Election

Waste Management sues SF over garbage contract

Mary Magee
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2
Waste Management sues SF over garbage contract

The already intense fight between Recology (formerly NorCal Waste) and Waste Management over SF’s next landfill contract just got more intense: today Waste Management of Alameda County announced that it is filing a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court to prevent the final award of a new long-term solid waste transportation agreement and landfill disposal contract to Recology on the grounds that awarding the contract would violate SF’s “competitive bidding ordinances.”

Now, Recology boosters will likely seek to frame this legal challenge as sour grapes over the city’s $11 million-a-year landfill contract. But WMAC’s suit represents a fundamental challenge to how SF’s $225-million-a-year solid waste stream is controlled: the suit requests a judicial declaration regarding the scope of the city’s 1932 Refuse Collection and Disposal Ordinance as it pertains to the transportation of residual wastes to a designated landfill outside city limits.


“The Department of the Environment [DoE] 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,” WMAC alleges.

WMAC has long held that DoE inappropriately issued a tentative contract award for both the transportation and disposal of solid waste to Recology on September 10, 2009, without soliciting any other transportation bids and in violation of longstanding City ordinances. Thanks to the 1932 ordinance, Recology has ended up with a monopoly over collecting and transporting waste through the streets of San Francisco. But that ordinance clearly does not apply to waste transported outside city limits, so folks have been asking if it would be greener to barge the city’s waste to nearby landfills. And they have been questioning whether ratepayers would benefit from lower rates if all of San Francisco’s garbage services, and not just the landfill contract, were put out to competitive bid.


Meanwhile, DoE, which sees $7 million of its own annual operating expenses for recycling, green building, and environmental justice programs and long-term planning for waste disposal incorporated into the garbage rates that Recology’s residential and business customers pay, ruled last year that WMAC’s objections were “without merit.”

So, now WMAC is taking its concerns to the Superior Court, asking that the court require DoE to scrap its tentative contract award to Recology for both waste disposal and waste transportation, and issue a new request for proposal to comply with existing competitive bidding requirements.

“WMAC is resolute in its commitment to providing the City and County of San Francisco with superior disposal services and responding to a Request for Proposal that is fairly administered,” WMAC’s Area President Barry Skolnick stated in a July 18 letter to the SF Board of Supervisors.

The move comes two days before the Board’s Budget and Finance subcommittee was scheduled to vote on approving a 10-year landfill disposal and facilitation agreement with Recology.

 The Board scheduled the vote last week, after it became clear that an initiative to require competitive bidding and franchise fees from waste management companies that seek to collect garbage in San Francisco, would not qualify in time for the November ballot. (Proponents of that initiative say they have enough signatures to qualify it for the June 2012 ballot. And they believe the question of whether candidates support competitive bidding on the city’s lucrative municipal solid waste collection, recycling, and disposal business continue to be a defining issue during the 2011 election.)


The landfill disposal and facilitation vote had already been delayed several months this year, following a Budget and Legislative analyst report that threw a curveball at the DoE’s plan by recommending that the Board consider submitting a proposition to the voters to a) repeal the city’s existing 1932 refuse ordinance such that future collection and transportation services be put to bid, and b) that future residential and commercial refuse collection rates be subject to Board approval. But so far, no supervisors have placed such a charter amendment on the November election.


The landfill disposal contract that the Budget and Finance sub-committee was to consider July 20 authorizes 5 million tons of solid waste disposal, or ten years, at Recology’s Ostrom Road landfill in Yuba County. It is worth in excess of $120 million, if the maximum of 5 million tons is reached, with all associated fees and costs to be passed onto, and  paid for by, refuse rate payers, not city funds. It allows for the Hays Road landfill in Vacaville to be used as a “back-up landfill.” And would allow Recology to pass on up to $10 million in rail hauler penalties, should the Ostrom Road landfill rail spur not be completed on time.


The facilitation agreement that the Board was also set to consider July 20, which governs how San Francisco’s waste is transported to its designated landfill, includes an additional rail transportation fee of $563 per rail container in future residential rate application increases that the Director of the Department of Public Works approves. (Unless there is an appeal, in which case it goes to the Rate Board, which is composed of the City Administrator (the post Ed Lee held before he was named mayor, and to which he wants to return,) the SF Public Utilities Commission director, and the Controller. And. in the event the cit

CCSF paid Recology $6.2 million to dispose of solid waste from city-owned facilities in FY 2010-11, and those costs are expected to increase by three percent to $6.4 million, according to the language of the ordinance that the Board’s budget and finance committee was set to consider this week.

As of press time, the Guardian was unable to reach anyone at City Hall to see if the city is seeking injunctive relief from WMAC’s filing, which provides a summary of San Francisco’s existing ordinances, a chronology of the events leading up to the DoE’s tentative award of the transportation and disposal contract to Recology and the subsequent bid protest filed by WMAC. {We’ll be sure to provide an update as the city’s response to the suit becomes available.)

“WMAC has exhausted all available and/or required administrative remedies,” WMAC states, noting that its filing also documents conflicting positions by DoE regarding the scope of the city’s Refuse Collection and Disposal Ordinance that San Francisco voters approved almost 80 years ago.

According to WMAC, DoE’s May 8 2008 Request for Qualifications stated that “the 1932 Refuse Collection and Disposal Ordinance …. does not address consolidating materials, processing for material recovery or transporting them to other facilities.”

According to WMAC, DoE re-stated this position in its Feb. 9, 2009 Request for Proposals.

“Yet in response to WMAC’s bid protest on (date) the Department stated there was no need to competitively bid transportation services outside the City limits since Recology was the only entity permitted under the 1932 ordinance to transport wastes from the in-city transfer station to an out-of-city landfill. “

As a result, WMAC is requesting the Court to rule on the scope of the 1932 Ordinance.

WMAC also notes that the Board of Supervisors designated the Altamont Landfill as the disposal site for all refuse collected within the City from November 1, 1998 through October 31, 2053, or until the City deposits 15 million tons. And that the 15 million ton has yet to be reached.

“There is ample time for the Department to issue a new RFP,” WMAC claims.

Repulsed by Recology’s tactics, Kopp strikes name from Adachi initiative

Mary Magee
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36
Repulsed by Recology’s tactics, Kopp strikes name from Adachi initiative

Who knew that a bunch of garbage could get a taxpayer watchdog like former supe/state senator/judge Quentin Kopp threatening not to endorse Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s pension reform initiative? But that’s what happened according to Kopp, who adds that he was “personally insulted’ by a signature gatherer outside the West Portal post office last week, after he struck his name from a petition he had signed in support of Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s pension reform measure.

Adachi, who has reportedly been paying up to $5 per signature, also came under fire this week from opponents of his measure, who are threatening legal action after an undercover video showed four signature gatherers for Adachi’s measure soliciting signatures while making misleading statements about the proposal.

But this misbehavior had not been made public when Kopp encountered a signature gatherer last Friday, who asked if he would sign the Adachi petition. “I wrote my name and has just started to print it, when he said, how do you feel about Recology?” recalled Kopp, who is backing a ballot initiative that would require competitive bidding and hundreds of millions of dollars in franchise fees from firms who seek to win San Francisco’s garbage collection and recycling contract.

As such, Kopp’s initiative threatens to up-end the terms of an 80-year old charter amendment that resulted in Recology (formerly Norcal Waste Systems) gaining a contractless monopoly on San Francisco’s $226 million-a-year garbage and recycling stream. 

When Kopp asked the signature gatherer, who identified himself as Tim McArdle, why he was asking about Recology, McArdle said he had another petition on hand, which referred to the allegedly satisfactory service that Recology is providing.

At which point, Kopp began to strike his name from Adachi’s $5-a pop petition. McArdle allegedly interrupted, saying, “No, that’s not the same petition as Recology’s.” And when Kopp kept scratching out his name, McArdle allegedly began swearing at him, even allegedly employing the time-honored F-word. “A woman walked by and was shocked,” Kopp said.(So far the Guardian has been unable to locate McArdle, but when we do, we’ll be sure to update this post.)


When McArdle grabbed back his clipboard, Kopp said he was able to see that on its backside was what Kopp describes as ‘Recology’s phony petition.”

So, why is Kopp so repulsed by Recology? According to Kopp. Recology recently signed up the city’s top signature-gathering firms to work on their petition thereby preventing Kopp and his associates from hiring these firms to collect signatures for his competitive bidding initiative. “And they are doing so from our rates, the money we pay, its legalized misappropriation of our money,” Kopp claimed

So far, it seems as if Recology’s strategy is paying off, at least in the short term. This week, sponsors of the competitive bidding initiative announced that they will turn in their signatures by December 11 to qualify their measure for the June 2012 ballot—and not their original target of November 2011.

Their decision followed less than three weeks of signature-gathering, a tight squeeze that occured, in part, because the City Attorney’s Office  took the full 15 days allowed by law to review the language of the Kopp initiative, which was first submitted June 3.

Even so, and despite an extensive Recology-financed media campaign that included push polls and network and cable TV ads against competitive bidding,  proponents and volunteers with Kopp’s campaign managed to gather the 7,168 signatures they needed to qualify his initiative by the city’s July 11 deadline for submitting petitions for the November election. But some signatures could prove invalid, hence the decision to delay the competitive bidding initiative until June.

And the Guardian learned today that the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee has scheduled a July 20 hearing on whether to award Recology the city’s $11 million-a-year landfill disposal contract, with the full Board set to vote on the issue on July 26 and August 2. In other words, the Board is rushing to make a decision on the landfill, which would further consolidate Recology’s monopoly on the city’s waste stream, before the Board’s summer recess.

The Guardian has also learned that the Budget and Finance Committee will hear a resolution July 20 concerning Recology’s existing agreement with the city over garbage. Rumors are swirling that this hearing will allow Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who sits on the committee, is running for sheriff and has allegedly been meeting with Mayor Ed Lee and Recology president and CEO Mike Sangiacomo behind closed doors, to insert a clause to allow for the payment of a $4 million franchise fee. But insiders assure the Guardian that Mirkarimi has no such plans, although Mirkarimi himself could not be reached.


Either way, as Kopp points out, the alleged proposed $4 million fee would only amount to 2 percent of Recology’s annual revenue from San Francisco ratepayers. ‘That’s almost an insult,” Kopp said, noting that Oakland, whose population is 340,000, (42 percent of San Francisco’s daytime population) gets a franchise fee of $30 million.

Now, in a recent report to the Board’s LAFCO committee, Recology claimed it provides $18 million annually in “free services” to the city. But the report did not include an independent analysis of Recology’s estimates, and therefore these claims raised the hackles of Kopp, Kelly and other competitive bidding proponents.

Kopp predicts a $4 million franchise fee would allow city leaders who oppose his measure to claim that one of the two objectives of his proposed initiative have been addressed.

In an interview with the Guardian earlier this year, Mayor Ed Lee said he felt that Recology “has justified its privilege to be the permit holder in San Francisco because of the things that it has been willing to do with us.”

Kopp said Lee repeated this position in June, and that Board President David Chiu recently said that he is opposed to monopolies in concept, but felt that any effort to allow competitive bidding on garbage services would tear the city apart.

“Chiu spoke in such draconian terms I thought I was in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Kopp said.

But these latest developments have strengthened Kopp and Kelly’s resolve to push ahead with their effort to give local residents a chance to decide whether competitive bidding would be better for San Francisco rate payers. As they point out, such a vote doesn’t mean Recology would be ousted from the city because they stand an excellent chance of winning any competitive bid. But it could mean that Recology is ousted from its current cost-plus arrangement with the city that allows them to make an estimated 10-20 percent profit.

And whatever happens, the upcoming battle threatens to shed light on Recology’s business model, which is based on vertical expansion into other counties and states, and the knowledge that, unlike the competitive bids it submits everywhere else in California, it has a guaranteed annual revenue of $225 million in San Francisco. In its 1996 filings with the Securities Exchange Commission, NorCal Waste and its 45 subsidiaries (now known as Recology) reported that San Francisco accounts for 50 percent of its annual revenue. And while those public filings are 15 years old, it’s clear Recology continues to rely on San Francisco for a large and guaranteed chunk of its income.

Or as one insider put it, “When you have a cost-plus contract, you can start buying things—like the Pier 96 development, and the recycling facility. And you can move profits to a different part of the company. You’re not competitively bidding the composting. And you can shift your profits out of San Francisco. And with a cost-plus contract, you put everything in the rates. For instance, the city says it wants composting. Ok, here’s the cost, here’s the bill. But you take the profit from the composting and invest it in San Jose, or San Bernardino, and use it to advance your other objectives, like buying two large landfills in Nevada and financing political campaigns.”

Meanwhile, Kopp says he plans to take Adachi to task for hiring the same signature gathering firm that is trying to undermine his petition.


“And I’m not planning to sign his petition now, and I might not endorse it,” Kopp said.
 




 

Where does Gavin Newsom vote?

Zelda Bronstein
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23
Where does Gavin Newsom vote?

Now that it’s pretty clear Gavin Newsom no longer has a residence in San Francisco, when is he going to change his voter registration? According to the San Francisco Department of Elections, there’s no statutory deadline; he can stay registered in San Francisco as long as he wants.

But he can’t vote here if he doesn’t live here — which means that if he wants to vote in the November election, he’s going to have to either (a) rent an apartment or buy another house in San Francisco that he can claim is his primary residence or (b) re-register as a resident of Marin County. As it is now, with no fixed place of abode in this city, he can’t come back and vote for the next mayor or sheriff or vote against the measure to change Care Not Cash. Because that would be voter fraud. And the lieutenant governor of California would never want to break the law.

Obama 2012 raises $86 million in small donations

Mary Magee
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3
Obama 2012 raises $86 million in small donations

The Obama 2012 campaign files its first financial report with the Federal Election Commission on Friday July 15. In an email to Obama supporters, the campaign noted that, “the Washington chatter around the report we’re releasing has focused on one number: the sum total we’ve raised.”

That number, as it turns out,  is more than $86 million, with 98 percent of the contributions coming in at $250 or less, with the average donation being $69, according to the Obama campaign.

”But other numbers that the pundits often ignore — like how many field offices we and the DNC have open, how many one-on-one conversations we’ve had with potential supporters, and how many people have already decided to own a piece of this campaign — tell the real story of our campaign,” Jim Messina, campaign manager for Obama for America, observed in an emailed statement.

According to a video the Obama campaign released today, they’ve had 31, 000 face-to-face conversations and 290,000 phone conversations with supporters. And they have already held 650 grassroots planning meetings and signed up 1,500 full-time volunteers.

”All those numbers are in the video, and they’re the ones you should be proud of today. Watch it now,” the Obama campaign suggests.

The campaign concludes by noting that, “our opponents won’t have hundreds of thousands of people giving whatever they can afford — so they’ll be relying heavily on money from two sources to fund an unprecedented barrage.”

These two sources, the campaign claims, are “Washington lobbyists and special interests whose explicit aim is to influence the federal government in any way they can,” and, “outside groups that don’t have to disclose a word about what they’ve raised or who they’ve raised it from, like one of Karl Rove’s political organizations. His groups have set an astounding $120 million fundraising goal in their campaign to tear down President Obama.”

The specter of Rove (aka the “boy genius” or “Turd Blossom” depending on your point of view) rising from the ashes like Harry Potter’s nemesis Voldemort isn’t exactly comforting (unless you believe that American politics are on a parallel track to the outcome of the Harry Potter 7: Part 2 movie, which opens this Friday.)

As the Obama campaign notes, “The threat to our success from these determined groups — acting solely in their own interest, not the public interest — is real, and it’s growing. And it’s going to take serious commitment and vigilance from all of us to withstand their attacks while still building the grassroots campaign we’ll need to win.”

Now I know plenty of people who are pissed off at Obama, because, yes we did kill Osama, and yes we didn’t withdraw all the troops from Afghanistan, etc. etc. But it feels as if the moment is already here in which regular folks need to remind themselves what life under a Republican administration with Rove’s hands on the wheel  was truly like. Unless, of course, you truly believe that life under Obama is just as bad. In which case, let’s hear about the realistic alternatives…

Mayor Lee’s budget deal

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editorial: Mayor Lee’s budget deal

Maria Poblet
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1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Politicians have a limited time offer for you

Sasha Cuttler
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0
Politicians have a limited time offer for you

As politicians push to maximize their campaign contributions before the semi-annual reporting deadline of tonight (Thu/30) at midnight – a big measure of the strength of their campaigns and sure-fire way to keep the money flowing in – our e-mail in-boxes at the Guardian have been flooded with urgent pleas for cash.

There’s a real art to these appeals, which generally rely on some combination of fear, humor, “we’re so close” appeals to “put us over the top,” and earnest calls for support in order to get people to open their wallets. We won’t find out how the campaigns really did for another month when the forms are due, but we thought we’d offer a sampling of our favorite pitches of the season.

President Barack Obama is offering to join you for dinner if you give his presidential campaign even a few bucks: “ I wanted to say thank you before the midnight deadline passes. And I’m looking forward to thanking four of you in person over dinner sometime soon. If you haven’t thrown your name in the hat yet, make a donation of $5 or more before midnight tonight — you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to be one of our guests.”

Democratic Party consultant James Carville sent out a funny one entitled “Backwards tattoo” on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee: “FEC deadline is midnight, and here’s a number to ponder: 90%. It’s so important, you should tattoo it backwards on your forehead so you read it every time you brush your teeth:

  • 90% of donations to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads this year came from 3 billionaire donors bent on destroying President Obama.

  • 90% of donations to the DSCC come from grassroots supporters.”

Comedian and U.S. Sen. Al Franken always writes great appeals. I liked his previous one, “Oatmeal,” better than his current one, “Cake,” but it’s still pretty good: “Remember Election Night 2010? Remember watching Democrats you admired—progressive champions—giving concession speeches?  Remember shaking your head as radical right-wingers were declared winners?  Remember the first moment you realized that John Boehner was going to become Speaker of the House? Not fun memories.  But here’s the thing: In a lot of states, the cake was baked a long time before the polls closed—not in 2010, but in 2009. Every cycle, races are won and lost—months before anyone votes—because one side builds an early advantage that proves to be insurmountable.”

On the other side other aisle, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is offering signed lithographs of the U.S. Capitol (huh?) for donations of $125 or more, or you can give just $4 to help elect four more GOP senators because, “Even with the support of all 47 Republican Senators for a Balanced Budget Amendment, Harry Reid blocking its progress every step of the way will be nearly impossible to overcome.”

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney writes that, “Your donation will build the campaign needed to defeat the Obama juggernaut in 2012.”

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) issued a national appeal for his efforts to stand “up to leaders of both parties” and the scheming capitalist forces: “Across the country, corporate forces have been pushing for draconian cuts to the social safety net, making it harder for all Americans to have a better quality of life.”

SF District Attorney candidate David Onek used his wife – Kara Dukakis, daughter of former Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis – to make his fundraising plea today: “I’m writing today to ask for your help. As you already know, my husband, David Onek, is running to be San Francisco’s next District Attorney to reform our broken criminal justice system. The deadline for our fundraising period is midnight tonight and it is crucial that we make a strong showing.”

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer even acknowledged the barrage of funding appeals as she sought money for her PAC for Change: “I know you may be getting a flurry of these June 30 fundraising emails today, so let me get right to the point: We’ve already raised more than $44,000 toward our $50,000 end-of-quarter grassroots goal — but if we’re going to make it, and fight back against the millions that Karl Rove and our opponents are already spending against us, I need your support before midnight tonight.”

SF Mayoral candidate Leland Yee sent out an appeal this morning with the subject line, “An amazing couple months…14 hours to go before the deadline,” in which he touted his campaign’s endorsements and accomplishments but asked people to dig deeper: “Even if you have donated to the campaign already, a contribution before midnight tonight will make a huge difference. Every dollar counts and no amount is too small.”

Mayoral candidate Dennis Herrera exclaimed: “Wow! It’s been just seven hours since I sent an email to each of you asking for your support in sponsoring my field team’s 10,000 signatures by matching them with a fundraising goal of $10,000 – and we have made some serious progress. “

And then tomorrow, after a likely round of “thank you, we did it!” self-congratulatory messages, it’s back to summer as usual.

Dick Meister: Paid sick leave is good for us all

Maria Poblet
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5

The latest figures show that some 44 million workers in private employment  – more than 40 percent of the private sector workforce – do not have paid sick days that they could use to recover from illnesses, including contagious illnesses such as the flu, or worse.

It should be of particular concern that those occupations which are currently least likely to provide paid sick days include occupations most likely to have regular contact with the public – most importantly and most disturbingly, food service and food preparation.

That raises serious health problems – especially in these tight economic times, when workers need to stay on the job as much as they can, no matter how ill they are, to earn as much money as they can. Which, of course, endangers the health of those who come in contact with them, as well as delaying their recovery from their illness.

Public health experts note that the fewer the number of workers who are able to stay at home when sick, the more likely it is that diseases will spread. In addition to the increased suffering of the public and other workers which that causes, it also causes significant economic losses.

Laws have been proposed in several states and in Congress that would require employers to grant paid sick leaves to their employees, but it seems unlikely that the measures, however much they are needed, will pass any time soon – if at all.

But there has at least been a start, however slight, toward what’s broadly needed. That’s a paid sick leave law that was adopted by the city of San Francisco five years ago – the first citywide such law in the country. If nothing else, the San Francisco ordinance proves that such laws are quite feasible, and not the “job killers” that anti-labor forces contend they would be.

San Francisco business groups fought fiercely against adoption of the ordinance and thankfully lost big time. The ordinance was approved by 61 percent of the voters in a citywide election in 2006.

Under the ordinance, workers in businesses with fewer than 10 workers can earn up to five paid sick days a year, while workers in larger businesses can earn up to nine paid sick days.  Workers accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours they work. They may use the sick time to recover from their own illnesses, care for a sick family member, or seek routine medical care.

A recent independent survey of nearly 1,200 San Francisco workers and nearly 700 employers by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research came up with findings that the city ordinance was, in the words of the California AFL-CIO, “overwhelmingly positive for workers, businesses and the public.”

The labor federation called the study “further evidence policies that help working families meet their responsibilities at work and at home are good for everyone.”

The study shows, in short, that the San Francisco ordinance has had a great impact on workers’ lives but little or no impact on the city’s businesses.  They overwhelmingly report that the law has not cut into their profits. Two-thirds of them reported no problems implementing the law.

It seems likely that the reason for the slight impact on businesses business can be attributed to the fact that most workers take sick leave days only when they need them.  Even though the law allows workers five to nine sick days a year, San Francisco workers used a median of just three days a year. And one-quarter of the workers didn’t take a single sick day.

Even the major opponent of the law prior to its passage, the local, politically powerful restaurant association that led the political fight against the city ordinance, now concedes it hasn’t led to employee abuses or hurt restaurants or other business.

Most important, as the state AFL-CIO noted, the survey proved that having paid sick days makes a substantial difference for working families.  More than half the workers surveyed said they’ve benefitted from the law. Among other important things, the law has given workers who need paid sick days the most, including parent and workers with chronic health conditions, the time they need to care for their health and that of their children.

The labor federation reports that it hears regularly “the stories of parents who are forced to choose between their children’s health and the financial well-being of their family . . . who have put off visits to the doctor and sacrifice their health to avoid losing their jobs.

Washington, D.C. and Milwaukee have followed San Francisco’s lead and adopted ordinances providing paid sick leave for workers.  And some states, California, New Jersey and Connecticut among them, have adopted similar though less extensive laws.

But what’s most needed is a federal law – a law that, if properly enforced, would grant sick leave pay to all workers, helping them, their families and anyone else who might be exposed to their illness.

It’s obviously the sensible thing to do.

 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

 

The way forward

Andrew Lam
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0
The way forward

sarah@sfbg.com

Two days before President Obama announced his plan to begin withdrawing 33,000 troops from Afghanistan over the next 15 months, Peace Action West’s political director Rebecca Griffin delivered a box containing thousands of toy soldiers to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office in downtown San Francisco.

Tied to each soldier were handwritten messages that gave reasons for demanding a large and swift withdrawal. Many of the petitions came from folks whose loved ones are in the military or are veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Unlike most Democratic Party leaders, Feinstein has not demanded a significant draw-down of combat troops, despite polls showing that Americans increasingly support leaving Afghanistan, particularly after the killing of Osama bin Laden. There’s good reason for the public’s growing restlessness. This 10-year war has already surpassed Vietnam as the longest conflict in U.S. history.

According to the online database icasualities.org, 1,637 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan and 4,463 soldiers have died in Iraq. Another 11,722 service members have been wounded in Afghanistan, and 32,100 in Iraq, primarily by improvised explosive devices. And that’s not counting the thousands who are suffering from depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and other ailments.

Griffin said her goal was to draw attention to the political organizing in support of ending the war. But even as she made her delivery, Feinstein was on MSNBC maintaining that draw-down decisions should be left to the military generals.

In the wake of President Obama’s June 22 announcement, which went way farther than the generals wanted, many of Feinstein’s colleagues such as Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the house minority leader, expressed disappointment that the pace of withdrawal isn’t quicker.

“I am glad this war is ending, but it’s ending at far too slow a pace,” Boxer said.

“We will continue to press for a better outcome,” Pelosi stated.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Concord), who visited the troops over Memorial Day weekend, told us that a different strategy is needed. “Our troops are incredible, dedicated, and skilled. But every minute of every day, they are in a very dangerous situation, and many of them are dying. There is no recognition that we are caught in the middle of a five-way civil war.”

And Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) vowed to offer defense appropriations amendments to cut all funding for combat operations. “History shows there is no military solution in Afghanistan,” she said. “We’ve got to engage with the Taliban and engage with those in the region to find some stability.”

But where does Obama’s plan leave the peace movement as the election nears?

Griffin said activists should take credit for getting Obama to withdraw 33,000 troops rather than the smaller number his generals wanted. She sees his plan as a sign that activists need to keep pushing for more, including a concrete timeline for when he will bring all the troops home.

Under Obama’s plan, 68,000 troops will still be on the ground in September 2012, and 2014 is identified as the deadline for completing the transition to Afghan control and ending the U.S.’s combat mission.

“This means there’ll be a significant military presence in Afghanistan for at least another three-and-a-half years,” Griffin said. “By the end of Obama’s first term, the war will be 11 years old and there will be nearly double the American troops on the ground as there were when [George W.] Bush left office.”

Progressive activist and author Norman Solomon, who is running in the 2012 race to replace Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Marin County), noted that a recent New York Times’ headline read “Obama Opts for Faster Afghan Pullout.”

“But faster than what?” Solomon said, noting that “10,000 troops are only 10 percent of our force. This is a pattern we saw in Iraq, where the withdrawal was too slow and the numbers remaining doubled when you factored in all the private contractors.”

Solomon said that when Nixon pulled 500,000 troops from Vietnam in the late 1960s, the conflict actually increased in terms of the tonnage of weaponry used. “And the U.S. is now engaged in wars in Libya, Yemen, and a Pakistan air war.”

But longtime antiwar activist and former Democratic state legislator Tom Hayden saw a number of clues in Obama’s speech for how to push for a faster, bigger, more significant draw-down.

“Obama said 33,000 troops will be withdrawn by next summer, followed by a steady pace of withdrawal. So that gets you to 50,000 troops by the election, and all combat troops out by 2014,” Hayden told us. “If he could be pushed by the peace movement, that would break the back of the warmongers’ planning.”

In his speech, Obama noted that the U.S. will host a summit with our NATO allies and partners to shape the next phase of this transition next May in Chicago, where Obama’s former chief of staff is mayor.

“Get ready, Rahm Emanuel, for big demonstrations,” warned Hayden, who was a member of the Chicago Seven group tried for inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. “But do you imagine Obama would do that if he were going to escalate the war? No — he’s wrapping a ribbon of unity to transfer control to Afghanistan on a timetable.”

He also noted that Obama’s allies aren’t exactly pushing him to stay. “They may not have an exit strategy, but they are heading for the exits,” Hayden said. “So if you organize demonstrations with international support, that gives you an organizational opportunity in multiple governments to press Obama to leave.”

Hayden predicts that Obama is moving toward a diplomatic settlement, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that is pro withdrawal and pro women.

“But Obama’s got a genuine problem of his own making. He escalated the damn war,” Hayden said. “He doesn’t want the military to be attacking his plan. But if he wants to be in the center, he’s going to offend the generals.

Hayden noted that in his speech Obama said, “America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home.” It was a statement that sounded in line with a recent U.S. Conference of Mayors resolution calling on Congress “to bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments.”

But Richard Becker, western regional coordinator of the antiwar ANSWER Coalition, described Obama’s draw-down as “a minimal pledge.”

“Given the growing discontent with the war, it’s hard to see how you can claim that this is a step forward,” he told us.

Becker said it has been difficult to mobilize the antiwar movement under a Democratic administration. He also stressed the importance of people coming out in San Francisco for a “protest, march, and die-in” on Oct. 7, the 10th anniversary of the war, and for a major action in Washington. D.C., on Oct. 6. “What’s going to get the U.S. out is a combination of what’s going on in Afghanistan — and what kind of antiwar movement we have here.”

Three good initiatives for the fall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editorial: Three good initiatives for the fall ballot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

DREAM Act would reduce deficit, strengthen military…and perhaps save the world

Mary Magee
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Last December, when the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act came up five votes short in the Senate, advocates began to worry that this seemingly modest piece of immigration reform, which offers a pathway to citizenship for undocumented youth who do well in college and/or serve in the military would not be able to get the necessary votes, even with Barack Obama as President. Rahm Emanuel, who served as Obama’s Chief of Staff up until last October, was reportedly criticized by some for allegedly not doing enough to support immigration reform. And frustration was high, as the community was forced to petition U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) each and every time they heard that a well-performing student, with no criminal record, like Steve Li or Mandeep was about to be sent to a country that they barely knew–taking their education and knowledge of the United States with them.

But six months later, the DREAMers (undocumented students who want to serve their adopted country) are refusing to take “no” for an answer. (In December, Steve Li won a reprieve, and last week ICE decided not to deport Mandeep, who was voted in high school as “most likely to save the world.” ) And now Emanuel, who was sworn in as Chicago’s mayor in May, is raising his voice in support of the DREAM Act, which Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who has been fighting for immigration reform for more than a decade, is sponsoring. And they are hoping to turn the tide and get Republicans to vote for legislation they say will reduce the deficit, build up the military and perhaps, by not deporting young U.S. trained geniuses, even save the world.

“The DREAM Act is consistent and reinforces the values of citizenship,” Emanuel said during a June 27 telephone call with reporters on the eve of the U.S. Senate’s first-ever hearing on the DREAM, which Durbin will chair June 28. “Having a DREAM Act pass at the national level will help us reinforce the right type of values,” Emanuel continued, noting that Colin Powell, a retired four-star general who was Secretary of State under President G.W. Bush, and Obama’s retiring Sec. of Defense Robert Gates, both support Durbin’s bill

Rahm was joined by Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Margaret Stock, a former professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in arguing that the DREAM Act will stimulate the economy and benefit themilitary, by allowing thousands of top-performing U.S.-educated youth to give back to their adopted country rather than face deportation to countries they barely remember, where they could fall victim of forces that don’t have America’s interests at heart.

As former head of Chicago Public Schools, Duncan said he met plenty of students who “happened not to be born in America” but had excelled in public schools, only to find the door slammed shut, when it was time to go to college. “We need to summon the courage and political will to do the right thing for our country,” he said.

Duncan pointed to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Vargas, whose story about his life as an undocumented immigrant was turned down by the Washington Post, before the New York Times magazine published it this weekend. “How many other Pulitzer Prize winners are there out there?” he asked.

And former West Point professor Margaret Stock explained that many of the DREAMers have great potential as military recruits, but are barred from enlisting, even though some of them try to anyway, under the current system.  “They are patriotic, honorable and want to serve the country,” Stock said.

Some of these potential recruits won’t qualify, because they have asthma or physical impairments, Stock noted. But she predicted that those that do, will do very well, based on a Pentagon study that showed that legal immigrants who enlist outperform U.S. citizens. And that, Stock added, could help fill the recruitment gap that is coming, as the economy recovers, and the U.S.-born population continues to age.

Records show that the military hasn’t had any difficulty meeting its goals since the economy tanked, a few years ago. But Stock predicted that the U.S. Armed Forces will face a difficult recruitment climate, as the recession ends. Unless the DREAM Act, which would dramatically enlarge the number of potential military recruits, passes.  “It would allow us to tap into a pool of homegrown talent that is highly motivated to join,” she said.

Asked what the point of the June 28 hearing is, given that the Republican votes for the DREAM Act still don’t seem to be there, Secretary Duncan, who will testify June 28 on behalf of the DREAM Act with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and Clifford Stanley, the Pentagon Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness, replied,” to continue to raise awareness and build a groundswell of support.”

“I don’t think anyone has given up hope that we can do the right thing,” Stock added. “What may have changed is the serious talk about reducing the debt. “
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According to a December 2010 Congressional Budget Office report, enacting the DREAM Act would save an estimated $1.3 billion over the next ten years. Supporters say that in addition to helping the military, the legislation would help fill 3 million job vacancies in the fields of stem cell, science and mathematics.
And as Stock pointed out, it makes no sense to deport large numbers of U.S. educated youth to foreign countries, where they risk being recruited to work for foreign governments against the U.S.’s best interests.

Asked whether new military recruits are really needed, now that Obama has announced a troop draw down in Afghanistan, Stock said that taking troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq doesn’t really reduce the global situation. “We constantly face crises in which we need the intervention of the U.S. military,” Stock said.

“We’re not turning into an era of full peace, and we expect to see a ten percent decline in pool of eligible recruits,” she said, noting that 35 percent of the U.S. citizens who sign up for the military fail medical fitness tests, another 18 percent fail because of drug and alcohol abuse, and 5 percent have criminal conduct problems.

“So, a crisis is coming, even with the draw down,” Stock continued, noting that the population of legal green card holders remains “relatively flat” even as the numbers of those who are legally here but can’t get a green card, and the numbers of those without documents but willing to serve, grows.

Stock noted that when you deport young people to countries they barely know and where they have no social safety net, they are in danger of being recruited by folks who might be at cross purposes with the United States. “The rise of MS-13 is directly related to our deportations to Central America,” Stock said. “The gang became their social network.”

Stock acknowledged that DREAM Act eligible students are “highly educated, high quality Americanized people,” and aren’t likely to become members of a gang. But they could be of interest to foreign militaries and intelligence organizations, she warned.

Asked how many non-citizens who are in the U.S. legally enlist in the military each year, Stock said about 9,000 non-citizens. But she noted that while documented non-citizens can join the military, they are however barred from becoming officers or attending West Point. “Most jobs are not open to them,” she said.  In other words, the DREAM Act doesn’t change the military’s requirements. But it would allow a much bigger number of non-citizens to join the military and eventually become citizens, which, in turn, would open more doors to them in the military, too.

And so ended the press conference ahead of Tuesday’s first-ever Senate hearing on the DREAM Act, which reportedly is being held in a large hearing room to accommodate at least 200 student supporters, including the daughter of a family of Albanian immigrants who was valedictorian of her Michigan high school class and is currently fighting deportation.

“These are young people who have that kind of exciting look in their eyes that they want to be part of the world,” Durbin, whose mother was a Lithuanian immigrant, recently said. “But they can’t make that first move toward the life that they want to live because they are undocumented.”

Predictably, the DREAM Act is being used as a recruiting tool for conservative groups, who argue that the DREAM is tantamount to amnesty for folks whose parents broke the law. These groups are already battling state-level Dream Act legislation in Maryland, which does not provide a pathway to citizenship but provides in-state tuition for qualified undocumented students. But a poll from Opinion Research Corporation in June 2010 found that 70 percent of likely voters support the DREAM, including 60 percent of Republican likely voters.

With the next election already looming, DREAMers aren’t likely to let up the pressure any time soon…so this could be an interesting political ride. Let’s hope it ends well for all the young people who are currently stuck in the middle of this Catch 22-like situation.
 

Keep San Francisco odd!

Zelda Bronstein
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2
Keep San Francisco odd!

The Redistricting Commission maps will be finalized in the next few weeks, and the big news for San Francisco is the loss of a state Senate seat. (That, and the fact that the Assembly and Senate may both become more centrist, thanks to the new lines and the top-two primary system.) You can check out the maps here.


There’s not a lot anyone can do about the loss of the Senate seat; the population growth in California is in the Central Valley and the Southland. But there’s another story that San Franciscans need to pay attention to, and it’s all about numbers. Odd and even numbers.


Here’s how it works:


San Francisco now has two senators, Leland Yee and Mark Leno. Leno represents the East side and Marin, Yee the West side and parts of San Mateo. Leno’s district is Number 3; Yee’s is Number 8.


Yee’s term runs until 2014, Leno’s until 2012.


The commission hasn’t put numbers on all the new districts yet. But the way the law works, if the new Senate district has an even number, then Yee stays in office — reopresenting his current district — until 2014 (unless he gets elected mayor), Leno’s gone in 2012 and can’t run for the new seat until 2014. Which means for two years, half of San Francisco has no representation in the state Senate.


On the other hand, if the district gets an odd number, Leno runs again in 2012 for what will be his seat, Yee either gets electred mayor this fall (in which case there’s a special election for his seat) or he stays in office until 2014 (when he would be termed out anyway) and for the next three years, San Francisco still has two senators.


Remember that among Leno’s East side constituents are a disproportionate number of people of color, low-income people and LGBT people. That simple decision — on a seat number — could cut them out of representation.


For the record: This isn’t about Leno vs. Yee. If we had to choose one of the two of them for our state Senator, I suspect I’d go with Leno — but that’s not going to happen. It’s Yee AND Leno or Yee alone.


And it’s not about saving Leno’s seat, either. If he gets the bad number, he’ll find something else to do — Gov. Brown needs help, Nancy Pelosi’s going to retire soon, the filing deadline for the mayor’s office isn’t until August … if you like Leno, he’ll still be around. If you don’t like him, he’ll still be around.


It’s a question of the better deal for the city, and an odd number is clearly the better deal. The commission is having a hearing at Fort Mason June 27, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., so it might be worth showing up and saying: Keep San Francisco odd!


 


So an even-number designation screws the poorer half of San Francisco — and an odd-number designation hurts nobody.

Feinstein gets box of toy soldiers, as Obama prepares to announce troop draw down

Mary Magee
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1

As Obama prepares to announce a troop drawdown this week, Peace Action West’s political director Rebecca Griffin delivered a box of thousands of toy soldiers, each attached to a petition for a swift withdrawal of U.S troops from Afghanistan, to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco office on Monday afternoon. Unlike many Democratic senators, Feinstein has not publicly demanded a rapid drawdown.

Griffin said the goal of collecting the messages, attaching them to toy soldiers and delivering them to Feinstein was to draw attention to the organizing that is happening to end the war, which reportedly is costing $2 billion a week. Many of the messages attached to the soldiers came from folks with family in the military.

A representative from Feinstein’s office accepted the delivery in the foyer of the Post Street building where Feinstein’s office is located. But Feinstein continues to support deferring draw down timetables to Gen. David Petraeus, based on comments she made on MSNBC that her press secretary Tom Mentzer referred the Guardian to on Monday, when we asked if Feinstein supports a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Asked by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, what Obama should do, perhaps this week, when he makes a decision as to how quickly to draw down, Feinstein said Monday that she had had a brief discussion with Petraeus. [Obama nominated Petraeus last June to succeed General Stanley McChrystal, after McChrystal was fired for comments he made to Rolling Stone magazine, which included dismissing the counter terrorism strategy that Vice President Joe Biden was advocating as “shortsighted,” saying it would lead to a state of “Chaos-istan” and showing a lack of respect for civilian leadership. Petraeus intends to retire in September, and Obama plans to nominate him as the next CIA director.]

“What General Petraeus said is, ‘Look, I will give him several options. I may make a recommendation. And then the President will decide,’” Feinstein told MSNBC. “My own view is that this right now is a primarily—should be a military decision.”

Feinstein noted that she is bothered by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s reaction. [Presumably, Feinstein was referring to comments Karzai made on the weekend, when he stated that the Nato-led coalition forces are “here for their own purposes, for their own goals, and they’re using our soil for that.” Last month, Karzai threatened to denounce the coalition as occupiers if they did not stop attacks on Afghan homes, after an airstrike killed civilians, many of them children.]

“I’m really very bothered by President Karzai’s reaction to it,” Feinstein told MSNBC. “That is negative to our troops over there. You know, our people have died essentially so that his country might be secure. I think this is a real problem: to have a President of a country that you are trying to help to stabilize, to get rid of al Qaeda, to see the Taliban doesn’t take over the country, and to receive a comment like that from the President of the country. But I think the President will make a decision—we can all guess, but none of us really know—to begin removing the troops. How big, I can’t say.”

Feinstein’s comments came shortly after Obama’s Sec of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged that the U.S is negotiating with the Taliban—an acknowledgement that only came after President Karzai publicly said that the US is in talks with the Taliban.

Asked if she’d like to see a more rapid withdrawal than the 5,000 troops originally suggested, and if she thought with Osama bin Laden’s recent death, and with al Qaeda diminished in Afghanistan, there’s a justification to begin drawing down more rapidly, Feinstein said, “There is a justification,” but she left viewers with a question.

“I don’t want to see what has been a turnaround, in the words of Petraeus, ‘still fragile’ destroyed,” Feinstein said. “I think there have been major inroads made in Afghanistan. Particularly in the south and now the plan is to go east. So that to me is the crux of the decision. How do you begin a significant rollback of troops without destroying the forward momentum that has been made by the surge?”

It’s been 18 months since Obama first ordered a surge of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan. And even if he withdraws the surge, there would still be about 70,000 American troops on the ground. And according to the Department of Defense’s website, there are currently 1.425 million active service members in the U.S. military.

Those statistics brings us back to Peace Action West’s Rebecca Grifffin, who noted during Monday’s action that because there is no draft, there is more of a disconnect from and less of an outcry about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, then there was about Vietnam. “Because there is no longer a draft, the public is not as touched, as they were by Vietnam,” she said.

As of Dec. 2010, there were 103,700 coalition soldiers in Afghanistan, according to DoD numbers. This means Obama has sent an additional 72,300 soldiers to Afghanistan since Dec. 2008, when Bush left office. Obama has significantly reduced troop levels in Iraq—drawing down their numbers from 178,300 in Dec. 2008 to 85,600 in Dec. 2010—but though there is a large military presence still in place, folks are fretting about the safety of those remaining troops as they try to pack up and leave Iraq in the coming years.

So far, there have been 4,408 military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which began March 19, 2003, 36 military deaths in Iraq’s Operation New Dawn, which began Sept. 1, 2010, and 1,590 deaths in Afghanistan’s Operation Enduring Freedom, which began Oct. 7, 2001.

That’s 6.034 deaths in total–a huge loss in terms of the families and communities that have been impacted by these soldiers’ deaths.

And then there are the 11,722 soldiers who were wounded in Afghanistan, the 31, 928, wounded in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the 172 wounded in Iraq’s Operation New Dawn, And that’s not factoring in the impact and cost of dealing—and not dealing–with post-traumatic stress disorder. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, 50,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars received a new PTSD diagnosis between 2002 and 2008, but fewer than 10-30 percent, particularly under 25-year-old males, completed a course of treatment sessions.

So, members of Congress are increasingly hearing from their constituents about the impacts of soldiers who were killed, maimed and/or are suffering from PTSD, especially as the recession threatens to translates into cuts to benefits and programs for veterans. And following the May 1 U.S. raid that led to Osama bin Laden being killed in Pakistan, there has been a big uptick in congressional support for a withdrawal, according to Griffin who spends a fair amount of time in Washington, D.C.

“A lot of people are using the raid as their starting point,’ Griffin said, pointing to the House of Representatives May 26 vote, where a measure which would have required Obama to develop an exit strategy for the war in Afghanistan with a clear end date and report back to Congress, only narrowly failed, winning 42 more votes than a similar amendment last year, and with a score of Republicans siding with the Democrats.

And in mid- June 16, a bipartisan group of senators wrote Obama, urging him to use his self-imposed July troop draw down deadline as an opportunity to begin a “sizable and sustained” draw down of troops that puts the U.S. on a path toward removing all regular combat troops from the country. But while a third of the Senate spoke out in that letter, and its signatories included Dem leaders Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, and Barbara Boxer, and a host of moderate Democrats and Republicans, it did not include Feinstein.

U.S. military officials have voiced concern that a rapid withdrawal of troops could undercut gains in southern Afghanistan, a traditional Taliban stronghold. And Feinstein certainly seems to share those worries. “It took 10 years and for the first time we now have a turnaround,” Feinstein, who is the Chair of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee, told reporters earlier this month. “I would like to not telescope what we are going to do; wait and see a little bit more about what happens. I think it’s important candidly to keep all our options open.”

In face of comments like this, Griffin and Peace Action West’s field organizers have spent the last two months collecting toy soldiers and messages to attach to them, with the help of an online outreach effort that they launched in May.“Part of it is to create a physical reminder of the public’s opposition to war. People talk about wanting their family members to come home, Griffin said, pointing to the handwritten messages that are attached to each toy soldiers. “Some politicians are saying, ‘Give them a little more time.’ But the casualties are going up each month, and last month was the deadliest for Afghan civilians on record. So, while Defense Secretary Gates, who is very invested in his counter insurgent strategy, is doing his farewell tour, the troops are asking, do we get to come home sooner because Osama bin Laden is dead?”

Griffin observed that DoD statistics show that double and triple amputations due to IEDs (improvised explosive devices) have increased, and that PTSD levels continue to rise as veterans return, yet it’s not clear that at-risk veterans are getting the help they need.

“There’s been a perception shift about Afghanistan,” Griffin continued, noting that it’s been going on for almost a decade, and that pressure from the public and Congress will make it more difficult for Obama to not follow suit.

But while Griffin is clearly against the war in Afghanistan, she believes there are alternative ways for the U.S. to be productively engaged. These include playing a role in regional diplomacy with Iran, Russia and Iraq, helping facilitate political negotiations with Afghan, and partnering with the Afghan people on development projects that help.

“But that does not include giving money to the military to build stuff because then it becomes a Taliban target,” Griffin explained.

Noting that Sen. Boxer has suggested drawing down the troops by 30,000 and Congressmember Barbara Lee has advocated reducing the troops by 50,000, Griffin believes that Obama’s July decision is very important in terms of setting the debate about when we are going to get out of Afghanistan entirely.

‘Will it be 2014, or much longer?” Griffin asked.

She believes the coming election season will help tip the balance, especially since recent polls show the American public supports a troop withdrawal, especially in the wake of the Osama raid. “But if there aren’t strong actions, it will fester and will risk getting bogged down,” she said, warning folks that they also focus on making sure that reduced military budgets don’t translate into cuts to veterans benefits and pay. “

A lot of people who are uncomfortable with what’s going on, don’t know what to do,” Griffin said, explaining that she is looking for people who want to end the war, and is urging them to visit Peace Action West’s website to learn about things that they can do,that they feel comfortable with. “We want people to know that even though it might seem hopeless, there’s a lot they can do.”

And with that Griffin shared with me a list of some of the reasons Californians gave when asked why they want to end the war:

“My nephew wants to come home.”

“I want my friend to be able to raise his son.”

“My ex-boyfriend never came back alive from Iraq. He was even against the war. And America is generally unhappy (to be mild) about our ‘fight’ still going on.”

“I want my legs back.”

“I have a good friend who is just back from Afghanistan and is suffering from PTSD. He is 22 years old. Stop doing this to young people.”

“If we can’t afford Medicare, then we can’t afford bombs.”

“Because my brother has been deployed several times and he has a family at home.”

“Stop because my son is in there for six years.”

“My brother has been to Iraq three times. The first time he was in the army for six months. We train football players longer than that.”

“My 21-year-old grandson was just sent with his army unit to the front lines in Afghanistan. Every day we wonder if he will come home alive and uninjured. And for what? Why does the U.S. have to police the entire world?”

All good questions and reasons as Obama prepares to tell the nation how many soldiers he plans to withdraw in July–and when the rest of them and their families can expect to see them come home….

Summertime Fernet-drinking just got its video anthem

Andrew Lam
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5
Summertime Fernet-drinking just got its video anthem

There was a time when ordering a shot of Fernet Branca was weird, when your friends would screw up their faces (if they actually knew what the stuff is) and waft a glass of Cuervo under your nose: “now this is a shot!”

Oh hold up, that’s actually still how it is – but at least now you have a dope song featuring a legit San Francisco soul legend to bawl back at the haters when they’re questioning your libation election.

I’m (half) joking – Fernet has long been the officially official “we’re in San Francisco!” weirdo drink for weirdos — who run this town, of course. We’ve been drinking it since Italian immigrants lugged it through Angel Island in their suitcases – straight on through Prohibition in fact. Branca ducked the judging gaze of teetotalers by being sold in pharmacies as medicinal elixir. 

But the modern day craze, well that’s something else. I was recently down in Buenos Aires, where they drink even more than we do (mixed with Coca Cola, in their case) – but even the porteños knew that San Francisco drinks hella Fernet Branca – we take down a quarter of the entire country’s total consumption, by some counts. 

If you’re going to point fingers anywhere for the current renaissance, you may as well jab them at DJs Doc Fu and Pause of the Red Wine crew.

Aaron “Pause” Vaughn says he was first introduced to Fernet back in 1995 by Hobson’s Choice bartender Chris Dickerson. Back then, it was the after hours drink of choice for the service industry set. Red Wine started drinking it paired with pints of Guinness at all its gigs, and members haven’t looked back. 

“I know the Red Wine crew and affiliated converts like it because it settles your stomach after a Mission burrito or a harrowing bike ride through the City,” Pause tells me in an interview over the Internets. “The Red Wine DJs have been notorious for drinking and pilfering bottles of the stuff at gigs for years.”

“We’ve been drinking it since we were kids in the club,” says Bruce O’Leary, who spins hip hop, soul, and eclectic booty-shakers throughout the city under the moniker of Doc Fu. “It wasn’t a thing. The bartenders we worked with were like ‘we’ve got this stuff in.’ And I was like ‘I’ll drink it.’ It was like a secret handshake.” 

But what started as an after hours drink for the cool kids started become the all hours drink for the cool kids – at least for Doc Fu, who started to “go to the bar and be like ‘yo, I need a shot of Fernet and Guinness like, right now.’”

And just like that, it wasn’t just the industry set anymore. “The other night I saw a guy on a ten speed with a sipper [of Fernet] in his back pocket,” says Doc Fu. 

High time the brew (comprised of a million ingredients culled from sources on multiple continents, reputably suitable for defeating hangovers, assuaging menstrual pains, or bonding with your Argentinian buddies) had an anthem.

And one night, gathering together drinking supplies from Safeway for a gig opening for Mistah F.A.B., the Red Wine boys hit upon it: “I Drink Fernet.” 

“You know how in Safeway they play random shit?” remembers Doc Fu. A mellow ’80s jam came over the tinny loudspeakers as the Red Wine crew was dealing with a store clerk who kept trying to sell them champagne instead of their desired bottle of Italian bitters. They started subbing out the lyrics to ones that were more appropriate for the situation at hand.

The result was too good to leave in the grocery aisle. Pause recorded the song with Equipto a few years ago, and even got Michael Marshall to do the hook. Marshall was part of the ’80s Berkeley group Timex Social Club and will forever go down in history for singing the hook for the Luniz’ “I Got Five On It.” Recently he’s been popping up all over, including in Equipto’s must-bump for SF summer 2011.  “Pause got Mike Marshall on the phone. I was like, the San Francisco soul legend? Why don’t you just call up Deangelo,” Doc Fu remembers. 

The crew recently released a video for “I Drink Fernet”, which they filmed at Haight Street bar Nickie’s with a little help from the amiable publicity reps at Fernet Branca. “Fernet showed up to the video shoot with four or five magnums. They’re incredibly nice folks by the way. It was a pretty fun night,” says Doc Fu. Pause phrases the night a little differently: “during the video shoot everyone got sloppy on Fernet.”

The videos making the rounds through SF drinkers now, which has Doc Fu joking about what the next round’s gonna be. “We should do a whole EP about liquor song, a song about Jameson, a song about pony kegs. Everyone loves liquor songs. Somebody today is having their first drink.”

And that’s what makes this city great. Perfect, now I’m thirsty. Pass that weird shit they only drink in San Francisco, and turn up my song. 

 

Wild is the wind

Andrew Lam
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0
Wild is the wind

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO “I remember the last time I saw Nina Simone, it was just after the Bush-Gore election fiasco. She was maaad,” graciously loquacious jazz chanteuse Kim Nalley told me over the phone when I asked her about the High Priestess of Soul’s relevance today. “Here was this woman who had been there through so many stages of the civil rights struggle, fought for voting rights in Mississippi, been there through all of that — and then to hear about black communities, Jewish communities, where the votes just disappeared …

“Well, she wasn’t having any of that. She told us we had to always keep up the fight, keep the fire going, and never let go. What was gained in one generation could be completely wiped out in the next. And all the while she was playing the most spellbinding music. I think that’s her angle on now”

Golden-voiced and full of fierceness, Ms. Nalley, a longtime (but not too long) Bay Area phenom and former owner of Jazz at Pearl’s in North Beach, intends to keep that message alive for five straight weeks at the Rrazz Room — and sing the sugar out of a Nina Simone set list that runs to 44 songs, augmented with tales of the activist diva’s life and accomplishments. If just thinking about doing all that makes you draw a breath, add in that Nalley is finishing up her Ph.D. in history at UC Berkeley, teaching jazz to grade school kids, and preparing to embark on a string of international tours and recording projects. Plus she’s catching up on all four seasons of Mad Men. Did I mention she’s gorgeous and actually exists?

She’s also well aware of the hold almighty Nina still exerts on the dancefloor imagination — from the famous, or infamous, Verve Remixed series of the early ’00s, to more recent sample-based efforts like those of Massive Attack, Gui Boratto, Ark, and this spring’s rather unfortunate minimal-tech hit “Sinnerman 2011” by Sean Miller and Daniel Dubb, which apparently took two people to make. (Civilization has so far escaped an Auto-Tuned strip-rap version of “See-Line Woman” or Deadmau5’s “Young Gifted and Black” but I could easily see Nicki Minaj as all “Four Women” at once.)

“You hear these newer versions of her, but some can sound so dated so quickly,” Kim said. “The originals never stop being fresh, alive. There’s nothing wrong with introducing her to new audiences in different ways. But Nina has always been with us, right there, so go out and hear her actual music, already.” *

SHE PUT A SPELL ON ME: THE MUSIC OF NINA SIMONE

Through July 17, Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.,

Sundays, 7 p.m., $30–$37.50

Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko

222 Mason, SF

www.therrazzroom.com

 

TRANNYSHACK: HEKLINA’S BIRTHDAY

The highest hog in dragland turns 103, and this night of greatest hits command performances will be an over-the-top trashtacular. Plus: Justin V. Bond from New York City, and probably some light rimming.

Fri/17, 9:30 p.m.–-3 a.m., $12–>$15. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.trannyshack.com

 

PRECOMPRESSION

It’s that time, again — time for the Burning Man gear-up and things that sound like this: “We invite you to live out this year’s theme in ways that manifest your personal journey.” I’m gonna be a pizza! Put it on the pizza! Put it on the pizza! It’s all good. With a holy helluva lot of DJs, theme installations, and fun-fur coughs.

Sat/18, 8 p.m.–4 a.m., $15 in “Playa finery,” $20 without. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

FLYING SAUCER BEACH PARTY

What do you get when you mix big-headed invaders, a slew of hot bodies, a ton of zombie-Martian makeup, and the “Hand Jive”? No, not Weinergate II: Night of the Living Tweets. Culturally invaluable burlesque crew Hubba Hubba Revue and a slew of groovy ghoulies play beach blanket bingo — but with laser guns! — at this ginchy all-day dress-up-and-rock-out bash.

Sun/16, 2 p.m.-8 p.m., $10 before 3 p.m., $12 after. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.hubbahubbarevue.com

Dick Meister: The battle of our generation

Maria Poblet
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0

 

President Bob King of the United Auto Workers union is proving again that he’s one of our most astute labor leaders, a worthy occupant of the position once held by the legendary Walter Reuther.

King’s latest column in Solidarity, the UAW’s official magazine, certainly proves that. King writes about the severe weakening of the union rights that are supposedly guaranteed all working people – the right to organize. King calls that “the first amendment for workers.”

That basic and essential right was granted U.S. workers by the National Labor Relations Act – the NLRA – that was enacted in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal measures that were designed in part to pull the country out of the Great Depression.

But now, says UAW President King, the NLRA’s basic process for determining whether workers want to organize – having them vote for or against unionization – is “fatally flawed.” King says the National Labor Relations Board ­–­ the NLRB – which is charged with enforcing the NLRA, does not do that – “does not protect workers’ right to organize.”

Workers’ lack of adequate legal protection is not a new development, as King notes. It’s been a serious problem for several decades. Since the 1970s, employers have been allowed to hire anti-union consultants “to design sophisticated ways to intimidate workers trying to organize.”

Boy, have they. Supervisors are trained to put pressure on individual workers to vote against unionizing. Workers are forced to attend meetings where they are warned of the dire consequences they’ll face if they vote for unionizing. Employers threaten to close down if their employees vote for a union. Union supporters are commonly disciplined, sometimes fired. And employer lawyers “find thousands of excuses for delaying elections. “

King needn’t look beyond his own union for examples of the NLRB’s ineffectiveness against the dictatorial actions of employers against unions. He could cite hundreds of cases involving the UAW.

For instance, last August, six years after the UAW lost a union election by just three votes at a facility in North Carolina, the NLRB finally ordered a new election “because the employer violated the law in more than a dozen ways.” The violations included threatening to do away with the jobs held by union supporters, spying on workers’ meetings and interrogating workers about union activity.

By now, however, all 25 members of the union’s organizing committee have left for other jobs, most union supporters have been fired, laid off or quit. And the new election still hasn’t been scheduled.

Another example involves a California facility. Seventy percent of the workers there signed union membership cards, but were so intimidated by management that only 19 workers out of 161 dared vote for UAW representation.

King says the union is “returning to its roots of direct action on behalf of workers rights.” Which is no small matter, given the UAW’s influential position within the labor movement.

The union is demanding that “all corporations, whether American or foreign-owned, allow their workers to freely decide whether to organize.”

King calls that “the battle of our generation,” as it surely is. He says “the battle for the First Amendment right to organize will determine the survival of the labor movement. It is the mission of our generation of trade unionists to secure these rights for future generations. We must win this fight for our children and grandchildren.”

King and other UAW officers are going to “call upon each and every member to give some time – perhaps two hours a week – to participate in public demonstrations for the First Amendment.”

The union also will be seeking the support of workers and their unions in other countries, since the UAW is dealing with companies whose owners are in Japan, Korea and Germany and whose products are sold worldwide. The UAW will in turn support the struggles of foreign workers for union rights in their countries, as part of “the global fight to force corporations to respect workers’ right to organize.”

It’s important to remember the UAW’s crucial role in helping establish a true middle class in this country through its organizing of the auto industry. That led workers in other industries to also demand – and get – decent wages, benefits and working conditions.

UAW President King thinks his union can lead the way again, this time to reforms that will protect and expand the union rights that the autoworkers and others won seven decades ago. Those are the rights that had so much to do with the rise of a true middle class, whose standing is now endangered by the anti-union onslaughts of employers and their government allies.

 

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 300 of his columns.

 

The Sacramento nightmare

Zelda Bronstein
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2
The Sacramento nightmare

The best-case scenario, Brian at Calitics says, is still very dicey:


Somehow, Jerry manages to find the few votes that he needs for the so-called “tax bridge” and then we head to the ballot in September.  Yes, September.  What is certain to be a pretty low turnout election, we somehow have to make people understand just how important this revenue really is. And that isn’t going to be easy.


The good news is that the Democrats in the state Senate and Assembly are much more in agreement on blocking some of the worst cuts. The bad news, my sources tell me, is that Brown will not back down from his insistence that any new taxes go to a vote of the people.


It’s going to be tricky to get a single GOP vote for even short-term tax extensions (or even for putting tax extensions on the ballot). But if he manages to do that, somehow, the Gov still has to figure out where he’s going to get the millions of dollars it will take to win a low-turnout September election that will favor the conservative side. Who’s going to pay for this?


Not looking good, Jerry.


 

Behind the all-smiles budget

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Behind the all-smiles budget

news@sfbg.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

THE GOOD NEWS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

THE BAD NEWS

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hall blasts Treasure Island deal

Mary Magee
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27
Hall blasts Treasure Island deal

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

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

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

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

Vote your vote away

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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14
Vote your vote away

The article has been changed from the print version to correct an error.

In a surprising move that is causing a strong backlash from progressives and other groups that have won important reforms at the ballot box, Sup. Scott Wiener is pushing a charter amendment that would allow the Board of Supervisors to change or repeal voter-approved ballot measures years after they become law.

If voters approve Wiener’s charter amendment, among the most vulnerable reforms may be tenant protections such as limitations on rent increases, relocation assistance for no-fault tenant removal, and owner move-in eviction limits, to name a few.

The Rules Committee heard concerned testimony about the proposal May 19 and opted to hold off on voting to send it to the full board for approval until the next meeting on June 2 to allow for more public comment.

If approved, the amendment will be on the November ballot, although the public may be confused about why such an amendment would be on the ballot in the first place. The measure covers ordinances and resolutions that were placed on the ballot by supervisors, and Wiener has said he plans to amend the measure to exempt those placed on the ballot by voter petition. Changes to taxes or bonds are not a part of the amendment because those are required by state law to go to the ballot box.

Paradoxically, Wiener’s reasoning for the proposal is that he believes voters are bogged down with too many ballot measures with complex issues that need changes, measures he claims the board could deal with more efficiently. But critics say it makes progressive reforms vulnerable to attack by a board that is heavily influenced by big-money interests.

At the committee meeting, about a dozen people spoke in opposition to the amendment, saying it seemed broad in scope and would be a more appropriate change at the state level.

Matthias Mormino, a legislative aide to Sup. Jane Kim, who chairs the Rules Committee, said that his boss is still on the fence. “She has concerns and hasn’t made up her mind yet.”

Currently California is one of the last states where a voter-approved initiative cannot be subject to veto, amendment, or repeal, except by the voters.

“It’s not a radical thing,” Wiener told the Guardian about the proposed amendment. “My thinking is that we should do our jobs. We elect public officials to make decisions every week. I wanted to strike a balance where the voters still have a strong say.”

But how strong of a say will the voting public have in cases where voter-approved initiatives are changed by the decisions of a board of politicians with their own influences and bias?

Wiener stated that he had no specific initiatives in mind when he decided to propose the amendment nor was he targeting any kind of legislation, except ones that are “outdated.” Wiener cited an example of updating campaign consultant reporting from quarterly to monthly as a change that needed to happen but could seemingly be a nuisance at the ballot box.

He is proposing a tiered system in which, for the first three years, an initiative is untouchable. In four years, a two-thirds majority vote by the board could make changes to initiatives; after seven years, a simple majority could do so. That means a raft of tenant measures approved in the 1990s could come under immediate attack.

“Does he not like our sick-leave policy?” Sup. John Avalos told us. “It’s so vague and unclear on what he is trying to do. I’m afraid that he is trying to change laws that are popular with the voters. It’s not a democratic way to resolve policy issues.”

Calvin Welch, a longtime progressive and housing activist, has his own theory on Wiener’s proposal. “Voters don’t have a big problem discerning which ones they agree with and which ones they don’t,” he said about voter-approved initiatives.

He did the number-crunching and concluded that of the 983 policy ordinances on the books, 207 (21 percent) were policy initiatives. Of those, 102 (about 10 percent) were approved by the voters.

“Not quite overwhelming the ballot,” Welch said. “The argument that what is promoting this — the inundation of the initiatives — is not borne of the facts.”

Welch believes Wiener is targeting certain landlord and tenant issues that date back to 1978, when San Francisco voters first started adopting rent control measures. “That is what the agenda is all about — roughly 30 measures that deal with rent control and growth control,” he said.

Wiener denies this is an attack on tenants, and claims he doesn’t have a specific agenda in mind. “This is long-term reform, not immediate gratification reform. To take the big, big step, we would have to change state law. This is just a modest first step.”

Welch also took issue with the idea of “election proportionality,” calling the measure an undemocratic power grab since many initiatives in San Francisco’s history were approved with more than 200,000 votes.

“Mayors don’t get 200,000 votes — these measures do,” Welch said. “That a body can overrule thousands of voters undermines the election process of San Francisco. Why not limit government actors instead of the people? It’s about what Sup. Wiener wants to change.”

Budget set-asides have long been a target for legislators, explained Chelsea Boilard, a budget analyst with Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. Historically in San Francisco, moderate politicians have mostly honed in on social service programs, not those with a lot of clout and political backing, like police and fire budgets. Although the Children’s Fund, which was set up by a charter amendment, would be exempt, other social program priorities set by voters could be eroded.

“The reality is that the police and fire departments don’t have to go to City Hall every year to defend their budgets, but health and human services do,” Boilard said.

While many on the left would love for the California Legislature to have the authority to make changes in the property-tax-limiting Proposition 13 — like by removing commercial property from being taxed at artificially low levels — activists see real danger in Wiener’s measure.

“I think this is bad policy. I know folks are frustrated with Prop. 13, for example, and wish it was easier to amend or repeal. But the way he’s going about this is odd to me,” political activist Karen Babbitt told us. “For one thing, it appears to apply to retroactively to existing ordinances and policy declarations.”

Babbitt also cites legal research indicating that Wiener’s proposal might contradict state law and be subject to legal challenge if it passes. Plus, that challenge could come from any direction since it would allow liberal and conservative reforms to be challenged by the board.

One proposition that would fall under Wiener’s amendment is Proposition L, the sit-lie ordinance approved last year that prohibits sitting or lying on public sidewalks between 7 am and 11 p.m. After a divisive campaign against the measure, police began enforcing it in April. In three years and with enough votes by the board, the board could repeal a law that Wiener supports.

“It’s really interesting,” said Bob-Offer Westort, a civil rights organizer with the San Francisco Coalition of Homelessness. “I have a lot of questions. I guess it cuts both ways. We’d like to see the aggressive panhandling law changed. We’d like to see the sit-lie repealed. There are definitely things, with the right composition of the board, we would benefit from. And there are things that we would not want to see changed.”

Either way, the measure could result in some divisive fights at the board. “One person presenting this as a way to get it done is not the answer,” Avalos said. “I worry that he will use the amendment to dismantle certain voter-approved laws.”

SFBG Radio: The hopeless GOP hopefuls

Zelda Bronstein
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Is there anyone in the Republican presidential field who can actually win both the primaries and the general election? Could we be facing another Texas governor trying for the White House? Check out the discussion after the jump.

NoHopeGOP by endorsements2010

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