Election

The attack on public finance

Andrew Lam
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EDITORIAL The two most important political reforms in modern San Francisco history were the restoration of district elections and the creation of a public-finance system for mayoral and supervisorial elections. Both give candidates who lack big-business support a chance to win elective office. Both give independents a chance to compete against the downtown interests. Both have improved local government considerably in the past decade. And now public financing is directly under attack.

The Board of Supervisors was slated to meet in closed session Sept. 27 to discuss amendments to the public disclosure law — allegedly, according to Supervisors Mark Farrell and Sean Elsbernd, to avoid legal liability. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down in July that an Arizona law giving increased public money to candidates who were being badly outspent by well-financed opponents. One aspect of the city’s law, which allows extra public money for candidates once their opponents break the spending cap, might fall under the high court’s ruling.

But the city’s right in the middle of a heated mayoral election, and all of the candidates entered knowing the current rules — and more important, nobody has come forward to sue, or even threaten to sue, over the city’s law. So there’s no urgent reason to rewrite the ordinance.

The very fact that so many qualified candidates are in the race is an argument for public financing. Many of the current candidates would be unable to raise the vast sums required for a serious campaign without the help of public finance — and that opens up the field to more ideas, more debate, more policy discussions. It also gives the voters more of a choice — which, is, after all, what democracy is about.

Besides, as activist Larry Bush pointed out to us, “you have two choices with money in elections — you can pay up from with public funding or you can pay afterward with sweetheart contracts. And we all know which one is cheaper.”

Mayor Ed Lee, who has refused to take public money (because he doesn’t have to — he’s got plenty of rich and powerful backers) is attacking the campaign law, complaining in a TV ad that his opponents are “using taxpayer money” for “attack ads” — and that’s spurring discussion about whether there ought to be limits on how public money can be used. Any move in that direction would undermine the whole point of the law — if candidates can’t do negative ads (which, like it or not, are part of the modern campaign world) with public funds, they’ll raise outside money instead.

There are plenty of ways to improve the city’s public finance law (increasing disclosure requirements for late money and expanding the restrictions on donation by city contractors would be a good start). But amending the law in the middle of a campaign when there are no existing legal threats is a bad idea, and the supervisors should scrap it.

PS: If Lee wants to be mayor, he needs to start showing up — at debates and forums. That’s part of the job.

Gascon justifies secrecy in Guardian interview

Sasha Cuttler
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Gascon justifies secrecy in Guardian interview

Three top candidates for district attorney held a joint press conference this morning calling out District Attorney George Gascon for refusing to release a controversial memo by a consultant hired by the DA’s office outlining problems with DNA analysis in the city’s crime lab, which was overseen at the time by then-Police Chief Gascon.

Instead of obeying a judge’s order that he release the document, Gascon is clinging to a thin legal interpretation that it is a work product that he can withhold, choosing instead to spend city resources appealing the ruling. Journalist Peter Jamison has repeatedly written about the memo and the crime lab in the SF Weekly, but it was the Bay Guardian who got Gascon’s most extensive comments to date on it during his endorsement interview with us last week.

Starting just after the 23 minute mark when I asked about the memo and continuing for more than 10 minutes, Gascon – who earlier presented himself as one of the state’s most progressive law enforcement officials – takes credit for exposing problems with the crime lab but offers a fairly tortured rationale for hiding a document that might prove embarrassing during election season.

The California Public Records Act allows limited disclosure exceptions for what’s called “work product,” or drafts of internal documents meant to be works in progress, but it doesn’t require those documents to remain secret (as with personnel records, for example). Gascon admits that he could release the document but that he chooses not to.

“There are several concerns here. This is a memo that is largely the opinions of an individual that is a work product, it is within the office of the District Attorney’s Office, and there is good public policy as to why you have work product. You want to have robust discussions and honest self assessment of what works and what doesn’t work,” he said.

We noted that the consultant, Rockne Harmon, was brought in to bring problems with the crime lab to light so they could be addressed (not attorneys discussing the strengths and weaknesses of a case, the example Gascon cited), that Harmon actually wants to memo to be released, and that no possible public harm could come from this.

Gascon even agreed with that last point, telling us, “This document is quite harmless, but it’s the concept of the ability of people to have honest self-assessment and self-critical discussions.” He said they were reviewing the judge’s ruling and “we’ll comply with the court.” Then, the very next day, he announced that he would appeal the ruling.

Clearly – as DA candidaes David Onek, Sharmin Bock, and Bill Fazio noted this morning – Gascon is hiding the document because he’s worried it will make him look bad. And as our discussion with Gascon illustrates, he is not someone who places a high value on transparency, which is a real problem given the history of damaging secrecy in both the SFPD and the DA’s office.

So give a listen to a candid discussion about a breaking news story on an important issue and weigh in with your thoughts. BTW, as an added bonus, keep listening to the interview to hear the perspective of an unlikely supporter that Gascon brought with him: attorney Matt Gonzalez, who galvanized the progressive movement with his 2003 mayoral run.

Guardian editorial: The attack on public finance

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ATTACKING PUBLIC FINANCE, COURTESY OF SUPERVISORS SEAN ELSBERND AND MARK FARRELL WHO ARE  CARRYING THE WATER FOR THE DOWNTOWN GANG AND ITS WELL-FUNDED CANDIDATE MAYOR ED LEE

Impertinent questions for the supervisors:
Why are you discussing amending/gutting a damn good thing (the public finance system)  for reasons of “liability” when nobody has sued the city?
Why not tell Mayor Ed Lee to start showing up at debates and forums instead of hiding behind the gushers of PG&E/Chamber/downtown/real estate money flowing  into his campaign?  B3

 

EDITORIAL: The two most important political reforms in modern San Francisco history were the restoration of district elections and the creation of a public-finance system for mayoral and supervisorial elections. Both give candidates who lack big-business support a chance to win elective office. Both give independents a chance to compete against the downtown interests. Both have improved local government considerably in the past decade. And now public financing is directly under attack.

The Board of Supervisors was slated to meet in closed session Sept. 27 to discuss amendments to the public disclosure law — allegedly, according to Supervisors Mark Farrell and Sean Elsbernd, to avoid legal liability. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down in July that an Arizona law giving increased public money to candidates who were being badly outspent by well-financed opponents. One aspect of the city’s law, which allows extra public money for candidates once their opponents break the spending cap, might fall under the high court’s ruling.

But the city’s right in the middle of a heated mayoral election, and all of the candidates entered knowing the current rules — and more important, nobody has come forward to sue, or even threaten to sue, over the city’s law. So there’s no urgent reason to rewrite the ordinance.

The very fact that so many qualified candidates are in the race is an argument for public financing. Many of the current candidates would be unable to raise the vast sums required for a serious campaign without the help of public finance — and that opens up the field to more ideas, more debate, more policy discussions. It also gives the voters more of a choice — which, is, after all, what democracy is about.

Besides, as activist Larry Bush pointed out to us, “you have two choices with money in elections — you can pay up from with public funding or you can pay afterward with sweetheart contracts. And we all know which one is cheaper.”

Mayor Ed Lee, who has refused to take public money (because he doesn’t have to — he’s got plenty of rich and powerful backers) is attacking the campaign law, complaining in a TV ad that his opponents are “using taxpayer money” for “attack ads” — and that’s spurring discussion about whether there ought to be limits on how public money can be used. Any move in that direction would undermine the whole point of the law — if candidates can’t do negative ads (which, like it or not, are part of the modern campaign world) with public funds, they’ll raise outside money instead.

There are plenty of ways to improve the city’s public finance law (increasing disclosure requirements for late money and expanding the restrictions on donation by city contractors would be a good start). But amending the law in the middle of a campaign when there are no existing legal threats is a bad idea, and the supervisors should scrap it.

PS: If Lee wants to be mayor, he needs to start showing up — at debates and forums. That’s part of the job.
 

On Guard!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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On Guard!

news@sfbg.com

 

CENTRAL SUBTERFUGE

While supporters of the controversial Central Subway project — from Mayor Ed Lee and his allies in Chinatown to almost the entire Board of Supervisors — dismiss the growing chorus of critics as everything from ill-informed to racist, they refuse to address the biggest concerns about the project.

In a nutshell, the main concerns center on serious design flaws (such as the lack of direct connections to either Muni or BART), the city’s responsibility for any cost overruns on this complex $1.6 billion project, its estimated $15.2 million increase to Muni’s already strained annual operating budget (a figure used by the Federal Transportation Administration, well over the local estimate of $1.7 million), and the city’s unwillingness to implement its own plans for improving north-south transit service on congested Stockton Street rather than relying solely on such an expensive option for serving Chinatown that doesn’t start until 2019.

Judge Quentin Kopp, a longtime former legislator, called this summer’s grand jury report, “Central Subway: Too Much Money for Too Little Benefit,” the best he’s ever read and one that should be heeded. He recently wrote a letter to top state officials urging them to reconsider the $488 million in state funding pledged to the project. As we reported last week, mayoral candidate Dennis Herrera is also challenging a project that he supported before its most recent cost overruns and design changes.

But supporters of the project pushed back hard on Sept. 14, using taunts and emotional rhetoric that avoided addressing the core criticisms. “Beneath the unfounded criticism about costs is actually a disagreement over values. The grand jury report relied upon by critics makes a only brief and superficial criticism about costs,” Norman Fong and Mike Casey wrote in an op-ed in last week’s Guardian.

Actually, the 56-page grand jury report goes into great detail about why it believes cost overruns are likely, citing the myriad risks from tunneling and SFMTA’s administrative shortcomings and history of mismanagement, including on this project’s less-complicated first phase, the T-Third line, which was 22 percent over budget and a year and half late in completion. Even with the contingencies built into the Central Subway budget, the report notes that a similar overrun would increase the local share of this project from $124 million to more than $150 million.

Mayor Lee purportedly addressed criticism of the project during the Question Time session in the Sept. 14 Board of Supervisors meeting, prompted by a loaded question from Sup. Sean Elsbernd offering Lee the “opportunity to move beyond the clichés and one-liners of political campaigns.”

But Lee’s answer was classically political, touting the estimated 30,000 jobs it would create, praising those who have pushed this project since the 1980s, offering optimistic ridership estimates (that exceed current FTA figures by about 9,000 daily riders), and ignoring concerns about whether the city can cover the ever-increasing capital and operating costs.

“Now is the time to support the Central Subway,” Lee said, flashing his trademark mustachioed grin.

We called the normally responsive Elsbernd, who prides himself on his fiscal responsibility, twice, to ask about financial concerns surrounding the project and he didn’t call back. During their mayoral endorsement interviews with the Guardian last week, we also asked Sups. John Avalos and David Chiu to address how they think the city will be able to afford this project, and neither had good answers about the most substantive issues (listen for yourself to the audio recordings on our Politics blog).

Once Congress gives final approval to $966 million in federal funding for this project sometime in the next couple months, the city will be formally committed to the Central Subway and all its costs. It’s too bad that, even during election season, all its supporters have to offer to address valid concerns are “clichés and one-liners.”(Steven T. Jones)

 

BLACK AGENDA

Mayoral candidates faced tougher questions than usual at a Sept. 15 forum hosted by the Harvey Matthews Bayview Hunters Point Democratic Club. Whereas debates hosted in the Castro and Mission Bay, for instance, featured questions on how candidates planned to clean up city streets, what they thought about AT&T’s plan to place utility boxes on city sidewalks, or how they’d promote a more business-friendly environment, residents brought a thornier set of concerns to the Bayview Opera House.

One question pointed to an alarming statistic based on U.S. Census data and cited by racial justice advocates, showing that residents of the predominantly African American Bayview Hunters Point have a life expectancy that’s 14 years lower, on average, than that of residents of the more well-to-do Russian Hill.

Someone else asked about improving mental health services for lower-income community members struggling with post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). High unemployment figured in as a key concern. And one member of the audience wanted to know how candidates planned to “improve the behavior of the police,” alluding to the mid-July officer-involved shooting that left 19-year-old Seattle resident Kenneth Harding dead, triggering community outrage.

Mayor Ed Lee attended the beginning of the forum but left early to attend an anniversary celebration for the Bayview Hunters Point Foundation; other participants included Terry Joan Baum, Jeff Adachi, Bevan Dufty, Dennis Herrera, David Chiu, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Joanna Rees.

Answers to Bayview residents’ sweeping concerns varied, yet many acknowledged that the southeastern neighborhood had been neglected and ill-served by city government for years.

“There is no economic justice here in Bayview Hunters Point,” Adachi said. “There never has been. That’s the reality.” He pointed to his record in the Pubic Defender’s Office on aggressively targeting police misconduct, and played up his pension reform measure, Prop. D, as a vehicle for freeing up public resources for critical services.

Dufty, who has repeatedly challenged mayoral contenders to incorporate a “black agenda” into their platforms, spoke of his vision for a mayor’s office with greater African American representation, and emphasized his commitment to improving contracting opportunities for minority-owned businesses.

Herrera, meanwhile, was singled out and asked to explain his support for gang injunctions, an issue that has drawn the ire of civil liberties groups. “I only support gang injunctions as a last resort,” he responded. “We shouldn’t have to use them. But … people should be able to walk around without being caught in a web of gang violence. I put additional restrictions on myself to go above and beyond what the law requires, to make sure that I am balancing safe streets with protecting civil liberties.”

Herrera asserted that gang violence had been reduced by 60 percent in areas where he’d imposed the controversial bans on contact between targeted individuals, and noted that the majority of those he’d sought injunctions against in Oakdale weren’t San Francisco residents.

Baum brought questions about a lack of services back to the overarching issue of the widening income and wealth gaps. “Right now, the money is being sucked upward as we speak,” she said. “We have to bring that money back down.”

She closed with her signature phrase: “Tax the rich. Duuuuh.” (Rebecca Bowe)

 

DUFTY REMEMBERS

The selection of Ed Lee as interim (or not-so-interim) mayor of San Francisco was one of those moments that left just about everyone dazed — how did a guy who wasn’t even in town, who had shown no interest in the job, who had never held elective office, suddenly wind up in Room 200?

Well, former Sup. Bevan Dufty, who was going to nominate Sheriff Mike Hennessey and switched to providing the crucial sixth vote for Lee at the last minute, told us the story during his mayoral endorsement interview last week.

Remember: Lee, as recently as a few days earlier, had told people he didn’t want to be mayor. “An hour before the meeting, Gavin (Newsom) called Michela (Alioto-Pier) and me into his office and said Ed Lee had changed his mind,” Dufty told us. He walked out of the Mayor’s Office uncommitted, he said, and even Newsom wasn’t sure where Dufty would go.

After two rounds of voting, with Dufty abstaining, there were five votes for Lee. So Dufty asked for a recess and went back to talk to Newsom — where he was told that the mayor thought the reason the progressives were supporting Hennessey was that the sheriff had agreed to get rid of about 20 mayoral staffers — including Chief of Staff Steve Kawa, “who had engineered Ed Lee running.”

So Kawa, with Newsom’s help, preserved his job and power base. “It’s all turnabout,” Dufty said. “I figure Mike Hennessey’s had a couple of beers and a couple of good times thinking about my vote. But that’s politics.” (Tim Redmond)

 

ALMOST FREE?

Friends and supporters of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were kept in a state of agonizing suspense over whether the two men, both 29, would be released from the Iranian prison where they’ve been held for more than two years following an ill-fated hiking trip in Iraqi Kurdistan.

On Sept. 13, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated publicly that Bauer and Fattal could be freed “in a couple of days.” The announcement brought hope for family and friends who, just weeks earlier, had absorbed the news that the men were sentenced to eight years in prison after an Iranian court found them guilty of committing espionage, a charge that the hikers, the United States government, religious leaders, and human rights advocates have characterized as completely baseless.

Reports followed that the Iranian judiciary would commute the hikers’ sentences and release them in exchange for bail payments totaling $1 million. But by Sept. 16, when supporters gathered in San Francisco in hopes that of an imminent announcement, they were instead greeted with new delays.

The constantly shifting accounts hinted at internal strife within the Iranian government, and contributed to the sense that Bauer and Fattal were trapped as pawns in a power struggle. By Sept. 19, their Iranian lawyer remained in limbo, awaiting the signature of a judge who was scheduled to return from vacation Sept. 20.

“Shane and Josh’s freedom means more to us than anything and it’s a huge relief to read that they are going to be released,” the hikers’ families said in a statement Sept. 13. “We’re grateful to everyone who has supported us and looking forward to our reunion with Shane and Josh. We hope to say more when they are finally back in our arms.” (Rebecca Bowe)

On the eve of our 45th anniversary–a new progressive agenda

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(The new progressive agenda is at the bottom of this blog.)

In our second issue of Nov. 1, 1966, the Guardian endorsed then Gov. Pat Brown over Ronald Reagan in what we called “the most important gubernatorial election in California history.” We wrote in a front page editorial that “the repudiation of Brown and the election of Reagan would mean that a generation of progressive legislation—in medicare, in education, in welfare, in conservation, in water resources, in bringing to account the dreadful problems of growth, population and sprawl—would be in grave jeopardy.”

We were much too prescient when we wrote that “Reagan rides the crest of the latest Califorrnia breakers of ‘conservation’–like Gatsby, it looks for fulfillment in another time–”boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Reagan’s stands, we noted, “typify the temper of this cause: he is on record at various times, in opposition to the progressive income tax, social security, medicare, the anti-poverty program, farm subsidies, TVA, the city rights act, the voting rights, public housing, federal aid to education and veterans housing for other than service-connected disabilities”

And we asked the obvious question: “How can a man or a movement govern the state of California, from 1966-70, with such a political philosophy?”

Well, Reagan won, he became governor and then president and it seems as if the Guardian has ever since been fighting Reaganonics in one form or another and its deadly legacy of deregulation, ever  lower taxes, laissez-faire economics, ever higher  fees for California colleges, the me-first-and-last  culture, the pernicious idea that government is the problem and  that corporate interests are the solution, on  and on. It’s still the case and we point to the concluding Guardian forum on issues for the mayor’s race.

It’s Wednesday night (9/21) at the LGBT Center. All but one of the major mayoral candidates will be there (Mayor Ed Lee has not confirmed). And the candidates will be asked whether they support key elements of the new progressive agenda developed by several progressive organizations in five forums over the past several months. An independent blue ribbon all-star panel of experts will judge whether the would-be mayors answered yes, no—or waffled. It should be lively, fun,  instructive, and very San Franciscan.  On guard! B3

See you there: Wednesday, Sept. 2l, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., at the LGBT Center, 1800 Market St., (at Octavia) in San Francisco. And here’s the new progressive agenda: http://www.sfbg.com/2011/09/13/new-progressive-agenda

 

 

Is Peskin plotting a comeback/payback?

Sasha Cuttler
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Is Peskin plotting a comeback/payback?

Many progressives have been disappointed in Board President David Chiu, particularly after his pivotal role in putting Ed Lee into the Mayor’s Office and stacking key board committees with moderates, as well as his controversial swing votes on Parkmerced and other projects. But nobody has been more disappointed than Chiu’s predecessor and one-time mentor, Aaron Peskin (as we detailed in a cover story earlier this year).

Now, knowledgable sources tell the Guardian that Peskin is seriously considering running against Chiu next year for his old District 3 seat on the Board of Supervisors — and that Peskin recently told Chiu that directly — although neither of them is commenting on the record.

So far, Chiu’s run for mayor doesn’t really appear to be catching fire, with Lee leading and only Dennis Herrera, Leland Yee, or Jeff Adachi exhibiting a credible chance of catching him. With many progressive activists actively searching for someone to run against Chiu next year (as Peskin said about another matter, “payback is a bitch”), Chiu is rumored to be eyeing a run for Tom Ammiano’s Assembly seat (which fellow Sup. David Campos is also said to be looking at, probably with Ammiano’s blessing if it happens), either next year or when Ammiano is termed out in 2014.

But Chiu campaign manager Nicole Derse dismisses such speculation, telling us, “The only thing David Chiu is running for is Mayor of San Francisco.  He is not thinking about the 2012 re-election for Supervisor and he is certainly not thinking for a minute about the Assembly race.  If Aaron Peskin decides to run in District 3 next year, it is a free country.”

An American blindness

Andrew Lam
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An American blindness

After the first jetliner crashed into the Twin Towers on that September 11 morning, a friend of mine and his 11-year old daughter climbed up to the roof of their Manhattan home to look around. Just then the second plane struck, the young girl fell backward, and went blind from shock.

It took more than a year of examinations and therapies before this girl came out of her blindness to look around.

That’s what happened to America itself ten years ago this Sunday on 9/11, though it might be claimed many of us were blinded by privilege and hubris long before. But 9/11 produced a spasm of blind rage, arising from a pre-existing blindness as to the way much of the world sees us. That in turn led to the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Afghanistan again, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and, in all, a dozen “shadow wars” according to The New York Times.

Bob Woodward’s crucial book, Obama’s Wars, points out that there were already secret and lethal counterterrorism operations active in more than 60 countries as of 2009. From Pentagon think tanks came a new military doctrine of the “Long War,” a counter-insurgency vision arising from the failed Phoenix program of the Vietnam era, projecting U.S. open combat and secret wars over a span of 50 to 80 years, or 20 future presidential terms. The taxpayer costs of this Long War, also shadowy, would be in the many trillions of dollars — and paid for not from current budgets, but by generations born after the 2000 election of George W. Bush. The deficit spending on the Long War would invisibly force the budgetary crisis now squeezing our states, cities and most Americans.

Besides the future being mortgaged, civil liberties were thought to require a shrinking proper to a state of permanent and secretive war, so the Patriot Act was promulgated. All this happened after 9/11 through Democratic default and denial. Who knows what future might have followed if Al Gore, with a half-million popular vote margin over George Bush, had prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court instead of losing by the vote of a single justice? In any event, only a single member of Congress, Barbara Lee of Berkeley-Oakland, voted against the war authorization, and only a single senator, Russ Feingold, voted against the Patriot Act.

Were we not blinded by what happened on 9/11? Are we still? Let’s look at the numbers we almost never see.

 

CASUALTIES OF WAR

As to American casualties, the figure now is beyond twice those who died in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. on 9/11. The casualties are rarely totaled, but are broken down into three categories by the Pentagon and Congressional Research Service. There is Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes Afghanistan and Pakistan but, in keeping with the Long War definition, also covers Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Second, there is Operation Iraqi Freedom and its successor Operation New Dawn, the name adopted after September 2010 for the 47,000 US advisers, trainers and counterterrorism units still in Iraq. The scope of these latter operations includes Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. These territories include not only Muslim majorities but, according to former Centcom commander Tommy Franks, 68 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and the passageway for 43 percent of petroleum exports, another American geo-interest which was heavily denied in official explanations.

A combined 6,197 Americans were killed in these wars as of August 16, 2011, in the name of avenging 9/11, a day when 2, 996 Americans died. The total number of American wounded has been 45,338, and rising at a rapid rate. The total number rushed by military Medivac out of these violent zones was 56, 432. That’s a total of 107,996 Americans. And the active-duty military suicide rate for the decade is at a record high of 2, 276, not counting veterans or those who have tried unsuccessfully to take their own lives. In fact, the suicide rate for last year was greater than the American death toll in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has long played a numbers game with these body counts. In addition to being painfully difficult and extremely complicated to access, there was a time when the Pentagon refused to count as Iraq war casualties any soldier who died from their wounds outside of Iraq’s airspace. Similar controversies have surrounded examples such as soldiers killed in non-combat accidents.

The fog around Iraq or Afghanistan civilian casualties will be seen in the future as one of the great scandals of the era. Briefly, the United States and its allies in Baghdad and Kabul have relied on eyewitness, media or hospital numbers instead of the more common cluster-sampling interview techniques used in conflict zones like the first Gulf War, Kosovo or the Congo. The United Nations has a conflict of interest as a party to the military conflict, and acknowledged in a July 2009 U.N. human rights report footnote that “there is a significant possibility that UNAMA is underreporting civilian casualties.”

In August, even the mainstream media derided a claim by the White House counter-terrorism adviser that there hasn’t been a single “collateral,” or innocent, death during an entire year of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, a period in which 600 people were killed, all of them alleged “militants.” As an a specific explanation for the blindness, the Los Angeles Times reported April 9 that “Special Forces account for a disproportionate share of civilian casualties caused by western troops, military officials and human rights groups say, though there are no precise figures because many of their missions are deemed secret.”

 

STICKER SHOCK OF WAR

Among the most bizarre symptoms of the blindness is the tendency of most deficit hawks to become big spenders on Iraq and Afghanistan, at least until lately. The direct costs of the war, which is to say those unfunded costs in each year’s budget, now come to $1.23 trillion, or $444.6 billion for Afghanistan and $791.4 billion for Iraq, according to the National Priorities Project.

But that’s another sleight-of-hand, when one considers the so-called indirect costs like long-term veteran care. Leading economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes recently testified to Congress that their previous estimate of $4 to $6 trillion in ultimate costs was conservative. Nancy Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers in D.C. — in my opinion, the best war reporter of the decade — wrote recently that “it’s almost impossible to pin down just what the United States spends on war.” The president himself expressed “sticker shock,” according to Woodward’s book, when presented cost projections during his internal review of 2009.

The Long War casts a shadow not only over our economy and future budgets but our innocent and unborn children’s future as well. This is no accident, but the result of deliberate lies, obfuscations and scandalous accounting techniques. We are victims of an information warfare strategy waged deliberately by the Pentagon. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal said much too candidly in a February 2010, “This is not a physical war of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants.” David Kilcullen, once the top counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, defines “international information operations as part of counterinsurgency.” Quoted in Counterinsurgency in 2010, Kilcullen said this military officer’s goal is to achieve a “unity of perception management measures targeting the increasingly influential spectators’ gallery of the international community.”

This new war of perceptions, relying on naked media manipulation such as the treatment of media commentators as “message amplifiers” but also high-technology information warfare, only highlights the vast importance of the ongoing WikiLeaks whistle-blowing campaign against the global secrecy establishment. Consider just what we have learned about Iraq and Afghanistan because of WikiLeaks: Tens of thousands of civilian casualties in Iraq, never before disclosed; instructions to U.S. troops to not investigate torture when conducted by U.S. allies; the existence of Task Force 373, carrying out night raids in Afghanistan; the CIA’s secret army of 3,000 mercenaries; private parties by DynCorp featuring trafficked boys as entertainment, and an Afghan vice president carrying $52 million in a suitcase.

The efforts of the White House to prosecute Julian Assange and persecute Pfc. Bradley Manning in military prison should be of deep concern to anyone believing in the public’s right to know.

The news that this is not a physical war but mainly one of perceptions will not be received well among American military families or Afghan children, which is why a responsible citizen must rebel first and foremost against The Official Story. That simple act of resistance necessarily leads to study as part of critical practice, which is as essential to the recovery of a democratic self and democratic society. Read, for example, this early martial line of Rudyard Kipling, the poet of the white man’s burden: “When you’re left wounded on Afghanistan’s plains/ And the women come out to cut up what remains/ Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains/And go to your God like a soldier.” Years later, after Kipling’s beloved son was killed in World War I and his remains never recovered, the poet wrote: “If any question why we died / Tell them because our fathers lied.”

 

A HOPE FOR PEACE

An important part of the story of the peace movement, and the hope for peace itself, is the process by which hawks come to see their own mistakes. A brilliant history/autobiography in this regard is Dan Ellsberg’s Secrets, about his evolution from defense hawk to historic whistleblower during the Vietnam War. Ellsberg writes movingly about how he was influenced on his journey by meeting contact with young men on their way to prison for draft resistance.

The military occupation of our minds will continue until many more Americans become familiar with the strategies and doctrines in play during the Long War. Not enough Americans in the peace movement are literate about counterinsurgency, counterterrorism and the debates about the “clash of civilizations”, the West versus the Muslim world.

The more we know about the Long War doctrine, the more we understand the need for a long peace movement. The pillars of the peace movement, in my experience and reading, are the networks of local progressives in hundreds of communities across the United States. Most of them are voluntary, citizen volunteers, always and immersed in the crises of the moment, nowadays the economic recession and unemployment.

This peace bloc deserves more. It won’t happen overnight, but gradually we are wearing down the pillars of the war. It’s painfully slow, because the president is threatened by Pentagon officials, private military contractors and an entire Republican Party (except the Ron Paul contingent) who benefit from the politics and economics of the Long War.

But consider the progress, however slow. In February of this year, Rep. Barbara Lee passed a unanimous resolution at the Democratic National Committee calling for a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan and transfer of funds to job creation. The White House approved of the resolution. Then 205 House members, including a majority of Democrats, voted for a resolution that almost passed, calling for the same rapid withdrawal. Even the AFL-CIO executive board, despite a long history of militarism, adopted a policy opposing Afghanistan. The president himself is quoted in Obama’s Wars as opposing his military advisors, demanding an exit strategy and musing that he “can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.” At every step of the way, it must be emphasized, public opinion in Congressional districts was a key factor in changing establishment behavior.

As for Al Qaeda, there is always the threat of another attack, like those attempted by militants aiming at Detroit during Christmas 2009 or Times Square in May 2010. In the event of another such terrorist assault originating from Pakistan, all bets are off: According to Woodward, the U.S. has a “retribution” plan to bomb 150 separate sites in that country alone there, and no apparent plan for The Day After. Assuming that nightmare doesn’t happen, today’s al Qaeda is not the al Qaeda of a decade ago. Osama bin Laden is dead, its organization is damaged, and its strategy of conspiratorial terrorism has been displaced significantly by the people-power democratic uprisings across the Arab world.

It is clear that shadow wars lie ahead, but not expanding ground wars involving greater numbers of American troops. The emerging argument will be over the question of whether special operations and drone attacks are effective, moral and consistent with the standards of a constitutional democracy. And it is clear that the economic crisis finally is enabling more politicians to question the trillion dollar war spending.

Meanwhile, the 2012 national elections present an historic opportunity to awaken from the blindness inflicted by 9/11.

After more than 50 years of activism, politics and writing, Tom Hayden is a leading voice for ending the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan and reforming politics through a more participatory democracy.

The America’s cup confusion

Zelda Bronstein
-
19
The America’s cup confusion

If the sponsors (and city officials) are right, the America’s Cup is going to be a huge event, attracting hundreds of thousands of spectators, many of whom will want to be on the San Francisco waterfront to watch. But it’s never been clear to me exactly how that’s going to work — how are all those (rich) people who are used to getting around in limos going to travel from their downtown hotels to the viewing areas? If the city wanted to do this right, we should close down the Embarcadero and some of the feeder streets to all vehicles (except ambulances — always needed when rich old people get excited) and force everyone to travel by pedicab. Buy up a fleet of several hundred of the human-powered vehicles and let all the unemployed teenagers get a shot at driving them. Job creation for youth; environmentally sound transportation; potentially fun bumper-car action with well-heeled patrons screaming in fear.


Remember: The f-line, even with improvements, can’t possibly handle the necessary traffic. And the AC types aren’t going to ride the train anyway. No way private cars can all fit without massive gridlock.


So: Pedicabs. My suggestion.


In the meantime, there’s this little problem of 8 Washington.


See, the developer of what would be the city’s most expensive condos ever is planning on excavating 110,000 cubic yards of soil for a massive underground parking garage — right along the Embarcadero, and right during the America’s Cup events. The Draft Environmental Impact Report for 8 Washington indicates that the dump trucks (about 20 big trucks per day, and possibly a lot more) would be using that roadway to get to 101 or 280.


Actually, if activist Brad Paul is correct, there’s no way the developer can excavate that much dirt in the time frame that it’s supposed to happen unless the number of trucks is closer to 300 a day. Imagine all of that happening while 100,000 people are trying to get to the waterfront to watch the show. Oh, and according to the DEIR for the America’s Cup, the Embarcadero will be CLOSED during that period.


The fact is, the 8 Washington project is not only a terrible idea (just what the city needs — more condos for mega-millionaires) but would directly screw up the whole America’s Cup effort. And the amazing thing is that the AC people and the Mayor’s Office don’t seem to be paying attention.


Paul has put together a lengthy critique of the whole mess that makes great reading if you’re into this sort of thing. So I thought I’d just post it all here. Warning: It’s long. Enjoy.


August 15, 2011                                                                                                         


Bill Wycko
Environmental Review Officer
San Francisco Planning Department
1650 Mission Street, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA  94103


Re: COMMENTS ON DRAFT EIR FOR 8 WASHINGTON STREET/
SEAWALL LOT 351 PROJECT    
Case No. 2007.0030E


Dear Mr. Wycko:


I am writing to my provide my comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (“DEIR”) for this project, a document that is incomplete, inadequate and in places quite misleading. I’ve organized my comments in sections beginning with a detailed discussion of how the project’s construction schedule has been greatly underestimated. This is followed by discussions of the DEIR’s failure to address key Housing and Population issues, misstatements regarding historic obligations related to Golden Gateway, comments on recreation issues, and more.  In general, I believe the DEIR fails to present objective information and analysis, it omits a number of relevant issues that are critical to the ability of public officials to make objective and informed decisions about the project and it is filled with judgments and assertions that are not supported by facts.


The DEIR is incomplete and inadequate in the following areas:


I. THE DEIR CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE FOR 8 WASHINGTON IS BOTH INACCURATE AND MISLEADING.


The DEIR construction schedule is based on overly optimistic assumptions that are totally unrealistic; the ramifications of these erroneous assumptions need to be carefully considered as they will cascade throughout the project requiring major revisions to the DEIR before it can be considered accurate and complete.


At the bottom of page II.19 it states:
 
      Project construction, including demolitions, site and foundation work,
      construction of the parking garage, and construction of the buildings,
      would take 27-29 months. Assuming that construction would begin in 2012,   
      the buildings would be ready for occupancy in 2014. The first phase of the
      construction would take about 16 months and would include demolition       
     (2 months), excavation and shoring (7 months), and foundation and below
      grade construction work (7 months).


While the DEIR unequivocally states the project will take 27-29 months to construct, from 2012 to 2014, facts provided elsewhere in the DEIR together with current city policies,  the City’s America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement and basic math indicate that this schedule is not tenable. The remainder of this section provides the data and analysis that lead to the conclusion that construction of 8 Washington will take much longer than 27-29 months, almost TWICE AS LONG, with excavation taking 2.5 to 3 TIMES longer.  


 


Table 1: Requested Changes to the overall DEIR construction schedule


          ACTIVITY             MINIMUM           MAXIMUM


    DEIR’s construction schedule: 27 months    to    29 months  


    Actual excavation schedule:  18 months           22 months
    — DEIR estimate for excavation – 7 months            – 7 months
    + Increased excavation time  11 months      to       15 months 
    + Archeology delays                .5 months      to         2 months
    +  America’s Cup delays                  2.5 months       to         5 months
    +  Weather delays                        .25 months      to         1 months


   ACTUAL CONSTRUCTION TIME 41 months       to      52 months



 
To refute the numbers in Table 1, project sponsors must present additional, verifiable data supporting their unrealistic assumptions, beginning with the claim that the first phase of construction takes 16 months with a mere seven months allocated for excavation/shoring.


A. The DEIR fails to accurately ascertain and analyze the excavation/shoring schedule.


The DEIR states on page II.20 that “approximately 110,000 cubic yards of soil” will be excavated from the site for an underground garage (approximately 90,000 cubic yards) and other foundation work during the seven (7) month “excavation” portion of the projected timeline. It later states excavation will take place 6.5 hours per day with an average of 20 truck trips per day (pg.IV.D.31). Assuming the average dump truck holds 12 cubic yards of dirt (typical payload for a dump truck), that would mean:


      · 110,000 cu. yards/12 cubic yards per truck = 9,166 truck trips


      · 20 trucks/day X 12 cubic yards/trip = an average of 240 cu. yards/day


      · 110,000 cu. yards/240 cu. yards per day = 458 working days for this task


Could this task be completed in seven (7) months as claimed in the DEIR?  NO.


     ·5 working days per week X 52 weeks = 260 working days per year
             – 11 holidays per year
                   249  total working days/year
   


     ·458 days to finish task/249 working days per year = 22 months  (not 7)
     
For this to take 7 months as the DEIR asserts, the following would have to be true:


   · 20 trucks/day X 7 months (145 working days ) = 2,900 total truck trips


   · 110,000 cu. yards/2,900 trucks = each truck must average 38 cubic yards/trip
Empirical evidence exists, however, proving the DEIR’s claim that the excavation portion of the schedule will take seven months is inaccurate and misleading:



             
        CASE STUDY #1: San Francisco General Hospital Rebuild Project


A recent SF General Hospital (SFGH) Newsletter reports the hospital’s contractor just finished hauling 120,000 cu. yards of dirt from the 45’ deep hole that was dug to build two basement levels and the foundation for a new hospital building. This is as close as anyone is likely to get to replicating what 8 Washington proposes, a three level 40’ deep underground garage accounting for most of the 110,000 cubic yards of dirt that must be removed from the site. 


A call to the SFGH Rebuild office revealed their excavation process took seven (7) months with an average truck load of 13 cu. yards per trip. How was that possible?


“The average truck load was 13 cubic yards. Some days we had
over 300 truck loads hauled in one day. This volume was possible
through use of a paved drive that allowed trucks to enter the side, be
loaded up then tires washed to prevent dirt on road causing storm-            
water pollution and dust.”


The SF General site is just a few blocks from U.S. 101 with direct access via Potrero Ave., thus minimizing potential traffic conflicts. The 8 Washington site will require driving long distances on city streets including “The Embarcadero, Harrison Street, and King Street… likely the primary haul and access routes to and from I-80, U.S. 101, and I-280 (pg. IV.D.31).” Imagine 300 trips a day on one of these streets.


 


        
               CASE STUDY #2: SF PUC’s New Hetch Hetchy Reservoir Tunnel


A recent Oakland Tribune story (4/8/11) describes construction of a new 3.5-mile tunnel designed to protect the water supply from SF’s Hetch Hetchy reservoir from major earthquakes by boring a 2nd, state-of-the-art tunnel from Sunol to Fremont alongside the existing 81-year-old Irvington Tunnel. The article states:


      “By the time the New Irvington Tunnel is completed in 2014, crews will have
        excavated about 734,000 cubic yards of material—the equivalent of 61,000
        dump-truck trips, said officials with the SF Public Utilities Commission.”


Dividing 734,000 cubic yards of soil by the 61,000 dump truck trips that the PUC says are necessary equals 12 cubic yards per truck trip. Given this job’s overall size and $227 million budget, it would seem to confirm the fact that the most efficient excavation equipment for the 8 Washington site will be 12 cubic yard dump trucks.



In light of these facts and the analysis provided above, the only way 8 Washington could meet its proposed seven (7) month excavation schedule would be to:


a) schedule up to 300 TRUCK TRIPS A DAY, over 10 TIMES the average number of trips per day (20) stated in the DEIR and 3 TIMES the absolute maximum of 100 truck trips per day (pg. IV.D.31)  along the Northeast Embarcadero during a period of time that directly overlaps with the major America’s Cup events and activities, something specifically prohibited by the City’s America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement ,        


         OR


b) average 38 cubic yards of dirt per truck trip, 3 TIMES the average truck payload of both the PUC’s Irvington Tunnel project and SF General Hospital’s 120,000 cubic yard excavation project—assuming that 38 cubic yard trucks:  a) exist in sufficient quantity in   the Bay Area, b) would be available during that period of time described and c) would be allowed on The Embarcadero, Harrison St., King St., Washington St. and Drumm St. by     the City. [see photo comparison of 12 cubic yard vs. 30 cubic yard trucks below]


Unless the project sponsor can demonstrate that one of these two highly unlikely scenarios is possible, then the EIR must reanalyze a number of impacts (e.g. Land Use, Air Quality, Greenhouse Gases) based on a revised excavation schedule, one that takes 2.5 to 3 TIMES as long as the one described in DEIR to complete excavation work, and this 22 month timeline assumes NO archeological remains are found on site and the City imposes NO stop work orders related to America’s Cup (see below).


This 15-month difference between the excavation period analyzed in the DEIR and the ACTUAL time it will take to complete the excavation (22 months vs. 7 months) is a major deficiency in the DEIR with profound impacts.  For instance, some of the most significant unavoidable negative impacts described in the DEIR involve degraded air quality both during and after construction. Adjusting the environmental analysis to reflect how long excavation will actually take means significant air quality impacts related to excavation (with the greatest detrimental effect on seniors, children and people exercising) will persist for 2.5 to 3 TIMES LONGER than described in the DEIR.  This flaw also requires significant revisions to other sections of the DEIR.


In light of this new information, the next draft of the EIR must contain an analysis of    this longer overall construction period—two months for demolition; a range of 18 to 22 months for excavation (not seven months); a built-in range of time for the shutting down of the site when archeological artifacts are uncovered, documented and extracted (something the DEIR’s archeology consultant states is “likely” ); and the building construction period. Finally, given these overly aggressive excavation schedule estimates, all other estimates for later construction phases must now to be cross checked for accuracy by independent contractors (e.g. not working for 8 Washington developer    or the source of the prior DEIR excavation estimate).


B. The actual construction timeline for 8 Washington will be 41-52 MONTHS. 
If the project sponsors disagree with this assessment, they must provide the Planning Department with much more detailed information on how they expect to achieve a shorter construction period given the restrictions described in the DEIR itself as well as mathematical analysis described above. For instance,


– Did the developers err when they reported that the average number of truck
   trips per day would be 20 as analyzed in the DEIR?  If so, what number do they 
   choose to use now and how does that impact various aspects of the DEIR analysis
   such as air quality, conflicts with pedestrians, MUNI and America’s Cup, etc.. 


– Does the developer plan to raise the limit of truck trips per day from 100 (as
   per the DEIR) to 300 truck trips per day? If so, how often will this happen and 
   how will these changes impact various aspects of the previous EIR analysis (e.g. air
   quality, traffic/transit/pedestrian conflicts, America’s Cup)?


– Does the developer plan to lengthen the average workday or work six days a
   week? If so, how often and how would this impact the previous DEIR analysis?
   NOTE: The DEIR construction schedule (27-29 months) was not predicated on the
   trucks operating 6 days a week EVERY WEEK. But even if the developer ran dump  
   trucks 6 days a week for the ENTIRE excavation period it would still take TWICE AS
   LONG as the DEIR states to remove 110,000 cubic yards of dirt .


– Where is the project sponsor planning to route 100 to 300 trucks a day as they
   leave the site, particularly during the various America’s Cup trials (2012) and
   finals (2013) when vehicular traffic will be severely limited or prohibited?
   Washington Street? The Embarcadero? Drumm Street? Clay Street?, where exactly?


– Have the developers located a source of 30+ cubic yard trucks and secured
   city permission to use them on the specific streets described in the DEIR?
   It seems fair to assume the SF General Hospital’s excavation contractor would have
   done this if it were possible (and the SF PUC’s Irvington Tunnel contractor). See the  
   three photos below to get a sense of the size difference between a typical 12 cubic yard
   dump truck and the type of tractor-trailer rig required to carry 30 cubic yards or more.



As the questions and examples (SF General Hospital) above demonstrate, the DEIR’s claim that 110,000 cubic yards can be excavated in seven months defies the laws of physics and math, not to mention the America’s Cup Host & Venue Agreement between the City and Larry Ellison’s Oracle BMW Racing Team 


 A thorough reading of the DEIR’s Archeology section and the America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement indicate that additional time must be built into the construction schedule for predictable work stoppages related to both issues.


KNOWN ARCHEOLOGICAL RESOURCES IDENTIFIED ON THIS SITE IN THE DEIR


On page IV.C.12, the DEIR’s archeology consultant, Archeo-Tec, identifies the Gold Rush ship Bethel as located under a portion of the site and states that “If discovered, the Bethel would be the oldest known (and perhaps most intact) archeological example of an early Canadian built ship (Pg. IV.C.3)”. On page IV.C.11, the archeology consultant states “Significant archeological resources are likely to exist at this site”.  The DEIR, goes on to state the proposed project will destroy a portion of city’s original Seawall causing “the largest disturbance of the Old Seawall to date”.


As a result of these DEIR findings, the archeology consultant should now be asked for an estimate of the time required to mitigate the discovery of the Bethel and other likely finds (e.g. original Seawall, other Gold Rush ships, original Chinatown). This “likely” work delay should be built into the construction schedule and stated as a range. For purposes of the matrix below (Table 1) we chose a time of two weeks to two months based on anecdotal information from other similar sites. Archeo-Tec, the archeology consultant, should be able to come up with a more precise estimate.


KNOWN AMERICA’S CUP SCHEDULING CONFLICTS


Based on recent MTA staff presentations on protocols for the America’s Cup, it seems clear that traffic, particularly construction dump trucks, will be banned from Washington Street, Drumm Street and The Embarcadero during major America’s Cup events that include, at a minimum, the America’s Cup World Series warm-up races (July/Sept. 2012), the penultimate Louis Vuitton Cup Series (July/August 2013) and the America’s Cup finals (Sept. 2013).  


This represents a minimum of 2.5 months that must be added to the construction schedule, something the DEIR authors should have included if they had read the America’s Cup DEIR which states there are 9+ weeks of races associated with this event in 2012/2013. The extra few weeks added to the low end range in Table 1 (below) are there to accommodate last minute weather delays and various large non-racing events held along the waterfront that will require closure of The Embarcadero, Washington Street, Drumm Street, etc.


Table 1 below lays out a more credible and realistic construction schedule based on the factors described at length above, taken directly from the DEIR or readily available from the city (e.g. America’s Cup DEIR) and the America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement.


 
Table 1: Requested Changes to the overall DEIR construction schedule


          ACTIVITY             MINIMUM           MAXIMUM 


    DEIR’s construction schedule: 27 months    to    29 months  


    Actual excavation schedule:  18 months           22 months
    — DEIR estimate for excavation – 7 months            – 7 months
    + Increased excavation time  11 months      to       15 months 
    + Archeology delays                .5 months      to         2 months
    + America’s Cup delays                   2.5 months        to         5 months
    + Weather delays                        .25 months      to         1 months


   ACTUAL CONSTRUCTION TIME 41 months       to      52 months


To refute these numbers, the project sponsors must not only present a verifiable and detailed plan to remove 110,000 cubic yards (9,167 truck trips) in seven months that the City has signed off on but also produce a letter from the City and Oracle BMW Racing granting a waiver from Section 10.4 of the America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement that would allow 20 to 300 trucks a day to drive along The Embarcadero, Washington Street   or Drumm Street during major America’s Cup events in 2012 and 2013.


D. Significant Transportation and Energy issues that were not addressed in DEIR.


More specific information related to the construction process needs to be provided and analyzed in the EIR, particularly regarding the far reaching impacts of those 9,166 dump truck trips, impacts that go beyond the immediate Northeast Waterfront.


The DEIR states “While the exact routes that construction trucks would use would depend on the location of the available disposal sites, The Embarcadero, Harrison Street, and King Street would likely be the primary haul and access routes to and from I-80, U.S. 101, and I-280”. At a minimum, The EIR needs to include information on where the two or three most likely disposal sites are located, based on recent experience (SF General Hospital excavation) so that one can analyze the extent of potential conflicts on the Bay Bridge or 101 South where other trucks will be transporting dirt to and/or from the Transbay Terminal project, Hunters Point Shipyard, Mission Bay, Treasure Island, etc. Without this information, the City could find itself creating significant traffic conflicts on the Bay Bridge or highway 101 that greatly increase air quality, traffic and transit problems without having analyzed these potential impacts in a flawed EIR.


Simply saying “While the exact routes that construction trucks would use would depend on the location of the available disposal sites” isn’t adequate or acceptable. Assumptions must be made regarding most likely disposal sites and routes to those sites and what additional cumulative impacts these routes (and 9,166 trucks) will create. The EIR must provide a MAP of the route to be used for hauling soil, all the way from the departure point at 8 Washington to the final destination(s) with an explanation of where trucks will drive and what restrictions there are on hours, size of payload, safety, etc. for the various streets, highways and bridges they will travel on. If the options include trucking the soil to San Francisco’s southern waterfront to transfer it to barges, then this needs to be disclosed and analyzed, including the potential routes and destinations of those barges.
In addition, to accurately compare the environmental impacts of the project sponsor’s ‘Preferred Project’ to the “No Project” alternative (energy consumption, traffic impacts, air quality degradation, etc.), one needs to know not only the destination of the approximately 9,166 dump truck trips but also the average miles per gallon of a typical dump truck. For instance, if the final destination for the soil was 100 miles away and a typical dump truck averages 8 miles per gallon of diesel fuel, then:



      9,166 truck trips X 200 miles per round trip = 1,833,200 miles for all dump trucks;


      1,833,200 gallons/8 MPG = 229,150 gallons of diesel fuel that would be burned. 


    
In other words, the city’s choices would be:



     229,150 gallons of diesel fuel used to transfer 110,000 cubic yards 1,833,200 miles


VS.


    ZERO (O) gallons of diesel fuel used if the NO PROJECT alternative were approved.


 


E. Importance of accurate, detailed information re: the construction process.


Given the above discussion, it is clear that the construction schedule set forth in the DEIR is inaccurate at best and has led, in many cases, to the significant understating of major negative impacts associated with this project. The lack of a detailed discussion of some of the key aspects of the construction process, e.g. the route and destination of 9,166 dump trucks, is also highly problematic.


Without a complete and thorough analysis of the impacts of a of an overall construction schedule that is TWICE AS LONG as the one analyzed in this DEIR, city officials will be missing much of the critical information they need to determine whether or not the developer’s ‘Preferred Project’ is necessary, desirable or feasible. A complete and factual analysis of this issue must be included in the next draft of the EIR which, given this and  other major inaccuracies and omissions (see below), should be recirculated in draft form.


 



II. THE DEIR FAILS TO DISCUSS OR ANALYZE ANY CRITICAL HOUSING ISSUES RELEVANT TO 8 WASHINGTON OR UNIQUE ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENERGY IMPACTS THOSE HOUSING ISSUES CREATE. 


A. Impacts of the project on the City’s Housing Needs were Not Analyzed in DEIR.  The DEIR states that potentially significant impacts to Population and Housing will not be discussed because the 2007 NOP/Initial Study found that the proposed project would not adversely affect them. Unfortunately the DEIR lacks the basic information needed to reach such a conclusion and, as we will demonstrate, an objective review of relevant 2008-2011 housing data contradicts this conclusion.


The world, particularly regarding housing, has changed radically since 2007. Relying   on housing and population information from 2007 ignores the financial and housing meltdown of 2008 and is simply indefensible. In addition, back in 2007, the EIR consultants were relying on stale, seven-year-old census data while today they have access to a multitude of fresh 2010 census data. No one can dispute that the housing environment today could not be more unlike the housing environment in 2007.
By relying solely on pre-2008 housing data from the 2007 NOP/Initial Study, this DEIR    lacks any of the basic information needed to conclude that this project would not have adverse effects on Population and Housing and must now revisit and thoroughly analyze these issues.


B. The DEIR fails to analyze how the type and price of housing proposed for
8 Washington determines whether or not it meets the city’s housing needs.


One of the project objectives (Pg II.14) is to “help meet projected City housing
needs.” How is that possible, given the fact that the developer has publicly stated
that these will be “the most expensive condominiums in the history of SF” ? With a
$345,000,000 project cost , 8 Washington’s 165 units will cost $2.0 million a unit
just to build . To secure financing and a ‘reasonable’ profit, each unit will have to
sell for $2.5-$5 million with penthouses selling for $8-$10 million.


Nowhere in the DEIR is ANY of this discussed. There is no analysis of how these
very high sales prices will determine who lives at 8 Washington (e.g. how many San
Francisco families could afford these prices?) and how the incomes of these new
residents ($250,000 to over $1 million/year) will dramatically change a number of
the environmental impacts of the project, with major implications for sustainability
and energy use, among other things.


The final EIR must state the average cost to build each unit and the range of
sales prices expected so that public officials can assess for themselves whether
the proposed condos will or will not  “help meet projected City housing needs.” 


The 2009 Housing Element, signed into law by Mayor Ed Lee on June 29, 2011, states that 61% of the housing need in San Francisco is for below-market-rate housing—serving families making 30-120% of Area Median Income (AMI), and only 39% of the city’s housing need is for market rate housing (120% to 500+% AMI).


As Planning staff and Commissioners know from their Housing Element discussions, the luxury condos proposed for this project are so expensive they will not help the city meet its current unmet housing needs. If this project objective (Pg II.14) is left in the final EIR, it should include a note explaining that the project, as proposed, is unlikely to meet this objective for the following reasons:


Condominiums selling for $2.5 million and more fall into the one segment of the city’s housing market that is currently overbuilt and has historically been over represented in relation to the state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) goals that underpin the updated 2009 Housing Element of the city’s General Plan. An ABAG report on housing needs vs. housing production in SF (1999-2006) that came out in 2007—a report that should have informed the 2007 NOP/Initial Study for 8 Washington—states RHNA Allocations (Goal), Permits Issued (Permitted) and % of Allocation Permitted (% of RHNA Goal) by income category as follows:



Table 2: SF Housing Production (1999-2006)*


Housing Type  Very Low    Low              Moderate       Market Rate 
by Income    Income Income  Income           Housing
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
  % of AMI:    21-50%  51-80%  81-120%         120-500+%
  Annual income: [21-50K] [57-81K] [85-123K]   [123K-$1million+]
———————————————————————————————————-
·RHNA Goal (units)   5,244       2,126   5,639                7,363


·Permitted    4,203       1,101      661                        11,474


·% of RHNA Goal     80%      52%       12%             156%


        * from a 2007 ABAG report entitled: A Place to Call Home



A chart like this, showing housing goals by income group (based on RHNA numbers from the State Office of Housing and Community Development), must be included in the DEIR so public officials can analyze what portion of the city’s unmet affordable and middle income housing needs, if any, the proposed project would meet. It illustrates something local housing experts have long known, that the city consistently comes in well above its RHNA goals for market rate condos, and has historically fallen short of its goals in all other categories for affordable housing, the housing that serves the 61% of San Franciscans that cannot afford ‘market rate’ housing.
C. Dramatic changes to the San Francisco housing market since the 2007 NOP/ Initial Study were not acknowledged and analyzed in the DEIR. All the traditional (pre-2007) sources of funding for the city’s affordable housing programs have dried up since the 2008 housing crash. Redevelopment tax increment funds will either be significantly reduced to pay the state to avoid closure of the SF Redevelopment Agency, or they will be eliminated altogether. Proceeds from the state’s $2.8 billion Affordable Housing Bond (Prop. 1C) are all spent. The federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit, a major source of funding for affordable housing, is under attack by House and Senate Republicans and may not survive.


This indicates that San Francisco won’t come close to meeting its pre-2007 affordable housing production levels  until we find a new permanent local source of funding for affordable housing. How long will that take? The DEIR must address this issue.


Another chart that must be included in the DEIR shows the city’s RHNA goals by income category combined with a summary of a recent SF Business Times (6/24/2011) chart showing all San Francisco residential projects under construction, permitted or  in the planning pipeline . Such a chart would look something like Table 3 below:


Table 3: Where does the city need help in meeting its RHNA goals?


          Extremely Low       Very Low            Low             Moderate          Market Rate   
                 Income          Income           Income            Income               Housing
         Below 30% AMI          31-50%            51-80%           81-120%              120-500+% 
      [21K-30K]         [35K-50]        [57K-81K]      [85K-120K]        [120K-$1M+]
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________


RHNA      439/yr.                   439/yr.           738/yr.            901/yr.                    1,632/yr.
Goals:      10.5%        +          10.5%      +      18%        +     22%  =  61%           39%
# of units                    of total        of total
% of goal
                             All Affordable Categories Combined            Market Rate_


Underway:          470 units                 1,557 units


Approved:                  8,751 units             30,878 units


In Pipeline:                   780 units                     4,184 units 
________________________________________________________________________
                          10,000 units             36,619 units 
            or                     or
          21.5% of all units                 78.5% of all units


                        56% of RHNA goals                                300% of RHNA goal
                in all affordable categories                        in market rate category
Some version of Table 3 must be included in the revised DEIR to help public officials determine whether the significant negative environmental impacts this project creates are outweighed by the ‘need’ for the type of housing that 8 Washington provides given the priorities set forth in the Housing Element of the General Plan and what the above-mentioned SF Business Times chart tells us about likely housing production for each segment of the city’s housing needs (from 2011-2014). 


Table 3 demonstrates that in a few years, if nothing changes, the city will have approved and built out 300% of its RHNA goal for Market Rate projects (such as 8 Washington) but only 56% of its RHNA goals for all other housing that serves San Franciscans making 30% AMI to 120% AMI. But given what we now know about the current lack of funding for affordable housing, the exact opposite of what was true in 2007 (when the city had significant amounts of Redevelopment tax increment and other affordable housing funds), many of the affordable housing projects listed by the Business Times are now on hold and unlikely to come on line by 2014. This means the mismatch between market rate (39% of need but 300% of production) and all categories of affordable will be even greater than Table 3 indicates.


To be fair, one could argue that some of the market rate housing on the Business Times chart may not be built soon either given that banks have been reluctant to lend money lately. However, a recent article in the SF Chronicle (8/11/11) entitled “Rents Go Through Roof” indicates that the city’s housing market is roaring back; Dennis Robal, property manager with Chandler Properties, reports “Noe Valley apartments that were $2,000 a month a year ago are now going for $2,400”. These kinds of increases, driven by new renters from the tech sector, are prompting major increases in investments by financial institutions in new rental housing.


Regarding the condo market, the one group of potential condominium buyers that
have not suffered financially from the economic meltdown are the very people who
caused it, the Wall Street investors, derivatives specialists, hedge fund managers,
etc. who are now making record salaries and bonuses. These are some of the people
8 Washington will be marketing to because they have the cash to spend $2.5-$10
million on a second, third or fourth home in San Francisco.


NONE of this housing analysis appears in the DEIR yet including it in the DEIR is
critical to the ability of public officials to make informed, rational decisions on this
project, particularly claims by the developer that this project will “help meet
projected City housing needs”. The information and analysis described above is
necessary to allow city officials and all readers to determine accurately and
objectively what portion of San Francisco’s unmet affordable and middle income
housing needs, if any, 8 Washington would meet.


Each year, as the City assesses how well it is meeting its RHNA (state) housing goals, the one area that has consistently over produced is high-end market rate housing affordable to people making $250,000 to $1 million+ a year.
How does building second, third and fourth homes for this demographic “help the city meet its housing needs?”


The unmet housing needs in San Francisco are for people making from 30%-50% of median income all the way up to 100-120%, not people making $250,000 to $1,000,000+ a year (200-500% or more of area median income). The DEIR needs to discuss the following questions to be considered complete, adequate and accurate, questions such as:


How does this project relate to the objectives, policies and goals of San Francisco’s recently enacted 2009 Housing Element of the General Plan?


What portion of San Francisco’s affordable and middle-income housing needs will this proposed project actually meet?


How many other projects under construction, approved or in the pipeline (see June 24,
2011 SF Business Times chart) will meet the needs of San Franciscans who can afford market rate housing vs. those that meet the needs of  the 61% of SF residents needing below market housing?


What percentage of “residents” of these condos will be using this housing as their primary residence vs. as second, third and fourth vacation homes?


Given that numerous studies show transit use goes down as income goes up,
how likely is it that these new owners will use public transit?


Again, the answer to each of these questions provides critical information that public
officials need to assess for themselves whether the proposed condos will or will
not “help meet the projected City housing needs.” 


Everything that’s happened since the 2008 economic/housing meltdown has made our housing problems worse, something the DEIR doesn’t attempt to analyze, arguing instead that a 2007 NOP/Initial Study—competed a year before the housing bubble burst—absolves it of all such responsibility, an argument that is factually absurd.


D. The DEIR fails to acknowledge, measure or analyze the unique environmental impacts generated by owners who can pay $2.5 to $10 million for luxury condos.


Building housing for this demographic has measurable impacts on transit and energy use that were not included in the DEIR. We know from national studies that low-and middle- income residents are far greater consumers of public transit than people with higher incomes. Imagine how much different public transit use will be when this inverse relationship includes people who can afford $2.5-10 million condos that come with             1-for-1 parking (costing almost $100,000 a space to build).


But a far greater environmental impact than driving private cars was not addressed in this DEIR, an impact resulting from lifestyle differences one can anticipate with some members of this highest of high-end demographics: owning and/or using private jets.


It’s reasonable to assume that five of the 165 condo buyers at 8 Washington (just 3% of   all buyers) are Wall Street hedge fund managers, derivatives traders or venture capitalists using these condos as second, third or fourth homes. It’s also reasonable to assume that these five buyers will use their condos 1.5 times a month on average and commute to and from SF aboard private business jets, a perfectly rational assumption for Wall Street executives making tens of millions in salary and bonuses each year. Why would they fly private jets rather than take Southwest…because they can. The fact that a handful of  people that are this wealthy will buy units at 8 Washington must be factored into any environmental analysis of a project that will explicitly market to this high-end demographic. That analysis must include, among others, the following:


 
                           Table 4: The Jet Fuel Burn Rate for Luxury Condominiums
___________________________________________________________________________
Mid to large size business jets used to fly cross country (e.g. Hawker 800XP, Gulfstream G2/G3, Bombardier Global Express) average 400 gallons of jet fuel per hour and take six hours to fly New York to SF and five hours to fly back for an 11 hour round trip  :


     · 11 hours X 400 gallons per hour = 4,400 gallons of jet fuel per trip
          a typical family car burns 1,200 gallons of gas per year so one flight from
          NYC to SF equals almost four years of driving a typical family car.
               ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
       
        ·  1.5 trips/mo. = 6,600 gallons/mo. X 12 mo. = 79,200 gallons of jet fuel/year


        ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Using our example of 5 residents, the numbers over one year and 20 years are:


        ·  5 X 79,200 gallons/per year = 396,000 GALLONS OF JET FUEL A YEAR or
         equivalent to driving a family car 330 years, A THIRD OF A MILENNIUM, per year.


        ·  396,000 gallons/year X 20 years = 7,920,000 GALLONS of jet fuel in 20 years
         equivalent to driving family car 6,600 years, OVER 6 MILLENIUM, in 20 years.



Given these condos cost $2+ million to build and will sell for $2.5 to $8 million or more,    it seems quite reasonable to assume a mere 3% of these buyers—just five (5) buyers out of 165 —will be part-time residents wealthy enough to commute to San Francisco by business jet. If this is a reasonable assumption , then the DEIR must include the mathematical calculations above to show the true energy costs of this project. In fact, it would also be reasonable to assume a few other buyers will use private business jets to commute from LA, San Diego, Denver, etc. The only way to prevent this, forbidding buyers to own or use corporate jets, is of course impossible.
This is just one example of how housing prices—and who lives in that housing—greatly changes environmental impacts and why this analysis must be included in the DEIR for    8 Washington. As condo prices reach $2.5-10 million, it’s reasonable to assume a number of buyers will use them as a second, third or fourth homes and that some of those buyers will travel here by jet, not car or public transit. On the other hand, if units at 8 Washington were affordable or market rate rental or affordable-by-design condos (80%-150% AMI), it’s very unlikely any of its residents would own or use business jets. Price does matter with regard to energy consumption and transit use.


Given these facts, the 8 Washington DEIR must analyze such questions as:


How many solar panels do you need to make up for 396,000 gallons of jet fuel per year?


How many low flow toilets make up for 396,000 gallons of jet fuel per year?


How many double pane windows make up for 396,000 gallons of jet fuel per year?


How many on-demand hot water heaters make up for 396,000 gallons of jet fuel per year?


Looking at the longer term impacts of this excessive consumption of energy resources:


How many solar panels compensate for 7,920,000  gallons of jet fuel over 20 years?


How many low flow toilets make up for 7,920,000 gallons of jet fuel over 20 years?


How many double pane windows make up for 7,920,000 gallons of jet fuel over 20 years?


How many on demand water heaters make up for 7,920,000 gallons of jet fuel over 20 years?


Having this information in the DEIR is necessary for the Planning Commissioners or Board of Supervisors to make informed decisions about 8 Washington, especially when the project sponsor keeps touting it as state-of-the-art, sustainable, LEED certified (at Gold or Platinum level), etc. When added to the project sponsor’s insistence on building a 420-car underground (below sea level) garage, one has to question how one can call this a model of sustainable development or let the DEIR include sustainability as a project objective.


Unless the DEIR seriously and objectively addresses questions of how the price of housing and who lives in that housing impacts environmental sustainability, we risk creating a backlash against things like LEED certification and terms like “sustainability”. They could easily become just another example of slick marketing and “greenwashing”. Everyone agrees that building 10,000 s.f. McMansions in the Sierra Foothills on 2-acre lots—even if they’re LEED certified at the highest level—is NOT sustainable development. Why is it any less absurd to use “green” and “sustainable” to describe $2.5-$10 million condos built as second and third homes for extremely wealthy part-time residents, some of whom commute from their primary residence by private jet?


The DEIR must provide public officials with the data and information they need to analyze all the significant impacts that units this expensive have on the environment. With this information, decision makers might choose to require a much smaller garage or no garage at all (insisting on more efficient use of nearby existing garages). They might also choose to support a much smaller project or no project at all, based on the lack of demonstrable need for this housing type and all the other negative impacts described above. But they cannot make any of these decisions in a rational and objective manner without all the facts, many of which are missing from this DEIR.


E. The DEIR confuses project “objectives” with city mandated requirements with regard to Inclusionary Housing, then fails to discuss any of the relevant issues around this city policy.


The project objective (Pg II.14) that talks about the project’s ability “to help meet
projected City housing needs” reads in full:


 “To develop a high-quality, sustainable and economically feasible
   high-density, primarily residential, project within the existing
   density designation for the site, in order to help meet projected
   City housing needs and satisfy the City’s inclusionary affordable
         housing requirement;” 


Satisfying the city’s inclusionary affordable housing requirement, for this or any market  rate housing development, IS NOT an Objective, and stating it as such is misleading. It is,  in fact, legally mandated by city ordinance. The developer doesn’t have a choice in the matter and it should be stricken from this Objective. However, this reference to inclusionary housing leads one to ask several questions that are never addressed in the DEIR but should be. An Inclusionary Housing section must be added that answers questions such as:


What are the specific requirements for including permanent below market rate (BMR) units in all market rate projects and how many would be required on-site for this one?


Did the developer ever consider building on-site BMR units and if not, why not?


If the developer did consider and reject on-site BMR units, why?


If the developer has decided to pay the in-lieu affordable housing fee, what would it be and how and where (e.g. within a 1-mile radius of the project) would it be spent?


Given that the in-lieu fee charged developers to buy out of providing BMR units on-site is based on construction costs and sales prices for “average” condos, how will the extraordinarily high construction costs and sales prices for these condos impact the in-lieu fee? If it doesn’t impact the fee, would an appropriate mitigation measure be amending the Inclusionary Housing policy so that it does?


Mentioning the inclusionary requirement as part of an objective stating that the project seeks to “help meet projected City housing needs” is misleading and inaccurate. It tries to infer that the funding for 30 affordable units provided by the developer’s inclusionary requirement is helping to meet this objective when, in fact, relying on inclusionary payments to advance the city’s affordable housing goals will only drive the city further   out of compliance with its state mandated RHNA goals. The following example clearly demonstrates the validity of this claim:


TNDC’s proposed affordable family apartment project at Eddy and Taylor Streets is typical of the projects now stalled in the city’s affordable housing pipeline due to the lack of affordable housing funding from traditional sources. But the Eddy and Taylor project is a 150 unit development, not 30 units. For it to go forward, you would need the inclusionary housing funds from FIVE market rate projects like 8 Washington. What would that do to San Francisco’s RHNA goals:


         If:  165 market rate units are needed to fund 30 affordable units,
  Then:   825 market units (5X) are needed to fund 150 affordable units (975 total units).
      
         If:  out of a every 975 new housing units, 825 are market rate & 150 are affordable,
   Then:  for each new 975 units built in SF: 85% are market rate, 15% affordable.


But the 2009 Housing Element of San Francisco’s General Plan (based on the state RHNA goals) calls for 39% OF NEW HOUSING TO BE MARKET RATE (NOT 85%). Relying on Inclusionary Housing off-site payments to fund affordable housing clearly runs counter to the housing production goals set forth in the 2009 Housing Element in the General Plan as well as the RHNA goals for San Francisco established by the state of California. Furthermore, as SB375 Sustainable Development funding criteria begins influencing state funding decisions, by driving our RHNA numbers toward 85% market rate, projects like 8 Washington could jeopardize San Francisco’s ability to apply for and receive state and federal infrastructure and transit funding.


The only way to bring San Francisco’s housing production numbers back into line with the goals in the Housing Element (and RHNA numbers) is to create a new local permanent and dedicated source of funding for affordable housing. These relevant facts regarding the impacts of inclusionary housing must be included in the DEIR.



III. THE DEIR IGNORES THE GENTRIFICATION/DISPLACEMENT IMPACTS OF THIS PROJECT THAT WILL RESULT IN THE LOSS OF HUNDREDS OF RENT CONTROLLED UNITS IN THE GOLDEN GATEWAY BY ENCOURAGING THE FURTHER HOTELIZATION OF ITS 1,200 RENTAL APARTMENTS


The other ‘partner’ in this project is Timothy Foo, who bought Golden Gateway from Perini Corp. about 20 years ago. Only 20% of the 8 Washington site is on Port land, while 80% of the site is on land owned by Mr. Foo and currently occupied by Golden Gateway’s community recreation center. However, Mr. Foo’s only mention in the DEIR is in a footnote to the first sentence of the Introduction which states: “On January 3, 2007, an environmental evaluation application (EE application) was filed by San Francisco Waterfront Partners II (the “project sponsor”) on behalf of the Golden Gateway Center*”. That footnote says “*Golden Gateway Center, Authorization Letter from Timothy Foo, December 27, 2006”).


In addition to violating the original Golden Gateway development agreement that required Perini (and future owners) to preserve the recreation center in exchange for deep discounts in land prices charged by Redevelopment, for some time now Mr. Foo has also been converting rent controlled apartments in the Golden Gateway to short term rental use (e.g. on one floor of a high-rise tower, a third of the units are rented this way). These conversions have been documented by the Golden Gateway Tenants Association, the Affordable Housing Alliance and the San Francisco Tenants Union. While such conversions are not unique to the Golden Gateway Center (see attached Bay Citizen article), they are illegal and violate city zoning, rent control and apartment conversion ordinances.


The DEIR must address this issue by posing the following questions to Mr. Foo and incorporating his answers into the DEIR. He must provide this information because as the owner of 80% of the underlying land that comprises the 8 Washington site, he has had and continues to have a direct financial stake in this project. He must be asked the following questions:


How many of Golden Gateway’s 1,200 rental apartments are currently being used as hotel rooms and/or short-term rentals and/or rented to persons other than those using them as primary residences or directly related to the person residing there (e.g. corporations, business organizations, apartment brokers).


Has Mr. Foo consulted with either the Rent Board or the Planning Department as to the legality of his use of apartments in Golden Gateway as hotel rooms or short-term rentals under applicable city zoning codes, the San Francisco Rent Control ordinance or the city’s Apartment Conversion Ordinance?


Upon receiving and analyzing this information from Mr. Foo, the DEIR must then answer the following questions:


Is the ‘hotelization’ of Golden Gateway and other large apartment complexes likely to increase with the approval of 8 Washington, a development that:


a) builds 165 high-end luxury condos ($2.5 – $10 million each)
 on Mr. Foo’s property—creating a much more upscale
environment adjacent to his Golden Gateway apartments;


b) provides Mr. Foo with $10-15 million (what he’s likely to
be paid for his 80% of the site) that can be used to upgrade
his rent controlled apartments at Golden Gateway in order                             to attract even more higher paying hotel users; and


c) if no mention of these conversions is made in the DEIR, after                     these written comments have been submitted, will send a clear
message to Mr. Foo and others that the City has no intention of
enforcing its own zoning, rent control and apartment conversion
ordinances, thereby encouraging even more conversions.


If conversions like those at Golden Gateway are not stopped soon, the city is at risk of losing thousands of residential apartments in its downtown neighborhoods.


What kind of mitigations would prevent the further hotelization of the Golden Gateway’s 1,200 rent controlled apartments?


With larger apartment complexes such as Golden Gateway, Parkmerced and Fox Plaza, owners get around the current prohibition on renting residential apartments for less than 30 days as hotel rooms (an action that is legally prohibited by the San Francisco Apartment Conversion Ordinance) by leasing them for more than 30 days to third parties (e.g. corporations, apartment brokers). These intermediaries then rent the apartments for anywhere from a day or two to a few weeks to a month or two.


A simple amendment to the Apartment Conversion Ordinance that changes “you cannot rent an apartment for less than 30 days” to “you cannot rent or occupy an apartment for less than 30 days” would prevent Golden Gateway and others from renting apartments for anywhere from a few days to up to four weeks. Preventing 30-60 day rentals would be a more complicated matter.


The DEIR must address how constructing 8 Washington could encourage, help fund and accelerate Mr. Foo’s conversion of the 1,200 units at Golden Gateway from rent controlled apartments to hotel use as well as the impacts this would have on the city’s housing goals as set forth in the San Francisco’s 2009 Housing Element and its RHNA goals. For instance, if we’re converting housing to non-housing (hotel) uses as fast or faster than we are creating new housing units, we will never dig ourselves out of our current housing crisis and that outcome would have catastrophic impacts on the environmental and economic sustainability of San Francisco as a city.


The DEIR must also describe, in detail, the kind of mitigations (see above) that, if enacted, could mitigate the potential impact of losing more that 165 rent controlled apartments at the Golden Gateway, erasing the gain, on paper, of 165 luxury condos.



IV. FREQUENT USE OF THE WORD “PRIVATE” AS A MODIFIER OF THE GOLDEN GATEWAY RECREATION FACILITIES THROUGHOUT THE DEIR  IS BOTH MISLEADING AND INNACCURATE IN LIGHT OF THE RECENT PRIVITIZATION AND FEE STRUCTURES IMPOSED ON THE CITY’S “PUBLIC’ RECREATION FACILITIES AND SWIMMING POOLS.


The current fee structure for public recreation facilities in San Francisco results in situations where the cost of attending ‘public’ pools can often exceed fees charged by    the “private” Golden Gate Tennis & Swim Center (GGTSC).


The use of the term “private” in this context throughout the DEIR appears to be an attempt to justify the loss of GGTSC facilities for the 3-4 years that it would be shut down if the “preferred project” were approved (see section I.A for actual construction schedule) as well as the permanent loss of five of nine tennis courts, the basketball court and the current, family-friendly ground level swimming pools, Jacuzzi and open space.


In the past, the city’s public recreation facilities, including its swimming pools, were  “public” in every sense of the word—open long-hours, open 6-7 days a week and “free” to residents. In recent years, however, the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department has increased resident user fees, reduced hours and increased the privatization of its facilities in response to ongoing budget deficits. Today, both the ‘private’ Golden Gateway facility and ‘public’ pools are open to anyone, anyone who is willing to pay   the fees that they charge. Neither is free.


A. The DEIR fails to discuss the privatization of the City’s  recreation centers: According to a 7/9/11 SF Chronicle article, the city is now leasing 23 of its 47 recreation centers to outside interests (e.g. nursery schools, private classes) with the city staffing only a dozen (12) of the 47 former “public” recreation centers. Seven (7) of the remaining recreation centers are under renovation and five (5) are vacant, unavailable for any kind of use “because no one has leased them and there is no money for city workers to run them”. Out of a total of 47 city recreation centers, only 12 are staffed by city workers who run programs for residents, many of them for a fee, during reduced days and hours.


The City also runs nine “public” swimming pools in neighborhoods such as North Beach, the Mission, Bayview, Visitacion Valley, etc. These pools used to be open five or six days a week and were free for residents. Today, residents pay $5 for each swim and $7 for adult swim lessons/water exercise. Children under 17 pay $1 per swim and $2 for swim lessons/water exercise ($3 for a swim & a class together).


Active Recreation Facilities: Public vs. Private… is there a difference anymore?


Each time a family of two adults goes to a city pool it costs $10 per visit to swim and up to $14 per visit if they participate in swim lessons or water exercise. If that family went three times a week, it would cost them $120-$168 per month depending upon how many times they took a swim vs. participated in swim lessons/water exercise. That comes to at least $1,440 dollars per year. Additional swim lessons/water exercise classes drive costs of using a “public” pool even higher.


Now imagine a family of two adults living at the Golden Gateway who currently       swim every day at the Golden Gate Tennis and Swim Center. At the city’s North Beach (public) pool, it would cost them $200 a month ($10/swim X 20 days) to swim Tuesday through Saturday (the pool is closed Sunday/Monday) and their schedules would have to match specific windows each day when the pool is available for adult lap swimming. Compare that to the two pools at the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Center—one just for swimming laps; one for kids, families and seniors that are open seven days a week for longer hours.


B. Comparative Costs. Because our hypothetical couple live at the Golden Gateway Apartments they automatically receive a discounted membership of about $170  per month ($85 each) to use the two pools, full gym across the street and have the ability to reserve tennis courts at $20 per use. Since the Golden Gateway was built (1960’s), residents have always received discounted membership at this facility, one of two community benefits Redevelopment required, along with Sidney Walton Square, in exchange for entitlements to build both the Golden Gateway (1,150 rental units) and the adjacent Gateway Commons (condominiums). Redevelopment felt both amenities were needed to meet the open space and active recreation needs of what was to become one of the densest residential communities in San Francisco and discounted the land for the GGTSC and Gateway Commons in exchange for the owner maintaining an active recreation facility at the GGTSC in perpetuity.


Even for those who don’t get the Golden Gateway resident discount, memberships to the Tennis and Swim Center that don’t include automatic access to the tennis courts cost about $220 a month to swim 30 days a month, the same price two adults would pay to swim only 20 days a month at the North Beach pool, a facility with no gym and only   one pool and therefore greater restrictions on when they could swim laps. It should also be noted that over 300 “guests” are admitted free to the Golden Gateway recreation facility each month, a total of 3,000 to 4,000 guests each year. We are not familiar with   a similar policy for free guests at the North Beach pool (or any other city pools).


Clearly, the recent privatization and escalating fee structures at the city’s “public” recreation centers/swimming pools have erased any real distinctions between public facilities and private facilities as viewed by local families and residents. But one of          8 Washington’s main justifications for closing the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Center for 3-4 years during construction—and downsizing the replacement facility—
is that it is a “private” club maintained for the selfish interests of the few.


Putting aside the fact that 8 Washington’s condos will cost $2 million each to build  and will sell for $2.5 to $5 million each and up (for upper floors), making them unaffordable to 97% of all San Franciscans (talk about catering to “the few”), the issue of who uses the current recreation facilities on this site is an important one that the DEIR must address. The similarities outlined above between today’s Golden Gateway recreation facilities and the City’s current “public” recreation centers/swimming pools contradicts the impression created by the DEIR in its current form with so many derogatory references to GGTSC as a ‘private’ club.


It is imperative that public officials have the information outlined above regarding the current costs of “public” recreation in front of them so they can decide for themselves what distinctions, if any, exist in today’s world between this ‘private’ club and so called “public” alternatives. This information is precisely what an EIR is suppose to provide to officials charged with making these kinds of decisions.


For these reasons, we must insist that you provide—in the Comments and Responses document—a clear, complete explanation of this issue, with a chart (see attached for potential template) that compares the facilities, hours, programs and costs to San Francisco residents of the city’s nine (9) “public” swimming pools with the current Golden Gateway recreation facility fee structure. Without such an analysis critical information will be lacking, information that Planning Commissioners, Park and Recreation Commissioners, Port Commissioners and the Board of Supervisors will clearly need as they assess the validity of the developer’s claims about who is served by the current facilities (and what environmental impacts they have) versus those who’ll be served by the proposed project (and its environmental impacts).


Without this information, it will be difficult for these public bodies to make informed decisions as to whether to grant or not grant the conditional use authorizations, upzonings and dozens of separate approvals and permits needed for this complicated and controversial project to proceed.


V. THE DEIR FAILS TO ADDRESS OR ANALYZE ANY OF THE MAJOR ECONOMIC ISSUES RELATED TO THIS PROJECT, ISSUES THAT HAVE SIGNIFICANT ENVIRONMENTAL AND FINANCIAL IMPACTS ON THE NEIGHBORHOOD AND THE CITY.


Several of the project sponsor’s and the Port’s objectives for this project speak to the “economic” benefits of the project for the developers, the Port and the City. The DEIR and other Port documents talk about the need to develop SWL 351 in order to generate revenue for badly needed Port infrastructure work. But the Port’s financial term sheet for this project is unrealistic, misleading and relies on depriving the city of $32 million in general fund dollars as part of a proposed Infrastructure Financing District.


This section addresses the DEIR’s lack of analysis or scrutiny regarding the ‘alleged’ financial benefits of the project as described in the Port’s Term Sheet for Seawall Lot 351 with San Francisco Waterfront Partners (“Term Sheet”) and how that Term Sheet, if executed, would have very real environmental impacts with regard to transit, open space, recreation, housing and population.  An examination of the Term Sheet demonstrates that the stream of income on which the term sheet’s finances rely cannot be achieved.  An objective analysis of “payments” described in this Term Sheet leads one to a much more pessimistic set of income projections than those presented in the September 23, 2010 Director’s Recommendation to the Port Commission. That report describes three payment sources as follows:


(1)  a land lease with annual payments of $120,000 per year;
(2)  future payments triggered by resale of condos created by the Project;
(3)  a to-be-established Infrastructure Financing District (IFD) that allows
              a portion of growth in property taxes to be reinvested in public facilities;  
 
That third source of funding is particularly troubling since it requires a sizeable appropriation of City General Fund revenues ($32 million) by the Port for its own purposes. We will now examine each of these proposed “payment” schemes to determine how realistic they are as well as the potential environmental and economic consequences they create for San Francisco’s residents and taxpayers:
1.  Lease Payments. It is easy to refute the likelihood of the $120,000/year lease payment for parcels to be used as open space with related facilities.  The second paragraph of Director’s Recommendation (page 5) states: “If engineering and cost analyses deem additional funding is needed to finance agreed upon public improve- ments, the Port agrees to designate some or all of the $120,000 per year park rent to augment financing of these public improvements.”  If the developer produces “engineering and cost analyses” showing “additional funding is needed to finance agreed upon public improvements,” the Port will “designate some or all of the $120,000/year in park rent to finance public improvements,” improvements that the developer is responsible for.  Suddenly this $120,000 of alleged “rent” could become no rent. Is that likely to happen? You be the judge:



A Little Recent History


The developer of 8 Washington is San Francisco Waterfront Partners, a partnership between Pacific Waterfront Partners and CALSTRS, the same partnership that  developed Piers 1½, 3 and 5 across the street. According to the Port’s rent rolls, San Francisco Waterfront Partners makes rent payments for Piers 1½, 3  and 5 of  $41,666.67 per month or $500,000 annually. But 90% of this is wiped out by a rent credit of a $450,000 annual rent credit ($37,500.00 per month). This means that the actual rent for Piers 1½, 3 and 5 paid by San Francisco Waterfront Partners isn’t $500,000/year, but $50,000/year or 1/10 of the original rent. Knowing this, it seems highly likely that the Port will grant a similar rent credit to 8 Washington, a credit that it has already offered in the Term Sheet approved last year.



The DEIR needs to discuss this and ask the following questions to help establish for public officials whether or not 8 Washington has the possibility of generating resources to fix up the Port’s historic infrastructure.


Was the $450,000 rent rebate given Piers 1½, 3 and 5 given for “public improvements” in the same way the 8 Washington Term Sheet proposes to give      8 Washington an up-to-$120,000/year (100%) rebate for “public improvements?


How much of this $120,000/year lease payment to the Port is guaranteed?


Based on recent history with this developer (see above box), it would appear that claiming a $120,000 per year lease payment is, at best, a gross overestimate.


2.  Future payments triggered by resale of condos (aka increased transfer tax). The second source of payments (around $25 MILLION over life of the lease) involves the developer recording covenants “committing all owners to transfer payments to the Port of ½ percent of sale value for all sales of the residential condominiums and all re-sales of commercial condominiums” (from Director’s Report, Page 4), in other words, a ‘voluntary’ increase in the transfer tax.  


This idea of obligating future owners to a special transfer “fee” was already tried, unsuccessfully, several years ago by then Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office as a way to provide ‘stimulus’ for large condo developers with approved projects who were trying to get financing. In exchange for agreeing to binding future condo owners to ‘voluntarily’ pay a 1% increase in the real estate transfer tax (but not calling it a “tax”), the Mayor’s Office proposed relieving the developers of 1/3 of their affordable housing requirement. That idea failed to get off the ground for both legal and political reasons. Regarding this proposal:


How does the Port plan to argue this increase in the real estate transfer TAX is not really a tax and do so in a way that convinces the Pacific Legal Foundation, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and SF Board of Realtors not to sue?
Mayor Newsom’s failed proposal did trigger an multi-stakeholder discussion of a broader, legally defensible strategy, going to the voters for a permanent, across the board increase in the transfer tax on ALL real estate transactions (above the median home price) generating tens of millions of dollars a year for affordable housing. A portion of this new money would fund traditional affordable housing built by non- profit housing development corporations, but a portion would also be available to for-profit housing developers to buy down their affordable housing obligations. All sides agreed to this compromise and to place it on the November 2010 ballot, because it HAD to go to the voters, just as the ½% transfer tax increase proposed     in this Term Sheet would need voter approval.


NOTE: The reason that this proposal was not on the ballot that November, as reported in the New York Times, was because Mayor Newsom refused to support it or ANY tax increase, no matter how much support it had, for fear of giving his Republican opponent in the Lt. Governor’s race an issue to use against him in the 2010 election.


If the best legal and political minds in the city couldn’t figure out a way to “voluntarily” increase the real estate transfer tax without going to the voters then, how does the Port propose to do the same thing for 8 Washington now?


3.  New IFD Funding Mechanism. The third weak link in this financing plan is the as yet “to-be-established Infrastructure Financing District (IFD) that will allow a portion of growth in property taxes to be reinvested in public facilities.”  Port Director’s Recommendation, page 2.   While the concept is an interesting one, it is in its infancy in San Francisco. The Board of Supervisors is in the process of setting up a pilot IFD with seven or eight property owners on Rincon Hill to test this model.


To date, citywide discussions about the use of tax increment financing tools, such as the IFD, have linked their use to funding a larger set of neighborhood infrastructure needs and public benefits previously identified through adopted Area Plans such as Eastern Neighborhoods, Market Octavia and Rincon Hill and not for the specific needs of individual projects or developers (e.g. 8 Washington).


Looking ahead, it isn’t hard to imagine the kind of criteria the Board of Supervisors might adopt to determine what developments could avail themselves of IFDs. Those with significant legal, political and financial challenges, such as 8 Washington, would not score well.  Nor would projects that dramatically reduce and eliminate active recreation facilities serving middle-income families and seniors for over 45 years.  Finally, projects that undo decades old community benefits agreements, provided as part of a Redevelopment plan (e.g. Golden Gateway’s permanent active recreation center), probably wouldn’t pass muster .


Assuming the city eventually creates IFDs in certain circumstances, how does the Port make the case for THIS project, given the growing political and legal opposition to it, the long standing community resource that it destroys and the fact that the Board of Supervisors won’t give up $32 million for it (see below).


 4. Diversion of property taxes from the General Fund to the Port. The majority of the 8 Washington/SWL 351 site is NOT Port property, but under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. Exhibit A of the Term Sheet shows the boundary of the 0.64 acre under Port control (SWL 351) and the 2.51 acres portion currently privately owned by Golden Gateway on AB168, 171, 291 (80% of the site). SWL 351 (the Port land) is only 20% of the total development site.


While these blocks were under the jurisdiction of the Redevelopment Agency, the property tax increment was diverted from the City’s General Fund to that Agency.  Following termination of the Redevelopment project area several years ago, however, ALL property tax revenue from this land flows to the General Fund.  The Port now proposes to divert the property tax increment from the portion of this site NOT UNDER PORT JURISDICTION away from the General Fund and to the Port.


The Port Director’s Term Sheet Recommendation on page 6 proposes “a new Port IFD” covering both SWL 351 and the Golden Gate Tennis and Swim Club (WHICH IS NOW ENTIRELY UNDER THE CITY’S JURISDICTION AND TAXING AUTHORITY).  Under the “new Port IFD” all the property tax increment from development on non-Port property would be diverted FROM the General Fund TO the Port.  Toward the end of the Term Sheet recommendation the Port Director does state that the Board of Supervisors would have to agree to this arrangement, which prompts several questions that should have been asked and answered in the DEIR:


Who from the city, not the Port, agreed to including these IFD financial terms in the Term Sheet?


Which members of the Board of Supervisors were consulted regarding this planned appropriation of property tax revenue from the city’s general fund?


What would lead the Port to think ANY current or future Board of Supervisors would  ‘voluntarily’ turn over $32 million in General Fund dollars to the Port, providing a $32 MILLION CITY SUBSIDY FOR LUXURY CONDOS when the Board is struggling with massive budget deficits, layoffs and cuts to vital city programs?


The DEIR must address whether or not this project is financially viable because if it is not, then the public facilities and infrastructure the project has promised to provide cannot be built. The DEIR must also assess the likelihood of the Board of Supervisors turning over $32 million in General Fund monies as a subsidy to the Port for this and other Port projects and analyze what environmental impacts this loss of $32 million to the city would create over time: what parks wouldn’t be maintained, which parks and recreation centers closed, what transit lines discontinued or run less frequently, etc.; actions that would not have been necessary had the city kept that $32 million. Specifically, the DEIR must answer the following questions:


Can 8 Washington’s public facilities (e. g. Jackson Commons, other open space) ever  be built with IFD funding, given that:


a) the IFD is predicated on the Port capturing 100% of the tax increment generated by 8 Washington even though the Port only owns 20% of the site, and


b) according to recent testimony before the Planning Commission by Michael Yarne (OEWD), under state law IFD’s are prohibited on land that “is currently,  or was previously part of a redevelopment area”?
 
Under what circumstances does the Port anticipate that the current (or a future) 
Board of Supervisors would voluntarily give up its 80% of this tax increment
($32 million out of $40 projected by the Port) to fund public improvements for   
LUXURY CONDOS at 8 Washington or other Port projects?


Has the Port had any discussions with the Board of Supervisors regarding this?


If so, what was the Board’s reaction?
    
Has the Port or project sponsor had state legislation passed (or introduced) that
provides the necessary waivers from the current state prohibition against
setting up IFD’s in former redevelopment areas?


Again, this is information that public officials must have to make informed, objective
decisions about the impacts of this project.


 


 


 


VI. THE DEIR FAILS TO DISCLOSE THAT 8 WASHINGTON IS THE FOURTH ATTEMPT TO CONVERT THE GOLDEN GATEWAY TENNIS & SWIM CLUB FROM CITY MANDATED ACTIVE RECREATION USE TO CONDOMINIUMS. IT PRESENTS VERY BRIEF AND MISLEADING INFORMATION REGARDING THE HISTORIC RECORD SUPPORTING THE REQUIREMENT TO PRESERVE THE CURRENT ACTIVE RECREATION FACILITIES ON SITE IN PERPETUITY.


The DEIR addresses this issue very briefly in a footnote on page II.3 that states:


2 The original development agreement governing the Golden Gateway Center Lots required the developer to provide non-profit community facilities as part of the overall development with the Golden Gateway Center. In Section 4 (a) of the Agreement for Disposition of Land for Private Development (“Agreement”) between Perini-San Francisco Associates (the “Developer’) and the Redevelopment Agency, dated August 27, 1962, the Developer agreed to maintain “community facilities of  a permanent nature… designed primarily for use on a nonprofit basis” (page 25 of the Agreement). Subsequent to the Agreement, the Agency and Golden Gateway Center (the successor to the Developer) entered into a Second Supplement and Amendment to the Agreement (“Second Supplement”) on March 14, 1976. Section 1(d) of the Second Supplement deleted Section 4(a) of the agreement (page 12 of Second Supplement) and thereby removed the requirement to maintain community facilities on the property in exchange for the dedication of Sydney Walton Park for perpetual use as a public park.


This interpretation of those documents contradicts evidence previously by individuals with intimate, first hand knowledge of those Golden Gateway redevelopment agreements. Those comments are attached as:


Exhibit A: A May 9, 1984 letter from then Mayor Dianne Feinstein that begins:“As a supervisor and as mayor, I have a long history with the redevelopment plan and agree with those who maintain that this site has always been considered set aside for recreation and open space.”


Exhibit B: An August 8, 1990 letter from Robert Rumsey to then redevelopment director Ed Helfeld that states:


  “I happened to be Deputy Director of Redevelopment in the late 1950’s and early  
    1960’s when the Golden Gateway redevelopment plan was adopted by the city and
    when Perini Corp. was subsequently selected as the developer of the Golden Gateway
    over eight other competitors… I feel it is important to place on the record the view of  
    the staff and commissioners of the agency at the time of selection: The provision of that
    open space and recreational space was a significant factor in the selection of the
    Perini proposal. And clearly, the space was presumed to be kept that way in
    perpetuity” (underlining Mr. Rumsey’s).


 


Exhibit C: A January 24, 2003 letter from Senator Dianne Feinstein reiterating that: 
  
   “I have a long history with the redevelopment area at Washington and Drumm Streets     
    and concur with those who believe this space was intended for recreation and open
    space. Please oppose further development of the Golden Gateway Tennis & Swim Club.”


These letters came in reaction to THREE previous unsuccessful attempts to develop the Golden Gateway Recreation Center as condominiums. Those attempts included:


1. Perini Corp. (early 80’s). The original developer of the Golden Gateway project proposed replacing the Golden Gate Tennis & Swim Club (GGT&SC) with a 9-story condominium project, in violation of its original approvals for the larger project that called for the GGTSC to serve as one of two major community benefits (along with Sidney Walton Sq.) in perpetuity. NOTE: This took place after the Second Supplement and Amendment to the Agreement referenced in Footnote 2 (above) was executed. Clearly, then Mayor Feinstein, had a very different interpretation of the Second Supplement than that of the author of Footnote 2 when she says in her letter that  “I agree with those who maintain that this site has always been considered set aside for recreation and open space.”


2. Perini Corp. (early 90’s). Again the owners of the Golden Gateway proposed replacing the project’s active recreation center with a condo project. This time, a letter from former Redevelopment Director Robert Rumsey date 8/8/90 provides extensive evidence that the interpretation of events contained in Footnote 2 is neither complete nor accurate. His detailed first hand description of that transaction which took place in the 1970’s is quite instructive. In addition to his comment that:


     “I feel it is important to place on the record the view of the staff and commissioners  
      of the agency at the time of selection: The provision of that open space and
      recreational space was a significant factor in the selection of the Perini proposal.
      And clearly, the space was presumed to be kept that way in perpetuity”


his letter states that “if it is now proposed that there is a loophole permitting that space to be invaded by condominiums, I would consider that to be most unfortunate for the city” and describes the land use negotiations that allowed Perini to substitute 155 low-rise condos for the four remaining high-rise rental towers that were suppose to be built as Phase III of the redevelopment plan. According to Rumsey, the agency finally, “albeit reluctantly” agreed to let Perini make this change “because some seven years had elapsed since completion of Phase II and there was otherwise no prospect for building on those long-barren blocks”.


Rumsey then states that the Agency’s October 28, 1975 minutes show the debate over what the Agency should charge Perini for the land that made up Phase III (now Gateway Commons condominiums) focused on “whether it should be $8.45 a square foot, the price established 15 years earlier, or a more realistic 1975 price of $15-$20 a square foot”. He then states:


      “My new successor, Arthur F. Evans, said he might agree with the higher number if
      the land was offered without restrictions, such as requirements of open space. And
      he added: Amenities such as Sidney Walton Square and the Golden Gateway tennis
      courts were on land that was not income producing, and since no one could build
      highrise buildings on this area, its value could be considered zero.”


As a result of this discussion, according to Rumsey, “Evans and the commission agreed to hold the land sales price to the original $8.45 a square foot, as the agency continued to view the open and recreation space to be in perpetuity.”


Based on Rumsey’s letter and substantial community opposition, this second attempt to replace the GGT&SC was defeated.


3. John Hamilton, developer (2003-04). In the mid-90’s Perini sold Golden Gateway to Timothy Foo and a group of investors. In 2003, developer John Hamilton proposed another condo tower on the site. Senator Feinstein’s January 24, 2003 letter was responding to that proposal. After reiterating her conclusion that “this space was intended for recreation and open space”,  she goes on to say, “increasing the height of the Club would drastically change the picturesque panorama of the Bay and would create shadow effects on the newly constructed Embarcadero. Further, development of more residential units would increase traffic noise and pollution, and disregard the original understanding between City officials and area residents that open space and recreational amenities should be preserved.”


4. Current 8 Washington Street/SWL 351 proposal is the 4th Attempt (2006-present) to develop condos on this site and demolish the Golden Gateway’s active recreation center, a facility that’s successfully fulfilled its intended purpose for almost 50 years.


In his written comments on 8 Washington’s DEIR dated August 11, 2010, Mr. Edward Helfeld, Director of the Redevelopment during the second attempt to demolish the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club speaks to the original purpose of the facility, how it has successfully served San Francisco’s recreation needs for over four decades and how relatively inexpensive it is compared to other tennis facilities in the city. He also writes that “As Executive Director (1987-1994) I was in total support of retaining Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club”.


Any public official or member of the general public reading the current DEIR would have no knowledge of these three previous attempts to build on this site, their outcome and the role former city officials have played in confirming that the Golden Gateway active recreation center was meant to be preserved as an active recreation center in perpetuity. The Comments and Responses to the 8 Washington Street/SWL 351 DEIR must include this historic information in order to be considered accurate, complete and objective.


 


 



VII. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS ON THE 8 WASHINGTON DEIR


A.  The DEIR’s Introduction presents confusing and conflicting information regarding how, when and by whom environmental review for this project was initiated. The first two paragraphs of the DEIR’s Introduction (pg. Intro.1) raise some troubling questions about how environmental review for 8 Washington was carried out that need to be addressed more completely and forthrightly. The timeline for environmental review is described as follows (quoting from the DEIR):


1. “On January 3, 2007, an environmental evaluation application (EE application) was filed by San Francisco Waterfront Partners II (the “project sponsor”) on behalf of the Golden Gateway Center for a project at 8 Washington Street and the adjacent Seawall Lot 351, which is owned by the Port….(the Port is not a co-sponsor of the proposed project, but has authorized San Francisco Waterfront Partners II to submit an EE application that includes Seawall Lot 351).”


2. “On August 15, 2008, the Port issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the development of Seawall Lot 351. Two parties submitted timely proposals: SF Waterfront Partners II and a development group led by Dhaval Panchal (which later withdrew its proposal).”


3. “On November 10, 2008, the Port reissued the RFP for this project.”


4. “On February 24, 2009, the Port Commission authorized Port staff to enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement with SF Waterfront Partners II, finding that the proposal submitted by SF Waterfront Partners II meets the requirements of the RFP and meets the Port’s objectives for Seawall Lot 351.”


It appears from this timeline that the ‘project sponsor’, SF Waterfront Partners, was selected to carry out the 8 Washington project on January 3, 2007 when they were “authorized” (by the Port) to submit an Environmental Evaluation (EE) application officially beginning environmental review. However, there’s no explanation in the DEIR as to why, 18 months later (August 2008), the Port decided to issue an official RFP to select a developer for Seawall Lot 351.


This makes no sense given that Seawall Lot 351 was included in the January 3rd EE application submitted by SF Waterfront Partners (if not as designated developer, then in what capacity?). Then three months later (November 2008), we’re told the Port reissued the RFP with no explanation as to why. Finally, on Feb. 24, 2009, twenty five months after SF Waterfront Partners filed the EE application and began the environmental review process, the Port Commission authorizes staff to enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement with SF Waterfront Partners (SFWP) to develop  SWL 351. This raises troubling questions that need to be addressed in the DEIR to give public officials (and the general public) a clearer sense of the appropriateness, completeness and legality of the current environmental review process.


The DEIR must explain:


1. Is this how environmental review is normally sequenced? Is it routine for a developer that has not yet been selected by the Port to undertake a specific project, let alone negotiated an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA) with the Port for said project, to submit an EE application to Planning for this project that they haven’t yet been selected to develop and then for the Port, eighteen months later, to issue the first RFP to select a developer for the project and have a developer other than the one who submitted the EE respond to the RFP—then drop out (with     no explanation why in the DEIR), then have the RFP reissued six months later and then finally,
25 months after the current developer of 8 Washington submitted the EE, the Port finally selects said developer (SFWP) as the official developer of 8 Washington and begins negotiating an ENA? Is this NORMAL procedure?


2. How could the Port authorize SFWP’s EE application without a written agreement designating SFWP as the approved developer of SWL351? Is this standard procedure in these matters?


3. If this EE process was, in fact, legal prior to August 2008, why did the Port reverse course on August 15, 2008 and issue an RFP for SWL 351 (a site already included in the EE application filed 18 months earlier)? Doesn’t the initial applicant in the EE process have to be either the property owner or his designated developer and be able to demonstrate site control? How would that have been possible back in January 3, 2007 for SWL 351?


4. What role did SFWP play in drafting the RFP (and Port’s objectives for SWL351)?



5. What reasons did the second respondent to RFP give for “withdrawing his proposal?”



6. Why was the RFP reissued on November 10, 2008?



7. When on January 3, 2007, the Planning Department accepted an environmental evaluation application (EE) “filed by San Francisco Waterfront Partners II (the “project sponsor”) on behalf of Golden Gateway Center for a project at 8 Washington Street and the adjacent Seawall Lot 351”, was Planning aware that San Francisco Waterfront Partners had not been and could not be legally designated as “project sponsor” for SWL 351 at that time?


8. Why didn’t the fact that SFWP had no legal basis to claim that it was the “project sponsor” for SWL 351 invalidate the EE application? The DEIR states that the Port “authorized San Francisco Waterfront Partners II to submit an EE application that includes Seawall Lot 351” but wouldn’t that imply SFWP would eventually be selected as the developer and discourage other developers from submitting responses to the Port’s August 15, 2008 RFP given that SFWP had been working with Planning staff on the environmental evaluation for 18 months already?


9. Is what happened in January 2007 legal? If not, when did the Planning Department become aware of this problem and what did it do about it?


10. Having now publicly described this chronology in the DEIR, what legal impact does this have today on the environmental and project review process?


11. Would any other developer be allowed to begin the environmental review process on a project for which they had neither been designated developer nor had site control?



These questions MUST be answered in the DEIR given the bizarre and confusing chronology that now appears in it regarding how environmental review was initiated for this project.


 


B. In other Port documents related to 8 Washington, San Francisco Waterfront Partners II is described as a partnership between Pacific Waterfront Partners (PWP) and California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). However, the involvement of CalSTRS in this project appears nowhere in the DEIR. Given that CalSTRS has already spent over $23 million dollars in predevelopment funds for 8 Washington, the DEIR must contain some mention of CalSTRS as a member of this partnership and the fact that the same partnership (PWP and CalSTRS) developed Piers 1½, 3 and 5 across The Embarcadero from this site.


Finally, the first sentence of the Introduction to the DEIR refers to the fact that “on January 3, 2007 an environmental evaluation application (EE) was filed by SF Waterfront Partners on behalf of the Golden Gateway Center   for a project at 8 Washington”. That footnote references “Golden Gateway Center, Authorization Letter from Timothy Foo dated Dec. 27, 2006.”


For this DEIR to be complete and accurate it must address several key questions including:


1. Who is developing this project? Pacific Waterfront Partners?  CalSTRS? Golden Gateway Center (Timothy Foo)? What are their relationships to each other and the proposed project?


2. What precisely is the relationship between these three entities and the Port?


3. What was the understanding between SFWP, Timothy Foo and the Port when SFWP submitted its EE application on behalf of Golden Gateway Center? All three are mentioned in the relevant discussion in the DEIR.


C. The DEIR is inadequate and incomplete due to its failure to include A Community Vision for San Francisco’s Northeast Waterfront. The DEIR is inadequate and biased in discussing the Planning Department’s Northeast Embarcadero Study (NES), while failing to include an equally detailed discussion of the background and recommendations of the study prepared by Asian Neighborhood Design entitled A Community Vision for San Francisco’s Northeast Waterfront, dated February 2011, which was presented to the Planning Commission on July 7, 2011. 


The second sentence in the third paragraph of the Introduction states that the purpose of the Northeast Embarcadero Study (NES) was “to foster consensus on the future of Seawall Lot 351 and at other seawall lot properties on the northern waterfront” and leaves the reader with the impression that it succeeded in this goal by stating how many public workshops were held (five) and “on July 8, 2010, the San Francisco Planning Commission adopted a resolution that it ‘recognizes the design principles and recommendations of the Study’ and urges the Port of San Francisco to consider the recommendations of the NES when considering proposals for new development in this area”.


To be accurate and truthful, the DEIR should mention the level of anger and frustration expressed by the majority of the public that attended these five workshops who felt the Port, who was paying for the NES, was dictating its conclusions in order to facilitate the approval of the
8 Washington. For example, when 30-40 people at a workshop opposed the notion advanced by Planning staff that The Embarcadero needed a “hard edge” and that “higher heights” were appropriate for the 8 Washington site and only 6-8 people expressed support for these ideas, the notes from that meeting would later say that opinion was divided on these matters. To its credit, the Planning Department states clearly in the final draft of the NES that they failed in their goal   of achieving consensus on the future of SWL 351.


The DEIR needs to include this information to provide a more accurate representation of the outcome of the NES process.


People were so upset by what they perceived as a transparent attempt to ‘justify’ 8 Washington, that they began their own community-based planning process to address the larger issues of reconnecting Chinatown, North Beach, Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill to the Waterfront; healing the wounds left by the ramps to the Embarcadero Freeway by making Broadway, Washington and Clay Streets more pedestrian, bicycle and transit friendly; and fostering consensus on the future of Seawall Lot 351 and at other seawall lot properties on the northern waterfront.


Four major community organizations representing thousands of local residents, small businesses        and property owners became the primary sponsors/organizers of this “Community Vision for the Northeast Waterfront” and hired Asian Neighborhood Design to assist them in developing it.    These organizations included: Friends of Golden Gateway; Golden Gateway Tenants Association; Telegraph Hill Dwellers and Barbary Coast Neighborhood Association. Stakeholders from Chinatown, Russian Hill, Nob Hill, Fisherman’s Wharf and other neighborhoods also participated.


On July 7, 2010, when the Planning Department staff presented the NES to the Planning Commission, AND and the four sponsors of the “Community Vision for the Northeast Waterfront” were invited to present a summary of their planning work to date.


The DEIR fails to make any mention of the alternative plan created by these four community groups with AND’s help. It needs to describe this study, how it differs from Planning’s NES and include it in the final EIR so public officials can evaluate the merits of both studies for themselves.
 
The DEIR must describe the reasons why this alternative community planning process was undertaken and include a detailed discussion how the proposed project would or would not conform to each of the recommendations contained in A Community Vision for San Francisco’s Northeast Waterfront?


I am attaching a copy of the AND Study: A Community Vision for San Francisco’s Northeast Waterfront to these comments and ask that it be included in the EIR so that readers and public officials can gauge for themselves if it was more successful in “fostering consensus on the future of Seawall Lot 351 and at other seawall lot properties on the northern waterfront” than the Planning Department’s Northeast Embarcadero Study (NES).


D. The DEIR tries, unsuccessfully, to minimize the loss of iconic views of Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill from in front of the Ferry Building with its argument about ‘episodic’ views and a new claim that “trees” already obscure the views of Coit Tower from in front of the Ferry Building, views enjoyed by millions of tourists, residents and office workers each year.  As demonstrated in Figure IV.B-3: View B (page IV.B.7), the height and mass of the proposed project would completely obstruct views of Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill currently seen from the Embarcadero Promenade at the northern end of the Ferry Building. This significant adverse effect on the visual quality and scenic vistas enjoyed by the public puts the project in direct conflict with a number of city and Port planning policies. The DEIR’s conclusion that this would not create a substantial adverse effect on a scenic vista because “Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill would continue to be visible from numerous vantage pointes in the vicinity of the Project site and the City” is a biased and subjective judgment that is not based on fact. This ‘episodic’ argument could be used to claim that NO building ever blocks an important view because if you walk far enough past the offending structure, you might get the view back.
The comment about trees blocking the view of Coit Tower from in front of the Ferry Building must be stricken from the document. I just came from standing at the main entrance of the Ferry Building and I could clearly see Coit Tower and most of Telegraph Hill. While several trees in front of the F-line stop across the street did impede the view around the edges, these trees could easily be pruned to eliminate the problem.



E. The DEIR’s Traffic and Transit Data is Seriously Out of Date.


The traffic data relied upon by the DEIR in reaching its conclusions is incredibly stale, having been based on surveys done in 2006-2007 and with 2000 census data (page IV.D.5 of the DEIR).  These studies must be updated.  For example, the assumptions made in the DEIR that the existing conditions at the Embarcadero/Broadway and Embarcadero/Washington intersections are “satisfactory” (at LOS D) defy logic.  Anyone familiar with the real time conditions at these intersections knows that this assessment could not be based on a factual analysis of current conditions at peak periods which, by the way, often occur on weekends (not studied in DEIR).


Also out of date is the transit information relied upon by the DEIR in reaching its conclusion that the project would not result in significant transportation impacts to transit systems (Impact TR-2), having been based upon data on capacity and utilization of individual MUNI lines from 2007 (page IV.D.9 of the DEIR).  This data should also be updated. For example, whoever was responsible for the assumption in the DEIR that the F-Line is not at capacity during peak periods has never ridden the F-line at peak periods. The America’s Cup will only make this worse.



F. The DIER belittles Pedestrian Safety Issues. The DEIR states that: “Conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles could occur at the project garage driveway, which could cause the potential inbound vehicles to queue onto Washington Street. Outbound vehicles would queue inside the garage and would not affect street traffic. Conflicts between outbound vehicles and pedestrians could still occur, but their effect on pedestrians would be reduced because pedestrians on the sidewalk have the right-of-way.” (page IV.D.25). I’m sure the fact that pedestrians have the right-of-way is of great comfort to families of children and seniors who’ve been struck and killed by cars. This statement is insulting and MUST be stricken from the DEIR. It’s also not true.


In the very next paragraph the DEIR makes the following statement about these potential vehicular and pedestrian conflicts at the garage driveway:


“The number of vehicles and pedestrians per minute are relatively small (about one vehicle and three pedestrians every 30 seconds on average) and it is therefore not anticipated that the proposed project would cause any major conflict or interfere with pedestrian movements in the area.” (page IV.D.25)


These numbers translate to 2 cars and 6 pedestrians every minute or 120 cars and 360 pedestrians an hour (or approximately 1,440 cars and 4,320 pedestrians coming into potential conflict in any given 7 am to 7 pm period).  The DEIR’s conclusion that such conflict between vehicles and pedestrian movement would be “less than significant” makes no logical sense and is simply not supported by the facts presented in the DEIR. 


G. The DEIR must include a new fence around the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club in its NO PROJECT Alternative. Finally, the comments often heard about the “ugly green fence” around the GGTSC reminds us that the DEIR must let the reader know that it is the owner of the property, Mr. Timothy Foo, who is responsible for the ugly “green fence”. First, he has put the GGTSC operator on a month-to-month lease making it difficult for them to make a substantial investment in a nicer fence. Second, Mr. Foo himself stands to gain financially if 8 Washington is approved, so he has no incentive to fix the fence since its unsightliness is being used as an argument for demolishing the current facility. This simplest way to correct this bias would be to:


Include a rendering of the site with a new, attractive fence in the NO PROJECT alternative .


For the reasons stated in this letter, I believe this DEIR is seriously incomplete and inadequate to address the potentially significant impacts of this project.  I urge you to revise the document and re-circulate it in draft form.


Sincerely,


 


Brad Paul


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Dick Meister: Busting the union busters, a labor day lament

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By Dick Meister

This is not a very happy Labor Day for labor, considering the continued heavy attacks on public employee unions, which have become the vanguard of organized labor. More than one-third of public employees are now in unions, while only about 7 percent of private sector workers are unionized.

Probably nothing could be more damaging to the labor movement in general than the attempts by anti-union forces to weaken unions at all levels of government by trying to limit– if not withdraw – their collective bargaining rights and right to strike, in addition to unilaterally cutting the pay and pensions, health care and other benefits their unions have won in bargaining.

Although that’s all been done in the name of budget balancing, it’s more accurately described as union busting, spurred on by the steady increase in public employee union members, even as the number of private sector unionists has been declining.

It hasn’t helped unions, either, that President Obama has turned out to be far less friendly to labor than he’d promised while securing lots of union money and lots of union supporters to help him win the presidency. Ironically, the key role unions played in Obama’s election has led to moves by anti-union forces to try to also weaken unions’ political rights.

The best example of the heavy pressures public employees and their unions are feeling is in Wisconsin, where the movement to strip public employees of their union rights began, under notoriously anti-labor Gov. Scott Walker.

Republican Walker is not only seeking to deny unionization to most state, county and municipal employees. He’s also been pushing measures that would increase the employees’ contributions to pension and health care funds by up to 50 percent, require their contracts to be re-negotiated yearly, and no longer allow unions to deduct dues from employee paychecks. It’s hard to imagine a union surviving under such restraints. Certainly Gov. Walker and his political friends don’t imagine it.

Wisconsin is but one of at least 18 states, including several once considered union friendly, where public employees are under heavy attack. On the federal level, supposedly labor-friendly Obama has imposed a federal pay freeze.

Ohio’s Republican governor, John Kasich, is trying to outdo Walker. He’s proposing, among other anti-union measures, to eliminate the bargaining rights of more than 35,000 of Ohio’s public employees, to outlaw teacher strikes, prevent child care and home care workers from unionizing and repeal a rule that requires paying union wages to non-union workers on public construction projects.

Gov. Walker, however, remains the poster boy for anti-labor stalwarts. His most outrageous act has been to back a new state law that requires about two-thirds of Wisconsin’s school districts to use employee handbooks to replace collective bargaining agreements that for decades outlined the teachers’ pay and duties.

Substituting the handbooks for negotiated contracts gives school administrators the authority to dictate broad changes in the teachers’ working conditions without so much as consulting the teachers. In some school districts, even the administrators were not consulted before the handbooks with their stringent new conditions were issued.

Teachers are probably our most important public employees. Yet despite their great importance – or maybe because of it – Gov. Walker is eagerly supporting, not only a withdrawal of teachers’ collective bargaining rights, but also an end to teacher tenure, which protects them from unwarranted attacks by union foes such as Walker.

Walker also wants a substantial increase in the already high contributions to their health insurance by teachers and teacher retirees and changes that curtail the teachers’ basic rights and security by allowing them to be hired on a year-to-year basis. The new rules also mandate that in times of financial constraint, seniority can no longer be a basis for deciding which teachers to lay off.

Some Wisconsin school districts are even trying to reduce the number of sick days allowed teachers, however unwise it may seem to have teachers with possible communicative illnesses remain in the classroom because they can’t afford to take days off.

Other districts are doing away with at least some paid holidays or changing extra days used for professional development into workdays and cutting paid lesson preparation periods in half. The Wisconsin Journal Sentinel’s Erin Richards quotes one of Wisconsin’s major teacher union leaders as noting that teachers across the state have been most concerned with losing prep time, which can have a direct effect on the quality of lessons and student performance.

Gov. Walker and other leading Republicans don’t seem to be much concerned about that. What’s more important to them is cutting Wisconsin’s education budget, the influence of teachers on education policy and, of course, all but eliminating the union rights of teachers and all other public employees.

But Walker may very well have gone too far. The negative reaction has been strong and growing in Wisconsin and elsewhere. It’s widely realized that if the public employee union busters are successful, private sector unions throughout the country will feel even stronger opposition. And it’s clear that if anti-union forces can weaken the public employee unions that are the strongest segments of today’s labor movement, it’s more than likely that private sector unions will be the next target.

The good news is that recently, Wisconsin voters easily turned back a GOP attempt to recall two strong pro-worker state senators who had helped lead the fight against Walker’s anti-worker legislation. The fight began in the spring when Republicans targeted eight Democratic senators for recall – and lost. There have been nine recall elections since then and labor has won five of them.

Labor and the Democrats had hoped to wrest control of the State Senate from the GOP. But though failing to do so, they did narrow the Republicans Senate majority to a razor-thin 17-16.

Democrats and union leaders are rightly celebrating the pro-labor election victories as a possible opening shot against anti-labor extremism nationwide, which could in turn lead to an attempt to recall Gov. Walker or at least force him to back off.

Actually, Walker has done his labor enemies a great favor by provoking public outrage that has brought important new strength and solidarity to the cause of working people and their unions everywhere.

So it may be a happy Labor Day after all, thanks to a labor opponent.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Where’s the “tax the rich” move in SF?

Zelda Bronstein
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20
Where’s the “tax the rich” move in SF?

Warren Buffett may have actually set off a movement with his NY Times oped calling for higher taxes on the rich. That’s what Carla Marinucci, who is not known as a socialist radical, reports today in the Chronicle. 


Billionaire Warren Buffett may not seem to have much in common with angry laborers at town hall meetings or armies of California nurses protesting in the streets.


But these days, the executive celebrity in his boardroom and working folks on the front lines have found a common mantra as the economy continues to sputter and the 2012 election approaches: “Tax the rich.”


It’s a great time to be talking about this — The Institute for Policy Studies just released a report showing that a lot of major corporations paid their CEOs more money last year than they paid in federal taxes. And as the economy continues to sputter, voters are going to keep asking why the rich are doing so well and the rest of us are doing worse and worse.


So let’s make this the center of the mayor’s race in San Francisco.


The nurse’s union is taking on the tax issue directly. The nurses’ candidate for mayor of San Francisco, Leland Yee, doesn’t even mention “taxes” on his list of issues in the race.


Progressive leader John Avalos talks about bringing in $40 million in new revenue, and he has told me many times that he supports taxing the rich. But those words aren’t on his issues page, either. Phil Ting supports repealing part of Prop. 13, but his website talks only of bringing in new revenue without raising taxes. David Chiu wants to reform the business tax, which is a good idea — but again, the word “tax” isn’t on his issue list, and there’s nothing about the rich at all. Bevan Dufty? Nothing about taxes at all. Ed Lee? Zero.


The only leading candidate whose website actually mentions tax reform as a leading issue is Dennis Herrera, who mentions repealing the payroll tax and holding a “tax summit.” His analysis of the payroll tax is dubious, but at least he uses the word “fair.” He doesn’t, however, use the word “rich.”


So here was have the mainstream of the Democratic Party and even ol’ Nancy Pelosi talking about making the wealthy pay their fair share, and in San Francisco, which is supposed to be the most liberal big city in America, it’s not even on the agenda.


Am I the only one who thinks this is a problem?


P

The real Leland Yee

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The real Leland Yee

tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s early January 2011, and the Four Seas restaurant at Grant and Clay is packed. Everyone who is anyone in Chinatown is there — and for good reason. In a few days, the Board of Supervisors is expected to appoint the city’s first Asian mayor.

The rally is billed as a statement of support for Ed Lee, the mild-mannered bureaucrat and reluctant mayoral hopeful. But that’s not the entire — or even, perhaps, the central — agenda.

Rose Pak, who describes herself as a consultant to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce but who is more widely known as a Chinatown powerbroker, is the host of the event. She stands in front of the room, takes the microphone, and, in Cantonese, delivers a remarkable political speech.

According to people in the audience, she says, in essence, that the community has come out to celebrate and support Ed Lee — but that’s just the start. She also urges them not just to promote their candidate — but to do everything possible to prevent Leland Yee from becoming mayor.

She continues on for several minutes, lambasting Yee, the state Senator who lived in Chinatown as a child, accusing him of about every possible political sin — and turning the Lee rally into an anti-Yee crusade. And nobody in the crowd seems terribly surprised.

Across Chinatown, from the liberal nonprofits to the conservative Chamber of Commerce, there’s a palpable fear and distrust of the man who for years has been among San Francisco’s most prominent Asian politicians — and who, had Lee not changed his mind and decided to run for a full term this fall, was the odds-on favorite to become the city’s first elected Chinese mayor.

The reasons for that fear are complex and say a lot about the changing politics of Asian San Francisco, the power structure of a city where an old political machine is making a bold bid to recover its lucrative clout — and about the career of Yee himself.

Senator Leland Yee is a political puzzle. He’s a Chinese immigrant who has built a political base almost entirely outside of the traditional Chinatown community. He’s a politician who once represented a deeply conservative district, opposed tenant protections, voted against transgender health benefits and sided with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. on key environmental issues — and now has the support of some of the most progressive organizations in the city. He’s taken large sums of campaign money from some of the worst polluters in California, but gets high marks from the Sierra Club.

His roots are as a fiscal conservative — yet he’s been the only Democrat in Sacramento to reject budget compromises on the grounds that they required too many spending cuts.

He’s grown, changed, and developed his positions over time. Or he’s become an expert at political pandering, telling every group exactly what it wants to hear. He’s the best chance progressives have of keeping the corrupt old political machine out of City Hall — or he’s a chameleon who will be a nightmare for progressive San Francisco.

Or maybe he’s a little bit of all of that.

 

Leland Yin Yee was born in Taishan, a city in China’s Guangdong province on the South China Sea. The year was 1948; Mao Zedong’s Communist Party of China had taken control of much of the countryside and was moving rapidly to take the major cities. The nationalist army of General Chiang Kai-Shek was falling apart, and Yee’s father, who owned a store, decided it was time for the family to leave.

The Yees made it to Hong Kong, and since Mee G. Yee had previously lived in the United States and served in the U.S. Army during World War II, he was ultimately able to move the family to San Francisco. In 1951, the three-year-old Leland Yee arrived in Chinatown.

For four years, Yee lived with his sister and mother in a one-room apartment with a shared bathroom while his father worked as a sailor in the merchant marine. It was, Yee recalled in a recent interview, a tight, closed, and largely self-sufficient community.

“The movie theater, the shoe store, the barber shop, food — everything you needed you could get in Chinatown,” Yee said. “You never had to leave.”

Of course, after a while, Yee and his mom started to venture out, down Stockton Street to Market, where they’d shop at the Emporium, the venerable department store. “It was like walking into a different country,” he said. “If you didn’t know English, they didn’t have time for you.”

Yee, like a lot of young Chinese immigrants of his era, put much of his time into his studies — in the San Francisco public schools and in a local Chinese school. “My mom spoke a village dialect, and we had to learn Cantonese,” he said. “Every little kid had to go to Chinese school. We hated it.”

When Yee was eight, his parents managed to buy a four-unit building on Dolores Street, and the family moved to the Mission, where he would spend not only the rest of his childhood but much of his early adult life. He graduated from Mission High School, enrolled in City College, studied psychology and after two years won admission to UC Berkeley.

Berkeley in 1968 was a very different world from Chinatown and even the relatively controlled environment he’d experienced at home in the Mission. “You didn’t protest in school. You’d have been sent home, and your mother would kill you,” he said.

At Berekely, all hell was breaking loose, with the antiwar protests, the People’s Park demonstrations, the campaign to create a Third World College (which led to the first Ethnic Studies Department), and a general attitude of mistrust for authority. “I developed a sense of activism,” Yee said. “I realized I could speak out.”

That spirit quickly vanished when Yee lost faith in some of his fellow activists. “People would work with us, then get into positions of power and use that against you,” he recalled. “A lot of my friends said ‘forget it.’ I left the scene.”

Yee once again devoted his energy to school, earning a masters at San Francisco State University and a Ph.D in child psychology from the University of Hawaii. Along the way, he met his wife, Maxine.

With his new degree, the Yees moved back to San Francisco — and back in with his parents at the Dolores property, where he, Maxine and a family that would grow to four kids would live for more than a decade.

 

Yee worked as a child psychologist for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, starting the city’s first high school mental-health clinic. He went on to become a child psychologist at the Oakland Unified School District, then joined a nonprofit mental health program in San Jose.

In 1986, Yee decided to get active in politics for the first time since college, and ran for the San Francisco School Board. He lost — and that would be the only election he would ever lose. In 1988, he won a seat, and established himself as an advocate for students of color, fighting school closures in minority neighborhoods. He also tried to get the district to modify its harsh disciplinary rules, arguing against mandatory expulsions.

On fiscal issues, though, Yee was a conservative. For his first term, despite the brutal cutbacks of the recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he insisted that the district make do with the money it had. His solution to the red ink: Cut waste. Only in 1992, when he was up for re-election, did he acknowledge that the district needed more cash; at that point, he supported a statewide initiative to tax the rich to bring money to the schools.

The sense of fiscal conservatism — of holding the line on taxes, but mandating open and fair contracting procedures and tight financial controls — was a hallmark of much of his political career. When the Guardian endorsed him for re-election to the board in 1992, we wrote that “there’s real value in his continuing vigilance against administrative fat and favoritism in contracts.”

Over the next four years, Yee worked with then-Superintendent Waldemar “Bill” Rojas, a deeply polarizing figure who pushed his own personal theory of “reconstitution” — firing all the staff at low-performing schools — and later was enmeshed in a scandal that led to prison time for a contractor he’d hired. Yee told me he was the only board member to vote against hiring Rojas, but people who were watching the board closely back then say he didn’t always stand up to the superintendent.

He also became what some say was a bit too close with Tim Tronson, a consultant hired by the district as a $1,000-a-day facilities consultant. Tronson wound up getting indicted on 22 counts of grand theft, embezzlement, and conspiracy in a scheme to steal $850,000 from the schools, and was sentenced to four years in state prison.

In 1998, when some school board members wanted to build housing for teachers on property that the district owned in the Sunset, Yee led the opposition — with Tronson’s help. At one meeting at Sunset Elementary School, Yee went so far as to say, according to people present, that “Tim Tronson is my man, and I rely on him for advice.”

Yee acknowledged that he worked closely with Tronson to defeat that housing project. “He was the facilities manager,” Yee explained, “and I said that I trusted his judgment.”

 

Yee has either a great sense of political timing or exceptional luck. He ran for the Board of Supervisors in 1996, facing one of the weakest fields in modern San Francisco history. He was the only Chinese candidate and one of just two Asians (the other, appointed incumbent Michael Yaki, barely squeaked to re-election). In an at at-large election with the top five winning seats, Yee came in third, with 103,000 votes.

He was never a progressive supervisor. In 2000, the Guardian ranked the good votes of what we referred to as Willie Brown’s Board, and Yee scored only 43 percent. He was against campaign finance reform. He supported the brutal gentrification and community displacement represented by the Bryant Square development. He voted to kill a public-power feasibility study and opposed the Municipal Utility District initiative. He opposed a moratorium on uncontrolled live-work development.

In 2002, Yee was one of only three supervisors to oppose Proposition D, a crucial public-power measure that would have broken up PG&E’s monopoly in the city. He stood with PG&E (and then-Sups. Tony Hall and Gavin Newsom) in opposition to the measure, then signed a pro-PG&E ballot argument packed with PG&E lies.

When I asked him about that stand, Yee at first didn’t recall opposing Prop. D, but then said he “stood with labor” on the issue. In fact, the progressive unions didn’t oppose Prop. D at all; the opposition was led by PG&E’s house union, IBEW Local 1245.

Yee was particularly bad on tenant issues. He not only voted to deny city funding for the Eviction Defense Collaborative, which helped low-income tenants fight evictions; he actually tried to get the city to put up money for a free legal fund to help landlords evict their tenants. He opposed a ballot measure limiting condo conversions. He opposed a measure to limit the ability of landlords to pass improvement costs on to their tenants.

In 2001, Yee voted to uphold a Willie Brown veto of legislation to limit tenancies in common, a backdoor way to get around the city’s condo conversion ordinance. Only Hall and Newsom, then the most conservative supervisors on the board, joined Yee. At one point, he started asking whether the city should consider repealing rent control.

He opposed an affordable housing bond in 2002, joining the big landlord groups in arguing that it would raise property taxes. Every tenant group in town supported the measure, Proposition B; every landlord group opposed it.

I asked Yee about his tenant record, and he told me that he now supports rent control. But he said that he was always on the side of homeowners and small landlords, and that property ownership was central to Chinese culture. “I was responding to the Chinese community and the West Side,” he said.

He wasn’t much of an environmentalist, either — at least not in today’s terms. He was one of the only city officials to support a “Critical Car” rally in 1999, aimed at promoting the rights of vehicle drivers (and by implication, criticizing Critical Mass and the bicycle movement).

His record on LGBT issues was mixed. While he supported a counseling program for queer youth when he was on the school board, he also supported JROTC, angering queer leaders who didn’t want a program in the public schools run by, and used as a recruiting tool for, the military, which at that point open discriminated against gay and lesbian people.

 

 

Yee was also one of only two supervisors who voted in 2001 against extending city health benefits to transgender employees.

That was a dramatic moment in local politics. Nine votes were needed to pass the measure, and while eight of the supervisors were in favor, Yee and Hall balked. At one point, Board President Tom Ammiano had to direct the Sheriff’s Office to go roust Sup. Gerardo Sandoval, who was ducking the issue in his office, to provide the crucial ninth vote.

Yee didn’t just vote against the bill. According to one reliable source who was there at the time, Yee spoke to a community meeting out on Ulloa Street in the Sunset and berated his colleagues, quipping that the city should have better things to do than “spend taxpayer money on sex-change operations.”

It was a bit shocking to trans people — Yee had, over the years, befriended some of the most marginalized members of what was already a marginalized community. “There was one person at the rail crying, saying ‘Leland, how could you do this to us,'” Ammiano recalled.

The LGBT community was furious with Yee. “I didn’t speak to him for at least a year,” Gabriel Haaland, one of the city’s most prominent transgender activists, told me.

Yee now says the vote was a mistake — but at the time, he told me, he was under immense pressure. When he voted for the queer youth program, he said, “the elders of the Chinese community ripped me apart. They called my mother’s friends back in the village [where he was born] and said her son was embarrassing the Chinese community.”

That must have been difficult — and he said that “if I had known the pain I had caused, I wouldn’t have voted that way.” But it was hard to miss that pain his vote caused.

On the other hand, people learn from their experiences, attitudes evolve, we all grow up and get smarter, and the way Yee describes it, that’s what happened to him.

In 2006, when he was running for state Senate, Yee met with a group of trans leaders and formally — many now say sincerely — apologized. It was an important gesture that made a lot of his critics feel better about him.

“He didn’t have to do that,” Haaland said. “People change, and he paid for his crime, and that’s genuine enough for me.”

As a former school board member, Yee kept an interest in the schools — but not always a healthy one. At one point, he actually proposed splitting SFUSD into two districts, one on the (poorer) east side of town and one on the (richer) west. “We strongly opposed that,” recalled Margaret Brodkin, who at the time ran Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. “Eventually he dropped the idea.”

For all the problems, in his time on the Board of Supervisors, Yee developed a reputation for independence from the Brown Machine, which utterly dominated much of city politics in the late 1990s. His weak 43 percent rating on the Guardian scorecard was actually third-best among the supervisors, after Ammiano and the late Sue Bierman.

In 1998, he was one of the leaders in a battle to prevent the owners of Sutro Tower from defying the city’s zoning administrator and placing hundreds of new antennas on Sutro Tower. He, Bierman, and Ammiano were the only supervisors opposing Brown’s crackdown on homeless people in Union Square.

When he ran in the first district elections, in 2000, against two opponents who had Brown’s support and big downtown money, the Guardian endorsed him, noting that while he “can’t be counted on to support worthy legislation … He’s one of only two board members who regularly buck the mayor on the big issues.”

(He never liked district elections, and used to take any opportunity to denounce the system, at times forcing Ammiano to use his position as president to tell Yee to quit dissing the electoral process and get to the point of his speech.)

 

In 2002, the westside state Assembly district seat opened up, and both Yee and his former school board colleague Dan Kelly ran in the Democratic primary. Yee won, and went on to win the general election with only token opposition.

His legislative record in the Assembly wasn’t terribly distinguished. Yee never chaired a policy committee — although he did win a leadership post as speaker pro tem. And he cast some surprisingly bad votes.

In 2003, for example, then-Assemblymember Mark Leno introduced a bill that would have exempted single-room occupancy hotels from the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to evict tenants for no reason. Yee refused to vote for the bill. Leno was furious — he was one vote short of a majority and Yee’s position would have doomed the bill. At the last minute, a conservative Republican who had grown up in an SRO hotel voted in favor.

When he ran for re-election in 2004, we noted: “What’s Leland Yee doing up in Sacramento? We can’t figure it out — and neither, as far as we can tell, can his colleagues or constituents. He’s introduced almost no significant bills — compared, for example, to Assemblymember Mark Leno’s record, Yee’s is an embarrassment. The only high-profile thing he’s done in the past several years is introduce a bill to urge state and local governments to allow feng shui principles in building codes.”

In 2006, Yee decided to move up to the state Senate, and he won handily, beating a weak opponent (San Mateo County Supervisor and former San Francisco cop Mike Nevin) by almost 2-1. His productivity increased significantly in the upper chamber — and in some ways, he moved to the left. He’s begun to support taxes — particularly, an oil severance tax — and when I’ve questioned him, he somewhat grudgingly admits that Prop. 13 deserves review.

He’s done some awful stuff, like trying to sell off the Cow Palace land to private developers. But he has consistently been one of the best voices in the Legislature on open government, and that’s brought him some national attention.

Yee has been a harsh critic of spending practices and secrecy at the University of California, and when UC Stanislaus refused in 2010 to release the documents that would show how much the school was paying Sarah Palin to speak at a fundraiser, Leland flew into action. He not only blasted the university and introduced legislation to force university foundations to abide by sunshine laws; he worked with two Stanislaus students who had found the contract in a dumpster and made headlines all over the country.

He’s fought for student free speech rights and this year pushed a bill mandating that corporations that get tax breaks for job creation prove that they’ve actually created jobs — or pay the tax money back. He’s also won immense plaudits from youth advocates and criminal justice reformers for his bill that would end life-without-parole sentences for offenders under 18.

Along the way, he compiled a 100 percent voting record from the major labor unions, including the California Nurses Association and SEIU, and with the Sierra Club. All three organizations have endorsed him for mayor.

Yee told me that he thinks he’s become more progressive over the years. “My philosophy has shifted,” he said.

Yet when you talk to his colleagues in Sacramento, including Democrats, they aren’t always happy with him. Yee has a tendency to be a bit of a loner — he’s never chaired a policy committee and in some of the most bitter budget fights, he’s refused to go along with the Democratic majority. Yee insists that he’s taken principled stands, declining to vote for budget bills that include deep service cuts. But the reality in Sacramento is that budget bills have until this year required a two-thirds vote, meaning two or three Republicans have had to accept the deal — and losing a Democratic vote has its cost.

“You have to give up all sorts of things, make terrible compromises, to get even two Republicans,” one legislative insider told me. “When a Democrat goes south, you have to find another Republican, and give up even more.”

In other words: It’s easy to take a principled stand, and make a lot of liberal constituencies happy, when you aren’t really trying to make the state budget work.

 

I met Rose Pak on a July afternoon at the Chinatown Hilton. She brought along her own loose tea, in a paper package; the waitress, who clearly knew the drill, took it back to the kitchen to brew. Pak and I have not been on the greatest of terms; she’s called the Guardian all kinds of names, and I’ve had my share of critical things to say about her. But on this day, she was polite and even at times charming.

After we got the niceties out of the way (she told me I was unfair to her, and I told her I didn’t like the way she and Willie Brown played politics), we started talking about Yee. And Pak (unlike some people I interviewed for this story) was happy to speak on the record.

She told me Yee had “no moral character.” She told me she couldn’t trust him. She told me a lot of stories and made a lot of allegations that we both knew neither she nor I could ever prove.

Then we got to talking about the politics of Chinatown and Asians in San Francisco, and a lot of the animosity toward Yee became more clear.

For decades, Chinatown and the institutions and people who live and work there have been the political center of the Chinese community. Nonprofits like the Chinatown Community Development Center have trained several generations of community organizers and leaders. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Six Companies, and other business groups have represented the interests of Chinese merchants. And while the various players don’t always get along, there’s a sense of shared political culture.

“In Chinatown,” Gordon Chin, CCDC’s director, likes to say, “it’s all about personal connections.”

There’s a lively infrastructure of community-service programs, some of which get city money. There’s also a sense that any mayor or supervisor who wants to work with the Chinese community needs to at least touch base with the Chinatown establishment.

Yee doesn’t do that. “He doesn’t give a shit about them,” David Looman, a political consultant who has worked with many Chinese candidates over the years, told me.

Yee’s Asian political base is outside of Chinatown; he told me he sees himself representing more of the Chinese population of the Sunset and Richmond and the growing Asian community in Visitacion Valley and Bayview.

Pak is connected closely to Brown, who Yee often clashed with. For Pak, Brown, and their allies, strong connections to City Hall mean lucrative lobbying deals and public attention to the needs of Chinatown businesses. Then there’s the nonprofit sector.

CCDC and other nonprofits do important, sometimes crucial work, building and maintaining affordable housing, taking care of seniors, fighting for workers rights, and protecting the community safety net. Yee, Pak said, “has never shown any interest in our local nonprofits. We all work together here, and he doesn’t seem to care what we do.” Yee told me he has no desire to see funding cut for any critical social services in any part of town. But he has also made no secret of the fact that he questions the current model of delivering city services through a large network of nonprofits, some of which get millions of taxpayer dollars. And the way Pak sees it, all of that — the nonprofits, the business benefits, the contracts — are all at risk. “If Leland Yee is elected mayor,” she told me, “we are all dead.”

I ran into an old San Francisco political figure the other day, a man who has been around since the 1970s, inside and outside of City Hall, who remains an astute observer of the players and the power relationships in the local scene. At the time we talked, he wasn’t supporting any of the mayoral candidates, but he had a thought for me. “This town,” he said, “is being taken over by a syndicate. Willie Brown is the CEO, and Rose Pak is the COO, and it’s all about money and influence.”

That’s not a pleasant thought — I’ve lived through the era of political machine dominance in this town, and it was awful. In the days when Brown ran San Francisco, politics was a tightly controlled operation; only a small number of people managed to get elected to office without the support of the machine. Developers made land-use policy; gentrification and displacement were rampant; corruption at City Hall turned a lot of San Franciscans off, not only to the political process but to the whole notion that government could be a positive force in society.

A few years ago, I thought those days were over — and to a certain extent, district elections will always make machine politics more difficult. But when I see signs of the syndicate popping up — and I see a candidate like Ed Lee, who’s close friends with Brown, leading the Mayor’s Race — it makes me nervous. And for all his obvious flaws, at least Leland Yee isn’t part of that particular operation. If there’s a better reason to vote for him, I don’t know what it is.

YEE HOME PURCHASE RAISES SUSPICIONS

Rose Pak has a question about Leland Yee. “How,” she asked me, “did the guy manage to buy a million-dollar house on a $30,000 City Hall salary?”

Pak isn’t the only one asking — numerous media reports over the years have examined how Yee raised a family of four and bought a house in the Sunset on very little visible income. And while I’m not usually that interested in the personal finances of political candidates, I decided that it was worth a look.

Here’s what I found: Public records show that in July 1999, Yee and his wife, Maxine, purchased a house on 24th Avenue for $875,000 (it’s now assessed at slightly more than $1 million). At the time, Yee was a San Francisco supervisor, earning a little more than $30,000 a year. (The salary of the supervisors was raised dramatically shortly after Yee left the board and went to the state Assembly.) His wife wasn’t working. And his economic interest statements for that period show no other outside earnings. So the disposable, after-tax income of the entire Yee family couldn’t have been much more than $25,000.

That, by any normal standard, shouldn’t have been enough to float a mortgage that, records show, totaled $516,000. In fact, the interest payments alone on that mortgage alone would total $3,600 a month — more than Yee’s gross income.

Documents in the Assessor’s Office show another paper trail, too. In 1989, Jung H. Lee, Yee’s mother, transferred the deed on a four-unit Dolores St. building where the family had been living to Maxine and Leland Yee — for no money. And a few months before the Yees bought the Sunset house, they took out a $320,000 home-equity loan on that property. That was the down payment on the Sunset property.

Still: At that point, the Yees would have been paying off two mortgages, with a total nut of about $5,000 a month — and supporting four kids, in San Francisco. In 2002, Yee’s economic interest statement’s show some modest income from teaching at Lincoln University — but nowhere near enough to pay that level of expenses.

What happened? Yee explains it this way: “For more than 10 years, we were living rent-free in my parents’ property,” he told me I an interview. “We were a close Chinese family, and my parents provided the food and helped pay for the children’s clothing. So we had almost no expenses and we lived very frugally.”

During that period, Yee was working for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the Oakland Unified School District, and a San Jose nonprofit, earning, he said, between $50,000 and $90,000 a year. If he saved almost all of that money, he would have had more than a half-million dollars in the bank when he bought the Sunset house.

There’s nothing on any of his economic disclosure forms showing any ownership of stocks or other reportable financial interests during that period, so he wasn’t investing the money. In fact, he says, it was, and is, all in simple savings accounts. A bit unusual for that large a sum of money.

How did he get a mortgage? “Back then,” he said, “banks were willing to lend a lot more freely than they do today.”

Starting in 2003, Yee was in the state Assembly, making a higher salary — but still not much in excess of $100,000 a year. After taxes, he was probably taking home about $75,000 — and $60,000 was going to the two mortgages.

How did he do it? “We have been supplementing our income with our savings,” he said. “We don’t take vacations, we are very careful with our money.” And they clearly aren’t desperate for cash — Yee’s daughter occupies two of the four units in the Dolores St. building they own, but the other two units are vacant.

It’s possible. It’s plausible. But I don’t blame people for wondering how he managed to pull it off. (Tim Redmond, with research assistance by Oona Robertson) 

 

 

 

BIG CORPORATIONS HAVE BACKED YEE

Yee became a prodigious fundraiser in Sacramento — and a lot of the money came from big corporations that had business in the Legislature. And while he has perfect scores from the Sierra Club and the big labor unions, he’s taken tens of thousands of dollars from some of the biggest corporations, agribusiness interests, and polluters in the state. And at times, he’s voted their way.

Since 1993, for example, campaign finance records show Yee has taken more than $20,000 from Chevron, ExxonMobil, Valero, Conoco Phillips, and BP. He’s received another $22,450 from the chemical industry (and industry employees). Most of it came from Clorox, Dow Chemical, and Dupont.

And while the Sierra Club may not have considered it a priority, Sen. Mark Leno has worked hard to pass a bill limiting chemical fire retardants in furniture. In 2008, Yee voted against Leno’s AB 706.

That year he also refused to support a bill that would prohibit the use of the chemical diacetyl in workplaces. The industries that opposed AB 514 (including Bayer, Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson) have given Yee a total of more than $60,000.

In 2003, Yee voted against a crucial tenant bill, one that would have prevented the owners of single room occupancy hotels from using the Ellis Act to evict tenants. He received a campaign check for $2,500 from the San Francisco Apartment Association the next day. Landlords in general have given Yee close to $40,000.

Then there’s agribusiness. Yee gets a lot of money from the farming industry, despite the fact that there obviously aren’t many farms in his district. Why, for example, would the California Poultry Association, the California Cattlemen’s Association, and the California Farm Bureau give him money? The Poultry Association’s Bill Mattos told us that Yee “has taken a keen interest in California’s poultry industry.”

Yee also took immense flak from the San Francisco Chronicle and other papers over a 2003 vote against a bill to limit emissions from farm vehicles. In an editorial, the paper wrote that he was “doing dirty work for the lobbyists.” In the end, under immense public pressure, he switched positions and voted for the bill. I asked Yee about all that money from all those bad operators, and he told me — as most politicians will — that campaign cash has never influenced any of his votes.

So why do all these groups give him money? “It’s about whether you will sit down and listen,” Yee said. “I will talk to all sides and at least consider the arguments as a thoughtful human being. Then I vote my conscience.” (Tim Redmond, with research by Oona Robertson) 

Dick Meister: the farmworkers are marching to Sacramento

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By Dick Meister

(Part one of a five part daily series on the farmworkers)

It’s hot, very hot, in the Central Valley, but still they march on toward Sacramento, thousands of members and supporters of the United Farm Workers union. They’ve been at it since August 22nd, when the 13-day, 200-mile trek began. The UFW has done it before, and for good reason. Like the others in the past, this march has drawn public attention to the union’s cause, energized its members and current supporters and doubtless added to its many supporters worldwide.

But will the march accomplish its immediate goal? That’s to win passage of the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act that would overcome serious obstacles to farm worker unionization, and another bill that would grant farm workers the right to be paid overtime after eight hours a day, 40 hours a week like non-agricultural workers.

That is largely up to Gov. Jerry Brown, who in June vetoed the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act for being “too drastic,” despite direct pressure from more than 1000 workers during the 12 days he deliberated before acting on the bill. They fasted, held vigils outside his office and rallies on the capitol grounds, complaining loudly about the desperate need for firm union rights to improve their miserable pay and working conditions, including the great need to protect them from the severe – sometimes deadly – heat in which they must work.

As a Kern County vineyard worker, Eva Orozco, explained:

“The pay is very low, they pressure us heavily to produce, they don’t respect us and we have to run and drink water quickly and use the bathroom quickly because if we take long we could be fired. Sometimes I’m afraid to show up for work for fear that that I will not work fast enough and I will be fired.”

The marchers will bring their complaints and demands directly to Brown when their march ends Sept. 4 outside Brown’s office. Like his father, former Gov. Pat Brown, Jerry Brown once was one of the UFW’s closest allies. In his earlier term as governor, Jerry Brown pushed through the Legislature the pioneering bill that granted California farm workers the union rights denied them elsewhere.

Ironically, the first of the UFW’s marches to Sacramento, in 1966, was aimed at pressuring Gov. Pat Brown to sponsor a bill that would grant union rights to farm workers. He refused, despite the urgings of more than 8,000 UFW members and supporters who gathered outside the Capitol at the end of the 25-day march.

Farm workers did not get those rights until his son won passage of the bill – the Agricultural Labor Relations Act or ALRA – that granted the rights nine years later after a week long march from San Francisco to the Modesto headquarters of the huge Gallo winery, which had rebuffed vineyard workers’ demands for a union representation election.

More than 15,000 people marched into Modesto, convincing Jerry Brown and state legislators that the UFW retained a sizable and influential constituency and great organizational ability. That had very much to do with passage of the ALRA and the consequent success of the UFW in winning union contracts, The law, however, was barely enforced by Democrat Brown’s successors as governor, Republicans George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson and Democrat Gray Davis.

The latest march could very well convince Jerry Brown to come to the aid of some of the state’s neediest, yet most broadly supported workers. He did it before and he can do it again.

 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

So much for civility

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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So much for civility

rebeccab@sfbg.com

The San Francisco mayor’s race went from a lackluster affair to a dynamic match as the Aug. 12 filing deadline drew near and two prominent city officials who had previously said they wouldn’t run tossed their hats into the ring.

Mayor Ed Lee’s Aug. 8 announcement that he’d seek a full term prompted several of his opponents to use their time onstage at candidate forums to decry his reversal and question his ties to the moneyed, influential backers who openly urged him to run. Several days later, Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s last-minute decision to run for mayor signaled more tension yet to come in the debates.

At this point, eight current city officials are running campaigns for higher office, and the dialogue is beginning to take on a tone that is distinctly more biting than civil. Adachi, who had not yet debated onstage with his opponents by press time, told reporters he was running because he wanted “to make sure there’s a voice in there that’s talking about the fiscal realities of the city.”

Adachi authored a pension reform ballot measure that rivals the package crafted by Lee, labor unions, and business interests (see “Awaiting consensus,” May 31, 2011). At an Aug. 11 candidate forum hosted by the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, the San Francisco Young Democrats, and the City Democratic Club, all of the top-tier candidates who were present indicated that they would support Lee’s pension reform measure and not Adachi’s.

“The reforms that I have championed are reforms that are absolutely needed, along with action,” Adachi told reporters moments after making his candidacy official. He added that after watching the mayoral debates, “I became convinced that either the candidates don’t get it, or they don’t want to get it.”

Those fighting words will likely spur heated exchanges in the months to come, but until Adachi’s entrance into the race, it was Lee who took the most lumps from opponents. Even Board President David Chiu, a mayoral candidate whose campaign platform is centered on the idea that he’s helped restore civility to local government, had some harsh words for Lee during an Aug. 11 mayoral debate.

“I do regret my decision to take Ed Lee at his word when he said he would not run,” Chiu said in response to a question about whether he regretted any of his votes. He also said his first interaction with Lee after the mayor had announced his candidacy was “a little like meeting an ex-girlfriend after a breakup.”

Lee, whose pitch on the campaign trail features a remarkably similar narrative about transcending political squabbling in City Hall, became the target of boos, hisses, and noisemaker blasts when a boisterous crowd packed the Castro Theater for an Aug. 8 candidate forum. He received one of the most forceful rebukes from Sen. Leland Yee, an opponent whom Lee supporters are especially focused on defeating.

“Had the mayor said that he would in fact run, he may not have gotten the votes for interim mayor,” Yee said. “Will you resign from your post,” he asked, challenging Lee, “in order to then run for mayor?” Days later, Yee had developed a new mantra about throwing power brokers out of City Hall instead of “wining and dining with them.”

Yet Lee said his decision to enter the race wasn’t because of the push from his backers, but because of how well things have gone during his brief tenure in Room 200. “Things have changed at City Hall, particularly in the last seven months,” he told reporters Aug. 8. “And because of that change, I changed my mind.”

In yet another twist, former Mayor Art Agnos — whom progressives had looked to as a potential appointee to the vacant mayor’s seat back in December, before Lee was voted in to replace former mayor and Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom — delivered a surprise endorsement of City Attorney Dennis Herrera shortly after Lee declared. The decision was particularly significant since Agnos first hired Lee to serve in city government, and has a long history of working with him.

“[Herrera] is an independent person who will empower neighborhoods … and won’t be beholden to power brokers,” Agnos said. He also told the Guardian he wasn’t surprised that Lee had opted to run, given the role former Mayor Willie Brown and influential business consultant Rose Pak had played in orchestrating Lee’s appointment.

“Anybody who is an astute political observer saw the signs from the very beginning,” Agnos said. In response to a comment about his unique vantage point as a would-be caretaker mayor, he said, “I would’ve kept my word and not run for reelection.”

Intense focus on Lee’s flip-flop, and on the Progress for All-backed “Run, Ed, Run” effort that was the subject of an Ethics Commission discussion that same week, stemmed at least in part from the threat the incumbent mayor represents to other candidates. A CBS 5-SurveyUSA poll suggested he became an instant front-runner.

Yet questions about “Run, Ed, Run” — some raised by observers unaffiliated with any campaigns — also served to spotlight the candidate’s longstanding ties with backers closely connected to powerful business interests that stand to lose big if their links to city government aren’t preserved.

Retired Judge Quentin Kopp issued an open letter to District Attorney George Gascón Aug. 1 urging him to convene a criminal grand jury to investigate whether illegal and corrupt influencing had occurred when Pak — a close friend of Lee’s and a key driver behind the “Run, Ed, Run” effort — reportedly recruited executives of Recology to gather signatures urging Lee to run.

Recology, which handles the city’s waste, was recently awarded a $112 million city contract, and Lee’s scoring of the company and recommendation to raise rates in his previous capacity as city administrator benefited the company. Brown received substantial campaign donations from Recology in previous bids for mayor. Kopp is the coauthor of a ballot initiative asking San Francisco voters if the company’s monopoly on city garbage contracts should be put out to bid.

“A criminal grand jury is vital in order to put people under oath and interrogate them,” Kopp said. “They would put Willie Brown under oath, put Pak under oath, put [Recology President Mike Sangiacomo] under oath, put [Recology spokesperson Sam Singer] under oath … That’s the course of action that should be pursued by this.”

Although Kopp told the Guardian that he hadn’t yet received a response from Gascón, DA candidates Sharmin Bock, Bill Fazio, and David Onek nevertheless seized the opportunity to publicly and jointly call for Gascón to recuse himself from any investigation into Progress for All. Gascón has a conflict of interest, they argued, since he reportedly sought Pak’s advice when deciding whether to accept Newsom’s offer to switch from his previous post as police chief to his current job as top prosecutor.

The Ethics Commission determined unanimously Aug. 8 that the activities of Progress for All, the committee that was formed to encourage Lee to run, had not run afoul of election laws despite director John St. Croix’s opinion that it had filed improperly as a general purpose committee when it ought to have been a candidate committee, which would have placed caps on contribution limits.

“The Ethics Commission has spoken, and they’ve supported our position,” Progress for All consultant Enrique Pearce of Left Coast Communications told the Guardian.

St. Croix did not return Guardian calls seeking comment, but an Ethics Commission press release included a caveat: “Should facts surface that coordination occurred between Mayor Lee and [Progress for All], such allegations will be investigated under the Commission’s enforcement regulations.”

At a Lee support rally organized by his official campaign team on Aug. 11, volunteers who arrived with “Run, Ed, Run” materials produced by Progress for All were told they could not display those signs and T-shirts; the same people were on a first-name basis with one of Lee’s campaign team members.

Pressed on the question of whether there was any coordination between agents of Progress for All and Lee, Pearce said the Ethics Commission discussion had focused on whether Lee had been a candidate. “Whether or not he’s a candidate has nothing to do with whether or not he has dinner with Rose [Pak],” Pearce noted. He insisted that there had not been coordination, and that the efforts to encourage Lee to run and to support Lee as a candidate were totally separate.

Sup. John Avalos, who is running for mayor on a progressive platform, recalled at an Aug. 8 candidate forum how things unfolded when Lee’s name first came up as an appointee for interim mayor.

Avalos reminded people that he had called for postponing the vote back in December because he hadn’t even had a chance to sit down and meet with Lee, who was in Hong Kong at the time. With behind-the-scenes deals orchestrating his appointment, Avalos said, “We saw City Hall turning into one big back room.”

View from the middle

Andrew Lam
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OPINION Editor’s Note: Between the well-funded, politically connected campaign pushing Ed Lee to run for mayor and the high-profile critics who say he should keep his word and step down, it’s hard to tell how the average city resident feels. So to reflect that perspective, we’re reprinting a letter that was sent to Lee on July 29.

Dear Mayor Lee,

My name is Peter Nasatir; I’m a middle-aged, middle class San Franciscan who works in middle management. I’m not an activist and I have no political ax to grind. In fact, I rarely write letters like this, but felt compelled to do so because I’ve been reading how you are considering a run for mayor this November. For your own integrity, and the good of the city, I urge you not to run.

One of the reasons you have been able to achieve the successes you’ve enjoyed this year is because San Franciscans know your time is finite, thus giving you the ability to avoid the kind of hard slog other mayors have found themselves in. You have been able to stay above the fray and receive near-universal support precisely because you’ve been able to do the amazing job you’re doing without having an eye on the upcoming election.

If you run, you’ll look like another cynical politician, who promises one thing and does another. Plus, with your experience, think how much political capital you’ll have when you return to your old position. And if you decide to run in 2015, you’ll already have on-the-job training no other candidate would have and have proven yourself to be a real leader for taking the high road.

I know Willie Brown and Rose Pak, who are considered influential community leaders, have been at the forefront of your bid to run. However, they also carry a lot of damaging baggage. Just look at the front page of today’s (July 29th) Chronicle. With their names attached to your run for mayor, your image in the eyes of many San Francisco voters is already tainted before you even have a chance to file your papers.

As much as I respect you and the incredible job you are doing, I can say without hesitation that if your name is on the ranked-choice ballot this November, I will not vote for you in any of the three positions.

On behalf of many like-minded San Francisco voters, I urge you to do the right thing and not run for mayor this November.

Thanks you for your consideration of this matter.  

Sincerely, 

Peter Nasatir

Ethics Commission to discuss Progress for All

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Ethics Commission to discuss Progress for All

San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Cote’s scoop highlighting how Recology executives were working behind the scenes under pressure from Chinatown power broker Rose Pak to encourage Mayor Ed Lee to seek a full term is just the latest development for a committee that’s raised eyebrows already, and it may be just the beginning.

Five mayoral candidates — board President David Chiu, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, state Sen. Leland Yee, former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, and businesswoman Joanna Rees — have teamed up to encourage the San Francisco Ethics Commission to investigate whether Progress for All has run afoul of local election laws, rallying behind an effort spearheaded by Democratic County Central Committee Chair Aaron Peskin in a July 28 letter to commissioners.

At the heart of the issue is whether Lee or any of his representatives have been coordinating with agents of Progress for All. If they are, Progress for All would have to be considered Lee’s own, candidate-controlled committee, Peskin asserts in the letter.

“Given the close relationship between Ms. Pak, the Mayor, and Progress for All, it is very possible that the committee has ‘consulted’ or ‘coordinated’ with the Mayor, and therefore its expenditures should be deemed to be made ‘at his behest,'” Peskin’s letter to the Ethics Commission argues. A City Hall insider told the Guardian that Pak — a primary driver behind the Run, Ed, Run campaign — is regularly observed going to and from the mayor’s office.

“If Progress for All or any of these other committees has been acting on Mayor Lee’s behalf, those committees may have violated the $500 contribution limit and prohibitions against accepting corporate, union or city contractor money, restrictions that apply to all candidate committees,” the letter states.

Financial disclosure filings for committees fundraising for the Nov. 8 election are due Monday.

Aside from the question of whether there is coordination between Lee, who has not yet announced that he will run for mayor, and Progress for All, concerns have been raised about city contractors aiding in the efforts of the campaign. Under the city’s Campaign Finance Reform Ordinance, contractors doing business with the city are not allowed to make political contributions.

(Given the revelations that Recology executives’ signature gathering efforts were done in violation of company policy, it’s no wonder Recology executives become bashful when approached by reporters who ask tough questions.)

Meanwhile, Recology might not be the only city contractor that Pak has encouraged to support Run, Ed, Run. A column that former Mayor Willie Brown published recently in the San Francisco Chronicle suggests that this isn’t the first conversation of this kind.

“One thing you can say about Chinatown powerhouse Rose Pak, she is not shy,” Brown’s column begins. “Holding court at the party for the opening of the new airport terminal, Rose was seated at the table with interim Mayor Ed Lee and his wife, Anita, and a host of other local officials. ‘I want every one of you to call his office and tell him he should run for mayor,’ Rose told the table. ‘And do it right away so that there’s no misunderstanding.’ Then she turned to the architect David Gensler. ‘Didn’t you do this terminal?’ she asked. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you remodel this terminal before?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Then your firm should raise a million dollars for his election campaign.'”

While Brown may not be a visible player in the Run, Ed, Run campaign, he’s certainly been at the table with a key driver behind it and Lee himself — and he’s using his platform in the Chronicle to get the word out about Lee’s potential mayoral campaign.

“The specific revelations of unethical and possibly illegal activity are very troubling and need to be fully investigated by the Ethics Commission as soon as possible,” Chiu told the Guardian.

Political consultant Jim Stearns, whose firm is managing Sen. Yee’s mayoral campaign, joined the chorus in calling for an investigation. “If you think about the fact that these guys still, according to press reports, are eating together once a week, and there’s not supposed to be any coordination … You have this committee that is essentially operating in complete disregard of the campaign law,” he said. “It’s sort of like there’s a crime being committed, and where’s the police?”

The San Francisco Ethics Commission will hold a policy discussion about how to treat Progress for All at its Aug. 8 meeting, Ethics director John St. Croix told the Guardian.

“We’ve told the committee that we believe they’re a primarily form committee, which is an independent expenditure committee on behalf of a candidate for office or a ballot measure,” St. Croix explained. “They’re claiming that there’s no candidate, so they can’t be that committee, even though they’re acting pretty much exactly like one would.”

As things stand, Progress for All has filed as a general purpose committee, he added. “A general purpose committee is what you would think of as a [political action committee]. They usually represent an organization or elected group of individuals, they tend to exist for a long period of time, and they contribute to multiple campaigns, whereas a primarily formed committee is created to support or oppose a single candidate or a single ballot measure in a single election,” he explained. Another key distinction: “Independent expenditure committees don’t have contribution limits the way that candidate committees do. Candidate committees have a $500-per-contributor contribution limit.”

Peskin, meanwhile, hinted that there may be more to come. “There’s a lot of it,” he said, “and I think there are many people who have stories to tell.”

Taking out the trash

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Taking out the trash

sarah@sfbg.com

A controversial city waste disposal contract appeared primed for final approval by the Board of Supervisors on July 26 (after Guardian press time) — despite being challenged by a lawsuit and initiative campaign — after two progressive supervisors rescinded their initial vote in a July 20 committee hearing and supported awarding the contract to Recology.

City staff had recommended awarding the 10-year, $112-million landfill disposal and facilitation agreement to Recology (formerly NorCal Waste Systems, Inc.), which has grown from a locally based company to the 10th largest waste management firm in the US, with $652 million in annual revenue, according to Waste Age magazine.

If the full board follows the unanimous recommendation of its Budget & Finance Committee, the vote will authorize Recology to transport and dispose up to 5 million tons of the city’s solid waste at the company’s Ostrom Road landfill in Wheatland, Yuba County. The contract will take effect when San Francisco’s disposal agreement at Waste Management Inc.’s Altamont landfill in Livermore expires — estimated to occur in 2015.

The deal will cement Recology’s control, at least for a 10-year period, over all aspects of the city’s solid waste stream, at a cost of about $225 million per year, even as the company faces significant challenges, many related to the city’s 1932 refuse collection and disposal ordinance.

That law, approved during the Great Depression to prevent conflict between competing garbage haulers, has resulted in Recology’s exercising complete control over trash collection and transportation in San Francisco, without having to bid on those contracts or pay the city franchise fees.

During the negotiations over the city’s next landfill contract — the only aspect of San Francisco’s waste stream put out to bid — this 79-year-old law was invoked to explain why Recology has the sole authority to transport trash and compostables to Wheatland, which is 130 miles from San Francisco.

The move also comes as Yuba County is contemplating significantly increasing dumping fees at the landfill — from $4.40 per ton to $20 or $30 per ton — a hike that could erase the $100 million that the Department of the Environment (DoE) claims the Recology deal would save over a competing bid by Waste Management Inc. WM is the largest waste firm in the U.S., according to Waste Age, with about $12.5 billion in annual revenues.

On July 18, WM filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court to prevent the city from approving the agreements with Recology on the grounds that they violate the city’s competitive bid laws.

“The Department of the Environment inappropriately and unlawfully expanded the scope of its 2009 ‘request for proposal for landfill disposal capacity’ and, therefore, violated the city’s competitive procurement laws,” WM alleges in the suit.

WM has long held that DoE inappropriately issued a tentative contract award for both the transportation and disposal of solid waste to Recology without soliciting any other transportation bids. But DoE, which gleans $7 million annually (to operate recycling, green building, and environmental justice programs and long-term planning for waste disposal) from rates that Recology’s customers pay, ruled last year that WM’s objections are “without merit.”

Now WM is asking the court to require DoE to scrap its award to Recology and issue a new request for proposals to comply with competitive bidding requirements.

“There is ample time for the department to issue a new RFP,” WM stated July 18, noting that there is plenty of room at its Altamont landfill to accommodate the city’s waste after the contract expires.

That same week, a coalition led by retired Judge Quentin Kopp, community activist Tony Kelly, and Waste Solutions CEO David Gavrich announced that it had submitted enough signatures to qualify an initiative on the June 2012 ballot requiring competitive bidding and franchise fees from any company that seeks to win any aspect of the city’s solid waste business.

Kelly says his group was unable to collect enough signatures in time for the November election because Recology hired the city’s two biggest signature-gathering firms to circulate what he calls a “phony petition” in support of Recology’s performance in San Francisco. And signature gatherers say they were harassed by Recology boosters while trying to petition citywide.

“But I believe the question of whether candidates support competitive bidding will continue to be a defining issue this fall,” Kelly said.

The board’s decision on the landfill agreements has already been delayed several months, following a February 2011 Budget and Legislative Analyst report recommending that the board consider submitting a proposition to the voters to repeal the 1932 refuse ordinance so that future collection and transportation services be put to bid. The report also recommended that future residential and commercial refuse collection rates be subject to board approval.

But with two progressive supervisors running in citywide elections this fall, and with Recology exerting massive pressure on elected officials, the Kelly coalition could not find four supervisors to place such a charter amendment on the November ballot, forcing them to launch their own initiative.

And at the July 20 meeting of the board’s Budget and Finance Committee, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who is running for sheriff, and Sup. Jane Kim rescinded their initial decision to send the agreements to the full Board without recommendation. Instead, after the committee had moved on to other business, they joined Chair Carmen Chu, one of the most conservative supervisors, in forwarding the Recology agreements to the full board with unanimous support.

Mirkarimi interrupted the committee’s next discussion to rescind the landfill vote. “I think there was some misunderstanding a little bit in wrapping up the landfill agreements with Recology, ” Mirkarimi said. He said that he asked for the vote to be rescinded, “so we can accurately reflect some of the sentiments being articulated here. I think we just learned some things on the fly.”

In many respects, the switch by Kim and Mirkarimi made sense: prior to their initial vote, they made positive statements about the proposed agreements, but also stated an interest in exploring the appropriateness of the city’s 1932 law.

“Overall, I think this was a good contract,” Kim said. But she noted that, thanks to the 1932 ordinance, the city doesn’t get franchise fees. And she claimed that it only gets half of what other Bay Area cities get from their waste contractors. “So, I’m really interested in continuing that conversation, but I think it’s a separate conversation,” she said.

Mirkarimi said it was his concerns that led the committee to “put a pause” on the Recology agreements until it could “undertake more homework.” He also noted that his office “held a number of meetings” and he tried to “leverage this opportunity to reanimate activity at the Port.”

“I was hoping that we might be able to arrive at something much more deliverable,” Mirkarimi said, presumably referring to the fact that these efforts resulted in DoE unveiling an amendment to include two “possible changes” to operations and facilities at the Port of San Francisco in the agreements.

These changes involve utilizing other modes of transportation, including barges, as alternatives to the rail-haul plan proposed in the agreement. They also call for developing new facilities at the Port for handling waste, recyclables, organics, and other refuse. The cost of such alternatives would be passed onto the rate payers.

“I think that, cost-effectively, we may be able to insert the Port into this equation, but it’s not ready for prime-time yet,” Mirkarimi said. He concluded by saying that Recology has been innovative in reducing the city’s waste stream.

“This should be a front-burner conversation,” Mirkarimi said, noting that former Mayor Gavin Newsom focused on making San Francisco “the greenest city” in the United States. He added that San Francisco claims to have a 77 percent diversion rate, the highest in the U.S., and said, “That comes at a cost, it doesn’t come for free.”

After the meeting, DoE deputy director David Assmann said that the City Attorney’s Office is reviewing WM’s filing. “But it’s too soon to comment,” Assmann said.

He also claimed that, thanks to the 1932 ordinance, “there was no practical way” for another company to transport San Francisco’s waste to its designated landfill, “other than building a second transfer station outside the city.”

But Kelly continued to express concerns that the agreements are not competitive, and that the city lacks a contract and ensuing franchise fees. “They are running this as if it’s still the 1950s,” he said.

Kelly claimed that Recology Vice President John Legnitto, who is the 2011 chair of the SF Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors, recently told him that Recology has been in negotiations with City Hall around a $4 million franchise fee, but that the money would now be spent opposing Kelly’s competitive bidding initiative.

Will Esbernd support Lee?

Zelda Bronstein
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Will Esbernd support Lee?

As the tom toms grew louder at the Chronicle and in the Willie Brown/Rose Pak community for Interim Mayor Ed Lee to run for the full term as mayor, I emailed two impertinent questions to my district supervisor Sean Elsbernd:


1. Would you have nominated Ed Lee for interim mayor had you known he would consider running for the job?


2. Will you endorse him if he does decide to run for mayor?


As a longtime West Portal resident, I’ve always gotten annoyed at how Elsbernd (and other supervisors) love to play the neighborhood game back in their district — but when the chips are down on a power structure issue, they go down to City Hall and vote with Willie Brown and the downtown gang. Which is what happened in January on the critical vote for mayor when the Willie Brown/Rose Pak forces worked a quiet play to knock out the progressive candidates (Sheriff Mike Hennessey and former Mayor Art Agnos) and put in City Administrator  Ed Lee, a Willie Brown ally.


Elsbernd was happy to nominate Lee and told us at the time that he had done so because he wanted an interim mayor who would not run in November.


In his email answer to me, Elsbernd wrote, “I believe the benefits of that strategy have proven correct (e.g. the overall budget process and its unanimous approval, and the unanimous approval of the consensus and comprehensive pension/health care charter amendment.“


So what about today when Lee seems more and more poised to run?


Elsburn noted that he has not endorsed anyone, but that “I have been most attracted to the candidacies of City Attorney Dennis Herrera and former Supervisors Alioto-Pier and Bevan Dufty.” He said that these three have the “right combination of qualifications, experience, intelligence, skills and integrity to serve as mayor.”


So what’s his out? “Should Mayor Lee run for election, I would only consider endorsing his effort under one circumstance—if, and only if, I was convinced that without his candidacy, Sen. Leland Yee would be elected. That is, if I see that no one else can beat Sen, Yee other than Mayor Lee, then I would support a Mayor Lee campaign. At this point, I’m not convinced of that—I still think any one of the three I mentioned above could beat Sen. Yee.”


Well, that’s Elsbernd back in his district doing his neighborhood routine at the Village Grill, a favorite Elsbernd breakfast place. Elsbernd has still left himself a way to do what he said he was dead set against doing: going along with Willie Brown and  Rose Pak and  helping Lee become the fulltime mayor. Bring back Quentin Kopp and John Barbagelata. B3


 

Will Kopp’s competitive bidding initiative derail Recology’s train to Yuba?

Mary Magee
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1
Will Kopp’s competitive bidding initiative derail Recology’s train to Yuba?

Sponsors of an initiative to require competitive bidding on all aspects of the city’s multi-million-dollar garbage services say they plan to deliver their initiative petitions to the Department of Elections this afternoon. The petitions contain 12,000 signatures, far more than the 7,000-8,000 required, effectively signalling that, even after the city weeds out non-valid signatures, the initiative will qualify for the June 2012 election.

The move threatens to give the Board a political migraine, since the Board is set to vote July 26 on a Department of Environment resolution to expand Recology (formerly Norcal Waste System, Inc)’s monopoly on San Francisco’s garbage and recycling services.

In fact, the DoE resolution contains two separate agreements: a $112 million long-term landfill disposal agreement that was competitively bid, and a facilitation agreement that governs how waste is transported to the landfill and that was not competitively bid. As such, the city’s facilitation agreement is already the subject of a lawsuit that Waste Management Inc. filed in San Francisco Superior Court last week.

Sponsors of the competitive bidding ordinance, which include retired judge Quentin Kopp, community activist Tony Kelly and Waste Solutions CEO David Gavrich,believe the Board should delay voting on the landfill disposal and facilititation agreements until next summer, after voters have had a chance to weigh in on the bigger question of whether folks want competitive bidding on all the city’s garbage-related services, which are worth a quarter of a billion, each year. “

“It would be disrespectful to voters to accept a resolution while an initiative is pending,” Kopp stated.

“It would make sense if they severe the landfill disposal and facilitation agreements into two files,” Kelly added, referring to how the two separate agreements are currently lumped into one item on the Board’s July 26 agenda, under the section titled “recommendations of the Budget and Finance sub-committee.”

How the deal got filed in the B&F sub-committee’s recommended section is another story unto itself: Last Wednesday, after Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Jane Kim, who sit on the Board’s Budget and Finance sub-committee, voted to send the deal to the Board with no recommendation, (a vote that suggested that they had some concerns with the deal) and after members of the public who came to testify about the item had left,  Mirkarimi asked to rescind the landfill vote.

“I think there was some misunderstanding a little bit in wrapping up the landfill agreements with Recology, “ Mirkarimi said, as he asked for the vote to be rescinded, “so we can accurately reflect some of the sentiments being articulated here.”
“I think we just learned some things on the fly,” Mirkarimi stated, as he and Kim joined committee chair Sup. Carmen Chu, one of the Board’s more conservative members, in sending the deal to the full Board “with recommendation.”

The Guardian learned of the vote switcheroo, after the DoE, which is apparently anxious to see the Recology agreements move forward, contacted us to say that our blog post about the Budget and Finance sub-committee, incorrectly stated that Mirkarimi and Kim had not given the deal their unmitigated thumbs-up. (The Guardian has since amended its blog post to accurately reflect what happened at the meeting, after this reporter and most members of the public, except the Chamber of Commerce’s Jim Lazarus, who supports the Recology agreements, had left the Board’s Chambers.)

Asked about the last-minute move to amend the vote Kelly said, “It was Ross at his Rossest.”

And in many ways, Mirkarimi’s move to rescind made sense: neither he nor Kim had registered any problems with the landfill disposal and facilitation agreements during the committee hearing, though a number of seemingly valid concerns were raised, including the observation by Yuba County supervisor Roger Abe that Yuba County is considering raising its host fees at Recology’’s Ostrom Road landfill in Wheatland from $4.40 a ton to $20- $30 a ton. If Yuba County does raise itsw fees, the move could wipe out the estimated $100 million in savings that DoE claims Recology’s proposal represents for San Francisco ratepayers. According to Abe, Yuba’s fees have not been raised for 14 years, and his county, which is one of the poorest in California, could use the additional income, especially if it is going to see its local landfill fill up faster than anticipated, thanks to San Francisco sending up to 5 million tons of trash over a 10-year period.

To be fair, Mirkarimi did warn that it would be unwise to dismiss Yuba County’s concerns , but he countered that any county can raise its fees. And DoE suggested that it was unlikely that Yuba County can raise its fees excessively, because those same fees would have to be paid by the other municipalities that use the Ostrom ROad dump, most of which are small towns that can’t afford to pay as much as relatively prosperous Bay Area cities like San Francicso.

Instead, Mirkarimi and Kim reserved most of their concerns for the bigger question of whether San Francisco ratepayers are best served by the city’s continuing lack of competitive bidding and franchise fee requirements on San Francisco’s remaining $225-million-a-year garbage collection related services–concerns that seem to bring us back full circle to Kopp and Kelly’s competitive bidding ordinance, which they had hoped to qualifty for

Asked how many supervisors he thought will stand up tomorrow and dig into the details of the DoE agreements and how they contradict with the requirements of the Kopp-Kelly-Gavrich competing bidding initiative, Kelly said, “Two.”

If so, that’s not likely to derail Recology’s train to Yuba, especially given that Mayor Ed Lee, who holds veto power over any item that less than eight supervisors support or oppose, told the Guardian in February that he believes Recology had earned its privilege.

But so far the City Attorney’s Office is remaining mum about the potential impact of WM’s lawsuit on Recology’s train to Yuba County, a silence that will give the Board the political cover they apparently so desperately need, if they vote tomorrow to haul San Francisco’s trash to Yuba County by rail, an arrangement that won’t start until after the city’s current contract at Waste Management’s Altamont landfill expires, something that is not anticipated to happen until 2015, based on the city’s current diversion rates.

 

Mayoral candidates scurry for signatures

Sasha Cuttler
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33
Mayoral candidates scurry for signatures

San Francisco mayoral candidates and their volunteers have been scrambling to gather the signatures of registered voters needed to reduce their filing fees and demonstrate popular support, over the weekend hitting popular gathering spots such as Dolores Park with a combination of earnest appeals and election-year gimmicks.

Volunteers for candidate John Avalos were the first to hit a crowded Dolores Park on Saturday, canvassing throughout the day, but they may have been upstaged by the campaign of David Chiu, which featured both the candidate himself and his Star Wars-inspired alter ego Chiu-bacca – a campaign volunteer dressed up as Chewbacca. The campaign even carried the motif through at the table it set up, which was staffed by someone in a space helmet that was reminiscent of a stormtrooper. No other mayoral or district attorney candidates seemed to have a visible presence there.

A Clonetrooper for David Chiu

Candidates have until this Thursday, July 28, to turn in the signatures of registered voters, each of which reduces that candidate’s filing fees by 50 cents. So mayoral candidates can eliminate their $5,048 filing fee (which represents 2 percent of the mayor’s $252,397 annual salary) by turning in 10,096 signatures. For district attorney candidates, the goal is 8,704 sigs, while sheriff candidates need 7,990 to get the freebie.

An Avalos volunteer gathers signatures (and possibly PBRs)

The other important upcoming election-related dates are Aug. 1, when the semi-annual campaign finance statements are due and we find out who’s been raising the most money, and Aug. 12, the deadline for candidates to file their intent to run for office. That’s when we find out whether Mayor Ed Lee breaks his pledge not to run, and whether there are any other surprise late entrants into the race, which is always a possibility.

Dick Meister: Workers gaining in fight for union rights

Maria Poblet
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0

This year marks the 76th anniversary of the National Labor Relations Act, the Depression-era law that was essential in building an American middle class – and which remains essential to the well-being of all working Americans. 

But you know what? Powerful corporate interests and their Republican buddies in Congress are nevertheless trying mightily to cripple what has so long been one of the most important U.S. laws of any kind.

Their main target currently is the National Labor Relations Board – the NLRB –which administers the National Labor Relations Act and takes seriously the act’s stated purpose of encouraging collective bargaining between workers and their employers.

The five-member labor board did very little to carry out its task of encouraging unionization during the notoriously anti-union Bush administration. But under President Obama, the NLRB has been doing its job – or has been trying to do its job — in the face of stiff Republican opposition.

The Republican opponents claim – what else? – that under Obama, the NLRB has become a tool of organized labor, Big Labor, as they like to call it.

It’s impossible to take those charges seriously. The labor board obviously has not been acting as an agent of unions, big or small. It’s merely been enforcing the law. But that, of course, means anti-labor forces no longer have the firm cooperation of the NLRB in their attempts to weaken unions as much as possible. They no longer have an ally in the White House. Bush is gone.

Imagine that. The National Labor Relations Board is actually doing what the law says it should do. And unions are actually getting a more or less even break vis-à-vis the corporate interests with whom they collectively bargain – or with whom they try to bargain.

What’s really got the anti-labor crowd sputtering lately is a ruling by the NLRB’s acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon,  against the Boeing Aircraft Company. Boeing was charged with breaking the labor law by moving a major assembly line from a unionized plant in Washington State to South Carolina, a notably anti-union state, in response to a machinist strike at the Washington plant. 

Moving the assembly line was done in violation of a provision in the National Labor Relations Act that bans companies from punishing striking unions by withholding or transferring jobs. Thus, said the NLRB’s Solomon, the assembly line should be moved back to Washington State.

Oh, boy, those union-hating Republicans in Congress didn’t like that at all. They threatened to defund the NLRB if it doesn’t withdraw its order to Boeing, trotting out their usual tired response to just about anything done in favor of unions these days. You’ve undoubtedly heard it – thousands of  times, maybe. Yes, that’s right. A ruling in favor of labor and labor law would be . . . Ah, yes, a job killer. Sure.

GOP House members have actually introduced something called – really – “The Protecting Jobs From Government Interference  Act.” that would void the NLRB order against Boeing  and prohibit future such orders. The proposed law undoubtedly has the approval of the union-hating U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has led the right-wing charge against the NLRB. It complains that the labor board is “out of control.”

Actually, the NLRB is out of control  – out of control of the right-wingers who had  their way throughout Bush’s two terms and are miffed that, unlike Bush, Obama doesn’t think their way is the only way to handle labor-management relations.

Much to the chagrin of the right-wingers, the labor board has come back strong under Obama. One of the board’s most important steps has been to develop rules to streamline the workplace elections that are held to determine if workers want to unionize. 

The board has cut short the pre-election periods that employers have used to harass workers into voting against unionization, approaching them individually and in mass meetings, frequently threatening to fire or otherwise penalize workers who vote for union representation. Obama’s NLRB also has cut back the time for management to appeal the outcome of a vote for unionization.

The changes, as one union attorney noted, are “common sense changes that drag labor law into the 21st century.” 

Common sense often doesn’t mean much to anti-labor Republicans. Sensible or not, they plunge onward on the anti-labor path that’s always been theirs. According to a count by Politico.com’s Joseph Williams, House Republicans have convened oversight hearings on the NLRB or summoned board members to Capitol Hill 14 times since the midterm elections to answer harassing questions and have threatened to severely cut the NLRB’s budget to “bring the board to heel.”

So, it’s still not easy for unions and workers who want to join unions, despite the progressive change in the NLRB’s attitude and operations. 

But the situation is looking much better since the change has come, since the law that promises American workers the right of unionization – and the important benefits that come from it – -is now being enforced by people who believe that their mission is not to hamper unions, but to encourage their growth for the benefit of all Americans.

 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

Recology president Mike Sangiacomo disses the Guardian as landfill agreements head to full Board

Mary Magee
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4

Dressed in neon- yellow vests, a crowd of Recology employees filed into the Board’s Chambers to witness the Board’s Budget and Finance subcommittee, which Sup. Carmen Chu chairs, vote to forward the Department of Environment’s proposal to award the city’s landfill disposal and facilitation agreements to Recology (formerly NorCal Waste, Inc), to the full Board.

The B&F vote wasn’t exactly a surprise. In the past six months, Recology’s top brass have been exerting pressure on the committee members to approve the agreements, which got delayed after folks started raising questions about the lack of a franchise fee and competitive bidding on all other aspects of San Francisco’s multimillion dollar municipal solid waste stream. And lobbyist Alex Clemens reported $17, 134.25 in promised payments from Recology between January and June 2011 for services that included contact with B&F subcommittee vice-chair Ross Mirkarimi in mid-June.

If the full Board goes ahead and gives the green light July 26, that approval would authorize Recology, which Waste Age’s June 2011 issue named as the 10th largest waste management company in the U.S.,  to start transporting and disposing up to 5 million tons of municipal solid waste in its Ostrom Road Landfill in Wheatland, Yuba County, once the city’s agreement at Waste Management’s Altamont landfill in Livermore expires, which is expected to happen some time in 2014 or 2015.

The initial refusal of Mirkarimi and fellow B&F subcommittee member Sup. Jane Kim to agree to Chu’s suggestion that they forward the proposed agreements “with recommendation” appeared to be indications that both supervisors harbored some concerns about the deal. UPDATE: But According to DoE communications director Mark Westlund, before yesterday’s meeting was over, Mirkarimi called to rescind the vote on the landfill item asking for it to go to the full Board with recommendation. Jane Kim concurred, and so now it goes to the Board with unanimous committee support. 

“Overall, I think this was a good contract,” Kim said during the July 20 hearing.

Kim added that she thinks “We need to continue the dialogue,” about the city’s 1932 refuse collection and disposal ordinance, which resulted in Recology gaining a monopoly over every aspect of the city’s $225 million-a-year waste stream, except the $11-million-a-year landfill disposal agreement.

Kim noted that under the arrangement that grew out of the 1932 ordiance the city doesn’t get a  franchise fee. And she claimed that San Francisco is getting half of what other Bay Area cities, which all have franchise fees, get from their waste contractors. “So, I’m really interested in continuing that conversation, but I think it’s a separate conversation,” Kim said.

Mirkarimi, who is running for sheriff this fall, noted that he has been “the most outspoken member” of the committee on the Recology item, and that his concerns were what led the committee to “put a pause” on the deal, until the committee could “undertake more homework.”

Thanks to that pause, the city’s LAFCO committee was able to commission a report on what other jurisdictions do around transporting and disposing of their solid waste in landfills, and Mirkarimi noted that his office “held a number of meetings” and he tried to leverage this opportunity to “reanimate activity at the Port.”

“I was hoping we might be able to arrive at something much more deliverable,” Mirkarimi said, presumably referring to the fact that these efforts only resulted in DoE unveiling a last-minute amendment to include two “possible changes” to operations and facilities at the Port of San Francisco in the agreements.

These possible changes, which DoE director Melanie Nutter presented during the July 20 hearing, involve a) utilizing modes of transportation, including barges, other than, or in addition to, the rail haul plan proposed in the agreement, b) developing new facilities at the Port for the handling of waste, recyclables, organics and other refuse, meeting no later than the fifth anniversary of the agreement to discuss the feasibility of such changes, and c) incorporating into the rates, or otherwise financing, the cost of implementing such transportation alternatives and the cost of such facilities.

“I think that cost-effectively we may be able to insert the Port into this equation, but it’s not ready for prime-time yet,” Mirkarimi observed.

Mirkarimi concluded by noting the many innovative things Recology has done in terms of making the city’s waste disposal system more environmentally friendly. “This should be a front-burner conversation,” Mirkarimi said noting that Mayor Gavin Newsom made it a focus of his administration to make San Francisco the greenest city. Referring to the fact that San Francisco claims to have a 77 percent diversion rate—the highest in the U.S—Mirkarimi said, “That comes at a cost, it doesn’t come for free.”

Mirkarimi’s comments came in the wake of Nutter’s claims that Recology’s bid for the landfill disposal agreement will save ratepayers $130 million, over the 10-year course of the agreement, compared to the bid that Waste Management submitted. “This is the best deal for San Francisco,” Nutter said.

Nutter’s estimates were repeated by Jim Lazarus, who spoke on behalf of the SF Chamber of Commerce and the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth. “This is the right contract for the people of San Francisco,” Lazarus said.

But Nutter’s $130 million estimate was thrown into question by Yuba County Sup. Roger Abe, who had driven the 130 miles from Wheatland to alert San Francisco  that Recology’s bid is based on the assumption that Yuba County will only charge San Francisco a $4.40 per ton host fee.

As Abe pointed out, Yuba’s rates have not changed in 14 years, and his county is considering increasing them later this year by up to $20 or $30 a ton.
Such an increase, multiplied by the 5-million tons of garbage in the agreement, could dramatically increase the cost to San Francisco ratepayers over the course of 10 years, Abe observed..

[If Yuba County approves an increase, and diesel fuel prices also increase, it could eliminate much of the cost differential between Recology’s and WM’s bid: a recent Budget and Legislative Analyst report shows that Recology would charge $58.94 a ton, ($28.53 for tipping and other fees + $30.14 transportation cost per ton), while WM would charge $66.79 for tipping and other fees + $18.33 transportation costs per ton.). But if diesel rises above $2:30 a gallon, SF ratepayers could also get hit with a fuel surcharge.]

Also speaking at the hearing was former D10 supervisorial candidate Tony Kelly, who along with retired Judge Quentin Kopp, David Gavrich’s SF Bay Railroad, and other concerned citizens, recently gathered 12,000 signatures to qualify a petition to require all aspects of San Francisco’s $225-million-a-year waste services to be put out to bid, and to require the winning bidder to pay San Francisco an annual franchise fee.

Kelly et al were originally aiming to qualify their petition for the 2011 ballot, but they blame what Kelly described during public comment as, “a very expensive advertising campaign,” by Recology, plus harassment of petition gatherers and signers, as why they ultimately had to delay qualifying their initiative until the June 2012 election cycle.

Kelly urged the committee to probe the details of a $10 million Special Reserve fund, which Recology could access, under the terms of its facilitation agreement, to cover all its expenses that have not yet been reimbursed through rate hikes. “You’d think the Budget and Finance sub-committee would want to explore those things,” Kelly said.

David Gavrich, who is also President & CEO of Waste Solutions Group, which has hauled 6 million tons of waste in the last 20 years, said approving the landfill disposal agreement, without knowing what rates Yuba County are about to set, was tantamount to “opening up San Francisco’s check book to Yuba County.”

“Recology has never moved a single ton by rail,” Gavrich also asserted.

But while none of the supervisors asked for any clarification of details in the proposed agreements, including the last-minute amendment, during the hearing, Chu was quick to comment about Gavrich’s “blank check” comment, noting that any county can increase its rates. “Alameda County already charges a lot more, so there are no guarantees either way,” Chu said.

She also claimed that the agreements had been subjected to a “very extensive, competitive and open process, especially around tipping fees.” What Chu didn’t mention is that earlier this week, WM filed a writ of mandate with San Francisco Superior Court to prevent the final award of a new long-term solid waste transportation agreement and landfill disposal contract to Recology ordinances, on the grounds that the deal violates the City’s competitive procurement laws.

Instead, Chu urged moving on the deal as soon as possible, by invoking the specter of a disaster hitting San Francisco before a landfill agreement is reached.
“Imagine if we had to go to the open market,” Chu said, apparently ignoring the fact that WM has stated that it would take SF’s waste in an emergency.

After the vote, Kelly expressed concern that the agreements are not competitive, but cost-plus, which means all costs get passed along to ratepayers. And that the city continues to lack a contract and ensuing franchise fees. “They are running this as if it’s still the 1950s,” Kelly said.

Kelly claimed that Recology Vice President John Legnitto, who is the 2011 Chair of the SF Chamber of Commerce’s Board, told him that Recology had been in negotiations with City Hall around a $4 million franchise fee, but that the money would now be spent opposing Kelly et al’s competitive bidding initiative.
But when the Guardian approached Legnitto after the hearing, he refused to comment, telling me my questions should go to Recology’s Robert Reed.
And Recology President Mike Sangiacomo, who was speaking to Chronicle reporter Rachel Gordon rudely told me, “Not today thank you,” when I approached him seeking comment on the Board committee’s vote.

“What did you do to him?” Gordon asked, as she followed Sangiacomo into a corner of City Hall. Er, nothing. Except what any self-respecting reporter would do. Like ask questions, read documents, and challenge the spin.

But that something clearly has ruffled the feathers of Recology’s top brass.
 “It’s like Godzilla, it’s like Monster Island, they can’t help themselves,” Beyond Chron’s Eric Smith commented to me during the hearing. “I’m disgusted by how money, labor and all these different entities can influence what happens. They don’t care about the little people. They care about the bottom line.”

Smith, who ran for D10 supervisor in 2010, spoke to the huge pressure that has been exerted on those supervisors who have publicly raised questions about Recology’s monopoly over all other aspects of the city’s $225 million-per-year waste stream. “Big corporations like Recology throw big money around and intimidate the electeds,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, DoE deputy director David Assmann confirmed that the City Attorney’s Office is looking at WM’s writ of mandate. But Assmann added that it is too early to respond to questions about the implications of that legal action on the Recology agreements.

Assmann also responded to a number of questions I’d already raised on the Guardian’s blog about the juicy details buried in the Recology agreements, beginning with a special reserve fund that was established in 1988, as part of Recology’s facilitation agreement that governed the transportation of waste to WM’s Altamont landfill, which is where San Francisco has been depositing its trash since 1987, and that will be rolled over to form the basis of a new special reserve fund.

Assmann said the fund currently contains almost $29 million, but only needs a baseline of $15 million. The extra funds will be the subject of a hearing this fall, he said, to determine how to use the balance, including exploring the possibility of using the funds, which were collected through a 1.3 percent surcharge on ratepayers, to lower the garbage rates.

Assmann also noted that while there is no limit on how much Yuba County can theoretically increase its host fees, “there has to be a nexus with associated costs,” and that Yuba County supervisors would have to bring any such proposed increase, which would also apply to all their other landfill users, to their voters.

Assmann further noted that the idea behind developing new facilities relates to the city’s 2020 goal of zero waste is “to get to zero waste we need new methods of handling waste,” Assmann told me explaining that San Francisco wants to be able to take residual material and process it so it could be recycled and wouldn’t end up in the landfill.

Assmann said a consultant is comparing the feasibility of building those facilities on land next to Recology’s Tunnel Road facility in Brisbane, or on land the Port owns in San Francisco, and the report should be completed later this year. He also noted that the transportation amendment would allow the City to switch or improve its transportation mode, during the life of the agreement, should cleaner technologies be developed, “including trains that run on less polluting fuel.”

Assmann clarified that San Francisco ratepayers won’t be footing the cost of building a new rail spur in Yuba County. “We’re not paying capital costs. The rail spur is not a cost that Recology can charge because it’s out of county. And if San Francisco only produces 2 million tons during the life of the agreement, we are under no obligation beyond that.”

And he noted that a potential $10 million contingency payment would only go into play if the City gave Recology the green light, and the company incurred costs related to rail haul, and the City then reneged on its deal, at which point Recology could then use its incurred costs to justify why it needs up to $10 million to included in the garbage rates.

All interesting details as we approach the Board’s July 26 vote—with a lawsuit hanging over the City’s head. So stay tuned…

Editorial: Don’t gut SF campaign law

Maria Poblet
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1

The U.S. Supreme Court, which has already ruled that corporations can spend all the money they want on political campaigns, dealt another huge blow to democracy in June when it struck down a campaign finance law in Arizona that was designed to level the playing field for candidates running against better-financed opponents.

The ruling has implications for San Francisco’s public finance law, and already the Ethics Commission has moved to amend — some would say gut — the ordinance. The supervisors also have to approve the changes, and they should move cautiously; there is much about the local law that can still be saved, and there are experts working on alternative models that could still work under the Arizona ruling.

The Arizona law gave public funds to candidates who agreed to limit personal spending to $500. The more privately financed opponents and independent expenditure (IE) committees spent on a candidate, the more public matching money the other candidates received.

The idea: if one rich candidate — or one candidate supported by deep-pocketed special interests — tried to dominate the election, the others would be given enough money to make things fair.

That’s the same motivation behind San Francisco’s law, which sets a spending limit for the mayoral and supervisorial races, provides matching funds for small contributions — and gives public money to candidates who are attacked by outside independent expenditure committees.

It’s possible that the current IE match won’t hold up to legal scrutiny under the Arizona decision. And already some of the city’s biggest downtown interests are threatening to sue to overturn the local ordinance. But there is much about the San Francisco law that will likely survive a court challenge.

Bob Stern, a campaign finance expert and president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, told us that he’s working on a new model law for cities like San Francisco. The Ethics Commission knew that when it voted July 11 to eliminate matching for IEs and to reduce the available pot of money.

Now the law comes to the Board of Supervisors, where eight votes are required to accept the Ethics Commission amendments. Good government advocates say the supervisors should do only what is clearly legally necessary: “The Ethics Commission should have used a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” Oliver Luby, a former commission staffer, told us.

The November mayor’s race is a huge test for the city’s law; this will be the first time effective public financing will be in place for a citywide race, and the success of the ordinance will draw national attention. The supervisors should stop short of so badly amending it that it will lose all its teeth.

The board should hold public hearings and solicit input from local and national experts. The supervisors shouldn’t be intimidated by downtown lawsuits and consider only the most limited changes — after reviewing every possible alternative. 

 

 

 

Don’t gut SF campaign law

Andrew Lam
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0

The U.S. Supreme Court, which has already ruled that corporations can spend all the money they want on political campaigns, dealt another huge blow to democracy in June when it struck down a campaign finance law in Arizona that was designed to level the playing field for candidates running against better-financed opponents.

The ruling has implications for San Francisco’s public finance law, and already the Ethics Commission has moved to amend — some would say gut — the ordinance. The supervisors also have to approve the changes, and they should move cautiously; there is much about the local law that can still be saved, and there are experts working on alternative models that could still work under the Arizona ruling.

The Arizona law gave public funds to candidates who agreed to limit personal spending to $500. The more privately financed opponents and independent expenditure (IE) committees spent on a candidate, the more public matching money the other candidates received.

The idea: if one rich candidate — or one candidate supported by deep-pocketed special interests — tried to dominate the election, the others would be given enough money to make things fair.

That’s the same motivation behind San Francisco’s law, which sets a spending limit for the mayoral and supervisorial races, provides matching funds for small contributions — and gives public money to candidates who are attacked by outside independent expenditure committees.

It’s possible that the current IE match won’t hold up to legal scrutiny under the Arizona decision. And already some of the city’s biggest downtown interests are threatening to sue to overturn the local ordinance. But there is much about the San Francisco law that will likely survive a court challenge.

Bob Stern, a campaign finance expert and president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, told us that he’s working on a new model law for cities like San Francisco. The Ethics Commission knew that when it voted July 11 to eliminate matching for IEs and to reduce the available pot of money.

Now the law comes to the Board of Supervisors, where eight votes are required to accept the Ethics Commission amendments. Good government advocates say the supervisors should do only what is clearly legally necessary: “The Ethics Commission should have used a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” Oliver Luby, a former commission staffer, told us.

The November mayor’s race is a huge test for the city’s law; this will be the first time effective public financing will be in place for a citywide race, and the success of the ordinance will draw national attention. The supervisors should stop short of so badly amending it that it will lose all its teeth.

The board should hold public hearings and solicit input from local and national experts. The supervisors shouldn’t be intimidated by downtown lawsuits and consider only the most limited changes — after reviewing every possible alternative. 

 

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