Budget

A bit of fairness for Prop. 13

David Talbot
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1

EDITORIAL Behind the crisis in the San Francisco schools, behind the city’s fiscal nightmare, behind the state’s intractable budget deficit is one gigantic policy mistake that dates back to 1978. It’s almost impossible to talk, even today, about repealing Proposition 13, the measure that limits property taxes. Millions of homeowners love their low taxes, and even the liberals among them are dubious about giving up their cherished perk.

But it’s entirely possible — and absolutely necessary — to look at amending the measure to end the most blatant inequalities and make the state’s property tax system a little more fair. AB 2492, a bill by Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, would do just that — and it deserves the support of every elected official, every community leader, and every voter who wants to save the state’s basic services and prevent the once-vaunted California education system from falling into irreparable collapse.

Ammiano’s bill starts with the basic premise that commercial and residential property should be taxed differently. There’s a good reason for that: Prop. 13 allows tax reassessments only when property changes hands, and residential property turns over far more often than commercial property. So over the past 32 years, homeowners have been taking on more and more of the property-tax burden.

Then there’s the popular scam big companies use to avoid higher assessments. The legal details are complicated, but the basic deal goes like this. A real estate investor or investment group sets up a corporation called, say, Big Building Inc. and buys a commercial office building. A few years later, when the property has doubled in value, the investors sell to a new group — by transferring 51 percent of the stock in Big Building Inc. There’s a new owner of the property, of course — but on the assessment roles, it still reads "Big Building Inc." — and the owners say that means no ownership transfer and no new assessment.

San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting has been complaining about this for years, and a few of these investors have been busted and forced to pay the proper taxes. But it’s hard to keep track of every deal — and expensive to fight the legal battles every time some corporation sets up a convoluted structure to hide an ownership transfer.

Ammiano’s bill would put an end to that. AB 2492 would make state law clear: Any time 50 percent or more of the ownership interest in a company changed hands, all of the real property that company owned would be deemed to have changed hands and could be reassessed.

In fact, the bill would create a rebuttable presumption that all property owned by any publicly-traded corporation would be assumed to have changed hands every Jan. 1. If the company wanted to prove that its stock holdings were substantially unchanged in the past 12 months, it could make that case; otherwise, the buildings get reassessed.

The impact on the state’s finances would be massive, in the multiples of billions of dollars. Local governments would see their budget problems diminish; schools would get more money. And the property tax burden would start to shift back off of homeowners, who now pay far more than their fair share.

Ammiano told us that Speaker of the Assembly John Perez is supportive. Even so, passing even such an obvious, fair amendment to Prop. 13 will be a massive struggle. Mayor Gavin Newsom needs to make a strong public statement of support; so do the mayors of every other Bay Area city. School boards, city councils, county supervisors — this is going to be a battle royal, and they all need to be on board. With this reform, an oil severance tax and reinstating the vehicle license fee, California’s budget problems could be nearly solved. What are we waiting for?

A bit of fairness for Prop. 13

David Talbot
-
1
A bit of fairness for Prop. 13

EDITORIAL Behind the crisis in the San Francisco schools, behind the city’s fiscal nightmare, behind the state’s intractable budget deficit is one gigantic policy mistake that dates back to 1978. It’s almost impossible to talk, even today, about repealing Proposition 13, the measure that limits property taxes. Millions of homeowners love their low taxes, and even the liberals among them are dubious about giving up their cherished perk.

But it’s entirely possible — and absolutely necessary — to look at amending the measure to end the most blatant inequalities and make the state’s property tax system a little more fair. AB 2492, a bill by Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, would do just that — and it deserves the support of every elected official, every community leader, and every voter who wants to save the state’s basic services and prevent the once-vaunted California education system from falling into irreparable collapse.

Ammiano’s bill starts with the basic premise that commercial and residential property should be taxed differently. There’s a good reason for that: Prop. 13 allows tax reassessments only when property changes hands, and residential property turns over far more often than commercial property. So over the past 32 years, homeowners have been taking on more and more of the property-tax burden.

Then there’s the popular scam big companies use to avoid higher assessments. The legal details are complicated, but the basic deal goes like this. A real estate investor or investment group sets up a corporation called, say, Big Building Inc. and buys a commercial office building. A few years later, when the property has doubled in value, the investors sell to a new group — by transferring 51 percent of the stock in Big Building Inc. There’s a new owner of the property, of course — but on the assessment roles, it still reads "Big Building Inc." — and the owners say that means no ownership transfer and no new assessment.

San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting has been complaining about this for years, and a few of these investors have been busted and forced to pay the proper taxes. But it’s hard to keep track of every deal — and expensive to fight the legal battles every time some corporation sets up a convoluted structure to hide an ownership transfer.

Ammiano’s bill would put an end to that. AB 2492 would make state law clear: Any time 50 percent or more of the ownership interest in a company changed hands, all of the real property that company owned would be deemed to have changed hands and could be reassessed.

In fact, the bill would create a rebuttable presumption that all property owned by any publicly-traded corporation would be assumed to have changed hands every Jan. 1. If the company wanted to prove that its stock holdings were substantially unchanged in the past 12 months, it could make that case; otherwise, the buildings get reassessed.

The impact on the state’s finances would be massive, in the multiples of billions of dollars. Local governments would see their budget problems diminish; schools would get more money. And the property tax burden would start to shift back off of homeowners, who now pay far more than their fair share.

Ammiano told us that Speaker of the Assembly John Perez is supportive. Even so, passing even such an obvious, fair amendment to Prop. 13 will be a massive struggle. Mayor Gavin Newsom needs to make a strong public statement of support; so do the mayors of every other Bay Area city. School boards, city councils, county supervisors — this is going to be a battle royal, and they all need to be on board. With this reform, an oil severance tax and reinstating the vehicle license fee, California’s budget problems could be nearly solved. What are we waiting for?

The dubious high-speed rail report

Zelda Bronstein
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1
The dubious high-speed rail report

The Chron’s blast at the state’s high-speed rail system is a big headline, but the report it’s based on is pretty dubious.


As the always-insightful Robert Cruikshank at Calitics points out, the state auditor is trying to blame the High Speed Rail Authority for the fact that federal funding for the project isn’t yet in place. But there’s no reason to believe that situation will remain forever; both Congress and the Obama administration have been friendly toward high-speed rail, and California is in line to get a significant amount of it.

 


And in the worst-case scenario, if there’s no federal funding at all, the money California voters have already approved won’t go to waste — it will go, for example, to improve the existing Caltrain lines.

 

Cruikshank:

 

For some HSR critics and skeptics, the uncertainty around federal funding is a reason to either not build the project, or to not build it in their backyard. The proper response, however, is not to be a passive actor, but to instead actively work to secure federal funding for HSR. You can go to the FourBillion.com site and told their Congressional representatives they want $4 billion in the FY 2011 budget, as a first step toward advocacy for the $50 billion in the transportation bill reauthorization.

 


CounterPULSE’s three day maypole

Andrew Lam
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1

It’s a big weekend for celebration. May 1st is International Worker’s Day, it’s the day when winter has finally left the Northern Hemisphere building, and marks the dawn dances of the pagan Beltane. All in all, it’s an apt time for rejoicing in the people and places what that make our world beautiful.

And given that we’re in the Bay, one of the Earth’s great cradles of populist art, there may be no better place to do that than CounterPULSE, the community art performance space that is celebrating 20 years (five in their current location) of helping cool artist do what they do. CounterPULSE has been sponsoring classes, performances, and residencies for some of our most progressive and exciting artists over the past decades — and they’re making it easy for you to throw some dough their way with three days of diverse, exciting programming that could really only happen here in San Francisco
“We’ve planned the weekend with three events that show the three sides of CounterPULSE,” says PULSE Executive Director, Jessica Robinson Love. In her ten years with the group, Love has seen it through a relocation from it’s old haunts of 848 Community Space to it’s current perch on Mission Street, as well as a tenfold increase in budget.

Simply put, here’s the schedule: Friday = politics, Saturday = art as experience, Sunday = movement. But screw putting it simply — it’s all so much fun that you should hear about each night in detail:

Friday: “This night is going to be about really big issues, but it will be a really fun show,” says Robinson Love of CounterPULSE’s political agitprop cabaret night, which highlights the center’s focus on free speech. The San Francisco Mime Troupe will be performing, along with W. Kamau Bell, famous for racially charged comedic performances, and porn star Annie Sprinkle. 

Saturday: “We’re calling it the Happening — we modeled Saturday on the Andy Warhol events at the Factory. It’ll be a sequence of surprises,” says Robinson Love. Wandering attendees will bumble about from room to room — a trapeze artist here, crocheting there, Fauxnique over yonder, maybe even bumping into Philip Huang to hear a rant about Jesus Christ and Pink Floyd keeping Jews and homosexuals off the moon. 

Sunday: Dance party! “It’s all our favorite dance companies from the Bay area,” Robinson Love tells me. Tapping their feet to the beat will be many of the groups that CounterPULSE has provided a warm nest to over the years, who are now flapping their wings mightly around the city. Among those that will be represented; ODC Dance, Axis, and the Joe Goode Performance Group.

May Day @ CounterPULSE
Fri/30 – Sun/2 8 p.m., $25-200
CounterPULSE
1310 Mission, SF
(415) 626-2060
www.counterpulse.org

ENDORSEMENTS: San Francisco ballot measures

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
ENDORSEMENTS: San Francisco ballot measures

 PROPOSITION A

SCHOOL FACILITIES SPECIAL TAX

YES

This measure would extend a 1990 parcel tax that expires in 2010 by another 20 years, keeping it at its current rate ($32 a year for single family homes and commercial enterprises, $16 a year per dwelling unit for mixed use buildings). The tax brings in $7 million a year for San Francisco school facilities and would finance seismic upgrades, structural strengthening and related improvements of its facilities, and child care centers. Vote yes.

 

PROPOSITION B

EARTHQUAKE SAFETY AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE BONDS

YES

It’s hard to argue against a $430 million bond act to upgrade police, fire, and water facilities to prevent a catastrophic collapse of the city’s most basic public safety infrastructure in the event of an inevitable earthquake. Hard — but not impossible: Sup. Chris Daly, the lone vote against Prop. B, points out that the bond money would be used to upgrade police stations but that the old County Jail at 850 Bryant St. wouldn’t get any help. Prisoners, it seems (even those who are awaiting trial and have been convicted of nothing) aren’t worth protecting. And the Fire Department has been very hazy about where it’s going to spend the cash. So we’ve got some concerns here — but on balance, we’re endorsing Yes on B.

 

PROPOSITION C

FILM COMMISSION

YES

By some accounts, this measure was put together in retaliation for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s November 2009 demand that Film Commission executive director Stefanie Coyote resign — shortly after her husband, actor Peter Coyote, supported Attorney General Jerry Brown over Newsom for governor. But Bill Barnes, who works as a legislative aide for Newsom ally Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, the author of Prop. C, says Alioto-Pier was working on this measure even before Coyote got ousted.

Either way, it’s a positive step. Prop. C would streamline a convoluted permitting process for shooting films in San Francisco — a process that can involve multiple departments — and would create a one-stop shop. It would also split the power to appoint the film commissioners between the mayor and the board (6-5, respectively), and require that all 11 commissioners have specific qualifications or experience. Vote yes.

 

PROPOSITION D

RETIREMENT BENEFITS

YES

Prop. D is a compromise. Sup. Sean Elsbernd wanted to reform the city’s pension system by mandating higher employee contributions and an end to what’s known as “spiking” — giving some employees a big raise just before they retire. Under current law, that worker would get a pension based on the inflated salary.

Elsbernd wanted to change the calculation and base pensions on an average of the final three years of salary an employee earned. Labor countered that some lower-paid workers only reach their top pay at the end of their careers. The final deal would base pensions on a two-year average. Prop. D would also require future employees to contribute and extra 2 percent to their pensions and require the city to set aside some money every year for the pension and retiree health care systems. In the end, progressive Sups. David Campos and Eric Mar signed on, and the city employee unions aren’t opposed. Vote yes.

 

PROPOSITION E

BUDGET LINE ITEM FOR POLICE SECURITY

YES

Prop. E would make one simple tweak to the reporting requirements for San Francisco’s annual city budget: a line-item on how much is spent on security for city officials and visiting dignitaries. As things stand, the amount the police department spends to protect people like, oh, say Mayor Gavin Newsom while he is crisscrossing the state campaigning for (lieutenant) governor is kept secret. That’s information the public has a right to know. Vote yes.

 

PROPOSITION F

RENTERS’ FINANCIAL HARDSHIP APPLICATIONS

YES

Prop. F would allow a tenant facing a rent increase to file a petition with the Rent Board claiming financial hardship. If the tenant was unemployed, or had his or her wages cut by 20 percent or more, or didn’t get a cost of living increase in government benefits and was paying at least 33 percent of his or her income as rent, the rent hike would be delayed for 60 days pending a hearing. If the renter can establish hardship, the landlord would have to hold off on the increase until the tenant’s employment or benefit situation improved. Few San Francisco landlords would be hurt by the delay in what are typically modest rent hikes — but a lot of tenants could avoid eviction. Vote yes.

 

PROPOSITION G

TRANSBAY TRANSIT CENTER

YES

Prop. G, a policy statement, became a moot point earlier this year, but it’s still good for San Franciscans to affirm the city’s support for bringing high-speed rail service downtown. The California High-Speed Rail Project is moving to create bullet train service from SF to downtown Los Angeles using bond money approved by voters in 2008. Even though that bond measure named the Transbay Terminal as the northern terminus of the first phase, some officials raised doubts about whether the downtown location was the best choice. That rail service was integral to plans for the transit center, which is currently being rebuilt, so the Board of Supervisors placed this measure on the ballot to support that choice. Earlier this month, the California High-Speed Rail Authority considered other alternatives and voted to stay with the Transbay Terminal. That’s the right way to go; vote yes.

ENDORSEMENTS: State ballot measures

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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8
ENDORSEMENTS: State ballot measures

PROPOSITION 13

LIMITS ON PROPERTY TAX ASSESSMENT FOR SEISMIC RETROFITS

YES

The primary sponsor of Prop. 13 is Republican Sen. Roy Ashburn, who dominated the news for several days after he was arrested for drunk driving on his way home from a Sacramento gay bar. Needless to say, Ashburn’s dramatic coming out has whipped up far more attention than his noncontroversial ballot initiative.

We’re generally opposed to anything that gives tax cuts or tax deferrals to property owners; thanks to a 1978 measure also called Prop. 13, much of the commercial and residential property in California is badly under assessed. And Prop. 13, 2010 style, is indeed a tax break. But it’s probably justified.

Buildings in this state are typically reassessed for property taxes after they’ve been modified with new construction, except in cases where the modifications are made to comply with earthquake-safety standards. While most buildings that undergo seismic retrofitting are exempt from reassessment until the property is transferred to a new owner, the exemption for unreinforced masonry buildings is limited to 15 years. Prop 13 would remove that 15-year cap.

The fiscal impact on cities is likely to be pretty minor, and the measure might encourage both commercial and residential landlords to bring their buildings up to standard. Vote yes.

 

PROPOSITION 14

OPEN PRIMARIES

NO

At the height of a royal mess last year when the state budget was long overdue and the two-thirds majority needed to pass it was still out of reach by one vote, Republican Sen. Abel Maldonado struck a deal with Democrats. He said he’d support the budget — if the majority party would meet a few of his demands. One thing he insisted on was Prop. 14 — a ballot measure that would effectively remove political parties from the primary elections process, allowing all voters to cast ballots for any candidate regardless of party affiliation.

Under Maldonado’s plan, all candidates would run on a single primary ballot, and the top two vote-getters would face off in the general election. Heavily funded by the California Chamber of Commerce and marketed by the same spin doctors and corporate lawyers who are rolling in Yes on 16 campaign money, Prop. 14’s backers say it will result in more centrist elected officials.

There are plenty of pitfalls here, the most worrisome being that it would drive up the cost of elections and give more moneyed (and corporate-allied) candidates a sharper competitive edge while elbowing out progressives. It would allow Republicans to play a role in what would normally be Democratic primaries (and vice versa.) The measure would also make it nearly impossible for smaller parties — the Green Party, for example — to offer candidates in the November elections.

Bad idea, bad process, Vote no.

 

PROPOSITION 15

FAIR ELECTIONS ACT

YES

California desperately needs electoral reform. Corporate campaign spending and lobbyists have poisoned the decision-making process and muzzled the voice of the people. Something radical needs to be done — and while this measure is only a small, measured step in the right direction, it’s an important and promising experiment.

Prop. 15 would create a pilot public financing program for the 2014 and 2018 races for California Secretary of State — and the program would be funded by a tax on lobbyists. Right now lobbyists pay only $12.50 per year to register with the state. This measure would increase that fee to $350 annually and use the money to create a fund of about $6 million that candidates for the crucial office overseeing elections in the state could tap after demonstrating their popular support by gathering a number of small contributions. All candidates who qualify would be given the same amount of money and left to compete on the issues. Ideally this public financing program would prove successful and eventually be expanded to other offices. Public financing of election campaigns, which is currently working well in Arizona and Maine, is certainly worth a try in California. Vote yes.

 

PROPOSITION 16

MONOPOLY PROTECTION FOR PG&E

NO! NO! NO!

The deceptively titled “Taxpayer’s Right to Vote Act” was dreamed up and funded entirely by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the monopolistic utility that is worried it could face actual competition here in San Francisco (and elsewhere) from municipal electricity programs that would offer customers a greener energy mix and more accountability than PG&E executives will ever demonstrate.

Rather than accept some healthy competition, this sleazy corporation has opted to spend some $35 million to exterminate all possibilities of municipal electricity programs cropping up anywhere in the state in a bid to preserve its octopus-like grip on the energy market in Northern California. Prop. 16 would require a two-thirds majority vote at the ballot before any community choice aggregation (CCA) program — or any attempt at creating or expanding a public-power system — could move forward. That’s an extreme hurdle — -and PG&E knows it.

In effect, PG&E is trying to buy public policy here, trying to pass a law that will protect its own monopoly interests.

In San Francisco, the CCA being proposed would offer customers 51 percent renewable power by 2017, which means it would blow PG&E out of the water in the green arena and mark S.F. as taking greater strides toward combating climate change than any other major U.S. city. This example could set a precedent for others, which, in turn, could create favorable market conditions for green energy startups that want to harness wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, tidal, and energy efficiency alternatives.

The very existence of Prop. 16 is already threatening the San Francisco CCA; the city’s Public Utilities Commission is trying to delay a final contract until after the June 8 vote on the measure (see editorial, page 5)

Vote no on Prop 16. Not just because it’s an example of a big business single-handedly trying to alter the state constitution for its own economic benefit by pouring millions of dollars into a deceptive advertising campaign. Not just because a two-thirds majority vote requirement is anti-democratic. Not just because there were reports that the signature gatherers who got people to sign on in support of placing Prop. 16 on the ballot were telling people that its purpose was to limit PG&E expansion or encourage solar power. Not just because Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and a half dozen members of the Legislature sent a letter rebuking PG&E CEO Peter Darbee for disrespecting the democratic process by going straight to the ballot to undermine legislation it initially supported that enabled the creation of CCA programs. Not just because PG&E is using $35 million of ratepayer dollars (that’s the check you wrote them for your electricity bill!) to put out slick TV ads for this campaign when it should have been repairing the pipelines under those manholes that keep exploding and messing up your morning commute. Not even just because with CCA, you already have the right to vote whether or not you want to be part of it, a choice PG&E will never give you. And not just because PG&E keeps trying to raise rates, which is much more difficult for municipal energy agencies to do.

If for no other reason, vote no because Prop. 16 flies in the face of everything environmentalists stand for. It’s a measure that will thwart progress on fighting climate change, brought to you by the company that practically invented green-washing. PG&E is a huge nuclear power player; it purchases coal from mountaintop-removal coal mines in West Virginia that are completely devastating biodiverse landscapes in Southern Appalachia and screwing over poor people by tainting their drinking water; and it’s in the process of building fossil fuel-fired power plants in poor communities of color in California. The CCA programs at least represent a glimmer of hope for an alternative model; Prop. 16 kills off that possibility with one fell swoop motivated by pure greed. For the love of justice, democracy, and the planet, vote no on Prop 16.

 

PROPOSITION 17

CAR INSURANCE SCHEME

NO, NO, NO!

Mercury Insurance sponsored this measure and is campaigning for it with tens of millions of dollars, betting it can fool voters and make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits by doing so. And if the company is right, insurance rates will skyrocket for new drivers and those who haven’t had continuous insurance coverage, which experts say will increase the number of uninsured drivers on the roadways and end up increasing insurance rates for everyone.

Mercury and its founder George Joseph have been truly malevolent players in California, exploiting their customers to make billions of dollars in profits, attacking California’s landmark insurance reform measure Prop. 103 with lawsuits and corrupting campaign contributions over more than 20 years, and flouting insurance regulators in such brazen fashion that even Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a conservative Republican, recently chastised the company for its “lengthy history of serious misconduct” (see “Buying power,” March 17).

Now, however, the company is hoping its promise to cut the insurance premiums of drivers who have maintained continuous coverage by “as much as $250 per year” will buy their votes and that they’ll overlook the myriad negative impacts of increasing everyone else’s premiums by $1,000 per year or more, based on Mercury’s own estimates.

Think about that. If you’re a driver who missed an insurance payment by even one day, or a soldier returning from boot camp, or someone with a low-income getting insurance for the first time or after ditching your car for a while, what are you going to do when you discover already-expensive car insurance comes with a $1,000 annual surcharge?

Many Californians, those who share our roads, will choose to drive without insurance. Then they’ll be more likely to leave the scene of accidents or declare bankruptcy rather than paying out-of-pocket for their accidents, both of which increase the cost of insurance for everyone else.

That’s how insurance works. If someone pays less, someone else pays more; and the only entity guaranteed to really make money over the long term is the insurance company. Don’t fall for this scam. Vote no on 17.

ENDORSEMENTS: National and state races

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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15
ENDORSEMENTS: National and state races

Editor’s note: the file below contains a correction, updated May 5 2010. 


National races


U.S. SENATE, DEMOCRAT


BARBARA BOXER


The Republican Party is targeting this race as one of its top national priorities, and if the GOP can dislodge a three-term senator from California, it will be a major blow for the party (and agenda) of President Obama. The pundits are happily talking about how much danger Barbara Boxer faces, how the country’s mood is swinging against big-government liberals.


But it’s always a mistake to count out Boxer. In 1982, as a Marin County supervisor with little name recognition in San Francisco, she trounced then-SF Sup. Louise Renne for an open Congressional seat. Ten years later, she beat the odds and won a hotly contested primary and tough general election to move into the Senate. She’s a fierce campaigner, and with no primary opposition, will have a united party behind her.


Boxer is one of the most progressive members of the not-terribly progressive U.S. Senate. She’s been one of the strongest, most consistent supporters of reproductive rights in Washington and a friend of labor (with 100 percent ratings from the AFL-CIO and National Education Association). We’ve had our disagreements: Boxer supported No Child Left Behind, wrote the law allowing airline pilots to carry guns in the cockpit, and was weak on same-sex marriage when San Francisco sought to legalize it (although she’s come around). But she was an early and stalwart foe of the war in Iraq, split with her own party to oppose a crackdown on illegal immigration, and is leading the way on accountability for Wall Street. She richly deserves reelection, and we’re happy to endorse her.


 


CONGRESS, 6TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


LYNN WOOLSEY


It’s odd that the representative from Marin and Sonoma counties is more progressive by far than her colleague to the south, San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi. But over the years, Lynn Woolsey has been one of the strongest opponents of the war, a voice against bailouts for the big Wall Street banks, and a foe of cuts in the social safety net. We’re proud to endorse her for another term.


 


CONGRESS, 7TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


GEORGE MILLER


George Miller has been representing this East Bay district since 1974, and is now the chair of the Education and Labor Committee and a powerhouse in Congress. He’s too prone to compromise (with George W. Bush on education policy) but is taking the right line on California water (while Sen. Dianne Feinstein is on the wrong side). We’ll endorse him for another term.


 


CONGRESS, 8TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


NANCY PELOSI


We’ve never been terribly pleased with San Francisco’s most prominent Congressional representative. Nancy Pelosi was the author of the bill that created the first privatized national park at the Presidio, setting a horrible standard that parks ought to be about making money. She was weak on opposing the war, ducked same-sex marriage, and has used her clout locally for all the wrong candidates and issues. But we have to give her credit for resurrecting and pushing through the health care bill (bad as it was — and it’s pretty bad — it’s better than doing nothing). And, at a time when the Republicans are trying to derail the Obama presidency, she’s become a pretty effective partner for the president.


Her fate as speaker (and her future in this seat) probably depends on how the Democrats fare in the midterm Congressional elections this fall. But if she and the party survive in decent shape, she needs to take the opportunity to undo the damage she did at the Presidio.


 


CONGRESS, 9TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


BARBARA LEE


Barbara Lee, who represents Berkeley and Oakland, is co-chair of the Progressive Caucus in the House, one of the most consistent liberal votes in Congress, and a hero to the antiwar movement. In 2001, she was the only member of either house to oppose the Bush administration’s Use of Force resolution following the 9/11 attacks, and she’s never let up on her opposition to foolish military entanglements. We’re glad she’s doing what Nancy Pelosi won’t — represent the progressive politics of her district in Washington.


 


CONGRESS, 13TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


PETE STARK


Most politicians mellow and get more moderate as they age; Stark is the opposite. He announced a couple of years ago that he’s an atheist (the only one in Congress), opposed the Iraq war early, called one of his colleagues a whore for the insurance industry, and insulted President Bush and refused to apologize, saying: “I may have dishonored the commander-in-chief, but I think he’s done pretty well to dishonor himself without any help from me.” He served as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee for exactly one day — March 3 — before the Democratic membership overruled Speaker Pelosi and chucked him out on the grounds that he was too inflammatory. The 78-year-old may not be in office much longer, but he’s good on all the major issues. He’s also fearless. If he wants another term, he deserves one.


 


State races


GOVERNOR, DEMOCRAT


EDMUND G. BROWN


Jerry Brown? Which Jerry Brown? The small-is-beautiful environmentalist from the 1970s who opposed Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s Diablo Canyon nuke and created the California Conservation Corps, the Office of Appropriate Technology, and the Farm Labor Relations Board (all while running a huge budget surplus in Sacramento)? The angry populist who lashed out at corporate power on a KPFA radio talk show and ran against Bill Clinton for president? The pro-development mayor of Oakland who sided with the cops on crime issues and opened a military academy? Or the tough-on-crime attorney general who refuses to even talk about tax increases to solve the state’s gargantuan budget problems?


We don’t know. That’s the problem with Brown — you never know what he’ll do or say next. For now, he’s been a terribly disappointing candidate, running to the right, rambling on about preserving Proposition 13, making awful statements about immigration and sanctuary laws, and even sounding soft on environmental issues. He’s started to hit his stride lately, though, attacking likely GOP contender Meg Whitman over her ties to Wall Street and we’re seeing a few flashes of the populist Brown. But he’s got to step it up if he wants to win — and he’s got to get serious about taxes and show some budget leadership, if he wants to make a difference as governor.


 


LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, DEMOCRAT


JANICE HAHN


Not an easy choice, by any means.


Mayor Gavin Newsom jumped into this race only after it became clear that he wouldn’t get elected governor. He sees it as a temporary perch, someplace to park his political ambitions until a better office opens up. He’s got the money, the statewide name recognition, and the endorsement of some of the state’s major power players, including both U.S. Senators and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He’s also been a terrible mayor of San Francisco — and some progressives (like Sup. Chris Daly) argue, persuasively, that the best way to get a better person in Room 200 is to ship Newsom off to an office in Sacramento where he can’t do much harm and let the supervisors pick the next mayor.


But it’s hard to endorse Newsom for any higher office. He’s ducked on public power, allowing PG&E to come very close to blocking the city’s community choice aggregation program (See editorial, page 5). His policies have promoted deporting kids and breaking up families. He’s taken an approach to the city budget — no new revenue, just cuts — that’s similar to what the Republican governor has done. He didn’t even bother to come down and talk to us about this race. There’s really no good argument for supporting the advancement of his political career.


Then there’s Janice Hahn. She’s a Los Angeles City Council member, the daughter of a former county supervisor, and the sister of a former mayor. She got in this race way before Newsom, and her nightmare campaign consultant, Garry South, acts as if she has some divine right to be the only Democrat running.


Hahn in not overly impressive as a candidate. When we met her, she seemed confused about some issues and scrambled to duck others. She told us she’s not sure she’s in favor of legalizing pot, but she isn’t sure why she’s not sure since she has no arguments against it. She won’t take a position on a new peripheral canal, although she can’t defend building one and says that protecting San Francisco Bay has to be a priority. She won’t rule out offshore oil drilling, although she said she has yet to see a proposal she can support. Her main economic development proposal was to bring more film industry work to California, even if that means cutting taxes for the studios or locating the shoots on Indian land where there are fewer regulations.


On the other hand, she told us she wants to get rid of the two-thirds threshold in the state Legislature for passing a budget or raising taxes. She supports reinstating the car tax at pre-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger levels. She supports a split-roll measure to reform Prop. 13. She wants to see an oil-severance tax to fund education. She’s one of the few statewide candidates who openly advocates higher taxes on the wealthy as part of the solution to the budget crisis.


We are under no illusions that Hahn will be able to use the weak office of lieutenant governor to move on any of these issues, and we’re not at all sure she’s ready to take over the top spot. But on the issues, she’s clearly better than Newsom, so she gets our endorsements.


 


SECRETARY OF STATE, DEMOCRAT


DEBRA BOWEN


Debra Bowen is the only Democrat running, a sign that pretty much everyone in the party thinks she’s doing a fine job as Secretary of State. She’s run a clean office and we see no reason to replace her.


 


CONTROLLER, DEMOCRAT


JOHN CHIANG


Like Bowen, John Chiang has no opposition in the primary, and he’s been a perfectly adequate controller. In fact, when Gov. Schwarzenegger tried two years ago to cut the pay of thousands of state employees to the minimum wage level, Chiang defied him and refused to change the paychecks — a move that forced the governor to back down. We just wish he’d play a more visible role in talking about the need for more tax revenue to balance the state’s books.


 


TREASURER, DEMOCRAT


BILL LOCKYER


Bill Lockyer keeps bouncing around Sacramento, waiting, perhaps, for his chance to be governor. He was attorney general. Now he’s treasurer seeking a second term, which he will almost certainly win. He’s done some good things, including trying to use state bonds to promote alternative energy, and has spoken out forcefully about the governor’s efforts to defer deficit problems through dubious borrowing. He hasn’t, however, come out in favor of higher taxes for the rich or a change in Prop. 13.


 


ATTORNEY GENERAL, DEMOCRAT


KAMALA HARRIS


There are really only two serious candidates in this race, Kamala Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, and Rocky Delgadillo, the former Los Angeles city attorney. Harris has a comfortable lead, with Delgadillo in second and the others far behind.


Delgadillo is on his second try for this office. He ran against Jerry Brown four years ago and got nowhere. And in the meantime, he’s come under fire for, among other things, using city employees to run personal errands for him (picking up his dry-cleaning, babysitting his kids) and driving his car without insurance. On a more significant level, he made his reputation with gang injunctions that smacked of ethnic profiling and infuriated Latino and civil liberties groups. It’s amazing he’s still a factor in this race; he can’t possibly win the general election with all his baggage.


Harris has a lot going for her. She was among the first California elected officials to endorse Barack Obama for president, and remains close to the administration. She’s a smart, articulate prosecutor and could be one of the few women atop the Democratic ticket this year. We were never comfortable with her ties to Willie Brown, but he’s no longer a factor in state or local politics. These days, she’s more closely allied with the likes of State Sen. Mark Leno.


That said, we have some serious problems with Harris. She’s been up in Sacramento pushing Republican-style tough-on-crime bills (like a measure that would bar registered sex offenders from ever using social networking sites on the Internet) and forcing sane Democrats like Assembly Member and Public Safety Committee Chair Tom Ammiano to try to tone down or kill them (and then take the political heat). If she didn’t know about the problems in the SFPD crime lab, she should have, and should have made a bigger fuss, earlier.


But Harris has kept her principled position against the death penalty, even when it meant taking immense flak from the cops for refusing to seek capital punishment for the killer of a San Francisco police officer. She’s clearly the best choice for the Democrats.


 


INSURANCE COMMISSIONER, DEMOCRAT


DAVE JONES


Two credible progressives are vying to run for this powerful and important position regulating the massive — and massively corrupt — California insurance industry. Dave Jones and Hector De La Torre are both in the state Assembly, with Jones representing Sacramento and De La Torre hailing from Los Angeles. Both have a record opposing insurance industry initiatives; both are outspoken foes of Prop. 17; and either would do a fine job as insurance commissioner. But Jones has more experience on consumer issues and health care reform, and we prefer his background as a Legal Aid lawyer to De La Torre’s history as a Southern California Edison executive. So we’ll give Jones the nod.


 


BOARD OF EQUALIZATION, DISTRICT 1, DEMOCRAT


BETTY T. YEE


Betty Yee has taken over a job that’s been a stronghold of progressive tax policy since the days of the late Bill Bennett. She’s done well in the position, supporting progressive financial measures and even coming down, as a top tax official, in favor of legalizing (and taxing) marijuana. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.


 


SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION


TOM TORLAKSON


Two prominent Democratic legislators are running for this nonpartisan post, state Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles and Assembly Member Tom Torlakson of Martinez. It’s a pretty clear choice: Romero is a big supporter of charter schools who thinks parents should be able to move their kids out of one school district and into another (allowing wealthier white parents, for example, to abandon Los Angeles or San Francisco for the suburban districts). She’s been supported in the past by Don and Doris Fisher, who put a chunk of their GAP Inc. fortune into school privatization efforts. Torlakson wants more accountability for charters, opposes the Romero district-option bill, and has the support of every major teachers union in the state. Vote for Torlakson.


 


STATE SENATE, DISTRICT 8, DEMOCRAT


LELAND YEE


Sen. Leland Yee can be infuriating. Two years ago, he was hell-bent on selling the Cow Palace as surplus state property and allowing private developers to take it over. In the recent budget crisis, he pissed off his Democratic colleagues by refusing to vote for cuts that everyone else knew were inevitable (while never making a strong stand in favor of, say, repealing Prop. 13 or raising other taxes). But he’s always been good on open-government issues and has made headlines lately for busting California State University, Stanislaus over a secret contract to bring Sarah Palin in for a fundraiser — and has raised the larger point that public universities shouldn’t hide their finances behind private foundations.


Yee will have no serious opposition for reelection, and his campaign for a second term in Sacramento is really the start of the Leland Yee for Mayor effort. With reservations over the Cow Palace deal and a few other issues, we’ll endorse him for reelection.


 Correction update: Yee’s office informs us that the senator suports an oil-severance tax and a tax on high-income earners and “believes that Prop. 13 should be reformed,” although he hasn’t taken a position on Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s reform bill. 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 12, DEMOCRAT


FIONA MA


Fiona Ma’s a mixed bag (at best). She doesn’t like Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and supports public power, but comes up with strange bills that make no sense, like a 2009 measure to limit rent control in trailer parks. Why does Ma, who has no trailer parks in her district, care? Maybe because the landlords who control the mobile home facilities gave her some campaign cash. She faces no opposition, and we’re not thrilled with her record, but we’ll reluctantly back her for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 13, DEMOCRAT


TOM AMMIANO


When the history of progressive politics in modern San Francisco is written, Tom Ammiano will be a central figure. His long-shot 1999 mayoral campaign against Willie Brown brought the left to life in town, and his leadership helped bring back district elections and put a progressive Board of Supervisors in place in 2000. As a supervisor, he authored the city’s landmark health care bill (which Newsom constantly tries to take credit for) and the rainy day fund (which saved the public schools from debilitating cuts). He uses his local influence to promote the right causes, issues, and candidates.


And he’s turned out to be an excellent member of the state Assembly. He forced BART to take seriously civilian oversight of the transit police force. He put the battle to reform Prop. 13 with a split-role measure back on the state agenda. And his efforts to legalize and tax marijuana are close to making California the first state to toss the insane pot laws. As chair of the Public Safety Committee, he routinely defies the police lobbies and the right-wing Republicans and defuses truly awful legislation. We’re glad Ammiano’s still fighting in the good fight, and we’re pleased to endorse him for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 14, DEMOCRAT


NANCY SKINNER


Nancy Skinner has taken on one of the toughest, and for small businesses, most important, battles in Sacramento. She wants to make out-of-state companies that sell products to Californians collect and remit sales tax. If you buy a book at your local bookstore, you have to pay sales tax; if you buy it from Amazon, it’s tax-free. That not only hurts the state, which loses hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, it’s a competitive disadvantage to local shops. Skinner’s a good progressive vote and an ally for Ammiano on the Public Safety Committee. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 16, DEMOCRAT


SANDRE SWANSON


Sandre Swanson represents the district where BART police killed Oscar Grant, but he wasn’t the one out front pushing for more civilian accountability; that was left to SF’s Ammiano. And while Swanson was generally supportive of Ammiano’s bill, he was hardly a leader in the campaign to pass it. This is too bad, because Swanson’s almost always a progressive vote and has been good on issues like whistleblower protection (a Swanson bill that passed this year protects local government workers who want to report problems confidentially). We’ll endorse him for another term, but he needs to get tougher on the BART police.

School Board fireworks

Zelda Bronstein
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2
School Board fireworks

Look for some interesting heat and maybe some light at the school board meeting tonight (April 27). The teachers union is holding a march and members will be speaking out against the layoffs (PDF), since this is the last board meeting before pink slips to more than 800 teachers and 300 para-professionals. The district, of course, is broke, since most of the money comes from the state, and the state is broke for all the reasons we all know, and I don’t envy the job of the school board and the superintendent, who have to somehow balance the books. The teachers think there should be more cost-cutting at the central office and that the district should dip into reserve fund, which will be about $8 million to the good at the end of this year.


It’s complicated, but the state requires the district to keep 2 percent of its budget total in reserve; that’s a sound policy. Right now, according to information that SFUSD spokesperson Gentle Blythe sent me, the reserve is at $33.6 million, much more than is needed, but some of that is temporary federal stimulus money.


Here’s how the distict outlines the situation:


Our baseline projections (i.e., the fund balance that would result if no steps were taken to address the budget shortfalls) are that our Unrestricted General Fund (UGF) balance would be $24.2 million, negative $37.9 million, and negative $97.6 million at the end of the three respective years. At the end of FY 2009-10, we would have $8.4 million more in fund balance than the $15.8 million required. However, we would fall short of our required fund balance in the following two years by $53.7 million and $113.4 million, respectively. If the Superintendent’s Budget Deficit Action Plan were implemented, our UGF fund balance would be $33.6 million, $23.6 million, and $15.8 million at the end of the three respective years.  


That, of course, assumes that the economy will still be awful in the next two years, that the state won’t have or allocate any additional money to education and that this same horrible fiscal situation will continue. Which may be true — but it may also be true that things will get better with a Democrat in the Governor’s Office, and the projections might not be so dire.


Meanwhile, the board will also be taking up a truly awful bill called SB 955, which attacks teacher seniority. It’s an informational item only, but should generate some discussion, since board member Rachel Norton has already weighed in on it in her sfgate blog post:


Still, it’s clear that there is political traction for California to weigh in on the national conversation happening on teacher seniority and evaluation, and I’m told that an alternative bill is likely to be introduced by a Democratic sponsor. If that happens, it will be important for the Board to have a position on what provisions should be included or dropped.

At this point, there’s no Democratic alternative bill in Sacramento, but there are plenty of moderate Democrats who could come up with one. And it raises the whole touchy issue of how to handle staff reductions in a district where many of the senior teachers have managed to get themselves assigned to top-performing schools. “We just sent layoff notices to 60 percent of the staff at Alvarado,” Board President Jane Kim told me. “And some schools on the west side will have only 10 percent layoffs.”

I cna’t imagine a majority of this school board coming down on the side of reducing seniority for teachers. But the fact that Norton is talking about the board looking at other alternatives, and how a counter to SB 955 might be structured, suggests that this issue isn’t going away. 

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28

SF Hep B Free


Attend this kick-off rally for a new hepatitis B ad campaign. The campaign addresses recent federal data confirming that SF has the highest rate of liver cancer in the country, primarily due to the high rate of hepatitis B among Asian Americans. Fiona Ma, Dr. Edward Chow, Ted Fang, and others will be speaking.

5:30 p.m., free

Togonon Gallery

77 Geary, 2nd floor, SF

www.sfhepbfree.org

Workers Memorial Day


Commemorate workers killed on the job and defend injured workers at this protest to reactivate the labor movement, protect the lives and safety of workers in the workplace, and demand healthcare and justice for all.

7 p.m., free

ILWU Local 34

801 2nd St., SF

www.workersmemorialday.org

THURSDAY, APRIL 29

Support SFBG’s slate card


Show your support for the Guardian’s June 2010 slate of endorsed candidates for the Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) at this fundraiser featuring live music by the Valerie Orth Band and Lumaya, DJs Smoove and Kramer, a performance by Fou Fou Ha, and more. Although the Guardian is not directly affiliated with this event, proceeds go to a Guardian slate card mailer prepared and distributed by the candidates.

7 p.m., $20–$100 suggested donation

CELLspace

2050 Bryant, SF

alixro@yahoo.com

Oakland teachers strike


Join the picket lines at your Oakland neighborhood public school to protest the district’s top-heavy administration, over-reliance on private contracts, and continued cuts to essential programs.

6 a.m. protest at a school near you

11 a.m. march and rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza

14th at Broadway, Oakl.

Oaklandteachers.wordpress.com

FRIDAY, APRIL 30

Project Homeless Connect


Celebrate Arbor Day by taking part in the groundbreaking of a new fruit tree orchard at Project Homeless Connect’s Growing Home Community Garden, a project that aims to provide an ongoing source of fresh fruit for San Francisco’s homeless community.

1 p.m., free

Project Homeless Connect

Octavia between Page and Oak, SF

RSVP to (858) 523-9020 or (510) 601-4211

SATURDAY, MAY 1

International Workers’ Day


This march and rally will demand full rights for undocumented workers; money for jobs and education not war and occupation; and no more budget cuts or fee hikes that are just taxes on the poor. Sponsored by the May Day 2010 Coalition and the ANSWER Coalition.

Noon, free

24th St. and Mission, SF

answersf.org

TUESDAY, MAY 4

HIREvent


Find out about job opportunities in accounting, education, management, public safety, customer service, sales, technology, law administration, and more at this job fair featuring resume recommendations and employers ready to hire.

11 a.m., free

Hotel Whitcomb

1231 Market, SF

1-888-THE JOBS

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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0
Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that there are now almost 10,000 employees with paychecks that totaled more than $100,000 last year. I can already hear the screaming: that’s close to a billion dollars! City workers are all overpaid, fat, and lazy! That’s why we have a budget crisis!

And yeah, I think it would be a lot more fair if the highest earners took the bulk of the pay cuts (5 percent for everyone in that $100K club would be $50 million a year). But Mayor Newsom wants to be sure the lowest-paid folks get their share of the hurt, so the biggest impact of his budget reductions will fall on those least able to handle it.

But I also think it’s worth looking at who these high earners really are.

Now, some of the ones at the top of the scale are political appointees. Do we really need to pay $354,000 to get someone qualified to run Muni? Is the head of the city’s Public Utilities Commission really worth $291,000? Some are getting market rate for their skills — three of the top 20 earners are doctors who work as pathologists in the Medical Examiner’s office.

But the most telling fact is that 11 of the top 20 are either cops or firefighters — and they’re collecting huge amounts of overtime. Four cops alone, all with the rank of captain or deputy chief, accounted for overtime pay totaling $588,000.

I know city employees who work at the senior management level — just like those cops — but they don’t get overtime. Neither do senior managers in most private-sector jobs. And it’s not as if these top cops are working for minimum wage; they all make around $200,000 or more as base salary. Plus they get excellent benefits and get to retire on sweet pensions.

Think of all the money and services you could save with one minor contract change: once you get to the level of captain in the SFPD, you aren’t eligible for overtime anymore.

Welcome to Elm Street: Part Four

Sue Vaughan
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0
Welcome to Elm Street: Part Four

In honor(?) of the new A Nightmare on Elm Street, we’re recapping all of the Elms so far. Find more on the Pixel Vision blog.

In the immortal words of the Fat Boys: are you ready for Freddy?

Well, duh. By 1988’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, everyone and their (human-faced) dog was ready for Freddy, whose status as a grinning, quotable pop culture icon would only be enhanced by his latest film. The Dream Master is the first of the Nightmare movies to basically do away with any semblance of a plot; instead, the film exists to provide variously surreal, outlandish, and repulsive nightmare sequences that inevitably end in the death of whatever character is chiefly involved.
And that ain’t such a bad thing. Though the behind the scenes credits are sorta impressive, actually — Renny Harlin, who’d go on to make Die Hard 2 (1990), Cliffhanger (1993), and Deep Blue Sea (1999), directed; Brian Helgeland, who shared a screenwriting Oscar with Curtis Hanson for 1997’s L.A. Confidential, and was later nominated for adapting 2003’s Mystic River, is among its co-writers — this movie is utterly ridiculous anytime Freddy’s not the center of attention.

Thankfully, that’s not often. As Louis described in his post on Nightmare 3, the remaining Elm Street kids/Dream Warriors — now more or less integrated into Springwood’s normal high school population —  are the first to go, and they go fast. But wait, you say! Didn’t Freddy get buried in consecrated ground, etc. etc., at the end of Dream Warriors? Yeah, but no matter: before Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) dies, he dreams his dog, Jason (zing!), turns demonic and pees a fiery stream into Freddy’s junkyard grave. Naturally, Freddy comes back to “life,” except he was already dead, or undead, or something, to begin with, wasn’t he? “You shouldn’t have buried me. I’m not dead!” Whatever, he’s back.

Before you can sing a slo-mo jump rope rhyme, Kincaid gets gloved, and ever-horny Joey (Rodney Eastman) drowns in his waterbed. Kristen (now played by Tuesday Knight, who’s no Patricia Arquette) meets a fiery end, but not before courteously extending Freddy’s nightmare-entering capabilities beyond the Elm Street circle: she pulls innocent, mousy Alice (Lisa Wilcox) into her fatal dream. (Freddy’s response: “How sweet! Fresh meat!”) Logically, of course, this means Freddy can now terrorize Alice and all of her friends, including her kung fu-fighting brother, Rick (Andras Jones); asthmatic nerd Sheila (Toy Newkirk); bug-phobic workout-aholic Debbie (Brooke Theiss); and letter-jacketed love interest Dan (Danny Hassel).

The death scenes benefit from what appears to be a bigger special-effects budget than previous films, with Debbie’s transformation into a giant cockroach remaining my personal favorite. There’s also a nice bit where Alice gets pulled into a movie screen, and an attempt at near-artsyness when a scene repeats multiple times to slow Alice and Dan from saving one of their imperiled, snoozing friends. I’m also a huge fan of the scene where Freddy visits Alice’s workplace, the Crave Inn (zing!) diner. Seems Freddy, in a particularly sassy mood, has ordered himself a pizza. A pizza covered in heads! Screaming heads! Freddy spears a head-meatball with one of his claws and excitedly smacks his lips: “My faaaaavorite!” The chewing sounds are amazing.

Later, Alice turns Perseus and “kills” Freddy by showing him his reflection in a piece of stained glass (but not before Freddy reminds us that “I. Am. Eternal!”) And since Freddy has now become not just a slaughterer-of-the-sleeping, but a taker-of-souls (when and how did that happen, exactly?), his captives sail to freedom past Alice in a wash of white light, as if Zelda Rubenstein was showing them the way. Yeah, that’s the end of him, for sure! Er … one more thing about Dream Master is its determined-to-be “hip” soundtrack, with Sinead O’ Conner, Dramarama, Blondie, and other artists contributing tunes. But you can’t go wrong with the Fat Boys.

Herrera to San Francisco: boycott Arizona

Mary Magee
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25
Herrera to San Francisco: boycott Arizona

I almost visited Arizona once.
I was in Nevada, visiting the Hoover Dam which crosses the border between Nevada and Arizona and took a photo next to the Arizona state sign.

But I didn’t cross the line. I already suspected that Arizona was groundzero for wingnuts, thanks to the decision of Arizona U.S. senator, Republican John McCain, to choose then Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election.


At least, Democrat Janet Napolitano was still governor of Arizona at the time, and so was able to veto similar attempts to pass racist immigration laws in the state of


But now Republican Jan Brewer, a former Maricopa County supervisor, is governor of Arizona and has signed Arizona’s SB  1070, I think I’ll follow San Francisco city Attorney Dennis Herrera’s advice and implement a sweeping boycott of all things Arizona.


Citing San Francisco’s “moral leadership against such past injustices as South African apartheid, the exploitation of migrant farm workers, the economic oppression of Catholics in Northern Ireland, and discrimination against the LGBT community,” Herrera offered the services of his office’s contracts, government litigation and investigations teams to work closely with city departments and commissions to identify applicable contracts and to aggressively pursue termination wherever legally tenable.


“Arizona’s controversial new law makes it a state-level crime for someone to be in the country illegally, and even criminalizes the failure to carry immigration documents at all times by lawful foreign residents,” Herrera’s April 26 press release observed. “It additionally imposes a requirement for police officers to question those they suspect may be in the United States illegally. Civil libertarians have sharply criticized the law for being an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against all Latinos, regardless of their citizenship. It has also been rebuked by the nation’s law enforcement community, with the president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, San Jose Police Chief Robert Davis, reiterating his organization’s 2006 policy statement that requiring local police to enforce immigration laws “would likely negatively effect and undermine the level of trust and cooperation between local police and immigrant communities.”


“Arizona has charted an ominous legal course that puts extremist politics before public safety, and betrays our most deeply-held American values,” said Herrera, who is the son of an immigrant from Latin America. “Just as it did two decades ago when it refused to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Arizona has again chosen to isolate itself from the rest of the nation. Our most appropriate response is to assure that their isolation is tangible rather than merely symbolic. San Francisco should lead the way in adopting and aggressively pursuing a sweeping boycott of Arizona and Arizona-based businesses until this unjust law is repealed or invalidated. My office is fully committed to work with San Francisco city departments and commissions to identify all applicable contracts, and to pursue termination wherever possible.  And my office stands ready to assist in any legal challenges in whatever way it can.”


Meanwhile, Napolitano, who is serving as Obama’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary, joined Obama in calling Arizona’s new immigration law “misguided.”


Appearing on ABC News, Napolitano said of the bill: “That one is a misguided law. It’s not a good law enforcement law. It’s not a good law in any number of reasons.”
She also warned that Arizona’s law could get other states trying to pass similar legislation, which could create a patchwork of immigration rules, instead of an an overall federal immigration system.


“This affects everybody, and I actually view it now as a security issue,” Napolitano said. “We need to know who’s in the country. And we need to know, for those who are in the country illegally, there needs to be a period under which they are given the opportunity to register so we get their biometrics, we get their criminal history and we know who they are. They pay a fine. They learn English. They get right with the law.”


Here on the streets of San Francisco, immigrant advocates are asking folks to march on May Day in solidarity with the immigrant communities of Arizona.


“In 2006, the immigrant community took to the streets in huge numbers,” a press release from the May 1st coalition stated. “Millions of undocumented working people and their families sought a pathway to legalization and to a life without fear of work-place raids or middle-of-the night deportations that tear families apart. In 2010, conditions have only worsened as hate crimes have increased exponentially; intolerance has been legitimized by the rhetoric of the Tea Party; and governments (like Arizona) have instituted harsh policing and employment practices that terrorize our communities. The federal government has failed to solve the crisis of undocumented workers in this country. In San Francisco, thousands of workers face losing their jobs because of a flawed employment verification process. Our children are deported without due process and now we must fear the codification of racial bigotry in Arizona.  State and federal governments have ineffectively solved the budget crisis on the backs of the lowest paid workers.  We march in solidarity with Arizona’s immigrants; immigrants everywhere; and the hard-working people of San Francisco who’ve unfairly endured the burden of this economic crisis.


The May 1st Coalition invites the community to join them for an April 28 poster-making party at 10 a.m, City College Mission Campus at 1125 Valencia Street in preparation for a May Day march at which Olga Miranda, President of SEIU Local 87, Jane Kim, SFUSD school board president, and Pablo Rodriguez, city college faculty, will speak.


My favorite comment on this unfunny situation comes from Daily Kos contributing editor and Las Vegas resident Jed Lewison.


“What do you call a bunch of people who not only don’t see anything wrong with Arizona’s new hate law, but blame federal inaction on immigration reform for “forcing” Arizona to enact the law while simultaneously trying to block federal immigration reform legislation?” Lewison asks. “You call them conservatives.”


 

Nevius makes the case for a progressive DCCC

Sasha Cuttler
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27
Nevius makes the case for a progressive DCCC

Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius made an excellent argument for supporting the Guardian’s slate of progressive candidates for the Democratic County Central Committee in Saturday’s paper, even though he was trying to do just the opposite. But I suppose that perspective is everything.

Our perspective at the Guardian is one of great pride in San Francisco and its left-of-center values. Nevius looks at San Francisco from his home in Walnut Creek and sees a scary place where people question authority figures and don’t simply trust developers, big corporations, and the Chamber of Commerce to act in the public interest.

“The next two months will see a battle for the political soul of the city. It will pit the progressives against the moderates in a face-off that will have huge implications in the November elections and, perhaps, the election of the next mayor. The key is control of an obscure but incredibly influential organization called the Democratic County Central Committee,” Nevius writes, and he’s right about that.

But he’s wrong when he assumes most San Franciscans agree with him and others who want to make the city more like the sterile suburbs that they prefer. Nevius values “safe streets,” which is his code for giving police more power through the proposed sit-lie ordinance and other unpopular crackdowns, despite the fact that he sat in the back row and watched the DCCC voted overwhelmingly against sit-lie after nobody presented a credible case for it.

Nevius is so utterly blind to the fact that most San Franciscans want adequate mitigation and community benefits from development projects that he recently ranted and raved about the defeat of the 555 Washington project, even though it was unanimously rejected by the Board of Supervisors for inadequately addressing these requirements.

The “moderate values” that Nevius champions are actually quite extreme: give downtown and developers everything they want, never question the behavior of cops or the Fire Department’s budget, keep cutting taxes until city government becomes incapable of providing services or regulating the private sector, ignore the cultural value of nightclubs and artists, and deport all the undocumented immigrants.

This is the Democratic Party that Nevius and his allies like Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier and supervisorial candidate Scott Wiener (a conservative attorney who would be the best friend that the suburban cowboy cops could ever have on the board) want to promote, and it looks more like the Republican Party than a political party with San Francisco values.

But they aren’t honest about that intention, instead trying to fool people into believing that progressives are the extremists. “But when Mrs. Jones receives her Democratic voter guide in the mail…she’s thinking of the party of Barack Obama, not the party of Aaron Peskin and (Supervisor) Chris Daly,” Wiener said.

But in the Democratic presidential primary election, it was Daly and Peskin who were the strongest early supporters of Barack Obama, while Wiener backed John Edwards and Alioto-Pier, Mayor Gavin Newsom, and the rest of the “moderate” party stalwarts supported Hillary Clinton. That’s not a huge deal, but it’s a sign of how the so-called moderates are willing to distort political reality.

So Nevius is right. This is an important election and it is about the soul of the city. Do you support scared suburban twits who disingenuously try to hide behind the “moderate” label in order to seem more reasonable, or do you support progressive candidates who have integrity and won’t moderate their values in order to appease the cops or the capitalists?

If it’s the latter, support the Guardian’s slate (which is substantially similar to the slates approved by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, the San Francisco Tenants Union, the Sierra Club’s SF Bay Chapter, and other progressive groups).

And if you want that slate to have some money to mail out a Guardian slate card, come to a fundraiser this Thursday evening at CELLspace, 2050 Bryant, featuring the candidates and some great exemplars of the culture they support, including amazing singer/songwriter Valerie Orth, the zany dance troupe Fou Fou Ha, and DJs Smoove and Kramer, who regularly rock the best clubs and community-based parties in town.

And by “town,” I mean San Francisco, not Walnut Creek.    

FEAST: 10 kick-ass brunches

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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FEAST: 10 kick-ass brunches

We here at the Guardian don’t survive on green buds and printer ink alone. We eat real food. Sometimes! But we do get up late and hungover. While we often forgo fancy brunch — unless we save our pennies for the amazing eggs-meet-legs “Sunday’s a Drag” buffet at Harry Denton’s (www.harrydenton.com) or dim sum nirvana at Yank Sing (www.yanksing.com) or Ton Kiang (www.tonkiang.net) — we’ll sure as shootin’ shell out for thrifty chilaquiles and bloody marys, especially the way the Bay makes ’em. Here are some of our dearest bleary-eyed, late-morning tummy fillers. (Marke B.)

 

BASHFUL BULL TOO

There are days when you wake up with a bladder full of Jameson’s and a fervent wish to sink into a salty, unglamorous world of egg and cheese. These are the mornings when bottomless mimosas and goat cheese frittatas sound like fightin’ words. Easy tiger, I got you — just slump into a booth at Bashful Bull Too, the most standard of Outer Sunset diners. There’s no live jazz band, no “scene” at all — just you and your greasy calories. Get down on their cheap plates of hash browns and bacon, or better yet, a burger. Slabs of ground beef are acceptable fare when, after all, you’re having breakfast at 2 p.m. (Caitlin Donohue)

3600 Taraval, SF. (415) 759-8112

 

BEAN BAG CAFÉ

In you’re from the Midwest, good brunch spots are distinguished by waitresses who call you “hon” and have your coffee waiting for you before you sit down. Become a regular at Bean Bag Café in the Western Addition, and they’ll do all that and more. Bean Bag’s extensive breakfast and lunch menu and progressive cooking staff means never having to decide if it’s too late for Goldilocks oatmeal (yep, it’s just right) or too early for pancakes and beer. Speaking of pancakes, the Bean Bag buttermilk, customized with bananas and caramelized walnuts on top, is a must-have. Pair it with scrambled eggs drenched in Tabasco, and you’re set until 3 p.m., when Bean Bag kicks off its happy hour with beer for $1.75. Other highlights: sunshine and a petting zoo of scruffy but wuvable dogs outside. (Diane Sussman)

601 Divisadero, SF. (415)-563-3634

 

CAFE DU SOLEIL

Lower Haight — known for its nicoise? C’est vrai! The salad nicoise at Cafe Du Soleil is a stunner, bursting with tender tuna, piquant greens, and enough fresh fixings to ensure some inner sunshine. But don’t stop there — or at the pastry case in front, with delectable goodies like croques madames and hazelnut chocolate croissants. Soleil’s salmon tortilla, a sort of deconstructed-quiche pyramid topped with lovely lox and drizzled with smoky romesco, is this laidback Parisian hang’s brunchtime piece de resistance. Bonus: hunky scruffsters and tattooed ladies. (Marke B.)

200 Fillmore, SF. (415) 934-8637. www.soleilsf.com

 

CHLOE’S

Let’s face it, one aspect of brunch — at least on a Sunday — is the wait. Chloe’s is no exception. The restaurant’s rep and tiny size mean that while weekdays are fine, on the weekend you will be waiting in a (loose) line. The upside is that Chloe’s is on a quiet corner of Church Street, so on a sunlit day, you’ll get fresh air and nothing noisier or more imposing than the people-watching pleasure of the J-Church sliding by. Once inside, indulge your sweet tooth: two highlights of the low-key menu are french toast made with croissants (served with strawberries and powdered sugar) and banana walnut pancakes, a Chloe’s specialty. Chloe’s offers some pleasant, simple variations on scrambled eggs, and the fresh fruit and white rosemary toast to compliment them. This may be Noe Valley, but the coffee is Twin Peaks good. (Johnny Ray Huston)

1399 Church, SF. (415) 648-4116

 

CHOW

The agony of brunch, since it allows for judgment-free consumption of lunch dishes or breakfast dishes, means having to choose between savory or sweet, sandwich or omelet, salad or hash browns. Ten minutes alone can be devoted to the age-old question of pancake or eggs benedict? Coffee or cocktail? Pancake or … This is where Chow ends the cycle of neurosis. At Chow, you can order one egg benedict and one pancake, accompanied by one cup of coffee and one wine mojito. Plus, Chow has two pancakes without peer: the blueberry with warm blueberry sauce and mascarpone cheese, and Marion’s ricotta pancake with lemon. Get one of each! Of course, if you want the chilaquiles or a cheesy scramble, Chow will happily oblige. Watch them start to emit a soft, warm glow when paired with a blushing bellini. (Diane Sussman)

212 Church and 1245 Ninth Ave. 415-552-2469; 415-665-9912, www.chowfoodbar.com

 

HOMEMADE CAFÉ

It’s Saturday morning-slipping-toward-noon, and there are few reasons to expend the effort to pick your fuzzball head up off the pillow it dropped onto in the after-party wee hours. Curled in your cocoon, there is but one comforting thought: breakfast! Few places can revive the soul and satisfy the belly as proficiently as Homemade Café. You’d be wise to choose the spinach, mushroom, and feta omelet. Sweet or spicy is a tough choice, though, since there are spectacularly fluffy blueberry pancakes to be had as well. It’s crucial that you remember this magical phrase: “Upgrade to Home-Fry Heaven.” They’ll arrive smothered in cheese, salsa, sour cream, and a choice of guacamole or pesto. You will feel alive again — at least until naptime. (Rebecca Bowe)

2454 Sacramento, Berk. (510) 845-1940

 

LIME

I love Lime. Not just because it offers a pretty good assortment of belly-filling foodstuffs on Sunday mornings or the hip and lively atmosphere — but because of the bottomless mimosas and bloody marys. Now, I could try to compare Lime’s eggs benedict to others I’ve eaten, but why bother? There are bottomless fucking mimosas and bloody marys, people! Who cares about the food when I can get stupid drunk with my friends at 11 a.m.? In fact, I can’t recall a time when we weren’t asked to leave, albeit very nicely by the wait staff. Just be careful, those drinks will knock you on your ass and give you a hangover by 4 p.m. Guaranteed. (Ben Hopfer)

2247 Market St., SF. 415.621.5256, www.lime-sf.com

 

LYNN & LU’S ESCAPADE CAFE

Lynn and Lu, I heart you. Snag a quaint table under an umbrella on Grand Avenue or find a spot on the back patio for a beautiful sunny brunch. The morning portions are fat, happy, and classic. Three-egg omelets come bursting with your filler of choice and arrive sitting next to a pile of yummy roasted potatoes. Those with stomachs bigger than their eyes will be relieved to see that the Escapade frittatas look more like a crowd-pleasing tower of peppers, veggies, and eggs than a paltry single serving — everyone will waddle away with a smile. The service is fabulous, the price is just right, and the food comes quick enough to whisk away any dream-soaked cobwebs. (Amber Schadewald)

3353 Grand Ave, Oakland, 510-835-5705

 

MAMA’S ROYAL CAFÉ

Imagine a John Waters time warp with rickety counter chairs, a napkin art gallery, and a suggestive painting of female softball players with a giant bat, and you’ve just about captured the quirkiness of Mama’s Royal Café. The home fries, hollandaise dishes, and rib-sticking omelets are consistently satisfying, but weekly specials also offer seasonal and delicious treats like lemon-ricotta pancakes with blood orange curd. The wait staff often serves on hipster time, which, quite frankly, works out perfectly since Mama’s is best enjoyed with friends on a lazy Sunday as you discuss, or help each other remember, last night’s misadventures. (Robyn Johnson)

4012 Broadway, Oakland. (510) 547-7600. www.mamasroyalcafeoakland.com

 

STACKS

After a recent multihour hike around the Presidio, I found myself ravenous. You know the feeling — fully prepared to combine breakfast, lunch, dinner, a multitude of snacks, and dessert into a single meal. Where better to do that than at Stacks, the San Francisco location of a mini-chain (others are in Menlo Park and Burlingame) that looks like a Denny’s that got an upscale makeover, with some of the biggest floral arrangements you’ll ever see. Speaking of gigantic, Stacks’ portions are robust, and their menu is a monster: over a dozen omelet choices; copious varieties of pancakes, crepes, and waffles; sandwiches and burgers; daily specials; and at least seven different smoothies. (Cheryl Eddy)

501 Hayes, SF. (415) 241-9011. www.stacksrestaurant.com

 

TAQUERIA LOS COYOTES

Being on a tight budget has forced me to get creative, and this underdog taqueria located on a block full of distracting alternatives has become my favorite spot for a weekend breakfast burrito. There are never any lines, the food is as cheap as it comes, and the egg and chorizo burrito with beans, cheese, and rice is guaranteed to soak up a whole weekend of leftover mischief hanging. It’s even big enough to share with any co-conspirators still hanging out as well. (Paula Connelly)

3036 16th St., SF. (415) 861-3708. www.taquerialoscoyotes.com

 

ZAZIE

Yes, there’ll be a wait — but it’s more than worth it at Zazie, a French bistro that is San Francisco’s best patio brunch spot. The heart of the menu resides in the poached egg dishes (my favorite is La Mer, with real Dungeness crab, avocado, and green onion), seven to choose from, each with a choice of one, two, or three perfectly poached eggs, wonderfully tangy hollandaise sauce, and a side of potatoes fried up with, get this, roasted garlic cloves. Yum! Everything on the brunch menu is awesome, from challah french toast to scrambled eggs Fontainebleau to the full-on trout du sud. C’est magnifique! (Steven T. Jones)

941 Cole Street, SF. (415) 564-5332, www.zaziesf.com

Throwing down with the Tablehopper

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Throwing down with the Tablehopper

The incredibly everywhere Marcia Gagliardi, a.k.a. the Tablehopper (www.tablehopper.com), has somehow canvassed, in-depth, every eatery, drinkery, and food-cartery in our fair city — while still maintaining her voracious appetite, sassy aplomb, and appealing figure. Her new book, The Tablehopper’s Guide to Dining and Drinking in San Francisco (Ten Speed Press) is one of those must-have recommendation books that truly opens your eyes and mouth to culinary nooks and crannies. Divided into a multitude of sections like “Shituations” (places for dumping someone), “Morning After Breakfasts,” “Picky Eaters,” “Dude Food,” and “Ethnic Group Dinners,” it’s a fantastic thing to have on hand for every occasion, real or imagined. Marcia took a minute to answer some of our more “Guardian” questions about Bay dining and drinking. (Marke B.)

SFBG I’m pansexual and bursting with spring fever. What bars or restaurants can I go to where the boys and girls and everything-in-between are hot and open to everything?

MARCIA GAGLIARDI I’ve always thought the Lush Lounge (1221 Polk, SF. 415-771-2022, www.lushloungesf.com) has a good mixed vibe, and it seems Blackbird (2124 Market, SF. 415-503-0630, www.blackbirdbar.com) draws a mixed crowd as well. Orbit Room (1900 Market, SF. 415-252-9525) too. Or just go to Beretta (1199 Valencia, SF. 415- 695-1199, www.berettasf.com) late at night, sprinkle some Ecstasy on everyone’s crispy thin-crust pizza, and see what happens.

SFBG I have $5 for dinner. Where should I go?

MG I’d go to Balompie Café (3349 18th St., SF. 415-648-9199) or El Zocalo (3230 Mission, SF. 415-282-2572) and get a couple of extremely filling pupusas, which come with chips and salsa. Yep, you can get some hot pupusa action for less than $5. Hott!

SFBG Oh dear, I’ve doublebooked on date night. But then I get to thinking — why not take ’em both on at once? They might get into each other as well, and three’s certainly company! What’s a good place to have them both meet me and, once the initial confusion subsides, gently introduce the idea of a potentially delicious ménage à trois?

MG Well, hello, Ms. Popular. This is the kind of night that calls for some sexy atmosphere, and whaddya know, booze. The cozy downstairs booths at Oola (860 Folsom, SF. 415-995-2061, www.oola-sf.com) might fit the bill, and you can take turns licking the sauce from the yummy, sticky, baby back ribs off each other’s fingers.

SFBG My parents are on their way to take me out to dinner, but I just got really stoned. Where will my goofy demeanor blend right in?

MG Florio (1915 Fillmore, SF. 415-775-4300, www.floriosf.com) would work because its dandy-yet-friendly atmosphere is parental-unit approved, the lights are dim, the hearty food will jive with your munchies, and there’s usually enough going on in there that your parents won’t be watching your every move. There’s also a little alley around the corner where you can spark up if you need another puff before dessert.

SFBG Best place to announce my impending gender reassignment surgery to someone close to me who may be surprised?

MG Absinthe (398 Hayes, SF. 415-551-1590, www.absinthe.com). You can request a quieter table so not everyone hears your answers to all of your friend’s burning questions, and the spirited cocktails — a coquettishly tangy Ginger Rogers or bourbon-spiked Scarlett O’Hara, perhaps? — will help them digest the good news.

SFBG Someone took me out on a date to a really expensive restaurant and insisted on paying. Now it’s my turn to take them out, but I’m like, down to my last $20. Where can I take them so they feel I’ve treated them to something classier than my budget suggests?

MG Ah yes, the old smoke and mirrors. I’d go to Great Eastern in Chinatown (649 Jackson, SF. 415-986-2500), which has some bountiful deals on set menus, and the room is spiffy. Or you could take them to dim sum at one of my favorite places, S&T Hong Kong Seafood (2578 Noriega, SF. 415-665-8338) in the Outer Susnset, and you will feast fo’ cheap.

SFBG What wine bars have the best pours? I mean top-of-the-glass for $6. I’m a-thirsty, girl!

MG Well, the folks working the bar at Castro’s 2223 (2223 Market, SF. 415-431-0692, www.2223restaurant.com) know their clientele well and do pretty big pours. Same with Laszlo (2526 Mission, SF. 415-401-0810, www.laszlobar.com). I also noted a fuller glass the last time I was at the Hidden Vine (620 Post, SF. 415-674-3567, www.thehiddenvine.com). And based on the number of loaded folks at the Wine Jar (1870 Fillmore, SF. 415-931-2924, www.winejar-sf.com), I’d say the generous pours are to blame.

SFBG What would you say are the most “interesting” things you’ve ever eaten in the city?

MG Some of the dishes at Spices! (294 Eighth Ave., SF. 415-752-8884) have definitely pushed the envelope for me. (Stinky tofu, intestine stew — and I don’t care to have either dish ever again). The tendon pho at Pho Tan Hoa (431 Jones, SF. 415-673-3163) definitely rates on the funky meter — and I’m talking big hunks of tendon.

MTA board approves controversial budget

Sasha Cuttler
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MTA board approves controversial budget

By Adam Lesser

City Hall needed an overflow room to accommodate all the disenchanted Muni riders who showed up to protest the two-year San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency budget plan yesterday (4/20). The budget locks in a 10 percent service cut through July 1st, 2011, at which point the MTA board is hopeful that the service cut will be lowered to 5 percent. The controversial budget was adopted on a 4-3 vote, and now goes to the Board of Supervisors, where progressive supervisors have already signaled opposition to the service cuts.

“It still seems and feels as I look at it [the budget], that it’s very tenuously put together. In light of the fact that it’s going to impact the least, the lonely, and the lost of us, I had to say, let’s keep looking at it,” said Director James McCray, who was one of three dissenting votes.

McCray, along with Director Malcolm Heincke who voted for the budget, were the two directors to openly express concern about the pay of transit operators and overtime charges. In a $750 million budget, service cuts wound up providing $29 million in savings, a relatively small number compared to the $456 million that will be spent on salaries and benefits, as well as the $59 million in work orders to other agencies like the police department and the city attorney.

Small revenue measures like adding 1,000 metered spaces, eliminating free reserved parking around areas like City Hall, and window advertising wrap on buses are part of the budget.

Heincke questioned MTA Executive Director Nathaniel Ford about the budget which includes $10 million in labor concessions from MTA employees while locking in a $9 million raise in 2011 and a $9.5 million raise in 2012 for transit operators from Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 250-A. Transit operators’ wages and raises are written into the city charter. 

“The bubble over my head says wow,” said Heincke. Ford’s attempts to negotiate with the union over work rules have been unsuccessful. Sup. Sean Elsbernd is pushing a charter amendment for the November ballot that would remove the TWU’s pay rates from the city charter.

Anger over Muni’s payment of work orders to other city agencies was a constant theme among community groups as diverse as the Chinese Progressive Association and the San Francisco Transit Riders Union. Those work orders have increased from $36 million in 2006 to $66 million in 2010.

“What really happened is the rest of the city had a budget crisis and the mayor went after Muni looking for funds,” said Dave Snyder, coordinator for the San Francisco Transit Riders Union. Newsom appoints the directors who sit on the MTA Board. “Muni is paying for service the public doesn’t want them to pay for at the expense of transit service.”

Members of the Latino and Chinese-American community were out in large numbers, not just to protest service cuts that they felt disproportionately impact the Mission and Chinatown, but to complain about harassment by the police. Enforcement of the Proof of Payment program has increased with Muni agents and police checking the amount of time left on riders’ transfer tickets, and issuing fines.

“You have police asking for ID and issuing $75 fines. There have been a few cases of deportation,” Beatriz Herrera, an organizer for People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER). Referring to riders whose transfers expire while riding a bus, Emily Lee of the Chinese Progressive Association said, “They expect folks to get off the bus. That’s an unreasonable expectation. It’s stressful for the community. The police are intimidating.”

The service changes are slated to take effect May 8th.

Love, guts, and glory

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Love, guts, and glory

arts@sfbg.com

SFIFF Though there were far starrier, more expensive films debuting in the Midnight Madness section of last year’s Toronto Film Festival, the category’s prize and foot-stomping audience favor was stolen by a low-budget Australian film that arrived with no fanfare, no name actors, and a writer-director who’d made no prior features.

Sean Byrne’s The Loved Ones focuses on small-town teenager Brent (Xavier Samuel), who’s severely depressed from a recent tragedy but rouses himself to attend the school prom — or would have, if he wasn’t hijacked instead for one of the most harrowing first dates in film history.

Pegged by some as "Misery meets Pretty in Pink," this instant horror mini-classic is by turns poignant, funny, grotesque, alarming, and finally very, very satisfying. It’s sure to be a hit again in the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Late Show section. Between festival travels, Byrne was back home in Melbourne when he answered my e-mail queries.

SFBG The movie really throws you for a loop by spending the first stretch on serious psychological drama, then springing something entirely different.

Sean Byrne Well, I needed [to establish] a hero who was uniquely qualified to survive hell. Someone who is conditioned to pain, who feels like they deserve to suffer. He’s a cutter or self-mutilator, someone who tries to block out emotional pain with physical pain. He’s a kid with a death wish who’s forced to endure a literal hell, and in the process realizes he’s got everything to live for.

SFBG Your central female character is more interesting than the usual horror movie villains in that she’s so spoiled she thinks she’s a victim, which then excuses her behaving monstrously. Where did that come from?

SB I was thinking about what could make a signature, iconic, highly marketable villain and I noticed how my five-year-old niece, along with almost every little girl, is obsessed with wearing pink. It’s part of the magic and fantasy stage of childhood, where they actually believe the Disney line "someday [my] prince will come." So then I started thinking, well, what if our villain is a teenager with raging hormones but still somehow stuck in this spoiled, childish, preoperational stage of development. I imagined "Princess" as a teenage version of that irritating kid in the supermarket who demands lollies and won’t stop screaming until she gets them.

SFBG I like that her favorite song is self-pity anthem "Not Pretty Enough." Has Kasey Chambers had any reaction to the film?

SB I tried to stay within the horror genre but at the same time subvert the conventions. And having our troubled hero listen to heavy metal (the "devil’s music") and our villain listen to a top-of-the-pops ballad like "Not Pretty Enough" was a way of doing that. As far as I know, Kasey hasn’t seen the film. I’m dying to know how she’ll react.

SFBG A difference between this movie and those associated with "torture porn" is that here both the victims and the perps are pretty complicated characters.

SB I hope so. I did my research and tried to get inside the heads of these characters before I started writing. Characters in horror movies are often one-dimensional cardboard cutouts. But really great ones like The Shining (1980), The Exorcist (1973), and Rosemary’s Baby (1968) delve into the psychology of the moment. They answer the question: how do ordinary people react to extraordinary situations honestly? They explore our base instincts with emotional authenticity.

SFBG The film really does dish out some horrifying abuse, though — did you ever pull back on how graphic it would be?

SB No. Never. I’m not a fan of PG-13 horror. The middle ground is pretty boring — that’s why it’s called the middle ground.

THE LOVED ONES

May 2, 10:30 p.m., Castro

May 6, 3 p.m., Sundance Kabuki


MORE ON SFBG.COM For an extended version of Dennis Harvey’s interview with Sean Byrne, visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision

Rolling forward

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Rolling forward

By Adrian Castañeda

news@sfbg.com

San Francisco’s Potrero del Sol Skatepark is often packed with skaterboarders, a testament to the sport’s popularity and to the dearth of places in the city where it’s legal to skate. But that will soon change with the city’s commitment to build two new skateparks: one in SoMa and the other in the Haight.

Both have been tentatively approved by the Board of Supervisors. But before any concrete is poured, the skaters will have to overcome budget crises, angry homeowners, and their own bad reputations, particularly in the Haight, where the proposed park has gotten caught up in the furor over vagrants and the proposed sit-lie ordinance.

San Francisco has long been a skateboarding hub, yet there’s always been friction with police, businesses, and everyday city life. Even though it’s legal, there just aren’t that many places to do it anymore, partially because the city and property owners routinely attach barriers to any surfaces that might be appealing to skaters.

Skateboarders, long accustomed to being ignored and disenfranchised, have responded in their usual DIY fashion, such as building a few obstacles in an empty parking lot under a freeway overpass. The city took notice of the demand and after three years of planning and meetings, the newest of San Francisco’s skate parks has finally been allotted the necessary funds to begin construction around the end of summer.

The Central Freeway Skate Park will be located in what is now a parking lot at the intersection of Duboce and Stevenson streets in the north Mission District area. With $2 million collected through the Central Freeway Corridor Housing and Transportation Improvement Act of 1999, which provides for the sale and lease of parcels of city land that were under the now-demolished freeway, officials plan to develop the park to eventually include basketball courts and a dog run.

Rich Hillis of the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development said the city is considering a variety of improvements, but confirmed that “we think the skate park is the priority.” He attributes the park’s relatively unopposed approval to the demands of the city’s skaters and to the community as a whole. “They embraced the idea of a skatepark early on,” Hillis said of the forward-thinking residents of the area. He jokingly adds that the park should be named “Hornbeck Park” after Bryan Hornbeck, director of the San Francisco Skateboard Association. Hornbeck and his associates started the SFSA to push the city to build new parks designed with skaters in mind.

“San Francisco has to have a world-class skatepark,” Hornbeck said at one of the many skate events his group organizes. Hornbeck said the city has been receptive, working with skaters on the design of the park, but left SFSA to organize skaters and raise the funds. “It’s bake sale; it’s lemonade stand; it’s the best we can do,” Hornbeck said. “We’re not trying to take anything, we’re trying to make our own thing.”

Plans for the park, drawn up by notable skatepark design firm New Line Skateparks, are currently under review by civil engineers. After the plans are finalized, the project will be bid out to find a contractor. Tentative 3-D renderings have been online for months, sparking heated debate on skateboarding Web sites.

When the acclaimed Potrero del Sol Skatepark opened in 2008, many skaters felt that while it was well-designed and enjoyable, it didn’t have enough terrain that mimicked street riding. New Line has designed a number of skating plazas, most recently in Los Angeles. Its involvement gives many skaters hope that the new park will incorporate obstacles that represent the city’s rich street skating history.

But things are not moving as swiftly for the city’s other planned skate park, just beyond where Waller dead-ends at Stanyan in the Haight, which doesn’t have the same guaranteed funding stream. While bids for a design have been submitted, the Recreation and Park Department needs to get approval for $1 million–$2 million in construction funds before moving forward. The city proposed the 120,000-square-foot cul-de-sac at the end of Waller and next to SFPD’s Park Station after the original site near the Golden Gate Park horseshoe pits was found to be too small and lacking the necessary sight-lines for safety. But according to some residents groups, the parking lot is less safe for youths.

Citing police incident reports, Lena Emmery, president of the Cole Valley Improvement Association, told us the Waller park would be in an area with a high number of reported assaults and drug arrests and would add to noise pollution. “This location puts a skateboard park too close to a dense residential area, as well as some businesses that would be negatively impacted by the noise from the skaters,” she wrote via e-mail.

While the lot is occasionally used for bicycle safety classes and overflow parking at Kezar Stadium, it sits empty most of the year, although a farmers market will hold its grand opening there April 28. Will Keating, a Waller Street resident and skateboarder who works on Haight Street, is excited about the proposed park. He disagrees with claims that the park would be a negative impact on his neighborhood. “I hear homeless mutants going crazy outside my window every night, I would much prefer skateboards,” Keating said of the current noise pollution.

The Haight Ashbury Improvement Association, which is leading the charge for a sit-lie ordinance, conducted a survey on its Web site and found that many of its visitors feel the skatepark would increase noise and safety problems in the Haight. Visitors to the site also said the lot would be better used as a farmers market. Yet city officials say the two are not mutually exclusive, and early designs for the project are said to include a large public plaza adjacent to the park intended for community events.

“We realize this is going to be a multiuse space,” said Nick Kinsey, property manager for the Recreation and Park Department. “Throughout San Francisco there are thousands and thousands of skateboarders but only two places where it is legal to skate.” Kinsey called the park is “a done deal,” citing a 2007 ordinance introduced by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi that mandates the department build a skatepark on the cul-de-sac.

Kent Uyehara, merchant chair for the HAIA and owner of FTC skateshop on Haight, said the community’s fears about pedestrian safety are understandable, but that fears of increased violence and drug use are irrational. “If you can’t have a skate park next to a police station, then basically you are saying you can’t have it.”

If the city enacts the sit-lie ordinance, which Uyehara supports, it would be easy to imagine that a skate park would be a magnet for homeless and others looking to escape police harassment. But Uyehara is adamant that the park would not become a haven for Haight Street refugees. “Skateboarders self-police their own areas,” he said. “We’re not trying to kick the homeless out,” he added. “We’re trying to make the neighborhood attractive for everyone, whether they’re buying something or not.”

Uyehara is no stranger to opposition. When his shop first moved to the Haight in 1994, he had to deal with threats from residents and a neighborhood organization, similar to the one he is now a part of, because of what skateboarding represented to them. Since then skateboarding and his business have prospered, and FTC now has four locations worldwide. “For a city that hosted the X-Games, it’s pathetic how skateboarding has been treated.”

Uyehara says the Waller park, along with the Central Freeway and Potrero del Sol parks, are part of a plan developed by the San Francisco Skate Task Force, created in 2002 by then-Sup. Gavin Newsom to address the growing friction between the city and its skateboard population. The task force envisioned “a series of five parks located in a star pattern, and one in the middle of the city, [that] would make it possible for users to easily get to a park within at least two miles of their home.”

All the meetings and fundraising will be in vain if the park is poorly designed and built, said Jake Phelps, editor-in-chief of Thrasher Magazine. He says locals should design the park “so we have no one to blame but ourselves,” and avoid another flawed park like Crocker Amazon in Sunnydale where, he says, “the fence costs more than the skatepark.” Unimpressed with preliminary designs for the park on Duboce, the notoriously blunt Phelps says, “They’re going to come to our town, drop a turd, and leave.”

The veteran skater is wary of “landscape designers” with grandiose ideas. “There are people who get too involved. They don’t skate. Who are they to tell anybody what it is?” Newer skateparks are too crowded with obstacles trying to please all different kinds of skaters, he said. Instead, he urges a simple design similar to the streets of downtown. “The whole idea of skating is being utilitarian with your environment.” Regardless of the design, he believes it won’t have a dramatic effect on the Haight community: “Homeless people are gonna sleep there,” he said. “People are gonna tag on it and think it’s theirs.”

“The whole city’s a park, but people need somewhere to go when they get kicked out of everywhere,” says pro skater Tony Trujillo, who is able to skate to the Potrero park from his house and thinks others should have the same proximity to hassle-free skating. Julien Stranger, another local pro, feels a park in the Haight would benefit youth in the area by giving them a healthy, creative outlet, something the Haight symbolizes to many. “I don’t think that the neighborhood should be complaining about the energy a skate park will bring,” he said. “Skate parks are pretty positive.”

Earlier this month, an informational meeting hosted by the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council, Kinsey, Hornbeck, and other residents raised concerns that noise pollution and property damage would increase because of the skate park. “There’s been no public outreach,” said Martha Hoffman, who lives across from where the park is slated to be built. “If we’d known about it sooner, we would have opposed earlier.”

Thuy Nguyen of the SF Skate Club, an after-school program that promotes skateboarding as a safe and positive activity, urged residents to look beyond their property values and consider the benefits for the city’s youth. “It’s important for kids who feel that traditional sports aren’t for them.” Her partner, Shawn Connolly, added that skateboarding has grown in popularity with children. “It’s right after baseball,” he said.

“If the city doesn’t have a skatepark, the city is the skatepark,” Hornbeck said of the Waller Street lot where he often hosts skate events with donated ramps to ease the community into the idea of skateboarders using the area. But until the city budget can provide for skateboarders, the debate over the park will rage — and the underused parking lot at the end of Waller will remain just that.

The inside angle

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The inside angle

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Josh Wolf’s second spell in the hot seat — and other penalties brought down against independent journalists documenting California’s defiant student movement — raise some important questions about the freedom of the press at civil disobedience protests.

Wolf, a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, faces a possible academic suspension for violating the student conduct code during a Nov. 20 student occupation of a campus lecture hall. But Wolf says he was there to document the moment as a reporter.

Brandon Jourdan, an independent journalist who was also inside the hall with Wolf, now faces his own set of misdemeanor charges after capturing footage of a March 4 student protest that broke onto a West Oakland freeway. And David Morse, a journalist and Indybay collective member who reported on a raucous Dec. 11 protest at the UC Berkeley chancellor’s residence, is now fighting the seizure of his camera and a search warrant issued by UC police for his unpublished photographs — something the First Amendment Project maintains is in violation of state law.

The footage that Wolf and Jourdan took on Nov. 20 and March 4 captured police use of physical force against protesters and documented the widely publicized actions from unique perspectives. The reports were broadcast on Democracy Now!, a popular independent news program that airs nationally on satellite television stations, public access channels, and online.

The gutsy camerapersons aren’t the first to face criminal charges. After nine reporters followed several hundred protesters seeking to block construction of the Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant onto private property in June 1979 and were arrested, an Oklahoma court of appeals ruled the First Amendment guaranteed them no immunity from prosecution for trespassing.

“That makes the position of a journalist very difficult, in areas where demonstrators are essentially exercising civil disobedience to make a point,” notes Terry Francke, executive director of Californians Aware, a watchdog organization focused on First Amendment issues. “There’s no free pass for journalists in the crowd recording what’s going on. Their principled position would presumably be yes, like [protesters] risk arrest and consequences for the greater good, they’d risk the same for the sake of giving the public … a close-up picture of what it’s like to be in those circumstances.”

Without that journalistic witness, “When you hear stories about what went on in the middle of a police and demonstrators’ confrontation … you’ll have two irreconcilable versions, from only directly interested parties,” Francke points out.

There’s been no shortage recently of civil disobedience on California college campuses, where operations have been ravaged by budget cuts. The Nov. 20 occupation was staged early in the morning at Wheeler Hall, when students barricaded themselves inside to protest a 32 percent fee hike imposed by the UC Board of Regents. While most reporters gathered outside the building or flew over in helicopters, Wolf was inside, and he’s the only student to claim being there in a journalistic capacity. He says he wore a police-issued press badge.

Wolf, a video journalist, enjoys a sort of celebrity status because he spent 226 days in jail after resisting a subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury. It started when he shot a film of a 2005 protest in San Francisco, which police tried to obtain because they believed it could help them pinpoint demonstrators who vandalized a police car and injured an officer. Since the case was pursued at the federal level, he was unable to invoke California’s shield law protecting journalists from being compelled to reveal unpublished material.

Democracy Now! aired a lengthy report of the Nov. 20 occupation featuring footage that the two embedded reporters had captured from the interior of Wheeler, coproduced by David Martinez. Show host Amy Goodman specifically named Wolf as a co-contributor when the report aired.

Now Wolf is facing a possible seven-month suspension by the campus Center for Student Conduct, which charges him with violating the student conduct code on multiple counts. “Their perspective is that I am a student and that I am a journalist,” Wolf explained. “My responsibility is no different from anyone else’s in there, and therein, my punishment should be reflective of that of everyone else.” Wolf said he had the backing of the journalism school, which confirmed to the Guardian that the dean wrote a letter of support for Wolf.

David Morse, 42, is a journalist who has covered hundreds of Bay Area protests on Indybay, an online news site that spotlights grassroots movements and protests. In a motion filed against UCPD, the First Amendment Project charges that Morse was arrested and had his camera seized Dec. 11 despite repeating six times that he was a journalist and displaying a press pass. “They told me, ‘You have a camera, we want your camera,'<0x2009>” Morse recounted. The next morning, as reports of angry, torch-wielding students storming the chancellor’s home and smashing windows made headlines, Morse was still sitting in jail in Santa Rita. “My voice as an eyewitness was completely silenced,” he said. His charges were dropped, but now he is challenging the search warrant to get his memory discs back.

When the police department sought a search warrant for Morse’s unpublished photos, they didn’t mention that he had identified as a journalist, the FAP charges. The legal nonprofit filed a motion to quash the warrant on grounds that it violates a provision in the penal code barring search warrants for journalistic work products, invoking the state shield law.

Jourdan, meanwhile, faces five misdemeanor charges after filming the March 4 freeway protest and subsequent police response, which many have characterized as excessive. (In one clip, an officer can be seen striking an individual who doesn’t appear to be resisting with a baton.) He was arrested along with two other videographers who also face criminal infractions. Footage Jourdan and Martinez captured from March 4 aired on Democracy Now!, and Jourdan’s report was also featured as a lead story on the Huffington Post. Jourdan says he wore press credentials.

“It’s unfair for them to file charges against me when they’ve dropped charges against others,” Jourdan said. The Oakland Police Department confirmed to the Guardian that Jourdan had been charged with crimes such as unlawful assembly and obstruction of a thoroughfare, but did not respond to a message asking what set him apart from other reporters.

Jourdan, who has also contributed to Reuters, The New York Times, and other outlets, has managed to capture a variety of similar events on film, including Amy Goodman’s arrest during protests outside the Republican National Convention in 2009. “Barely a month goes by that some lawyer isn’t calling me up trying to get footage of some one getting beat up,” he said. But he maintains that documenting these intense moments is crucial, not for resolving disputes, but to document these moments in history.

Reporters from mainstream television news programs toting bulky cameras were also filming on the freeway, but were allowed to leave. Guardian news intern Jobert Poblete and multimedia producer Cameron Burns with UC Berkeley’s Daily Californian were arrested on the freeway too, but their charges were later dropped after state Sen. Leland Yee intervened. “Journalists are generally provided greater access to cover news stories than other members of the public,” Yee wrote in a letter to the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. “Unfortunately, law enforcement did not provide such leeway in this case.”

Adam Keigwin, Yee’s chief of staff, said the senator’s office got involved on behalf of the Guardian and the Daily Cal because he knew those publications. “We just need to know more about this,” Keigwin said. “Once credentialed media is present, it’s the senator’s perspective that journalists should have the right to cover these things and should not be charged.”

But when asked if there is a deficiency in state law since that right doesn’t technically exist, Keigwin responded, “This may be something we should consider.”

Driving up the cost of housing

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Driving up the cost of housing

By Jobert Poblette

news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY If you think living in the Bay Area is expensive, think about what it would be like if you didn’t have access to public transportation. A new report by Chicago-based think tank Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) considers just that problem, offering a new way of understanding just what constitutes affordable housing.

The CNT report — dubbed the Housing and Transportation (H+T) Affordability Index (www.htaindex.cnt.org) — maps housing affordability for 337 metropolitan areas and provides before-and-after snapshots that show how affordability changes when transportation costs are taken into account.

Affordable housing is usually defined as consuming 30 percent or less of a household’s income, but CNT proposes a redefinition. Under CNT’s new definition, housing is only considered affordable if the sum of housing and transportation costs constitutes 45 percent or less of household income. That redefinition would have dramatic effects on the Bay Area’s affordability picture.

Many communities in the region that would have been considered affordable under the old definition — including large swaths of Hayward, Marin County, Sacramento, and Stockton — would be unaffordable under the new standard. And San Francisco, well served by public transit, would be deemed a lot more affordable.

The difference that smart planning and public transportation make can be huge, especially for households already feeling the pinch of a weak economy. According to CNT, transportation costs in “location efficient” neighborhoods — its term for “compact, mixed-use communities with a balance of housing, jobs, and stores, and easy access to transit” — can be as low as 12 percent of a household’s budget versus up to 32 percent for less efficient neighborhoods where residents must drive to jobs and services.

For example, CNT calculated an annual transportation cost difference of $2,780 between Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood, which it calls “compact,” and the city of Antioch, which it considers “dispersed.”

CNT says “location efficiency” in development can translate to big savings. According to its report, if 50 percent of new growth in the Bay Area occurs in compact rather than dispersed neighborhoods, the region could collectively save more than $1.1 billion in transportation costs.

Besides reducing a community’s environmental impact and improving residents’ quality of life, the report argues that things like walkability, proximity to jobs and services, and efficient public transportation help make an area more livable and affordable. The report also raises questions about the wisdom of cutting public transportation, especially in a period when many households are being forced out of their homes.

CNT hopes that its analysis will lead to more awareness for policy makers and more transparency for consumers. “What we’re looking for is a new definition of affordability, transportation cost disclosures for consumers, and incentives to build more compact communities around transit,” CNT spokesperson Nicole Gotthelf told us.

Gotthelf said the Bay Area has been at the forefront of this issue, specifically mentioning the work of the Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the agency that plans, coordinates, and finances transportation in the nine counties that make up the region. “They’ve been actively trying to understand the housing and transportation trade-offs for Bay Area households.”

In turn, MTC offered support for the principles behind the CNT study. “We agree that it is good policy to promote the development of affordable housing at or near transit hubs,” MTC spokesperson John Goodwin told the Guardian.

In its “Transportation 2035 Plan for the San Francisco Bay Area,” which outlines how the agency will spend $218 billion in transportation funds over the next 25 years, MTC even sets out a goal of “decreas[ing] by 10 percent the combined share of low-income and lower-middle-income residents’ household income consumed by transportation and housing.”

Goodwin told us the agency is committed to smart growth principles: “The Bay Area is not unique, but I think the Bay Area is part of a vanguard … We are among the leading metro areas in making this a policy priority, and I feel confident in saying that this priority will continue to be affirmed.”

Goodwin pointed to the agency’s Transportation for Livable Communities (TLC) program, which is designed to promote development that “revitalizes central cities and older suburbs, supports and enhances public transit, promotes walking and bicycling, and preserves open spaces and agricultural lands.” Now in its 12th year, the TLC program has helped fund scores of transportation-related and affordable housing projects.

The MTC also administers the Housing Incentive Program, which “rewards communities … when they successfully promote high-density housing and mixed-use developments at transit stops to support transit use.” The program provides up to $3 million in grants to local governments that partner with developers to build housing near transit hubs.

Conversely, the agency also won’t approve funding for new transit stops that aren’t in dense areas. The thresholds require a minimum number of housing units within a half-mile radius of new transit stops, from 750 units for new ferry terminals to 3,850 units for new BART stations.

But the MTC’s efforts represent only one part of the equation. Goodwin said that coordination is key. “What we have here in the Bay Area is that decisions about transportation funding — for the most part — are conducted at the regional level, while land-use decisions are made at the local level. So it requires coordination between regional agencies like MTC and local cities and counties.”

In spite of the MTC’s efforts, huge problems plague the region. Housing costs in the Bay Area are among the highest in the nation. A recent report conducted by the Urban Land Institute — based on research conducted by CNT — found that, on average, Bay Area households spent $41,420 a year on housing and transportation, a whopping 59 percent of median income.

With budget crises affecting many of the region’s public transit providers, service cuts and fare hikes make the picture bleaker. Recently, AC Transit and Muni services were cut by almost 10 percent, causing longer waits and crowded buses — and a huge budget deficit could mean deep cuts in Caltrain service this summer. If these cuts force more Bay Area households to turn to cars, the region’s affordability can be adversely affected, even as households deal with the pressures of a weak economy.

On the national stage, several developments offer signs that smart growth principles — including the link between housing affordability and transportation — may be gaining wider traction. These developments are presenting smart growth and public transportation advocates with opportunities to push for reform.

Last year, three federal agencies — the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency — announced a partnership that would have the agencies working together on housing and transportation initiatives. The partnership laid out six “livability principles,” including commitments to provide more transportation choices, “promote equitable, affordable housing,” support existing communities, and “value communities and neighborhoods.” The new partnership’s rhetoric includes references to location and energy efficiency, transit-oriented and mixed-use development, and walkable neighborhoods.

On Capitol Hill, Congress is working on a new omnibus transportation bill to replace a bill that expired in 2009. The bill would provide billions in federal funding for highways and other forms of surface transportation. Consideration of the new bill in both the House and Senate has stalled, but some proposals emphasize the creation of transportation choices and livable communities. Transportation for America (www.t4america.org), a coalition of housing, transportation, environmental, and other groups, is mobilizing to promote public transportation and sustainable development in the new transportation bill, seeking to make CNT’s way of looking at the world into official U.S. policy.

Crime Bomb

Zelda Bronstein
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Editors note: This story was originally published May 31,  2001.


They found Virginia Lowery lying in the garage of her Excelsior home, an electrical cord around her throat, an ice pick jammed through her skull — in one ear and out the other. For the next 11 years San Francisco homicide detectives made no progress on the case. Promising leads turned into dead ends. Theories collapsed. The cops assigned to the case retired. It looked like Lowery’s 1987 slaying would never be solved.


Then in April 1998, by pure chance, police found Robert C. Nawi. Or rather, they found his fingertips.


When Nawi, a 57-year-old carpenter, got in a shouting match in a North Beach watering hole, he was picked up by the cops on misdemeanor charges and shuttled to county jail, where he was fingerprinted and booked. The computer spat out some interesting news: Nawi’s digits, according to the database, resembled a fingerprint found at the scene of Lowery’s slaying.


Soon thereafter, police evidence analyst Wendy Chong made a positive print match, and the new suspect found himself facing murder charges and life in a cage.


Nawi’s fate, to be decided at trial next year, rests largely on police readings of his fingerprints, as well as some DNA gathered by the coroner. Which raises some questions: How, exactly, did the cops and their computers analyze the evidence? Did they get it right? Is anybody checking their work?


 


Making a match between the distinguishing ridges and whorls, often microscopic, of two fresh fingerprints is a relatively simple task for a print expert. However, cases like Nawi’s aren’t so clear-cut: the print collected in Lowery’s garage is faint, smudged, and missing in patches.


Michael Burt, the resident forensicscience guru at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, shows me an 8-by-10-inch enlargement of the print discovered at the murder scene; it’s blurry, grainy, and only about 60 percent complete. To my layperson’s eye, it bears little resemblance to the clear, fresh mark left by Nawi at his booking. “The one print is so washed out you can’t see anything,” says Burt, who is representing Nawi. “This is not science at all; it’s subjective and shouldn’t be allowed.”


Burt, a 22-year veteran defense lawyer known around the Hall of Justice for his trademark cart full of documents, has plenty of cause to doubt the cops’ evidence. Despite what you may have seen on Law and Order, fingerprint examiners can — and often do — get it wrong. Last year 141 of America’s top forensic labs were tested to see if they could accurately match two fingerprints: 39 percent failed; 11 labs made false IDs. San Francisco analysts are rarely, if ever, graded for accuracy.


Jim Norris, head of the San Francisco Police Department’s forensics division, argues that new computer imaging tools are making it possible to match even sketchy, partial prints. “When somebody shows a print that was originally collected at the crime scene, and it looks very difficult to deal with, what they’re not looking at is the image that has been [digitally] enhanced,” Norris explains. “It’s a lot easier to deal with.” Norris admits that the department has seldom tested its print examiners for accuracy, but he says their work is constantly checked by superiors.


According to Burt, in this particular instance analysts didn’t turn to computers but simply enlarged the prints before making the call. The district attorney’s DNA evidence against Nawi is equally flawed, he says. When coroner Boyd Stephens autopsied the corpse, he — per routine — snipped the woman’s fingernails with a household nail clipper and stuck them in an envelope. Unrefrigerated, the clippings slowly rotted for more than a decade, until, in the wake of Nawi’s arrest, prosecutor John Farrell had them tested for DNA.


When the crime lab got the evidence, in 1998, DNA analyst Alan Keel scraped all 10 nails with a single cotton swab, combined the scrapings into one tiny pile, and dropped them into a genetic-typing device. According to standard forensic procedure, each nail should’ve been swabbed and tested separately.


Now, Burt contends, the sample has deteriorated because of a lack of refrigeration and has been contaminated with the DNA of more than one person. “[Keel] says there are three, possibly four different individuals underneath her fingernails,” the lawyer says. “He’s trying to grab my client out of that mixture. There’s no scientific way to do that.”


Norris disagrees: “There are ways to deal with [DNA] mixtures; it’s not a common problem luckily, but it’s something that comes up — for example, in rape cases where there are multiple assailants. There are ways to deal with it.”


I run down the scenario for Dr. Simon Ford, a Ph.D. biochemist and DNA expert who heads up San Francisco–based Lexigen Science and Law Consultants. “That’s not good,” Ford tells me. “You should deal with each hand separately, at least, and probably each nail separately. I don’t think combining all the nails together is a good idea.”


 


The dispassionate examination of crime scene evidence — narcotics, fingerprints, hair and fibers, genetic material, firearms, and everything else — is a cornerstone of the American justice system. The work, which can mean the difference between life and death for a suspect, is carried out by more than 500 labs nationwide, most of them run by law enforcement agencies.


In the public imagination — as shaped by endless cops-and-lawyers TV shows — forensic science is a perfectly impartial arbiter of justice. Eyewitnesses get confused. Police may be corrupt. Lawyers can corkscrew facts. Juries, not always composed of the brightest lights, can be swayed by mob dynamics. But science doesn’t lie. If the analyst says the bullet came from the suspect’s gun, then it must have.


It’s a comforting thought.


There’s just one problem: All forensic science is performed by humans, and all people make blunders. They mislabel samples. They use malfunctioning equipment. They inadvertently drop a flake of skin in a vial of blood, thus adding their own DNA to the sample.


Subjectivity, too, plays a starring role in forensic science, much of which depends on human-made comparisons. In one case heard last year by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Robert Dondero, two DNA experts couldn’t agree on the meaning of a genetic sample.


In addition to honest mistakes born of incompetence and overwork, there are continuously uncovered examples of fraud: the lab analyst, believing that the verdict justifies the means, willing to lie on the stand or fake test results. While the scientific question of DNA accuracy has been hashed out extensively in court rooms and the media, the issue of police crime lab accuracy has gone ignored, both by press and government regulators.


Each year California cops make 1.5 million arrests. Each of the state’s 19 local crime labs — run by sheriffs, prosecutors, and cops — performs thousands of analyses annually. Each of those tests, if faulty, could put an innocent person behind bars, or set a guilty soul free.


And in the wild world of forensics there are precious few safeguards against human bias and error: Crime labs are almost entirely unregulated. There are virtually no federal laws governing their operation; no law that says, “Bullet comparisons must be done using the best, most accurate techniques”; no law that says, “DNA examiners must meet these basic educational criteria”; no requirement that crime labs be audited and inspected. In California only DUI-<\h>testing procedures are regulated by state law.


“There’s more regulation in whether some clinical lab can give a test for strep throat than there is on whether you can use a test to put somebody in the gas chamber,” public defender Burt says. “That to me seems backwards. The stakes are the highest in the criminal justice system. These people are deciding who lives or dies.”


The ramifications spread beyond individual cases. While billions of dollars have been poured into police departments and prisons over the past two decades, pols and badge wearers have shown little interest in adequately funding or regulating crime labs. California’s facilities need hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs and equipment upgrades. The idea of public oversight is off the radar entirely.


The nonprofit American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD) is the closest thing forensics has to a regulatory agency. Created in the early 1970s to “improve the quality of laboratory services provided to the criminal justice system,” the group runs a voluntary accreditation program for forensic facilities. To get the society’s stamp of approval, a facility must pass a 149-point inspection. (Sample question: “Are the procedures used generally accepted in the field or supported by data gathered in a scientific manner?”) To maintain the certification, a lab must be tested annually and be reinspected every five years.


Of the approximately 500 labs in the United States, a mere 187 are accredited by the ASCLD. Only 11 of California’s 19 local crime labs have the group’s seal of approval. The San Francisco police facility isn’t one of them. Neither is the Contra Costa sheriff’s lab. Nor the San Mateo sheriff’s forensic unit.


 


“Got dope?” asks the white-coated woman who opens the locked door to the SFPD crime lab. She’s expecting cops bearing drug-filled baggies, to be weighed and tested and filed away until the courtroom beckons. Crime lab chief Martha “Marty” Blake steps out of her windowless office to greet me.


A few months back, Blake and her 18-person team traded overstuffed quarters in the city’s central cop shop at Eighth Street and Bryant for expansive new $1.5 million digs out in the asphalt wastes of the Hunters Point shipyard. “I’m getting ready to apply for accreditation, hopefully by next spring,” she says, pointing to a file cabinet emblazoned with the ASCLD seal. “We couldn’t get accredited in that facility when we were downtown at the Hall of Justice. It was too cramped. There was no way we could guarantee there would never be any chance for any contamination of the evidence when we had four people crammed into a little room trying to look at clothing, for example.”


Blake’s operation has taken its lumps over the years. In 1994 analyst Allison Lancaster was canned after she was videotaped faking drug tests. Last year Superior Court Judge Dondero slammed the lab’s lead DNA expert for “engaging in shortcuts,” “performing missteps,” and harboring a questionable “degree of bias” against defendants. Defense lawyers like Burt continue to hammer the lab for its lack of credentials.


With her eyeglasses and graying hair Blake looks more like a schoolteacher than a cop. She pulls a xeroxed sheet of paper out of a drawer and eagerly places it in front of me. “We just switched to a new case review process. This is the sort of thing we have to implement for accreditation. Every case we produce has to go through a review by a supervisor,” she explains. “This wasn’t happening before; a review happened before, but you’d just glance over [the work] and say, ‘Hmm, looks good to me,’ and initial it. It was sort of lightweight.” Bolstered by an increased budget and a growing staff, the lab’s procedures are improving across the board, according to Blake.


Why should forensic labs, which can land someone on death row, go without government oversight? “I’d like to think we can do this ourselves,” Blake replies, noting that the state’s management of the DUI testing program has been less than stellar. “I’m a little nervous about other agencies getting involved in regulation,” she says, because they don’t “really know the science.”


Nationally, the accountability vacuum is producing a steady stream of scandals, raising unsettling questions about the way we administer justice in this locked-down nation. A small sampling:
• Let’s start with the trial of the century, wherein O.J.’s defense team put the forensic bunglings of the Los Angeles Police Department on display for “unacceptable sloppiness,” pointing out a dozen major instances of possible evidence contamination. After losing the Simpson trial, the lab promptly began a thorough overhaul.
• In 1993 the West Virginia Supreme Court found a police blood expert guilty of fabricating or misrepresenting evidence in a staggering 134 cases. The man, one Fred Zain — employed by the state cops during the 1980s — was put on trial for perjury, while the state freed several unjustly imprisoned death row inmates and paid out millions to people who had been wrongfully convicted. Bexar County, Texas, where Zain worked in the early ’90s, also prosecuted him for perjury.
• A few years later, in 1997, the reputation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation crime lab — at the time widely regarded as the pinnacle of forensic science — was shredded by the allegations of a whistle-blowing scientist. The bureau’s lab practiced shoddy science and regularly presented inaccurate, pro-prosecution testimony, charged Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, one of the agency’s top explosives experts. The FBI denied the allegations and tried to discredit Whitehurst, but a scathing 517-page report by the Justice Department’s inspector general corroborated many of the scientist’s major claims and recommended disciplinary action against five agents.


• An April 1997 front-page story in the Wall Street Journal brought more unflattering publicity to the FBI lab, scrutinizing the track record of agent Michael Malone, a hair and fiber analyst. The paper quoted three well-known forensic scientists who challenged Malone’s analyses (one labeled him a “fraud”), illustrated numerous cases where the agent seemed to be fudging the evidence — and noted that courts were busy overturning convictions obtained with his testimony. “The guy’s a total liar,” one defense lawyer told the Wall Street Journal.
• In 1998 San Diego jurors convicted a top county police DNA expert of embezzling $8,100 in cash seized as evidence in murder cases. That same year the San Diego Police Department embarked on a 10-month internal investigation into charges of sloppy work and missing evidence at its crime lab, and it admitted that it had lost crucial evidence in an unsolved homicide case.
• Last year a crime lab chemist in Prince George’s County, Md., claimed that the police department was using improperly calibrated drug analysis equipment. Defense lawyers promptly challenged some 100 pending drug cases.



California is one of the few states that has actually scoped the inner workings of its local crime labs. The results of that onetime review, performed in 1998 by the state auditor’s office, are disturbing. Quality control was lacking at most of the facilities. Many of the labs were using “outdated and improperly working equipment.” As in San Francisco, many didn’t make their scientists undergo regular proficiency testing.


Without quality assurance measures — minimal at 13 of the 19 labs — the potential for error shoots through the roof. California auditor Elaine Howel says the study raised serious questions. “There are several issues,” she says. “Is the evidence being handled appropriately so there’s no potential for contamination?” Labs, according to Howel, should “make sure they are consistently applying the methodology so one forensic examiner isn’t using one technique and someone is using a different technique to conduct the same type of testing. That ties back to the credibility of the results.”


Ten of the outfits were relying on “outmoded” technology that needed replacement. At the Huntington Beach Police Department lab, staffers worked up a Rube Goldberg–<\d>esque scheme to revive a broken arson analysis gadget. Sort of. “Because the laboratory does not have the funds to replace this equipment, staff found a creative way to cool the [machine] using hoses rigged to a faucet,” auditors found. But, they noted, “this method could negatively affect the analysis of the evidence processed by this instrument.”


Then there was the question of whether the analysts themselves were up to par. “We think forensic examiners need to be tested every year to make sure they’re maintaining competence in their ability to perform the forensic examinations they’re doing,” Howel tells me. Eight of the labs had no proficiency testing for their staffers.


“It helped us put our operation in perspective to the rest of the state,” says S.F. lab chief Blake, who thinks the audit was fair. “We did look like we were swamped. It helped us get our additional staff.”


Whitehurst, the former top explosives expert at the FBI, doesn’t like the term ‘whistle-blower.’ “We’re simply scientists, and we disagree with the type of science that’s being practiced — because it’s not science,” he told me. “Our forensic labs are dictating truth; they’re not discovering it.” Whitehurst says he constantly hears from irate crime lab scientists claiming their operations are riddled with improprieties.


The Ph.D. chemist spent eight years at the bureau combing the rubble of bomb blasts for clues. And complaining. During his tenure with the bureau, he made 237 written complaints concerning what he saw as a pattern of bunk science and bogus testimony on the part of his colleagues. The charges spurred an 18-month probe by the Justice Department, the phone-book-size results of which were made public in 1997, undoubtedly marking one of the FBI’s worst public embarrassments.


The special-inspection team, an international panel of renowned forensic scientists, had few kind words for the lab, finding “significant instances of testimonial errors, substandard analytical work, and deficient practices” in numerous investigations, including the Unabomber, Oklahoma City, and World Trade Center bombings. Among the skeletons in the bureau’s closet: “scientifically flawed reports”; examiners devoid of the “requisite scientific qualifications”; and five agents who couldn’t be trusted.


Whitehurst’s experiences have led him to believe that crime labs should be overseen by federal or state authorities, rather than by ASCLD and its voluntary certification program. “It’s a foregone conclusion; there’s no question in my mind in five years forensic labs will be regulated, and they will be audited,” said Whitehurst, who now lives in Bethel, N.C., and acts as an expert witness in criminal trials. “There’s too much discovery happening.”


Lab directors argue that their work is constantly reviewed by the courts — juries don’t have to believe a forensic expert; judges can overturn verdicts based on forensic evidence — making their profession among the most scrutinized.
Whitehurst disagrees, saying juries, defense lawyers, and judges are often baffled by the science presented to them. “Listen to this phrase: pyrolisis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry,” he says. “Do you know what that is? Let’s try this one: fourier transform infrared spectrometry. I’ve got a doctorate in chemistry and a jurisdoctorate also. What I’m saying to you are completely foreign concepts. When I try to explain how a ultraviolet spectraphatometer works, or how a micro spectraphatometer works, just saying the words begins the glass-over of the eyes.”


The Alameda County Sheriff’s crime lab is housed in a two-story building in the foothills just off 150th Avenue in San Leandro. On the second floor, in a series of linoleum-tiled rooms connected by a cluttered hallway, the lab’s technicians scope the physical remnants of crime, putting bullets beneath microscopes, lifting latent fingerprints from knife handles, culling DNA strands from splattered blood.


Each year the operation, which analyzes evidence for most of the county’s police forces, handles some 200 “major” investigations, most of them murders and rapes. But drug cases (1,800 to 2,000) and DUIs (more than 4,700) make up the bulk of the work. There are only eight lab technicians to handle the massive load.


“Every analytical report has to be right on the mark,” said lab director Tony Sprague, who has worked at the facility for 30 years. “We have a huge responsibility to make sure all the results are accurate.”


Sprague guides me through the building, showing me a single lead particle, as magnified 10,000 times by a monstrous, $270,000 scanning electron microscope. Next door a white-<\h>coated technician sits glued to a conventional microscope, studying a handgun cartridge. Across the hall are the analysts’ personal workstations: on one of the wide-topped tables sit the innards of an auto; on another lie sheets of paper covered with boot prints.


Sprague is an amiable gearhead and explains in detail how each of the machines works. The gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, an ovenlike slab of a machine, can detect the presence of gasoline or kerosene in air samples collected at the scene of a suspected arson fire. Another device uses infrared light to determine the chemical composition of a given substance — a bag of white powder for instance.


The lab’s ASCLD accreditation in June 1999 was a huge undertaking, according to Sprague. “It took us about two years [to get certified],” he says. “It was costly from the standpoint that you have to take dedicated staff time away from analytical work to get the paperwork done for the accreditation process. In our case we really didn’t change our ways of doing forensic science to meet accreditation standards. There was really no issue about doing things differently — the thing we had to do, we had to document all the policies, the procedures, all of our quality assurance records had to be brought up to a little bit higher level.”


Voluntary reviews by the nonprofit ASCLD are enough regulation for Sprague, who views government oversight as a losing proposition. “Some mandated federal program? I don’t know that that’s really the answer,” he says. “That would involve a huge bureaucracy. It would be a very difficult situation.”


Ralph Keaton, executive director of ASCLD’s accrediting board, agrees. “I think crime laboratories should have some kind of program to review the quality of the work being produced by the laboratory — and that’s the reason we came into existence,” he tells me via telephone from the organization’s headquarters in Garner, N.C. “It’s my opinion that no one can evaluate the type of work being done better than the actual practitioners of that discipline. Just like the oversight of the medical profession is best done by the doctors themselves.”


Speaking to me in his office library, Sprague tells me he is proud of the work his team does, proud to be acknowledged by his peers. But he admits to a certain frustration, saying that his lab is seriously short-staffed: “We’re about one-third the strength we should be at for what we’re doing.”

Crime Bomb

Zelda Bronstein
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0

Editors note: This story was originally published in 2001.


 


They found Virginia Lowery lying in the garage of her Excelsior home, an electrical cord around her throat, an ice pick jammed through her skull — in one ear and out the other. For the next 11 years San Francisco homicide detectives made no progress on the case. Promising leads turned into dead ends. Theories collapsed. The cops assigned to the case retired. It looked like Lowery’s 1987 slaying would never be solved.
Then in April 1998, by pure chance, police found Robert C. Nawi. Or rather, they found his fingertips.
When Nawi, a 57-year-old carpenter, got in a shouting match in a North Beach watering hole, he was picked up by the cops on misdemeanor charges and shuttled to county jail, where he was fingerprinted and booked. The computer spat out some interesting news: Nawi’s digits, according to the database, resembled a fingerprint found at the scene of Lowery’s slaying.
Soon thereafter, police evidence analyst Wendy Chong made a positive print match, and the new suspect found himself facing murder charges and life in a cage.
Nawi’s fate, to be decided at trial next year, rests largely on police readings of his fingerprints, as well as some DNA gathered by the coroner. Which raises some questions: How, exactly, did the cops and their computers analyze the evidence? Did they get it right? Is anybody checking their work?


Making a match between the distinguishing ridges and whorls, often microscopic, of two fresh fingerprints is a relatively simple task for a print expert. However, cases like Nawi’s aren’t so clear-cut: the print collected in Lowery’s garage is faint, smudged, and missing in patches.
Michael Burt, the resident forensic-<\h>science guru at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, shows me an 8-by-10-inch enlargement of the print discovered at the murder scene; it’s blurry, grainy, and only about 60 percent complete. To my layperson’s eye, it bears little resemblance to the clear, fresh mark left by Nawi at his booking. “The one print is so washed out you can’t see anything,” says Burt, who is representing Nawi. “This is not science at all; it’s subjective and shouldn’t be allowed.”
Burt, a 22-year veteran defense lawyer known around the Hall of Justice for his trademark cart full of documents, has plenty of cause to doubt the cops’ evidence. Despite what you may have seen on Law and Order, fingerprint examiners can — and often do — get it wrong. Last year 141 of America’s top forensic labs were tested to see if they could accurately match two fingerprints: 39 percent failed; 11 labs made false IDs. San Francisco analysts are rarely, if ever, graded for accuracy.
Jim Norris, head of the San Francisco Police Department’s forensics division, argues that new computer imaging tools are making it possible to match even sketchy, partial prints. “When somebody shows a print that was originally collected at the crime scene, and it looks very difficult to deal with, what they’re not looking at is the image that has been [digitally] enhanced,” Norris explains. “It’s a lot easier to deal with.” Norris admits that the department has seldom tested its print examiners for accuracy, but he says their work is constantly checked by superiors.
According to Burt, in this particular instance analysts didn’t turn to computers but simply enlarged the prints before making the call. The district attorney’s DNA evidence against Nawi is equally flawed, he says. When coroner Boyd Stephens autopsied the corpse, he — per routine — snipped the woman’s fingernails with a household nail clipper and stuck them in an envelope. Unrefrigerated, the clippings slowly rotted for more than a decade, until, in the wake of Nawi’s arrest, prosecutor John Farrell had them tested for DNA.
When the crime lab got the evidence, in 1998, DNA analyst Alan Keel scraped all 10 nails with a single cotton swab, combined the scrapings into one tiny pile, and dropped them into a genetic-<\h>typing device. According to standard forensic procedure, each nail should’ve been swabbed and tested separately.
Now, Burt contends, the sample has deteriorated because of a lack of refrigeration and has been contaminated with the DNA of more than one person. “[Keel] says there are three, possibly four different individuals underneath her fingernails,” the lawyer says. “He’s trying to grab my client out of that mixture. There’s no scientific way to do that.”
Norris disagrees: “There are ways to deal with [DNA] mixtures; it’s not a common problem luckily, but it’s something that comes up — for example, in rape cases where there are multiple assailants. There are ways to deal with it.”
I run down the scenario for Dr. Simon Ford, a Ph.D. biochemist and DNA expert who heads up San Francisco–<\d>based Lexigen Science and Law Consultants. “That’s not good,” Ford tells me. “You should deal with each hand separately, at least, and probably each nail separately. I don’t think combining all the nails together is a good idea.”
Blinding them with science
The dispassionate examination of crime scene evidence — narcotics, fingerprints, hair and fibers, genetic material, firearms, and everything else — is a cornerstone of the American justice system. The work, which can mean the difference between life and death for a suspect, is carried out by more than 500 labs nationwide, most of them run by law enforcement agencies.
In the public imagination — as shaped by endless cops-and-<\h>lawyers TV shows — forensic science is a perfectly impartial arbiter of justice. Eyewitnesses get confused. Police may be corrupt. Lawyers can corkscrew facts. Juries, not always composed of the brightest lights, can be swayed by mob dynamics. But science doesn’t lie. If the analyst says the bullet came from the suspect’s gun, then it must have.
It’s a comforting thought.
There’s just one problem: All forensic science is performed by humans, and all people make blunders. They mislabel samples. They use malfunctioning equipment. They inadvertently drop a flake of skin in a vial of blood, thus adding their own DNA to the sample.
Subjectivity, too, plays a starring role in forensic science, much of which depends on human-<\h>made comparisons. In one case heard last year by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Robert Dondero, two DNA experts couldn’t agree on the meaning of a genetic sample.
In addition to honest mistakes born of incompetence and overwork, there are continuously uncovered examples of fraud: the lab analyst, believing that the verdict justifies the means, willing to lie on the stand or fake test results.
While the scientific question of DNA accuracy has been hashed out extensively in court rooms and the media, the issue of police crime lab accuracy has gone ignored, both by press and government regulators.
Each year California cops make 1.5 million arrests. Each of the state’s 19 local crime labs — run by sheriffs, prosecutors, and cops — performs thousands of analyses annually. Each of those tests, if faulty, could put an innocent person behind bars, or set a guilty soul free.
And in the wild world of forensics there are precious few safeguards against human bias and error: Crime labs are almost entirely unregulated. There are virtually no federal laws governing their operation; no law that says, “Bullet comparisons must be done using the best, most accurate techniques”; no law that says, “DNA examiners must meet these basic educational criteria”; no requirement that crime labs be audited and inspected. In California only DUI-<\h>testing procedures are regulated by state law.
“There’s more regulation in whether some clinical lab can give a test for strep throat than there is on whether you can use a test to put somebody in the gas chamber,” public defender Burt says. “That to me seems backwards. The stakes are the highest in the criminal justice system. These people are deciding who lives or dies.”
The ramifications spread beyond individual cases. While billions of dollars have been poured into police departments and prisons over the past two decades, pols and badge wearers have shown little interest in adequately funding or regulating crime labs. California’s facilities need hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs and equipment upgrades. The idea of public oversight is off the radar entirely.
The nonprofit American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD) is the closest thing forensics has to a regulatory agency. Created in the early 1970s to “improve the quality of laboratory services provided to the criminal justice system,” the group runs a voluntary accreditation program for forensic facilities. To get the society’s stamp of approval, a facility must pass a 149-point inspection. (Sample question: “Are the procedures used generally accepted in the field or supported by data gathered in a scientific manner?”) To maintain the certification, a lab must be tested annually and be reinspected every five years.
Of the approximately 500 labs in the United States, a mere 187 are accredited by the ASCLD. Only 11 of California’s 19 local crime labs have the group’s seal of approval. The San Francisco police facility isn’t one of them. Neither is the Contra Costa sheriff’s lab. Nor the San Mateo sheriff’s forensic unit.
Renewing the review process
“Got dope?” asks the white-<\h>coated woman who opens the locked door to the SFPD crime lab. She’s expecting cops bearing drug-filled baggies, to be weighed and tested and filed away until the courtroom beckons. Crime lab chief Martha “Marty” Blake steps out of her windowless office to greet me.
A few months back, Blake and her 18-person team traded overstuffed quarters in the city’s central cop shop at Eighth Street and Bryant for expansive new $1.5 million digs out in the asphalt wastes of the Hunters Point shipyard. “I’m getting ready to apply for accreditation, hopefully by next spring,” she says, pointing to a file cabinet emblazoned with the ASCLD seal. “We couldn’t get accredited in that facility when we were downtown at the Hall of Justice. It was too cramped. There was no way we could guarantee there would never be any chance for any contamination of the evidence when we had four people crammed into a little room trying to look at clothing, for example.”
Blake’s operation has taken its lumps over the years. In 1994 analyst Allison Lancaster was canned after she was videotaped faking drug tests. Last year Superior Court Judge Dondero slammed the lab’s lead DNA expert for “engaging in shortcuts,” “performing missteps,” and harboring a questionable “degree of bias” against defendants. Defense lawyers like Burt continue to hammer the lab for its lack of credentials.
With her eyeglasses and graying hair Blake looks more like a schoolteacher than a cop. She pulls a xeroxed sheet of paper out of a drawer and eagerly places it in front of me. “We just switched to a new case review process. This is the sort of thing we have to implement for accreditation. Every case we produce has to go through a review by a supervisor,” she explains. “This wasn’t happening before; a review happened before, but you’d just glance over [the work] and say, ‘Hmm, looks good to me,’ and initial it. It was sort of lightweight.” Bolstered by an increased budget and a growing staff, the lab’s procedures are improving across the board, according to Blake.
Why should forensic labs, which can land someone on death row, go without government oversight? “I’d like to think we can do this ourselves,” Blake replies, noting that the state’s management of the DUI testing program has been less than stellar. “I’m a little nervous about other agencies getting involved in regulation,” she says, because they don’t “really know the science.”
Beyond O.J.
Nationally, the accountability vacuum is producing a steady stream of scandals, raising unsettling questions about the way we administer justice in this locked-down nation. A small sampling:
• Let’s start with the trial of the century, wherein O.J.’s defense team put the forensic bunglings of the Los Angeles Police Department on display for “unacceptable sloppiness,” pointing out a dozen major instances of possible evidence contamination. After losing the Simpson trial, the lab promptly began a thorough overhaul.
• In 1993 the West Virginia Supreme Court found a police blood expert guilty of fabricating or misrepresenting evidence in a staggering 134 cases. The man, one Fred Zain — employed by the state cops during the 1980s — was put on trial for perjury, while the state freed several unjustly imprisoned death row inmates and paid out millions to people who had been wrongfully convicted. Bexar County, Texas, where Zain worked in the early ’90s, also prosecuted him for perjury.
• A few years later, in 1997, the reputation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation crime lab — at the time widely regarded as the pinnacle of forensic science — was shredded by the allegations of a whistle-<\h>blowing scientist. The bureau’s lab practiced shoddy science and regularly presented inaccurate, pro-<\h>prosecution testimony, charged Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, one of the agency’s top explosives experts. The FBI denied the allegations and tried to discredit Whitehurst, but a scathing 517-page report by the Justice Department’s inspector general corroborated many of the scientist’s major claims and recommended disciplinary action against five agents.
• An April 1997 front-page story in the Wall Street Journal brought more unflattering publicity to the FBI lab, scrutinizing the track record of agent Michael Malone, a hair and fiber analyst. The paper quoted three well-known forensic scientists who challenged Malone’s analyses (one labeled him a “fraud”), illustrated numerous cases where the agent seemed to be fudging the evidence — and noted that courts were busy overturning convictions obtained with his testimony. “The guy’s a total liar,” one defense lawyer told the Wall Street Journal.
• In 1998 San Diego jurors convicted a top county police DNA expert of embezzling $8,100 in cash seized as evidence in murder cases. That same year the San Diego Police Department embarked on a 10-month internal investigation into charges of sloppy work and missing evidence at its crime lab, and it admitted that it had lost crucial evidence in an unsolved homicide case.
• Last year a crime lab chemist in Prince George’s County, Md., claimed that the police department was using improperly calibrated drug analysis equipment. Defense lawyers promptly challenged some 100 pending drug cases.
Under the microscope
California is one of the few states that has actually scoped the inner workings of its local crime labs. The results of that onetime review, performed in 1998 by the state auditor’s office, are disturbing. Quality control was lacking at most of the facilities. Many of the labs were using “outdated and improperly working equipment.” As in San Francisco, many didn’t make their scientists undergo regular proficiency testing.
Without quality assurance measures — minimal at 13 of the 19 labs — the potential for error shoots through the roof. California auditor Elaine Howel says the study raised serious questions. “There are several issues,” she says. “Is the evidence being handled appropriately so there’s no potential for contamination?” Labs, according to Howel, should “make sure they are consistently applying the methodology so one forensic examiner isn’t using one technique and someone is using a different technique to conduct the same type of testing. That ties back to the credibility of the results.”
Ten of the outfits were relying on “outmoded” technology that needed replacement. At the Huntington Beach Police Department lab, staffers worked up a Rube Goldberg–<\d>esque scheme to revive a broken arson analysis gadget. Sort of. “Because the laboratory does not have the funds to replace this equipment, staff found a creative way to cool the [machine] using hoses rigged to a faucet,” auditors found. But, they noted, “this method could negatively affect the analysis of the evidence processed by this instrument.”
Then there was the question of whether the analysts themselves were up to par. “We think forensic examiners need to be tested every year to make sure they’re maintaining competence in their ability to perform the forensic examinations they’re doing,” Howel tells me. Eight of the labs had no proficiency testing for their staffers.
“It helped us put our operation in perspective to the rest of the state,” says S.F. lab chief Blake, who thinks the audit was fair. “We did look like we were swamped. It helped us get our additional staff.”
Busting the FBI
Whitehurst, the former top explosives expert at the FBI, doesn’t like the term ‘whistle-blower.’ “We’re simply scientists, and we disagree with the type of science that’s being practiced — because it’s not science,” he told me. “Our forensic labs are dictating truth; they’re not discovering it.” Whitehurst says he constantly hears from irate crime lab scientists claiming their operations are riddled with improprieties.
The Ph.D. chemist spent eight years at the bureau combing the rubble of bomb blasts for clues. And complaining. During his tenure with the bureau, he made 237 written complaints concerning what he saw as a pattern of bunk science and bogus testimony on the part of his colleagues. The charges spurred an 18-month probe by the Justice Department, the phone-book-<\h>size results of which were made public in 1997, undoubtedly marking one of the FBI’s worst public embarrassments.
The special-inspection team, an international panel of renowned forensic scientists, had few kind words for the lab, finding “significant instances of testimonial errors, substandard analytical work, and deficient practices” in numerous investigations, including the Unabomber, Oklahoma City, and World Trade Center bombings. Among the skeletons in the bureau’s closet: “scientifically flawed reports”; examiners devoid of the “requisite scientific qualifications”; and five agents who couldn’t be trusted.
Whitehurst’s experiences have led him to believe that crime labs should be overseen by federal or state authorities, rather than by ASCLD and its voluntary certification program. “It’s a foregone conclusion; there’s no question in my mind in five years forensic labs will be regulated, and they will be audited,” said Whitehurst, who now lives in Bethel, N.C., and acts as an expert witness in criminal trials. “There’s too much discovery happening.”
Lab directors argue that their work is constantly reviewed by the courts — juries don’t have to believe a forensic expert; judges can overturn verdicts based on forensic evidence — making their profession among the most scrutinized.
Whitehurst disagrees, saying juries, defense lawyers, and judges are often baffled by the science presented to them. “Listen to this phrase: pyrolisis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry,” he says. “Do you know what that is? Let’s try this one: fourier transform infrared spectrometry. I’ve got a doctorate in chemistry and a jurisdoctorate also. What I’m saying to you are completely foreign concepts. When I try to explain how a ultraviolet spectraphatometer works, or how a micro spectraphatometer works, just saying the words begins the glass-over of the eyes.”
Understaffed in Alameda
The Alameda County Sheriff’s crime lab is housed in a two-<\h>story building in the foothills just off 150th Avenue in San Leandro. On the second floor, in a series of linoleum-<\h>tiled rooms connected by a cluttered hallway, the lab’s technicians scope the physical remnants of crime, putting bullets beneath microscopes, lifting latent fingerprints from knife handles, culling DNA strands from splattered blood.
Each year the operation, which analyzes evidence for most of the county’s police forces, handles some 200 “major” investigations, most of them murders and rapes. But drug cases (1,800 to 2,000) and DUIs (more than 4,700) make up the bulk of the work. There are only eight lab technicians to handle the massive load.
“Every analytical report has to be right on the mark,” said lab director Tony Sprague, who has worked at the facility for 30 years. “We have a huge responsibility to make sure all the results are accurate.”
Sprague guides me through the building, showing me a single lead particle, as magnified 10,000 times by a monstrous, $270,000 scanning electron microscope. Next door a white-<\h>coated technician sits glued to a conventional microscope, studying a handgun cartridge. Across the hall are the analysts’ personal workstations: on one of the wide-<\h>topped tables sit the innards of an auto; on another lie sheets of paper covered with boot prints.
Sprague is an amiable gearhead and explains in detail how each of the machines works. The gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, an ovenlike slab of a machine, can detect the presence of gasoline or kerosene in air samples collected at the scene of a suspected arson fire. Another device uses infrared light to determine the chemical composition of a given substance — a bag of white powder for instance.
The lab’s ASCLD accreditation in June 1999 was a huge undertaking, according to Sprague. “It took us about two years [to get certified],” he says. “It was costly from the standpoint that you have to take dedicated staff time away from analytical work to get the paperwork done for the accreditation process. In our case we really didn’t change our ways of doing forensic science to meet accreditation standards. There was really no issue about doing things differently — the thing we had to do, we had to document all the policies, the procedures, all of our quality assurance records had to be brought up to a little bit higher level.”
Voluntary reviews by the nonprofit ASCLD are enough regulation for Sprague, who views government oversight as a losing proposition. “Some mandated federal program? I don’t know that that’s really the answer,” he says. “That would involve a huge bureaucracy. It would be a very difficult situation.”
Ralph Keaton, executive director of ASCLD’s accrediting board, agrees. “I think crime laboratories should have some kind of program to review the quality of the work being produced by the laboratory — and that’s the reason we came into existence,” he tells me via telephone from the organization’s headquarters in Garner, N.C. “It’s my opinion that no one can evaluate the type of work being done better than the actual practitioners of that discipline. Just like the oversight of the medical profession is best done by the doctors themselves.”
Speaking to me in his office library, Sprague tells me he is proud of the work his team does, proud to be acknowledged by his peers. But he admits to a certain frustration, saying that his lab is seriously short-staffed: “We’re about one-third the strength we should be at for what we’re doing.”<\!s>v

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

alert@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, APRIL 22

Oakland Teacher Strike


Demand improved learning conditions for students and for re-prioritizing next year’s Oakland Unified School District budget at this protest against a top-heavy administration, increase in private contracts, and continued layoffs of teachers and support staff.

6 a.m. picket at your local Oakland public school, free

Noon rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza

14th St. at Broadway, Oakl.

Oaklandcoalition@gmail.com

Stop the Gang Injunction


Protest the proposed gang injunctions in North Oakland as a vehicle for racial profiling and criminalizing the day-to-day activities of youth of color. Demand that the city invest these resources in addressing root causes of violence and finding solutions toward building affordable communities for everyone. Protest scheduled to coincide with the preliminary hearing for the injunction.

Noon, free

Superior Court of California, Alameda County

1221 Oak, Dept. 20, Oakl.

Stoptheinjunction.wordpress.com

SATURDAY, APRIL 24

Million Meals for Haiti


Thousands of volunteers are needed to help pack and ship 1 million meals in less than 24 hours to feed earthquake survivors in Haiti. The Salvation Army plans to distribute 1 million meals per week in Haiti for the next six to nine months and has issued a call for help.

8 a.m., free

Cow Palace

2600 Geneva, Daly City

(415) 553-3568

www.sfsalvationarmy.org

Sidewalks Are For People!


Celebrate San Francisco’s public space, vibrant and diverse culture, and tradition of tolerance and compassion by doing what you love on any city sidewalk. Barbecue! Make art! Play chess! Read! Knit! Do yoga! Converse! Stand idly! This follow-up to last month’s event is in protest of the proposed Sit/Lie Ordinance that will make it illegal to sit or lie on sidewalks in San Francisco.

All day, free

A sidewalk near you, SF

Visit www.standagainstsitlie.org to find out about scheduled events

MONDAY, APRIL 26

Environmental Emergency Conference


Attend this conference organized by Revolution Books in response to the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks to initiate any significant measures to address our climate change crisis. The speakers bring a wide range of political perspectives, experience, and expertise in sounding the alarm for action.

7 p.m., free

UC Berkeley

Stanley Hall Auditorium

Mining Circle, off Gayley road, Berk.

www.ucbemergencyenviroconf.org

TUESDAY, APRIL 27

Hold Big Banks Accountable


Join the march to Wells Fargo’s annual shareholders meeting and protest the mass evictions of California families by big banks that are guilty of predatory lending, refusing to make necessary loan modifications to save neighborhoods, and continuing to reap record profits after being bailed out by taxpayers.

Noon march, free

Meet at Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero at Market, SF

1 p.m. rally, free

Merchants Exchange Building, 465 California, SF

(415) 864-3980

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

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