Board of Supervisors

Newsom talks taxes

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By Tim Redmond

And he appears to be against them. At least, that’s what a brief interview with SF Appeal suggests:

Although that doesn’t mean the Mayor is seriously considering EVERYTHING — especially not tax hikes. The same wisdom as before applies: tax hikes don’t poll well, therefore it’s probably a waste of time to present them to voters. Newsom doesn’t support browning out fire stations, and wants to protect police officers’ salaries (which increased by another 4 percent this year). A bigger sales tax only hits poor voters, Newsom said. The state’s already raising taxes, and the school district has its own parcel tax measure, so we’re back to controversial moneymakers like the condo-conversion fee.

“They hate it,” said Newsom, gesturing to Board members’ doors. Though the Mayor was quick to mention that he and Avalos have a good working relationship, something that might not always play well with Avalos’s progressive buddies on the board.

Ah yes, the condo conversion fees. The idea is to make it easier to turn rental housing into condominiums as long as you pay a fee. That would, of course, decimate the rental housing stock and lead to more evictions.

But the Examiner reports that the mayor seems to be ready to play some political hardball — he won’t talk about new taxes unless the supes give him his condo conversions and a equally bad plan to sell of taxicab permits:

Generating more revenue could soften the blow of the cuts. Newsom indicated he has not ruled out tax measures on the November ballot. But he also emphasized the need to approve two of his previous proposals that stalled after meeting opposition, including from members of the Board of Supervisors. Those proposals are charging a fee for people who want to do a condo-conversion right away, instead of having to wait for years, and auctioning off permits to drive taxicabs.

The thing about both of those items is that they represent short-term money. You’ll get a lot of fees quickly — but no structural fix.

And the supervisors won’t want to go for either of them.

Editor’s Notes

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Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

You can see the city’s next fiscal crisis, and all the bloodshed it will involve, sticking up its ugly head at the Board of Supervisors these days.

The immediate issue on the table is a supplemental appropriation of $7 million to save the jobs of some 500 frontline public health workers who are scheduled to receive pink slips this month. But the deeper issue is how the supervisors are going to deal with the fundamental unfairness of the mayor’s budget — particularly as the issue gets reopened this winter. Because the city’s finances are not improving, and it’s almost certain that there will have to be midyear changes. And — sadly — there’s no indication that Mayor Gavin Newsom is going to be any more willing to work with the board and look for progressive solutions than he was in the summer.

The budget deal the supervisors signed off on in June wasn’t such a good deal at all, in part because it rested on Newsom’s promise to work toward a revenue measure for the November ballot. In retrospect, San Francisco missed an opportunity here — lots of Bay Area cities went to the ballot with tax increases to head off service cuts, and voters approved nearly all of them.

But Newsom never tried very hard to convince his allies on the board to go along with that plan and let the whole thing slide, putting the city in the position where layoffs that will cut deeply into the public health infrastructure are moving forward.

And now seven supervisors — all of the progressives plus Bevan Dufty — are ready to take an emergency step to stop the layoffs. They’re willing to put $7 million in reserve money up front, now. And if they can convince Sophie Maxwell to change her position and join them, the board will put the ball right back in the mayor’s court.

The thing is, the city’s budget crisis never really goes away. It’s a structural imbalance; save for the occasional boom years, San Francisco simply doesn’t bring in enough revenue to cover the costs of services people in this city want and need. It’s much worse in a recession, of course, but it’s always bad. And it’s going to remain an annual problem until the folks at City Hall make some major structural changes.

If, for example, we really want to avoid raising any new taxes — Newsom’s line — then we have to downsize, and the only fair way to do that is to start at the top. There are highly paid management–level people all over this city who don’t do nearly as much work in a week as a typical nurse’s aide does every day. The rampant cronyism slowed down after Mayor Willie Brown left office, but it never went away. A lot of Brown appointees still have cush jobs, and Newsom has added to the list. None of those folks ever get laid off.

With the layoffs scheduled this month, more than 1,000 members of SEIU Local 1021 — the union that represents frontline workers — will have been laid off. How many members of the Management Employees Association? Exactly 25.

And if we’re not going to look at radical restructuring, starting with department organization and management, then we have to bring in more money. That’s taxes, Gavin. In fact, to make this city solvent for the future we should probably do both.

Nobody wants to talk about that, though. So the women who hold the public health system together get canned, the wealthy enjoy low taxes, and the crisis goes one, year after year.

I hope Sup. Maxwell realizes what this is about — because if she votes the right way, it might actually force the mayor to make some of those tough choices he loves to talk about.

DPH Budget Cuts: The saga continues

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By Rebecca Bowe

The ongoing saga of budget cuts affecting a majority of people of color and women in the city’s Department of Public Health took yet another twist this afternoon.

For now, the Budget & Finance Committee has voted to restore the cuts, but it won’t be heard by the full Board of Supervisors until next Tuesday, when eight votes will still be needed to pass the $8 million supplemental appropriation. Meanwhile, in the wake of the city controller’s dramatic pronouncement yesterday that the Board wasn’t allowed to take anything out of the General Fund reserve, Sup. Chris Daly had to do some fancy footwork to come up with a new way to restore the cuts.

At a special meeting of the Budget & Finance Committee this afternoon, Supervisors voted to restore the cuts — but since City Controller Ben Rosenfield said he was unable to certify a spending decision that would draw approximately $8 million from the General Fund reserve, Supervisors voted to dip into the $45 million that the Board placed on reserve across major city departments at the 11th hour of budget deliberations back in July. In the Department of Public Health, it represents about $11.9 million in salaries and benefits. Since drawing from this pot of money wouldn’t render the budget out of balance, the city controller can sign off on it as a legitimate move.

The idea to use the DPH reserve, instead of General Fund reserve dollars, was suggested by Sup. Chris Daly after City Controller Ben Rosenfield announced yesterday afternoon that he would not allow the Board to vote on a supplemental appropriation that spent General Fund reserve dollars because the city is projected to be in dire straits financially. “The previously appropriated spending no longer appears to be supportable,” Rosenfield told the Supervisors this afternoon. “The difference exceeds the value of the General Fund reserve.”

The city controller has never barred the Board from taking a vote on a supplemental appropriation due to a budget deficit. But Rosenfield said this afternoon that in the handful of instances when the controller has had to notify the city of a projected budgetary shortfall, this was the first time that a vote was pending on a supplemental appropriation.

Controller, in radical move, defies supes

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By Tim Redmond

In a move that’s unprecedented in modern San Francisco history, city controller Ben Rosenfield appears poised to try to block the Board of Supervisors from approving a $7 million supplemental budget appropriation to prevent 500 layoffs of frontline health department workers.

It’s the latest twist in a convoluted battle that pits SEIU Local 1021 and the progressives on the board against the mayor, who wants to lay off nurses aides and clerical workers.

In a budgetmessage posted today, Rosenfield says that the city is running $53 million in the red, and that “until this shortfall is addressed, the Controller’s Office will not be able to certify funds from the General Fund Reserve for other appropriations.”

Rosenfield, a Newsom appointee, is apparently relying on a very old City Charter section that looks like this:

S.F. Charter Sec. 9.113 (d) “General Fiscal Provisions”

No ordinance or resolution for the expenditure of money, except the
annual appropriation ordinance, shall be passed by the Board of
Supervisors unless the Controller first certifies to the Board that
there is a sufficient unencumbered balance in a fund that may legally be
used for such proposed expenditure, and that, in the judgment of the
Controller, revenues as anticipated in the appropriation ordinance for
such fiscal year and properly applicable to meet such proposed
expenditures will be available in the treasury in sufficient amount to
meet the same as it becomes due.

But in my 25 years of covering City Hall, I have never once seen this happen. There have been bad budget deficits before, and supplemental appropriations, and the controller has never told the supervisors that they can’t spend reserve money.

“About the only thing Rosenfield and I agree on is that this has never been done before,” Sup. Chris Daly told me this evening.

The controller’s report notes that several city departments are running over budget — but interestingly, Human Services and Public Health, the targets of the layoffs, are running a surplus of $8.1 million (exactly what the supervisors want to spend).

Among those departments facing shortfalls: The Sheriff’s Office, which is in the red because of “an increase in jail population” — possibly due to the new police chief’s crackdown on drug dealing in the Tenderloin.

I couldn’t reach Rosenfield tonight, but Daly notes that the same legislation was before the board last week, and Rosenfield didn’t object. “So he’s already certified it,” Daly said. “And I’m not sure how he can decertify it now.”

I’m not going to argue that the city has money to burn, but there are always mid-year budget changes in bad times. The supes and the mayor are going to have to make some budget adjustments. But there’s also unanticipated money coming in — for example, San Francisco stands to get about $33 million in federal stimulus money for the Department of Public Health in April, and that funding will be retroactive to the previous year. So this year’s shortfall will actually be $33 million less.

Tina Johnson, a legislative affairs staffer for the state Department of Health Care Services, confirmed the near-certain availability of that money in a Nov. 16th letter to state Sen. Leland Yee.

In any other year, I suspect the controller would follow the normal practice of informing the mayor and the supes that the budget was out of line (as it is, in one way or another, almost every year) and then allow them to come up with some mid-year corrections. But this battle between Local 1021 and the mayor has gotten ugly, and I’m sure there was pressure on Rosenfield.

Look for a showdown at the board meeting tomorrow (Nov. 17). Daly told me that whatever Rosenfield says, “we’re going to have a vote on this.”

Ballard is out, but will Newsom’s tone change?

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By Steven T. Jones

The Mayor’s Office has announced the departure of press secretary Nathan Ballard, a glib and caustic communicator who unnecessarily sowed division with members of the Board of Supervisors and various community groups. The question now is whether this represents an impending change in tone for the lame-duck mayor.

While this afternoon’s press release makes the split sound amicable, it’s hard to know what’s actually going on in this increasingly squirrely administration. But Mayor Gavin Newsom’s quote in the release is telling: “Nathan Ballard is unflappable, smart and a fierce advocate.”

I would agree with each of those adjectives, but it was the last one that really characterized his approach and its contribution to the bunker mentality that the Newsom Administration has developed over the last few years, with its Nixonian penchant to treat all potential opponents as enemies to be publicly scorned and belittled.

John Ross at Modern Times

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By Tim Redmond

John Ross, author, poet, civic honoree and longtime Bay Guardian Mexico City correspondent, will be at Modern Times Nov. 18th to read from his new book, El Monstruo.

John is a San Francisco treasure, and his events are not to be missed. Here’s the scoop:

SAN FRANCISCO (Nov. 2nd) – Poet/author/journalist/ and globe-trotting troublemaker John Ross will present his latest cult classic “El Monstruo – Dread & Redemption In Mexico City” (Nation Books) on Wednesday, November 18th at Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District beginning at 7:00 PM.

“El Monstruo” (“The Monster”) tells the sordid tale of Mexico City, the most contaminated, corrupt, crime-ridden, and conflictive megalopolis in the Americas, where Ross has lived for the past quarter of a century. The narrative spans no less than 50,000,000 years, beginning way back in the Paleocene and time traveling all the way to last spring’s swine flu panic.

“John Ross sings a lusty corrido about a great betrayed city” writes Mike Davis, author of “City Of Quartz” and “Planet Of Slums.” “Ross has fashioned a stirring love letter and cautionary tale about his beloved Mexico City,” adds Kirkus Reviews.

John Ross is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction and an equal number of poetry chapbooks, the most recent of which is “Bomba!” (Calaca de Pelon, Mexico City.) “Iraqigirl”, a diary of a teenager coming of age under U.S. occupation that Ross developed and edited was published by Haymarket this July. John Ross is the winner of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Upton Sinclair Prize (The “Uppie”) for his 2005 phantasmagorical autobiography “Murdered By Capitalism – 150 Years of Life & Death On The American Left” and the 1995 American Book Award for “Rebellion From the Roots”, the first published account of the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas that the author has accompanied from its earliest hour and about which he has written four books.

In addition to Modern Times, John Ross will present “El Monstruo” at Northtown Books, 957 Street in Arcata California on Friday the 13th at 7 PM and will bring the Monster to the UC Berkeley campus when he speaks at the Center for Latino Policy Research, 2547 Channing Way, on MonsY, November 30th at Noon.

In recognition for his decades-long accomplishments as an activist and writer, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently declared May 12th “John Ross Day.”

Declaring that San Francisco has become “a sanctuary city for the rich,” Ross declined the “honor.”

Inside the mayor’s office with SEIU Local 1021

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By Rebecca Bowe

Yesterday, around 4 p.m., 22 union members rushed into the mayor’s office (the plush reception area on the other side of those stately double doors) and demanded to meet with Mayor Gavin Newsom. Immediately blocked by security from continuing all the way to the mayor, they vowed to wait — and remained there for about two hours. The protesters were there as representatives or supporters of SEIU Local 1021, which has launched a months-long fight against Newsom in the wake of layoffs and deep salary cuts in the Department of Public Health inflicted by city budget cuts.

In the City Hall corridor just outside the mayor’s office, scores of other SEIU members gathered in support of those inside the reception area. Chants, cheers, and the refrain from Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” could be heard from outside. The SEIU members inside, meanwhile, circled up and prepared to be arrested. Meanwhile, the clerks working in the reception area continued diligently working away at their desks. (Each of the mayoral staffers declined to comment. At one point, mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard walked through the room, and the union members hollered at him to please ask the mayor to show some leadership. “Will do,” he said with a smile, and disappeared behind a door.)

The mayor never showed. Nor did any clash take place between the union members and the plainclothes security officers who were coolly guarding the doors leading out to the corridor and back to the mayor’s actual office. The union members stayed until approximately 6:15 p.m., chanting, singing, delivering impromptu speeches, and resolving that they would keep up the fight. Here’s what it was like in there.

They finally negotiated an exit with the security officers, and joined the others outside the doors.

Then, they flooded into the street outside City Hall with the other workers and proceeded to circle around the intersection of Polk and McAllister. Sup. Chris Daly joined them and thanked them for their work, vowing to do what he could to restore the cuts.

At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, supervisors voted seven to four to dip into the General Fund reserve to restore the jobs of certified nursing assistants and unit clerks in the city’s Department of Public Health.

But after it was announced that the ordinance had passed on first reading, and the SEIU workers who’d packed the Board Chambers let out a celebratory whoop, some one pointed out that eight votes were needed for approval. The measure had actually failed — and the disappointment in the room was palpable.

Housing cars or people?

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Housing cars or people?

news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY San Francisco Board of Supervisors President David Chiu has introduced legislation that would curtail the ability of residential property owners in Telegraph Hill, North Beach, and Chinatown to evict tenants and replace them with garages.

The ordinance, which is currently being reviewed by staff before it is considered by the Planning Commission, seeks to prohibit the construction of garages in rental properties that have been the site of a no-fault eviction in the past decade. Even if no evictions have occurred, owners would have to apply for a conditional use permit from the Planning Department to build the garage.

"We have seen a pattern of applications for garage installations following no-fault evictions," Chiu aide David Noyola explained.

The Ellis Act, a state law passed in 1986, gives owners the right to evict tenants if they decide to "withdraw from the rental market." The law specifies that all units in the building must be evicted. In 2005, the Board of Supervisors also began requiring landlords to pay $4,500 to each evicted tenant for relocation costs, with an additional $3,000 for seniors and the disabled.

Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenant Union, said the Ellis Act was intended to allow property owners to get out of the business of being a landlord, but "in practice it is utilized far more often by developers who are looking to rent the properties at considerable profit."

Although there are restrictions on re-renting property that has been cleared of tenants under the Ellis Act, a primary concern of tenant activists is the use of evictions to convert the building into a tenancy-in-common. A TIC is a form of joint ownership whereby multiple owners can buy the building and live in separate units.

"Often the real estate developer will try to make improvements following a TIC conversion to make it more sellable, and one of those is garages," Gullicksen said.

Malcolm Yeung, the public policy manager of the Chinatown Community Development Center, told us that "a garage generally increases the market value of a property by $30,000 to $50,000."

Yeung worked with Chiu’s office to develop the legislation after arguing in a discretionary review hearing before the Planning Commission that a particular Ellis Act eviction in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood was in violation of Sec. 101.1(b) of the San Francisco Planning Code, which states "that existing housing and neighborhood character be conserved and protected in order to preserve the cultural and economic diversity of our neighborhoods."

Following the distribution of Ellis Act notices to four low-income families, the property owner also filed for a garage add-on. Yeung successfully made the case that the eviction contradicted the Planning Code’s commitment to the preservation of economic diversity. He told us that the addition of garages "incentivizes owners to take on the financial costs of an Ellis Act eviction" and can "transform communities from long-term low-income residents to TICs, which go on the market at high value."

Gullicksen also said landlords often threaten an Ellis Act eviction and offer a buyout. "One of the benefits of the legislation is that it put tenants more in the driver’s seat when negotiating a buyout," he said. He also noted that homeowners are twice as likely to own cars as renters, which means that the conversions to TICs increase the number of vehicles in neighborhoods already congested with automobiles.

But like with all housing activity, there have been a greatly reduced number of both Ellis Act evictions and buyouts since the crash of the housing and credit markets a year ago, slowing to zero from March through May before slowly picking up in July.

Critics have decried the legislation as creating the burden of obtaining a conditional use permit and exacerbating the lack of street parking in the neighborhoods. But Noyola told us, "This problem has been around for a long time and will continue to be an issue when the market picks up again."

The legislation would also decrease the number of parking spaces that may be built with each new housing unit, part of a citywide trend. Noyola said the legislation is "progressive planning policy that prioritizes housing over parking, especially in the densest part of the city."

Crossing the line

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Crossing the line

sarah@sfbg.com

Estella (a fake name she used to protect her identity) is a single mother of five who came to the United States from Latin America when her oldest daughter was a baby, hoping for a better future for her family.

But thanks to a shift in San Francisco’s sanctuary policy that Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered last year, Estella’s daughter — we’ll call her Maria, now 15 — was seized by federal immigration authorities this fall, ripped from her family and community, and shipped to a detention center in Miami.

Her crime: she got in a fight with her younger, U.S.-born sister.

The experience shattered Estella’s dreams and terrified her family, whom immigration experts describe as "mixed status" because Estella also has U.S.-born children.

It also convinced Estella to speak out publicly to try to convince Newsom that legislation that ensures due process for kids like her daughter is the right thing to do.

Last month, a veto-proof majority of the Board of Supervisors voted to support amendments to Newsom’s current policy in an effort to make sure juveniles get their day in court before being hastily and needlessly referred to federal immigration authorities.

But the next day, Newsom vetoed the legislation introduced by Sup. David Campos, claiming it violates federal law. And now Newsom is refusing to debate the issue with Campos or meet with the community whose kids are at risk of being deported because someone in local law enforcement suspects them of being here without paperwork and accuses them of committing a serious crime.

Under Newsom’s policy, which he ordered without public review in June 2008, city officials are required to refer juveniles whom they suspect of being undocumented felons to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when they book them at Juvenile Hall.

Last month Newsom defended his policy, saying that the city’s sanctuary ordinance, as originally conceived and adopted, was designed to protect law-abiding city residents.

"It was never meant to serve as a shield for people accused of committing serious crimes in our city," Newsom wrote in his veto letter.

His comments followed close on the heels of a San Francisco Chronicle editorial claiming the majority of these juveniles detained are subsequently found guilty of serious crimes.

But this is not true: the Juvenile Probation Department’s 2008 statistics show that 68 percent of the young people arrested in San Francisco that year were found to be innocent.

And as Estella’s story shows, under Newsom’s policy juveniles who have not committed serious crimes are at risk of being reported and detained for possible deportation.

This means a teenager — a 15-year-old girl in this case — could get dropped off in a country she last saw when she was a baby, with no family to meet and take care of her. These kids are at risk of being preyed upon by criminal gangs or "coyotes," often-unscrupulous human traffickers known to abuse and abandon young people during the perilous border crossing.

Most kids in Maria’s situation would want to return to their U.S. home — to their parents, families, friends — the only community they know. But since the federal government has made border crossings increasingly perilous, getting back to the U.S. often requires several thousand dollars in smuggler fees — leaving teens open to harsh exploitation.

In other words, deportation — in Maria’s case, for the crime of a fight with her sister — could be a sentence to years of forced labor, life in a violent gang … or death.

BAD DAY AT SCHOOL


It’s not clear how Maria got into the altercation at school with her sister; fights between siblings and friends in high school are hardly a rare or even terribly remarkable experience. But in this case, Estella told us, a school official reported her daughters’ fight to a social worker, who brought a police officer to Estella’s house for questioning.

As a result, Estella’s daughter was taken to Juvenile Hall. A year ago, she would have had access to a lawyer, who would have helped sort things out. If the fight had been serious or violent, she might have been placed on supervised probation.

But thanks to Newsom’s new policy, probation officers referred her to ICE and its agents swooped in, seized her, and shipped her to Miami.

Ultimately, a juvenile judge in San Francisco recommended Estella’s daughter be put on probation — but by that time, Maria was already in Florida, in a detention center run by a private company under contract to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

Detainees have no right to a public defender or free legal services. It’s often hard for their families to find out exactly where they are, so detainees wait in detention for immigration officials to decide what to do next.

Maria was fortunate that ORR recommended temporary reunification. Immigrant advocates say that Estella’s daughter is now back in the Bay Area with her family, but is still under deportation proceedings.

They note that one way parents can get their kids back from ICE is by giving up information — including the names, fingerprints, and addresses of other family members — to federal immigration authorities. But parents are not always willing to do that, especially if it could lead to other family members, including children, being deported.

As of press time, a super-majority on the Board of Supervisors is planning to override Newsom’s veto of Campos’ legislation at its Nov. 10 meeting. But the mayor has said he intends to ignore the Campos legislation — a posture that is not only legally questionable, but leaves immigrant parents facing the ongoing nightmare that their teens could get deported to a country they never knew for a crime they didn’t commit.

Immigrant advocates cite the case of a 14-year-old boy who is under ICE removal proceedings after he brought a BB-gun to school, and a Mexican youth who was deported, even though the District Attorney’s Office dismissed the robbery charges against him.

Patti Lee, managing attorney for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office Juvenile Unit, described how the feds recently snatched a kid outside juvenile court, even though the District Attorney’s Office had dismissed his case.

"The kid was coming into court with his mother and the ICE agent had a photo of him, and grabbed him outside the building," Lee said. "His mom was hysterical and it was traumatic for our staff."

These are not isolated cases. ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice told us that 150 juveniles from San Francisco have been referred to ICE, and 114 have been taken into federal custody and transferred to detention facilities since Newsom ordered his policy change in 2008.

Immigration advocates say some of the kids have been sent to Yolo County, while others have been shipped to Oregon, Washington, Indiana, and Florida, making visits from family members, who may themselves be undocumented, extremely difficult.

Eric Quezada, an immigrant advocate and the executive director of Dolores Street Community Services, told us that while kids may try crossing the border to rejoin their families and friends, "lacking the serious dollars to come back, many are deported into extreme poverty or to be part of a gang."

Lee notes that federal immigration authorities have a duty to reunite children with their families. "But if the family is undocumented, its members are afraid to step forward, afraid to step into the Youth Guidance Center," Lee said. "So there are some children sent back to their alleged country of origin, without a family and resources. Because we can’t track them, that may be a death sentence."

DEATH MARCH


As a volunteer with No Mas Muertes (No More Deaths), a humanitarian camp in Arizona, SF Pride member Molly Goldberg has seen firsthand what being deported and trying to cross the border means to immigrants in terms of loss of dignity and life.

Arizona has been an immigrant rights testing ground for years. Shortly after its creation as an agency, the Department of Homeland Security provided millions of dollars to build a wall blocking the easiest terrain, forcing border crossers into the most rugged and dangerous areas, Goldberg said.

"They are bottle-necking it so folks cross in the most difficult, deadly area," she said.

Since the wall went up, the numbers crossing have gone down — but numbers dying have gone up. Goldberg said 184 people have died so far this year. But the numbers of dead could be much higher. "Because of the vultures and other scavengers, bodies are gone pretty quickly," she said.

This year, Service Employee International Union Local 1021 organizer Robert Haaland accompanied Goldberg to the border. Haaland says what he saw convinced him of the need for Campos’ amendment.

"I kept thinking about the Campos legislation in terms of seeing the impact of people crossing the border after being deported," Haaland said. He described a makeshift memorial to a 14-year-old El Salvadoran girl named Josseline whom smugglers left behind after she got sick from eating a bad can of tuna, according to her younger brother. He managed to cross the border, but Josseline died after wandering alone and without water in the border’s dry and inhospitable no man’s land for a week.

Others get left behind and die because they are wearing the wrong shoes and end up with badly blistered feet or are too weak to continue the grueling trek. Haaland recalled seeing water bottles that volunteers had left on the coyote trails but had subsequently been slashed, presumably by nativist vigilantes.

"The Border Patrol is using the desert as a weapon and harassing people who go to the border to give humanitarian aid," Haaland said.

That’s where some of the kids Newsom has sent for deportation will wind up.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?


Although Newsom has made it clear he intends to keep referring kids to ICE, their whereabouts and fate under his policy remains somewhat of a mystery.

Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesperson for ORR, which is responsible for detained juveniles deemed "unaccompanied" (a category they could be placed in if they refuse to divulge the whereabouts of undocumented family members in the U.S.) said he can’t divulge their precise whereabouts because of juvenile confidentiality rules.

Wolfe told the Guardian that kids could be placed in juvenile halls or shelter-like facilities run by private contractors, depending on their crimes. He said ORR is required to report to Congress annually about the program, but the report for FY 2008-09 won’t be available for a few months.

In the meantime, Wolfe e-mailed the Guardian a copy of ORR’s 2007-08 report, which includes a map featuring colored circles to represent the numbers of apprehended kids based on Department of Homeland Security referrals.

The map shows that in 2007-08, less than 100 juveniles were apprehended in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington; 100-250 were apprehended in San Diego; 1,000-1,600 in Phoenix; and 1,600-2,600 at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Presumably, next year’s map will include a colored circle around San Francisco, representing an apprehension rate similar to San Diego. But it probably won’t reveal which facilities these kids were sent to or whether they were ultimately deported, even though these kids were apprehended on the basis of referrals made by local city officials.

Nor will it show what the local community knows full well: that many deported kids cross back over the border to rejoin their families. Only now, because they have been deported, they are forced to go underground and are at risk if being recruited by gangs.

The federal government’s Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program was transferred from ORR to the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. "The program is designed to provide for the care and placement of unaccompanied alien minors apprehended in the U.S. by Homeland Security agents, border patrol officers, or other law enforcement agencies and are taken into care pending resolution of their claims for relief under U.S. immigration law or released to adult family members or responsible adult guardians," reads the U.S. Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. "Resolution of their claims may result in release, granting of an immigration status (such as special immigrant juvenile or asylum), voluntary departure, or removal."

According to a 2008 ORR report, "a great number of UAC have been subjected to severe trauma, including sexual abuse and sexual assault in their home countries or on their journey to the U.S.: gang violence, domestic violence, traumatic loss of a parent, and physical abuse and neglect. In addition, UAC experience the increased probability of ongoing trauma as a result of their uncertain legal status and return to difficult life circumstances."

The report also notes that "UAC have indicated that, among other reasons, they leave their home countries for the U.S. to rejoin family, escape abusive family relationships in their home country, or find work to support their families in their home country."

ORR has approximately 7,200 UAC a year in its facilities, which are operated by organizations such as the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. There are more than 41 ORR-funded care provider facilities in 10 different states.

Last year’s ORR report noted that average length of stay in federal detention facilities is 55 days before children are released to family members and other sponsors, move into the adult system, or are returned to their home countries.

"As these programs increase and ICE increasingly places people in them, there’s a financial incentive to keep detaining people." Francisco Ugarte, an immigration lawyer with San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network, told us.

But Abigail Trillin, staff attorney for Legal Services for Children, says ORR is doing a better job of handling juveniles than ICE did. "ORR has the right and obligation to try and place these kids in the least restrictive option," Trillin said. "But being reunified with your family does not in any way change the fact that you are under federal removal proceedings. So you still have a very significant risk of being deported alone to your country of origin."

Having a documented parent helps a juvenile make the case for staying in the U.S. permanently, as does having grounds for asylum. Having siblings who are U.S. citizens or having been here since you were a small child does not significantly help someone’s case.

But ending up in lockup can makes things worse. "If a child is in an ORR secure detention facility, they are less likely to fight their deportation case — a fight that could take up to two years — than if they were reunified with their family," Trillin said. "We have not yet seen a juvenile move from a secure facility to a foster home, but we have in the case of kids who are in ORR shelters for more than three months and have a legal case for staying."

Still, she said it’s possible a child could be flown to an airport in their country of origin without much subsequent support in most Latin American countries. "If they are Mexican, they are flown to the airport in Tijuana, and if there are no relatives, they are turned over to a child welfare agency in Mexico," Trillin said. "I don’t believe that level of cooperation exists elsewhere, though there might be some temporary shelters for them to wait in while their relatives are coming."

All countries of origin will have some involvement, Trillin noted, to the extent that they are contacted because all these kids need travel documentation. But that support is minimal. As she said, "Our country feels that it’s done its duty once the consulates are contacted."

LETTER OF THE LAW


In his Oct. 28 veto letter, Newsom claimed that the supervisors had changed the sanctuary ordinance by "restricting the ability of local law enforcement officers to report juveniles who are in custody after being booked for the alleged commission of a felony and are suspected of vioutf8g the civil provisions of our sanctuary ordinance."

But in a Nov. 2 response to Newsom’s veto, Campos countered that his amendment won’t shield anyone guilty of such crimes and he invited Newsom to publicly debate the issue. "The board and the people of San Francisco deserve to understand more fully why you intend to ignore this policy and the time-honored democratic processes followed in enacting it," Campos wrote. "At stake is the protection of innocent immigrant children that have been unjustly separated from their families."

He also accused Newsom of spreading misinformation about what federal law requires. "City officials have no affirmative legal duty under federal law to expend limited local resources and funding on immigration enforcement," Campos wrote, citing a July 1, 2008 public memo from the City Attorney’s Office and legal experts from Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and UC Davis Law School who "have all agreed that there is no federal duty to inquire or report."

Noting that the City Attorney’s Office has made it clear that his proposed amendment is "a legally tenable measure," Campos concluded that "the point at which a referral of a minor is made to ICE is ultimately not a legal decision but a policy decision.

"Our criminal justice system rests on the principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty; that is why providing youth an opportunity to contest a charge in court is a matter of basic due process," Campos continued. "The current policy is creating a climate of fear in immigrant communities, which means that immigrants who have been victims or witnesses to crimes are afraid to come forward."

The City Attorney’s Office has declined to comment on whether the mayor has the authority to ignore properly approved legislation. "We are not going to comment on legislation that’s still in the legislative process," City Attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey told us.

But Campos believes the mayor lacks any such authority. "Can the mayor ignore legislation because he believes it’s illegal? Does he have the authority to have the final say? I don’t think so," said Campos, who is an attorney.

Trillin sees Newsom’s refusal to debate the issue with Campos as further confirmation that the Mayor’s Office doesn’t have a substantive argument that its sanctuary policy is a good one. "They can’t defend their position. They can’t win on substance," said Trillin, whose organization frequently provides legal guidance and support for immigrant youth.

She noted that the controversy that prompted Newsom’s policy change started with family reunification efforts. City officials were trying to reunite undocumented teenagers who were caught selling crack in downtown San Francisco with their families in Honduras when ICE officials intercepted them at George Bush Intercontinental/Houston Airport in December 2007 and May 2008.

These interceptions led U.S. Attorney Joe Russoniello, who opposed San Francisco’s sanctuary ordinance when it was introduced in the 1980s, to claim that flying youth back to their families without first referring them to ICE was tantamount to harboring criminals.

After the apprehended city officials claimed they were acting in accordance with San Francisco’s sanctuary ordinance, Russoniello convened a federal grand jury to investigate the city’s juvenile probation department. That investigation still hangs over JPD, even as Sen. Barbara Boxer mulls recommending candidates to replace Russoniello.

Meanwhile, right-wing activists have been blaming the city’s sanctuary policy for the tragic 2008 shootings of three members of the Bologna family, after they discovered that 23-year-old Edwin Ramos, the alleged killer and an MS-13 gang member, was apprehended by San Francisco’s juvenile justice system as a teen, but was never referred to the feds.

Facing this firestorm, Newsom caved to public pressure and followed the advice of Kevin Ryan, his Republican criminal justice director and the only prosecutor fired for cause during the 2006 U.S. attorneys firing scandal, by ordering that the city treat juvenile immigrants as adults, referring them to ICE at the moment of arrest on felony charges.

CHILDREN ON ICE


The same day supervisors approved Campos’ amendment, outgoing LAPD Chief William Bratton urged his department to keep its focus on fighting crime, not illegal immigration, plunging headfirst into the controversy over the federal 287(g) program.

Created in 1996 and expanded in the wake of 9/11 purportedly to counter terrorism and violent crime, the 287(g) program allows the federal government to enter into agreements giving local police the authority to enforce federal immigration laws. This has led many immigrants to mistrust and refuse to cooperate with local cops.

"My officers can’t prevent or solve crimes if victims or witnesses are unwilling to talk to us because of the fear of being deported," Bratton wrote in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece.

"I think what Chief Bratton is saying is different from what we are hearing in San Francisco" Campos said. "Mayor Gavin Newsom seems to be implying that San Francisco’s juvenile probation officers have no choice. But really, there is no law requiring them to refer kids to ICE. So it seems that what the mayor is doing is creating a de facto 287(g) program that gives local officers the power of federal agents."

That’s why Campos said it’s important for Newsom to participate in a public discussion of his intentions. "We need to ask the mayor if what he is saying is that JPD is an arm of ICE. If that’s the case, we need to know."

President Obama promised during the campaign that immigration reform would be part of his legislative agenda, but the White House hasn’t acted much on the issue. Yet immigration attorney Francisco Ugarte is hopeful that the tide is turning locally, as witnessed by the outpouring of support for Campos’ legislation. "Thirty-three percent of San Francisco residents are foreign-born," Ugarte observed. "That’s a really high number, a significant part of the constituency."

Russoniello told the Guardian that immigrants are not entitled to the same level of due process as citizens, implying that the U.S. has a two-tier criminal justice system. "There are citizens, and then there are people," Russoniello said.

Ugarte finds such arguments laughable. "The federal government has to make the argument that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to undocumenteds," Ugarte said. "These are hare-brained ideas that stem from hate and fear. The wonderful part of our country is that we have respect in the laws for all."

Ugarte believes that blaming the tragic Bologna murders on the city’s immigrant youth policy is like arguing that putting people on parole leads to crime. "Yes, there are going to be bad apples," Ugarte said. "But that doesn’t mean we can solve our problems by sending people to another country. L.A. thought it could get rid of gangs by deporting people to El Salvador. But guess what? They only grew the problem."

Patti Lee of the Public Defender’s Office doesn’t believe that the sanctuary policy will change unless the Board exerts financial pressure on Juvenile Probation. "I do not believe the policy will change because JPD is under orders from the mayor," Lee explained. "But JPD is supposed to comply with the legislation. So the Board of Supervisors, through its Public Safety Committee, could question JPD’s chief about his current process and why he isn’t complying with it. The board does have control over JPD’s budget, so it can put the squeeze on them."

"When police arrest and detain an undocumented child and bring them into detention charged with a felony, the minute they come in front gate, JPD has been directed to contact ICE," Lee said. "So we are not even aware until a day or two later, when we receive a police report or when we get a house list the next day, if someone is ICEed or not."

If the kids are unaccompanied and there are no family members in town, they typically go to juvenile lock-up for 30 days and then are released to ICE and get deported," Lee said.

"They are being ICEed even if they are adjudicated," Lee added, noting how her department got one youth’s charges reduced to misdemeanors but JPD reported the youth to ICE anyway, based on the current policy that any undocumented person booked on a felony should be reported at the moment of booking. "So they were ICEed without due process," Lee said. "And these are children."

Newsom: support just-cause eviction law

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Newsom: support just-cause eviction law

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom, reeling from criticism of his disappearing act last week and his failure to quickly reengage with San Francisco, has an opportunity to repair some of his tattered image, particularly among progressives, and mend fences with the majority of the Board of Supervisors. It wouldn’t even require a dramatic or groundbreaking step — all he has to do is agree to sign legislation by Sup. John Avalos extending eviction protections to roughly 20,000 vulnerable San Francisco renters.

The Avalos legislation clears up a lingering loophole in the city’s rent-control ordinance, a leftover piece of a bad deal that tenants were forced to accept when the city first moved to limit rent hikes 20 years ago. Back in 1978, with greedy landlords taking advantage of a housing shortage to jack up rents by astronomical rates, the supervisors and then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein were under immense pressure to pass some kind of control. But the landlord-friendly mayor and at-large elected board were unwilling to do what Berkeley had done across the bay by setting permanent limits on how much landlords could raise prices. Instead, they approved a watered-down measure aimed largely at fending off a tenant initiative that would have gone further.

The deal capped rent hikes — but only for existing tenants, allowing landlords to raise rents whenever a unit became vacant. And, after the real estate industry whined that rent control would cause developers to stop building new housing in San Francisco (a dubious claim if ever there was one), the supervisors agreed to exempt all newly constructed housing (that is, anything built after 1979) from any rent regulations at all.

That housing is still exempt from rent control — and because the rent control law also includes eviction protections for tenants, the post-1979 housing stock is also exempt from those rules.

Most San Francisco tenants enjoy what’s known as "just-cause" eviction rules — that is, you can’t toss a tenant out on the streets without a reason. Failure to pay rent, of course, is legal grounds to send someone packing; it’s also okay to force a tenant out if the owner wants to move in.

But for the roughly 20,000 renters living in newer units, evictions can happen on a landlord’s whim — and one of the most dangerous problems is the lack of protection for people who live in a foreclosed building. Tenants in older, pre-1979 buildings have the right to continue to live in the property, under the same lease or rental agreement, after a sale or foreclosure. The Avalos bill would extend that protection (and the other just-cause protections) to all tenants in the city.

It’s hardly a radical idea — and given the boom in high-end housing construction in this city over the past decade (slowed only by the economic crash), the claim that tenant protections will doom new housing is demonstrably false. It would save vulnerable residents from losing their homes, protect people who live (through no fault of their own) in foreclosed properties, and restore a level of fairness to the local housing market.

The measure will almost certainly get six votes on the board, so the only real obstacle is the threat of a Newsom veto. The mayor should state publicly that he supports the measure and will sign it — which could be the start of a new, more promising chapter in Newsom’s political career.

Herrera to Russoniello: Back off or we’ll see you in court!

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By Steven T. Jones

In the wake of today’s Board of Supervisors vote to override Mayor Gavin Newsom’s veto of requiring due process to play out before city officials turn undocumented juveniles over to federal immigration authorities, City Attorney Dennis Herrera sent an fascinating letter to U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, a conservative who had threatened to bring charges against employees who follow the new law.

Herrera is walking a thin line between Newsom, who unilaterally weakened the city’s long-standing Sanctuary City law last year under pressure from nativists and the San Francisco Chronicle; and supervisors and immigrant rights activists who say the mayor’s new policy violates the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty. Newsom has threatened not to enforce the new policy, which becomes law in 30 days, citing the legal threat to city employees.

But Herrera has now attempted to remove that threat by asking Russoniello to withdraw it, and issuing a threat of his own if the holdover Republican attorney doesn’t back down: San Francisco may turn to the courts to overturn Russoniello’s interpretation of federal law, which Herrera calls “broad.”

The important part of the letter states: “Because of the Board of Supervisor’s adoption of the Amendment, and in view of your earlier assertions that certain City officials may have violated federal criminal laws regarding their past handling of certain juvenile arrestees and your seemingly broad interpretation of the harboring statute, I ask that the U.S. Attorney’s Office provide an assurance that if the city proceeds to implement this Amendment in accordance with its terms, City law enforcement officers and employees will not be prosecuted for violating federal criminal laws. I would appreciate your timely response to this letter, preferably by December 7, 2009. If the U.S. Attorney’s Office does not provide us with an adequate assurance that it will not prosecute City officials or employees who would implement the Amendment, my Office may be compelled to explore with City policymakers other options regarding the implementation and enforcement of the Amendment, including the possibility of filing a declaratory relief action in federal court.”

For a complete interpretation of the frightening implications of Newsom’s policy stance, read tomorrow’s Guardian cover story.

Editorial: Newsom: support just-cause eviction law

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For the roughly 20,000 renters living in newer units, evictions can happen on a landlord’s whim.

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom, reeling from criticism of his disappearing act last week and his failure to quickly reengage with San Francisco, has an opportunity to repair some of his tattered image, particularly among progressives, and mend fences with the majority of the Board of Supervisors. It wouldn’t even require a dramatic or groundbreaking step — all he has to do is agree to sign legislation by Sup. John Avalos extending eviction protections to roughly 20,000 vulnerable San Francisco renters.

The Avalos legislation clears up a lingering loophole in the city’s rent-control ordinance, a leftover piece of a bad deal that tenants were forced to accept when the city first moved to limit rent hikes 20 years ago. Back in 1978, with greedy landlords taking advantage of a housing shortage to jack up rents by astronomical rates, the supervisors and then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein were under immense pressure to pass some kind of control. But the landlord-friendly mayor and at-large elected board were unwilling to do what Berkeley had done across the bay by setting permanent limits on how much landlords could raise prices. Instead, they approved a watered-down measure aimed largely at fending off a tenant initiative that would have gone further.

Newsom and the next chapter

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By Tim Redmond

It’s a little weird that Gavin Newsom just disappeared after dropping out of the governor’s race. I had a feeling that he wasn’t going to hold up well under the pressure; he loves celebrity, loves to be on the A-List and loves to hear himself talk, but he can’t take a punch. And getting hit, a lot, is a big part of statewide politics. So I suspect that when he realized that this particular dream was over — clunk! — and that in two years, he’s not going to be anything but Gavin Newsom, citizen, he had a little meltdown.

This ought to be cause for concern: Somebody has to run the city for the next two years, and either Newsom is going to buck up, get back to work and try to change the way he does business — or he’s going to be a bitter lame-duck who can’t get anything accomplished except to go all Nixonian and attack his enemies.

I’m really hoping it’s the former — and now that he’s off his statewide horse, I think it’s safe to say that most of the supervisors, including the progressives he so disdains, would be more than willing to start working with him. I’d love to see the mayor come back from Hawaii with a clear understanding of what went wrong with his campaign. As we point out in an editorial today:

If the real Gavin Newsom had been anything like the campaign picture his handlers tried to present, he would have been a serious candidate. Newsom the candidate was a leader who brought San Franciscans together to get things accomplished. He was a progressive thinker who created universal health care and an effective budget process with a rainy day fund that prevented teacher layoffs. He was bold enough to challenge federal and state law on same-sex marriage and demand equality for all.

But Newsom the mayor was actually a snippy politician who refused to work with the Board of Supervisors and would never engage his opponents. He was great at press releases but short on accomplishments — universal health care and the rainy day fund were projects put together by Tom Ammiano, one of the supervisors the mayor disdained, who is now a state Assembly member. He refused to take a lead role fighting Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to promote clean energy and public power. And for all his success in moving same-sex marriage forward, he never once managed to bring that kind of progressive energy or policy-making to economic issues. His budget this year was the same as Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget — cuts and fees only. No new taxes.

As a result, the progressives and independent voters in his own town didn’t support his campaign — and without the environmentalists, labor, tenants, and progressive elected officials from San Francisco behind him, there was no way he could generate an honest grassroots movement.

I’d love to see the mayor reach out to the folks who have been snubbed all these years. Let’s talk about making the city budget work for everyone — and if that means some new revenue sources (which lots of other cities seemed to be able to pull off), at least he doesn’t have to worry about running statewide after raising local taxes.

He can take a hard look at where his cuts have really hit and try to work with labor to spread the pain a little better and chop from the top, not just the bottom.

He can become a real, serious clean-energy leader by strongly supporting CCA and taking a visible public role in the campaign against PG&E’s anti-public-power initiative.

The city’s ready for a Gavin, Chapter Two. And he wouldn’t be the first politician to rebound from a defeat, learn his lesson and start his career up again.

Any bets on whether that’s going to happen?

The battle for District 6

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The battle for District 6

tredmond@sfbg.com

The race to replace Chris Daly — the always progressive, sometimes hotheaded supervisor who has dominated District 6 politics for almost a decade — is becoming one of the most important battles of 2010, with the balance of power on the board potentially in play.

Through whatever accident of politics and geography, San Francisco’s even-numbered districts — five of which will be up for election next fall — haven’t tended to fall in the progressive column. Districts 2 (Marina-Pacific Heights) and 4 (Outer Sunset) are home to the city’s more conservative supervisors, Michela Alioto-Pier and Carmen Chu. District 8 (the Castro) has elected the moderate-centrist Bevan Dufty, and District 10 is represented by Sophie Maxwell, who sometimes sides with the progressives but isn’t considered a solid left vote.

District 6 is different. The South of Market area is among the most liberal-voting parts of San Francisco, and since 2000, Daly has made his mark as a stalwart of the board’s left flank. And while progressive are hoping for victories in districts 8 and 10 — and will be pouring considerable effort and organizing energy into those areas — Daly’s district (like District 5, the Haight/Western Addition; and District 9, Mission/Bernal Heights) ought to be almost a gimme.

But the prospect of three progressive candidates fighting each other for votes — along with the high-profile entry of Human Rights Commission director Theresa Sparks, who is more moderate politically — has a lot of observers scratching their heads.

Is it possible that the progressives, who have only minor disagreements on the major issues, will beat each other up and split the votes enough that one of the city’s more liberal districts could shift from the progressive to the moderate column?

A FORMIDABLE CANDIDATE


A few months ago, District 6 was Debra Walker’s to lose. The Building Inspection Commission member, who has lived in the district for 25 years, has a long history on anti-gentrification issues and strong support in the LGBT community.

Jim Meko, who also has more than a quarter century in the district and chaired the Western SOMA planning task force, was also a progressive candidate but lacked Walker’s name recognition and all-star list of endorsements.

Then rumors began to fly that school board member Jane Kim — who moved into the district a few months ago — was interested in running. Kim has been a leading progressive voice on the school board and has proven she can win a citywide race. She told me she’s thinking seriously about running, but hasn’t decided yet.

Having Kim in the race might not have been a huge issue — in District 9 last year, three strong progressives competed and it was clear that one would be the ultimate winner. But over the past two weeks, Theresa Sparks has emerged as a likely contender — and if she runs, which seems more than likely at this point, she will be a serious candidate.

Sparks picked up the kind of press most potential candidates would die for: a front-page story in SF Weekly and a long, flattering profile in San Francisco magazine, which called her "San Francisco’s most electrifying candidate since Harvey Milk." Sparks does have a compelling personal tale: a transgender woman who began her transition in middle age, survived appalling levels of discrimination, became a civil rights activist and now is seeking to be the first trans person elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

She has experience in business and politics, served on the Police Commission, and was named a Woman of the Year by the California State Assembly (thanks to her friend Sen. Mark Leno, who would likely support her if she runs).

"Anyone who knows Theresa knows that she is smart, a formidable candidate, can fundraise, and will run a strong race," Robert Haaland, a trans man and labor activist who supports Walker, wrote on a Web posting recently.

She’s also, by most accounts (including her own) a good bit more moderate than Walker, Meko, and Kim.

LAW AND ORDER


Sparks doesn’t define herself with the progressive camp: "I think it’s hard to label myself," she said. "I try to look at each issue independently." Her first major issue, she told me, would be public safety — and there she differs markedly from the progressive candidates. "I was adamantly against cuts to the police department," she said. "I didn’t think this was a good time to reduce our police force."

She said she supported Sup. David Campos’ legislation — which directs local law enforcement agents not to turn immigrant youth over to federal immigration authorities until they’re found guilty by a court — "in concept." But she told me she thinks the bill should have been tougher on "habitual offenders." She also said she supports Police Chief George Gascón’s crackdown on Tenderloin drug sales.

And she starts off with what some call a conflict of interest: Mayor Gavin Newsom just appointed her to the $160,000-a-year post as head of the HRC, and she doesn’t intend to step down or take a leave while she runs. She told me she doesn’t see any problem — she devoted more than 20 hours a week to Police Commission work while holding down another full-time job. "I don’t know why it would be an issue," she said, noting that Emily Murase ran for the school board while working as the director of the city’s Commission on the Status of Women.

But some see it differently. "It would be as if the school superintendent hired someone to a senior job just as that person decided to run for school board," Haaland said.

Sparks’ election would be a landmark victory for trans people. For a community that has been isolated, dismissed, and ignored, her candidacy (like Haaland’s 2004 run in District 5) will inspire and motivate thousands of people. And it’s a tough one for the left — opposing a candidate whose election would mean so much to so many members of one of the city’s most marginalized communities could be painful. "A lot of folks will say that the progressives will never support a transgender candidate," Haaland noted.

But in terms of the city’s geopolitics, it’s also true that electing Sparks would probably move District 6 out of the solidly progressive column.

"If we lose D6, it’s huge," Walker noted. "This is where most of the new development is happening, where law-and-order issues are playing out, where we can hope to save part of the city for a diverse population."

More than that, if progressives lose District 6 and don’t win District 8, it will be almost impossible to override mayoral vetoes and control the legislative agenda. And that’s huge. On issue like tenants rights, preventing evictions, controlling market-rate housing development, advancing a transit-first policy — and raising new revenue instead of cutting programs — the moderates on the board have been overwhelmingly on the wrong side.

Kim, for her part, doesn’t want to talk about the politics of the 2010 elections — except to say that she’s thinking about the race and will probably decide sometime in the next two months. But she agreed with my analysis of how any left candidate should view this election: if she’s going to enter, she needs to present a case that, on the issues that matter, she’d be a better supervisor than either of the two long-term district residents with strong progressive credentials already in the race.

"I don’t have an answer to that now," Kim told me. "And when I make my decision, I will."

Editorial: The next Gavin Newsom

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Editorial: The next Gavin Newsom

EDITORIAL It’s possible that Mayor Gavin Newsom took a long look at himself, his life, and his future last week and decided that politics — intense, 24/7/365 politics — wasn’t what he wanted right now. It’s possible (as Randy Shaw noted in Beyondchron.org) that Newsom "now joins longtime adversary Chris Daly in putting family relationships ahead of one’s political career." It’s possible that he never really wanted a future in electoral politics and was driven to run for governor less by personal ambition than by the desire of his advisors to see him in a higher political role.

In that case, Newsom has a responsibility to do the best job he can over the final two years of his term as mayor, then step away and find something else to do with his life.

But since it’s also possible — even likely — that Newsom still hopes to have a political career, and that his decision to drop out of the governor’s race was as much about his failure to gain any traction as it was about his family obligations, it’s worth talking about why his campaign failed and what he can and should do next.

For starters, Newsom never expected to beat Attorney General Jerry Brown in the big-donor fundraising battle. He was hoping to put together a grassroots operation, to mobilize the Obama constituency, and build a war chest with tens of thousands of small donors organized through social media and technology. And that kind of effort could have worked — Brown has name recognition and money, but not much else. It’s hard to imagine large masses of young activists donating time and energy to his primary campaign.

The problem was, those legions of California activists weren’t terribly excited about Newsom either. And there are good reasons for that — reasons Newsom needs to understand if he wants to run for statewide elected office in the future.

If the real Gavin Newsom had been anything like the campaign picture his handlers tried to present, he would have been a serious candidate. Newsom the candidate was a leader who brought San Franciscans together to get things accomplished. He was a progressive thinker who created universal health care and an effective budget process with a rainy day fund that prevented teacher layoffs. He was bold enough to challenge federal and state law on same-sex marriage and demand equality for all.

But Newsom the mayor was actually a snippy politician who refused to work with the Board of Supervisors and would never engage his opponents. He was great at press releases but short on accomplishments — universal health care and the rainy day fund were projects put together by Tom Ammiano, one of the supervisors the mayor disdained, who is now a state Assembly member. He refused to take a lead role fighting Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to promote clean energy and public power. And for all his success in moving same-sex marriage forward, he never once managed to bring that kind of progressive energy or policy-making to economic issues. His budget this year was the same as Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget — cuts and fees only. No new taxes.

As a result, the progressives and independent voters in his own town didn’t support his campaign — and without the environmentalists, labor, tenants, and progressive elected officials from San Francisco behind him, there was no way he could generate an honest grassroots movement in a Democratic primary.

Now he’s back from the campaign trail — and he has two years to pick up on the lessons of his ignominious political collapse. If he wants any kind of a political future, he needs to change. First, he needs to start engaging and working with the supervisors — even the ones who disagree with him. (Showing up for "question time" would be a huge step). He needs to take the city’s structural budget deficit seriously and present plans for progressive taxes to help close it. He needs to show he can take on big powerful local interests — PG&E, for example — by opposing the utility’s anti-public power initiative and putting his political capital on the line to support community choice aggregation.

Newsom the imperial mayor has, we hope, been a bit humbled. Let’s see if he comes out of this chapter as an embittered, angry (and ultimately unsuccessful) mayor committed to punishing his enemies — or a serious city leader who can live up to his own hype.

Okay, the SF results are in

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By Tim Redmond

Or at least, enough to call the election as far as I’m concerned. With about half the votes counted, nothing has changed from my last post : Prop. A wins, of course. But so does Prop. B — which may go down as the most significant outcome of the evening. It’s a vote of confidence in the Board of Supervisors, especially since there was no real Yes campaign and the No campaign played on the supposed mistrust in government, which apparently isn’t working in San Francisco.

Prop. C wins, of course. Prop. D loses, no surprise. Prop E was always a winner.

I honestly didn’t think Prop. B had a chance. Neither did a lot of its backers. So the district supes are more popular than the mayor or a lot of the established pundits think.

Okay, we’ve got numbers

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By Tim Redmond

And a couple of surprises.

With just the absentee ballots in — traditionally the most conservative votes — Prop. A is cruising to victory. No surprise there — that one was going to win easy.

Prop. B, which would take out of the City Charter the mandate that the supervisors hire no more than two staffers — is actually ahead in the absentees. That’s a big surprise — I suspected that the more conservative voters would buy the argument that the supes will just run wild and hire armies of staffers.

But there’s a message here — people LIKE district elections, and for the most part (while the reputation of legislative bodies in general ain’t that great) people seem to LIKE the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. They seem to realize that the board members have a huge amount of work to do, and need more help to properly serve voth the city and their own districts.

Prop. C, allowing the city to sell naming rights to Candlestick, is winning and will will handily.

Prop. D — the controversial measure to allow electronic billboards in Mid-Market — is losing, narrowly — but as the more progressive votes come in, that will widen and Prop. D will go down.

Oh — City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Treasurer Jose Cisneros are getting re-elected.

SF seeks green power alternatives to PG&E

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By Steven T. Jones and Rebecca Bowe

With a unanimous vote by the Board of Supervisors today, San Francisco took a big step into the clean energy business, approving the issuance of a Request for Proposals for projects that will be part of the Clean Power SF program that will compete for customers with Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

The city’s version of the so-called Community Choice Aggregation program has involved “seven years of preparing San Francisco to get into the green energy business,” said Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who has shepherded the program as chair of the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo).

While PG&E has relentlessly attacked CCA efforts, both locally and through a statewide initiative campaign for would require a two-thirds popular vote for counties to create them, the 11-0 vote here seems to indicate Clean Power SF isn’t as controversial as PG&E would like people to believe.

“This step is a very important step and it’s been an eye-opening experience to serve on LAFCo,” Sup. Bevan Dufty, referring to opposition from PG&E and some of its business community allies and adding, “When the public understands the issues, they like competition and a more sustainable city.”

Which union got hit hardest?

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By Melanie Ruiz

It’s not fair!…Or not equal, anyway.

A chart we’ve created — you can see it here (PDF) — shows how the city’s unions fared during the layoffs and forced givebacks of the last budget cycle. The cuts shown are for Fiscal Year 2009-2010. The layoff figures cover the past three fiscal years.

The figures show that Service Employee International Union (SEIU) Local 1021, representing many front-line workers, took by far the largest hit. For example, Local 1021’s city employees and per diem nurses gave back 3.22% of their total pay and benefits base, whereas the Municipal Executives’ Association (MEA), which represents higher-paid managers, only gave back 1.5%.

The chart, compiled from data provided by the Controller’s Office, seems to support the argument that Local 1021 members have been making for months: Mayor Gavin Newsom has balanced the budget by cutting front-line, lower-paid workers instead of skimming the fat from upper management corridors.

Ed Kinchley, a member of Local 1021’s health care division bargaining team, says he “doesn’t understand why the mayor doesn’t get it — that the people at our level, who are often providing services directly to the general public, need to be properly compensated and treated with some respect.” The numbers show that Local 1021 has been hit hardest by layoffs. Kinchley says it’s “blatantly unfair” that over the past three fiscal years, 82% of the city’s layoffs have been from SEIU bargaining units.

There are more managers than in the past, yet fewer line workers to manage. Kinchley doesn’t see any sensible explanation for these figures, “except for observing the mayor to be out to get us and our union.” For laborers on the front-lines, there is something important that the numbers don’t convey – the consequences of real people loosing their their livelihoods and San Franciscans losing crucial public services.

Nathan Ballard, Newsom’s press spokesperson, hasn’t yet responded to our request for comment.

The Board of Supervisors Budget Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow on legislation by Sup. John Avalos that would trim management positions to save health-care workers; Sup. Chris Daly has another bill to restore funding for front-line health workers. “We will be there,” says Kinchley. “We are looking with a lot of interest in supporting what Supervisors Avalos and Daly are doing at the board.”

Newsom’s out

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By Tim Redmond

So Gavin Newsom made official what so many have been speculating on for so long: He’s out of the governor’s race.

And I suspect that means he’ll be in the city until his term ends in 2012.

There’s been a lot of talk of him running for lieutenant gov, but one source in City Hall who is close to Newsom told me that’s unlikely — because if he won the second-tier post and left the city for Sacramento, the Board of Supervisors would be able to choose his replacement.

“His supporters here would be furious,” the source said. “It’s one thing to turn the city over to David Chiu and Aaron Peskin to take over as governor of California. But to do it for the worthless lieutenant governor job? The money people would never forgive him.”

Poor turnout

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Poor turnout

news@sfbg.com

The Guinness World Record for the largest mobilization of human beings was recently broken when 173 million people demanded that their governments eradicate extreme poverty around the world. But U.S. media barely noted the call and San Francisco’s event had low attendance, suggesting an uphill struggle for the cause in the world’s richest nation.

Millions gathered at more than 3,000 Stand Up, Take Action events in 120 countries Oct. 16-18 in an attempt to put pressure on governments to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, but less than 30 people gathered on the steps of San Francisco City Hall to support the movement.

Sup. John Avalos was one of the speakers at the event, organized by a coalition of local activist groups and student volunteers. Admitting that he was "expecting it to be a little bigger," Avalos said the event was just the start of what needed to be a much larger movement by the American people.

"There is a strange phenomenon occurring at the moment. It’s as if people are a little bit asleep about the need to be active," Avalos told the Guardian. "Because we have an administration they view as being more supportive of human rights and economic and social justice, people are being lulled into thinking things will just get better."

Standing just a short walk away from the birth place of the United Nations, Avalos bought attention in his speech to the rich history San Francisco has in mobilizing social change. "We do the best to live up to it, but we have a long way to go. Around the world this is the time to uproot poverty — we try to provide a safety net, but it could be stronger."

The Stand Up, Take Action, End Poverty Now! campaign is in its fourth year and is organized by the UN Millennium Campaign in an attempt to raise awareness of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a series of benchmarks designed to eradicate global poverty.

At the United Nations Millennium Development Summit in 2000, 189 world leaders promised to "end poverty by 2015." The eight goals include eliminating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) has authored or coauthored every major piece of legislation dealing with global HIV/AIDS issues since she was elected to Congress. She told the Guardian that MDGs must be placed in context with poverty in America. "Sometimes people argue that we must look after our own first, but my position is that if you look at the eight Millennium goals, they all apply to our own country too," Lee said. "Look at the plight of people who are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS in our country — especially in African American and Latino communities.

"With the economic downturn, poverty rates in America are soaring, putting more people into circumstances the MDGs focus on outside of America," she continued. "I think it really is important to make those connections."

Lee compared the foreclosure crisis and lack of regulation in the financial markets over the last eight to 10 years to the "wild West" and calls America’s 47 million uninsured a "moral disgrace."

"It is about priorities and political will, and this will be determined by the voices of people saying it must be done," she said. "People have to push for these changes and remember that it didn’t just stop with the election. We have to raise awareness while at the same time working on changing policy. Otherwise we can get stuck debating issues and not doing the work that has to be done to change these very deplorable conditions."

Sup. David Campos was the only other supervisor to speak at the Civic Center event. He said he is committed to the fight against global poverty and wants to see the government represent the values San Francisco was founded on.

"We need to shed light and bring attention to one of the largest issues facing the world today — severe poverty," Campos said. "I really believe that as a city, as a state, and as a country, we not only need to make sure we push the U.S. to follow the lead of other countries, but actually become a leader in making these Millennium goals a reality."

After the event, Campos told the Guardian: "It doesn’t surprise me that more people didn’t show up to the event. But part of the task is to spread the word. San Francisco has been a leader in a number of these issues in the past, and I think we should play a key role in this one."

Campos said that one solution might be to put forward a resolution before the Board of Supervisors to support MDGs and have the city take a formal position on it.

"It is definitely something we are talking about to demonstrate San Francisco’s commitment to the issue," he said. "A lot of people don’t know about the goals, or the fact that the U.S. hasn’t really made them a priority. We need to spread the word and let people know this kind of a movement is only going to be a success if people take it upon themselves to play a leadership role."

Brian Webster, a volunteer who organized the SF event, drew attention to the large number of supporters for the MDGs in California. More than 250,000 people have signed up for the One Campaign, a global NGO that partnered with the U.N. Millennium Campaign in the events.

"For campaigners, it is now a matter of trying to join together and identify vast strategies to communicate what needs to be done," Webster said. "We will continue to educate communities, politicians, and civic leaders in what can be done this month, in the next six months, and ultimately, in the next six years."

While the Bush administration rarely mentioned MDGs while in office, many activists believe President Barack Obama’s public recognition of the goals at a recent U.N. summit demonstrates a change in American policy.

"In other countries, there has been more education and awareness about the goals. But here in America, it is almost like we are starting eight years late," said Anita Sharma, the North American director for the U.N. Millennium Campaign. "President Obama has said that the MDGs are American goals and has even talked about his plans for achieving them."

Also, despite the low numbers at the San Francisco event, Sharma says more than 190,000 people from North America participated in last weekend’s campaign, an increase of more than 70,000 from last year’s attempt.

"It’s not like Americans don’t care about global poverty — in fact we give more in charitable contributions than any other country in the world," she said. "It just takes quite a lot to get Americans into the streets and mobilized. There needs to be more education out there, that’s all."

Ananya Roy, a UC Berkeley professor of city and regional planning and education director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies, says she doesn’t think MDGs can be achieved worldwide by 2015. Even so, she stressed the important role they played in the framework of development.

Speaking at UC Berkeley’s Stand Up and Take Action Event, she said: "The goals are important because they are seen as a new global social contract that makes issues of poverty and inequality quite urgent. They also come with measurements and targets, which is meant to create accountability."

Roy placed particular emphasis on the eighth goal: building a global partnership for development. She noted that that increased awareness can change the ways the U.S. and European governments operate in terms of aid and trade.

"This multilateral contract requires more than simply the action and leadership of the U.S. and Western Europe," she said. "We need to think about poverty and inequality that is immediately around us, understand how we are involved in the production of depravity, and then we must act in solidarity.

"We need to be thinking about poverty as it exits here in the U.S. and not just as an abstract problem that belongs to someplace else," she added. "It is also our problem."

According to a 2009 U.N. report, progress toward achieving the MDGs has been slow in some cases and certain achievements have been reversed by the economic downturn. The report estimates that there will be 55 million to 90 million more people living in extreme poverty than anticipated before the crisis.

For Chandler Smith, media coordinator for the One Campaign — which campaigns for better development policies and more effective aid and trade reform — the Guinness certification marks progress toward achieving the MDGs. "That this year is breaking another world record speaks to the power of people to organize around the world, shows that we are a global community, and that there is a sustainability in the movement," he said.

"As for the North American aspect, we are always trying to educate people more about these issues. Our results show that a lot of our work has been done — but that we also have more work to do."

Sanctuary showdown

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Sanctuary showdown

sarah@sfbg.com

City Hall echoed with delighted whoops of Si se puede! last week, as a veto-proof majority of the Board of Supervisors voted to give juvenile immigrants their day in court before referring them to federal immigration authorities.

But the battle over the civil rights of immigrant kids is far from over, as Mayor Gavin Newsom, Police Chief George Gascón and U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello all insist that they will ignore or defy the city ordinance.

That puts the city in a strange legal position: the supervisors have passed a law that the mayor won’t implement — so it’s not clear what will happen next.

But here’s what is clear — and alarming: under Newsom’s policy, which the sanctuary legislation by Sup. David Campos would overturn, large numbers of immigrant kids are facing possible deportation. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson Virginia Kice told the Guardian that 150 juveniles from San Francisco have been referred to ICE since June 11, 2008 when Newsom began requiring that the city’s probation officials refer youth to ICE on arrest.Of those, 114 have come into federal custody (and may be facing deportation). Campos, who came to this country from Guatemala as an undocumented teen, said his legislation is a "balanced response" to the shift in sanctuary policy

Under Newsom’s policy, city probation officials are required to refer juveniles booked on a felony and appear undocumented to ICE at the time of arrest.

But under Campos’ amendment, ICE referral would not occur unless a juvenile justice court finds the youth guilty as charged.

Mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard short-circuited the immigrant community’s hopes for due process by announcing that Newsom simply plans to ignore Campos’ legislation.

"The Campos bill isn’t worth the paper it’s written on — it’s unenforceable and he knows that," Ballard told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Campos says that’s nonsense. "The whole point of having a sanctuary ordinance is that we choose not to be in the business of federal immigration enforcement," Campos said. "We are not an arm of ICE."

In a phone interview, Russoniello told the Guardian that Newsom’s policy accords juveniles due process at the federal level, and that federal immigration authorities are not interested in going after people who are obeying laws or are simply out of status.

"Our focus is guns, gangs, and drugs," Russoniello said. "But people who are detained should have no expectation that they will not be deported."

In other words, kids who are arrested on felony charges — who may not be guilty — could be deported anyway.

"Juvenile Probation Department alerts ICE when an individual comes in that they believe may be a deportable juvenile alien," Kice said. "We dispatch an officer to interview the juvenile, elicit biographical information, and do background checks to see if they have a legal basis for being in the country."

So where are the kids Newsom has turned over in the past year? Hard to say. Kice said the federal Human and Health Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement is responsible for ensuring that kids receive appropriate care and protection. "We no longer deal with the custody issues related to juvenile cases," Kice added.

Russoniello said he doesn’t know the whereabouts of the 114 juveniles placed in federal custody since Newsom’s policy took effect in June 2008, but dismissed such concerns as "pretextual."

"Before June 2008, the city’s pretext for sending [Honduran teenagers] back home was to reunite them with their family. Now the complaints are they are being ripped away from their families," he said. "The Campos legislation is mute, it’s irrelevant, and it’s contrary to federal law, and I think the mayor and the chief of police both agree."

Chief Gascón, concerned about the lack of due process and kangaroo courts at the federal level that he experienced as police chief in Mesa, Ariz,, recently told the Guardian he hoped to see Campos and Newsom find a compromise.

Gascón, who was appointed by the mayor, now says he believes Newsom’s hands are tied because of federal laws. "I don’t think the mayor has a choice," Gascón told the Chronicle.

But Sheriff Mike Hennessey, whom ICE pressured to amend his department’s policy toward immigrant detainees last year, thinks the Campos amendment is reasonable. "I don’t think we want to be reporting people who aren’t worthy of prosecution," Hennessey said. "Federal law says that if a probation officer violated the Campos’ amendment, they could not be penalized, under federal law," Hennessey explained. "That’s different from saying they are mandated to report juveniles to the federal authorities."

Juvenile Probation Department Chief William Siffermann told the Guardian that his agency "will continue to discharge its duties and responsibilities in a manner that conforms with all laws and await the outcome of the San Francisco legislative process."

"At the conclusion of that, we will confer with the city attorney and outside legal counsel around any impacts this would have on existing protocols."

Chop from the top

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Chop from the top

rebeccab@sfbg.com

At the Oct. 23 groundbreaking ceremony for the rebuild of San Francisco General Hospital, Mayor Gavin Newsom sang the praises of the public hospital’s staff.

"To all the men and women who work in this remarkable place that changes people’s lives each and every day … every time I come here, I realize you’re not just saving patients, you’re taking care of families," the mayor said. "It’s so difficult to see someone in pain. But to see the smile and the pride their loved ones have because of the job you guys have done is something magical."

Yet some health care workers, marked by their signature purple and yellow T-shirts, clearly weren’t feeling the magic. As Newsom waxed poetic onstage, they stood clustered in the audience displaying a banner proclaiming, "Keep Public Health Healthy." It was meant as a reminder that SEIU Local 1021, the union that represents certified nursing assistants (CNAs) and clerical workers facing significant slashes in pay in the wake of a city budget cuts, is still pushing to have their salaries restored.

On Sept. 15, 500 CNAs and clerical workers received notice that they would be laid off, although some would be reclassified at lower-paying positions, effective Nov. 15. For the CNAs being demoted, the reductions amount to an average of $15,000 annual reduction in pay. For the clerical workers facing downgrades, the cuts reflect an average loss of $5,000.

It wasn’t the first time SEIU workers turned out at one of Newsom’s public appearances. Beginning in August, union members began vocally characterizing the layoffs and demotions as a civil ights issue because they disproportionately affect women and people of color. According to a Department of Public Health assessment, 96 percent of the affected employees are people of color and 79 percent are women.

Mayoral Chief of Staff Steve Kawa insisted this wasn’t an attack on the city’s comparable-worth policy, which guarantees equal pay for work done primarily by women. "We would not do anything against comparable worth, " Kawa told the Guardian. "Even with the change in status in the wage, these workers will be making 18 percent above market."

But Sup. John Avalos framed it differently. "These people are some of the lowest paid frontline workers in the city," he pointed out a recent Board of Supervisors meeting. "I have spoken to many of them in my district. They’re often single women who are raising children, who don’t know how they’re going to survive."

After angry SEIU members made a series of boisterous appearances at Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign events, the mayor finally agreed to meet with them in talks that were mediated by San Francisco Labor Council head Tim Paulson.

"[Newsom] complained at some length during the first meeting about us attacking him," noted SEIU member Ed Kinchley. "We responded that we’re really not attacking him. What we were criticizing was a policy that goes after classifications filled predominantly by women and people of color."

The ongoing flap took a new twist at the Oct. 22 Board of Supervisors meeting, when Sups. Avalos and Chris Daly each announced plans to find funding to restore the public health workers’ salaries. Avalos proposed skimming some excess from management positions, which have swelled in recent years.

"Before cutting vital city services … we should first look to those who have the most, not to those who have the least," Avalos noted. He said he plans to ask the city controller to draft an annual salary ordinance that would reclassify top management positions in order to free enough funding to stop the demotions and wage reductions for the CNAs and clerical workers.

According to a report issued by the city controller, citywide management positions have grown from 739 in budget year 1998-99 to 1,075 in 2008-09, a 68 percent increase. Some individuals were promoted with salary increases ranging from $20,000 to $40,000 annually.

"I don’t know how one does that," Kawa said when asked about Avalos’ proposal. "It doesn’t make any sense to me."

Daly, meanwhile, noted that Department of Public Health Chief Financial Officer Gregg Sass had highlighted a preliminary projection for an $8 million DPH budget surplus in a Sept. 15 memo. Daly announced that he plans to request the money be flagged to go back into the department to stave off deskilling of frontline workers.

When asked if this money was available to fund the CNAs and clerical workers, Sass responded, "I don’t think it is." Emphasizing that it’s a preliminary figure, he added that "any additional funding, should it exist, is a component of the city’s overall ability to stay on budget this year and offset any shortfalls in city revenue … and address the large projected deficit for next year. I don’t see how it could be seen as ‘available’ until the city has better projections of [other tax revenue]."

The union had planned for a lengthy session with mayoral staff to continue negotiations on the same day of the supervisors’ meeting. But when Kawa learned about Avalos’ proposed legislation, he got angry and walked out, according to one SEIU member.

Asked if proposed legislation detracted from the negotiations, Kawa told us that "it made the last one difficult because it was somewhat of a surprise. And usually when you’re in good-faith negotiations, you share with the other folks the activities you’re up to so that you know that they’re actually there to negotiate in good faith."

Back at SF General after the groundbreaking ceremony, Newsom posed for photos with top public health officials, scooping shovels full of loose dirt with golden spades. The giddy atmosphere dissipated when the mayor turned around to find himself ringed by a group of reporters vying for a chance to pepper him with questions. He responded to most of their queries in typical loquacious fashion. But when the Guardian asked him to comment on Avalos’ proposed legislation, his face darkened slightly. "I don’t have any comment," he responded gruffly. Then he was whisked away for more photographs.

PG&E ballot initiative clears a hurdle

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By Rebecca Bowe

The Guardian has received several accounts that paid signature gatherers for a ballot initiative backed by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. that could darken prospects statewide for public-power programs were pitching it in a way that, at best, wasn’t entirely straightforward. And by several accounts, the petition has stopped circulating because proponents successfully gathered the 694,354 signatures needed before it can qualify for the ballot.

One voter wrote to say that a canvasser approached him in Pasadena seeking signatures for two different petitions: the PG&E-backed initiative, and a proposal to legalize and tax marijuana. Once he signed the petition to legalize pot, she asked him to sign the PG&E petition as if it were merely a second copy, he charged. She later stated that she had been instructed by her supervisor to do so, according to his account.

The Guardian also got reports that signature gatherers have denied that the petition was funded by PG&E, told people that signing it would result in lower utility rates, or described it as an initiative to promote clean energy in California.

In reality, the initiative, which was previously titled the Taxpayers Right to Vote Act, would require a two-thirds majority vote before any community choice aggregation program could be funded or implemented. This could jeopardize San Francisco’s fledgling CleanPower SF, a community choice aggregation program that would provide San Franciscans with electricity from cleaner energy sources. The Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 to oppose the initiative.

While voters can — and should — read the title and summary of a proposed initiative before signing on the dotted line, canvassers who are paid by the signature clearly have an incentive to speed the process along and frame a proposal in a favorable light. And if signature gatherers stand outside health food stores in the Bay Area asking voters to support legalizing marijuana and developing clean energy, it’s an easy sell.

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