City Attorney Dennis Herrera

HANC gets a new eviction notice

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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33

The City and County of San Francisco voluntarily dismissed an eviction notice it had issued to the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council Recycling Center, but then the Recreation & Parks Department promptly sent a new one with a deadline of June 30.

The HANC recycling center and native plant nursery has continued operating in Golden Gate Park’s Kezar Triangle despite an effort initiated last year under former Mayor Gavin Newsom to evict the facility. The recycling center, which also offers compost for urban gardeners and a place to drop off used veggie oil, has been in Golden Gate Park for decades and has formed partnerships with community gardening projects throughout the city.

Rec & Park started making plans to replace it with a community garden last year amid concerns about “quality of life” issues. Some neighbors were bothered by recyclers filling up shopping carts with containers plucked from their sidewalk recycling bins, to trade in for small amounts of cash. Members of HANC, meanwhile, saw the eviction as political payback from Newsom, who encountered stiff opposition from the progressive neighborhood group when he led the charge to place San Francisco’s sit / lie ordinance on the ballot. 

The request for dismissal, filed May 26 in San Francisco Superior Court and signed by Attorney David Ammons in the office of City Attorney Dennis Herrera, doesn’t provide a clear reason for the move. But Robert De Vries, HANC’s attorney, said the tactic was likely meant to avert legal entanglement by dissolving the first, and more legally problematic, attempt at eviction and replacing it with a new one that may be harder to challenge in court. In a letter to Rec & Park commissioners dated Dec. 2, 2010, De Vries wrote that the first eviction notice was illegal under the structure of the lease that HANC had signed with the city, and asserted that HANC could legally possess the property until June 30, 2011.

Because the dismissal of the first eviction was done “without prejudice,” there was nothing preventing Rec & Park from issuing a new eviction notice, which it did the same day. Rec & Park did not respond to an email seeking comment.

“Your attorney has argued in court that the notice was not effective to terminate the lease,” notes a May 26 letter from Rec & Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg. “While we continue to believe that we gave you more than adequate notice of the Lease termination and to disagree with the assertion that the Lease has continued on a year-to-year basis, to avoid that dispute, we are superseding the earlier notice with this one.”

HANC’s Jim Rhoads told the Guardian that he wasn’t very surprised by Rec & Park’s latest move. “We knew this would happen,” he said. “We’re going to meet with our lawyers, and decide on the legal front what we do next.”

De Vries said he could not discuss all the possible legal angles that HANC could use to try and fight the eviction, but he hinted that the eviction could be considered retaliatory. “This … termination was initiated under Newsom as payback for my client [for opposing] sit / lie,” he said.

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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7
Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

Three weeks before the June 25-26 Pride Weekend — which is the unofficial opening of the official fall mayoral race — there are two front-runners: state Sen. Leland Yee and Sup. John Avalos.

I’m not saying either is going to win. Things change quickly in this town. We don’t even know for sure if the incumbent, Ed Lee, is going to be in the final scrum.

But here’s what we do know: Yee and Avalos — right now, today — are doing the things they need to do to emerge from a crowded pack. And the others are either hanging back or flailing around.

Avalos had more than 400 people at his kickoff. State Assemblymember Tom Ammiano was there to endorse him. He’s got window signs all over the east side of town. He’s showing momentum, energy; he’s on track to solidify the progressive base and start moving west. He has agreed to cosponsor the mayor’s pension reform plan (but only if SEIU Local 1021 gets the amendments the union wants).

Yee has figured out a very smart strategy: He realizes that he’s already got name recognition and a west-side base, that he’s never going to get the support of the Chinatown establishment (powerbroker Rose Pak hates him), and that he’s one of at least five candidates fighting over the center. So he’s trying to grab a share of the left.

Yee’s people were thrilled that he and Avalos got the Sierra Club. The more groups that endorse the two together (in any order), the more Yee becomes associated with the progressive standard-bearer. And the more second-place votes he gets on the left. (Don’t kid yourself; this race may well come down to who gets second-place votes on the left.)

And Sup. David Chiu just gave Yee a great big gift. Chiu defied every single tenant group in town and became the swing vote in favor of the Parkmerced project. Now the tenants are pissed — and you know Yee is going to try to take advantage of it.

The frustrating part of that scenario is that Yee was never a good tenant vote when he was a supervisor. That’s his Achilles’ heel on the left — but it’s old history, and the anger at Chiu is here today.

Would Chiu be a better mayor for tenants than Yee? Quite possibly. Is any tenant group thinking that right now? No.

Chiu’s in a tricky spot. He’s trying to be the centrist progressive — and that’s a hard thing to sell to either the center (where he’s one of five candidates) or the left (where Yee is edging him out in cozying up to Avalos).

City Attorney Dennis Herrera hasn’t recovered from the political consultant lobbying mess (not a new story, he’s hardly the only, or even remotely, the worst offender, but damn, it makes him look bad). Former Sup. Bevan Dufty’s doing great at the candidate forums but doesn’t have a breakout move. Assessor Phil Ting is awfully quiet.

It’s only June. But it won’t be “only” anything much longer.

Awaiting consensus

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
Awaiting consensus

news@sfbg.com

Mayor Ed Lee’s pension reform proposal was unveiled May 24 with support from some of those who helped develop it, including investment banker Warren Hellman, Rebecca Rhine from the Municipal Executives Association, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce head Steve Falk, and San Francisco Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson.

The plan would dramatically alter the way the city manages employee retirement benefits, starting July 2012, while exempting employees who earn less than $50,000. Lee described it as “serious,” “comprehensive,” and a plan that “reflects consensus.”

Already the legislation to place it on the fall ballot has secured the cosponsorship of Board President David Chiu and Sup. John Avalos, rival candidates for mayor. Other mayoral candidates also offered their support, including former Sup. Bevan Dufty and City Attorney Dennis Herrera.

But there is one notable exception to the support for this plan, a party that has been at the negotiating table where it was crafted: Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents about half of the city’s 26,000 employees. The union claims the plan disproportionately affects 500 SEIU members, who are mostly women and people of color and already took large pay cuts last year to avoid layoffs.

Avalos, who described Lee’s proposal as “a sensible approach” and “the right way to go,” has said that if SEIU’s concerns aren’t adequately addressed, he’ll withdraw his sponsorship.

“I’d like to get to a consensus, but if we don’t and 10,000 union workers don’t sign on, I’m going to take my name off as a sponsor,” Avalos said. “We have to find ways to pay for pension benefits without decimating jobs and social services.”

Lee’s measure also didn’t win over Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who claims the proposal won’t make deep enough or fast enough cost savings in the next few years, so he will continue gathering signatures to place a rival measure on the ballot.

So rather than the consensus product Lee hoped the whole city family would be able to convince voters to support, it’s looking like pension reform could again be a divisive issue and one that spills over into this year’s mayor’s race.

Chiu thanked “our brothers and sisters from the labor community” when Lee announced his pension measure, noting that “each city worker that makes more than $50,000 would have to give thousands every year.” He supports the pension deal and hopes SEIU will eventually back it. Avalos and Sen. Leland Yee, another mayoral candidate, seem to be waiting for SEIU to sign on before offering their full support.

Mayoral spokesperson Christine Falvey told us that Lee views SEIU’s concerns as separate from the pension reform proposal. “He appreciates SEIU’s input in the pension reform talks and has committed to sitting down with them and trying to resolve this issue.”

Then there’s Adachi, who helped qualify Measure B, a 2010 pension reform proposal that united labor and city leaders in opposition. He continues to gather signatures to qualify a competing pension measure, needing about 50,000 signatures by early July unless Lee amends his plan to secure greater cost savings in less time.

“My focus is on this issue,” Adachi said, praising Lee’s efforts at achieving consensus. “But is this going to solve this problem so we don’t have to come back within two to three years? It comes down to a math problem.”

Adachi says Lee’s plan doesn’t adequately address the city’s need to save money now.

“The stress period is really in the next four years, so my hope is that the mayor’s proposal could be strengthened,” Adachi said, noting that his proposal yields $90 to $144 million in annual savings, compared to $60 to $90 million annually under Lee’s plan.

“SEIU is right that Mayor Lee’s proposal is inequitable,” Adachi added, noting that Measure B was criticized for being unfair to lower-income workers. “That’s why my new proposal increases pension contribution rates in $10,000 graduations. But under Lee’s plan, a person who earns $100,000 contributes the same rate as someone who makes $50,000.”

He criticized Lee’s plan for requesting only modest increases from safety workers. “Police and fire cost two to three times as much as everyone else’s retirement. They pay 17 percent of what’s in the fund and take out 36 percent. So that means SEIU folks are subsidizing the costs of safety workers’ retirement.”

Adachi acknowledged it would be better to have one measure everyone can support. “But I don’t agree that we should put ineffective reform on the ballot,” he said.

Adachi took a lead role on the issue in 2010 when he qualified Measure B mostly with backing from a few wealthy sponsors, including venture capitalist Michael Moritz, a financial supporter of Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the Ohio Republican Party. Adachi took lots of political heat for the move, but he shrugs off the criticisms.

“It comes down to making sure people understand the issue,” he said. “A year ago, no one was acknowledging that it was a problem, but now everyone does. I’m hoping the board strengthens the proposal. It’s going to take supervisors really looking at this to see if works, not just jumping on the bandwagon.”

According to the Department of Human Resources, Lee’s plan would yield an estimated savings of $800 million to $1 billion over 10 years, with the bulk coming from increased employee retirement fund contributions of up to 6 percent for future and current employees. The proposal raises the retirement age from 62 to 65 for most city workers and from 55 to 58 for public safety workers. It also imposes caps on pensions for new employees.

Lee’s proposal must now make its way through the Rules Committee and win the approval of the full board by July 12, the deadline for supervisors to submit charter amendments. According to the Department of Human Resources, 89 percent of San Francisco’s 26,000 city workers earn more than $50,000. That means only 3,000 city workers fall below the $50,000 cut-off that exempt them from paying extra, under Lee’s plan.

But Larry Bradshaw, a bargaining unit member of SEIU 1021, said that members who make slightly more than that threshold will face pay cuts under the plan, on top of the pay cuts they took last year to avoid being laid off by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

For certified nursing assistants, the shift would amount to a roughly $12,000 annual pay cut, Bradshaw said. Security guards would face an estimated $5,000 per year cut, and clerical workers could face anywhere from $1,000 to $11,000 per year.

These workers faced getting fired and rehired at lower-paid classifications to make up for a revenue shortfall, but the union reached an agreement to stave off the worst pay cuts for those “de-skilled” employees by imposing a one percent across-the-board cut for all members in order to restore the salary cuts.

As SEIU workers take the pay cut to fund pensions, he said union members won’t be able to continue subsidizing the salaries of these deskilled workers.

“So we’re not going to have that option of asking our members to keep funding these workers who have taken this 20 percent pay cut,” he said. “And these are primarily women and people of color.”

But Sup. Sean Elsbernd and other supporters of the pension deal say the plight of these workers is an unrelated issue. “They aren’t a pension issue, so wouldn’t it be more appropriate to discuss them in the collective bargaining context?”

Elsbernd believes Lee’s measure is “fair and equitable,” partly because employees’ pension contributions would be reduced in boom years when tax revenue and stock market gains swell the city’s coffers.

“But Jeff Adachi is throwing a big roll of the legal dice,” Elsbernd said. He noted that city employees have long paid 7.5 percent toward their pensions. “But now, along come two pension reform plans that both challenge that notion.

“And every case in California shows you have to provide a commensurate benefit to change that kind of right,” he continued, arguing that Lee’s proposal is more legally sound because it lowers employees’ contributions during boom years. “So the $60 million that our plan would save is a hell of a lot more secure than the $90 million Jeff claims his plan would save.”

Sup. David Campos has yet to take a position on Lee’s plan, but hopes there is a way to address legitimate concerns about lower-income workers. “There’s no question that we have to do something about pension reform,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s a perfect proposal. But I’m especially intrigued by Mayor Lee’s plan. It recognizes that low-wage workers should not be expected to contribute at a higher rate than higher-wage workers. But we have to put the mayor’s proposal in the context of what else is happening, which is why SEIU’s de-skilling concerns are legitimate.” Campos credited Adachi for highlighting pension reform. “My hope is that we can come up with something that we can all be supportive of, where the mayor and Jeff’s proposals are combined. And while we have to be careful that the balance that has been constructed is maintained, this allows for a dialogue at the board, and for Jeff to be involved, so we can come up with a unified proposal. Because if we are going to address pension reform, we need to do so with a united front.”

Lee needs to make a decision

Maria Poblet
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Lee needs to make a decision

news@sfbg.com

The moment Ed Lee accepted the job as interim mayor — with the strong support of former Mayor Willie Brown and Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak — we knew that the word “interim” would soon be in play.

Lee promised he wouldn’t run in November, and for some supervisors (particularly Sean Elsbernd, who nominated Lee) that was a deal breaker: Elsbernd told us he wouldn’t vote for anyone who wanted to seek a full term. But immediately some of Lee’s supporters began pushing him — quietly and not-so-quietly — to go back on his word and announce his candidacy.

Last week, a fake “draft Ed Lee” campaign emerged and got front-page treatment in the San Francisco Chronicle, despite the fact that it was orchestrated entirely by two political consultants. And word around City Hall is that Lee faces immense pressure to get in the race — and hasn’t entirely ruled it out.

That’s a problem. Lee is heading into a crucial budget season and will be negotiating with, and making deals with, a wide range of constituency groups. Everyone in town needs to know, now, what sort of mayor is running the show — a caretaker trying to get San Francisco through a rough time until a duly elected replacement can take office, or an ambitious politician looking at how to leverage this appointment into a four-year gig.

Lee has every right to run for mayor, and the filing deadline isn’t until August. By law, and political tradition, he can wait until the last minute to tell the city how he plans to spend the fall. And the fact that he promised not to run shouldn’t be an absolute bar: we never endorsed the idea of a caretaker mayor in the first place. What if Lee does a great job? What if the voters overwhelmingly want him to stick around? Why should that be off the table?

Still, this waiting game and this ongoing round of rumors and back-room discussions isn’t good for the city. If Lee wants to run, he needs to announce it now. If he’s not going to run, he needs to tell everyone — starting with Brown, Pak, and his other top backers — that he’s simply not going to do it, that he’s not changing his mind, and that they have to stop pushing him and making noise about it.

There are other candidates in the race, some directly involved in making city policy. When Sup. David Chiu talks about his budget priorities, we know exactly whom we’re dealing with — a board president who wants to be mayor. When City Attorney Dennis Herrera takes on the tricky job of running for mayor while serving as an impartial city legal officer, we know what the conflicts are. It’s not fair to them, or to anyone else, to be dealing with a mayor who may have secretly promised his supporters (who are also players and lobbyists at City Hall) that he’s getting into the race.

Lee may be personally undecided — but he can’t manage the city this way. He has to give San Franciscans a straight, and final, answer: is he running or not? Otherwise all these behind-the-scenes whispers, involving some very shady political operators, will fatally undermine his credibility. 

 

Editorial: Lee needs to make a decision

Maria Poblet
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8

 

 The moment Ed Lee accepted the job as interim mayor — with the strong support of former Mayor Willie Brown and Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak — we knew that the word “interim” would soon be in play.

Lee promised he wouldn’t run in November, and for some supervisors (particularly Sean Elsbernd, who nominated Lee) that was a deal breaker: Elsbernd told us he wouldn’t vote for anyone who wanted to seek a full term. But immediately some of Lee’s supporters began pushing him — quietly and not-so-quietly — to go back on his word and announce his candidacy.

Last week, a fake “draft Ed Lee” campaign emerged and got front-page treatment in the San Francisco Chronicle, despite the fact that it was orchestrated entirely by two political consultants. And word around City Hall is that Lee faces immense pressure to get in the race — and hasn’t entirely ruled it out.

That’s a problem. Lee is heading into a crucial budget season and will be negotiating with, and making deals with, a wide range of constituency groups. Everyone in town needs to know, now, what sort of mayor is running the show — a caretaker trying to get San Francisco through a rough time until a duly elected replacement can take office, or an ambitious politician looking at how to leverage this appointment into a four-year gig.

Lee has every right to run for mayor, and the filing deadline isn’t until August. By law, and political tradition, he can wait until the last minute to tell the city how he plans to spend the fall. And the fact that he promised not to run shouldn’t be an absolute bar: we never endorsed the idea of a caretaker mayor in the first place. What if Lee does a great job? What if the voters overwhelmingly want him to stick around? Why should that be off the table?

Still, this waiting game and this ongoing round of rumors and back-room discussions isn’t good for the city. If Lee wants to run, he needs to announce it now. If he’s not going to run, he needs to tell everyone — starting with Brown, Pak, and his other top backers — that he’s simply not going to do it, that he’s not changing his mind, and that they have to stop pushing him and making noise about it.

There are other candidates in the race, some directly involved in making city policy. When Sup. David Chiu talks about his budget priorities, we know exactly whom we’re dealing with — a board president who wants to be mayor. When City Attorney Dennis Herrera takes on the tricky job of running for mayor while serving as an impartial city legal officer, we know what the conflicts are. It’s not fair to them, or to anyone else, to be dealing with a mayor who may have secretly promised his supporters (who are also players and lobbyists at City Hall) that he’s getting into the race.

Lee may be personally undecided — but he can’t manage the city this way. He has to give San Franciscans a straight, and final, answer: is he running or not? Otherwise all these behind-the-scenes whispers, involving some very shady political operators, will fatally undermine his credibility.

 

The case for local taxes

Zelda Bronstein
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8
The case for local taxes

When state Sen. Darrell Steinberg introduced SB 653, a bill that would allow cities to impose an income tax, a car tax and excise taxes, I called his press office and asked if the senator was serious. Me, I thought this was one of the best ideas I’d ever heard of out of Sacramento, but I couldn’t believe Steinberg was actually going to push it.


After all, Steinberg has been in heated discussions with the Republicans over the state budget, and they’ve been refusing to bend, even an inch, on new revenue. And the Democrats can’t pass a budget alone; the two-thirds requirement for new taxes means at least four members of the recalictrant GOP have to go along.


But if Steinberg could threaten the jerks with a bill that requires only a majority vote but would open the door to all kinds of new taxes up and down the state, maybe they’d start to come around. That seemed like the theory.


But his staff told me that he was entirely serious — and to my astonishment (and perhaps his) the bill is moving forward. We did an editorial endorsing it two weeks ago, and all of a sudden, it’s getting a lot of attention. And it’s exposed a fascinating political debate in the state and raised a lot of questions that ought to be part of the political conversation.


Jerry Brown’s been talking for months about “realignment” — sending more state services back to local government. It’s part of the populist side of the guv, and it flies in the face of 50 years of liberal thought. The federal government used to be our friend — the feds enforced civil rights laws in the racist South. The feds put money into inner cities. The state of California enforced equality, too — the famous Serrano v. Priest decision, in state court, guaranteed that public schools in all areas, not just rich ones, had the resources to provide a quality education to all. “State’s rights” was the cry of segregationists; rich people in conservative communities wanted school funding to be a local decision.


But things are different now, and the political stars are realigned. The most important civil rights moves are coming from cities (see: San Francisco, same-sex marriage) and progressive communities are defying the feds on issues from immigration to medical pot. (The flip side is also happening, see: Arizona and SB 1070).


Right now, today, the single most important issue in the United States (with the possible exception of stupid foreign wars) is the wealth gap and taxation. So much flows from that — the collapse of social services, the cost of health care, unemployment, the crisis in state budgets, the decline in public education … name an issue, and it has at least some roots in the way the nation handles money. And two things have happened in the last 15 years or so, at least at the national level:


1. The Republican Party has been taken over by the far right.


2. The Democratic Party has been taken over by Wall Street.


So nothing good’s going to happen in Washington. And in California, thanks to our two-thirds rule, nothing good’s going to happen in Sacramento as long as a tiny minority of really bad Republicans can hold the state hostage.


Which means that the only hope for progressive economic policy is going to come from local government — and the best thing the Democrats can do in the state Legislature is to stand back and allow it to happen. Which is exactly what the Steinberg bill would do.


Now, the San Francisco Chronicle has come out against the Steinberg bill, saying it would


mark a regrettable retreat from the notion that Californians of many lifestyles and cultures – city dwellers, beach-goers, farmers, ranchers, techies, loggers, entrepreneurs – share a common bond. The delegation of a greater tax burden and government duties to 58 counties and hundreds of cities would only compound the disparities that make this state nirvana for some and Appalachia for others.


The problem is, that notion — that romantic vision of One California — is already gone. California isn’t one state any more; it’s too big to be a state, and it ought to be at least three states. The Democrats control both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office — and it’s almost impossible even to pass a state budget. There’s nothing resembling a political consensus in California, and we might as well admit it.

I understand the problem of economic disparity — but you can’t address it under the current system. There are, indeed, a few counties that have very little tax base, and that will need substantial state aid; I’m good with that. I’m happy to have my tax money go to the poorest counties. But I’m not seeing the Steinberg bill as a reason to cut state spending; I think we ought to increase state spending. I just think that what comes out of Sacramento should be a floor, not a ceiling. If people in San Francisco want to spend more on their public schools — and do it in a progressive way — what’s wrong with that?

The problem with local taxes is that the most progressive, fair revenue solutions aren’t available to cities. Income taxes are far better than sales taxes; ad valorem property taxes are better than parcel taxes. But cities can’t impose traditional income taxes, and are hobbled by Prop. 13 on property taxes. So when cities DO try to impose their own taxes, the results aren’t fair — the poor pay more than the rich.

Interestingly, Dan Walters of the SacBee, who is by no means considered a liberal, likes the Steinberg bill:

California’s experiment in centralized budgeting, the unintended consequence of Propostition 13’s approval in 1978, has been an abject failure. California is simply too diverse for one-size-fits-all decision making from Sacramento, especially when the Capitol can’t even decide what that size should be.

And City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who is running for mayor, likes the idea, too:


California communities that view government as a needless intrusion into people’s lives are morally entitled to limit their local government, and to pay less for fewer services.   Conversely, California communities that see government’s potential to improve the lives of their residents deserve to fully realize the benefits of the public services they’re paying for.


But the notion that we must bind the fate of 37 million Californians to the governance of lowest common denominator is absurd. 


Steinberg’s bill isn’t perfect — it doesn’t include corporate income taxes. But it’s a lot better than what we have now.

I realize that we’re in tricky territory here — should counties where 80 percent of the voters want mandatory prayer in schools and a curriculum that says God doesn’t like homosexuality have the right to overrule state and federal law and ignore the Constitution in the name of local control? Of course not.

But I think you can argue that local government, after meeting the basic federal and state requirements, has the right to go a step further in the pursuit of civil and Constitutional rights. Just as cities, after receiving their minimum allotment of stae money, have the right to raise more. And do it in a fair way.

At the very least, the bill creates a discussion that we all ought to be having. Cuz the way we’re running the state right now isn’t working.

Tourk’s clients sully Herrera’s mayoral campaign

Sasha Cuttler
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22
Tourk’s clients sully Herrera’s mayoral campaign

Does anyone really believe that lobbyist and campaign consultant Alex Tourk isn’t talking to City Attorney Dennis Herrera, whose mayoral campaign Tourk is running, about the biggest clients and issues that Tourk is representing? Honestly, do they believe the public is that stupid?


Apparently so, because that’s the story they were feeding to the Chronicle and its readers today, denying that the two men had ever talked about the Stow Lake Boathouse vendor contract or California Pacific Medical Center and its controversial plan to build a new hospital and housing project on Cathedral Hill.


I mean, c’mon, Tourk even filed documents with the Ethics Commission stating that they had talked about those issues and clients, only to now deny it after realizing that it’s actually illegal to lobby one of your campaign clients. Luckily, Herrera had the good judgment to refer the matter to the Oakland City Attorney’s Office to investigate, considering that this city’s hopelessly corrupt and ineffectual Ethics Commission has abdicated its watchdog responsibilities in favor of repeatedly rubber-stamping every ethics waiver that comes before it, making a mockery of itself and contributing mightily to culture of political corruption that has been on the rise in San Francisco.


This is a problem that runs far deeper that just the Recreation and Parks Department steering the Oretega family vendor to Tourk, who then used his insider connection to get them the contract, which is unseemly enough. No, that’s just the tip of the iceberg with a consultant who has deep connections to monied interests and who has been hired by a mayoral candidate who actually hopes to gain some progressive support.


Consider Tourk’s client list. CPMC is perhaps the most controversial project facing city approval this year, one in which a powerful corporation is making big demands that are being strenuously opposed by a wide swath of working class San Franciscans. Whether Herrera would support this project as mayor and what modifications he would make are important litmus tests to determine what kind of mayor he would be. Yet his campaign consultant is simultaneously advocating for CPMC.


How would Herrera be on police issues, ranging from officer accountability to pension reform to whether to retain new Police Chief Greg Suhr? And can we really have faith that whatever stands Herrera takes weren’t influenced by the fact that the San Francisco Police Officers Association is another Tourk client?


Other Tourk clients include Civil Sidewalks, which advocated for the sit-lie ordinance that police are now struggling with how to legally implement; CH2MHill, the Lennar subcontractor who exposed Hunters Point residents to carcinogenic construction dust; Medjool Restaurant, whose politically connected owner has pushed projects that clash with local planning codes; Prado Group, which has a number of development proposals in SF; Target Corp., which is doing a controversial remodel of the Metreon; and many others.


Is Tourk touting his inside access to man who may be the next mayor? Will Herrera’s campaign benefit from that cross-pollination? I’ve left messages with Tourk and Herrera to ask these questions and others, and I’ll update this post when the call back, but what do you think they’re going to say? And, based on their credibility-stretching comments to the Chron today, will anyone believe them?


UPDATE: Herrera called back, but he wouldn’t discuss these issues on-the-record, instead just giving me a quote similar to the one he gave the Chron: “I was surprised to read that Alex Tourk listed me on his lobbying disclosure forms because he never lobbied me on any of those clients and issues.”

Muni strike vote stems from “gigantic mistrust” of the MTA

Sasha Cuttler
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7
Muni strike vote stems from “gigantic mistrust” of the MTA

At a time when public employee unions are being demonized, downsized, and degraded by conservatives and much of the general public, it was a bold gesture for Muni drivers to recently authorize their Transportation Workers Union Local 250A to defy city law and go on strike anyway. But following through on that threat and shutting down Muni may only turn the public even more strongly against that union.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu said a Muni strike would be “a significant mistake” that he’s trying to avert, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera has issued a statement reminding the public and Muni workers that strikes are banned in the union contact and the City Charter and “we will take appropriate legal recourse.”

But the union’s Secretary-Treasurer Walter Scott told us the strike authorization vote was a result of the “gigantic mistrust” by Muni workers of their Municipal Transportation Agency bosses. “They wanted a strike authorization vote,” he said, which “shows that the membership is behind us” as union leaders negotiate a new contract in the wake of November’s Prop. G, which ended the union’s pay guarantees.

Among the recent factors that Scott said have led Muni workers to doubt that the agency is negotiating in good faith were the MTA’s unilateral decisions to withhold Health Care Trust Fund money that had gone to drivers in previous years and the new requirement that drivers bring in doctors’ notes if they call in sick, as well as the agency’s decision to hire public relations specialist Charlie Goodyear to publicize developments in the ongoing negotiations.

But Goodyear said those issues are diversions that haven’t been raised in the current negotiations, that the MTA was acting under authority it has under the charter, and that “we hope that the good work that’s been going on for five or six weeks continues” and the two sides reach an agreement on a new contract.

Scott also expressed hope that the two sides will reach a deal. “Nobody wants to strike, and we’re trying our damnedest to find a happy median in these negotiations,” he said.

As for the right of the drivers to strike, Scott agrees that the current contract prohibits it, but he noted that the contract expires on June 30 and that “on July 1, we have no contract. That’s went the legality [of a strike] comes into question.”

Herrera has noted that the City Charter also declares that “strikes by City employees are not in the public interest,” going on to note that “said employees shall be dismissed.” But Scott says Muni employees have already been so vilified by city officials and the local press that calling a strike wouldn’t hurt their standing with the public much more: “If I’m shot dead and someone stabs me, it doesn’t make that much of a difference.”

Earth Day in City Hall … on Wells Fargo’s dime

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1

Who was lucky enough to get treated to Mayor Ed Lee’s Earth Day Breakfast in City Hall, with the city’s top politicos and a smattering of high-profile San Franciscans? After noticing that the Board of Supervisors had approved a grant of $12,000 from Wells Fargo a few weeks ago to sponsor the event, the Guardian contacted the Mayor’s Office to ask for the guest list. The response came from the city’s Department of the Environment, which accepted the donation and organized the affair.

The 472-person invite list (we don’t know how many actually attended) included prominent figures such as Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, billionaire investor Warren Hellman, and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. All 11 members of the Board of Supervisors were invited, too, as were mayoral hopefuls City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, and state Sen. Leland Yee.
 
Invitations were extended to some truly green organizations, too, such as Green for All, Save the Bay, Rainforest Action Network, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the Sierra Club, the Apollo Alliance, Greenaction, and others.

And many seats were reserved for the corporate sector. A total of nine representatives of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. were on the list. There were seven from Cisco, several from consulting and design firm CH2MHill, and a couple representatives from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill — the firm that’s doing the Parkmerced overhaul and which was tapped to envision waterfront venues for the America’s Cup. 

Seven representatives — including the CEO — were invited from Recology, which is in the midst of a debate over its high-stakes, $275 million no-bid garbage contract with the city.

According to Mark Westlund of the Department of the Environment, only half of the Wells Fargo grant went toward the mayor’s Earth Day Breakfast, “the remainder to a series of community events held in the Department’s EcoCenter lobby.” The other sponsors included Blue Shield of California ($2,000); CH2MHill; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; United Airlines; Environmental Science Associates ($4,000); Levi Strauss & Co.; Cisco ($6,000) and Starbucks — which provided BPA-free travel mugs (double green points!).

It’s nice that San Francisco taxpayers didn’t have to shell out the $18,000 for all these people to celebrate Earth Day together. But at an event such as this, with so many millions of dollars in city contracts and major development projects flying around (not to mention the half a dozen or so people in need of campaign contributions), you can bet they weren’t all talking to one another about saving the planet.

Hererra decries “the real outrage” of PG&E delay

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1
Hererra decries “the real outrage” of PG&E delay

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) considered whether or not to accept a deal with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) at its April 11 meeting in which the company would pay a relatively lenient $3 million fine for failing to turn over safety records for its network of natural gas pipelines to the regulatory agency by the March 15 deadline. The CPUC had demanded that the utility turn over the information in the wake of the San Bruno explosion. Prior to crafting the deal, PG&E had faced a possible $1 million-per-day penalty for every day it failed to comply.

The CPUC did not vote on the deal, but the meeting apparently featured tough questions from commissioners and a very long discussion centering on whether PG&E was saying it would promise to do what the CPUC told them, or only “consider” doing it. (You can read the Chronicle’s account here.)

Meanwhile, City Attorney Dennis Herrera issued a press release before the start of the meeting to highlight official commments his office submitted to the CPUC on behalf of the City and County of San Francisco.

“The real outrage is that seven months after the San Bruno tragedy, not a single PG&E gas transmission line prone to similar ruptures has been replaced,” Herrera said. “Yes, I think a $3 million fine for a utility giant that flouts regulatory orders is too lenient. But the imperatives of human life and safety ought to take precedence over punishing PG&E over slipshod recordkeeping.” Herrera’s office urged the CPUC to require PG&E to immediately begin testing and replacement work on the 152 miles of gas transmission lines.

“What is of concern to Dennis is that we’re getting lost in a discussion about records,” said Herrera spokesperson Matt Dorsey, when the focus should be on addressing unsafe gas transmission lines. Dorsey added that one pipeline in particular runs right through the Dogpatch neighborhood, near Herrera’s house.

Will Muni youth passes be saved?

Zelda Bronstein
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Will Muni youth passes be saved?

A popular and successful program that gave free group bus passes to summer programs for kids is up for renewal — but nobody knows if Muni officials will approve it.


The Summer Youth Group Pass allowed thousands of children in 50 different nonprofit summer programs access to free rides for field trips. Last year 850 passes were made available and each covered a groups of roughly 20 students.
But despite political support from educators and youth activity leaders, and a official letter from Sup David Campos and City Attorney Dennis Herrera, San Francisco Municipal Transporttion Agency Executive Director Nathaniel Ford remains mute on whether the program will continue.


Herrera and Campos issued the letter March 31 detailing the importance of the passes and urging action. Herrera said, “I’m hopeful [it will be renewed]. It was a tremendous success last year and I see no reason why it won’t continue this year.”
But SFMTA spokesperson Kristin Holland a decision has yet to be made. She said staff must look at the finances of renewing the program and that she has yet had audience with Ford to ask his response to the letter.


The politicians in support of the passes are taking their cues from educators and youth advocates on the ground. Education advocate Margaret Brodkin, for example, said she believes “we need to make summer a much more enriching time for young people, especially for low income people.”


One person she said is working toward that goal is Jeff Feinman, executive director of Mission Graduates. Feinman explained, group passes “allow kids to see different parts of the San Francisco they wouldn’t have opportunity to see otherwise. It’s a reward for the work they do.”


From an organizational perspective, group passes are important for two major reasons. Feinman said, “logistically, they make coming and going easy.” Instead of requiring a pass for each student, one pass can work for an entire group. He added that “the cost saving is huge for our programs that are cash strapped.”


When it comes to public transit, Campos said it is important to not only alleviate funding woes but to move forward with comprehensive support for low-income Muni riders. “[Group passes] is one piece of a larger puzzle,” he said. “We want to make Muni more accessible affordable to students in the public schools.”


He added, “We have been exploring the possibilities of making Muni free for all youth in San Francisco. That’s a long term plan.”

Scumlords settle

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Scumlords settle

news@sfbg.com

Five years after the Guardian’s award-winning, three-part series about how representatives for the Lembi family allegedly engaged in illegal and unethical tactics intended to force protected renters from their homes (“The Scumlords,” March 2006), City Attorney Dennis Herrera has concluded contentious negotiations to reach a multimillion dollar settlement with CitiApartments and other Lembi-controlled corporations.

The two sides have agreed on a settlement worth anywhere between $1 million and $10 million to the city, depending on the crumbling real estate empire’s future worth and whether the Lembi family decides to “forever cease property management operations within the City and County of San Francisco — permanently and irrevocably,” as the City Attorney’s Office put it.

That agreement and an injunction barring the landlords from future harassment of tenants was scheduled for submission to San Francisco Superior Court on March 29 and still must be approved by a judge, although that is usually pro forma in cases like this in which both sides have agreed to the terms.

In its lawsuit, the city alleged that the defendants “employed a business model that systematically and unlawfully dispossessed long-term residential tenants of their rent-controlled apartments, leaving defendants free to make significant unpermitted renovations and to re-rent those newly renovated units at dramatically increased market rates.

“Ostensibly, this illegal business model enabled Lembi family interests to aggressively outbid competing investors for perhaps hundreds of residential properties throughout San Francisco,” the complaint continued, further alleging that the defendants’ business entities were organized and operated in such a way that they were “the alter egos of defendants Frank Lembi, Walter Lembi, and David Raynal.”

The defendants disputed those claims, the injunction notes, “by reaching a settlement and agreeing to injunctive terms and payment of civil penalties, defendants are not admitting any wrongdoing or making any admission of liability.”

But the City Attorney’s Office said that this is “the most exhaustively detailed settlement in memory, and the strongest possible agreement to protect the public interest.” And Herrera told us that the settlement reflects “the pervasiveness of the conduct” the city looked at, regarding tenant treatment and the litigation process.

“So, it was necessary to get as tough and detailed an injunction as possible to ensure that tenants will be protected going forward, and in terms of trying to extract a maximum dollar settlement,” Herrera told us. “For us, their conduct is the most important thing, but the financial penalties are not insignificant. This ensures they do business under strict circumstances, play by the rules, and do not present a threat to tenants. But if they want to leave, obviously, there’s a dollar amount connected to that.”

The lowest possible settlement, $1 million, requires the Lembi companies to quickly get out of the rental business in San Francisco. The settlement comes almost five years after Herrera first filed suit against CitiApartments — and 18 months after former CitiApartments’ tenants sued the Lembi empire (see “SF vs. Frank Lembi,” 10/6/2009), following a financial crash that involved banks foreclosing on dozens of the group’s properties (see “Triumph of tenacity,” 6/1/2010).

The City Attorney’s litigation included evidence from tenants and other witnesses identified by former Guardian reporter G.W. Schultz, and Herrera credited the Guardian with originating the case. CitiStop, a coalition of labor and tenants groups, also referred tenants and helped the case, and almost 300 tenants and witnesses came forward after the city’s 2006 filing.

The City Attorney’s Office noted that Herrera amended his original complaint three times to fully capture the Lembi family’s “byzantine array of business entities, trusts, and partnerships within the scope of the lawsuit,” fighting through corporate stall tactics that were the subject of fines issued by the courts.

Even after their unscrupulous tactics were exposed, the Lembis continued to be celebrated by business groups such as the San Francisco Apartment Association, although city officials told us “real estate observers had long speculated that the Lembi family’s unlawful business model was ultimately unsustainable. And the severe economic downturn that began in late 2008 appears to have been cataclysmic for the aspiring real estate empire.”

Who’s next?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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39
Who’s next?

steve@sfbg.com and tredmond@sfbg.com

The seven serious candidates who have announced plans to run for mayor extends from moderate to conservative at this point, but it’s an unusual field for San Francisco: there is no clear progressive standard-bearer, and no clear downtown candidate.

But it probably won’t stay that way. Sources say others are likely to join the lackluster race in the coming months, and there’s a strong likelihood that some progressive candidate will decide to the take plunge.

Also unlike the last few mayor’s races, there appears to be no clear frontrunner — either in fundraising or in having a clear constituency base — a new dynamic that creates an unpredictability that will be exacerbated because this is the first contested mayor’s race using the ranked-choice voting system and public financing of candidates.

There was a weak field of challengers to Gavin Newsom in 2007 and no one qualified for public financing or presented a strong threat. But this time City Attorney Dennis Herrera and former Sup. Bevan Dufty already have indicated they will take public financing, and others are expected to follow suit.

In addition to Herrera and Dufty, the field includes Sen. Leland Yee, Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, venture capitalist Joanna Rees, and former Sups. Tony Hall and Michela Alioto-Pier. Those close to Board President David Chiu also say he is “seriously considering” jumping into the race and talking to friends and supporters about that possibility now.

But so far none come from the progressive political community that has controlled the Board of Supervisors for the past decade. Although Chiu is the only candidate in the field to self-identify as a progressive, he has adopted a more moderate governing style that has frustrated many progressive activists and supervisors. So that leaves voters on the left without a candidate right now.

“If a credible progressive candidate doesn’t get into the race, then we’ll see the top-tier candidates — which so far Leland Yee and Dennis Herrera — try to make friends with progressive San Francisco. And it would appear they have a lot of work to do,” Aaron Peskin, the former board president who chairs the San Francisco Democratic Party, told us.

Both Yee and Herrera have taken some progressive positions, and Yee has consistently endorsed more progressive candidates than anyone else in the mayoral field, but they have also taken many positions that have alienated them from progressives. And both have been taking in lots of campaign cash from interests hostile to the progressive base of renters, environmentalists, and advocates for social and economic justice.

“Nobody who has put their hats in the ring is really exciting anyone, so there is plenty of room for new entrants,” Peskin said, noting the progressives are actively discussing who should run. Peskin wouldn’t identify whom they’re courting, but some of the names being dropped are Sups. John Avalos, Ross Mirkarimi, and David Campos, as well as former Sup. Chris Daly and Peskin.

But Mirkarimi shifted some of that talk this week when he announced that he intends to run to replace the retiring Mike Hennessey as sheriff.

Political consultant Jim Stearns, who is representing Yee, also expects others to get into the race. “I don’t think the field is complete yet. Historically, the strong self-identified progressive candidate has come in late or surged late, like [Tom] Ammiano and [Matt] Gonzalez,” Stearns said.

Ammiano launched his write-in mayoral bid in September 1999 and Gonzalez jumped into the race just before the filing deadline in August 2003, so there’s plenty of time for progressive candidates to get in. “It’s never too late in San Francisco,” Stearns said. And unlike those two races when the upstarts were seriously outspent by the well-heeled frontrunners, Stearns said this year’s field will likely be on a fairly even financial footing.

“It’s likely every candidate will have $1.5 million to $2 million to spend,” he said. That means the keys to the race are likely to be name ID with voters and “which campaign can do the most with the least dollars,” Stearns said.

Already, some of the candidates who will be running to the center are looking for progressive support. Yee, for example, has given substantial amounts of money to progressive groups and candidates and has endorsed progressives for office.

Yee told us he’s positioning himself as “the candidate of the regular folks of San Francisco — the people who are trying to raise their families and live in this city.” He added: “To the extent that the progressive agenda fits that, we’ll be part of it.”

But he already has the endorsement of the Building Trades Council, which has often been at war with progressives, particularly over development issues.

Yee said he hasn’t yet weighed in on the local budget, but he agreed that new revenue “shouldn’t be off the table.” He said he thinks the current pension reform discussions at City Hall, involving Mayor Ed Lee, Sup. Sean Elsbernd, financier Warren Hellman, and union representatives are “the right way to go.”

Herrera said he’s going to run on his record — which includes a long list of progressive legal actions (along with his gang injunctions, which a lot of progressives question). He also told us that he’s involved in the pension reform discussions but thinks that new revenue absolutely ought to be a part of the budget debate.

Meet the new boss

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Meet the new boss

news@sfbg.com

The Guardian hasn’t been invited into City Hall’s Room 200 for a long time. Former Mayor Gavin Newsom, who frequently criticized this newspaper in his public statements, had a tendency to freeze out his critics, adopting a supercilious and vinegary attitude toward any members of the press who questioned his policy decisions. So it was almost surreal when a smiling Mayor Ed Lee cordially welcomed two Guardian reporters into his stately office Feb. 15.

Lee says he plans to open his office to a broader cross-section of the community, a move he described as a way of including those who previously felt left out. Other changes have come, too. He’s replaced Newsom’s press secretary, Tony Winnicker, with Christine Falvey, former communications director at the Department of Public Works (DPW). He’s filled the Mayor’s Office with greenery, including giant tropical plants that exude a calming green aura, in stark contrast to Newsom — whose own Room 200 was sterile and self-aggrandizing, including a portrait of Robert Kennedy, in whose footsteps Newsom repeatedly claimed to walk.

When it comes to policy issues, however, some expect to see little more than business-as-usual in the Mayor’s Office. Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin, a progressive stalwart, said he sees no substantive changes between the new mayor and his predecessor. “It seems to me that the new administration is carrying forward the policies of the former administration,” Peskin said. “I see no demonstrable change. And that makes sense. Lee was Willie Brown and former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s handpicked successor. So he’s dancing with the guys that brought him in.”

Sup. David Campos, viewed as part of the city’s progressive camp along with Peskin, took a more diplomatic tack. “So far I’ve been very pleased with what I’ve seen,” Campos noted. “I really appreciate that he’s reached out to the community-based organizations and come out to my district and done merchant walks. I think we have to wait to see what he does on specific policy issues.”

But while Lee has already garnered a reputation for being stylistically worlds apart from Newsom, he still hews close to his predecessor’s policies in some key areas. In our interview, Lee expressed an unwillingness to consider tax-revenue measures for now, but said he was willing to take condo conversions into consideration as a way to bring in cash. He was unenthusiastic about community choice aggregation and dismissive of replacing Pacific Gas & Electric Co. with a public-power system. He hasn’t committed to overturning the pending eviction of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council’s recycling center, and he continued to argue for expanding Recology’s monopoly on the city’s $206 million annual trash stream, despite a recent Budget and Legislative Analyst’ report that recommended putting the issue to the voters.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who met Lee in 1980 through the Asian Law Caucus, said Lee would be facing steep challenges. “It’s a fascinating political karmic outcome that he is now our appointed mayor. He didn’t seek it out, as he says, but the opportunity he has now is to focus his efforts on fixing some of the problems that have gone unaddressed for decades, pension reform being one of them. I think he realizes he has a limited time to achieve things of value. The question I and others have is, can he do it?”

 

THE RELUCTANT MAYOR

Lee identified as a non-politician, patently rejecting the notion that he would enter the race for mayor. In meetings with members of the Board of Supervisors at the end of 2010, he said he didn’t want the job.

Yet while vacationing in Hong Kong, Lee became the subject of a full-court press. “When the lobbying and phone calls started … clearly they meant a lot to me,” Lee told us, adding that the choice “was very heavy on my mind.” He finally relented, accepting the city’s top post.

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

Adachi offered an interesting take on Lee as caretaker: “Somewhere along the way, [Lee] became known as the go-to guy in government who could take care of problems,” Adachi said, “like the Wolf in Pulp Fiction.”

Sounding rather unlike Harvey Keitel’s tough-talking character, Lee noted, “One of my goals is to rebuild the trust between the Mayor’s Office and the Board of Supervisors. I think I can do that by being consistent with the promises I make.”

Lee’s vows to keep his promises, mend rifts with the board, and stay focused on the job could be interpreted as statements intended to set him apart from Newsom, who was frequently criticized for being disengaged during his runs for higher office, provoking skirmishes with the board, and going back on his word.

The new mayor also said he’d be willing to share his working calendar with the public, something Newsom resisted for years. Kimo Crossman, a sunshine advocate who was part of a group that began submitting requests for Newsom’s calendar in 2006, greeted this news with a wait-and-see attitude. “I’ve already put in a request,” Crossman said. “Politicians are always in support of sunshine — until they have to comply with it.”

 

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Pointing to the tropical elephant-ear plants adorning his office, Lee noted that elephants are considered lucky in Chinese culture. With the monstrous issues of pension reform and a gaping budget deficit hitting his mayoral term like twin tornadoes, it might not hurt to have some extra luck.

Pension reform is emerging as the issue du jour in City Hall. A round of talks on how to turn the tide on rising pension costs has brought labor representatives, Sup. Sean Elsbernd, billionaire Warren Hellman, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, labor leaders, and others to the table as part of a working group.

Gabriel Haaland, who works for SEIU Local 1021, sounded a positive note on Lee. “He’s an extraordinarily knowledgeable guy about government. He seems to have a very collaborative working style and approach to problem-solving, and he is respectful of differing opinions,” Haaland said. “Where is it going to take us? I don’t know yet.”

Lee emphasized his desire to bring many stakeholders together to facilitate agreement. “We’re talking about everything from limiting pensionable salaries, to fixing loopholes, to dealing with what kinds of plans we can afford in the health care arena,” he noted. Lee said the group had hashed out 15 proposals so far, which will be vetted by the Controller’s Office.

A central focus, Lee said, has been “whether we’ve come to a time to recognize that we have to cap pensions.” That could mean capping a pension itself, he said, or limiting how much of an employee’s salary can be counted toward his or her pension.

Since Lee plans to resume his post as city administrator once his mayoral term has ended, he added a personal note: “I want to go back to my old job, do that for five years, and have a pension that is respectable,” he said. “At the same time, I feel others who’ve worked with me deserve a pension. I don’t want it threatened by the instability we’re headed toward and the insolvency we’re headed toward.”

 

BRACING FOR THE BUDGET

If pension reform is shaping up to be the No. 1 challenge of Lee’s administration, tackling the city budget is a close second. When Newsom left office, he passed Lee a budget memo containing instructions for a 2.5 percent reduction in most city departments, part of an overarching plan to shave 10 percent from all departments plus another 10 percent in contingency cuts, making for a bruising 20 percent.

Lee said his budget strategy is to try to avert what Sup. David Chiu once characterized as “the typical Kabuki-style budget process” that has pitted progressives against the mayor in years past. That means sitting down with stakeholders early.

“I have opened the door of this office to a number of community groups that had expressed a lot of historical frustration in not being able to express to the mayor what they feel the priorities of their communities are,” Lee said. “I’ve done that in conjunction with members of the Board of Supervisors, who also felt that they weren’t involved from the beginning.”

Affordable-housing advocate Calvin Welch said Lee’s style is a dramatic change. “I think he’s probably equaled the total number of people he’s met in six weeks with the number that Newsom met in his seven years as mayor,” Welch said.

Sup. Carmen Chu, recently installed as chair of the Budget & Finance Committee, predicted that the budget will still be hard to balance. “We are still grappling with a $380 million deficit,” Chu told us, noting that there are some positive economic signs ahead, but no reason to expect a dramatic improvement. “We’re been told that there is $14 million in better news. But we still have the state budget to contend with, and who knows what that will look like.”

Sup. John Avalos, the former chair of the Board’s powerful Budget Committee, said he thinks the rubber hasn’t hit the road yet on painful budget decisions that seem inevitable this year — and the outcome, he said, could spell a crashing halt to Ed Lee’s current honeymoon as mayor.

“We are facing incredible challenges,” Avalos said, noting that he heard that labor does not intend to open up its contracts, which were approved in 2010 for a two-year period. And federal stimulus money has run out.

 

DID SOMEONE SAY “CONDO CONVERSIONS”?

Asked whether he supported new revenue measures as a way to fill the budget gap, Lee initially gave an answer that seemed to echo Newsom’s inflexible no-new-taxes stance. “I’m not ready to look at taxes yet,” he said.

He also invoked an idea that Newsom proposed during the last budget cycle, which progressives bitterly opposed. In a conversation with community-based organizations about “unpopular revenue-generating ideas,” Lee cautioned attendees that “within the category of unpopular revenue-generating ideas are also some that would be very unpopular to you as well.”

Asked to explain, Lee answered: “Could be condo conversion. Could be taxes. I’m not isolating any one of them, but they are in the category of very unpopular revenue-generating ideas, and they have to be carefully thought out before we determine that they would be that seriously weighed.”

Ted Gullicksen, who runs the San Francisco Tenants Union, said tenant advocates have scheduled a meeting with Lee to talk about condo conversions. Thanks to Prop. 26’s passage in November 2010, he said, any such proposal would have to be approved by two-thirds of the board or the voters. “It’s pretty clear that any such measure would not move forward without support from all sides,” Gullicksen said. “If anyone opposes it, it’s going to go nowhere.”

Gullicksen said he’d heard that Lee is willing to look at the possibility of significant concessions to renter groups in an effort to broker a condo conversion deal, such as a moratorium on future condo conversions. “If, for example, 1,000 TICs [tenants-in-common] became condos under the proposal, then we’d need a moratorium for five years to minimize and mitigate the damages,” Gullicksen explained.

More important, some structural reform of TIC conversions may be on the table, Gullicksen said. “And that would be more important than keeping existing TICs from becoming condos.”

Gullicksen acknowledged that Lee has the decency to talk to all the stakeholders. “Newsom never attempted to talk to tenants advocates,” he said.

 

GREEN, WITHIN LIMITS

Lee’s two children are in their early 20s, and the mayor said he takes seriously the goal of being proactive on environmental issues in order to leave them with a more sustainable San Francisco. He trumpeted the city’s green achievements, saying, “We’re now on the cutting edge of environmental goals for the city.”

Leading bicycle activist Leah Shahum of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition had praise for Lee on bike issues. “I’m really encouraged by his very public support of the new green separate bikeways on Market Street and his interest and commitment to creating more,” she said. “I believe Mayor Lee sees the value of connecting the city with cross town bicycle lanes, which serve a wide range of folks, including business people and families.”

Yet some proponents of green causes are feeling uncertain about whether their projects will advance under Lee’s watch.

On the issue of community choice aggregation (CCA), the ambitious green-energy program that would transfer Pacific Gas & Electric Co. customers to a city-run program with a cleaner energy mix, Lee — who helped determine rates as city administrator — seemed lukewarm. “I know Mr. [Ed] Harrington and his staff just want to make sure it’s done right,” he said, referring to the general manager of the city’s Public Utilities Commission, whose tepid attitude toward the program has frequently driven him to lock horns with the city’s chief CCA proponent, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi.

Lee noted that CCA program goals were recently scaled back. He also said pretty directly that he opposes public power: “We’re not in any day getting rid of PG&E at all. I don’t think that is the right approach.”

The controversial issue of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council Recycling Center’s pending eviction from Golden Gate Park still hangs in the balance. The Recreation and Park Commission, at Newsom’s behest, approved the eviction despite overwhelming community opposition.

Lee said he hadn’t looked at the issue closely. “I do know that there’s a lot of strong debate around the viability, what that operation attracts and doesn’t attract,” he said. “I had the owner of HANC here along with a good friend, Calvin Welch, who made a plea that I think about it a bit. I agreed that I would sit down and talk with what I believe to be the two experts involved in that decision: Melanie Nutter at the Department of the Environment and then Phil Ginsburg at the Rec and Park.” Nutter and Ginsburg supported HANC’s eviction.

Welch, who is on the board of HANC, noted that Lee could be swayed by his staff. “The bunch around Newsom had old and bad habits, and old and bad policies. In dealing with mayors over the years, I know how dependent they are on their staff. They’re in a bubble, and the only way out is through a good staff. Otherwise, Lee will come to the same conclusions as Newsom.”

HANC’s Jim Rhoads told the Guardian he isn’t feeling reassured. “He said he would keep asking people about it. Unfortunately, if he asked his own staff, it would be a problem because they’re leftovers from Newsom.”

Speaking of leftovers, Lee also weighed in on the debate about the city’s waste-management contract — and threw his support behind the existing private garbage monopoly. Campos is challenging a perpetual waste-hauling contract that Recology has had with the city since 1932, calling instead for a competitive-bidding process. When the Department of the Environment recommended awarding the city’s landfill disposal contract to Recology last year, it effectively endorsed a monopoly for the company over managing the city’s entire waste stream, at an estimated value of $206 million per year.

The final decision to award the contract was delayed for two months at a February Budget & Finance Committee hearing. Campos is contemplating putting the issue to the voters this fall, provided he can find six votes on the Board.

“I know that Sup. Campos had given his policy argument for why he wants that revisited,” Lee said. “I have let him know that the Recology company in its various forms has been our very dependable garbage-hauling company for many, many decades. … I feel that the company has justified its privilege to be the permit holder in San Francisco because of the things that it has been willing to do with us. Whether or not we want to use our time today to revisit the 1932 ordinance, for me that wouldn’t be a high priority.”

 

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

In the last week of 2010, Avalos pushed through groundbreaking local-hire legislation, without the support of then Mayor Gavin Newsom or his chief of staff, Steve Kawa, who wanted Avalos to back off and let Newsom takeover the task.

With Lee now in Room 200, things appear to be moving forward on local hire, in face of misleading attacks from Assemblymember Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), who wants to make sure no state money is used on local-hire projects, presumably because the building trades are upset by it. And Kawa, whom Lee has retained as chief of staff, doesn’t really support the legislation. Indeed, Kawa’s presence in the Mayor’s Office has his detractors believing that the new boss in Room 200 is really the same as the old boss.

“I feel like things are moving forward in the right direction around local hire, though a little more quietly than I’d like,” Avalos told the Guardian. Avalos noted that he is going to hold a hearing in March on implementing the legislation that should kick in March 25.

Welch said he believes that if Lee starts replacing staff wholesale, it could indicate two things: he’s a savvy guy who understands the difficulties of relying on Newsom’s chief of staff Steve Kawa for a budget, and he’s not ruling out a run for mayor.

“If I was in his position, the first thing out of my mouth would be, ‘I’m not running.’ I think he’s very focused in the budget. And it’s going to make or break him. But if he starts overriding Kawa and picks staff who represent him … well, then I’d revisit the question of whether he’s contemplating a run for mayor, say, around June.”

Herrera’s crackpipe crackdown

Zelda Bronstein
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Herrera’s crackpipe crackdown

I lived at Hayes and Fillmore in the 1980s, at the height of the crack epidemic, and a spectacularly unsuccessful dealer hung out on my corner. He was so bad at selling the stuff (or else was smoking so much of it) that he was constantly broke and used to knock on my door late at night ask to borrow a buck to buy a can of beer.


At one point he owed me about $10, and offered to pay me back with “some hubba.” He proceded to open his fist and show me a couple of grimy rocks rolling around in his filthy, sweaty palm.


It looked so appealing. I politely declined.


That was my one and only chance to smoke crack, and I passed it up. So when I heard that city attorney Dennis Herrera was going to sue a bunch of local stores for selling crack pipes, I must admit I was curious: What’s the definition of a “crack pipe?” How can you tell what a piece of smoking apparatus is going to be used for?


I asked Jack Song, a spokesperson for Herrera, and he told me it was pretty clear. “They’re glass, and they have certain characteristics,” he said.


Again: I’ve never actually smoked crack, so I have no personal experience with crack pipes. But I used to have a really nice glass pot pipe, which unfortunately was seized by the police in upstate New York many years ago. I went on Google images, the source for all truth, and checked out “crack pipes,” and some of them looked a little like the one I used to use for what we now consider a legal medical treatment.


According to the press reports, an undercover cop went into these stores and asked to buy a crack pipe. The store owners allegedly offered up a specific device, which would not have been terrible smart; when we used to buy bongs in Connecticut, where selling any sort of drug paraphernalia was illegal, the salespeople would talk loudly about how to load “the tobacco.”


In this case, Herrera’s even going a bit beyond crack pipes:


At all times relevant to this Complaint, up to and including the present, in addition to
the permitted tobacco products, Defendants have also displayed and sold smoking paraphernalia, including a large array of pipes and devices commonly referred to as “bongs.”


But Song told me marijuana devices wouldn’t be targeted.


At any rate, the legal case is now going to rest, I guess, on what defines a “crack pipe.” (Apparently there are “meth pipes,” too, which are a little different from crack pipes. I feel so old and uninformed.)


And while I understand the neighbors griping about the stores attracting a nasty element (my old pal on Hayes and Fillmore was harmless enough, but your typical crackhead isn’t great company), I wonder about the ultimate impact of this particular, uh, crackdown.


Herrera’s lawsuit notes:


By providing their customers with a way to ingest illegal and dangerous narcotics, Defendants are creating and contributing to conditions which are injurious to the health, safety and welfare of their customers, neighbors, and the community at large. Defendants’ conduct causes or contributes to offensive and annoying conditions, including, but not limited to: illegal and dangerous trafficking of controlled substances, illegal and dangerous use and abuse of controlled substances, public intoxication, and the crime and nuisance related thereto.



I get that the city attorney considers these stores a community nusiance, and he may well be right. But I don’t think this is going to do much about crack and meth use.


I mean, can’t you smoke crack out of a pot pipe? Can’t you pretty much smoke it out of anything? When I was in high school people stuck their pencils into apples and made holes to smoke pot out of; in college, I learned that, in a pinch, Tampax wrappers made perfectly adequate rolling papers.


Druggies (of the sort who use crack pipes, anyway) may be violent and otherwise fucked up, but they’re notoriously creative. They may stop hanging around these particular stores in these particular neighborhoods, but they’ll find someplace else.


It seems likely that the only ones who are going to suffer for this are the store owners; the crackheads will be just fine. In a manner of speaking.


 

Planned Parenthood calls for support against GOP attack

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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6

As the struggle to keep the doors open at the legendary women’s clinic, Lyon-Martin Health Services, continues here in San Francisco, yet another blow to women’s health care at the national level has advocates sounding the alarm. Planned Parenthood has issued a call for help defeating a federal bill it’s calling “the most dangerous legislative assault on women’s health and Planned Parenthood in our 95-year history.”

Congress is gearing up to vote on the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which would eliminate federal funding for all health-care services provided by any clinic that offers abortion services. The legislation places Planned Parenthood, a leading national provider of reproductive health care serving primarily low-income and uninsured women, squarely in the crosshairs.

The bill was proposed by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IL), who apparently has serious beef with Planned Parenthood.

While Pence has sought to convince lawmakers that the bill would eliminate federal funding only for abortions, its reach is actually much broader than that, and it would deliver a devastating blow to basic reproductive health services for millions of women.

“This bill would eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood health centers — including funding for birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing, and more,” notes a statement on Planned Parenthood’s website. “The consequences of this bill are clear — and they would be devastating. More women would have unintended pregnancies. Cancer would develop, undiagnosed, in countless women. There is no doubt: cutting off millions of women from care they have no other way to afford places them at risk of sickness and death.”

Even Cosmo has weighed in, noting that this federal funding is helping millions of women stay healthy or detect early stages of disease: “Last year, that money (which would dry up completely if the bill is passed) went towards 2.2 million Pap tests, 2.3 million breast exams, and over six million tests for STDs.”

City Attorney Dennis Herrera has joined in the calls for defense of Planned Parenthood, issuing an email blast as part of his mayoral campaign asking voters to sign a petition against the Pence legislation. “New efforts by the far right to eliminate funding from all Planned Parenthood health centers nationwide pose a dangerous and immediate threat to women’s health,” Herrera wrote in the campaign message.

A number of other online petitions are circulating on this issue as well. Go here or here to learn more.

Dirty business

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Dirty business

rebeccab@sfbg.com

The owner of a certified minority-owned business in San Francisco is suing the city, charging that his telecommunications company went belly up after city officials falsely accused him of participating in a fraudulent kickback scheme within the city’s Department of Building Inspection (DBI).

The case and depositions of high-ranking officials offer a rare window into the inner workings of city government at a time when corruption was rife within DBI and regulations governing city contracting were considerably less strict. They also provide a glimpse at how city business was sometimes conducted under the administration of Mayor Willie Brown, a powerful figure who has resurfaced recently in San Francisco politics.

In addition, the case alleges inappropriate behavior by current Mayor Ed Lee when he was the city’s purchasing director. One of the depositions includes allegations that Lee, at Brown’s direction, approved a city contractor who was utterly unqualified and was later accused of being part of a criminal scam.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit — James Brady, CEO of Cobra Solutions — closed up shop years ago and moved to Sacramento with his wife and business partner, Debra. But he’s been locked in an ongoing legal battle against powerful forces in City Hall since 2003, when he claims the city stopped issuing payments to his company, terminated its contract, and declined to award it a new contract on suspicions of bribery.

“They want to make us look like we’re Bonnie and Clyde,” Brady told the Guardian. “We’ve never done a thing.”

Nancy Fineman, an attorney with the firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, which is representing the city in the case, said the corruption allegations against Cobra still stand and she emphasized, “The city attorney was not involved in doing anything wrong.”

In a complaint filed Jan. 7, attorney G. Whitney Leigh — law partner of former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez — alleges that a host of city officials are responsible for precipitating Brady’s financial ruin.

According to Leigh’s version of events, Cobra was dragged into an overzealous campaign to hold someone accountable after a contractor the city alleged was corrupt vanished, leaving a number of subcontractors unpaid and the city “with egg on its face.”

Leigh subpoenaed Ed Harrington, former city controller and current head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission; Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda; former officials from the Office of Contract Administration, and others to testify out of court during discovery. Leigh describes the case as “a Shakespearean tragedy combined with a cartoon combined with a soap opera.”

For City Attorney Dennis Herrera, it might be more like a zombie flick. The city attorney is gaining momentum in his campaign for mayor and has taken an early lead in fundraising against his opponents. The Cobra Solutions saga might be one that he — and other top city officials — would rather forget.

 

CONFLICTS AND CRACKDOWNS

Appeals in the case have reached all the way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled that Herrera had a conflict of interest that should have disqualified his office from suing Cobra. Beginning in September 2000, before he was elected city attorney, Herrera provided legal representation to Cobra while working with a private firm called Kelly, Gill, Sherburne & Herrera.

Due to the disqualification, Herrera could not discuss specifics in the case. But he did offer us a general comment. “I’ve made it very clear that me and my office are going to have zero tolerance for corruption and individuals who would violate the public trust,” he said. “This case, I think, represents that philosophy.”

When Herrera was campaigning for city attorney in the November 2001 race, he ran on a platform of cracking down on fraud and corruption. The DBI case began as a triumphant delivery of that campaign promise.

In 2003, following a yearlong investigation by a Public Integrity Task Force that Herrera had convened, a corrupt DBI official named Marcus Armstrong got busted by the feds. He’d allegedly falsified the qualifications on his resume and set up shell companies to funnel money out of city coffers for his own personal gain. He pleaded guilty to corruption charges brought by the U.S. Attorney, and spent time in prison for cheating the city out of about $500,000.

Herrera brought a civil suit against Armstrong and a DBI contractor, Government Computer Sales, Inc. (GCSI), which allegedly partnered with Armstrong in a kickback scheme. Questions surrounded GCSI from the start. It only gained certification as a city contractor after being rejected multiple times by city staff as unqualified. Deborah Vincent-James, who directed the city’s Committee on Information Technology (COIT) at the time and has since died, testified in a 2008 deposition that GCSI was “fraudulent” and got the contract only because of ties to Mayor Brown.

Herrera hit a stumbling block when he amended the complaint to name Cobra Solutions and its management company, TeleCon Ltd., as another city contractor in on Armstrong’s kickback scheme. (Debra Brady was president of TeleCon, which predated Cobra. Although the Bradys insist the two entities were separate, Herrera named TeleCon in the suit as an alter ego of Cobra.)

Cobra struck back, claiming the City Attorney’s Office wasn’t entitled to file suit against the company because Herrera’s old firm had represented Brady. Herrera told us the whole thing came about “because of the 18 minutes that I billed to work for Cobra.”

Herrera’s office initially denied any conflict of interest. “Immediately upon discovery of Cobra’s role, the office screened Herrera off from further involvement in the investigation and all matters related to it in accordance with a stringent ethical screening policy Herrera established when he took office,” according to a statement issued by the City Attorney’s Office.

But the Supreme Court disagreed in a 2006 ruling. “The possibility that the City Attorney’s former client might be prosecuted for civil fraud by the City Attorney’s office may test public faith in the integrity of the judicial system,” the ruling stated, “raising the specter of perceptions that the former client will be treated more leniently because of its connections, or more harshly because of leaked confidences.”

 

COBRA’S CASH

The city’s lawsuit alleged that Cobra paid Armstrong about $240,000 in bribes in exchange for $2.4 million worth of business with DBI from April 1999 through 2000. The allegation was based on checks Cobra sent to Monarch Enterprises, which the city said was an Armstrong front. The investigation found that GCSI paid Armstrong about 10 percent of the contract amount in a similar fashion.

“Armstrong used these and all other funds received from Cobra for his personal benefit and gain,” the suit claimed. The complaint also charges, “Cobra … knew that Monarch enterprises was wholly owned and controlled by Armstrong, and that any payment made by Cobra was in fact a payment to Armstrong.”

But Cobra’s suit claims an FBI investigation into Cobra’s involvement found no wrongdoing. Additionally, “We turned all of our records over to the U.S. Attorney,” Leigh noted, and that didn’t lead to a criminal prosecution.

Brady calls the corruption allegation “a big lie,” and says his company’s name has been wrongfully sullied. He says Armstrong led him to believe Monarch Enterprises was an Internet company performing training, support, and computer security upgrades as a subcontractor. The bills came in, and Cobra believed it was responsible for paying for the service, Brady said. “We mailed the checks, and never thought about it.”

Before the trouble started, Cobra Solutions was in a growth phase, having gone from four employees to 35 in just a few years. James and Debra Brady moved from Colorado to San Francisco in the late 1980s with nothing. James Brady worked as a manager in several SROs, became a member of the Tenderloin Merchant’s Association and helped establish a credit union serving low-income residents.

The couple established TeleCon Ltd. and started out as city subcontractors providing voicemail services. At first, they had very limited resources. “Prior to being able to afford an office, Debra frequently used the telephones in the women’s lounge at Nordstrom to conduct business,” according to her bio.

Cobra was established after Vincent-James urged the Bradys to submit a bid for an upcoming contract. The city had opened up a Request for Proposals (RFP) for vendors who wanted to be admitted to the Computer Store, an entity created to speed up municipal orders for technical services.

Before then, it could take six months for the city to purchase so much as a desktop computer. A Human Rights Commission vetting process, designed to ensure that city contractors adhered to environmental and social justice criteria, caused long delays. Then-City Purchaser Ed Lee created the Computer Store to solve this logistical challenge. Vendors who applied for membership were vetted in the RFP (minority-owned businesses were given preference), admitted as certified contractors, and granted preference by city departments in need of IT services.

Cobra’s first departmental contract through the Computer Store was a $1.3 million agreement to provide technical services for DBI, working with Armstrong. Things got off to a rough start.

“We could never find the guy, he would never be at work, and when we did see him, he was complaining,” Brady recounted. According to Cobra’s complaint, “it ran into a series of disputes with DBI and Armstrong over the scope of work and particular payment issues,” and Cobra was eventually awarded a settlement reflecting services it provided after Armstrong changed the scope of the work.

Brady says he sought city help in dealing with Armstrong. According to Cobra’s complaint, he appealed for assistance to COIT, which oversaw the Computer Store. Cobra’s relationship with Armstrong soon soured, and the DBI deal dissolved.

According to the description of Vincent-James, “The relationship between James Brady … and Marcus got worse … Marcus got another company involved because James Brady would not do what Marcus wanted to do.”

The other company was GCSI.

 

NEW PHASE

Things got better for the Bradys before they got worse. Cobra became one of the city’s largest technology services providers, netting $14.5 million in contracts with various city agencies by 2003. They relocated to a nicer, more spacious office in the Financial District.

A partnership with IBM granted them access to higher credit limits than ever. The couple had a home custom-built in El Sobrante. When GCSI vanished without a trace, Vincent-James called on Cobra to hire some of the GCSI subcontractors who had gotten burned in the process, according to a deposition from former city purchaser Judith Blackwell.

By 2003, the Public Integrity Task Force’s DBI investigation was in full swing, but Brady didn’t know it. He says he started experiencing problems getting paid, yet couldn’t get an explanation from city agencies.

According to Cobra’s complaint, “The city intentionally frustrated payments to Cobra and TeleCon because investigators hastily and incorrectly concluded that the companies had conspired with Armstrong in a GCSI-type scheme to defraud the city.”

Fineman, the city’s attorney, said she strongly disagrees with “the idea that we just stopped and left them in the lurch,” emphasizing that there had been a whole separate legal proceeding arising out of the fact that “Cobra was not paying its subcontractors,” in violation of its contract.

The city defended its decision to delay Cobra’s payments by pointing to the GCSI scandal, which had left city agencies high and dry. “By the time the City discovered GCSI’s fraud and stopped making payments to GCSI, GCSI had already received millions of dollars in city payments that were not then passed on to the subcontractors,” a letter from the City Attorney’s Office to Brady’s attorneys explained. “Once the city started investigating the payments to GCSI that Marcus Armstrong authorized, GCSI’s assets, officers and staff disappeared. … The city has an obligation to its taxpayers to prevent the GCSI scenario from unfolding with regard to Cobra / TeleCon.”

Brady insists that because Cobra couldn’t get paid, it couldn’t pay its subcontractors, or its creditors, either — and the financial holdup triggered a cascade of losses. “I’ve got IBM, Booz Allen Hamilton, and American Express breathing down on me like a dragon,” he said. “Everybody wants to get paid. We owed folks after we couldn’t collect our receivables.”

The bills were piling up. “We were sinking fast,” said Debra Brady, “so we sold our house in El Sobrante.”

Brady said he was stunned to learn that Cobra had been named in Herrera’s suit.

“I have 37 employees, and I had to go in and tell them. I was all choked up and the phone was ringing, and it was my attorney on the line telling me that the FBI was coming. I could not believe that after everything we had achieved in the last three years, my former attorney was filing a lawsuit against me.”

 

CLEARING THEIR NAMES

After filing the complaint against Cobra, the City Attorney’s Office called on the company to submit to an audit — but Cobra refused on the basis that Herrera’s firm had represented it in the past. “The City Attorney’s assumption of the role of auditor seems calculated to exacerbate and expand the existing conflict of interest,” Cobra attorney Ethan Balogh wrote in an April 2003 letter. “This problem could easily be solved by allowing an agency other than the City Attorney to conduct the audit.”

In a lengthy back-and-forth, Herrera’s office responded: “You have never explained why your client, having been caught sending over $240,000 in cash to a San Francisco IT manager who authorized over $2.4 million in payments to Cobra/TeleCon during the period of time which he received those payments, has elected not to immediately … open its books and records to the city. Instead … you have raised a host of constantly-shifting objections and arguments as to why the city’s demand was inappropriate.”

Cobra’s lawsuit charges that the City Attorney’s Office never informed the Controller’s Office that Cobra would have allowed an audit by another party. At the same time, it charges, city attorneys weren’t allowing Cobra to communicate with the controller directly, due to the legal dispute.

“The question of who would do the audit and whether or not the City Attorney was doing the audit was not something that I was aware of or certainly had not agreed to,” Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda said during her deposition.

Meanwhile, Cobra had received the highest Human Rights Commission score of any bidder for a renewal on the Computer Store contract, an HRC document shows. Brady received a letter stating that his company would be awarded a new Computer Store contract — but shortly after, he got a second letter reversing that award.

Judith Blackwell, who oversaw city purchasing under Brown’s administration, explained why during her deposition with Leigh. After Cobra’s bid evaluation, Blackwell testified, her office moved to award the contract — but the controller intervened, saying Cobra shouldn’t be awarded a new contract because of the Armstrong scandal. Blackwell wasn’t willing to throw Cobra out, however.

“I learned from watching politics that I cannot afford to bend the rules,” Blackwell testified. “If I step outside the precise boundaries in any way, or if any African American administrator does, they are probably not going to be interpreted in the same way as if anyone else did it. Based on the … procurement code, there is no way that I could, as the purchasing director, just throw them out.”

Blackwell testified that Zmuda requested that she sign paperwork denying Cobra the contract, and Blackwell received a warning when she refused. “She told me that I needed to remember that when [Mayor Brown] was gone that they, the Controller’s Office, and [Chief of Staff Steve Kawa] — I knew that is what she was implying — were in charge,” Blackwell said. Once Mayor Gavin Newsom replaced Brown, Blackwell was let go. She now lives in New York City.

Blackwell testified that losing her job came as a surprise, since she’d worked on Newsom’s campaign and expected to keep her position. “I had asked him something about why it happened and he said … he knew nothing about it and people were acting without, you know, basically not at his direction,” Blackwell testified. “I said, well, Mayor Newsom, you are in charge. And his response was, oh, I wish that were so.” 

 

ED LEE APPROVED UNQUALIFIED CONTRACTOR ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION

GCSI — a company accused of defrauding the city after improperly being given a city contract by Ed Lee, allegedly at the urging of then-Mayor Willie Brown — is long gone.

“I don’t think they’re around,” Nancy Fineman, an attorney representing the city, told the Guardian. “We’ve just been focused on Cobra and TeleCon.”

The story of how GCSI came to be a city contractor may be the most fascinating part of this case, one that could have repercussions today, even though it happened in the late-1990s.

Like Cobra Solutions, GCSI was a contractor with the city’s Computer Store — gaining admission after being repeatedly rejected by city staff, according to a 2008 deposition with former COIT director Deborah Vincent-James, who has died.

Vincent-James testified that GCSI didn’t meet the minimum qualifications and recounted how, during an interview with city officials about the bid, a member of the City Attorney’s Office noticed a wire peeking out from the suit of a GCSI representative who had been surreptitiously taping the meeting.

“San Francisco was not aware of GCSI’s wrongful conduct, financial problems, or legal difficulties at the time it hired GCSI to work on the DBI projects,” a city lawsuit claimed. Nor had the city realized that, “GCSI’s president and owner had been arrested and imprisoned by a federal judge for contempt of court and for disbursing funds in an effort to avoid …efforts to collect its loan.”

GCSI principal Robert Fowler resided in both Washington, D.C., and California, was believed to be a citizen of Sweden, and was also the director and owner of a bank located on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, according to Herrera’s complaint.

“From day one, I knew that they were not qualified,” Vincent-James’ deposition transcript reads. She went on to say that the official city process for evaluating contractors was “totally bypassed.” Nonetheless, “We had to admit them to the Computer Store.”

“Who told you, you had to admit them to the Computer Store?” attorney Whitney Leigh asked.

“The director of purchasing,” states Vincent-James’ deposition transcript. “Ed Lee.”

She went on to testify that Lee had been acting under the direction of Mayor Brown. According to her deposition, “[Lee] was directed by the Mayor’s Office and told to do an evaluation process. They evaluated them. They were put in the store.” She also testified, “Principals of GCSI hired an attorney who had been in the State Legislature with Mayor Brown and … GCSI had felt that because we were asking intrusive questions during the oral interview, such as ‘Why do you have that wire hanging out of your coat?’ … They felt that biased the committee toward … not hiring them.”

Neither Brown nor Mayor Lee’s office responded to requests for comment.

GCSI is still a codefendant in the complaint, but the principals of the defunct company seem to be off the hook. A 2008 story from the Anchorage Daily News noted that Fowler had emerged as the head of a natural gas company in Alaska. The Bradys, meanwhile, are getting ready for another court date in March. “We keep going to court,” Debra Brady said. “I’m kind of like, when is the end coming?”

Gascon shocker

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Gascon shocker

Gavin Newsom’s appointment of his police chief, George Gascón, as district attorney wasn’t just a slap in the face to the D.A.’s office, it reversed a long tradition in which the city’s top prosecutors have pledged their opposition to the death penalty. It broke an unwritten rule that the district attorney should have some independence from the Police Department. And it suggests that Newsom’s decision was about his own future and not about San Francisco’s.

Gascón, who has a law degree from Western State University in Fullerton, has been a member of the state bar since 1996 and has handled labor and bankruptcy cases for a year and a half. But he’s never prosecuted a criminal case.

He still believes he has the necessary organizational skills. “Running a D.A.’s office is not the same as prosecuting cases on the floor,” he said at his Jan.9 swearing-in.

He sees the D.A. post as a way to build closer relationships between various law enforcement agencies, including the police department and the public defender’s office. “We have to find a way to bring law enforcement together,” Gascón said.

But so far the response to his appointment in those circles has been less than favorable, even though City Attorney Dennis Herrera issued a press release praising Gascón’s help in moving ahead with gang injunctions in Visitacion Valley.

Attorney Elliot Beckelman, who worked in the D.A.’s office until a few months ago, said people in the office were stunned because no one thought Gascón was a good candidate. “It’s like taking a lawyer who has been working for 20 years, and has done a stint as the D.A., and graduated from the police academy, and appointing them as police chief when they never worked as a police officer, arrested anyone, or saw a dead body,” he said.

Beckelman said he wonders if Gascón’s Jan. 9 comment that he is not “philosophically opposed to the death penalty” indicates that Newsom picked him to boost his own popularity with law enforcement groups and improve his chances at getting elected to higher office.

“It’s very cynical to make your final political move one that disassociates you from San Francisco, but it’s a big move nationally in terms of where Newsom hopes to land five moves from now,” Beckelman said. “It’s a politician appointing another politician.”

Former District Attorney Terence Hallinan said Gascón’s appointment was stupid. “Maybe it’s Gavin’s comeback after gay marriage to appoint someone who will say, ‘Okay, let’s kill people.’ But this is not a well-thought-out move,” he said. “OK, Gascón’s a lawyer, but he has never practiced law. The D.A. and the police work together, yes, but you have to try a lot of cases before you work out which are worth prosecuting and which deputies to assign.

‘It’s the responsibility of the D.A.’s office to supervise the police,” he added.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi notes that the choice of Gascon’ has energized this fall’s D.A.’s race , when Gascón will have to stand for election to keep his new job. “What was a sleepy race looks like it will take center stage” Adachi said. “Other candidates are now outsiders and will have to distinguish themselves.”

One such opportunity could arise if Gascón seeks the death penalty in the coming year. Matt Gonzalez, who was the first candidate to oppose the death penalty when he ran against then-D.A. Terence Hallinan, said he thinks Gascón’s views on the death penalty should have eliminated him. “That alone should have made him ineligible. This is a step backward.”

Gonzalez thinks Gascón’s appointment trivializes what the D.A.’s office does. “This was a real opportunity to pick a professional prosecutor who was familiar with the office and knew San Francisco,” he said. “Instead, this is like me thinking I should be police chief because I’ve seen a lot of fingerprints.”

Adachi worries that little is known about Gascón’s legal abilities. “He does not have a track record in terms of felony and homicide experience,” he said. “That’s not to say he wouldn’t run the office well, but it leaves us without an important knowledge base. He does bring many years of experience as a police officer, but the responsibilities are very different.”

Adachi observes that while police bring cases to the D.A. based on probable cause, the D.A. reviews those cases and only brings cases that are deemed justified. “But will Gascón file more cases for the sake of wanting to justify arrests by the police?” Adachi mused.

Out with the old

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Out with the old

On the chilly morning of Dec. 21, a crowd of prominent local and state figures huddled in an industrial parking lot overlooking the brick smokestack of the Potrero power plant, which has been in operation for more than 40 years. It was the winter solstice, the morning after a lunar eclipse, and an historic environmental moment for San Francisco.

A longstanding battle to shut down the aging, polluting power plant was finally coming to an end, and it would be effectively shuttered as the calendar flipped to the new year. Although the past decade had been marked by political infighting and a relentless push to persuade the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) to shut it down sooner, the tone that day was buoyant as people made the rounds, embracing one another and offering congratulations and thanks.

Among those who lined up before the media were Mayor Gavin Newsom, who will be sworn in as lieutenant governor in early 2011; Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose 10 years on the Board of Supervisors is coming to a close; City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who’s thrown his hat into the mayoral race; and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Ed Harrington, whose name has been floated as a contender for interim mayor.

Each of these local politicians played a role in the contentious battle to close the plant, and each candidly admitted that shouting matches on the subject had erupted over the years. Yet they all expressed thanks to one another and to community members in the Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, and Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhoods, where residents were most directly affected by the noxious air pollution generated by the plant.

“They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a state and a city to close this power plant,” said Maxwell, whose District 10 includes the neighborhoods affected by the power plant. “I started working on these plants when I took office, and now the plants are leaving with me.” Maxwell was credited with displaying dogged persistence and playing an instrumental role in pushing for the shutdown the plant.

“There were a lot of phone calls, there were a lot of arguments, there were a lot of disputes. But the fact of the matter is that everybody was focused on the same goal — and that was getting this plant shut down,” said Herrera, who has also been a key player in the decade-long fight to shut down the plant.

Newsom sounded a similar note. “I want to compliment everybody for their steadfastness and their devotion to this process,” the mayor said. “We didn’t always necessarily agree.”

Joshua Arce, who worked with community members to shut down the plant as part of his work with the Brightline Defense Project, was clearly pleased by the announcement. “It’s a fantastic day. We’re at last going to see the billowing smokestack come down, and for good,” Arce said.

The shutdown finally came to pass because the CalISO, which regulates the state power grid, was willing to accept new energy system upgrades as sufficiently reliable. For years, despite the community’s insistence that the plant was having an unacceptable impact on public health and disproportionately affected low-income communities of color, CalISO refused to terminate a contract requiring the plant to stay in operation for grid-reliability purposes.

However, new pieces to the city’s energy puzzle were recently fitted into place. The Trans Bay Cable, a 53-mile submarine power line that can transmit 400 megawatts of electricity from a Pittsburg generating station to San Francisco, became fully operational Nov. 23, months behind schedule. Meanwhile, a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. re-cabling project deemed important to San Francisco’s electricity reliability was completed Dec. 5.

“This plant has been part of the reliable supply for San Francisco … for a long time. And more recently, it actually provided the security for San Francisco should anything happen outside of San Francisco,” Yakout Mansour, president and CEO of the CalISO said during the shutdown ceremony. “But the time is here to replace the plant with an alternative to make the city more secure and reliable with much less polluting options.”

The CalISO issued a letter to the plant owner, which recently merged with another company and changed its name from Mirant to GenOn, stating that the must-run agreement would be terminated effective Jan. 1. The date of the final termination is Feb. 28, pending approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Now the major question is what will become of the power plant site, a vast strip of industrial real estate wedged between Illinois Street and the waterfront. “Many ideas have been thrown out there. People have come to us and said everything from office and industrial and research and development, to wind turbines,” noted Sam Lauter, a local spokesperson for GenOn. Lauter noted that community meetings would be held soon to discuss the future site use.

The site was previously owned by PG&E, and the utility is responsible for cleaning up lingering toxic residue including lampblack, a byproduct of coal processing, left behind when PG&E sold the site. Because of the pollution, residential units cannot legally be constructed on the site, even after cleanup.

There is one unfortunate consequence to shuttering the plant. According to plant manager Mike Montany, five or six of the 28 employees of the plant will lose their jobs. The rest will either retire or go to work at a new facility, he said.

While San Francisco will be poised to ring in the new year with improved air quality thanks to the elimination of its last polluting energy facility, residents of the area where the city’s power will now be sourced from won’t be so lucky. They are faced with the construction of two new power plants. The undersea Trans Bay Cable will run from the PG&E’s substation in San Francisco — a humming network of cables and transformers located beside the power plant that will stay put after the shutdown — to a generating station in Pittsburg, located in the delta near the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.

GenOn owns the Pittsburg power plant, and it recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new power plant in neighboring Antioch, called Marsh Landing. At the same time, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) recently gave the green light for another new power plant in that area. The $1.5 billion PG&E facility would be located in Oakley, which borders Antioch. It won commission approval Dec. 16, despite an earlier decision rejecting the proposal.

The plans for new power plants were approved just after the conclusion of an important United Nations convention on Climate Change in Cancún, Mexico, and amid news reports highlighting scientists’ conclusion that polar bears have a shot at survival only if serious efforts are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While the cheerful ceremony to shut down the Potrero power plant was a satisfying conclusion to a long battle, there’s a long road yet ahead in the overarching struggle against climate change.

Weighing a landlord’s promise

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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8
Weighing a landlord’s promise

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Emotions ran high at meetings held by the San Francisco Planning Commission about a massive overhaul of Parkmerced, a housing complex located next to San Francisco State University that is a neighborhood unto itself.

The plan envisions tearing down 1940s-era garden apartments and townhomes to make way for new low-rises and high-rises that would contain a mix of rental housing and for-sale units. Over the course of a construction project spanning three decades, Parkmerced would expand to 8,900 units — enough to triple the number of residents who can now be accommodated. Final approval for the project is expected in March at the earliest.

Some 150 residents turned out at a Dec. 9 special meeting held near Parkmerced to make it more accessible for seniors and people with limited mobility. Although commissioners had planned to open with a staff presentation, residents protested and demanded to speak first, and their request was granted. After listening to residents comment for hours, commissioners continued the discussion until the Dec. 16 meeting, which drew a smaller turnout.

While some residents were pleased by the plans, the majority who attended the first meeting expressed alarm and anxiety. People aired concerns about the long construction timeline, increased density, traffic congestion, and the impact the plan would have on a well-established, multigenerational community. Many of the speakers had been born at Parkmerced or raised families there. The comments portrayed an economically diverse neighborhood supporting close-knit circles of friends and family.

One question that seemed to have residents rattled most was whether they could trust the developer’s promise that their rent control would be preserved, even after their existing apartments have been torn down.

Among them was octogenarian Robert Pender, a founding member of the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization, who hobbled from his wheelchair to the podium to deliver his statement for the public record. “Parkmerced is my home, and I’m not going to be evicted because some landlord wants to make some more money,” he announced. After making his comments, Pender turned to face the audience, lifted his cane in the air, and issued a rally cry that captured the sentiment of the evening: “fight!”

Under the development plan, 1,500 apartments would be razed to make way for new residential units. The midcentury garden apartments open out to shared courtyards and patios. Many house tenants who’ve lived at Parkmerced for decades. For elderly residents or those who have disabilities, the exceptionally low rent makes it possible for them to stay in San Francisco despite limited income.

From the outset, Parkmerced Investors LLC and Stellar Management have promised existing tenants that they will be relocated to replacement units with roughly the same square footage, where they’ll continue to pay the same monthly rates and keep their rent control. The developer has even promised to keep the existing apartments intact until the new units are available so that none of the residents will have to move twice.

“Our promise to our residents is that we will preserve the rent control,” said P.J. Johnston, a spokesperson for the developer. “Our attorneys believe that the rent-control protections are absolutely ironclad.”

Johnston emphasized the big picture: “For decades, progressive San Francisco has been talking about the need for developing large chunks of affordable housing, for increasing density on the west side, and for creating more housing around transit. Here we finally have the opportunity to do all that while introducing major transit improvements and extending rent control.”

The landlord’s promise of continued rent control is written into a development agreement, a contract between the developer and the city that would be filed along with permits and entitlements for the property. Any subsequent owner would also have to adhere to the terms of the agreement.

Despite those assurances, tenant advocates speaking at the Dec. 9 meeting sounded the alarm that the guarantee could be called into question in court if the developer or a new owner ever sought to challenge it. The Costa-Hawkins Act, passed in 1995, prohibits rent control on newly constructed units, and San Francisco’s rent ordinance guarantees rent control only for units built before 1979.

“It is disingenuous for the Parkmerced landlord and for city staff to assure tenants that they will have rent-controlled replacement units after their units are demolished,” noted Polly Marshall, a tenant commissioner on the San Francisco Rent Board who spoke as an individual before the Planning Commission. “We simply don’t know if this will be the case.”

Marshall said the agreement could be susceptible to a legal challenge, given recent court rulings in Los Angeles and Santa Monica finding that the Ellis Act and the Costa-Hawkins Act preempted any contracts brokered with the municipalities. In each case, signed agreements between a developer and a city were dissolved in California courts.

“There’s nothing in state law that says that when you demolish rent-controlled housing, it has to be replaced with rent-controlled housing,” said Dean Preston, director of Tenants Together, a statewide tenant advocacy group. “I don’t think the city or the developer can make those guarantees.”

Preston added that the problem would be intensified if the property is conveyed to a new owner who didn’t make the same commitments, and acknowledged that he didn’t perceive a surefire way to guarantee enforceability. “It’s not the developer’s fault, and it’s not the city’s fault,” Preston added. “Ultimately this needs to be addressed In Sacramento.”

City staff and the developer seemed responsive to the concerns. In comments submitted to commissioners Dec. 9, Marshall said the development agreement should be amended to specify that the developer agreed to waive any rights to challenge the requirements of the agreement. The following week, at the Dec. 16 meeting, planning staff distributed revised copies of the agreement that had been changed to include that language.

During a staff presentation at the Dec. 16 meeting, mayoral development advisor Michael Yarne addressed the rent-control question in a detailed presentation. “The city wants to protect existing tenants,” Yarne told commissioners. “It is not the city’s intent to leave existing tenants vulnerable.”

Under Costa-Hawkins, Yarne said, exceptions to the rent-control prohibition apply in cases where a municipality has made a valuable contribution to a developer for a residential project in exchange for the waiver of rights under Costa-Hawkins.

Yarne ticked off a slew of contributions he believed would pass muster in a court of law as enough to qualify for the exception. Among other perks, maximum density controls for the site would be eliminated; the height and bulk for new buildings would be increased beyond what’s normally allowed; the city would not assess impact fees for the replacement units; the amount of permitted commercial mixed-use development for Parkmerced’s zoning category would be substantially increased; and the development rights would be frozen for 30 years with no required milestones.

“We believe this satisfies the public-assistance exception,” Yarne said. He noted that the document was drafted with feedback from City Attorney Dennis Herrera.

Tenant rights activist Calvin Welch, who had not yet seen the latest draft of the development agreement when the Guardian caught up with him, said “we’re agnostic” on the rent-control provision until having had a chance to carefully vet the final agreement. Yet he said the tenants were “absolutely right to be concerned,” given the recent legal precedent.

Sup. Sean Elsbernd, whose District 7 includes Parkmerced, said he tuned into the hearings though he did not attend. Elsbernd said he would feel comfortable moving forward with the plan as long as he had assurance from the City Attorney’s Office that the agreement was enforceable. “I don’t want to see that project go forward without certainty,” he said.

Christina Olague, vice president of the Planning Commission, acknowledged the strong concerns voiced by residents about the coming changes to the property. “We have to be sensitive to the emotions that we witnessed that day,” Olague said. “We have to balance out a lot of different needs.”

At the Dec. 16 meeting, more residents made comments echoing the furious opposition expressed on Dec. 9. At the same time, a small contingent of residents who favored the plan turned out to urge commissioners to approve it.

“I have witnessed consistent honesty from one source — the owner of Parkmerced, Rob Rosania,” Daniel Phillips, who identified himself as president of the Board of Directors of the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization, noted in written comments submitted to commissioners. “As long as I have known Rob Rosania and Stellar Management, they have made promises and kept them.”

Yet it was clear that many other tenants were not convinced, and on Dec. 9, several lamented the idea that their homes would be knocked down and their longstanding community impacted by the new development.

Residents who oppose the development recently formed a new residents organization called the Parkmerced Action Coalition. Members of that group are opposed to the wholesale demolition of the 1,500 garden apartments and would rather see them retrofitted and preserved.

“We are living in panic,” a woman who had lived in Parkmerced for many years told commissioners. “I am completely opposed to the tear-down of our community.”

Mayoral dynamics

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
Mayoral dynamics

steve@sfbg.com

Despite the best efforts of Sup. Chris Daly and some of his progressive colleagues to create an orderly transfer of authority in the city’s most powerful office, the selection of a successor to Mayor Gavin Newsom will come down to a frantic, unpredictable, last-minute drama starting a few days into the new year.

The board has convened to hear public testimony and consider choosing a new mayor three times, each time delaying the decision with little discussion by any supervisor except Daly, who pleaded with his colleagues on Dec. 14 to “Say something, the people deserve it,” and asking, “Are we going to take our charge?”

The current board will get one more crack at making the decision Jan. 4, a day after the California Constitution calls for Newsom to assume his duties as lieutenant governor — although Newsom has threatened to delay his swearing-in so Daly and company don’t get to the make the decision.

“I can’t just walk away and see everything blow up. And there are a few politicians in this town that want to serve an ideological agenda,” Newsom told KCBS radio reporter Barbara Taylor on Dec. 16, two days after praising the board for its “leadership and stewardship” in revising and unanimously approving the city’s bid to host the America’s Cup.

Newsom and his fiscally conservative political base fear that the board’s progressive majority will nominate one of its own as mayor, whereas Newsom told Taylor, “The board should pick a caretaker and not a politician — that’s my criteria.”

Some board members strongly disagree. “It’s not his to decide. Besides, what’s not ideological? That doesn’t make sense. Everyone’s ideological,” Sup. John Avalos told the Guardian, a point echoed by other progressives on the board and even many political moderates in town, who privately complain that Newsom’s stand is hypocritical, petty, and not in the city’s best interests.

The Guardian has interviewed a majority of members of the Board of Supervisors about the mayoral succession question, and all expect the board to finally start discussing mayoral succession and making nominations on Jan. 4.

But whether the current board, or the newly elected board that is sworn in on Jan. 8, ultimately chooses the new mayor is anyone’s guess. And at Guardian press time, who that new mayor will be (and what conditions that person will agree to) was still a matter of wild speculation, elaborate conspiracy theories, and backroom deal making.

 

GETTING TO SIX

A majority of supervisors say there’s a simple reason why the board hasn’t seriously discussed mayoral succession since it unanimously approved the procedures for doing so Nov. 23 (see “The process begins,” Nov. 30). Everyone seems to know that nobody has the required six votes.

Avalos said he thinks the current board is better situated to choose the new mayor because of its experience, even though he voted for the delay on Dec. 14 (in an 8-3 vote, with Daly and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos in dissent). “I supported the delay because we were not closer to having a real discussion about it than we were the week before,” Avalos told us, noting that those who were pushing for Campos “didn’t do enough to broaden the coalition to support David Campos.”

For his part, Campos agreed that “the progressive majority has not figured out what it wants to do yet,” a point echoed by Mirkarimi: “I don’t think there’s a plan.” Sup. Sophie Maxwell, who made both the successful motions to delay the vote, told us, “There’s a lot more thinking that people need to do.”

“We do not yet have consensus,” Chiu said of his reasons for supporting the delay, noting that state conflict-of-interest and open government laws also make it difficult for the board to have a frank discussion about who the new mayor should be.

For example, Chiu is barred from even declaring publicly that he wants the job and describing how he might lead, although he is widely known to be in the running.

The board can’t officially name a new mayor until the office is vacant. Sup. Bevan Dufty, who is already running for mayor, told us the board should wait for Newsom to act. “I felt the resignation should be in effect before the board makes a move,” Dufty said.

Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Carmen Chu, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Eric Mar did not return the Guardian’s calls for comment.

 

PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

Adding to the drama of the mayoral succession decision will be the new Board of Supervisors’ inaugural meeting on Jan. 8, when the first order of business will be the vote for a new board president, who will also immediately become acting mayor if the office has been vacated by then and the previous board hasn’t chosen a new mayor.

While Newsom and his downtown allies are clearly banking on the hope that the new board will select a politically moderate caretaker mayor, something that three of the four new supervisors say they want (see “Class of 2010,” Dec. 8), the reality is that the new board will have the same basic ideological breakdown as the current board and some personal relationships that could benefit progressives Chiu and Avalos.

Daly said downtown is probably correct that the current board is more likely than the new one to directly elect a progressive mayor who might run for the office in the fall, such as Campos or former board President Aaron Peskin. But he thinks the new board is likely to elect a progressive as president, probably Campos, Chiu, or Avalos, and that person could end up lingering as acting mayor indefinitely.

“They really haven’t thought through Jan. 8. Downtown doesn’t like to gamble, and I think it’s a gamble,” Daly said. “There’s a decent chance that we’ll get a more progressive mayor out of the leadership vote for board president.”

Avalos said it “would be a disaster” for the board president to linger as acting mayor for a long time, complicating the balance of power at City Hall. But he wouldn’t mind holding the board gavel. “I think I would do a good job as board president, but I’m not going to scratch and claw my way to be board president,” Avalos said. “I’d be just as happy to be chair of the Budget Committee again.”

Avalos said he thinks it’s important to have a mayor who is willing to work closely with board progressives and to support new revenues as part of the budget solution, which is why he would be willing to support Chiu, Campos, or Mirkarimi for mayor, saying “All of them could do a good job.”

Given the progressive majority on the board, it’s also possible that there will be a lingering standoff between supporters for Chiu, a swing vote in budget and other battles who has yet to win the full confidence of all the progressive supervisors, and former Mayor Art Agnos, who has offered to serve as a caretaker. Some see Agnos as more progressive than the other alternatives pushed by moderates, including Sheriff Michael Hennessey and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission head Ed Harrington.

Moderates like Dufty are hopeful that a couple of progressives might break off to support Hennessey (“From the first minute, he knows everything you’d need to know in an emergency situation,” Dufty said) or Harrington (“I could see him stepping in and closing the budget deficit and finding a good compromise on pension reform,” Dufty said) after a few rounds of voting.

Mirkarimi is openly backing Agnos. “He has evolved, as I’ve known him, in the days since being mayor,” Mirkarimi said. “I think we’ve spent too much time on finding the progressive guy to be mayor than on setting up what a progressive caretaker administration would look like.” And then there are the wild cards, like state Sen. Mark Leno and City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Herrera’s a declared candidate and Leno has made it clear that he’d take the job if it were offered to him.

Given the fact that supervisors can’t vote for themselves, it’s difficult for any of them to win. “I don’t think it’s likely that a member of the Board of Supervisors will get enough votes to be mayor,” Avalos told us, although he said that Chiu is the one possible exception.

But to get to six votes, Chiu would have to have most of the progressive supervisors supporting him and some moderates, such as D10 Supervisor-elect Malia Cohen (whom Chiu endorsed), D8’s Scott Wiener, and/or Chu (who might be persuaded to help elect the city’s first Chinese American mayor).

That would be a delicate dance, although it’s as likely as any of the other foreseeable scenarios.

Potrero power plant could be shut down in February

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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0

The Potrero power plant could be shut down entirely by the end of February, the Guardian has learned. According to a report prepared for the Dec. 15 meeting of the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) Board of Governors, an energy regulatory body, the aging power plant will soon be released from a Reliability Must-Run (RMR) contract requiring its continued operation for grid-reliability purposes.

“The ISO will provide an RMR termination notice to Mirant at the end of this month or in early January,” the report states, “which would terminate the RMR agreement by February 28, 2011.”

In August of 2009, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera reached an accord with Mirant Potrero LLC, the company that owns and operates the Potrero Power Plant, to shut down the plant by Dec. 31, 2010. Although the company agreed to the terms of shuttering the plant by the end of this year, there was a catch — the Cal-ISO would first have to terminate Mirant Potrero’s RMR contract. Apparently, that won’t happen till early next year, but this latest Cal-ISO report marks the first time the agency has committed to a specific date.

The Potrero power plant won’t be a necessary power source for San Francisco now that a new energy transmission line has been installed. The Trans Bay Cable, a 53-mile submarine power line that can transmit 400 megawatts of electricity from a Pittsburg substation to San Francisco, became fully operational on Nov. 23.

“The Trans Bay Cable finished its testing successfully and was put into successful service,” spokesperson P.J. Johnston told the Guardian. Meanwhile, a PG&E re-cabling project deemed important to San Francisco’s electricity reliability was completed Dec. 5.

“Having both of these projects completed and proven operationally reliable were the two key conditions for enabling the ISO to release the entire Potrero power plant from its reliability must-run contract obligation,” the Cal-ISO report notes.

Removing the Potero power plant from service will benefit San Francisco’s air quality, particularly in the city’s southeastern neighborhoods.

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