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Politics Blog

Why is PG&E attacking Leno on education?

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It’s not like schools are their business – at all. But the $13 billion utility company is the big money behind recent television ads depicting Mark Leno as a foe of children and schools.

“San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno claims that he’s for better schools,” the ad informs, according to a transcript provided by the California Teacher’s Association. “Yet in 2004, it was Leno who joined Republicans, and with one vote to spare, cut $3.1 billion from California schools.”

Actually, said CTA in a news release, “It distorts Leno’s support for a state budget in 2004 that temporarily reduced some funding for schools. The budget was approved by the Legislature with bipartisan support in that financially difficult year for the state.”

CTA, which represents 90 percent of the state’s educators, endorsed Leno in the District 3 State Senate race, and held a rally today in Mill Valley to affirm their support and criticize PG&E.

“Why is PG&E behind this?” CTA’s Mike Myslinski wondered when we spoke to him. “Leno has a strong education record and parents and teachers are very disturbed by this ad.”

The ad was attributed to a political action committee called “Protect Our Kids,” which late independent expenditure filings [PDF] with the CA Secretary of State show is heavily funded by CALIFORNIANS FOR A CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE, A COALITION OF ENVIRONMENTALISTS, TAXPAYERS, AND PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY. [PDF]

Looks like the San Francisco Police Officers Association, as well as a couple of out of state companies, also kicked in to cover the $100,000 in cash that’s been spent on anti-Leno propaganda that has nothing to do with energy – clean or otherwise. But, as CTA points out, “The PG&E-funded ad comes at a time when one of Leno’s opponents in the Senate race, Joe Nation, is being criticized for his huge financial support from business interests. PG&E is a supporter of Nation.”

It wasn’t all that long ago Leno was shaking hands with PG&E over at the LGBT center.

Woo-hoo, a planning party

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What are you doing after work tomorrow? Critical Mass? The Alterna-Mass that all the cool bikers are talking about? Maybe a happy hour somewhere, or heading home to get dolled up for the Bohemian Carnival?
Hey, how about the Market-Octavia Plan Party?
— cue the crickets —
OK, OK, maybe a party to mark the successful end of the years-long process to create and win political approval for a new Market & Octavia Neighborhood Plan is something that only a policy wonk can get excited about. But it is a very San Francisco type of plan, creating strict limits on new parking, good affordable housing incentives, and design standards promoting walkability. As plan participant and party promoter Jason Henderson said, “This is the plan that sets the precedent for a more sustainable, car-lite future for San Francisco.”
Not doing it for you? Try this quote from the party invite: “Munchies and partial hosted bar.” Better? It’s also at the Rickshaw Stop, the coolest bar in Hayes Valley, from 5:30-9:30. And it will feature speeches by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, Planning Commission President Christina Olague and lots of others who helped bring this baby home.
So come on down…if you’re into that sort of thing.

March to stop the Moth Spray

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Photo courtesy of Vegan Reader

Moth spray activists are planning to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday, May 31, to protest government plans to spray the Bay Area with moth pheromones.

Folks will gather at 9 am on the San Francisco side in the bridge parking lot, begin their walk at 10 am, and rally at 12 noon at the West End of Crissy Field, between Mason Street and the Marine Sanctuary Visitor Center. (Presumably, no one is going to try the Tibetan monks’ stunt of climbing the bridge, this time dressed as Light Brown Apple Moths.) You can find more information about the details of the march, here.

UC Davis scientists continue to challenge the United States Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Agriculture’s claims that the moth poses a severe threat to agriculture and that the aerial pesticides will effectively eradicate the pest.

But the CDFA is fighting back.

In a recent press release, the CDFA claimed that “aerially-applied moth pheromones have been used around the world for more than a decade with no indication of harm to people, pets or plants.”

“To date, the only impact on the environment or living things is confusion in male moths looking to mate with females,” CDFA officials claim.

3.26 million ways to reuse your Prop. G fliers

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As Prop. F supporters continue to liven up their shoestring campaign with dance, debate and rap songs,
yet another huge question is looming over the Prop. G campaign: What is San Francisco going to do about all the glossy Prop. G fliers that are choking up mailboxes citywide?

Since the Lennar-financed Prop. G campaign has already spent over $3.26 million to try and influence the June 3 vote, how about helping find 3.26 million ways to reuse the Prop. G mailers? (ways that don’t involve burning them, tempting as that may be, since that would make air quality worse)

We came up with the first three.

1. Wallpaper to cover the mold in your non-luxury dwelling.
2. Materials for your 2008 Halloween costume.
3. A year’s supply of bird cage liner.

Prop. F’s break dancing rattles the system’s chains

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Turfaholic’s Johnel dazzled at a recent Prop. F rally on Palou street in the heart of the Bayview. Stay with it, and you’ll get to the part where Johnel sets his own chains a-spinning. Awesome to watch.

Where in the world is Carmen Policy?

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Where in the world is Carmen Policy?

That’s what Prop. F supporters are wondering amid the deafening silence that has followed their invite to Lennar consultant and former 49ers president Policy to debate POWER community organizer Alicia Schwartz on Saturday, May 31, in the Bayview.

Back in February 2008, Policy made headlines when he was hired by Lennar executive Kofi Bonner to head what has since become the $3 million Prop. G campaign. That measure primarily involves a land exchange that would allow Lennar to build a new 49ers stadium atop the toxic Hunters Point Shipyard site, while building luxury condos and retail buildings on the former Monster Park site.

Prop. F campaign manager Chris Cassidy says that the Prop. F campaign, which would require 50 percent of all Lennar’s housing units to be truly affordable to the folks who currently live in the Bayview, decided to invite Policy to debate Prop. F’s Schwartz, “because of the money Policy has received from Lennar and because of his connections to the community from when he was president of the 49ers.”

Prop. G’s most recent campaign financial disclosures show that $40,915 was paid to Carmen Policy, $343,138 for attorneys’ fees, $1.3 million on advertising, and $767,607 on “consulting services.”

As Power’s Schwartz notes in a Prop. F press release, “Politics can be a contact sport, but it should also be a contest of ideals.”

Prop. F organizers say the debate will take place, with or without Policy, at 5030 3rd Street and Quesada Avenue, ( near the MUNI T-Line – Palou Ave. Stop) on Saturday May 31 – 6:30-8:00

Hey, at least Schwartz is challenging Policy to a dance-off…(watch Schwartz, third from left, do the Cha Cha slide).

Prop 98 could destroy the next Kerouac

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By Jen Sullivan Brych

What if Jack Kerouac couldn’t find a cheap place to crash in San Francisco so he could drink at Vesuvio Café and bang on his typewriter? Would he have been forced to remain in the “sanitarium” of San Luis Obispo, as he referred to it? Would he have been forever missing what a biographer called the “feverish intensities” of San Francisco, never inspired to write again?

Even worse, what if the next generation of Kerouacs and Alice Walkers and Michelle Teas can’t afford to live in San Francisco anymore? The frightening Proposition 98 on the June 3 ballot would eliminate all rent control in California. If San Francisco loses rent control, it loses writers and its literary scene.

“If rent control goes, I know I’d lose my apartment soon enough,” said writer Peter Orner via email. Orner wrote The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and winner of the Bard Fiction Prize. He was also a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award for Esther Stories.

Orner has lived in the Mission for about five years. “They’d replace me with an investment banker in about forty seconds,” he said.

So why should people care if writers like Orner leave the city en masse? Richard Florida, University of Toronto business professor and author of the book The Rise of the Creative Class, argues that this group of people is creative, makes good money, and values diversity. The creative class includes writers of all genres, as well as educators, financiers, scientists and techies.

The group is attracted to urban areas like San Francisco, which ranked number one in Florida’s creativity rankings for large cities, because of its theater venues, its cafes and spoken word performances, its rock musicians and art galleries; in other words, because of its writers and artists and the quality of life they provide. Florida argues that cities which are successful in attracting this creative class are prospering, while cities that don’t are not. So, if rent control vanishes and the writers and artists disappear, our city by the Bay will suffer.

Matt Smith loves prop. 98

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I almost don’t know what to say about Matt Smith’s SF Weekly piece in favor of Prop. 98. I know Smith gets a little unhinged when it comes to housing issues, but his faith in the free market to lower the price of housing in San Francisco – against all odds and all evidence – is just looney.

He starts off with the typical landlord/libertarian argument against rent control, which is that it screws up the marketplace:

Tens of thousands of other apartments are kept off the market through “hoarding,” as individual tenants remain in cheap and cavernous three-bedrooms, hang on to their old $200-a-month apartments long after they’ve moved in with a spouse, or are otherwise motivated to cling to their leases.

Except that Prop. 98 would allow existing tenants to stay in existing rent-controlled apartments, which lose rent control forever when they’re vacated. So the rent-controlled units would be even more valuable, and the incentive to “hoard” even greater. As would be the incentive for landlords to evict long-term tenants.

But wait, there’s more:

Studies also show that rent control discourages construction of new rental apartments New housing construction fell by one third in the seven years after San Francisco’s rent control law passed in 1979. During the 1990s, meanwhile, the number of rental units actually decreased by 7,500.

Ah, but all newly constructed units are exempt from rent control anyway. So something else must be going on here. Perhaps the number of rental units decreased because developers, who care nothing for the city’s housing needs, realized there’s more money to be made selling condos. It’s the same reasons Lennar Corp. broke its promise to build rental housing in Hunters Point: There’s more money in selling units right now than in renting them.

And, of course, we’re losing rental housing – not to rent control but to condo conversions, another way property owners can make money.

Smith seems to think that without rent control

“it’s reasonable to surmise … that downtown apartment construction would accelerate. Rents would stabilize or decline. …. Businesses would flock to San Francisco, which would have ample new office space and more, cheaper homes for their employees.”

Sounds idyllic, if you want to live in Manhattan, which I don’t.

In fact, Matt Smith’s vision of a “great city” is by nature one that’s constantly growing and ever-more dense. He berates the urban environmentalists:

San Franciscans replaced what had been a metropolitan vision of the future with one best described as suburban. Rather than being a great city, it would instead be a tranquil place to live.

Matt, you have no sense of history. After World War II, the captains of industry who had completely taken over planning and development policy, in the military model of command and control, to make the West Coast war machine work, decided they liked that way of doing business. So a handful of them sat down and planned the future of the Bay Area. Low-cost South of Market housing would be demolished to make way for hotels and a convention center. Following the suburban model, BART would connect outlying bedroom communities with a dense downtown office core. High-rise buildings would hold the economic center of the Pacific Rim. A network of freeways would cross the city in a Los Angeles-style grid.

That’s what the master planners who Smith lauds had in mind. And the people who lived here decided that it wasn’t fair that nobody asked them about it. So they fought back, cutting off the freeways, down-zoning neighborhoods, fighting over-development (which, by the way, hurts city coffers more than it helps) and trying to keep this a decent place to live.

Rapid growth is not always good, not always desirable. Cities are places where people live, and keeping them livable is a noble pursuit.

And when it comes to housing in a city like San Francisco, the market will never, ever solve the problem. I’ve written about this over and over, but here’s the latest.

Regulation – treating housing not just like a fungible commodity but like a necessity of life that the market can’t fairly provide – is the only way to keep San Francisco affordable.

“Fuck Lennar!”

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I’ve witnessed my share of political rallies, but Prop. F’s “We Shall Not be Moved” event at 3rd Street and Palou in the Bayview takes the bumpin’-block-party prize.

Wedged between three cash checking stores, a beauty parlor, and a T-Third station, the rally was awash with multilingual “Yes on F” signs, edgy urban chic and fighting words.

But beyond the many powerful speakers who showed up to stir up the crowd, the afternoon’s three most memorable moments involved song, dance and the spoken word.

Turfaholics’ Johnal performed to a funky remix of “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair).

Prop. F supporters put a smile on the crowd’s face with their soulful attempts at the Cha Cha Slide.

And last but not least was hiphop emcee Cobe Obeah

Stay with the following video for a minute and you’ll get to the part where Cobe announces that he doesn’t usually cuss, then gets the crowd joining in a “Fuck Lennar!” chant, before delivering a final FU to San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Connecticut joins SF in charges against McKesson

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Reuters is reporting that the state of Connecticut today followed San Francisco’s lead in suing the McKesson Corp. over an alleged conspiracy to unfairly manipulate the price of prescription drugs. The Connecticut suit charges that McKesson, a multinational corporation based in San Francisco and ranked 18th on the Fortune 500 list, violated anti-racketeering laws by creating a scheme to artificially increase published figures related to what retail pharmacies pay to obtain prescription drugs from wholesalers like McKesson.

The alleged scheme involved the participation of a little-known company based in San Bruno called First DataBank, a subsidiary of media giant Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle. First DataBank maintains a sophisticated database of prescription drug prices that Medicaid administrators and private insurers use to determine what they’ll pay a pharmacy retailer to cover the cost of your drugs after you’ve made the co-pay.

Because so many prescription drugs exist, First DataBank’s figures are critical for understanding the true cost of pharmaceuticals as they move through market pipelines from the manufacturer to the wholesaler to the corner pharmacy. The suits allege that First DataBank and McKesson conspired to inflate those published prices so that everyone from Medi-Cal to Blue Cross paid far more to pharmacies than appropriate for the drugs. A big part of McKesson’s business comes from chain pharmacies, and if they saw McKesson going to bat for them, the suits claim, they were likelier to maintain those business relationships instead of turning to a McKesson competitor like AmerisourceBergen or Cardinal Health. Yes this stuff sounds sleep-inducing, but there’s a whole lot of money involved if City Attorney Dennis Herrera and others are right about this. Learn more about San Francisco’s lawsuit.

Getting past gay marriage

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The latest Field Poll results confirm what I and others here at the Guardian have been saying since the California Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same sex marriage came down two weeks ago: this long, divisive fight is basically over in California. Gay and lesbian couples will start getting married in a couple weeks and will likely be able to keep doing so forever, as it should be.
California voters simply won’t be willing to write discrimination into the California constitution, particularly after it has now been validated by the high court, the California Legislature (twice), and even gay marriage opponent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for respecting the ruling and said he’ll campaign against the fall ballot measure that would outlaw same sex unions.
Those are dynamics that even the best “marriage is between Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” campaign are not going to overcome.

Do people remember Chevron’s abuses? People do

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By Maria Dinzeo
The agenda at Chevron’s annual shareholders meeting will be slightly different this year, as representatives from Nigeria, Ecuador, and Burma descend on the meeting to finally have their say. For years, Chevron has been accused of myriad human rights and environmental abuses, from having nonviolent protestors gunned down in Nigeria to the dumping of toxic waste into Amazon waterways in Ecuador.
Tomorrow, representatives from these countries will voice their concerns directly to shareholders and executives. Amazon Watch Director of Communications Simeon Tegel told us the event was designed to “potentially help shareholders become more active” in pressuring Chevron executives to finally address and rectify Chevron’s abuses.
“One hopes they are human beings too, although sometimes it’s hard to tell. But perhaps they will be motivated to do something, either from pressure from their shareholders or from the kindness of human nature,” said Tegel.
Chevron’s human rights violations are not limited to abuses abroad. Richmond has long felt the sting of Chevron’s environmental negligence, despite the company’s soaring profits. While Chevron promises more energy efficient oil refining methods, they continue to belch toxins into the air over Richmond, and plans for a $1 billion expansion of their Richmond refinery has increased resident’s health and safety concerns.
“Change is a long time coming,” said Rosi Reyes, spokesperson for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. “Unfortunately, the citizens of Richmond have read through Chevron’s Environmental Impact Report and they feel that there are empty promises. Chevron continues to use equipment that is over 35 years old, and everything in the report points to [Chevron] refining heavier crude oil.”
Reyes said that the City of Richmond’s aims to wean itself of its oil dependent relationship with Chevron: “We want Chevron to put a cap on crude oil and put money into green energy,” she said.
Though contacted repeatedly, Chevron’s Media Relations Department was unavailable for comment.
Although Richmond representatives will not be allowed inside the meeting, they hope to confront Chevron executives through their protest outside. Said Amazon Watch spokesman Mitchell Anderson, “[Chevron] may not be listening, but they will definitely hear us tomorrow.”

Lennar coverage wins awards

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Just as San Francisco voters prepare to cast ballots that will determine whether controversial megdeveloper Lennar covers Candlestick and Hunter’s points in 10,000 new homes, the Guardian is being honored for stories that exposed the company’s local misdeeds. A series of stories by Sarah Phelan showed how Lennar (with the support of Mayor Gavin Newsom and other high-profile political allies) failed to monitor or control toxic dust at its Parcel A site on Hunter’s Point, allegedly retaliated against whistleblowers, and bought off allies in its campaign to avoid accountability for its actions. Phelan’s stories are being honored in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies’ prestigious “Investigation Reporting” category, while Guardian coverage of the MediaNews merger and its facilitation by Hearst Corporation (owner of the Chronicle) is a finalist for AAN’s first-ever Public Service Award. The project was led by staff writer GW Schulz and was supported by a Guardian lawsuit that made public previously secret corporate documents.
Phelan’s stories are also being honored by the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club (at whose June 5 awards banquet finalists will learn whether they won first place or were a runner up), along with stories by three other Guardian writers and editors: Tim Redmond, Steven T. Jones, and Diana Scott.

Targeting immigrants…in a good way

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San Francisco celebrated Spanish-speaking cultures over the weekend with fun Carnaval events in the Mission District, and housing activists followed that up by commandeering six billboards and using them to put out messages in Spanish urging voters to reject Prop. 98, which would end rent control and restrictions on conversion of rental properties to condos.
Members of the clandestine coalition who liberated the billboards say immigrants have already had to endure an increase in immigration sweeps and a rising level of anti-immigrant vitriol from the right, so now is the time to fight back against a change in housing laws that would hit low-income immigrants particularly hard.
One member of the coalition who was named, Ruben Salazar, said in a public statement: “What we need now are big, bold reminders shortly before the election to turn out the vote on June 3. Prop 98 is a wolf in sheep’s clothing hiding from public attention and sneaking into law during an off-season election. We decided to take over corporate billboards to loudly expose the hidden agenda of Prop 98 and to reclaim the corporate media for community use.”

Joe Nation’s friends are bad news II

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More on why Joe Nation’s friends are bad news:

The Mark Leno campaign has done an analysis of the independent expenditure campaigns supporting Nation, and there are some truly nasty bad guys in there. Many of them (for example, our old friends PG&E) gave campoaign cash directly to Nation, then gave more money through the IEs.

Check out the list, taken from a Leno press release:

Civil Justice Association of California (CJAC) $342,544

A group of big oil, insurance, banking, chemical, pharmaceutical companies as well as companies involved in the subprime mortgage meltdown. They were co-sponsors of Proposition 64, which was opposed by consumer and environmental advocates and weakened the general public’s ability to pursue lawsuits over unfair business practices and environmental violations. CJAC works to limit their member’s liability when lawsuits are brought against them from consumers, patients, workers or environmental advocates.

* Joe Nation took $1,000 from Pacific Gas & Electric Co., CJAC member

* Joe Nation took $3,600 from California Apartment Association, CJAC member

* Joe Nation took $1,000 from the CA Hospital Association, CJAC member

* Joe Nation took $3,600 from MEDPAC of the CA Association of Physician Groups, sponsored by the CA Association of Physicians Organizations Los Angeles, CJAC member

* Joe Nation took $3,200 from the San Francisco Apartment Association, California Apartment Association is a CJAC member

* Joe Nation took $7,200 from the California Real Estate Political Action Committee, CJAC member

Cooperative of American Physicians $100,000

A group that provides liability insurance for it’s member physicians and advocates to maintain the liability caps up-held in the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA), which capped their liability in malpractice lawsuits at 1975 levels.

* Joe Nation took $3,600 from Cooperative of American Physicians

Californians Allied for Patient Protection (CAPP) $50,000

A group of corporate hospitals, doctors, insurance companies and others in the medical industry whose priority is to maintain the liability caps up-held in the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA), which capped their liability in malpractice lawsuits at 1975 levels.

* Joe Nation took $3,600 from Californians Allied for Patient Protection

* Joe Nation took $3,600 from MICRA California PAC of NorCal Mutual Insurance Company, member of CAPP

Californians for Jobs and a Strong Economy $3,277

A group of insurance companies, financial-services firms, developers, card clubs and biotechnology companies

I still think it’s a two-person race now, with Carole Migden far behind. And I think the best way to stop Nation is to vote for Leno. But whoever you support, don’t vote for Nation.

Driving to death

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With all the understandable concern about global warming lately, we tend to forget that our over-reliance on automobiles also has a more immediate impact: death, lots and lots of death.
Research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration already shows that traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people ages 3-6 and 8-34, and is the third leading cause of death for all Americans after cancer and heart disease, some of which can also be traced back to the automobile.
Today’s Chronicle reports on new research showing that particulate matter, much of it from automobiles, causes far more premature death than previously thought, up to 24,000 annual deaths in California alone. In another piece, the Chron speculates that people might be driving less on Memorial Day weekend, the mother of all road trip holidays, but I still know lots of people who drove down to Lightning in the Bottle and other spots without pausing to consider the externalities.
Yet even after cutting more than $1 billion in transit funding last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned around and did the same thing this year, cuts that would cost the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency $37 million in the coming fiscal year. This isn’t just stupid and short-sighted: it’s deadly.
But there are countervailing forces fighting back, from a strong local bicycle movement to this fall’s high-speed rail bond measure to the international car-free movement, whose biggest annual event, the International Carfree Conference, will be held in Portland next month, the first time it has been in the U.S. And the Guardian will be there (arriving by train) with live daily coverage and interviews with leading thinkers and activists. Stay tuned.

Marin goes 100% renewable…with natural gas

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photo of PG&E’s Pittsburg power plant (now owned by Mirant) in front of a horizon full of SMUD’s windmills, courtesy Barbara George of Women’s Energy Matters

I’ve been reading through the Marin Clean Energy plan, which is designed to offer customers in 12 potential cities in Marin County the possibility of powering their homes and businesses with 100 percent renewable energy. How can this be, and how can San Francisco do the same?

Their community choice aggregation plan offers folks two options: “light” green (25 percent renewable, ramping up to 50 percent by 2014) or “deep” green (100 percent renewable right out of the gate.) Initially, this will be achieved through power purchase agreements with third-party renewable energy suppliers, while at the same time contracting to build their own renewable power sources and encouraging citizens, through incentives, to put up their own solar panels and wind vanes. (Studies have shown that Marin County has the potential for as much as 846 megawatts of renewables, mostly from solar and wind, though biomass and methane capture are also achievable, especially with all those dairy farms.) The county’s draw is about 240 megawatts.

But my question was if they would still need to rely on natural gas or any other “conventional” power sources as they transition, or to meet peak needs and state-mandated reliability standards.

I queried Tim Rosenfeld, of the Marin Energy Management Team, who has been consulting the county on the plan. “We can’t abandon conventional natural gas generation,” he told me. “It will still be there for firming and shaping our grid, but we will be able to ‘green’ it through our renewable generation.”

Joe Nation’s friends are bad news

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Check out who’s spending money supporting Joe Nation: A group called the Civil Justice Association of California. As Calitics notes:

A group like this does not spend a quarter million on a politician without expecting something in return. What does this anti-consumer organization expect in return? You need look no further than their own description: “Industry-sponsored California group, advocating legal reforms to restrict tort recovery.”

You can find out more about this group at its website, but Calitics has it right: This is an organization that wants to protect big businesses (particularly, these days, Big Pharma) from liability suits.

In case anyone was still wondering if Joe Nation ought to be called a “progressive.”

Governor touts green businesses in SF

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Photo courtesy of Governor’s Office
By Janna Brancolini
The Environmental Defense Fund’s San Francisco office hosted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today to recognize five California companies and a host of green business practices identified in a new EDF report called “Innovations Review: Making Green the New Business as Usual.”

The EDF said the purpose of the report was to identity business innovations that are good for both the environment and a company’s bottom line. They said they hope other companies will consider emulating these green practices.

Schwarzenegger said the companies being recognized have realized that “business as usual was changing” and starting doing things such as powering headquarters with renewable energy, running shuttle buses to cut down on the number of employees commuting to work and implementing communications systems that use a fraction of the energy of normal equipment.

Schwarzenegger said that about a third of the more than 50 companies discussed in the report are based in California and said, “We are inspiring other states, and we are inspiring the country.”

Peakers delayed 2 weeks

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At the May 20 meeting, the Board of Supervisors agreed to a two-week hold on a plan to build two combustion turbine “peaker” power plants in the city. (Also known as the CTs.) The delayed legislation was also amended by Sup. Sean Elsbernd, who injected a 90-day due diligence period into the process.

Translation: if the Board, two weeks from now, passes the plan to build the peakers, a 90-day due diligence period kicks in. And if, during that period, the SFPUC general manager finds that another plan meets a certain list of criteria (which are included in the amendments and can be read here), then he can kill the city’s peaker plan and put forth the alternative. The alternative would still have to go through all the permitting and planning processes that the city’s peakers have already weathered, but the city’s peaker project would be dead.

Elsbernd’s amendments contain a list of qualifications that any alternative must meet, including an agreement that Mirant’s Unit 3 would still close (so the company can redevelop that site for some other profitable commercial use), and that any other “proposed project” would improve environmental quality and city control over energy supplies.

The language here is pretty careful: nowhere does it say that a new proposal must be as clean, if not cleaner, than the city’s peakers. Nor does it say it must be owned by the city.

Elsbernd asked for the two week continuance when introducing the amendments, to give the Board more time to get comfortable with them and “to make sure that the CTs are either the right thing or the wrong thing.”

Peskin, describing the motion before them, jabbed that the extra time was for any possible alternative “proposed by PG&E and/or Mirant.”

To which Elsbernd took issue, “Actually, I would disagree with your statement,” he said. “This is not a proposal from PG&E.”

After the item passed, with Sup. Chris Daly citing it as a delay tactic and dissenting, Elsbernd told the Guardian the amendments did not come from the Mayor’s staff. “They came from my pretty little head,” he said. “I asked the city attorney to draft them for me.”

RFK Jr. and NRDC part ways on power plants in SF

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On May 12, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, founder of Waterkeeper, senior counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and as big a wig as Al Gore in the environmental hall of fame, decided to weigh in on San Francisco’s plan to build two fossil fuel-burning power plants. He sent this letter to the Board of Supervisors, Mayor Gavin Newsom, the CPUC’s Mike Peevey, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, urging them to back away from a future hooked to fossil fuels.

“Given the size and impact of this project, I respectfully urge you to listen to the public interest and environmental groups such as Sierra Club and SPUR that are calling for an independent study to determine whether these power plants are truly required in 2008,” Kennedy wrote.

But, lest you get confused about how emphatically concerned an eco-heavy-hitter like NRDC is about San Francisco’s energy future, the group sent another letter three days later saying they don’t have a position on the controversial issue, and don’t plan on taking one. That letter was signed by Ralph Cavanagh, who handles energy issues for NRDC and has been a champion of decoupling — which utility companies love because it separates the profit-making from the energy-consuming, thus ensuring they still take home a pretty penny while encouraging customers to cut back on energy use.

Craig Noble, spokesperson for NRDC, explained the discrepancy by email, writing, “Bobby wasn’t representing NRDC in his official capacity when he took a position on that particular project. It was unclear to some people that he was speaking as a private citizen, so NRDC released a letter of clarification – we have not looked at this project and therefore have not taken a position.” He also wrote they probably wouldn’t, as they tend to focus on broader policy issues rather than individual projects.

A number of environmental and social justice groups have also allied against San Francisco’s plan to build the peakers, strongly urging city officials to step it up with renewables rather than natural gas, and sending letters with their eco-group stamps all over them. They also met with Newsom to express alternatives to the peakers, according to Josh Arce of Brightline Defense, one of the leaders of the environmental front.

But it wasn’t until Newsom’s staff met with PG&E, the quiet giant of the anti-peaker movement, that the Mayor put the brakes on the power plant’s approval process. After that meeting, Newsom intervened last week at the Board of Supervisors, temporarily pausing the approval process of the peaker plan while he called for the exploration of other alternatives.

PG&E’s peaker-less proposal

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For all those following the latest and greatest in the saga of San Francisco’s energy future, here’s a copy of the proposal PG&E put before Mayor Gavin Newsom’s staff on March 5, and which has been making rounds at City Hall. It outlines (though doesn’t go into too much detail) a number of energy efficiency measures, demand-response targets, and transmission upgrades.

Tony Winnicker, spokesperson for the SFPUC, seemed nonplussed by the plan, and said it only slightly differed from a past anti-peaker proposal from PG&E that Cal-ISO found wasn’t enough for San Francisco to forgo building two new combustion turbine power plants. The new plan includes a line connecting two substations in Potrero and Embarcadero, ultimately making our local grid a little more dynamic. But, said Winnicker, “There’s no indication from Cal-ISO that doing this would allow us to close Potrero without Cal-ISO’s consistent requirement of ‘in city, dispatchable, reliable’ generation.”

Cal-ISO’s Gregg Fishman said the new proposal had pros and cons they’d have to weigh, and introducing a new plan at this point could mean more delays on closing Mirant. “One drawback to a transmission alternative is that building a new major transmission project, instead of installing the peakers, will mean potentially years of delay in the closure of the highly polluting Potrero. Additionally, any new in-city resources, including demand response, would need to be available “around-the-clock” to meet national reliability standards the ISO is required to uphold. Currently, demand response is not available 24/7.”

Don’t know about you, but my Mission district mailbox has been bombarded by scary mailers from PG&E, posing as the Close It Coalition, screaming “NO NEW POWER PLANTS.” They claim environmental reasons but one inside source told me PG&E is “paranoid” about public power. Their 2007 annual report to shareholders includes a section detailing the risks of loosing customers to Community Choice Aggregation or municipalization of electricity services. (See pages 74-76 of this document. I also recommend page 56 for details on the fossil fuel burning power plants PG&E is also building, that are bigger and dirtier than the city’s would be.) Peter Darbee, CEO of the corporation, also expressed his own personal concern about public power at PG&E’s May 14 annual meeting (but you’ll have to tune into tomorrow’s Guardian for details on that.)

San Francisco sues massive drug wholesaler

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Close readers of the Bay Guardian might remember that back in October of 2006, we caught up with a story involving the McKesson Corp., one of the world’s largest wholesalers of prescription drugs based in San Francisco, and a little-known publishing house called First DataBank, located in San Bruno and one of the few publishers of prescription drug prices in the United States.

First DataBank is owned the Hearst Corp., parent of the San Francisco Chronicle. We followed up with a few more versions of the story, but beyond the Wall Street Journal, which broke the first major story about the relationship between the companies as a lawsuit on the East Coast alleging a conspiracy to artificially inflate drug prices winded its way through the courts, almost no one has bothered to report on the subject.

It took the Chronicle’s business section weeks after our stories ran to publish anything on the suit even though the Journal led with the story on its front page when it first went public.

Probably within hours from now, however, you should expect to see more about McKesson and First DataBank at SFGate.com with a new attitude from the Chronicle about the two companies.

That’s because San Francisco’s city attorney announced today that we’ll be the first government entity to sue McKesson for the alleged price inflations in a federal court in Boston where the other suits were filed. The stories we wrote focused on labor unions there that extended drug benefits to their rank-and-file and whose attorneys obtained internal communications from McKesson and First DataBank employees that purportedly showed how the companies celebrated the success of the alleged price-fixing scheme. In San Francisco’s suit, First DataBank is not listed as a defendant, but the city attorney describes the company as “an unnamed co-conspirator.”

Despite McKesson’s global reach and headquarters being located here in the city, we’ve always been blown away that the local press has spent so little time reporting on them. We’ll post more info as we gather it.

The perils of private wi-fi

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Tom Ammiano, who was just up in Portland, alerted me to this. That city’s ambitious plans to let a private company wire the entire area have fallen flat. The job is only one-third done. The company’s out of money. It’s a mess.

In other words, the critics of Mayor Newsom’s old Earthlink-Google wi-fi plan were absolutely right.

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