Corporations

The Chronicle’s dishonest hit on district elections

Zelda Bronstein
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8

The move to get rid of district elections – which is based entirely on the fact that big business and more conservative voices (including the Chron) don’t like the progressive policy positions of the current board – is now well under way. The Chron devoted its Insight section to the issue Feb. 28, leading with a long editorial that wandered back and forth between points and never really made the case.


An example of the Chron’s logic:


But sitting atop the decision-making tree [in San Francisco] are small-time politicos, some elected with fewer than 10,000 votes in a city with a population of 808,976.


Horrifying! It’s as if the United States Congress – which has to decide issues like war and peace — was made up of local politicos who were elected with as few as 100,000 votes in a nation of 350 million.


Or as if the California Assembly – which has to deal with a $28 billion budget deficit – was made up of local politicos who were elected with as few as 50,000 votes in a state of more than 35 million.


A district supes votes could represent about 1.2 percent of the entire city. A state Assembly member could represent only 0.1 percent of the population of the state. And yet, I don’t hear the Chron calling for the state Assembly to be replaced with an at-large body.


More:


A town with sweeping plans to develop two empty Navy bases at Hunters Point and Treasure Island, fill vacant offices with new jobs, and cut its budget by more than a half billion dollars isn’t getting the thought, expertise – and citywide vision – it needs for these challenges.
This lack of broad leadership obstructs the city’s future. A major cause is the district election system that magnifies neighborhood and tight-knit interest groups to produce officeholders with little stake in citywide questions. If all politics is local, as former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously declared, then San Francisco has pushed this dictum to the max. It’s all about me and my neighborhood.


That’s absolutely, factually untrue – the district elected board has done more to advance citywide issues – from minimum wage to health care to the rainy day fund to infrastructure planning – than any at-large board in the previous 20 years.


And the Chron’s own editorial contradicts that argument:


Supervisor David Campos (a winner with 9,440 votes) led a move to keep illegal immigrants who are juveniles accused of felonies from being turned over to federal authorities, despite a city legal opinion that the idea wouldn’t fly. Supervisor John Avalos (6,918 votes) dreamed up the “must spend” order directing the mayor to maintain expenditures in a record deficit year. Thankfully, he dropped the idea at the 11th hour


Okay, I get that the Chronicle editorial board doesn’t like the Campos sanctuary bill or the Avalos must-spend legislation – but that are both citywide issues. They have nothing to do with “me and my neighborhood.”


Which is really the entire point here. The Chron doesn’t like the outcome of district elections – because over the past ten years, the progressives have shown they can win district races. There’s a good reason for that; in district races, you don’t need to raise huge amounts of money.


As Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and Supervisor David Chiu point out in an opposing editorial:


Part of that increased accessibility to government is the result of the decrease in the cost of running a district versus a citywide election. In the 1994 citywide elections, the average winning candidate spent $456,000 in today’s dollars. That’s 225 percent greater than the amount spent today: In 2008, the winning candidates spent an average of $204,000. Candidates needing to raise money for a citywide race will inevitably turn to special interests for contributions. If you believe elected representatives should speak up for people, not just the special interests that donated to their campaigns, today’s district system serves you better.



They also note:


Before district elections were passed, under a citywide election system, many neighborhoods – the Excelsior, the Sunset, the Mission and Bayview-Hunters Point – had no supervisor of their own. Today, all residents can pick up the phone and reach an office responsible for their neighborhood and responsive to their concerns – a broken streetlight, a dangerous pothole or a consistently tardy Muni line.


A lot of people don’t like Chris Daly’s personality, and some don’t like his politics, but if you’re a person living on SSI in a grubby little hotel room in the Tenderloin and you need help, you can walk into his office and get a welcome reception and assistance with your needs. You won’t get that from the mayor.


On the other hand, do you think, Don Fisher ever needed to stand in line and try to make a 15-minute appointment to talk to Gavin Newsom? Seriously?


And while we’re on the personality stuff: Yeah, some of Daly’s antics have been over the top. But he’s no worse than some of the others who have served on citywide boards. Former Sup. Bill Maher once accused one of his opponents of having a small penis, and waved around two fingers spread about an inch apart to the press and public.


More important, we had supervisors who did nothing. We had supervisors who did exactly what the mayor said without any question. We had supervisors who were wholly-owned subsidiaries of major local corporations. I’ll take Chris Daly over those folks any day.


By any rational standard, the district board over the past ten years has been more productive, more accountable, more representative and more accessible than any at-large board I’ve seen in my almost 30 years of covering this city.


So the Chron needs to shut up about “citywide perspective”’ and personalities. If the paper wants to oppose district elections, it needs to drop the poll-tested downtown talking points and tell the truth:


The current board is too liberal for the Chron. The moderate candidates the paper prefers can’t win in districts. So they want to change the rules.


That’s the story, beginning, middle and end.


 

PG&E’s laughable Prop 16: Who needs friends when you’ve got $35 million?

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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16

Last month, when the Guardian sent an intern to cover a debate between Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spokesperson David Townsend and California Sen. Mark Leno, the reporter was ejected from the event at Townsend’s request.

I figured I’d be immune from such nonsense when I ventured to the state capitol yesterday for a joint informational hearing about Proposition 16, the ballot initiative that PG&E has bankrolled for the June ballot for the purpose of extinguishing competition in its service territory. The initiative would establish a two-thirds majority vote before any municipal electricity program could get up and running, and its sole sponsor is PG&E.

But just after I snapped a photo of Sen. Mark Leno and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano chuckling sardonically at a PG&E executive who had mistakenly referred to the ballot initiative as “Prop 13,” a guard swooped in and ordered me to stop photographing and turn off my voice recorder.

I shot him a dirty look at first, but then realized that I could wind up meeting the same fate as our unfortunate intern if I didn’t cooperate. He informed me that it’s protocol to provide advance notification before photographing or recording a public meeting at the capitol (despite the fact that the hearing is televised and open to the public). Then he asked for my name and affiliation, and said he would have to ask committee members for permission before he could allow me to do any more recording or photographing. Presumably, the decision would be based on who was asking. He vanished and, a few minutes later, returned to say that the answer was “no.”

Thus, I was reduced to frantically scribbling down notes, which means the exchanges transcribed below aren’t as complete as they could be. (Anyone know of an acupuncturist who can soothe muscle stiffness in the forearm?)

Yesterday’s hearing made it clear that PG&E has little support for the ballot initiative other than its own war chest of funding, and it’s royally pissed off the Legislature besides. PG&E Senior Director Ed Bedwell blushed a bright red hue more than once when he was assailed with statements such as, “Alienating those who are usually in your camp is not a good sign,” an admonishment delivered by Assembly Member Tom Ammiano when pointing out that not even California’s other investor-owned utilities are behind the initiative.

Apparently, not even the Republican members of the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee and the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee could stand the smell of the PG&E’s bullshit, as every one of them had walked out of the room by the end. Not a single member of either legislative committee had a positive word for the proposition, but Assembly Member Jared Huffman plainly stated his opinion: “I think this is a terrible initiative.”

Nor was there any evidence of the “coalition” supporting Prop 16 that the PG&E-funded public relations firm that orchestrated this campaign claims exists. Every single member of the public who commented voiced strong opposition, and most had traveled there on their own dime.

Even the conservative-leaning Agricultural Energy Consumers Association, which represents 40,000 growers, is against it. “It would have a chilling effect on the farming community,” Michael Boccadoro of the Agricultural Energy Consumers testified. A representative from the California Chamber of Commerce spoke in favor, but local Chambers of Commerce are not unified in their support.

Paul Hauser, of Redding Electric Utility, testified that if customers in his territory —  which has been slammed with high unemployment — were paying PG&E prices instead of the municipal electricity rates, every single man, woman, and child would have to fork over an extra $440 per year.

The Pacific Gas & Electric Corporation, which is the parent company of the regulated Pacific Gas & Electric Company, has vowed to spend $35 million on Prop 16. Since the corporation derives all of its funding from the company, which is regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission and earns its money through customer billing, this means that every PG&E ratepayer is pitching in. Speaking of bills, PG&E rates will increase 30 percent by 2013 if PG&E is granted its requested hikes, according to The Utility Reform Network.

“Maybe it’s time the Legislature took a very hard look at whether that parent corporation needs to exist,” Boccadoro, of the agricultural group, commented. “Maybe it’s time for a vote on rate increases as well.”

One point that came up over and over again during questioning was the fact that instead of proposing changes to legislation, PG&E sought to use the initiative process to get its way, a move that Leno argues is flouting the democratic process. A second point was that its move is inconsistent with a statute that requires utilities to “cooperate fully” with community-choice aggregation programs. Below are some exchanges between members of the Legislature and Bedwell, the PG&E executive.

…

Leno: Can you describe to us how Prop 16 exemplifies your abiding by the statute of AB 117 in “cooperating fully?”
Bedwell: Can you repeat that?
Leno: (repeats language of statute)
Bedwell: … “I don’t see how that’s necessarily inconsistent. The cooperation aspect is in the implementation…”
(Leno takes issue with this, saying that they could have proposed that such language be included in the bill at the time it was being drafted. He points out that Prop 16 would present a “hurdle” to municipal power programs, and asks Bedwell if he agrees.)
Bedwell: Says he thinks it would create “a high bar.”
Leno: “A high bar. How is a high bar in any way consistent with ‘cooperate fully?’”
Bedwell: … “I don’t see it’s a matter of cooperation or lack of cooperation. …”
…

Bedwell: “We value our customers. I think you know through the last six or seven years in San Francisco, you know that we’re very committed to retaining our customers.”
Leno: (Explains that he is a PG&E customer in San Francisco, and a Sacramento Municipal Utility District [SMUD] customer in Sacramento.) “I pay PG&E 25 percent more, and I get more green power here in Sacramento. [In PG&E’s San Francisco territory] my business suffers regularly from blackouts. I’ve never had a blackout here in Sacramento.”

SF officials tap corporate cash

Sasha Cuttler
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2
SF officials tap corporate cash

San Francisco’s $500 campaign contribution limit makes it tough for rich individuals and corporations to curry favor with local politicians, right? Well, not really. Actually, politicians can still tap wealthy interests for tens of thousands of dollars for their special events and pet projects, as long as they fill out a form called “Payments Made at the Behest of an Elected Officer” within 30 days.

Traditionally, those forms have been buried in the files of the Ethics Commission, but the agency recently put them online, a rare bit of user-friendly sunshine from this often-toothless watchdog body. A Guardian review of the forms shows it is almost exclusively the city’s most fiscally conservative elected officials who use this tactic, tapping a relatively small pool of downtown power brokers.

When Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier wanted to support a Bizworld Foundation event in December, she had Pacific Gas & Electric donate $5,000 on her behalf. Sup. Sean Elsbernd throws a big annual crab-feed fundraiser in February, with proceeds going to the Laguna Honda Foundation. The form for this year’s event isn’t in yet, but last year he got $5,000 each from all the top anti-progressive funders: Don Fisher, Dede Wilsey, Charles Schwab, Warren Hellman, Platinum Advisors, and the San Francisco Association of Realtors.

But far and away the biggest beneficiary of these kinds of corporate donations is Mayor Gavin Newsom, who submitted more than half the forms on file. For last year’s Sunday Streets events, he tapped the Hellman family for $30,000, Blue Shield for $10,000, his favorite developer Lennar for $10,000, and Lennar subcontractor CH2M Hill for $5,000. The year before, the top Sunday Streets donors (at $20,000 each) were California Pacific Medical Center (which is seeking city approval to build two new hospitals) and Catholic Healthcare West.

For his swearing-in events in 2008, Newsom tapped old family friends Gordon and Ann Getty for $30,000, the Fisher family for $20,000, and Charles Schwab, Dede Wilsey, and Marc Benioff for $15,000 each. And, of course, PG&E gave him $10,000.

When Treasurer Jose Cisneros was starting his Bank on San Francisco program in 2008, he had Wells Fargo donate $20,000. When Sup. Bevan Dufty wanted to create Mission High School scholarships in his name, he called his friends Denise and John York, owners of the 49ers, to cut a check for $19,000.

Only one official from the progressive side of the local political spectrum turned to these big donations for help, and that was then-Sup. Aaron Peskin in 2007, when he wanted to raise $84,000 to buy a Telegraph Hill property to turn into open space. His top donors were the Gerson Bakar Foundation for $34,000 and 1301 Sansome LLC for $15,000.

So if you want to find out how downtown corporations are supporting the politicians they favor, keep your eye on this valuable new online resource.

The battle for the forgotten district

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The battle for the forgotten district

sarah@sfbg.com

This November, when voters in District 10 — the largest, sunniest, and most diverse of the city’s 11 supervisorial districts — replace termed out Sup. Sophie Maxwell, they’ll be making a selection that could have pivotal implications for the entire city.

That’s because the next supervisor from southeast San Francisco inherits a district that is home to some of the city’s biggest environmental and public health challenges, as well as the most potential for development that will determine what kind of city San Francisco becomes.

District 10 is where you’ll find the most polluted and most underdeveloped lands in San Francisco, areas that could either be transformed into models of a sustainability or, in the words of Tony Kelly, the president of Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association, “be turned into a toxic Foster City.”

District 10 is where the slaughterhouses, tanneries, and glue factories set up shop and used the bay as a dumping ground. It’s where the smokestacks of coal and oil fired power plants polluted the air. It’s where the Navy filled the Bay, built a shipyard at Hunters Point and loaded parts of the first atomic bomb onto the USS Indianapolis in 1945.

District 10 is where the bottom fell out of this industrial economy in 1974, when the Navy left, taking with it people’s jobs, pay, and hopes for a home of their own and a better future, particularly for what was then a predominantly African American population.

And District 10 is ground zero for plans that will triple the population and double the number of homes — homes that likely will only be “affordable” to Google executives and retirees from Marin, forever changing the face of San Francisco’s southeast sector. Critics fear that will accelerate what has been a steady exodus of black residents, replaced by megadeveloper Lennar’s vision for a new D10.

It’s against this dark history and difficult present that a wide open field of more than a dozen candidates are vying to replace Maxwell, who came to power in 2000 and has had a mixed voting record in her decade on the board. Sometimes, Maxwell was the eighth vote that let the progressive majority on the Board override Mayor Gavin Newsom’s veto and pass trailblazing legislation. Other times, she was the swing vote that allowed the moderate minority to carry Newsom’s water.

So, in addition to D10’s many internal challenges, this seat could determine the political balance of power on the Board of Supervisors, placing all the more importance on voters in this long-marginalized part of town.

 

DISTRICT OF DISCONTENT

Eric Smith, a biodiesel activist who has thrown his hat in the D10 ring, says that there is a lot of frustration in the air, and looking at the problems the district is facing, it’s hardly surprising that it has what nearly every candidate agrees is a fractured political culture.

“The Bayview, the Hunters Point Shipyard’s toxic Superfund site, the homicide rate, unemployment, poor public transportation, dwindling services and community resources have made D10 one of the city’s largest melting pots of discontent,” Smith said.

Smith’s words were spoken while the Elections Department was verifying signatures earlier this month on a second failed effort to qualify a petition to recall Maxwell.

Bayview resident and D10 candidate Marie Franklin didn’t support the attempt to recall Maxwell, but she understood it as “a frustration movement.”

“People are sinking in the sand, we’ve already lost so many of them, and they felt Sophie wasn’t doing anything for them,” said Franklin, who praised Maxwell for helping get Franklin’s apartment building complex renovated — a job that was completed 18 months ago, at a cost of $65 million, creating 500 local jobs.

“There are 654 units here, and they were uninhabitable,” Franklin said. “There was black mold, rain falling inside. We had people living worse than Haiti.”

Franklin, who said she is running because she “knows the history,” came here in 1978, when she and her son were living in a car after a fire left them homeless. She said the Bayview was a totally isolated area, barely part of mainstream San Francisco.

“There were no taxis, no services,” she recalled. “Nobody would come here, it was the stigmatized area where no one was accountable to provide services.”

The Bayview — which in some ways is the heart of D-!0 — wasn’t always a black community. But African Americans have been living here for 70 years, dealing with all the racism, denial of services, poverty, and pollution. And it bothers Franklin that 85 percent of the 10,500 homes that Lennar plans to develop won’t be affordable to the elderly, disabled, unemployed and low-income people who currently live in the Bayview.

“We need to preserve the diversity of the community and make sure their issues and information will flow to City Hall,” she said. “You must give the people a handle. If you don’t reach out, they’ll slip. That’s why folks out migrated.

Whoever succeeds Maxwell will be a central player in addressing some very big and dirty issues: the future of the Navy’s radiologically impacted shipyard at Hunters Point, Lennar’s massive redevelopment plan for the Shipyard and Candlestick Point, the polluting power plants, replacement of stinky digesters at the sewage plant, and the SF Hope public lousing rebuild.

There’s also the chance to address violence and crime. James Calloway, a candidate who has long worked in Bay Area schools, told us he believes that education and jobs are part of the keys to rejuvenating the district.

“Job opportunities are not as plentiful in the district,” Calloway said. “When I was a kid, you could walk down Third Street at 2 a.m. Now I wouldn’t walk down it at 9 p.m., and I know the area.”

Calloway is hopeful that the massive redevelopment plan, if done correctly, could start the district’s comeback. “Not a lot of black folks stay here when they have extensive education,” he said. “But it’s not only them. Many were displaced by redevelopment and had no way to go back.”

 

ELECTION UP FOR GRABS

The largest of the city’s 11 electoral districts, D10 is a huge triangular piece of land in the city’s southeast sector that was used as an industrial dumping zone for decades. Today, the district runs from the Giants stadium at AT&T Park to the 49ers stadium at Candlestick Point and encompasses Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, India Basin, Portola, Little Hollywood, and Visitacion Valley. It’s also crossed by two freeways that isolate it from the rest of the city, and is home to a large number of crumbling housing projects that are in the process of being rebuilt.

Candidate Ed Donaldson grew up in the projects until he was 10 years old, when the Redevelopment Agency kicked his family out in the 1970s. “We landed on our feet, but others weren’t so lucky,” said Donaldson, who works as a housing counseling director at the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation.

“There is a sense that the Bayview and Visitacion Valley have not been included within the San Francisco family,” Donaldson said. “There is a sense of being forgotten.”

In 2007, Donaldson co-founded the Osiris Coalition to tackle the city’s dormant Certificate of Preference program, in which the Redevelopment Agency issued a document to displaced residents and businesses in the 1960s promising that they could return.

He also tried to rescue some 700 foreclosed properties and recycle them as affordable housing stock. And now he is trying to prevent the city from bulldozing seven SF Hope projects without guaranteeing residents that they have right to remain.

In 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom and Maxwell convened an African American Outmigration Task Force that didn’t get a public hearing about its findings until August 2008. The timing angered some, who questioned why the report’s findings and implications for urban planning weren’t released before June 2008, when the residents of San Francisco voted for the Lennar-led Proposition G, a proposal to build 10,000 market rate homes at one of San Francisco’s last remaining black communities, which Newsom and Maxwell endorsed.

The taskforce didn’t publish its recommendations until the end of 2009, allegedly because of insider squabbling. Meanwhile, gentrification was going on actively, and many blamed Newsom, and by extension Maxwell, for failing to do anything with the group’s findings as D10 residents continued to suffer from high rates of asthma, cancer, unemployment and an ongoing black exodus.

It wasn’t always this way. In the 1940s, the district’s black population exploded when migrants from the south and World War II veterans came to work at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Some moved to Alice Griffith Public Housing complex, or Double Rock, which was built as military housing in 1962. Others relocated to the Bayview when the Redevelopment Agency took over the Fillmore/Western Addition in the ’60s and ’70s as part of a controversial urban renewal effort.

But when the Navy abandoned the shipyard in 1974, unemployment hit the black community hard. Today, hundreds of the city’s lowest income residents live in Alice Griffith’s crumbling units and endure sewage backups, no heat, cloudy drinking water and leaking ceilings, as they wait for the projects to be rebuilt.

“Generations have been trapped in the silo of public housing and cannot get out, because of lack of opportunity and education, so when we legislate, we need to take that into consideration,” said candidate Malia Cohen, whose grandfather came from Texas to work at the shipyard where he met her grandmother, whose family came from New Orleans.

“My grandfather’s father was a longshoreman. He worked with the infamous Leroy King [a commissioner at the city’s Redevelopment Agency] and he has fantastically vivid stories of racism,” said Cohen, who works for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, previously served on the executive staff of Mayor Gavin Newsom, and has already raised over $18,000 in the D10 race and qualified for public matching funds.

“My family came here to work hard, they lived on Navy road in the projects, and then they bought a house here. My parents were born here, and we were all public schooled,” Cohen recalled as she took me on a tour of D10 that ended up in Visitacion Valley, an increasingly Chinese-American neighborhood that reflects a district-wide trend.

Census data show that by 2000, Asians were the largest racial group in the district (30 percent), followed by blacks (29 percent), whites (26 percent), and Latinos (19 percent). By 2003, according to the California Urban Issues project, the trend continued. Asians were the largest racial group (32 percent), followed by blacks (27 percent), whites (21 percent) and Latinos (17 percent) of the population.

This means that D10 candidates will have to garner support from more than one ethnic group to win. Over a dozen candidates have already filed papers in the race, but so far there is no clear front-runner.

Also frustrating the prognosticators is that fact that D10 has had the lowest voter turnout in the city, so the winner will also depend on who goes to the polls.

D10 candidate Geoffrea Morris, who is the grand daughter of longtime Bayview activist Charlie Walker, has been knocking on doors and participating in voter registration drives.

“We need new blood,” Morris said

Getting elected will be a complicated equation. Although Bayview’s population was 50 percent African American at the time of the 2000 census, it didn’t turn out the vote. In the 2006 election, only 14,000 of the district’s 37,000 registered voters went to the ballot, and 50 percent were from whiter, richer, and more Asian neighborhoods.

“It’s very important to the future of the city that the ethnicity diversity of the board be maintained and that the African American community have representation,” former Board President and current Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin told the Guardian.

Maxwell recently told the Guardian that she’s not ready to endorse any D10 candidates yet. “I’m waiting for people to have a better understanding of what this community is, what the common thread running through it is, and how to use rank choice voting,” she told us.

The only candidate who currently holds elected office is BART director Lynette Sweet, who had her answers down pat when we reached her by phone, and even used wording that was eerily similar to Maxwell’s words.

“D10 is a pretty diverse district, but there is only one common thread: the need for economic development,” Sweet told me. “That’s true in Potrero Hill, Portola, Dog Patch and the Bayview. It’s the same mantra: a lot of small businesses need help, and the only way to help them is through economic development. In Potrero Hill it’s about land use. In the Bayview, it’s about the shipyard and better transportation and truancies.”

 

THE COMMON THREAD

District 10 is ground zero for the Lennar’s $2.2 billion plan to develop 10,500 market rate condos at the Shipyard and Candlestick Point. The plan will allegedly create thousands of jobs and new parks, deliver on an historic community benefits agreement that labor groups claim is so “lawyered up” that the developer can’t renege on its promises.

The package is framed as the one and only way to revitalize the southeast’s formerly vibrant economic engine. Indeed, any time anyone tries to slow down the process—to take time to thoroughly read the draft EIR and see if it adequately addresses the impacts of this massive urban reengineering project — a chorus of “no delays” starts up, either from residents of the housing projects desperate to see their homes rebuilt, or the labor contractors who hope to get jobs.

“It’s as if the city is playing checkers, while Lennar is playing three-dimensional chess,” Eric Smith observed.

Lennar has stated that it will contribute $711 million to finance this massive project. The remainder will be leveraged by Mello-Roos bonds, state taxes based on the use and size of a property and intended to raise money for needed services, and tax increment financing, which creates funding for projects by borrowing against future property tax revenues.

The conceptual plan won Maxwell’s backing but environmental groups are critical of the draft EIR.

During DEIR hearing, environmentalists questioned the wisdom and the cost of filling the Bay to build a bridge over Yosemite Slough, and building condos on Candlestick Point state recreation area, the only open major open space in the district.

But the city’s Planning Department also has 20,000-30,000 units of housing in its pipeline. This means that if all these plans get approved in the next decade, they’d account for 80 percent of residential development citywide. And D10’s population could triple, further skewing the district’s already shifting demographics.

In other words, D10 as we know it could become nothing more than a historic relic in a few years, and the next supervisor will play a key role in deciding whether that happens. SFHDC’s Ed Donaldson warns that any supervisor who does not understand the complexity of the city’s largest district can expect a similar recall backlash in future.

“There is no one homogenous voice in the community,” Donaldson said. “The grass-roots organizing that brought about the recall effort was a result of a changing political structure in the area, but is not yet on par with other districts in town. We still allow our politics to be controlled from downtown.”

Fellow candidate Eric Smith warns that the issues—and politics—are complex.

“People were emotional, angry, and desperate because they feel no one listens to them,” Smith said. “That’s part of the problem here; they would rather have a supervisor go down swinging for them, rather than watch one seemingly side with Lennar, PG&E and the mayor on issues contrary to their interests. That’s the terrible irony and one of the biggest problems in District 10. Folks are so mad, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make them feel they have a voice in the outcome, even if it’s potentially worse.”

Smith cited the sequence of events that culminated last year in the Navy dissolving the community-based shipyard Restoration Advisory Board (RAB), which for years has reviewed technical documents and commented on the Navy’s clean-up proposals. But in December, the Navy made its official decision to disband the RAB, citing dysfunctional behavior and off-topic discussions that got in the way.

“Some of the same folks who were frustrated by the process, tried to send a signal to the Navy that they weren’t being heard and for all their well-intentioned efforts got the RAB dissolved,” Smith said. “I truly feel for them, it’s absolutely heartbreaking, but at times, they can be their own worst enemy.”

One of the looming issues about the shipyard is that the land has been polluted and needs to be cleaned. The shipyard contains radioactive debris from ships towed to the shipyard, after a 90-foot wave washed over them during an atomic test gone awry. The Navy burned 610,000 gallons of radioactively contaminated ship fuel at the shipyard, and workers showered on the shipyard, raising concerns that radioactive materials got into the drains and sewers. And questions have been raised about radiological tests on animals at the yard.

 

LEAKS AND FLOODS

It’s not just the shipyard that’s toxic. Even the buildings that were constructed to house workers 50 years ago are a serious mess.

Realtor Diane Wesley Smith, who grew up in public housing projects, took me on a walking tour of Alice Griffith last week to see conditions that tenants will likely have to endure until at least 2014, if the city sticks to its plan to relocate people into a new replacement unit in the same geographical area, if not the exact same site.

What we found was pretty messed up.

“The water sometimes comes out brown and feels like sand. It’s been like that for a year,” one resident said.

“The water is cloudy, the bath tub isn’t working and the sink keeps stopping up,” said another.

A woman named Silvia showed us how the water from the tap in her elderly mother’s kitchen flows out cloudy and then doesn’t settle properly, like foamy beer.

“The roof’s been leaking for years, the sewage backs up, but they just fixed the lights,” Silvia said. A neighbor named Linda was using her oven as a heater.

“The toilet backs up a lot, and my grandson’s been coughing a lot from asthma,” Linda said.

“Roaches is always a problem,” said a woman named Stormi, dressed in black sweats and a black T-shirt that read, “Can’t knock the hustle.”

“They’re trying,” said Stormi, a member of the Alice Griffith Residents Association, as a couple of Housing Authority trucks pulled up to do repairs.

“They promise that you will not have to leave your unit, but if they try to move us down to the waterfront, well, there’s a reason there’s no housing there, and it’s because the land will flood,” Stormi said.

“If we don’t end up at the table, we’ll end up on the menu,” Wesley Smith warned, as she stopped to chat with a group of young men, who were worried they would pushed out of the Alice Griffith rebuild through the criteria being established.

“Fred Blackwell, the executive director of the Redevelopment Agency, assures me that’s not the case, but Alice Griffith is a Housing Authority property, and empty promises have the potential to be great promises provided they are made in writing,” Wesley Smith said as we walked out of the projects and onto the road where a yellow and black sign announced “flooded” next to Candlestick Point park, where Lennar wants to build.

Malia Cohen expressed concern about Hope SF residents, as we drove through the Sunnydale housing project.

“We have to be diligent and mindful that people are not pushed out,” Cohen said, noting the sweeping views at Gleneagles golf course above Sunnydale, and the value of housing for a golf course community. “When public housing gets taken offline, we must work with Redevelopment and the Housing Authority to make sure no one is changing the rules halfway. We have to make sure the talks and walks line up. We need to be equal partners. We cannot be bulldozed by City Hall.”

Geoffrea Morris is a Calworks employee, at the Southeast Community College facility on Oakdale, which was built to mitigate the city’s expansion of the sewage plant in 1987. She cited concerns about the literacy levels of people who live in the 2200 public housing units that cluster D10. “A lot of people in Alice Griffith don’t even know the dates or when it’s going to be reconstructed,” Morris said. “Folks like to be told stuff like that, but the city gives you a stack of papers. Some will read them, but others rely on folks they think are trustworthy. They need stuff in layman’s terms written on one sheet of paper.”

Morris is a fan of the Internet who posted a community survey online, and made sure every housing project got some literature telling people to get informed. She worries about the digital divide in D10:

“A lot of folks don’t have computers and access to important information,” Morris said. “And let’s talk about the way ‘affordable’ is used to trick people.”

Michael Cohen, Newsom’s top economic adviser, recently stated in a memo that over the expected 15-20 year phased build out, Lennar’s Candlestick-Shipyard development would include, “up to 10,500 residential units, about 32 percent of which (3,345) will be offered at below market rates.”

“But 892 units of this ‘affordable category’ will be sold to folks earning $100,000,” Morris said. “So if you subtract 892 units from affordable unit category, you’re back to 25 percent affordable.”

Candidate Kristine Enea, an attorney and a former RAB member, chairs the India Basin Neighborhood Association, which administers a US EPA grant to hire experts to translate the Navy’s cleanup documents into plain English and comment on them She was frustrated by the Navy’s decision to dissolve the RAB.

“The lack of a forum does nothing to bolster the community’s trust in the cleanup or the redevelopment process,” Enea said.

Enea generally supports the Lennar project, but has concerns about whether it will adequately mitigate increased car traffic, or result in commercial development that benefits her neighborhood.

“India basin is a pocket of Hunters Point right along the shoreline,” Enea said. “Right now, we have no shops or restaurants, no ATM, no groceries, nothing beyond one liquor store and a few industrial businesses.

Potrero Boosters president Tony Kelly told us that District 10 residents can think for themselves. “D10 residents don’t need to rely on corporations to solve their problems,” he said.

“Folks in the eastern neighborhoods came up with a better revitalization plan than what the city proposed and community activists managed to close the power plant, after the city said it was impossible,” Kelly recalled.

And there’s no shortage of good ideas.

Kelly suggested that an urban agriculture center could immediately put low-skilled folks to work by erecting greenhouses on unused land. Smith said the industrial zone could be “incredible eco-park made from sustainable sources.

‘D 10 is the dumping ground for everything, including all the city’s waste,” he said. “We could be a shining example, not just for D 10, but the rest of the state.”

The D 10 candidate line up includes Calloway, Cohen, Donaldson, Smith, Enea: civil rights attorney Dewitt Lacy, Morris, Potrero View publisher Steve Moss; District 7 BART director Lynette Sweet, Wesley-Smith. Bill Barnes, who works for Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, and Linda Richardson, who was appointed to the Human Rights Commission in 2007 by Mayor Newsom, have also expressed interest in the race.

In such a huge field, name identification will play a major role. Sweet is in office, but BART Board is not a high-profile job and won’t give her a huge advantage.

Cohen has a slight edge right now in that she’s raised $18,505, including $500 from former Newsom flak Peter Ragone, making her the first D. 10 candidate to qualify for campaign financing. The oldest of five girls, Cohen recalls how her mother got laid off from her city job as a school-based mental health worker and then rehired, as part of the city’s budget cuts.

“We felt that pinch and the frustrating games that are played out between the leadership and the rank and file,” she said.

Cohen who worked for Newsom in his first term as mayor, but has since left his administration , said she is uncomfortable at being framed as Newsom’s candidate.

“Because I’m not, but I am one of the few candidates who has seen how the mayor and the Board work—and don’t work—together,” she said.

Moss sees the city’s southeast as a “district in transition.” Over coffee at Farley’s in Potrero Hill, he told me that the southeastern neighborhoods could be “launching pads for environmentally sustainable growth.”

“The district’s been in a frozen period for 30 years, But despite the problems, people are deeply committed to and in love with their community.

“This district is the future of San Francisco and its social fabric—the diversity, income –and its problems are leftovers from the city’s industrial age.”

 

 

 

DISTRICT 10, BY THE NUMBERS

Total Acres: 5,650

Average household income: $85,000

Population: 73,000

Registered voters: 37,700

Average housing price: $335,000

Ethnicity (2003 figures): Asian 32%, African American, 27%, white 21%, Hispanic 17%

Development status of land: 18% residential, 38% is commercial, 38% undevelopable

All figures the latest available. Sources: SFGIS, Association of Bay Area Governments, U.S. Census, California Urban Issues Project. Ethnicity and income data is from 2003 and almost certainly has changed.

Economy vs. environment

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Economy vs. environment

 

By Adam Lesser

news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY The Port of Oakland has long been a battleground that pits economic development against environmental justice, a dichotomy that has become all the more fraught with emotional baggage during the current recession.

For years, West Oakland residents, environmentalists, and public health officials have demanded that government officials do something about the long lines of old, idling diesel trucks that spew toxic emissions that have sickened the surrounding community (see “The polluting Port,” 3/24/09).

When the state finally mandated expensive retrofits of the oldest trucks at the start of this year, truckers and their allies reacted angrily to what they called a job-killing regulation. But rather than viewing such fights in isolation, a new Bay Area movement is seeking to broaden the debates within what it labels the “toxic triangle” extending from the Port of Oakland to San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point to the city of Richmond.

Citing concern for how to effectively address the cumulative impact of pollution, community groups including the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project and Asian Pacific Environmental Network are sponsoring the Toxic Triangle Hearings. The first hearing was held Feb. 13 in Oakland; the next two hearings will take place later this year in the other two triangle points.

At the first hearing, supporters introduced their cumulative impact pledge, a request that agencies ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the California Air Resources Board work together to define emission limits for an entire area and to collectively adopt reduction strategies. The ultimate goal is an environmental justice ordinance that would require any new project to receive an “EJ permit” before a proposed project was allowed to move forward.

The city of Cincinnati approved a similar system last June, but it was put on hold this month due to concerns about the cost of implementing it during these hard economic times. The delay in Cincinnati points to an emerging theme in the narrative from lawmakers and corporations. With high unemployment and huge government budget deficits, can we afford to further regulate pollution?

California Assembly Member Nancy Skinner, who represents Richmond, was on hand at the Toxic Triangle Hearings. Questions arose about the ongoing legal battle between community groups and Chevron, which wants to expand its Richmond refinery. The refinery is the largest in Northern California, with a capacity of 240,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

The retrofit is on hold after a court rejected the project’s EIR, asking Chevron to clarify whether the expanded refinery would process heavy crude oil, which generates more pollution. A Jan. 19 editorial in the Contra Costa Times made the pro-business argument, claiming that Chevron “is poised to shut down its Richmond refinery operations” and laying blame on environmentalists.

“All we know is that the Chevron people have talked of change — there’s been a shift,” Skinner said. “They’re looking at all their North American operations. That doesn’t mean we just roll over. But it means that we have to be aware of that when we sit at the table.”

But environmentalists question whether closing the Richmond refinery is a realistic threat from Chevron, or merely a negotiating tactic. “There is no credible scenario in which this refinery will close anytime soon for business reasons,” said Greg Karras, a senior scientist for Communities for a Better Environment. “The issue is whether Chevron can move to heavier oil and whether they have to disclose that. It has nothing to do with jobs.”

The Toxic Triangle Hearings highlight this perceived conflict between the economy and the environment. But Karras called the dichotomy a “false choice,” arguing that the greatest potential for job growth lies in innovation and green jobs, not a refinery expansion.

APEN’s State Organizing Director Mari Rose Taruc agreed: “We want people to have jobs and make it out of the recession. But we’re not going to trade our health and the ailing conditions of our community for something worse.”

Taruc sounded frustrated, similar to the tone Karras expressed when faced with the question of the economic impact of environmental regulation. For now, she said the rationale for delay is the recession, but “when the economy is good, there would be another excuse.”

Fixing the Foundation

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Fixing the Foundation

 

By Anna Widdowson

news@sfbg.com

The Foundation of City College of San Francisco is seeking to shield its financial dealings from public scrutiny under a new agreement that could limit the college district’s oversight of fundraising done in its name.

The agreement establishes the formal relationship between the foundation and the district, renewing a document that expired last June. But it became controversial when the district sought to make the foundation into an auxiliary organization, which would allow greater oversight by the district and the public, while the foundation sought greater autonomy and secrecy surrounding its fundraising operations.

The two sides have been in strained negotiations for months, but the freshly inked compromise agreement will likely be on the Feb. 25 Board of Trustees’ agenda as a discussion item so that public testimony can be taken and changes can be made before it’s formally considered for approval.

The backdrop of the dispute — and the reason it’s so contentious — is last year’s criminal indictment of former City College Chancellor Philip Day for a money-laundering scheme using foundation accounts. Last July, Day was charged with eight felonies for misappropriating more than $150,000 in college funds, including using the foundation to funnel public money into a political campaign and maintaining an unregulated slush fund. The trial is set to begin later this year.

But the foundation, which controls more than $19 million in scholarships and other assets for the district, says that corruption is precisely why it wants to back away from the college, which managed the foundation’s finances under the previous agreement that expired last June.

Peter Bagatelos, the foundation’s lawyer, said Day’s missteps have cast a shadow on the foundation that has impeded its ability to fundraise. He explained that many donors mistook the district’s actions for those of the foundation and were scared away from donating, which is why the foundation is seeking to be an independent body.

Yet a Guardian investigation (“On shaky ground,” 3/5/08) unearthed documents showing that the foundation helped Day launder $35,000 in public funds into a 2006 political campaign, although an internal audit couldn’t find evidence that foundation directors approved the transfer and, as Bagetelos told us at the time, “It was never done with their consent or knowledge or participation.”

Now the foundation is asserting that it cannot fundraise successfully if it is turned into an auxiliary organization, as some trustees are seeking, which would subject the foundation to public records, open meetings, and other sunshine laws that Bagatelos derided as “a lot of bureaucracy and entanglements.”

“They just want to go out and raise money to help the students,” Bagatelos said. As for why transparency hinders that cause, he said: “There are many donors who don’t want to be made public.”

“The foundation is not a public agency, it’s a private corporation,” he noted.

A rough draft of the agreement, which is still under review, lays out the steps the foundation will take to gain greater autonomy, including hiring and paying its own employees, and adopting a structure comparable to other nonprofit entities to make it more attractive to prospective donors.

But some college trustees, including President Milton Marks and Vice President John Rizzo, believe they should be given greater oversight over the foundation’s finances. “The district [and the foundation are] equally tarnished by the activity because they enabled [Day],” Rizzo said. “I just want to get enough sunshine in there that goes beyond what they have to report by law, so if a future chancellor does something like that, we’ll know about it.”

Bagatelos said the foundation will still be subject to monthly reviews and regular audits as outlined by the laws governing all nonprofit organizations, but the district may not have access to donor and fundraising information.

Hao Huntsman, president of the Academic Senate, which represents the college faculty, said this lack of transparency would hurt the ability of both entities to rebuild their reputations.

“The foundation raises money using the City College name. We have a lot of investment in that name and are very sensitive to how that name is being used and the kinds of places we are soliciting money from,” he said. “We don’t want to be taking money from firearm manufacturers and tobacco companies, for example.”

But Rizzo explained that the college has no control over where the foundation gets its donations. “They could collect money from PG&E or Chevron and give scholarships and the district would have no say,” he said.

This leaves the college wide open to efforts by corporations to make donations that direct the course of research at the college, a phenomenon that has blighted many a public school over the years. “We are concerned that there won’t be the same degree of knowing,” Huntsman said. “If the college doesn’t have a say in the control of that money, it could be used for something other than what it was intended for.”

As it stands, the foundation primarily raises money for scholarships. Rizzo would also like to see the foundation give the college from $3 million to $5 million annually to help cover operational costs and close the budget deficit. “It’s great to have scholarships, but if we don’t have classes the scholarship can’t mean much,” he said.

Rizzo and Huntsman also want the new agreement to require the foundation to turn over upwards of $3 million raised by faculty members independently of the foundation.

Rick Knee, a member of the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance Task Force who has tried for years to bring City College under its oversight, said the potential agreement raises concerns about the foundation’s ability to wield unprecedented political clout.

“It might enable them to do some arm twisting,” Knee said. “If the foundation wants to make a clean break from the Day era, they should give the current Board of Trustees a chance to make their case and demonstrate that they’re not Phil Day.”

Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said that an agreement in which there was both independence and transparency for the two parties would strike an appropriate balance.

“The irony here is that you have the college and the foundation saying the exact same thing,” he said. “The college is worried that unless they have control the foundation will threaten its integrity, and the foundation is saying that without autonomy the school will tarnish its name and make it harder for them to get donors. They are both right in light of what happened with Day.”

Lawyers on both sides agree that, as a nonprofit, the foundation has the right to control its own assets. But that doesn’t mean they should keep the district in the dark, say the trustees, who want the foundation to open its books to the district, if only to ensure a modicum of public accountability.

Rizzo, who was on the negotiating team, told us that the agreement currently maintains donor secrecy but allows for some financial oversight by the district, including monthly audit reports and notification of instances when district funds enter foundation accounts. “They’ll have to report some things to the Board of Trustees, then the district will make them public,” Rizzo said. “But they do not want to report donor names and that will be an item of discussion.” *

Steven T. Jones contributed to this report.

An open letter to the Transit Workers Union

David Talbot
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An open letter to the Transit Workers Union

 

By Gabriel Metcalf

OPINION Last week, the Transit Workers Union refused to accept a deal with San Francisco that would have modestly reduced major service cuts and eliminated another increase in discount fares at least for this year. The proposal would have involved two things: first, a one-time contribution by drivers to their own pension plans (worth $8.9 million for next year, almost precisely cancelled by the automatic raise of $8 million the drivers will receive next year); and second, a change in work rules that would have required drivers to actually work 40 hours in a week before earning overtime, which would have saved $3.8 million over the next 14 months.

Muni is facing a deficit of at least $17 million in the current fiscal year and around $55 million next year. Future years will be worse. Given these pressures, the TWU is getting ready to re-vote. I presume that, eventually, union members will accept the deal. But either way, given how utterly marginal this deal is for the riders, progressives need to begin a public conversation about what responsibility the union has for making Muni work better.

The problem is not that TWU salaries are too high. The problem is the work rules. These include: drivers not having to let their managers know how long they will be absent from work, making it impossible to set schedules; drivers earning overtime pay before actually working 40 hours a week; and perhaps most significantly, a set of rules that makes it virtually impossible to hire part time drivers. Currently, Muni is forced by the work rules to pay drivers at full hourly rates to sit around between the morning and afternoon peaks. That rule costs MTA about $11 million each year.

If the TWU is willing to give on just the overtime and part-time driver rules, MTA would save $12.4 million in next year’s budget — and this savings would grow in the future. Other work rule changes could save much, much more, while dramatically increasing service to riders.

Probably the underlying cause of Muni’s work rules is the fact that the TWU, unlike other bargaining units in the city, has its salary and benefits set by formula in the City Charter — which means that management has nothing to offer during labor negotiations. Friends of mine in the labor movement argue that TWU is just doing its job in trying to get a good deal for members. I would argue that TWU needs to do more than that, and needs to begin taking responsibility for building a transit system that works well and can grow over time.

Maybe this public sector union needs to take a page from the Swedish labor movement.

Early into the post World War II economic boom, the Swedish unions learned that, since they controlled the government and increasingly controlled the boards of directors of the corporations they had organized, they were essentially always going to get their major demands met. This forced a big shift in their culture, causing them to have to take responsibility not just for cutting a good deal for their members, but for ensuring the profitability of the companies. Labor could easily “win too much” and drive the companies out of business, thereby returning its members to unemployment. Once labor controlled the businesses, it had to come up with a proactive agenda for how to run them successfully.

Closer to home, we’ve seen the teachers union accept cuts and changes to their equivalent of work rules in order to prevent teacher layoffs. And we’ve seen the Service Employees International Union at the national level put immense resources into passing health care reform — something that will benefit all Americans, not just SEIU members.

Something similar needs to happen now at Muni.

Muni workers deserve a good wage. It’s a hard job under the best of circumstances. And as Muni tries to keep service on the streets without enough money for equipment and maintenance, workers on the front lines will bear the brunt of the bigger problems. But a lot of people resent the things the union has chosen to ask for in addition to a good wage.

Muni’s troubles are multifaceted. They involve bad management, bad street design, bad land use planning, and certainly insufficient funding. But work rules are undeniably part of the issue as well. It cannot be progressive for the TWU, in the middle of the worst financial crisis to hit our country since the Great Depression, to cling to the same work rules it has had in the past. Muni needs TWU to help it be successful.

Gabriel Metcalf is executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

SF Weekly mangles Mexican politics

Zelda Bronstein
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SF Weekly mangles Mexican politics

The SF Weekly, in its continuing effort to make everything the progressives in San Francisco do look stupid, just stepped in a major turd. A piece by Matt Smith seeks to trash the supes for passing a resolution supporting Mexican electricity workers against an effort by the Mexican government to privatize the nation’s electricity system.

He notes:

However, the government of Mexico felt this one to be so egregious as to warrant fact-checking. As it happens there was no privatization. The government transferred Luz y Fuerza del Centro to a much larger power utility called the Comision Federal de Electricidad — which is, you guessed it, also government-run.

 His single source for that information? The (utterly unbiased, of course) Mexican consulate.

Well, John Ross, our Mexico City correspondent, who has lived there more more than 25 years, has written several books on Mexican politics and is nationally known an expert in the area, has written about this issue extensively. I just sent him Smith’s blog post, and here’s how he responded:

Consul general Carlos Felix Corona’s response to the Board of Supervisors resolution re Felipe Calderon’s efforts to break the mexican electricity workers union (SME) is disingenuous. The Luz y Fuerza Company was forced to buy electricity from the federal electicity commission (CFE) at an exorbitant price, with the costs then passed along to the consumer by presidential fiat. The CFE itself now buys a third of the electricity it generates from private corporations — in violation of the Mexican Constitutionl, which ascribes electricity generation as a state function, thus privatizing electricity generation in Mexico City and five other states in the center of the country. According to the SME, whose workers were forced out of the generating plants and which the Mexican Labor Commission has now stripped of its authority to represent the workers, Luz y Fuerza lines will now be sold off to W Communications, a Madrid-based transnational represented in Mexico by two ex-energy secretaries (Calderon himself is an ex energy secretary). W Communications is expected to install fiber optic cables on the old Luz y Fuerza lines. The Calderon administration will no doubt wait several months to seal this deal until the clamor about priviatization recedes. But the contracts have been signed, so don’t be fooled by the consul’s disingenuous response that Luz y Fuerza has not yet been privatized. Now that US unions and the SF Board of Supes have expressed their solidarity with the electricity workers, Felix Corona, a shill for calderon, seeks to bamboozle San Franciscans that all is honky dory South of the border and that protest marches that regularly turn out a quarter of a million Mexicans are just the work of a few malcontents  

So there’s another side to this story, Matt, and the consulate is hardly a trustworthy source.

 

The people vs. corporate power

Andrew Lam
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The people vs. corporate power

steve@sfbg.com

The June 8 election is shaping up to be one that pits the people against powerful business interests, a contest that will demonstrate either that money still rules or that growing public opposition to corporate con-jobs has finally taken root.

On the state level, the five ballot measures include two brazen money-making schemes and two experiments in election reform, along with primary races that are still in flux. In San Francisco, where the ballot measures still have a few more weeks to shake out, the election will feature two rarely contested judges races, recession relief for renters, City Hall fiscal reforms, and a fight for control of the local Democratic Party.

So far, only four local measures have qualified for the San Francisco ballot, all placed there by members of the Board of Supervisors. Progressives qualified the Renters Economic Relief package (which limits rent increases during recessions and sets conditions for landlords passing costs to tenants), an initiative establishing community policing standards, and one affirming city support for making Transbay Terminal the northern high-speed rail terminus. Supervisors were unanimous in supporting a charter amendment governing the Film Commission.

But the board is still hashing out changes to the more controversial ballot proposals, a debate that will continue at its Feb. 23 meeting. They include an overhaul of how the city funds its pension program and an effort to remove Muni salary minimums from the city charter, both by Sup. Sean Elsbernd; a $652 million seismic safety bond proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom; and a Sup. John Avalos charter amendment that would prevent the mayor from unilaterally defunding certain budget expenditures. All measures must be approved by March 5.

Also still forming up in the coming weeks are primary races for legislative seats (although no incumbents appear to be facing strong challenges) and all eight state constitutional offices, including governor (where Attorney General Jerry Brown seems poised to easily win the Democratic nomination), lieutenant governor, and attorney general (which District Attorney Kamala Harris is running for).

Candidates have until March 12 to declare themselves for statewide and legislative offices, as well as for the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, which could play a key role in this fall’s Board of Supervisors elections. Two years ago, a slate of progressives led by Aaron Peskin and Chris Daly launched a surprise attack to wrest control of the board away from the moderates who have long controlled it. Newsom, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and their downtown allies are expected to try hard to regain control over their party’s purse-strings and endorsements.

 

JUDGING THE JUDGES

Another struggle from two years ago is also being replayed. In 2008, then-Sup. Gerardo Sandoval successfully challenged Superior Court Judge Thomas Mellon, arguing the Republican-appointed jurist was too conservative (and the entire court is not diverse enough) for San Francisco. This time the target is Judge Richard Ulmer, a conservative appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ulmer is being challenged by two LGBT attorneys, Daniel Dean and Michael Nava, the latter endorsed by Sen. Mark Leno, Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, and Peskin, who chairs the Democratic Party and could be helpful in the race. “He’s a brilliant guy,” Leno said of Nava.

Leno also has endorsed deputy public defender Linda Colfax, a Latina lesbian, in a four-way race to replace retiring Judge Wallace Douglass. The other candidates are Harry Dorfman, Roderick McLeod, and Robert Retana. If no candidate wins a majority of votes, the top two finishers square off in a runoff election in November.

Leno said he’s thrilled to see a diverse crowd of attorneys seeking judgeships: “This governor has failed horribly in his appointments, not only with the LGBT community, but with communities of color as well.”

 

TWO COMPANIES TRY TO BUY CALIF.

The struggle between the broad public interest and the wealthy power brokers that have long-dominated California politics is most apparent in the state propositions, which have been certified and for which ballot arguments are now being collected by the California Secretary of State’s Office.

Two of those ballot measures, Propositions 16 and 17, are blatantly self-serving efforts by a pair of powerful corporations to increase their profitability, however deceptively and with overwhelming amounts of campaign cash they are presented.

Prop. 16, sponsored by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., would require local governments to get two-thirds of voters to approve creation of energy programs like Clean Power SF, San Francisco’s plan for developing renewable energy projects and selling that power directly to citizens.

As we’ve reported (“Battle royale,” Jan. 13, and “PG&E attack mailer puts City Hall on defensive,” Dec. 22, 2009), PG&E placed the measure on the ballot to avoid having to repeatedly crush public power initiatives around the state with multimillion dollar campaigns, even though political leaders like Leno and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi say the measure violates the state’s community choice aggregation law. That law allows local governments to create energy programs and prohibits PG&E from interfering with those efforts.

“The unregulated behavior of corporate arrogance is killing our democracy. Prop. 17, sponsored by Mercury Insurance, would let companies increase car insurance premiums for a variety of reasons that are now prohibited by the 1988 measure Prop. 103. Mercury has continuously attacked that landmark law, using lawsuits, huge political contributions, sponsored legislation, and, according to newly released documents from the California Department of Insurance (see “The malevolence of Mercury Insurance,” Feb. 10, Guardian Politics blog), blatantly illegal activity in setting premiums and excluding certain customers, such as artists, bartenders, and members of the military.

“The Mercury initiative is even more pernicious than what it was doing before,” Harvey Rosenfield, who wrote Prop. 103 and works for Consumer Watchdog, told the Guardian. “Under Mercury’s initiative, if you’ve never had prior insurance, you can be surcharged for the first time. Then they’ve thrown in some other tricks and traps.”

Mercury spokesperson Coby King told us the company has been unfairly maligned and denies that the measure is simply about boosting its profits: “Prop. 103 is the law of the land, but to the extent there are improvements that can be made that are pro-business and pro-consumer, Mercury has not been shy about acting in the public interest.”

Yet few public interest groups or public officials believe the claims being made by Mercury or PG&E, and they hope that the public won’t be fooled.

“These are measures designed to give a financial advantage to a specific industry or company,” U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, who battled Mercury as California’s first insurance commissioner, told us. He strongly opposes both measures, but did say, “Money talks. It always has, particularly in propositions.”

Yet Leno said he’s a bit more hopeful: “Californians have been savvy in the past, and I do believe they’ll be able to see through the tens of millions of dollars in misleading ads.”

“To me, it’s a classic case study of what’s going on with the initiative process in California and with politics in general,” said Derek Cressman, western regional director of California Common Cause. “There are two initiatives literally sponsored by corporations to push very narrow interests.”

Yet Cressman said recent events could help. There’s been a big public outcry in recent weeks over the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow unlimited corporate spending to influence elections, the role that insurance companies played in sinking federal health care reform efforts, and the way businesses interests are hindering efforts to deal with global warming.

“It makes people aware of the overwhelming role corporations are playing in dictating government policy,” Cressman said.

 

TAKE OUT THE MONEY

A pair of election reform measures might help lessen the influence of money and political parties. Prop. 14 is an open primaries measure that Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) got placed on the ballot as a condition for breaking last year’s budget stalemate. It would create a single primary ballot and send the top two finishers to the general election, regardless of party.

Prop. 15, the California Fair Elections Act, takes direct aim at the corrupting influence of money in elections, creating a pilot public finance program in the secretary of state races for 2014 and 2018. The measure, which has broad support from politicians and good government groups in the Bay Area, is modeled on successful programs in Maine and Arizona.

“No elected official should be in the fundraising game the way they are now,” campaign chair Trent Lange told us. “This is a way to change how we fund elections.”

The idea is to create a model that will eventually be used for other offices. The campaign fund would be generated by a $350 annual fee on lobbyists, lobbying firms, and lobbyist employers. Currently lobbyists pay just $12.50 per year to register, which Lange said, “just shows the power of lobbyists in Sacramento.” *

 

Newsom’s $72 million corporate giveaway

Sasha Cuttler
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Newsom’s $72 million corporate giveaway

City economist Ted Egan yesterday released his analysis of the payroll tax exemption for new hires that Mayor Gavin Newsom has proposed, one of several business tax cut proposals that we discuss in this week’s Guardian. Egan estimates that the net revenue loss (which takes into account taxes paid by the new hires) to the city would be $72 million over the next two years.

“The proposed policy will have a strong positive effect on local hiring, albeit at a steep costs the City’s General Fund,” Egan wrote, later adding, “The policy would also make the City’s serious current budget deficit worse, and likely lead to significant employment reductions in the City’s workforce.”

While the tax breaks amount to only about 1 percent of businesses’ payroll costs, Egan’s models predict they would spur the creation of 4,330 jobs, or about 5 percent of the jobs lost since 2007. Yet he also notes that the unemployment rate in San Francisco has been dropping in recent months and the economy is predicted to add about 20,000 jobs in the next two years even without this subsidy by taxpayers.

Both Newsom and Egan have tried to cast these tax breaks as similar to the approach being taken by President Obama. Egan writes, “The policy is a targeted tax cut that mirrors the President’s New Jobs Tax Credit, which is supported by a wide range of economists.”

But the big difference is that the federal government can deficit-spend and doesn’t have to reduce its own spending, which would have a negative impact on economy, as Egan’s report acknowledged a few pages later: “Because the City cannot run a fiscal deficit from one year to the next, the lost revenue would necessitate reductions in City staffing and services, like any revenue shortfall.”

The report specifically doesn’t analyze the impact of that reduced government spending on the local economy, with Egan writing that, “is not considered, because the City could adjust to that impact in many ways.” New taxes, for example, which Newsom has avoided proposing as a partial solution to the city’s gargantuan $520 million projected budget deficit.

In an interview with the Guardian this morning, Egan also affirmed what he has told us before, that the consensus among economists is that direct government spending stimulates the economy more than tax cuts, even though these tax cuts tied to new hiring are better than general tax cuts.

For example, Egan said that another current Newsom tax cut proposal – a $2,000 tax break for businesses that provide health care to employees – “would have a negative effect on the economy” because it doesn’t encourage hiring.

While the report is generally favorable to the notion of these targeted tax cuts, it doesn’t make a recommendation. And it does take away a key argument that Newsom and other believers in trickle down economics generally make, that the tax cuts will ultimately be paid for by increased economic activity. Instead, the report shows the cuts will cost $85 million of two years and the new hires will generate $12 million in increased sales, hotel, and other taxes. Even stretching that analysis out over 10 years, assuming the new hires remain employed after the tax exemption ends, the reports says the policy will still cost the city $42 million.

Sup. John Avalos, the chair of the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee who has been skeptical of Newsom’s tax cut proposals, has set a Feb. 24 hearing on the proposal.

Basically, this is a policy decision rooted in ideological beliefs: Should the city subsidize private companies at great cost to the public treasury, payroll, and services? Does the public sector exist solely to serve private corporations? Economic conservatives who are hostile to government generally think so, but progressives think it’s crazy to make deep cuts to government spending and services just to subsidize private sector economic growth, most of which is going to occur naturally anyway.

We go after the Weekly’s ad revenue

Zelda Bronstein
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We go after the Weekly’s ad revenue


The Bay Guardian will be in court Thursday morning, Feb. 11, to ask a San Francisco judge to force SF Weekly to hand over half its advertising revenue as partial payment on a $21 million judgment.


The paper also filed a motion Feb. 9th asking Judge Marla Miller to add two of the corporations that make up SF Weekly’s parent company to the judgment.


The judgment came as the result of a Guardian lawsuit charging SF Weekly and the national chain that owns it with predatory pricing — that is, selling ads below cost in an effort to harm the locally owned, independent competitor. A San Francisco jury awarded the Guardian $6.3 million, which Judge Marla Miller increased to $15.6 million. With attorneys fees and interest, the judgment is now worth more than $21 million.


But Village Voice Media, the SF Weekly’s owner, has refused to pay — hiding in part behind a complex corporate structure (pdf).


The motion that will be heard Feb. 11 before Judge Paul Slavit marks the latest effort by the Guardian to collect some of the money. The paper has already seized two SF Weekly vehicles and the rent the company gets from subtenant.


The other motion, which will be heard March 12 in Judge Miller’s court, seeks to amend the May, 2008 judgment to include Village Voice Media LLC and Village Voice Media Holdings LLC.


VVM is arguing that that the Weekly has no unencumbered assets and that New Times Media LLC, which owned the weekly at the time we filed the suit, is just an empty holding company.


The Guardian’s lawyers argue that VVM and New Times are essentially the same company, with the same directors and same owners, and that VVM is a successor to New Times because of a 2006 merger.


There’s a good report on the issue in the Stranger.


The motion for assignment of ad revenue will be heard at 10:30 a.m. in San Francisco Superior Court, Dept. 610.


 


 

Black History Month in SF kicks off with dancing, future visions

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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By the time I made it to the 2010 Black History Month kickoff ceremony at San Francisco City Hall, on Friday, Feb. 5, California Public Utilities Commissioner Tim Simon was talking about how the African American community can make sure it doesn’t get left on the sidelines in future.

Simon advised folks to know their resources, community and strategy to ensure that people of color are included in the burgeoning Green economy—a topic in keeping with the history-of-black-economic-empowerment theme.

“And I want to encourage all of us to celebrate the month of Black History and teach it to our children, because we could lose this generation,” Smith said, noting that just three blocks away from City Hall in the Western Addition/Filmore, “young men talk about and celebrate it when they reach 25 years old.”

California Public Utilities Commissioner Tim Simon advised folks how not to get left behind in the Green economy.

The community was encouraged to attend the Human Rights Commission’s Feb. 18 meeting in the Bayview and to get involved in the 2010 Census, which will provide temporary, part-time jobs with flexible hours.

Destined to Dance enlivens the corridors of power at San Francisco’s City Hall.

And then dancers with Destined to Dance wowed the audience by infusing the typically staid marble corridors of power with a “Swing low, sweet chariot” inspired blend of energy, grace and light-footed gaiety.

After the main program concluded, a who’s who of San Francisco’s black community lingered for a moment to chat.

Sup. Sophie Maxwell told me that she saw the failed attempt to recall her as “democracy at work.” She also repeated earlier statements that she is not yet ready to endorse any of the candidates vying to replace her when she is termed out in January 2011.

“It’s not just about Bayview Hunters Point,” Maxwell observed. “The common thread is the entire District 10 community.”


D. 10 candidates Eric Smith and Tony Kelly smile for the camera.

Kelly told me that to his mind the common thread is that residents of the district, which is home to the worst toxic hot spots in the city, can’t rely on corporations to solve their problems.

“District 10 can think for itself,” Kelly said. “They don’t have to look outside. But to my mind, up until now, the approach in city hall has been that there is no mess in D. 10 that can’t be fixed by a friendly corporation.”

Kelly observed that folks in the eastern neighborhoods came up with a better revitalization plan than what the city proposed, and that community activists managed to close the power plant, after the city said it was impossible.

“We have the worst schools, transportation and pollution,” Kelly said. “Candidates in the D. 10 race tend to fall into one of two groups: those that are responsive to Lennar and PG&E’s plans, and those who oppose them.”

D. 10 candidate Kristine Enea, who attended the Navy’s Feb. 2 “community involvement plan” meeting at the Bayview YMCA told me that at least the Navy showed some willingness to let the community speak at that meeting,

Chris Jackson San Francisco Community College Board Trustee chats with D. 10 candidates Tony Kelly and Kristine Enea.

“But they need to stop being so defensive,” Enea said, as she questioned why the Navy refuses to speak in public about why it dissolved the Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board.

D 10 candidate Lynette Sweet told me that she thought California PUC commissioner Tim Simon “hit it on the head with his comments,” at the Black History Month kickoff event.

D. 10 candidate Lynette Sweet poses for the camera.

“We’re not the sum of our parts, we’re not murderers and poverty pimps, there is some real leadership and quality people within our community,” Sweet observed.

The malevolence of Mercury Insurance

Sasha Cuttler
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The malevolence of Mercury Insurance

Yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle reports on a long history of illegal practices by Mercury Insurance – including discrimination against soldiers, artists, bartenders, and other professions in auto insurance coverage and rates – and the long-overdue political and regulatory attention being paid to the company.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real story of Mercury’s dealings in California is even more insidious, and it has implications to the health care reform legislation being pushed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, which would require all Americans to buy health insurance, just as all California motorists are required to buy car insurance from Mercury and other companies.  

Documents from the California Department of Insurance (275 pages worth, which we also obtained and which you can download here) detail the Mercury’s deceptive practices, but it was hardly a secret how Mercury operated, brazenly and openly defying standards and regulations that voters created in 1988 by approving Prop. 103.

The author of that measure, respected activist Harvey Rosenfield of Consumer Watchdog, has been sounding the alarm about Prop. 17, a measure that Mercury has placed on the June ballot that would overturn key parts of Prop. 103, allowing insurance companies to jack up premiums for those who haven’t been loyal and continuous insurance customers that paid every bill on time.

Rosenfield recently stopped by the Guardian and offered a fascinating history of insurance regulation in California – and his battles with his number one nemesis, Mercury Insurance.

“Prior to the passage of Prop. 103, which the voters approved in 1988, insurance companies were not regulated in California. They could basically get away with anything and they did. In 1984, the state Legislature mandated that people buy auto insurance and guess what happened? After that, everyone in the marketplace is required to buy insurance and there’s no protection against how much insurance companies could charge you for it or even if they refused to sell it to you because of where you lived or the color of your skin, there were just no protections,” Rosenfield told us.

“One of the most pernicious practices after the Legislature said you have to buy insurance was that when you went to the insurance companies and said, ‘OK, I’m required by law to buy insurance, now sell it to me.’ They’d say, well you didn’t have it before, so we’re not going to sell it to you now. Or, you didn’t have it before so therefore we’re going to surcharge you and double the price of insurance. Talk about a Catch 22.”

So consumer groups sued and Rosenfield started writing Prop. 103. In 1987, the courts said this was a legislative issue, not a judicial one, so the groups turned to the California Legislature.

“Of course, the Legislature was too beholden to the insurance lobbyists to do any of the proposals that we were offering, so we went to the ballot box in 1988. Prop. 103 did many things: it called for a rollback, requires insurance companies to open up their books and justify premiums, it requires auto insurance companies to base your premium on your driving record, the number of miles you drive every year, and your driving experience. No longer would your ZIP code be the dominant determinant for how much you pay. And that battle, just to get that put it in place, we didn’t win that until 20 years after 103 began. We won in basically in 2006, 18 years later, after court challenges and going to the commissioner.”

While Prop. 103 allows the insurance commissioner to set additional reasonable factors in setting insurance premiums, Rosenfield said, “The one rating factor that Proposition 103 prohibits is the one that insurance companies used before. Prop. 103 says you cannot base insurance premiums or refusing to insure somebody on the absence of prior insurance.”

But as the new documents and other court findings showed, Mercury ignored that provision and used it as a factor anyway, setting a surcharge of about 45 percent of the premium price if you hadn’t had insurance before, for which they were again sued.

“Mercury realizes they’re going to lose the civil suit, goes to Sacramento, spreads a fortune in campaign contributions, and lo and behold, gets a bill passed overriding this provision of Prop. 103, legalizing its surcharges. [Gov. Gray] Davis vetoes it in 2002 on the grounds that it violates Prop. 103. Another year goes by, Mercury spreads even more money around, and this time Davis is up in a recall election and needs Mercury’s money. So he takes the money, it’s $100,000 or more, and Davis signs the bill. We have to go to court and challenge the bill as an unconstitutional amendment to Proposition 103, which we finally succeed in doing and it’s upheld by the Court of Appeals in 2005. All that time, Mercury is overcharging people. Ultimately, Mercury is told, the law you sponsored is invalid and you can’t do it anymore, so it stops in 2005 – 10 years of wanton, brazen violation of the law. And that brings us to the Mercury initiative.”

But because these surcharges are so lucrative – in some states, a Consumer Watchdog investigation found, doubling or tripling premiums – Mercury decided to spend millions of dollars to place Prop. 17 on the June ballot, and it will spend millions more to fool consumers into believing that its somehow good for them.  

“The Mercury initiative is even more pernicious than what it was doing before, and here’s why. Under Mercury’s initiative, if you’ve never had prior insurance, you can be surcharged for the first time. It overturns the Prop. 103 provision and legalizes these surcharges. Then they’ve thrown in some other tricks and traps, as you’d expect an insurance company to do on a ballot measure.”

What are those tricks and traps? How have they been able to get away with this for so long? Why did Attorney General Jerry Brown, a candidate for governor, give the measure such a favorable and misleading ballot title and summary? Why has the Democratic Party been so unwilling to challenge them? We’ll have much more on Mercury and its corrupting corporate influence in future issues of the Guardian.

Coby King, Mercury’s vice president and spokesperson, wouldn’t speak directly about the newly revealed documents or the concerns they’re causing among regulators and politicians, sending us the same prepared statement he send to Chronicle, which says consumer groups are trying to “mislead consumers and rehash old allegations.”

Yet I pressed him on why Mercury has for decades shown such contempt for the regulatory framework created by Prop. 103, which the company has now challenged through lawsuits, sponsored legislation, lavish political contributions, the new ballot measure, and even through blatant violations of the law. He tried to refer me to Kathy Fairbanks, who headed the Mercury-backed front group, Californians for Fair Auto Insurance Rates, which is pushing Prop. 17.

But when I noted that the group is supposedly independent of Mercury, and it is the company’s hostility to Prop. 103 that I was asking about, he finally said this: “Prop. 103 is the law of the land, but to the extent there are improvements that can be made that are pro-business and pro-consumer, Mercury has not been shy about acting in the public interest.”

Ah, so it’s the public interest that Mercury has been acting in. Got it.

 

The “jobs” shell game

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The “jobs” shell game

Written with Nima Maghame

news@sfbg.com

While many San Francisco city officials have been trying to figure out how to close a projected budget deficit of more than $520 million, Mayor Gavin Newsom has spent the last month trying to make that spending gap even larger by aggressively pushing a variety of business tax cuts that economists say will do little to improve the local economy and could actually make it worse.

Newsom first proposed his so-called “local economic stimulus package” a year ago during his ill-fated run for governor, just as President Barack Obama was pushing his own economic stimulus plan. But unlike the federal government’s $787 billion plan, about a third of which involved tax cuts demanded by conservatives, Newsom proposed to cut local business taxes while also deeply slashing local government spending and laying off hundreds of city workers.

Most economists say that’s a terrible idea. In fact, a report issued at the time by Moody’s Investor Services made it clear that every dollar of direct government spending adds about $1.60 into the economy (or $1.73 if it’s on food stamps, the most stimulative spending government can make), whereas business tax cuts add only about $1 to the economy for every dollar spent.

We clashed with the Mayor’s Office at the time on our Politics blog (see “Mayor Newsom doesn’t understand economics,” 2/13/09), with Newsom’s spokesperson telling us the mayor was relying on the input of City Economist Ted Egan. But when we interviewed Egan about the issue, he agreed that it’s a bad idea to slash government spending to pay for tax cuts.

“We were in no way saying you should cut taxes to stimulate the economy, particularly if it means reducing government spending,” Egan told us then. And when we asked directly whether it’s better for San Francisco’s economy for the city to directly spend a dollar on payroll or to give that dollar away in a private sector tax break, he told us, “The consensus among economists is that most of the time government spending stimulates the economy more.”

The Board of Supervisors basically ignored Newsom’s proposal. But he revived it last month, expanding the proposals with even more private sector subsidies and making them the centerpiece of his Jan. 13 State of the City speech, publicly pushing it since then with a series of public events at businesses located in the city.

And this time — with the local economy still slow, projected city budget deficits bigger than ever, and little serious talk about how the city can bring in more money — it appears the proposals will be the subject of a series of hearings before Board of Supervisors’ committees in the coming weeks.

Newsom’s tax cut proposals include a proposal to waive the 1.5 percent payroll tax (the city’s main business tax) for all new hires; extend and expand the payroll tax exemption for biotech companies (see “Biotech’s bonanza,” p. 12); give small businesses tax credits for their spending on health plans; and allow developers to pass one-third of their affordable housing in-lieu fees onto future homeowners.

Newsom and his Press Secretary Tony Winnicker have spoken euphorically about the proposals, saying they’re desperately needed to spur the local economy. “We believe that enacting these tax incentives, particularly the payroll tax credit for new hires, is one of the single biggest things we can do for economic growth,” Winnicker said.

Despite repeated questions about the economists’ concerns over financing tax cuts with government spending cuts, we couldn’t get them to address the tradeoff directly. “The mayor will support critical public services,” was all Winnicker would say about the deep cuts that Newsom is expected to announce in his June 1 budget.

Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee, expressed more skepticism about the mayor’s proposals. “Do tax breaks have the intended effect of stimulating the economy? As we underfund government services, are we getting a net gain or are we getting something taken away? For the very small businesses in my district, it’s going to be trickle-down economics. It’s very unrelated and unmeasurable in benefit,” he told us.

David Noyola, board aide to President David Chiu, said his boss is supporting the biotech tax credit but reserving judgment on the rest. “It’s going to be a cost-benefit analysis,” Noyola said. “When we’re talking about jobs, we’re talking about public and private sector jobs, always.”

While Egan’s economic analysis predicts tax cuts will encourage some economic growth, even he is circumspect about the good it will do, particularly without finding a way to avoid deep cuts in city spending. “The truth of the matter is that our stimulus efforts are small because the city has relatively small power to affect the local economy,” Egan told us.

That’s the consensus economic opinion. Huge federal spending can help a national economy a little bit, but local economies are just different animals that local governments are largely powerless to really alter, particularly through tax cuts.

“I agree with Egan: city government has little power over the local economy,” Mike Potepan, an urban development economist at San Francisco State University, told the Guardian.

Both economists agree that tying tax cuts to job creation or development stimulus is better than general tax cuts, but that neither is good if it means laying off more city workers.

“Research shows that by cutting taxes you have more business activity where studies show it is likely to effect employment,” Potepan said. “On the other side, you have to think about revenue. Cities are going to have to balance their budgets, which could mean a cut in services.”

Author Greg LeRoy expresses a more critical perspective in his book The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation (1995, Berrett-Koehler), amassing evidence from economic studies and CEO surveys that corporate tax breaks, even those tied to new job creation, have almost no effect on private companies’ decisions about where to locate and whether to hire.

“How can companies get away with this? Because the system is rigged. Corporations have it down to a science. They have learned how to chant ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ to win huge corporate tax breaks — and still do whatever they wanted all along,” LeRoy writes. “That’s the Great American Jobs Scam: an intentionally constructed system that enables corporations to exact huge taxpayer subsidies by promising quality jobs — and lets them fail to deliver. The other benefit often promised — higher tax revenues — often proves false as well.”

While proposing to forgo collecting millions of dollars in payroll taxes (the Controller’s Office is still working on a projected total for the tax cut package), the Mayor’s Office also wants to spur development of new housing with a proposal that would delay collection of needed affordable housing money by more than a decade.

After hearing mostly from a large crowd of desperate developers and construction workers during a Jan. 21 hearing on the proposal, the Planning Commission approved the package on a 4-3 vote, with the mayor’s appointees in agreement and the board’s appointees in dissent. It will be considered by the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee sometime after Feb. 12.

The most controversial part of the fee reform package involves reducing the fee developers pay to support affordable housing by 33 percent, then charging a 1 percent transfer tax to subsequent buyers of those homes. Egan estimates developers would save almost $20,000 per housing unit, and that it would take an average of 16 years for the city to recover that money. But for high-rise luxury condos, the city would eventually recover about $27,000 per unit.

“It’s a classic make-an-investment-now-to-get-more-later strategy,” Michael Yarne, who crafted the policy for the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development at Newsom’s direction, told the Guardian.

“If it makes it feasible for projects to be started, then it is worth passing,” Tim Colen, a representative of San Francisco Housing Action, said at the Planning Commission hearing, expressing hope that it will help create desperately needed construction jobs and new market rate housing.

But affordable housing advocates and some progressives criticize the policy as completely backward, saying that affordable housing development is desperately needed now, during these tough economic times, rather than a policy that encourages more market rate housing and bails out bad investments made at the height of the real estate bubble.

“What the city needs to do is directly build affordable housing, for which there is a demand,” affordable housing activist Calvin Welch told us. “The problem is that the banks don’t want to lend these guys money because they know nobody can afford to buy houses at the prices that these guys are demanding.”

Debra Walker, who is running for supervisor from District 6 and voted against the proposal when it came before the Building Inspection Commission (the sole vote on a commission dominated by mayoral appointees), agrees.

“The whole argument is that it stimulates development, but it doesn’t,” Walker said, arguing that the incremental gains (about 25 housing units per year, Egan estimates) will be offset by delayed affordable housing construction. “There would be more economic stimulus by using the fee to build more affordable housing.”

Instead, it simply shifts resources to favored entities: from home owners to developers, in the case of the affordable housing fees, or in the case of the tax credits, from the public to the private sector. But Newsom’s office just doesn’t see it that way.

“The Guardian believes in protecting public sector employees over private sector employees,” was how Winnicker formulated our understanding of what the economists are saying. “Most people don’t work for the city, and if we can support private sector jobs, that adds to sales tax revenues and benefits the economy. Despite a short-term impact of the tax credit, that’s a benefit.”

Adam Lesser contributed to this report

 

Newsom’s perplexing attack on San Francisco’s economy

Sasha Cuttler
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Newsom’s perplexing attack on San Francisco’s economy

There’s a crazy disconnect in City Hall these days over how to help the local economy. Mayor Gavin Newsom has spent much of the last month focusing on “jobs” and “local economic stimulus,” proposing to give a few million dollars in tax breaks to local companies while refusing to discuss new tax measures to help close the city’s $522 million budget deficit.

As we explain in detail in tomorrow’s Guardian, economists just don’t think the tax cuts will help the economy much at all – particularly if the city is reducing its spending and payroll to do so — but even some progressive supervisors are playing along to appease the anxious business community. For example, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu supports an extension of the biotech tax, denying city coffers the benefit of efforts by the city and UCSF to become an important hub for the industry.

Then, in today’s Chronicle, Newsom floats the idea of unilaterally shortening the workweek for city employees in order to save $50 million in payroll costs, firing 10,000 workers and then rehiring most of them to do so. But let’s be clear about this: that means removing $50 million from San Francisco’s economy, or even more once you figure in the multiplier effect that would more than double that loss.

As much as Newsom and his Chamber of Commerce allies love to bash government, the city is one of San Francisco’s largest employers, a clean industry with good-paying jobs. And it just makes no sense why they prefer to inflict mass layoffs on that employer – not to mention the reduced city services that will hurt even private sector productivity — rather than increase taxes on large corporations that ship their profits out of the city and therefore offer minimal benefits to this city’s economy.   

 

Drinking the tea, ignoring the facts

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Drinking the tea, ignoring the facts

Listening to members of the Tea Party movement on KQED’s Forum this morning, I and many callers to the show were struck by the basic inaccuracy of their core beliefs, these revanchist delusions about what’s in the U.S. Constitution and how this country really operates.

There’s a lot of justifiable anxiety out there over the state of the country, and the Tea Party movement has tapped into that with bumper sticker slogans that are just broad enough to capture alienated Americans from across the political spectrum. One recent poll shows that 41 percent of respondents are sympathize with the movement, stronger support than either major political party now enjoys.

But facts should matter, and they just don’t to many teabaggers or their high priestess, Sarah Palin, who is headlining the current national Tea Party convention in Nashville. For example, the two self-described “patriots” on this morning’s show railed against all the unconstitutional actions of the runaway federal government in ways that reveal an astonishing ignorance about the document they claim to prize so highly.

An East Bay woman from Bay Area Patriots, Heather Gaas, complained that the “government takeover” of the health care system is specifically prohibited by the constitution, seemingly unaware that there is no takeover, and even if there was, the federal government is specifically empowered to “regulate commerce” and see to the country’s “general welfare.”

North Bay teabagger Gary Hahn claimed that a free market system with minimal government is enshrined in the Constitution, another false claim. The words “capitalism” or “free market” aren’t in the Constitution, which doesn’t prescribe an economic system for the country and would even allow socialism to exist if we had to votes to approve it.

Luckily, while host Dave Iverson did little to correct the teabaggers’ inaccuracies on the first half of the show, a series of callers did that work on the second half. One caller, who was a self-described Tea Party member and Ron Paul supporter, criticized the hypocrisy of the guests’ for criticizing “big government” while supporting its wars and imperial overreach, sounding the anti-war position that is also an element of this broad and unfocused movement.

And that’s really why we shouldn’t read too much into this movement’s power and its implications (check out this interview for an insightful take on why conservatism no longer contributes anything useful to American politics). The Tea Party is best understood as a primal scream rather than a political movement. I’m a big government progressive, yet I share the teabaggers’ outrage over the Wall Street bailouts and the corruption and unresponsiveness of the two major political parties.

We may even share a few revanchist impulses, concerns that powerful forces have steered this country away from what it once was. But my concern is with Big Corporations that have eroded basic egalitarian principles expressed from the Declaration of Independence (the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” talk about radical!) to the New Deal, not with Big Government (except for its biggest and most wasteful element, the bloated military budget).

But the revanchist fantasies of most tea baggers long for a time that is no longer possible, when there was still a frontier on which rugged individualists could stake their claim, for that “shining city on the hill” that their god, Ronald Reagan, once conjured up in the national mind’s eye. They want to smite their liberal enemies and restore this country to a position of deserved greatness, an attitude that frankly scares the crap out of me, with its echoes of 20th Century fascism.

The realities of today are much more complex than the teabaggers’ simplistic beliefs. They want to deeply cut government spending, despite the damage that would do to the fragile economy. They want us to get tough with the terrorists, unaware that every bomb we drop has the potential to create new enemies. They want more power for the “real Americans,” however racist and divisive that judgment is made.

Yet their primal scream shouldn’t be ignored because it is the manifestation of frustration that cuts across a wide swath of the country that is fed up with politics as usual. But in the teabaggers’ ignorance of the Constitution and the basic social contract on which any country or government is based, we can see just how much work there is to do before we have an educated and engaged citizenry that is even capable of participating in a democracy. So this is still a party worthy of our attention.

 

Newsom and O’Reilly celebrate conservatism

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By Steven T. Jones

Anyone who still thinks that Mayor Gavin Newsom is a liberal who has been unfairly maligned by the Bay Guardian and other wild-eyed San Francisco lefties should watch his appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show last night, in which Newsom praises O’Reilly (a right-wing reactionary if there ever was one) as a political moderate, correctly calls himself an economic conservative, and said he watches O’Reilly’s show every night and agrees with much of what he hears.

While Newsom meekly disagrees with O’Reilly’s ridiculous main premise that the situation in Sacramento and San Francisco proves that “liberal governance just don’t work,” he spends far more time agreeing with O’Reilly than challenging any of O’Reilly’s ludicrous and inaccurate assertions.

For example, O’Reilly blames California’s fiscal mess on liberals (actually, the main problem is our Republican governor and a two-thirds budget vote threshold that has let conservatives hold the state hostage) and casts San Francisco as increasingly overrun with homeless people and pot clubs (both of which have declined, leaving SF with just 22 licensed and well-regulated cannabis dispensaries).

Instead of defending traditional Democratic Party values (those that existed before Bill Clinton and others allowed them to be coopted by big corporations and anti-government crusaders) and his party’s current leaders, Newsom bends over backward to highlight his no-new-taxes stance and says, “We operate in a fiscally conservative manner.”

As the Chronicle reports today, San Francisco is facing a $522 million and growing budget deficit, which Newsom is only trying to increase with his proposed tax cuts and embrace of Reaganomics, while steadfastly refusing to work with others on finding new revenue sources. This is a recipe for disaster, but at least Newsom is sure to be invited back on his buddy Bill’s show, where he they can together celebrate the crash of civil society as we know it.

Alioto-Pier drops out of insurance commissioner race

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By Steven T. Jones

Michela Alioto-Pier has withdrawn from the race for insurance commissioner. “Michela suffered an injury to her leg which required surgery and will entail additional time in the hospital time to heal,” her husband Tom Pier said in a public statement. “The necessary recuperation, as well as the demands of her duties as a San Francisco Supervisor and as a mother of three young children, make a statewide run for Insurance Commissioner impractical at this time.”

We’re sorry to hear about her poor health. But like most of her progressive colleagues on the board, who already endorsed Assembly member Dave Jones for insurance commissioner, we’re not disappointed that her candidacy has come to an end.

At a time when insurance companies like the truly malevolent Mercury Insurance are brazenly pushing deceptive profit-making schemes and actively corrupting politicians of both major parties, we need a strong and independent defender of the public interest in this job.

And based on her well-established record of coziness with corporations and hostility to progressive causes, Alioto-Pier just isn’t that person.

What an awful week

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By Tim Redmond

I’m starting to feel as if we’re back in the Bush days, when reading the news was just depressing, all the time, every day. What a rotten fucking week: We lost the Senate supermajority (although I’d argue that we never really had it — as long as Joe Lieberman was one of the 60 “Democratic” votes, and the Democrats kept giving him everything he wants, there’s no way anything progressive was going to happen there anyway.) Health care reform is in serious trouble. Obama’s popularity is tanking, The unemployment figures are still alarming. Air America is shutting down.–

And we just lost one of the most important Supreme Court rulings in modern history, effectively giving big corporations the ability to even further control American politics.

Ick.

But at least this is funny, one of the better comments on the health care issue that I’ve seen:

Who will fight corporate America?

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By Steven T. Jones
corpflag.jpg
This morning’s U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision overturning a 103-year-old law limiting corporate spending on elections is a huge setback for the people’s ability to counter the power of Wall Street and multi-national corporations, a development exacerbated by signals that the Democratic Party is retreating from even its nominally left-of-center initiatives in the wake of Tuesday’s loss of its Massachusetts seat in the U.S. Senate.

If this morning’s front page San Francisco Chronicle story is to be believed, Democratic congressional leaders are essentially abandoning health care reform and climate change legislation, shifting instead to focus on “creating jobs and cutting the enormous federal deficit.”

And if Mayor Gavin Newsom’s recent initiatives here are any indication, job creation is synonymous with corporate tax breaks, while deficit reduction probably means the elimination of even more government jobs, further enabling private sector excesses. Yes, the political climate in this country is turning as bleak and stormy as the California weather this week.

But at least downpours provide needed water. With progressive institutions from the anti-war movement to minor political parties at their weakest point in many years, it’s unclear who will unite and lead a public that is growing increasingly frustrated with this country’s political dysfunction and uneven economic recovery (that is, corporations are recovering but most people aren’t).

There are a few faint glimmers of hope. The Chron reports on an alliance between UC students and administrators to push for a reversal of deep cuts to education spending. And spending by labor unions was also unshackled by today’s court decision, which could be helpful if that movement wasn’t in such disarray right now and was willing and able to help lead a broad people’s movement.

But the question facing the country right now is this: who can effectively fight corporate America, and who is willing to do so?

Restoring majority rule

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Restoring majority rule

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lame duck response to California’s projected $20 billion state deficit has given supporters of more than 30 budget and revenue-related state initiatives now in circulation a renewed sense of urgency as they scramble to gather signatures and qualify proposed solutions to the state’s ongoing financial emergency for the November ballot.

But while this plethora of initiatives reflects widespread frustration over the state’s broken system of governance, disagreement rages over how to fix it and how best to restore majority rule to California.

“These are the hardest decisions a government must make, yet there is simply no conceivable way to avoid more cuts and more pain,” the governor told reporters Jan. 8 as he released a new budget proposal calling for $8.5 billion in cuts to state workers’ wages, health and human services, and prisons; a legally questionable $4.5 billion shift in other funds; and $6.9 billion in federal reimbursements that have yet to be approved.

Even steeper social services cuts are in the works, Schwarzenegger warned, if the feds don’t comply with this request for a bailout. But he refused to target corporations and millionaires as revenue sources, clinging instead to the standard Republican pledge not to raise taxes.

“We didn’t hear him say, ‘We are going to pinch the wealthy and the corporate,'<0x2009>” State Sen. Mark Leno observed. “He is definitely setting his sights on the social safety net.”

Recent revolts within the public university system, including the November takeover of UC Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall, suggest that tuition hikes, layoffs, and reduced study options have brought students to the tipping point.

But UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff fears that without restoring majority rule to the state’s budget and revenue-related measures, such revolts only address symptoms, not causes, of the impasse.

So Lakoff decided to author the California Democracy Act, an initiative that would replace the state’s two-thirds requirement on budget and revenue bills with a simple majority vote, after Sen. Loni Hancock invited him to meet with a group of Democratic state senators last spring.

“She said the Democrats were having problems getting anything done, and I went away saying, ‘this is ridiculous,'<0x2009>” Lakoff said. “It occurred to me that since the problem came by way of the initiative process, then it was possible to rectify it that way.”

Proposition 13, approved by voters in 1978, limited property tax increases and required a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature to approve most new tax increase, measures that contributed mightily to the state’s bleak financial situation.

California also requires a two-thirds vote for the Legislature to approve the annual budget, along with only Arkansas and Delaware. On Jan. 5, Sonoma State philosophy professor Teed Rockwell told the Potrero Hill Democratic Club to endorse Lakoff’s initiative, noting that California is the only state to require two-thirds vote on budget and revenue bills.

“I have learned that essentially everything that is uniquely wrong with California results from this one fact,” Rockwell said.

California has the largest number of millionaires in the U.S., but as Rockwell observed, thanks to the fiscal stranglehold of the Republican minority, “We do not have enough money to keep our parks open or maintain affordable tuition at our public colleges. And the extremists in Sacramento want to solve this problem by decreasing taxes on millionaires and increasing taxes on the middle class.”

Rockwell noted that of the 22 states that produce oil in the U.S., all have oil severance taxes, including Sarah Palin’s Alaska and George W. Bush’s Texas — except California.

But while the California Democracy Act simply resolves that “all legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote,” neither the state Democratic Party nor the major unions are willing to support Lakoff’s measure, citing its bad results in the polls.

Instead, veteran legislator and California Democratic Party Chair John Burton is backing a Hancock proposal that seeks to reduce to a simple majority the Legislature’s voting requirement on budget bills.

Lakoff warns that budget bills merely determine how to slice the pie, while revenue bills determine the size of the pie. This means that if Democrats succeed in only reforming the state’s budget voting requirements, they’ll still be stuck with having to make painful cuts.

But Hancock, who has been living with the results of this fiscal gridlock since she was elected to the state Assembly six years ago and helped sponsor the failed oil severance tax initiative in 2006, believes decisions to cut prison or education spending are not trivial.

“Last year Democrats gave $2 billion in tax breaks just to get one desperately needed Republican vote on the budget,” Hancock told the Guardian. “And now the Republicans are asking for takeaways on environmental and labor protections that they otherwise wouldn’t have any power to negotiate.”

“I am a realistic idealist,” Hancock continued. “I believe we are better off to get the majority vote to pass the budget. That way, the minority might begin to negotiate and have a more rational conversation. I’m very pleased that throughout the state, folks are recognizing that state governance is broken.”

California Tax Reform Association executive director Lenny Goldberg told us it’s hard to choose between the Lakoff and Hancock initiatives.

“It’s a question of what’s achievable, of how to focus energy,” Goldberg said. “Lowering the vote requirement for the budget would eliminate some of the hostage-taking and help reverse the corporate loopholes that the Democrats were forced to accept to get a budget passed. So at least it would make the budget process better.”

But he agrees that budget reform only makes the Democrats solely responsible for the budget, while preventing them from raising revenue.

“So there is some disagreement whether it’s better to do one, if you can’t do tax reform,” he said. “In the end, it’s a strategic, not substantive, question. Is it better to do budget alone, or not at all? Personally, I think we’re better off doing budget reform than nothing — but it’s a close call.”

Hancock and Lakoff both believe that a competing initiative, endorsed by Schwarzenegger and funded by the group California Forward, is the poison pill in the upcoming fiscal equation.

“Unfortunately, it’ll make it harder to raise fees,” Hancock said.

“It should be renamed California Backward,” Lakoff quipped, noting that while the California Forward initiative supports a simple majority on budget bills, it seeks to raise to two-thirds the voting threshold on new fees.

California Forward executive director Jim Mayer said his organization supported Prop. 11, the redistricting measure that passed in November 2008, “as a start to melt the political gridlock.

“And our two initiatives will help legislators do a better job of spending the pie,” Mayer added, noting that his group is talking to Democrats and Republicans as well as counties, cities, and branches of the Chamber of Commerce.

One of California Forward’s initiatives seeks to change the budget vote requirement to a simple majority and create a two-year budget cycle. It also forces the Legislature to use one-time revenues for one-time expenditures — and requires a two-thirds vote on fee increases, raising Democrat hackles.

“When the Legislature attempts to replace what’s currently a tax on utilities with a fee, currently they can do that with a simple majority. But people on the right tend to worry that if you eliminate a tax and call it a fee, it’s illegal,” California Forward spokesperson Ryan Rauzon explained.

The other initiative would allow county governments to identify priorities and raise revenue with a simple majority vote, Mayer said, a plan he claims is about “empowering local governments.”

Newsom’s faith-based economic plan

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By Steven T. Jones
time-reaganomics.jpg
The theory that cutting taxes on corporations and the rich creates wealth that eventually trickles down to help everyone — a policy that drastically widened the income gap — is back, and in San Francisco of all places.

Is it “ideological” to question whether the business tax cuts that Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing will exacerbate the city’s huge budget deficit, potentially doing far more harm than good? Press Secretary Tony Winnicker, who finally returned my call about the proposal, told me that it is.

But Winnicker denied that conservative economic ideology is behind Newsom’s belief in the healing power of business tax cuts, calling it simply “practical” and telling me, “The mayor doesn’t share your hostility toward the private sector.”

That may be true, but I don’t share his hostility toward the public sector, which would lose even more of the “jobs” that Newsom claims to value so highly in order to pay for his experiment in trickle-down economics. Winnicker grudgingly acknowledged that short-term fiscal reality – and the fact that they didn’t study how much revenue will be lost before proposing the plan, or in the year since it was first pitched — but argued that it will somehow help the city over the long run.

“We believe that enacting these tax incentives, particularly the payroll tax credit for new hires, is one of the single biggest things we can do for economic growth,” Winnicker said.

But he couldn’t cite any evidence supporting that belief, which is a matter of faith for economic conservatives. Yet even the city’s fairly conservative economist, Ted Egan, says that reducing government spending in order to cut business taxes just isn’t smart.

Newsom’s corporate giveaway

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By Steven T. Jones
state of city.jpg
After going through a ridiculous security check (I waited 15 minutes for an “escort,” but they never even inspected my bag) to get into Mayor Gavin Newsom’s invite-only State of the City speech last night in the Asian Art Museum, I chatted with my colleague Melissa Griffin, the blogger and Examiner columnist, as Newsom worked the room.

The mayor eventually wound his way over to me, and when I turned to greet him, he gave me a playful shove, knocking me off balance and telling me, “Be nice!” Just minutes into his speech, in which he promoted corporate tax breaks and a discredited “local economic stimulus package,” I understood what he meant.

When he introduced this trickle-down economics initiative almost a year ago, we cited studies showing that it was a political gimmick that didn’t work and shot down Newsom’s claim that the city’s economist supported this giveaway of public funds to the private sector.

But last night, Newsom chided the Board of Supervisors for not scheduling hearings on his proposal to waive payroll taxes for new businesses and new jobs, create tax credits for health insurance costs, and extend current tax breaks for biotech companies, seemingly oblivious to the fact that such actions will add to the massive budget deficit that he barely mentioned.

The Chronicle today quoted gleeful Chamber of Commerce head Steve Falk and the chilly reaction that this strange initiative got from supervisors, but San Francisco Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin went even further, this morning telling us, “I am so disappointed that the mayor of San Francisco is taking a page from the playbook of the Republican Party. This sounds like Ronald Reagan’s trickle down economics. In an era when some of the richest corporations have made zillions of dollars and the U.S. government just gave them zillions more, now we’re going to close hospitals and say we can’t pave our streets.”

Outdoors & Sports

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Outdoors & Sports

BEST NONPROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAM

SF Fog Rugby

The Fog is one of the only rugby clubs in the world that actively recruits people of color, gay men, and women — and somehow only incredibly hunky ones apply.

(415) 267-6100, www.sffog.org

BEST GYM

Gold’s Gym

It’s the gayest, classiest, most fresh-smelling gym in the city. Get buff. Get ripped. Get Gold.

Various locations. www.goldgym.com

BEST YOGA STUDIO

Monkey Yoga Shala

Bend, breathe, burn. Go bananas. Be like the monkey at Monkey Yoga Shala, the Bay Area’s premier simian yoga studio.

3215 Lakeshore, Oakl. (510) 595-1330, www.monkeyyoga.com

BEST DANCE STUDIO

ODC

Learn how to bust moves and join the Rhythm Nation with the professional booty shakers at ODC — or just watch them in amazing performances.

351 Shotwell, SF. (415) 863-6606, www.odcdance.org

BEST PUBLIC SPORTS FACILITY

Kezar Stadium

It’s not as glamorous as it was back in the day, but Kezar is still the best place to kick balls and soak up vibes left over from the Summer of Love.

755 Stanyan, SF.

BEST PERSONAL TRAINER

Hoop Girl

Shake off that flab, grind your pelvis, and work that ass with Christabel Zamor, the sexiest hula-hooping heroine in the world.

www.hoopgirl.com

BEST SKATE SPOT

The Embarcadero

Embarco is the best place in the world for street skating. Just don’t tell the cops.

Pier 1, Embarcadero and Market, SF

BEST PUBLIC POOL

Mission Pool

An impeccably maintained, old-school outdoor pool tucked into the heart of the Mission. The last of a dying breed.

1 Linda, SF. (415) 641-2841, www.sfgov.org

BEST SURF SPOT


Linda Mar, Pacifica: Best Surf Spot
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Linda Mar, Pacifica

The water’s cold, the waves are rough, and the weather is screwy, but our readers love a challenge.

Cabrillo Hwy. at Linda Mar Blvd., Pacifica.

BEST PARK FOR HIKING

Tilden Park

Trek through winding trails full of trees and wildlife at the oldest and most beautiful park in the East Bay.

Grizzly Park Blvd., Berk. (510) 562-PARK, www.ebparks.org

BEST NUDE BEACH

Baker Beach

Rock out with your cock out or jam out with your clam out at the best nude beach in the West.

Off Lincoln Blvd., Presidio, SF. www.nps.gov

BEST CLOTHED BEACH

Stinson Beach

Amazing (if often fog-drenched) views, cool spontaneous sand sculptures, and tons of hidden nooks and crannies for a private feel.

1 Calle del Sierra, Stinson. (415) 868-1922, www.nps.gov

BEST NATURE SPOT FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES; BEST PUBLIC PARK

Golden Gate Park

Accessibility is key at this beloved multifaceted venue, which offers several services specifically for the disabled.

www.parks.sfgov.org

BEST PICNIC SPOT

Dolores Park

Panoramic views of the city, half-naked hotties, beer, sausage, and pot brownies. This ain’t your daddy’s picnic spot (well, maybe your sugar daddy’s)!

Dolores between 18th and 20th Sts., SF.

BEST DOG PARK

Fort Funston

Where else can a pup frolic in Pacific Ocean waves and then chill with his bitch on a grassy knoll when he’s done? Nowhere.

Skyline Blvd. at John Muir Dr., SF. www.fortfunstondog.org

BEST CAMPGROUND

Angel Island

Wind-sheltered and semiprivate, the campsites at Angel Island are the perfect remedy for the Fog City blues.

www.angelisland.org

BEST PLACE TO WATCH THE SUNRISE; BEST CITY VISTA

Twin Peaks

You can see everything from Twin Peaks: the sky, the city, the tourists, the tweakers!

Top of Twin Peaks Blvd., SF.

BEST PLACE TO WATCH THE SUNSET

Ocean Beach

The sun may rise in the eastern skies, but it settles in a fine location: just off the shore of the O.B.

Great Hwy. between Geary and Sloat Blvds., SF.

BEST PLACE TO SEE THE STARS

Mt. Tamalpais

Your roof might be awesome, but if your landlord catches you up there, you’ll be homeless in no time. Skip the eviction and head to Mt. Tam.

801 Panoramic Hwy., Mill Valley. www.parks.ca.gov

Outdoors & Sports

BEST CEREBRAL WORKOUT

OK, you know when you’re doing the elliptical at the gym, flipping idly through an US Weekly between fighting with some meathead over whether you’ve really been on the machine for 30 minutes? That’s your body getting stronger while your mind’s getting weaker. Combat your brain’s slow atrophy at vibrantBrains, the only gym devoted exclusively to the oft-ignored muscle inside your skull. Instead of sweat-drenched Nautilus machines, vibrantBrains is composed of computer stations with software to challenge different parts of your mind. Happy Neuron works out your cognitive and language skills, while Lumosity’s exercises work out your memory and attention capabilities. In between “workouts,” the vibrantBrains lounge offers tea, reading material, and a community of newly intelligent peers. Classes like “Minding Your Mind” and “Neurobics” are also offered. All software is proven scientifically to improve brain function, but vibrantBrains’ owners, Lisa Schoonerman and Jan Zivic, provide a personal touch that eases your wits into fitness.

3235 Sacramento, SF. (415) 775-1138, www.vibrantbrains.com

BEST DRINKING CLUB WITH A RUNNING PROBLEM

Banish preconceived notions about running clubs: people whose less-than-1-percent body fat is shellacked in sweat-wicking, high-tech fabrics; New Balance slaves to a stopwatch and heart monitor. Not so with the Hash House Harriers (or H3), a running club fueled more by beer and sexual innuendo than Gu and Cytomax. The Harriers’ motto is “A drinking club with a running problem.” A hash run is based on hare hunting, with the leading hasher laying out a trail that the rest follow. This entails more than improvising a route, however: the hasher must set up the keg and beer stops along the way. Punishments are doled out for not following the route, and they’re not just sore muscles. Down-downs, as they’re called, involve drinking all the alkie in your cup. Booze consumption along the way isn’t the only unorthodoxy; members choose some very interesting nicknames, which range from “Wet Nurse” to “Cum Guzzling Cockaholic.” If Bay to Breakers comes 51 times less a year than you’d like, join up now.

(415) 5-ON-HASH, www.sfh3.com

BEST WAY TO GO

When most people hear “go,” they think of the opposite of “stop” or that middling ’90s rave movie. Well, there’s a lot more to “go” than green lights and Katie Holmes. Take, for example, Go, the 4,000-year-old Chinese board game. Go, or “Eastern Chess,” involves two players facing off over a wooden board with small black and white stones as their weapons. The game, once used in military training schools to teach strategy, is challenging, complex, and addictive. Where can you go to Go in San Francisco? You go to the San Francisco Go Club, where you can enter Go tournaments, get Go ranking verification, receive Go lessons, or simply throw down a challenge (“You wanna Go?!”). Go-ing since 1935, this organization, headquartered in an intimate little Richmond District space, is perfect for Go fanatics and first-time Go-phers alike. Even if chess, backgammon, and checkers aren’t doing it for you anymore, don’t give up on board games — Go further.

500 Eighth Ave., SF. (415) 386-9565, www.sfgoclub.com

BEST PLACE TO POLISH YOUR STUNTS

Fear not, action stars. Just because you lost your stuntman (they’re first to go in a recession) doesn’t mean your movie has to suck. Head over to the Tat Wong Kickboxing Academy and learn those kung fu moves for yourself. Founded by Master Tat Wong — one of Inside Kung Fu magazine’s 100 Most Influential Martial Artists of the 20th century and host of TV’s “Kung Fu Theater” — the academy uses a combination of Chinese San Shou, American kickboxing, and Muay Thai techniques to instruct students of all ages in a huge former bank building on Clement Street. What does that all mean? It means that whether you’re an action star or an extra, you’ll be arrow-punching and tornado-kicking your way to tighter buns, mental discipline, and badass self-defense skills. And even if you’re not the next Jean-Claude Van Damme, Tat Wong’s cardio kickboxing classes may ensure you outlive him.

601 Clement, SF. (415) 752-5555, www.tatwong.com

BEST UPPERCUTS


Michael the Boxer: Best Uppercuts
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

If you thought You Don’t Mess with the Zohan was just another escapist summer film fantasy, think again. Ass-kicking hairstylists really do exist. Witness Michael Onello, the owner of Michael the Boxer, the only boxing gym and barbershop in the Bay Area. Michael is a third-generation barber and professional boxing trainer, highly qualified to dish out both buzz cuts and uppercuts. From the barber chair to the boxing ring, Onello’s SoMa shop is a blend of old-school service and new-school fitness. You can peruse Onello’s book, Boxing: Advanced Tactics and Strategies, during a hot lather shave and then, afterward, head into the ring to learn how to throw a haymaker. It’s boxing and barbering, all under one roof. But don’t let the Zohan comparisons give you the wrong idea. Michael’s not working — as a boxer or barber — for laughs. He’s simply the best double-threat in town. As Muhammad Ali said, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.”

96 Lafayette, SF. (415) 425-3814, www.michaeltheboxer.com

BEST NET PROFIT

On a late-night talk show, five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams recently referred to herself as a “tennis nerd,” meaning that when she isn’t playing tennis, she likes to watch it. All Bay Area tennis nerds should know about the Centre Court Pro Shop at San Francisco Tennis Club. For once you won’t have to trek through a maze of equipment for other sports to get to the array of shoes, clothes, and racquets. And if you glance at the TV by the front counter, you’ll likely see a recording of a classic match. Casual onlookers who were wowed by the epic “Greatest Match Ever” between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer can show their allegiance to the players associated with the sport’s renaissance by buying some new Babolat or Wilson gear. The shop has a ton of demo racquets, so any player — from weekend hacker to daily tennis nerd — can figure out through trial and error (and fun) which stick works best for hitting winners and upping their game.

645 Fifth St., SF. (415) 777-9010

BEST GAME IN TOWN

When you’re winning, it doesn’t matter where you watch. “The Catch” in ’82 could have made prison walls disappear. Super Bowl XXIX (Niners 49, Chargers 26) gave that boiler-room sublet in the Tenderloin charm. Yes, winning throws a glow on your surroundings, but when you’re losing — the 49ers have finished below .500 for the last five seasons; the Giants, for the last three — it’s a different story. You want comfort. You want character. You want beer. Thankfully, there’s Green’s Sport’s Bar on Polk. It’s got all the essentials: 17 high-definition TVs, 18 draft beers, and vintage Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions on the walls. Friendly staff, fanatical patrons, and an interior covered with flags, jerseys, pucks, pictures, and pennants — your game at Green’s is a guaranteed “W” regardless of the score, and a perfect reminder that just because your team’s losing, you don’t have to be a loser.

2239 Polk, SF. (415) 775-4287

BEST EXPLOSION OF AQUA

We’re perhaps a little too, er, unbalanced to stand upright enough on a surfboard and guide it through the roiling waves, but that doesn’t mean we’re not suckers for hotties in wetsuits. Often you’ll find us curled up with a cup of joe in the dunes of Ocean Beach or Pacifica (or, hell, southern Baja — we’re enthusiasts!) appreciating fine-bodied curler-tamers from afar and merrily offering freshly laundered towels and the pitiful results of our amateur clambake to those who return from the breakers unbroken. But enough about us. This award goes to Aqua Surf Shop for not only outfitting our heroic tsunami-herders with affordable boards, suits, and accessories, but also taking the whole surfwear trend in charitable directions with glamorous fashion shows at 111 Minna that benefit the Edgewood Center for Families and Children and feature the work of several primo local stylists and music makers. With a new Haight Street location to complement its original Ocean Beach store, Aqua keeps growing and growing, proving that surfers really are the gift that keeps on giving.

2830 Sloat, SF. (415) 282-9243; 1742 Haight, SF. (415) 876-2782, www.aquasurfshop.com

BEST TRUE SCHOOL SKATE COMPANY

Skateboarding may be the coolest sport in the world, but its popularity has come with a price: the loss of authenticity and soul. The subculture used to be underground and dangerous, but thanks to corporate buyouts, heavy MTV coverage, and the X Games, it’s become as innocent as lacrosse. Luckily, Deluxe, a.k.a. DLX, the parent distribution company for Real Skateboards, Thunder Trucks, Spitfire Wheels, Krooked, and Antihero, keeps it real. With a focus on localized production — all boards, trucks, wheels, and clothes are actually made right here in the city — and a dedication to a distinctly San Franciscan brand of skate culture (flannels, beers, and raw street), Deluxe has managed to maintain some integrity as an alternative for the small sect of people who like to skate but hate the mall. Deluxe pros like Mark Gonzales, Dan Drehobl, and Peter Ramondetta are as far as you can get from corporate whores like Tony Hawk and Bam Margera, and the products Deluxe makes bear almost no resemblance to the shit they stock at Westfield Centre.

1111A 17th St., SF. (415) 468-7845, www.dlxsf.com

BEST GIANT FITNESS CLUB THAT ATE ALAMEDA

The Bladium isn’t joking when it bills itself as “big club, big energy.” Situated in a former aircraft hangar on an abandoned naval base, the 120,000-square-foot sports and fitness club has stellar views of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and San Francisco. Inside, airy dance studios, two indoor soccer fields, an in-line hockey rink, a rock climbing wall, a boxing ring, basketball and volleyball courts, and a kids center mean there are plenty of ways to get hot and sweaty. Did we mention the well-stocked bar and grill where you can offset any potential weight loss from all that working out? The club’s belief in cross-training as the best way to stay healthy translates into plenty of exercise options for one low monthly fee. But beware the darling clothing store situated inside the club. That’s where you may lose the shirt off your back, in exchange for a racy lacy sports bra — all the better to show off your nascent abs.

800 West Tower Ave., Bldg 40, Alameda. (510) 814-4999, www.bladium.com

BEST TWO-WHEELED COMMUTE

All the transportation experts say that when it comes to riding bicycles through big-city streets, there is safety in numbers. So if you’re among the majority of San Franciscans who still don’t pedal their way to work, there’s no better day to try it than Bike to Work Day, which occurs each May. This year, for the first time in San Francisco history, official traffic surveys that day counted more bicycles than automobiles during the morning commute on Market Street, a particularly astounding feat given that a court injunction has prevented the city from creating any new bike lanes or making improvements for the past couple of years. The day also features free coffee and other goodies from “energizer stations” (often staffed by very attractive “energizers”) around town and a Bike Home from Work afterparty, where you can flirt with the steel buns set and toast your merry mileage.

www.sfbike.org

BEST NON-KINKY ROPE SKILLS


SFC Double Dutch: Best Non-Kinky Rope Skills
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

San Francisco has never been known for its wholesome use of rope — check Kink.com for a taste of “normal” SF-style rope play — but that’s all changing now that the Double Dutchesses are back on the scene. The DD girls, four supersexy city girls with mind-boggling rope skills, made a big splash a few years ago with their quirky jump rope routines and blood-drenched performance art skits. But despite DD’s efforts, the great double dutch resurgence never quite took off, probably because choreographed jump roping is hard as hell. The girls laid low for a while, working diligently on their routines, but now they’re back. Their new jump rope instruction organization, SFC Double Dutch, is dedicated to spreading the joy of jump rope. So untie your bondage slave and sign up for classes at CELLspace or Studio Garcia before they fill up. Uptown, downtown; everybody’s gettin’ down.

214 Clara, SF. (415) 618-0992, www.sfcdoubledutch.com

BEST SWINGIN’ ON A STAR


McKinley Park: Best Swingin’ on a Star
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

You might not have had the need — or the opportunity — to plan an over-the-top, no-holds-barred romantic date recently. Let’s face it: it’s hard to get a date in this city, let alone get one you’re actually excited about. But just when you’re least expecting it, someone wonderful lands in your lap, and you find yourself frantically trying to come up with something that will impress. May we suggest McKinley Park, a hidden gem atop Potrero Hill. It’s an ideal date stop: the swing set at the edge of the sleepy playground stunningly overlooks the entire city. Soaring through the night air, you feel as though you’ll launch into the stars. It’s even better to bike up to the park, despite the major hill climb required, as the rolling hills sloping down toward Third Street provide the best cycling roller coaster this city has to offer — with an ocean view.

20th Street at Vermont, SF

BEST BIG LEBOWSKI

Even though the Presidio is gradually entering a slow hostile takeover by corporations (vanity museums, Lucasfilm) and big parking lots, it’s still San Francisco’s throwback to the past. The farther you get from the fancy park gates, the further back in time you travel. Near the coastal bluffs, time becomes completely irrelevant, making the Presidio the perfect place to reenact scenes from the greatest slacker movie of all time: The Big Lebowski. With a bowling ball, some beers, and a few other geeky friends, the Presidio Bowl becomes your personal set for faux nihilism and cutting repartée. Twelve lanes and a bangin’ snack bar (bacon-and-egg cheeseburgers, anyone?) sate you while the doobie wears off. And who can’t appreciate the value of an endless fountain of warm, imitation nacho cheese? Sadly, you’ll have to make the film’s emblematic White Russians yourself — the Bowl only serves beer, wine, and malt liquor. But there’s nothing wrong with ordering a glass of half-and-half on the rocks and doctoring it with your flask, is there?

93 Moraga, SF. (415) 561-2695. www.presidiobowl.com

BEST CYCLOCROSS-DRESSERS

If you don’t do a double take when you see a six-foot-four female impersonator screaming at a Muni driver on Market Street because he rear-ended her ’57 Chevy, congratulations. You’ve officially arrived as a proper San Francisco citizen. Where else is it considered commonplace to see a trolley hit a tranny? Yet even the most seasoned SF residents might turn their heads at this: grown men, dressed in skintight spandex and frilly lingerie, sprinting through Golden Gate Park with bikes hiked over their shoulders. This occasion, the Outlaw Cyclocross Race, is the unofficial annual opener for Northern California’s October–February cyclocross race season, in which dozens of hardcore, or ridiculous, cyclists cross-dress to avoid an entry fee. Zooming off in a cloud of dust, the froofy men (and a few tie-wearing women) race through a closed-circuit loop filled with steep hills and insurmountable logs. This slightly nonlegal event has kept itself well-hidden from permit-demanding eyes for almost 15 years. To find it, you’ll have to listen in the fall for strident yodels and ripping lace.

BEST HEAD START

You celebrate the same birthday over and over. You’ve begun to contemplate Botox. And let’s not even talk about your waistline: Your muffin top runneth over. In our youth-centric, waif-y culture, where are the breaks for the older or plumper folks? The Double Dipsea Race is one. This 14.2-mile footrace, a round-trip between Stinson Beach and Mill Valley held in June, is age-handicapped: the oldest runners are given up to a 25-minute advantage over a scratch group of younger pups. The race has a few more swerves from convention. Women over 140 pounds and men over 200 can take special prizes. And runners who frequent those North Bay trails would do well to take note of the race’s permissible shortcuts. The race offers these corner-cutters because founder Walt Stack wanted to encourage women and older folks to participate. The course is still grueling — a 2200-foot nongradual elevation gain, uneven, rocky footing, and yes, the infamous 600-plus Mill Valley steps. Yet it offers a gorgeous and breathtaking (if you have any left to take) vista of the Pacific.

www.doubledipsea.com

BEST HIGH BACKSIDE OLLIE COMEBACK

There was a time when San Francisco was ground zero for skate culture. Spots like the Justin Herman Plaza, Hubba Hideout, and Pier Seven cranked out pro after pro and bred a scene more stylish and full of big-city attitude than the world had ever seen. It was great for the city’s skaters who enjoyed fame, money, and industry-wide respect, but the corporations that owned the plazas, ledges, and staircases were unanimously pissed off. Ledges were capped, security guards were hired, and special laws were created to make sure San Francisco became as undesirable for skaters as an empty swimming pool for Olympian dog-paddlers. Most of the SF skate scene may have vanished since the attack, but it never died. The new Portero Del Sol Skatepark is proof. New pros, up-and-comers, and established vets like Max Schaff and Karma Tsocheff have been tearing that shit up since the cement dried back in April.

Utah and 25th St., SF.

BEST STEEL CITY BRO-DOWN

If you’ve ever met someone from Pittsburgh, you’ve met a Steelers fan. Steel City natives are serious about sports. San Francisco has a surprisingly large number of Steelers bars, where transplants and trend-followers throw back brewskis at 10 a.m. on football season Sundays. But Giordano Bros. sandwich shop in North Beach makes you genuinely feel like you’re back in the ‘Burgh itself. It’s not uncommon to hear the hoots of former elementary school classmates running into each other, beer is available in buckets — and authentic Primanti Bros.–style sandwiches are served. These wonders are stacked with your choice of Italian meat (try the hot cappicola) and slathered with cheese, oil and vinegar, and french fries between thick-sliced Italian bread. (Add boiled egg for the full experience.) Four large TVs ensure everyone can see the game. When the Steelers win, Giordano’s proprietors pass around Iron City, a brew found only in Pittsburgh. Because, in Pittsburghese: “Every one of yinz Stillers fans gets a victory swig dahn ‘ere.”

303 Columbus, SF. (415) 397-2767, www.giordanobros.com

BEST BODY SLAMS

The folks at Fog City Wrestling want you to watch a luchador slam a Tom Cruise impersonator into the floor. They want you to see a Samoan take-down team (combined weight: 1,100 pounds) take on the “Reno Punks” in a swirling, convoluted drama of independent pro-wrasslin’. Sweaty, in-your-face, “maybe knock you over if you’re in the front row” wrestling has come back to San Francisco after what promoters Caesar Black and Steve Armani claim has been a 30-year absence. Fog City’s shows are packed with so many acts, highlights, and subplots that things get raucously confusing. With a full-size ring and professional sound and lights, it brings a high level of showmanship with a big ol’ plate of athleticism on the side. Wrestlers like Rikishi, the Mexican Werewolf, and Mister Primetime pull big-show moves — flying back flips, body slams, and pile drivers — just like them whut you see on the tee-vee.

www.fogcitywrestling.com

BEST FLYCATCHIN’

As a San Francisco resident, it’s your born (or inherited, or adopted) duty to be a Giants fan. It doesn’t matter that baseball is boring or that scandal rocks the team every year that they don’t completely suck. But just going to a Giants game can be as sporty as playing baseball — and you don’t even have to enter the ballpark. Grab a pony keg and some friends, don your orange fright wig, set up camp on the stone benches across from the waterway by AT&T Park, and while away the afternoon or evening watching the kayakers on the bay wait to catch fly balls. You’ll almost be able to see the big screen where the game is projected. Or, if you actually care about what’s going on inside, press your eyeballs up to the right of the bicycle-parking check-in and you’ve got the best field-side seats in the park. Why pay $6 per Bud to watch the Giants lose when you can drink your own beer, listen to the cheers and jeers, and enjoy some amateur watersports?

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