Board of Supervisors

Guardian Voices: Stop and Frisk didn’t work last time

Zelda Bronstein
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5
Guardian Voices: Stop and Frisk didn’t work last time

Mayor Lee’s musings before the Chronicle editorial board, in which he revealed his thoughts about instituting a “stop and frisk” policy in San Francisco, set off a very quick negative responses from two of his high-profile supporters in the African American community, Willie Brown and Supervisor Malia Cohen. But that’s only part of the surprise the mayor will face if he pursues this policy.

It wasn’t a real good week for Mayor Lee, who seemed to repeatedly trip himself up:

— In  the chat about stop and frisk;
— In the admission at a Board of  Supervisors hearing by Sutter/CPMC that the economic modeling of the hospital chain’s proposed  project so undermined key elements of the deal that Mayor Lee demanded that it be redone;
— And in his testimony before the Ethics Commission on the Mirkarimi case that brought specific charges of  perjury he has yet to answer.

But the stop and frisk was the most sobering of the three, for it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the very nature of the city that he seeks to govern and an astounding insensitivity to its not-too-distant past.

The last time stop and frisk was implemented by the San Francisco Police Department was in 1974, at the height of the “Zebra” murders during which, over a six-month period from the end of 1973 to the beginning of 1974, 16 whites were murdered and another six wounded (one of whopm was a young Art Agnos) in shootings using a similar caliber hand gun. What made sensational headlines was the fact that the six survivors all agreed that the shooters were  black. 

Mayor Joe Alioto, facing a steep decline in tourist visits to the city and a drumbeat of headlines, surprised eferyone by announcing a stop and frisk policy aimed at young Black males. Within the first week some 500 stops were made. Not a single Zebra suspect was found.

The San Francisco NAACP and ACLU quickly filed suit in Federal Court where the policy was banned as being un-Constitutional racial profiling. The Zebra case was broken using the time tested technique of offering a reward for information. An informant stepped up, and in the summer of 1974, four men were arrested based upon his information. In 1976 the four men were convicted –and the stop and frisk policy had nothing to do with either their arrest or conviction.  Nothing remained of the failed policy for 38 years.

What did remain was a deep and bitter memory of stop and frisk in the San Francisco African-American community — a memory neither Willie Brown nor Malia Cohen forgot.

If the mayor really believes that stop and frisk will work in the face of deep seated community resentment, based on actual local historic experience – for his remarks were all about “getting the guns” off the street in African American neighborhoods — then he has a profound misunderstanding of the nature of San Francisco.

San Francisco is perhaps one of the two or three most humanly diverse cities in North America. There is a bewildering mix of humans in our city, which confronts any policy based upon appearances — such as stop and frisk — with complexities that often render its actual use on the street ineffective. Simply stated, people are not as they seem in San Francisco, and many San Franciscans prefer to live no other way. Good cops understand this and work hard to learn who is who on the street. That’s called community policing and it often works in San Francisco.  

But many times it doesn’t. Let me tell you a personal story.

During the school year, I try to pick up my two grandsons, Jalius and Jacob, every Tuesday. We spend some time together walking from their school, George Peabody, in the Inner Richmond, to the 33 Stanyan bus stop at Clement and Arguello for a bus ride back to the Haight-Ashbury. We walk and talk and then wait for the bus and talk some more.

A few months ago, we were waiting for the bus, the boys sitting on the bench, me standing and talking. I noticed a cop across the street doing a foot patrol, talking to merchants and customers. He kept looking at us. He was Chinese and my grandsons are half Chinese.  Finally, he walked over to us and with a polite smile asked me why was I talking to these children.

I had an idea that was why he came over so I was expecting the question. I smiled back to him and said, proudly, “these are my grandsons, Jalius and Jacob”.  He looked at me and then turned to the boys and said “is he?” They said “yes” and he looked back at me and said “just doing my job,”  and turned and walked away.

And what a tough job it is as people are often other than they look in San Francisco. Old white men are not always what they seem, and young black men are not always what they seem, no matter how low they ware their pants. Policies based upon things being exactly as they appear will be overwhelmed by the human reality of the City of St. Francis.

There is a connection between people in this physically compact city of ours that forms a foundation for a common political outlook when it comes to personal and group rights and freedoms. San Francisco is a center-left city on matters of civil and human rights. Local elections have shown time after time that on civil and human rights the usual political divisions between the various parts of San Francisco don’t obtain. Trying to push a center-right stop and frisk policy on San Francisco will politically isolate Ed Lee, making all other parts of his agenda that much more difficult to accomplish. And as a city we need to get some big things done, quickly. Let’s move on, together, and get them done.

Davis launches D5 campaign with fortuitous timing

Sasha Cuttler
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14
Davis launches D5 campaign with fortuitous timing

When progressive activist Julian Davis formally launched his District 5 supervisorial campaign late last week with a well-attended kickoff party at the Peacock Lounge in Lower Haight, timing and circumstances seemed to be on his side.

Days earlier, Quintin Mecke – a rival for the progressive vote in this staunchly leftist district – announced to supporters that he needed to care for his ailing mother and wouldn’t be running after all. At the same time, appointed incumbent Christina Olague seemed to be rapidly falling from favor with many progressives.

First came the viral video of Olague gushing over all the support she’s received from Chinatown power broker Rose Pak during a fundraiser where she raised nearly $50,000, then her squirrely role in helping the moderates repeal ranked-choice voting, and finally the bizarre episode of clashing with a close progressive ally and friend to defend Mayor Ed Lee from perjury allegations.

Davis has sought to capitalize on the rapidly unfolding developments, today sending out a press release blasting Olague for having “joined the conservatives on the Board of Supervisors to repeal ranked choice voting for mayoral elections,” and telling the Guardian that Mecke’s exit will help clarify the choice D5 voters face.

“The fact that he’s out allows us to consolidate the progressive base,” Davis said, not mentioning that candidates John Rizzo and Thea Shelby will also be vying for the progressive vote.

At his kickoff party, Davis also demonstrated that he has substantial support from another significant D5 voting block – African Americans – for which he’ll be competing with political moderate London Breed, director of the African American Arts & Cultural Complex.

Davis said that with Olague’s support by Mayor Ed Lee and the city’s economic and political establishment, he’ll need to run a strong grassroots campaign based on “people power and shoe leather,” an approach that he’s also displaying with regular street corner campaigning.

“We’re at an economic, social, and political crossroads in San Francisco,” he said at his launch party. “Rogue developers are corrupting City Hall with a vision of luxury condos, corporate tax breaks, chain stores, and parking garages. It’s a vision of San Francisco that doesn’t include us. Everyday, progressive reforms are being dismantled and progressive values are being abandoned.”

Davis is hoping that Olague’s ties to Lee will drag her down in a district that voted almost 2-1 in favor of progressive John Avalos (whose campaign Davis actively worked on) over Lee in last year’s mayor’s race.

“Look what’s happening on the waterfront where Olague voted to approve the 8 Washington development. These are condos for the Kardashians, vacation homes for the ultra rich and the 1 percent. That’s not keeping it real for San Francisco,” he said at the kickoff. “So we’ve got to ask ourselves: how do they get away with it? The only way they can. By choosing your leaders for you. Over the past two years in San Francisco, we’ve had an appointed mayor, an appointed district attorney, an appointed sheriff, and an appointed District 5 supervisor. Does that sound like participatory democracy to you? Does that sound like your vote counts?”

And as Avalos also tried to do in his mayoral campaign, Davis says he wants to use his campaign to help restart the city’s progressive movement, which has been in tatters since being divided and nearly conquered by the politicians and political operatives who helped elevate Lee into Room 200 18 months ago.

As he told supporters, “We can re-launch the progressive movement in San Francisco from this district. We can take back City Hall. We will win this election with people power, street by street, block by block, neighbor to neighbor, shop by shop.”

Brown, Pak, and Olague

Zelda Bronstein
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38
Brown, Pak, and Olague

Christina Olague was a great planning commissioner. I’ve always liked her, and when she was appointed we pointed out how strongly she was rooted in the progressive community.

Olague has strong progressive activist credentials, from working with the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition to protect low-income renters during the last dot-com boom to her more recent community organizing for the Senior Action Network. She co-chaired the 2003 campaign that established the city’s minimum wage and has been actively involved in such progressive organizations as the Milk Club, Transit Riders Union, and the short-lived San Francisco People’s Organization.

She also served two terms on the Planning Commission — appointed by Board of Supervisors then-President Matt Gonzalez in 2004 and reappointed by then-President Aaron Peskin in 2008 — where she was known for doing her homework on complicated land use issues and usually landing on the progressive side of divided votes.

We’ve had some disagreements since she took office — particularly around 8 Washington. (I also disagreed with the Labor Council on that one, and only three of the supervisors agreed with me.) And it’s not the first time an elected official I supported turned around and infuriated me on a development vote.

I want Olague to succeed; I want her to come to us in the fall with a record that makes us want to endorse her for a full four-year term. She’s been talking seriously about violence in the district and about young people, predominantly African Americans, getting killed. I feel like she wants to do the right thing.

But her reelection effort is starting to feature some bad actors.

At a recent fundraiser in Chinatown, former Mayor Willie Brown, who ranks as one of the most corrupt public officials in modern San Francisco history and whose administration was a disaster for poor and working-class people (he once even said that poor people ought to just get out of town because this city is too expensive for them), stood up and made a speech, warmly endorsed Olague and said he would be with her “all the way.” Olague then thanked Rose Pak, the Chinatown power broker, for “all of her support over the last few months.”

This makes me nervous. And it hasn’t helped my nerves that I’ve been trying to talk to Olague about these issues for the last week, and she keeps avoiding the conversation by not returning calls or cutting conversations short when I do reach her.

Willie Brown, with his Chron column, has taken on this funny, warm, man-about-town persona, but when he was running City Hall, everything was about money. He cut deals right and left that destroyed communities and neighborhoods. He oversaw, aided and encouraged what we called the “Economic Cleansing of San Francisco.” Tens of thousands of working-class people, artist, writers, young people … were driven out of the city by a steamroller of gentrification — all with the mayor’s blessing.

Now he’s working as a private attorney, and last time we checked was getting $200,000 a year to represent PG&E. We have no idea what other big corporate clients he has or what he does for them — but it’s clearly not writing legal briefs and handling litigation. He gets paid for being a political fixer. For the bad guys.

And he’s going to be with Olague “all the way.”

Damn.

Under oath

Andrew Lam
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19
Under oath

steve@sfbg.com

Mayor Ed Lee and suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi each took some lumps on June 29 as they were cross-examined by opposing attorneys in front the Ethics Commission, which is conducting the official misconduct case that Lee brought against Mirkarimi over a Dec. 31 domestic violence incident. But the hearings proved unexpectedly dramatic when the room was suddenly cleared for an undisclosed security threat — following testimony by Lee that a city commissioner alleges included perjury.

The incident raises a number of issues that officials hadn’t yet answered by Guardian press time. Was the security threat real? If so, why wasn’t the room or the rest of City Hall properly secured after the mayor was whisked away? If not, who ordered the room cleared and why?

Undersheriff Paul Miyamoto, who ran against Mirkarimi last year, told the Guardian that the San Francisco Police Department notified his office that a caller claimed to have planted bombs outside of City Hall and on the Golden Gate Bridge. Deputies conducted a search and found nothing, and his office didn’t order the recess of the hearing. “We did not evacuate anyone,” he told us.

Speculation about the incident was heightened during the break when Debra Walker, a Mirkarimi supporter and longtime member of the city’s Building Inspection Commission, told the Guardian that Lee committed perjury when he denied speaking with any members of the Board of Supervisors before filing official misconduct charges. Lee was responding to a direct and pointed question from Mirkarimi attorney Shepherd Kopp — one that that Lee’s attorneys had unsuccessfully objected to.

Specifically, Walker said that her longtime friend and political ally Sup. Christina Olague — who Lee appointed to serve the last year of Mirkarimi’s term for the District 5 seat — had told her repeatedly that Lee had asked her advice before filing the charges against Mirkarimi, and that Olague’s advice was that Lee should ask for Mirkarimi’s resignation but drop the matter if he refused.

That allegation, which was first reported on the Guardian’s Politics blog shortly after the commission went into recess (Olague had not yet returned a call from the Guardian asking whether she had spoken to Lee about Mirkarimi), prompted reporters to confront Olague in the hallway outside her supervisorial office, where she tersely denied the allegation and then took refuge behind closed doors.

When the reporters lingered and persisted, waiting for a more complete answer, Olague finally emerged, reiterated her denial, refused to speculate about why her friend Walker would make that claim, and said, “We’re not allowed to discuss this matter with anyone before it comes to the board…I may have to recuse myself from voting on this.”

It was unclear why she thought recusal might be necessary, but if she does disqualify herself from voting on Mirkarimi’s removal later this summer after Ethics completes its investigation and makes its recommendations to the board, that would hurt Lee’s effort to get the nine votes needed to remove Mirkarimi.

When the Ethics Commission hearing resumed after a couple hours, Lee was again placed in a position of denying specific factual allegations that others have made, again raising the possibility that he committed perjury in his sworn testimony, which could expose him to felony criminal charges while undercutting his moral authority to remove Mirkarimi over the single misdemeanor count of false imprisonment that he pleaded guilty to in March.

The second instance was when Kopp asked Lee, “Did you ever extend any offer through third parties that you would find him another job if he resigned?”

“I don’t recall offering Sheriff Mirkarimi any job,” Lee replied.

Kopp specifically asked whether that job offer had been extended on Lee’s behalf by permit expediter Walter Wong or by San Francisco Democratic Party Chair Aaron Peskin, to which Lee replied, “Absolutely not.”

Mirkarimi supporters have told the Guardian that Peskin had made that offer, which Mirkarimi refused, shortly before the party chair publicly called for Mirkarimi’s resignation. The outgoing message on Peskin’s cell phone said he was unavailable and wouldn’t be checking his messages until July 5. Mirkarimi’s attorneys said they’re still figuring out how to respond to the developments and had no comment, but Walker said she’s willing to testify under oath.

But the dramas underscore the treacherous grounds opened up by these unprecedented proceedings, the first involving the Ethics Commission and the broadened definition of official misconduct placed into the City Charter in 1996. As baseball great Barry Bonds and former President Bill Clinton learned, being forced to testify under oath about sensitive topics can be a tough trap to negotiate.

 

MIRKARIMI TESTIMONY

Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith also seemed to be trying to spring that perjury trap on Mirkarimi as he took the stand on the morning of June 29 following an hour on the stand at the previous night’s hearing. Keith reminded Mirkarimi that he was advised not to discuss his testimony with anyone and asked, “Who have you spoken to since last night?”

“My attorneys,” Mirkarimi answered.

“What did you say to them?” Keith asked, drawing objections about attorney-client privilege that Commission Chair Benedict Hur sustained.

“Did you stop for coffee?” Keith then asked, seemingly concerned that Mirkarimi may have discussed his testimony with someone at the coffee shop that morning, which Mirkarimi denied. Keith let the allegation go but maintained an accusatory, hectoring tone throughout the next three hours that he had Mirkarimi on the stand, two more hours than he had told the commission he would need.

Much of the time was spent trying to establish support for the allegation that Mirkarimi had dissuaded witnesses and sought to thwart the police investigation, which was triggered by a call from Ivory Madison, a neighbor to whom Mirkarimi’s wife, Eliana Lopez, had confided. But the testimony yielded little more than the city’s unsupported inference that Mirkarimi must have directed Lopez and his campaign manager, Linnette Peralta Haynes, to contact Madison after she had called the police and urged her to stop cooperating with them.

Mirkarimi has maintained that he did nothing to dissuade Madison or anyone from talking to police, and that he wasn’t aware of the investigation or that Madison had made a videotape of Lopez showing a bruise on her arm until hours after the police were involved. He even sent a text to Lopez saying there was nothing he could do, as he noted.

“It was after 4pm on January 4 when I first learned of any of this,” Mirkarimi testified, later adding, “I was very clear to her in saying you can’t unring the bell, we have to follow through with this.”

Yet Lee and the deputy city attorneys who are representing him also maintain that they needn’t prove witness dissuasion or other allegations they have made, and that the Dec. 31 incident and Mirkarimi’s guilty plea to a single misdemeanor count of false imprisonment are enough to constitute official misconduct and warrant his removal, an interpretation that Mirkarimi’s attorneys dispute.

Keith sought to hammer home how Mirkarimi should have admitted to and publicly atoned for his crime right away rather than telling reporters it was a “private family matters” (which Mirkarimi admitted was a mistake) or fighting the charges by trying to discredit Madison publicly, an allegation he denies.

After unsuccessfully trying to get Mirkarimi to admit to directing efforts to question Madison’s credibility in local media accounts, Keith asked, “Did you ever direct anyone not to attack Ivory Madison?”

“I never directed anyone to attack or not attack,” Mirkarimi replied.

Keith also clarified that Mirkarimi denies the allegation Madison made that the physical abuse on Dec. 31 went beyond grabbing Lopez’s arm once in the car, as the couple has maintained. “It’s your testimony there was no punching, pulling, or grabbing in the house?” Keith asked, which Mirkarimi confirmed.

Yet Keith said that given the totality of what happened, Mirkarimi should have known he couldn’t continue on as sheriff. “Under those circumstances, wouldn’t resigning be the honorable thing to do?” Keith said, to which Mirkarimi replied that it’s a hard question and that he’s doing what he thinks is right.

Faced with friendlier questions from his own attorney, David Waggoner, Mirkarimi apologized for his actions, saying “I feel horrible and ashamed,” but that he was “sad and scared” to have his family torn apart against their will. He also said that he believes he can still be effective as sheriff because “what makes San Francisco special is our forward-thinking approach to criminal justice.”

Longtime Sheriff Michael Hennessey — who endorsed Mirkarimi and continues to support him — established a variety of programs emphasizing redemption and rehabilitation, hiring former convicts into top jobs in the department to emphasize a belief in restorative justice that Mirkarimi ran a campaign promising to continue.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be an example of what this redemption process looks like,” Mirkarimi said, choking back tears.

But Keith had the last word before Mirkarimi left the stand, belittling the idea that Mirkarimi offers an example to follow by noting how much probation time and court-ordered counseling he still has to undergo and asking, “The process of redemption doesn’t happen overnight, right?”

 

LEE ON THE STAND

Under questioning by Kopp, Mayor Lee admitted that he doesn’t have a written policy on what constitutes official misconduct, that his decisions are made on “a case by case basis,” and that he’s not sure whether conviction of a crime would always constitute official misconduct “because I’ve never confronted this before.”

“Were you aware that many members of the Sheriff Department have criminal convictions?” Kopp asked. Lee said he was not aware. Asked whether he was aware that Sheriff Hennessey had hired a convicted murderer into a top command staff position (see “The unlikely sheriff,” 12/21/11), Lee said he wasn’t.

Lee’s insistence that Mirkarimi’s crime makes him unable to deal effectively with other officials was also attacked by Kopp, who asked, “Isn’t it true that people get elected who have disagreements with other city officials?” He pointed out that City Attorney Dennis Herrera had nasty conflicts with Lee when they ran against each other for mayor last year, but that they’re working well together now.

Kopp also drilled into Lee about his decision to bring official misconduct charges before conducting an investigation or speaking with any witnesses besides Madison — an answer Lee blurted out just as city attorneys objected to the question. Much of Madison’s written testimony has been rejected by the commission as prejudicial hearsay evidence (see “Mayor vs. Mirkarimi,” July 27).

But the public’s perception of this case, if not it’s outcome, could turn on whether Lee is holding Mirkarimi to standards that he himself — as someone appointed mayor on a later-broken promise not to run for a full term — couldn’t meet. It was what Kopp seemed to be driving at before the bomb scare.

“You have asserted in your written charges that Sheriff Mirkarimi’s conduct fell below the standard of decency, good faith, and right action that is impliedly required of all public officials, correct?” Kopp asked.

“Yes,” Lee replied.

“We expect certain things of our elected officials, right?” Kopp asked.

After a long pause, in which Lee appeared to be thinking through his answer, he replied, “That’s generally true, yes.”

“And when the charter speaks of official misconduct, it doesn’t say we expect a certain standard for the sheriff, a different standard for the mayor, a different standard for the DA, a separate standard for the assessor, it just speaks in general terms about official misconduct for public officials, right?” Kopp asked.

Kaiser objected to the question on three counts, sustained on the grounds that it calls for a legal conclusion.

“Do you yourself believe there’s a separate standard for sheriff than for other elected officials?” Kopp asked, and this time the city’s objection was overruled and Lee replied, “It should be the same standard.”

“And would you agree with me that one of the things that is expected of elected officials is for them to be honest and forthright when dealing not only with their constituents, but with other elected officials?” Kopp asked, his final question before Chair Benedict Hur announced that the hearing would be suspended and the room would need to be cleared.

After the hearing reconvened, Kopp drew parallels to other city officials who remained on job after scandals, including former Mayor Gavin Newsom (who had an affair with a subordinate who was married to his campaign manager), former Sheriff Dick Hongisto (who was jailed for refusing to carry out a court’s eviction order), and current Fire Chief Joanne Hayes White (whose husband reported that she hit him in the head with a pint glass).

Asked about the latter case, Lee responded, “I don’t know all the circumstances around that and I don’t believe I was mayor at the time.”

 

Leaked documents add to CPMC’s credibility problems

Sasha Cuttler
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10

Three key members of the Board of Supervisors today presented what they say are documents leaked by a whistleblower within California Pacific Medical Center showing it will likely shut down St. Luke’s Hospital by invoking an escape clause in the development agreement that the Mayor’s Office negotiated and the board is now considering.

The CPMC internal financial documents sent to the supervisors Sunday from an anonymous whistleblower predict a financial scenario in which the operating revenue will fall below a 1 percent margin by 2018.  The predicted loss would allow CPMC to exit its 20-year commitment to St. Luke’s and close the hospital in 2020, just five years after its scheduled reopening.  Sups. David Chiu, Malia Cohen, and Christina Olague say they worry the financial shortfall would also limit CPMC’s charitable donations while its Sutter Health parent company cuts hundreds of hospital jobs to save a projected $70 million per year.

 CPMC has promised to seismically retrofit St. Luke’s and run it for 20 years. In return, the medical group gets to build a massive hospital on Cathedral Hill. Inserted into the deal is what Chiu calls the fine print, which states if CPMC operating margin falls below 1 percent for two years it may close the hospital. Chiu said CPMC presented the escape clause as a very unlikely event, occurring only in a catastrophic scenario.

Instead, the leaked documents present a negative operating margin as an incredibly probably situation that CPMC has known about for months and misrepresented to city officials. “CPMC knew it was possible and likely they would default on their commitment,” Cohen said, adding that her greatest grievance is CPMC’s refusal to do anything about the situation.

Cohen said the financial revelations aren’t surprising considering Sutter Health has a reputation for shady practices. She said we should all wonder how a supposedly not-for-profit corporation is able to make so much profit.

CPMC spokesman Sam Singer said the documents are fraudulent, flawed financial reports that CPMC threw away a long time ago. He suggested someone must have dug them out of the garbage in a conspiracy like fashion. Singer said the mayor had learned about the document a few weeks ago.

Chui said that may help explain why  the Mayor’s Office recently acknowledged it reentered negotiations with the CPMC after becoming concerned about the viability of St. Luke’s, telling supervisors it was based on CPMC’s revised revenue estimates, sparking a controversy during last week’s hearing.

Whatever the reason, the three supervisors want more time to investigate the matter.

“Let’s be clear,” said Cohen said, “these contract negotiations should be informed by actual financial information and not just by the word of CPMC leadership, which we’ve unfortunately found to be untrustworthy.”

 

 

Mayor and Mirkarimi testify in Ethics probe before dramatic disruption

Sasha Cuttler
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261
Mayor and Mirkarimi testify in Ethics probe before dramatic disruption

After Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi endured about four hours of questioning in his official misconduct proceedings, mostly from Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith, Mayor Ed Lee took the stand a little after 1pm. But just as Mirkarimi attorney Shepherd Kopp was beginning to pin Lee down on the selective manner in which he decided to launch these unprecedented proceedings, the commission suddenly announced the hearing was being suspended and the room would need to be cleared immediately.

There is speculation that there was a bomb threat or other security emergency, but officials have so far offered no explanation for the dramatic development or whether the hearing would reconvene today. Yet the room is still half-filled with journalists and audience members, some speculating that that the clearing of the room was simply an effort to get the unusually grim-faced Lee off the hot seat.

Kopp’s questioning included pointed questions about whether he consulted any members of the Board of Supervisors before deciding to bring official misconduct charges against Mirkarimi in March. The city’s objection was overruled after Kopp noted that the supervisors will ultimately decide Mirkarimi’s fate. Forced to answer under oath, Lee said no, he didn’t speak to any supervisors before filing charges.

But progressive activist Debra Walker says Sup. Christina Olague — women who are close political allies and speak regularly — has repeatedly told her that Mayor Lee asked her opinion before filing the charges. If true, that would mean Mayor Lee committed perjury, which is a felony. Yet as reporters confronted Olague outside her office, she denied ever speaking with Lee about the case and then barricaded herself in her office.

When the reporters lingered and persisted, she finally emerged, reiterated her denial, refused to speculate about why her friend Walker would make that claim, and said, “We’re not allowed to discuss this matter with anyone before it comes to the board…I may have to recuse myself from voting on this.”

It was unclear why she thought recusal might be necessary, but if she does that would hurt Lee’s effort to get the nine votes on the board needed to remove Mirkarimi.

We’ll have complete analysis of the testimony and other developments in next week’s Guardian.

 

CPMC’s new numbers threaten St. Luke’s and the mayor’s deal

Sasha Cuttler
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9

Can San Franciscans trust California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) not to shutter St. Luke’s Hospital once the company gets what it wants from the city? And has the Mayor’s Office, in its desire to please the business community and building trades, accepted and promoted a bad deal that doesn’t adequately protect the city’s interests?

Those are some of the questions that arose Monday during a hearing on CPMC’s $2.5 billion, multi-hospital development proposal before the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee when officials from the Mayor’s Office revealed that the development agreement they negotiated with CPMC might not be good enough to keep St. Luke’s open.

As we’ve reported, CPMC (a subsidiary of Sutter Health, a not-for-profit corporation that nonetheless has a well-earned reputation for profiteering and other bad corporate behavior) is seeking to build a 550-bed regional luxury hospital atop Cathedral Hill. In exchange, the development deal requires CPMC to rebuild St. Luke’s, a seismically unsafe hospital in the Mission District that is relied on by many low-income San Franciscans (as well as the city, which would otherwise have to shoulder more of that burden at General Hospital).

After years of stalled negotiations between CPMC and two consecutive mayors, Mayor Ed Lee announced a deal in March that would have CPMC build a smaller version of St. Luke’s (with just 80 beds) and agree to keep it open for at least 20 years as long as CPMC’s operating margins didn’t dip below 1 percent in two consecutive years.

Activists had criticized the deal as too small, too short, and without enough guarantees, but Mayor’s Office officials have consistently said they were confident it was enough to keep St. Luke’s from being shuttered. But now, based on new revenue projections offered by CPMC, even those officials have lost confidence in the deal and say it needs to be renegotiated.

“These new 2012 projections, while still showing CPMC will not breach the 1 percent margin, do not offer the same comfort level we previously had,” Ken Rich of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development told the committee.

The news hit like a bombshell, shaking the confidence of even supervisors who strongly supported the deal, such as Sup. Scott Wiener, who called it a “surprising, critical piece of information” and said, “It’s very, very important that this issue is quickly resolved.”

For supervisors who were already skeptical of the deal and CPMC – such as Sup. David Campos, whose District 9 includes St. Luke’s – it was further evidence that this was a bad deal that needed more work before being brought to the board. The Planning Commission has already approved the project and the full board was scheduled to consider it in just a few weeks.

“What does that say about the way the negotiation was done?” Campos told us. “How half-baked can something be? What have we done to verify the numbers that CPMC gave us? And what does this say about CPMC?…If the numbers on St. Luke’s aren’t accurate, how can we trust the rest of what they’re telling us?”

Yet during the hearing, when Campos tried to get reassurances from CPMC officials and requested that the board be allowed to review the company’s financial records, he was rebuffed and belittled by CPMC attorney Pam Duffy – who later tersely apologized for her comments after Committee Chair Eric Mar criticized them as “insulting to the board.”

Campos had questioned Rich about why the city was relying on CPMC rather than independently assessing the numbers. “Maybe if you had done an audit, you wouldn’t be in this position of being surprised by the numbers that were given to you,” Campos told Rich.

But Rich said “projections are guesses, we can’t ever guarantee that they are right,” noting that CPMC had revised its revenue estimates downward for the years after St. Luke’s would open (when it would be absorbing the high costs of construction), making its profit margin slimmer. “CPMC took a more conservative approach to forecasting the rate of increase in hospital charges as well as patient volumes in light of the greater uncertainty in health care finance,” Rich said.

So Campos asked whether the supervisors could review CPMC’s data. Rich, who has reviewed it, replied, “The conditions under which we were shown CPMC’s projections is that those are confidential.”

Campos noted that it is the board’s job to review and approval this deal to determine whether it’s in the city’s best interests, which shouldn’t simply involve trusting CPMC. “Why should the executive branch of the government see those numbers but not the legislative branch?” he asked.
“It’s really not our call,” said Rich, noting that he had no objections to the request.

But when Campos asked CPMC’s Duffy, she offered a legalistic refusal, and when Campos tried to explain his reasoning, she said, “I heard your speech a moment ago” and added, “this isn’t really a game of gotcha.”

When Campos said the board was simply exercising its due diligence over an important project. she said “nothing unusual or untoward has occurred here, and the suggestion that might be the case, I think it unfair.”

But Campos wasn’t alone in wanting more reassurance from CPMC, who supervisors, labor leaders, and community activists have criticized for its secrecy and bad faith negotiating tactics with both the city and its employee unions.

“This announcement is shocking, on a number of levels,” Board President David Chiu said at the hearing, noting that he had met with CPMC officials just days earlier and they hadn’t mentioned the new developments, instead assuring him that their operating margins were high and the deal protected St. Luke’s. “It’s not a great way to build the trust we’ll need to move this forward.”

Rich said he had learned of the new numbers 12 days earlier, drawing a rebuke from Campos and others who said the supervisors should have been notified earlier. But Rich said that he was hoping that the problem would be solved through negotiations with CPMC before the hearing, but that talks over the issue have so far been fruitless.

“We would have vastly preferred to have an agreement in hand,” Rich told the committee, reassuring the supervisors that the Mayor’s Office will not support the project until the St. Luke’s issue is resolved to its satisfaction.

But Sup. Malia Cohen criticized CPMC as an untrustworthy negotiating partner. “CPMC has an interesting corporate culture,” she said, noting that the company has repeatedly misled supervisors and community leaders, accusing it of being “disingenuous in its negotiations.”

Chiu emphasized that this is a make-or-break issue: “This is an escape clause that could allow St. Luke’s – and what St. Luke’s means to the city – to not be operational. So this is an incredibly important question.”

Campos said this latest episode only added to his suspicion that CPMC will play games with its finances to shutter St. Luke’s – whose construction must be completed before CPMC can build Cathedral Hill Hospital – once it gets the lucrative regional medical center that it really wants.

“How do we know they aren’t transferring money out of CPMC into Sutter in order to shut down St. Luke’s?” Campos said, adding that he wants to see a clear guarantee that St. Luke’s will remain open as a full-service hospital. “This deal, as far as I’m concerned, is not ready for prime time.”

Artificial turf project appealed as opponents decry use of kids as lobbyists

Sasha Cuttler
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14
Artificial turf project appealed as opponents decry use of kids as lobbyists

As opponents of a controversial plan to install artificial turf soccer fields in Golden Gate Park appealed the project’s approval to the Board of Supervisors – with a hearing set for July 10 – they criticized how a soccer coach inappropriately used children to lobby for the project and raised hopes that a new alternative plan would be supported by supervisors.

Responding to the recently approved plan threatening to pave over seven acres of natural grass playing fields in Golden Gate Park, the main organizing opposition, SF Ocean’s Edge, and its attorney, Richard Drury, submitted the 300-page appeal to the board on June 12. The appeal challenges the environmental impact report, citing many of its inadequacies, including the renovation’s aesthetic and environmental inconsistencies with that of the Golden Gate Master Plan and its failure to consider other possibly better alternatives.

The Beach Chalet Athletic Fields Renovation was approved by the Planning Commission and Parks and Recreation on May 24 after a joint hearing that lasted more than six hours. During the hearing, opponents criticized many of the project’s features, but an especially outrageous concern came weeks afterward when a letter from an upset parent began circulating. In the letter, an angry father accuses a Vikings League soccer coach of using his unknowing son as a political pawn to support the renovation project.

“I was shocked and angered to learn that our eleven-year-old son was taken by his soccer coach, without our knowledge or consent, to attend the joint committee meeting in support of converting the Beach Chalet soccer fields to artificial turf.  He was one of the dozens of kids in team uniforms,” said the letter.

The parent said his son was picked up from school and was already dressed in uniform ready for practice but instead was taken to City Hall.

“It is really an outrage,” said Katherine Howard, SF Ocean’s Edge organizer, “to use children to further one’s own agenda instead of having an open and honest discussion.”

Renovation supporters argue that replacing the fields with artificial turf and bright lighting will allow children greater access and contribute to a growing need for more athletic fields throughout the City.

The letter accused the Vikings League of appointing itself speaker for San Francisco’s youth when not every parent or child agrees. And in this case, the boy was said to be in tears after the hearing.

“If my children were brought before a hearing for political purposes,” said Drury, “I would be livid.”

Drury and others maintained the park should be kept as a retreat from the pressures of urban life. Contained in the appeal is an alternative hybrid project that opponents are calling a “win-win solution.”

They propose renovating the playing fields at West Sunset Playgrounds with artificial turf and adequate lighting while keeping the Golden Gate Park fields natural with maintenance that includes adequate drainage and gopher control.

“It’s a very simple and very reasonable alternative,” Drury said, adding that the hybrid plan meets all the objectives of the city’s current proposal and wouldn’t increase the costs.

Although Parks and Recreation were uncooperative and refused to consider the hybrid plan, Drury and Howard feel optimistic about the appeal and think they will have better luck dealing with the Board of Supervisors.

Olague is the swing vote on voting system repeal

Sasha Cuttler
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58
Olague is the swing vote on voting system repeal

Conservative Sup. Mark Farrell’s effort to repeal San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting system for citywide elected officials is headed to the Board of Supervisors tomorrow, and all eyes are on swing vote Sup. Christina Olague. She surprised her longtime progressive allies with her early co-sponsorship of the measure when it was introduced in March, but she’s now expressing doubts about the measure.

The board rejected an earlier effort by Farrell and Sup. Sean Elsbernd to repeal RCV outright, but then Farrell tried again with a measure that excludes supervisorial elections and has a primary election in September, and if nobody gets 65 percent of the vote then the two two finishers have a runoff in November.

“I’m not going to support something that calls for a runoff in September,” Olague told the Guardian, referring to the primary election, although she did echo the concerns from RCV’s critics who claim that it confuses voters. She also said that it hasn’t helped elect more progressives and that “some progressives I talked to aren’t 100 percent behind it.”

Such talk worries Steven Hill, the activist who helped create the voter-approved system, and who has been battling to shore up support for it in the face of concerted attacks by more conservative politicians, newspaper columnists, and downtown interests, all of whom preferred the old system of low-turnout, big-money December runoff elections.

“I think it’s working well. San Francisco saves a ton of money by not having two elections,” Hill said. He said downtown money will skew the runoffs elections even more in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizen United ruling allowing unlimited political spending. “With Citizen’s United,” he said, “they’ll just do a ton of independent expenditures.”

He said Olague had told him she intended to withdraw her co-sponsorship of the measure, but she hadn’t done so yet. Olague told us that she wanted to discuss the matter with Farrell before withdrawing her support, that she hasn’t been able to reach him yet, and that she’s been focused on other issues she considers more important, such as crime prevention.

The measure currently is being co-sponsored by the board’s five most conservative supervisors and Olague, meaning it will go before voters on the November ballot if they all remain supportive. Hill said that the measure may not be voted on tomorrow because of an administrative snafu dealing with noticing requirements, but the hearing would proceed anyway, possibly offering clues as to the measure’s chances of success.

Thick petition against a big project

Zelda Bronstein
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45
Thick petition against a big project

My old friend Sue Hestor stopped by my house June 24 to ask if any of my neighbors might want to sign the referendum petition on 8 Washington. She was carrying a clipboard with a document the size of a phone book attached to it. Almost 600 pages, neatly bound.

I flipped through it. Lots and lots of background documents on the project, nothing anyone’s ever going to read. But thanks to some slick moves by the developer, Simon Snellgrove, supported by his allies on the Board of Supervisors, the referendum petition has to have all of that material attached.

See, the petition seeks an election to overturn a piece of legislation. Doesn’t happen often in San Francisco, and as far as I know, it’s never been successful. State law, of course, says that you have to show people the bill you want to overturn.

But when activists in Bayview Hunters Point tried to run a referendum campaign on the area’s redevelopment plan, they lost before they even had a chance. The City Attorney’s Office ruled that each petition had to include the entire redevelopment plan, all 62 pages. Since the petitions didn’t include every single page of that plan, the signatures were rejected.

In this case, Snellgrove’s crew made sure that the final legislation approved by the supes included numerous mentions of other documents that were, in legal terms, “included by reference.” Lots of documents. And all of them had to be copied, bound and attached to every set of petitions that every circulator carries.

It’s a bear: You can’t send petitions around by mail, you can’t carry a whole stack to a big event … and it costs $18 to print and bind a set. The foes of 8 Washington will need at least 1,000 sets to get the required 28,000 signatures. That’s $18,000, just to get started.

Which would clearly appear to be a chill on the rights of the people to force a ballot referendum.

Still, they soldier on. Hestor told me she’s “fundraising like crazy” to get enough money not to pay signature-gatherers but just to print the petitions. Jon Golinger, who’s helping run the campaign, says he confident there will be more than enough copies to do the job.

So if you want to get a little exercise for your arms (don’t laugh –one petitioner is already having arm problems lugging this stuff around) and you’re interested in helping out, check out the campaign HQ at 15 Columbus or call 415-894-7008. There’s a rally Saturday/30 at 10am.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Putting 8 Washington on the ballot

Zelda Bronstein
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116
Putting 8 Washington on the ballot

The fall ballot’s going to be crowded — and one of the issues that may face a vote is the future of the 8 Washington condo complex, the waterfront multi-zillionaire housing that the city doesn’t need.

Opponents of the project have filed for a referendum on the Board of Supervisors approval, and they’re meeing Satruday June 23 at 15 Columbus at 10am to start the process of gathering signatures. It’s not easy — they need 28,000 signatures in 28 days, and this, I suspect, isn’t going to be one of those money-heavy deals with a lot of paid gatherers.

Former City Attorney Louise Renne will be there to lead off the festivities.

Me, I’d love to see this on the ballot in a high-turnout year when six supervisorial seats are up. Because it’s a great issue to discuss: Who is San Francisco building housing for, and why?

Is it ok that more than 80 percent of the people who work in San Francisco can’t afford to buy or rent a median-priced home? Is it ok that virtually all of the new housing getting constructed is out of reach to virtually all of the people who work here?

Is that in any way sustainable?

 

Dueling pot protests precede rejection of a permit appeal

Sasha Cuttler
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12
Dueling pot protests precede rejection of a permit appeal

Dueling demonstrations in front of City Hall yesterday afternoon – with one side supporting medical marijuana dispensaries and the other protesting the city’s February approval of three new clubs in the Outer Mission/Excelsior area – preceded the Board of Permit Appeals decision to reject an appeal challenging Mission Organics.

That was the first of the three clubs to pull their building permits to open up shop in a part of the city that currently has no cannabis dispensaries. Yet a group of residents from the region – which includes District 11 supervisorial candidate Leon Chow – has been angrily agitating against the clubs and claiming they expose children to an illegal drug.

Bearing signs that included “Stay away from pot clubs” and “Keep the weeds away from kids” – most in both English and Chinese characters, with a smattering of Spanish translations – the predominantly Asian protesters squared off against a slightly larger crowd of medical marijuana supporters bearing signs that included “Respect Local Law” and “Marijuana is Medicine.” Together, it was a crowd of a couple hundred lining the sidewalk, drawing reactions from passing motorists.

Asked whether he would try to undermine the city’s system of regulating medical marijuana facilities if elected to the Board of Supervisors, Chow told us, “We’re opposing this, but I don’t think it would be my priority.”

Chow said he was “opposing high density,” noting that the Planning Commission approved three dispensaries in the area on Feb. 21, but he also raised concerns that the clubs make it easier for children to get marijuana, that they cater to healthy people just looking to get high, and that city regulations conflict with federal law.

“We don’t want healthy young people to be exposed to people coming out of medical marijuana clubs,” Chow told us. Asked whether he had similar concerns about bars and liquor stores, he said that he did but “there’s nothing I can do” to shut down existing businesses that sell alcohol.

“I don’t want there to be more liquor stores,” he said, although he assured us that, “I’m not a conservative, crazy, church-going Republican.”

Yet supporters of Mission Organics – whose workers will be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union – did call Chow a hypocrite given that he works for SEIU-UHW. “So it’s a union representative opposing a union business,” said Matt Witemyre, an organizer with UFCW who was demonstrating in support of Mission Organics, which he said has agreed to a strict code of conduct that will make them good, responsible members of that community.

“The vast majority of the neighborhood is in support of the project,” Ariel Clark, an attorney representing Mission Organics, told us, characterizing protesters as a small yet vocal part of the neighborhood. The appeal was filed by Steve Currier, president of the Outer Mission Merchants and Residents Association.

Long after most of the protesters on both sides had gone home, the Board of Permit Appeals voted 3-1 to reject the appeal, clearing the way for Mission Organics to open on the 5200 block of Mission Street. But opponents have vowed to continue their fight and appeal the permits for the other two approved clubs – Tree-Med and The Green Cross, a venerable cannabis delivery service – when they apply for building permits.

Avalos emerges as the board’s main progressive champion

Sasha Cuttler
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23
Avalos emerges as the board’s main progressive champion

Sup. John Avalos seems to be the only consistent champion of progressive values at the Board of Supervisors these days, as he demonstrated once again yesterday as he tried to present some alternatives to the neoliberal corporatism that has seized City Hall over the last couple years.

Last week, Avalos was the only vote against a pandering proposal by Sup. Mark Farrell to exempt more small businesses from the city’s payroll tax, which is projected to cost the city $1.5 million next fiscal year and $2.5 million the following one, blowing a $4 million hole in the two-year budget that supervisors are now finalizing for approval in two weeks.

Yesterday, as the measure was about to receive final approval on its second reading, Avalos made a motion to delay it until after the fall election when voters may consider a pair of measures to transition from a payroll to gross receipts tax as the means of assessing local businesses. Mayor Ed Lee and Board President David Chiu introduced one measure that is revenue neutral, while an alternative by Avalos would bring in about $40 million per year.

Avalos didn’t have the votes for the long delay, so he got behind a compromise motion by Sup. Jane Kim to delay the measure until July 10 so the Budget Committee can at least factor it into its deliberations. Farrell opposed the move, insisting that “this is about creating jobs now,” despite the fact that businesses couldn’t apply for the exemption until next February.

A spirited debate followed, in which Avalos criticized City Hall’s current penchant for business tax cuts and questioned whether it really creates the jobs its boosters claim. He also noted that it is the multitude fee increases that local politicians have approved in recent years to balance the budget without raising taxes that have become most onerous for small businesses.

“When we were raising fees over the last five years, we were raising taxes on small businesses,” Avalos said, suggesting that rolling back those fees and taxing larger corporations that can afford it is a better strategy for helping small businesses and encouraging them to create jobs.

Eventually, Avalos won the short delay on a 7-4 vote, with Sups. Farrell, Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd, and Scott Wiener opposed.

Meanwhile, Avalos managed to place on the fall ballot an increase in the real estate transfer taxes paid on properties worth $2.5 million or more, convincing Sups. Kim, David Campos, and Eric Mar to support the proposal as the 5 pm deadline for at least four supervisors to place measures on the ballot neared. It would raise $16 million and compete with a similar measure by Lee that would raise $13 million through a smaller increase on properties worth more than $1 million.

Avalos also joined Campos and Chiu in opposing final approval for the 8 Washington housing project for the uber-wealthy. On the same 8-3 vote, the board also rejected Chiu’s efforts to allow opponents of the project to circulate referendum petitions without having to lug around a thick stack of all the studies referenced in the project approval.

Chiu appealed to his colleagues to support “citizens of San Francisco exercising the constitutional right to referendum,” but he won few sympathies on a board that these days seems most concerned with the interests of this city’s wealthiest individuals and corporations.

Ethics Commission undercuts the main witness against Mirkarimi

Sasha Cuttler
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213
Ethics Commission undercuts the main witness against Mirkarimi

The testimony of the star witness in Mayor Ed Lee’s official misconduct case against suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi came in for harsh criticism by the Ethics Commission last night, with that body striking most of it as prejudicial and unsupported hearsay evidence that should have never been introduced, something that even the city’s attorneys admitted and apologized for.

It was a serious blow to the city’s case that also undercuts the written testimony of the city’s domestic violence expert, attorney Nancy Lemon, who based much of her analysis and judgments on this discredited and disallowed testimony of Ivory Madison, the neighbor and confidante of Mirkarimi’s wife who reported the Dec. 31 domestic violence incident to police.

Meanwhile, Lee was confronted by a large pack of reporters following his monthly appearance before the Board of Supervisors earlier the day, which peppered him with pointed questions about his decision to bring what is evolving into an expensive, complicated, and nasty prosecution of Mirkarimi rather than simply allowing him to be recalled by voters. The exchange made news when Lee characterized Mirkarimi’s arm-grabbing incident as “the beating of his wife.”

Mirkarimi and his attorneys labeled that comment and much of the city’s case as simply a smear campaign that goes well beyond the narrow question of whether Mirkarimi committed official misconduct and should be removed from office, which the commission is still in the process of setting up procedures to answer.

Yesterday’s hearing dealt mostly with deciding whether to exclude or allow the written testimony of nearly two dozen witnesses. The only testimony that was stricken entirely was that of Paul Henderson, Lee’s criminal justice adviser, who testified that Mirkarimi’s guilty plea to misdemeanor false imprisonment for the grabbing incident would hurt his ability to function as the sheriff. The commission found the testimony to be irrelevant and prejudicial, clearly upsetting Deputy City Attorney Sherri Kaiser.

But the big news from last week’s hearing was the dim view that the commission took of Madison’s 22-page declaration, which painted Mirkarimi as domineering and oppressive, a bleak picture that she attributed to his wife, Eliana Lopez, as conveyed during repeated conversations between October and December as the couple was having marital problems. Madison is the main source supporting the city’s most serious allegations: that Mirkarimi abused his wife and then tried to thwart a police investigation

Commissioner Paul Renne – a career litigator appointed to the commission by the District Attorney’s Office – took the lead role in criticizing Madison’s testimony and the city for allowing it, ruing the fact that it was used by the Examiner and other media outlets to paint a defamatory “portrait of verbal abuse and child neglect inside Mirkarimi’s fear-ridden household,” as the Examiner put it on the cover of yesterday’s paper.

“I saw that and I thought maybe this idea of [taking initial testimony through written] declarations is not protective of the interests of everyone,” Renne said.

“I was disappointed by the content of Ivory Madison’s declaration. A first-year lawyer should know that much of it is inadmissible and it should not have been given to us,” Renne told Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith, calling it “clearly hearsay, clearly having the intention of poisoning the well of this hearing.”

Keith didn’t even try to defend most of the declaration, responding to Renne by saying, “We have an independent witness that is represented by [her own legal] counsel and we didn’t have control over everything that was submitted…I think the criticism is well-taken and we didn’t mean to put matters before the commission that are not relevant.”

“But you were the one who submitted the declaration,” Renne responded, telling Keith that the city must avoiding engaging in character assassination that goes beyond the scope of the commission’s inquiry, which will result in a formal recommendation going to the Board of Supervisors near the end of summer.

“My recommendation is we reject the declaration and you bring her in for live testimony,” Renne recommended. The rest of the commission seemed to agree with Renne’s criticism, but it opted to go through the declaration line-by-line, removing most of it from the proceedings. Madison is also expected to testify live and be subjected to a tough cross-examination by Mirkarimi’s attorneys, who say she has blown the incident out-of-proportion and broke the confidence of Lopez, who denies that Mirkarimi was ever abusive.

In arguing unsuccessfully for much of Madison’s written testimony to remain in the record, Keith told the commission that it was the basis for Lemon’s assessment of patterns of behavior by batterers, thus undercutting that testimony as well.

“If they’re untrue, they’re meaningless, right?” Renne asked Keith, referring to the sensational tales Madison told about Mirkarimi’s controlling behavior.

But Keith said that even if the stories Lopez told Madison were untrue or highly embellished – as Lopez’s attorney, Paula Canny, has implied as she characterized her client as building a child custody case in the event the couple divorced – they are still relevant to understanding why Madison reported Mirkarimi to the police.

“Whether or not these actions happened, it’s relevant to her concerns,” Keith said.

But Mirkarimi attorney Shepherd Kopp said that, like much of the city’s case, hearsay testimony based on flawed and prejudicial information should be irrelevant to these proceedings and shouldn’t be allowed as evidence against Mirkarimi.

“Their expert, Ms. Lemon, can believe what she wants, but that doesn’t mean it should come in as evidence,” Kopp said.

The hearing was continued to next week when Mirkarimi, Lee, and other key witnesses are expected to begin giving live testimony before the commission on June 28 and 29. Click here to read the various documents associated with the case.

Fixing SF’s sunshine problems

Andrew Lam
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8

EDITORIAL Open-government advocates are circulating a series of amendments to the city’s landmark Sunshine Ordinance, and a lot of them make perfect sense. In general, the changes bring the law up to date — and deal with the ongoing and increasing frustration over the lack of enforcement that has rendered toothless one of the most progressive open-government laws in the nation.

The advocates are trying to find four supervisors to place the measure on the November ballot. It won’t be easy: Already, the City Attorney’s Office has circulated a memo arguing that some of the amendments conflict with state law or the City Charter.

And in the background, Sup. Scott Wiener is looking to take another approach to open-government, asking city departments to examine the costs of complying with the existing law — which could easily become an argument for loosening the rules.

The new disclosure rules are relatively modest. A policy body would have to release all documents relevant to a decision 48 hours in advance of a meeting. Documents that include metadata — tracked changes and other digital information — would have to be released in full. Regulations on closed meetings around pending legal issues would be tightened.

But the bulk of the changes have to do with enforcing the law — and that’s where the battle lines are going to be drawn. The measure would create a powerful supervisor of public records, appointed by the city attorney, who would be directed to review all denials of public records — and who, by law, would be ordered to “not consider as authority any position taken by the city attorney.” That seeks to address a key shortfall in existing law — the City Attorney’s Office, which (like most law firms) is often driven by privacy and confidentiality, advises city agencies on what records can be withheld, and city officials who refuse to release documents simply say they were following the advice of their attorney.

The proposal would turn the Sunshine Task Force into an independent commission, some of whose appointments wouldn’t be subject to any official review. The commission would have extensive new authority to levy fines on city employees who it finds in violation of the sunshine law and to force the Ethics Commission — which routinely ignores sunshine violations — to take action against offenders.

The idea, of course, is to mandate consequences for violating the Sunshine Ordinance, which is flouted on a regular basis by public officials who pay no penalty and thus have no real reason to comply. But increasing the scope and certainty of punishment is one side of the coin — and if there were better ways to ensure compliance, none of that would be necessary.

In Connecticut, a state Freedom of Information Commission has the statutory authority to require any government agency to release a document or open a meeting. The panel doesn’t punish people; it obviates that whole process. And it would be much, much easier to get beyond the penalties and simply create a legal process that allowed the Sunshine Commission full authority to order public agencies to comply with its rulings. The commission rules that a meeting was illegally closed? Tapes of that meeting must be released, at once. Documents improperly withheld? Cough them up, now. The only appeal city officials would have: go to court and seek a secrecy order. If the supervisors and other city officials think the proposed rules go too far, they can refuse to put this measure on the ballot, but that be ducking the clear and obvious problems. And there’s an easy solution: Give the Sunshine Commission the same power as the FOI panel in Connecticut, which has operated just fine for more than 30 years.

Why do Lee, Chiu, and others want to stifle economic growth?

Sasha Cuttler
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16
Why do Lee, Chiu, and others want to stifle economic growth?

Why do Mayor Ed Lee, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, and San Francisco’s two major daily newspapers want to punish success? Because that’s exactly what their proposal to create a new gross receipts tax for businesses – in which corporations would be taxed more as they grow, thus encouraging economic stagnation – would do.

Right now, the city taxes businesses through a payroll tax, levying taxes based on the number of employees the company has. But under a gross receipts tax that would replace the payroll tax, employees have a disincentive to be productive and efficient and increase their companies’ profits because that would expose those companies to more of the city’s onerous tax burden.

Why would investors and employees want to grow a business in San Francisco when that would only submit them to higher taxes. Clearly, this is anti-business measure that is likely to plunge our local economy back into the depths of the recession. Don’t our leaders understand the need to help this fragile economic recovery?

Okay, okay, in case you haven’t guessed it yet, the previous three paragraphs are satire of the ridiculously overblown and misleading political rhetoric used by Lee and other critics of the city’s payroll tax, which they deride as as “job killer” that makes companies not want to hire new employees.

“Mayor Lee and Board President David Chiu proposed a gross receipts tax as an alternative to the City’s current payroll tax, which punishes companies for growing and creating new jobs in San Francisco,” Lee’s office wrote in a press release it distributed last week.

Yet my argument that a gross receipts taxes “punishes companies for growing” is just as logically sound as Lee’s argument that the payroll tax discourages companies from “creating new jobs” – and both arguments are also complete hyperbolic bullshit. But it’s seductively simple and widely parroted bullshit.

“To attract more companies to San Francisco and encourage existing employers to hire more employees, it is past time to do away with this tax,” our new neighbors down the hall, the editors of the Examiner, wrote in their editorial today, a oft-repeatedly refrain from the Chronicle and SF Chamber of Commerce as well. It later added that switching tax methods “wouldn’t penalize companies for employing people or paying them well. And city policy wouldn’t give employers any incentive to shed employees during a downturn.”

But the reality is that the 1.5 percent payroll tax is too small to really be a factor in the decision by corporations to add new employees, something they are already loath to do unless forced to by rising demand. It is simply one imperfect gauge of the size of a company and its ability to pay local taxes, just as the gross receipts tax is.

Health insurance costs, which Lee’s CPMC deal doesn’t adequate contain, is a far bigger factor in a company’s hiring decisions. So is commercial rent, which Lee’s corporate welfare policies are causing to go up downtown and throughout the city.

For decades, conservatives have tried to sell the general public on bogus trickle down economic theories that we all benefit from corporate tax cuts and that people will simply stop working if you tax them, ideas that should have been discarded as they were discredited. But they’re back with a vengeance, in supposedly liberal San Francisco of all places, actively peddled by key Lee supporters like billionaire venture capitalist Ron Conway, who only recently dropped his Republican party affiliation in favor of declined to state.

But it’s time to call out this voodoo economics for what it is: self-serving bullshit that ought to be rejected by citizens of a city that prides itself as being more educated and enlightened than the rubes in the flyover states that have been so thoroughly manipulated by the Republican Party and Blue Dog Democrats, to the detriment of our entire country.

Now, the Examiner’s argument that the business tax reform proposal would broaden and stabilize the tax base is a sound and meaningful argument, which is why the concept enjoys widespread support from across the ideological spectrum and is worth doing (although progressives rightful argue that if the tax base is being broadened then the city should reap some benefits from that, logic that Lee inexplicably resists).

Yet as the City Hall debates that will shape the details of business tax reform begin in a couple of weeks, it’s time to drop this misleading “job killer” label that has been promulgated by Republicans and other fiscal conservatives over the last decade and have an honest debate over what’s best for San Francisco’s private and public sectors.

Free Muni for kids: Tough slog at the MTC

Zelda Bronstein
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15
Free Muni for kids: Tough slog at the MTC

There are plenty of reasons I like the David Campos free Muni for youth plan. Anything that gets the next generation used to seeing Muni as the primary form of transportation in town is a good idea. It’s a great benefit for low-income kids (and around SF these days, the only ones who we’re giving any benefits to are businesses that get tax breaks, and those breaks are worth far more than the modest cost of the Campos plan). But it’s particularly important this year, because the school district is in serious financial straights and is probably going to eliminate most school-bus transportation next year. So poor kids and kids whose parents don’t have cars will have a harder time getting to school.

The supervisors approved this, and the mayor signed off on it — but some of the money is supposed to come from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, made up of regional representatives, and Campos is having a tough battle.

The MTC staff recommended that SF get $4 million in regional transit money for the idea, but not all, or even most, of the 16 members of the panel want to see one city get money for something all of them would love to do.

But: Someone has to try this as a pilot project, and SF, with the highest per-capita transit ridership, is a good place to start.

Sup. Scott Wiener is also on the MTC, representing San Francisco, and he’s totally against the free Muni for youth plan. And when it come up at an MTC committee, he was willing to vote for it — “I realize I lost that battle, and at the MTC I’m representing San Francisco,” he said — but only if MTC stipulated that no additional city money would go to the program.

And that kind of screws the whole thing up, since it will be hard to do with just the $4 million.

Ugh. Such a great idea, for a fraction of the money we’re handing out like hot dogs to everyone who asks for a tax break. Why don’t the poor kids get a break for once?

Bevan Dufty’s all wet and woofy

Zelda Bronstein
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20
Bevan Dufty’s all wet and woofy

I’ve had issues with Bevan Dufty. Oh, lord, I’ve had issues. He so often voted the wrong way on the Board of Supervisors and was the only major candidate running for mayor who answered No to the affordable housing question at the Guardian mayoral forum.

But I have to say, he’s doing quite the creative job as the mayor’s homeless coordinator. I’ve always liked the idea of the “wet house” — a place where alcoholics can drink in safety. It’s basic harm reduction, something that sometimes conflicts with the prevailing wisdom on sobriety but will almost certainly save lives. He’s taking the right line on panhandling — the other day, he told me, he spoke in front of the Interfaith Council and complained about the notion of refusing to give money to panhandlers because they might use it for drugs and alcohol.

“Well,” he said, “there are people in this room who generate money for drugs and alcohol. What if that principle applied to your paycheck?”

(I always give money to panhandlers. I also spend part of my paycheck on Bud Light and bourbon. Deal with it.)

And now he’s got the puppy plan.

You can laugh at this all you want, and a lot of people will, but I think it’s a fabulous idea. It won’t solve homelessness, and I know that these little side trips can divert attention from the massive social problem that is housing costs and homelessness in this city, but still:

There are dogs that need to be adopted. There are lonely people who are in SROs who can adopt those dogs. It might keep some of them from panhandling. It will certainly make a number of canine and human creatures a lot more happy.

Remember PAWS? (One of my favorite groups.) These folks figured out in the worst days of the AIDS pandemic that having companion animals around made people’s lives better, and they worked to help people with AIDS keep their pets. Now they work with seniors and low-income people, providing support and services.

The dogs don’t care if their owners are living in an SRO; they’re happy to have a home. The people who might be isolated and stressed living alone and with very little money have a bit of light in their lives. Although a lot of SROs don’t take pets (and I get it — pit bulls on crack and fleas and shit), the Community Housing Partnership is working with Dufty on a pilot program, and if it works he cann push it further.

And that’s not the end. Under Sup. Scott Wiener’s recent legislation, dog walkers (thousand of ’em) are supposed to have some basic dog-training skills, and there aren’t that many places that offer those classes — but Dufty tells me he thinks maybe some low-income SRO residents can learn to teach dog training classes and make some money that way.

Again: Little stuff. I still want to tax the rich to provide housing as a human right for all. But things are not good on the streets of San Francisco, and every little bit helps.

 

 

Guardian voices: The zombie condo converters

Zelda Bronstein
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28
Guardian voices: The zombie condo converters

What is the shelf life of  a really bad public policy concerning housing in  San Francisco?

When it comes to condo conversions of existing rent controlled apartments, the answer is that there is no limit on how many times this bad idea is taken off the shelf. Like a bad summer zombie movie, this undead keeps  walking, no matter what San Franciscans say.

A little history.  In 1982 Supervisor Willie Kennedy, not a bomb-throwing tenant advocate by any stretch, sponsored legislation that limited the  conversion of existing apartments to condos to no more than 200 a year. The measure did not touch new constriction, allowing unlimited condominium construction. Indeed, from 1983 to 2000, some 12,200 new condos were built, an average of some 680 units a year. Since 2000, nearly 100 percent of all new residential constriction is built as condos; there is no limit on renting a condo, but an annual limit in converting an existing apartment. Clearly, condos are a tenure type of housing that is dramatically expanding.

The reason Kennedy and the at-large elected Board of Supervisors voted for the annual limit was to protect rent-controlled apartments, a type of housingthat can’t be expanded. San Francisco’s 1978  rent control ordinance exempted all new construction from being under rent control. So rent-controlled apartments were a fixed number — all apartments built before 1978 — banned by law from ever being expanded. 

Yet those apartments are the largest number of affordable housing units available to moderate and middle income households. Thus, there’s a rational desire to preserve them by a public policy that limits their conversion to condos because they are declining in numbers.

And San Francisco voters understand and support this very rational policy.

In 1989, realtors and speculators tried to overturn the annual limit, proposing a measure that said if 51 percent of a building’s existing tenants voted for a conversion, then the building could be converted with no annual limit. This proposal laid out a future of a Hobbesian society here in San Francisco with one set of well-to-do tenants fighting another set of less-well-off tenants, building by building. San Francisco voters defeated the measure 63-37.

But in the land of the living dead condo converters, no is never the answer.
 
In 2002, Gavin Newsom, Tony Hall and Leland Yee, Plan C, and the Chamber of Commerce placed another measure on the ballot to repeal the annual limit. It too, was  rejected: 60 percent voted no, and 40 percent yes. The measure was defeated in all of the supervisorial districts except  Newsom’s D2, Tony Hall’s D7, and Leland Yee’s D4.

Tenant and affordable housing advocates were not unmoved by the desire of tenants, especially in privately owner rental housing facing Ellis Act and TIC evictions, to seek the protection of home ownership. In 2008 they supported an amendment to the Subdivision Code carving out from the annual limit conversions of apartments by nonprofit, limited equity housing
co-ops.

Now were are confronted again by a desire to allow more conversions of rent controlled units by private buyers who bought into the TIC dodge around the annual condo conversion limit.

Since TIC’s do not require a sub-division map, creating legally recognized separate units, they became “grey market” condos. With hot mortgage money flowing during the bubble, TIC owners could get financing. Now, banks are actually following some laws and will not lend to buy a legally grey TIC.  Thus the move to get them converted to legal condos.
 
This is, in its most basic form, yet another bailout caused by speculative capitalism. We seem to no longer believe in the market as an economic system, in which bad economic decisions result in economic loss for the folks involved. We now seem to believe in the “market society” — in which those with money get to keep it no matter what bad decisions they make.

What this is all about is not really homeownership but about home sales. After all, if you have a TIC you already have a home. You want to convert it to a condo not to live in, but to sell. To make it easier to sell TICs would make it harder to sell the thousands of already approved but stalled new condos.

Mayor Lee administration want to stimulate these stalled condo developments, claiming they will create constriction jobs. The Farrell and Wiener condo conversion plan undercuts these efforts and, of course, will create no jobs for anyone but realtors and moving companies.

This is called a “contradiction of capitalism,” when one set of capitalists seek, to the disadvantage of another group of capitalists, to get the government to intervene on their behalf.  But it does prove once again that Lenin was right when he said that one could count on one set of capitalists to compete with each other to sell rope to hang another set.

It’s really bad economic policy, and even worse housing policy.

The 8 Washington embarrassment

Zelda Bronstein
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16
The 8 Washington embarrassment

I wasn’t shocked by the vote on 8 Washington. I knew it was happening; I knew we’d lost when the EIR went through. I knew we couldn’t count on a solid progressive bloc any more. I knew that the lobbying was intense.

But I have to say, at the end of the day I was embarrassed. Because the supervisors sold the city cheap.

In the earlier board discussions, Sup. Christina Olague and Sup. Eric Mar mentioned their concerns about the heigh and bulk of the project and said they would work with the developer, Simon Snellgrove, on changes. But the final project was exactly the same size.

Olague and Sup. Jane Kim were concerned about the amount of parking; the developer agreed to cut 50 spaces. But the actual size of the garage won’t be reduced at all; the only promise: There won’t be valet parking, so maybe not so many cars will fit.

Yes, Snellgrove agreed to set aside some scholarships for low-income kids to swim in the pool, which is a great thing and I fully support it. For a project that, according to available figures, will net the developer $200 million in profit — according to Sup. David Chiu’s analysis, a 72 percent rate of return — the scholarship money is peanuts.

There’s an additional 50 cent parking levy to pay for surface improvements in the area.

But as Chiu asked at the June 12 meeting, “Is the city getting an appropriate level of benefits based on Snellgrove’s profits?” Project foe Brad Paul — a veteran of more than 30 years of the city’s development wars — doesn’t think so. “They got nothing,” he told me.

Here’s how it went down:

Chiu started off by introducing the board’s budget analyis, Harvey Rose. Rose said he’d reviewed the finances of the project, and concluded that the city would get $50 million less out of the project than the developer or the Port of San Francisco, which owns some of the land and is a primary proponent, had originally claimed. Chiu also noted that not all the documents were in the file, but nobody else seemed to care.

In fact, through most of the discussion — limited discussion — and final votes, it was pretty clear that nobody was swayed by any of the facts that Chiu put forward. This deal was done long before the board members took their seats.

Chiu offered a series of amendments, none of them terribly radical. He pointed out that the deal requires the city to pay the developer $5 million for open-space improvements. “That’s an anomaly,” Chiu said, and moved that it be removed.

Kim, who throughout the meeting was the strongest supporter of the project, argued that the city often reimburses developers for open space. More, she said, compared to what the city has asked other major residential developers to give, this project is just dandy. “I would not say this is not a fair deal for the city,” she told her colleagues.

The vote on the $5 million giveaway? Developer 6, SF 5. Siding with Snellgrove: Christina Olague, Scott Wiener, Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, and Jane Kim. Siding with Chiu and project opponents: John Avalos, David Campos, Malia Cohen, and Eric Mar. It’s an odd lineup — Cohen doesn’t always vote with the progressives, and I have to say it’s strange to see Kim and Olague siding with the four most conservative supervisors.

Chius’s second proposal: Since the city’s benefits were $50 million less than advertised, why not add $14 million to the affordable housing fee?
Developer: 7. Affordable housing: 4. Voting for the developer: Olague, Wiener, Chu, Elsbernd, Farrell, Kim and Mar.

Okay, one last try. Chiu suggested maybe just $2 million more for affordable housing. Wiener, as is he way, went off on his usual complaint that too much of the affordable housing money is for poor people and not enough for the middle class. The final vote:

Developer: 6. Affordable housing: 5. Voting for the developer: Olague, Wiener, Chu, Elsbernd, Farrell, Kim.

Kim, again, took the lead in promoting the deal on the final vote, saying that a parking lot and a private club were not a good use for the space and that “we are achieving here is a higher and better use for the land.” That’s what every developer talks about, by the way — higher and better use.

She also talked about One Rincon, that hideous tower next to the Bay Bridge that was approved after then-Sup. Chris Daly cut a deal with the developer that the San Francisco Chronicle denounced as a “shakedown.”

Kim said that, considering the much-smaller size of the Snellgrove project, the benefits were richer than the Rincon deal.

I never liked the Rincon deal — that tower’s a disaster, an ugly scar on the skyline, and there was nowhere near enough affordable housing money. That’s because I think that the city should be building six affordable units for every four market-rate units, that there’s no need for more housing for the very rich and that our current housing policy is a disaster. (The Guardian wrote an editorial at the time that said it was good that Daly had gotten that much money, but was dubious about the whole project. In retrospect, we were too kind.)

I think all my readers at this point know that. So does Daly.

But I asked the former supervisor anyway to comment on the difference between 8 Washington and One Rincon. His thoughts:

1. The Rincon Hill agreement was negotiated by the district Supervisor working together with the communities most impacted by the development. 8 Washington was opposed by the district Supervisor and many nearby residents.
2. Most people in the South of Market were not diametrically opposed to highrise development in that location. The Planning Department had been working on a Rincon Hill neighborhood plan and was recommending upzoning for the area.
3. Rincon Hill had no waterfront trust issues.
4. The Rincon HIll development impact fee was $25 per square foot (over and above the required inclusionary affordable housing fee even though the Mayor’s Office contended that over $20 per square foot would kill the deal.) According to Kim’s release, her 8 Washington deal netted an additional $2 million for affordable housing and a $.50 parking surcharge. This even though development in Rincon Hill is not as valuable as the northern waterfront.

Folks: I think the city got taken to the cleaners here. I’ll stipulate that I’m against this project for much broader reasons. And maybe I’m just an old commie who thinks that the richer you are, the more you should give back, that the affordable housing fees on the most expensive condos in San Francisco should be higher than normal, that if Snellgrove nets $200 million, then the city by definition left too much on the table.

But I don’t think I’m alone in believing that if you’re going to approve something that will make a developer this rich, and let him use public land to do it, on the waterfront, you ought to get your fair share. And that didn’t happen.

Embarrassing.

No deal yet on business tax reform as competing measure are introduced

Sasha Cuttler
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21
No deal yet on business tax reform as competing measure are introduced

Mayor Ed Lee and his business community allies failed to reach an agreement with labor and progressives by today’s deadline for submitting fall ballot measures to the Board of Supervisors, leading progressive Sup. John Avalos to introduce a business tax reform measure that would compete with Lee’s proposal.

The Avalos measure would raise $40 million in new General Fund revenue to restore recent cuts to city services while Lee’s would essentially be revenue-neutral, although Lee did tweak the formulas to raise about $13 million in new revenue that would be dedicated to a new Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which would be created by another ballot measure that Lee was having a hard time funding in the face of business community opposition.

“I don’t believe trickle down economics works, except for the 1 percent,” Avalos told the Guardian, arguing the importance of recovering revenue that the city lost when the biggest downtown corporations sued the city in 2001 to invalidate a gross receipts tax. Both the Lee and Avalos measures would gradually convert the current payroll tax into a new version of the gross receipts tax, which is preferred by most of the business community.

So, will voters in the fall be faced with competing ballot measures? Probably not, according to the same sources from the business and progressive sides of the negotiations who told us last week that it appeared a deal was in the offing, something they still believe.

“This is the beginning of the negotiations,” said the business community source, noting that both measures won’t be approved until next month, with discussions about merging them ongoing. “I’m sure this is part of the process and they will agree on a number.”

Our labor source agreed, predicting the two sides will come to an agreement because neither side wants competing ballot measure, but noting that Lee appears to be trying to create divisions between the progressive revenue coalition and the affordable housing advocates. “That’s just positioning on their part, but it doesn’t feel like good faith bargaining,” the source said.

Mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey seemed to leave the door open for compromise, telling the Guardian, “The Mayor believes that to be successful, we should continue building consensus around business tax reform and that it’s important that the business community continue to be key partners in that effort.”

Lee is trying to placate an emboldened business community, which has taken a hard line position on opposing new taxes even while seeking ever more tax breaks and public subsidies. In fact, Sup. Mark Farrell had another business tax cut on today’s board agenda, cutting the payroll tax for small businesses at a cost of more than $2 million to city finances.

“I believe we need to do all we can to incentivize job growth in our small business community,” Farrell said.

Avalos said he agrees with helping small businesses – which is why both his and Lee’s business tax reform measure shifts more of the tax burden to the large corporations that have been so profitable in recent years – but that “we should not be putting a hole in the city’s budget to do so.”

In a sign of just how strong the business community has become at City Hall compared to the progressive movement that had a board majority just two years ago, the tax cuts were approved on a 10-1 vote, with only Avalos opposed.

Hospital standoff

Andrew Lam
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2
Hospital standoff

steve@sfbg.com

The controversial and long-awaited proposal by California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) to build a 550-bed luxury hospital atop Cathedral Hill and to rebuild St. Luke’s Hospital has finally arrived at the Board of Supervisors — where it appears to have little support.

So far, not one supervisor has stepped up to sponsor the deal, and board members say it will have to undergo major changes to meet the city’s needs. “There are still a lot of questions that remain,” Sup. David Campos told us, citing labor, housing, community benefits, and a long list of other issues that he doesn’t believe CPMC has adequately addressed. “It tells me there’s still more work to be done.”

CPMC, which is Sacramento-based nonprofit corporation Sutter Health’s most lucrative affiliate, has been pushing the project for almost a decade. Its advocates have subtly used a state seismic safety deadline for rebuilding St. Luke’s — a hospital relied on by low-income residents of the Mission District and beyond — as leverage to build the massive Cathedral Hill Hospital it envisions as the Mayo Clinic of the West Coast.

But the project’s draft environmental impact report shows the Cathedral Hill Hospital would have huge negative impacts on the city’s transportation system and exacerbate its affordable housing crisis. And CPMC has been in a pitched battle with its labor unions over its refusal to guarantee the new jobs will go to current employees or local residents and be unionized. There are also concerns with the market power CPMC will gain from the project, how that will affect health care costs paid by the city and its residents, and with the company’s appallingly low charity care rates compared to other health care providers (see “Lack of charity,” 12/13/11).

CPMC had refused to budge in negotiations with the Mayor’s Office under two mayors, for which Mayor Ed Lee publicly criticized the company’s intransigence last year. But under pressure from the business community and local trade unions who support the project, Lee cut a deal with CPMC in March.

That development agreement for the $2.5 billion project calls for CPMC to pay $33 million for public transit and roadway improvements, $20 million to endow community clinics and other social services, and $62 million for affordable housing programs, nearly half of which would go toward helping its employees buy existing homes.

While those numbers seem large, community and labor leaders from San Franciscans for Healthcare, Housing, Jobs and Justice (SFHHJJ), which formed in opposition to the project, say they don’t cover anywhere near the project’s full impacts. And given that CPMC made about $180 million in profit last year in San Francisco alone — money that subsidizes the rest of Sutter’s operations — they say the company can and should do better.

“This is about standing up to corporate blackmail,” SFHHJJ member Steve Woo, a community organizer with the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, told us.

 

PIVOTAL PROJECT

CPMC is perhaps the most high-profile project the board will consider this year, one that will impact the city for years, so the political and economic stakes are high.

The Planning Commission voted 5-1 on April 26 to approve the deal and its environmental impact report, citing the project’s economic benefits and the looming deadline for rebuilding St. Luke’s. The Board of Supervisors was scheduled to consider the appeal of that decision on June 12 (after Guardian press time), but activists say supervisors planned to continue the item until July 17.

In the meantime, the board’s Land Use Committee has scheduled a series of hearings on different aspects of the project, starting June 15 with a project overview and presentation on the jobs issue, continuing June 25 with a hearing on its impacts to the health care system. Traffic and neighborhood impacts would be heard the next week, and then housing after that.

Calvin Welch, a progressive activist and nonprofit affordable housing developer, said the project’s EIR makes clear just how paltry CPMC’s proposed mitigation measures are. It indicates that the project’s 3,000 new workers will create a demand for at least 1,400 new two-bedroom housing units. Even accepting that estimate — which Welch says is low given that many employees have families and won’t simply be bunking with one another — the $26 million being provided for new housing construction would only create about 90 affordable studio apartments.

“We’re going to end up, if we want to house that workforce, subsidizing CPMC,” Welch told us.

Compounding that shortcoming is the fact that the Cathedral Hill Hospital is being built in a special use district that city officials established for the Van Ness corridor — where there is a severe need for more housing, particularly affordable units. The SUD calls for developers to build three square feet of residential for every square foot of non-residential development.

“That would require building 3 million square feet of residential housing with this project,” Welch said. “We don’t think $26 million meets the housing requirement for this project, let alone what was envisioned by this [Van Ness corridor] plan.”

SFHHJJ is calling for CPMC to provide at least $73 million for affordable housing, with no more than 20 percent of that going to the company’s first-time homebuyer assistance program. That assistance program does nothing to add to the city’s housing stock and critics call it a valuable employee perk that will only increase the demand for existing housing — and thus drive up prices.

But the business community is strongly backing the deal, and the trade unions are expected to turn out hordes of construction workers at the hearing to make this an issue of jobs — rather than a corporation paying for its impacts to the community.

“After a decade of discussion, debate and compromise, the city’s departments, commissions, labor, business and community groups all agree on CPMC,” San Francisco Chamber of Commerce President Steve Falk wrote in a June 8 e-mail blast entitled “Message to the Board of Supervisors: Don’t Stand in the Way of Progress.”

“The fate of our city’s healthcare infrastructure now lies solely with the Board of Supervisors,” the Chamber says. “When it comes time to vote, let’s insist they make the right choice.”

Yet it’s simply inaccurate to say that labor and community groups support the deal, and both are expected to be well-represented at the hearings.

 

CARE FOR WHOM?

Economic justice issues related to health care access and costs are another potential pitfall for this project. SFJJHH activists note that no supervisors have signed on to sponsor the project yet — which is unusual for something this big — and that even the board’s most conservative supervisors have raised concerns that the city’s health care costs aren’t adequately contained by the deal.

“There’s a significant amount of dissatisfaction with the deal, even among conservatives,” SFJJHH member Paul Kumar, a spokesperson for the National Union of Healthcare Workers, told the Guardian.

On the progressive side, a big concern is that CPMC is proposing to rebuild the 220-bed St. Luke’s with only 80 beds, which activists say is not enough. And even then, CPMC is only agreeing to operate that hospital for 20 years, or even less time if Sutter’s fortunes turn around and the hospital giant begins losing money.

CPMC Director of Communications Kathryn Graham, responding by email to questions and issues raised by the Guardian, wrote generally and positively about CPMC and the project without addressing the specific concerns about whether housing, transportation, and other mitigation payments are too low.

On the jobs issue, she wrote, “Our project will create 1,500 union construction jobs immediately—and preserves and protects the 6,200 health care professional jobs that exist today at the hospitals. Currently, nearly 50 percent of our current employees live in San Francisco. During the construction phase of this project, we are committed to hire at least 30 percent of workers from San Francisco. We will create 500 permanent new jobs in just the next five years—200 are guaranteed to be local hires from underserved San Francisco neighborhoods. We don’t know where you got the ridiculous idea that our employees must reapply for jobs at our new hospitals. That is incorrect.”

Yet CPMC has resisted requests by the California Nurses Association and other unions to be recognized at the new facility or to agree to card-check neutrality that would make it easier to unionize. And union representatives say CPMC has offered few assurances about staffing, pay, seniority, and other labor issues.

As one CNA official told us, “If they aren’t going to guarantee jobs to the existing employees, those are jobs lost to the city.”

“We’re giving Sutter a franchise over San Francisco’s health care system for 30 to 40 years, so we should ensure there are basic worker and community protections,” Kumar said.

Welch and other activists say they believe CPMC is prepared to offer much more than it has agreed to so far, and they’re calling on the supervisors to be tougher negotiators than the Mayor’s Office was, including being willing to vote down the project and start over if it comes down to that.

“They make too much money in this city to just leave town,” Welch said of CPMC’s implied threat to pull out of San Francisco and shutter St. Luke’s. “It’s bullshit.”

Why I hope Sup. Farrell is wrong about condos

Zelda Bronstein
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213
Why I hope Sup. Farrell is wrong about condos

So Sup. Mark Farrell thinks the Board of Supervisors is ready to turn its back on the tenants movement and vote for legislation that would increase evictions, eliminate rental housing and undermine one of the most important pieces of tenant legislation to come out of City Hall in decades?

Gawd, I hope he’s wrong.

From the Examiner:

Similar proposals have gone nowhere at City Hall. Farrell acknowledged it has been a “third rail,” but he suggested the political climate has shifted. “This is a different Board of Supervisors and this is a different time,” Farrell said.

Yeah, it’s a different Board of Supervisors. Five years ago, the 8 Washington project would never have been approved in its current form. Five years ago, Ed Lee wouldn’t have been elected mayor.

But I don’t think this board is ready to abandon the tenant vote.

Making condo conversions easier is a huge deal. When San Francisco put a limit on condo conversions more than 20 years ago, it was a landmark law that put the preservation of affordable, rent-controlled housing over the needs of speculators. Over the past decade, the single greatest threat to tenants in this city is Ellis-Act evictions done to create tenancies in common. And the only check on more of that happening is the disincentive posed by the limits on condo conversions.

If Farrell gets his way, and TIC owners can bypass the conversion lottery, tenant organizations will be furious. There are, at best, five reliable pro-landlord votes on the board, so It’s not going to happen without either David Chiu, Christina Olague or Jane Kim siding with Farrell. A lot of things suprise me in local politics, but that would be a shocker.

 

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