Ethics Commission

Chiu and Herrera roll up their sleeves for spring cleaning in City Hall

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
3

For some time now, oft-labeled “power brokers” with undue influence in San Francisco city government have taken heat for failing to register as lobbyists. At the same time, politically connected insiders are often criticized for manipulating the permitting process for major real estate developments far outside the public gaze.

It’s said that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Yesterday, City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Board of Supervisors President David Chiu introduced a package of reforms designed to shed more light on lobbyists’ practices.

The new set of rules would tighten up lobbying regulations, create new disclosure rules for developers and their lobbyists, create more oversight around city contracting and grant-making, and require the publication of a guide for campaign donors spelling out Ethics laws regarding campaign contributions.

“We’re not demanding of anybody else anything different than we would demand of ourselves,” Herrera said, adding that he and Chiu had been working on drafting the proposal for months.

Chiu and Herrera both vied for the city’s highest office in competition with Mayor Ed Lee in 2011. Since beginning his term as mayor, Lee has drawn sharp criticism for his cozy relationships with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Chinatown consultant Rose Pak and a handful of others who are not registered as lobbyists.

Without mentioning anyone by name, Chiu noted, “I do think there are individuals who have not registered as lobbyists who probably should.”

The proposed rules would broaden the definition of “lobbyist” under the city’s Ethics regulations. The new definition would include “any individual who makes contact with” an elected official on behalf of an employer or anyone else paying them “for lobbyist services.” If someone makes $1,000 or more per month for lobbying, that person would be considered a lobbyist under the law.

The new legislation would also create new disclosure requirements for “permit expediters,” who work on behalf of developers to hasten the permitting process for major real estate construction. They would have to register with the city’s Ethics Commission and file regular reports about their contacts with city officials. Developers with major planning projects in the pipeline would also have to disclose donations of $5,000 or more to city-based nonprofits.

Chiu noted that he and Herrera had consulted with Friends of Ethics, a group of government accountability advocates that’s been pushing for Ethics reform, for help drafting the proposal.

Chiu and Herrera also acknowledged that better enforcement of existing laws was needed in addition to the proposed legislative reforms. “Our city could be more proactive in enforcing our Ethics laws to the fullest,” Chiu said. “Not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law.”

Checks from mayor’s mysterious breakfast companions mysteriously absent

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
52

In less than three months, custom made super yachts will zip around the San Francisco Bay in the ultimate competition for the prized America’s Cup. But San Francisco could wind up spending millions more than originally expected to host this prestigious sailing regatta.

At a March 13 committee hearing at the Board of Supervisors, America’s Cup Organizing Committee CEO Kyri McClellan reported that Mayor Ed Lee was investing an “incredible amount of energy” into helping ACOC with fundraising efforts to avert a city funding shortfall. He was even said to be hosting “breakfasts with CEOs” to solicit funding, McClellan said.

Who are the CEOs? Nobody will say.

How much has each of them pledged to give? Nobody will say.

When the Guardian submitted these questions to Lee, McClellan, and Stefanie Roumeliotes – whose SGR Consulting firm was wheeled in at the last minute to organize fundraising events – none answered directly.

McClellan responded on April 9 with a copy of a letter she sent to Mayor Lee and Board President David Chiu on the day of the hearing, which she indicated was “the most recent update on fundraising.” Roumeliotes, for her part, told the Guardian flat out to stop calling, because her firm was not going to answer any questions.

So far, it appears that none of the mayor’s fundraising meetings, which took place from January 25 to March 4, resulted in his unnamed breakfast companions writing out actual donation checks.

Had they contributed funding, the donation amounts would have been reflected in “behested payment” forms filed with the San Francisco Ethics Commission, required under state law to be submitted 30 days after a contribution is made.

Elected officials are “supposed to file behested payment [forms] for … legislative, governmental or charitable purposes,” Ethics Commission chief John St. Croix told the Guardian, so donations relating to the America’s Cup would fall squarely into this category. Those forms are supposed to filed internally by department, then sent onto Ethics. So far, none have been recorded.

“If there are such forms that the mayor filled out,” St. Croix told the Guardian, “they’re not getting forwarded.”

Meanwhile, McClellan’s March 13 letter suggests that recent fundraising efforts have yielded only $1.4 million – which won’t actually be in hand till next year. That’s a far cry from the estimated $15.6 million funding gap race organizers say is needed to cover San Francisco’s estimated $22.5 million billionaires’ boat race tab. As the fundraising arm of the race organizing committee, ACOC promised in an initial agreement that it would “endeavor to raise” the amount needed to defray city costs. Thus far, it’s paid $6.8 million.

In her letter to Lee and Chiu, McClellan suggested that roughly $13 million of that $15.6 million shortfall would be accounted for in “forecast General Fund revenues.” That translates to additional money harvested from visitors’ pockets via sales and hotel taxes, with some payroll taxes and parking fees sprinkled in, all associated with the America’s Cup events. Little-guy money.

And thanks to the little guys, ACOC’s new fundraising goal is much more attainable. “The SFACOC continues to endeavor to raise the funds,” McClellan wrote. “At a minimum that is $2,670,851 of which we already have $1,400,000 in existing pledges that are to be received by January 2014.”

 

Mayor Lee’s trip to China raises questions of ethics and influence

Sasha Cuttler
-
86
Mayor Lee’s trip to China raises questions of ethics and influence

[UPDATED(x3)] Mayor Ed Lee barely had time to unpack from his recent political junket to Paris before he was off on his current trip to China – both of which were paid for and accompanied by some of his top political supporters and among the city’s most influential power brokers. No wonder Lee doesn’t have time to weigh in on Airbnb’s tax dodge, the condo conversion stalemate, or other important city issues.

Local good government advocate Charles Marsteller learned of the current China trip from Willie Brown’s column in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, whose editors (including Editor Ward Bushee, who we’re still waiting to hear back from about this trip) consider it a “man about town” column immune from conflict-of-interest policies that normally require journalists to disclose who is paying them on the side.

“I’m here with Mayor Ed Lee for my seventh official visit,” Brown cheerfully wrote, although readers were left to wonder just what official business Brown might be conducting with our mayor and his entourage. So, being an expert on political disclosure laws, Marsteller went down to the Ethics Commission to pull the Form SFEC-3.216(d) that state law requires elected officials to file before leaving on trips paid for by outside interests.

But it wasn’t there, so Marsteller filed an official complaint with the commission, telling us, “I did so to impress upon our Elected and other City Officials the need to properly report gifts in a timely way and in the manner as called for by State law and on the forms provided by the SF Ethics Commission.” 

When we contacted mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey, she forwarded us a copy of the form that should have been filed before the trip and told us, “I’m not going to answer the question about why we failed to file the appropriate forms with the Ethics Commission, as we worked closely with the City Attorney’s office to exceed reporting requirements by all appropriate deadlines.” [UPDATE: The time stamp on the form indicated it was filed on May 25, before the trip, even though it wasn’t publicly available at the Ethics Commission office when Marsteller went down to look for it].

The form indicates that Lee’s portion of the trip was paid for by the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce, whose influential leader Rose Pak conspired with Brown to get Lee appointed mayor more than two years ago. This is also the same Rose Pak who was admonished by the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission for illegally funding another political junket to China in 2009 with Sups. David Chiu and Eric Mar and then-Sup. Carmen Chu, who Lee appointed as Assessor earlier this year.

Those officials were forced to repay the expenses after the FPPC found that Pak, that time acting under the auspices of the Chinese New Year Festival Committee, was not allowed to make gifts exceeding $420 per official that year. “Please be advised that since the Chinese New Year Festival Committee is not an organization that falls under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, no public official may accept gifts of any type from this organization valued in excess of the applicable limit,” FPPC counsel Zachary Norton wrote in an Aug. 22, 2011 enforcement letter to Pak.

In other words, because this committee and “other 501(c)(6) chamber of commerce organization[s]” are in the business of actively lobbying top elected officials for favorable policies, rulings, and projects, they are barred by ethics law from giving them the gifts of big overseas political junkets. As Marsteller noted in his complaint letter, violations are punishable by fines of $5,000 per violation, or if they are “willful violations of the law” – which doing the same thing you were sanctioned for just two years ago certainly might be considered – the criminal penalties are $10,000 per violation or up to a year in jail.

Mayor Lee’s portion of the trip cost the Chamber $11,970, according to the form. But this time, to get around the FPPC restrictions, Pak seems to have passed the hat among various business elites to fund the trip. The mayor’s form shows that 41 people paid up to the current gift limit of $440 “to defray the cost of the mayor’s trip.”

They include Pak, Brown, four people from Kwan Wo Construction, three from American Pacific International Capital, two each from Boyett Construction, Young Electric, and Bel Builders, Harbor View Holdings Director Gorretti Lo Lui, and SF Immigration Rights Commissioner Sonya Molodetskaya – most of whom were also part of the trip’s 43-member delegation.

Among others who tagged along for the trip are Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru (who has a history of political corruption under Mayors Brown and Newsom and no clear business being on a Chinese trade delegation, but who doesn’t love a free trip?!), Kofi Bonner from Lennar Home Builders, Harlan Kelly with the SFPUC, Jay Xu with the Asian Art Museum, the wives of Lee and Bonner, Kandace Bender with San Francisco International Airport, and Mark Chandler with the Mayor’s Office of International Trade and Commerce.

It’s not clear who paid for those other public officials or even what they were doing there. [UPDATE: Department of Public Works spokesperson Rachel Gordon told us that Nuru paid for the trip himself, but that he’ll be studying China’s instrastructure, from its separated bikesways to greening of public rights-of-way, as well as meeting with Chinese businesses involved in the redevelopment of Hunter’s Point. “He’s been looking at a lot of the infrastructure in China,” Gordon said. “I expect a dozen if not more ideas when he returns.”] Then again, it also wasn’t clear why venture capitalist Ron Conway – Lee’s top campaign fundraiser and possible reason for publicly subsidizing big tech companies, including many that Conway funds – joined and helped sponsor Lee’s recent trip to Paris. This is just how business gets done in San Francisco.

“Willie Brown is the former Mayor of San Francisco,” Falvey told us when we asked why Brown was on the trip and what its purpose was. “The purpose of the trip is to promote San Francisco, its local manufacturing, cultural exchanges, he is signing an MOU and meeting with high level, new Chinese government officials.”

[UPDATE 4/5: Marsteller has withdrawn his complaint from the Ethics Commission alleging the mayor’s form wasn’t filed on time, but he and another citizen have filed separate complaints with the FPPC alleging the trip and its funding mechanism may violate the agency’s 2011 ruling against Pak.]

Last gasp ends the sordid Mirkarimi saga

Sasha Cuttler
-
167
Last gasp ends the sordid Mirkarimi saga

A San Francisco judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and his wife, Eliana Lopez, which is likely to be the last step in an ugly and protracted political, legal, and administrative battle stemming from Mirkarimi grabbing Lopez’s arm during an argument on Dec. 31, 2011.

The couple’s neighbors, attorney Abraham Mertens and his wife, Ivory Madison, reported the grabbing incident to police over the objections of Lopez, who had sought advice from Madison and allowed her to film a short but emotional video displaying a bruise on her arm, which became the main evidence against Mirkarimi.

That exploded into a high-profile drama in which Mirkarimi was vilified by the media, charged with domestic violence and witness dissuasion, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment, suspended without pay for six months by Mayor Ed Lee, and finally reinstated to office by the Board of Supervisors in October.

Along the way, the two couples – who are still neighbors, despite Mirkarimi’s efforts to sell his house and move – became increasingly bitter public rivals. Lopez consistently denied being abused and implied to reporters that Mertens and Madison had political motives for breaking her confidence and reporting the incident to police. Mertens and Madison maintained that Mirkarimi tried to dissuade their cooperation with police – an allegation that the long investigation failed to substantiate – and blasted Mirkarimi and Lopez in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed.

Other than that, Madison and Mertens refused to talk to the press as the saga unfolded – a stance they maintained today, with a man who answered the phone at the Red Room website business they run immediately telling us, “They’re not interested in talking.”

But Madison, who went to law school before becoming a fantasy writer, did let loose in June when she submitted a wild, incredible 22-page declaration to the Ethics Commission as part of the city’s effort to permanently remove Mirkarimi on official misconduct charges, purporting to describe the tyrannical way the Mirkarimi ran the household, as Madison claimed she was told by Lopez (which she disputes).

The commission criticized and gutted the declaration, finding that it was prejudicial and contained little usable evidence. Commissioner Paul Renne even dressed down the deputy city attorneys for submitting it, calling it “clearly hearsay, clearly having the intention of poisoning the well of this hearing,” causing Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith to apologize and explain they had little to do with the declaration because Madison had hired a private attorney who helped her prepare it.

The couple and their attorney have threatened to sue Mirkarimi and Lopez for more than a year, and they finally filed the defamation case in January, and it has now been quickly dismissed. Domestic violence advocates and allies of Mayor Lee also threatened a recall election against Mirkarimi, but that also seemed to wither late last year – meaning this is probably the last we’ll hear about this case, at least until Mirkarimi runs for reelection in two years, if he decides to do so.

Asked to comment on the lawsuit’s dismissal, Mirkarimi told the Guardian, “My family and I are very happy and have moved forward, and I hope they are too.” His attorney, David Waggoner, told us, “Hopefully, the dismissal represents the end of what has been a long and painful experience for everyone involved.”

Activists to government: SF should be more like LA

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
9
Activists to government: SF should be more like LA

What sets San Francisco apart from Los Angeles? When it comes to city agencies that are supposed to keep politicians, lobbyists and campaign financiers honest, there are evidently some key differences.

Last year, San Francisco’s Budget & Legislative Analyst, Harvey Rose, drafted a report at the behest of Sup. David Campos comparing the San Francisco Ethics Commission to that of LA. It was meant as a precursor for moving forward with a package of tougher Ethics regulations governing areas like campaign finance, but so far little has happened on that front.

Some of Rose’s findings are intriguing. For example, the report notes that in LA, investigations into possible ethics violations result in more findings of merit and, ultimately, significantly higher fines on average. Whereas the LA Ethics Commission dismisses just 19 percent of its cases, the vast majority of ethical investigations here in San Francisco – 76 percent – die off with findings of no merit, or “case dismissed.”

Do San Franciscans have a tendency to file more complaints lacking in substance, or does this reflect the modus operandi of the Ethics Commission – an agency that has long been painted as a sleeping watchdog by good-government wonks?

“I think that could be a fascinating figure to get more detail about,” says Eileen Hansen, a former member of the San Francisco Ethics Commission who served for six years. “LA heard more [cases], but we dismissed more,” she added.

Hansen is part of an ad hoc group, Friends of Ethics, that’s gearing up for an informational hearing scheduled for tomorrow, Feb. 27, to take a deeper look at the Rose report and consider what lessons San Francisco’s Ethics Commission might learn from its counterpart in LA, where government accountability rules are regarded by lawyers and government transparency activists as a gold standard. Those who attend the “interested persons” meeting will enjoy a rare perk: The ability to address a commission without having to adhere to the two-minute time limit normally imposed at public hearings.

“Those who are on the commission’s list – consultants, political treasurers, political lawyers, all the usual suspects – are the ones who have weighed in so far,” an email circulated by Friends of Ethics points out. “For ten years the rules have been written by those special interests, and we are insisting that they be written for the public interest.”

What’s LA got that San Francisco doesn’t? For one thing, the city bans political contributions from registered lobbyists. This means, for instance, that if a registered lobbyist is trying to sway an elected official who’s up for reelection on, say, a major development project, that lobbyist is legally barred from writing a big fat juicy check to support said politician’s campaign. In San Francisco, there is no such rule.

Hansen says there are other measures that could improve government accountability in San Francisco. “We ban contributions from city contractors, but we have a huge loophole,” she explains, “of not including people seeking development projects. That’s 90 percent. Development drives politics in this town,” she added, noting that closing the loophole could be a possible reform.

“LA is doing some great things. Our hope is that we get the public to take the Rose report seriously,” Hansen said. “It could inform the beginning of a reform package that we would love to see the Ethics Commission take seriously.”

The Ethics Commission hearing will be held on Feb. 27 at 3 p.m. in San Francisco City Hall, Room 400.

Hearing called on America’s Cup “fundraising fiasco” as Mayor Lee talks about scaling back the event

Sasha Cuttler
-
20
Hearing called on America’s Cup “fundraising fiasco” as Mayor Lee talks about scaling back the event

Amid reports that San Francisco taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $20 million in America’s Cup expenses because of anemic fundraising efforts by the America’s Cup Organizing Committee, today Mayor Ed Lee talked about scaling back the event and offering public naming rights to wealthy donors and Sup. John Avalos called for a Board of Supervisors hearing to look into the matter.

Following his monthly question time appearance before the Board of Supervisors, Lee was questioned about the issue by reporters, and he downplayed the idea that the city will go into the hole for its overzealous sponsorship of billionaire Larry Ellison’s big boat race.

“We’re not in the hole, but we will be if we don’t raise enough money. And I don’t want the pressure on the General Fund, and that would end up being an obligation that we have. By the way, while I’m raising, or helping to raise, some $20 million to cover that, I’m also asking all departments now that we have a, relative to what was going to be a larger race, now we don’t have as many boats, the expenses might be off so we have to kind of update it and reduce it. So with the combination of reducing the expense side and then raising some money as we’re doing from the private sector, we’re getting some new traction,” Lee said.

“We still have plans to spend upwards of $30 million to cover all the expenses, and we’re hoping that gets down to much less than that. But my goal right now is to get reports from all the departments about how to reduce their spending on this. I’m still going to try to raise the $20 million with the help of Senator Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Lt. Gov. Newsom,” Lee said.

He also alluded to public goodies that he may offer to wealthy potential donors, including making a passing reference that “we’ve created some ongoing legacies, naming rights in areas that haven’t been named yet, we’ve cleared that with the Port to make sure it’s a very attractive package for them.” But ultimately, he said that city taxpayers are on the hook to pay for the impacts of this race: “This is a financial obligation that we signed on.”

Earlier in the day, the Telegraph Hill Dwellers – which has been active since the America’s Cup was first proposed in trying to ensure the event makes financial sense for the city – sent a letter to the board calling for a hearing and highlighting the ethically dubious actions by city officials that got us into this mess.

That letter follows in its entirety:

February 12, 2013

Supervisor Carmen Chu, Chair

Supervisor David Campos

Supervisor Malia Cohen

Government Audit and Oversight Committee

San Francisco Board of Supervisors

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place

San Francisco, CA 94102

Re: Request for Oversight Hearing on America’s Cup Organizing Committee “Fundraising Fiasco”

Dear Members of the Government Audit and Oversight Committee:

As a northern waterfront neighborhood leader who has supported bringing the America’s Cup to San Francisco since Day One, I feel compelled to urge you to take urgent action to begin to restore a profound breach of public trust while there is still time left to salvage this event. 

News reports this week revealed the stunning news that San Francisco taxpayers may have to pay upwards of $20 million to subsidize the America’s Cup[1] despite public commitments stating that the event would not be taxpayer-funded and a signed contract designed to make that happen.[2]  In light of such astonishing news this close to the race, I request that you schedule a public hearing now to get answers to this critical question: what happened and how can we fix it?

Specifically, I encourage you to solicit testimony and an appearance before the Committee from the two individuals most responsible for the current $20 million shortfall out of the $32 million in private fundraising that was committed to prevent the need for taxpayer subsidies:  America’s Cup Organizing Committee Executive Director Kyri McClellan and America’s Cup Organizing Committee Chair Mark Buell.  These are the two individuals whose primary job it has been for the past two years to ensure that the America’s Cup Organizing Committee complied with its fundraising obligations.  Both Ms. McClellan and Mr. Buell have made numerous public statements over the past two years aimed at rebuffing all concerns about their ability to raise the $32 million. 

For example:

1)  “I have every confidence we will meet our obligations,” – Kyri McClellan, 6/13/11[3]

2)  “Yep, we are not running behind in the least bit,” – Kyri McClellan, 9/19/11[4]

3)  “I am confident that all the money will be raised,” – Mark Buell, 1/6/12[5]

4) “I’m busting my ass raising (money) for it.” – Mark Buell, 2/7/12[6]

5)  “we are confident that the agreement we have with the (America’s Cup) Event Authority coupled with our continued fundraising successes will ensure we meet our obligations to the city.” – Mark Buell, 2/7/12[7]

6)  “There is definitely more heavy lifting to be done, but we think we’re well-positioned to do that,” – Kyri McClellan, 2/8/12[8]

The role that Ms. McClellan has played in creating what is being referred to as a “fundraising fiasco”[9] should particularly be evaluated in light of the two ethics laws that were waived by the San Francisco Ethics Commission at the urging of members of the Board of Supervisors to enable her to shift seats across the negotiating table from her previous job working as the Mayor’s America’s Cup deal negotiator on behalf of the City into her private role working for the America’s Cup Organizing Committee.[10]  The twin dangers of reduced accountability and lax scrutiny that stem from this kind of “revolving door” between government and the private sector are precisely what the ethics laws that were summarily waived were put in place to prevent.  The question now must be asked whether the decision to waive ethics rules to allow someone playing such a central role to shift sides deserves a significant part of blame for the problems that have begun to come to light.

As a long-time supporter of the America’s Cup, I hope you will take swift action to get answers and correct the course of the event before it is too late.  Thank you very much for your time and consideration. 

Sincerely,

Jon Golinger

President

Telegraph Hill Dwellers

 

[1] America’s Cup could cost S.F. millions, Matier & Ross, S.F. Chronicle 2/10/13

[2] “[T]he [America’s Cup Organizing] Committee will endeavor to raise up to $32 million over a three year period from private sources, to reimburse the City for a portion of the City’s costs (including, without limitation, costs associated with CEQA review), and lost revenues, and City expenditures required to meet its obligations under Sections 8 and 10 (including resources from the police, and public works departments, the Port, DPT and MTA). The Committee’s fundraising targets for the three year period are $12 million for year one, and $10 million for years two and three.” – Section 9.4, 34th America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement, 12/14/10

[3] America’s Cup Fundraising is Floundering, NBC News, 6/13/11

[4] America’s Cup reach tax exempt status, KGO ABC News, 9/19/11

[5] America’s Cup organizers hit first fundraising goal, SF Chronicle, 1/6/12

[6] America’s Cup needs ‘significant additional fundraising,’ SF Chronicle, 2/7/12

[7] ‘Significant’ fundraising needed for America’s Cup group, SF Business Times, 2/7/12

[8] Controller:  America’s Cup needs more fundraising to cover city costs, SF Examiner, 2/8/12

[9] City Pushes to Fill Fundraising Gap for America’s Cup, KTVU Ch. 2, 2/11/13

[10] “In order to accommodate McClellan, commissioners agreed to waive two post-employment restrictions for city officials.  The first is a yearlong post-employment communications ban, and the second prohibits former city employees from receiving compensation from city contractors for two years. . . . Asked what would happen if ACOC somehow failed to raise the agreed-upon funds, placing McClellan in the position of having to explain the shortfall or re-negotiate with her former coworkers, Ethics Commission Deputy Executive Director Mabel Ng allowed, ‘If something like that happened, there might be a conflict.’ And what justification was given for waiving the ban on former employees receiving compensation from city contractors? “For that one, in the law itself, it says the commission may waive it … if it would cause extreme hardship,” Ng explained. “There would be a hardship, because … this is a great opportunity for her, and there was a short timeline for her to do it.”  Pressed on that point, Ng confirmed that the “hardship” in this case was the possibility of being barred from a great job opportunity, not the threat of financial impact or job loss. The other issue, Ng said, was that without McClellan serving in that post, the committee’s fundraising effort might not be successful. “It just seemed like, you need to have somebody take charge,” she said. “The committee may suffer without her at the helm. If she were not able to do that, the committee — which plays a very crucial role in this — may not be able to meet its obligations.’” Mayoral staff member to direct America’s Cup Organizing Committee, SF Bay Guardian, 4/7/11

 

 

Ethics Commission wants to hide its own flaws

Zelda Bronstein
-
3
Ethics Commission wants to hide its own flaws

The Ethics Commission has serious problems. A detailed report by Board of Supervisors Budget Analyst Harvey Rose, comparing SF’s ethics rules and enfocement to that of Los Angeles, found a long list of ways that this city is falling short. The supervisors asked the commission to have a robust discussion of the findings and propose reforms.

Now Friends of Ethics, made up of a number of former commissioners, activists, and campaign-finance watchdogs, says that the commission is trying to hold a quick hearing that will gloss over much of the criticism of the Rose report. The group wants the hearing delayed until there’s a lot more time to bring a lot more people into the process.

Here’s the letter FOE sent over:

To the Ethics Commission and Staff:

Friends of Ethics is writing with objections and protests regarding the upcoming “Interested Persons” meetings scheduled for December 4 and 10, 2012.

The Commission notified “Candidates, Treasurers and Interested Persons” of meetings “to discuss recommendations of the Budget Analyst report (also known as the Harvey Rose report) comparing programs of the San Francisco Ethics Commission with those of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission.”

The notice was dated November 28, providing only three business days before the first meeting will take place.

The Friends of Ethics bases its protest and objections on the following facts, and by this memo, formally requests that Ethics postpone these meetings until February.

     The proposed Interested Persons meetings do not mention inclusion of a representative from the Board Budget Analyst office to present their report and to discuss its findings. Without their direct involvement, as well as the invited presence of Supervisor Campos who requested the Rose report, the Interested Persons meeting will have only the staff’s views of the report as a basis for discussion. We believe this fails to provide the direct interaction and communication that should be part of this process.

    Ethics was requested by the Board of Supervisors to conduct robust and inclusive outreach to all participants in San Francisco’s political life. Ethics provided Friends of Ethics with the list used to contact Interested Persons about this meeting. We believe the list provided is not an adequate outreach, includes no community-based organizations active in electoral politics, any of the chartered Democratic clubs or other partisan political organizations, or special focus organizations active in San Francisco elections. We believe the lack of an inclusive outreach as evidenced by this list denies the Commission of a full discussion of the issues and is weighted toward the regulated community. We are puzzled by the fact that many people who do receive the Interested Persons notices are not on the list provided by Ethics, and seek a clarification on whether additional lists were used that were not disclosed to us. We also note that the late Joe Lynn, while the Campaign Finance Officer for Ethics, not only conducted extensive outreaches for IP meetings, including contacting past treasurers and press and posting notices on local political blogs and chat boards, but also later informed Director St. Croix in writing about those practices for the purpose of encouraging the continuation of such outreach.

    Ethics provided insufficient time for a review and analysis of recommendations that are significant and meaningful for the operation and success of the Ethics Commission mission. We believe that Ethics has done the bare minimum of notice of a public meeting and failed to take a serious approach to this important issue. Providing notice three days before the meeting, particularly in the holiday period between Thanksgiving and the first of December, means that no organization has an opportunity to place this issue on their agenda for a discussion or to endorse comments to be provided to the Ethics Commission.

    Ethics prepared an agenda that omitted significant and critically important comparisons between the Los Angeles and San Francisco Ethics Commissions that were included in the Rose report. While Ethics did list specific recommendations from the Rose report, the report itself detailed a number of additional differences that are significant to the San Francisco political community as we know it, and that should be part of a discussion of the Rose report.

Among the omitted points are:

    Los Angeles has a private right of action for citizens to act when Ethics does not; in Los Angeles this can include penalties under a civil action. San Francisco has no such provision. We believe this is essential to meaningfully empower citizens to directly seek compliance with our laws.

    Los Angeles requires disclosure of contributors of $100 or more to groups making “third party” expenditures. San Francisco does not require public disclosure of this money stream. Disclosure of donors to third party committees would add transparency, particularly if this has become a strategy to allow city contractors to influence elections.

    Los Angeles prohibits contributions from those seeking permits, while San Francisco does not. Friends of Ethics has determined that over 90 percent of all City Hall lobbying involves permit decisions.

    Los Angeles prohibits commissioners from fundraising for candidates, while San Francisco does not. This is the heart of pay-to-play politics that infects city appointments as commissioners are often the first stop for fundraising on behalf of city elected officials. We note a recent case where a city commissioner hosted a fundraiser that included contributions from city employees from the same department. The candidate returned the contributions, recognizing that commissioners are prohibited from seeking contributions from city employees. However, this demonstrates the potential abuse and underscores that Los Angeles’ policy is a stronger and more easily enforced prohibition. We recommend it.

    Los Angeles prohibits fundraising from city contractors and those seeking city actions. San Francisco allows contractors to fundraise and serve on candidate finance committees, although they may not contribute their own funds. Currently San Francisco also does not require candidates to disclose the names of their Finance Committee members. However, we strongly prefer closing the loophole, as Los Angeles has done, by prohibiting city contractors and permit seekers from fundraising.

    Los Angeles requires a more robust disclosure of “paid by” notification on telephone messages when 200 or more people are called. San Francisco sets the threshold at 500 people. Therefore, “paid by” calls to members of political clubs during the endorsement process would be missed under San Francisco’s standard but included under LA’s standard.

    Los Angeles provides a “Guide for Contributors” that educates donors and reduces confusion on such issues as aggregate contribution limits, prohibitions on officers of organizations receiving city funds, and so forth. This is done at minimal cost and made available on the Internet with no printing or mailing costs. San Francisco does not provide a Guide. Instead, the Ethics staff has recommended that the Commission rewrite the law to overturn specific prohibitions, stating that contributors are confused about the rules. The best approach is Los Angeles, where an educational outreach to contributors is part of their program. We note that San Francisco provides guides and outreach to most others involved in political activities, including committee treasurers, candidates and others but does not include an educational outreach to donors.

    Los Angeles prohibits political contributions from being made at City Hall or other city offices, including offices rented with city funds. San Francisco allows contributions to take place in the mayor’s own office, supervisor’s offices, at Redevelopment, Planning, Port or other offices – in short, anywhere that a donor chooses to make a contribution. We believe allowing contributions to be made in the workplace of city officials undermines public confidence and is inconsistent with other restrictions on the use of city resources for political purposes.

    Los Angeles has a more robust view of what constitutes lobbying and includes attorneys who offer strategic advice even if they do not directly contact a city official. San Francisco does not require registering or disclosing clients from such attorneys involved in orchestrating a favorable result for a paying client. Attorneys who serve as committee treasurers also do not face the same level of public disclosure as lobbyists.

We believe this list of omitted topics, coupled with the unacceptable short timeframe provided for analysis and review by the political community, and the failure to provide adequate outreach, raises serious concerns that Ethics is not engaged in a serious effort to obtain the public’s views on its operations and policies based on the Harvey Rose report.

We further note that Ethics has not provided a public schedule of when it will complete a summary of the Interested Persons meeting and comments, or a schedule for consideration by the full Commission of any recommendations.

In addition, Friends of Ethics requests that the San Francisco Ethics Commission audio record the IP meetings regarding the Rose report and post the recordings on its website, as is done by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.  In the past, the San Francisco Ethics Commission made audio recordings of its IP meetings, though they were not posted online.  The Commission’s Directors later discontinued the audio recording altogether, which may have been motivated by valuing the privacy of attendees over public transparency.  Given that the Rose report IP meetings are about comparing San Francisco’s good government laws with Los Angeles’ to consider adopting improvements offered by Los Angeles, Friends of Ethics believes that the first improvement that San Francisco should adopt is the Los Angele set of standard practices for conducting IP meetings.  When it comes to the development of good government law and policy, the public’s right to know is paramount.  Therefore, Friends of Ethics requests that all future IP meetings held by the San Francisco Ethics Commission be audio recorded and the recordings promptly posted online.”

Our reasons for requesting a specific timetable for next steps is based on our observation of lengthy delays in staff action on issues even when raised by the Commission itself. We believe the political community will be unlikely to participate in a process that has no specific and public timetable for action but that could take more than a year to reappear.

For example:

    In July 2011, the Ethics Commission requested that staff draft proposals to close the loophole that allows committees seeking to draft a candidate to fall outside the normal reporting and disclosure requirements. However, staff did not produce a proposal until November 2012, 16 months later, and did so without an Interested Persons meeting to discuss their proposal.

    Also at the July 2011 meeting, the Ethics Commission requested that staff examine the loophole that prevented the Commission from acting in cases of Official Misconduct by a commissioner. Ethics staff still has not produced a proposal to close that loophole.

    Also in 2011, a Superior Court judge suggested that San Francisco adopt a policy prohibiting commissioners from recommending a specific lobbyist to parties seeking a contract or other decision from that commission. Ethics has not prepared any response to that suggestion.

    In June 2012, Rules Committee Chair Jane Kim requested that the Ethics Commission provide some information on the city’s Ethics laws in languages other than English, noting that the rules are as important to donors and committees as they are to the public. The Ethics Commission has taken no steps, including in the election just concluded.

Given this record, we believe that any public process to examine the Harvey Rose Report and build new recommendations must include proposed timelines for action if there is to be public confidence that this process is meaningful.

We also strongly recommend that the Ethics Commission set aside time to allow a full discussion before the Commission itself. We believe that such a discussion should not place a two-minute limit on public members making comments.

For the above reasons and cited facts, Friends of Ethics requests that the Interested Persons meeting on the Harvey Rose Report be postponed until February when the political community will have an opportunity to evaluate the proposals and endorse changes, that the Commission immediately engage in a more robust outreach effort that extends beyond the list provided by Ethics to us, that the conversation be broadened to include all topics of comparison between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and that a proposed timeline for a record of the Interested Persons meeting and action by the Commission be provided.

We submit this protest respectfully and with support for the work of the Commission and specifically for the thorough review of any steps that can improve the Commission and public confidence in our political process.

Signed:

Eileen Hansen, former Ethics Commissioner
Bob Planthold, former Ethics Commissioner
Paul Melbostad, former Ethics Commissioner
Sharyn Saslafsky, former Ethics Commissioner
Bob Dockendorff, former Ethics Commissioner
Joe Julian, former Ethics Commissioner
Oliver Luby, former Ethics Commission staffer
Aaron Peskin, past President, Board of Supervisors
Charles Marsteller, former SF Coordinator, Common Cause
Karen Babbitt, community advocate
Marc Saloman, community advocate
Larry Bush, Publisher, CitiReport

 

Record-breaking spending floods District 1 with political propaganda

Sasha Cuttler
-
19

District 1 supervisorial candidate David Lee and independent expenditure campaigns supporting him have spent nearly $800,000 – shattering previous spending records for a district election – bombarding Richmond District voters with a barrage of mailers and other media pushing a variety of claims and criticisms about incumbent Sup. Eric Mar that sometimes stretch credulity and relevance.

But is it working? Or is the avalanche of arguments – much of it funded by “big money from Realtors, Landlords, and Downtown Special Interests,” as a recent Mar mailer correctly notes – feeding speculation that Lee would do the bidding of these powerful players on the Board of Supervisors?

Mar campaign manager Nicole Derse thinks that’s the case, arguing the Lee campaign would have leaked internal polls to the media if they were favorable, and it wouldn’t be escalating its attacks on so many fronts hoping for traction, such as yesterday’s press conference hitting Mar on the issue of neighborhood schools.

“They’re pretty desperate at this point and throwing anything out there that they can,” Derse told us, later adding, “I feel good, but we really have to keep the fire up.”

Mar and the independent groups supporting him, mostly supported by the San Francisco Labor Council, have together spent about $400,000. Most of the mailers have been positive, but many have highlighted Lee’s political inexperience and his connections to big-money interests, raising questions about his claims to support tenants and rent control.

Lee campaign manager Thomas Li, who has been unwilling to answer our questions throughout the campaign, did take down some Guardian questions this time and said he’d get us answers, but we haven’t heard back. On the issue of why the Realtors and other groups who seek to weaken tenant protections were supporting Lee, Li simply said, “Our position has been steadfast on protecting rent control and strengthening tenant protections.”

The Lee campaign has repeated that on several mailers – possibly indicating it is worried about that issue and the perception that Lee’s election would give landlords another vote on the board, as tenant and other progressive groups have argued – but most of its mailers recently have attacked Mar on a few issues where they must believe he is vulnerable, even when they distort his record.

Several mailers have noted Mar’s support for a city budget that included funding for a third board aide for each of the 11 supervisors – a budget the board unanimously approved – as well as his support for public campaign financing, despite the fact that Lee’s campaign has taken more than $150,000 in public financing in this election, 30 percent more than Mar’s. They have also criticized Mar for supporting the 8 Washington high-end condo project, even though Lee also voted for the project as a member of the Recreation and Parks Commission.

As this Ethics Commission graphic shows, Lee has been by far the biggest recipient of independent expenditures in this election cycle, with hundreds of thousands of dollars coming from the downtown-funded Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth and the Realtor-created Citizens for Responsible Growth.

Mar and his allies have hit back with mailers noting that most of the funding for the Chinese American Voter Education Project, Lee’s main political and communications vehicle in recent years, has simply gone to pay his $90,000-plus annual salary, which he didn’t fully report on financial disclosure forms required of city commissioners. They have also hit Lee for his support for the Recreation and Parks Department’s closure of recreation centers and other cuts while he “consistently supported privatization of our parks.”

At this point, it’s hard to know how this flood of information and back-and-forth attacks will influence District 1 voters, but we’re now days away from finding out.

Olague attacks led by billionaires and a consultant/commissioner with undisclosed income

Sasha Cuttler
-
72
Olague attacks led by billionaires and a consultant/commissioner with undisclosed income

Understanding how political activists are being paid is important to understanding what their motivations are. For example, is Andrea Shorter – a mayor-appointed former president of the Commission on the Status of Women – leading the campaigns against Sup. Christina Olague and Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi out of concern for domestic violence, or is it because of their progressive political stands, such as supporting rent control and opposing corporate tax breaks?

As a city commissioner who is required under state law to report her income on annual financial disclosure forms to the city, the public should be able to know who is paying this self-identified “political consultant.” But we can’t, because for each of the last five years, Shorter has claimed under penalty of perjury on Form 700 to have no reportable income, which means less than $500 from any source – an unlikely claim that was the source of complaints filed today with the Ethics Commission and Fair Political Practices Commission.

Shorter led efforts to have her commission support Mayor Ed Lee’s failed effort to remove Mirkarimi from office for official misconduct, and now she’s become one of the main public faces leading an independent expenditure campaign called San Francisco Women for Accountability and a Responsible Supervisor Opposing Christina Olague 2012, funded with more than $100,000 by Lee’s right-wing financial supporters: venture capitalist Ron Conway and Thomas Coates (and his wife), who has also funded statewide efforts to make rent control illegal.

Neither Shorter nor Conway responded to our requests for comment, but tenant advocates and Olague supporters are pushing back with an 11:30am rally at City Hall tomorrow (Thurs/1). Organizers are calling on activists “to beat back the attacks on rent control and workers by billionaires Ron Conway and the Coates family. The 1 Percent Club, Coates and Conway want San Francisco to be a playground for the rich. Take a stand to say that these opportunists CANNOT buy elections!”

The Ethics Commission complaint against Shorter was filed this morning by sunshine activist Bob Planthold, who also filed a similar complaint a couple weeks ago against District 1 supervisorial candidate David Lee, who also appears to have grossly understated his income of the same financial disclosure form during his service on the Recreation and Parks Commission.

“There’s been too little attention by mayor after mayor after mayor in that the people they appoint are allowed to be sloppy, negligent, unresponsive, and under-responsive to these financial disclosure requirements,” Planthold told us.

Although the Ethics Commission doesn’t confirm or deny receiving complaints or launching investigations, Planthold said Ethics investigators have already notified him that they were investigating the Lee complaint, and he expects similar action against Shorter. “Ethics is pursuing my complaint against David Lee. It’s not one of the many that they decided to ignore,” Planthold said.

The FPPC complaint against Shorter is being filed by former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who told us, “The complaint speaks for itself.”

Although Shorter claims no income on public forms, the political consulting firm Atlas Leadership Strategies lists Shorter as the CEO of Political Leadership Coaching, which works with political candidates and causes. Atlas also represents PJ Johnston, who was press secretary for then-Mayor Willie Brown and now represents a host of powerful corporate clients.

“Her brand of discreet, highly confidential, political coaching works to equip leaders with tools to exercise more effective, impactful, innovative and – where possible – transformative leadership,” was one way Atlas describes Shorter.

Is she working in a discreet and confidential way to elect moderate London Breed to one of the city’s most progressive districts? Is she being paid for that work by Conway or anyone else? Is she doing the bidding of Mayor Lee and his allies in hopes of greater rewards?

Or should voters just take at face value her claim to really be standing up for “accountability” from public officials? Is this really about the statement Shorter makes in the video prominently displayed on the sfwomenforaccountability.com website: “Christina Olague has lost the trust of victims’ advocates. She has set our cause back. I’m profoundly disappointed in her and I can’t support her anymore.”?

With less than a week until the election, voters can only speculate.

Move on, Mr. Mayor

Andrew Lam
-
21

EDITORIAL San Francisco politics hasn’t been this tense in years — and it’s not just because of the upcoming election. The battle over Mayor Lee’s attempt to oust Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has left bitter divisions at City Hall and in communities all over town. And the mayor is only making things worse.

In an odd way — and we say odd because it was so expensive and a misuse of mayoral power — the system worked. Mirkarimi, who had a physical altercation with his wife that left a bruise on her arm, took responsibility and pled guilty to a misdemeanor; he’s now on probation and undergoing counseling.

After the mayor decided to invoke a rarely used Charter provision and suspend Mirkarimi without pay, the Ethics Commission held hearings, conducted and extensive inquiry and voted to uphold the charges, with the chair, Benjamin Hur, strongly dissenting. Every one of the commissioners raised thoughtful points; several poked big holes in the mayor’s case.

Then the Board of Supervisors met — and again, the members carefully considered Mirkarimi’s actions, the language and history of the City Charter, the prevailing law, and the facts of the case. There was remarkably little political grandstanding; we listened to the entire meeting, lasting more than seven hours, and were left with the impression that the supervisors took their job seriously, weighed the case, forced the City Attorney’s Office, representing the mayor, and Mirkarimi’s defense team, to justify their arguments, and rendered a ruling.

Nine votes were needed to remove the sheriff; that’s appropriate for such a profound sanction. Only seven supervisors sided with the mayor, and the four who rejected the charges had excellent, well-stated and credible reasons.

That’s the way the Charter outlined this process playing out, and in the end, the mayor lacked the overwhelming consensus he would have needed to use his executive authority to remove from office someone duly chosen by the voters. It’s done; it’s over. Most of the city would like to move on.

That’s not to say that Mirkarimi should be celebrating. He did an inexcusable thing. Domestic violence advocates have every right to be unhappy with his actions — and nobody, nobody in town should condone his behavior. He’s not denying it, either; he accepted the criminal consequences and will now have to demonstrate that he’s able to do his job.

But the mayor won’t move on. Mirkarimi sent him a note asking for a meeting, and Lee hasn’t responded. That shows a lack of leadership — and a lack of the civility that the mayor promised us when he took office. Ed Lee started this political process, and now that it’s over, he should be leading the effort to pull the city back together, to recognize that there were valid arguments on both sides of this case and his didn’t prevail — and to stop the demonization of people who didn’t agree with him.

Was Realtor-financed attack ad illegally coordinated with Lee?

Sasha Cuttler
-
33
Was Realtor-financed attack ad illegally coordinated with Lee?

District 1 supervisorial candidate David Lee might have violated election laws prohibiting candidates from coordinating with groups doing independent expenditures after being featured in a pricey attack ad blasting his opponent, incumbent Sup. Eric Mar.

The San Francisco League of Pissed Off Voters yesterday filed a complaint with the Ethics Commission requesting an investigation into illegal coordination between Lee and the Association of Realtors, which produced an ad entitled “Send Mar Back to Mars,” in which Lee appears to have participated in the filming.

“Our concern is that Lee’s campaign has collaborated with the San Francisco Realtors Association in providing footage,” says Fabiana Ochoa, a member of the steering committee for the League.  “That’s really a violation of the law.  It’s a concern this year because we see how national super PACs have an influence on campaigns.”

Lee’s direct fundraising and the allegedly independent expenditures on his behalf this week topped $557,486 – more than any other San Francisco supervisorial campaign in history — prompting the Ethics Commission to again raise the expenditure cap on the public financing in Mar’s race. Lee and his campaign have refused to answer questions about this or other issues. 

“No one has ever seen that kind of spending here in San Francisco.  It’s turned into a challenging and nasty campaign,” Ochoa said.  “It’s a small district but the game has changed.”

Progressive groups — including the League, San Francisco Tenants Union, and Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club — are fighting back with a rally scheduled for this Monday at 5pm outside the Realtors Association office at 301 Grove Street. They’re urging participants to bring pots and pans, reminiscent of the group of scowling children who were smeared with dirt and banging pots and pans in the video.   

In an email to the Guardian, the Ethics Commission’s Executive Director John St. Croix said, “The Ethics Commission can not confirm, deny or discuss complaints.” If the Ethics Commission does investigate and finds that Lee knowingly participated in this advertisement, it is unclear what exactly the penalty will be and the District Attorney’s office is not jumping to any conclusions yet. “For now it’s still with the Ethics Commission so we can’t comment on it,” says Stephanie Ong Stillman, press secretary for the D.A.’s office.

In a time when corporations are considered people and wealthy interests have unprecedented political influence in elections, all eyes are on the candidates and how honestly they run their campaigns.  Current San Francisco law prohibits candidates from organizing with independent expenditures like this one.

The ad, which cost $50,000 to make, mocks Mar’s efforts to remove toys from McDonald’s Happy Meals by featuring kids protesting his policies.  The glossy 3 ½ minute commercial is high-quality with Hollywood production value, leaving skeptical viewers wondering if Lee’s cameo was staged and his participation deliberate.   If it was, then Lee also violated laws that ban candidates from accepting campaign contributions exceeding $500.

The Association of Realtors clearly has an interest in David Lee, considering Mar supports tenant rights, and the Tenants Union has make its rally and campaign an effort to “save rent control” and called it a “march on the 1 percent” that is trying to buy the Board of Supervisors and remake San Francisco.

Realtors Association President Jeffery Woo would not discuss the issue when reached by phone.  In an emailed press statement to the Guardian, the Association of Realtors wrote, “ We stand by the facts, and humor, of the video we produced on the election in District 1 and do not plan to remove it from YouTube as it has achieved success in raising important issues in San Francisco.”

The Guardian also reached out to the political media expert who produced the film, Fred Davis, but he did not return our calls. 

Davis, who served as chief media strategist for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, is a Hollywood-based veteran of campaign marketing and has produced some of the most notorious political ads in recent history including the Demon Sheep video for Carly Fiorina’s 2010 GOP senate campaign.  He also created the highly lampooned 2010 ad featuring Delware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, who assured viewers that she was “not a witch.” 

Judge for yourself whether Lee participated in the making of this video:

 

Local censored 2012

-
0

 

BEHIND THE MIRKARIMI CASE

In early January, details from the police investigation of then-Sheriff-elect Ross Mirkarimi bruising his wife’s arm during an argument were leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle and other news outlets. The key piece of evidence was a 45-second video that Mirkarimi’s wife, Eliana Lopez, made with her neighbor, Ivory Madison, displaying the bruise and saying she wanted to document the incident in case of a child custody battle. That video convinced many of Mirkarimi’s guilt, and a majority of Ethics Commissioners say they found it to be the main evidence on which Mirkarimi should be removed from office on official misconduct charges (the Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote on Mirkarimi’s removal on Oct. 9, after Guardian press time).

But that video was only a small part of the overwhelming and expensive case that Mayor Ed Lee brought against Mirkarimi, including the more serious charges of abuse of power, witness dissuasion, and impeding a police investigation, all of which go more directly to a sheriff’s official duties. All of those charges got lots of media coverage and they helped cement the view of many San Franciscans that Mirkarimi engaged in a pattern of inappropriate behavior, rather than making a big momentary mistake. Yet most of the media coverage during the six months of Ethics Commission proceedings ignored the fact that none of the evidence that was being gathered supported those charges. Indeed, all those charges were unanimously rejected by the commission on Aug. 16, a startling rebuke of Lee’s case but one that was not highlighted in many media reports, which focused on the one charge the commission did uphold: the initial arm grab.

 

 

THE NEXT DOT-BOMB

In the late 1990s, San Francisco was in a very similar place to where it is now. The first dot-com boom was full bloom, driving the local economy and creating countless young millionaires — but also rapidly gentrifying the city and driving commercial and residential rents through the roof (great for the landlords, bad for everyone else). And then, the bubble popped, instantly erasing billions of dollars in speculative paper wealth and leaving this a changed city. The city’s working and creative classes suffered, but the political backlash gave rise to a decade with a progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors.

The era ended in 2010 when Ed Lee was appointed mayor, and he began ambitious agenda of pumping up a new dot-com bubble using tax breaks, public subsidies, and relentless official boosterism to lure more tech companies to San Francisco. Lee has been successful in his approach, in the process driving up commercial rents and housing prices. By some estimates, about 30 percent of the city’s economy is now driven by technology companies.

Yet there have been few voices in the local media raising questions about this risky, costly, and self-serving economic development strategy. The Bay Citizen did a story about Conway’s self interested advice, the New York Times did a front page story raising these issues, and San Francisco Magazine just last month did a long cover story questioning how much tech is enough. But most local media voices have been silent on the issue, and much of the damage has already been done.

 

OLD POWERBROKERS RETURN TO CITY HALL

More than a decade ago, then-Mayor Willie Brown and Chinatown power broker Rose Pak worked together to empower big business, corrupt local politics, and clear the path for rampant development — an approach that progressives on the Board of Supervisors repudiated and slowed from 2000-2010. But Brown, Pak, and a new generation of their allies have returned in power in City Hall, and it’s as bad as it ever was.

Many San Franciscans know of their high-profile role appointing Lee to office in early 2011. But their influence and tentacles have extended far beyond what we read in the papers and watch on television, starting in 2010 when their main political operatives David Ho and Enrique Pearce ran Jane Kim’s supervisorial campaign, beating Debra Walker, a veteran of the fights against Brown’s remaking of the city.

Now, this crew has the run of City Hall, meeting regularly with Mayor Lee and twisting the arms of supervisors on key votes. Pearce and Ho persuaded longtime progressive Christina Olague to co-chair the scandal-plagued Run Ed Run campaign last year, she was rewarded this year with Lee appointing her to the Board of Supervisors. Pearce has been her close adviser, and most of her campaign cash has been raised by Brown and Pak. Even progressive Sup. Eric Mar admits that Pak in raising money for him, a troubling sign of things to come.

 

THE REAL OCCUPY STORY

The Occupy San Francisco camp that was cleared by police last week may have been mostly homeless people. And major news media outlets from the start reported that Occupy was dangerous, filthy, and a civic eyesore.

But last fall, the camps were comprised of a huge variety of people that chose to live part or full time on the streets. Students, people with 9-5 jobs, people with service jobs, and the unemployed were all represented. Wealthy people who lived in the financial districts where camps popped up mixed with working-class people who came from suburbs and small towns. Families came out, welcomed in the “child spaces” set up in many Occupy camps throughout the country. Most camps also boasted libraries, free classes, kitchens, food distribution, and medical tents.

As news media focused on gross-out stories of pee on the streets and graphic descriptions of drunk occupiers, they managed to ignore the complex systems that were built in the camps. Nor did anyone mention that homeless people have the right to protest, too.

Supervisors reinstate Mirkarimi, rejecting Lee’s interpretation of official misconduct

Sasha Cuttler
-
181
Supervisors reinstate Mirkarimi, rejecting Lee’s interpretation of official misconduct

The Board of Supervisors has voted to reinstate Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and reject the official misconduct charges that Mayor Ed Lee brought against Mirkarimi for grabbing and bruising his wife’s arm during a New Year’s Eve argument, for now ending an ugly saga that has polarized San Franciscans.

The vote was 7-4, two votes shy of the nine needed to sustain the charges and remove Mirkarimi, who now resumes the position voters elected him to in November with back pay going back to March when Lee suspended him. Sups. Christina Olague, David Campos, John Avalos, and Jane Kim voted in Mirkarimi’s favor, condemning the domestic violence incident but saying that it didn’t meet what is and should be a high and clear standard for overruling the will of voters, a concern also voiced by Sup. Mark Farrell. 

“I do take this job seriously, that we are public policy makers,” said Kim, a lawyer who emphasized their duty to set clear standards for officials during these unprecedented proceedings rather than being swayed by emotional responses to conduct by Mirkarimi that she called “incredibly egregious.”

But for most of the supervisors, that was enough. Sup. Eric Mar, who is in the middle of difficult reelection campaign against the more conservative and well-financed David Lee, said he thought is was important to have “zero tolerance” for domestic violence and his vote was “in the service of justice and a belief it will combat domestic violence.”

Earlier in the hearing, Kim had led the questioning of Deputy City Attorney Sherri Kaiser, whose broad interpretation of official misconduct standards and inability to set clear guidelines troubled Kim, just as it had earlier to Ethics Commission Chair Benedict Hur, the sole vote on that body against removal after it conducted six months worth of hearings.

“I agree with Chairman Hur, I think we need to take the most narrow view of official misconduct,” Kim said, echoing a point that had also been made by Campos, who quoted Hur’s comment from the Aug. 16 hearing where the commission voted 4-1 to recommend removal: “I have a lot of concern about where you draw the line if you don’t relate this to official duties.”

Farrell also shared that concern, which he raised in questioning Kaiser and during the final board deliberations almost seven grueling hours later. 

“I worry a great deal about the potential for abuse in this charter section,” Farrell said, warning this and future mayors to use great caution and restraint before bringing official misconduct charges. Yet he still found that the “totality of the circumstances” warranted removal because Mirkarimi had compromised his ability to be the top law enforcement officer.

Each supervisor expressed what a difficult and joyless decision this was, and even those who supported Mirkarimi strongly condemned his actions and the efforts by some of his supporters to minimize the seriousness of his actions and the need for him to change.

“I have tremendous mixed feelings about Ross Mirkarimi,” Avalos said, noting his many proud progressive accomplishments but adding, “I’ve always seen Ross as someone who has deep flaws….[This saga] offers a chance for personal transformation and I think that’s something Ross really needs to do.”

Mirkarimi seems humbled by the hearing, and the stinging criticism of his former colleagues and his one-time allies in the domestic violence community, and he pledged to work on “regaining their trust” as he tries to embody the city’s long-held value on redemption.

“I appreciate all the comments of by the Board of Supervisors and I hear the message. The next step is mending fences and moving forward,” Mirkarimi said. Later, he told reporters, “We’re absorbing all the comments that were made by the Board of Supervisors. They are my former colleagues and I take it very seriously.”

That need to heal the deep and emotional divide between San Franciscans who see this case in starkly different ways – which was on vivid display during the hours of public testimony – was sounded by several supervisors. “We will need to come together as a city on this,” Board President David Chiu said.

Most of those who spoke during the nearly four hours in public comments favored Mirkarimi and condemned the efforts to remove him as politically motivated, overly judgmental, and setting a dangerous precedent rather than resorting to usual method for removing politicians after a scandal: recall elections.

“If anything happens to the man, it should come back to me to make that decision. Don’t do their dirty work for them,” one commenter said.

The most politically significant person to speak during public comment was former Mayor Art Agnos, who said he was a friend and supporter of Mirkarimi, but he was more concerned with the scary implications of this decision. “I respectfully urge that this Board protect all elected officials from the dangerous discretion used in this case and reinstate Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.”

Most of those who spoke against Mirkarimi were domestic violence advocates, who were adamant that Mirkarimi be removed, casting it as a litmus test for whether the city takes their issue seriously. “This is a disciplinary proceeding, it is not election stealing,” said Beverly Upton, head of the Domestic Violence Consortium, who has lead the campaign to oust Mirkarimi since the incident was made public.

But the two sides seemed to be speaking past one another, each expressing righteous indignation that people didn’t see the issue like they did, indicating how polarizing these long-lingering proceedings have become and how difficult to heal that rift may be.

“It made my stomach turn to hear some of the comments that were made,” Sup. Carmen Chu said, condemning the actions of Mirkarimi supporters in vocally or visibly supporting one another. “That was wrong, this is not a joyous event.”

Yet Farrell said he was also concerned that Mirkarimi’s opponents would go after supervisors who made a principled stand against removing him. “I hope no one takes pot shots at the people who voted against this,” he said.

That principled stand – condemning Mirkarimi’s behavior but having a high standard for removing an elected official – was a trail blazed by Hur, who opened the hearing by presenting the Ethics Commission’s findings and a decision that he was the sole vote against. He noted the “challenge of my presentation” but made careful efforts to accurately represent the views of the commission majority.

Yet he ended up using almost half of his time at the podium — his allotted 10 minutes plus a few extra minutes to respond to questions from supervisors — to stress the danger of broadly interpreting the city’s official misconduct language and not requiring direct connection to an official’s duties.

“Public policy suggests we should interpret this more narrowly than proposed by the majority,” Hur said, later adding that his colleagues on the commission “did not provide a clear basis for how official misconduct is delineated.”

When Sup. Malia Cohen asked what he meant by the “public policy” interest at stake here, he replied, “The need to have policies that are clear…It does benefit the public when the laws are clear.” (Cohen later voted to remove Mirkarimi, stating with little explanation, “I believe the reading of the charter is narrow and appropriately applied in this case.”)

The issue of what qualifies as official misconduct — and whether there is a predictable way for officials to know where that line is drawn, or whether it’s entirely up to the discretion of mayors — was also highlighted by Kaiser’s long presentation, but probably not in the way she intended.

Kaiser appealed to people’s sense of outrage about the initial arm-grab and subsequent guilty plea — claiming Mirkarimi “attacked his wife” and “this conduct was serious!” — and seemed to think that was an adequate test of whether bad behavior by an elected official warrants his unilateral removal from office.

Kaiser took issue with Hur’s contention that a lack of clear, limiting standards gives too much power to future mayors to remove their political enemies for minor incidents.

“The mayor certainly does not agree with Hur’s argument for a bright line rule,” Kaiser said. She mocked the notion that mayors would abuse this expanded power. “The check on that is the Ethics Commission, and the check on that is this body.” Kaiser’s position was that the statute should be read as broadly as possible and that the process should be trusted to protect against political manipulations.

But Chiu also took issue with that standard, saying “having clarity in the law seems to make sense” and asking Kaiser how officials can know what standards they’re expected to meet.

“I don’t agree and I didn’t mean to convey the standard is murky,” Kaiser replied, but as she tried to elaborate, her standard began to seem ever murkier.

“It depends on the circumstance,” Kaiser said. “But that doesn’t make it too vague to apply. It makes it more nimble.”

A nimble standard might suit mayors just fine, but the idea seemed to bother the supervisors, even Farrell, who told Kaiser that her position “seems to me very contradictory.”

At the end of the hearing, Campos returned to Kaiser’s “nimble” comment as a reason for rejecting that argument and Lee’s charges: “I don’t think the analysis made me comfort. She said the interpretation was nimble, but I don’t know the difference between nimble and vague, and I think they are one in the same.”

“Most cases will be clear, but there are decisions on the periphery,” Kaiser told Farrell during the earlier questioning, not making it clear which category she’d put the Mirkarimi case into.

Kim was the next to try to pin Kaiser down on whether there’s a discernible standard for the city to apply to this and future cases, saying she’d like to see a “bright line rule or a test.” Kaiser said that it depends on the office, but that a law enforcement officer shouldn’t commit a crime.

“Then any misdemeanor the sheriff pleads to is official misconduct, is that right?” Kim asked.

No, she said, the conduct must be while someone is in office — seemingly contradicting her earlier point – and found to be so by the board and commission. But then she said, “It is true that any misdemeanor relates to the duties of a sheriff.”

Kim persisted: “This is where I get stuck. When does it fall below the standard of decency?”

“The charter doesn’t answer that question. It’s a case-by-case determination,” Kaiser said.

“What’s to guide us in the future?” Kim asked.

But again, there was no clear answer, it’s simply for mayors to decide. “It is a discretionary decision,” Kaiser said.

Kim, a lawyer, questioned whether the stance by Kaiser and Lee could lead the courts to strike down the city’s untested statute. “Does that open us up to the vagueness issue, which would make the clause unconstitutional?” Kim asked.

But Kaiser said San Francisco voters wanted to give the mayor wide power to interpret misconduct when they approved the broad new official misconduct language in 1995, part of a complete overhaul of the City Charter.

“Voters made a considered choice to put suspend and remove procedures in the charter,” she said, trying to counter the argument that recall elections should be used to remove elected officials. “These suspension and removal procedure is more nimble. It’s less expensive than a recall.”

Yet with a final price tag expected to be in the millions of dollars and proceedings lasting seven months, it’s debatable whether this process was really cheaper and more nimble.

Mirkarimi attorney David Waggoner began his presentation by saying, “There’s no question that on Dec. 31, 2011, Ross Mirkarimi made a terrible mistake.”

But it was a mistake that Mirkarimi admitted to, accepted the criminal punishment that followed his guilty plea, endured a forced six-month separation from his family, had his job and salary taken from him, was the target of a media and political campaigns that have deeply damaged his reputation, “his entire life’s work was destroyed almost in an instant.” All for pleading to a low-level misdemeanor.

“At the end of the day, the punishment does not fit the crime,” Waggoner said.

He noted that just three elected officials have been removed for official misconduct in the city’s history, each time for serious felonies. But now, it’s being applied to a misdemeanor with arguments that broaden a mayor’s ability to remove political adversaries.

“You must decide whether to uphold or overturn the will of the voters,” Waggoner told the supervisors.

He even took a swipe at the domestic violence advocates who have led the campaign to remove Mirkarimi: “Ironically, the very advocates who should be defending Eliana Lopez have been attacking her.”

Taking over from Waggoner, Mirkarimi’s other attorney, Shepard Kopp, said Mirkarimi had no official duties before taking the oath of office, and the charter makes clear there needs to be connection. “It says misconduct has to occur while an official is in office.”

Kopp also brought the focus back to the precedent in this historic case. “The other problem with the mayor’s position is it doesn’t give you any guidance or future mayors any guidance,” Kopp said, later adding, “To follow the mayor’s position is not workable policy and it doesn’t have any support under the law.”

Supervisors questioned Kopp and Waggoner, but it didn’t seem to reveal any new insights, simply reinforcing their points that official misconduct should be a rarely used tool applied only to serious crimes.

In her final five-minute final rebuttal, rather than letting her co-counsel Peter Keith speak or trying to mitigate some of the damage from her earlier testimony, Kaiser seemed to double-down on her tactic of using emotional arguments rather than addressing legal standards for removal.

She alleged Mirkarimi’s team offered “a theory that domestic violence doesn’t matter if you’re sheriff,” prompting an audible negative reaction from the crowd that Chiu gaveled down. That reaction was even louder and more outraged when Kaiser implied Mirkarimi “threatens the life of a family member.”

Those sorts of characterizations fed much of the crowd’s stated belief that this case was a “political witchhunt” designed to destroy a progressive leader, and the opposition expressed to some domestic violence advocates testimony could be used against the larger progressive community.

But Agnos, who sat in the audience throughout the long hearing, told us the frustration was understandable. “The crowd, after nine months of agony, expressed a lot of emotions, and that is inherent in mass crowds,” he said. “They didn’t mean ill will to the domestic violence community. There was no malevolent intent there.”

Supervisors who voted to reinstate Mirkarimi said they want to make clear their commitment to combating domestic violence. “I worry that this case has set us back because of the tensions around how we responded,” Avalos said.

“I think it’s important that no matter how we feel about this that we come together as a city,” Campos said. “People on both sides have legitimate viewpoints on this issue.”

Former girlfriend defends Mirkarimi

Zelda Bronstein
-
39
Former girlfriend defends Mirkarimi

By Evelyn Nieves

For months, I’ve watched as Ross Mirkarimi has been slandered as a “wife beater”—by the mayor of San Francisco, no less—and vilified in the press based on lies, half-truths and innuendo.  It has been heart-breaking, nauseating, to witness.

I know for a fact that Ross is no abuser. He and I were a couple for eight years. For most of that time, we lived together. Not once did Ross even come close to making me feel unsafe in his presence. He never threatened me. He would walk away or cry “uncle” rather than argue. He simply had no stomach for it.

When the news broke last January that Ross, newly elected as San Francisco’s Sheriff but not yet sworn in, might be arrested on domestic violence charges, I was sure the accusation wouldn’t stick. Not once people knew the facts.

I was naïve.

By now, everyone knows that Ross and his wife, Eliana Lopez, got in an argument in their car on New Year’s Eve. She wanted to take their toddler to her native Venezuela, and Ross, bereft the last time a one-month trip to Venezuela stretched into several, balked. Eliana moved to exit the car and Ross held her, a second too long, causing a bruise. Eliana called a friend and made a videotape of the bruise the next day in case she and Ross ended up in a custody battle. Four days later, without Ross’s wife knowing, the friend called police.

The hell that broke loose is worthy of an Errol Morris documentary. The San Francisco District Attorney, a political opponent, sent four investigators to interview all of Ross’s neighbors. That never happens in a misdemeanor case–it costs too much time and money. Anti-domestic violence advocates began calling for Ross’s head even before he was charged.

We all want to stop abusers in their tracks. But let’s make sure we are properly identifying the abuser.

Early on, in January, the Bay Citizen interviewed me. I expected the other local newspapers to contact me or pick up my quotes, which essentially said that Ross never, ever came close to abusing me. But no reporter from the local dailies that were splashing all kinds of hearsay on their front pages ever contacted me. This even after I contacted them to try to correct falsehoods being reported as fact.

I was fully prepared to testify had Ross’s case gone to trial. I knew facts that would contradict lies made to condemn him.  I still wish the case had gone to trial. But at the time that Ross pled guilty to “false imprisonment”–for turning his car around to go home when the argument threatened to spill out into a restaurant he and his wife planned to enter–his lawyer told me she believed that Ross could not get a fair trial. The last straw was when the judge refused a change of venue.

So Ross pleaded guilty so he could have his wife and son back, end the hysteria and try to go and do his job.

Instead, the mayor used Ross’s guilty plea as an excuse to suspend him without pay—without any due process—starting several more months’ of investigation, interrogation and character assassination at Ethics Commission hearings. And for what? In the end, the five-member Ethics Commission, three of whom are appointed by the Mayor, found Ross guilty of only one charge: grabbing his wife’s arm. One member wondered what the people would say if they decided not to uphold the Mayor’s rash suspension and declaration of “official misconduct.” Well, in the few times that I’ve met with Ross in the last few months, he was stopped everywhere by people of every demographic group. Old, young, progressive, moderate, and of every ethnicity. All wanted to express their support and their contempt for what has happened to him. All blamed politics.

I had not seen Ross much in the years since we parted. I moved to another side of the city, moved in different circles. But, in essence, he has not changed much.

The last time I saw him before this case exploded was before Christmas. On a Saturday morning, Ross was in his District Five supervisor uniform—gray suit, white shirt, wingtips. He had already gone to one neighborhood meeting and was on his way to another, even though his official duties as supervisor were over and he was supposed to be on vacation. I kidded him about this, and he shrugged and said, “Well, you know me.”

I do.  And so I’ll say with confidence that Ross does not deserve what he has endured. He deserves vindication, and the chance to do the job he was elected to do.

Evelyn Nieves is a longtime journalist and former New York Times bureau chief.

The Mirkarimi vote: Will there be some profiles of courage?

-
52

(See the postscript for the Chronicle’s shameful crucifixion coverage of Mirkarimi and a timely, newsworthy oped it refused to run by Mirkarimi’s former girl friend. And how Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders ran the Nieves piece on her blog. Damn good for you, Debra Saunders.)

On Jan. 6, 2011, the Bay Citizen/New York Times broke a major investigative story headlined “Behind-the-Scenes Power Politics: The Making of Ed Lee.” The story by Gerry Shih detailed how then Mayor Gavin Newsom, ex-Mayor Willie Brown, and his longtime political ally Rose Pak orchestrated an “extraordinary political power play” to make Ed Lee the interim mayor to replace Newsom, the lieutenant governor-elect.

The story also outlined the start of a chain of events that leads to the vote by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday on whether Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi keeps his job.

Shih reported that “word had trickled out” that the supervisors had narrowed the list of interim candidates to three—then Sheriff Michael Hennessey, former Mayor Art Agnos, and Aaron Peskin, then chairman of the city’s Democratic party.  But the contenders “were deemed too liberal by Pak, Brown, and Newsom, who are more moderate.”

Over the next 48 hours, Pak, Brown, and the Newsom administration put together the play, “forging a consensus on the Board of Supervisors, outflanking the board’s progressive wing and persuading Lee to agree to become San Francisco’s first Asian-American mayor, even though he had told officials for months that he had no interest in the job,” Shih wrote.

The play was sold on the argument that Lee would be an “interim mayor” and that he would not run for mayor in the November election. The Guardian and others said at the time that the play most likely envisioned Lee saying, or lying, that he would not run for mayor and then, at the last minute, he would run and overpower the challengers as an incumbent with big downtown money behind him.  This is what happened. That is how Ed Lee, a longtime civil servant, became the mayor and that is how the Willie Brown/Rose Pak gang won the day for the PG&E/Chamber of Commerce/big developer bloc and thwarted the progressives.

Let us note that the other three interim candidates would most likely never have done what Lee did and suspend Mirkarimi for pleading guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment in an arm-bruising incident with his wife Eliana. In fact, Hennessey supported Mirkarimi during the election and still does and says he is fit to do the job of sheriff. 

This was a political coup d’etat worthy of Abe Ruef, the City Hall fixer at the start of the century. “This was something incredibly orchestrated, and we got played,” Sup. John Avalos told Shih. Sup. Chris Daly was mad as hell and he voted for Rose Pak because, he told the Guardian, she was running everything in City Hall anyway. Significantly, the San Francisco Chronicle missed the story and ever after followed the line of its columnist/PG&E lobbyist Willie Brown and Pak by supporting Lee for mayor without much question or properly reporting the obvious power structure angles and plays.

This is the context for understanding a critical part of the ferocity of the opposition to Mirkarimi. As the city’s top elected progressive, he was a politician and force to be reckoned with. His inaugural address as sheriff  demonstrated his creative vision for the department and that he would ably continue the progressive tradition of Richard Hongisto and Hennessey. That annoyed the conservative law enforcement folks. He could be sheriff for a good long time, keep pushing progressive issues from a safe haven, and be in position to run for mayor when the time came. So he was a dangerous character.  

To take one major example, the  PG&E political establishment and others regard him as Public Enemy No. 1. Among other things, he managed as an unpaid volunteer two initiative campaigns during the Willie Brown era. They were aimed at kicking PG&E out of City Hall, enforcing the public power provisions of the federal Raker Act, and bringing  the city’s cheap Hetch Hetchy public power to its residents and businesses for the first time. (See Guardian stories since 1969 on the PG&E/Raker act scandal.)

He then took the public power issue into City Hall when he became a supervisor and aggressively led the charge for the community choice aggregation (cca) project.  His work was validated in the recent 8-3 supervisorial vote authorizing the city to start up a public power/clean energy program. This is the first real challenge ever to PG&E’s private power monopoly.

Significantly, Willie is now an unregistered $200,000 plus a year lobbyist for PG&E. He writes a column for the San Francisco Chronicle promoting, among other things, his undisclosed clients and allies and whacking Mirkarimi and the progressives and their issues on a regular basis.  And he is always out there, a phone call here, an elbow at a cocktail party there, to push his agenda.   The word is that he’s claiming he has the votes to fire Mirkarimi.

The point is that the same forces that put Lee into office as mayor are in large part the same forces behind what I call the political assassination of Mirkarimi.  And so, when the Mirkarimi incident emerged, there was an inexorable  march to assassination. Maximum resources and pressure from the police on Mirkarimi. And then maximum pressure from the District Attorney. And then maximum pressure from the judicial process (not even allowing  a change of venue for the case after the crucifixion media coverage.)  And then Lee calls Mirkarimi “a wife beater” and suspends him with cruel and unusual punishment: no pay for him, his family, his home, nor legal expenses for him or Eliana for the duration.

And then Lee pushes for maximum pressure from the City Attorney and the Ethics Commission to try Mirkarimi and force the crucial vote before the election to put maximum pressure on the supervisors. Obviously, the vote would be scheduled after the election if this were a fair and just process.

Lee, the man who was sold as consensus builder and unifier, has become a polarizer and punisher on behalf of the boys and girls  in the backroom.  

And so the supervisors are not just voting to fire the sheriff.  Mirkarimi, his wife Eliana, and son Theo, 3, have already paid a terrible price and, to their immense credit, have come back together as a family.

The supervisors got played last time and voted for a coup d’etat to make Lee the mayor, rout the progressives, and keep City Hall safe for Willie Brown and Rose Pak and friends.   This time the stakes are clear: the supervisors are now voting on the political assassination of the city’s top elected progressive and it’s once again aimed at helping keep City Hall safe for PG&E, the Chamber, and big developers.

The question is, will there be some profiles of courage this time around? b3

P.S.1  Julian Davis for District 5 supervisor: “Supes mum on sheriff,” read the Sunday Chronicle head. Nobody would say how he/she would vote. And poor Sup. Sean Elsbernd claimed that he would be “holed all Sunday in his office reading a table full of thick binders of official documents related to the case plus a few that he’s prepared for himself containing some case law.”  (Anybody wonder how he’s going to vote? Let’s have a show of hands.)  

The last time I saw Julian Davis he was holding a “Stand with Ross” sign at a Mirkarimi rally on the City Hall steps. With Davis, there would be no second guessing and hand wringing on how he would vote. That’s the problem now with so many neighborhood supervisors who go down to City Hall and vote with Willie and downtown. Davis would be a smart, dependable progressive vote in the city’s most progressive district (5), and a worthy successor to Matt Gonzalez and Ross Mirkarimi. If Davis were on the board now, I’m sure he would stand with Ross and speak for Ross, no ifs, ands, or buts. And his vote might be decisive.  

P.S. 2 The Chronicle’s  shameful crucifixion of Mirkarimi continues  The Chronicle has refused to run a timely and  newsworthy op ed piece from Evelyn Nieves, Mirkarimi’s former girl friend. She  wrote an op ed piece for the Chronicle four days before the Tuesday vote.  Nieves is an accomplished journalist who for several years was the San Francisco bureau chief for the New York Times.  She told me that she was notified Monday morning that the Chronicle didn’t have room for the op ed in Tuesday’s paper. I sent an email to John Diaz, Chronicle editorial page editor, and asked him why the Chronicle couldn’t run her op ed when the paper could run Willie Brown, the unregistered $200,000 plus PG&E lobbyist who takes regular whacks at Mirkarimi, as a regular featured column in its Sunday paper.  No answer at blogtime.

This morning, I opened up the Chronicle to find that the paper, instead of running the Nieves piece today or earlier,  ran an op ed titled “Vote to remove Mirkarmi,” from Kathy Black, executive director of the Casa de las Madres, the non profit group that advocates against domestic violence. It has been hammering Mirkarimi for months. On the page opposite, the Chron ran yet another lead editorial, urging the supervisors to “Take a Stand” and vote for removal because “San Francisco now needs its leaders to lead.” It was as if Willie was not only directing the Chronicle’s news operation but writing its editorials–and getting paid both by PG&E and the Chronicle.  And so the Chronicle started out with shameful crucifixion coverage of  Mirkarimi and then continued the shameful crucifixion coverage up until today. Read Nieves on Ross.

Well, the honor of the Chronicle was maintained by columnist Debra Saunders, virtually the Chroncle’s lone journalistic supporter of Mirkarmi during his ordeal. Many Chronicle staffers are privately supportive of Ross, embarrassed by Willie’s “journalism,” and critical of the way the Chronicle has covered Mirkarimi. Saunders posted the Nieves column her paper refused to print on her Chronicle blog. Damn good for you, Debra Saunders.  

 

 

Supervisors advised against Mirkarimi recusals, essentially removing their gags

Sasha Cuttler
-
76
Supervisors advised against Mirkarimi recusals, essentially removing their gags

It’s looking increasingly unlikely that any members of the Board of Supervisors will be recused from next week’s big vote on whether to sustain the official misconduct charges against suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, particularly given an advice letter written today by attorney Scott Emblidge, who is advising the board.

Mirkarimi and his attorneys were hoping some supervisors would admit discussing the case with Mayor Ed Lee or others – particularly Sup. Christina Olague, who is at the center of the controversy about whether Lee committed perjury when he denied, while testifying under oath, ever consulting with any supervisors about the case – and they were disappointed with Emblidge’s advice.

“Scott Emblidge parrots the language of the City Attorney in his recommendation against recusal,” Mirkarimi attorney David Waggoner told us, taking issue with the relationship Emblidge and his firm have with the city and the fact that he also served as legal counsel to the Ethics Commission, some of whose members were unaware of that dual role and expressed concern. “The board must appoint independent counsel.”

In his advice letter, Emblidge did take a similar position to that urged by the City Attorney’s Office, which argued that supervisors are assumed to be politicians who have some relationship with the person that they’re being asked to judge and that analogizing it to a jury in a criminal case isn’t accurate.

“That analogy is misguided. The Charter does not provide for resolution of official misconduct charges by a body unfamiliar with the parties or the facts of the dispute. Rather, it specifically entrusts that decision to the Board of Supervisors, a body composed of individuals who almost certainly would have had dealings with anyone charged with official misconduct,” Emblidge wrote in a letter requested by Board President David Chiu. “Rather than a jury trial, this proceeding is more like an administrative hearing involving employee discipline or other important rights.”

Emblidge said the legal standards indicate that a supervisor must have a financial interest in the decision or be so “personally embroiled” in the case that he/she would have already demonstrated a strong bias or animus against Mirkarimi. And even then, it would be up to a majority vote by the board to excuse a supervisor from the vote.

Such recusal votes are usually mere formalities once a supervisor claims a conflict-of-interest, as then-Sup. Gavin Newsom sometimes did on votes involving landlord-tenant relations. But given that it takes nine of the 11 votes to remove Mirkarimi – with each recusal effectively being a vote in his favor – claims of a conflict will be carefully scrutinized, which Emblidge thinks is appropriate.

“The bar should be high for recusal because of the three-fourths requirement,” Emblidge told the Guardian, making clear that was his personal rather than legal opinion.

The City Attorney’s Office strongly advised the supervisors earlier this year not to discuss the Mirkarimi case with anyone, and they have all heeded that advice and refused to discuss the case with reporters, adding to the drama surrounding a high-profile decision with huge potential long-term ramifications.

Unlike other big decisions, in which supervisors will publicly stake out positions before the vote, often making clear the political dynamics and swing votes, nobody really knows where any of the supervisors stand right now. It’s widely believed that progressive Sups. John Avalos and David Campos – both of whom have unexpectedly easy paths to reelection in November – are the most likely votes for Mirkarimi, with just one more vote needed to reinstate him.

Olague will be in a tough spot politically, torn between supporting the mayor who appointed her and a district that Mirkarimi once represented, where opposition to his removal seems strongest. Ditto with Sup. Jane Kim, a fellow former Green long allied with Mirkarimi, but also someone who backed Lee last year and has ambitions to be the next board president.

This is also a board filled with Ivy League lawyers, and it’s hard to say what aspect of this complex case will draw their focus. Will they side with those who say the decision is simply about showing zero tolerance for domestic violence, or will they share the concerns of Ethics Chair Benedict Hur, who calls this a potentially dangerous precedent that gives too much power to the mayor.

It’s even possible that someone from the board’s conservative bloc of Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, and Carmen Chu might object to this costly and distracting move by government to go after one individual, making this more about limited government and deferring to voters rather than the fate of an individual for whom they have no particular fondness.

Until now, it’s been difficult to read these tea leaves, but that might be about to change. Emblidge argues that the grounds for recusal are so narrow and restrictive that even if supervisors make public statements about their thoughts on the case, that wouldn’t present a conflict-of-interest that would prevent them from voting on it, particularly now that they’re actively reviewing the record.

So, are we about to start getting some hints from under the dome about how this is going to play out? We’re listening and we’ll let you know.

Qualifying Mirakarimi’s jury

Andrew Lam
-
5

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors formally received the official misconduct case against suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi Sept. 18, starting the clock on the 30-day deadline that the City Charter provides for the board to take action. Board President David Chiu announced a special meeting to consider the case on Oct. 9 at 2pm. The schedule the board had previous agreed to: a 10-minute presentation by the Ethics Commission, 20 minutes by representatives of Mayor Ed Lee (who brought the case), 20 minutes by Mirkarimi’s side, a five-minute rebuttal by Lee, public comment (which could last for hours), and then deliberation by supervisors.

The drama-before-the-drama will involve what in court would be called jury selection — Mirkarimi’s lawyers want to see if any supervisors should be disqualified from voting.

It’s a critical point: It would take at least nine of the 11 supervisors to remove the sheriff, and that number doesn’t’ change if some are ineligible to vote. So every recusal is, in effect, a vote to save Mirkarimi’s job.

And it’s an open question whether some supervisors should recuse themselves. They’re supposed to be unbiased jurors, and if any of them have discussed the case with the mayor in advance, they might be forced to sit this one out.

Mayor Ed Lee was asked on the witness stand whether he spoke with any supervisors about removing Mirkarimi, and he denied it. But Building Inspection Commissioner Debra Walker said her longtime friend and political ally Sup. Christina Olague told her Lee had sought her input on the decision. Confronted by journalists, Olague denied the charge but said, “I may have to recuse myself from voting on this.”

Another possible recusal from the vote would be Sup. Eric Mar, who just happened to be called as a juror in Mirkarimi’s criminal case — and thus could have been exposed to prejudicial evidence — before those charges were settled with a plea bargain. There have also been rumors that Board President David Chiu spoke with Lee about Mirkarimi at some point.

Last month, Mirkarimi lawyer David Waggoner told the board that he wanted each supervisor to declare whether he or she has spoken with anyone about Mirkarimi, but the legal team is proceeding cautiously, wary of offending the supervisors who will now decide the fate of their former colleague.

“We’re going to respectfully ask each member of the board to state under oath who they’ve talked to about the case,” Waggoner told us.

Normally, jurors would be extensively questioned during the voir dire process, and those who had served on an elected body with a defendant for years would almost certainly be removed from the jury pool, which seems to have been the case with Mar’s disqualification on the criminal case. But that’s just one more example of how this unprecedented process is anything but normal, with city officials basically making up the rules as they go along.

The case for reinstating Mirkarimi

Andrew Lam
-
113

EDITORIAL We know for a fact that on New Year’s Eve, 2011, Ross Mirkarimi, the elected but unsworn sheriff of San Francisco, had a physical altercation with his wife that left her with a bruised arm. We know she later complained about that bruise on a video lasting less than a minute. Beyond that, nobody except Mirkarimi and Eliana Lopez knows exactly what happened; there were no witnesses except the couple’s three-year-old son, no video taken during the fight, no audio recordings — nothing.

We know that Mirkarimi agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment — although we also know there was never any evidence that he actually imprisoned anyone.

That’s all we really know about the incident that has set off an expensive, drawn-out, political and legal battle that could change the city’s politics for years to come. If the whole thing seems a little overblown, that’s because it is.

There is nothing in the record that justifies Mayor Ed Lee’s move to suspend Mirkarimi, and nothing that would justify the supervisors voting to remove him from office. In fact, a removal vote would set a dangerous precedent for future mayors in a city that already gives its chief executive far too much power.

Let us examine the three main reasons why the board needs to vote to restore the elected sheriff.

1. If you believe Eliana Lopez, there’s no case.

The only person other than Mirkarimi who can honestly and accurately testify about the events of New Year’s eve is Lopez — and she has been clear, consistent, and convincing in her account.

Lopez acknowledges that she and her husband have had marital issues, that Mirkarimi wasn’t as supportive or her and their young son as he should have been, that he was away from home and working when she should have been sharing domestic duties. She was considering divorce — but was worried that Mirkarimi might gain custody of their boy.

She testified under oath before the Ethics Commission that Mirkarimi was never someone who “beats his wife” (to use Lee’s utterly inappropriate terminology). He had no history of domestic violence with her.

What he did was grab her arm during an argument, leaving a bruise. Inexcusable, but hardly a sign of serious assault. In fact, Lopez testified that she bruises so easily that just playing around with three-year-old Theo can leave marks on her.

Lopez testified that she made the video to use as a tool — a bargaining chip, so to speak — if Mirkarimi ever sought to gain custody of their son. She said she believed that her neighbor, Ivory Madison, who made the video, was a lawyer and that the video would be protected by attorney-client confidentiality. She said she never wanted to go to the police and never felt physically threatened by her husband.

The mayor charged Mirkarimi with attempting to dissuade witnesses and interfere with a police investigation, but those charges were based almost entirely on the testimony of Madison, whose rambling 22-page statement was so full of hearsay that the Ethics Commission tossed almost all of it. There was absolutely no evidence of witness tampering, and those claims were dismissed.

In fact, the only reason the commission recommended removal is the fact that Mirkarimi bruised his wife and pled to a misdemeanor — one that everyone knows he didn’t really commit. Remember: It’s legal, and common, in misdemeanor cases to plead to something you never did to avoid facing trial on more serious charges.

There’s no principled way to accept as credible the testimony of Lopez and still vote to remove the sheriff. If she’s telling the truth — and we believe her — the case should end right there.

2. Mirkarimi was chosen by the voters, and the voters can freely remove him.

Ross Mirkarimi was elected in November, 2011, with a clear majority in a contested race. The state Constitution provides an excellent remedy for replacing an elected official who has lost the confidence of the voting public; it’s called the recall. With a fraction of the effort that’s been spent on this case, people who feel Mirkarimi should no longer serve as sheriff could have collected signatures and forced an election.

The City Charter gives the mayor extraordinary authority — we would say too much authority — to unilaterally suspend an elected official and seek removal. That’s a power that should be wielded only in the most extreme cases, with great deference to the will of the voters.

Lee did no investigation before filing official misconduct charges. He based those charges on unsubstantiated claims, most of which were proven false. There’s a dangerous precedent here: If Mayor Ed Lee can suspend without pay Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi on such limited evidence, the ability of future mayors to misuse this power could be alarming. And remember: There is nothing in the Charter that allows anyone to suspend or seek removal of the mayor.

3. This case mangles “official misconduct.”

There’s another dangerous element to this case, and it’s not just a legal technicality. The New Year’s Eve incident occurred before Mirkarimi took the oath of office; on that day, he wasn’t the sheriff of San Francisco. He was a supervisor.

It’s hard to claim he was guilty of “official misconduct” on a day when he had no official duties. A fascinating, but unsigned analysis by somebody who clearly has a strong legal background is posted on the web (rjemirkarimi.blogspot.com). It notes:

“If the Supervisors approve what the Ethics Commission did on August 16, they will be handing a powerful new political weapon to all mayors, present and future. Good mayors may never misuse it, but other mayors might. No longer will such a mayor be limited to examining an opponent’s conduct while in office. He will have carte blanche and a strong motive to look farther back in time for personal misconduct that occurred before his opponent took office, and to use what he finds to suspend his opponent without pay and remove him from office — all while claiming (as undoubtedly he will) to be engaged in a noble pursuit of truth and justice.”

Let’s be serious: There have been San Francisco mayors with a long record of vindictive politics, or seeking any method possible to punish their enemies. There may well be again. Do we really want to have this case — this weak case driven more by politics than reason and evidence — set the precedent for the grave step of overriding the voters and removing an elected official?

Any of these three reasons ought to be grounds to vote against the mayor’s charges. Together, they make a sound enough case that it’s hard to imagine how the supervisors, sitting as a fair and impartial jury, could come to any conclusion other than returning Mirkarimi to office. We recognize that there are political implications, that Mirkarimi’s foes will target anyone who votes to support him. And just as it’s hard for some politicians to appear “soft on crime,” it’s nearly impossible to survive in San Francisco if you’re considered “soft on domestic violence.” But anyone who doesn’t want tough choices shouldn’t run for public office. It will take courage to do the right thing here — and in the end, that’s what should matter.

Perjury charges don’t look so good for the mayor

Zelda Bronstein
-
65
Perjury charges don’t look so good for the mayor

The Chron doesn’t think it’s important, but there’s some serious evidence in today’s Ex that the mayor wasn’t entirely forthcoming when he testified before the Ethics Commission. The declarations from Debra Walker and Aaron Peskin are attached at the end of the story; they’re worth reading.

Walker is very straightforward: She says she’s friends with Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and his wife, Eliana Lopez. She’s also been close friends with Sup. Christina Olague:

Ms. Olague and I often got together for coffee or movies, and we talked often about land-use issues. I wrote a letter of support for Ms. Olague to Mayor Lee, asking him to appoint her as supervisor. At her request, I loaned her a painting to hang in her office when she took office.

All of that is consistent with what I’ve heard about their friendship, and it doesn’t sound like Walker was ever out to get Olague or to put her in a bad situation.

Then Walker  explains that during the week of March 6, she was talking to Olague and complained about the Mirkarimi case. “She said the mayor had asked her about the case when they were talking about other issues, and had asked her for her thoughts.”

The declaration goes on a bit, with plenty of backup to the idea that Olague and Lee had discussed how to deal with the sheriff. Which doesn’t surprise me — I have heard from other prominent people in the city that Lee reached out to them for advice on whether to suspend Mirkarimi.

But it’s a problem for two reasons. One is that Olague, sitting as a judge in this case, isn’t supposed to have talked to anyone else about it — certainly not the prosecuting authority, the mayor.

The other is that Lee denied under oath that he had talked to any of the supervisors about the case.

Debra Walker isn’t a fan of Ed Lee, but she would have had to go to considerable lengths to create this level of fiction. It rings honest to me, particularly when she notes that “on June 29, 2012, at 2:10 pm, I received a phone message from Supervisor Olague saying ‘Debra, the converstaion never happened.'”

Look: This is a sworn statement, made under penalty of perjury. So either Walker’s lying and guilty of perjury, or the mayor is. Which seems more likely?

Ditto for the Peskin declaration, which includes dates, times, places, and specific messages. Again: Did Peskin go out of his way to perjury himself — or did the mayor fail to tell the truth on the stand?

This is now part of the case, like it or not: The credibility of the mayor is one of the issues at hand — and more important, if Lee talked to Olague he probably talked to others. Who would then have to recuse themselves.

123...10Page 2 of 10

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org