John Avalos

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.”

Chiu and pragmatism win over the new board

Sasha Cuttler
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13

Despite the re-election of David Chiu as president of the Board of Supervisors today, there was a palpable shift in the political dynamics at City Hall. “Ideology” has been deemed a dirty word by a majority of the Board of Supervisors, while the politics of identity and “getting things done” is the new imperative.
That shift was most evident in the 8-3 vote for Chiu, with progressive Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi supporting Avalos for the post through two rounds of voting. Chiu won it on the second round after fiscal conservative Sup. Sean Elsbernd withdrew his nomination, with he and his other three backers – Sups. Carmen Chu, Scott Wiener, and Mark Farrell – all supporting Chiu in the second round.
“This year represents a changing of the guard, a transition,” Chiu told us, noting the departure of both Mayor Gavin Newsom and supervisors that include Chris Daly. “We’re going to have to get past the oppositional politics of personality.”
In place of a progressive politics based on principled positions and aggressively challenging the influence that powerful downtown interests still exert on City Hall, Chiu is advocating for more pragmatic solutions to the considerable challenges facing the city, starting with a projected budget deficit of almost $400 million.
“None of us were voted into office to take positions, we were voted into office to get things done,” Chiu said.
His approach has occasionally earned him the scorn of progressives over the last two years, particularly in Chiu’s high-profile compromises with Newsom over cuts to Muni and city programs, business tax breaks, and other issues, as Avalos noted. But as Avalos told Chiu, “Clearly today, you have been validated in your hard work.”
Chiu was backed in both rounds of voting by progressive Asian-American Sups. Jane Kim and Eric Mar, both of whom also struck pragmatic notes in their comments. But they also noted that the board’s new civility and diversity are progressive values. “I think this new board represents the evolution of the progressive movement in San Francisco,” Mar said.
Newsom has been pointedly criticizing the notion of ideology for years – apparently unaware that his anti-tax, pro-business philosophy is an ideology – and it was echoed by several supervisors, including Farrell, who said he wants “to turn City Hall into a place based on issues and ideas and not ideology.”
Now, we’re all left to wait and see what kinds of issues and ideas take root. We’ll have much more on an extraordinary week at City Hall – with a new board and new incoming Mayor-select Ed Lee – in next week’s Guardian.

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.”

City Hall’s mad political swirl

Sasha Cuttler
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1
City Hall’s mad political swirl

It was common knowledge around City Hall that Chinatown power broker Rose Pak and former Mayor Willie Brown were lurking behind the sudden emergence of Ed Lee as the pick for interim mayor, but Bay Citizen reporter Gerry Shih does an excellent job showing how it actually went down in a story that appeared in today’s New York Times.

Pak is also expected to orchestrate a big show of Chinese-American power during this afternoon’s Board of Supervisors meeting, and progressive supervisors tell the Guardian that they have been personally lobbied by Pak to get behind Lee. Some supervisors hold out the hope that Michael Hennessey might still have a shot, or that Ed Harrington might be put back in play, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Lee seems like he’ll be the guy, at least with this board.

In addition, the rumor mill is buzzing that David Chiu will declare his candidacy for mayor in the coming weeks, although other sources indicate he hasn’t made a final decision yet. And given that the new board still has to confirm the current board’s selection, don’t be too surprised if someone makes a play to name Chiu as interim mayor, but that’s a longshot.

Following right on the heels of today’s interim mayor vote will be tomorrow’s swearing in of the new board and vote on president, which Chiu would like to hold onto. But after crossing his progressive colleagues on Tuesday to support Lee over Hennessey, most progressives are expected to push for Sup. John Avalos, while fiscal conservative Sup. Sean Elsbernd is also expected to make a bid for the presidency. None appear to have six votes yet.

Despite media reports about the board’s “progressive majority,” the current political dynamics don’t really give any faction a majority, with identity politics holding heavier sway than ideology right now. So the only prediction that political watchers can make right now is that it’s going to be interesting.

Chiu rejects DA job and defends his support for Lee

Sasha Cuttler
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22

Amid speculation that he was angling to be appointed district attorney – and questions about whether that goal influenced his support for Ed Lee to be named interim mayor – Board of Supervisors President David Chiu has issued a press release announcing that he’s withdrawing from consideration for the DA’s job.

“Right now my strong belief is that I can best serve San Francisco from City Hall. The challenges ahead of us will require a new level of collaboration between our elected leaders—many of them new to office—and all San Franciscans who care about the future of our incredibly diverse and inclusive City,” Chiu said in the prepared statement, thanking Mayor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Kamala Harris for their consideration and for recent meetings with Chiu on the appointment.

When I spoke with Chiu yesterday afternoon, he said that he was leaning against taking the job, partly out of concern that Newsom would replace him with a fiscal conservative like Joe Alioto Jr. “I would not want to leave my seat to someone whose perspective on issues is drastically different than mine,” Chiu told me.

He also strongly emphasized that there was no connection at all between his discussion with Newsom over the DA appointment and with Chiu’s pivotal support for Lee, and Chiu said Newsom did not raise the issue during their conversations. On Tuesday, Chiu broke with his progressive colleagues to be the sixth vote in favor of Lee.

Chiu said that he has long been supportive of Lee and Chiu disagrees with the assertion that Lee is a less progressive pick than Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who had the support of five progressive supervisors. “He’s someone who has tremendous progressive roots,” Chiu said of Lee, noting that Chinese-American progressives have long considered him one of their own. “We have been working with Ed Lee for years and we know where his heart is.”

Chiu argued that Lee is experienced in a broad range of city functions and issues while Hennessey’s knowledge of city government issues is limited mainly to law enforcement. While the strong and sudden support for Lee among fiscal conservatives has been worrisome to many progressives, Chiu noted that “unfortunately, the moderates are far more disciplined than we are on the progressive side.”

“We have many competing and diverse constituencies that led us to be unable to get to consensus around one candidate,” Chiu said.

The current Board of Supervisors will convene for a final time at 3 p.m. tomorrow to vote on Lee after progressive supervisors successfully pushed for a delay in the vote on Tuesday. In addition to Chiu and the five supervisors to his ideological right, Sup. Eric Mar has announced that he will also support Lee, and Sups. John Avalos and David Campos said they are open to backing Lee after they get the chance to speak with him.

Chris Daly’s Final Say

Mary Magee
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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.

The vote’s delayed until Friday

Zelda Bronstein
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5

Late at night, a bit of common sense at the board. After Supervisors David Campos, John Avalos and Ross Mirkarimi made the same basic point — that none of them had had a chance to talk to Ed Lee about the job, that Lee wasn’t even in town right now and that it was crazy to vote for a mayoral candidate who hasn’t been part of any process — six supervisors, including Sophie Maxwell, voted for a continuance until Friday, Jan. 7th at 3 pm. So it will be another crazy three days trying to figure all this out.

 

 

Trash talk

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Trash talk

sarah@sfbg.com

The fate of the city’s mountains of garbage — 1,400 tons a day — will be decided some time in the next few months. Maybe.

Two competing proposals for hauling away the trash have been up for consideration since last spring. But the San Francisco Board of Supervisors still doesn’t seem to know which alternative is better, and the board still hasn’t scheduled a hearing on the issue.

Waste Management Inc. has the current contract and trucks waste to the Altamont landfill. Recology now wants to ship the garbage by rail three times as far away, to the company’s Ostrom Road landfill in Yuba County (“A Tale of Two Landfills,” 06/15/10).

David Assmann, deputy director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment told the Guardian that his department asked for a hearing in October on its proposal to award the contract to Recology when the city’s contract at Altamont landfill expires in 2015.

“But that hearing request got delayed,” Assmann said. “With a new board, new committees, and maybe new chairs of committees coming in January, I’m not sure when the hearing will take place,” he added. “But I’d be surprised if it’s before Jan. 15.”

Sup. David Campos told the Guardian he still has many questions about the contract. “I don’t know if it’s the correct way to go at this point,” he said. “I’m trying to figure it out.”

That sentiment seems to be shared by Sups. John Avalos and Eric Mar, who took a road trip earlier this year to see both landfills. And some local waste management experts have suggested that Recology’s plan would be greener if the city barged its trash to Oakland, then loaded it onto trains, instead of driving it across the Bay Bridge.

Assmann acknowledged that the barging question keeps coming up, but said would be cost prohibitive since trash would have to be loaded and unloaded both sides of the bay. “It would be horrendously expensive, so it’s not a likely option unless folks want their rates to go up dramatically.”

And now Yuba County officials are rethinking how much to charge the city to dump it waste in their rural county’s backyard. Yuba County Supervisor Roger Abe told the Guardian his board has asked the county administrator to look into the process for raising disposal fees at Ostrom Road.

“We’re supposed to receive a report on that, plus parameters on what you can change,” Abe said, noting that fees at Ostrom Road were set at $4.40 per ton in 1996. “So it’s a 14-year-old fee. Clearly, the cost of living is a lot higher now. And when the landfill was established, it was only serving Yuba County. But now it’s being touted as a regional landfill, an approach that is depleting our county’s ability to dispose of its own trash. So if people outside the county are using our landfill, they should be paying more.”

But Assmann doesn’t think the rate hikes would torpedo the city’s plan. “Whichever one of the two landfills is chosen can always opt to raise fees. But that would also impact the fees of local residents, so it’s a self-inhibiting factor,” he said.

“And who knows the implications of Prop. 26 on this,” he continued, referring to the statewide proposition voters approved in November that requires a two-thirds supermajority vote in the state Legislature and at the ballot box in local communities to pass fees, levies, charges, and tax revenue allocations that previously could be enacted with a simple majority vote.

“But even if the fees double in Yuba County, they’ll still be less expensive that at Altamont,” he said. “So our recommendation is to go forward with the Ostrom Road landfill proposal.”

Abe agreed that Prop. 26 could have an impact on the fee-raising process. “But I find it difficult to believe that Yuba County would have a problem raising fees on out of town garbage,” he said. “If I had a choice, I’d say no to Recology. But if it’s coming anyway, I know that $4.40 per ton is not going to be sufficient compensation — and this county is desperate for funds.”

DoE director Melanie Nutter has claimed the Recology contract is environmentally friendlier and could save ratepayers $125 million over the life of the contract. “This is a good deal for San Francisco and for the environment,” Nutter stated when DoE was pushing for a board hearing in October. “Ostrom Road is a state-of-the-art facility that employs industry best practices, and the price is dramatically lower than the competition. This will help us maintain reasonable refuse collection costs as we move toward zero waste.”

The landfill disposal contract is for 5 million tons or 10 years, whichever comes first. DoE predicts that this amount will decrease in the coming years because of prior success in waste prevention, recycling, and composting programs. San Francisco already recycles 77 percent of its waste stream, the highest diversion rate of any city nationwide.

But Abe notes that Waste Management proposes to use methane generated from trash disposed at its Altamont landfill to power its liquid natural gas trucks. “I can’t see how using trains would be greener,” he said.

Recology spokesperson Adam Alberti has told the Guardian that Recology’s waste disposal contract was environmentally superior, in part because San Francisco has mandatory composting legislation that reduces the amount of decomposing organics, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, being sent to landfills. But Irene Creps, who has homes in San Francisco and Yuba County, pointed out that not all municipalities disposing trash at Ostrom Road have mandatory composting laws, which means the landfill will continue to generate methane. “A lot of places around here only have a black bin,” Creps said.

Meanwhile, Waste Management has threatened legal action if San Francisco awards the contract to Recology, alleging that Recology’s bid was procured under flawed and potentially unlawful application of administrative rules. In a Nov. 9, 2010 letter, WM’s Bay Area Vice President Barry Skolnick urged San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors to “reject the award to Recology and avoid entering into a high-priced 10-year contract that is not even necessary until 2015, at the earliest, and to apply the procurement process to all qualified bidders fairly and consistently, as the law requires.”

The local trash controversy continues as a grassroots movement to stop Recology from expanding at the Jungo Road Landfill in Humboldt County, Nev., won an interim round. At a Dec. 20 meeting, Humboldt County commissioners voted 4-1 to reject a proposed settlement agreement with Recology that would have allowed the landfill to continue.

Does Mayor Newsom represent SF workers or San Mateo politicians?

Mary Magee
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2

“Does Newsom represent local workers or San Mateo politicians?” That’s the question being asked  at City Hall today. And it’s threatening to deliver an unwelcome kick to Mayor Gavin Newsom on his way out of City Hall’s revolving doors, as dozens of unemployed construction workers deliver 1,000 Christmas cards that residents of Bayview Hunters Point, Chinatown, the Mission, the Tenderloin and South of Market have signed. The cards urge Mayor Gavin Newsom to “put the Merry into Christmas and the Happy back into New Year” and sign local hire law that the Board passed a week ago.

This special holiday season delivery has been in the works since Dec. 14, when Bayview-based job advocates Aboriginal Blackmen United (ABU) tried to meet with Newsom and get his signature on legislation that a super-majority on the Board support.

But after Newsom was a no-show and his chief of staff Steve Kawa refused to give ABU any assurances, community advocates Brightline Defense Project printed up a thousand of the cards urging Newsom to “put the Merry into Christmas”. And Brightline, ABU, Chinese for Affirmative Action, PODER, and the A. Philip Randolph Institute then asked unemployed workers, activists, and concerned citizens to sign this unusual set of greeting cards.

The move comes a day after the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to urge Newsom to veto Avalos local hire policy. Local hire advocates suspect this counter-move was orchestrated to give Newsom political cover, should he choose to make the seemingly Scrooge-like move of vetoing, just before the holiday season, legislation that would help San Francisco residents secure work on billions of dollars worth of local tax-payer funded construction projects .

But the San Mateo supervisors claim that San Francisco’s plan, which would mandate that 50 percent of workers on city-funded projects are local residents, threatens to hurt an already sluggish regional economy.

“This is not the time to put isolation around a community,” San Mateo Sup. Carole Groom reportedly said at a hastily convened Dec. 21 special session.
 “If this is rejected, it would be time for all of us to sit down and talk about this,” fellow San Mateo County Sup. Adrienne Tissier reportedly said.

Newsom has until Christmas Eve to either sign or veto the law, though the Board can still override his veto, provided Avalos still has eight votes in the New Year. And if Newsom doesn’t sign or veto the law by week’s end, it will go into effect in 60 days.


San Mateo officials are arguing that the local hire legislation particularly impacts their county, because the law contains a “70-mile” clause that includes the San Francisco Airport, the Hetch Hetchy water system and the San Bruno jail.

Sup. John Avalos previously told the Guardian that project labor agreements protect workers at the airport and working on projects that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission funds. But Tissier reportedly claimed that San Francisco’s local hire policy would kick in, once new contracts are negotiated.

Reached by phone, Avalos said it’s not clear if the San Mateo supervisors have actually read his legislation
‘If they had, they’d see a lot of ways that is supports San Mateo workers,” Avalos said.

San Francisco’s local hire legislation, which is the nation’s strongest, requires that 20 percent of workers within each construction trade be local residents starting in 2011. That number increases 5 percent annually for seven years, as local workers join trades where community representation is lacking, before reaching 50 percent. In other words, 80 percent of the workforce could be non-city residents in 2011, and even at 50 percent local hire, half of the jobs will still be available to workers who don’t live in San Francisco.
 
“That’s hardly an exclusion especially when you consider that San Francisco taxpayers are making the investments on these projects,” Avalos stated.
He believes that the San Mateo County Building Trades Council pressured the San Mateo Board to pass their Dec. 21 resolution urging a veto on his measure. Either way,  Victor Torreano, vice president of the San Mateo County Building Trades Council was quoted in media coverage of the Dec. 21 vote, saying, “the need for housing in San Francisco and the Peninsula make it impossible for many blue collar workers from sinking family roots in the area.”

Avalos acknowledges that San Francisco International Airport is in San Mateo County, and its workers understandably wants jobs there,
“San Mateo County has to put up with the sound of the airport, and its residents deserve to have jobs there, but this is much ado about nothing,” Avalos said. “But it’s the Building Trades that are uncomfortable with changing slightly their practices.”

Mike Theriault, Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Building Trades Council, acknowledged that his group has never been pleased with Avalos’ legislation.

“But we are resigned to seeing how it plays out,” Theriault told the Guardian. “We think there are better things they could have done to guarantee access of San Francisco residents to careers in our trades.”

Theriault believes that Avalos may not understand the project labor agreement are of limited duration.
“So, they will require an extension of the existing labor agreement,” Theriault said,  noting the legislation states that future extensions would have to comply with the new law.

But Theriault acknowledged that with or without Newsom, Avalos’ legislation still has a chance to move forward.
“If he vetoes it, I understand that the Board will have another crack at it, Jan. 4,” THeriault said, referring to the current Board’s last meeting in January.
 
The Bay Area Council has also announced its opposition to Avalos’ legislation,
 “This troubling trend of intra-county battles being started by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors needs to stop,: Bay Area Council President and CEO Jim Wunderman said in a Dec. 21 statement. “The Bay Area is one regional economy, not nine island states. We need to focus on nurturing the fragile economic recovery in our region, not setting bad policies that pit county against county.  The Bay Area Council urges Mayor Newsom to veto this foolhardy piece of legislation.  Right now, we do not need any more incentives for businesses to leave any county, the Bay Area, or California.”

But advocates for the legislation note that the San Francisco Controller recently estimated that the law will pump $270 million into the local economy over the next 10 years. They hope Newsom will emerge from his warren-like office today and sign the law, delivering a historic Christmas present to the city’s growing ranks of unemployed workers.


But even if he doesn’t, Avalos isn’t sweating it.


“Newsom probably won’t sign it, and he’ll write a letter saying he’s opposed to it,” Avalos predicted. “And even if the new mayor is [SFPUC director] Ed Harrington, he’s been supportive of the measure. So Newsom has to answer his own conscience and ask himself, if he’s going to represent local residents or San Mateo politicians.”


According to Brightline’s Joshua Arce, ABU led about 30 to 40 workers from Bayview, Chinatown, and the Mission up to Room 200 today to drop off 1,000 signed  cards from residents in every neighborhood asking the Mayor to sign the community’s local hiring law by Christmas.
 
“Room 200 was locked, but we kept knocking,” Arce told the Guardian. “Eventually the doors opened and out came [Mayor Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff] Steve Kawa. We showed him all of the Christmas cards that we had for his boss and he thanked us. Ashley Rhodes of ABU explained that since we heard how much the Mayor liked the ABU holiday card last week, we printed up 1,000 more and got them signed by people from every community in San Francisco.”
 
“We asked where the Mayor was in terms of making his decision, he said that the Mayor was still studying all of the issues,” Arce continued. “He brought up the opposition from the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, so we asked him to tell the Mayor to support us, the thousands of unemployed and job-hungry San Franciscans, over four San Mateo politicians.”
 
“Steve Kawa said that they will be working around the clock to make sure all concerns are addressed, and we showed Steve a card signed by Sup. Bevan Dufty just moments before we came upstairs,” Arce addded. “Sups. John Avalos and Eric Mar also signed Christmas cards to the Mayor.”

According to Arce, ABU left the two huge Santa bags full of cards with Kawa, who picked them up, commenting “These bags are awfully heavy.” 

“I asked him to make sure to tell his boss that the cards were printed on 100% recycled paper,” Arce concluded. “Let’s hope that Mayor Newsom puts the Merry into Christmas and the Happy back into New Year!”

Mayoral dynamics

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
Mayoral dynamics

steve@sfbg.com

Despite the best efforts of Sup. Chris Daly and some of his progressive colleagues to create an orderly transfer of authority in the city’s most powerful office, the selection of a successor to Mayor Gavin Newsom will come down to a frantic, unpredictable, last-minute drama starting a few days into the new year.

The board has convened to hear public testimony and consider choosing a new mayor three times, each time delaying the decision with little discussion by any supervisor except Daly, who pleaded with his colleagues on Dec. 14 to “Say something, the people deserve it,” and asking, “Are we going to take our charge?”

The current board will get one more crack at making the decision Jan. 4, a day after the California Constitution calls for Newsom to assume his duties as lieutenant governor — although Newsom has threatened to delay his swearing-in so Daly and company don’t get to the make the decision.

“I can’t just walk away and see everything blow up. And there are a few politicians in this town that want to serve an ideological agenda,” Newsom told KCBS radio reporter Barbara Taylor on Dec. 16, two days after praising the board for its “leadership and stewardship” in revising and unanimously approving the city’s bid to host the America’s Cup.

Newsom and his fiscally conservative political base fear that the board’s progressive majority will nominate one of its own as mayor, whereas Newsom told Taylor, “The board should pick a caretaker and not a politician — that’s my criteria.”

Some board members strongly disagree. “It’s not his to decide. Besides, what’s not ideological? That doesn’t make sense. Everyone’s ideological,” Sup. John Avalos told the Guardian, a point echoed by other progressives on the board and even many political moderates in town, who privately complain that Newsom’s stand is hypocritical, petty, and not in the city’s best interests.

The Guardian has interviewed a majority of members of the Board of Supervisors about the mayoral succession question, and all expect the board to finally start discussing mayoral succession and making nominations on Jan. 4.

But whether the current board, or the newly elected board that is sworn in on Jan. 8, ultimately chooses the new mayor is anyone’s guess. And at Guardian press time, who that new mayor will be (and what conditions that person will agree to) was still a matter of wild speculation, elaborate conspiracy theories, and backroom deal making.

 

GETTING TO SIX

A majority of supervisors say there’s a simple reason why the board hasn’t seriously discussed mayoral succession since it unanimously approved the procedures for doing so Nov. 23 (see “The process begins,” Nov. 30). Everyone seems to know that nobody has the required six votes.

Avalos said he thinks the current board is better situated to choose the new mayor because of its experience, even though he voted for the delay on Dec. 14 (in an 8-3 vote, with Daly and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos in dissent). “I supported the delay because we were not closer to having a real discussion about it than we were the week before,” Avalos told us, noting that those who were pushing for Campos “didn’t do enough to broaden the coalition to support David Campos.”

For his part, Campos agreed that “the progressive majority has not figured out what it wants to do yet,” a point echoed by Mirkarimi: “I don’t think there’s a plan.” Sup. Sophie Maxwell, who made both the successful motions to delay the vote, told us, “There’s a lot more thinking that people need to do.”

“We do not yet have consensus,” Chiu said of his reasons for supporting the delay, noting that state conflict-of-interest and open government laws also make it difficult for the board to have a frank discussion about who the new mayor should be.

For example, Chiu is barred from even declaring publicly that he wants the job and describing how he might lead, although he is widely known to be in the running.

The board can’t officially name a new mayor until the office is vacant. Sup. Bevan Dufty, who is already running for mayor, told us the board should wait for Newsom to act. “I felt the resignation should be in effect before the board makes a move,” Dufty said.

Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Carmen Chu, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Eric Mar did not return the Guardian’s calls for comment.

 

PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

Adding to the drama of the mayoral succession decision will be the new Board of Supervisors’ inaugural meeting on Jan. 8, when the first order of business will be the vote for a new board president, who will also immediately become acting mayor if the office has been vacated by then and the previous board hasn’t chosen a new mayor.

While Newsom and his downtown allies are clearly banking on the hope that the new board will select a politically moderate caretaker mayor, something that three of the four new supervisors say they want (see “Class of 2010,” Dec. 8), the reality is that the new board will have the same basic ideological breakdown as the current board and some personal relationships that could benefit progressives Chiu and Avalos.

Daly said downtown is probably correct that the current board is more likely than the new one to directly elect a progressive mayor who might run for the office in the fall, such as Campos or former board President Aaron Peskin. But he thinks the new board is likely to elect a progressive as president, probably Campos, Chiu, or Avalos, and that person could end up lingering as acting mayor indefinitely.

“They really haven’t thought through Jan. 8. Downtown doesn’t like to gamble, and I think it’s a gamble,” Daly said. “There’s a decent chance that we’ll get a more progressive mayor out of the leadership vote for board president.”

Avalos said it “would be a disaster” for the board president to linger as acting mayor for a long time, complicating the balance of power at City Hall. But he wouldn’t mind holding the board gavel. “I think I would do a good job as board president, but I’m not going to scratch and claw my way to be board president,” Avalos said. “I’d be just as happy to be chair of the Budget Committee again.”

Avalos said he thinks it’s important to have a mayor who is willing to work closely with board progressives and to support new revenues as part of the budget solution, which is why he would be willing to support Chiu, Campos, or Mirkarimi for mayor, saying “All of them could do a good job.”

Given the progressive majority on the board, it’s also possible that there will be a lingering standoff between supporters for Chiu, a swing vote in budget and other battles who has yet to win the full confidence of all the progressive supervisors, and former Mayor Art Agnos, who has offered to serve as a caretaker. Some see Agnos as more progressive than the other alternatives pushed by moderates, including Sheriff Michael Hennessey and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission head Ed Harrington.

Moderates like Dufty are hopeful that a couple of progressives might break off to support Hennessey (“From the first minute, he knows everything you’d need to know in an emergency situation,” Dufty said) or Harrington (“I could see him stepping in and closing the budget deficit and finding a good compromise on pension reform,” Dufty said) after a few rounds of voting.

Mirkarimi is openly backing Agnos. “He has evolved, as I’ve known him, in the days since being mayor,” Mirkarimi said. “I think we’ve spent too much time on finding the progressive guy to be mayor than on setting up what a progressive caretaker administration would look like.” And then there are the wild cards, like state Sen. Mark Leno and City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Herrera’s a declared candidate and Leno has made it clear that he’d take the job if it were offered to him.

Given the fact that supervisors can’t vote for themselves, it’s difficult for any of them to win. “I don’t think it’s likely that a member of the Board of Supervisors will get enough votes to be mayor,” Avalos told us, although he said that Chiu is the one possible exception.

But to get to six votes, Chiu would have to have most of the progressive supervisors supporting him and some moderates, such as D10 Supervisor-elect Malia Cohen (whom Chiu endorsed), D8’s Scott Wiener, and/or Chu (who might be persuaded to help elect the city’s first Chinese American mayor).

That would be a delicate dance, although it’s as likely as any of the other foreseeable scenarios.

Chiu wins holiday bake-off “most artistic” category

Mary Magee
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1

The 4th annual Board of Supervisors holiday treat throw down at City Hall today featured elegant trophies, celebrity judges and fierce competition. The desserts were judged in three categories: Most Tasty, Most Festive and Most Artistic. And the judges seemed to be enjoying themselves as they sampled the goodies and decided on the awards, as the rest of us waited hungrily, dessert forks in hand

Sup. Eric Mar’s legislative aide Cassandra Costello won—and lost—the “Most Tasty” category, after the judges (who city insiders say were playing by hardcore Top Chef rules) deemed her apple tart “most tasty” but too late to qualify.

Sup. Bevan Dufty’s former legislative aide Boe Hayward won the “Most Festive” category for his Giants inspired cake. It didn’t hurt that his super cute 51/2 week-old baby Eloise was on hand to help accept the award.

But when it came to the most artistic category, Board President David Chiu’s “Mud Wrestling on the Board” narrowly beat out Sup. Carmen Chu’s legislative aide Katy Tang’s “Board of Chess-Off”. (Oops: as readers will notice if they read the comments on this post, Katy Tang’s entry was actually titled “Board of Chess-Eff,” a subtle play on the Board of SF. Sorry for the error, KT, and thanks for your fabulous bake art.)

Chiu’s mud wrestling confection featured 11 snow people. Each snow person had a numbered clue attached to help cake eaters identify which supervisor they were supposedly eating.  The clues were as follows: 1 Happy Meals. 2 Swans. 3 Gavel. 4 Her Dog Birdie. 5 Plastic Bags. 6 F-Bomb. 7 Throwing the Microphone. 8 Sidney. 9 Progressive Fists in the Air. 10 Stylishly Dressed. 11 Budget Chair. (Scroll down to find answers to Chiu’s quizz).

Chiu’s entry also came with a print out of what the Board President says is his favorite President Roosevelt quote: “The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”  A clue, perhaps, as to how Chiu is feeling about his often-embattled position on the Board.

But while Tang’s Chess-Eff didn’t win the “most artistic award,” it was a classic illustration of what Chiu described as “the three-dimensional game of chess” being played around the choice of the next mayor. Featuring marshmallows for interim mayors and/or mayoral candidates, the Board of Chess-Eff came with a warning that the dessert wasn’t actually edible. No kidding. Don’t know about you, but the never-ending speculation about the mayor is giving me major indigestion.

Answers to Chiu’s Mud Wrestling quiz: 1 Eric Mar. 2 Michela Alioto-Pier. 3 David Chiu. 4 Carmen Chu. 5 Ross Mirkarimi. 6 Chris Daly. 7 Sean Elsbernd. 8 Bevan Dufty. 9 David Campos. 10 Sophie Maxwell. 11 John Avalos. (The answers correspond to the numeric district that each supervisor represents. And while this looks a tad too obvious, Chiu said that until he organized it this way, no one could figure out which supervisor he was talking about.)

A funny thing happened on the way to the airport

Mary Magee
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4
A funny thing happened on the way to the airport

After Steve Kawa, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff, started making noises about local hire’s impact on folks who work at San Francisco Airport, since technically it’s in Millbrae, I asked Sup. John Avalos, the legislation’s chief sponsor, to clarify this point.

“Project labor agreements trump this legislation,” Avalos said.

Avalos’ straightforward answer, coming on the heels of Kawa’s grumblings, Sparks claims about the program’s costs, and the striking absence of any analysis of the economic benefits of local hire (especially compared to the recent hooplah around the Americas Cup) made me wonder about the connection between the airport , Human Rights Commission director Theresa Sparks and the Mayor’s Office, since criticism of Avalos’ local hire legislation mainly seems to be coming from these three sources, these days.

Local hire, Steve Kawa, and the Americas Cup

Mary Magee
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Unemployed workers and community advocates hoping to secure Mayor Gavin Newsom’s support for Sup. John Avalos’ groundbreaking local hire legislation rallied at City Hall December 14 to meet with Newsom’s chief of staff Steve Kawa. But Newsom and Kawa were said to be in intense negotiations over the Americas Cup bid. So, James Richards, founder of Aboriginal Blacks United, waited until Kawa could see him, along with Florence Kong of the Bayview-based Kwan Wo Ironworkers. Joshua Arce of the Brightline Defense Project, and a group of local residents.

“‘Living in the city is so expensive,” Kong observed. “It’s not fair that a lot of local work is being done by workers from outside the city.”

Kawa finally emerged and shepherded folks out of the Mayor’s Office and into a meeting room close to the supervisors’ office. He was uncomfortable with having media at the meeting. But Richards said the group was OK with a reporter. And then he asked Kawa if Newsom would sign Avalos’ local hire law later that day.

“This is a very complex piece of legislation, and if it does become law, that’s when the work begins,” Kawa said, noting that Newsom will have ten days to review it, after its Dec. 14 reading. “Some folks are still concerned about it, partly on the trades union side,” Kawa added.

But Richards pressed his point. “After the Board acts today, we want to talk to the mayor,” Richards said. “We don’t want to wait around another ten days. We want him to assure us.”

But Kawa refused to give assurances. “At the end of the day, 42,000 San Francisco don’t have a job,” Kawa said, claiming the best local jobs program was Jobs Now, under Newsom.  “But the federal government is refusing to extend that program, and now we can’t hire anybody at City Hall and we have to get this economy growing,” he said.

When Joshua Arce of Brightline expressed concern that folks had met privately with Newsom to exert pressure against Avalos’ legislation, Kawa replied that Newsom had concerns that some folks could lose their jobs around San Francisco airport, because, technically, it’s in San Mateo.

“And are we sure this legislation will be successful?” Kawa continued. “The worst thing a government can do is over promise and under deliver. Our question is, you tell me how it will not fail. Because, yes, we want to have local hire, but don’t mislead anybody by saying, we pass this legislation, she gets a job. Our issue is making sure that we are not misleading anyone. Those are the concerns that people have. Will it be successful, as written? Because we can’t mislead your members, James.”

“Tell the mayor, we are here,” Richards said.
And then Kawa was shaking his hand and heading back to the Mayor’s Office, presumably to talk about cups and America.

“It’s a good thing, we are here today,” Richards said to the workers who remained sitting in the meeting room long after Kawa was gone. Many of them were young, black and male–and in search of a job. “Give a round of applause for your own self,” Richards continued. “It’s a good thing to let them know you come down here to take care of your own business.Because don’t nobody…”

He paused and the ABU members in the room immediately picked up the “don’t nobody give a damn” refrain, their voices ringing as one.

“Some times when we push too hard, when we get what we want, he get on a roll and tell all the reasons why he not going to sign. ‘I want to do this, but…” Richard added.

And then Richards turned to the issue of local hire at UC Mission Bay.“They gotta know today that we are hot on their trail,” he said. “Let them go tell that. Let Steve go tell that. Then they know we are fighting that.”

An hour later, when the Board gave Avalos’ legislation a veto-proof majority, Richards, Kong and the rest of the group burst into applause.
“It’s been quite a road to get here,” Avalos said.

“This is the most substantive policy San Francisco has passed in a generation,” Julian Davis observed, as local hire supporters rejoiced by the Tree of Hope, outside the Board’s Chambers.

Inside the Chambers, the Board was voting unanimously to support the city’s Americas Cup bid.

“To win a sailing race, every member of the crew has to work together,” Board President David Chiu said.  And his words could equally have applied to Avalos and the community’s effort to navigate treacherous political seas, get local hire legislation passed and, hopefully, lift everyone’s boat, in the process.

Hiring at home

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Hiring at home

sarah@sfbg.com

The lame duck Board of Supervisors made history Dec. 7 when it voted 8-3 to approve mandatory local hire legislation for city-funded construction projects. The measure ends a decade-long effort to reach 50 percent local hiring goals through good-faith efforts.

“That’s a sea change in our local hiring discussion,” said Sup. John Avalos, who launched the legislation in October as part of the LOCAL-SF (Local Opportunities for Communities and Labor) campaign, which seeks to strengthen local hiring, address high unemployment rates, and boost the local economy.

The veto-proof passage of Avalos’ measure comes in the wake of a city-commissioned study indicating that San Francisco has failed to meet good-faith local hiring goals for public works projects even as unemployment levels rise in the local construction industry and several local neighborhoods face concentrated poverty.

Although Cleveland also has a local-hire law, the Avalos measure will be the strongest in the nation. Avalos’ legislative aide Raquel Redondiez told the Guardian that Cleveland’s 2003 legislation requires 20 percent local hire.

“This legislation doesn’t just have a mandated 50 percent goal,” Avalos explained, noting that San Francisco will require that each trade achieve a mandated rate and that 50 percent of apprentices be residents.

“This will ensure that our tax dollars get recycled back into the local economy, and that San Franciscans who are ready to work are provided the opportunity to do so,” Avalos said.

Avalos’ groundbreaking legislation phases in mandatory requirements that a portion of San Francisco public works jobs go to city residents and includes additional targets for hiring disadvantaged workers.

 

WHO GETS $25 BILLION?

The legislation replaces the city’s First Source program, under which contractors were required only to make good faith efforts to hire 50 percent local residents on publicly-funded projects. But the measure begins slowly by mandating levels some contractors are already reaching. According to a study commissioned by the city’s Office of Employment and Workforce Development and released in October, 20 percent of work hours on publicly-funded construction projects are going to San Francisco residents.

Avalos’ legislation, which is supported by a broad coalition of labor and community groups including PODER, the Filipino Community Center, Southeast Jobs Coalition, Kwan Wo Ironworks Inc., Rubecon, and Chinese for Affirmative Action, comes at a critical moment for the recession-battered construction industry.

Under the city’s capital plan, more than $25 billion will be spent on public works and other construction projects in the next decade — and two-thirds of this money will be spent over the next five years.

The measure has environmental benefits too. Transportation still accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions generated in the Bay Area than any other source, and San Francisco residents are more likely to take transit, walk, or bike to work than residents of other Bay Area counties. “When local citizens are able to work locally, there are fewer cars on the road and less air pollution,” Avalos said.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi said that Avalos’ legislation is “just a start.”

“People have talked a good game about local hiring,” observed Mirkarimi, whose district includes the high unemployment-affected Western Addition.

“We are going to have to go beyond construction and start thinking about delving into the private sector,” Mirkarimi continued, pointing to the need to build 100,000 housing units over the next 25 years if the city is to keep up with a projected population increase. “Who is going to build that housing?” he asked.

Sup. Eric Mar noted that “the Sierra Club endorsed the measure early on because of the environmental benefits of having people work close to where they live.”

Sup. David Campos, whose district includes the Mission, said the measure was one of the most significant pieces of legislation to emerge from the board in recent years. “In the past, a lot of obstacles got in the way, including some legal challenges,” said Campos, who credited Avalos for navigating a complicated legal structure. “At the end of the day, I think this is going to benefit everyone.”

Mike Theriault, secretary-treasurer for the San Francisco Building Trades Council, told the Guardian he remains opposed to the legislation because the union presers to allocate jobs based on seniority, not residency. But he said the amendments make the measure “less harmful and more survivable in the short-term.”

 

THE ECONOMIC GAP

Termed-out Sup. Sophie Maxwell, who represents the city’s economically distressed southeast sector, has often noted that the construction industry provides a path to the middle class for people without advanced degrees or facing barriers to employment. She thanked Avalos for pushing legislation that promises to provides opportunities for “growing the middle class instead of importing it.”

“This industry closes the economic gap,” she said.

Board President David Chiu and termed-out Sups. Chris Daly and Bevan Dufty also supported Avalos legislation. But Dufty, who is running in the 2011 mayoral race, cast the eighth vote, which gave the measure a veto-proof majority.

The board’s Dec. 7 vote came a few hours after Bayview-based Aboriginal Blacks United founder James Richards and a score of unemployed local residents rallied at City Hall in the hopes of securing Dufty’s vote.

ABU has recently been protesting at UCSF’s Mission Bay hospital buildings site on 16th and Third streets. Its members also triggered a shut down at the Sunset Reservoir last month after a court ruled that locals promised jobs installing solar panels at the plant be replaced by higher-skilled engineers,

“It’s been too long that we have been protesting and fighting this good faith effort,” Richards told the Guardian. “We need a mandatory policy.”

Dufty is also hoping the Avalos measure could spread to other cities and benefit workers nationwide. “At a certain point I looked at labor and said, ‘Yes, I’m going for this legislation. But not just for San Francisco — you want to take this concept to other cities,’ ” Dufty said, as he made good on his promise to Richards to vote to support Avalos’ law.

Dufty seemed hopeful that Mayor Gavin Newsom would get behind the legislation. “But I respect that there may be a little bit of coming together between now and the second reading.”

Newsom spokesman Tony Winniker told the Guardian that the mayor has 10 days to review Avalos’ legislation after its Dec. 14 second reading. “He supports stronger local hire requirements but does want to review the many amendments that were added before deciding,” Winnicker said.

But will Newsom, who is scheduled to be sworn in as California’s next lieutenant governor Jan. 3, issue a veto on or before Christmas Eve on legislation that has been amended to address the stated concerns of the building trades?

That would be ironic since the amended legislation appears to match recommendations that the Mayor’s Taskforce on African American Outmigration published in 2009. The California Department of Finance projected that San Francisco’s black population would continue to decline from 6.5 percent (according to 2005 census data) to 4.6 percent of the city’s total population by 2050 — in part because of a lack of good jobs.

 

WILL NEWSOM VETO?

Avalos originally proposed to start at 30 percent and reach 50 percent over three years. But after the building trades complained that these levels were unworkable, Avalos amended the legislation to require an initial mandatory participation level of 20 percent of all project work-hours within each trade performed by local residents, with no less than 10 percent of all project work-hours within each trade to be performed by disadvantaged workers.

He also amended his legislation to require that this mandatory level be increased annually over seven years in 5 percent increments up to 50 percent, with no less than 25 percent within each trade to be performed by disadvantaged workers in the legislation’s sixth year.

A Dec. 1 report from city economist Ted Egan estimated that the local hire legislation would create 350 jobs and cost the city $9 million annually. But Egan clarified for the Guardian that this cost equals only 1 percent of the city’s spending on public works in any given year.

Vincent Pan of Chinese Affirmative Action, which supports Avalos’ local hiring policy, suggested that the mayor “check the temperature.”

“It would be leadership on the part of the mayor not to veto legislation that’s about San Francisco,” Pan said.

And Mindy Kener, an organizing member of the Southeast Jobs Coalition breathed a deep sigh of relief when Dufty’s vote made the law veto-proof. “It’s gonna go across the country,” Kener said. “We just made history.”

Local hiring — and purchasing

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Local hiring — and purchasing

EDITORIAL The local hire ordinance that the Board of Supervisors approved last week once again puts the city on the cutting edge of progressive policy. San Francisco’s law, sponsored by Sup. John Avalos, is the strongest in the country, and ultimately will mandate that 50 percent of all the people hired on public works projects live in the city.

The politics of the bill were tricky; the local building trades unions opposed it on the grounds that many of their members live out of town and that hiring decisions should be based on seniority, not on residence. But eight supervisors recognized that a local hire law not only benefits the large numbers of unemployed San Franciscans; it’s also good economic policy for the city.

Numerous studies have shown that money paid out to local residents gets spent in town, and circulates in town, and creates more economic activity. That translates into fewer social and economic costs for the city and increased tax revenue.

There are costs to the law. Someone has to monitor compliance, and that requires additional city spending. Training local workers for union jobs may raise the price of some projects. But in the end, the studies all show that keeping money in the community is worth the price.

Avalos deserves tremendous credit for negotiating with labor and other interested parties, accepting compromises that don’t damage the impact of the measure and lining up eight votes to pass it, so even if Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoes it, the board can override the veto.

Now the board ought to apply the same principle to a local purchase law.

One of the major complaints small businesses have in San Francisco is their inability to get city contracts. The qualifying process is complicated and expensive — and when big out of town corporations with plenty of resources to put together bids can also offer lower prices, locals get left out.

The city spends vast sums of money, hundreds of millions of dollars a year, buying goods and services. Every dollar that leaves town translates into far more than a dollar lost to the local economy.

In fact, a 2007 study by Civic Economics showed that 38 percent of the money spent on locally based retailers in Phoenix, Ariz., remained in town and recirculated in the local economy; only 11 percent of the money spent at chain stores stayed in town.

That’s a huge difference, and would translate into many millions of dollars for the San Francisco economy. (Over time, the impact of local hire and local purchasing laws would be much greater than the one-time burst of income expected from the America’s Cup race.)

There are complications with any local purchase law. Not everything the city needs can be bought locally. Nobody in San Francisco, for example, makes train cars or fire engines. But on everything from office supplies and cars to uniforms and consulting contracts, there are (or could be) local companies handling the city’s business.

As with the Avalos law, there would be costs. Some small local suppliers would be unable to match the price that big chains offer. But the overall economic benefits to the city would greatly exceed those price differentials.

San Francisco currently gives a modest preference in bidding to local firms. But if the supervisors applied the Avalos principle and mandated that, within five years, a certain percentage of everything the city buys would have to go to local firms, city officials would be forced to do what they ought to do anyway: look local first.

Every year during the holiday season, the mayor and business leaders urge residents to shop locally. When the new Board of Supervisors takes over in January, the members should start looking beyond rhetoric and start working on legislation that would keep the city’s money in the city.

EDITORIAL: Local hiring, and purchasing

Zelda Bronstein
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Tomorrow’s Guardian editorial:

The local hire ordinance that the Board of Supervisors approved last week once again puts the city on the cutting edge of progressive policy. San Francisco’s law, sponsored by Sup. John Avalos, is the strongest in the country, and ultimately will mandate that 50 percent of all the people hired on public works projects live in the city.

The politics of the bill were tricky; the local building trades unions opposed it on the grounds that many of their members live out of town and that hiring decisions should be based on seniority, not on residence. But eight supervisors recognized that a local hire law not only benefits the large numbers of unemployed San Franciscans; it’s also good economic policy for the city.

Numerous studies have shown that money paid out to local residents gets spent in town, and circulates in town, and creates more economic activity. That translates into fewer social and economic costs for the city and increased tax revenue.

There are costs to the law. Someone has to monitor compliance, and that requires additional city spending. Training local workers for union jobs may raise the price of some projects. But in the end, the studies all show that keeping money in the community is worth the price.

Avalos deserves tremendous credit for negotiating with labor and other interested parties, accepting compromises that don’t damage the impact of the measure and lining up eight votes to pass it, so even if Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoes it, the board can override the veto.

Now the board ought to apply the same principle to a local purchase law.

One of the major complaints small businesses have in San Francisco is their inability to get city contracts. The qualifying process is complicated and expensive — and when big out of town corporations with plenty of resources to put together bids can also offer lower prices, locals get left out.

The city spends vast sums of money, hundreds of millions of dollars a year, buying goods and services. Every dollar that leaves town translates into far more than a dollar lost to the local economy.

In fact, a 2007 study by Civic Economics showed that 38 percent of the money spent on locally based retailers in Phoenix, Ariz., remained in town and recirculated in the local economy; only 11 percent of the money spent at chain stores stayed in town.

That’s a huge difference, and would translate into many millions of dollars for the San Francisco economy. (Over time, the impact of local hire and local purchasing laws would be much greater than the one-time burst of income expected from the America’s Cup race.)

There are complications with any local purchase law. Not everything the city needs can be bought locally. Nobody in San Francisco, for example, makes train cars or fire engines. But on everything from office supplies and cars to uniforms and consulting contracts, there are (or could be) local companies handling the city’s business.

As with the Avalos law, there would be costs. Some small local suppliers would be unable to match the price that big chains offer. But the overall economic benefits to the city would greatly exceed those price differentials.

San Francisco currently gives a modest preference in bidding to local firms. But if the supervisors applied the Avalos principle and mandated that, within five years, a certain percentage of everything the city buys would have to go to local firms, city officials would be forced to do what they ought to do anyway: look local first.

Every year during the holiday season, the mayor and business leaders urge residents to shop locally. When the new Board of Supervisors takes over in January, the members should start looking beyond rhetoric and start working on legislation that would keep the city’s money in the city.

The true cost of local hire

Mary Magee
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The true cost of local hire

Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andy Ross are claiming it will cost $2.2 million annually to carry out Sup. John Avalos’ newly approved legislation that mandates local hire rates on city-funded construction projects,

And Human Rights Commission director Theresa Sparks is claiming it will actually cost $3 million to run the program.

Neither Sparks nor Matier and Ross are talking about the savings the program will create in terms of the need for less law enforcement, if more local residents are hired. Nor do they mention the economic benefit of tax payer dollars being funneled into the local economy, if more San Francisco residents are hired on city-funded construction projects.

As a result, their conversation sounds like an attack on local hire legislation that Sparks says she supports.

“Matier & Ross are about a million dollars off,” Sparks told the Guardian in a voice mail message three days after I first called asking if it was true that HRC was pissed that the Office of Economic and Workforce Development was being charged with monitoring Avalos’ newly approved program.

‘We tried to get them to leave it with us,” Sparks said, noting that HRC already has contract compliance officers overseeing every city contract.

“This will cost $2-3 million more, and it’s unnecessary,” Sparks continued, noting that during her (ultimately unsuccessful) D6 campaign she talked about “inefficiency in government” and here was yet another example of that very same wasteful phenomenon.

‘Rather than approve a project, the agency that creates a program wants to hire its own people and create a whole new infrastructure, “ Sparks said. “We tried to participate in the local hire ordinance, but we were excluded from all the meetings.”

Sup. John Avalos’ legislative aide Raquel Redondiez disagrees that Sparks was omitted from the discussion. And Redondiez has the emails to prove it.

In an Oct. 21 email sent to Redevelopment director Fred Blackwell, Rhonda Simmons in the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and Sparks at HRC, six weeks before Avalos’ legislation passed on its first reading, Redondiez wrote that Avalos would like to meet with Blackwell, Simmons and Sparks.

“Supervisor Avalos would like to meet with your offices to learn about how current contracts are now tracked for local hiring, lbe [local business enterprises], and union hours,” Redondiez wrote. “As we move forward with the local hiring legislation, we would like to have a deeper understanding of the current tracking practices and possibilities.Please let us know when we can meet in the next 10 days.”

Redondiez email thread shows she got a reply from Guillermo Rodriguez in the Mayor’s Office the same day. But there was no reply from Sparks. Blackwell and Simmons attended local hire hearings at City Hall in November and December. This reporter does not remember Sparks at those hearings, but community advocates say they saw her outside at least one hearing, in November.

So, does this add up to HRC being deliberately excluded from the discussion about how best to monitor local hire, or something entirely different?

Community and worker advocates, who support the legislation, say they tried to reach out to Sparks, but got mixed messages. They say Sparks said she was supportive of the legislation, but that they were left with the impression that HRC wasn’t interested in monitoring the program.

Michael Theriault, Secretary-Treasurer of the Building Trades, which opposes Avalos’ legislation because it believes the measure will pit workers who live here against workers who don’t, didn’t sound like he was advocating to put HRC in charge of monitoring compliance with the mandatory local hire ordinance.
“There is a sense that HRC is about small business advocacy,” Theriault said.

Sparks hasn’t returned my latest call, but I’ll be sure to post her comments here. So stay tuned as we follow the latest twist in the local hire debate. And don’tforget to tune in to tomorrow’s Board meeting (Dec. 14, 2 p.m. at City Hall), when the local hire legislation has its second reading.

The mayoral roulette

Zelda Bronstein
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The mayoral roulette

At the San Francisco Tomorrow holiday party Dec. 8th, David Chiu, Dennis Herrera, John Rizzo, Jake McGoldrick and a host of others who I’ve seen at these events for at least the past few years were doing their usual schmoozing — when Ross Mirkarimi, a former SFT board member, showed up with …. Art Agnos. I haven’t seen the former mayor at an SFT event since … I don’t know. Since a long long time ago.


Agnos made a short speech and talked about all of the rising stars in the San Francisco progressive movement — Mirkarimi, Chiu, Rizzo, David Campos, Eric Mar, John Avalos … and it was all very nice and low key. But there was a message in his appearance, in his connection with Mirkarimi, and even in the overall tone of his remarks, which amounts to this:


If the supervisors have trouble finding a progressive who can get six votes — and if they want an old hand, someone who has been through a brutal recession as mayor of San Francisco and dealt with awful budgets and nasty politics, someone who will serve for a year and then walk away — Agnos is open to being asked.


Well, maybe a little more than open to being asked. I wouldn’t say he’s actively, publicly campaiging for the job, but he has met with most of the supervisors, and dropped them all a 13-page memo listing all of his accomplishments, and his supporters (maybe his emissaries) are making the rounds and making the case for Agnos. Which amounts to this:


None of the progressives now more-or-less openly in the mix (Campos, Chiu, Mirkarimi, even Aaron Peskin) can realistically take on all the sacred cows (esp. police and fire), make a bunch of other cuts, and push for all sorts of revenue increases — and at the same time try to run for re-election in November (when the tax hikes would be on the ballot). The only way to do “what needs to be done” is to put in a progressive caretaker who can then take the political heat for the tough decisions — and help set up a campaign for another progressive in November.


I’m not sure I entirely agree — the right person, with the right leadership and agenda, could set up a five-year plan for fiscal stability, launch year one immediately and tell the public that he/she needs a full term to finish the job. But it’s true that it will be tough — and it’s also true that none of the obvious alternatives have ever run citywide.


If Tom Ammiano were interested, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Tom has run citywide numerous times (for School Board, pre-district elections supervisor and mayor), has been elected by half the city (to the Assembly), and has the credibility to deal with the budget crisis and still win in November. But he’s not, and we have to respect that.


Right now, the progressives can’t seem to unite on a candidate. None of the current board members has six votes today. And Campos, Chiu, Mirkarimi and everyone else in the game knows full well how hard it will be to win in November, particularly against State Sen. Leland Yee, who will be a formidable candidate, and possibly City Attorney Dennis Herrera (who has won citywide), State Sen. Mark Leno (who is popular all over town) and others.


So if a couple rounds pass and there’s no winner, the “progressive caretaker” concept will be in play. It’s possible Mirkarimi would give up his seat two years early and take that job; it’s likely Peskin would agree to serve one year and then step down. But it’s also possible that neither scenario works out — at which point Sheriff Mike Hennessey and Agnos will be in play.


(I hear through the grapevine that Willie Brown is nosing around, too — and let’s remember that he became Assembly speaker by cutting a deal with the Republicans.)


Hennessey’s got a strong progressive record, but has never had to deal with anything remotely as awful as what the next mayor will face. So Agnos backers will make the case that their guy has the experience and gravitas to pull it off.


Given all of that, let me say a couple of things about Agnos, since I was around and watching City Hall when he was mayor (and some of the people who will be voting on this weren’t.)


Art’s a mixture. He was a great progressive member of the state Assembly. When he ran for mayor, we backed him strongly; he seemed to be the great progressive hope. Then his long list of wonderful promises ran into the buzz saw of a deep recession — and made things much worse with his arrogant, imperious style. His first major act in office was to sign a set of contracts that gave away the store to PG&E. He never lifted a finger for public power. And it quickly became clear that he wasn’t a fan of open government or public process. We were all supposed to “Trust in Art” and shut up if we didn’t like it.


That’s why — despite what was at the time and is in retrospect a pretty darn progressive record, a lot of solid accomplishments and absolutly no hint of corruption or scandal — the progressives just weren’t all that excited about his re-election. So he lost to Frank Jordan, who was way worse.


The thing is, Agnos these days is a lot more mellow. He’s 72, knows he’s not going anywhere else in politics, and has essentially admitted to me that he made a lot of mistakes, and his arrogance and closed-door attitude were top on the list. A reformed Agnos — willing to serve with a degree of humility and an acceptance that progressive politics in this town demands inclusiveness, and that even though he’s a former mayor, he’s not by definition the most important person in any room he walks into — would present an interesting option.


Of course, we still don’t know exactly where he would be on the issues, since, like Chiu, he hasn’t even publicly called himself a candidate for the job. I still think anyone who is a serious contender ought to be willing to appear before the supervisors and answer questions.


We all know where to start: What’s your plan for raising a quarter billion dollars in new revenue in 2011?    

Class of 2010: Malia Cohen

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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4
Class of 2010: Malia Cohen

sarah@sfbg.com

It took two weeks and 19 updates of San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting system before Malia Cohen, a former Mayor Gavin Newsom staffer and partner in a firm that helps businesses and nonprofits create public policy, was declared the winner of the hotly contested race to represent District 10, which includes Bayview, Hunters Point and Ingleside. The nail-biting time lag was a byproduct of complex calculations that involved 22 candidates, no clear front-runners, and a slew of absentee and provisional ballots.

But when the RCV dust settled, the results proved that the D10 vote continues to break down along class, race, and gender lines. These RCV patterns personally benefited Cohen’s success in picking up second- and third-place votes.

But they also helped D10’s African American community, now smaller than its growing Asian community but still larger that the black community in any other distinct in the city, send an African American supervisor back to City Hall. And it avoided a run-off between Lynette Sweet and Tony Kelly, who won most first-place votes.

Some chalk up Cohen’s victory to her polished appearance, the middle-of-the road positions she took on the campaign trail, and an impressive list of endorsements that include the San Francisco Democratic Party, the Labor Council, the Building and Construction Trades Council, state Sen. Leland Yee (D-SF), Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Fiona Ma (D-SF), Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, SF Democratic Party Chair Aaron Peskin, and BART Board President James Fang.

But Cohen told us she thinks coalition building was the key. “Endorsements only account for a quarter of the reasons why you win,” she said. “It’s all about building an organization, a net that goes deep and wide.”

Some progressives were alarmed by a Dec. 1 fundraiser to help settle Cohen’s campaign debt whose guest list included Newsom, former Mayor Willie Brown, Sup. Sean Elsbernd, Ma, Building Owners and Managers Association director Ken Cleaveland, Kevin Westlye of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and Janan New of San Francisco Apartment Association.

Cohen dismissed concerns over this conservative showing of après-campaign support. “Fear not,” she said. “It is a fundraiser event. And now that I’m a newly elected supervisor, I look forward to meeting everyone. And I will do a great job representing everyone.

So what should we expect from Cohen, who ran as a fourth-generation “daughter of the district from a labor family” on a platform of health, safety, and employment — and will soon represent the diverse southeast sector, which has the highest unemployment, crime, recidivism, foreclosure and African American out-migration rates citywide and is ground zero for Lennar Corp.’s plan to build thousands of condos at Candlestick and the shipyard?

“I’m a bridge-builder,” said Cohen, who attributes her surprisingly tough but open-minded edge to being the oldest of five sisters.

So far, she’s not going out on a progressive limb. She told us she favors a caretaker mayor: “I’d like someone to maintain the business of the city, someone who has zero political ambition,” she said. “That way it creates an even playing field for the mayoral race.”

Cohen says she is determined to address quality of life concerns, including filling potholes, re-striping crosswalks and introducing traffic calming measures, and taking on critical criminal justice issues, including City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s gang injunction in the Sunnydale public housing project in Visitacion Valley. She opposes Herrera’s strategy but notes: “If not gang injunctions, then what? I can’t dispute that they get short-term results, but what about the long-term impacts? We need long-term solutions.”

Cohen supports Sup. John Avalos’ efforts to pass mandatory local hire legislation but is open to “creative solutions” to help get it over the finishing line. “People who live here should be working here,” Cohen said. “But is 50 percent the magic mandatory hire number? I don’t know.”

Cohen, who just survived a foreclosure attempt, has promised to be a “fierce advocate” for constituents facing similar challenges, including those who met predatory loan brokers at church.

But asked how she would cut spending or raise revenue to address the city’s massive budget deficit, she had no specific answer.

Yet Cohen disagrees with detractors who say she lacks experience. “I may look cute, but don’t be misled. I have a public policy background and fire in my belly. I’m a union candidate, I’m smart, I’m talented, and above all, I love the people in D10 and the rest of San Francisco. I want everyone to prosper and receive benefits. So give me a shot.”

Dufty was Avalos’ eighth vote on local hire

Mary Magee
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History was made at City Hall on December 7, when the Board voted 8-3 to approve local hire legislation for city-funded construction projects.
“This is the strongest local hiring measure in the nation, “ said Sup. John Avalos, the legislation’s chief sponsor. “It doesn’t just have a mandated 50 percent goal. It has a ‘by trade’ mandate. It requires 50 percent of apprentices to be residents. More than anything we are moving away from a good faith policy. That’s a sea change in our local hiring discussion.”
Sup. Sophie Maxwell thanked Avalos “for taking up the mantle” and pushing construction industry legislation that will provide opportunities for ”growing the middle class instead of importing it.”
“This industry closes the economic gap,” Maxwell said,
Board President David Chiu, Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Chris Daly, Bevan Dufty, Eric Mar, Sophie Maxwell and Ross Mirkarimi voted for the legislation. But Dufty was the eighth vote that gave the measure a veto-proof majority. His vote came after he met ABU (Aboriginal Blacks United) leader James Richards and other advocates of unemployed residents. They see the legislation as a way to invest local tax dollars in local communities, reduce crime and poverty, and lessen pollution by reducing workers’ commutes.


“It’s been too long that we have been protesting and fighting this good faith effort,” Richards said.” We need a mandatory policy.”
ABU member Troy, 47, who was born and raised in the Bayview, and has two sons, said he had been unemployed for six months.
“If we don’t work, nobody works, that’s ABU’s motto,” Troy said. ‘We can’t have nobody come from Marin, taking our jobs and pushing us back onto the streets, selling drugs. We gotta put the merry back into Christmas.”



“A lot of moving parts had to come together for this legislation to be successful,” Dufty told the Board, a couple of hours after he met ABU’s Richards. “This is very reminiscent of Healthy San Francisco, which was one of the most monumental changes in the city.”
Dufty said he believes that, much like Healthy San Francisco, local hire legislation is bigger than just San Francisco. “At a certain point, I looked at labor and said, yes, I’m going for this legislation, but not just for San Francisco,” Dufty said. “You want to take this concept to other cities.”


Dufty  was hopeful that Mayor Gavin Newsom will get behind the legislation, before its Dec.14 second reading.
“But I respect that there may be a little bit of coming together between now and the second reading,” he said.
Newsom spokesperson Tony Winniker told reporters that the mayor plans to review the amended legislation and consult with impacted contractors and unions before deciding whether to veto the legislation.
A December 1 report from city economist Ted Egan estimated that the local hire legislation will create 350 jobs and cost the city $9 million annually, or 1 percent of whatever it spends on public works. (San Francisco is set to spend an estimated $27 billion on capital projects over the next decade.)
Vincent Pan of Chinese Affirmative Action, which supports Avalos’ local hiring policy, suggested that the mayor “check the temperature.”
“It would be leadership on the part of the mayor not to veto legislation that’s about San Francisco,” Pan said.

Supervisors punt mayoral decision back a week

Sasha Cuttler
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Supervisors punt mayoral decision back a week

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today voted to delay until Dec. 14 the process of choosing a mayor to succeed departing Mayor Gavin Newsom after taking about 40 minutes worth of public testimony, most of it calling on supervisors to act quickly to choose a public-spirited mayor to deal with a variety of neglected issues.
After Assembly member Tom Ammiano announced earlier today that he would not accept the board’s nomination to become mayor, it seemed unlikely that anyone could get the required six votes. But Sup. Chris Daly, who led the campaign to recruite Ammiano, argued for beginning the process today as agendized.
“While the Board of Supervisors is not prepared today to appoint someone as successor mayor of San Francisco, we shouldn’t truncate the conversation,” Daly argued, reiterating his call last week for a mayor who is experienced, compassionate, and willing to work cooperatively with the board.
But Sup. Sophie Maxwell didn’t want to have that conversation, making the motion to continue the item for one week, a motion seconded by Sup. Bevan Dufty. Neither offered reasons or arguments for the action.
Yet Daly noted that the board has an approved process for selecting a new mayor and “it might be a good idea to try it out and see how it works,” even if six votes aren’t there yet to approve a nominee. “I’m prepared to make a nomination.”
He addressed calls for delaying the mayoral succession decision by noting that Oakland Mayor-elect Jean Quan and Governor-elect Jerry Brown have both put together transition teams to prepare for taking power at the same time that Newsom will resign as mayor to become lieutenant governor.
“Typically, a mayor would have had about a month to put together a transition team,” Daly said, also noting, “We are now borrowing time against the next administration of San Francisco.”
Sups. David Campos and Eric Mar also spoke in support of this board making the mayoral succession decision “sooner rather than later,” as Campos put it. “We do have a very tough budget year we will be facing and many challenges in front of us,” he said. Campos said he was open to the delay, but he said “it would be a mistake” not to begin dealing with the decision in earnest next week.
Mar said he was open to the delay because he was interested to read the “Values-based Platform for the next Mayor” that a coalition of labor and progressive groups called San Francisco for All distributed at the meeting. The four-page document called for a mayor to value accessibility, consensus-building, making appointments who are accountable to the community, more equitable budget priorities, and transparency.
The motion to delay was approved on a 9-2 vote, with Daly in Sup. John Avalos in dissent.

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