Ethics Commission

Deleting accountability

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› amanda@sfbg.com

Public records are coming in pretty handy these days. Congress is using them to investigate the relationship between the Republican National Committee and the firing of eight attorneys general, and as with many investigations that use documents to uncover malfeasance, some key documents are missing — in this case Karl Rove e-mails.

It seems Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office also has a penchant for the delete key, according to findings of the city’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. Two complaints brought by citizens have been heard by the task force regarding how the mayor’s daily calendar is kept — or isn’t kept — and what happened to e-mails that disappeared after they were requested by a member of the public.

"We found there was willful and ongoing violations and destruction of records," task force chair Doug Comstock told the Guardian.

Staff in the Mayor’s Office say they didn’t do anything wrong and no willful destruction of public records has occurred. According to Joe Arellano of the Mayor’s Office of Communications, the e-mails — invitations sent out for the mayor’s Jan. 13 District 1 community policy forum — were purged because they were temporary.

"We have such a huge e-mail system, we have to delete e-mails that are transitory. These, to us, were the same kind of e-mails," Arellano said.

The case is on hold awaiting further information regarding the city’s capability to retrieve purged electronic documents and will be heard again by the task force. But the larger issue is whether Newsom is intentionally keeping his calendar a secret, in violation of city law.

The Mayor’s Office only makes public Newsom’s so-called Prop. G calendar, named for a 1999 ballot measure expanding the Sunshine Ordinance and explicitly making the mayor’s schedule a public record. It’s a stripped-down version of his list of appointments, often with only a couple events per day.

The Mayor’s Office has argued that Newsom’s complete calendar can’t be made public, citing security and privacy concerns. The task force disagrees and contends it’s a document that should be public, with redactions of security and privacy information as needed.

The Mayor’s Office disagrees. "The sunshine task force is wrong, and we are right," Newsom press secretary Nathan Ballard said. "The calendar we give to the public and press exceeds Prop. G."

Arellano, in a letter to the task force, described the other document as a "working calendar that is extremely detailed and accounts for his time from departure from home until his return in the evening. The working calendar contains not only the Mayor’s meeting schedule, but also confidential information such as the officers assigned to protect him, security contact numbers, the Mayor’s private schedule, details of his travel," and everything else that he’s doing.

"What they refuse to realize is they’re both public documents," Comstock said about the dual calendars.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC), agrees that both calendars are public if they contain information about what the mayor’s doing with his city time.

"If they have security concerns, they can withhold particular items that would jeopardize the mayor’s security. There are certain things we can all agree on that can be withheld, certain driving routes and evasive strategies for emergency planning. But when the vehicle stops and he gets out for a meeting at an office, home, or place of business, that item has to be revealed," Scheer said. "If we’re talking about a calendar, there may be thousands of items, and only a handful may be subject to redaction. They can’t use the few to justify nondisclosure of the many."

But that’s precisely what the Mayor’s Office is doing.

The mayor, city attorney, and all department heads are required by Prop. G to reveal "the time and place of each meeting or event attended." The only exclusions may be "of purely personal or social events at which no city business is discussed and that do not take place at City Offices or at the offices or residences of people who do substantial business with or are otherwise substantially financially affected by actions of the city."

Therefore, a Prop. G calendar should contain everything a city official does every day in the course of working for the public. When asked if all the blank spaces on the Prop. G calendar represent personal time, Ballard said, "It could be personal. It could be other. It’s not anything we’re required to divulge under Prop. G."

But just because it should be there doesn’t mean it is. For example, the mayor’s calendar for the afternoon of April 19 shows him attending a library luncheon at 12:30 p.m., a phone interview at 2:30 p.m., and a 4 p.m. meeting with his chief of staff, followed by a Port Commission swearing in.

But we ran into Newsom coming out of a 2 p.m. Recreation and Park Commission meeting, where he spoke in support of more public art in the city. This event is not listed on his calendar. Ballard said the Prop. G calendar is sometimes amended to reflect changes. "I don’t have an android following him at all times. We’re just human beings working here."

"If he indeed was there, I will try to remedy that," Ballard added.

This scenario suggests other public business is also not being adequately tracked and Newsom’s real calendar could fill in the gaps, but the mayor’s computer software is set to automatically delete the working calendar after five days, destroying a record of what the mayor actually did.

Aside from any prurient interest in what the mayor is up to, an accurate record of events is a part of public accountability. Newsom’s calendar for the week of April 16 lists 31 meetings and events amounting to 25 1/2 hours at work. The city attorney’s Prop. G calendar is even more paltry. Between April 23 and 27, Dennis Herrera apparently attended 13 meetings and spent 11 1/2 hours working for the city.

Calendars are important public documents, Scheer says. "Most importantly, they give an insight into who has access to that public official." But, he says, "it’s only as revealing as it is complete."

Scheer and the CFAC are currently involved in a court case with San Bernardino County. The San Bernardino Sun sued the county for access to supervisors’ e-mails, memos, and calendars for a period of time last summer during a large fire that destroyed houses. Bill Postmus, the chair of the board of supervisors, appeared to be AWOL during the emergency, and reporters at the Sun sought relevant documents that might support Postmus’s claim that he was in contact with his staff at the time.

A judge ordered the records released, with redactions, and most officials have complied, except Postmus, who has convinced the county to hire outside counsel and appeal.

Back in San Francisco, the Mayor’s Office doesn’t seem to be sweating much about the next legal action regarding its records management. The task force does not have the power to levy fines or punishment, so the calendar case has been referred to the Ethics Commission, the district attorney, and the attorney general.

"We will be vindicated by the Ethics Commission," Ballard said. "The Ethics Commission will side with us." *

The dark prince of SF elections

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By Steven T. Jones
Why does attorney Jim Sutton seem to be involved in every major campaign finance scandal in San Francisco? In the latest, Sutton’s firm reportedly advised a local motorcycle training company on how to allegedly launder money into a City College bond campaign (Sutton isn’t mentioned in the story, but in a letter the company wrote to the Ethics Commission that the Chron featured on today’s front page). Shouldn’t the State Bar take an interest in this at some point?

Sunshine battles on three fronts

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EDITORIAL It’s been, to put it mildly, a terrible year for open government. The climate of secrecy in Washington, DC, has only increased: from clandestine spying on antiwar protesters to secretive immigration raids to a huge growth in document classification, the nation’s capital has shifted squarely into the dark ages. As G.W. Schulz reports ("100 Years of Secrets," page 22), there’s even an attempt in Congress to create a new official secrets act, with stiff criminal penalties for people who disclose information the government doesn’t want the public to know.

In California the governor has vetoed a public-records bill backed by all 120 legislators, and the State Supreme Court issued one of the worst rulings in its history, ensuring that virtually all police disciplinary records will forever be hidden from public view.

San Francisco has its problems too. The Sunshine Ordinance still has some significant loopholes — and as Amanda Witherell reports ("The Sunshine Posse," page 20), a cadre of sunshine activists is working overtime to try to force the city to comply with its own rules and to demand that electronic documents get the same treatment as paper records.

So there’s a lot of work to do. But the good news is that there are legislative and grassroots efforts on many fronts to turn the tide back. Some of the key points:

In Washington: The Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, along with other sunshine advocates, is pushing a bill by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. John Cornyn (R-Texas) that would greatly strengthen the federal Freedom of Information Act. The bill would require federal agencies to expedite FOIA requests and allow requesters to seek attorney’s fees if the government forces them to go to court. The GOP-led Congress blocked it last year, and the Bush administration has always opposed it, but with the Democrats in control, it’s likely to get through both houses this spring.

Meanwhile, Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) tried last month to push a bill that would impose criminal penalties for unauthorized leaking of government information. He’s backed off somewhat, but that threat remains. It’s crucial that San Franciscans contact Sen. Dianne Feinstein (who sits on the Judiciary Committee) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to demand that the FOIA bill pass and that Kyl’s proposal die.

In Sacramento: Assemblymember Mark Leno has introduced a bill that would override the devastating Supreme Court decision on police records. The measure, AB 1648, would once again allow public access to information about the extent of police officer discipline and would permit agencies such as the San Francisco Police Commission to hold some disciplinary hearings in public. It’s a crucial bill; cloaking all discussion of problematic cops in a veil of secrecy undermines public trust in law enforcement, perpetuates poor management, and protects abusive officers. The legislature needs to pass it quickly. Leno has also reintroduced his Public Records Act reform bill, AB 1393, with a few amendments to address technical problems that the Governor’s Office claimed to have with last year’s bill. This time Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has no excuse not to sign it.

In San Francisco: It’s still far too hard for members of the public to get basic information from city departments. The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force needs to have the authority to mandate that agencies follow its decisions; an attempt to make that happen three years ago failed when the supervisors balked at empowering the sunshine panel. The task force lacks the full-time staffer mandated in the ordinance.

The task force should bring its proposals back to the board, and one of the supervisors needs to step up as an open-government advocate and bring that proposal back. If the task force had any teeth or if the Ethics Commission or district attorney would enforce the existing law, these battles wouldn’t be necessary. *

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s getting a bit creepy how easily and casually we are all starting to joke about global climate change.

It’s not coming, it’s here. My brother is framing houses in a T-shirt in upstate New York. And it’s so cold in California that the citrus crop is ruined. The other day one of my colleagues mentioned that global warming might not make every place warmer; "it’s just going to kill us all."

Maybe it will.

One of the most chilling (sorry) depictions of what’s about to happen comes not from Al Gore’s movie (which was powerful) but from a book called A Friend of the Earth, which is a pretty bad novel by a very good writer, T.C. Boyle. The story line is weak, but the scene — Santa Inez in 2025 — has a strange air of realism. It’s almost impossible to live there in Boyle’s future; the storms are so regular and fierce that only specially constructed homes can survive them, and almost nobody spends much time outdoors.

I have a friend who’s a very, very successful investment adviser, a self-made millionaire several times over, who has been living a dream of a life in Boca Raton, Fla., diving and spearfishing and cruising around on his yacht … and he just sold his place and bought a dirt farm in Kentucky. Florida is going to be wiped out by the hurricanes, he says. He’s also shut down a lot of his business, since he thinks the US economy is going to completely tank soon. He wants to be someplace where he can grow his own food.

I think this is crazy. I’ve never been into doomsday. I have two kids, which by itself is an act of optimism and hope. As we say in my family (which has elevated the art of denial to world-class levels), everything is going to be just fine.

So I laugh about the weather like everyone else. I live way up on a hill; if the ice melts and the sea rises all the way to my doorstep, it will be time to buy an ark. I’ve always been into boats anyway.

But right now it really feels like this is coming at us a lot faster than anyone expected. And the much-heralded moves by the governor of California to reduce greenhouse gases a little bit by a few years from now seem so incredibly puny.

In politics I’ve always felt that intent matters. There are some wonderful programs that don’t work as well as they should, not because of corruption but because the money is inadequate or the staff isn’t properly trained or somebody made some mistakes. That’s different from somebody deliberately lying, cheating, and stealing to game the system.

Pacific Gas and Electric Corp. is a corrupt institution with sleazy lawyers and consultants who abuse the local political system. Carolyn Knee, who was the treasurer for a group fighting on behalf of a ballot campaign for public power in 2002, is a good person who apparently made some mistakes in the complex process of filing all the campaign finance documents on a volunteer basis for a grassroots initiative. And she just told me the SF Ethics Commission wants to fine her $26,700.

There’s something very wrong here. *

Prosecute election theft

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EDITORIAL There’s no doubt at all that a group of downtown businesses operating through a series of supposedly independent political committees organized in part by attorney Jim Sutton have used every tool at their disposal to influence the outcome of the District 6 supervisorial election. And there’s no doubt that what these folks have done violates at least the spirit of the city’s election laws, which were designed to offer, as much as legally possible, a level playing field for candidates and full disclosure of campaign expenses.
There’s also no doubt that Sutton has been willing to bend and at times break the rules: in 2002 his law firm was fined $240,000 — the largest penalty of its kind in city history — for failing to disclose late contributions from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to a campaign to defeat a public power initiative.
At some point this sort of conduct rises to the level of a crime — and at least some respectable, credible activists and observers think the attacks on Sup. Chris Daly have reached that level. In a letter to the Guardian, published on page 8, former ethics commissioner Joe Lynn argues that Sutton and his allies are guilty of attempting to steal an election.
There’s no crime in the books called “Grand Theft, Election,” although there probably should be. But Lynn says that what’s happened here — unregulated committees raising and spending tens of thousands of dollars and not fully disclosing it until late in the cycle — is not merely sleazy and unethical but criminal.
We’re always nervous about bringing the criminal justice system into political disputes (we still remember how then-mayor Art Agnos pushed the district attorney into conducting a witch-hunt investigation into the opponents of a downtown ballpark ballot measure). But we’re also sick of seeing the likes of Sutton, Don Fisher, and SFSOS operate with virtual impunity when what they are doing comes very, very close to a conspiracy to subvert local election laws. The Ethics Commission needs to conduct a full investigation here, but that body can impose only civil penalties, which means cash fines — and for billionaire Fisher, whose money is behind a lot of these shenanigans, a stiff fine is just the cost of doing business.
District Attorney Kamala Harris ought to look into this. The problem is that Sutton was her lawyer in a heated campaign in 2003 during which her opponent, Terence Hallinan, raised similar charges. So Harris is conflicted; the best solution would be to appoint outside counsel — a special prosecutor, to use the Washington terminology — to investigate whether Sutton, Fisher, SFSOS, or anyone else ought to face criminal prosecution. The sooner that process gets started, the better. SFBG

The dirt in D6

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› amanda@sfbg.com › sarah@sfbg.com If you live in San Francisco’s District 6, it’s pretty difficult to avoid what some residents are calling a new filth polluting Tenderloin corners and SoMa streets. It’s not overflowing trash bins or urine-stained door frames — it’s the relentless election billeting that uses those images to support Rob Black and oppose Chris Daly for the district’s seat on the Board of Supervisors. “We’re tired of talk. Of loud, whining, condescending, offensive, abusive, lying, showcasing, arrogant talk,” reads a recent poster on a telephone pole. “District 6 is dirty and dangerous. District 6 is still poor. Chris Daly is why. Dump Daly. Back Rob Black.” “I was totally offended by this,” Debra Walker, a progressive activist and resident of the district for 25 years, told the Guardian. “This kind of message intentionally suppresses the vote. People I’ve talked to in the district who aren’t very political are totally turned off by the mailings from Rob Black or made in his benefit.” Some of the mailings, posters, and literature can be directly attributed to independent expenditure (IE) committees recognized by the Ethics Commission and acting legally. Some, however, have more dubious ancestry but apparent links to a campaign attorney with a long history of using millions to control the outcome of elections in San Francisco: Jim Sutton (see “The Political Puppeteer,” 2/4/04). Sutton did not return calls for comment. Most of the anonymous literature directs people to the Web site www.DumpDaly.org. SFSOS’s Wade Randlett told us his group paid for the site and a volunteer set it up. SFSOS and Sutton formed Citizens for Reform Leadership 1–6 — IE committees listed on many of the signs and much of the literature, including the poster quoted above. The committees haven’t filed any IE reports with the Ethics Commission. Walker, along with Maria Guillen, vice president of SEIU Local 790, and another District 6 resident, Jim Meko, submitted a complaint with the Ethics Commission on Sept. 29 with nine pieces of physical evidence supporting their concern that the roof had been blown off the $83,000 spending cap on the campaign, in place because all candidates agreed to public financing. The evidence submitted with the complaint varied and included three different mailers from “Concerned Residents of District 6,” a committee that has yet to exist on paper in the Ethics Commission filing cabinets. The mailers from the “Concerned Residents” are glossy triptychs critical of Daly but not explicitly advocating for another candidate. They do not state the amount the committee paid for them, which is required of any electioneering communication. On Oct. 6 the Ethics Commission released a statement saying the spending cap for District 6 was no longer in effect. John St. Croix, executive director of the commission, has identified at least $90,000 in IEs, including three unreported mailers. “At some point we will attempt to determine who distributed the mailers,” St. Croix said. “But it’s not likely before the election.” The tactic of breaking the law before the election and taking the heat after the ballots are in has been used in the past, and this new example flouts recently passed legislation. These mailings should have been filed with the Ethics Commission, according to an ordinance passed in 2005 in response to similar anonymous hit pieces that came out in the elections of 2003 and 2004 against Supervisors Gerardo Sandoval and Jake McGoldrick. (Sutton defended SFSOS’s main funder, Donald Fisher, in his successful Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation against Sandoval over the issue.) “It’s a strategy taken straight from Karl Rove’s playbook,” Meko, a 30-year SoMa resident, told us. Joe Lynn, former Ethics Commission member and staffer, told us “all the committees in San Francisco should turn their backs on contributions from people who are involved in this scheme — at least until they explain their involvement. These are the most sophisticated folks in San Francisco politics. I think a full investigation including possible criminal activity ought to be assigned to a master.” He said District Attorney Kamala Harris used Sutton in her race and therefore may have a conflict of interest. The Rob Black for Supervisor committee claims no connection to the literature that hangs on doorknobs and clogs mailboxes, the push polls calling people, or the postings in the streets and tucked under windshields. “I don’t support the anonymous pieces. If people are doing it on my behalf, I don’t want it,” Black told us. But Daly told us “the IEs appear to be coordinated…. The Black committee is not running a campaign that would be independently competitive. He’s only sent one piece of mail, but he’s had eight sent on his behalf.” Residents suggest it’s even more than that: Walker received three more anti-Daly mailers Oct. 20. Black confirmed that he had only sent one mailing to the district, and he’s “not surprised” that so many IEs have sent out mailings in his support. With the exception of a filing from the Police Officers Association, the only legal IEs reported with the Ethics Commission so far are from the Building Owners and Management Association (BOMA) and Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA). They also trace back to Sutton, Black’s former boss at Nielsen Merksamer, a law firm that represented PG&E in the 2002 campaign against public power, for which the firm was fined $100,000 for failing to report until after the election $800,000 from PG&E, the biggest fine ever levied by Ethics. Sutton left the firm shortly after. Black stayed on until 2004, when he took a position as legislative aide with Michela Alioto-Pier. The most recent poll released by Evans McDonough purports to show Black ahead by six points (with a five-point margin of error). It was commissioned by Barnes, Mosher, Whitehurst, Lauter, and Partners, which has also been employed by Sutton through BOMA and the GGRA for the IEs in the District 6 election. The financial shenanigans have been a rallying point for the Daly campaign. More than 70 volunteers signed in at an Oct. 21 rally and hit the streets: shaking hands, distributing literature, and making phone calls raising support for Daly. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi criticized the soft money’s “ugly, nasty, mean-spirited tactics” to oust Daly. “If they have to resort to these tactics, is that the kind of government we want in San Francisco?” he asked the crowd. “This is the nastiest, most personal and hateful thing I’ve ever been involved with,” Daly said. “It’s very painful.” But, he said, “our people power is better than their money power.” Outside a volunteer shouted into a bullhorn, “Don’t let downtown interests buy your democracy!” SFBG

Why won’t the PG@E attorney for supervisor answer some questions?

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Douglas Chan, an attorney with the law firm of Chan, Doi, and Leal, is a candidate for supervisor from the Sunset District. PG@E has paid $2l0,054 to his firm the last two years, according to PG&E’s filings with the California Public Utilities Commission.

Chan also disclosed that he has received more tthan $l0,000 during the last year in gross income including his pro rata share of the gross income of the firm from five clients (PG&E, Ferry Plaza Limited Partnership, Chess Ventures Legal Challenge, Sugarbowl Bakery, and Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association), according to his Statement of Economic Interest filed with the Ethics Commission. This is nothing new for Chan: Back in 2002, he put his name on PG@E campaign material opposing the public power initiative and supporting PG@E and thus earned a spot in the Guardian’s Hall of Shame that year.

The PG@E connection raises some serious questions for Chan. He refused to be interviewed for our Guardian editorial endorsement interviews of candidates for supervisor (even though most other candidates in other races came in for interviews.) And he and his campaign staff have refused to talk to us about these questions. So it may be up to the residents inside and outside the Sunset District to ask him these questions at candidates’ nights and when they spot Chan on the campaign trail. Good luck! Let us know. These are the questions I emailed today to Chan, his campaign manager Tom Hsieh jr., and his firm.

To Doug Chan, Tom Hseih jr., Nicole Yelich, and to Chan, Doi and Leal:

We’ re sorry that Doug Chan, as a candidate for public office in the Sunset District (not far from where I live), has decided not to come to the Guardian for our normal round of candidate interviews, as almost everyone has done in other campaigns.

We’re also sorry that we cannot reach him, or anyone in his campaign, who can answer some important questions about the relationship that he and his law firm have had with PG@E for years. So I am asking these questions by email (for Guardian coverage and for my Bruce Blog at sfbg.com):

l. PG@E has paid $2l0,054.ll to the Chan, Doi, and Leal law firm during the last two years, according to PG@E filings with the CPUC. What has PG@E paid the law firm so far this year? Will PG@E be an ongoing client of the firm? What is the total that PG@E has paid the law firm through the years? What percentage of the firm’s revenue has been paid directly or indirectly by PG@E, year by year? If elected, will Chan fully divest himself and disengage completely from the firm?

2. What work has Chan himself done for PG@E? In reading through the resume of Chan and the partners of the firm, it doesn’t appear that this firm or its partners have any specific utility or energy expertise. Why then did PG@E hire this firm?

3. Did PG@E encourage Chan to run for the Sunset supervisorial seat?

4. Have you asked the city attorney for an opinion on how PG@E’s hiring of the firm and Chan would affect his votes and whether he would have to recuse himself on such votes as public power, the community choice aggregation project, and the many other projects and votes involving PG@E? If you have an opinion, what is it?

5. What is Chan’s position on enforcing the Raker Act and bringing Hetch Hetchy power to the city for our residents and businesses? Would he vote to put on the ballot an initiative proposal to buy out PG@E’s transmission lines and make San Francisco a public power city? Would he for example support proposals such as the last two public power proposals that went on the ballot? We would appreciate his reasoning on this critical issue that costs the city hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

6. Would he vote to direct the city attorney to sue PG@E to make null and void the city’s l939 PG@E franchise fee, which is the lowest in the state, and PG@E claims is signed in perpetuity? If not, why not? We would appreciate his reasoning on this critical issue that costs the city tens of millions a year.

7. What is Chan’s position on the community choice aggregation proposal now before the board? On the city’s development of alternative power sources such as solar, tidal, etc.? ON tearing down the ruinous Potrero Hill power plant?

7. The critical question: given PG@E’s heavy investment in Chan and his firm, could Chan explain to us and the people of the Sunset how you would represent them fairly and honestly on these critical public power/public resource issues and not be under the influence of your former client PG@E?

Thanks very much. We would appreciate talking to Chan directly or, if that is not possible, getting his answers to the above crucial public power and public policiy quetions from him. Thanks very much. B3

Doug Chan, PG&E’s man at City Hall

No limits

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By Steven T. Jones
Well, the gloves have come off in the District 6 supervisorial race. The Ethics Commission has just announced that the voluntary spending caps have been lifted in that race, responding to complaints that the tens of thousands of dollars in hit pieces on Sup. Chris Daly have effectively blown the caps. Daly, Rob Black, and the other major candidates had agreed to limit their campaign expenditures to $83,000 or less, and both Black and Daly have already spent about half that, according to just filed campaign finance statements. Now that the caps are gone, Daly is free to spend the $95,000 he has in the bank, outstripping the $52,000 Black has on hand. Add those totals (which are far from complete with a month still to go) to the fat wads of cash that anti-Daly forces are still like to throw around and expect the fur to fly.

District 6 sleaze

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EDITORIAL The fall campaign season has only begun, and already the District 6 race is getting really ugly. A downtown-funded operation, hiding behind anonymous mailers and front groups, is spending gobs of money to smear Sup. Chris Daly, and thanks to the city’s campaign-spending laws, Daly’s ability to fight back is limited. The whole mess points to a real problem in the way so-called independent-expenditure committees are regulated, and the supervisors and the Ethics Commission should take up the issue immediately.
Daly, who’s represented the district for almost six years, has offended a lot of people — including some of the city’s richest and most powerful interest groups. They tried to unseat him four years ago with no success, but this time around they have more money and a slimy, secretive strategy that appears to expose a loophole in local law.
The first salvo landed a few weeks ago: a slick, 22-page mailer called “The Case Against Chris Daly” that attacks him on almost every front. The hit piece is unsigned, so the people who received it have no way of knowing exactly who’s behind the message. And there’s no requirement that the sponsors register with the city’s Ethics Commission and reveal their source of financing.
It’s pretty clear, though, who produced and paid for the piece. The money is going through a group called Citizens for Reform Leadership #1, which was set up by downtown elections lawyer Jim Sutton, organized by SFSOS, and funded in large part by Republican kingmaker and the Gap founder Don Fisher. (Sutton has also established Citizens for Reform Leadership committees two through six, indicating that there’s more of this to come.)
The way San Francisco’s campaign-spending limits work, no candidate for supervisor can spend more than $83,000 — unless one of the other candidates breaks that cap. Then all rules are off. But that cap doesn’t apply to whoever put out the 22-page hit piece — in part because we don’t even know legally who it was. That means the SFSOS-Fisher crew can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars hammering away at Daly — and he can’t spend more than $83,000 fighting back.
The candidate who benefits most from this sewer money is Rob Black, a former aide to Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier who has the backing of Mayor Gavin Newsom and is by any account Daly’s most serious challenger. Black told us he has no direct connection to the hit squad — but he stopped short of promising not to engage in negative campaigning himself. And he’s certainly not going around town denouncing the anti-Daly sleaze.
That should change now. If Black wants to be seen as anything other than a pawn of Fisher, he should put out a formal statement calling on SFSOS and its allies to back off, quit the anonymous name-calling, and either come clean or stay out of District 6. So should every other candidate in the race. (The hotly contested District 5 battle two years ago was remarkably clean, in part because all of the candidates agreed not to accept this sort of nonsense.)
The Ethics Commission should launch a full investigation of this anonymous campaigning with the aim of exposing the forces behind it — and if the city’s current law doesn’t allow a ban on secret hit pieces, the supervisors should amend it today. Meanwhile, the commission ought to lift the expenditure limit for District 6; it’s not optimal, but in this case it’s only fair. SFBG

WEDNESDAY

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AUG 2

Californian campaigns

Come to a campaign finance reform panel with Kris Greenlee of California Common Cause; Maria Guillen of SEIU Local 790; and Dan Purnell of the City of Oakland Public Ethics Commission. The panel – moderated by Tony West, a UC Hastings College of the Law board member – will discuss how to take reforms to the state level. (Deborah Giattina)

Noon-1 p.m.
Commonwealth Club of California
595 Market, second floor, SF
Free, advance registration required
(415) 597-6700

Music

International Youth Music Festival

Musical whiz kids from around the United States and Europe converge on San Francisco for a run of orchestral shows at SF landmarks St. Mary’s Cathedral (Wed/2), Mission Dolores (Mon/7), and Grace Cathedral (Tues/8). The chamber orchestra will perform music by Dvořák, Brahms, Shostakovitch, and others. With performers ranging in age from 12 to 21, prepare to be blown away by the level of play and prodigious talent. (Joseph DeFranceschi)

7:30 p.m.
St. Mary’s Cathedral
1111 Gough
$10-$16
(510) 595-9378
www.youthmusicinternational.com

Sunburned

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› amanda@sfbg.com
The Mayor’s Office of Communications has for months been fighting with Sup. Chris Daly and several unrelated activists over the release of public documents. By denying and ignoring Sunshine Ordinance requests — including some by the Guardian — the office has garnered a reputation for secrecy that has transformed a disparate group of activists into a united force pushing the boundaries of the city’s landmark open government law.
The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force (SOTF) on July 25 found the MOC in violation of the Sunshine Ordinance on two counts, but the mayor’s spokespeople defied its decision and refused to release seven pages of MOC e-mails that Daly requested. Jennifer Petrucione, who spoke for the mayor at the meeting and left before a final decision had been reached on one of the violations, told the Guardian, “I was contemptuous of the process.”
Her view and that of mayoral press secretary Peter Ragone, as they explained to the Guardian, is that the voluminous nature of some requests and the political motivations of document requesters like Daly violate the spirit of the Sunshine Ordinance, which voters passed in 1993 to encourage public access to how decisions are made in city hall. Instead of disclosing documents, the MOC has found loopholes in the broadly written law permitting them to hide information.
“We have the right to withhold certain documents if they are recommendations,” Petrucione told us July 28, even though the task force generally supports disclosure of such documents. In another case of ignoring a request, she chalked it up to an accident: “That was not us trying to avoid Sunshine, it was us doing it too quickly and overlooking things.”
While both Ragone and Petrucione insisted it’s their policy to release everything they can, even if it’s logistically difficult given the volume of requests they receive, they’re still having a hard time producing documents in a timely fashion. So some activists have reacted to early inaction with ever more voluminous and complicated requests.
The day after we discussed the MOC Sunshine Ordinance policies with Petrucione and Ragone, Mayor Gavin Newsom appeared at a town hall meeting in the Richmond, where we asked him about the dispute with Daly’s office. “I haven’t been privy to the details,” he told us. “I would like to see us readily provide whatever information is being requested. I said, ‘Peter, just send all the information, even in the spirit of the ordinance. We have nothing to hide.’”
Two days later, Petrucione called the Guardian to say the mayor had ordered her office to release the disputed documents after all. She told us, “You guys want to make an issue of it, so we decided to just put them out there.”
BURIED DOCUMENTS
The disputed e-mails requested by Sup. Daly involve Ragone’s purchase last year of a tenancy in common (TIC) from which two disabled residents had been evicted by a landlord evoking the Ellis Act, as first reported by the blog www.beyondchron.org.
Daly was curious if there might be any connection between Ragone’s new digs and Newsom’s vetoes of proposals that would have protected tenants from those kinds of evictions. Daly’s office filed an immediate disclosure request for any documents regarding evictions or condominium conversions.
After the MOC initially responded that they didn’t have any such documents, which Daly’s office didn’t believe, the issue dragged out over four months in front of the SOTF, with the MOC eventually turning over about 25 relevant documents but withholding seven e-mails, with Petrucione citing Section 67.24 of the Sunshine Ordinance: “Only the recommendation of the author may, in such circumstances, be withheld as exempt.”
Daly appeared at the meeting to speak on his own behalf. “I’m not attempting to have a gotcha on the Mayor’s Office. I’m attempting to form a decision,” he said.
The task force doesn’t have the power of subpoena or investigative authority — its members can’t look at the e-mails and decide if they’re public — so the matter was referred to the Ethics Commission, which does. Petrucione, who had the documents at the meeting, could have just handed them to Daly. She told the Guardian, “We’re not concerned about what the e-mails say. We’re trying to adhere to the letter and the spirit of the law.”
In fact, the documents contained only mildly embarrassing information, with a pair of e-mails from Petrucione plotting ways to overshadow the news of Newsom’s tenant protection veto last September by releasing word of the veto late on a Friday and coupling it with a high-profile announcement of San Francisco’s Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, “which will bury any interest in the Ellis release.”
But the MOC’s resistance to disclosure — both to Daly and to activists also seeking information during that same time period — has only served to galvanize those seeking public records.
ACTIVISTS’ SUNRISE
Everyone starts with a little kernel of concern, a reason to wonder or worry about what those elected officials are up to. Kimo Crossman last year wanted to know more about the sketchy municipal wi-fi deal with Google and Earthlink that Newsom was proposing. After hitting initial roadblocks when making requests for specific information like a copy of the contract, Crossman started asking for reams of documents, anything remotely related to the TechConnect plan. His concerns have now expanded to disaster preparedness issues and finally to the Sunshine Ordinance itself.
Last week at the SOTF meeting, where Crossman is now a regular member of the audience, he filed a complaint that the mayor had not provided the opportunity for public comment at a Disaster Council meeting June 5. After reviewing video and transcripts of the meeting and hearing Petrucione’s evolving explanations, the task force found a violation.
Crossman — who at one time was being considered for “vexatious litigant” status by city officials who wanted to tone down his voluminous requests — was pleased and said, “I thought it was a success that the mayor was held accountable to Sunshine just like everyone else in the city.”
Perhaps the violation will inspire the Mayor’s Office to fulfill the outstanding records requests of other citizens, like Wayne Lanier, who had a little home improvement issue.
About a year ago, Lanier and a few of his neighbors repaired the sidewalk around a few trees and planted some flowerpots in front of their homes. Then the city slapped them with a $700 tax, under the Occupancy Assessment Fee for Various Encroachments.
The ordinance was introduced by the mayor and passed the Board of Supervisors in July 2005. It was designed to tax property owners who eat up the public right-of-way with stairways and fences, but the ordinance became what Lanier likes to call the “tree and beauty tax.”
Lanier wanted to know what kinds of meetings and discussions had led up to this ordinance, so in March he sent a Sunshine Ordinance request to Newsom. “I requested his calendar prior to July,” Lanier told the Guardian. “A very simple e-mail request under the Sunshine act.”
Lanier says he has yet to receive an answer to his request, let alone any correspondence or acknowledgement from the Mayor’s Office that they’re working on it. Later, he had concerns about avian flu, where he was again rebuffed in his attempt to get documents.
THE PRICE OF DELAY
The frustrating stories of Crossman and Lanier eventually caught the interest of Christian Holmer, who championed their causes and set out with Crossman on a project they think could streamline the practice of releasing public documents.
Holmer is the secretary of the Panhandle Residents Organization Stanyan Fulton, which has a Web site compendium of all the Sunshine Ordinance requests he knows about. He posts a running countdown of how many days each request has been outstanding, as well as details on the runaround and excuses he receives from city officials.
His goal is to standardize how various departments produce documents and make them more easily accessible to the public “in as few keystrokes as possible,” as he puts it. And to do that, he’s made lots of Sunshine Ordinance requests, which MOC officials argue are too onerous for them to deal with, particularly given Holmer’s lengthy, heavily annotated e-mails, which he fires off to a variety of city departments on a daily basis.
As the many city reps who receive these e-mails will attest, it can take well over an hour to read the entire contents of one e-mail, only to find out it includes enough attachments to keep the reader busy for the better part of a day.
Petrucione and Ragone, who have received Holmer’s request for the mayor’s daily calendar but not yet answered it, cite the difficulty in figuring out exactly what Holmer wants. However, even the Guardian’s simply worded requests for that same information, as well as documents related to the recent health care measure, weren’t filled by the timelines set out by the ordinance.
Ragone says his office is just trying to keep up with the deluge of document requests. He raised the possibility of reforms, such as a designated Sunshine Ordinance officer or standardized form, but the MOC hasn’t formally proposed any.
Matt Dorsey of the City Attorney’s Office is wary of standardizing the system: “I don’t think the law should create a barrier — a ‘you didn’t sign this so I don’t have to answer it’ situation.” SFBG

Last call?

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› news@sfbg.com

Concerns about public drinking in North Beach and stifled public debate are conspiring to cripple a pair of popular outdoor festivals, possibly creating a troubling precedent for other events at the start of San Francisco’s festival and street fair season.

"We’ll have to cancel this year’s festival," Robbie Kowal, who runs the North Beach Jazz Festival, said of the possibility of not getting his alcohol permit. "Seventy-five percent of our funding comes from the sale of alcohol."

The Recreation and Park Commission’s Operations Committee is set to review the jazz festival’s permit May 3, and if sentiments among the three mayor-appointed commissioners haven’t changed, they might not allow Kowal and his partners, John Miles and Alistair Monroe, to set up bars and serve drinks to local jazz fans in Washington Square Park, as they’ve been doing without challenge for the past 12 years.

"We’ve never even had a hearing to get a permit before," Kowal said. "We’ve had no arrests and no [California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control] violations. We’re being punished when we haven’t done anything wrong. We’re caught up in this whole North Beach Festival situation."

Kowal was referring to a dispute involving the neighborhood’s other popular street fair, the North Beach Festival, a 52-year street fair that had its permission to sell alcohol in the park yanked this year. The festival is hosted by the North Beach Chamber of Commerce, whose director, Marsha Garland, is a political adversary of the area’s supervisor, Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin.

The problem started when parks general manager Yomi Agunbiade determined that a long-standing ban on alcohol in city parks should also apply during festivals. Two out of three members of the Rec and Park Commission’s Operations Committee agreed with that ruling during an April 5 meeting, and it became official policy.

Then, as the North Beach Festival permit went to the full commission for approval April 20, the words "permission to serve beer and wine" disappeared from the agenda item. Those words had appeared on an earlier version of the agenda, allowing the commission to grant what Garland had received with every permit for the last 20 years. The agenda change meant the commission couldn’t even discuss the alcohol issue, let allow issue a permit that allowed it.

Commissioner Jim Lazarus questioned a representative of the City Attorney’s Office about it and was told that the full commission couldn’t hear the policy if the general manager and Operations Committee were in agreement.

"I was taken aback by the fact that the full request of the applicant to serve beer and wine was not on the calendar," Lazarus told us. "I’ve been on the commission for three and a half years, and I’ve never seen that happen before for this kind of issue."

This story is still unfolding, but observers are openly wondering whether this is an isolated case of political sabotage or whether this battle over beer could hurt the summer festival season.

Wine and beer sales have always played a critical role in the financial viability of many of the city’s summer festivals. In a city that’s never been afraid of a liberal pour, many are beginning to wonder if the good times are over, and if so, why?

"The Rec and Park meeting was so disheartening, and if it’s used as a precedent in any way, it will harm other events. If the oldest street fair in this city can be chipped away at like that, who’s next?" said Lindsey Jones, executive director of SF Pride, the largest LGBT festival in the country.

Some North Beach residents think this Rec and Park procedural shell game is punishment for Garland and her organization’s opposition to Peskin, whom they blame for the change.

"Aaron Peskin would like to take Marsha Garland’s livelihood away," said Richard Hanlin, a landlord and 30-year resident of North Beach who filed a complaint over the incident with the Ethics Commission.

"They want to railroad Marsha," said Lynn Jefferson, president of the civic group North Beach Neighbors. "They want to see her out of business. If she doesn’t have those alcohol sales, she’ll personally go bankrupt."

At the heart of the Garland-Peskin beef is a 2003 battle over a lot at 701 Lombard St. known as "the Triangle," which the owner wanted to develop but which the Telegraph Hill Dwellers wanted for a park after they found a deed restriction indicating it should be considered for open space. Peskin agreed with the group he once led and had the city seize the land by eminent domain, drawing the wrath of Garland and others who saw it as an abuse of government power.

Peskin told the Guardian that it’s true he doesn’t care for Garland, but that he did nothing improper to influence the commission’s decision or agenda. However, he added that he’s made no secret of his opposition to fencing off much of the park to create a beer garden and that he’s made that point to Rec and Park every year since the festival’s beer garden started taking over the park in 2003.

“Just let the people use Washington Square Park. It’s the commons of North Beach,” Peskin said. “The park should be open to people of all ages 365 days a year. That’s just how I feel.”

Yet Peskin said that neither the North Beach Jazz Festival, which doesn’t segregate people by age, nor festivals that use less neighborhood-centered parks, like the Civic Center and Golden Gate Park, should be held to the same standard. In fact, he plans to speak out in favor of the jazz festival’s right to sell alcohol during the May 3 meeting.

Access became the buzzword this year, in response to last year’s decision by the San Francisco Police Department to gate two-thirds of the park off as a beer garden, effectively prohibiting many underage festivalgoers from actually entering a large part of the park. The section near the playground remained ungated, but many families were disillusioned by the penning of the party.

Enter the North Beach Merchants Association, a two-year-old rival of the Chamber of Commerce with stated concerns about booze. President Anthony Gantner learned that the park code banned alcohol from being served in any of the parks listed in Section 4.10, which includes Washington Square as well as nearly every other greenway in the city, unless by permission of the Recreation and Park Commission, which should only be granted as long as it "does not interfere with the public’s use and enjoyment of the park."

Gantner and Peskin both argue that the beer garden does interfere with the right of those under 21 to use the park. "The Chamber is basically doing a fair, and that’s it," Gantner said. "A lot of its members are bars, and they run a very large fair with beer gardens that result in incidents on the streets for merchants."

Though Garland contends that the festival is an economic stimulator, resulting in an 80 percent increase in sales for local businesses, Gantner claims that a number of businesses don’t benefit from the increased foot traffic. He associates alcohol with the congruent crime issues that crop up when the clubs let out on Broadway, and thinks that selling beer and wine in the park only accelerates problems in the streets after the festival ends at 6 p.m.

Gantner has the ear of local police, who are understaffed by 20 percent and looking for any way to lower costs by deploying fewer cops. "It used to be we could police these events with full staff and overtime, but now we’re trying to police them with less resources, and the events themselves are growing," Central Station Capt. James Dudley said.

He’s also concerned about the party after the party. The police average five alcohol-related arrests on a typical Friday night in North Beach, most after the bars close. But those numbers don’t change much during festival weekend, leading many to question the logic behind banning sales of alcohol in the park. Besides, if sales were banned, many festivalgoers would simply sneak it in. Even one police officer, who didn’t want to be named, told us, "If I went to sit in that park to listen to music and couldn’t buy beer, I’d probably try pretty hard to sneak some in."

At the April 20 Rec and Park meeting, Garland presented alternative solutions and site plans for selling beer and wine, which represents $66,000 worth of income the festival can’t afford to lose. Beyond her openness to negotiations, Rec and Park heard overwhelming support for the festival in the form of petitions and comments from 30 neighbors and business owners who spoke during the general public comment portion of the meeting.

Father John Malloy of the Saints Peter and Paul Church, which is adjacent to the park, spoke in support of Garland’s request. "I think I have the most weddings and the most funerals in the city," he said. "I’m praying that we don’t have a funeral for the North Beach Festival. If anyone should be against alcohol, it should be the priest of a church."

So who are the teetotalers? Testimony included 10 complaints from members of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers, Friends of Washington Square, and the North Beach Merchants Association, as well as Gantner and neighborhood activist Mark Bruno, who came down from Peskin’s office, where he was watching the hearing, to testify.

Commissioner Megan Levitan said, "If anyone knows me, they know I like my wine," before going on to explain that she was born in North Beach and even used to serve beer at O’Reilly’s Beer and Oyster Festival. However, she said, she’s a mother now, and parks are important to her.

"It does change a park when alcohol is there," she said. "I do not believe we should serve alcohol in the park."

Will that still be her stance May 3 when the North Beach Jazz Festival requests its permit? The jazz fest has never had beer gardens, and the organizers don’t want them. Instead, they set up minibars throughout the park, which remains ungated, allowing complete access for all ages.

Although there is hired security and local police on hand, by and large people are responsible for themselves. The organizers say it’s just like going to a restaurant for a meal and a drink, except in this case it’s outside, with a stage and free live music.

Though Kowal remains optimistic, he’s rallying as much support as possible, even turning the May 3 meeting into an event itself on his Web site (www.sunsettickets.com). His partners, Monroe and Miles, were concerned enough to swing by City Hall to see Peskin, who agreed to testify and help the Jazz Festival retain the right to sell booze.

"The first person to write a check to start this festival was Mayor Willie Brown," Kowal said. "Peskin has always been a big supporter of the festival, which is why we think it will all work out."

The festival is a labor of love for the three organizers, who barely break even to put the event on; after expenses are covered, any additional profit from the sale of alcohol is donated to Conservation Value, a nonprofit organization that aids consumers in making smart purchases.

"We were the first fair to use Washington Square Park," Monroe, the founding father of the jazz festival, said. "We’re standing up for the right to access the park. It’s not about ‘he said, she said’ or who did what to whom. It’s about hearing free live music."

So now comes the moment when we find out whether this is about alcohol, parks, or simply politics, and whether future street fairs could feel the pinch of renewed temperance. If the jazz festival gets to sell booze, Garland’s supporters argue, that will represent a bias against the North Beach Festival.

The commission will hear Garland’s appeal at the end of May, just two weeks before the festival begins. With contracts already signed and schedules set, the stakes are high. Owing to lack of funds, Garland has already canceled the poetry, street chalk art, and family circus components of the fair. She did receive an e-mail from Levitan promising a personal donation to put toward the street chalk art competition. Even so, she’s preparing for a funeral.

And if alcohol is prohibited at the jazz festival, it could send out a ripple of concern among street fair promoters and lovers around the city. To be a part of the decision, stop by the meeting and have a say. SFBG

PS This weekend’s How Weird Street Faire, on May 7, centered at Howard and 12th Streets, will have beer gardens in addition to seven stages of music and performances. But organizers warn that it could be the last festival because the SFPD is now demanding $14,000, a 275 percent increase from the police fees organizers paid last year.

operations committee hearing

May 3, 2 p.m.

City Hall, Room 416

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF

(415) 831-2750

www.sfgov.org

The political puppeteer

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By offering envelope-pushing legal and political advice at key moments in the fall campaign, attorney Jim Sutton was perhaps the single most influential individual behind the victories of Mayor Gavin Newsom and District Attorney Kamala Harris.
In the process, Sutton solidified his reputation as the dark prince of San Francisco elections, a hired gun who helps downtown interests and well-funded campaigns continue to dominate the electoral field even after voters passed reforms that restricted campaign giving and spending and required more official disclosure.
“He knows more election law than anyone, and he knows it better than anyone else,” local political consultant David Looman told the Bay Guardian. “He is the guy you call.”
New era, new player
Sutton, 40, stepped on the political stage just as voters were going to the polls in the fall of 1997 to demand more transparency in campaigns, a reaction to the leadership of Mayor Willie Brown and the dealings of powerhouse consultants like Jack Davis and Robert Barnes. At the time Sutton worked for Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller, and Naylor, a Mill Valley firm that specializes in election law.
Sutton took on mostly big-money campaigns backed by downtown interests — such as Brown’s 1999 reelection and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s successful, multimillion-­dollar bids to squelch the public power movement in 2001 and 2002. Highly versed in the minutia of campaign finance law, he became a major player in electoral politics in San Francisco — and across the state.
“He is one of a small handful of very influential political law attorneys who typically represent moneyed, influential candidates,” California Common Cause executive director Jim Knox told us. “And he seems to be on something of a crusade right now.”
A search of the San Francisco Ethics Commission’s online database shows that over the past six years, Sutton has acted as treasurer or in another legal capacity for at least 20 campaigns and counts such heavily funded political action committees as the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, the Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, and the San Francisco Association of Realtors among his permanent clients. For that work, which doesn’t include the fall election, he earned at least $750,000.
Many of the city’s progressive activists and leaders see him as a dark agent — a tool only well-heeled interests can hire to navigate regulatory loopholes in order to spend as much as possible, even it means pushing the limits of the law, to sway voters.
“He’s an opportunistic lawyer who works against populist issues,” Sup. Tom Ammiano said.
Moreover, activists and state campaign finance experts say, he exerts an extraordinary level of influence over the city’s campaign regulators, including the top staff at the Ethics Commission and the deputy city attorneys who work with that agency.
“He is a high-powered fixer who has relationships with people in power that let him deliver for his clients in a way that leaves the less-connected among us flabbergasted,” said Marc Solomon, a Green Party member who worked on Sup. Matt Gonzalez’s mayoral campaign.
For his part, Sutton says that’s nonsense.
“There’s absolutely no proof or evidence of that,” Sutton told us. “I’m a professional, and I don’t want special access. I don’t need it, because I have a knowledge of the law.”
Rising to the top
By the time Sutton left his old firm last May to create Sutton and Associates, he had sealed his reputation as a go-to guy and counted among his clients the man who would be mayor. Sutton was everywhere. Consider:
• Having lawyered Newsom through the embarrassing flap in early 2003 over the $1 million loan from mentor Gordon Getty that (whoops!) Newsom neglected to disclose on his economic interest statements, Sutton served as treasurer to the Marina District supervisor’s mayoral campaign.
• When district attorney candidate Harris’s consultants realized their client was facing disaster if they couldn’t get her out of a legally binding pledge she signed in January 2003 to abide by the spending limits set in that race, they summoned Sutton, who got her out of the jam. The Ethics Commission’s decision to lift the spending limit was one of the agency’s most egregious acts in years and was truly an extraordinary event, activists say. It allowed Harris to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get past Bill Fazio in the runoff and eventually beat incumbent Terence Hallinan.
• Sutton handled the regulatory filing procedures for the California Urban Issues Project, a nonprofit lobbying outfit that churned out campaign mailers slamming Hallinan and mayoral contender Gonzalez for, among other charges, an unwillingness to crack down on the activities of homeless people. Though the group’s status prevents it from taking positions on candidates, the mailers clearly favored one candidate over the other. However, since the pieces didn’t actually include a “vote for candidate X” command, they fell within the bounds of the law as recently interpreted by the appellate courts, Sutton told us.
“What I do is say, ‘I am the lawyer. It’s my job to say this is what the law says. This is what it does or doesn’t allow,’ ” Sutton said. “It’s not about any kind of ideology on my part.”
• Sutton also served as treasurer for the campaigns behind two successful measures funded by downtown interests: the clean-streets initiative (Proposition C) and the controversial anti-panhandling legislation sponsored by Newsom (Proposition M). Interestingly, Harris particularly benefited because of her support for Prop. M. San Francisco pollster David Binder told us in December that her position on Prop. M helped her win over much of Fazio’s base and was key to her victory.
• Sutton’s expertise helped Newsom and Harris raise money in larger chunks during the runoff than they might otherwise have done. That’s because Sutton is keenly aware of a detail in the city’s campaign finance law that says if a candidate carries “accrued expenses” from the general election to the runoff, that candidate can collect $500 (instead of $250) from contributors. He should be — the ruling came as a result of his suggestion to local regulators.
For practical purposes, it can become a matter of shuffling the books. Newsom and Harris had so much cash behind their candidacies that it’s tough to believe they had any real debt. And in the case of at least Newsom, the amount of “debt” certainly seemed to be a moving target.
Shortly after the general election, Newsom campaign manger Eric Jaye told us he thought Newsom bore roughly $30,000 in accrued expenses. But when the campaign filed the paperwork, Newsom showed $225,322 in unpaid bills (see “Tainted Dough,” 12/03/03).
Neither Hallinan’s nor Gonzalez’s campaign took advantage of this provision in the law, even though Gonzalez treasurer Randy Knox brought it to the candidate’s attention. Gonzalez told us at the time that he didn’t consider such a move ethical.
Learning the ropes
A self-described politics nerd who interned in his state assemblymember’s office in high school, Sutton credits the rigors of the tight-knit environment of Pomona College — more than his three years at Stanford University Law School — with influencing the way he works today.
“I learned early I wasn’t going to get away without doing my homework,” he told us.
After clerking for former California Supreme Court Justice Edward Panelli from 1988 to 1989, he searched for a way to combine his legal degree with his keen interest in politics and government. In 1990 he found his way to Nielsen, Merksamer, though he lived, as he still does, in San Francisco.
Since he knew the city, he evolved into the firm’s attorney who dealt with San Francisco matters, he told us, even though he’s a member of the Republican Party — a rare bird here. In fact, he even served a stint as general counsel for the California Republican Party.
His first work in the city was on behalf of large institutions — the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum’s early bond campaigns, for example. He also made a key alliance with consultant Barnes, who was on his way to building a hugely influential career here and becoming closely connected to former mayor Brown.
In spring 1998, Sutton acted as treasurer for Bay Beautiful, a PAC aimed at defeating Proposition K, which former state senator Quentin L. Kopp put on the ballot to restrict Brown’s control of the development of Treasure Island. (Though the measure passed, the Brown-controlled Board of Supervisors failed to implement it.)
In November 1999, Sutton played a role in the orchestrated independent expenditure campaign on behalf of Brown’s reelection efforts in his handling of the Willie Brown Leadership PAC. The PAC directed some $55,000 into Brown’s bid for a second term (see “The Soft Money Shuffle,” 2/16/00).
At the time, Sutton had gone public with his strong opposition to efforts to restrict spending in political campaigns, writing in the San Francisco Examiner, “Not only does a spending cap decrease the quantity and quality of the issues discussed in the campaigns, it also infringes on First Amendment rights.”
One year after Brown’s reelection, the Leadership PAC, together with the pro-downtown Committee on Jobs, pumped some $67,000 into an unsuccessful bid to defeat Proposition O, which reinstated limits on independent expenditures and provided public financing for campaigns. Sutton handled the legal work for No on O.
No surprise there, Sutton’s critics say. Where money seeks to influence politics, that’s where you’ll find him. Sutton, though, says the list of campaigns he’s served doesn’t reflect his ideology as much as it does his skill set. He told us the best-funded campaigns “tend to have the more complicated legal questions, since they’re going to do more stuff.”
Money and politics
Advocates of campaign finance reform say Sutton has taken his opposition to campaign spending limits on the road, seeking to erode local ordinances that restrict spending.
“Sutton is active all over the state in his opposition to campaign finance reform,” said Paul Ryan, political reform project director for the Los Angeles–based Center for Governmental Studies.
Most recently Sutton testified before the San Diego Ethics Commission at a Jan. 21 hearing on a proposal to strengthen local campaign finance law. Sutton argued the commission should repeal the local law and replace it with the state’s version, which happens to be weaker.
“When we wrote the Political Reform Act of 1974, we put in there that local laws could be stronger than the state law,” Center for Governmental Studies director Bob Stern said. “What we have now is about 100 cities and counties that have gone beyond the state law. What [Sutton] is doing is pushing local jurisdictions to follow the state law only. And that’s unfortunate, because each local jurisdiction needs to deal with its own problems.”
Sutton said he just wants a uniform standard, with the minimal local amendments.
“[Cities and counties] keep making more and more laws, which are making things more and more complicated and difficult for anyone who wants to run for election to figure out,” Sutton said. “It has a dampening effect.”
Ryan and others are concerned Sutton might succeed in discouraging officials in municipalities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco from sticking by their stronger local laws. Compounding their concerns is that Sutton appears to have a great deal of influence over regulatory officials — at least in San Francisco.
Charlie Marsteller, who formerly headed up a San Francisco chapter of California Common Cause, believes the Ethics Commission has for more than a year failed to act on a complaint he filed against Sutton in late 2002, because of Sutton’s influence on the agency. (The complaint was over Sutton’s failure to disclose some $800,000 in contributions from PG&E to a committee aimed at defeating Proposition D, another public power measure.)
“It seems to me they are waiting until after February, when a seat on the commission is up and they’ll be able to replace [Bob Planthold] with a Sutton-friendly commissioner,” Marsteller said. (Assessor-Recorder Mabel Teng is expected to name Planthold’s replacement any day now.)
More recent examples activists point to include the Harris spending-cap matter and the latest: a charge made Jan. 16 by two Ethics Commission staffers that director Ginny Vida ordered the destruction of documents accidentally e-mailed to the agency by a secretary in Sutton’s office. Those documents, which were first reported on in the San Francisco Sentinel, strongly suggest that funds raised by the San Francisco Swearing-In Committee (without contribution limits) for Newsom’s inauguration were used to pay off a long list of consultants who worked on the campaign — a charge Sutton has vehemently denied.
On Jan. 28, Sutton filed paperwork for the committee reporting contributions but not expenditures. The total raised was $317,850 and included donations of $10,000 to $20,000 from such downtown players as Shorenstein Co., Gap founder Don Fisher, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, and Clear Channel.
Though Sutton insists he enjoys no undue influence on local regulators, even one of Harris’s consultants told us Sutton was hired for just that reason. “Jim Sutton has a certain amount of influence with Ginny Vida. He doesn’t think [spending limits] are constitutional,” Looman said. “And I believe that worries her too.”
Vida was on medical leave and couldn’t reached for comment, but her deputy, Mabel Ng, said neither she nor Vida give Sutton special treatment.
“I don’t think he has any more or any less influence than anyone else,” Ng said.
Dealing with Ethics
Sutton’s most impressive act in the Harris controversy was convincing Vida and Ng that Harris didn’t know she was bound to the pledge she signed in January 2003 to stay under the spending cap. Had ethics officials concluded that Harris knew her pledge was binding when she blew the cap sometime in September, they could have disqualified her from the race, according to the terms of the city’s campaign finance law.
Instead the Ethics Commission signed onto a settlement agreement stipulating that Harris’s had been an innocent mistake — though there was plenty of evidence that her campaign officials fully knew the pledge was binding (see Campaign Watch, 9/17/03 and 10/08/03). But in buying into Sutton’s version of events, the commission allowed Harris to continue spending money that helped her win the race.
“To facilitate the needs of Sutton’s clients, [Ethics] staffers gave in to Sutton the way he wanted,” Marsteller said. “The commissioners dropped the ball in that they needed to request an audit to check out the veracity of the statements being made by Harris…. They could hardly decide that the violations by the Harris committee were unintentional absent an audit. It’s one of the greatest demonstrations of incompetence I’ve seen, and Sutton led them into it.”
For his part, Sutton disagrees that Vida gave him an easy of time of it. “They fined [Harris] $34,000, and they made sure we printed flyers and ads telling the public of the mistake,” Sutton said.
That’s true. But Ryan and others view the matter as strong evidence of Sutton’s influence.
“It appears as though many of the arguments he makes personally are then likewise made by Ginny Vida and Mabel Ng,” Ryan said. “It appears as though Jim Sutton is influencing the public policy and San Francisco and the interpretation of the city’s finance laws.”

The political puppeteer

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By offering envelope-pushing legal and political advice at key moments in the fall campaign, attorney Jim Sutton was perhaps the single most influential individual behind the victories of Mayor Gavin Newsom and District Attorney Kamala Harris.
In the process, Sutton solidified his reputation as the dark prince of San Francisco elections, a hired gun who helps downtown interests and well-funded campaigns continue to dominate the electoral field even after voters passed reforms that restricted campaign giving and spending and required more official disclosure.
“He knows more election law than anyone, and he knows it better than anyone else,” local political consultant David Looman told the Bay Guardian. “He is the guy you call.”
New era, new player
Sutton, 40, stepped on the political stage just as voters were going to the polls in the fall of 1997 to demand more transparency in campaigns, a reaction to the leadership of Mayor Willie Brown and the dealings of powerhouse consultants like Jack Davis and Robert Barnes. At the time Sutton worked for Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller, and Naylor, a Mill Valley firm that specializes in election law.
Sutton took on mostly big-money campaigns backed by downtown interests — such as Brown’s 1999 reelection and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s successful, multimillion-­dollar bids to squelch the public power movement in 2001 and 2002. Highly versed in the minutia of campaign finance law, he became a major player in electoral politics in San Francisco — and across the state.
“He is one of a small handful of very influential political law attorneys who typically represent moneyed, influential candidates,” California Common Cause executive director Jim Knox told us. “And he seems to be on something of a crusade right now.”
A search of the San Francisco Ethics Commission’s online database shows that over the past six years, Sutton has acted as treasurer or in another legal capacity for at least 20 campaigns and counts such heavily funded political action committees as the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, the Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, and the San Francisco Association of Realtors among his permanent clients. For that work, which doesn’t include the fall election, he earned at least $750,000.
Many of the city’s progressive activists and leaders see him as a dark agent — a tool only well-heeled interests can hire to navigate regulatory loopholes in order to spend as much as possible, even it means pushing the limits of the law, to sway voters.
“He’s an opportunistic lawyer who works against populist issues,” Sup. Tom Ammiano said.
Moreover, activists and state campaign finance experts say, he exerts an extraordinary level of influence over the city’s campaign regulators, including the top staff at the Ethics Commission and the deputy city attorneys who work with that agency.
“He is a high-powered fixer who has relationships with people in power that let him deliver for his clients in a way that leaves the less-connected among us flabbergasted,” said Marc Solomon, a Green Party member who worked on Sup. Matt Gonzalez’s mayoral campaign.
For his part, Sutton says that’s nonsense.
“There’s absolutely no proof or evidence of that,” Sutton told us. “I’m a professional, and I don’t want special access. I don’t need it, because I have a knowledge of the law.”
Rising to the top
By the time Sutton left his old firm last May to create Sutton and Associates, he had sealed his reputation as a go-to guy and counted among his clients the man who would be mayor. Sutton was everywhere. Consider:
• Having lawyered Newsom through the embarrassing flap in early 2003 over the $1 million loan from mentor Gordon Getty that (whoops!) Newsom neglected to disclose on his economic interest statements, Sutton served as treasurer to the Marina District supervisor’s mayoral campaign.
• When district attorney candidate Harris’s consultants realized their client was facing disaster if they couldn’t get her out of a legally binding pledge she signed in January 2003 to abide by the spending limits set in that race, they summoned Sutton, who got her out of the jam. The Ethics Commission’s decision to lift the spending limit was one of the agency’s most egregious acts in years and was truly an extraordinary event, activists say. It allowed Harris to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get past Bill Fazio in the runoff and eventually beat incumbent Terence Hallinan.
• Sutton handled the regulatory filing procedures for the California Urban Issues Project, a nonprofit lobbying outfit that churned out campaign mailers slamming Hallinan and mayoral contender Gonzalez for, among other charges, an unwillingness to crack down on the activities of homeless people. Though the group’s status prevents it from taking positions on candidates, the mailers clearly favored one candidate over the other. However, since the pieces didn’t actually include a “vote for candidate X” command, they fell within the bounds of the law as recently interpreted by the appellate courts, Sutton told us.
“What I do is say, ‘I am the lawyer. It’s my job to say this is what the law says. This is what it does or doesn’t allow,’ ” Sutton said. “It’s not about any kind of ideology on my part.”
• Sutton also served as treasurer for the campaigns behind two successful measures funded by downtown interests: the clean-streets initiative (Proposition C) and the controversial anti-panhandling legislation sponsored by Newsom (Proposition M). Interestingly, Harris particularly benefited because of her support for Prop. M. San Francisco pollster David Binder told us in December that her position on Prop. M helped her win over much of Fazio’s base and was key to her victory.
• Sutton’s expertise helped Newsom and Harris raise money in larger chunks during the runoff than they might otherwise have done. That’s because Sutton is keenly aware of a detail in the city’s campaign finance law that says if a candidate carries “accrued expenses” from the general election to the runoff, that candidate can collect $500 (instead of $250) from contributors. He should be — the ruling came as a result of his suggestion to local regulators.
For practical purposes, it can become a matter of shuffling the books. Newsom and Harris had so much cash behind their candidacies that it’s tough to believe they had any real debt. And in the case of at least Newsom, the amount of “debt” certainly seemed to be a moving target.
Shortly after the general election, Newsom campaign manger Eric Jaye told us he thought Newsom bore roughly $30,000 in accrued expenses. But when the campaign filed the paperwork, Newsom showed $225,322 in unpaid bills (see “Tainted Dough,” 12/03/03).
Neither Hallinan’s nor Gonzalez’s campaign took advantage of this provision in the law, even though Gonzalez treasurer Randy Knox brought it to the candidate’s attention. Gonzalez told us at the time that he didn’t consider such a move ethical.
Learning the ropes
A self-described politics nerd who interned in his state assemblymember’s office in high school, Sutton credits the rigors of the tight-knit environment of Pomona College — more than his three years at Stanford University Law School — with influencing the way he works today.
“I learned early I wasn’t going to get away without doing my homework,” he told us.
After clerking for former California Supreme Court Justice Edward Panelli from 1988 to 1989, he searched for a way to combine his legal degree with his keen interest in politics and government. In 1990 he found his way to Nielsen, Merksamer, though he lived, as he still does, in San Francisco.
Since he knew the city, he evolved into the firm’s attorney who dealt with San Francisco matters, he told us, even though he’s a member of the Republican Party — a rare bird here. In fact, he even served a stint as general counsel for the California Republican Party.
His first work in the city was on behalf of large institutions — the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum’s early bond campaigns, for example. He also made a key alliance with consultant Barnes, who was on his way to building a hugely influential career here and becoming closely connected to former mayor Brown.
In spring 1998, Sutton acted as treasurer for Bay Beautiful, a PAC aimed at defeating Proposition K, which former state senator Quentin L. Kopp put on the ballot to restrict Brown’s control of the development of Treasure Island. (Though the measure passed, the Brown-controlled Board of Supervisors failed to implement it.)
In November 1999, Sutton played a role in the orchestrated independent expenditure campaign on behalf of Brown’s reelection efforts in his handling of the Willie Brown Leadership PAC. The PAC directed some $55,000 into Brown’s bid for a second term (see “The Soft Money Shuffle,” 2/16/00).
At the time, Sutton had gone public with his strong opposition to efforts to restrict spending in political campaigns, writing in the San Francisco Examiner, “Not only does a spending cap decrease the quantity and quality of the issues discussed in the campaigns, it also infringes on First Amendment rights.”
One year after Brown’s reelection, the Leadership PAC, together with the pro-downtown Committee on Jobs, pumped some $67,000 into an unsuccessful bid to defeat Proposition O, which reinstated limits on independent expenditures and provided public financing for campaigns. Sutton handled the legal work for No on O.
No surprise there, Sutton’s critics say. Where money seeks to influence politics, that’s where you’ll find him. Sutton, though, says the list of campaigns he’s served doesn’t reflect his ideology as much as it does his skill set. He told us the best-funded campaigns “tend to have the more complicated legal questions, since they’re going to do more stuff.”
Money and politics
Advocates of campaign finance reform say Sutton has taken his opposition to campaign spending limits on the road, seeking to erode local ordinances that restrict spending.
“Sutton is active all over the state in his opposition to campaign finance reform,” said Paul Ryan, political reform project director for the Los Angeles–based Center for Governmental Studies.
Most recently Sutton testified before the San Diego Ethics Commission at a Jan. 21 hearing on a proposal to strengthen local campaign finance law. Sutton argued the commission should repeal the local law and replace it with the state’s version, which happens to be weaker.
“When we wrote the Political Reform Act of 1974, we put in there that local laws could be stronger than the state law,” Center for Governmental Studies director Bob Stern said. “What we have now is about 100 cities and counties that have gone beyond the state law. What [Sutton] is doing is pushing local jurisdictions to follow the state law only. And that’s unfortunate, because each local jurisdiction needs to deal with its own problems.”
Sutton said he just wants a uniform standard, with the minimal local amendments.
“[Cities and counties] keep making more and more laws, which are making things more and more complicated and difficult for anyone who wants to run for election to figure out,” Sutton said. “It has a dampening effect.”
Ryan and others are concerned Sutton might succeed in discouraging officials in municipalities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco from sticking by their stronger local laws. Compounding their concerns is that Sutton appears to have a great deal of influence over regulatory officials — at least in San Francisco.
Charlie Marsteller, who formerly headed up a San Francisco chapter of California Common Cause, believes the Ethics Commission has for more than a year failed to act on a complaint he filed against Sutton in late 2002, because of Sutton’s influence on the agency. (The complaint was over Sutton’s failure to disclose some $800,000 in contributions from PG&E to a committee aimed at defeating Proposition D, another public power measure.)
“It seems to me they are waiting until after February, when a seat on the commission is up and they’ll be able to replace [Bob Planthold] with a Sutton-friendly commissioner,” Marsteller said. (Assessor-Recorder Mabel Teng is expected to name Planthold’s replacement any day now.)
More recent examples activists point to include the Harris spending-cap matter and the latest: a charge made Jan. 16 by two Ethics Commission staffers that director Ginny Vida ordered the destruction of documents accidentally e-mailed to the agency by a secretary in Sutton’s office. Those documents, which were first reported on in the San Francisco Sentinel, strongly suggest that funds raised by the San Francisco Swearing-In Committee (without contribution limits) for Newsom’s inauguration were used to pay off a long list of consultants who worked on the campaign — a charge Sutton has vehemently denied.
On Jan. 28, Sutton filed paperwork for the committee reporting contributions but not expenditures. The total raised was $317,850 and included donations of $10,000 to $20,000 from such downtown players as Shorenstein Co., Gap founder Don Fisher, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, and Clear Channel.
Though Sutton insists he enjoys no undue influence on local regulators, even one of Harris’s consultants told us Sutton was hired for just that reason. “Jim Sutton has a certain amount of influence with Ginny Vida. He doesn’t think [spending limits] are constitutional,” Looman said. “And I believe that worries her too.”
Vida was on medical leave and couldn’t reached for comment, but her deputy, Mabel Ng, said neither she nor Vida give Sutton special treatment.
“I don’t think he has any more or any less influence than anyone else,” Ng said.
Dealing with Ethics
Sutton’s most impressive act in the Harris controversy was convincing Vida and Ng that Harris didn’t know she was bound to the pledge she signed in January 2003 to stay under the spending cap. Had ethics officials concluded that Harris knew her pledge was binding when she blew the cap sometime in September, they could have disqualified her from the race, according to the terms of the city’s campaign finance law.
Instead the Ethics Commission signed onto a settlement agreement stipulating that Harris’s had been an innocent mistake — though there was plenty of evidence that her campaign officials fully knew the pledge was binding (see Campaign Watch, 9/17/03 and 10/08/03). But in buying into Sutton’s version of events, the commission allowed Harris to continue spending money that helped her win the race.
“To facilitate the needs of Sutton’s clients, [Ethics] staffers gave in to Sutton the way he wanted,” Marsteller said. “The commissioners dropped the ball in that they needed to request an audit to check out the veracity of the statements being made by Harris…. They could hardly decide that the violations by the Harris committee were unintentional absent an audit. It’s one of the greatest demonstrations of incompetence I’ve seen, and Sutton led them into it.”
For his part, Sutton disagrees that Vida gave him an easy of time of it. “They fined [Harris] $34,000, and they made sure we printed flyers and ads telling the public of the mistake,” Sutton said.
That’s true. But Ryan and others view the matter as strong evidence of Sutton’s influence.
“It appears as though many of the arguments he makes personally are then likewise made by Ginny Vida and Mabel Ng,” Ryan said. “It appears as though Jim Sutton is influencing the public policy and San Francisco and the interpretation of the city’s finance laws.”