San Francisco’s Hunters Point Shipyard and Candlestick Point.

And last week, I asked whether Vallejo’s loss, when Lennar declared bankruptcy at Mare Island as part of a LandSource restructuring deal, could somehow have become Lennar’s gain.

And now comes news that Lennar’s stocks took a nasty nose dive last week, when Barry Minkow, who served time for stock fraud, but now apparently investigates fraud in between being a pastor in San Diego, accused Lennar of using its joint ventures like a Ponzi scheme.

The battle over the LA Weekly

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By Tim Redmond

Okay, I already blogged this, but my first item was just looking at the actual story. You have to go back now, a few days later, and check out the comments It shows (1) how attached people in LA have been to their alternative newspaper, and (2) how strongly many people feel about the assholes who run Village Voice Media. The interactions between Marc Cooper and Rick Barrs (who works for VVM) are almost unprintably delightful.

Avalos is Budget Committee chair

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Photo by Luke Thomas
“Mr. Mayor, it’s great to see you in Chambers. We need to have your cooperation,” Sup. John Avalos (far right) tells Newsom (second from right), as newly elected Board President David Chiu (second from left) and Clerk of the Board Angela Cavillo (far left) look on.

Text by Sarah Phelan
Newly sworn-in Supervisor John Avalos told the Guardian yesterday that he had asked to be on the board’s powerful Budget and Finance Committee and would happy to be its chair.

And now comes news that Avalos, who represents the predominantly working class District 11, has got his wish.

Avalos, who was sworn in yesterday by newly elected Board President David Chiu, will take over as the Budget and Finance Committee chair from termed-out Sup. Jake McGoldrick.

The move comes as the City faces its worst budget deficit since the Depression.

But though Avalos is a first-time supervisor, he already has a deep and broad understanding of the City’s budget process, knowledge that he gleaned while working as Sup. Chris Daly’s legislative analyst for the past three years.

“John Avalos has more experience of budget issues than me,” Daly told me yesterday, outside the Board Chambers, after the inaugural meeting was over. “Because while I was in there (Daly gesticulates towards the Board chambers) listening to endless hours of public comment, John, as my legislative analyst was meeting with the Controller and the Budget Analyst and all the other people involved in the budget process.”

But even Avalos is awestruck by the tsunami of bad financial news that has hit the City.

“I was visibly shaken” Avalos told me of his reaction during in a recent meeting about the City’s budgetary woes.

Avalos’ appointment as chair means that he can get on with advancing measures related to the city’s staggering $576 million deficit. These include holding hearings about legislation that former Board President Aaron Peskin’s introduced earlier this week, on his penultimate day on the job.

That legislation proposes a special election in June, so voters can weigh in on a number of proposed, but as yet-to-be finalized revenue generating measures.

Avalos will also oversee hearings on $125 million in midyear budget cuts, including Peskin’s proposal to get rid of the Small Business Assistance Center and cut ballet, symphony and opera funding in half.

The path to President Chiu

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By Steven T. Jones

How did David Chiu, the supervisor with the least experience in government, end up as president of the Board of Supervisors? And what does it say about the role that ideology and alliances will play in a city that’s wrestling with a dire economic situation?

I have some thoughts on both of those questions, but first, let’s run through how today’s voting went down because it illustrates the political dynamics now at work in City Hall. It’s important to understand that there was a split in the board’s progressive majority, which includes Chiu, John Avalos, David Campos, Eric Mar, Chris Daly, and Ross Mirkarimi.

After the last election in which the first four of those progressives first won their supervisorial seats, Daly (and to a lesser degree, Avalos) privately began to challenge Mirkarimi’s bid for president, for reasons both personal and political. But they pledged to vote for a progressive and began promoting the idea that one of the four freshmen get the job.

That move raised the possibility that Mirkarimi (a Green who was the top supervisorial vote-getter in November and a strong contender for mayor) might look for some moderate votes, or perhaps even support a moderate pick like Sophie Maxwell or Bevan Dufty. That was the stage that was set for today’s vote.

David Chiu wins

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On the seventh vote, Dist. 3 Sup. David Chiu has been elected president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Live from City Hall

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By Steven T. Jones

City Hall is packed with people here to watch the election of the new Board of Supervisors president, both in board chambers and the overflow area of the North Light Court. The nominees (in order of nomination) are Chris Daly (who nominated himself), Sophie Maxwell (nominated by Bevan Dufty), Ross Mirkarimi (nominated by David Campos), John Avalos, and David Chiu (those last two nominated one another).
Public comment is now underway and should take awhile. Stay tuned because I’ll announce the winner as soon as there is one.

Ammiano, Yee take on BART police

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By Tim Redmond

There’s action on the state level to force the BART Board to create some level of civilian oversight for the BART police.

The action comes in the wake of the fatal shooting Jan. 1 of Oscar Grant — an apparent case of gross police misconduct caught on numerous cell-phone videos.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and state Sen. Leland Yee are introducing legislation to require some form of civilian oversight for the BART police. The state has every right to do that; the BART police only exist as a force with full peace officer powers because the state Legislature granted BART that authority in 1976.

Yee and Ammiano were responding to the shooting and to a Guardian editorial pointing out the long history of problems with the BART police and calling for civilian oversight.

Sup. David Campos will introduce a similar resolution at the Board of Supervisors soon.

Meanwhile, the BART police are saying they can’t talk to the officer because he’s resigned. That’s such nonsense — the guy is no longer a cop, so Internal Affairs can’t question him, but he is, by any standard, a homicide suspect, and the BART police, Oakland police and Alameda County Sheriff’s office can all seek to question him.

In fact, it’s likely he resigned because his lawyer suspects there might be criminal charges.

Peskin’s going-way gift

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By Tim Redmond

Aaron Peskin, who has generally been a good Board of Supervisors president, gave the city a nice going-away present at his last meeting, moving to call a special election in June to look for ways to raise new revenue.

It’s got the mayor’s panties all in a wad:

Mayoral press secretary Nathan Ballard said Newsom is in the middle of sensitive negotiations with labor and business leaders that could result in broad support for any cost-cutting or revenue-raising measures, but that Peskin’s legislation “threw a money-wrench into the plan.”

In other words, Gavin Newsom wants to squeeze labor for every penny he can get, and cut as much as possible out of the city budget — and the prospect that all that blood on the floor might not be necessary, that there’s actually a chance of bringing in new revenue, screws up all of his plans.

Too bad. There’s no way to cut $500 million out of the city budget without losing very essential services. Peskin did the right thing; at the very least, new revenue ought to be part of the budget discussions.

MTA tries to help cyclists by removing bike lanes

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Photo of Market and Octavia intersection by Kate.

By Steven T. Jones

San Francisco’s bicycle community is baffled by last night’s unanimous Metropolitan Transportation Agency vote to seek the removal of bike lanes at the intersection of Market and Octavia, where more than a dozen cyclists have been injured by cars making illegal right turns onto the freeway.
The logic offered by MTA traffic engineer Jack Fleck and the City Attorney’s Office (which is apparently concerned about liability issues after a couple injured cyclists sued the city) is that forcing bikes and cars to merge into one lane will prevent drivers from inadvertently turning into cyclists.
But that logic apparently only makes sense to bureaucrats and lawyers (and Mayor Gavin Newsom’s MTA appointees, none of whom seem to understand bike issues) because the plan has been uniformly criticized today by cyclists and other alternative transportation types. They say the forced merge at that busy intersection will only create more conflicts between bikes and cars.
“It makes no sense. I was really surprised they even brought it to the board,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which was not consulted on the proposal.
Even the Planning Department agrees this is a dumb idea, one that conflicts with the Upper Market Design Plan that was approved less than two months ago. It calls for raised, colored bike lanes to make cyclists more visible and with trees and other visual barriers to make that illegal turn less attractive to drivers.
Ironically, bicyclists are placing their hopes for killing the proposal in Judge Peter Busch, who issued the current injunction against new bicycle projects and who will be asked Jan. 22 to approve this proposal. As Shahum said, “Our hope is that the judge denies it.”

Is Vallejo’s loss Lennar’s gain?

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From Vallejo’s “Discover Vallejo” site.

Text by Sarah Phelan

“Due to the Company’s termination of its right to purchase certain LandSource assets, the Company recognized deferred profit of $101.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2008 (net of $31.8 million of write-offs of option deposits and pre-acquisition costs and other write-offs) related to the recapitalization of the Company’s LandSource joint venture in 2007.”

I’m no expert on investor relations, but it seems that the above paragraph, excerpted from Lennar’s December 18 2008 8-K report, means that by filing bankruptcy at Mare Island last summer, Lennar either spared its shareholders from further loss, or earned them a profit.

Either way, the financial calculation that lurks behind that deal feels like cold comfort to communities like San Francisco whose last pieces of undeveloped lands are caught up in Lennar’s shareholder-driven financial web.

How New Times ruined the LA Weekly

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By Tim Redmond

Wow, this is nasty. But real. Marc Cooper, longtime alternative press reporter and columnist, dissects (with a nice, sharp scalpel) the decline of the LA Weekly under the chain now known as Village Voice Media, nee New Times Newspapers.

His nut:

Weekly readers were informed, quite simply by its out-of-town owners, that they have been wrong, wrong, wrong for the last 30 years. They might think they like opinion and commentary and national news and sober and thorough investigative reporting, and all with a progressive tinge. But they’ve been wrong. Dead wrong. Instead, they want a smart-alecky, sophomoric, barely edited, thinned out, often reactionary sensationalist stew that displays little or no editorial rhyme nor reason. Yeah! That’s the formula.

Sound familiar?

(Oh, and by the way: Here’s the last column from Nat Hentoff, who these same chain owners just fired at the VIllage Voice.)

Peskin declares emergency, calls special election

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By Sarah Phelan

With the next regularly-scheduled election not until November 2009 — that’s nearly halfway through the fiscal year and too late to address the City’s staggering $575.6 million projected deficit, which threatens to kill or maim just about every program and service that local citizens hold dear–termed-out Board President Aaron Peskin used his last day on the Board of Supervisors to call for a June 2 municipal election “for the purpose of submitting revenue and fiscal measures to the voters.”

But, as Peskin’s resolution notes, to conduct an election on such short notice, the City must modify certain election procedures and deadlines. And such modifications are permissible if the Board finds an emergency

“The Board of Supervisors therefore finds that an emergency exists,” Peskin’s resolution states.

“This emergency ordinance will ensure that the City is able to submit and the voters are able to consider revenue measures designed to avoid the impending deficit threatening the public health, safety and welfare.”

Suggested measures include

**A possible increase in sales tax “and a possible dedication of the proceeds of the tax increase to emergency health and human services and to public protection.”
**A possible increase in the payroll tax
**A possible new residential utilities users tax
**A possible increase in the commercial utilities users tax
**A possible new parcel tax
**A possible new gross receipts tax on residential rental income
**A possible new gross receipts tax on commercial rental income
**A possible new gross receipts tax on all commercial transactions
**A possible new surcharge on the parking tax
**A possible amendment to the City charter to allow the City to appropriate up to 100 percent of the current balance in the Rainy Day Reserve, not to exceed 20 percent of the projected deficit in years in which budgetary deficit of $250 million or more is projected

A possible new charter amendment that would cap all set-asides at their Fiscal Year 2008-2009 level, allow the City to reduce its contributions during budgetary shortfalls, and provide that year-end surpluses be returned to the General Fund.

Peskin is proposing to modify the election code so the Board can consider such measures fewer than 30 days after receiving drafts and legislative digests, if both are delivered to the Clerk of the Board at least 72 hours prior to committee hearings and made available to the public at that time.

Wow. Sounds like the incoming Board is going to be pretty darn busy.

On a related note, Sup. Sean Elsbernd introduced a charter amendment for the November 3, 2009 election, requiring that “one-time revenues be spent only for one-time uses, unless otherwise authorized by the Board.” In other words, not on salaries. Stay tuned.

Will Bay Area Dems block CIA reform?

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panetta.jpg
Leon Panetta was a longtime congressman
from Monterey, widely respected for his intelligence
and integrity, before joining the Clinton Administration.

By Steven T. Jones

President-elect Barack Obama sent a clear reformist message by selecting Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency, and Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein responded with an equally clear message that she intends to block meaningful reform of this country’s disgraceful imperial overreach.
It’s not surprising. Feinstein has always been a faithful servant of the rich and powerful, and since 9/11 she’s been complicit in the Bush Administration’s illegal approach to the “war on terror” – implicitly condoning illegal spying, torture, assassinations, and fabrication of the casus belli in Iraq — while personally profiting from U.S. wars.
Also complicit in this unconstitutional mess is San Francisco’s other top congressional Democrat, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who knew about Bush’s warrantless wiretapping all along, did nothing to stop or expose it, and single-handedly blocked the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
The question now is whether Obama, with the help of the progressive movement that helped elect him, can overcome these powerful defenders of the status quo. Because only a respected outsider (at least during the Bush years) like Panetta – rather than the intelligence community insider Feinstein wants – can credibly repair the damage and set a new course for this country.

BART Police: Hope for reform?

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By Tim Redmond

The shooting of Oscar Grant, which was captured on several videos, may become for the BART police what Rodney King was in LA: An incident so outrageous it sparks public demand for reform.

The BART Board is still largely missing in action here (although Tom Radulovich, who represents San Francisco, says he supports a move for civilian oversight and will push it if he can get a few other votes). But Assembly Member Tom Ammiano told me he’s looking at what the state Legislature can do here, and Sup. David Campos told me he’s going to introduce a resolution calling on BART to create a credible civilian oversight system.

I talked about this on KQED’s Forum this morning, and urged people to call the BART board members and demand action. The problem, frankly, is that a lot of the people on the BART board are lazy — they don’t want to put in the time or do the work necessary to properly monitor the 200 armed officers they send out to patrol the trains. That’s unacceptable, and they need a swift kick in their collective asses. Maybe a push by the state, and all of the cities tha BART passes through, will help.

By the way, BART’s chief spokesman, Linton Johnson, is kind of a problem. He walked off in the middle of the show ths morning, saying someone on his staff had called in sick. And in an interview last night, when he was asked why BART still hasn’t interviewed the officer, he suggested we all look at it “from the officer’s perspecitive.”

Uh, no, Mr. Johnson — you’re management. You have to look at it from the public’s perspective.

Beware the BART police

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By Tim Redmond

The coverage on KTVU of the latest BART police shooting shows what TV news can do at its best. While the Chron was relying on official accounts and some witnesses, KTVU got two sets of cell-phone videos that show the horror of the shooting in black and white. Then there’s the painful press conference when a BART spokesman talks about the safety of the passengers and says it’s “regrettable” for someone to die.

But what’s been missing in most of this discussion is the fact that this is nothing new — the BART police have been involved in improper shootings at least twice previously — and in both cases, the officers were cleared of any wrongdoing.

The big problems is that BART has no civilian oversight for the police. There’s no BART Board committee that monitors the BART cops, no independent investigative agency, nowhere except the BART Police to file complaints against the BART police. It’s the only major police agency in the Bay Area that operates with zero effective civilian oversight.

Here are two alarming examples of past police abuse:

1992: A BART cop shoots and kills an unarmed man who is walking away.

2001: A BART cop shoots an unarmed naked man.

I asked BART Board member Tom Radulovich today if there’s any way this incident will finally lead to a movement for civilian oversight of the BART police. He said he favors that — but he’ll need more votes. Here’s the BART Board president and vice-president. You can reach president Blalock at (510) 490-7565 and vice-president Fang (who represents San Francisco) at 415-397-0220. Blalock’s phone keeps ringing and doesn’t seem to have voice mail, but I’ll keep trying. I left Fang a message. You can do that, too.

Lynette Sweet represents parts of San Francisco, too. I can’t find a phone number for her and the BART office won’t give it out, but here’s her email: Lynettebart@aol.com.

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