Governor

Behind the Twitter tax break deal

Sasha Cuttler
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36
Behind the Twitter tax break deal

There’s much political intrigue and anticipation swirling around the Central Market Payroll Tax Exclusion, aka the Twitter Tax Break, which the Board of Supervisors will consider next month. This has all the elements of a great story: backroom deals between political and corporate power brokers, the strange argument that Republican-style tax cuts will cure Mid-Market blight, the fact that Twitter executives have uttered nary a tweet about shaking down SF taxpayers, and the role that a pair of supposedly progressive supervisors have played in brokering the deal.

Following up on my Feb. 10 post about how the deal would help Twitter meet the high asking price of politically connected landlord Alvin Dworman for a new mid-Market headquarters, the Bay Citizen yesterday had a great story showing how Dworman gave then-Mayor Gavin Newsom discounted office space for his lieutenant governor bid just as Newsom proposed the tax break that would benefit Dworman and Twitter. The story also includes a nice tick-tock about how this unseemly deal unfolded.

We at the Guardian are currently awaiting a big package of documents from City Hall that we requested on the deal, and sources tell us they’re likely to include some interesting insights and tidbits. For example, are Twitter and Dworman the main beneficiaries of this legislation or are there other corporations (and the politicians they support) who were pushing this plan? Everyone is also waiting to see how the city’s Office of Economic Analysis rates the proposal, and Economic Ted Egan tells us that report should be out by the end of next week or beginning of the following week.

At this point, we have more questions than answers, but that should start changing by next week. Maybe we’ll gain a better understanding of why Sup. Jane Kim is pushing this deal (much to the consternation of some of her former top supporters) or why Randy Shaw, the taxpayer-subsidized blogger and Tenderloin don, strongly backed Kim’s candidacy and attacked her critics with such perplexing ferocity. Will Willie Brown’s name continue popping up? Perhaps we’ll be able to determine whether the Newsom-Dworman pact actually broke campaign finance laws. And we’ll certainly gain some insights into how the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development trades away taxpayer money to successful corporations that wield whines and threats of relocation.

If nothing else, we’ll get a peek into modern crony capitalism, San Francisco-style, dressed up in the guise of “saving” the Tenderloin. So, from a strictly journalistic perspective, this should be fun.

No San Bruno rate hike for PG&E

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
No San Bruno rate hike for PG&E

EDITORIAL In a Feb. 18 message to shareholders, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced that the projected costs of the San Bruno pipeline explosion could exceed $700 million. Now the company wants to get some of that back from ratepayers. That will be a huge test for Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Public Utilities Commission, and send a signal about how the new governor will deal with the rogue utility. The outcome should be simple: every penny of the costs of cleaning up the mess, repairing and upgrading the pipelines, and setting damage claims and lawsuits should be paid out of PG&E profits.

Let’s review the facts.

•The CPUC gave PG&E $5 million to upgrade the pipeline under San Bruno in 2009, but the company decided to spend the money instead on executive bonuses.

•PG&E officials fought bitterly to prevent the federal government from cracking down on natural gas pipeline inspections.

•PG&E never conducted serious inspections of a line that was past its rated use and had been poorly constructed in the first place.

•PG&E intentionally inflated gas pressure in that line beyond what regulators say was safe.

•It took PG&E more than an hour to shut off the gas after the explosion, making the resulting fire much harder to contain and quite possibly contributing to some of the eight deaths and destruction of more than 30 houses.

That’s not the sort of record that suggests that the pipeline disaster was an unavoidable accident. It certainly wasn’t caused by a natural disaster. It was corporate error — misuse of money, irresponsible monitoring of a dangerous piece of equipment, intentional efforts to blunt public oversight. The damage was PG&E’s fault.

The problem is that so far, the company hasn’t been held accountable. As John Weber, editor of The Bay Citizen, pointed out in a Feb. 5 column: “What consequences have PG&E and its executives faced for these blunders? None. The stock is doing just fine. The California Public Utilities Commission has awarded the company almost $30 million in bonuses for energy-saving targets that weren’t achieved. The company plans to hire a new gas operations executive, but no one has lost his job — except a hapless manager who thought it would be smart to spy on the online discussions of smart-meter opponents.”

Ideally, the CPUC and the federal regulators ought to levy the heaviest possible fines on the company and mandate far stricter maintenance oversight. At the very least, the commission needs to make it clear that no ratepayer money will go for San Bruno-related expenses.

The pressure should be on at every level of government. The San Francisco supervisors should pass a resolution calling on the CPUC to reject any rate hike that would force PG&E customers to pay for the accident. State Sen. Leland Yee (D-SF) has already issued a statement denouncing any rate hike. But the Legislature ought to go further and pass a bill that would state that no utility can charge its ratepayers for costs related to an accident that was clearly the utility’s fault.

Otherwise, the utility that killed eight people and destroyed an entire neighborhood will emerge unaccountable and unscathed. P.S. Go to TURN.org to sign the Utility Reform Network’s anti rate hike petition.

The cushy life of a public-sector worker

Zelda Bronstein
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1
The cushy life of a public-sector worker

You want to see how easy life is in those lucrative, unionized public-sector jobs that the governor of Wisconsin is going after? Isthmus, the alternative weekly in Madison, has a brilliant piece by a teacher who talks about what this battle is really about. Read it and tell me that this woman is overpaid and gets too many benefits. Go ahead. I can’t wait.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

THEATER

ONGOING

The Dog and Pony Show The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Sun/27. No horses in this show, actually, and no people either, just dogs. That’s the claim anyway. But while she manages to largely steer clear of ponies, in her new solo show, Michigan-based performance artist and NEA Four alum Holly Hughes ultimately segues not so subtly from her lifelong obsession with dogs to the life lessons we might glean from them. Treats along the way can take the form of amusing personal observations about Dorothy and Toto’s misadventure in the Wizard of Oz, a clip of the Obamas wagging the White House dog on Barbara Walters, or Hughes and her partner of 16 years at home in cozy domesticity—just two women, nine animals, and one sectional sofa. Her own family’s love for animals developed in the absence of much love for anyone else, Hughes tells us. Fortunately her monologue, directed by Dan Hurlin, resists being a bummer thanks to Hughes’ indomitable good nature. It’s her very cute and talented Norfolk terrier who steals the show, however, via a video segment at a Michigan dog competition. Maybe that’s as it should be in this unabashed bow to the bowwow. (Avila)

*Farragut North NOHSpace, 2840 Mariposa. www.opentabproductions.com. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 5. Former Howard Dean speechwriter Beau Willimon’s formulaic but solidly crafted 2008 play about backroom politics and the seamy side of what’s euphemistically called the American democratic process seems like it’d make a good George Clooney movie. George Clooney thought so too. He’s making it now under the title The Ides of March. You can see it sooner and without all those goddamn movie stars in this low-budget, high-octane staging by OpenTab Productions (Fishing). Stephen (Ben Euphrat) is a 25-year-old wiz of a press secretary for a “maverick” governor heading into a major primary battle on the road to the White House. But an unexpected phone call leads “idealistic” power-lover Stephen into temptation, even as it reveals the real dynamics of the electoral system he thought he’d mastered. A battle for career survival ensues with his former boss (Alex Plant), in which loyalty is a password and decency the first sandbag to drop. Opening night had one or two timing issues and some actors lost in shadow, but director Dave Sikula builds the action well and gets strong performances from an uneven but generally winning cast. Particularly nice work comes from a convincingly unraveling Euphant, a coolly compassionate Carla Pauli (as precocious intern–turned–unwitting pawn), and the formidable Nathan Tucker as Stephen’s slickly conniving counterpart and Mephistopheles of the moment.

*The Last Night of the Barbary Coast SOMArts,934 Brannan; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5 and 9pm. Through Sat/26. A fresh theatrical breeze blows in from the rank and churlish alleyways of Gold Rush San Francisco’s notorious red light district in writer/director Jessa Brie Berkner and Idora Park Theatre Company’s beautifully detailed musical tale. Set on and around a gorgeous rotating roulette-wheel stage (crafted by Simon Cheffins and Jack Ruszel, and hauntingly illuminated by lighting designer Zoltan DeWitt), Last Night of the Barbary Coast tells the story of a young Midwestern woman (Tristan Cunningham) who joins a traveling troupe of vaudevillians, searching for an unknown freedom in the chaotic landscape of the Old West as a performer and prostitute. A set of 49er archetypes (smartly outfitted by costumer Lucid Dawn) overflow the ample SOMArts stage with the all the flouncing brawn, sashaying bodices and boozy bluster of a saloon floorshow, alongside live musical accompaniment from vocalist-instrumentalist Freddi Price’s lush and moody nine-piece Alchemical Orchestra. Told in snatches of dialogue, song and pantomime (smooth choreography by Ena Dallas), Berkner weaves an inspired narrative from personal family legend and characters derived from the tarot deck’s Major Arcana. The result is a dynamically staged, alternately somber and spirited exploration of the precarious freedom possible in life and art. (Avila)

Party of 2 – The New Mating Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, www.partyof2themusical.com. $27-29. Sun, 3pm. Open-ended. A musical about relationships by Shopping! The Musical author Morris Bobrow.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through April 9. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Treefall New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctsf.org. $24-40. Call for dates and times. Through Sun/27. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a tale of erotic attraction by Henry Murray.

What We’re Up Against Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, bldg D; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2:30 and 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm; Tues, 7pm. Through March 6. Following the popularity of Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius in 2009, Magic Theatre brings the New York playwright back for the world premiere of a decidedly flimsy comedy about sexual discrimination at a busy architecture firm. Eliza (Sarah Nealis) is the bright and brash new employee who finds herself shut out by an old boys network. Sodden boss Stu (Warren David Keith) resents her heartily for her competence and ambition, while ass-kissing power-jockey Weber (James Wagner) uses the leverage for all its worth. Gender solidarity with sole (but soulless) sister Janice (Pamela Gaye Walker) doesn’t get Eliza very far either. One guy at the firm, Ben (Rod Gnapp), alone knows better (among what amounts to an unbelievably inept staff). Eliza, meanwhile, crafts a form of revenge from her well-guarded solution to the otherwise stymieing “duct problem” in the plans for a new mall, a major account hitting the skids. Ben’s obsession with ducts is something of a key joke here, which ends up being characteristic of a play that stretches its not-very-new conceits thinly over two acts. The glass ceiling, ducts and all, is a bit too transparent in this bloodless production (helmed by artistic director Loretta Greco), leaving precious little to wonder or worry about. (Avila)

 

BAY AREA

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs Berkeley Rep, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Call for dates and times. Through Sun/27. In his latest monologue (playing in repertory with another, The Last Cargo Cult), Mike Daisey explores the deeper implications of his own, and our, obsession with technology through a parallel look at the career of Apple’s megalomaniacal founder, and Daisey’s own reconnaissance trip to Apple’s manufacturing center in southern China. The story is well-crafted, Daisey’s delivery dependably expert—even if his humor occasionally strays into the more obvious, belabored humor of the office water-cooler wag—and the real-world vision of hell he paints in a behemoth suicide-ridden factory called Foxconn (apt if understated name there) all too salient. But the story gives us back as revelation what we already know, surely, about the horrifying labor system behind our various electronic gizmos and much else besides. It’s a kind of liberal conceit to play along with the indignation and head back out into the world fully willing to do battle against corporate capital, or at least sign an online petition. As a performer, meanwhile, Daisey has not budged from the formula he originally borrowed from Spalding Gray but made it even more his own. Indeed, to call his approach “indebted” to Gray is like saying the black market iPhone knock-offs he describes are merely an homage to Apple’s product. Beside his professed love for the latest high tech wizardry comes this uncanny attachment to the utterly low-tech, analog-monologue style of the late master.

Collapse Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $34-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through March 6. Aurora Theatre presents a comedy by Allison Moore.

Seagull Wed, 7:30pm, Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm; Tues, 8pm. Through Sun/27. Marin Theatre Company presents a new translation of Chekhov’s great play from former Oregon Shakespeare Festival artistic director Libby Appel. The translation feels crisp and lucid, but artistic director Jasson Minadakis’s production remains fairly unmoving despite some effective moments among a skilled cast, including the dependably charismatic Howard Swain (as the doctor). The surprising lack of connection or spark between the principal characters—especially the jaded writer (Craig Marker) and the infatuated, soon-to-be-ruined Masha (an otherwise vivacious Liz Sklar)—results in a dutiful production without that pent-up Chekhovian atmosphere that should envelop and follow you for hours if not days to come. (Avila)

World’s Funniest Bubble Show The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through April 3. The Amazing Bubble Man extends the bubble-making celebration.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BAY AREA

Marga’s Funny Mondays The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Mon/28, 8pm. $10. Marga Gomez hosts a Monday night comedy series.

 

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

 

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

THEATER

ONGOING

Clue Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $15-35. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 7 and 10pm. Through Sat/19. A play based on a film based on a board game is just the kind of tangled genealogy much goodtime theater is made of these days. So there’s nothing too new about Boxcar’s stage adaptation of the manic 1985 comedy derived from a once popular Parker Bros. diversion. In fact, it’s at least the second stage adaptation of same to be offered in San Francisco. (Impossible Productions remounted its version at the Dark Room just last year.) Nevertheless, led by adapter-director Nick A. Olivero, Boxcar’s production pursues its vision like a mad yen, with a loving fidelity and self-referential glee that are not so much inspired as just plain zealous (although Olivero’s scenic design does reach new heights: a TV-toned board-game set that the audience peers down on from six-feet-high balconies ringing the stage). Performances are dutiful and solid for the most part, with especially nice work from Brian Martin (as the butler) and J. Conrad Frank (as Mrs. Peacock). Although there’s something vaguely and not unpleasantly hypnotic about it all, groups of cult-film line-gleaners may be the best audience for this one. (Avila)

*Farragut North NOHSpace, 2840 Mariposa. www.opentabproductions.com. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 5. Former Howard Dean speechwriter Beau Willimon’s formulaic but solidly crafted 2008 play about backroom politics and the seamy side of what’s euphemistically called the American democratic process seems like it’d make a good George Clooney movie. George Clooney thought so too. He’s making it now under the title The Ides of March. You can see it sooner and without all those goddamn movie stars in this low-budget, high-octane staging by OpenTab Productions (Fishing). Stephen (Ben Euphrat) is a 25-year-old wiz of a press secretary for a “maverick” governor heading into a major primary battle on the road to the White House. But an unexpected phone call leads “idealistic” power-lover Stephen into temptation, even as it reveals the real dynamics of the electoral system he thought he’d mastered. A battle for career survival ensues with his former boss (Alex Plant), in which loyalty is a password and decency the first sandbag to drop. Opening night had one or two timing issues and some actors lost in shadow, but director Dave Sikula builds the action well and gets strong performances from an uneven but generally winning cast. Particularly nice work comes from a convincingly unraveling Euphant, a coolly compassionate Carla Pauli (as precocious intern–turned–unwitting pawn), and the formidable Nathan Tucker as Stephen’s slickly conniving counterpart and Mephistopheles of the moment.

Next to Normal Curran Theatre, 445 Geary; (888) SHN-1799, www.shnsf.com. $30-99. Call for dates and times. Through Sun/20. Diana Goodman (Alice Ripley) is a woman too restlessly witty and big-souled to sit easy in the suburban home she shares with her husband (Asa Somers), 16-year-old daughter (Emma Hunton), and 18-year-old son (Curt Hansen). What’s worse, the 18-year-old died as a baby about 17 years ago, and has not been taking the news lying down. A mother’s grief winds through this sometimes clever, mostly sappy, and ultimately tedious Broadway rock musical about a bipolar woman and the impact of her illness on her family. Director Michael Greif’s (Rent) kinetic staging takes place across a three-level industrial-box set that houses musicians in its outer corners as well as the stereotypical family dwelling in its center. The set’s outer façade (moving panels featuring giant eyes and mouth) meanwhile suggests the whole thing as a model of the mind we’re witnessing come apart. The 2008 musical by Brian Yorkey (book and lyrics) and Tom Kitt (music) won a Pulitzer for its supposedly bold depiction of mental illness. But despite reasonable scoffing at the paternalistic, pharmacologically fueled regime of mainstream treatment (embodied by Jeremy Kushnier’s various doctors), neither Tony-winner Ripley’s jagged performance nor Yorkey’s book transcends a stultifying and finally grating set of narrative clichés, which the driving, mostly generic-sounding score only makes more obvious. A Woman Under the Influence this isn’t. (Avila)

Party of 2 – The New Mating Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, www.partyof2themusical.com. $27-29. Sun, 3pm. Open-ended. A musical about relationships by Shopping! The Musical author Morris Bobrow.

*Pearls Over Shanghai Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm. Through April 9. Thrillpeddlers’ acclaimed production of the Cockettes musical continues its successful run.

Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.custommade.org. $10-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/19. Originally conceived as a one-off benefit show by Gray’s widow, Kathleen Russo and director Lucy Sexton, Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell intersperses segments of some of Gray’s most famous works—Swimming to Cambodia, Gray’s Anatomy, Monster in a Box—with excerpts from his journals, the stories left to tell. The original concept to have five actors representing five aspects of Gray’s words—adventure, career, family, journals, and love—seems to have been crafted with the specific purpose of allowing several people the opportunity to “speak for” Spalding, without actually performing “as” Spalding, appropriate enough for a celebratory memorial, but hard to accept as a capital-P play. It’s a conundrum that Custom Made Theatre cannot solve. Half the cast convey by their tone and manner the casual ease of campfire story-tellers, while the other half take a more performative approach to their recitations, particularly a smooth Patrick Barresi as “Career” and the likable Richard Wenzel as “Love.” The stories themselves are often hilarious, including Gray’s turns as a “Bowery Bum,” a jailbird in Nevada, and a sweat lodge initiate, while the stories that are not side-splittingly funny are poignant, painful, and even unflinchingly sentimental, especially in regards to his young sons. But as a work of theatre, they underwhelmed. (Gluckstern)

Treefall New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctsf.org. $24-40. Call for dates and times. Through Feb 27. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a tale of erotic attraction by Henry Murray.

What We’re Up Against Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, bldg D; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2:30 and 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm; Tues, 7pm. Through March 6. Following the popularity of Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius in 2009, Magic Theatre brings the New York playwright back for the world premiere of a decidedly flimsy comedy about sexual discrimination at a busy architecture firm. Eliza (Sarah Nealis) is the bright and brash new employee who finds herself shut out by an old boys network. Sodden boss Stu (Warren David Keith) resents her heartily for her competence and ambition, while ass-kissing power-jockey Weber (James Wagner) uses the leverage for all its worth. Gender solidarity with sole (but soulless) sister Janice (Pamela Gaye Walker) doesn’t get Eliza very far either. One guy at the firm, Ben (Rod Gnapp), alone knows better (among what amounts to an unbelievably inept staff). Eliza, meanwhile, crafts a form of revenge from her well-guarded solution to the otherwise stymieing “duct problem” in the plans for a new mall, a major account hitting the skids. Ben’s obsession with ducts is something of a key joke here, which ends up being characteristic of a play that stretches its not-very-new conceits thinly over two acts. The glass ceiling, ducts and all, is a bit too transparent in this bloodless production (helmed by artistic director Loretta Greco), leaving precious little to wonder or worry about. (Avila)

 

BAY AREA

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs Berkeley Rep, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Call for dates and times. Through Feb 27. In his latest monologue (playing in repertory with another, The Last Cargo Cult), Mike Daisey explores the deeper implications of his own, and our, obsession with technology through a parallel look at the career of Apple’s megalomaniacal founder, and Daisey’s own reconnaissance trip to Apple’s manufacturing center in southern China. The story is well-crafted, Daisey’s delivery dependably expert—even if his humor occasionally strays into the more obvious, belabored humor of the office water-cooler wag—and the real-world vision of hell he paints in a behemoth suicide-ridden factory called Foxconn (apt if understated name there) all too salient. But the story gives us back as revelation what we already know, surely, about the horrifying labor system behind our various electronic gizmos and much else besides. It’s a kind of liberal conceit to play along with the indignation and head back out into the world fully willing to do battle against corporate capital, or at least sign an online petition. As a performer, meanwhile, Daisey has not budged from the formula he originally borrowed from Spalding Gray but made it even more his own. Indeed, to call his approach “indebted” to Gray is like saying the black market iPhone knock-offs he describes are merely an homage to Apple’s product. Beside his professed love for the latest high tech wizardry comes this uncanny attachment to the utterly low-tech, analog-monologue style of the late master.

Collapse Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $34-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm (also Feb 19, 2pm). Through March 6. Aurora Theatre presents a comedy by Allison Moore.

Grapes of Wrath Marion E. Green Black Box Theater, 531 19th, Oakl; www.theatrefirst.com. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/20. TheatreFIRST presents Frank Galati’s stage adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel.

Heartbreak House Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-0999, www.berkeleyrep.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs/17, 8pm). Through Sat/19. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley presents the George Bernard Shaw comedy set just before World War I.

The Last Cargo Cult Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Call for dates and times. Through Sun/20. As fans of J. Maarten Troost have learned, life on an island “paradise” is far less idyllic than the imagination yearns to believe. So it’s hardly surprising that Mike Daisey’s monologue The Last Cargo Cult begins with a white-knuckle ride in a prop plane piloted by a man with a milky eye. Daisey’s destination, the Pacific island of Tanna, is the location of one of the world’s last so-called “cargo cults”, and their big celebration “John Frum Day” is approaching. Daisey’s intention to hang out at the festivities smacks a little of entitled voyeurism, but the parallel he manages to draw between the complexities of a religion dedicated to a mythical cargo of “awesome shit”, and our own dedication to the acquisition of same, is a striking one. From our almost blind faith in the value of basically valueless currency, to our even blinder faith that indenturing ourselves by debt will enrich us, the foundations of our own “cargo cult” are revealed smartly by Daisey to be just as precarious as if built at the base of a volcano as in Tanna. Still, I found the most revealing thing about the evening to be the moment when the couple next to me took off with a $100 bill they’d acquired free-of-charge at the door, to which I can’t help but ask them: “Did you get your money’s worth?” (Gluckstern)

Not a Genuine Black Man The Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 8pm. Through Fri/18. Brian Copeland brings back his long-running solo show.

Seagull Wed, 7:30pm, Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm; Tues, 8pm. Through Feb 27. Marin Theatre Company presents a new translation of Chekhov’s great play from former Oregon Shakespeare Festival artistic director Libby Appel. The translation feels crisp and lucid, but artistic director Jasson Minadakis’s production remains fairly unmoving despite some effective moments among a skilled cast, including the dependably charismatic Howard Swain (as the doctor). The surprising lack of connection or spark between the principal characters—especially the jaded writer (Craig Marker) and the infatuated, soon-to-be-ruined Masha (an otherwise vivacious Liz Sklar)—results in a dutiful production without that pent-up Chekhovian atmosphere that should envelop and follow you for hours if not days to come. (Avila)

Strange Travel Suggestions The Marsh Berkeley, Cabaret, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Sat/19. Jeff Greenwald stars in a one-man show about the vagaries of wanderlust.

World’s Funniest Bubble Show The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $8-11. Sun, 11am. Through April 3. The Amazing Bubble Man extends the bubble-making celebration.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BAY AREA

Marga’s Funny Mondays The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Mon/14, 8pm. $10. Marga Gomez hosts a Monday night comedy series.

 

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

 

Leno forces GOP hand

Zelda Bronstein
-
5
Leno forces GOP hand

For whatever tactical reason (or other inexplicable Jerry Brown rationale), the governor has refused to tell Californians what he would cut if he can’t get his tax extensions approved. And the Republicans refuse to say what they would cut instead of letting the taxes continue.


So Sen. Mark Leno did it for them. Leno asked the Legislative Analyst to explain what $13 billion in budget cuts — the “no-new-taxes” budget the GOP wants — might look like.


It’s really, really scary.


For starters, take $4.5 billion away from K-12 education. That means the end to class-size limits for K-3. It’s a huge deal: The Gray Davis measure that limited those classes to 20 students probably did more than anything in decades to save public education in California. You want 40 kids in a kindergarten class with one teacher? You think any of them will be learning to read? Oh, and the state could save $700 million by delaying kindergarten for kids; guess who that impacts? Those kids are going to spend more time in pre-school which either (a) is subsidized by the taxpayers or (b) comes out of the hides of working parents.


Oh, and we’d eliminate food stamps for noncitizens. So people won’t be able to feed their kids. You think crime might become more of a problem? But wait: No room in the prisons.


Then we put college out of the financial reach of middle-class kids and expect to build a 21st century economy. And that’s just the beginning.


Leno deserves thanks for putting this list out; it ought to be in the ballot handbook along with the proposal to continue (not RAISE, just continue) some taxes. And we should all be asking every Republican in Sacramento: Is this what you want? If not, give us an alternative. 


 

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

I had fun with the state budget the other day. The Sacramento Bee has a pretty good online simulation that lets you pick programs to cut and revenues to raise to see if you can get rid of a $26.4 billion deficit, and I gave it a shot. It took me exactly seven minutes to turn the red ink into a $2.1 billion surplus.

See, it’s not that hard. Extend the 2009 tax increases, as Gov. Jerry Brown has suggested. Force multistate corporations to pay taxes based on sales in California. Increase the corporate income tax rate to the same level as the personal income tax rate. Eliminate the Prop. 13 loophole for nonresidential property. Pass an oil severance tax. A few more mouse clicks and bingo: I’ve got $28 billion, without cutting much of anything. (Well, I cut prison spending.)

The lesson you get from playing, of course, is that cuts alone will never do the job; there’s not enough left to cut.

When I finished, I called the office of Asemblymember Connie Conway (R-Tulare). She chairs the Republican Caucus gave the formal GOP response to Brown’s State of the State speech and insisted that new taxes were not acceptable.

Her press spokesperson, Sabrina Lockhart, was very friendly and nice. I told her about the Bee game and asked: If you don’t like Brown’s taxes, what specifically should the state cut?

Lockhart’s response: “Our focus has been on creating jobs to bring in new revenue.”

Okay, I’m for that, too, but let’s be real. Even if 1 million new jobs materialized tomorrow, that wouldn’t bring in enough money this year to balance the budget. Brown’s proposing $12 billion in cuts. If that’s not enough, what else do the Republicans think should go?

Lockhart: “The Republicans are engaged in the subcommittee process and will be reviewing the governor’s proposals.”

But your boss said no taxes, I told her. There are really only two options; taxes or more cuts, right? Am I missing something here?

Lockhart hemmed and hawed for a moment. “That’s why we think job creation has to be a part of this,” she finally said.

Well, I do, too, but it’s just not that simple. If the Republicans don’t want taxes, why won’t they tell us what they want to cut instead? Seriously, what Brown is offering is brutal, bloody — what else would the GOP members put on the chopping block?

Answer: They have no proposals. Nothing at all. Just no new taxes. If I were Jerry Brown, I’d be drinking heavily.

California is a rich state

Zelda Bronstein
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9
California is a rich state

My favorite part of the State of the State speech (full text here) was a bit of perspective that almost everyone has ignored. It went like this:


We are still a very rich society. In two years alone, Californians will have added more than $100 billion to their personal income. Yet, our State’s credit rating is the lowest of the 50 states, unemployment is higher than the national average and some journalists are calling California a “failed state.”


In two years, Californians will have added more than $100 billion to their personal income. And given that 20 percent of all income eanred in the U.S. goes to the top 1 percent of Americans. $20 billion of that new income will go to the very richest Californians. More than 60 percent of all income earned goes to the richest 20 percent, which would mean $60 billion in income to people who are already richer than four of five Californians.


Brown gets this, clearly. And he’s no fool; I think he can do simple math. Which would lead you to conclude that an increase in the state income tax for the top brackets could bring in a huge chunk of change — without harming the economic recovery. (And don’t give me that trickle down shit; facts are facts, and the top 1 percent of income earners are far less likely to spend their marginal dollar, creating jobs. They sock it away, creating wealth for future generations.)


I know the idea of talking about higher income taxes is political death, but when we talk about frugality and tightening our belts, let’s remember: California is still a very rich state. We can afford things like public education. Even the governor says so.

Medi-Cal and cell phones: The ugly truth

Zelda Bronstein
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3
Medi-Cal and cell phones: The ugly truth

There’s a chilling comment from political consultant Dan Schnur in the Los Angeles Times. In a fascinating story by Tony York, Schnur talks about the difference between image and reality in California’s budget wars:


“Cut $1 billion out of Medi-Cal and most voters won’t notice. Take away some cellphones and make legislators sit on a picnic bench, and they pay attention,” he said.


Yep: Jerry Brown is saving the state a few million dollars by cutting cell phones for state workers and replacing a fancy conference table in his office with a cheap one. And that’s gotten a lot of press — as Jerry, the old master, knew that it would. We still live in a state, and a nation, where symbolism matters more than substance.


Republicans still get away with saying that the governor needs to cut state employee pay and benefits — although you could fire (that is, cut all pay and benefits) for every one of the state’s 240,000 employees and you wouldn’t be close to balancing the budget. (What nobody says is that the majority of state spending in California goes for local programs — what legislator wants to call on the governor to cut funding for his or her district? Not even the Republicans do that.) Little cuts like Brown’s mean nothing, and are easily wiped up by the daily, unpredictable ebb and flow of tax receipts.


And yet, Brown has to send a message that he’s being frugal, so he gets rid of his conference table (did he sell it? For how much?) And it works.


And, of course, nobody ever talks about how much the state wastes in corporate tax breaks; it’s much easier to take away some Caltrans worker’s phone.


I wish Brown could really tell the truth in his State of the State speech — that the stuff people get agitated about is chump change, that a huge cut to Medi-Cal means people dying (but not today, and you can’t prove the link, and poor people die all the time and the press never notices), that cuts to education mean more poverty (and crime, and public expense) in the future, that we’ve already cut (or pupt off with gimmicks) about $30 billion in spending, and that the state has a serious revenue problem.


But he knows he can’t do that. People won’t vote for his tax plan unless he looks like he’s somehow punishing state workers and flagellating himself. Good thing the Jesuits trained him.


 

Newsom’s (unbelievably short) resignation letter

Mary Magee
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10
Newsom’s (unbelievably short) resignation letter

When I clicked on the link to “Mayor resignation” on the Board of Supervisor’s website, I expected a video of Newsom making an incredibly gushy and long-winded resignation speech to pop up.

Instead, I found a one-sentence resignation letter that Starr Terrell faxed to Clerk of the Board Angela Calvillo at an unspecified time on Jan. 10, 2011.

“I am resigning my position as Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco, effective this date, so as to assume the role of Lieutenant Governor of the State of California,” Newsom wrote.

The brevity of Newsom’s letter—and the seemingly endless time it took him to vacate the post–reminded me of something Newsom said the Friday before he resigned.

We were all standing outside Room 200, listening to Newsom go on about how great it was that the outgoing Board had nominated Ed Lee to be the new mayor, especially since Lee reportedly didn’t even want the job—an attitude that apparently impressed Newsom when reviewing potential candidates for both the mayor’s and D.A.’s post.

Anyways, some brave reporter asked Newsom something about his swearing-in ceremony as Lt. Governor, which was slated to take place at 1:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 10.

At which point Newsom said, “Willie Brown said it best, when he told me, don’t worry, I’ll be at your funeral Monday.”

 

 

Uncertain developments

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Uncertain developments

sarah@sfbg.com

Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to eliminate redevelopment agencies and enterprise zones has San Francisco officials confused about which local projects will be affected.

Currently, the state allows municipalities to redevelop specified areas by borrowing against estimated future property taxes. Brown says he doesn’t want to interfere with any redevelopment bonds or commitments that have been contractually entered into — but the plan would redirect billions from development projects to schools, public safety, and other local programs.

“Redevelopment takes money from schools, cities, and counties,” Brown said at a Jan. 10 budget proposal press conference. “We want to take that money and leave it at the local level for the purposes it was historically intended. That’s police or fire or local activities, county, or schools.”

Brown says his proposal will save the state’s general fund $2.7 billion over the next 18 months. And he wants to help cities and counties raise taxes to replace that money.

But local officials say it remains to be seen what Brown’s plan means for existing obligations, and details won’t emerge until the governor releases a draft budget in March.

“I don’t think we’ll really know until we see what the legislation says,” said Redevelopment general counsel Jim Morales. “Clearly if you have a binding contract, that’s enforceable in court. The Legislature couldn’t pass a law that interferes with that.”

Redevelopment already has contracts related to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and Mission Bay. “The fact that we have an agreement is helpful. But a redevelopment plan of itself is not an agreement,” Morales said. “It goes to the question of what is the obligation, who gets it, and what tools do they have to fulfill those obligations.”

Morales said he believes the passage of Proposition 22 in November — which blocked the state from taking local redevelopment funds — lies at the heart of Brown’s proposal.

“The way Prop. 22 was drafted doesn’t give the state Legislature much room to use these funds except to eliminate redevelopment agencies,” he said. “It’s a legal as well as a political strategy to amend by another ballot measure or somehow modify Prop. 22.”

Brown’s bombshell landed just as city officials announced that a settlement had been reached with the Sierra Club and Golden Gate Audubon Society over charges that the city’s environmental impact report for Lennar Corp.’s massive development proposal for Candlestick Point and the former Naval Shipyard was inadequate.

The agreement includes criteria for the design and construction of a bridge across Yosemite Slough to lessen environmental impacts and provide habitat improvements.

“A settlement that provides great benefits to people and wildlife is not one that is often achievable. We’re extraordinarily pleased to have done so in this case,” said Arthur Feinstein, chair of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter in a Jan. 8 press release.

“The agreement creates benefits for the community and the open space, habitats, and wildlife throughout the project area,” said Mark Welther, executive director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society. “The lagoon and other improvements will create an area whose beauty and ecological significance will rival Crissy Field.”

Lennar’s Kofi Bonner said the settlement helps clear the way for fundraising efforts. “It means we have one less lawsuit to deal with,” Bonner told the Guardian at the Jan. 11 swearing-in for interim Mayor Ed Lee.

Still on the table is a suit that Bayview-based Green Action and Power (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) brought against the city’s EIR for Lennar’s project.

Bonner said POWER’s lawsuit is about issues that the developer does not control. “POWER’s suit is about toxins removal and how the Navy is handling the issue,” he said.

POWER counters that it’s premature for the city to certify the EIR for the Lennar project. “The problem is that we are asking the city to approve future uses at the shipyard when we don’t know the result of the Navy’s clean-up process,” said Jaron Browne, a spokesperson for POWER.

Browne said that there’s nothing in POWER’s lawsuit to prevent Lennar from moving forward at Candlestick Point or with rebuilding the Alice Griffith public housing project.

A (not so brief) history of hate

Mary Magee
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9
A (not so brief) history of hate

Since the horrific shooting of Rep. Giffords and the loss of Judge Roll, Christina Green, and four other innocent bystanders, folks have been grappling with the role of violent rhetoric in triggering the tragedy. And now the National Day Laborer Organizing Network has set up A History of Hate: Political Violence in a Rogue State to chronicle political violence and intimidation in Arizona since 1987, which is when U2’s Bono received a death threat because of his stance on Martin Luther King.

“Something strange happened toward the end of the Joshua Tree tour,” Bono noted in a 2006 interview. “We had campaigned for Martin Luther King Day in Tempe, Arizona, where the tour opened back in April. There was a governor there called Mecham who was holding out against it, and we had got involved in local politics there and took a stand. We went back to Tempe at the end of the tour, in December, to play the Sun Devil Stadium.”

“I was getting death threats throughout the tour,” Bono said. “This character was a racist offended by our work, he thought we were messing in other people’s business and taking sides with the Black man. One night the FBI said: ‘Look, it’s quite serious. He says he has a ticket. He said he’s armed.’… So we played the show, the FBI were around, everyone was a little unnerved. You just didn’t know, could he be in the building?”

A History of Hate’s stated mission is “collecting evidence of intolerance that have been brewing and boiling over in this country.” And it’s asking folks to  contribute their story to this growing archive, “so we can turn the tide from a history of hate to a future of progress.”

 “Our hearts go out to the victims and their families in this horrible tragedy,” NDLON director Pablo Alvarado stated. “We mourn alongside them in part because as day laborers, we understand deeply the experience of being targeted by violent hatred and extremism. If there is one lesson from those who have built the historical rights and privileges we enjoy, it is this: hate must be confronted so it can be overcome by love. It cannot be ignored and the world needs to know,” Alvarado continued. “What Arizona needs, and what all of us need, is to confront the hard truth of our current political environment with unifying steps. After we have paused to comprehend the immeasurable tragedy in Arizona, we must now do our part to make a more just society.”

Sounds like a good idea. Hey, maybe immigrant rights advocates and the communities they represent can submit all the hate mail and death threats they regularly receive –a burden they have so far largely borne alone and in silence.

 

 

Power and pragmatism

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
Power and pragmatism

steve@sfbg.com

After an epic week at City Hall, the political dynamics in San Francisco have undergone a seismic shift, with pragmatism replacing progressivism, longtime adversarial relationships morphing into close collaborations, and Chinese Americans as mayor and board president.

It was a week of surprises, starting Jan. 4 when City Administrator Ed Lee came out of nowhere to become the consensus choice for interim mayor, and ending Jan. 9 when Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed Police Chief George Gascón to be the new district attorney, Newsom’s last official act as mayor before belatedly taking his oath of office as lieutenant governor on Jan. 10.

In between, the outgoing Board of Supervisors held a special final meeting Jan. 7, at which progressive supervisors fell into line behind Lee, some of them reluctantly, and accepted the new political reality. The next day, the new Board of Supervisors took office and overwhelmingly reelected David Chiu as board president, with only the three most progressive supervisors in dissent.

After Chiu played kingmaker as the swing vote for making Lee the new mayor, the board and Mayor’s Office are likely to enjoy far closer and more cooperative relations than they’ve had in many years. And the sometimes prickly, blame-game relations between the Police Department and D.A.’s Office should also get better now that the top cop has switched sides. But what it all means for the average San Franciscan, particularly the progressive voters who created what they thought was a majority on the Board of Supervisors, is still an open question.

One thing that is clear is the ideological battles that have defined City Hall politics — what Chiu called the “oppositional politics of personality” during his closing remarks on Jan. 8 — have been moved to the back burner while the new leaders try a fresh approach.

Newsom — with his rigid fiscal conservatism and open disdain for the Board of Supervisors, particularly its progressive wing — is gone. Also leaving City Hall is Sup. Chris Daly, a passionate and calculating progressive leader whose over-the-top antics caused a popular backlash against the movement.

In a way, Newsom and Daly were perfect foils for one another, caustic adversaries who often reduced one another to two-dimensional caricatures of themselves. But they were each strongly driven by rival ideologies and political priorities, despite Newsom’s rhetorical efforts to turn “ideology” into a dirty word applied only to his opponents.

“This year represents a changing of the guard, a transition,” Chiu said, pledging to continue pushing for progressive reforms, only with a more conciliatory approach, a theme also sounded by Sups. Eric Mar and Jane Kim, who each broke with their progressive colleagues to support Chiu over rival presidential nominee Sup. John Avalos.

“I will always support policies that will make our city more equitable and just,” Kim said after being sworn in to replace Daly, although she also made a claim about the new board with which her predecessor probably wouldn’t agree: “I think we have a lot more in common than we don’t.”

With a focus on diversity and compromise, “respect and camaraderie,” Mar said, “I think this new board represents the evolution of the progressive movement in San Francisco.”

If indeed City Hall is enjoying a “Kumbaya” moment, the path to this point was marred by backroom deal-making and old-school power politics, much of it engineered by a pair of figures from the previous era who are by no means progressives: former Mayor Willie Brown and Rose Pak, head of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce.

Pak was seated front and center — literally and figuratively — during the board’s Jan. 7 vote for Lee and its Jan. 8 vote for Chiu, following media reports that it was she and Brown who persuaded Lee to take the job and city leaders (particularly Newsom, Chiu, and outgoing Sups. Bevan Dufty and Sophie Maxwell) to give it to him.

It all seemed sneaky and unsettling to board progressives, who questioned what kind of secret deal had been cut, even as they voiced their respect for Lee’s progressive roots and long history of service to the city. The sense that something unseemly was happening was exacerbated on Jan. 4 when Dufty abandoned a pledge of support for Sheriff Michael Hennessey — who five progressive supervisors supported for interim mayor — and left the meeting to confer with the Mayor’s Office before returning to announce his support for Lee.

Sups. David Campos, Ross Mirkarimi, and Avalos pleaded with their colleagues for time to at least talk with Lee, who was traveling in China since he reportedly changed his mind about wanting the interim mayor job. Maxwell was the only Lee supporter in the 6-5 vote for delaying the interim mayor item by a few days so the supervisors could speak with Lee by phone.

Pak and other Chinatown leaders put together a strong show of force by the Chinese American community at that Jan. 7 meeting, where the board voted 10-1 for Lee, with only Daly in dissent. Afterward, some of Lee’s strongest supporters — including the Rev. Norman Fong and Gordon Chin with the Chinatown Community Development Center — admitted that the process of picking Lee was flawed.

“Part of the problem was Ed’s because he couldn’t make up his mind. The process was bad,” Fong told the Guardian after the vote. Although Fong said he knows Lee to be a strong and trustworthy progressive, he admitted that the way it went down raised questions: “Some people were concerned about who he’ll listen to.”

Specifically, the concern is that Lee will be unduly influenced Brown and Pak, who each represent corporate clients whose interests are often at odds with those of the general public. And both operate behind the scenes and play a kind of political hardball that runs contrary to progressive values on openness, inclusion, and accountability.

“If there is a phone call from Willie Brown to Rose Pak, Ed Lee is going to go along with it,” predicted a knowledgeable source who has worked closely with all three, recalling the way they did business during Brown’s mayoral administration. “There was no real discussion of issues. The fix was always in.”

But Pak insisted that there was nothing wrong with the process of selecting Lee, and that all concerns about the nomination were driven by anti-Asian racism. “You have a plantation mentality,” Pak told the Guardian as she held court in front of a crowded press box before the Jan. 8 meeting. “The Bay Guardian has never given people of color a fair shot.”

While Newsom, Chiu, and Pak-allied political consultant David Ho all insisted “there was no deal” to win support for Lee, Pak seemed to revel in the high-profile role she played, with Bay Citizen reporter Gerry Shih labeling her “boastful” in his Jan. 6 article “Behind-The-Scenes Power Politics: The Making of Ed Lee,” which ran the next day in The New York Times.

“This was finally our moment to make the first Chinese mayor of a major city,” Pak reportedly told Shih. “How could you let that slip by?”

Chiu downplayed Pak’s influence, telling the Guardian that Lee was his top choice since November, and telling his colleagues before the Jan. 7 vote, “Ed is someone who does represent our shared progressive values.” But he also made it clear that helping the city’s progressive movement wasn’t what drove his decision.

“This is a decision beyond who were are as progressives and who we are as moderates. It’s about who we are as San Franciscans,” Chiu said. “This is a historic moment for the Chinese-American community,” calling it “a community that has struggled, a community that has seen discrimination.”

The next day, shortly after being elected to a second term as board president, Chiu acknowledged the “very real differences” in ideology among the supervisors, “but leadership is about working through those differences.” Ultimately, he said, “none of us were voted into office to take positions. We were voted into office to get things done.”

Highlights of Ed Lee’s nomination

Mary Magee
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25

An awful lot went down at City Hall today: four Board members were termed out, new Board members were moving into their offices, the old Board nominated Ed Lee as interim mayor, and Gavin Newsom revealed he’ll be gone as mayor by Monday afternoon. Here in no particular order are some of the highlights:


When termed-out D6 Sup. Chris Daly suggested that Rose Pak be nominated mayor, since she apparently managed to broker the Lee deal in three short days, Pak shot back, “I would do it, only if Chris Daly would be my Chief of Staff.”


Pak told me that she persuaded Lee to take the job, over the cell phone, while he was at the airport in Hong Kong.


Pak outlined her reasons for supporting Ed Lee as mayor. “Ed Lee has devoted 35 years to San Francisco. He’s earned his stripes. He’s the most qualified, the most unifying agent, and the most talented.”


 The crowd of seniors from the Self Help for the Elderly non-profit who crammed City Hall today are a likely preview of things to come during the mayor’s race.


 Board President David Chiu’s insistence that there were no back room deals. “Shortly after Gavin Newsom was elected Lt. Governor, I said Ed Lee should be considered as a candidate,” Chiu told me. “There was never a deal.”


The strong sense that Chiu is running for mayor in November, though he hasn’t filed. Asked if he was running, Chiu said. “I’m here at the Board focused on the work.” Asked if he wasn’t running, Chiu said, “I’m here at the Board focused on the work.” (That’s not a very convincing denial, David!)


On being reminded that the Year of the Rabbit kicks off in February, Chiu added,  “Hopefully, this will be a very fortunate year for San Francisco.”


Oakland and San Francisco will both have Asian American mayors—160 years after Chinese immigrants first settled in San Francisco and 129 years after the Chinese Exclusion Act sought to prevent these immigrants from rising to the top.


The rejoicing that reportedly is going in the Asian community, right now.“Chinatown is excited,” a reporter for Sing Tao Daily told me. “Ed Lee is a low-key kinda guy. No one really knows him, but as former DPW director, he was always filling up pot holes.”


The stated hope that Lee will support Sup. Avalos local hire ordinance, which kicks in Feb. 23, implement Sup. David Campos’ due process for immigrant youth ordinance, and enforce the recommendations of the Mayor’s African American Out Migration Task Force.


The growing sense that Sup. John Avalos is a strong contender as new Board President.


Sharen Hewitt’s observation that burgeoning racial tensions between African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos need to be addressed. Now.


Julian Davis’ observation that while the way Lee was appointed is not something San Francisco should be proud of, the fact that we now have an Asian American mayor with the almost unanimous support of the old Board is (Daly was the lone dissenter).


Newsom’s reminder that the old Board’s vote was symbolic.“Today was an extraordinary historic vote,” Newsom said. “But remember, it’s symbolic. The new Board will make the appointment.”


 Newsom’s description of Lee as a ‘recruitment” as he, too, insisted there were no backroom deals. “There were no deals, no backroom deals,” Newsom insisted. “He’s the right person at the right time.”


Newsom’s claim that this isn’t about Lee (or anyone else who’d been nominated.) “It’s not about you,” Newsom said, recreating a conversation he allegedly recently had to convince Lee, who’d just been guaranteed five more years employment as City Administrator, to become interim mayor for the rest of 2011. “You are that something more, that something better. You’re the one guy who can pull it altogether, including if disaster strikes, which is my biggest fear.”


Newsom’s relief that he only needs to prepare a 3-page budget brief. “Someone who understands so much of the process doesn’t need 20 pages,” he said.


Newsom’s claim that ideologues make terrible mayors.”If this city gets off track, plays some ideological game, it impacts the entire region,” he said. “I love that Lee is not even in the country. If he had been here, he’d probably have been convinced not to do it. Ideologues make terrible mayors, and mayors make terrible ideologues.”


Newsom’s explanation of how Lee will be able to get back his job, though the charter prohibits people who served in elected office from working for the city for at least a year.
”Hopefully, the Board will make it easy for him. Four members of the Board can put a charter amendment on the ballot. Or Lee can do it himself.”


Newsom’s revelation that he will be sworn in as Lt. Governor at 1:30 p.m, Jan. 10, and San Francisco will find out who the next District Attorney is by then.


Newsom’s claim that 2010 was an “incredible” year. “The Shipyard, Treasure Island, the America’s Cup, Doyle Drive, the Transbay Terminal. All these things are groundbreaking,” he said.


 


 

Historic mayoral vote followed a flawed process

Sasha Cuttler
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6

Ed Lee would be San Francisco’s first Chinese-American mayor right now – if Mayor Gavin Newsom wasn’t delaying his swearing in as lieutenant governor. And Lee might also have had 10 votes on the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, as he had today, if the process hadn’t involved backroom deals and moderate, lame-duck supervisors kowtowing to the outgoing mayor. In other words, this historic occasion just didn’t need to be sullied the way it was this week.
There was real jubilation at City Hall when I left there a few minutes ago, and for good reason, even though today’s vote will have to be repeated by the new board after Newsom officially resigns. “This is a historic moment for the Chinese-American community,” Board President David Chiu told a packed board chambers, calling it, “a community that has struggled, a community that has seen discrimination.”
Chiu braved the taunts of Sup. Chris Daly and some progressive activists for supporting Lee on Tuesday, steadfastly maintaining that Lee is progressive and the best candidate for this job, despite his five progressive colleagues voting for Sheriff Michael Hennessey. And Lee does have progressive roots and support, as the progressive supervisors have attested publicly.
Once the progressive supervisors were given the chance to talk to Lee – whose openness to accepting the nomination came out of nowhere, reportedly at the urging of Chinatown power broker Rose Pak and former Mayor Willie Brown – all but Daly voted to support Lee.
Yet all of them also publicly noted how the process was deeply flawed and contrary to progressive principles of openness and accountability. “I have questions about the process and how we got to this point,” Sup. John Avalos said before announcing his support for Lee based on a half-hour telephone conversation yesterday (Lee has been in China through his public consideration as interim mayor).  
Sup. David Campos said he nominated Hennessey as a compromise caretaker mayor based on the representation from Newsom that he was acceptable and after being told by Sup. Bevan Dufty that he would support Hennessey. Instead, Dufty refused to vote until calling for a recess and marching down to the Mayor’s Office on Tuesday, returning to be the swing vote for Lee.
“I’m very disappointed in the way this process has gone down,” Campos said, adding that Hennessey “did not deserve the kind of treatment he received.” Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Eric Mar echoed the point, with Mirkarimi saying he still doesn’t understand why Dufty flipped or what happened when he went to visit the Mayor’s Office.
Through the whole hearing, Dufty – a candidate for mayor himself – didn’t say a word. At one point, he even started clearing out his desk in Board Chambers, throwing away recycled papers and filling a big envelope full of paper clips. He didn’t stick around the hallway for the celebration that he helped enable, instead going straight into his office, where I found him and asked for a reaction to his colleagues’ questioning of his motives and integrity.
“My actions speak for themselves,” was all Dufty would say.
Perhaps they do, but even Lee’s strongest supporters acknowledged that the process of picking him was flawed. “Part of the problem was Ed’s because he couldn’t make up his mind,” Rev. Norman Fong told the Guardian. “The process was bad.”
Without a public discussion or the ability of reporters or supervisors to talk to Lee, Fong acknowledged why some progressives worried that a deal had been cut to continue with Newsom’s policies and personnel. “Some people were concerned about who he’ll listen to,” Fong said, but he said, “I’ve fought with Ed Lee and I know his heart…He’ll do the right thing.”
Gordon Chin of Chinatown Community Development Center said he has worked closely with both Lee and Hennessey and both would have been good interim mayors, and he said this should not have been a partisan fight. “Who nominated Mike Hennessey as the nominee of all of progressive San Francisco?” Chin asked, noting that few progressive constituencies were consulted on the choice or offered their buy-in.
Yet he also acknowledged the unseemly way in which Lee came out of nowhere to get the nomination, with little public vetting, “If Ed was out there a week earlier, it would have been a lot better. It was a flawed process,” Chin said.
So flawed that Daly and many progressive activists are still smarting about what happened and wary of what kind of mayor Lee will be. “No more backroom deals,” queer activist and blogger Michael Petrelis repeatedly shouted at Rose Pak as she was being interviewed outside board chambers.
But Fong just shrugged and told me, “There’s backroom deals on the left too.”

PG&E’s Nancy McFadden named Brown’s executive secretary

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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2

Remember when Pacific Gas & Electric Co. embarked on a $46 million political adventure called Proposition 16, the so-called Taxpayers’ Right to Vote Act, which would have rendered it nearly impossible for municipal Community Choice Aggregation electricity programs to compete with the utility giant by requiring a two-thirds majority vote for their implementation?

Remember how the initiative drew scathing criticism from state legislators, including Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who wrote in a December 2009 letter to PG&E that Prop. 16 “calls into question your company’s integrity,” and Sen. Mark Leno, who called it a “slap in the face to the legislature”?

And how even Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, wrote in an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News: “Pure and simple, Proposition 16 is a clever, brazen, buzzword-driven effort by one company to manipulate the California Constitution to protect its current monopoly.”

And how, at the end of that extraordinarily expensive campaign, PG&E lost, primarily because Prop. 16 was rejected by voters in its own service area?

Well, Governor Jerry Brown just appointed the brains behind the operation as one his executive secretaries, a position that’s akin to chief of staff.

Nancy McFadden was senior vice president of PG&E from 2005 to 2010, and she has been publicly credited with dreaming up Prop. 16. Now, she’ll serve in Brown’s administration as an executive secretary along with Jim Humes, who was chief deputy attorney general to Brown. McFadden previously served as deputy chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, and she also served in the Schwarzenegger and Davis administrations.

Chris Daly’s Final Say

Mary Magee
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18
Chris Daly’s Final Say

As part of my effort to compile a list of most roastable moments of Sup. Chris Daly‘s decade-long career at City Hall, I asked the termed-out D6 supervisor if he would sit down for an exit interview. And shortly before Christmas, when there was still hope the Board would select a progressive interim mayor, and Daly had not yet vowed to politically haunt Board President David Chiu with shouts of, “It’s on like Donkey Kong” , we arranged to meet me at the Buck Tavern on Market Street, which Daly, who now holds the liquor license, is threatening to rename “Daly’s Dive.”

As it happens, the lion’s share of our conversation ended up taking place by cell, since Daly got stuck in late afternoon commuter traffic, as he drove to San Francisco from Fairfield, where his wife and children have lived since April 2009, making him a fitting symbol of the East-Bay-and-beyond migration pattern of couples who live in San Francisco, until they have more than one kid.

Except not all couples with two small kids get to move into one of two foreclosed properties that the in-laws bought with $545,000 cash in spring 2009. At the time, Daly’s critics accused him making such a mess of governing the city that he had decided against raising his own family here. Daly predictably disagreed. “There are few people who think about the future of San Francisco and the health of the city more than me,” Daly told reporters, explaining that his wife wanted family support raising their children, so she had moved to the same cul-de-sac as her parents, as Daly continued to live in a condo in San Francisco with roommates and to see his family on weekends.

Anyways, on the dark and stormy night that I interviewed Daly in mid-December, he acknowledged that he was going to be in for one helluva roast at the Independent on Jan. 5. in the worst possible sense of the tradition.
“Will there be controversial subjects, things that on the face of it, are not very nice? Yes,” Daly said.

And then he claimed he had agreed to this ordeal, because, under the roast’s traditional format , he would get to go last—and thus would get to have the last word.
“Why would I want to end my City Hall career like this? Because I get to go last, and can really say what’s on my mind,” Daly said. “Unless the D.J. wants to say something as he’s spinning.”

Daly’s comment suggests that folks who attend his roast at the Independent will witness a historically vicious verbal drubbing on all sides, since no one has ever accused Daly of holding back from saying what was on his mind. Even if it has led to seemingly counterproductive “We are shocked, SHOCKED!” responses. Like the time Sup. Michela Alioto Pier introduced an ultimately doomed etiquette ordinance, after Daly swore at a constituent during a City Hall meeting, in 2004.

Daly said at the time that he comes from a background as a housing-rights organizer on the streets of Philadelphia and San Francisco, where confrontation was an effective political tool. But he also claimed that he had learned an important lesson.
“In the future it’s going to be better for me personally and politically to focus my energy positively on the people I care about instead of negatively on the people I think are doing them harm,” Daly reportedly said.

Fast forward six years, and Daly is unrepentant about his record of fighting for low-income people, while openly defying City Hall’s unwritten rules of etiquette.
“Etiquette always seemed a little silly, something for the ‘other’ San Francisco, for the prim and the proper and that’s not what I am concerned about,” Daly said. “I’m aware of the turn-the-other-check philosophy, and, if I were religious, I’d be out of the Old Testament. I’d be, if someone pokes you in the eye, I’d poke back.”

Daly says he stopped caring about etiquette towards the end of his first year in office. “When those in power use that power to put down those who are less advantaged, when I see that, I respond quickly and with as much force as I can to prevent them from doing that kind of thing again,” he said. “ If you want to attack homeless people for political advantage, I’m going to attack you right back. That’s not ‘proper,’ but I think it’s just.”

Daly says he also soon realized tthat the truth wasn’t the driver.
“I already knew that money, power and significant forces would be pushing back against me but then I discovered that the actual truth wasn’t what played out there in the world of spin. It’s like when the Examiner’s Josh Sabatini asked me how I want to be remembered, and I said, “Not as the caricature the Examiner created of me.”

Daly, who moved to San Francisco in 1993 to work on homeless and affordable housing issues, was at the heart of the movement around Ammiano’s 1999 write-in campaign for mayor, and part of the progressive sweep onto the Board, in 2000.

“For me, it’s never been about being a ‘good’ vote. I breathe leftist progressive politics,” Daly said. “Where I can make more of a mark is in terms of setting the stage for those votes and holding the line in districts that are not progressive. I’m very proud of my attempts to hold the line on issues, but the work doesn’t make any friends.”

Daly noted that after he made comments about Newsom’s alleged cocaine use during the 2007 Mayor’s race, downtown interests threw everything they had left at him.
‘They got a lot of hits in, but no total blows,” he opines. “Last time I checked, I saved the city $150 million on the Americas Cup deal that they were going to ram rod through.”

And so, as he prepares to begin life as a bar owner, don’t expect Daly to pass up opportunities to launch verbal attacks, if he believes they are warranted, political consequences be damned.

“People want to have the power without any of the negativity they associate with all the shit we have to deal with to build this power,” Daly added. “So, it’s all, Daly and [former Board President Aaron] Peskin took control of the Democratic Party at midnight. Well, how did you want us to take over? “

Daly claims if you take away “negatives” attributed to him, you take away his wins. “People call me a lot of things, but I’m not a loser, I win a lot” Daly added, noting that Democrats being nice to Republicans has led to losses in D.C., not gains. “So, yes, I’ve got a lot of negatives, and they’ve clearly been made into a target, but if I can take the hits, and help people I care about, I’m happy to do it. That’s what I’ve done for ten years.”

Daly says he’s become “pretty desensitized to criticism,” even as he admits to being a sensitive person, deep inside. “I don’t think I’d have quite the visceral response to poverty and oppression, if I wasn’t sensitive,” he said. “I care deeply about people’s struggles. That’s why I’m here, but I also have a pretty solid critique of capitalism and I know how to follow the money, so when I get criticized by some downtown mouthpiece, I know what time it is.”

Daly says he started the Daly Blog several years ago, to push back against what he felt was unfair treatment in the media. And he says he endorsed outgoing mayor Newsom for Lt. Governor, despite their long and antagonistic history, so progressives could have a shot at installing a mayor in Room 200.

“My money now is on the selection of the mayor going to the new Board, and Avalos getting it in the 13th round of voting,” Daly said.

Daly made that prediction three weeks before the progressives on the Board seem poised to hand the keys to R.200 to City Administrator Ed Lee—thereby eliciting Daly’s ballistic “Donkey Kong” outburst.

With the outgoing Board set to meet Friday to make a selection, here’s another Daly roastable moment, this time from Peskin, related to the fall-out that ensued after Daly made two appointments to the SFPUC, while serving as acting mayor for one day, while then Mayor Willie Brown was out of the country, on a trip to Tibet.

“When Mayor Willie Brown left office, Charlotte Schultz had an unveiling ceremony of Brown’s picture. Newsom, who by then was mayor, was presiding. And Charlotte had a beautiful easel with a golden drape over it. When she pulled back the curtain there was a picture of Daly, who was listed as “41st and a half” mayor presiding from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on October 22,” Peskin recalled, noting that under Daly’s picture there was another curtain that contained Brown’s actual portrait.”

And while Daly’s controversial statements and outbursts always make headlines, there is no denying that he helped make the progressive agenda, including establishing mandatory paid sick days, universal healthcare, and forcing developers to contribute in affordable housing or services for poor, an integral part of city policy.
 “The Chronicle used him as the poster child to try and dissuade anyone from supporting a progressive agenda,” former Sup. Jake McGoldrick observed. “He was used to smear any of our good ideas. And Chris never seemed to understand that some of us needed to be a little more sensitive, since we needed to get re-elected and didn’t represent districts that were as progressive as his. Personal attacks make the whole situation smell bad.”

Sup. John Avalos, who served as Daly’s legislative aide until he was elected as D11 supervisor, acknowledged that a lot of folks have accused Daly of doing irreparable harm to the progressive movement and being a gift to Newsom and the moderates at City Hall.
“People try and make hay out of it,” he said. “But his antics have probably hurt him more than anyone,” Avalos added, noting that he ran in 2008 as Daly’s former legislative aide.
‘And it didn’t hurt me, and I made no bones about where I came from.”

And then there’s the fact Daly defeated the Chamber ’s Rob Black in the 2006 election. “We don’t do enough to have better relationships between ourselves,” Avalos added , reflecting on the divided progressive movement. “It’s more than just one person.”
 
Peskin for his part acknowledges that Daly will be missed on the Board.
 “He sucked the oxygen out of the room and made it all super lefty and caustic, and it certainly did not allow a better conversation to evolve,” Peskin said. “But it’s still going to be a pretty profound loss.”

Backroom Ed Lee mayoral deal raises suspicions

Sasha Cuttler
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11

Last night’s dramatic eight-hour Board of Supervisors meeting, at which six supervisors suddenly came together around naming City Administrator Ed Lee to succeed Gavin Newsom as mayor, was a classic case of backroom dealing making, the full results of which the public still doesn’t know. And it is those unknowns that have progressives rightfully pissed off and distrustful of the choice.
On the surface, both Lee and the progressives’ preferred pick, Sheriff Michael Hennessey, are similar figures who fit Newsom’s demand for a nonpolitical caretaker mayor. He has publicly said both would be acceptable, and both have some impressive progressive credentials as well.
Lee was a civil rights attorney who help run the Asian Law Caucus before being hired by then-Mayor Art Agnos as an investigator for whistleblower complaints, and he’s worked for the city ever since, serving as executive director of the Human Rights Commission and director of the Department of Public Works. Newsom moved him in the powerful post of city administrator in 2005 and he was recently approved for a second five-term for that job, unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors.
Sup. Bevan Dufty and other supervisors had even talked to Lee about being interim mayor, and he has consistently said that he didn’t want it – until a couple days ago. That’s when Newsom and the fiscal conservatives on the board suddenly coalesced around Lee, who apparently changed his mind while on a trip to China, from which he is scheduled to return on Sunday, although that might be moved up now that the board has delayed the vote choosing him until Friday afternoon.
That delay was won on a 6-5 vote, with moderate Sup. Sophie Maxwell heeding progressive requests for an opportunity to at least be able to speak with Lee before naming him the city’s 43rd mayor. “I don’t think we should make such a decision blindly,” Sup. John Avalos said.
It was a reasonable request that neither the fiscal conservatives nor Board President David Chiu, the swing vote for Lee in what his progressive supporters angrily call a betrayal, would heed. And the question is why. What exactly is going on here? Because it’s not just progressive paranoia to think that a deal has been cut to maintain the status quo in the Mayor’s Office, as Newsom’s downtown allies have desperately been seeking.
Just consider how all of this went down. Sources have confirmed for the Guardian that Chiu met with Newsom at least twice in recent days, and that Newsom offered Chiu the district attorney’s job, hoping to be able to put a fiscal conservative into the D3 seat and topple a bare progressive majority on the board. Chiu reportedly resisted the offer and tried to influence who Newsom would name to succeed him, and we’ll find out as soon as today who the new district attorney will be.
Closed door meetings also apparently yielded Lee as Newsom’s choice for successor mayor, with both Chiu and Sup. Eric Mar initially inclined to back Lee, who would be the city’s first Chinese-American mayor. After pushing his colleagues for weeks to name a new mayor, Daly tried to thwart the Lee pick by initially seeking a delay, then finally persuading Mar to go with Hennessey as his first choice.
“Politically, he will work for the other side, my progressive colleagues,” Daly said at the hearing, calling it “the biggest fumble in the history of progressive politics in San Francisco.”
As the deliberations began, Mar called Lee his mentor at the Asian Law Caucus and someone whom he respects, but that he preferred to keep Lee in his current post and to support Hennessey, who got five votes on the first round, while Lee got four, including Chiu.
Dufty – who said that he would be supportive of Hennessey for mayor – and Sup. Sophie Maxwell abstained from voting for anyone during the first round. On the second round, Maxwell went with Lee, leaving Dufty as the kingmaker. But rather than decide, he asked for a recess at 8:45 pm, and he and Maxwell went straight to Room 200 to confer with Newsom.
When the board reconvened, Dufty announced his support for Lee. Dufty denies that Newsom offered him anything, but he did confirm that Newsom indicated a preference for Lee and a willingly to help Lee return to his current post next year, which requires some tricky maneuvering around city ethics laws. Similarly, Chiu denies that his support for Lee was anything less than his unconditional preference.
But it’s hard to know. After weeks of Newsom playing games with leaving the Mayor’s Office to assume his duties at lieutenant governor (a stand egged on by his downtown allies and Chronicle editorial writers), it seems likely that Lee has given them some kind of assurance that he won’t rock the boat or side with board progressives on key issues.
Some progressives aren’t ready to accept that Lee will be our next mayor, believing that Chiu, Dufty, or Maxwell can still be shamed into changing their minds, but that seems unlikely. Instead, progressive Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi just want to talk to Lee and they hope to be convinced that he’ll work cooperatively with the board and not simply be a Newsom puppet.
“I have been open and I remain open to supporting Ed Lee,” Campos said in support of the motion to continue the meeting to Friday at 3 pm, the day before the new Board of Supervisors is sworn in.
But he and the other progressives are openly questioning the Lee power play. After all, Campos said, his nomination of Hennessey was already an olive branch to Newsom’s side, saying he wasn’t the progressives’ first choice but simply the most acceptable from Newsom’s list. “It was in the spirit of one side of the political spectrum saying to the other side, ‘We want to come together,’” Campos said.
Instead, it was a backroom political deal with carried the day, a deal that Chiu went along with.
“I feel amazingly betrayed right now,” Jon Golinger, Chiu’s campaign manager, told us after the meeting. “It’s a shock…Process-wise, Ed Lee came out of nowhere.”
And that’s antithetical to the progressive values on transparency and public process. So now, it’s up to Lee, Chiu, and the other involved in this deal to fill in a few of the many blanks, and to assure the public that this choice is in the best interests of the whole city.

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

Alerts are compiled by Nicole Dial and Jackie Andrews

alert@sfbg.com

FRIDAY, JAN. 7

 

Noam Chomsky interview

Pick the brain of linguist and author Noam Chomsky as Wild Wild West Radio hosts an interactive cyber-convo with the influential professor and political dissident. Listeners may phone in questions or chat with Chomsky online for a unique, collective experience.

3 p.m., free

Wild Wild Left Radio

www.wildwildleft.com

 

San Francisco Bike Party

The new year brings a new kind of mass bicycle ride, one a bit more civilized than Critical Mass. Join the inaugural San Francisco Bike Party, a new monthly ride that begins at AT&T Park and follows a planned route through the city, obeying most traffic laws along the way. But it will still be a rolling party, complete with a mobile sound system and three party stops for dancing and socializing along the way.

7:30 p.m., free

Giants Stadium, Willie Mays Gate

www.sfbikeparty.org

SATURDAY, JAN 8

 

Board of Supervisors swearing-in

Members of the newly elected Board of Supervisors take their oath of office, followed immediately by the election of a new board president, who could also become acting mayor once Gavin Newsom is sworn in as California’s new lieutenant governor. Or if Newsom resigns by then, the board could also directly select a new interim mayor. It promises to be high political drama under the dome.

Noon, free

Room 250, City Hall

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Dr., SF

www.sfbos.org

 

Writers with Drinks

Writers with Drinks mixes genres and authors and throws in a dash of alcohol. It’s more than just a reading series, it’s also a celebration of performers, intellectuals, and writers from all over. This month it features writers Jane Wiedlin, Ethan Watters, Jesús Ángel García, and Blake Charlton. More good news: proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture. 7:30 p.m.; doors open at 6:30 p.m.

$5 to $10, sliding scale The Make Out Room 3225 22nd St., SF www.writerswithdrinks.com

SUNDAY, JAN. 9

 

Found the Free University of SF

Matt Gonzalez, Alan Kaufman, and others are forming the new Free University of San Francisco, and they want public input. Organizers ranging from political activists to poet laureates will put on a public meeting to discuss plans for the university. The Free U aims to promote free higher level education for anyone who wants it. Future plans include a weekend-long teach-in Feb. 5–-6. Come down and help promote and organize free education. 10 a.m., free Viracocha 998 Valencia, SF 415-573-5766

 

Guantánamo Means Torture

Attend a public planning meeting for the national demonstration scheduled for Jan. 11 against the continuation of Guantánamo Bay’s detention facility. World Can’t Wait hosts the meeting here in San Francisco, and then travels to Washington, D.C., with Witness Against Torture, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and other activists to demand an end to the horrors of Guantánamo. 2:30 p.m., free Mechanics Library 57 Post, 415 864 5153

sf@worldcantwait.org

Jerry Brown wants to eliminate Redevelopment

Mary Magee
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Jerry Brown wants to eliminate Redevelopment

Calitics reveals today that newly sworn-in Gov. Jerry Brown told the Sacramento Bee that he’s proposing to eliminate local redevelopment agencies as part of a set of austerity measures that he is proposing in a purported effort to shock folks into approving new revenues

Brown’s shocking proposal got me calling tenants rights activist Calvin Welch and Arc Ecology executive director Saul Bloom, who both have strong and well- informed views on what’s up with local redevelopment agencies and how they could be improved. And interestingly neither Bloom nor Welch was in favor of eliminating redevelopment.

Welch, who hadn’t yet had time to read the article when I called him, actually laughed when I outlined Brown’s basic idea, which admittedly is big on shock value and thin on explanations, at least at this point.
‘That would be very interesting, but the devil’s in the details.” Welch observed, noting that voters just approved Prop. 22 in Nov. 2010 to prevent the state from taking city redevelopment money to balance the budget in Sacramento. (Unfortunately, Prop. 22’s passage still doesn’t protect San Francisco from having its budget raided by the state, since it’s defined as both a city and a county.)

“That’s an astounding idea,” Welch added, trying to wrap his mind around Brown’s out-of-the-blue proposal. “Because in San Francisco, there are redevelopment areas, including Bayview Hunters Point, Mission Bay and the Transbay Terminal, that have already been authorized for another 25-30 years.”

“Perhaps the language would be ‘no new redevelopment’ but I don’t know how you would do that,” Welch added, noting that Brown has not only been governor before, but was also mayor of Oakland. (During his term as mayor, Brown was credited with starting the revitalization of Oakland but was also accused of being more interested in downtown redevelopment and economic growth than political ideology.)

Welch noted that San Francisco was fortunate in being able to reshape its Redevelopment financing arrangements in 1990 under then mayor Art Agnos.

“It was probably the most progressive and long standing reform of Art Agnos’ administration—and no one understands it,” Welch said. As Welch tells it, when Agnos came into office, he inherited a city that had been bankrupted by a decade of mayor Dianne Feinstein’s business-friendly policies, much like how San Francisco has been milked in the past decade by Newsom’s business-friendly policies.

“Redevelopment doesn’t pay its way in the post Prop. 13 world,” Welch stated. “Under Mayor Gavin Newsom, we’ve had the most market rate housing produced and the biggest deficits in what was a real estate collapse, as part of the collapse of the economic markets. And under Mayor Feinstein’s 10-year rule, we saw massive amounts of commercial office space built that never paid its way, leaving Agnos with a $103 million deficit.”

Welch notes that Agnos also inherited a huge homeless crisis (something Welch says Feinstein was in denial over) and that Agnos sought to reform Redevelopment in large part as a way to address the city’s growing lack of affordable housing. “Art basically said, let’s take a look at tax increment financing,” Welch said, referring to a tax financing arrangement, under which a municipality can a) do an assessed value of an area before redevelopment takes place, b) estimate what that same area’s local taxes would be after redevelopment, and c) borrow money against the incremental difference between a) and b).

“Art said, ‘I want to do that and I want to use the hundreds of millions of dollars available through redevelopment for affordable housing,’” Welch recalled. He noted that Agnos succeeded in his mission by shifting the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency’s mission from ‘urban renewal’ (which had negative connotations following the displacement of African American and other low-income communities from the Fillmore in the 1960s) to ‘community development,’ making Redevelopment subject to the same budgetary process as other departments, and insisting that 20 percent of tax increment financing dollars be devoted to affordable housing.
“But we said, ‘no, 50 percent has to be devoted to affordable housing and Art agreed, and that’s been the case since 1990,” Welch recalled. “And since then our Redevelopment Agency has been the principal source of affordable housing revenue in San Francisco.”

So, in another words, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency is pretty much alone in the state, in terms of devoting half its tax increment financing revenues to affordable housing. But by the same token, San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency is pretty much alone in the state in terms of not being governed directly by a city council or a county Board of Supervisors. Instead, it’s governed by a Commission, whose members are appointed solely by the mayor . And therein lies the problem, Welch says.
‘It would only take six votes on the Board of Supervisors, or eight votes to override a mayoral veto, to change that,” Welch observed.

But to date there haven’t been eight votes to do that, even with a progressive Board.
Welch believes the problem is that supervisors, who currently each only have two legislative aides, fear swampage from Redevelopment responsibilities.
“To contemplate taking over a multibillion dollar agencies and taking on the likes of Catellus with only two staffers, well it’s a recipe for disaster,” Welch said, acknowledging that additional reforms, including splitting appointments on the Redevelopment Commission between the mayor and the Board, or allowing the Board to hire additional legislative staff to work on redevelopment issues, could solve the problem.

Bloom, who recently sued after the Redevelopment Commission threw his non-profit under the bus, said his non-profit’s recent experience perfectly illustrates why and how Redevelopment should be reformed, rather than completely eliminated.
“Redevelopment is a process that has been much abused, so it’s easy to say, let’s get rid of it, but I’m not there, ”Bloom said, noting that his beef has been with the way his non-profit was treated by Redevelopment Commissioners, rather than Redevelopment staff.
“But I do believe there needs to be a modification of the process, in which redevelopment is put in the hands of an entity that is answerable to the public.”

Bloom believes this modification could be achieved by making the Board of Supervisors the governing body of the Redevelopment Agency, which is already the case in almost all municipalities in California.
“Give that role to the Board of Supervisors because you can fire your supervisor,” Bloom said, noting that currently there are no limits on how long individuals, who are appointed by the mayor, can serve on the Redevelopment Commission. ‘If you give that role to the supervisors, they will be able to utilize more staff to become better Board members. So, this is an opportunity to increase people’s participation in the process.”

Meanwhile, it’s possible that Brown’s threat to eliminate Redevelopment will be like the time Warren Buffett, who’d just been announced as then newly elected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s financial adviser, caused a brou-haha when he threatened to reform that even holier of cows, Prop. 13.

 

2010 Offies!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
2010 Offies!

tredmond@sfbg.com

When a major conservative political movement starts using a name that typically refers to the act of scrotal fellatio, you know it’s morning again in America. In 2010, the teabaggers came home. They nominated candidates who think masturbation is selfish and wonder why monkeys aren’t still evolving into humans. They held rallies urging the government to “get out of my Medicare,” which happens to be a government program. Their leaders praised dictators and urged women who had been raped to look at the bright side of things.

And those were just the headlines.

It’s hard to imagine a year that could be worse than 2010 — but it was a great vintage for the Offies.

Presenting the Off Guard awards for the silliest, most insane, and absolute worst of the year that was.

AND SHE FIGURES IF WE ARREST EVERYONE WITH BROWN SKIN, WE CAN FINALLY GET THIS SORT OF BEHAVIOR UNDER CONTROL

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer told reporters that illegal immigration resulted in beheadings in the desert.

BUT AS LONG AS YOU DON’T TOUCH YOURSELF WHEN YOU THINK OF THE DEVIL, IT’S GOING TO BE OKAY

Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware who decried masturbation as a “selfish act,” said she only dabbled in witchcraft and had just one date on a satanic altar.

EXCEPT THAT WE ALREADY ARE, AND WE ALREADY ARE

Jerry Brown said he opposed the state’s marijuana legalization measure because “we can’t compete with China if we’re all stoned.”

LOOK BUSY

A Pew Research Center poll showed that 41 percent of Americans think Jesus will return in the next 40 years.

HEY, IF WE’D JUST CREATED THE WORST ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER OF THE DECADE, WE’D WANT A LITTLE BREAK, TOO

A few days after the worst oil spill in U.S. history, BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward complained that he wanted his life back.

BUT HE SWEARS HE’LL STOP AT BEHEADINGS

Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner said if he were governor he’d give the National Guard live ammunition to shoot at immigrants on the border.

AFTER ALL, IF THEY’RE NOT IN AN AIRPLANE, THEY CAN’T DO ANY DAMAGE

GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina said that people on the federal no-fly list should have the right to own guns.

OOH, WHEN YOU TALK TOUGH LIKE THAT YOU ALMOST SOUND LIKE SOMEONE WHO COULD STAND UP TO THE REPUBLICANS. OR MAYBE NOT

President Obama asked whose ass he should kick at BP.

IT’S OKAY, THOUGH, AS LONG AS THEY WEREN’T ENGAGING IN ANY SELFISH ACTS

Staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission got caught spending as much as eight hours a day downloading porn at the office.

AND SOMETIMES GOP CANDIDATES ARE NITWITS

Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle praised Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for his efforts to privatize that country’s retirement system, saying “sometimes dictators have good ideas.”

YEAH, COME ON, WHY CAN’T YOU LOOK AT THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THINGS?

Sharron Angle said that women who have become pregnant as the result of rape or incest should “turn lemons into lemonade.”

DAMN GUMMINT TRYING TO INTERFERE WITH PRIVATE BIDNESS

GOP Congressman Joe Barton of Texas apologized to BP for a White House “shakedown.”

YES, AS A MATTER OF FACT I DO OWN THE WHOLE GODDAM SCHOOL

Meg Whitman’s son threw softball equipment over a fence to kick a group of computer science and physics students off the Princeton rugby field.

NICE, SINCE THOSE GROUPS ALL GOT ALONG SO WELL

GOP Senate candidate Chuck DeVore compared Palestinian activists to Nazis, Fascists, and Communists.

AND OF COURSE, THAT WORKS SO WELL WITH MODERN MANAGED CARE

Nevada banned chicken costumes from the polls after Nevada Senate candidate Sue Lowden said that people should barter with doctors for health care the way “our grandparents would bring a chicken to the doctor.”

ANOTHER GREAT MOMENT IN THEOLOGY FROM THE MAN WHO BROUGHT YOU THE PEDOPHILE PRIEST COVER UP

Pope Benedict said it was okay for male prostitutes to wear condoms.

SO HE’S GOT THAT GOING FOR HIM. WHICH IS NICE

Formerly classified State Department cables revealed that the premier of Korea is still an excellent drinker.

ACTUALLY, THEY TOOK ONE LOOK AT THE TEA PARTY AND DECIDED THEY WERE BETTER OFF AS THEY ARE

Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell said that evolution was a myth; after all, she wondered, “why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

THE CHURCH HAS ALWAYS BEEN KNOWN FOR ITS SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE

The Vatican announced that the ordination of women and the abuse of children were both “grave crimes.”

THAT’S OKAY, IT WILL LOOK GOOD ON HIS RESUME

Gavin Newsom decided to run for lieutenant governor after saying he didn’t know what the job was.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK, CIA EDITION

The United States held high-level negotiations with a supposedly senior Taliban operative who turned out to be a Pakistani shopkeeper.

BUT WAIT — HOW WILL WE KNOW IF WE’RE SUPPOSED TO WORRY OR NOT?

The Department of Homeland Security abandoned color-coded safety alerts.

THE INTELLIGENCE AND CULTURAL TASTE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IS SIMPLY STAGGERING

Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol, made it to the final round of Dancing with the Stars.

WHICH MAKES HIM ENTIRELY QUALIFIED TO SERVE AS A REPUBLICAN POLITICIAN

Dan Quayle’s son ran for Congress in Arizona and admitted that he had been posting on “dirty Scottsdale” under the name of Brock Landers, a sidekick to porn star Dirk Diggler.

IS HE ONE OF THE NAZI FASCIST COMMUNISTS, TOO?

Rand Paul said Obama’s criticism of BP was “un-American.”

WAIT — WAS THAT A BROWN ALERT?

The California Highway Patrol shut down its South Lake Tahoe office after officers found an anal vibrator and thought it was a bomb.

HONESTY IS JUST PART OF THE PROCESS OF RECOVERY

Tiger Woods admitted that he sucked.

EXCEPT THAT IT MOSTLY BENEFITS THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY

Vice President Joe Biden called the health reform bill “a big fucking deal.”

IT’S THOSE CUTE WOODEN SHOES, YOU SEE

NATO Commander John Sheehan said Dutch soldiers were too gay.

DAMN, AND HE’S SUCH AN ATTRACTIVE MAN. I’M SURE THE TSA FOLKS WERE REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO IT

John Tyner told Transportation Security Administration officials in San Diego that if “you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.”

AND HE WASN’T EVEN TALKING ABOUT HER

Sarah Palin demanded that Rahm Emanuel apologize for using the term “fucking retarded.”

 

SINCE WE ALL KNOW THOSE PEOPLE DON’T KNOW HOW TO SPEAK IN PUBLIC

MSNBC Host Chris Matthews was so excited by an Obama speech that he said he “forgot he was black.”

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spent $50 million on a ballot initiative to stop public power, and lost after getting soundly defeated in every county where the utility has customers.

YOU MAY BE PART OF THE FAMILY, BUT WHEN IT COMES TO MY POLITICAL CAREER, HONEY, YOU’RE OUT THE DOOR

Meg Whitman fired her housekeeper when she found out she was in the country illegally.

BUT THEY’RE ALIKE ANYWAY, RIGHT?

Sharron Angle defended a campaign ad depicting menacing-looking Hispanic men by telling members of the Hispanic Student Union at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas that many of the members looked Asian.

OF COURSE, SHE SKIPPED THE FIRST FEW AMENDMENTS — BOOORING!

Christine O’Donnell said she couldn’t find anything about the separation of church and state in the Constitution.

BECAUSE IN A FIREFIGHT, THE FIRST THING ANYONE WOULD BE THINKING ABOUT IS HIS SERGEANT’S CUTE ASS

Sen. John McCain said he opposed ending “don’t ask, don’t tell,” talked about all the soldiers and Marines who lost limbs, and said that “when your life is on the line, you don’t want anything distracting.”

SINCE WE ALL KNOW THAT HEALTH INSURANCE MAKES YOUR PEE SMELL FUNNY

Federal judge Henry Hudson asked Obama administration officials whether the new health care plan was similar to forcing all Americans to eat asparagus.

SO IT’S JUST AS WELL THOSE PEOPLE ON THE NO-FLY LIST HAVE THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

Sharron Angle said that the Obama administration’s policies might require “Second Amendment solutions.”

IT’S PERFECTLY FINE FOR HOMOSEXUALS TO ATTEND MARRIAGE CEREMONIES, AS LONG AS THEY’RE JUST THE HIRED HELP

Sir Elton John played at Rush Limbaugh’s wedding.

SURE, GREAT FUN. JUST LIKE SHOOTING YOUR FRIENDS WITH A HUNTING RIFLE

Dick Cheney said he had been a “big supporter of water boarding.”

DAMN, SUPERVISOR, THE OFFIES WILL MISS YOU

Chris Daly vowed to say “fuck” at every single board meeting in 2010.

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

Social inequality is morally wrong, politically dumb, and economically unsustainable. It also makes you fat.

Seriously.

There’s a book by two British epidemiologists that argues the physical and mental health case for economic equality — and it’s full of great stuff. It’s a year old, but I read a nice analysis of it in Nicholas Kristof’s column in the Jan. 2 New York Times. Kristof notes that Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, both British epidemiologists, cited vast and growing evidence that societies with greater equality are in general more healthy. And by that they mean not only that those societies have less crime and violence; the people who live with greater equality actually have less heart disease, mental illness, and obesity.

The book is called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. A lot of it’s kind of touchy-feeley, but in the end, they come to a scientific conclusion: “The relationships between inequality and poor health and social problems are too strong to be attributable to chance.”

The two scientists also take on one of the great taboos of modern economics. They argue that growth isn’t necessarily good, that the standard goal of every official government policy in every major nation in the world — capitalist, socialist, or communist — over at least the past half-century, has been based on a flawed assumption.

There aren’t even that many progressives in this country who want to challenge the idea that the economy needs to grow to solve problems like unemployment and poverty. Sim Van Der Ryn, the visionary planner and architect, once told me that it makes no sense to have “a perpetually adolescent economy.” But in most polite company, that’s heresy.

But our new governor, who once employed Van Der Ryn as the director of the Office of Appropriate Technology, has a few heretical cells in his Jesuit-trained brain. And while I don’t expect him to turn the state’s growth frenzy on its head, he ought to be willing to think about this:

The solution to California’s problems may lie more with redistributing the pie than with making it larger.

I’m not arguing that we should abandon growth, particularly at a time of high unemployment. But keep in mind: corporate profits are already up, both here and nationwide — but the big companies are hoarding their cash and not hiring. Banks are making money again — but they’re not lending it out. We’re in a different sort of recovery here, one that may, for the moment, be structurally jobless. During the deep recession, businesses figured out how to survive with fewer employees, and they’re not about to start expanding the payroll.

And of course, the public sector has done nothing but shrink, and there’s little talk of anything but more shrinking.

So maybe the only way we’re going to get out of this is to inject more money into the economy, not by borrowing but by sending some of the idle wealth at the top back down to the level where it might become production. It might make us all a lot healthier. Because it turns out that you don’t have to eat the rich; just tax them.

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