David Campos

The mayor’s horrible deal

David Talbot
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The Supervisors should pass legislation outlawing vote trading for all local elected officials, including Newsom

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom put the supervisors in a terrible position — and showed the worst kind of political arrogance — when he held $43 million worth of critical services hostage to his desire to continue packing commissions with political hacks. The deal he presented to the board was shameful, and the supervisors should have rejected it. And now they should pass legislation to make this sort of logrolling illegal.

The mayor’s original budget plan included sharp cuts to a wide range of services. The supervisors’ Budget Committee found a way to add back more than $40 million in funding for things like psychiatric beds at SF General Hospital, violence-prevention programs, and public financing for the next mayor’s race.

But under the City Charter, the mayor can simply refuse to spend that money — and that’s what Newsom said he would do. That is, unless the board would agree to reject two proposed charter amendments to reform the Municipal Transportation Agency and the Recreation and Park Commission.

Let’s remember: the MTA and Rec-Park measures have nothing to do with the budget. The board wanted to overhaul those departments (and give the board some appointments) because they’re a mess; the Rec-Park Commission, appointed entirely by the mayor, is a rubber-stamp agency that votes with nearly 100 percent unanimity on every issue. The MTA has served as a slush fund for the police department at a time when bus lines are cut and fares keep going up.

Newsom told board members that he could, indeed, restore the funding they wanted; the money was there. But he wouldn’t. In other words, he would allow desperately ill people to be turned away from SF General for lack of a bed — if the board didn’t stand down on its reforms. And by a 6-5 margin, with Board President David Chiu providing the critical vote for the mayor’s agenda, the board went along with the deal.

Even worse: Chiu and his colleagues gave up their charter amendments. But the mayor didn’t give up his: a Newsom measure that would prevent elected officials (like Chiu) from serving on the Democratic County Central Committee is still on the ballot.

Five of the progressives on the board hung tough, and Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Chris Daly, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi deserve credit for refusing to accept a bad, embarrassing deal.

But in the end, the board got rolled. The mayor played tough and a majority of the supervisors folded. If a supervisor proposes trading one piece of legislation for another, it would violate state law. That doesn’t apply to the mayor — but it should. The board should immediately pass legislation outlawing vote trading for all local elected officials, including the chief executive. Let’s see if Newsom wants to veto that.

Rumors fly that Board can’t amend Lennar deal, after all

Mary Magee
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14

For the past month, fireworks and deals have been going on at City Hall as the Board prepares to vote on Lennar’s massive redevelopment plan for Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard. And recently, the Board vowed to make a slew of amendments to the plan, even as they approved the project’s environmental impact report.

But now it’s beginning to look like the only winners could be the developer—and perhaps those folks at city hall who are staking their political careers on jamming this deal over the finish line, come hell or high water, before the November election comes around and they go into the private sector as real estate developers.

I say this because two weeks ago, the progressives on the Board were saying that they had been told that they couldn’t amend the EIR July 14, but that they could amend the actual redevelopment plan when it comes before them on July 27. It was for this reason, they said, that they decided to vote to accept the EIR in an 8-3 vote, with only Sups. John Avalos, Chris Daly and Eric Mar, voting to reject the project’s key environmental document.

But today, with less than two working days before the Board’s July 27 meeting, I’m hearing rumors that the Board will only be able to take an up and down vote, when they consider Lennar’s actual redevelopment plan.

In other words, the only way the Board would be able to change anything would be to reject the plan in its entirety.But everyone knows that this is a pigs-may-fly scenario, given the massive pressure the Mayor’s Office, labor and Lennar have been exerting on the Board.

So, if these “up-and-down-vote only” rumors turn out to be true, folks who care about environmental and economic justice better start sounding the alarm. Because there is a plethora of unresolved issues that Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Chris Daly, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi identified July 13 as needing shoring up, before the actual redevelopment plan would ever pass their sniff test.

These concerns included fears that the project’s financing plan amounts to daylight bank robbery, that the proposed bridge across the Yosemite Slough is unnecessary, and that the amount of projected air pollution related to the development is unacceptable.

And then there’s the fact that the Controller’s “economic benefits” report only used averaged figures, and therefore did not give any details about how many jobs and benefits the project would create in this economically depressed community in the next few years.

And did I mention the part about liquidated damages and watershed concerns? Or the fact that there are no maritime uses in the current plan, even though these uses could translate directly into relatively unskilled jobs, if old ships were broken up at the shipyard.

But despite the hours of discussion on July 13 that the Board sat through last week, I do not recall anyone from the Mayor’s or City Attorney’s Office advising the supervisors that they would not be able to amend the actual plan when it comes before them July 27.

Right now, a lot of confusion is swirling as folks point to the fact that Board President David Chiu introduced five amendments at a July 12 Land Use Committee hearing that eight supervisors subsequently voted to accept. This move led the rest of the Board to believe that they too could make amendments to the final plan.

But a review of Chiu’s amendments and the project’s EIR suggests that these changes are in fact repackaged pieces of the EIR, and that the move misled other supervisors into believing that that they would have a chance to amend the actual redevelopment plan.

So far, no one from the Mayor’s Office has returned my calls seeking clarification on this process. But if it turns out that the only way the Board can have input is to kick the plan to the curb, or ask the Planning Commission to make new findings, then democracy in San Francisco has been replaced with an empty charade.

“The Board can make changes along the line that David made in the Land Use Committee, “ Chiu’s legislative aide Judson True told me today. But he wasn’t clear on the process next week, and suggested that I call Cohen’s office, which I did (only to find myself shunted to Cohen’s voice mail.)

So, what gives? And why would the Board allow an out-of-town developer in partnership with the Mayor’s Office to sidestep its responsibility in this way?

“We were told we could not make amendments to the EIR, but could make amendments to the plan that we will be voting on this Tuesday,” Campos told me today, noting that he and Mirkarimi were prepared to make changes July 13, but were then told they could not do that.

“The biggest fear I have with this project, and any project this size in this economy, is that a lot is promised, but will anything get developed, or will we be stuck holding the bag,” Campos added.

Similar questions led the Alameda city council to kick developer SunCal to the curb last week. Ironically, the move could open the door to a developer like Lennar to try and swoop in and pick up the pieces in the island city across the Bay from San Francisco.

But folks in Alameda are pointing to San Francisco as an example of how difficult it is to nail down developers, noting that Michael Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top financial advisor, recently admitted that investment money is scarce, even though the city’s EIR for the project has been approved.

Actually, Cohen went a step further by intimating that all the benefits that the community wants out of the plan would deter investors even more—comments that were perhaps just a precursor to this potential bombshell that the Board won’t actually be able to amend the deal, after all? Stay tuned.

Unions say grand juror unethically helped Adachi measure

Sasha Cuttler
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Unions say grand juror unethically helped Adachi measure

San Francisco’s police and fire unions are taking a lead role in opposing Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s November initiative to make city employees pay more of their pension and health care costs, despite the fact that both unions have recently renegotiated their contracts to exempt their members from paying those increased costs until 2013.

The unions and Bob Muscat from the San Francisco Labor Council recently formed the group Stand Up for Working Families to run the opposition campaign to Adachi’s SF Smart Reform, yesterday holding a press conference at City Hall to highlight the allegedly unethical role that a grand juror has played in pushing the Adachi measure.

Civil Grand Jury member Craig Weber led the committee that in June released a report on the city’s pension system called “Pension Tsunami: The Billion Dollar Bubble,” warning that employee pension costs to the city would more than double in the next five years and “fundamental adjustments must be made to the City’s employee pension program.”

Yet by the time that report came out (following a similar grand jury report from a year earlier), Weber was already working as treasurer for the Adachi’s signature-gathering campaign, which City Attorney Dennis Herrera called an inappropriate conflict of interest and which Muscat says that raises questions about data manipulation and access to secret grand jury proceedings.

“I have serious concerns in this particular instance that Mr. Weber’s dual roles create a conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of conflict of interest, which would undermine the integrity of any Civil Grand Jury investigation into these issues,” Herrera wrote in a June 14 letter to Presiding Judge James McBride, relating how Weber had sought advice from Herrera’s office on the matter in March and that both Weber and the Grand Jury chair refused to heed his advice that Weber recuse himself from working on the report.

“We believe he used his position on the Civil Grand Jury to manipulate the civil grand jury report,” attorney Peter Saltzman, who represents opponents of the measure, said at the press conference.

But Adachi called the charges “just smoke and mirrors,” telling the Guardian that his initiative was based on data from the Controller’s Office and that the measure was written and publicly available before the latest grand jury report was released. “We received zero information from the grand jury,” Adachi told us. “We relied on public information that we received from the Controller’s Office.”

He has claimed the measure will save the city about $167 million per year by making city employees pay more into their pensions and health care costs for their dependents, although that figure will be lower for the next two years because of exemptions that were written into five police and fire memorandums of understanding that the Board of Supervisors approved last week, agreements negotiated by the Mayor’s Office and opposed by Sups. David Campos and Chris Daly (Sup. Ross Mirkarimi also voted against the MOU for Fire Department executives) because of the exemption.

Police union head Gary Delagnes, who was at the press conference, told the Guardian that the special consideration for those two unions – both of which are key supporters of Mayor Gavin Newsom — was simply a function of negotiating their MOUs later than the other unions. “By the time we and the firefighters were in there, this thing [Adachi’s campaign] had really picked up steam,” he told us.

During the press conference, Muscat highlighted how billionaire Michael Moritz, managing partner of Sequoia Capital, put almost a quarter-million-dollars into qualifying the Adachi measure for the ballot and said, “This is a measure not in the interests of anyone in San Francisco and it represents the interests of people outside of San Francisco” who are attacking public employee unions for political reasons.

Redevelopment requires “duty of loyalty” from Arc Ecology

Mary Magee
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Redevelopment requires “duty of loyalty” from Arc Ecology

As a longtime member of the Mayor’s Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC), Scott Madison took exception to a “duty of loyalty” clause in Arc Ecology’s most recent contract with the Redevelopment Agency.

This new requirement in Arc’s contract came up for discussion during the CAC’s July 12 meeting, Madison said.The rest of CAC did not rise up in support of his concerns, Madison adds. But he is convinced the requirement will harm the community that surrounds the 770-acre area that the city and Lennar want to develop with their massive Candlestick-Shipyard redevelopment plan.

The Board of Supervisors will consider that plan at their July 27 meeting, along with suggestions that Arc and the Sierra Club have been making for years. These suggestions include strengthening the terms governing the transfer of Parcel E-2, the most polluted shipyard site, and removing what Arc and the Sierra Club believe is an unnecessary bridge over the environmentally sensitive Yosemite Slough.

Arc has been monitoring the environmental impacts of the shipyard since 1984, and has provided neighborhood groups with information and technical support related to cleanup and redevelopment since 1986. And more recently, Arc Ecology opened a “community window on the shipyard cleanup” on Third Street, which is also accessible online, to provide information and resources for more meaningful community involvement in the cleanup.

Arc hosts environmental education discussions and community workshops and submits written comments to the Navy about the cleanup and to appropriate agencies on related shipyard redevelopment and reuse plans.

“We are working with the BVHP community to ensure that the transfer, redevelopment, and reuse are to the maximum benefit of the neighboring community,” Arc’s website states.

But in the past few years, as Lennar’s political Candlestick-Shipyard juggernaut has been gathering speed, Arc has ruffled feathers in the Mayor’s Office by developing Alternatives For Study, a document that explores detailed alternativesto the current Candlestick-Shipyard plan.

None of ARC’s alternatives are opposed to the development, but they all suggest ways to improve it, including an option that would not involve building a bridge over the slough, or a stadium on the shipyard, and would prevent the taking of 23 acres of state park land which Lennar wants so it can build luxury waterfront condos in the middle of the current Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, a plan that would be unthinkable if it was proposed for Crissy Field.

But the city, and in particular Michael Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top economic advisor, view these alternatives, as signs of disloyalty, as they seek to rush Lennar’s massive 770-acre redevelopment plan over the finishing line, while arguing that any further amendments will make the plan more difficult for Lennar to shop around to investors, especially in light of the depressed economy.

The growing coziness between the city and the developer was put on full public display last week, when Sup. David Campos asked the project’s proponents to step forward at the Board’s July 13 hearing on the project’s EIR.

As Lennar Urban’s Kofi Bonner began to rise from his seat in the public seating area, Cohen, who had just finished answering Campos’ questions about the bridge and the project’s financing liabilities from the city’s bullpen in the Board’s chambers, raced over to the podium before Bonner had a chance to speak.

This uneasy closeness between city and developer, along with Arc’s extensive background in shipyard related matters, are why Madison believes the city’s residents are best served when Arc can express its opinions freely, even if that involves critiquing plans that the city seems to have grown increasingly defensive about, ever since it entered into a partnership with the Florida-based Lennar.

“Yes, it’s true that the city is paying for this contract with Arc, but it seems to me that this particular contractor’s responsibility should be primarily to the Citizen’s Advisory Committee, and not the city,” Madison said. “What if Arc reaches a conclusion that is odd with the developer, city agencies and other consultants? Would Arc be prohibited from making it public?”

Madison says the city has claimed that Arc would not be prohibited from such activities, and that the contract contains standard language. But he also adds that certain parties who are boosters for the city’s redevelopment plan object to what Arc and Bloom are doing in terms of raising valid science-based concerns.

“At the meeting, Al Norman said he hopes the Redevelopment Agency handcuffs Saul, not just by the hands but by the ankles,” Madison claimed.

And Bloom said that after his group made a video of him walking around wearing a “Can I buy your park?” billboard to illustrate what Lennar’s plan will do to the only state park in San Francisco, he was told that if Willie Brown was still mayor, Arc would have lost its contract, and all department heads who had been supportive of awarding it to Arc, would have been fired, too

Bloom notes that under Mayor Brown, he was awarded several contracts and helped author Prop. P, the measure that voters approved in 2000, which called upon the Navy to clean up the shipyard to the highest levels practical.

“Even Willie understood the need for balance,” Bloom said.
 
Bloom protested the city’s “duty of loyalty” requirement at the CAC’s July 12 meeting, but has apparently decided that the clause isn’t an insurmountable obstacle, because he has apparently since signed the contract. UPDATE: I just spoke to Bloom who told me that he has not yet signed the contract and is still working to get Redevelopment to see the problem with this requirement.

“At the CAC meeting, the committee endorsed the proposal to give us the contract,” Bloom explained. “But it’s up to the Redevelopment Commission to approve the contract, something they are set to consider at their September 7 meeting. We are making the argument that they need to think about the contract in broader terms.”

And Madison notes that it’s common sense that if you want a truly independent voice advising Redevelopment on the shipyard cleanup plan, then that voice should be allowed to be genuinely independent.

“The fact that the city is paying the bill for the contract shouldn’t require an organization to sign an extraordinary Duty of Loyalty, which conflicts with its true loyalty to the surrounding community,” Madison said.

The Guardian’s recent immediate disclosure request to Redevelopment should reveal the exact terms of Arc’s Duty of Loyalty requirement. And Matt Dorsey, spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office says such clauses are rare.

“We are unaware of any confidentiality requirements being made, except in very rare circumstances, such as contracts related to the airport where there may be terrorist concerns,” Dorsey said. Stay tuned.

Adachi and the real politics of pension reform

Sasha Cuttler
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71
Adachi and the real politics of pension reform

While downtown-oriented politicos and out-of-touch corporate columnists tout the political potential of targeting public employee unions with pay reductions and pension plan take-aways – and say the Public Defender Jeff Adachi may be mayoral material for doing so – they forget that electoral success requires coalitions, particularly in savvy San Francisco.

Unlike his cheerleaders, Adachi seems to understand this, downplaying the personal political upside when he talked to the Guardian and other media outlets. Sure, he might just be sandbagging, as his boosters hope he is, but there’s good reason to believe that this move could hurt Adachi’s chances of becoming mayor more than it helps it.

Much has been written and said about how Adachi’s move alienated labor unions and much of the progressive movement. “They urged me not to do it,” Adachi told the Guardian in the final days of his successful signature-gathering effort for a measure that would save the city about $167 million per year by taking that amount out of employees’ paychecks.

It’s not that pension reform isn’t needed. Indeed, San Francisco voters just approved a measure in June to increase the pension contributions for all new city employees, and politicians ranging from Sups. John Avalos and David Campos on the left to Sup. Sean Elsbernd and Mayor Gavin Newsom on the right all agree that more needs to be done, pledging to work with unions on the issue. And given the surly mood of the electorate, Adachi’s measure will probably pass.

But that still doesn’t make him mayoral material. Unlike Newsom, whose Care Not Cash initiative to take money from poor people helped propel him into Room 200, Adachi doesn’t have a strong constituency behind him, unlike the full strength of downtown and the Willie Brown machine that Newsom had behind him.

Downtown will never get behind a mayoral campaign for Adachi, a heavily tattooed defender of criminals who has a strong independent streak, even if they like the fact that he’s socking it to the public employee unions, an effort they helped fund. And progressives will now have a hard time ever trusting Adachi to work with them, seeing him now as someone hostile to political process and coalition-building, much like Newsom.

And even Newsom has come out against Adachi and his proposal, even though he loves the pension reform issue and shares some stylistic similarities with Adachi, including a certain political petulance. “Mayor Newsom has been clear that effective, long-term pension reform will come by doing it with our public employee unions, in partnership, not to and against them, in contrast to the Adachi measure,” Newsom Press Secretary Tony Winnicker wrote to the Guardian this week. It was a laughingly hypocritical statement from a mayor who has repeatedly demonized unions and refused to work cooperatively with them, but it’s a true statement nonetheless.

Finally, while socking it to public employees may be in vogue right now, during this moment of real economic uncertainty and political myopia, this sort of divisive politics might come to be seen more as opportunistic than courageous. And it’s hard to see how the approach that Adachi has taken will somehow add up to an effective political coalition capable of stealing the Mayor’s Office from wily politicians like Mark Leno, Leland Yee, or Aaron Peskin.

Consider the fact that even the Police Officers Association – the most conservative, downtown-oriented employee union in San Francisco – also opposes the Adachi measure and other efforts to blame the city’s fiscal problems on employees, rather than the large financial institutions that don’t even pay any kind of business tax to the city.

So I leave you with the words of POA President Gary Delagnes, writing in the May issue of the POA Journal, sounding a bit like a Guardian editorial writer on this politically sensitive issue: “Even more problematic is the rapidly developing notion that public employee pensions serve as the root of all evil, and are almost solely to blame for all of our economic woes.

“Opportunistic Wall Street insiders, politicians, and robber baron CEOs have manipulated and pilfered our country’s financial well-being. They have unconscionably – if not also illegally – lined their deep pockets with the hard-earned savings and pensions of the middle class working man and woman. Accountants from coast to coast have coached multi-millionaires on the art of avoiding paying their true tax obligations. Millions of people were allowed to qualify for mortgage loans by greedy bankers and mortgage brokers that led to trillions of dollars in bailout money. The result is a public incensed about fat cats taking advantage of them. Now, the backlash has set up public pensions and the unions that negotiated them as the scapegoats for his anger.

“Those of use who long ago made the decision to forgo large salaries in exchange for a life of public service, are now being portrayed as greedy and self-centered, taking unwarranted pensions and benefits after 30 years of service as firefighters, police officers, teachers, and nurses. These are shameful accusations, and utterly without merit.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, but unlike one of our editorials, this is the perspective of cops and other unions and progressive constituencies that will shape their actions in elections to come.

Bad faith

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Bad faith

steve@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his business allies are actively trying to sabotage the various revenue measures that have been put forth by the labor movement and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, employing deceptive rhetoric, sneaky tactics, and a refusal to bargain in good faith.

In fact, Newsom — the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor — is so averse to supporting anything that could be called a “tax” that he rejected a hard-won compromise measure created by powerful developers, affordable housing advocates, a pro-business think tank, the building trades, and his own directors of housing and economic development.

Just as that story was breaking in the New York Times (produced by Bay Citizen) on July 9, members of the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee discovered that Newsom’s proposed ballot measure to close loopholes in the city’s hotel tax that favored airline employees and online travel companies — a widely supported change, but one worth just $6 million per year — contains language that would nullify any increases in the hotel tax. Earlier in the week, labor unions turned in signatures on an initiative to increase the hotel tax by 2 percent, which would bring in more than $30 million per year.

“This poison pill is an intentionally deceptive, underhanded move,” Gabriel Haaland, an organizer with Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which sponsored the hotel tax, told us. “It’s so frustrating. It’s not even a good faith fight. He’s trying to create confusion and fool the voters. If our measure passes fair and square, it should be implemented.”

Meanwhile, Newsom and business groups have been attacking a reform measure by Board President David Chiu that would make the currently flat payroll tax more progressive, exempt more small businesses from paying it, and create a commercial rent tax to spread the tax burden more widely than the 10 percent of businesses who now pay tax to the city.

Critics complained that the measure would hurt local businesses — but that’s just not true. The city’s Office of Economic Analysis concluded that Chiu’s original proposal would have no effect on private sector jobs and would generate $34 million annually for the city, preserving some government jobs and spending.

Then Chiu amended the measure to spare even more small businesses. Now the OEA says that the measure would actually create private sector jobs — and still bring $28 million in to the city. Yet Newsom and the business community are still withholding their support.

This trio of Machiavellian moves comes just a week after Newsom pulled out of budget negotiations with board progressives concerning about $40 million in board add-backs to programs that Newsom proposed to cut after they wouldn’t agree to his precondition that they withdraw unrelated measures proposed for the November ballot, such as splitting appointments to the Rent, Recreation and Park, and Municipal Transportation Agency boards and requiring police officers to do foot patrols.

The series of events has led many progressives to say that conservative ideological blinders — a knee-jerk opposition to anything that saves government jobs and services or that Republicans might criticize — is the only logical explanation for the intransigent stance adopted downtown and by Newsom.

“It’s ideological. It’s not economic, and it’s not even political,” said Calvin Welch, the affordable housing activist who helped negotiate the transfer tax compromise with developer Oz Erickson, San Francisco Planning Urban Research Association director Gabriel Metcalf, Mayor’s Office of Housing Director Doug Shoemaker, and others.

That measure would have created a transfer tax on sales of properties over $875,000 and generated approximately $50 million annually for affordable housing (funds that were drastically reduced in Newsom’s proposed 2010-11 budget) while cutting in half the current requirements and fees on market-rate developers to create below-market-rate units. The plan would have stimulated both types of housing and created desperately needed construction work — an approach those involved called an elegant solution to several problems.

“To me, this was a win-win, solving two problems that are each a big deal,” Metcalf told us. “I don’t know what his reasons were for not supporting it. I was surprised.”

But Welch said, “It collapsed straight up because the mayor didn’t want to support a tax.” Although Newsom told the Times it was because there wasn’t broad enough consensus yet, “the mayor’s reason is whole-cloth bullshit,” Welch said, noting the role of the Mayor’s Office in brokering the deal. “The mayor walks away from it because everyone wasn’t in the room? Well, it’s your room, motherfucker. Show some leadership.”

Newsom Press Secretary Tony Winnicker refused to discuss these issues by phone, responding to our written inquires by noting that Newsom opposes taxes and thinks the best way to address budget deficits are privatizing city services and pension reform (although he opposes Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s initiative, the only pension reform measure on the fall ballot).

“The mayor is opposed to the Board of Supervisors’ proposals to increase taxes because they’re not needed to balance the budget and they will strangle our still young economic recovery,” Winnicker wrote, refusing to answer follow-up questions or support a statement about Chiu’s measure that the OEA concludes is not accurate.

Like many political observers of all stripes, those from downtown and progressive circles, Welch criticized Newsom for his lack of engagement with city business and its long-term fiscal outlook, contrasting him with former Mayor Willie Brown, who met regularly with former Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano even as the two ran a bitter campaign for mayor against one another in 1999. “They dealt with the city’s business like two adults who cared about the city,” he said.

Welch acknowledged that there was still work to be done building political support for the transfer tax measure. He and other progressives would have had to win over city employee unions who wouldn’t like the budget set-aside aspect, and Erickson and Metcalf would need to placate some of their downtown allies who oppose taxes on ideological grounds. But given how downtown groups are behaving right now, that might not have been an easy sell.

“There are members of the small business community that are averse to any taxes,” said Regina Dick-Endrizzi, director of the city’s Office of Small Business and staffer to the Small Business Commission, which was withholding a recommendation on the Chiu measure but planned to meet again to consider it July 12 (look for an update on the sfbg.com Politics blog). She said the small business community is having tough times and “they are just not sensitive to keeping city workers employed.”

Larger commercial interests are being even more forceful in opposing the revenue measures. While a parade of workers, social service providers, and progressive activists testifying at the July 9 Budget Committee hearing implored supervisors to place all the proposed revenue measures on the ballot, representatives from the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) and San Francisco Chamber of Commerce were the only two speakers urging supervisors to drop the measures and focus instead on creating private sector jobs.

“You’re trying to create a little revenue here and it’s not going to work,” said Ken Cleaveland, director of BOMA SF, arguing that big banks and financial services companies — entities exempt from the payroll tax that Chiu is hoping to target with the commercial rent tax — will buy their buildings to avoid paying the tax. “They aren’t going to create more jobs and they really aren’t going to create more revenue.”

Yet Chiu noted that it was the business community and fiscal conservatives who pushed to create the Office of Economic Analysis, whose work they have regularly used to attack progressive legislation. Now that the office has concluded that a piece of progressive legislation is good for the local economy, Chiu told Cleaveland and the Chamber spokesperson Rob Black at the hearing, “I ask you to respect the work this office has done.”

Black said the Chamber board will consider Chiu’s amended legislation, but said businesses are in no mood to help the city. “How many times have you gone to your neighborhood merchant and had them say, ‘Gee, my rent’s too cheap’?<0x2009>” he said during his testimony.

Yet Chiu said landlords of small tenants (those paying less than $65,000 in rent per year) are exempt from the rent tax and only 26 percent of SF businesses would pay any city business tax under his plan. “I hope the mayor will support this proposal and the business community will give it a good look,” Chiu said as the hearing ended.

At the beginning of the hearing, Chiu framed the dire situation facing San Francisco, citing Controller’s Office figures showing this year’s $500 million budget deficit (out of a $6 billion total budget) will be followed by a $700 million deficit next year and a $800 million gap the following budget cycle as a result of a deep structural budget imbalance.

“We have budget deficits as far as the eye can see,” Chiu said at the hearing. “We have to consider measures that will provide more stable sources of revenue.”

He also noted that city employee unions have agreed to give back about $250 million in salary and had their ranks reduced by about 2,000 workers in the last two years. So he and the other progressive supervisors say it’s time for the rest of San Francisco to help address the problem.

“We, as a city, should not be trying to balance this budget simply through cutting,” Sup. David Campos said.

Sup. John Avalos, the committee chair, amended his transfer tax measure in the wake of Newsom’s rejection of the deal by making it a simple 2 percent tax on properties that sell for more than $5 million, and 2.5 percent tax on properties over $10 million. He estimates it will bring in about $25 million per year from the city’s wealthiest corporations and landlords.

“That’s who we’re socking it to,” Avalos told us, saying he was disappointed the compromise fell through. “The amendment is going to be more progressive than what was originally planned.”

Even Sup. Sean Elsbernd, a strong fiscal conservative who announced early in the hearing, “You want to do that [balance future budgets] by adding taxes, but I want to do it through ongoing service cuts,” later told the Guardian that he was intrigued by the amendments Avalos and Chiu made to their measures and has not yet taken a position on them.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is also sponsoring a measure to increase the city’s tax on parking lot operators from 25 percent to 35 percent, the first change to that tax in 30 years, and will include valet parking for the first time. The measure would bring in up to $24 million per year, and OEA analysis shows it would decrease the number of cars trips by 1.3 percent, another benefit.

SFMTA supports the measure, with board member Cameron Beach testifying that the money will be used to subsidize Muni and “it links the use of private automobiles and is consistent with the city’s transit-first policy.” Mirkarimi, who chairs the Transportation Authority, also has proposed a $10 local vehicle license fee surcharge that would bring in another $5 million per year for Muni.

All the revenue measures require six votes by the full Board of Supervisors, which is scheduled to consider them July 20, after which they would need a simple majority approval by voters in November to take effect.

The mayor has the authority to directly place measures on the ballot, so the committee hearing on his hotel tax loophole measure and a $39 million general obligation bond that he’s proposing to create a revolving loan fund for private sector seismic improvements were mere formalities, so supervisors criticized aspects of each but were unable to make changes.

Avalos even grudgingly acknowledged the hotel tax poison pill was an effective way to kill that revenue source, saying at the hearing, “This is very smart. I don’t agree with it, but it’s very smart.”

Haaland was less charitable, criticizing a provision designed to confuse voters. “This kind of move means both measures won’t pass because now we have to oppose [Newsom’s measure],” he said, criticizing the mayor for running away from the hard decisions facing the city. “He won’t be around next year, when we have an even bigger structural budget deficit, to clean up this mess. Absent new revenue sources, this city starts to fall apart.”

Transit troubles

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Transit troubles

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Peggy da Silva is an avid cyclist, public transit advocate, and member of the San Francisco Transit Riders Union — a new organization made up of several hundred San Franciscans who want to see improvements to Muni.

Yet even she admits that when it comes to getting to work, it takes just 15 minutes by car or an hour if she opts to go by bus. “I am committed to transit and cycling” for environmental reasons, she said, but “it gets really frustrating” to wait for the bus or light rail cars to arrive.

Da Silva could be considered lucky in that she can opt to drive if she feels it’s necessary, while many lower-income San Franciscans cannot afford a car and have no choice but to rely on Muni to get to work, buy groceries, or make doctor appointments. It’s even worse late at night when the buses run less frequently and the streets are dark and empty.

Speaking at a June 29 transit rally, the Rev. Norman Fong of the Chinatown Community Development Center joked that Chinatown is one of the city’s greenest neighborhoods — but “not by choice.” Most Chinatown residents just can’t afford to own a car, underscoring the point that Muni service cuts affect lower-income communities more significantly than those with more transportation options.

The perception that Muni is broken isn’t unique to transit advocates. Around City Hall, a number of proposals have been put forth to fix the ailing system, which has been mired in delays and overcrowding as fares have gone up and service was slashed. But determining what the root problems are, how they should be addressed, and what the best path forward may be has proved arduous.

Rather than a simple calculation or a study in efficiency, the debate surrounding Muni is spinning into an emotionally charged affair. For those aiming to protect low-income riders from service cuts or fare increases, it’s a discussion about social justice, calling into question why the city is asking more of bus riders than motorists in a city with a “transit-first” mandate in its charter.

The strong opposition to the cuts by supervisors and the public has led to a rollback. On June 30, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) announced that on Sept. 4, it would be able to restore half of the 10 percent systemwide service reduction that went into effect in May.

“Due to stronger than expected revenue streams, operational efficiencies, and new grant opportunities, staff is recommending the restoration of service on some routes and lines this fall,” according to an SFMTA press release. Buses that run all night would come more often, and the partial service restoration would help ease over-crowding.

While this was welcome news for anyone who takes transit, the expected improvement still leaves untouched many key issues plaguing the city’s public transit system. Two separate initiatives most likely destined for the November ballot seek to deal with systemic problems — but both have met with resistance.

On July 1, Sup. Sean Elsbernd announced that he had submitted some 75,000 signatures for a proposed charter amendment for the November ballot to change the way transit operator salaries are determined. Since they only needed 46,000 signatures, “presumably, we’ll qualify,” Elsbernd told us.

“It presses the reset button on all the [memorandums of understanding] and then puts the riders at the table,” he explained. “It also eliminates the side letters that allow the six leaders of the union to get full-time salaries and benefits without needing to drive.”

Elsbernd’s proposal would require operator wages and benefits to be set through collective bargaining, instead of the current guarantee that their wages be at least as high as the average wage rate for transit operators in the two highest paying comparable transit systems.

Yet his proposal is opposed by the city’s transit operators union, TWU Local 250-A, whose members feel they’ve been unfairly blamed for the MTA’s fiscal problems. Speaking at the June 29 rally, Ron Heintzman, the new international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, summed up the attitude of drivers who feel they are being asked to give up hard-fought gains in the face of an economic downturn.

“I’ve been told that here in San Francisco, the mayor for some reason clearly has his head up his ass,” Heintzman said. “It’s time to tell him to stop trying to balance the damn budget on the backs of the workers.”

Speakers at the rally voiced support for federal legislation that would bolster municipal transit budgets nationwide with a $2 billion emergency infusion. A second federal bill would allow local governments greater flexibility with federal transit funding that currently can only be spent on capital projects, not day-to-day operations.

“We’re asking them not to make us buy a bus when we can’t hire a bus operator to drive it,” explained Harry Lombardo, international president of the Transit Workers Union. “There’s no point in spending hundreds of thousands on a bus and letting it sit in mothballs. And believe me, it’s happening all over the country.”

Sup. David Campos, a cosponsor of a competing ballot measure that aims for more comprehensive Muni reform, joined the rally and criticized the notion that drivers should be blamed a dysfunctional, underfunded transit system.

“Those of you who live in San Francisco know that right now there is a climate at City Hall that is pointing the finger at drivers, blaming drivers and blaming the workers for the problems that this system has,” Campos said at the rally. “Muni is broken. But Muni is not broken because of labor. And we have to say no to that push to somehow create a division between riders and drivers…. We can’t ignore the fact that we have a system that is getting money that is not being used well.”

Campos has joined with Sups. Ross Mirkarimi, Eric Mar, and Board President David Chiu to propose a reform package that would remove the pay guarantee for Muni driver, but also create split appointments to the MTA Board of Directors, allocate a share of property tax revenue to the city’s Transportation Fund, and establish an Office of the MTA Inspector General to help reduce waste and ramp up efficiency. The proposal would be subject to voter approval in November.

The proposal to give the supervisors some appointments to an MTA board that is now solely accountable to the Mayor’s Office became an issue at the eleventh hour of budget negotiations between the supervisors and Newsom on June 30. The mayor strongly opposed that and two similar charter amendments that would establish split appointments for the Recreation and Park Commission and the San Francisco Rent Board, as well as a ballot measure that would require the police department to engage in foot beat patrols.

Many saw his stance as a quid pro quo that inappropriately tied mayoral support for the budget — which included funding restorations to community programs that progressive board members wanted to preserve — to these unrelated ballot proposals.

Dave Snyder, who directs the SF Transit Riders Union, viewed the move as an affront on Muni riders. “This particular mayor has managed to screw up Muni service through his complete control over the agency,” Snyder said. “And whatever it takes, Muni riders want to see that fixed.”

While he said he thought a split appointment for the MTA Board was important, “the most important thing is more money. That’s the key issue,” he added, noting the reform package would create more funding for Muni.

Members of the Budget and Finance Committee resisted the mayor’s demand and forwarded a budget to the full board that included their high-priority restorations. The proposed ballot measures will be considered by the board this month.

“If you ask me, I would say we should have commission reform across the board,” Mirkarimi told the Guardian. “The idea of having [equally balanced appointments] is a smart way for us to share the responsibility and the consequences.”

MTA’s fiscal problems aren’t unique to San Francisco. On July 1, Caltrain announced a menu of undesirable options to deal with big financial troubles facing the commuter railroad. Elimination of weekend service and certain weekday train stops, or a 25-cent increase to base fares or zone fares, will be the subject of public hearings this summer.

Noting that all the different sources that fund Caltrain have been slashed, spokesperson Christine Dunn told us, “It’s frustrating to not be able to provide the service you want to provide.”

Danger zone

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Danger zone

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Rita Connolly, a registered nurse who has worked with inmates in San Francisco jails since 1985, says she’ll never forget the time she had to act fast to save a prisoner’s life.

The man had just arrived from a different jail and was waiting to go through intake. He was slumped over and looking ill, too weak to voice a complaint. Several worried inmates beckoned Connolly over, and once she examined him, she realized he was in the midst of a heart attack. He was rushed to the emergency room. He lived — but sustained irreversible heart damage.

“He could have been someone who didn’t live,” Connolly told the Guardian, but he also could have had a better outcome. The inmate had alerted someone that he was having chest pains earlier in the day, she later learned, as he was boarding a bus from an Alameda County Jail. A medical services worker examined him just before the bus left, but allowed him to proceed. By the time he arrived in San Francisco, the warning signals had progressed to a full-blown heart attack.

The story highlights an extreme example of a trend Connolly said she observes regularly — inmates from counties that use privatized jail health services aren’t receiving the same standard of care that San Francisco provides. Sometimes, there are obvious signs that the care is inadequate, placing inmates’ health at risk.

Alameda’s jail health services contractor, Tennessee-based Prison Health Services Inc. (PHS), has made headlines before for a track record marred by inmate deaths and lawsuits alleging negligence. PHS has expressed interest in contracting with San Francisco if the city opened the door to privatization, which Mayor Gavin Newsom has once again proposed in his latest budget.

That budget also calls for cuts to community-based health and human service programs that threaten to erode the safety net for those battling mental health issues, drug addiction, and chronic health problems, all proposals now being weighed by the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee.

But it is the debate over whether to make a $11 million cut to jail health services that raises the most thorny and telling questions about what sacrifices are considered acceptable — and what populations can be the most easily targeted — in the quest to balance a budget without the tax increases that Newsom opposes.

 

OPEN WOUNDS

In San Francisco, the city’s Department of Public Health contracts with the Sheriff’s Department to address inmates’ medical needs. Privatized jail health care would be cheaper, though by how much is a moving target. But nobody is arguing that the care would be better.

Newsom’s budget proposes switching to a private firm as early as January 2011 to help solve a daunting budget deficit. The proposal originated with the Mayor’s Office, and Sheriff Mike Hennessey — whose department would realize the potential savings — went along by including the item in his departmental budget.

In years past, the Board of Supervisors has repeatedly resisted the proposal and is likely to do so again — but rejecting it would mean finding up to $11 million in savings elsewhere.

“The fear is that when you bring privatization into the picture, there is a financial pressure to cut corners. And even though that may end up saving some money … the price that comes with it is too high,” Sup. David Campos said at a recent budget hearing. Referencing stories about inmates who died needlessly in jail under the care of for-profit firms, Campos said he isn’t willing to risk a similar tragedy occurring in San Francisco.

The proposal has been floated repeatedly since as far back as the early 1990s, according to healthcare workers whose jobs have been jeopardized by privatization before. Newsom proposed the cut last year, and the year before.

“In absence of the budget problem, [Hennessey] probably would not have proposed this, nor would we have proposed this,” Newsom’s budget director, Greg Wagner, told members of the Budget and Finance Committee at a May 26 hearing, adding that the mayor shares concerns about prisoner safety. Newsom’s office did not return multiple calls requesting comment for this story.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to a hear an appeal by the state of California to the federal court ruling that substandard medical care in California prisons constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and necessitates the early release of about 40,000 prisoners. At the May 26 hearing, healthcare workers familiar with the interiors of county jails and state penitentiaries came forward with horror stories.

“Every week I receive at least one inmate who has an open gunshot wound. They have not seen medical care in the county jails,” Dr. Elena Tootell, chief medical officer at San Quentin state prison, told committee members. “It’s quite surprising to me that they send inmates with gunshot wounds to prison. They just walk off the bus. They often have paper towels stuck to their bodies, seeping the blood. And then we are obligated to take care of them. This does not happen from San Francisco County, I’m going to tell you that right now.”

Tootell said she’d observed a significant difference between those counties using private firms and those using public health care. “They will have a fracture — they’ve never been splinted, they’ve never seen a doctor. They’re on anticoagulation [medication], but haven’t had their blood checked in weeks and have bruises all over their body.”

Connolly echoed similar concerns. For example, she told the Guardian, she’s found herself asking questions like, “You were on AIDS medication before you got arrested and now you’re not?”

Susanne Paradis, a healthcare research contractor with SEIU Local 1021, rejects the premise that the same services could be provided at a lower price. Under a private model, she says, the priority is to keep costs low — and that means doing less.

A key issue, Paradis said, is that private firms tend to rely more heavily on licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) — lower-paid medical staffers who aren’t trained to assess patient’s medical needs and cannot administer the same care that registered nurses (RNs) can. Using PHS data, Paradis found that in Alameda, there is one RN for every 92 inmates, compared with one RN per 32 inmates in San Francisco.

“An RN has the ability to assess, observe, and determine if there’s emergency care needed,” Paradis explained. “An LVN does not have the ability to do that.”

John Poh, a nurse practitioner stationed at a jail in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice, explained the difference this way: “The more RNs you have working for you, the fewer deaths you have.”

PHS, an obvious point of comparison with San Francisco since it serves Alameda, declined to answer questions about its services. Instead, media spokesperson Pat Nolan e-mailed a brief statement. “We are excited to hear that San Francisco is considering the contracting of correctional health care,” he wrote. “Should the city choose to go through an RFP process, we would look forward to participating. We think it is the right thing to do for the city and its taxpayers.”

 

LINES OF DEFENSE

While those incarcerated in San Francisco jails can be thought of by some as criminals, nuisances, or miscreants, those requiring medical attention are patients in the eyes of the jail healthcare workers.

Inmates routinely enter the system with diabetes, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, heart problems, liver disease, and substance abuse issues, Connolly said. On occasion, a woman will arrive in jail only to learn that she is pregnant. Mental health problems are common, and some battle psychiatric issues in combination with physical ailments.

“Overall, our patient population has had little access to health care. For many people, we’re the only show in town,” Connolly noted.

Poh said some problems could spiral out of control if jail health staff didn’t nip them in the bud. If an inmate is exhibiting signs of tuberculosis, for instance, they’ll immediately get a mask and be sent to the hospital for screening. Sexually transmitted diseases are also a priority for treatment. “You don’t want that person going out infected,” Poh explained.

The city takes a proactive stance when it comes to treating inmates, Poh said, because at the end of the day, county jail is a revolving door. “Everybody leaves county jail. They’re either going home, to a program, or to prison.” If people are released back into the community with contagious, untreated health problems, the risk of exposure can spread beyond jailhouse walls.

San Francisco’s current system is considered a first line of defense, in which inmates are “seen as members of the community who happen to be in jail right now,” Paradis said.

Privatizing jail-health services would constitute a blow to a wider public health safety net in San Francisco that is already weathering painful cuts. At a June 15 Beilenson Hearing, a state-mandated opportunity for community members to explain the impacts of proposed health and human services cuts to the Board of Supervisors, people came out in droves to protest cuts to programs serving vulnerable residents.

Kristie Miller, executive assistant of the Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE) Project, told the Guardian that her organization serves 350 clients a year who are victims of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. The organization stands to lose its mental health funding, so Miller had come out to speak against the cut. “It provides trauma-focused psychotherapy for survivors who’ve experienced a lot of abuse, violence, and exploitation,” she said.

Jeff Schindler, chief development officer for the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, said he was there protesting a 79 percent funding cut to his organization’s 108-bed residential program on Treasure Island. “We won’t have a place for people to actually go into residential treatment for their mental health and substance abuse issues,” he said. “These are individuals who are going to get their needs met somehow, somewhere, and generally that’s going to be at San Francisco General Hospital.”

It’s in this context that the proposal to contract out for jail health services is being proposed. “It’s easy to dismiss prisoners as probably the least valued sector of our society,” Deirdre Wilson, of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, noted at a May 26 hearing. “But the right to health care is a human right.”

 

FOR THE RECORD

According to an estimate prepared by the Sheriff’s Department, the city could save anywhere from $11 million to $14 million by contracting out for jail health services, and Newsom’s budget assumes a savings of “over $11 million per year.”

However, the Controller’s Office continues to revise that figure as the debate shifts and concerns are raised about the skill mix that a private firm would use. “We don’t really know what it would cost to contract out, unless there was an RFP and a response to the proposal and some discussion about what the staffing requirements would be,” Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda explained at a June 17 hearing. She added that the potential range of savings spanned from $3 million to $11 million annually, depending on decisions that would have to be made about acceptable staffing levels.

San Francisco’s inmate population has shrunk in the wake of the crime lab scandal, and a city-owned facility in San Bruno has been temporarily shuttered. Sheriff Hennessey told the Guardian he believed medical care in the jails could be provided either by city workers or a private firm, but added that he’s “quite happy” with the status quo. Noting that 25 of the 58 counties in California already use private firms, he added, “It’s not an unusual or unique thing.” Hennessey also said the decision was linked to a broader philosophical and political question, and that he doubted there was support on the board for the proposal to go forward.

Mitch Katz, director of the city’s Department of Public Health, did not directly say whether he supported Newsom’s proposal. “I think our Jail Health Services does a great job, but I do understand that the city is facing an extremely difficult budget year and that ultimately the budget must be balanced,” Katz wrote in an e-mail.

Gabriel Haaland, who represents SEIU Local 1021 union members whose jobs would be affected by the proposal, voiced strong opposition at a June 17 Budget and Finance Committee meeting. “‘We don’t care about these people because they’re poor and they’re in jail.’ That’s the message” in the decision to contract out, Haaland charged. The item was continued and will be revisited as budget deliberations unfold.

SF mayoral analysis in the NY Times misses the mark

Sasha Cuttler
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4
SF mayoral analysis in the NY Times misses the mark

I have praised Bay Citizen’s early work and I think Gerry Shih is a smart young reporter, but I think their analysis of who will be San Francisco’s next mayor – which ran in today’s New York Times – was off the mark and shows they don’t yet have a good grasp of this city’s political dynamics. And a big reason for that is – just like the Examiner and the Chronicle – they relied too much on downtown players who consistently misread those dynamics, at least in recent years.

The one thing it got right was naming Aaron Peskin as one of the frontrunners to succeed Newsom if he is elected lieutenant governor. Peskin is really the only politico in town he has been putting big plays together these days, whether it be keeping Democratic Party leadership in progressive hands or defeating the 555 Washington project. So he might be the only one who can count to six with this current progressive-dominated board.

But nobody really thinks David Chiu is a frontrunner, despite Shih’s claim. Chiu has been a pretty good board president, but remember that he was elected as a compromise candidate (with lots of help from Peskin) after the then-frontrunners, Ross Mirkarimi and Bevan Dufty, couldn’t put the votes together. And since then, he has disappointed his progressive colleagues on several votes, making them unlikely to support him for mayor.

Besides, it will be difficult for any supervisor to get six votes when they can’t vote for themselves, which also makes me scoff at Shih’s contention that John Avalos and David Campos are running for mayor (two supervisors who are close to the Guardian and have never indicated to us that they’re running, even when we’ve asked, although they might each eventually become mayors). Ross Mirkarimi is more likely and wants the job, but would have a tough time getting a board majority to give is to him.

Shih told the Guardian that he’s been getting lots of critical feedback on his article today, and while he said Chiu and Peskin are names that kept coming up in his interviews, Shih admits that the attractive narrative of the protege challenging his mentor perhaps skewed the final analysis: “The relationship between those two guys ended up getting played up in the story.”

The article makes several other mistakes as well (and not just the obvious factual errors, like getting the mayoral election year wrong, as well as the year Feinstein left office, both of which have since been corrected online). It left City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s name out entirely, despite the fact that he’s already declared his intention to run for mayor and could certainly be a compromise candidate. Public Defender Jeff Adachi also wasn’t mentioned, even though he has a better chance than half the people on Shiu’s list, such as Willie Brown or Ed Harrington, who downtown may like but progressives really don’t.

Two strong possibilities for mayor – Mark Leno and Leland Yee – were given only passing mention in the article even though they are far more likely choices than Chiu. Both Leno and Yee have aggressively worked both the centrist and progressive sides of the aisle and are in great positions to run for mayor or be appointed by the board.

The hopes for a Chinese-American mayor that Shih placed with Chiu are probably better placed with Yee, who has worked with Rose Pak and other business interests while also having a history of endorsing progressive candidates, which he’ll be able to call in when he runs (and yes, unlike other candidates on Shih’s list, Yee has actually declared his intention to run).

Similarly, Leno has good relations with progressives on the board, which will be tested a bit this fall as he campaigns for moderate supervisorial candidate Scott Wiener and navigates the wedge issue minefield, but it’s easy to see how with the right outcomes this fall and key deals cut, Leno could emerge as the frontrunner.

The dynamics of this thing are incredibly complicated, but if I was in Shih’s shoes and was asked to name the two frontrunners, I’d probably say Peskin and Leno, with Yee a close third and Herrera as an outside possibility. Or it could be none of them if nobody can count to six and the option of a caretaker mayor who agrees not to run later (such as an Art Agnos) seems like the only way forward.

As politicos Alex Clemens and David Latterman said in their post-election analysis on June 10, this is very complicated and will be the subject of many deals by experienced insiders (of which Chiu really isn’t one just yet). “Everyone is gaming this thing out and trying to figure out what happens,” Clemens said.

But there is one scenario in which I could see Chiu figuring prominently, and that’s in what happens if both Newsom and Kamala Harris win their respective state races. Chiu has expressed a desire to be District Attorney, a chance that he might get if he can help play kingmaker with whoever becomes our next mayor.

So perhaps that qualifies him as a frontrunner of sorts after all.

Newsom’s plan for DCCC domination

Zelda Bronstein
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Newsom’s plan for DCCC domination

Gavin’s not quite ready to take over the world, or even California, but he’s not leaving office without trying to mess up the progressive majority on the Democratic County Central Committee. The plan he hatched June 15: Ban elected city officials from sitting on the DCCC. The idea: Get rid of Supervisors David Campos, David Chiu, John Avalos and Eric Mar. The overall plan: With the progressive supervisors — who have high name recognition and thus get easily elected — gone, the Newsom allies can take back control of the local Democratic Party.


It’s a pretty blatant move — far beyond Aaron Peskin’s so-called coup. And I must say, it’s a bit hypocritical.


See, the DCCC isn’t just made up of 24 elected members. Every San Francisco Democrat who holds state or national office — or who is a candidate for state or national office — is also an automatic member. So Senator Diane Feinstein is a DCCC member; so is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and Sen. Mark Leno. And guess who gets a seat this fall? Lt. governor candidate Gavin Newsom. People like Feinstein and Pelosi never show up; at best, they send a proxy. They rarely pay much attention to the local party, don’t help out much with party fundraising, don’t even come to the party’s annual dinner (Newsom didn’t show this year, even though he’s the mayor of a Democratic city.)


There have been members of the Board of Supervisors on the DCCC for years. The late Sue Bierman was always a member, and actually cared about and paid attention to the local Democratic Party. Leslie Katz was a member as a supe, and still is. It’s never been that big a deal to anyone — until the progressives starting winning seats. Then suddenly it’s a horrible conflict.


The real conflict has nothing to do with city officials sitting on the committee; it’s the fundraising issue. The city’s campaign finance rules don’t apply to DCCC races, so candidates for DCCC who are also running for supervisor — Scott Wiener, Rafael Mandelman, Debra Walker — can raise unlimited money for their DCCC races and use that additional name recognition for the fall elections. The thing is, I think most of the candidates who benefit from this loophole agree that it needs to be fixed; Mandelman certainly does, and he’s told me that several times. I couldn’t reach Walker or Wiener this morning, but I’d be very surprised if both of them wouldn’t endorse some kind of contribution limits for DCCC races.


I asked Newsom’s press spokesperson, Tony Winnicker, if the mayor would support fundraising limits. Apparently he doesn’t (or at least, he doesn’t want to push the issue):


“For this November’s local ballot, which the Mayor can place an initiative on, we propose eliminating the potential conflict that exists between City officeholders also holding office as elected County Party Committee members.”


How about getting rid of all the elected officials, and creating a real grassroots county committee? No, that won’t fly with Newsom either. Winnicker:


It’s appropriate for state and federal Democratic elected officials from San Francisco to serve on the Democratic County Central Committee.


The city/local offices — Mayor, Board, Treasurer, Assessor, City Atty, Sheriff, District Atty, Public Defender — are nonpartisan offices who have direct oversight over City business. That’s the difference and conflict. This is a local initiative, so our focus and concern is local good government and local conflicts or appearance of conflicts.


From everything I can figure, Newsom doesn’t want campaign-finance reform and doesn’t want to put the party in the hands of local activists; he just wants to get rid of the supervisors who take positions he doesn’t like. That seems like a pretty bad way to make public policy. 


UPDATE: Just talked to Scott Wiener, who told me he agrees that the whole issue of DCCC campaign spending ought to be on the table. And he said he is not at this point prepared to support Newsom’s initiative. “I have concerns with the number of elected officials on the DCCC,” he said, “but there are times when it’s entirely appropriate to have people who have a demonstrated commitment to the DCCC and then get elected supervisor to stay on it.”

Sit /lie goes down at the Board of Supervisors

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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19

At the June 8 Board of Supervisors meeting, a controversial ordinance that sought to ban sitting or lying down on the sidewalk was voted down 8 to 3, with Sups. Michela Alito-Pier, Sean Elsbernd, and Carmen Chu voting in favor.

Proponents of the law, which was backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief George Gascon, framed it as a measure to promote “civil sidewalks.” Yet opponents believed that the law would be used as a tool against the homeless.

Alioto-Pier said the law was needed to give police a new tool for dealing with people who congregate on the streets and intimidate passersby, saying residents and businesses were bothered by “the presence of dogs or shouting.”

Yet a number of supervisors spoke forcefully against the ordinance, saying it was not an appropriate solution to the problems that Alioto-Pier and other sit/lie backers had raised concerns about.

“I don’t believe that this is the San Francisco way to to approach the challenges that we face,” said District 8 Sup. Bevan Dufty, who goes along with Newsom’s proposals more often than his progressive colleagues and is typically a swing vote on the board. Dufty referenced a former, similar San Francisco law that was ultimately repealed. “That was a law that didn’t want to see gay men congregating at 1 a.m. outside a bar,” he said. He called for a more substantive approach, saying, “We can do better.”

Sup. David Campos also spoke against it. “It doesn’t actually address the issue of civility,” he said. “The case for this legislation simply has not been made.” He noted that day laborers who wait for hours on the sidewalk in hopes of finding work could be targeted when they sit down to take a rest.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi said he thought greater enforcement of existing laws and community policing would be more effective than the proposed ordinance. Later in the meeting, he proposed a measure to be placed on the November ballot that would require police to adopt a foot beat patrol program and a community policing policy.

The board also voted unanimously in favor of a proposal by Board President David Chiu to create a neighborhood community justice task force “to make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors regarding the creation of restorative and community justice programs.” Chiu pitched the idea as a more meaningful response to hostile behavior on the streets in neighborhoods such as the Haight, where calls for a sit /lie ordinance originated.

“We’re very pleased about what happened today,” said Andy Blue, an activist who organized a citywide campaign opposing sit / lie. But he said it wasn’t over yet, since Newsom has already moved to place the proposal on the ballot. “We know we’re going to face an uphill battle,” he said, “because we’re going to be in a campaign with some very well-funded opponents.” But Blue said he felt confident that once the information got out to San Franciscans, “they’ll vote against it in November.”

 

 

 

Nevius family values

Zelda Bronstein
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6
Nevius family values

The Chron’s C.W. Nevius has made a big deal of moving back into town from the suburbs — and the offhand comment by Steve Jones in an email to Nevius has almost become a sticky nickname. In fact, his own newspaper’s website, sfgate, headlined his column “Suburban twit moves to city.”

But Chuck’s got some work to do before he starts to understand San Francisco values.

Take his latest column, about the Democratic County Central Commitee. Now, any Chron columnist (or anyone else) has the right to endorse and advocate for any candidates he or she wants. And Nevius is absolutely right to point out that the DCCC race is crucial, that control of the committee will have a significant impact on the fall supervisorial elections.

Here’s what made me want to scream:

“So, if you’re happy with the far-left agenda, check out the Bay Guardian. (Progs with name recognition like Peskin, David Campos, David Chiu, and John Avalos are probably shoo-ins. Daly is not running.) For those who’d like to see a swing to families, kids, and civility on the streets, here are some suggestions.”

 A swing to families and kids? You must be kidding.

The single greatest issue facing families and children in this city is the cost of housing. That’s why Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, which almost everyone agrees is the premier family-advocate group in the city, has made affordable housing a huge priority.

Some of what a recent Coleman report says:

 “Two-thirds of all children in the city do not have a secure future in San Francisco

More families in San Francisco are low-income (43%) than middle-income (23%), and face economic hardship even when working full-time jobs.

Extreme racial disparities in family income and access to opportunity mean that the majority of children who do not have a secure future in SF are children  of color, and the majority of children who do have a secure future are white.”

Coleman’s recommendations: Build and preserve affordable housing for families — not market-rate condos, not condo conversions, but below-market-rate housing.

From the report:

“1. Prioritize the needs of 45,000 children growing up in 20,000 extremely-poor and low-wage working families.  trategies must combine investing in a stronger social safety-net for families now, and investing in anti-poverty strategies that will prepare today’s poor children to become economically secure San Franciscans of the future. The city’s housing and educational policies must focus on the children and families with the greatest need, and not get sidetracked by the demands of middle-income or upper-income families whose needs are legitimate but not as urgent.

 2. Invest in affordable homeownership programs for middle-income families, but focus the vast majority of limited housing resources on building permanently affordable family rental housing.”

That is exactly what the progressives — the “far left” folks that Nevius decries — have been talking about all these years. The candidates Nevius endorses are of the political camp that advocates more market-rate housing, more condo conversions, fewer tenant protections — more of the kind of things that drive lower-income families out of the city.

The next priority is education. Families that don’t have a lot of money have no option other than the public schools, and a lot of us who might be able to afford private schools still think public education is the way to go. What the schools need in San Francisco is pretty simple: They need more money. The “moderates: Nevius endorses — who actually count as fiscal conservatives, by San Francisco standards — are generally against raising taxes, as is our mayor. The San Francisco city government doesn’t oversee the schools, and most of the education money in California comes from the state — but San Francisco’s Rainy Day Fund, and the willingness of the supervisors to put money into the local schools, has saved hundreds of teacher layoffs and helped the quality of the local public schools.

 Where did that idea come from? Progressive leader Tom Ammiano.

I’m a San Francisco parent with two kids, and I have a lot of friends who are San Francisco families, and none of us see the Nevius agenda as family-friendly. That’s why we’re supporting the progressives.

Insecure Sanctuary

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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9
Insecure Sanctuary

Sarah@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors is urging San Francisco officials not to participate in Secure Communities, a controversial federal-local fingerprinting collaboration set to be activated June 1. But opting out of a program that threatens to make debates over “sanctuary city” protections of immigrants irrelevant may not be easy.

Speaking at a May 18 rally, Sup. Eric Mar warned that the use of Secure Communities by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could cause the deportation of innocent residents and destroy local community policing efforts. “The police-ICE entanglement will hurt our communities and many people accused of minor crimes will see families torn apart,” Mar warned, as he urged the city to opt out of the Department of Homeland Security initiative, which identifies immigrants who are sitting in U.S. jails and may be deportable under federal immigration laws.

Cosponsored by Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, Chris Daly, Bevan Dufty, Sophie Maxwell, and Ross Mirkarimi, Mar’s resolution was scheduled for a May 25 vote that would make San Francisco the first jurisdiction in the nation to pursue withdrawing from the system.

“The shadow of Arizona is starting to cover other cities,” Mar said, referring to Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation, SB 1070. “We can’t let Arizona come to San Francisco.”

ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice said the program’s focus is on criminal aliens. “These are folks who have been charged with or found guilty of felonies and have ignored deportation orders,” Kice said.

But ICE statistics show that the program mostly deports those with minor offenses. Between October 2008 and March 2010, Secure Communities submitted 1.9 million sets of digital fingerprints and deported 33,326 people nationwide. Fifteen percent of those deported (4,903 people) had criminal histories that included major drug and violent offenses such as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and kidnapping (Level 1 crimes). The other 85 percent (28,423 people) were deported for less serious drug and property offenses (Level 2 crimes) and other minor charges (Level 3 crimes).

Kice admits that Level 2 and 3 offenders constitute the largest percentage of SC cases. “That’s because representatively more people are arrested for Level 2 and 3 offenses than Level 1,” she said. “That’s probably fortunate, because Level 1 crimes are very serious.”

But American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Joanne Lin warns that Secure Communities allows the federal government to circumvent local sanctuary policies and fast-track deportation. “It allows the Department of Homeland Security to identifty everyone who is booked, whether they are here lawfully or their charges are subsequently dropped or dismissed,” Lin said.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said he has no reservations about the program, which the Bush administration first announced in March 2008. “Sanctuary city policies were never meant to protect criminal behavior,” mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker said May 7, when San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey blew the whistle on the federal-local fingerprinting collaboration. “At the end of the day, federal officials should enforce immigration laws. We report — we don’t deport.”

The program links local law enforcement databases to the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric system through interoperability agreements with states, allowing instantaneous information-sharing among local jails, ICE, and the FBI.

ICE implemented the program in North Carolina and Texas in October 2008. Under President Obama, the program has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states. ICE plans to have a Secure Communities presence in each state by 2011, and in each of the 3,100 state and local jails nationwide by 2013, according to its Web site.

Under the program, participating jails submit fingerprints of arrestees to immigration and criminal databases, thereby giving ICE a technological presence in prisons and jails. An overview conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan National Immigration Law Center observes that “the critical element” of the program is that, during booking in jail, arrestees’ fingerprints will be checked against DHS databases, rather than just against FBI criminal databases.

“ICE asserts that the purpose of the Secure Communities program is to target violent criminals for removal,” NILC observed. “Advocates had criticized the program’s operation because it took place at the beginning of the criminal process and therefore indiscriminately targeted persons arrested for crimes of all magnitudes, rather than persons convicted of serious crimes.”

“The underlying purpose may be to lay the groundwork for real immigration reform,” NILC concludes. “But the mechanisms put in place will be difficult to dismantle, and the civil rights violations they produce cannot be undone.”

Scott Lorigan of the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information signed an interoperability agreement with ICE’s John P. Torres in April 2009. Since then, the system has been activated in Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura counties. Now it’s set to get switched on in San Francisco.

Campos thanks Hennessey for blowing the whistle, and lays the blame at Obama’s door. “None of us would have known this was happening,” Campos said. “This is the time for all San Francisco’s elected officials to stand up in support of the principles that led us to establish a sanctuary city. It’s not just the board, but also the mayor who needs to step up and say what just happened is not acceptable. This program eviscerates sanctuary city.”

Hennessey has written to California Attorney General Jerry Brown asking for assistance in opting out of the ICE program. Brown’s office is reviewing his request. “The California Department of Justice manages the statewide database of fingerprints that are essential to solving crimes, but we have no direct role in enforcing federal immigration laws,” Brown’s press secretary Christine Gasparac clarified. “We were informed by ICE that they will work with counties to opt out of their program. Because that is a process directly between the county and ICE, we’re advising local authorities who want to opt out to contact ICE directly.”

But it’s not clear what opting out will achieve. ICE’s Kice said jurisdictions can choose not to receive the immigration-related information on individuals who are fingerprinted, but that information will still be provided to ICE, which can act on it. Kice said that after an arrestee’s biometrics are forwarded to the feds, the information is bounced off FBI and DHS databases, and the information that comes back says if they have a record.

“What comes out is a recap of whatever relevant information is in the database,” she said. “For example, whether there has been a prior formal deportation or a prior arrest. It also shows if they have an adjusted status — whether they have legal permanent status. It will indicate if they are naturalized, in which case they are not subject to removal. That’s the information the community could cut off.”

“ICE always did these checks, but it was only available to local law enforcement agencies if they queried the system themselves, which required them to take a couple of extra steps,” Kice continued. “And it was name based. And that could be problematic, given duplicate names in system. That’s what fingerprints eliminate. Our concern is that municipalities are dependent to a large extent on information provided by the individual at the moment of arrest. We think the use of biometrics will ensure that folks who provide false information to local law enforcement officials don’t escape detection.”

Kice acknowledged that not everyone in the database is a violator. “The fact of having a record does not mean that you are a deportable alien,” she said. “And we understand that someone may get arrested and may not get convicted on their current charges. But what about a prior history? We know that folks have eluded detection, escaped, or been released from custody. So the individual may be someone who has other prior convictions. It’s the totality of their record that we are talking about here.”

At present, the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department only reports noncitizens who are booked on felony charges. Hennessey expressed concerns about the unintended consequences of ICE technology interfacing with that of the Department of Justice’s fingerprint database.

He also warned that the 2,000 or so ICE referrals his office makes annually could explode. “We’ll be fingerprinting 35,000-40,000 persons annually,” Hennessey claimed. “And ICE has a record of secrecy. They won’t tell me what happened to folks they pick up. They won’t say if they are still in custody, been released or deported. The basis of sanctuary city is to protect immigrants who are not doing anything wrong or serious. When ICE grabs someone who failed to pay a traffic ticket and that person is supporting a family, I don’t think those crimes should rise to the level of deportation.”

The battle over Muni reform

Zelda Bronstein
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1
The battle over Muni reform

Sup. Sean Elsbernd is getting a lot of attention for his plan to change the way Muni drivers are paid, and although he’s going to have a hard time getting 70,000 signatures for a Charter Amendment, the fact that Muni’s unions have given back to the city less than the other major employee unions gives he move a boost. There are arguments in favor of the current salary structure, but as long as it’s set in the Charter this way, it’s hard for the city to get any leverage on work-rul changes, which are really what Elsbernd is after.


But if you want to look at reforming Muni, you have to go beyond this one issue — and that may be the battle that takes place this fall. Sup. David Campos, along with Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Eric Mar, has put together a comprehesive Muni reform Charter amendment that includes some of the changes Elsbernd is proposing — but addresses Muni governance and funding, too.


The Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees Muni, is now run by a seven-member board, with all the members appointed by the mayor. That’s hardly created the sort of political independence that the supporters of the system wanted. So under the Campos proposal, three members would be appointed by the mayor, three by the Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors, and the final member, the potential swing vote, would be appointed jointly by the mayor and board president (boy, that meeting will be fun). All seven would be subject to board confirmation.


The MTA would also be guaranteed a stream of income equivalent to 2.5 cents for every hundred dollars of property tax valuation.


The reform plan creates an Office of Inspector General in the MTA, and gives that person the authority to conduct audits and monitor waste and fraud — something sorely needed in the agency. And it would allow the supervisors to reject the MTA budget by a simply majority vote.


It’s likely that Campos, Mirkarimi and Mar will get the six votes they need to put this on the ballot, so they won’t have to go out and get signatures. Which means that even if Elsbernd’s ambitious grassroots effort is successful, the voters won’t be deciding whether to accept or reject a Muni reform measure; they’ll be choosing between one that only addresses pay for Muni workers and one that changes the pay system — but also seeks to overhaul how the system is run.

Sheriff: ICE referrals will leap from 2,000 to 40,000

Mary Magee
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4

There was a strong showing of supervisors, activists and community members at today’s rally to urge San Francisco to opt out of the Secure Communities Initiative, an automated fingerprint screening system that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to switch on, in San Francisco on June 1—just two weeks ago.

The program links local law enforcement agencies to the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric system through interoperability agreements with each state. Scott Lorigan in the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information reportedly signed such an agreement with John P. Torres, acting assistant Secretary of ICE, over a year ago, on April 10, 2009. And according to ICE, As April 2010, biometric identification has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states:

In California, the system has already been activated in Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernadino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura.But as speakers pointed out at today’s rally, the supervisors and the communities they represent would not have even known that this system was about to go live in San Francisco, had it not been for San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey, who spoke out after ICE informed local law enforcement agencies about the program three weeks ago.

Eric Quezada of Mission-based Dolores Street Community Services kicked off the rally with a rousing speech in which he warned that this “draconian Policy” was happening in the “shadow of Arizona.

Sup. Eric Mar warned that ICE’s proposed program will not make communities more safe.
”It was developed in the dead of night,” Mar said. “The police-ICE entanglement will hurt our communities and tear families apart.”

The Bush administration introduced the Secure Communities Initiative in March 2008. But as Mar observed, it is now being expanded under President Obama.“Many people accused of minor crimes will see families torn apart,” Mar said, citing statistics to show that  “90 percent of those IDed have been arrested for minor, less severe crimes.

“The shadow of Arizona is starting to cover other cities,” Mar continued. “We can’t let Arizona come to SF.”

Sheriff Hennessey told the crowd that he had written to California Attorney General Jerry Brown asking for his assistance in opting San Francisco out of the ICE program.“The Sheriff already has the authority to report foreign born folks charged with serious  felonies,” Hennessey explained.

In a May 18 letter to AG Jerry Brown, Hennessey wrote that he believed that Brown’s agency “has the technological capability to isolate by agency the information linked to ICE.”

““I ask that you isolate transactions from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department because Secure Communities conflicts with local laws,” the Sheriff continued. “My department already has a system in place that reports individuals to ICE and I do not wish it to be replaced by Secure Communities.”

Hennessey also expressed concern about the unintended consequences of ICE technology interfacing with that of the Department of Justice’s fingerprint database, which also holds fingerprints collected for non-criminal justice purposes such as employment applications. And he warned that the number of ICE referrals could explode under the new system.
Under this system, we’ll be fingerprinting 35,000-40,000 persons annually, “ Hennessey said. “I think that’s excessive.”

Currently the Sheriff’s Dept. reports foreign-born individuals arrested on a felony crime or found during the booking process to have a felony of a previous ICE contact in their criminal histories.

‘Since 2007, the department has delivered more than 3,100 individuals to ICE, and has reported at least twice that number,” Hennessey wrote. “I would like to keep system that way.”

At the rally, Hennessey warned that the new system will widen excessively to include folks who were charged with misdemeanors, infractions and traffic violations, but failed to show up in court.

“ICE has a record of secrecy. They won’t tell me what happened to folks they picked up, they won’t say if they are still in custody, been released or deported,” Hennessey said.

Sup. John Avalos said the Secure Communities Initiative is yet another example of why the nation needs comprehensive immigration reform.
“I don’t know if we have the ability to opt out, there are a lot of obstacles in our oath, right now.”

But he warned that the nation is passing laws that “stand at odds” with the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights “And we have rogue departments in the Obama administration, “ Avalos added. “ I consider ICE a rogue department. “
 
Rev. Phillip Lawson, a retired Methodist minister said he wanted to stand in solidarity with “resident aliens”.
“As black people, we know what it’s like to be aliens in our own land. And this enlarges the net of ICE. We will soon not be able to tell any difference between the police and ICE. And no one will trust the police.”

“I give thanks to the courage of folks here for instituting this attempt to say, no we will not cooperate…And we can also resist the law.”

Sup. David Campos, who provided much leadership in the last two years around the city’s sanctuary legislation, thanked Hennessey for blowing the whistle.

“None of us would have known this was happening,” Campos said. “This is the time for all San Francisco’s elected officials to stand up in support of the principles that led us to establish a sanctuary city. It’s not just the Board, but also the mayor who needs to step up and say that what just happened is not acceptable. This program eviscerates sanctuary city.”

Campos warned that the community has already lost trust in the local police, over the last two years, thanks to the city’s policy of referring juveniles to ICE when they are booked.

“If we cooperate [with SCI] that lack of trust will intensify,” he warned. “I applaud the sheriff, but we also need the police department to come forward.”

Campos laid the blame at Obama’s door.
“This is a Democratic president, who was elected with the support of the Latino and the immigrant community, but is engaging in practices worse than any other president.”

Tim Paulson, executive director of the Labor Council spoke on behalf of 150 unions in town. “Our work is dependent on the immigrant community,” He said. “Secure Communities is absolutely divisive and unconstructive. It pits worker against worker, families against families.”

Heidi Li of Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach warned that victims of domestic violence, trafficking and elder abuse would be at risk from ICE’s program.

“It will result in a situation where folks who need trust and assurance the most, will not feel safe and will no longer report to the police when they are the victims of abuse,” Li said.

At rally’s end, Hennessey told the Guardian, “The basis of Sanctuary city is to protect immigrants who are not doing anything wrong or serious. When ICE grabs someone who failed to pay a traffic ticket, and that person is supporting a family, I don’t think those crimes should rise to the level of deportation.”

Warning folks that folks did not know that SCI had been activated in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, Hennessey said all he can do is “raise the issue” of opting out. 

Sup. Mar told the Guardian that the request to opt out is a “unique and creative tactic.”

“We have the strong legal backing from organizations around the country, but SFPD Chief George Gascon doesn’t seem convinced,” Mar observed

Christine Gasparac, Attorney General Jerry Brown’s press secretary told the Guardian that they received Hennessey’s May 18 letter requesting to opt out and are reviewing it.

“To clarify, the California Department of Justice manages the statewide database of fingerprints that are essential to solving crimes, but we have no direct role in enforcing federal immigration laws,” Gasparac said. “We were informed by ICE yesterday that they will work with counties to opt out of their program. Because that is a process directly between the county and ICE, we are advising local authorities who want to opt out to contact ICE directly.

Virginia Kice, ICE’s Western Regional Communications Director said, “under Secure Communities jurisdictions can choose not to receive the immigration-related information on individuals who are fingerprinted, but that information will still be provided to ICE.

As April 2010, biometric identification has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states. Since it’s unclear, which communities know about the program, the Guardian is posting the list here:

In Arizona:  Cochise, Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Yavapai and Yuma

In California Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernadino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura

In Delaware: Kent, New Castle and Sussex

In Florida: Brevard, Browar, Charlotte, Clay, Collier, Duval, Escambia, Highlands, Hillsborough, Lake, Leon, Manatee, Marion,Miami Dade, Monroe, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Polk
Sarasota, St. Johns, St. Lucie, Volusia

In Georgia: Clayton, DeKalb and Gwinnett

In Hawaii: Oahu

In Illinois: DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair, Will and Winnebago

In Lousiana: Jefferson Parrish

In Maryland: Frederick, Prince George’s, Queen Anne’s and St. Mary’s.

In Massachusetts: Suffolk

In Michigan: Wayne

In North Carolina: Brunswic, Buncombe, Cabarrus, Catawba, Columbus , Cumberland, Dare , Duplin, Durham, Gaston, Halifax, Harnett, Henderson, Jackson, Lee, Mecklenburg, New Hanover,
Orange, Transylvania, Union and Wake.

In New Mexico: Bernalillo, Dona Ana, Grant, Hidalgo, LunaOhio, Cuyahoga and Franklin

In Oklahoma: Oklahoma, TulsaOregon and Clackamas

In Pennsylvania: Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia

In Utah: Box Elder, Davis, Salt Lake, Utah and Weber

In Virginia: Alexandria City, Arlington, Fairfax, Fauquier, Henrico, Loudoun, Norfolk City, Prince William, Rappahannock. Richmond City and Virginia Beach City

In Texas: Bexar, Brazoria, Brewster, Brooks, Collin, Culberson, Dallas Dallas County Jail, Dallas Farmers Branch PD, Dallas Irving PD, Dallas and Collin Richardson PD, Dallas and Kaufman Mesquite PD, Dallas, Collin, Denton Carrollton PD, Denton, Dimmit, El Paso, Fort Bend, Galveston
Grayson, Harris, Hidalgo, Hudspeth, Hunt, Jeff Davis, Jefferson, Jim Wells, Johnson, Kaufman, Kenedy, Kinney, Kleberg, Maverick, McLennan, Montgomery, Nueces, Pecos, Presidio, Real, Starr, Tarrant, TDCJ, Terrell, Travis, Uvalde, Val Verde, Webb, Willacy, Williamson, Zapata and Zavala.

ENDORSEMENTS

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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24
ENDORSEMENTS

Our endorsements  for the upcoming election were originally published on April 27. We’re republishing them here for the benefit of absentee voters. Our clip-out guide to take to the polls will appear in our June 2 issue and online.

On the eve of the June 8 election, we’ll be publishing our handy clip-out guide for you to take to the polls. Before then, however, take a minute to read about our decisions — and why they’re important for the future of the country, the state, and San Francisco.

ENDORSEMENTS:

>>NATIONAL AND STATE RACES

>>STATE BALLOT MEASURES

>>SAN FRANCISCO BALLOT MEASURES

>>JUDICIAL RACES

 

Pictured above: 

OUR CHOICES FOR DCCC

We’ve already endorsed candidates for the Democratic County Central Committee (see “Our endorsements for DCCC,” 3/30). We’re listing them again here for easy reference — in the order they will appear on the ballot. (Since it’s unfair to present candidates in a crowded field in alphabetical order, the state every year does a random alphabetical drawing to set the order in these races.)

The election is crucial — DCCC controls the local Democratic Party endorsements, which can make a huge difference in district supervisorial contests.

 

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 13

Debra Walker

Aaron Peskin

Eric Quezada

Joe Julian

Alix Rosenthal

Michael Goldstein

David Campos

David Chiu

Rafael Mandelman

Kim-Shree Maufas

Carole Migden

Robert Haaland

 

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 12

Chris Gembinski

Connie O’Connor

Michael Bornstein

John Avalos

Hene Kelly

Melanie Nutter

Sandra Lee Fewer

Eric Mar

Milton Marks

Jane Morrison

Jake McGoldrick

Larry Yee

 

Supes to SF: Let’s opt out of ICE’s automatic fingerprint referral program

Mary Magee
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8
Supes to SF: Let’s opt out of ICE’s automatic fingerprint referral program

Just two weeks before a controversial collaboration between local police and ICE is set to get switched on in San Francisco, Sups. Eric Mar, John Avalos, David Campos, Chris Daly and Sophie Maxwell are introducing a  resolution that calls on the city to opt out of a program that could undermine public safety and threaten innocent community members with deportation.

Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who blew the whistle on this program, and Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson will join the supervisors May 18,  9 a.m. on the steps of City Hall. The resolution will be formally introduced at the Board’s afternoon meeting.

Sup. Mar’s legislative aide Lin-Shao Chin told the Guardian that it looks like an opt-out option is possible.
“It’s very vague, the way it’s written,” Chin said, referring to the contract that the Department of Homeland Security has drafted and that cities are required to sign onto, via a statement of intent.”So, while it doesn’t say you can opt out, it’s very vague, and from what we’ve heard, so far it’s all just been verbal communication between the law enforcement agencies.”

The fed’s proposed Secure Communities Initiative (SCI) has been criticized by civil rights experts.They say the program causes immigrants to be reported for deportation without due process and that it destroys trust between the police and immigrant communities.

The program seeks to check the immigration status of anyone whose fingerprints are taken by law enforcement personnel by cross-checking fingerprints through a federal database. They warn that  immigrants who are simply charged with very  minor charges – such as selling ice cream bars without a permit– or those who are overcharged on arrest–could end up torn from their families without due process and reported for deportation.
 
Advocates see similarities between the program and Arizona’s SB1070, since SCI gives discretion to individual police officers, who may mistakenly arrest or overcharge innocent immigrant residents, thereby triggering their deportation. 

“ICE’s own statistics, cited in news reports, indicate that some 88 percent of the 33,000 immigrants deported to date under the program had committed non-violent offenses or no offense at all,” community advocates note.

“Five percent of people tagged are actually documented, and only 10 percent are actually felons,” Chin claimed, warning that there is also, “the  potential for a whole bunch of databases, including those containing information on legal citizens, to be hooked together in ways that pose civil liberty concerns.”

Earlier this month, Washington, DC’s City Council unanimously introduced legislation that would prohibit local police from sharing arrest and booking information with ICE. But the Board’s resolution will be the first in the nation to urge an opt-out.

“The feds didn’t present opting-out as an option, they made it sound compulsory, but immigrant groups who met with ICE were verbally told the could opt out,” Chin claimed.
“Immigrant advocates in Contra Costa and Alameda counties didn’t even know their cities had opted into the program, until folks were referred to ICE. The good news is that we are touching this before we have been hooked into the program.”

Chin said it seems the SFPD CHief George Gascon’s office is “under the impression that the program is mandatory, but that’s not the impression we get from ICE.”
Chin also noted that the SCI is an “unfunded mandate,” since there could be costs to cities and municipalities who have to hold folks in jail longer than usual, while they wait for the feds to come and pick them up.

“From what we have heard, these [SCI] contracts are negotiated at the state level,” Chin added, suggesting that the ball on this issue in California lies within Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown’s court.
 

Democratizing the streets

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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26
Democratizing the streets

steve@sbg.com

It’s hard to keep up with all the changes occurring on the streets of San Francisco, where an evolving view of who and what roadways are for cuts across ideological lines. The car is no longer king, dethroned by buses, bikes, pedestrians, and a movement to reclaim the streets as essential public spaces.

Sure, there are still divisive battles now underway over street space and funding, many centered around the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which has more control over the streets than any other local agency, particularly after the passage of Proposition A in 2007 placed all transportation modes under its purview.

Transit riders, environmentalists, and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors are frustrated that Mayor Gavin Newsom and his appointed SFMTA board members have raised Muni fares and slashed service rather than tapping downtown corporations, property owners, and/or car drivers for more revenue.

Board President David Chiu is leading the effort to reject the latest SFMTA budget and its 10 percent Muni service cut, and he and fellow progressive Sups. David Campos, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi have been working on SFMTA reform measures for the fall ballot, which need to be introduced by May 18.

But as nasty as those fights might get in the coming weeks, they mask a surprising amount of consensus around a new view of streets. “The mayor has made democratizing the streets one of his major initiatives,” Newsom Press Secretary Tony Winnicker told the Guardian.

And it’s true. Newsom has promoted removing cars from the streets for a few hours at a time through Sunday Streets and his “parklets” in parking spaces, for a few weeks or months at a time through Pavement to Parks, and permanently through Market Street traffic diversions and many projects in the city’s Bicycle Plan, which could finally be removed from a four-year court injunction after a hearing next month.

Even after this long ban on new bike projects, San Francisco has seen the number of regular bicycle commuters double in recent years. Bike to Work Day, this year held on May 13, has become like a civic holiday as almost every elected official pedals to work and traffic surveys from the last two years show bikes outnumbering cars on Market Street during the morning commute.

If it wasn’t for the fiscal crisis gripping this and other California cities, this could be a real kumbaya moment for the streets of San Francisco. Instead, it’s something closer to a moment of truth — when we’ll have to decide whether to put our money and political will into “democratizing the streets.”

 

RECONSIDERING ROADWAYS

After some early clashes between Newsom and progressives on the Board of Supervisors and in the alternative transportation community over a proposal to ban cars from a portion of John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park — a polarizing debate that ended in compromise after almost two acrimonious years — there’s been a remarkable harmony over once-controversial changes to the streets.

In fact, the changes have come so fast and furious in the last couple of years that it’s tough to keep track of all the parking spaces turned into miniparks or extended sidewalks, replacement of once-banished benches on Market and other streets, car-free street closures and festivals, and healthy competition with other U.S. cities to offer bike-sharing or other green innovations.

So much is happening in the streets that SF Streetsblog has quickly become a popular, go-to clearinghouse for stories about and discussions of our evolving streets, a role that the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition — itself the largest grassroots group in the city, with more than 11,000 paid members — recently recognized with its Golden Wheel award.

“I think we are at a tipping point. All these little things have been percolating,” said San Francisco Planning Urban Research Association director Gabriel Metcalf, listing examples such as the creative reuse of San Francisco street space by Rebar and other groups (see “Seizing space,” 11/18/09), experiments in New York and other cities to convert traffic lanes to bicycle and pedestrian spaces, a new generation of more forward-thinking traffic engineers and planning professionals working in government, and more aggressive advocacy work by the SFBC, SPUR, and other groups.

“I think it’s all starting to coalesce,” Metcalf said. “Go to 17th and Valencia [streets] and feel what it’s like to have a sidewalk that’s wide enough to be comfortable. Or go ride in the physically separated bike lane on Market Street. Or take your kids to the playground at Hayes Green that used to be a freeway ramp.”

Politically, this is a rare area of almost universal agreement. “This is an issue where this mayor and this board have been very aligned,” Metcalf said. Winnicker, Newsom’s spokesperson, agreed: “The mayor and the board do see this issue very similarly.”

Mirkarimi, a progressive who chairs the Transportation Authority, also agreed that this new way of looking at the streets has been a bright spot in board-mayoral relations. “It is evolving and developing, and that’s a very good thing,” Mirkarimi said.

Both Winnicker and Mirkarimi separately singled out the improvements on Divisidero Street — where the median and sidewalks have been planted with trees and vegetation and some street parking spaces have been turned into designated bicycle parking and outdoor seating — as an example of the new approach.

“It really is a microcosm of an evolving consciousness,” Mirkarimi said of the strip.

Sunday Streets, a series of events when the streets are closed to cars and blossom with life, is an initiative proposed by SFBC and Livable City that has been championed by Newsom and supported by the board as it overcame initial opposition from the business community and some car drivers.

“There is a growing synergy toward connecting the movements that deal with repurposing space that has been used primarily for automobiles,” Sunday Streets coordinator Susan King told us.

Newsom has cast the greening initiatives as simply common sense uses of space and low-cost ways of improving the city. “A lot of what the mayor and the board have disagreements on, some of that is ideological,” Winnicker said. “But streets, parks, medians, and green spaces, they are not ideological.”

Maybe not, but where the rubber is starting to meet the road is on how to fund this shift, particularly when it comes to transit services that aren’t cheap — and to Newsom’s seemingly ideological aversion to new taxes or charges on motorists.

“We’re completely aligned when it comes to the Bike Plan and testing different things as far as our streets, but that all changes with the MTA budget,” said board President David Chiu, who is leading the charge to reject the budget because of its deep Muni service cuts. “Progressives are focused on the plight of everyday people who can’t afford to drive and park a car and have to rely on Muni. So it’s a question of on whose back will you balance the MTA budget.”

 

WHOSE STREETS?

The MTA governs San Francisco’s streets, from deciding how their space is allocated to who pays for their upkeep. The agency runs Muni, sets and administers parking policies, regulates taxis, approves bicycle-related improvements, and tries to protect pedestrians.

So when the mayoral-appointed MTA Board of Directors last month approved a budget that cuts Muni service by 10 percent without sharing the pain with motorists or pursuing significant new revenue sources — in defiance of pleas by the public and progressive supervisors over the last 18 months — it triggered a real street fight.

The Budget and Finance Committee will begin taking up the MTA budget May 12. And progressive supervisors, frustrated at having to replay this fight for a second year in a row, are pursuing a variety of MTA reforms for the November ballot, which must be submitted by May 18.

“We’re going to have a very serious discussion about MTA reform,” Chiu said, adding, “I expect there to be a very robust discussion about the MTA and balancing that budget on the backs of transit riders.”

Among the reforms being discussed are shared appointments between the mayor and board, greater ability for the board to reject individual initiatives rather than just the whole budget, changes to Muni work rules and compensation, and revenue measures like a local surcharge on vehicle license fees or a downtown transit assessment district.

Last week Chiu met with Newsom on the MTA budget issue and didn’t come away hopeful that there will be a collaborative solution such as last year’s compromise. But Chiu said he and other supervisors were committed to holding the line on Muni service cuts.

“I think the MTA needs to get more creative. We have to make sure the MTA isn’t being used as an ATM with these work orders,” Chiu said, referring to the $65 million the MTA pays to the Police Department and other agencies every year, a figure that steeply increased after 2007. “My hope is that the MTA board does the right thing and rolls back some of these service reductions.”

Transit riders have been universal in condemning the MTA budget. “The budget is irresponsible and dishonest,” said San Francisco Transit Riders Union project director Dave Snyder. “It reveals the hypocrisy in the mayor’s stated environmental commitments. This action will cut public transit permanently and that’s irresponsible.”

But the Mayor’s Office blames declining state funding and says the MTA had no choice. “It’s an economic reality. None of us want service reductions, but show us the money,” Winnicker said.

That’s precisely what the progressive supervisors are trying to do by exploring several revenue measures for the November ballot. But they say Newsom’s lack of leadership on the issue has made that difficult, particularly given the two-third vote requirement.

“There’s been a real failure of leadership by Gavin Newsom,” Mirkarimi said.

Newsom addressed the issue in December as he, Mirkarimi, and other city officials and bicycle advocates helped create the city’s first green “bike box” and honor the partial lifting of the bike injunction, sounding a message of unity on the issue.

“I can say this is the best relationship we’ve had for years with the advocacy community, with the Bicycle Coalition. We’ve begun to strike a nice balance where this is not about cars versus bikes. This is about cars and bikes and pedestrians cohabitating in a different mindset,” Newsom said.

Yet afterward, during an impromptu press conference, Newsom spoke with disdain about those who argued that improving the streets and maintaining Muni service during hard economic times requires money, and Newsom has been the biggest impediment to finding new revenue sources.

“Everyone is just so aggressive on trying to raise revenue. We’ve been increasing the cost of going on Muni the last few years. I think people need to consider that,” Newsom said. “We’ve increased the cost of parking tickets, increased the cost of using a parking meter, and we’ve raised the fares. It’s important to remind people of that. The first answer to every question shouldn’t be, OK, we’re going to tax people more or increase their costs.

“You have to be careful about that,” he continued. “So my answer to your question is two-fold. We’re going to look at revenue, but not necessarily tax increases. We’re going to look at revenue, but not necessarily fine increases. We’re going to look at revenue, but not necessarily parking meter increases. We’re going to look at new strategies.”

Yet that was six months ago, and with the exception of grudgingly agreeing to allow a small pilot program in a few commercial corridors to eliminate free parking in metered spots on Sunday, Newsom still hasn’t proposed any new revenue options.

“The voters aren’t receptive to new taxes now,” Winnicker said last week. Mirkarimi doesn’t necessarily agree, citing polling data showing that voters in San Francisco may be open to the VLF surcharge, if we can muster the same kind of political will we’re applying to other street questions.

“It polls well, even in a climate when taxation scares people,” Mirkarimi said.

 

BIKING IS BACK

It was almost four years ago that a judge stuck down the San Francisco Bicycle Plan, ruling that it should have been subjected to a full-blown environmental impact report (EIR) and ordering an injunction against any projects in the plan.

That EIR was completed and certified by the city last year, but the same anti-bike duo who originally sued to stop the plan again challenged it as inadequate. The case will finally be heard June 22, with a ruling on lifting the injunction expected within a month.

“The San Francisco Bicycle Plan project eliminates 56 traffic lanes and more than 2,000 parking spaces on city streets,” attorney Mary Miles wrote in her April 23 brief challenging the plan. “According to City’s EIR, the project will cause ‘significant unavoidable impacts’ on traffic, transit, and loading; degrade level of service to unacceptable levels at many major intersections; and cause delays of more than six minutes per street segment to many bus lines. The EIR admits that the “near-term” parts of the project alone will have 89 significant impacts of traffic, transit, and loading but fails to mitigate or offer feasible alternatives to each of these impacts.”

Yet for all that, elected officials in San Francisco are nearly unanimous in their support for the plan, signaling how far San Francisco has come in viewing the streets as more than just conduits for cars.

City officials deny that the bike plan is legally inadequate and they may quibble with a few of the details Miles cites, but they basically agree with her main point. The plan will take away parking spaces and it will slow traffic in some areas. But they also say those are acceptable trade-offs for facilitating safe urban bicycling.

The city’s main overriding consideration is that we must do more to get people out of their cars, for reasons ranging from traffic congestion to global warming. City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey said that it’s absurd that the state’s main environmental law has been used to hinder progress toward the most environmentally beneficial and efficient transportation option.

“We have to stop solving for cars, and that’s an objective shared by the Board of Supervisors, and other cities, and the mayor as well,” Dorsey said.

Even anti-bike activist Rob Anderson, who brought the lawsuit challenging the bike plan, admits the City Hall has united around this plan to facilitate bicycling even if it means taking space from automobiles, although he believes that it’s a misguided effort.

“It’s a leap of faith they’re making here that this will be good for the city,” Anderson told us. “This is a complicated legal argument, and I don’t think the city has made the case.”

A judge will decide that question following the June 22 hearing. But whatever way that legal case is decided, it’s clear that San Francisco has already changed its view of its streets and other once-marginalized transportation choices like the bicycle.

Even the local business community has benefited from this new sensibility, with bicycle shops thriving around San Francisco and local bike messenger bag companies Timbuk2 and Rickshaw Bags experiencing rapid growth thanks to a doubling of the number of regular bicyclists in recent years.

“That’s who we’re aiming at, people who bike every day and make bikes a central part of their lives,” said Mike Waffenfels, CEO of Timbuk2, which in February moved into a larger location to handle it’s growth. “It’s about a lifestyle.”

For urban planners and advocates, it’s about making the streets of San Francisco work for everyone. As Metcalf said, “People need to be able to get where they’re going without a car.”

Muni reform that might actually work

David Talbot
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0
Muni reform that might actually work

EDITORIAL The 2007 ballot measure that was supposed to give Muni more political independence and more money has failed to provide either. It’s time to say that Proposition A, which we supported, hasn’t worked — in significant part because the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom hasn’t allowed it to work. It’s time for a new reform effort, one that looks at Muni’s governance structure, funding, and the way it spends money.

There are several proposals in the works. Sup. David Campos has asked for a management audit of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, and that’s likely to show some shoddy oversight practices and hugely wasteful overtime spending. Sup. Sean Elsbernd wants to change the way Muni workers get paid, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu are talking about changing the way the MTA board is appointed. There are merits to all the reform plans, but in the end, none of them will work if they don’t address the fundamental fact that Muni doesn’t have enough money to provide the level of transit service San Francisco needs.

The basic outlines of what a progressive Muni reform measure would look like are pretty obvious. It ought to include three basic principles: work-rule and overtime reform; a change in the way other departments, particularly the police, charge Muni for work orders — and a sizable new source of revenue.

The work orders are, in many ways, the easiest issue. Last year, the San Francisco Police Department charged Muni more than $12 million in work orders. For what? Well, for doing what the Police Department gets paid to do anyway: patrolling Muni garages, putting cops on the buses, and dealing with Muni-related traffic issues. And a lot of that $12 million is police overtime.

The labor and revenue issues are trickier — mostly because they’re being addressed separately. Elsbernd, for example, wants to Muni workers to engage in the same collective bargaining that other city unions do, which makes a certain amount of sense. But he’s wrong to make it appear that the union and the workers are the major source of Muni’s financial problems — and that approach won’t get far. The bus drivers and mechanics didn’t make millions on large commercial developments that put a huge strain on the transit system — and the developers who profit from having bus service for the occupants of their buildings have never paid their fair share. Nor is it the fault of the union that car traffic downtown clogs the streets and makes it hard for buses to run on time.

We agree that the transit union needs to come to the table and talk, seriously, about work-rule changes. Every other city union, particularly SEIU Local 1021, whose members are among the lowest-paid workers in the city, has given something up to help the city’s budget problems.

But any attempt to change Muni’s labor contract needs to be paired with a serious new revenue program aimed at putting the transit system on a stronger financial footing — and traffic management plans that give buses an advantage over cars. The city can add a modest fee on car owners now, and if a Democratic governor wins in November, it’s likely that state Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow a local car tax will become law. That’s part of the solution, as is expanded parking meter hours. (And someone needs to talk about charging churchgoers for parking in the middle of the streets on Sundays.) But Muni also needs a regular stream of income from fees on developers.

And a seven-member MTA appointed entirely by the mayor does nothing for political independence; at the very least, the supervisors should get three of the appointments.

The city badly needs Muni reform — and the elements are all in place. But it can’t be a piecemeal approach.

Muni reform that might actually work

David Talbot
-
7

EDITORIAL The 2007 ballot measure that was supposed to give Muni more political independence and more money has failed to provide either. It’s time to say that Proposition A, which we supported, hasn’t worked — in significant part because the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom hasn’t allowed it to work. It’s time for a new reform effort, one that looks at Muni’s governance structure, funding, and the way it spends money.

There are several proposals in the works. Sup. David Campos has asked for a management audit of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, and that’s likely to show some shoddy oversight practices and hugely wasteful overtime spending. Sup. Sean Elsbernd wants to change the way Muni workers get paid, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu are talking about changing the way the MTA board is appointed. There are merits to all the reform plans, but in the end, none of them will work if they don’t address the fundamental fact that Muni doesn’t have enough money to provide the level of transit service San Francisco needs.

The basic outlines of what a progressive Muni reform measure would look like are pretty obvious. It ought to include three basic principles: work-rule and overtime reform; a change in the way other departments, particularly the police, charge Muni for work orders — and a sizable new source of revenue.

The work orders are, in many ways, the easiest issue. Last year, the San Francisco Police Department charged Muni more than $12 million in work orders. For what? Well, for doing what the Police Department gets paid to do anyway: patrolling Muni garages, putting cops on the buses, and dealing with Muni-related traffic issues. And a lot of that $12 million is police overtime.

The labor and revenue issues are trickier — mostly because they’re being addressed separately. Elsbernd, for example, wants to Muni workers to engage in the same collective bargaining that other city unions do, which makes a certain amount of sense. But he’s wrong to make it appear that the union and the workers are the major source of Muni’s financial problems — and that approach won’t get far. The bus drivers and mechanics didn’t make millions on large commercial developments that put a huge strain on the transit system — and the developers who profit from having bus service for the occupants of their buildings have never paid their fair share. Nor is it the fault of the union that car traffic downtown clogs the streets and makes it hard for buses to run on time.

We agree that the transit union needs to come to the table and talk, seriously, about work-rule changes. Every other city union, particularly SEIU Local 1021, whose members are among the lowest-paid workers in the city, has given something up to help the city’s budget problems.

But any attempt to change Muni’s labor contract needs to be paired with a serious new revenue program aimed at putting the transit system on a stronger financial footing — and traffic management plans that give buses an advantage over cars. The city can add a modest fee on car owners now, and if a Democratic governor wins in November, it’s likely that state Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow a local car tax will become law. That’s part of the solution, as is expanded parking meter hours. (And someone needs to talk about charging churchgoers for parking in the middle of the streets on Sundays.) But Muni also needs a regular stream of income from fees on developers.

And a seven-member MTA appointed entirely by the mayor does nothing for political independence; at the very least, the supervisors should get three of the appointments.

The city badly needs Muni reform — and the elements are all in place. But it can’t be a piecemeal approach.

ICE says it will automatically vet juvenile immigrants fingerprints

Mary Magee
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25
ICE says it will automatically vet juvenile immigrants fingerprints

In what appears to be another fatal blow for San Francisco’s sanctuary laws–and due process in general— officials for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) say the fingerprints of juvenile immigrants charged with serious offenses will also be automatically forwarded to ICE

“My colleagues in SF advise that the fingerprints of juveniles arrested for criminal offenses will also be vetted through Secure Communities,” Virginia Kice, ICE’s Western Regional Communications Director, told the Guardian.

“If that’s the case, that’s pretty significant,” said Sup. David Campos, who was under the impression that the Secure Communities initiative would not touch juveniles. The thinking, Campos said, was that juveniles’ fingerprints were handled through a separate database and therefore would be exempt from the new federal initiative.

Sheriff Mike Hennessey, who does not handle juvenile detainees, told the Guardian,  “If I had to guess, I would say that Ms. Kice is correct, but it’s possible that the computer could be bifurcated.”

Calls to Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department Chief William Siffermann and California Attorney General Jerry Brown (whose office maintains fingerprinting databases) remained unanswered, as of blog posting time.

Supes continue AZ boycott resolution; Daly calls for boycott of AZ Diamondbacks

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1
Supes continue AZ boycott resolution; Daly calls for boycott of AZ Diamondbacks

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote yesterday, May 4, on a resolution introduced by Sup. David Campos for a municipal boycott of Arizona-based businesses as a response to Arizona’s anti-immigration measure, which we report on in this week’s issue.

“I would imagine that if Arizona had passed a law that said if any person is Latino or who looks Latino has an added burden to prove and demonstrate their immigration status, then most of us would say that … action is needed,” Campos said. “Arizona hasn’t done that, explicitly, but … that is the direct result of this piece of legislation.

“At some point,” Campos added, “those of us who are looking at what’s happening in Arizona have to recognize that for us not to do something, or not to say something, in some respects, in an indirect way makes us complicit in that.”

The resolution was continued until May 11 on a motion by Sup. Sean Elsbernd, seconded by Sup. Carmen Chu.

Reached later by phone, Elsbernd said he opposes the boycott, and that he continued the item so he could cast a ‘no’ vote. If an item is introduced and then goes directly to the full board without committee reference, as happened in this case, it requires a unanimous vote to pass, he said — so if he had voted against it on May 4, the whole thing would have died. “I think the boycott is misguided. It’s not hitting the target,” Elsbernd said, adding that he opposes the law but thinks a boycott would have unintended consequences. He said he thought energy and resources should go instead toward fundraising support for Arizona Democrats who oppose the law, or lobbying in D.C. for federal immigration reform. While he said he traveled to D.C. for that purpose in 2007, he doesn’t have any concrete plans to organize a fundraiser or book a trip anytime soon.

Sup. Chris Daly rose from his seat and left the room the moment the item was continued. Earlier in the meeting, Daly introduced a resolution urging a boycott of the Phoenix-based Arizona Diamondbacks, scheduled to play the San Francisco Giants here in the city on May 28, 29, and 30. Daly’s resolution notes that team owner Ken Kendrick has contributed significantly to the Republican Party, although he has claimed to oppose the controversial legislation.

Daly’s resolution encourages “those concerned about immigrant rights to protest the Arizona Diamondbacks in San Francisco on May 28th – 30th,” encourages Giants fans to attend other games to support the team, and “encourages the San Francisco Giants and San Francisco Giants fans to wear Gigantes uniforms during our home stand against the Arizona Diamondbacks to show our support for Latino baseball players and the Latino and immigrant communities.”

Sounds and slides from May 1 immigration rally

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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0

Thousands of people spilled out into the streets of San Francisco on Saturday, May 1, to march for federal immigration reform and to denounce Arizona’s SB 1070, an anti-immigration measure widely perceived as a racist, ill-advised approach to addressing illegal U.S. border crossings. The law makes it a state-level crime to be in the U.S. illegally, and criminalizes failure to carry immigration papers at all times.

Sup. David Campos, who introduced a resolution at last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting calling for a city boycott of Arizona-based businesses until the law is repealed, delivered remarks in Spanish to a crowd of rally participants, which can be heard in the slideshow below. (Those of you with delicate sensibilities may want a heads up that his remarks are interrupted a couple times by a guy screaming “Fuck Arizona!!!” right into the mic.) Campos’ resolution is on the agenda for the May 4 Board of Supervisors meeting.

Here’s a translation of the Supervisor’s remarks: “Power to immigrants! Power to the workers! Power to the Latino community! Power to America! This is our country, we’re Americans like anyone else. We’re sending a clear message to the president and the Democratic Congress. They’ve been elected by the Latino Community. They were elected to pass immigration reform. It makes me proud that San Francisco was the first to send a message to the whole country. We’re going to boycott Arizona. We’re going to send a message to Arizona that they’re not going to violate our rights, that they’re not going to violate this country’s constitution. Let’s send a message to our brothers and friends in Arizona that you are not alone. We’re with you. Power to the immigrants! Yes we can! Let’s keep fighting onto victory!”

Audio and photos by Rebecca Bowe

For a more detailed story about the day’s events and local responses to the Arizona legislation, pick up this week’s Guardian.

 

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