SFBG Blogs

Will Kopp’s competitive bidding initiative derail Recology’s train to Yuba?

Mary Magee
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Will Kopp’s competitive bidding initiative derail Recology’s train to Yuba?

Sponsors of an initiative to require competitive bidding on all aspects of the city’s multi-million-dollar garbage services say they plan to deliver their initiative petitions to the Department of Elections this afternoon. The petitions contain 12,000 signatures, far more than the 7,000-8,000 required, effectively signalling that, even after the city weeds out non-valid signatures, the initiative will qualify for the June 2012 election.

The move threatens to give the Board a political migraine, since the Board is set to vote July 26 on a Department of Environment resolution to expand Recology (formerly Norcal Waste System, Inc)’s monopoly on San Francisco’s garbage and recycling services.

In fact, the DoE resolution contains two separate agreements: a $112 million long-term landfill disposal agreement that was competitively bid, and a facilitation agreement that governs how waste is transported to the landfill and that was not competitively bid. As such, the city’s facilitation agreement is already the subject of a lawsuit that Waste Management Inc. filed in San Francisco Superior Court last week.

Sponsors of the competitive bidding ordinance, which include retired judge Quentin Kopp, community activist Tony Kelly and Waste Solutions CEO David Gavrich,believe the Board should delay voting on the landfill disposal and facilititation agreements until next summer, after voters have had a chance to weigh in on the bigger question of whether folks want competitive bidding on all the city’s garbage-related services, which are worth a quarter of a billion, each year. “

“It would be disrespectful to voters to accept a resolution while an initiative is pending,” Kopp stated.

“It would make sense if they severe the landfill disposal and facilitation agreements into two files,” Kelly added, referring to how the two separate agreements are currently lumped into one item on the Board’s July 26 agenda, under the section titled “recommendations of the Budget and Finance sub-committee.”

How the deal got filed in the B&F sub-committee’s recommended section is another story unto itself: Last Wednesday, after Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Jane Kim, who sit on the Board’s Budget and Finance sub-committee, voted to send the deal to the Board with no recommendation, (a vote that suggested that they had some concerns with the deal) and after members of the public who came to testify about the item had left,  Mirkarimi asked to rescind the landfill vote.

“I think there was some misunderstanding a little bit in wrapping up the landfill agreements with Recology, “ Mirkarimi said, as he asked for the vote to be rescinded, “so we can accurately reflect some of the sentiments being articulated here.”
“I think we just learned some things on the fly,” Mirkarimi stated, as he and Kim joined committee chair Sup. Carmen Chu, one of the Board’s more conservative members, in sending the deal to the full Board “with recommendation.”

The Guardian learned of the vote switcheroo, after the DoE, which is apparently anxious to see the Recology agreements move forward, contacted us to say that our blog post about the Budget and Finance sub-committee, incorrectly stated that Mirkarimi and Kim had not given the deal their unmitigated thumbs-up. (The Guardian has since amended its blog post to accurately reflect what happened at the meeting, after this reporter and most members of the public, except the Chamber of Commerce’s Jim Lazarus, who supports the Recology agreements, had left the Board’s Chambers.)

Asked about the last-minute move to amend the vote Kelly said, “It was Ross at his Rossest.”

And in many ways, Mirkarimi’s move to rescind made sense: neither he nor Kim had registered any problems with the landfill disposal and facilitation agreements during the committee hearing, though a number of seemingly valid concerns were raised, including the observation by Yuba County supervisor Roger Abe that Yuba County is considering raising its host fees at Recology’’s Ostrom Road landfill in Wheatland from $4.40 a ton to $20- $30 a ton. If Yuba County does raise itsw fees, the move could wipe out the estimated $100 million in savings that DoE claims Recology’s proposal represents for San Francisco ratepayers. According to Abe, Yuba’s fees have not been raised for 14 years, and his county, which is one of the poorest in California, could use the additional income, especially if it is going to see its local landfill fill up faster than anticipated, thanks to San Francisco sending up to 5 million tons of trash over a 10-year period.

To be fair, Mirkarimi did warn that it would be unwise to dismiss Yuba County’s concerns , but he countered that any county can raise its fees. And DoE suggested that it was unlikely that Yuba County can raise its fees excessively, because those same fees would have to be paid by the other municipalities that use the Ostrom ROad dump, most of which are small towns that can’t afford to pay as much as relatively prosperous Bay Area cities like San Francicso.

Instead, Mirkarimi and Kim reserved most of their concerns for the bigger question of whether San Francisco ratepayers are best served by the city’s continuing lack of competitive bidding and franchise fee requirements on San Francisco’s remaining $225-million-a-year garbage collection related services–concerns that seem to bring us back full circle to Kopp and Kelly’s competitive bidding ordinance, which they had hoped to qualifty for

Asked how many supervisors he thought will stand up tomorrow and dig into the details of the DoE agreements and how they contradict with the requirements of the Kopp-Kelly-Gavrich competing bidding initiative, Kelly said, “Two.”

If so, that’s not likely to derail Recology’s train to Yuba, especially given that Mayor Ed Lee, who holds veto power over any item that less than eight supervisors support or oppose, told the Guardian in February that he believes Recology had earned its privilege.

But so far the City Attorney’s Office is remaining mum about the potential impact of WM’s lawsuit on Recology’s train to Yuba County, a silence that will give the Board the political cover they apparently so desperately need, if they vote tomorrow to haul San Francisco’s trash to Yuba County by rail, an arrangement that won’t start until after the city’s current contract at Waste Management’s Altamont landfill expires, something that is not anticipated to happen until 2015, based on the city’s current diversion rates.

 

Mayoral candidates scurry for signatures

Sasha Cuttler
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33
Mayoral candidates scurry for signatures

San Francisco mayoral candidates and their volunteers have been scrambling to gather the signatures of registered voters needed to reduce their filing fees and demonstrate popular support, over the weekend hitting popular gathering spots such as Dolores Park with a combination of earnest appeals and election-year gimmicks.

Volunteers for candidate John Avalos were the first to hit a crowded Dolores Park on Saturday, canvassing throughout the day, but they may have been upstaged by the campaign of David Chiu, which featured both the candidate himself and his Star Wars-inspired alter ego Chiu-bacca – a campaign volunteer dressed up as Chewbacca. The campaign even carried the motif through at the table it set up, which was staffed by someone in a space helmet that was reminiscent of a stormtrooper. No other mayoral or district attorney candidates seemed to have a visible presence there.

A Clonetrooper for David Chiu

Candidates have until this Thursday, July 28, to turn in the signatures of registered voters, each of which reduces that candidate’s filing fees by 50 cents. So mayoral candidates can eliminate their $5,048 filing fee (which represents 2 percent of the mayor’s $252,397 annual salary) by turning in 10,096 signatures. For district attorney candidates, the goal is 8,704 sigs, while sheriff candidates need 7,990 to get the freebie.

An Avalos volunteer gathers signatures (and possibly PBRs)

The other important upcoming election-related dates are Aug. 1, when the semi-annual campaign finance statements are due and we find out who’s been raising the most money, and Aug. 12, the deadline for candidates to file their intent to run for office. That’s when we find out whether Mayor Ed Lee breaks his pledge not to run, and whether there are any other surprise late entrants into the race, which is always a possibility.

The Performant: Super Freaks

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

Thunderbird Theatre and Foul Play serve it up weird
 
Like swallows returning to Capistrano, there are certain annual events you can count on to lift the spirits and brighten an otherwise soggy outlook. One such anticipated delight is Thunderbird Theatre’s yearly production of an ensemble-created original comedy. Mavens of the shameless spoof, the fabulous T-birds have sent-up pulp detective fiction, lucha libre wrestling, pirate intrigues, Citizen Kane, Conan the Barbarian, vampire romance, and creepy office politics in variously hysterical ways, and a summer pilgrimage to their shows is always effort well-rewarded.

This year’s Thunderbird Special was “SaltyTowers” (the run ended July 23) — a goofy mashup of Greek mythology and the best BBC comedy show ever to feature the line “don’t mention the war.” The opening sequence, involving a traditional chorus, established the basic plot, but it was the next scene, set in the lobby of the hapless, underwater hotel that established the funny. As a string of minor gods, mortals on-the-lam, and a beleaguered mob boss-styled Zeus check-in to Poseidon’s realm, they were waited on by a Portuguese man-o-war, a Dolphin, and Poseidon himself: a world-weary deity in an ill-fitting suit, married to Medusa — a woman for whom the phrase “my little nest of vipers” could actually be taken for an endearment.

The tangled fishing line of a plot might have lost direction now and again, but the buoyant silliness of the Thunderbird crew was unsinkable. Brandon Wiley played a scantily-clad Dionysus with hedonistic abandon; Neil Higgins’ swinging socialite Hermes was equal parts Oscar Wilde and Eddie Izzard; Analisa Svehaug channeled Connie Booth as “Dolly,” a matter-of-fact dolphin receptionist-cum-waterpark
performer; and Thunderbird regular Shay Casey’s Zeus, “a big God with big needs,” nevertheless seemed strangely unflapped by the temporary loss of his tender bits in a mishap involving an angry crustacean (Gilbert Esqueda). Weird science alert: did you know the sting of a Portuguese man-o-war can cause an orgasm? To find out how, you’ll have to see it for yourself.

Meanwhile, across the hallway of the EXIT Theatreplex, an entirely different brand of weird is getting a test-drive at Foul Play’s premiere of Nikita Schoen’s “The Left-handed Darling”. Inspired in part by the imitable Tod Browning film, “Freaks,” Schoen’s first foray into playwriting is tinged with longing, deformity, and a calmly rational madness that doesn’t so much spiral as glide smoothly forward into the dark.

The central character, Calliope (AmandaOrtmayer), is the young daughter of former sideshow performers, Phillip and Constance Darling (Don Wood and Kimberly Maclean). Raised in isolation by her well-meaning yet physically challenged parents (they are unhappily co-joined), Calliope amuses herself by creating hybrid creatures from the body parts of the animals her father “preserves” in jars.

Starved for companionship, she falls in with a group of carnival freaks, played with delicate empathy by Wood, Maclean, Mikka Bonel, and Sean Owens, with a suitably creepy Mikl-em as their barker/overseer, Sugarchurch. Surreal flourishes such as the mysterious puppet entity, Dr Chang, a hauntingly lifelike parasitic twin, Don Seaver’s dissonant soundscape, and a stellar courtroom scene staged by the sideshow performers, create an atmosphere of thoughtful unease that lingers long after the final bow.

THE LEFT-HANDED DARLINGThrough Aug. 13
EXIT Theatre
156 Eddy, SF
(415) 673-3847
www.sffringe.org

How to avoid smart meters

Zelda Bronstein
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How to avoid smart meters

PG&E’s smart meters are coming to my Bernal Heights street — and I don’t want one. I’m not really that worried about getting zapped by radiation from the radio transmitter — the whole house is abuzz in wifi anyway. But it seems as if everyplace that the new meters have been installed, people are unhappy; bills go up at random, complaints aren’t answered etc. And honestly, I’m not sure I want PG&E to have such detailed information about my electricity use. Bottom line: I don’t trust PG&E. And I’d rather wait until the CPUC is done with its hearings on the matter and has issued some guidelines.


Okay, maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I ought to just accept that the private electric company is going to know every time I turn on a lightbulb. But for now, I’ll wait.


And there’s a way to get out of it. All you have to do is call 877-743-7378. It’s a 24-hour line. I was only on hold for about four minutes. I told the person I didn’t want a smart meter; she asked why, and I told her I didn’t trust PG&E. She told me I would be put on the delay list and no new meter would be installed until the CPUC issues new rules.


So I’m probably good for another year or two. 877-743-7378. Give it a try.


 

Burning Man tickets sell out for the first time

Sasha Cuttler
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34

For the first time in the event’s 25-year history, tickets to Burning Man have sold out. With more than a month left to go before the gates to Black Rock City open at midnight on Aug. 28, burners have already started a mad scramble for spare tickets through various message boards and online networks.

Shortly after tickets started selling at the fastest pace ever on Jan. 20, officials with Black Rock City LLC, the SF-based company that staged Burning Man in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, privately warned that they may sell out this year. The event, which last year peaked at almost 52,000 attendees, is limited by its permits with the US Bureau of Land Management and BRC’s own desire to control its ever-growing size.

A couple months ago, the company announced that tickets would not be available at the gate (which had happened only once before, in 2008) and urged burners to get their tickets because it could sell out. Then, over the weekend, that’s what happened. “This is new territory,” BRC board member Marian Goodell told the Guardian, noting that its BLM permit (which is up for renegotiation after this year’s event) calls for capping the population at last year’s level. “If we didn’t have the BLM permit restrictions, we could manage an increased population.”

BRC, nicknamed the Borg, had privately been trying to dampen public speculation that the event would sell out, worried that scalpers would make a run on tickets. It’s illegal in California to sell tickets for more than their face value, and it has traditionally been a strong part of the burner ethos not to profit off reselling of the tiered-pricing tickets (which ranged from $210-360 this year). But that will be tested this year by the laws of supply and demand. There have also been counterfeit ticket scams exposed recently, and that will be an even greater concern now that legitimate ticket outlets are no longer an option, although the Burning Man website lists ways to check whether a ticket is legitimate.

Meanwhile, BRC has been settling into its new headquarters in Mid-Market Street area, and it has recently announced an Aug. 5 launch date for The Burning Man Project, the new nonprofit organization that will slowly began taking over control of the event over the next several years, with a kickoff party in United Nations Plaza starting at 5 pm.

For more on Burning Man during this important transitional year, look for the Guardian’s special Playa Prep issue hitting the streets on Aug. 3; grab a copy of my new book, The Tribes of Burning Man; or attend one of my upcoming book-related events. And, if you can manage to get a ticket, I’ll see you on the playa.

Dick Meister: Workers gaining in fight for union rights

Maria Poblet
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This year marks the 76th anniversary of the National Labor Relations Act, the Depression-era law that was essential in building an American middle class – and which remains essential to the well-being of all working Americans. 

But you know what? Powerful corporate interests and their Republican buddies in Congress are nevertheless trying mightily to cripple what has so long been one of the most important U.S. laws of any kind.

Their main target currently is the National Labor Relations Board – the NLRB –which administers the National Labor Relations Act and takes seriously the act’s stated purpose of encouraging collective bargaining between workers and their employers.

The five-member labor board did very little to carry out its task of encouraging unionization during the notoriously anti-union Bush administration. But under President Obama, the NLRB has been doing its job – or has been trying to do its job — in the face of stiff Republican opposition.

The Republican opponents claim – what else? – that under Obama, the NLRB has become a tool of organized labor, Big Labor, as they like to call it.

It’s impossible to take those charges seriously. The labor board obviously has not been acting as an agent of unions, big or small. It’s merely been enforcing the law. But that, of course, means anti-labor forces no longer have the firm cooperation of the NLRB in their attempts to weaken unions as much as possible. They no longer have an ally in the White House. Bush is gone.

Imagine that. The National Labor Relations Board is actually doing what the law says it should do. And unions are actually getting a more or less even break vis-à-vis the corporate interests with whom they collectively bargain – or with whom they try to bargain.

What’s really got the anti-labor crowd sputtering lately is a ruling by the NLRB’s acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon,  against the Boeing Aircraft Company. Boeing was charged with breaking the labor law by moving a major assembly line from a unionized plant in Washington State to South Carolina, a notably anti-union state, in response to a machinist strike at the Washington plant. 

Moving the assembly line was done in violation of a provision in the National Labor Relations Act that bans companies from punishing striking unions by withholding or transferring jobs. Thus, said the NLRB’s Solomon, the assembly line should be moved back to Washington State.

Oh, boy, those union-hating Republicans in Congress didn’t like that at all. They threatened to defund the NLRB if it doesn’t withdraw its order to Boeing, trotting out their usual tired response to just about anything done in favor of unions these days. You’ve undoubtedly heard it – thousands of  times, maybe. Yes, that’s right. A ruling in favor of labor and labor law would be . . . Ah, yes, a job killer. Sure.

GOP House members have actually introduced something called – really – “The Protecting Jobs From Government Interference  Act.” that would void the NLRB order against Boeing  and prohibit future such orders. The proposed law undoubtedly has the approval of the union-hating U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has led the right-wing charge against the NLRB. It complains that the labor board is “out of control.”

Actually, the NLRB is out of control  – out of control of the right-wingers who had  their way throughout Bush’s two terms and are miffed that, unlike Bush, Obama doesn’t think their way is the only way to handle labor-management relations.

Much to the chagrin of the right-wingers, the labor board has come back strong under Obama. One of the board’s most important steps has been to develop rules to streamline the workplace elections that are held to determine if workers want to unionize. 

The board has cut short the pre-election periods that employers have used to harass workers into voting against unionization, approaching them individually and in mass meetings, frequently threatening to fire or otherwise penalize workers who vote for union representation. Obama’s NLRB also has cut back the time for management to appeal the outcome of a vote for unionization.

The changes, as one union attorney noted, are “common sense changes that drag labor law into the 21st century.” 

Common sense often doesn’t mean much to anti-labor Republicans. Sensible or not, they plunge onward on the anti-labor path that’s always been theirs. According to a count by Politico.com’s Joseph Williams, House Republicans have convened oversight hearings on the NLRB or summoned board members to Capitol Hill 14 times since the midterm elections to answer harassing questions and have threatened to severely cut the NLRB’s budget to “bring the board to heel.”

So, it’s still not easy for unions and workers who want to join unions, despite the progressive change in the NLRB’s attitude and operations. 

But the situation is looking much better since the change has come, since the law that promises American workers the right of unionization – and the important benefits that come from it – -is now being enforced by people who believe that their mission is not to hamper unions, but to encourage their growth for the benefit of all Americans.

 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

More questions in Bayview shooting

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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After receiving a San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) press release issued July 21 stating that the man who died July 16 following an officer-involved shooting in the Bayview had been killed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, I phoned the city’s Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Amy Hart.
 
I asked Hart to walk me through how the conclusion that the gunshot wound was self-inflicted had been reached. But Hart responded that the Medical Examiner has not reached any conclusion so far about the cause of Harding’s death.

“That’s not a component of the press release that we issued,” Hart said. “Maybe it’s a question that would be best addressed to the San Francisco Police Department, probably their homicide division. For us, the cause and manner of death are pending. So, we are going to complete our investigation before we discuss the manner of death. The question that you’re asking is something that came from the police press release, so you have to ask them the nature of why they said that.”

I called the SFPD and left a message, and I’ll be sure to provide an update once they call back.

The SFPD release stated that the Medical Examiner had detected two gunshot wounds in the body of Kenneth Wade Harding, Jr., the 19-year-old from Washington state who died after being shot on a crowded sidewalk in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. One gunshot wound entered and exited Harding’s left leg, the statement said. A second gunshot wound entered the right side of Harding’s neck, and the bullet remained in his head. The round that was lodged in his head was of .380 caliber, police said, so it could not have come from a .40 caliber SFPD-issued firearm.

A .380 caliber round was discovered in the pocket of the jacket Harding was wearing, the press release added. “Based upon evidence known at this time including: officer and witness statements that Harding shot at the police officers, Shot Spotter data, video tape evidence that depicts a firearm at the scene that was subsequently taken and the location of gunshot residue on Harding’s right hand, it appears that Mr. Harding’s head wound was self inflicted,” the press release stated.

The Medical Examiner’s office hasn’t issued a death certificate yet, Hart said, and it generally takes several weeks to determine the cause of death.

I asked Hart if the Medical Examiner’s office had any way to determine which bullet had entered Harding’s body first.

“I wouldn’t say there’s a good way, except for eyewitness accounts,” she responded, adding that the Medical Examiner’s Office doesn’t have information to determine which bullet entered the body first.

While the Medical Examiner determined that the .380 caliber bullet entered through the right side of the neck, it is the ballistics section of SFPD’s crime lab that determines the caliber of the rounds, Hart explained.

When I asked Hart what process the Medical Examiner’s office would follow to determine the cause of death, she said, “It’s a completion of our investigation that will need to happen here at the Medical Examiner’s office. We’re going to make a final determination, and what goes into an investigation depends on a case, there’s no set thing that has to happen.” Eventually, she said, the various components of the investigation, such as witness accounts, the ballistics analysis, and the examination of the body will be merged.

Meanwhile, Mayor Ed Lee offered brief comments to the media today in response to the most recent findings released by the SFPD. The mayor attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Bayview Branch Library at Third and Revere streets, which is expected to open in December of 2012. Here’s a video of Lee’s response to the latest evidence released by SFPD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YSz1l4mOHQ

Video by Rebecca Bowe

Lee was joined by District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen as well as Sen. Mark Leno, Sen. Leland Yee, Sup. Scott Weiner, newly installed Municipal Transportation Agency Director Ed Reiskin, City Librarian Luis Herrera, and other prominent San Franciscans. City officials emphasized the positive at the press conference, stressing that the new library would be a center for learning that could serve the youth of the Bayview and offered hope for the future of a neighborhood in transition. “It’s not all doom and gloom here,” Cohen told reporters.

I asked Cohen if she had a comment about the police deparment’s latest findings, but she declined to say anything about it.

At this point, there are still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding Harding’s death. So far, the gun that discharged the .380 caliber bullet into Harding’s head has not been recovered by police. Police believe an unidentified man in a hooded sweatshirt who can be seen in a YouTube video picking up a silvery object off the sidewalk removed Harding’s weapon from the scene, and they say they are searching for the man and the gun. But if the object shown in the video is a gun, and it was Harding’s gun, it’s still not clear how it wound up some 10 yards away from the body after he shot himself.

SFBG Radio: GOP tries to bankrupt the country

Zelda Bronstein
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12
SFBG Radio: GOP tries to bankrupt the country

Today, Johnny talks to economist Johhny Venom about the debt limit, how the GOP is holding the country hostage and how it could cause severe, lasting damage to the American economy. Listen after the jump.


DebtDisaster by endorsements2010

The BART Police video raises new questions

Zelda Bronstein
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12
The BART Police video raises new questions

BART, under public pressure, has finally released a video that shows part of the shooting of Charles Hill. Zusha Elinson of the Bay Citizen continues to do great work on this story (which the Chron didn’t even put on the front page). He’s got a good analysis, but after watching the video about 20 times, with as much stop action as my computer could give me, it seems pretty clear that:


1. The officers made no credible attempt to calm Hill down or de-escalate the situation. The shooting happens only 25 seconds after the cops arrived on the scene.


2. There’s no evidence on the video that Hill threw a bottle at the officers. It does appear that he threw what BART identifies as a four-inch knife, but it didn’t come anywhere close to the cop you can see in the video. And it appears, from my viewing (and Elinson’s) that the knife was thrown AFTER the shot was fired. Which could mean the guy was holding the knife and it flew out of his hands as he got hit — or it could mean that once he realized he was shot, he heaved it toward the officer.


3. Hill was not anywhere near close to the officer (and thus couldn’t have been credibly threatening to stab him) when the shot was fired.


As an aside: It’s clear that a knife can be a deadly weapon. A cop being attacked by a knife has the right to defend himself with lethal force. And a knife that it thrown with the right degree of skill and accuracy can be every bit as lethal as a bullet. But in this case, Hill was visibly intoxicated (which was why the cops were called in the first place). He may have been an expert knife-thrower (although it appears he wasn’t — the knife clattered away several feet from the officer). But I can tell you, because I’m into this sort of thing, that’s it’s very difficult to throw a knife well from even a few feet away. It takes years of practice to get good with a perfectly balanced knife, one that’s designed to be thrown. If the “four inch knife” Hall threw was a pocket knife or any kind of knife with a heavy handle, the difficulty would increase dramatically; those knives tend to travel in an unbalanced spin and wind up hitting the target handle-first (and thus fairly harmlessly). And I don’t know very many people who can throw any sort of knife with any degree of accuracy when they’re drunk.


Again: The cops had no way of knowning what this guy’s skill level was. He could have been a ninja assasin able to stick a dull pocket knife in someone’s heart from 50 feet away blind and dead drunk. I’m just saying: The level of threat here was a lot lower than, say, a man holding a guy, or a man holding a knife a foot away.


San Francisco cops are required to undergo training to deal with people who are mentally ill, unstable, drunk or on drugs. Part of that training involves trying to talk the person down, trying to avoid a situation where any sort of force is necessary. That clearly didn’t happen here.


One more note: When I was working on another BART shooting story years ago, I read a book on police use of force and it had an interesting comment. I quote from my prior story:


In Modern Police Firearms, a textbook on law-enforcement procedures, Professor Allen P. Bristow of California State University, Los Angeles, writes that deadly force should be used to stop a fleeing felon only when “he cannot be contained or captured” through other means. Further, Bristow notes, an officer considering deadly force should ask the following question:


“Is the crime this suspect is committing, or are the consequences of his possible escape, serious enough to justify my taking his life or endangering the lives of bystanders?”


 In this case, the guy wasn’t fleeing, but the question remains: Was his alleged crime serious enough to justify taking his life?


 


 


 

Grab your deck, Tha Hood Games riding out tomorrow Sat/23

Andrew Lam
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1
Grab your deck, Tha Hood Games riding out tomorrow Sat/23

Mini ramps in front of murals, skate shoes stomping around, multiple forms of media sharing the spotlight for tomorrow (Sat/23)’s all-day multimedia art exhibit at the African Art and Culture Complex. Thanks to Parks and Recreation and an East Bay youth creativity non-profit you can shoulder your deck and head to Tha Hood Games exhibition.

Founded in East Oakland in 2005 by Keith “K-Dub” Williams & Ms. Barbara “Adjoa” Murden, Tha Hood Games was created to give “youth a creative platform to share their talents,” according to the group’s website. Tha Hood Games has ramped up 30 skate events and youth art festivals all over the Bay Area, in Las Vegas, Long Beach, and at the X Games.

The group’s events highlight the talents of Bay Area youth skateboarders. In an interview with the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, Williams said that, “Tha Hood Games gives youth an opportunity to showcase and nurture their skills in skateboarding, music, dance, and the visual arts in their own communities. This exhibition is our way of sharing our journey visually, and spotlighting our family of creative people and the many youth, cities and communities we have visited.”

So of course, there’s gonna be art on Saturday — the exhibit features murals and paintings on helmets and car hoods. There’s gonna be skateboarding – a temporary park’s been erected in the parking lot of the the African Art and Culture Complex that’ll be open from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Also included will be live performances, live art, skate demos, and vendor booths.  Pro skater and associate of Tha Hood Games Karl Watson will be in attendance, as will be pro skater Nyjah Huston. An opening reception in the art gallery will take place from 5-7 p.m., and a fashion show  from 7-9 p.m.

 

“Tha Hood Games: Kids, Community, Comrades”

Sat/23, 11 a.m.-9 p.m., free

African Art and Culture Complex

762 Fulton, SF

(415) 292-6172

Facebook: Tha Hood Games Exhibition

www.aaacc.org


 

Live Shots: Soundgarden at the Civic Auditorium, 7/21/11

Andrew Lam
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2

After capping off a monstrous 20-plus song set yesterday, on Thursday, July 21, with the tortured grind of “Slaves & Bulldozers,” Soundgarden put an exclamation point on their performance with a six minute shake-the-building-foundations, horses-of-the-apocalypse audio assault.

Amid waves of controlled feedback and blaring Seattle Sonic resonance, I thought my dental fillings were shaking loose. I was worried the Civic Auditorium balcony would soon collapse. I suspected that teenagers might start exploding throughout the audience.

If there had remained any wayward ounce of Superunknown sentiment regarding Soundgarden’s return, it had been extinguished long before the encore. The ear-bleeding onslaught at the outro was entirely (and wonderfully) gratuitous, then. Apparently the band just wanted to ruin our hearing for the rest of the week to make their point.

Yes, Soundgarden was in prime fighting shape. If you hadn’t caught it at the 1996 show at Kaiser Auditorium (now featured on their Live On I-5 disc) or the Greek Theater during grunge’s high watermark or the Warfield in all of its youthful glory — well, you still got the real deal last night. Not only did the band deliver on its trademark heft, but the setlist was epic.

The group relied most heavily on material from Superunknown and Badmotorfinger, but dug deep into the vault at times, with the likes of “Ugly Truth”, “Loud Love,” and the early-as-it-gets “Nothing To Say.” Soundgarden also gave San Francisco first listen to some glorious obscurities that have yet to surface on their reunion tour, with an amped-up “Drawing Flies” and an entirely anthem-oriented “Head Down.”

All of the band’s radio hits were included, which at times this made for a somewhat disjointed iPod shuffle-style pacing to the night. But the slower, quietly textured numbers are all essential to Soundgarden’s identity — and say what you like, but “Black Hole Sun” might very well be its generation’s “Strawberry Fields.”

As the band wound down the main set with the juggernaut creep of “4th of July,” Soundgarden plunged deep into their element with “Beyond the Wheel,” from their first LP Ultramega OK. Chris Cornell stalked the stage belting out upper register falsettos for the better part of the track, while Kim Thayil let loose on high wire guitar solo wizardry.

There is a stunning weight to all of this, to Soundgarden’s music when it locks one member to another like that. In this sense, their current tour shouldn’t be viewed so much as a reunion, but a question as to why they were apart in the first place.

End notes:

– Talk about grunge. The Civic Auditorium is seriously grimey these days. 

– Former San Francisco Giant and future hall-of-famer Randy Johnson is apparently Soundgarden’s tour photographer. He was seen early on in the photo pit at the start of the show and was photographing from the back of the stage during the show’s finale.

– Notorious for hissy fits prior to the band’s breakup, bassist Ben Shepherd was on good behavior throughout the night. Furthermore, the inclusion of one of his few authored tracks “Head Down” was one of the show’s highlights.

– Drummer Matt Cameron is really something to watch – his is sort of a precision bludgeoning — half barbarian, half perfectly calibrated robot. (Check him out on the Youtube clip)

– And…why aren’t these guys headlining Outside Lands?

 

Appetite: 4 noteworthy new spirits

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: 4 noteworthy new spirits

From an elegant new Islay scotch to a campfire toasted corn whiskey, then two locally-tied spirits, a rye with barbershop ties and a liqueur line imported by SF locals, there’s some noteworthy new sips to share with you.

WHISK(E)YS:

LAPHROAIG 2011 CAIRDEAS – Laphroaig’s master distiller John Campbell and Global Brand Ambassador Simon Brooking were in SF a couple weeks ago. I spent an afternoon with them sipping Laphroaig’s brand new 2011 Cairdeas, Ileach Edition. Limited release, only 350 cases have been made available to the US, of which SF alone has 75 (at Whiskey Shop on Sutter Street). On the heels of last year’s limited Cairdeas Master’s Edition, this winning version is non-chill filtered, hinting at that quintessential Islay peatiness but rounded out with an overall earthy, slate quality, and gentle sweet notes of candied orange.

Laphroaig is releasing a Triple-wood Quarter Cask scotch this Fall in the US (already a big seller in UK), which is basically their creamy, spicy Quarter Cask scotch finished in sherry casks. Though I have a bottle of their now extinct 15yr, and their 10yr is a peat-heavy Islay standard, my favorite remains their 18yr, a less peaty, more balanced beauty redolent of salt, vanilla, honey, with gentle spice and layered depth.

BALCONES BRIMSTONE – In my 7×7 corn whiskey article, I list Balcones corn whiskey, a 2010 Double Gold medal winner at SF World Spirits Competition. They just released a new whiskey, Brimstone, smoked with sun-baked Texas scrub oak.

My first reaction upon tasting it is to crave BBQ (not unlike with MB Roland’s delightful Black Dog http://mbrdistillery.com/products.aspx, another smoked corn whiskey, although both have quite a different taste profile). Balcones Brimstone tastes, yes, of fresh corn, but with a bold, smoky, campfire essence, and more than a hint of sweet cumin. Distiller Chip Tate calls it, “Texas campfire in a glass.” That’s exactly it. An intriguing addition to the Balcones line.

I can’t help but be drawn more towards smoked corn whiskeys than to standard, clear corn whiskeys.

1512 SPIRITS – Salvatore Cimino is a Nob Hill barber by day (at 1512 Pine Street), and whiskey distiller by night. Cimino comes from a distilling lineage with a Prohibition-era bootlegger grandfather, whose 1923 photo (right) graces the bottle of 1512 Spirits‘ Barbershop Rye.

Distilled over direct fire in Rohnert Park (using one Portuguese copper alembic still and one 70-gallon finishing still), 1512 is truly small batch at 350 bottles per month. Made from 100% rye grain, his unaged rye ($32-35 a bottle) is surprisingly balanced and flavor-rich for a young whiskey.

I sampled the aged rye (not yet released), aged in 3-gallon new char, American oak barrels. At merely three months, it’s already showing robust color and body, the taste full with rich wood notes. Sal hopes to release a classic bourbon and a cherry-smoked bourbon in the future.

Sip these locally-made beauties at 15 Romolo, 83 Proof, Swig and Rye, or buy a bottle at Jug Shop, Healthy Spirits, Cask, Liquid Experience. Even LA’s Father’s Office is serving 1512 alongside their beloved burger.

pür•spirits – Recently released in SF (find them at D&M on Fillmore and online at K&L), pür•spirits is a German-distilled spirits’ line with a local connection: it was imported to the US by SF locals, Kiki and Harvey Braverman, from Kiki’s native Germany.

Though there are also two vodkas and a malted barley spirit, I sampled pür‘s three liqueurs:

– Blood Orange: Spiced and sweet, it is redolent of cinnamon and cloves.
– Elderflower: No, it does not taste identical to St. Germain, but is, rather, a little lighter, gently sweet and floral with hand-picked white elderflowers from around Lake Constance, which is situated between Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
– Pear: I’ve tasted a lot of pear liqueurs, from locally-made ones to those only found in Switzerland, Germany, etc… pür•likör williams is unusual not only in its almost lighter-than-air, delicate mouth feel, but in that it tastes just like fresh-pressed pears. It is my favorite of the three.

— Subscribe to Virgina’s twice monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot

Dick Meister: New hope for domestic workers

Maria Poblet
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With a lot of luck, we may finally take decisive action to guarantee decent treatment for the world’s highly exploited housekeepers, maids, nannies and other domestic workers. There are an estimated 100 million of them, working in more than 180 countries.

Their pay is generally at the poverty level, and very few have fringe benefits such as pensions and employer-paid health care. Few have the protection of unions or labor laws, and they’re often at the mercy of unscrupulous labor contractors.  Almost half of them are not entitled to even one day off per week. About a third of the female workers are denied maternity leave.

The hope for improving the domestics’ slavery-like conditions has arisen from action taken in Geneva this month at the annual meeting of the United Nation’s International Labor Organization – the ILO.

Delegates representing unions, employers and governments voted 396 to 16  for what’s called a “Convention on Domestic Workers.” The non-binding convention spells out how domestics should be treated in UN member countries – most importantly in the pace-setting United States.

In the U.S., as in most other countries, an estimated 80 percent of the domestics are women of color, subject to racial discrimination and physical and sexual abuse.  In the United States, most of them are immigrants as well . They’re easy targets for exploitation, especially since, as elsewhere, domestics mainly work in private unregulated households, usually alone.

What’s more, U.S. domestics lack most of the protections of state and federal labor laws that are granted most U.S. workers outside of agriculture . Most other non-agricultural workers at least have the right to unionize. But domestics don’t even have that basic right.

The National Labor Relations Act specifically denies union rights to anyone “in the domestic service of any family or person.” That’s right. The Depression-era law that was designed to pull poverty-stricken workers out of poverty and build a middle class does indeed prohibit an entire group of exceptionally needy workers  from taking a major step to improve their extremely poor working conditions. The word for that is “un-American.” 

That outrageous legal prohibition has its roots in racism. Pressures from southern states, which objected to granting union rights to the mainly black domestics, was the main reason domestics were excluded from the National Labor Relations Act.

 Some domestics have nevertheless formed union-like organizations to seek better treatment. But they need the force of law behind them.

The ILO convention calls for guaranteeing domestic workers in the United States and everywhere else some of the key rights that unionized workers invariably have, among them, regular working hours, vacations, maternity leaves and Social Security benefits.

Domestics would be promised what amount to contracts with employers that would make clear just what they would be expected to do, for how long, and for how much pay.  Their working conditions would have to include time off of at least 24 hours a week.

Migrant workers would have to be provided with a written job offer of employment or a contract before crossing  the border into another country to work.

It took several years for ILO representatives to adopt the domestic workers convention. It was finally adopted as a direct result of campaigning here and aboard by groups of activists from unions and other organizations. They will  be working for the next few years to get as many nations as possible to implement the ILO convention with their help.

The effort in this country is being led by the National Domestic Workers Alliance, with major support from the AFL-CIO, which has arranged to have some domestic workers represent themselves in ILO meetings and voting.

Among other things, proponents hope to make it clear that “domestic workers are real workers, NOT powerless individuals who are expected to remain in quiet servitude and endure long hours without overtime pay, along with hazardous working conditions without access to health and safety protections.”

Proponents also hope to end the “cultural relativity excuse that sleeping on a mattress in an unheated garage is better than he or she would get in their home country, or that the poor treatment of domestics is a tradition.”  The ILO convention says otherwise and workers in the United States and other countries where it is adopted  “will be armed with the knowledge that there is an international standard that protects them.”

Domestics already are granted labor rights in New York State, and California legislators are considering a proposal to bring them under that state’s labor laws. But winning basic rights for the badly exploited domestic workers elsewhere will be very difficult. But so was convincing ILO representatives to take on the task, the long needed task of granting domestic workers union rights and, with them, the decent wages, hours and working conditions that come with unionization.

Yes, winning the union rights for domestics worldwide will be very difficult. But we know it can be done.  And certainly we know that it should be done. 


Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century.  He can be reached through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

 

Mark Mulroney uses repressed Catholicism to explore sex and gore

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Mark Mulroney uses repressed Catholicism to explore sex and gore

Artist Mark Mulroney learned his ABCs in Catholic school but his spongey child-brain soaked up a lot more than just textbook facts and bible versus. The gigantic boobs, guts and bloody wounds, horrified men, sweet girls, and hilariously exaggerated genitalia present in Mulroney’s current exhibition, “Sent Upstate”, is far from holy, but he likes to give the church credit where due.

Mulroney didn’t exactly realize the severity of the images he had been exposed to in the church until he started drawing as a teen. The violent stories, bloodshed and the relentless guilt surrounding sex started to show up in his doodles, mixing with comic book clippings and album cover art. All grown-up, Mulroney isn’t afraid to be honest about where his ideas on sex and death derived from and a quick stroll around “Sent Upstate” at The Guerrero Gallery will give you shivers and tingles. Should you be offended? Turned-on? Maybe you should laugh? Mulroney’s artist statement says it best, “People don’t want to die and they want to have sex.” Still, it’s best to hear Mulroney explain things a bit further.

 

mmulroney3

 “Savage Love”

 

SFBG: What was the inspiration for “Sent Upstate” collection?

Mark Mulroney: I had six weeks to turn it around so I didn’t have time to overthink. I just relied on my usual methods: put a boner on something or make it bleed.

SFBG: What are some of your primary inspirations for all that sex and creepiness?

Mulroney: My work helps me understand the world, however tripe or cliché that sounds. And a lot of it has to do with what I saw in Catholic school. You don’t realize the gravity of things you’re looking at when you’re really young. So violent, but you don’t realize it until you look back. Like, I when I was five, I saw a picture of a Saint being filleted. Odd, isn’t that? So what I’m doing now is making sense of the influential images I was exposed to during age five to 18. What was I looking at back then and how did it shape me?

SFBG: What are some other specific images you remember?

Mulroney: Someone’s eyes being lit on fire by the holy spirit. Now that makes for some fantastic imagery. I did a lot of drawing as a kid. I’d look at album covers of Black Sabbath and this one from Sub Humans with a guy being shot in the head. I learned how to draw through Catholic school and record covers. 

 

mmulroney5

“That’s My Wife You’re Fucking”

 

SFBG: Do you really think about those things while you’re creating or is it more subconscious?

Mulroney: I don’t overthink anything. The rule is make work I would want to look at. Sex and death? That’s work I want to see and then I just make it fit together somehow.

SFBG: Is the work meant to make your stomach churn? Mine did a little.

Mulroney: Well you don’t get a free pass—every action has consequences. I suppose that’s a Catholic thing. No matter what you do, you’re going to pay for it somehow. In most of my imagery there is someone having a good time, coupled with another image of a person not having a good time.

SFBG: Where do you get inspiration for all the sexual imagery?

Mulroney: Library book sales. I go to a lot of thrift store with my wife and brother.

SFBG: Describe a few recent finds.

Mulroney: Outside of buffalo NY I found five, small photo albums. Polaroid size. All images were of a guy taking a picture of his boner, different positions, different days. No face, just this guy’s boner. I got it for five bucks. Why were you collecting pictures of your boner. Can’t anticipate finding that. Why is this out there? What did you get out of this—was it a gift. Everything everything ends up at swap meet or thrift store, like this handcarved wood box I found with a women’s diaphragm in it. And Argentina is fantastic place to find self-published home pornography from swingers clubs in the 50s. This kind of stuff totally informs everything I do. I’m so curious about this stuff. I’m not being judgmental, I just have a curiosity for why people do what they do.

SFBG: Do you think your work turns people on?

Mulroney: Ya. I get emails about being people turned on and then I get emails about people complaining that my work is too gratitutius. This one women had a crush on Veronica from Archie, at the time I was using her picture a lot and this woman loved the work. She wanted to pay me to draw Veronica masturbating, with green smoke coming out of her vagina– what? Like what? I just couldn’t fathom…why the green smoke? So funny. 

SFBG: Did you draw it?

Mulroney: I emailed her back to ask some sizing questions and she never replied. She wanted to pay me $25, but man, I would have done it anyway. She had the balls to ask for that. I old have done it for free.

 

mmulroney2

“Untitled”


SFBG: What’s up with all the super, gigantic boobs in your work?

Mulroney: Goes back to when I was five. My dad had a Playboy with a blonde woman, standing on top of waterfall in a 70s jungle setting. She had really big boobs and I thought to myself, “This is really something I think I like. Those are fantastic.” And bigger boobs are more fun to draw than small ones. There’s so much comic potentioal in boobs and wieners. I haven’t found comedy in vaginas— I can’t seem to find a way to draw them in a way that doesn’t make them slightly scary.  

SFBG: Is drawing vaginas a current goal?

Mulroney: Ha! Not a goal. Usually when I move from one house to the next I change my focus. When I lived in San Francisco, you would think I would have made more sexual work but there was so much around that I didn’t need to participate. When I moved to upstate New York, the sex stuff started coming out. You don’t see bodies there. It’s too remote, non-stop grey, cold snow.

SFBG: Maybe you should to an island of men so you can work on your vag drawings?

Mulroney: Ya or go to prison. Then it would happen. I could do tattoos on people as a trade for cigarettes and things.

 

Marky Mulroney “Sent Upstate” 

With Charles Linder’s “Swimmingly, With Watermelons and Referrals”

Through Aug. 6

Guerrero Gallery

2700 19th St., SF

(415) 400-5168 

www.guerrerogallery.com

 

 

Recology president Mike Sangiacomo disses the Guardian as landfill agreements head to full Board

Mary Magee
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Dressed in neon- yellow vests, a crowd of Recology employees filed into the Board’s Chambers to witness the Board’s Budget and Finance subcommittee, which Sup. Carmen Chu chairs, vote to forward the Department of Environment’s proposal to award the city’s landfill disposal and facilitation agreements to Recology (formerly NorCal Waste, Inc), to the full Board.

The B&F vote wasn’t exactly a surprise. In the past six months, Recology’s top brass have been exerting pressure on the committee members to approve the agreements, which got delayed after folks started raising questions about the lack of a franchise fee and competitive bidding on all other aspects of San Francisco’s multimillion dollar municipal solid waste stream. And lobbyist Alex Clemens reported $17, 134.25 in promised payments from Recology between January and June 2011 for services that included contact with B&F subcommittee vice-chair Ross Mirkarimi in mid-June.

If the full Board goes ahead and gives the green light July 26, that approval would authorize Recology, which Waste Age’s June 2011 issue named as the 10th largest waste management company in the U.S.,  to start transporting and disposing up to 5 million tons of municipal solid waste in its Ostrom Road Landfill in Wheatland, Yuba County, once the city’s agreement at Waste Management’s Altamont landfill in Livermore expires, which is expected to happen some time in 2014 or 2015.

The initial refusal of Mirkarimi and fellow B&F subcommittee member Sup. Jane Kim to agree to Chu’s suggestion that they forward the proposed agreements “with recommendation” appeared to be indications that both supervisors harbored some concerns about the deal. UPDATE: But According to DoE communications director Mark Westlund, before yesterday’s meeting was over, Mirkarimi called to rescind the vote on the landfill item asking for it to go to the full Board with recommendation. Jane Kim concurred, and so now it goes to the Board with unanimous committee support. 

“Overall, I think this was a good contract,” Kim said during the July 20 hearing.

Kim added that she thinks “We need to continue the dialogue,” about the city’s 1932 refuse collection and disposal ordinance, which resulted in Recology gaining a monopoly over every aspect of the city’s $225 million-a-year waste stream, except the $11-million-a-year landfill disposal agreement.

Kim noted that under the arrangement that grew out of the 1932 ordiance the city doesn’t get a  franchise fee. And she claimed that San Francisco is getting half of what other Bay Area cities, which all have franchise fees, get from their waste contractors. “So, I’m really interested in continuing that conversation, but I think it’s a separate conversation,” Kim said.

Mirkarimi, who is running for sheriff this fall, noted that he has been “the most outspoken member” of the committee on the Recology item, and that his concerns were what led the committee to “put a pause” on the deal, until the committee could “undertake more homework.”

Thanks to that pause, the city’s LAFCO committee was able to commission a report on what other jurisdictions do around transporting and disposing of their solid waste in landfills, and Mirkarimi noted that his office “held a number of meetings” and he tried to leverage this opportunity to “reanimate activity at the Port.”

“I was hoping we might be able to arrive at something much more deliverable,” Mirkarimi said, presumably referring to the fact that these efforts only resulted in DoE unveiling a last-minute amendment to include two “possible changes” to operations and facilities at the Port of San Francisco in the agreements.

These possible changes, which DoE director Melanie Nutter presented during the July 20 hearing, involve a) utilizing modes of transportation, including barges, other than, or in addition to, the rail haul plan proposed in the agreement, b) developing new facilities at the Port for the handling of waste, recyclables, organics and other refuse, meeting no later than the fifth anniversary of the agreement to discuss the feasibility of such changes, and c) incorporating into the rates, or otherwise financing, the cost of implementing such transportation alternatives and the cost of such facilities.

“I think that cost-effectively we may be able to insert the Port into this equation, but it’s not ready for prime-time yet,” Mirkarimi observed.

Mirkarimi concluded by noting the many innovative things Recology has done in terms of making the city’s waste disposal system more environmentally friendly. “This should be a front-burner conversation,” Mirkarimi said noting that Mayor Gavin Newsom made it a focus of his administration to make San Francisco the greenest city. Referring to the fact that San Francisco claims to have a 77 percent diversion rate—the highest in the U.S—Mirkarimi said, “That comes at a cost, it doesn’t come for free.”

Mirkarimi’s comments came in the wake of Nutter’s claims that Recology’s bid for the landfill disposal agreement will save ratepayers $130 million, over the 10-year course of the agreement, compared to the bid that Waste Management submitted. “This is the best deal for San Francisco,” Nutter said.

Nutter’s estimates were repeated by Jim Lazarus, who spoke on behalf of the SF Chamber of Commerce and the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth. “This is the right contract for the people of San Francisco,” Lazarus said.

But Nutter’s $130 million estimate was thrown into question by Yuba County Sup. Roger Abe, who had driven the 130 miles from Wheatland to alert San Francisco  that Recology’s bid is based on the assumption that Yuba County will only charge San Francisco a $4.40 per ton host fee.

As Abe pointed out, Yuba’s rates have not changed in 14 years, and his county is considering increasing them later this year by up to $20 or $30 a ton.
Such an increase, multiplied by the 5-million tons of garbage in the agreement, could dramatically increase the cost to San Francisco ratepayers over the course of 10 years, Abe observed..

[If Yuba County approves an increase, and diesel fuel prices also increase, it could eliminate much of the cost differential between Recology’s and WM’s bid: a recent Budget and Legislative Analyst report shows that Recology would charge $58.94 a ton, ($28.53 for tipping and other fees + $30.14 transportation cost per ton), while WM would charge $66.79 for tipping and other fees + $18.33 transportation costs per ton.). But if diesel rises above $2:30 a gallon, SF ratepayers could also get hit with a fuel surcharge.]

Also speaking at the hearing was former D10 supervisorial candidate Tony Kelly, who along with retired Judge Quentin Kopp, David Gavrich’s SF Bay Railroad, and other concerned citizens, recently gathered 12,000 signatures to qualify a petition to require all aspects of San Francisco’s $225-million-a-year waste services to be put out to bid, and to require the winning bidder to pay San Francisco an annual franchise fee.

Kelly et al were originally aiming to qualify their petition for the 2011 ballot, but they blame what Kelly described during public comment as, “a very expensive advertising campaign,” by Recology, plus harassment of petition gatherers and signers, as why they ultimately had to delay qualifying their initiative until the June 2012 election cycle.

Kelly urged the committee to probe the details of a $10 million Special Reserve fund, which Recology could access, under the terms of its facilitation agreement, to cover all its expenses that have not yet been reimbursed through rate hikes. “You’d think the Budget and Finance sub-committee would want to explore those things,” Kelly said.

David Gavrich, who is also President & CEO of Waste Solutions Group, which has hauled 6 million tons of waste in the last 20 years, said approving the landfill disposal agreement, without knowing what rates Yuba County are about to set, was tantamount to “opening up San Francisco’s check book to Yuba County.”

“Recology has never moved a single ton by rail,” Gavrich also asserted.

But while none of the supervisors asked for any clarification of details in the proposed agreements, including the last-minute amendment, during the hearing, Chu was quick to comment about Gavrich’s “blank check” comment, noting that any county can increase its rates. “Alameda County already charges a lot more, so there are no guarantees either way,” Chu said.

She also claimed that the agreements had been subjected to a “very extensive, competitive and open process, especially around tipping fees.” What Chu didn’t mention is that earlier this week, WM filed a writ of mandate with San Francisco Superior Court to prevent the final award of a new long-term solid waste transportation agreement and landfill disposal contract to Recology ordinances, on the grounds that the deal violates the City’s competitive procurement laws.

Instead, Chu urged moving on the deal as soon as possible, by invoking the specter of a disaster hitting San Francisco before a landfill agreement is reached.
“Imagine if we had to go to the open market,” Chu said, apparently ignoring the fact that WM has stated that it would take SF’s waste in an emergency.

After the vote, Kelly expressed concern that the agreements are not competitive, but cost-plus, which means all costs get passed along to ratepayers. And that the city continues to lack a contract and ensuing franchise fees. “They are running this as if it’s still the 1950s,” Kelly said.

Kelly claimed that Recology Vice President John Legnitto, who is the 2011 Chair of the SF Chamber of Commerce’s Board, told him that Recology had been in negotiations with City Hall around a $4 million franchise fee, but that the money would now be spent opposing Kelly et al’s competitive bidding initiative.
But when the Guardian approached Legnitto after the hearing, he refused to comment, telling me my questions should go to Recology’s Robert Reed.
And Recology President Mike Sangiacomo, who was speaking to Chronicle reporter Rachel Gordon rudely told me, “Not today thank you,” when I approached him seeking comment on the Board committee’s vote.

“What did you do to him?” Gordon asked, as she followed Sangiacomo into a corner of City Hall. Er, nothing. Except what any self-respecting reporter would do. Like ask questions, read documents, and challenge the spin.

But that something clearly has ruffled the feathers of Recology’s top brass.
 “It’s like Godzilla, it’s like Monster Island, they can’t help themselves,” Beyond Chron’s Eric Smith commented to me during the hearing. “I’m disgusted by how money, labor and all these different entities can influence what happens. They don’t care about the little people. They care about the bottom line.”

Smith, who ran for D10 supervisor in 2010, spoke to the huge pressure that has been exerted on those supervisors who have publicly raised questions about Recology’s monopoly over all other aspects of the city’s $225 million-per-year waste stream. “Big corporations like Recology throw big money around and intimidate the electeds,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, DoE deputy director David Assmann confirmed that the City Attorney’s Office is looking at WM’s writ of mandate. But Assmann added that it is too early to respond to questions about the implications of that legal action on the Recology agreements.

Assmann also responded to a number of questions I’d already raised on the Guardian’s blog about the juicy details buried in the Recology agreements, beginning with a special reserve fund that was established in 1988, as part of Recology’s facilitation agreement that governed the transportation of waste to WM’s Altamont landfill, which is where San Francisco has been depositing its trash since 1987, and that will be rolled over to form the basis of a new special reserve fund.

Assmann said the fund currently contains almost $29 million, but only needs a baseline of $15 million. The extra funds will be the subject of a hearing this fall, he said, to determine how to use the balance, including exploring the possibility of using the funds, which were collected through a 1.3 percent surcharge on ratepayers, to lower the garbage rates.

Assmann also noted that while there is no limit on how much Yuba County can theoretically increase its host fees, “there has to be a nexus with associated costs,” and that Yuba County supervisors would have to bring any such proposed increase, which would also apply to all their other landfill users, to their voters.

Assmann further noted that the idea behind developing new facilities relates to the city’s 2020 goal of zero waste is “to get to zero waste we need new methods of handling waste,” Assmann told me explaining that San Francisco wants to be able to take residual material and process it so it could be recycled and wouldn’t end up in the landfill.

Assmann said a consultant is comparing the feasibility of building those facilities on land next to Recology’s Tunnel Road facility in Brisbane, or on land the Port owns in San Francisco, and the report should be completed later this year. He also noted that the transportation amendment would allow the City to switch or improve its transportation mode, during the life of the agreement, should cleaner technologies be developed, “including trains that run on less polluting fuel.”

Assmann clarified that San Francisco ratepayers won’t be footing the cost of building a new rail spur in Yuba County. “We’re not paying capital costs. The rail spur is not a cost that Recology can charge because it’s out of county. And if San Francisco only produces 2 million tons during the life of the agreement, we are under no obligation beyond that.”

And he noted that a potential $10 million contingency payment would only go into play if the City gave Recology the green light, and the company incurred costs related to rail haul, and the City then reneged on its deal, at which point Recology could then use its incurred costs to justify why it needs up to $10 million to included in the garbage rates.

All interesting details as we approach the Board’s July 26 vote—with a lawsuit hanging over the City’s head. So stay tuned…

Fri/22 at the Elbo Room: Pres Records live revue!

Sue Vaughan
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Fri/22 at the Elbo Room: Pres Records live revue!

Ahh the good old days. Scientific literature on nostalgia couldn’t even fill a Pee Chee folder, but psycho-sages don’t need to tell us that positive memories act as a natural anti-depressant, and that music — surprise! — is a strong trigger of nostalgia. No wonder we get that warm vacuum tube glow when we hear the vintage sounds of the past. 

It should be pretty apparent by now that classic soul and R&B has made a big comeback in the Bay Area thanks to a few DJs with awesome record collections, like Lucky, Primo, and the Hard French-ers — not to mention the still thriving record shops like Dick Vivian’s Rooky Ricardo’s Records. And let’s face it — soul music is fun as hell to get down and dirty to.

Luckily for us, music producer and songwriter Nick Waterhouse and his Pres Records label mates the Allah-las embody that hard, gritty, and raw spirit of the 1960s — whether it be a rough and tumble garage sound or the kind of soul music that makes you double over and hurt so good. The result is simply damn good music that is just as relevant today as ever, maybe because what was reflective of the turbulent and chaotic times of that decade ring true in the effed-up present. Looks like the grass is just as green — or brown? — over here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwKbYN6ru1E

Nick Waterhouse and the Tarots featuring the Naturelles
With the Allah-las and DJ Lucky
10 p.m., $10
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF

Carfree crowd praises SFMTA’s choice of Reiskin

Sasha Cuttler
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4
Carfree crowd praises SFMTA’s choice of Reiskin

Today’s announcement of Ed Reiskin as the new executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is being warmly welcomed by bicyclists, transit riders, and other advocates for alternatives to the automobile – and not just because Reiskin doesn’t own a car and gets around by bike and Muni.

As the head of the Department of Public Works, Reiskin transformed the agency into one that facilitated the creation of more vibrant public spaces and safer, multi-use streets, overseeing some of the Newsom Administration’s most significant progressive accomplishments.

“He really began the process of turning DPW into a complete streets agency,” says Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City and an elected member of BART’s Board of Directors. He noted that Reiskin is widely respected by city staff, department heads, and a variety of community groups.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition director Leah Shahum said she was “really pleased” with the choice – saying Reiskin has been “lights years ahead” of previous DPW administrators – and said it bodes well for an agency that faces some difficult challenges.

“I think Ed Reiskin has proven himself as a leader and someone who is really involved with San Francisco,” she said. “He will be the MTA director who most understands the real needs that San Franciscans have in terms of mobility.”

For example, she said Reiskin prioritized repaving and filling in potholes on streets that have bike lanes, where bad pavement can cause serious crashes or conflicts with drivers. “The fact is he understands that is a safety issue,” she said.

Radulovich offered two cautionary notes in his praise of the choice. The first was his hope that Reiskin will be allowed to take the bold action the MTA needs to reform Muni and create truly mulit-modal, safe streets, rather than being micromanaged and having the agency turned into a piggybank for other departments, as Mayor Newsom did with former MTA director Nat Ford.

“Is the mayor finally going to allow the MTA director to do what he needs to do to fix the agency?” Radulovich asked.

Secondly, he fears that DPW might backslide to the days before Reiskin took over, when the agency was removing public benches all over the city and making public spaces less inviting, rather than taking the lead on creating new, more inviting public spaces – from parklets to Sunday Streets – as Reiskin did.

“The worst case is you don’t gain anything at the MTA and you lose something at Public Works,” Radulovich said.

For his part, Mayor Ed Lee sounded a note of optimism that Reiskin will transform the agency. “I thank the SFMTA Board of Directors for their thoughtful, deliberative and unanimous support of Ed Reiskin as the new leader of the SFMTA,” Lee in a prepared statement. “Now is the time to focus on the future of the SFMTA and continue to make good on our promise to San Francisco transit riders and taxpayers by creating greater efficiency in our transit system, improving on-time performance, and honoring our City’s Transit First Policy.”

“Contrary to common sense”

Sasha Cuttler
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16
“Contrary to common sense”

It’s been my observation over 20 years in journalism that the politicians who most often refer to “common sense” tend not to possess it. And that was reinforced this morning when I got an email for Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachman plugging a new television commercial opposing raising the nation debt ceiling.

“Dear Fellow Conservative,” it began, misreading her audience by a big way in my case, “I will not vote to increase the debt limit. Period.” And in the commercial, she follows this opening line with, “It goes completely contrary to common sense.”

With six words, she tortures not just grammar, but also the very notion of common sense. Because it make not one iota of sense to let the U.S. default on its debts, lower its credit rating and artificially jack up interest rates, simply because these ignorant Tea Party fools don’t like the size and scope of the federal government.

If the people really agreed with the right-wingers’ plans to gut government, Bachman would have the votes in Congress and the White House to make deep cuts during the normal budget process, which common sense should indicate is the proper time to make budget cuts. But instead, she and other conservatives are pandering to ignorant yahoos who think greatly reducing government will somehow help the economy, when actually it would kill economic growth.

“When times are tight for your family or mine, we know that’s not the time to call the credit card company and ask for a higher credit limit. But that’s what many elected officials in Washington are suggesting we do for our nation, right in the midst of an economic crisis!” Bachman argues.

Clearly, Bachman has never actually been in the position of having to make the tough decisions between buying groceries for your kids and refusing to take on more debt, because many families often do choose the former. And no matter what cash-strapped families decide, they also usually look at ways to increase their revenue, something Bachman and the conservative refuse to do, for ideological reasons that make no sense.

But that’s really beside the point, because there is no equivalency between family and federal budgets. While it is certainly true that Congress and President Obama should take steps to reduce the budget deficit – hopefully addressing the ridiculously high and growing wage and wealth gaps in the process, problems directly connected to the ballooning federal debt – no reputable economist would support the deep cuts Bachman advocates while the unemployment rates are as high as they are.

And when the time comes to start making deep cuts in government spending, we should start with the military budget, because it’s the lion’s share of the budget and ultimately an investment that harms our species. It’s just common sense.

The (unsafe) UCSF shuttles

Zelda Bronstein
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9
The (unsafe) UCSF shuttles

No question: The shuttles used by UCSF (which, is, forgodsake, a health-care organization) ought to have seat belts. So should school buses (actually, full-body restraints in school buses might not be such a bad idea. I want them in my car, too. Shut up and sit down, you little bastards — we’re driving here.) And the UCSF drivers should be more careful.


There are also other safety issues around those shuttles, though. Particularly when they pick up and drop off passengers on city streets.


The UCSF campuses have their own shuttle stops; the ones at Mission Bay are the same as any normal bus stops. But the shuttles don’t just stop on the campuses. They stop, among other places, at 16th and Mission — and typically they use the Muni stop.


Or sort of. Travel west on 16th St. any afternoon, and you’ll see this scene: A UCSF shuttle is halfway in and halfway out of the Muni stop. A Muni bus is stopped behind, unable to pull in. Cars are pulling around the bus and can’t see the (smaller) shuttle as it starts to pull out of the stop (and the bus starts to pull in). Traffic is all backed up waiting for this mess to clear — except for the drivers in a rush, who pull around (sometimes inching into the opposing lane of traffic), typically missing the shuttle bus by inches as it slides back onto the street.


And there are a lot of bicycle riders in the mix. It’s pretty much a bloody accident waiting to happen.


If UCSF gets to use Muni stops (nobody else can — nobody. Not the On Lok shuttle, not the private Genentech buses, not commercial tourist vehicles) then the university ought to pay the city a fee to make the stops big enough, then the drivers ought to be trained to pull forward all the way into the stop to let the Muni bus in behind (and so other cars can see them). And the Muni drivers and everyone else should be trained to treat the shuttles as part of the local transit system.


I get the need for the UCSF shuttles. Without them, all those doctors and medical students might be driving all over town between the campuses (although again: health-care organization. Bicycles are very healthy). But either they’re part of the city system and can use city facilities (properly) — or they aren’t, and they shouldn’t stop in the Muni zones.


Pet peeve of the week.   

Decide, Ed, Decide

Zelda Bronstein
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23
Decide, Ed, Decide

So Ed Lee maybe, sorta is thinking he might want to consider running for mayor. He tells folks in the Mission that “I’ve made no decision yet.” He leaves the Chron with some pretty strong hints:


Asked if he would categorically rule out running in November, Lee sidestepped the question, saying he is proud of his achievements so far, including unanimous votes at the board this week on his budget and his pension reform plan, and has more goals to accomplish, like increasing the city’s workforce and affordable housing stock.


When a reporter noted to the mayor that his answer didn’t rule out running, Lee smiled and hopped into his car.


That alone is a clear and dramatic shift in his position. He told us back in February that running in November was out of the question:


Although rumors had been circulating that Lee might seek a full term, he told the Guardian he’s serious about serving as a caretaker mayor. “If I’m going to thrust all my energy into this, I don’t need to have to deal with … a campaign to run for mayor.”


So now he’s being coy — and that’s not an appealing position for a mayor who has made it his trademark to be honest and straightforward with people.


I know what’s happening: Some of his best friends and allies are terrified of the prospect of Mayor Leland Yee, and Yee appears to be the frontrunner — and so some powerful people are putting immense pressure on him to put aside his own desires and do what they think is best for the city (which means blocking Yee).


If Lee wants to run, that’s his choice. I know he said he wouldn’t, but times change and the situation changes and that’s why I was against the whole “caretaker” mayor thing in the first place. When you define someone as a caretaker who can’t run again, you deprive San Franciscans of the right to choose the next mayor. (I don’t like legislative term limits, either — same argument.)


But this dancing around and playing games is a bad thing. Run, Ed, Run, or Don’t, Ed, Don’t — but please: Decide, Ed, Decide. Now. Then you can start telling everyone the truth and we can believe it.


 

Editorial: Don’t gut SF campaign law

Maria Poblet
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1

The U.S. Supreme Court, which has already ruled that corporations can spend all the money they want on political campaigns, dealt another huge blow to democracy in June when it struck down a campaign finance law in Arizona that was designed to level the playing field for candidates running against better-financed opponents.

The ruling has implications for San Francisco’s public finance law, and already the Ethics Commission has moved to amend — some would say gut — the ordinance. The supervisors also have to approve the changes, and they should move cautiously; there is much about the local law that can still be saved, and there are experts working on alternative models that could still work under the Arizona ruling.

The Arizona law gave public funds to candidates who agreed to limit personal spending to $500. The more privately financed opponents and independent expenditure (IE) committees spent on a candidate, the more public matching money the other candidates received.

The idea: if one rich candidate — or one candidate supported by deep-pocketed special interests — tried to dominate the election, the others would be given enough money to make things fair.

That’s the same motivation behind San Francisco’s law, which sets a spending limit for the mayoral and supervisorial races, provides matching funds for small contributions — and gives public money to candidates who are attacked by outside independent expenditure committees.

It’s possible that the current IE match won’t hold up to legal scrutiny under the Arizona decision. And already some of the city’s biggest downtown interests are threatening to sue to overturn the local ordinance. But there is much about the San Francisco law that will likely survive a court challenge.

Bob Stern, a campaign finance expert and president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, told us that he’s working on a new model law for cities like San Francisco. The Ethics Commission knew that when it voted July 11 to eliminate matching for IEs and to reduce the available pot of money.

Now the law comes to the Board of Supervisors, where eight votes are required to accept the Ethics Commission amendments. Good government advocates say the supervisors should do only what is clearly legally necessary: “The Ethics Commission should have used a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” Oliver Luby, a former commission staffer, told us.

The November mayor’s race is a huge test for the city’s law; this will be the first time effective public financing will be in place for a citywide race, and the success of the ordinance will draw national attention. The supervisors should stop short of so badly amending it that it will lose all its teeth.

The board should hold public hearings and solicit input from local and national experts. The supervisors shouldn’t be intimidated by downtown lawsuits and consider only the most limited changes — after reviewing every possible alternative. 

 

 

 

Outrage at the Bayview Opera House (VIDEO)

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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31

A community meeting July 20 at the Bayview Opera House dissolved into chaotic shouting when Police Chief Greg Suhr attempted to present the San Francisco Police Department’s version of what transpired July 16 when a 19-year-old African American man was shot nine times by police and killed just blocks from where the meeting was held.

“On Saturday afternoon, two officers at the Bayview station … contacted a fare evader whose name ended up being Kenneth Wade Harding, Jr. of Seattle, Washington,” Suhr began. “After asking him for his identification, he became a little bit anxious, and at one point in time he jumped off the platform and ran across the street, and ran through crowded Mendell Plaza. I cannot tell you how badly that I feel … as captain of this station for two years. I love the Bayview community.”

At that point, angry shouts rose up and Suhr started getting booed, but he continued. “During this foot pursuit, at some point in time, the suspect … fired at the officers, and the officers returned fire. This is the account that we have so far.”

Kilo Perry began shouting back at the chief, saying, “You are not a friend of ours. You are the enemy,” before bystanders tried to calm him down. The SFPD had planned on showing a power point presentation about the incident, but that didn’t happen. Instead, Suhr was drowned out, and the microphone was passed to various community representatives and members of the clergy, who’d helped organize the meeting, as they tried to regain control. Lifelong Bayview resident Charlie Walker asked people to sit down and relax.

Several hundred people had gathered at the Bayview Opera House to get answers about the shooting, and most remained seated as people continued to swarm around the police chief. After some time had passed, community leaders managed to set up a question-and-answer session with Suhr.

From this brief exchange and venting session, it became clear that people had come to the meeting with broader concerns than just what transpired Saturday. Elvira Pollard stood to recount how, seven years ago, her son had been shot by police 36 times, and that police had claimed that he’d shot first. She said it took more than nine months to get an autopsy report. “It’s the same scenario!” she charged. “Do you really think they aren’t going to lie about this one?” Suhr said that he couldn’t comment on that case specifically since he didn’t know the details, but offered to meet with her.

As people spoke, police violence against youth emerged as a theme. Harding was not a resident of the Bayview, and it came to light after his death that he had served time for attempting to promote prostitution and was a person of interest in connection with the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old woman. But to many who expressed outrage at the meeting, his death was linked to past instances in which youth had been gunned down by law enforcement. One woman showed up wearing a T-shirt, earrings, and a handbag displaying images of Oscar Grant, the 20-year-old unarmed Hayward man who was shot and killed by BART officer Johannes Mehserle on January 1, 2009.

A concern that was voiced again and again was that people felt the police routinely harrassed youth on the T-Third line. Grilled about why police were constantly stopping young people over MUNI transfers, Suhr responded that police had recovered weapons from T-line passengers while conducting fare inspections in the past.

The meeting broke apart when Suhr was escorted out, surrounded by uniformed officers, news cameras, and angry residents who continued to demand that he release the names of the officers who shot Harding. One simply yelled, “stop shooting black people in the back!” Once outside, with beads of sweat rolling down his face, Suhr told reporters, “I’ll be back.”

Here’s a video of the tense exchanges that took place at the July 20 meeting. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3cQwtKMsXM

Video by Rebecca Bowe

Party with the new, movie-making Yard Dogs Road Show Sun/24

Andrew Lam
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0
Party with the new, movie-making Yard Dogs Road Show Sun/24

It’s not every day that you get a missive from the carnival, so when I saw Eddy Joe Cotton’s email in my inbox I read it. Holy damn, Yard Dogs Road Show is making a movie. Even more than that — he was extending the invite to go play with the traveling pack of musico-gypsies on Sun/24 at their Oakland clubhouse. You can come too. No, really.

“The Yard Dogs Road Show wants to be a movie right now,” says Cotton, author of one of the best road journals ever (Hobo) and long-time member of the long-time traveling burlesque-vaudeville experience that is the YDRS. It kind of always did (if not another novel) — the band’s provenance has always been romanticized by its members, if not made into an urban legend. Take a gander at my interview with the group’s song and dance man Miguel for a look at magic and mystery. 

The band’s developed a nationwide following through its bohemian wonderland of a live show. So cool, it wants to share its roots. Of course, there is a Kickstarter involved. See, movies don’t just pop up from nowhere. Cotton explains — actually, he really explains, maybe I’ll just cut ‘n’ paste. The band needs your dough for:

– Editing, obtaining additional footage, purchasing archival-stock footage, music publishing fees, audio production, camera upgrades, hard drives, film festival entry fees, film promotion, graphic design, DVD manufacturing, etc.

– We have a 7-year old mini-DV camera that has stopped accepting tapes. We’ve had it repaired too many times. We need a new HD camera – price tag $4000

– We still need more footage to tell the story we want to tell. This will mean more of everything. 

Plus publicity, DVD manufacturing, cuts to Kickstarter and Amazon, mailing the DVDs, and for video gear they’ve already bought. 

Bla bla bla. Contributing to the project through the Kickstarter site will mean you get anything from YDRS love (this is not totally broken down, so feel free to let your imagination run rampant) to lifetime tickets to see the band giggin’. And the party in Oakland will feature a movie Q&A, sushi rolls, and lasso tricks. 

 

Yard Dogs Road Show movie party

Sun/24 5 p.m.-midnight, free

Yard Dogs Art Shack

2509 Myrtle, Oakl.

www.yarddogsroadshow.com

Wage theft prevention ordinance moves forward

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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33

Supervisors expressed strong support July 20 for an ordinance that a San Francisco coalition of labor advocates is pushing for to prevent wage theft and shore up protections for low-income workers. Spearheaded by Sups. Eric Mar and David Campos with Sups. Ross Mirkarimi, Jane Kim, John Avalos, and David Chiu as co-sponsors, the legislation would enhance the power of the city’s Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement (OLSE) and double fines for employers who retaliate against workers.

Dozens of low-wage restaurant workers, caregivers, and day laborers turned out for a July 20 Budget & Finance Committee meeting to speak in support of the Wage Theft Prevention Ordinance, which was drafted in partnership with the Progressive Workers Alliance. The umbrella organization includes grassroots advocacy groups such as the Chinese Progressive Association, the Filipino Community Center, Pride at Work, Young Workers United, and others.

A restaurant worker who gave his name as Edwin said during the hearing that he’d been granted no work breaks, no time off, and had his tips stolen by his employer during a two-and-a-half year stint in a San Francisco establishment, only to be fired for trying to take a paid sick day. “When I was let go, I did not receive payment for my last days there,” he said.

His experience is not uncommon. An in-depth study of labor conditions in Chinatown restaurants conducted by the Chinese Progressive Association found that some 76 percent of employees did not receive overtime pay when they worked more than 40 hours in a week, and roughly half were not being paid San Francisco’s minumum wage of $9.92 an hour.

“People who need a job and can’t afford to lose it are vulnerable to exploitation,” Shaw San Liu, an organizer with the Chinese Progressive Association who has been instrumental in advancing the campaign to end wage theft, told the Guardian.

The ordinance would increase fines against employers from $500 to $1,000 for retaliating against workers who stand up for their rights under local labor laws. It would establish $500 penalties for employers who don’t bother to post notice of the minimum wage, don’t provide contact information, neglect to notify employees when OLSE is conducting a workplace investigation, or fail to comply with settlement agreements in the wake of a dispute. It would also establish a timeline in which worker complaints must be addressed.

“The fact is that even though we have minimum wage laws in place, those laws are still being violated not only throughout the country but here in San Francisco,” Campos told the Guardian. “Wage theft is a crime, and we need to make sure that there is adequate enforcement — and that requires a change in the law so that we provide the Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement more tools and more power to make sure that the rights of workers are protected. Not only does it protect workers, but it also protects businesses, because the vast majority of businesses in San Francisco are actually … complying with the law, and it’s not fair for them to let a small minority that are not doing that get away with it.”

So far, the ordinance is moving through the board approval process with little resistance. Mayor Ed Lee has voiced support, and Budget Committee Chair Carmen Chu, who is often at odds with board progressives, said she supported the goal of preventing wage theft and thanked advocates for their efforts during the hearing. The item was continued to the following week due to several last-minute changes, and will go before the full board on Aug. 2.

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