Ed Lee

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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25

tredmond@sfbg.com

I had, as they say, a spirited and frank discussion last week with Enrique Pearce, the political consultant working on the Run Ed Run campaign. I chided Pearce, whose firm is called Left Coast Communications, for leading an effort that, at the very least, involves some touchy legal and ethical issues. (After all, the group is raising money for a campaign for a candidate who hasn’t filed as a candidate. There are reasons why federal, state, and local laws mandate that people who are running for office declare that they want the office before they start raising money.)

Pearce insisted he was doing nothing illegal. (Okay, if he says so.) He also argued that his firm is the most progressive consulting operation in the city. (Whatever.) But the real focus of our discussion — and the reason it’s worth talking about — was the question of whether corruption really matters.

I think sleaze — and the appearance of sleaze — is a defining progressive issue. If Pearce agrees, he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Let’s back up here. When Willie Brown was speaker of the state Assembly, he passed some good legislation, and allowed some very bad legislation to become law. But his greatest legacy is term limits — and the terrible public perception of what was once one of the best state legislatures in the nation.

Brown was the epitome of corruption, a guy who actively flouted the notion of honest, open government. Among other things, he had a private law practice on the side — and clients would pay him big money because of his influence on state legislation. Of course, we never knew who the clients were; he wouldn’t release the list.

When he was mayor, his sleazy ways continued — and left even progressive San Franciscans believing that you can’t trust City Hall with your money. Which means, of course, that it’s harder to convince anyone to pay more taxes.

There’s no question that Brown and Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak (don’t get me started) were key players in putting Mayor Ed Lee in office, and that they’re playing a big role in this new effort. Which means, as far as I’m concerned, that it’s utterly untrustworthy — and that progressives should be miles and miles away.

I’m not arguing that Ed Lee is a bad mayor (he’s way better than the last guy). He might even turn into a good mayor if he runs for a full term. Pearce thinks he’d be better for progressives than state Sen. Leland Yee. We can argue that later.

But as long as his campaign is directly linked to people whose standard practices undermine the heart of the progressive agenda (which depends on a belief that government can be trusted to take on social problems), then you can count me out.

Editorial: Mayor Lee’s budget deal

Maria Poblet
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1

The way the daily newspapers are presenting it, the budget that Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee negotiated represents a new era of civility and cooperation at City Hall. The committee, after marathon negotiations, approved the $6.8 billion deal unanimously. Both sides called it a good process and a good result.

And indeed, by any standard, the way Lee worked with community groups was a huge breakthrough. After 16 years of essentially being cut out of the process under mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom, the stakeholders — the people who provide the essential city services — were actually at the table. And the final blueprint isn’t as bad as it could be.

But it’s still a budget that does nothing to restore the roughly $1 billion of General Fund cuts over the past five years, that seeks no new taxes from big business or the wealthy, and that includes spending on a new Police Academy class that even the mayor doesn’t think the city needs.

And from the start, the mayor and his staff were absolutely determined to privatize security at the city’s two big public hospitals — even when it makes no political or fiscal sense.

The privatization plan was the centerpiece of what became a 13-hour shuttle diplomacy session, as staffers and supervisors sought to reach a deal they could all accept. The Mayor’s Office — particularly Steve Kawa, the chief of staff — put immense pressure on the committee members to accept a plan to replace deputy sheriffs with private security guards at San Francisco General and Laguna Honda hospitals. In the grand scheme of things, the $3 million in projected savings wasn’t a huge deal — but the politics was unnecessarily bloody. It’s as if Lee and Kawa were determined to privatize something, whatever the cost.

In the end, Sup. Jane Kim deserves considerable credit for holding firm and refusing to accept the proposal — and since Sup. David Chiu went along with her, they joined Sup. Ross Mirkarimi as a three-vote majority on the five-member panel and shot it down.

Police Chief Greg Suhr pushed for funding for a new police academy class to train 35 officers at a cost of $3.5 million (that’s $100,000 a cop). “I don’t think the department has looked hard enough at how we deploy the existing officers,” Sup. John Avalos told us.

And some key issues are still up in the air — for example, whether the mayor will adequately fund public financing of the November campaigns. With at least eight serious candidates running for mayor (not counting Lee), and most of them looking for the public financing that will help level the playing field, the city’s going to have to come up with at least several million dollars. That’s critical to the fairness of the election.

The bottom line remains: This city has been deeply damaged by years of cuts. And the next budget needs to start with a plan to repair that.

 

 

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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5

tredmond@sfbg.com

I’m not going to tell Ed Lee he can’t run for mayor. I know he promised he wasn’t going to. I know that if he hadn’t made that promise, he wouldn’t have had the six votes to win the office. I think Lee believed at the time that he didn’t want to run in November, and he may believe it now.

But this is still a democracy, and if Lee thinks the situation has changed and he’s the only person who can properly lead the city over the next four years, he ought to put his name forward.

Right now, though, he’s allowing the “draft Ed Lee” movement to get out of control.

Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak and political consultant Enrique Pierce (who runs the clearly misnamed Left Coast Campaigns and loves to tout his progressive credentials) have set up an office, are raising money, and have hatched this plan to get Lee to agree to put his name on the ballot and not actively campaign.

The operation — which, let’s remember, carries Ed Lee’s name on it — has already run afoul of the law. The Ethics Commission — hardly an aggressive political watchdog — says the campaign had improperly filed as a political action committee. That’s not Lee’s fault — he has nothing to do with this. But it already taints his reputation.

Lee, by all accounts, has done a far better job with the budget than his immediate predecessor. He’s actually been talking to people. He listens; he accepts logic; he tries to make thing work. I admit, the bar is pretty low — Gavin Newsom was a complete asshole. Still: Lee’s a decent guy.

But he has some heavy political baggage — and most of it has to do with his connections to sleazy operators like Pak and Willie Brown. As long as he’s linked to people who treat campaign finance laws, lobbying rules, and political ethics with disdain bordering on hostility, he’s going to have trouble keeping the public trust.

And right now, those same people are raising money — money that is already being spent on a political campaign — and the noncandidate is letting it happen.

Run if you want, Ed. But if you’re going to keep your promise, then it’s time to call Pak, Pierce and company and tell them to quit.

Three good initiatives for the fall

Andrew Lam
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2

The progressive wing of the Board of Supervisors (including, to her credit, Sup. Jane Kim) has placed three important reform measures on the November ballot. That the measures are headed for the voters is a clear indication of the shift of power at the board — progressives no longer have a reliable six votes. But the progressives still have the ability to push issues — and in an mayoral election year, these measures will provide a valuable gauge for the candidates and create broad-based organizing opportunities.

The measures include a ban on the demolition of more than 50 units of rent-controlled housing; a ban on further admissions charges at parks or leasing park facilities to private companies; and a requirement that participants in the Care Not Cash program get an actual housing unit — not just a shelter bed — before their welfare grants are cut.

The supervisors are under immense pressure to back off from those proposals, and if two of the five supporters pull their names before the final deadline of July 14, the measures won’t make the ballot. Some argue that the controversy over the measures could threaten the mayoral campaign of progressive standard-bearer John Avalos. But Avalos told us he supports all three measures and has no interest in turning back. He’s right — the supervisors should hold firm and insist on a public vote on all three.

The Care Not Cash reform has already generated a lot of controversy. Mayor Ed Lee has denounced it, saying it will destroy the entire program, and two mayoral candidates, former Sup. Bevan Dufty and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, have come out against it. But the measure is pretty simple and straightforward: it says that a bed in a shelter doesn’t count as “housing.”

That’s a critical definition, because under Care Not Cash, the city tries to put homeless welfare recipients into housing, mostly single-room-occupancy hotels — and in exchange, takes back most of the welfare grants. But by law, a bed in a shelter counts as a home — so the minute the city finds someone a cot to sleep on in a noisy, sometimes dangerous shelter with no privacy and arbitrary curfews and rules, that person loses most of his or her welfare grant. Along the way, the city locks up shelter beds for people in the CNC program — so when other homeless people show up for a place to sleep, they’re told there’s no room. That’s a sign of a broken system.

The housing demolition measure comes as a response to a badly flawed proposal to rebuild Parkmerced — tearing down hundreds of rent-controlled housing units in the process. The parks measure is an attempt to stop Phil Ginsburg, head of the Recreation and Parks Department, from turning public property over to private for-profit firms in an effort to raise cash.

The community groups and grassroots sponsors of these measures have a responsibility to organize and mount serious campaigns; there’s going to be big-money opposition. But it’s worth having all three on the ballot in November.

Editorial: Three good initiatives for the fall ballot

Maria Poblet
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16

The progressive wing of the Board of Supervisors (including, to her credit, Sup. Jane Kim) has placed three important reform measures on the November ballot. That the measures are headed for the voters is a clear indication of the shift of power at the board — progressives no longer have a reliable six votes. But the progressives still have the ability to push issues — and in an mayoral election year, these measures will provide a valuable gauge for the candidates and create broad-based organizing opportunities.

The measures include a ban on the demolition of more than 50 units of rent-controlled housing; a ban on further admissions charges at parks or leasing park facilities to private companies; and a requirement that participants in the Care Not Cash program get an actual housing unit — not just a shelter bed — before their welfare grants are cut.

The supervisors are under immense pressure to back off from those proposals, and if two of the five supporters pull their names before the final deadline of July 14, the measures won’t make the ballot. Some argue that the controversy over the measures could threaten the mayoral campaign of progressive standard-bearer John Avalos. But Avalos told us he supports all three measures and has no interest in turning back. He’s right — the supervisors should hold firm and insist on a public vote on all three.

The Care Not Cash reform has already generated a lot of controversy. Mayor Ed Lee has denounced it, saying it will destroy the entire program, and two mayoral candidates, former Sup. Bevan Dufty and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, have come out against it. But the measure is pretty simple and straightforward: it says that a bed in a shelter doesn’t count as “housing.”

That’s a critical definition, because under Care Not Cash, the city tries to put homeless welfare recipients into housing, mostly single-room-occupancy hotels — and in exchange, takes back most of the welfare grants. But by law, a bed in a shelter counts as a home — so the minute the city finds someone a cot to sleep on in a noisy, sometimes dangerous shelter with no privacy and arbitrary curfews and rules, that person loses most of his or her welfare grant. Along the way, the city locks up shelter beds for people in the CNC program — so when other homeless people show up for a place to sleep, they’re told there’s no room. That’s a sign of a broken system.

The housing demolition measure comes as a response to a badly flawed proposal to rebuild Parkmerced — tearing down hundreds of rent-controlled housing units in the process. The parks measure is an attempt to stop Phil Ginsburg, head of the Recreation and Parks Department, from turning public property over to private for-profit firms in an effort to raise cash.

The community groups and grassroots sponsors of these measures have a responsibility to organize and mount serious campaigns; there’s going to be big-money opposition. But it’s worth having all three on the ballot in November.

 

Ethics chief says “Run, Ed, Run” must register honestly

Sasha Cuttler
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24
Ethics chief says “Run, Ed, Run” must register honestly

As the pseudo-campaign to convince Mayor Ed Lee to change his mind and run for mayor prepares to open a campaign office tomorrow morning – an event with all the trappings of a real campaign but without the candidate or the regulatory controls – the Ethics Commission is asking it to re-register in a less deceptive way.

As the Examiner reported this morning, Progress for All, the group behind the Run, Ed, Run campaign – which has set up a website, bought advertising, and printed and circulated campaign materials around the sole purpose of promoting a mayoral campaign – registered as a political action committee (one not subject to campaign contribution limits or other controls) even though Ethics Director John St. Croix said it is clearly formed around a primary purpose.

Today, St. Croix tells the Guardian that he has asked Progress for All to re-register as a committee formed around the specific purpose of promoting Lee for mayor, but that “I don’t know that they responded completely in the affirmative.” Guardian calls to the group’s main contract Gordon Chin, who also runs the Chinatown Community Development Center, were not returned.

Despite statements to the Examiner by Progress for All campaign consultant Enrique Pearce that this campaign isn’t unprecedented (he cited the 1999 mayoral write-in campaign of Tom Ammiano, who was a willing participant in the effort and formed a campaign committee), St. Croix said it is unprecedented and his office is figuring out how to regulate it.

“There aren’t regulations specifically designed for a scenario like his,” he told us. “They can’t operate in the absence of regulations.”

Right now, while Progress for All lists five co-chairs of the committee, the public has no way of knowing who’s funding the group, how much individual donors have given, or how much is being spent to make the campaign appear to have popular support. That will become more clear at the end of July when the semi-annual campaign finance reports are due, and St. Croix said his office plans to “carefully examine” those filings in order to decide how to proceed.

The group’s current filings list its purpose as “general civic education and public affairs,” but St. Croix said the public has a right to know that it has actually formed around a single candidate. While the courts have struck down fundraising limits for committees like this, the group’s website seems to limit contributions to the maximum individual contribution of $500, apparently acknowledging that there are potential legal problems with its current approach.

Lee has repeatedly said that he doesn’t want to run for mayor and has not encouraged this effort, but he has done little to discourage the efforts by a group led by his closest political allies, so he could be sullied by group’s tactics if he eventually decides to run. St. Croix says that if Lee runs and his campaign has any overlap with the current efforts, it will raised troubling issues of whether there has been any collusion between the two campaigns, which is illegal.

Despite the concerns expressed by Ethics, the agency doesn’t have a great track record of being tough with powerful campaign finance violators, as a Grand Jury report released this week argues. For example, although the Guardian and Bay Citizen each reported back in October about an independent expenditure (partially funded by Willie Brown) on behalf of Jane Kim’s supervisorial campaign that was done through Pearce’s Left Coast Communications, which was Kim’s campaign consultant, that apparently illegal action was never followed up by the Ethics Commission. St. Croix has said he can’t comment on that incident, and he responded to the grand jury report by noting that its recommendations were mild even though “the report itself uses some fighting words,” and he said he was preparing a formal response.

Although some activists have argued that those expressing concerns about this stealth campaign are somehow being undemocratic, the reality is that Progress for All is the only mayoral campaign not playing by the rules. And there are rules that govern elections, rules set up precisely so the public knows who’s really behind the campaign propaganda.

Fixing Care not Cash

Zelda Bronstein
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18
Fixing Care not Cash

I will admit to a bias up front: I was against Care Not Cash in 2002, when Gavin Newsom used it as a cynical play to get elected mayor by bashing the homeless. I always argued that the city would be taking away the already-tiny welfare payments from people in exchange for housing that isn’t there. Imagine living on $422 a month in San Francisco. Now imagine that’s been cut to $59 a month — because the city’s determined that you can sleep in a shelter bed. Great fucking deal.


And that’s what happens. Care not Cash allows the city to reduce a homeless person’s general assistance grant to $59 a month as soon as the city finds housing for the person. And a shelter counts as housing.


There are lots of problems with the scenario — like this and and this. In essence, the city sets aside a certain number of shelter beds for people in the CNC program, but they don’t all show up, so there are empty beds — and people who need a place to sleep can’t get them because they’re earmarked as “housing” for an anti-homeless program.


So five supervisors have come up with a ballot initiative that would make one small, but significant change in the Care Not Cash legislation. It would specify that shelters don’t count as housing. That’s it. That’s the entire amendment. (You can read the proposed law here (pdf)


It makes perfect logical sense. You want to tell a homeless person that instead of giving you welfare payments, we’re going to give you housing? Fine. Then make it housing. Wasn’t that the premise of CNC from the start?


But somehow, CNC stalwarts (including those who make money off the program) are outraged, claiming this will gut the entire effort. In the Chronicle story, Mayor Ed Lee notes that


“By removing the shelter system from the available benefits provided to Care Not Cash recipients, we dismantle this path to getting people housed, ultimately undermining the success of the nationally recognized, award-winning program.”


Of course, the proposal doesn’t remove the shelter system from the available benefits. Sup. Jane Kim, the sponsor, and her colleagues aren’t talking about shutting down shelters or kicking homeless people out. The measure just says you can’t take someone’s welfare grant away just because you found him or her a temporary cot in a noisy, often unsafe shelter that offers no privacy and operates under random rules that at lot of us would find intolerable. 


Again, my bias is against the entire premise of Care Not Cash. I think the city (and the state and the feds) ought to be providing homeless people with enough money to get a place to live and enough to eat. That’s the way it used to work — when I arrived in San Francisco, you could actually afford to rent a room in a shared house with General Assistance money, and you could live reasonably — not in luxury, but reasonably — on federal SSI payments. But the cost of housing has so outstripped the increase in welfare payments that people wind up on the streets. 


But if we’re going to do the Care Not Cash thing, shouldn’t the city be required to provide real housing before the grants get cut off?


Randy Shaw, who runs a bunch of Care Not Cash hotels under city contract, doesn’t think so. He argues that


[T]he measure repeals CNC’s central premise that homeless single adults on welfare should not get $422 per month if they refuse SRO housing. The initiative also dramatically reverses San Francisco homeless policy: it replaces a system designed to get homeless people housed with one subsidizing homeless people to live permanently in shelters. The measure increases homelessness and provides no alternative funding to make up for the millions of CNC dollars that would be eliminated from the city’s supportive housing budget.


 I understand the concern about the CNC money (some of which, again, goes to Shaw’s operation). If the city starts paying $422 a month to some people who are now only getting $59, that money will have to come from someplace. But this whole notion that the proposed change will allow the city to give cash grants to people who “refuse SRO housing” seems a bit off.


“We haven’t changed that part at all,” Jennifer Freidenbach, who runs the Coalition on Homelessness and was involved in drafting the measure, told me. “People who refuse SRO housing would still get their grants cut.”


I asked Shaw about this — and also about my understanding that there isn’t enough SRO housing for every homeless person who wants a place to live. Should people on the waiting list get their grants cut off because the city can stick them in a shelter in the meantime?


For whatever reason, my old pal Randy hasn’t responded. (I continue to be boggled by two things — Shaw never calls people before he trashes them, and he seems unwilling to have substantive debates with me when I want to talk to him. That last time I emailed him to ask why he didn’t call people for comment, he responded: “I see the issue very differently and disagree with your premise.” How is that helpful? This time he didn’t answer at all.)


The oddest thing is that Shaw — a longtime housing advocate who has spent 30 years working to help low-income people — has adopted a remarkably strident, even harsh tone that reminds me of the rhetoric that Newsom and his allies used to use. Consider:


Understand we are talking about people who have the option of accepting permanent housing but refuse. People who want to get a full city grant, live in a city-funded shelter, but want the right to pay nothing.


Jeez. Those lazy welfare bums who want “the right” to a place to live and a miniscule, tiny cash grant.


There was a time when liberals used to talk about a guaranteed national income. Now the debate in progressive San Francisco involves bashing poor people. Wow. 


 

Will partisan agendas shape the redrawing of political lines? — UPDATED

Sasha Cuttler
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14
Will partisan agendas shape the redrawing of political lines? — UPDATED

UPDATED BELOW In the midst of a political realignment at City Hall that is still shaking out, the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee is today (Thurs/23) considering appointments to the Redistricting Task Force, the body that will redraw supervisorial districts using the latest census data. And its choices will say a great deal about the role of integrity and impartiality in the new “politics of civility.”

This commission will arguably have more influence on the city’s political dynamics over the next decade than any other, so overtly partisan appointees should be viewed with great suspicion. Larry Bush at CitiReport did a nice rundown of the applicants and their backgrounds, but the Rules Committee will be where the real action is.

President David Chiu stacked the committee with a conservative majority (Sups. Mark Farrell and Sean Elsbernd) and named a chair (Sup. Jane Kim) whose political loyalties are tough to peg right now. Will she seek an appointee who doesn’t have a political agenda, or will she seek to reward a partisan ally like applicant Paul Hogarth, who worked on her campaign and writes for BeyondChron.org, a propaganda outlet for Kim-backers Randy Shaw and the Willie Brown/Rose Pak/David Ho cabal that elevated Ed Lee into Room 200 and is desperately trying to keep him there.

There are other problematic applicants as well, including Potrero View Publisher Steven Moss, who ran for supervisor in D10 last year and has shown a penchant for seeking payback against his perceived enemies (including the Guardian, which ran articles questioning his residency status). Applicant Ron Dudum has also shown a vindictive streak – following up his failed D2 supervisorial campaigns with an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the ranked-choice voting system – that would make him a worrisome figure to have on this task force.

So far, three people have been named to the body by the Elections Commission: gadfly/policy wonk David Pilpel, Google attorney Melissa Tidwell, and Mark Schreiber, the managing general partner of Cooper White & Cooper. So already, this is tilting toward a business community bias that will probably get worse once Mayor Ed Lee makes his three appointments to the nine-member commission.

Given how the Rules Committee is stacked, its three recommendations are likely to raise questions that the full board will need to put to rest when it takes the matter up on Tuesday. Voters need to have faith that partisan agendas aren’t shaping the city’s most important political lines, and now is the moment to ensure they have that confidence.

UPDATE: The committee voted unanimously to recommend Eric McDonnell, the chief operating officer of United Way of the Bay Area; Jenny Lam, director of community initiatives for Chinese for Affirmative Action and a board member of Chinatown Community Children’s Center; and Mike Alonso, a “security professional” with Corporate Security Services who got his law degree from New College in 2007 but never worked as a lawyer.

Measure would make getting a shelter bed easier and more fair

Sasha Cuttler
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3
Measure would make getting a shelter bed easier and more fair

More than three years after a Guardian investigation found that San Francisco’s homeless shelter system is an unnecessarily confusing, difficult to navigate, and inequitable boondoggle that routinely denies people use of even vacant shelter beds, voters in November will get a chance to change a system created largely by former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Care Not Cash program.

Care Not Cash was sold to voters in 2002 as a program that reduced the general assistance payments to homeless individuals in exchange for the city giving them housing and support services. But that housing often turned out to be simply a shelter bed, and after years of city budget cutting closed homeless shelters, nearly half the remaining beds were set aside for Care Not Cash clients whether they used them or not.

So Sup. Jane Kim and four progressive supervisors, working with the Coalition on Homelessness, yesterday approved the creation of a “Fair Shelter” ballot measure to require that Care Not Cash clients get more than simply a shelter bed and that shelter beds be opened up to all who need them on a more equitable and sensible basis.

But Mayor Ed Lee and others who helped create the current system are criticizing the measure and using the same deceptive claims that have masked the problem for years. “Care Not Cash is premised on providing a path to housing and services. That path begins with shelter for those who need it. By removing the shelter system from the available benefits provided to Care Not Cash recipients, we dismantle this path to getting people housed, ultimately undermining the success of this nationally recognized, award-winning program,” Lee said in a statement issued yesterday.

Human Services Agency Director Trent Rhorer, Newsom’s point person in creating the system, told the Chronicle that the measure would threaten Care Not Cash and attract more homeless people to the city by making it easier to get into shelters. He also denied there was a problem, noting that about 100 of the city’s 1,100 shelter beds are vacant each night.

But there’s a gaping contradiction at the heart of Rhorer’s rhetoric, demonstrating that the city’s real intention is to make life as difficult as possible for the homeless in the hopes that they’ll simply leave the city, as Guardian reporters found when they spent a week trying to sleep in the shelters. Vacant beds are only made available late at night, and claiming one often involves long uncertain waits and crosstown run-arounds between where people register and where they might ultimately sleep.

It’s a dehumanizing and deceptive system that COH and the city’s Homeless Shelter Monitoring Committee have long been seeking to change. “The inclusion of shelter in the original ordinance has resulted in an unintended negative consequence of wreaking havoc on the city’s publicly funded shelter system. People with disabilities, seniors, working homeless people and undocumented people have a disadvantage in garnering access to shelter beds under the current system,” Shelter Monitoring Committee Chair LJ Cirilo said in a statement put out by COH, which noted that 43 percent of shelter beds are reserved by Care Not Cash recipients, although they represent only about 14 percent of the city’s homeless population.

Ford says goodbye at Golden Wheel Awards

Sasha Cuttler
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2
Ford says goodbye at Golden Wheel Awards

Just hours after being asked to leave the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, director Nat Ford was at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s annual Golden Wheels Awards accepting an award for the MTA’s Livable Streets Team. But that potentially awkward moment was eased by the universal political support for making the streets of San Francisco safer and more inviting for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Coming from car-centric Atlanta in 2006, Ford admitted he was an unlikely champion of turning San Francisco into one of the country’s best cities for biking. But he said the SFBC was “very persistent and worked with us.” While the bike injunction hurt progress, Ford said the support of SFBC and city officials allowed the agency to beef up the program from just a couple of staffers to “a dozen of the best bike planning and engineering folks in this country.”

“It was great working with all of you to get the MTA where it is today in terms of biking,” Ford told the capacity crowd in the War Memorial Building’s second floor event space, where the balcony overlooked City Hall and a sea of hundreds of bikes parked on the sidewalk out front.

Mayor Ed Lee spoke next, pledging to continue the progress and telling the crowd, “I want to give my very special thanks to Nat Ford for his five years of very dedicated service.”

Both Ford and MTA members told the Guardian that the split was a “mutual decision.” Ford told us, “Now’s a good time to go,” and that he’s still figuring out his next move. MTA board chair Tom Nolan told us, “It’s something we arrived at together. It’s good for his family and him.”

Indeed, it seems very good for Ford. The board approved a $385,000 severance package to go with its request that he resign before his contract expires, a payout that is drawing some criticism. “I am deeply disappointed that MTA would approve a nearly $400,000 golden parachute for an outgoing city executive. At a time when our budget is cutting critical social services for our kids and the most vulnerable in our city, we can ill-afford to be paying excessive payouts to administrators who are no longer working for the public. I have fought these exorbitant sweetheart deals at UC and CSU, and as mayor I will reform these practices,” Sen. Leland Yee, a candidate for mayor, said in a prepared statement.

Nolan says it’s time to restore the agency. “I’ve talked about wanting to restart what we do,” he told us. While Ford’s reported job hunting was one reason for the split, Nolan also alluded to mismanagement of the agency and the mistrust of its administration by Transport Workers Union Local 250A and other employees.

“We clearly have a problem when the drivers turn down a contract two-to-one,” Nolan said of the union’s rejection of its latest contract, which has since been approved by an outside arbitrator. “We can do a lot better.”

But the Ford saga was just a sideshow during an evening devoted to celebrating the improvements to the city’s bicycle network and selling the SFBC’s vision of what’s next, which it calls “Connecting the City.” The plan calls for three, green, separated bikeways (like those now on a stretch of Market Street) bisecting the city by 2015 (with the first Bay To Beach route done by next year) and a fully connected network of 100 miles of bikeways by 2020.

“Safe, comfortable, crosstown bikeways for everyone,” was how MTA Commissioner Cheryl Brinkman put it in slick video that the SFBC premiered at the event to promote the plan.

SFBC Director Leah Shahum told the crowd the idea is to connect and promote the city’s various neighborhoods and encourage “regular San Franciscans” to take more frequent trips by bike. “Seven in 10 of us, that’s how many people are already riding a bike,” she said, citing a survey of how many city residents own or have access to bikes. “We’re developing a vision where people are connected by safe, family-friendly bikeways.”

Shahum praised how engaged Mayor Lee has been with the plan and the need to improve the city’s cycling infrastructure. “Let me tell you how impressed I am with the level of involvement from Room 200,” she said.

Lee pledged to make cycling safer on dangerous sections of Oak and Fell streets that connect the Panhandle with the Lower Haight – sections Shahum took Lee on during Bike to Work Day this year – and to complete a new green bike lane on JFK Drive this year.

“We can get a lot of the goals of the Bicycle Coalition done together. We need your help in November,” Lee told the crowd, calling for them to support a street improvement bond measure on the fall ballot. He said the bicycling community has made the streets more fun and inviting, telling the crowd that at this weekend’s Conference of Mayors, he is “going to brag about our bike lanes and our way of living.”

The mayoral poll: No surprises

Zelda Bronstein
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18
The mayoral poll: No surprises

The David Chiu campaign has released a poll that isn’t really all that surprising. It shows that the two candidates who have run citywide races — State Sen. Leland Yee and City Attorney Dennis Herrera — are a little tiny bit ahead, and Chiu is a little tiny bit behind, but all of them are well within the margin of error of a poll sample of only 500 people. Yee is out in front at 17 percent (I’m actually surprised he’s not further ahead at this point, since so much of this is name recognition and he’s been elected so many times, to so many jobs, over so many years that he has by far the best name rec in the race). Chiu and Herrera are tied at 13 and 12 percent (but with a plus-or-minus five percent MOE, all three are statistically in a dead heat).


I would have thought John Avalos would be closer to the top at this point, since he’s doing a good job consolidating the left, but he’s never run citywide, and the campaigns have barely started. Again: It’s name recognition right now.


The bottom line: There is no front runner (with the possible exception of Yee). There may never be a front-runner among the three men bunched in the center of the pack. It’s all going to come down to who gets the second- and third-place votes — which is why ranked-choice voting is so valuable in a race like this. In a traditional race, two candidates who combined might have 35 percent of the vote would be in a runoff, and a candidate who missed the cut by half a percentage point would be out of the running.


One thing we do know: This poll is going to drive Rose Pak and Willie Brown nuts, and increase dramatically the pressure on Ed Lee to run. the more powerful Yee appears, the more likely it is that the center of power in the Asian community will shift away from Pak’s Chinatown operations. Yee’s base is west side, not Chinatown; always has been. Pak despises him (and the feeling is no doubt at least somewhat mutual).


The other fact that weighs in Yee’s favor: He’s doing a better job than anyone of expanding his base. He’s racking up leftside endorsements (unions, the Sierra Club) and aiming hard at the Avalos Number Twos.


As for the questions about what people want in a mayor? Again, these are poll-tested platitudes that we hear every year, and we’re going to hear more of them. “Together.” “Shared values.” “Making the city work.” If it weren’t such a beautiful day, I’d want to puke out my window.

Daly: SFBG profiled the wrong guy

Sasha Cuttler
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Daly: SFBG profiled the wrong guy

When I interviewed Chris Daly for this week’s cover story on David Chiu and the political realignment at City Hall, Daly said we were putting the wrong guy on the cover.

“If the story is about political realignment, it’s about David Ho,” Daly told me of the political consultant who once worked on his and other progressive campaigns, but who helped engineer a split in the progressive movement with the help of consultant Enrique Pearce and District 3 Sup. Jane Kim, whose campaign they worked on together last year, beating early progressive favorite Debra Walker.

Daly said the political realignment that has taken place at City Hall has more to do with Kim and Ho – in collusion with former Mayor Willie Brown, Chinatown Chamber head Rose Pak, and Tenderloin power broker Randy Shaw – than it does with Chiu, who Daly considers simply a pawn in someone else’s game. Ho is seeking to be Pak’s successor as Chinatown political boss, and he and Pearce have been out there doing the ground work Pak’s effort to convince Lee to remain mayor.

“Any realignment that exists is about David Ho and I think it has more to do with the District 6 race than the District 3 race,” Daly said. “As far as David Chiu and realignment, they are separate things.”

While Ho and Pearce have traditionally worked on progressive campaigns – particularly in high-profile contests like this year’s mayor’s race, where John Avalos is the clear progressive favorite – they are now some of the strongest behind-the-scenes backers of the campaign to convince Ed Lee to run. Neither Ho nor Pearce returned our calls for comment.

“That’s the whole realignment,” Daly said, explaining that it was the peeling of entities like Chinatown Community Development Corporation and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic away from the progressive coalition of the last decade that has cast progressive supervisors into the wilderness and empowered Chiu and Kim, who in turn brought Lee to power.

“It’s not a seismic realignment, it’s a minor realignment, it just happens to be who’s in power,” Daly said. “It was a minor political shift that caused a big change at City Hall.”

Power has now consolidated around Mayor Lee, as well as those who convinced Chiu to put him there, including the powerful players who helped elect Kim. “These people, as far I can tell, have disowned Chiu,” Daly said. “He did what they wanted but he failed the loyalty test in the process.”

Chiu has so quickly fallen from favor that even Planning Commission President Christina Olague, who spoke at Chiu’s campaign launch event on the steps of City Hall just two months ago, is now one of the co-chairs of a committee pushing Lee to run, along with others connected to CCDC and the Pak/Brown power center.

Kim has also notably withheld her mayoral endorsement. She tells us that she’s waiting until after budget season, but the real reason is likely to wait and see whether Lee gets into the race. Daly said this new political power center has been playing the long game, starting with supporting Chiu back in 2008.

“Peskin kind of brought him up, and then I – tactically or a strategic blunder – I made the mistake of not bringing someone up,” Daly said, insisting that he’s always questioned Chiu’s political loyalties. “I had doubts from the beginning. Ultimately, it was Jane Kim and David Ho who tag teamed me and got me on board.”

Daly said Chui’s last-minute move to cross his progressive colleagues and back Lee for mayor “irreparably harmed him with progressives,” while doing little to win over a new political base. “He miscalculated the damage it would do to him,” Daly said.

Chiu’s dependability was also called into question when he was openly considering a deal with Gavin Newsom to be named district attorney, which would have allowed Newsom to appoint his replacement in D3, a move that he didn’t check with Pak.

“He gave control of his political base to someone else,” Avalos told us, offering that if Chiu was going to be so narrowly ambitious then he should have taken Newsom’s offer to become district attorney.

Even those around Chiu have emphasized his independence from Pak, who has desperately been looking for someone she could count on to back and prevent Leland Yee from winning the mayor’s office. And if Lee doesn’t run, sources say she’s likely to back another political veteran such as Dennis Herrera or Michela Alioto-Pier.

But given how deftly Ho and his allies have grabbed power at City Hall, I’d say they have a pretty good chance of convincing Lee to run, despite the mayor’s resistance. And if Lee runs, Daly, USF Professor Corey Cook, and others we interviewed say he would probably win.

CPMC’s stunning arrogance

Andrew Lam
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CPMC’s stunning arrogance

The San Francisco City Planning Commission hearing June 9 on California Pacific Medical Center’s expansion plans was remarkable — both in the comments that the commissioners had and in the mind-boggling arrogance of the giant hospital chain.

CPMC wants to build a massive new hospital and medical office building on Van Ness Avenue and rebuild St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission. The plans aren’t even close to complying with city planning codes — the Sutter Health affiliate will need city approval to exceed height limits on Van Ness (by more than 100 feet); a modification of the housing construction requirement for new offices; permission to demolish existing housing units; permission to take over a part of San Jose Avenue — and a lot more. In other words, CPMC is asking a lot from the city.

And since this nonprofit controls four major hospitals in the city, its future development decisions need to be considered in the context of San Francisco’s overall health care needs.

It’s entirely reasonable that the city ask CPMC for a development agreement that provides benefits to city residents. Mayor Ed Lee has made it clear that the approval of this project will depend on whether CPMC can address affordable housing, healthcare access for low-income people, a secure future for St. Luke’s, workforce development, and transportation impacts. Lee’s proposals are more than reasonable: he’s asking that CPMC pay the standard fee for affordable housing required of any major commercial developer; increase its level of charity care (now an abysmal 0.99 percent) to the average of other regional hospitals (2.3 percent); increase its Medical acceptance rate; and maintain St. Luke’s as an acute care facility with an emergency room. Union nurses are asking that Sutter deal with them in good faith.

But Dr. Warren Browner, CEO of CPMC, showed little interest in working with the city. The demands are way too high, he told the commissioners, insisting that it was unreasonable to ask the hospital to contribute that much to affordable housing. He acted as if CMPC was somehow entitled to move forward — at its own proposed schedule — and that all of these city demands were nonsense.

That’s not going to work.

A clear majority of the commissioners got the point. As Ron Miguel pointed out, Sutter is a nonprofit — and its tax-exempt status mandates a certain level of social responsibility. Every big commercial developer has to pay for housing and transit impacts. Gwyneth Borden and Bill Sugaya noted that hospital officials knew full well what the planning rules were when they bought the Van Ness site.

This is a $2.5 billion project. Community benefits need to be a significant part of the final plan. If anything, Lee’s proposals are too limited (Sutter should agree to protect St. Luke’s for 50 years, not 20). The planning commissioners should stick to their positions — this project is out of control, and if Browner wants to see it built, he needs to come back with a new set of numbers, and a new attitude.

Editorial: CPMC’s stunning arrogance

Maria Poblet
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3

The San Francisco City Planning Commission hearing June 9 on California Pacific Medical Center’s expansion plans was remarkable — both in the comments that the commissioners had and in the mind-boggling arrogance of the giant hospital chain.

CPMC wants to build a massive new hospital and medical office building on Van Ness Avenue and rebuild St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission. The plans aren’t even close to complying with city planning codes — the Sutter Health affiliate will need city approval to exceed height limits on Van Ness (by more than 100 feet); a modification of the housing construction requirement for new offices; permission to demolish existing housing units; permission to take over a part of San Jose Avenue — and a lot more. In other words, CPMC is asking a lot from the city.

And since this nonprofit controls four major hospitals in the city, its future development decisions need to be considered in the context of San Francisco’s overall health care needs.

It’s entirely reasonable that the city ask CPMC for a development agreement that provides benefits to city residents. Mayor Ed Lee has made it clear that the approval of this project will depend on whether CPMC can address affordable housing, healthcare access for low-income people, a secure future for St. Luke’s, workforce development, and transportation impacts. Lee’s proposals are more than reasonable: he’s asking that CPMC pay the standard fee for affordable housing required of any major commercial developer; increase its level of charity care (now an abysmal 0.99 percent) to the average of other regional hospitals (2.3 percent); increase its Medical acceptance rate; and maintain St. Luke’s as an acute care facility with an emergency room. Union nurses are asking that Sutter deal with them in good faith.

But Dr. Warren Browner, CEO of CPMC, showed little interest in working with the city. The demands are way too high, he told the commissioners, insisting that it was unreasonable to ask the hospital to contribute that much to affordable housing. He acted as if CMPC was somehow entitled to move forward — at its own proposed schedule — and that all of these city demands were nonsense.

That’s not going to work.

A clear majority of the commissioners got the point. As Ron Miguel pointed out, Sutter is a nonprofit — and its tax-exempt status mandates a certain level of social responsibility. Every big commercial developer has to pay for housing and transit impacts. Gwyneth Borden and Bill Sugaya noted that hospital officials knew full well what the planning rules were when they bought the Van Ness site.

This is a $2.5 billion project. Community benefits need to be a significant part of the final plan. If anything, Lee’s proposals are too limited (Sutter should agree to protect St. Luke’s for 50 years, not 20). The planning commissioners should stick to their positions — this project is out of control, and if Browner wants to see it built, he needs to come back with a new set of numbers, and a new attitude.

 

Lee should veto Parkmerced

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Lee should veto Parkmerced

EDITORIAL Mayor Ed Lee got his start as a lawyer working on tenant issues. He understands the city’s rent laws and the shortage of affordable housing. He also knows — or ought to know — that when the city’s tenant groups are unanimously opposed to a project, elected officials who care about tenant rights should pay attention.

The Parkmerced project will be a clear test: Does he follow his activist roots, stick with the people he started with and show his independence — or side with the big out-of-town developer and allow the project to move forward?

The supervisors approved the project by the narrowest of margins, 6-5. All of the progressives voted to reject the development agreement and rezoning — and for good reason. The deal would lead to the demolition of 1,500 units of rent-controlled housing. And while the developer says it will abide by the rent laws for the newly built replacement units, that’s a shaky legal guarantee. The larger point, tenant advocates say, is that demolishing existing affordable housing is always a bad idea.

In the end, 1,500 people will have to leave the homes they’ve lived in for years — in some cases, many years. They will be offered replacement units in a high-rise — very different from the garden apartments (with, yes, gardens) that they’ve occupied. And if the developer decides that there’s more money to be made by jacking up the rents on those units, it’s a safe bet that an army of lawyers will arrive attempting to undermine the questionable guarantees now in the deal.

There’s also the problem of transportation and traffic. The project will include a new parking space for every new unit, meaning 6,000 new cars in an area already overwhelmingly congested. Since the vast majority of the units will be market-rate (the developer will provide 15 percent affordable units, under city law, which means 85 will be sold or rented to rich people) the development will transform what is now still something of a working-class neighborhood into another enclave for the wealthy.

When we talked to Mayor Lee, he was noncommittal on the deal. At the same time, he noted that the garden apartments are old and will have to be replaced at some point. We don’t dispute that there are ways to add more density at Parkmerced. But wholesale demolition of affordable housing isn’t the answer.

This deal is bad for tenants and bad for the city. Mayor Lee ought to recognize that then tenant groups opposing this have analyzed it carefully and come to an entirely reasonable conclusion.

Sup. David Chiu, the swing vote in favor of the project, did serious damage to his reputation as a progressive and lost thousands of tenant votes by siding with the developer. Lee, who insists he isn’t running in November, ought to demonstrate that he hasn’t forgotten his roots, that he listens to activists, and doesn’t simply go along with poorly conceived development projects. He should veto the development agreement and zoning changes and send this thing back to the drawing board.

Behind the all-smiles budget

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Behind the all-smiles budget

news@sfbg.com

When Mayor Ed Lee released his 2011-12 budget proposal June 1, all was sweetness and light at City Hall.

The mayor delivered the document in person, to the supervisors, in the board chambers. Sup. Carmen Chu, chair of the Budget Committee, was standing to the mayor’s right. Board President David Chiu was to his left. There was none of the imperious attitude we’d come to expect in the Gavin Newsom era — and little of the typical hostility from the board.

As Sup. David Campos, who was elected in November 2008, remarked afterward: “It’s the first time since I’ve been elected that the mayor has taken the time to come to chambers. It’s reflective of how this has been a lot more of an inclusionary process.”

Lee went even further. “This is a pretty happy time,” he said. “There are no layoffs, and instead of closing libraries we’ll be opening them.” That earned him an ovation from assembled city leaders, including mayoral candidates City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting along with District Attorney George Gascón. “I think this budget represents a lot of hope.”

It’s true that this year’s cuts won’t be as bad as the cuts over the past five years. It’s also true that the pain is spread a bit more — the police and fire departments, which Newsom, always the ambitious politician, wouldn’t touch, are taking their share of cuts.

But before everybody stands up and holds hands and sings “Kumbaya,” there’s some important perspective that’s missing here.

Over the past half-decade, San Francisco has cut roughly $1 billion out of General Fund spending. The Department of Public Health has eliminated three- quarters of the acute mental health beds. Six homeless resource centers have closed. The waiting list for a homeless family seeking shelter is between six and nine months. Muni service has been reduced and fares have been raised. Recreation centers have been closed. Library hours have been reduced.

In other words, services for the poor and middle class have been slashed below acceptable levels, year after year — and Mayor Lee’s budget doesn’t even begin to restore any of those cuts.

“We’re not ready yet to restore old cuts,” Lee told the Guardian in a June 2 interview. “It was enough for us to accomplish a pretty steady course and keep as much. Particularly with the critical nonprofits that provide services to seniors and youth and homeless shelters, we kept them as close as we could to what last year’s funding was.”

But the current level of funding is woefully inadequate. As Debbi Lerman, administrator of the Human Services Network, noted, the people who work in the nonprofits Lee was talking about haven’t had a pay raise in four years — even though the cost of living continues to rise. “Our costs have gone up with cost of inflation,” she noted.

She said the cuts over the past few years have deeply eroded services for children, homeless people, substance abuse programs, and others. “There have been significant cuts to every area of health and human services.”

And in a city with 14 billionaires and thousands more very wealthy people, Lee’s budget is distinctly lacking in significant new ways to find revenue.

 

THE GOOD NEWS

Just about everyone agrees that the budget process this year has been far better than anything anyone experienced under Newsom. “He [Mayor Lee] listened to everybody,” Lerman said. “That doesn’t mean they fixed everything. Mayor Lee fixed as much as he could.”

At his press conference announcing the release of the budget, Lee thanked Police Chief Greg Suhr for having already made significant cuts through management restructuring and for considering an additional proposed cut of $20 million.

“We want to thank you for that great sacrifice,” Lee said, addressing Suhr, who sat in front row of public benches, dressed in uniform. Lee next acknowledged that adequate funding for social services also helps public safety. “Without those services, officers on the street would have a harder job,” he said.

Lee also praised the departments of Public Health and Human Services for helping to identify $39 million in federal dollars and $16 million in state dollars, to help keep services open and the city safer.

Lee noted that San Francisco no longer has a one-year budget process and has just released its first five-year financial plan as part of its decision to go in five-year planning cycles.

“To address this, I’ve asked for shared sacrifice, ” Lee continued, adding that he recently released his long-awaited pension reform charter amendment, emphasizing that it was built through a consensus and collaborative-based approach.

Lee also said he would consider asking voters to approve what he called “a recovery sales tax” in November if Gov. Jerry Brown is unable to extend the state’s sales tax. That would bring in $60 million — but it is only on the table as a way to backfill further state budget cuts.

Lee observed that San Francisco is growing, the economy is looking brighter, and unemployment is down from more than 10 percent last January to 8.5 percent today. He plugged the America’s Cup, the city’s local hire legislation, the Department of Public Works’ apprenticeship programs, and tourism, both in terms of earmarking funding in the budget for these programs and their potential to boost city revenues.

He said his budget proposed $308 million in infrastructure investments that include enhanced disability access, rebuilding jails, and energy efficiency, and is proposing a $248 million General Obligation bond for the November ballot to reduce the street repair backlog.

“We will get these streets repaired,” he promised.

“This submission of a budget is not an end at all, it’s the beginning of the process,” he continued, going on to recognize Chu for her work getting the process rolling and thanking Budget Analyst Harvey Rose in advance. “I do know his cooperation is critical.”

And he concluded by thanking each of the supervisors. “I will continue enjoying working with you — we need to keep the city family tight and together.”

The sentiment was welcomed by supervisors. “As he said, this is the beginning of the process, and it’s an important and symbolic step” Campos said. “The budget shows that a lot of good programs have been saved. But there is still work to do.

“There are still gaps in the safety network,” he added, singling out cuts to violence-prevention programs. “It’s my hope they will be restored.”

 

THE BAD NEWS

But even if the cuts for this year are restored, the city budget is nowhere near where it ought to be. “We still had to make cuts,” Lee acknowledged.

“We did consider very seriously a whole host of revenue ideas that we had,” he said. “They were not off the agenda at all.” At the same time, he noted that state law requires a two-thirds vote for new taxes (although that threshold drops to 50 percent in presidential election years). “We decided that it’s not that they were bad ideas, but that we wouldn’t be able to sell them at this time.”

Lee praised some of the revenue ideas that have been suggested in the past year, including the alcoholic beverage fee proposal by Sup. John Avalos, which Lee called “a pretty good idea.” He said that “a year or two from now” an additional sales tax and a parcel tax (for the police or for schools and open space) might be on the agenda.

The city now has a multiyear budget process and projections are supposed to go beyond a single year. But what’s missing — and what nobody is talking about — is a long-term plan to restore critical city services to a sustainable level. That means talking — now — about tax proposals for 2012 and beyond and including those revenue streams in long-term budget planning.

Because the city parks, the public health system, the libraries, the schools, affordable housing programs, and the social safety net are in terrible condition today, the result of year after year of all-cuts budgets. And while the supervisors and the mayor wrangle over the final details, and advocates try to win back a few dollars here and a few dollars there, it’s important to recognize that this budget does nothing to fix the damage.

“We’re about $10 million short of what we need right now to keep service providers at current levels,” noted Jennifer Freidenbach, who runs the Coalition on Homelessness. “But we also need to restore the health and human services system that was slaughtered under Gavin Newsom.”

Around the bay, around the world

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Around the bay, around the world

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE “When one door closes, another opens” is the kind of cliché that drives you batty when you’ve been fired, or your lover has literally showed you the door. But once in a while even clichés prove their right to exist. Take the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, which last year faced homelessness when Caltrans requisitioned the Palace of Fine Arts’ parking lot for the duration of the Doyle Drive reconstruction. With poor access to MUNI and no parking lot, EDF had no choice but to start a frantic search for another venue. The crisis challenged them to rethink a format that has worked for them since 1989 — potentially very risky, because, to quote another cliché: “Don’t mess with success.”

With a need to move from one temporary shelter to another, EDF took the opportunity to reshape its offerings in a way that might yet prove beneficial to both audiences and performers.

For one group of dancers, however, this year’s EDF is a homecoming. For the first time in more than 200 years, dancers and musicians from the Rumsen Ohlone Tribe will perform on their own land. Decimated by disease and dispersed because of persecution and discrimination, most live in a diaspora in their own country. But they did not, as popular history and the federal government would have it, die out; the tribe is 2,000 members strong. Many, including tribal chief Tony Cerda have settled in the Pomona area. But their ancestors are buried below what is now Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

On Friday, June 3, in the presence of tribal dancers and musicians, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee presented Cerda with the EDF’s annual Malonga Casquelourd Lifetime Achievement Award. The homecoming festivities continue on June 18, when a half-dozen other California tribes join the Ohlones for an all-day “California Indian Big Time Gathering” at Yerba Buena Gardens.

Two other aspects of this year’s program deserve special attention. June 11 and 12, eight companies will perform at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley for the first time. For dancers used to showing their work in community halls, stepping onto a generous professional stage (and in front of a potential audience of 2,000) will be both a challenge and a delight. In January, EDF held its auditions at Zellerbach to an enthusiastic response from the primarily East Bay crowd. The word clearly had gotten out about how much fun these auditions are. In previous years at the Palace, the events regularly sold out.

The Zellerbach lineup aims to offer a similarly broad perspective of world dance. The eight companies will present taiko and Bharatanatyam contextualizing each other; African music and dance as practiced in Benin and Ghana; ancient belly dancing with a modern twist; and theatrically appropriate rituals from the Philippines and Bali. It also includes a barefoot version of flamenco, dances from a multicultural Veracruz, and, to top off the evening, a premiere for 100 celebrating Tahitian culture.

This year’s other innovation relates to performances June 19, 25, and 26 at YBCA’s Forum, where audience members will have the opportunity to enter the world of these dances. It makes sense. Culturally-rooted dance is integral to a community’s sense of well-being. It enhances milestones — courting, funerals, the changing of seasons, coming-of-age ceremonies, and thanksgiving practices.

These dances are not primarily meant to entertain — although of course they do — and many are participatory. When divorced from their contexts and put on a proscenium stage, something is inevitably lost. The Forum performances will restore some of the communal aspect of world dance. Each program offers a different quartet of companies that will perform a short piece, then invite the audience to join them in one aspect of their practice. You can choose among Balinese, Polish, square, Filipino, capoeira or African dance.

Or how about a piece of poppy seed cake served on a sword?

SAN FRANCISCO ETHNIC DANCE FESTIVAL

Through July 3, $18–$58

Various venues

www.sfethnicdancefestival.org

 

Hall blasts Treasure Island deal

Mary Magee
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Hall blasts Treasure Island deal

Mayoral candidate Tony Hall, who also happens to be a former executive director of the Treasure Island Development Authority, just blasted Mayor Ed Lee’s endorsement of the Treasure Island deal:

“This deal will never benefit San Franciscans because no banker will advance a billion dollars in pre-development costs that are necessary to shore up and detoxify a man-made island that sits in the middle of a bay on top of one of the strongest earthquake faults in Northern California,” Hall claimed in a June 7 press release. “The developers themselves are nearly bankrupt. I’m very disappointed in Mayor Lee for promoting this deal. As an administrator, he should know better and be strong enough to tell the people the truth.”

Hall went on to vent about the “City Family,” referring to a phrase that Mayor Ed Lee seems to be fond of using anytime he is trying to build consensus at City Hall.

“In the past few weeks, we have seen a trend developing from the so-called ‘City Family,’” Hall observed. “In May, they proposed a hasty pension deal that barely scratches the surface of the problem. Now in June they are ready to pass a phony Treasure Island deal that benefits the connected developers and their consultants, but will probably never benefit San Franciscans. All these celebrated agreements seem timed to paper over important issues with hasty solutions right before the Mayoral election.  What’s next for July? An agreement to build a permanent rainbow across the Bay? The ‘City Family’ might try to take these issues off the table, but my mayoral campaign is going to put these issues right back squarely in front of the voters.”

Avalos introduces SF-San Mateo Local Hire agreement

Mary Magee
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Avalos introduces SF-San Mateo Local Hire agreement

Last year, when Sup. John Avalos introduced and eventually won passage of the city’s landmark local hiring ordinance, a number of battles broke out, as folks in neighboring municipalities began fretting that the new law could shut them out of construction jobs in San Francisco. Avalos worked hard to make sure their concerns were addressed, but he continued to encounter resistance from San Mateo County.
And in February Assemblymember Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) who is facing term limits and reapportionment, introduced a bill in Sacramento that was intended to limit the reach of the Avalos legislation, which aimed to put more San Francisco residents to work on city-funded construction projects.
Hill’s legislation, AB 356, sought to prohibit the use of state money on local-hire projects and prevent Avalos’ legislation from being applied to the city’s projects in counties within 70 miles of San Francisco, including upgrades to the Hetch Hetchy water system on the Peninsula.
“San Francisco can use its own money any way it wants,” Hill said at the time, “Taxpayers from San Mateo, Ventura, Solano and other California counties shouldn’t have to pay for the increased construction costs that will result from San Francisco’s local-hire ordinance.”
Plus, he said the city should be thinking regionally, not hyper-local.
But, as Avalos repeatedly pointed out, his local hire law doesn’t apply to projects funded with state money, and it only mandates 20 percent local hire this year, gradually increasing to 50 percent local hire over the next seven years.
At the time, the Guardian predicted that Hill’s bill would “probably go down the crapper because the San Francisco legislators, who have a fair amount of clout up in Sacramento these days, aren’t going to support it. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and state Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee have all signed a letter supporting the city’s local hire law.”
And sure enough, after the mayors of San Francisco and Los Angeles, not to mention organizations from San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego, and the State Building Trades Council made their views known, Assemblymember Charles Calderon requested June 3 that Hill’s legislation by ordered to the inactive file.
Local supporters of Avalos’ legislation say Hill’s bill got pulled because there was no chance in hell that it would ever get out of the State Assembly.
But Hill’s office claims it was because San Francisco and San Mateo reached a deal last week, and that this outcome was Hill’s intention all along.
“What happened was that the Assemblymember Jerry Hill put together a bill and his intention was to get his constituents in San Mateo a memorandum of understanding with San Francisco—and that MOU was signed last Friday (June 3) by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and San Mateo County Board President Carole Groom,” Hill’s legislative aide Aurelio Rojos told the Guardian.
And according to a statement that Hill’s office released June 3, Hill welcomed the signing of a reciprocity agreement that “ends a dispute between the counties of San Mateo and San Francisco by creating a level playing field for San Mateo County residents working on construction  projects in the county funded by San Francisco.”
Hill’s press release claims the MOU was “forged following weeks of negotiations that began in February after Hill introduced legislation that would have limited San Francisco’s recently enacted local hire ordinance to its geographic boundaries. The agreement allows contractors working on San Francisco public works projects located in San Mateo County to hire an equal number of workers from the two counties.  As a result of the agreement, Hill has agreed not to move forward with his legislation, Assembly Bill 356.”
 “San Mateo County construction workers will no longer be penalized by San Francisco’s local hire ordinance as a result of the agreement,” Hill said.  “I applaud Mayor Lee and Supervisor Groom for creating a level playing field that will enable San Mateo residents to work on construction projects within their county.”
 Hill claims that  with San Francisco scheduled to award $27 billion in public contracts during the next decade, the city’s local hire  provision would have impacted the ability of San Mateo County residents to work on construction projects in their county, including the San Francisco International Airport, the jail in San Bruno, Hetch Hetchy waterworks and other facilities on the Peninsula.”
Either way, today, Avalos, who has long maintained that Hill either didn’t understand his legislation or was refusing to understand the legislation, and Mayor Ed Lee are introducing a resolution, “approving a local hiring agreement between San Francisco and San Mateo County,” and reinforcing equal opportunity guaranteed under San Francisco’s Local Hire Policy and community-labor partnerships
Avalos, who is running for mayor, apparently led the negotiations alongside Lee to forge the agreement which allows contractors performing San Francisco public works projects in San Mateo County to equally draw workers from San Francisco and San Mateo to meet required staffing levels under the local hiring ordinance.
The agreement covers San Francisco-funded projects located in San Mateo County, including the San Francisco airport.  Under the agreement, San Mateo workers are included by the local hiring requirement for projects  in San Mateo County, and will be able to fill up to half of the local hiring requirement.
“This is a win-win for workers in San Francisco and San Mateo. Whatever we can do to support job creation in the Bay Area region during this very long recession is going to be very meaningful to the families that are struggling to stay in this area,” Avalos said.
“The achievement in securing this resolution is really a testament to the strength of communities united,” said Brightline executive director Joshua Arce. “Sup. Avalos always intended that his legislation would expand, in terms of opportunities on city-funded projects, outside San Francisco. On San Francisco-funded work in San Mateo, San Francisco and San Mateo workers will be working side by side, taking advantage of the local and regional aspects of the legislation.”
Or as Avalos put it,  “The local hiring ordinance is about making sure we create job opportunities in San Francisco when the city invests taxpayer dollars in construction projects. We included the flexibility to craft reciprocal agreements with other cities and counties, and that’s exactly what was accomplished in the deal that was reached between San Francisco and San Mateo.”

Editorial: Mayor Ed Lee should veto the Parkmerced development agreement

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 Mayor Ed Lee got his start as a lawyer working on tenant issues. He understands the city’s rent laws and the shortage of affordable housing. He also knows — or ought to know — that when the city’s tenant groups are unanimously opposed to a project, elected officials who care about tenant rights should pay attention.

The Parkmerced project will be a clear test: Does he follow his activist roots, stick with the people he started with and show his independence — or side with the big out-of-town developer and allow the project to move forward?

The supervisors approved the project by the narrowest of margins, 6-5. All of the progressives voted to reject the development agreement and rezoning — and for good reason. The deal would lead to the demolition of 1,500 units of rent-controlled housing. And while the developer says it will abide by the rent laws for the newly built replacement units, that’s a shaky legal guarantee. The larger point, tenant advocates say, is that demolishing existing affordable housing is always a bad idea.

In the end, 1,500 people will have to leave the homes they’ve lived in for years — in some cases, many years. They will be offered replacement units in a high-rise — very different from the garden apartments (with, yes, gardens) that they’ve occupied. And if the developer decides that there’s more money to be made by jacking up the rents on those units, it’s a safe bet that an army of lawyers will arrive attempting to undermine the questionable guarantees now in the deal.

There’s also the problem of transportation and traffic. The project will include a new parking space for every new unit, meaning 6,000 new cars in an area already overwhelmingly congested. Since the vast majority of the units will be market-rate (the developer will provide 15 percent affordable units, under city law, which means 85 will be sold or rented to rich people) the development will transform what is now still something of a working-class neighborhood into another enclave for the wealthy.

When we talked to Mayor Lee, he was noncommittal on the deal. At the same time, he noted that the garden apartments are old and will have to be replaced at some point. We don’t dispute that there are ways to add more density at Parkmerced. But wholesale demolition of affordable housing isn’t the answer.

This deal is bad for tenants and bad for the city. Mayor Lee ought to recognize that the tenant groups opposing this have analyzed it carefully and come to an entirely reasonable conclusion.

Sup. David Chiu, the swing vote in favor of the project, did serious damage to his reputation as a progressive and lost thousands of tenant votes by siding with the developer. Lee, who insists he isn’t running in November, ought to demonstrate that he hasn’t forgotten his roots, that he listens to activists, and doesn’t simply go along with poorly conceived development projects. He should veto the development agreement and zoning changes and send this thing back to the drawing board.

 

 

Sneaky campaign to draft Lee sullies political environment

Sasha Cuttler
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Sneaky campaign to draft Lee sullies political environment

At a time when City Hall is taking on several important issues – from the budget and pension reform to massive projects such CPMC’s mega hospital and housing project and the redevelopment of Parkmerced and Treasure Island – an ambitious cabal of political operators bent of convincing Mayor Ed Lee to break his word and run for office is poisoning the environment under the dome.

A series of unfolding events over the last week makes it clear that Sup. Jane Kim’s campaign team – political consultants Enrique Pearce and David Ho, Tenderloin shot-caller Randy Shaw, and their political benefactors Willie Brown and Rose Pak – are orchestrating another campaign to convince Lee to run for office, apparently abandoning the mayoral campaign of Board President David Chiu.

The Bay Citizen reported that Pearce was pursuing creation of a mayoral campaign that Lee could simply step into, while blogger Michael Petrelis caught Pearce creating fake signs of a grassroots groundswell for Lee over the weekend. That effort joins another one by the Chronicle and a couple of downtown politicos to create the appearance of popular demand for Lee to run despite a large field of well-qualified mayoral candidates representing a wide variety of constituencies.

And then today, Shaw joined the effort with a post in his Beyond Chron blog that posed as political analysis, praising the John Avalos campaign – an obvious effort to ingratiate himself to the progressive movement that Shaw alienated by aggressively pushing the Twitter tax break deal and Kim’s candidacy – while trying to torpedo the other mayoral campaigns, calling for Lee to run, and offering a logic-tortured take on why the public wouldn’t care if Lee breaks his word.

Pearce and Ho – who sources say have been aggressively trying to drum up support for Lee in private meetings around town over the last couple weeks – didn’t return our calls. Kim, who is close to both Chiu and Avalos, told us she is withholding her mayoral endorsement until after the budget season – which, probably not coincidentally, is when Lee would get into the race if he runs.

Fog City Journal owner Luke Thomas, who Petrelis caught taking photos for Pearce over the weekend – told us Pearce’s Left Coast Communications, “hired me in my capacity as a professional photographer to take photographs of people holding ‘Run Ed Run!’ signs and should not be construed as an endorsement of the effort to draft Ed Lee into the mayor’s race.”

In an interview with the Guardian last week, Lee reiterated his pledge not to run for mayor – which was the basis for his appointment as a caretaker mayor to finish the last year of Gavin Newsom’s term – but acknowledged that Pak and others have been actively trying to convince him to run. Pak has an open disdain for candidate Leland Yee and fears his ascension to Room 200 would end the strong influence that Pak and Brown have over the Mayor’s Office and various department heads.

“I am not running. I’ve told people that. Obviously, there is a group of good friends and people who would be happy for me to make a different decision, so they’re going to use their time trying to persuade me. I’ve told them I’m not interested and I have my personal reasons for doing that but they’re not convinced that someone who has held this office for five months and not fallen into a deep abyss would not want to be in this office and run for mayor. I’ve been honest with people that I’m not a politician. I’ve never really run for office nor have I ever indicated to people that I’d like to run for mayor of San Francisco. That’s just not in my nature so it’s been a discussion that is very foreign to me that has been very distracting for me in many ways because I set myself a pretty aggressive piece of work that this office has to get to. The way I do it is very intensely. I do meet a lot of people and seek their input before I made a decision,” Lee told us.

Even Sup. Sean Elsbernd, who nominated Lee for mayor, told the Chronicle that he doesn’t support the effort to pressure Lee into running and he feels like it could hurt sensitive efforts to craft compromises on the budget and pension reform. When asked by the Guardian whether he would categorically rule out a run for mayor, Lee told us he would.

“I’ve been very adamant about that yet my friends will still come up to me and they’ll spend half their time talking to me about it. And I say thank you, I’m glad you’re not calling me a bum and trying to kick me out,” Lee told us, noting that Pak – a longtime ally who helped engineer the deal to get Lee into office, for which Chiu was the swing vote, parting from his five one-time progressive supervisorial allies in the process – has been one of the more vociferous advocates on him running.

Asked whether there are any conditions under which he might change his mind, Lee told us, “If every one of the current supervisors in office asked me to run and those supervisors who are running voluntarily dropped out.” But Avalos says he’s committed to remain in the race, and his campaign has been endorsed by three other progressive supervisors.

A different Mayor’s Office

Zelda Bronstein
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A different Mayor’s Office

A group of Guardian reporters and editors met with Mayor Ed Lee June 2, and while the mayor and I don’t agree on everything, I have to say: It was refreshing.


Refreshing because the mayor has a sense of humor and doesn’t act like an infallible monarch. Refreshing because his office looks like, well, a working office. Refreshing because he smiled, was polite and never said “I dispute the premise of your question.”


What a difference.


Under Willie Brown, the mayor’s office was an imperial sanctum. If His Royal Williness deigned to favor one of his servants or subjects with the boon of a royal visit, you were expected to crawl on your hands and knees and kiss the floor. 


When Gavin Newsom was the occupant, the place was a cross between a museum and an Architectural Digest showplace — not a scrap of paper on the desk, every hair perfectly in place, the Robert Kennedy pictures and books lined up perfectly for the visitor to admire.


Both mayors treated the press with hostility. Both expected to be treated as potentates. The mayor was better than you and I — and you needed to understand that right away, or risk disdain and dimissal.


Ed Lee isn’t doing what I want with the budget. He’s not talking about raising taxes on the rich. He’s probably going to go along with ParkMerced and maybe even Treasure Island. He signed the Twitter tax break. I worry (a lot) about his ties to past corrupt regimes.


But he’s happy to have reporters in his office. He’s got stacks of reports on his desk and a notepad that suggests he’s actually reading them. He showed us his private “man cave” in the back, and offered us walnuts. He’s not always right on policy, and I don’t think he should run in the fall … but he’s not a jerk. And given the recent history of San Francisco mayors, that’s pretty radical.


  

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