George Gascon

District attorney distances self from anti-cannabis memo, ‘unequivocally supports medical marijuana’

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Don’t believe everything you read, especially when it comes out of the District Attorney’s office. D.A. George Gascon’s press representative Stephanie Ong Stillman says a memo covered in this week’s Herbwise column circulated earlier this month outlining the “continued illegality of selling marijuana” — even in state regulated cannabis dispensaries — was sent out without Gascon’s knowledge and “does not represent his views on medical marijuana.”

“He unequivocally supports medical marijuana,” Stillman told the Guardian on the phone this afternoon. “Prosecuting illegal marijuana sales is not a priority.”

This is — unequivocally — good news for San Francisco’s medical cannabis patients. The memo (signed by assistant district attorney John Ullom) stated that cannabis dispensaries were acting under protection of state law were perpetrating “a marijuana mega-myth.” According to the East Bay Express, it was released in response to indignation expressed by an unnamed dispensary’s deliveryperson was apprehended by law enforcement. 

But Stillman says the brief was written over three years ago, before Gascon was elected to office. Calling it “a template brief,” she says it’s not the first time the memo has been circulated in response to legal questions about cannabis — but that it has not been since Gascon has been in office, and will not be used again under his administration. 

But what of today’s headline of the SF Examiner, a quote presumably attributed to Gascon reading “all sales of marijuana are illegal”? 

“It’s a misquote,” says Stillman. “They’re going to print a correction.”

UPDATE: The Guardian just recieved a call from Gascon himself, who confirmed Stillman’s comments, saying “I’ve already taken steps to make sure that this will not happen again.” Can we just say we’re pleased as punch that he’s upholding the values that he shared with us in his Guardian endorsement interview last September?

UPDATE: Although felony charges against the deliveryperson who was initially apprehended have not been dropped, Gascon’s office has filed for a two-week continuance.

Two incidents

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caitlin@sfbg.com

UPDATE: The District Attorney’s office has retracted the memo detailed in this article, and told the Guardian that D.A. George Gascon “unequivocally supports medical marijuana.” Full story here

HERBWISE “If they can successfully take out San Francisco, then medical marijuana is gone,” said spokesperson of SF’s Medical Cannabis Task Force Stephanie Tucker. I had given Tucker a call because I was trying to salvage some meaning from last week.

It was a confusing one for followers of local cannabis news. News broke of the district attorney’s memo calling marijuana sales illegal (more on this later). They canceled Discovery Channel’s Weed Wars reality TV show. Thieves dressed as ninjas robbed a cannabis deliveryperson in West Covina, Calif. Anti-cannabis driving laws were proposed by Chino Assemblymember Norma Torres. In a long-awaited KQED interview with US Attorney Melinda Haag, Haag pegged the blame for the threatening letters she’s sent to the landlords of cannabis dispensaries on unsubstantiated crime spates such businesses invite to their communities. News reports circulated that Florida teen Trayvon Martin had been suspended from school for petty cannabis possession, as if that explained his murder at the hands of a racist crank. In the middle of it all, SF’s Department of Public Health launched a campaign against the sale of hash and medicated edibles — but only for nine hours.

Well then, that’s something. Of this last incident, at least, Tucker could offer some small clarification. On Tuesday, March 20, someone at the DPH sent out a memo outlining steps that could be taken to reduce the unspecified “potential hazards” of cannabis edibles. One of these counseled against selling products that “required concentrating cannabis active ingredients” — products like hash or kief, which is composed of sifted cannabis trichomes.

“Immediately after the advisory was issued, activists were alerted,” Tucker said. The curtailing of concentrated products and edibles especially worried patient advocates because many can’t — or choose not to — ingest marijuana by smoking it. After informal dialogue with the Department, the matter was squashed, the memo’s message retracted by the agency.

That responsiveness is heartening for those concerned with safe and easy cannabis access, though the thought that a city agency would harsh on medical marijuana particularly now, at a time of heightened scrutiny by the federal government, is disquieting. Or perhaps the agency saw the memo as a way to patrol commercialization and increased branding of edible products. In recent years, everything from chocolate-covered waffle tacos to peanut butter energy bars have been infused with cannabis for commercial sale. Ironically, this kind of increased professionalization has also led to tighter quality control testing in analytical labs around the Bay Area — hypothetically making those products safer.

At any rate, cannabis patients won that office memo battle. The same has yet to be determined in regards to another recent threat to patient rights: a 14-page review that district attorney George Gascon’s office produced this month calling out the “marijuana mega-myth.” Stoners will be surprised to learn Gascon used the colorful term (he also employs the use of “semantogenic shell game” to describe efforts to normalize sales, vivid!) in reference to the belief that dispensary sales of cannabis are legal.

What will this mean for the future of SF dispensaries? Without a doubt there will be many more angry phone calls from patients. But it’s already having legal ramifications. The memo was a response to an objection from a dispensary’s attorney who was perturbed by an incident in which the collective’s delivery driver was arrested by law enforcement en route to making a delivery. Gascon’s assertion that the entire business was illegal was surely not the reaction the attorney had hoped for.

Guardian Op-Ed: Domestic violence, a Latina feminist perspective

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By Myrna Melgar

Myrna Melgar is a Latina survivor of childhood domestic violence, a feminist, and the mother of three girls. She is a former legislative aide to Sup. Eric Mar.

Eliana Lopez is my friend. I have asked for her permission to put into words, in English, some observations, thoughts and insights reached during our many conversations these past few weeks about her experience with San Francisco’s response to the allegation of domestic violence by her husband, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. We hope this will lead to a teachable moment for law enforcement and anti-domestic-violence advocates about cultural sensitivity — and will lead to honest discussions about the meaning of empowerment of women.

We hope that Eliana’s experience, and our shared perspective, will prompt some analysis among feminists, advocates, and the progressive community in general about the impact of the criminalization of low-level, first offenses of domestic violence on this one immigrant woman — and the implications for all immigrant women and other women of color.

Eliana Lopez came to San Francisco from Venezuela with hope in her head and love in her heart. She decided to leave behind her beautiful city of Caracas, a successful career as an actress, and her family and friends, following the dream of creating a family and a life with a man she had fallen in love with but barely knew, Ross Mirkarimi.

Well-educated, progressive, charismatic, and artistic, she made friends easily. She and Ross seemed like a great match. Both were committed environmentalists, articulate and successful. They had a son, Theo. As they settled into domestic life, however, problems began to surface. The notoriously workaholic politician did not find his family role an easy fit. A bachelor into his late forties, Ross had trouble with the quiet demands of playing a puzzle on the floor with his toddler or having an agenda-less breakfast with his wife. Ross would not make time for Eliana’s request for marriage counseling, blaming the demands of job and campaign.

On December 31, figuring that the election campaign was over and Ross would have a little breathing room, Eliana broached the subject of traveling to Venezuela with Theo. Ross’s emotional reaction to her request led to the argument that has now been repeatedly documented in the press — and for which he was eventually charged.

According to Eliana, the context of what happened between them on December 31 actually started much earlier. Ross grew up as the only son of a single teenage mother of Russian Jewish descent and an absent Iranian immigrant father. Pressured by the opposition of her family to her relationship with an Iranian Muslim, Ross’s mother divorced his father by the time he was five. Ross was raised on a small, nearly all-white island in New England, with no connection to his father. When he had the opportunity, Ross traveled to Chicago, where his father had remarried and built a new family with two sons. Ross’s father turned him away. In Eliana’s analysis, Ross’s greatest fear is that his painful story with his father will be replayed again with Theo.

Eliana’s version of what happened next has never wavered. She went to her neighbor Ivory Madison, as opposed to anyone else, because she thought Ivory was a lawyer and could advise her if her troubles with her husband resulted in divorce. Documenting Ross’s reaction to her request to take Theo abroad would be ammunition — targeting his greatest fear. Making the video was Madison’s idea, and Eliana agreed to it, thinking that it would be useful to her if a custody dispute ensued. But in Eliana’s mind, the video was her property, her story.

Eliana insisted that Ivory did not have her permission to share the video or the story with anyone, that she was not in any danger, and that she was working on her marriage with Ross. Unbeknownst to Eliana, by the time Ivory called the police, she had already shared the story with Phil Bronstein, then the editor at large of Hearst Newspapers, the publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Let’s stop for a moment to consider the question of the empowerment of women. The disempowerment of Eliana began on a very small level when her husband grabbed her by the arm during an argument. It was exponentially magnified by the neighbor in whom she confided, who decided that Eliana’s strongly held desire to handle her problems with her husband herself was inconsequential. The disempowerment of Eliana was then magnified again and again, by the police, the press, the district attorney, and finally even anti-domestic-violence advocates.

How did it come to be that a system that was intended to empower women has evolved into a system that disempowers them so completely?

Unquestionably, there are women in deeply abusive relationships who need assistance getting out, who may not be able to initiate an escape on their own. Eliana’s relationship with Ross did not even come close to that standard. Yet in the eyes of Ivory Madison, Phil Bronstein, District Attorney George Gascon, and even the Director of La Casa de las Madres, once her husband had grabbed her arm, Eliana was simply no longer competent and her wishes were irrelevant.

In other words, an action done by a man, over which a woman has no control whatsoever, renders the woman incompetent and irrelevant, and empowers a long list of people — most of whom are male — to make decisions on this woman’s behalf, against her consistent and fervently expressed wishes. No one in the entire chain of people who made decisions on Eliana’s behalf offered her any help — besides prosecuting her husband.

Eliana was only consulted by the district attorney in the context of seeking her cooperation in relation to the criminal charges against her husband. Eliana never gave her input or assessment in the situation, was never consulted about the plea agreement.

Now the disempowerment of Eliana has taken an even more sinister twist. In an opinion piece published in the Chronicle, Ivory Madison’s husband, Abraham Mertens, charged Eliana with intimidation for allegedly pressuring his wife and himself to destroy the video that Ivory conceived and recorded of Eliana’s moment of distress. The same day, Mayor Ed Lee announced that he was suspending Ross as sheriff, and the charges, as written up by the City Attorney, included the Mertens accusation. This had the effect of silencing and disempowering Eliana — but this time, she is being threatened with criminal prosecution. The victim has somehow become the criminal.

Mertens, the mayor, the D.A., the city attorney, and the newspaper editor are all men. All men acting on behalf of a very educated and articulate woman who has repeatedly, passionately, asked them to give her her voice back. And for that they are threatening to criminally prosecute her.

Kathy Black, the director of La Casa de las Madres, called Eliana twice. At the same time, Black and other domestic violence advocates were calling on Ross to step down, raising money to put up billboards, and mobilizing for the anti-Ross campaign, trying him in the press. Seeing all this, Eliana never trusted Black’s motives and never took the call. Had Eliana thought assistance would be available her and to Ross without a threat to her family and livelihood, this all would have been a very different story.

During Ross’s initial preliminary hearing, Eliana Lopez famously told judge Susan Breall “this idea that I am this poor little immigrant is insulting, it’s a little racist.” And yet, what middle class, successful, educated Eliana was exposed to is exactly what we as a city have forced victims of domestic violence to face by our emphasis on criminal prosecution.

In San Francisco, we concentrate on saving victims from domestic violence situations. Our efforts in communities of color, immigrant communities, and teens is geared to make sure that victims get away from their abusers.

It’s inarguable that women in dangerous situations need to be provided options to get out. But concentrating on these alone — rather than on the array of options that are needed in less severe cases — is the equivalent of treating disease at the emergency room. In fact, this approach undermines prevention efforts because it puts women in the position of choosing between seeking help through counseling and therapy to modify the behavior of their partners — or exposing them to criminal prosecution. It has the unfortunate outcome of disempowering women, particularly low-income immigrant women and women of color, whose economic realities, position in society, and relationship to law enforcement both real and perceived is very different than for white middle-class women.

It’s not hard to see that, for immigrant women and women of color, exposure to law enforcement is perceived as dangerous. Many immigrants fear law enforcement based on their experiences with repressive regimes in their own countries. In the past couple of years, the mandatory referral to federal immigration authorities has created panic and fear of police in immigrant communities across America. Immigrant women, already on the edge economically, face the real threat of the loss of their partner’s income if the partner is accused of a crime and the boss finds out. Many black women understandably doubt the criminal justice system’s capacity to treat black men charged with any crime.

So here is the challenge to domestic violence advocates and progressive folks who care about women: A more progressive approach to Eliana and Ross’s particular situation, and to domestic violence in general, would be to work on emphasizing early, non-law enforcement intervention and the prevention of violence against women in addition to the necessary work of extricating women from dangerous situations.

Professor Laureen Snider at Queens University in Ontario has argued that criminalization is a flawed strategy for dealing with violence against women. Snider argues that feminists and progressives have misidentified social control with police/governmental control. In other words, we are substituting one oppressor for another — and glossing over the fact that in the judicial system, poor people of color fare worse than white middle-class people. We have punted on the hard work education, and of shaping and reshaping men’s definitions of masculinity and violence, of the social acceptance of the subjugation of women, of violence against children. We have chosen to define success in the fight against domestic violence by women saved from horrible situations and incarceration rates for their abusers — rather than doing the difficult work of community and individual change necessary to prevent violence from happening in the first place.

Putting up billboards in Spanish telling women that domestic violence is never a private matter might make people feel like they are doing something useful, but it will do nothing to help Eliana, and it will do very little to prevent domestic violence against women in the Spanish-speaking community.

My own experience with the community’s response to domestic violence was very different from Eliana’s. My father was physically abusive. The most violent period of my life was during high school in the 1980’s, shortly after we had immigrated to the United States from war-torn El Salvador. Our economic realities and shaky legal situation placed a level of stress on our family that made violence an almost daily occurrence.

I ran away from home, and eventually got connected with the services offered through the Redwood City YMCA. We entered family counseling, and the intervention was successful — my father was able to stop his violent behavior and our family survived. Had the police intervened, my father would have likely been charged, very possibly deported, and the whole family would have been sent back to El Salvador — back to the civil war.

In the case of my family, in which violence was a severe, everyday occurrence, there was a successful intervention. In Eliana’s case, which was limited to her husband too forcefully grabbing her arm, the family was destroyed and it will take years before the victim and her child will be able to (maybe) put their lives back together.

I challenge the progressive community and anti-violence advocates to reexamine this criminalization-heavy approach and its impact on my friend Eliana’s family, but also to examine how it affects all victims of domestic violence in San Francisco, particularly women in immigrant communities and women of color who rightfully have a distrustful relationship with law enforcement. Although it might make some feel better, all of this energy and effort spent demanding Ross Mirkarimi’s resignation only serves to reinforce the dominant model of criminalization — to make an example out of him. It won’t help Eliana, and it won’t help people suffering from violence in their intimate relationships.

Myrna Melgar is Latina survivor of childhood domestic violence, a feminist, and a mother of three girls. She is a former legislative aide to Sup. Eric Mar.

 

Mirkarimi sentenced, absent drama

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The drama that hordes of reporters were waiting for didn’t happen. District Attorney George Gascon’s threat to “bring up” at Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s sentencing the notion that Mirkarimi didn’t really think he was guilty vanished. Mirkarimi sat in front of Judge James Collins, who years ago helped a sitting judge duck a domestic violence charge, and agreed to the terms of his sentence (three years probation, mandatory attendance at a 52-week DV counseling program and some modest fines). Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Aguilar-Tarchi said she had nothing to add; neither did Mirkarimi’s lawyer, Lidia Stiglich. And that was that — as far as the courtroom went.

Outside, Mirkarimi faced the expected scrum of cameras and microphones, and read a prepared statement that sounded as if the district attorney had insisted on it. “I deeply and humbly apologize for my behavior,” he said. “There are no excuses and I accept full responsibility.” He said he had started counseling “to remedy my arrogance and anger issues” and apologized for saying earlier that the incident was “a private family matter.”

And he gave no signs of being ready to step down, saying he would “work so much harder to regain your trust … to be a better public servant.”

An hour or so later, Gascon faced the same press crew and announced that he had treated this case “just like any other domestic violence incident.” He denied that there was any political motivation; in fact, he denied it twice. He never made exactly clear why he had decided not to intervene after all at the sentencing hearing, except to say that Mirkarimi’s statements after receiving his sentence were satisfactory (see above).

He said he’s a “strong believer in redemption and restorative justice” and said this deal would “offer [Mirkarimi] an opportunity to redeem himself.”

Which, of course, led to the question of the day: Did Gascon think Mirkarimi could, or should, hold onto his job? Phil Matier from the Chron asked it directly, and Gascon refused to answer, saying “it’s not my place” to say. I tried again a few minutes later, asking if, given Gascon’s belief in redemption, there was any possibility that the sheriff could sufficiently redeem himself to remain in his elected position. Again: “It’s not my place to say.”

It was, however, what everyone was talking about. Matier and Ross reported that Mayor Ed Lee was huddling with lawyers to try to figure out whether he has legal grounds to begin the process of removing Mirkarimi from office. It’s tricky, and has only happened twice in the last 100 years, once in the 1930s, when a public defender was involved in a murder-for-hire case, and again in the 1970s, when an airport commissioner who was also a union official was charged with favoring union workers.

One obstacle, according to Matier and Ross: The D.A.’s Office won’t give Lee the video that was at the heart of this case. Gascon confirmed that, saying the video was considered internal work product and wouldn’t be released to anyone.

The law on removing a sitting elected official in San Francisco is murky and confusing, with little precedent. Does a guilty plea to false imprisonment of his wife equal “official misconduct?” Can an incident that took place before Mirkarimi became sheriff count as misconduct in the office he assumed later?Would the supervisors hold a public trial? What rules of evidence would apply?

The politics are murky, too: If Lee files charges, he’ll be tossing the matter to the Board of Supervisors in an election year, which the supes will hate and it will be a blow to the concept of civility that the mayor tries so hard to promote. If he doesn’t, then in the unilkely event that Mirkarimi does anything else bad, critics will blame the mayor for not acting.

So this isn’t over yet.

Meanwhile, the award for the most inappropropriate question at the Gascon news conference goes to the San Jose Mercury news reporter who, after much discussion about whether Mirkarimi could carry a weapon again and when the stay-away order would be lifted, asked (I kid you not):

“Which should he get back first — his gun or his wife?”

 

 

Jeff Adachi on Gascon and Mirkarimi

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Jeff Adachi, the public defender, who has been trying criminal cases for a quarter century, had some interesting comments on District Attorney George Gascon’s latest move:

Ross has already pled guilty and so he’s already accepted the plea bargain.  In order to enter a plea, you have to waive your constitutional rights and the judge has to be satisfied you are voluntarily and intelligently entering a plea of guilty. In the 25 years I’ve been practicing law, I’ve never seen a DA ask a person who already pled guilty to a plea bargain, “Are you really, really sure you are guilty?” so it would be highly unusual for a prosecutor to do so, and even more unusual for the elected DA to do so in a misdemeanor case.

Which is pretty much my point: This is very odd behavior for the DA. I don’t get it.

Gascon and the Mirkarimi plea deal

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The Mirkarimi case has taken another strange turn: The district attorney, George Gascon, just told the Chronicle that he doesn’t think the sheriff really thinks he’s guilty, and wants to raise that at his sentencing March 19.

I find this pretty unusual and remarkable. Whatever you think of the Mirkarimi case (and there are plenty of different opinions), the guy pled guilty to a fairly serious crime — and Gascon’s staff negotiated the plea deal with Mirkarimi’s lawyers. Why is he talking about messing around with the situation at this point?

Well, according to the Chron, Gascon was responding to a Matier and Ross column in which the sheriff acknowledged that he owes some hefty legal bills and that the cost of defending himself, and the cost to his family, was a factor in his guilty plea. Gascon is taking that as a sign that Mirkarimi maybe still thinks he’s innocent:

“There is a guilty plea here and I know there’s almost an attempt (by Mirkarimi) to deny that this has occurred: ‘I didn’t really do this. I’m being forced to do this.’ That’s very concerning to me, to be very honest with you,” Gascón said in a meeting with The Chronicle editorial board.

That’s a fair amount of extrapolation — Mirkarimi never told Matier and Ross that he’s innocent, although (like most criminal defendants) he maintained that position all the way up to the plea bargain. That’s what happens in a court case; the accused pleads not guilty, says he or she will fight the charges, proclaims innocence — and then, in the vast majority of the cases in the U.S. criminal justice system, eventually cops a plea.

Why? There are lots of reasons. The  New York Times had a fascinating piece on this March 10. You might think you’re innocent, but won’t get a fair trial. You might be innocent, but fear that you can’t prove it and you don’t want to take the risk of the harsh sentence you might get if you lose. You might just decide that it’s better to accept some degree of punishment instead of dragging the case out. You might really be guilty, but not in the way the original charges read. You might be guilty as hell; you just said you were innocent because you were waiting for a good plea deal. This is how the criminal justice system works in the United States.

I called Gascon to talk about this, and he started off by saying, as he did in the meeting with the Chron ed board, that “we’re not accustomed to accepting a guilty plea from someone who isn’t guilty.” If that’s really the case, then he’s the only district attorney in the country with that policy. When we talked a bit further, he made the point that domestic violence is a special case: “When the defendant goes through counseling, they have to admit responsibility,” he said. “I want to make sure he understands what a guilty plea is and what it means.” Which is valid — I agree that step one in any sort of anger-management or DV program is taking responsibility for your actions. But didn’t this all come up when Gascon’s staff first cut the deal? Isn’t it a little late now to have second thoughts?

Mirkarimi has already agreed to go to counseling and take a domestic violence class. I talked to his lawyer, Lidia Stiglich, and she told me that she was “at a little bit of a loss. The sheriff accepted responsibility. We have a plea agreement and a disposition, and I don’t see any legal reason why it wouldn’t go forward as proposed.”

I agree, and have said in public many times, that Mirkarimi has to take responsibility for his actions, has to tell the public what really happened that day, and, like any other defendant who enters domestic violence counseling, admit that he’s done something wrong and that it wasn’t at all OK or excusable. That’s all part of the package.

I just don’t get what the district attorney is up to.

 

 

 

 

 

The mortage crimes

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EDITORIAL The mortgage crisis in San Francisco isn’t just devastating to homeowners and to the southeast neighborhoods where foreclosures are most common — it’s clear evidence that lenders and their affiliates are and have been acting illegally. This city ought to be taking the lead on pressing civil and criminal charges against the mortgage outfits.

City Assessor Phil Ting commissioned a report in February that showed that nearly every one of 382 foreclosures actions in the city between January 2009 and October 2011 had at least some irregularities. In more than 80 percent of the cases, the report identified direct violations of law.

It’s a stunning revelation: In nearly 100 percent of the cases studied, the mortgage companies did something wrong. Homeowners were not notified that they were in default. Properties were seized and sold by companies that didn’t have the proper title to them. Documents were backdated or signed by an entity that didn’t have the authority to sign. In some cases, it wasn’t clear who actually owned the mortgage, because the corporation that filed for foreclosure had never property taken title to the loan.

The report comes as Occupy protesters in San Francisco are moving aggressively to target banks that are tossing people out of their homes and at a time when county sheriffs in other parts of the country are refusing to execute foreclosure orders.

There may not be much San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi can do — mortgage foreclosures in California can be done with almost no oversight and by the time the sheriff is called in there’s nothing left but an eviction. But the report makes clear that there were both violations of business regulations and crimes, in some cases felony crimes — and the San Francisco city attorney and district attorney should be moving as quickly as possible to take legal action.

Both City Attorney Dennis Herrera and District Attorney George Gascon have asked for more material from Ting’s office, although neither has announced a formal investigation. But every day that this goes on, more people lose their homes and more crimes are committed — and both offices should move as quickly as possible to take action.

There’s nothing in the federal settlement over fraudulent mortgage activity that prevents local officials from taking this sort of action. There’s nothing preventing Herrera from seeking an injunction against further foreclosures or preventing Gascon from indicting the lenders and their executives.

Meanwhile, Ting told us that he’s asking Attorney General Kamala Harris to investigate, because the pattern of violations almost certainly goes beyond San Francisco.

State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier has introduced a bill that would mandate transparency in foreclosures, so at least homeowners would know who to contact to seek a modification. That’s a good start. But holding these sleazy operators accountable would send a message that San Francisco isn’t going to let this sort of behavior continue.

Guardian editorial: SF should go after mortgage criminals

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EDITORIAL The mortgage crisis in San Francisco isn’t just devastating to homeowners and to the southeast neighborhoods where foreclosures are most common — it’s clear evidence that lenders and their affiliates are and have been acting illegally. This city ought to be taking the lead on pressing civil and criminal charges against the mortgage outfits.

City Assessor Phil Ting commissioned a report in February that showed that nearly every one of 382 foreclosures actions in the city between January 2009 and October 2011 had at least some irregularities. In more than 80 percent of the cases, the report identified direct violations of law.

It’s a stunning revelation: In nearly 100 percent of the cases studied, the mortgage companies did something wrong. Homeowners were not notified that they were in default. Properties were seized and sold by companies that didn’t have the proper title to them. Documents were backdated or signed by an entity that didn’t have the authority to sign. In some cases, it wasn’t clear who actually owned the mortgage, because the corporation that filed for foreclosure had never property taken title to the loan.

The report comes as Occupy protesters in San Francisco are moving aggressively to target banks that are tossing people out of their homes and at a time when county sheriffs in other parts of the country are refusing to execute foreclosure orders.

There may not be much San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi can do — mortgage foreclosures in California can be done with almost no oversight and by the time the sheriff is called in there’s nothing left but an eviction. But the report makes clear that there were both violations of business regulations and crimes, in some cases felony crimes — and the San Francisco city attorney and district attorney should be moving as quickly as possible to take legal action.

Both City Attorney Dennis Herrera and District Attorney George Gascon have asked for more material from Ting’s office, although neither has announced a formal investigation. But every day that this goes on, more people lose their homes and more crimes are committed — and both offices should move as quickly as possible to take action.

There’s nothing in the federal settlement over fraudulent mortgage activity that prevents local officials from taking this sort of action. There’s nothing preventing Herrera from seeking an injunction against further foreclosures or preventing Gascon from indicting the lenders and their executives.

Meanwhile, Ting told us that he’s asking Attorney General Kamala Harris to investigate, because the pattern of violations almost certainly goes beyond San Francisco.

State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier has introduced a bill that would mandate transparency in foreclosures, so at least homeowners would know who to contact to seek a modification. That’s a good start. But holding these sleazy operators accountable would send a message that San Francisco isn’t going to let this sort of behavior continue.

Why do evictions continue despite widespread banking fraud?

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Do you think a groundbreaking report – showing that 84 percent of foreclosures in San Francisco over the last three years involved faulty paperwork, some of it amounting to fraud – would finally mean swift justice for victims of those crimes?

Think again.

According to Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, whose office produced the astonishing report, government action is certainly appropriate in the follow-up to the report. “There are potential legal action on behalf of the attorney general and potential policy solutions at the state level,” said Ting.

But these solutions will likely take their long, bureaucratic time. And in the meantime, San Francisco homeowners — many of whom say that they were lied to, tricked, or defrauded by the lenders or beneficiaries of their mortgage loans — will continue to be kicked out of their homes with no legal oversight.

People have been claiming these injustices for years. Now, the report has proven that the vast majority of them are probably right.

“Until now, public information in California regarding improper foreclosure practices has been largely anecdotal. This report is important because it is the first to provide a rigorous, quantifiable analysis of the nature and frequency of foreclosure irregularities in California,” said Lou Pizante of Aequitas, a mortgage investigation firm that partnered with the Assessor-Recorder’s office to produce the report, in a press release.

The report focuses on six areas: assignments, notice of default, substitution of trustee, notice of trustee sale, suspicious activities indicative of potential fraud, and conflicts relating to MERS (short for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.).

In 99 percent of loans, the report identifies “one of more irregularities.” In 84 percent, there were “what appear to be one or more clear violations of the law.”
These violations include forging signatures, failing to file proper paperwork, failing to notify borrowers of things that they are legally required to know such as changes in the owners of their mortgages and notices that they have been put on track for foreclosure. And lots of felony fraud. 

Yet Ting told us it will be difficult to use these findings to hold banks and other lenders accountable, at least any time soon.
The report is likely the beginning of a lengthy process that will, at best, involve investigations from several city and state departments.
Matt Dorsey, press secretary for the city attorney’s office, confirmed that “we’re working with our client department the Assessor-Recorder,” but couldn’t say much else.

District Attorney George Gascon released a statement addressing the report, which says that “Mortgage-related fraud is a top priority in my office will prosecute those who pray on vulnerable homeowners. Many people have lost their homes due to foreclosures, tearing apart families and communities.”

But according to Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai, the DA’s office cannot begin looking into the cases until it receives documents from the Assessor-Recorder detailing the allegations in the report.

Talai emphasized that “our door remains open, and we would always welcome anyone with any kind of information”; homeowners with documents that they believe contain proof of invalid foreclosure proceedings can go to the DA themselves.

But will the release of the report help these homeowners?
 
When asked if people who believe they were a victim of these “irregularities” and “felony crimes” could use the report to challenge their lenders, Ting replied, “they could potentially.”

But, “the alternate question would be asked, which is: were they actually making payments on their homes? If they weren’t, they would have a very hard time challenging their foreclosure.”

Yet, anecdotally, lenders often tell consumers that they need to stop making loan payments in order to qualify for loan modification. They then get put on the fast track for foreclosure. Ting said his office heard these anecdotes too.

“Unfortunately, oftentimes when that happens, it’s done verbally. We also heard that. But it becomes almost impossible to prove,” Ting told me.

So banks can lie to consumers, thus potentially immunizing themselves from prosecution based on crimes committed against consumers. Then to top it all off, when folks get evicted and become homeless, they can be ticketed or jailed for sitting on the sidewalk. Thanks, justice system.

Hopefully, this report can act as an important step in the right direction.

“I’m proud of the fact that this is the first report of its kind, in the state, really identifying these issues on a systematic basis,” said Ting.

At least now the thousands of San Francisco residents that have lost their homes can point to evidence proving that this is a more complicated problem than people borrowing money that they can’t afford to pay back.

As the report states, “Reckless borrowing notwithstanding, much publicly available evidence suggests that there are indeed many legitimate victims of abusive lending and service practices.”

These people didn’t need the report to tell them that they were “legitimate victims.” But let’s hope that, with its help, they can see some justice.

Gascon and mayoral corruption

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EDITORIAL The indictments of two executives of an airport shuttle company on charges of laundering campaign money are, in themselves, a rarity and something to celebrate: the district attorney of San Francisco is actually attempting to enforce the laws against political corruption. That’s unusual in this city, and worthy of note.

But at this point, the entire sum total of prosecutions involving the scandal-ridden campaign of Mayor Ed Lee amounts to a pair of cases against people who made what appear to be illegal contributions. As of today, the message that’s being sent is that nobody in the Lee campaign did anything wrong. And that seems a little bit curious.

Lee’s late entry into the race — after he’d promised for months not to run — and his refusal to abide by the rules of public financing forced his supporters to raise a large amount of money very quickly. There were so-called independent expenditure committees collecting donations and running parallel campaigns that, by law, should have been entirely distinct from Lee and his official effort. We’ve always been dubious about the supposed lack of coordination.

Then there were the well-documented instances of irregularities serious enough that every other candidate in the race asked for state and federal monitors to watch the election. Several eyewitnesses told local reporters that they saw volunteers for one of the supposedly independent groups filling out absentee ballots for voters, using a special template that ensured the votes would go for Lee. Some said they saw ballots being collected at a makeshift voting booth. In a video provided by the campaign of State Sen. Leland Yee, it appears that volunteers were both filling out ballots and placing them in bags — both clear violations of law.

Gascon’s announced investigations of all the allegations — but more than three months later, nothing has come of it. His office won’t confirm or deny whether investigations are ongoing or whether any further indictments may be forthcoming. But at the Chinese New Year Parade, Chinatown powerbroker and Lee ally Rose Pak announced that she had heard Gascon was investigating her.

There’s been plenty of time to collect evidence, and Gascon has a responsibility to let the public know, as quickly as possible, what’s happened to the rest of the allegations. If everyone in the Lee campaign is really innocent, and none of the independent groups supporting the mayor did anything wrong, he should say that, and present the evidence.

It doesn’t help Lee, the city, or the integrity of the voting process to have these cases drag out. Gascon needs to conclude them, expeditiously.

Is SF’s DA investigating Rose Pak?

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Well, Ms. Pak thinks he is. At the Chinese New Year parade, where she wields the mic at the reviewing stand and typically makes nasty comments about local politicians, she was relatively muted this year –– except when D.A. George Gascon rode by. “I read in the blogs that you’re still investigating me,” she shouted. “What the hell did I do? I just elected the first Chinese American mayor. You will find nothing, except that I swear a lot.”

Gascon has for more than four months been investigating irregularities in the Ed Lee campaign, including charges of illegal campaign contributions and voter fraud. Gascon’s office issued a press release Feb. 14 announcing the indictments of Go Lorries and two of its senior employees. The airport shuttle outfit allegedly laundered campaign money by asking its employees each to donate the maxium $500 to Lee’s campaign and then paying them back from company funds. From the release:

The defendants are accused of making an unlawful $11,500 campaign contribution from GO Lorrie’s to the Ed Lee campaign by passing it through GO Lorrie’s drivers and staff. … “Campaign finance and disclosure laws help to ensure fairness and transparency in our elections,” said District Attorney George Gascón, “and my office takes the violation of these laws very seriously.  After a thorough investigation, we have found clear evidence to charge Go Lorrie’s and two of its employees with making illegal campaign contributions.”

Nobody from the Lee campaign has been charged with anything.

So what about the other apparent violations? Is that still under investigation? Is Rose Pak a target? I asked Stephanie Ong Stillman, Gascon’s spokesperson, and she told me that she can’t confirm or deny that there’s any further investigations under way or that any specific individual is under investigation.

So I’m glad to see the Go Lorries indictment, which marks a rare instance of somebody taking campaign laws seriously. But there’s a lot more here, and I hope Gascon doesn’t think that nailing one company that everyone will insist acted on its own with no support from or connection to a pretty darn sleazy campaign will end the controversy.

 

 

Mirkarimi victory seems assured

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The San Francisco Elections Department counted more than 25,000 ballots today and just posted new ranked choice voting tallies that continue to indicate Ross Mirkarimi has been elected sheriff, widening his margin of victory from yesterday’s count. Mayor Ed Lee and District Attorney George Gascon saw their margins shrink slightly, but they are also the clear winners.

With only about 7,000 provisional ballots still be counted, it’s unlikely that these results will change. Lee’s share of first place votes dipped by about a half percentage point to 31 percent, while second place John Avalos, third Dennis Herrera, fourth David Chiu, and fifth place Leland Yee each gained a bit of ground.

It took 12 rounds of reallocating votes, one more than yesterday’s tally, but the latest count shows Lee winning with 60 percent of the vote to Avalos’s 40 percent.

In the sheriff’s race, the only variable after yesterday’s count was whether Paul Miyamota might be eliminated before Chris Cunnie – raising the question of whether Mirkarimi would get a big enough chunk of Miyamoto’s votes to put him over to top. But with Mirkarimi gaining ground in first place votes to 38 percent, and with 1,117 votes separating Cunnie and Miyamoto in the second round, it would be almost impossible for the winner to change.

In the DA’s race, Gascon dropped and David Onek rose by about a half percentage point, but with more of Sharmin Bock’s votes going to Gascon, he wins in the third round with 63 percent of the vote.

Lee, Mirkarimi, and Gascon win first ranked choice tally

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San Francisco’s first run of ranked choice voting tallies for yesterday’s election shows Ed Lee winning the mayor’s race (with progressive favorite John Avalos in second), George Gascon remaining district attorney, and Ross Mirkarimi becoming the new sheriff in town.
“Progressive victory, citywide, that’s huge,” Sup. David Campos told Mirkarimi this afternoon outside the Elections Department, where a scrum of journalists and politicos gathered to get the results. It would indeed be a rare citywide victory for progressives, which analyst David Latterman says constitute about 19 percent of the electorate, compared to 39 percent who identify as moderate and 36 percent who call themselves liberals.   
About 7,500 provisional and 24,000-25,000 absentee ballots remain to be counted over the next few days, said Elections Chief John Arntz, telling reporters, “I’m not saying these are the final results by any stretch.” But there is good reason to believe these winners will stick.
In the sheriff’s race, where Mirkarimi faced off against three candidates with long law enforcement backgrounds, David Wong was the first to be eliminated, and the lion’s share of his 9,487 votes went to fellow Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Miyamoto rather than Chris Cunnie, the former head of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, knocking Cunnie out of the race.
Of Wong’ votes, 3,828 went to Miyamoto, 2,637 were exhausted (meaning Wong voters had no second choice), 1,682 went to Mirkarimi, and just 1,325 went to Cunnie, who had been in second place. That gave Mirkarimi almost 40 percent of the vote, compared with 30.7 percent for Miyamoto and 29.8 percent for Cunnie.
On the next round, Cunnie’s 42,877 votes were redistributed as follows: 16,820 to Miyamoto, 14,675 exhausted, and 11,322 to Mirkarimi, giving him 53 percent of the vote. “I’m optimistic, but I’m not declaring victory,” Mirkarimi told reporters. He said that he hopeful that he’ll get the chance to continue the 30-year progressive legacy of retiring Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who endorsed Mirkarimi.
The only real variable in the sheriff’s race is how Cunnie’s second place votes break in the event that incoming ballots change who gets eliminated after Wong, but Mirkarimi said he was happy with how well progressive campaigns did in this election.  
“I want to say how proud I am of the Avalos campaign. It did a good job at getting people out who have felt disenfranchised,” Mirkarimi added.
Indeed, Avalos surprised much of the political establishment by finishing strongly in second place with 18.3 percent of the vote compared to Lee’s 31.5 percent and Dennis Herrera’s 11.3 percent. In the first ranked choice run, it took 11 rounds of eliminations for Lee to break the 50 percent threshold of victory. And when he did, he jumped all the way to 61 percent, mostly because voters who chose Herrera as their third choice exhausted their ballots.
When Herrera was eliminated in Round 10, 18,276 of his 29,717 votes were exhausted, and of the balance, 6,683 went to Avalos and 4,705 went to Lee, where they had been at 28 percent and 49 percent respectively. Avalos then finished second with 39 percent of the vote.
Other notable rounds in the mayoral runoff were when fourth place finisher David Chiu was eliminated and his nearly 20,000 votes broke most heavily in favor of Ed Lee and being exhausted, reinforcing the idea that he draws his support mostly from moderates and is no longer part of the progressive movement that helped elect him to the Board of Supervisors.
Avalos got just 2,376 of Chiu’s second place votes, compared to 5,894 for Lee and 3,832 for Herrera. By contrast, when Leland Yee was eliminated a round earlier, his votes were redistributed fairly evenly among Lee, Chiu, Herrera, and Avalos. Part of the reason that Avalos never gained ground on Lee was that the mayor got more second place votes than his progressive challenger on every elimination between Round 3 and the final round.
In the DA’s race, Gascon’s 42 percent total of first place votes is an insurmountable lead, particularly given that he also did well on the second place votes, showing that attacks on his secrecy and police connections didn’t do much to hurt him. When third place finisher Sharmin Bock was eliminated in the third round, Gascon got 13,301 of her votes, compared with 10,430 for David Onek, and 11,840 exhausted.
The Elections Department will run new totals every day at 4 pm

With 100 percent (sort of) counted …

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With 100 percent of the vote in — sort of — the election is shaping up this way:

Barring a real surprise, Ed Lee will win a four-year term.

Ross Mirkarimi is positioned 10 points ahead of Chris Cunnie, and ought to survive the RCV count to win the sheriff’s race.

George Gascon is too far ahead to catch.

The turnout was a miserable 31 percent.

That’s tonight, though — I’m getting reports that a lot of precincts had a lot of election-day absentees turned in. That could bump the turnout a few points — and since election-day absentees tend to break roughly the same as election-day votes, it will help Mirkarimi.

John Avalos really showed the strength of the progressive vote tonight and established himself as a leader in the movement. He and his campaign have a lot to be proud of; he lacked the big money and IE efforts that the other candidates had and he ran an impressive campaign. But without the type of early-voting effort that the Lee campaign had, it appears there was no way anyone could win this race.

That’s part of the lesson for progressives — the Avalos campaign surged in the last two weeks, but it was already too late. Those early votes can be decisive, and tonight, it appears they were.

 

 

 

The latest numbers: The initiatives

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Well, we can call the election on most of the initiatives.The two bond measures, A and B, are going to win handily. Prop. C and Prop. D are both going to win, but Prop. C is going to have more votes — and thus be the one that takes effect.

I think the sales tax (Prop. G) is going down; the election-day vote is almost even yes and no, and it needs two-thirds to win. Not going to happen.

The “neighborhood schools” measure is going to lose. So are Props. E and F.

Oh: George Gascon will be the district attorney for the next four years. Not even close.

The first numbers

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The absentees are in, and it’s no surprise that Mayor Ed Lee is in the lead. In fact, he’s way in the lead — he’s got 39 percent of the 67,000 absentees. I expected him to have a big advantage here, since he did a lot of early GOTV.

Worth noting: John Avalos, the most progressive of the major candidates, is in second in the absentees. That’s a very good sign for the Avalos campaign. But Lee is almost 20,000 votes ahead of Avalos and Dennis Herrera, and that, folks, will be very hard to make up.

The district attorney’s race is over; George Gascon has won.

The sheriff’s race is interesting; Ross Mirkarimi — again, the most progressive candidate — is actually ahead in what is looking like a very conservative absentee vote. He’s only got a slight lead over Chris Cunnie (31.7 percent to 31.4 percent, a total of a couple hundred votes) but that margin will grow as the night moves on. Mirkarimi, it appears, will finish first.

Here’s why I say it’s a conservative absentee turnout: The sales tax, Prop G, is losing 57-42 and Prop. H, the neighborhood schools measure, is ahead 58-41. Both results suggest a strong westside turnout in the absentees.

I’m surprised that Mirkarimi is doing so well with this bunch.

And I’m a little surprised that Prop. C (the “consensus”) pension reform is so far ahead of Prop. D (the Adachi pension reform). Even in the conservative areas, C is leading by 7 percent.

By the way, the school and street bonds have won. If they’re over 66 percent (and both are) in this batch of votes, they’ll win handily.

 

Election night coverage and parties

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As always, the Guardian will have a team of reporters in the field tonight covering the election parties and doing regular posts here on the Politics blog, where Executive Editor Tim Redmond will also be analyzing the results as they come in. But if you want to get out there mix and mingle with the campaigns yourself, here’s a list of the parties around San Francisco, most of which start around 8:30 and last until around 11. 

John Avalos for Mayor, Roccapulco, 3140 Mission St.

Dennis Herrera for Mayor, Club Mighty, 119 Utah St.

Leland Yee for Mayor, Rasselas Jazz Club, 1534 Fillmore St.

Jeff Adachi for Mayor, Harbour Court Hotel 165 Steuart St.

David Chiu for Mayor, Rendezvous Tapas, 2080 Van Ness

Bevan Dufty for Mayor, Don Ramon’s Mexican Restaurant, 225 11th St.

Ed Lee for Mayor, Tres, 130 Townsend St.

Tony Hall for Mayor, Campaign HQ, 99 West Portal Avenue

Joanna Rees for Mayor, Eastside West, 3154 Fillmore

Michela Alioto-Pier for Mayor, The Brick  Yard, 1787 Union St.

League of Pissed Off Voters, El Rio, 3158 Mission St. (mayoral candidate Terry Baum in attendance)

Yes on A, Mercury Lounge, 1582 Folsom St.

Yes on C/No on D, Slim’s, 333 11th St.

David Onek for DA, Pilsner Inn, 225 Church

Sharmin Bock for DA, Yoshi’s Jazz Club, 1330 Fillmore

Bill Fazio for DA, Tony Nik’s Cafe, 1534 Stockton

George Gascon for DA/Chris Cunnie for Sheriff, Delancey Street, 600 The Embarcadero

Ross Mirkarimi for Sheriff, Carnelian by the Bay, 1 Ferry Plaza

Paul Miyamoto for Sheriff, Pete’s Tavern, 128 King Street

 

Lee benefits from vetoing health care reform

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Downtown groups that pressured Mayor Ed Lee to veto legislation that would have prevented businesses from raiding their employees’ health savings accounts have been funneling big bucks into independent expenditure campaigns formed to keep Lee in the Mayor’s Office.

Meanwhile, the Board of Supervisors today strengthened a weak alternative to the vetoed legislation by Board President David Chiu, which it then continued for two weeks. The amendments by Sup. Malia Cohen were unanimously approved by the board, but her five allies in supporting the vetoed legislation – David Campos, John Avalos, Ross Mirkarimi, Jane Kim, and Eric Mar – preferred that the measure be returned to committee for more analysis, losing on a 6-5 vote.

“We need more time to understand the implications of the amendments. We’re not sure if it actually closes the loophole,” Campos, the vetoed measure’s sponsor, said of provisions in the Health Care Security Ordinance – the city’s landmark measure that required employers to provide some health coverage to employees – that allowed businesses last year to pocket more than $50 million from health savings accounts they created for their employees.

One Cohen amendment specifically addressed one of the more egregious violations – restaurants that charge customers at 3-5 percent surcharge for employee health care and than pocket that money at the end of the year – which Chiu had addressed only by calling for more scrutiny of the tactic by the Office of Labor Standards. She also would require businesses to keep two years worth of contributions in the account, rather than the one year sought by Chiu to address the so-called “January problem” of businesses draining the account at the end of every year and leaving nothing for employees who get sick or injured at the start of the year.

It was perhaps a sign of the heat that Lee took from labor and consumer groups for his veto that he quickly issued a press release today praising the supervisors for addressing the issue. “I applaud President Chiu, Supervisor Cohen, organized labor, small business owners, and the Department of Public Health for finding the solutions to this important public policy that can strengthen our City’s landmark Health Care Security Ordinance. By closing the loophole through these proposed amendments, we can increase access to health care, protect jobs in our small businesses and protect consumers while growing our economy at the same time,” it read.

But Lee appears to have already benefited from heeding the demands of downtown – particularly the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA) – who made defeating the Campos legislation a top priority, casting it as a new “fee” that would drain $50 million from the local economy.

The San Francisco Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth PAC, created by notorious downtown bagman Jim Sutton, is the best-funded on the four independent expenditure groups that are supporting Lee, taking in $390,000 this fall, including $27,000 from the GGRA and $25,000 from the Chamber’s SF Forward group. Both groups also support the Committee on Jobs, which kicked in $110,000 to the Alliance campaign. GGRA also gave another $10,000 to the pension reform campaign that Lee is pushing, support the Chamber had threatened to withhold if the Campos measure was approved.

GGRA Executive Director Rob Black denied this was pay-to-play politics, noting that the Alliance is also supporting DA George Gascon, Sheriff candidate Chris Cunnie and two ballot measures. “But absolutely, the mayor’s name is on there and the organization voted to endorse him,” Black said.

GGRA voted in August to endorse Lee, Chiu, and Michela Alioto-Pier for mayor. Black said the organization is “generally supportive of Sup. Chiu’s approach to reforming the Health Care Security Ordinance,” and Black specifically said it supports improving requirements that businesses notify employees about the health savings accounts and how to use them.

The GGRA led the original fight against the HCSO in 2006, which was sponsored by then-Sup. Tom Ammiano, who lined up a veto-proof majority on the progressive-dominated board and eventually persuaded then-Mayor Gavin Newsom to support it. The measure created the Healthy San Francisco program and required employers to spend a minimum amount per employee on health care, although federal ERISA law bars cities from prescribing how that money is spent.

GGRA challenged the employer mandate all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that it violated ERISA, losing the case. Many of its members restaurants then opted to use health savings accounts rather than paying into Healthy San Francisco or private health insurance, even though health experts say such accounts are the worst option.

Campos and his allies have maintained that money in these health savings accounts belongs to employees and that businesses that use and raid them gain an unfair competitive advantage at the expense of their employees, customers, and city taxpayers, who are often forced to foot the bill for the uninsured.

Campos and the coalition that supports him has said they may take this issue to voters if the Chiu/Lee legislative fix doesn’t address their concerns.

Two words Ed Lee doesn’t want to hear

13

There are two words no candidate wants to hear a month before Election Day:

“Criminal investigation.”

I give District Attorney George Gascon credit — I didn’t think he’d ever really go after municipal corruption, but he’s showing at least a bit of political spine here, launching an investigation into the dubious campaign contributions of Ed Lee. Lee’s campaign immediately said there would be full cooperation:

Last week, Mayor Lee’s campaign returned 23 contributions associated with Go Lorrie’s Shuttle company as a result of the campaign’s own concerns and compliance review. On Friday, the campaign reached out to the District Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Ethics Commission and the Fair Political Practices Commission to offer its full assistance in any investigation or review. It is important to note that there is nothing about the District Attorney’s statement or initiation of an investigation that suggests that Mayor Lee’s campaign is a target.

And at this point, there’s no way to know how far the investigation will go or what it will turn up. But the very fact that the D.A. is looking into all of this looks bad for Lee.

And if Gascon’s office scours not only the Go Lorrie’s money but the rest of Lee’s campaign contributions — and the independent expenditure committees that aren’t supposed to be coordinating with each other or the main campaign — he might find more.

Bill Barnes, who works with the Lee campaign, told me that he was doing everything possible to make sure the contributions were all on the up-and-up. “I can’t control the i.e.’s,” he said, “but we are very careful to follow the law.”

He also said that it’s possible there were mistakes, like the Go Lorrie’s money. “We’re raising a lot of money in a short period of time,” he said.

But you see, that’s part of the problem. You enter the race late, refuse to accept public financing (and abide by spending limits) and start trying to raise more than a million bucks in a few weeks, and it’s too easy to get sloppy. Add in the fact that people like Willie Brown, who never cared much for campaign contribution or ethics laws, are involved in the fundraising, and you have a recipe for real trouble.

 

Few surprises in Examiner endorsements

15

The San Francisco Examiner – a paper with a generally conservative editorial stance, and one that endorsed John McCain for president in 2008 – has endorsed a slate of Establishment candidates for citywide office: Ed Lee for mayor, George Gascon for DA, and Chris Cunnie for sheriff.
That’s not really surprising, but its second and third choices for mayor were: Dennis Herrera second and Bevan Dufty third. Herrera was also the Guardian’s second choice and Dufty was someone we considered for third, choosing instead to go with Leland Yee. As the Examiner wrote, there are lots of qualified candidates in this race, and there were a lot more worrisome ones the paper could have picked.
For a newspaper that often takes ridiculous right-wing stances, such as its editorial last year denying global warming, the mayoral endorsement actually reads fairly reasonably. I don’t agree with its conclusion that Lee’s aversion to politics and business-friendly focus are good things, but I was happy to see the Examiner call out Lee’s cronyism and uncritical praise for bad corporate actors like PG&E.
“We do have some concerns about his ties to former power-brokers and off-the-cuff comments that are now being blasted in negative campaign ads. We implore Lee to work harder to separate himself from those who claim responsibility for his success, for they are just as likely to be responsible for any downfall. We ask that Lee, as we would any mayor to be open and honest about his relationships,” the paper wrote.
And its comments about the other candidates it liked were also pretty much on target. The only real criticism I would offer – and it is a significant one – is that progressive favorite John Avalos didn’t even get mentioned among the eight it discussed. WTF?
Now I’m sure they wouldn’t have had great things to say, given their conservative leanings. But to simply leave Avalos out shows the paper has a disregard and disdain for the left that is a big part of what’s wrong in San Francisco. It’s why our mayor and police chief can make this the first city in the country to launch an aggressive midnight raid on the Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s why the Chamber of Commerce can so shamelessly demand that businesses be allowed to drain the employee health funds that a hard-won city law requires them to provide.
San Francisco is not a progressive city, although a large number of San Franciscans are progressive and they have helped usher in a number of important progressive reforms, from worker and tenants protections to environmental initiatives, often through battles that Avalos helped wage on the people’s behalf.
So to ignore Avalos is to ignore progressives in this city. And they can steal our money or our tents, but we aren’t going away.