John Avalos

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

It was not what you’d call a banner day in the big leagues. On May 12, the progressives — who celebrated sweeping victories in last fall’s election — lost three significant battles, leaving me more than a little nervous about the upcoming epic fight over Mayor Newsom’s 2009-10 budget.

In separate votes, with different members going the wrong way each time, the Board of Supervisors sided with Newsom on a private deal to build a solar-power project in the Sunset District, then approved his Muni service cuts and fare hikes.

And while the final Muni vote was going on at City Hall, the School Board was meeting nearby and voting to restore a military recruiting program to the public high schools.

This is not what any of us had in mind during last fall’s campaigns.

The vote to approve the Recurrent Energy project came early in the day and left me shaking my head. The idea was fine — build solar panels on the Sunset Reservoir — but the contract the mayor’s Public Utilities Commission put forth was full of serious problems. For starters, nobody was ever able to explain why the city never looked seriously at a way to build the project itself instead of giving the land to a private, for-profit company that will charge very high rates for the power. It was the kind of deal you’d expect the fiscal conservatives to wince at, but no: Sean Elsbernd was all in favor.

That left Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos to raise the questions about this use of public resources and public money. The problems should have been hammered out in committee, and the deal amended before it ever came to the board. But to my surprise, John Avalos voted with Carmen Chu to pass it out of Budget and Finance.

Then, again to my surprise, Eric Mar broke with the progressive bloc and sided with the Newsom camp to approve the thing.

I wasn’t thrilled with the outcome, but you can’t win ’em all — and I figured that at least the Muni fare hikes were going down. After all, Board President David Chiu had done an outstanding job of challenging Muni on its assumptions and its spending on plans, and was leading the charge to reject the budget. Six other supervisors signed on to his move.

Then the backroom talks started — right in the middle of the board meeting. The Mayor’s Office offered a few tidbits, but insisted that the fare hikes and service cuts had to be passed or the entire city budget would be out of whack. And to my surprise, in the end, Chiu blinked. He voted to table his own resolution, effectively approving the Muni plan.

What was missing in all of this, I think, was visible progressive leadership. Chiu has done some good things, but he’s still very new — and in this case, he didn’t stand up to the mayor. I think that’s partially experience, learning how Newsom plays the game and realizing that you can’t let him threaten you or push you around, that compromise is fine and open communications are great, but that in the end, the supervisors have to call their own shots.

And there’s nobody else on this board stepping into that role right now.

The progressive majority on the board is fractious, but that’s always going to be the case. The reason there’s no left-wing "machine" in San Francisco, and never will be, is that people on the left are always too independent and too unwilling to be herded. There’s still room, though — and now, a desperate need — for leadership, for someone who can be the majority whip and make sure the six votes are there when we need them.

If the progressives can’t stick together on Newsom’s budget, it’s going to be a long, and painful, year.

I wish Mark Sanchez had decided to stay on the School Board instead of running for supervisor. He would have been re-elected, and either Jill Wynns or Rachel Norton would have lost, and this whole JROTC fiasco would never have happened.

There are plenty of problems in the schools, plenty of issues for the board to work on, and with the deep budget problems, it’s going to be important for the members to work together. The decision by Wynns and Norton to dredge up a done issue and drag it back before the board was needless and wrong.

I’m way against JROTC in the schools, but even some of the people who ended up supporting it — like board member Norman Yee — never wanted to see it back before the board again. Now we’re going to be fighting over this for months to come. There may be litigation, and it didn’t need to happen.

Now any hope of finding an alternative leadership program that doesn’t involve the military is gone for at least the next two years, and we’re stuck with the Army as part of our high school curriculum.

Not a banner day, folks. Not a banner day. *

Avalos seeks greater transit justice

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Round three of the battle between Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board over the Municipal Transportation Agency’s budget saw Sup. John Avalos, throw a powerful one-two punch at the Mayor’s Office, with the backing of Board President David Chiu and Sups. David Campos, Chris Daly, Eric Mar, Sophie Maxwell and Ross Mirkarimi.

Last week, as Avalos observed, the Board did not have the votes needed to reject the MTA budget, but today
they had enough to delay decisions on the MTA budget until at least next week: a special meeting was set for noon, May 27, to discuss the details in an alternative, transit-first budget that Avalos is calling the “Transit Justice Package.”

Under Avalos’ proposal, the MTA 2009-10 budget would roll-back proposed fare increases for seniors, youth and lifeline uers, restore bus lines to public housing, while increasing parking fees in the city’s downtown core on Sundays and evenings, and eliminating public subsidies in city parking garages.

“Given our grave economic crisis , we owe it to seniors, youth and other low-income MUNI riders to come up with a better budget that ensures MUNI accessibility and accountability, “ Avalos said, while his progressive colleagues noted that transit advocates are concerned that the under the budget that Newsom has been pushing, MUNI riders would pay four times more than drivers of private vehicles.

And then Avalos ntroduced a charter amendment to reform the MTA Board composition. Currently, the mayor appoints all seven members of the MTA Board and all the supervisors can do is confirm or reject these nominations.

Avalos’s charter amendment, which will be on the November ballot, proposes to split these appointments, so that the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors each get to nominate three commissioners, and the seventh is elected by the voters of San Francisco.

“The new MTA Board composition will create greater checks and balances and also ensure that the MTA director is not solely accountable to one person, but a Board that is more representative of the City and County of San Francisco,” Avalos said.

Big afternoon at City Hall

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By Steven T. Jones

A series of progressive groups will take to the steps of City Hall this afternoon for rallies supporting Sup. Chris Daly’s renters’ economic relief legislation, laying out the budget priorities of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, and opposing the damage to Muni that would be inflicted by the Municipal Transportation Agency’s budget.

San Francisco Tenants Union sponsors a noon rally that precedes the 1 p.m. Land Use Committee hearing on Daly’s legislation, which would expand renters’ rights to add roommates, suspend rent increases that would exceed 33 percent of a tenant’s income, and limit rent increases that have been banked over several years.

At 2 p.m., Coleman Advocates launches a preemptive strike on the June 1 release of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget, calling for City Hall to be mindful of the needs of low-income families that are being forced from the city.

And then at 3 p.m., the Transit Justice coalition will make a last ditch effort to save Muni from service cuts and fare hikes. Although the Board of Supervisors last week approved a negotiated deal to approve the MTA budget, progressive supervisors on the Budget and Finance Committee revived it the next day and it returns to the full board tomorrow.

While Sups. David Campos, John Avalos, Eric Mar, Ross Mirkarimi, and Daly – who oppose the MTA budget deal – need two more votes to be successful, they’ll highlight how Muni fares will have doubled to $2 under Newsom and they’ll push for drivers to share more of the Muni riders’ pain and a decrease in the $63 million in payouts to our departments.

John Ross takes no prisoners

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By Tim Redmond

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Ross tell the supes how it is. Photo by Luke Thomas

It wouldn’t have been John Ross Day in San Francisco if they didn’t have to call the cops.

And, indeed, a few minutes after Ross – the poet, journalist, activist, author and Bay Guardian correspondent – was honored at the Board of Supervisors, with a proclamation sponsored by Sup. John Avalos, his companeros and campaneras recessed to a conference room down the hall to await refreshments, and since it was 4:20, and the windows of the room were open, well …. The smell of fresh herbal medicine wafted out the door and down the hall, and pretty soon you could smell it in front of the supervisors chamber, and before long a couple of sheriff’s deputies came by and – politely, respectfully – informed us all that smoking – “of any kind” – was forbidden in City Hall.

And for a moment, I shuddered, because whenever the cops are around and John is around, there always seems to be trouble.

But remarkably enough, everyone on all sides kept cool, and the deputies walked away, and John made it through an entire afternoon and evening at City Hall without getting arrested.

That’s a far cry from the old days.

Typically, when people are honored by the supervisors, they thank the board, praise the wonders of this city and politely and meekly receive their award. Not John Ross.

The half-blind, half deaf rabble rouser made a short statement in which he managed to insult city government, denounce the entire process of giving out awards and demand that the board reject the Muni fare hike. Then he read a poem denouncing the “motherfuckers” who are driving poor people out of the Mission.

It was a great moment in San Francisco history. Supervisors Chris Daly, David Campos, Avalos and Ross Mirkarimi seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely; some of their colleagues, as Daly later told me, were squirming.

But that’s why we love John Ross, an uncontrollable shit disturber who is utterly and sometimes insanely fearless, who is pure of heart and devoted so deeply to the cause of social justice that he can’t put it aside, even for a minute.

Here’s his statement, in entirety.

Saving the southeast

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sarah@sfbg.com

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This map of all foreclosures in San Francisco shows a heavy concentration in the southern part of the city, home to many low-income communities of color.

When Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sup. Sophie Maxwell convened a task force in July 2007 to figure out why African Americans are leaving San Francisco and how to reverse this trend, the subprime loan market crisis was about to send a shock wave of home foreclosures sweeping through southeast San Francisco.

Hope SF, the promised rebuild of the city’s public housing projects, is underway at a cost of $95 million. The city’s certificates of preference program, giving housing priority to black residents displaced by redevelopment, has been expanded and extended. But little has been done to address the immediate problem.

Instead political leaders have focused on a plan to subsidize Lennar Corp.’s construction of thousands of new condos in the southeast section of the city — the heart of the San Francisco’s remaining African American community — and have done nothing to promote a plan that could convert hundreds of foreclosed homes into affordable for-sale or rental units there, right here, right now.

African American Out Migration Task Force (AAOMTF) members recall warning that the crisis would likely hit San Francisco’s already dwindling black population extra hard. And Sup. John Avalos, who was running for election in District 11, remembers seeing impacts in the Excelsior District as early as 2007.

"I was telling people in early 2007 that this was a problem in District 11, and even real estate people didn’t believe me," recalled Avalos, who is exploring legislation to hold banks accountable and spoke at an ACORN protest in support of Excelsior homeowner Genaro Paed, a Filipino native who just staved off eviction orders pending the outcome of his lawsuit against Washington Mutual concerning what Paed describes as "a predatory loan" secured in 2006.

Avalos also planned to introduce legislation on May 12 that would expand protection of renters, including those in foreclosed homes who are now being evicted by banks.

This isn’t the first time city leaders have studied the African American exodus or ways to prevent low-income and minority households from being preyed upon or displaced. Indeed, this task force’s initial findings, (released last summer after Lennar spent millions to persuade voters to support building 10,000 condos in the city’s southeast) suggests San Francisco’s entire black community is at risk unless proactive and immediate steps are taken.

According to U.S. Census data, the city’s African American population shrank to 6.6 percent of the city’s total population by 2005 (a 40 percent decline since 1990) and will likely slip to 4.6 percent by 2050, according to the California Department of Finance. And these findings were made before the foreclosure crisis heated up.

In 2008 Maxwell and other elected officials convened a Fair Lending Working Group (FLWG) to figure out how to respond to the wave of foreclosures. By year’s end, there were 667 home foreclosures in San Francisco, almost all in the city’s southeast sector.

These numbers sound small compared to Contra Costa County or Oakland, where thousands of foreclosures occurred. And they aren’t big enough to qualify for the first round of President Barack Obama’s National Stabilization Program grants, which were released earlier this year. Based on a census-driven formula, the grants sent $8 million to Oakland and no money to San Francisco.

But with half the city’s foreclosures in the Bayview, home to most of the city’s remaining African Americans, the fact that little has been done to save these homes — or to follow early recommendations to do so — is a gentrification crisis in the making.

Ed Donaldson, housing counseling director at the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation in the Bayview District, served on the FLWG and remembers suggesting a two-tier track. First, take steps to protect renters in places that have been foreclosed and second, buy as many foreclosed properties as possible with the aim of reselling or leasing them as affordable units. While the FLWG liked the renter protection angle, it did not support the foreclosure acquisition program.

"The idea fell on deaf ears," recalls Donaldson, who was disappointed his foreclosure purchase plan didn’t make it onto FLWG’s recent recommendation list. FLWG members include financial institutions such as Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, and Patelco Credit Union; community-based organizations such as Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, SFHDC, Mission Economic Development Agency; and city agencies. The agency also has received staff support from Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, the Mayor’s Office of Housing, Treasurer Jose Cisneros and the Office of the Legislative Analyst.

"We’d already seen the spike in foreclosure numbers, so how did these recommendations get pushed out? We need something with teeth," Donaldson said.

SFHDC executive director Regina Davis says she suggested a foreclosure purchase and resale plan as an AAOMTF member and was concerned when she noticed that her recommendation was not included on the list discussed at the April 23 meeting. Billed as a closing-out session, that meeting took place at the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and was attended by Davis, chair Aileen Hernandez, Redevelopment director Fred Blackwell, the Rev. Amos Brown, Barbara Cohen of the African American Action Network, Tinisch Hollins of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and former supervisor and assessor Doris Ward, among others. The AAOMTF is finishing up its work this week.

"I got involved because I believed that in exchange for participation, we would see things done and/or funded. Part of what we want to see are real action items that keep African Americans in San Francisco or bring them back. So we really want this issue to move forward with substance," Davis told the Guardian.

Recognizing that San Francisco is facing massive budget constraints, SFHDC is proposing to borrow $1.5 million from Clearinghouse CDFI, a Los Angeles community development financial agency, to acquire and rehabilitate these foreclosed properties.

Davis’ group would then turn it around and offer residents several options: buy (if the prospective buyer qualifies for the city’s $150,000 downpayment assistance and a $50,000 loan from the California Housing Financing Agency); lease (in which SFHDC sells the home to the buyer but leases the land, making the price affordable), lease-to-own. Or, Davis adds, people could rent the units at affordable rates.

But to make the plan work, SFHDC need the banks to sell the properties AT below market rates. Noting that foreclosed properties are still selling in the Bayview for $400,000, Davis says her nonprofit intends to purchase 100 to 200 homes during a 24-month period at less than $200,000 mark.

Yet Davis remains optimistic about the plan’s chances as SFHDC negotiates with major banks for a 50 percent discount, noting that there is a monthly average of 50 foreclosures in the Bayview-Hunter’s Point, and SFHDC has access to 100 qualified buyers.

Blackwell said the Redevelopment Agency hasn’t developed an initiative or a funding pool to respond to the foreclosures in the city’s southeast sector. But, he said, the agency is looking at ways to apply for National Stabilization Program funds even though "federal guidelines mostly don’t apply well in expensive markets like San Francisco.

"We are engaged in advocacy so San Francisco can take advantage of any federal stabilization funds, but we don’t have an agency-specific proposal," he continued.

"Frankly, I think community-based organizations are the best to do programs like that, especially since there is so much anxiety about the Redevelopment Agency and property acquisition in the southeast," Blackwell added.

He believes that given the city’s current budgetary constraints, the AAOMTF "will likely look for leadership from the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors in cases where members have made recommendations and there is an opportunity to bring in public money."

Blackwell feels the city is still getting its mind around its foreclosure problem. "We’ve been spared the wholesale neighborhood-by-neighborhood devastation that places like Antioch faced," Blackwell said. "So, there wasn’t the same sense of urgency. And there’s a need to look more closely at the data. A lot of the information is based on anecdotes."

Yet the feds seem willing to help if city officials take the initiative. Larry Bush, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s regional office, says San Francisco and Oakland could file a joint foreclosure plan application.

"If they can identify 100 homes, they’d be eligible for $5 million," Bush said, noting one snag that could unravel the plan locally. "Foreclosed properties must be vacant for at least six months. And as you know, in San Francisco, foreclosed homes still sell."

Maxwell says the city could do more to confront predatory lenders and enforce tenant rights, as well as developing a plan to buy foreclosed properties. "But in San Francisco it’s an issue because of relatively high prices," she told us.

Yet the city’s high prices are the very problem pushing out low-income residents. African American home ownership actually increased after 1990, even as out-migration among black renters increased. But now, if the foreclosures stand, that exodus will likely accelerate.

Asked if she supports SFHDC’s current foreclosure plan, Maxwell said, "It makes sense to me. If that could be done, it would be optimal."

Myrna Melgar of the Mayor’s Office of Housing says she’s not sure that a foreclosure resale plan would work in San Francisco for folks who bought a couple of years ago, when house prices hit $700,000, only to see house prices fall to around $400,000.

"San Francisco is a very different universe from Detroit," Melgar said. "Properties don’t sit around empty and vacant. They are bought by speculators who are betting that in two or three years, their values will go up. So if we had money to buy these properties, which we don’t, we’d be in competition with the speculators, who have lots of money with no strings attached, and who drive the prices up."

Another difference, Melgar said, is that San Francisco banks are holding onto 50 percent of their foreclosed properties, whereas Antioch banks are only holding onto 22 percent. "We’d like to keep folks in the homes," Melgar said. "But it’s a policy issue related to the reality that we have such limited funds."

Board restores some Muni service, but Newsom gets his fare hike

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By Steven T. Jones

After hours of negotiations between the Mayor’s Office (mostly via its representative, Sup. Carmen Chu) and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, President David Chiu reconvened his colleagues this evening to announce that he had cut a deal on his challenge to Muni’s budget: “I’m happy to say we’ve made good headway.”

Chiu asked MTA chief Nat Ford to announce the terms: the agency would trim $10.3 million from the budget (a $2.8 million reduction in the $66 million it is giving to other city departments, $6.5 million in salary and operations savings and other nips and tucks, and $1 million in increased parking revenue after a 90-day study of extending meter hours) and restore $8.6 million in proposed Muni service cuts, immediately complete MOU negotiations with the SFPD to finally explain why the MTA is giving them millions of dollars every year, and delay by six months increases in what seniors, youth and the disabled will pay for Fast Passes.

Everyone thanked Chiu for taking the lead on challenging the MTA budget and negotiating a settlement to this conflict with Mayor Gavin Newsom, then all the progressive supervisors criticized the package as a bad deal that unduly punishes Muni riders and lets Newsom get away with raiding what is supposed to be an independent agency. “I have to say I’m utterly disappointed with where we are right now,” said Sup. David Campos, the first to react to the freshly inked deal.

The board voted 6-5 to drop its challenge of MTA’s budget, allowing fares to increase to $2 and services to be reduced, with Sups. Campos, Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, John Avalos, and Eric Mar in dissent.

Seeming stung by the criticism of his colleagues, Chiu seemed to lay blame where it belonged when he said, “On Friday, the mayor and I had a conversation about this budget and it was made clear to me that there wouldn’t be any movement….We needed to work this out so we could move forward on the myriad issues before us.”

Loitering outside clubs banned

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Text by Sarah Phelan

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Asking for change outside local nightclubs could end up costing you $100 or a stint in the county jail, thanks to a newly enacted loitering ban that’s aimed at making clubbing safer but threatens First Amendment rights.

Google the phrase “we met outside the club” and you’ll get all sorts of interesting hits, mostly involving luscious bands, lascivious strippers and a crazy story titled “Getting laid Brazilian style.”

But meeting band members, picking up strippers and getting laid San Francisco style by people you met outside clubs here just got potentially harder, thanks to loitering legislation that the Board of Supervisors passed yesterday, in an effort to make clubbing safer. And then there are the usual questions about how this legislation impinges on people’s First Amendment rights and how it will most likely end up netting a bunch of homeless folks rather than hardened criminals.

“The areas outside nightclubs have become the site of robberies, assaults, stabbings and shootings” states the loitering ban that the Board passed in a 9-2 vote, with Sups. Chris Daly and John Avalos dissenting.

Recurrent Energy project passed on 7-4 vote

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By Rebecca Bowe

The Board of Supervisors voted 7 to 4 this afternoon to approve a 25-year power purchase agreement with Recurrent Energy, a private firm that plans to construct a 5-megawatt photovoltaic array at the Sunset Reservoir. Supervisors John Avalos, David Campos, Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi voted against the agreement, voicing concerns that the city would be locked into a bad financial deal for years to come and asserting that the city could strike a better deal with Recurrent. Part of the problem, Mirkarimi noted, is that the city would be locked into paying a fixed price for solar energy even if the going rate drops significantly in coming years.

The Guardian has weighed in on the project at several junctures. While everyone at the table believes that the end goal is laudable – adding 5 megawatts of clean energy to the city’s renewable portfolio – Supervisors Mirkarimi and Campos have expressed opposition to contract terms that they say would ultimately sell San Francisco ratepayers short. At a joint meeting between LAFCo and the SFPUC on April 24, Mirkarimi also worried that the Recurrent Energy project could undercut the efforts of San Francisco’s fledgling Community Choice Aggregation initiative.

The power purchase agreement was originally put forth by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Supervisor Carmen Chu. Chu advocated strongly for it during today’s meeting, saying she believed it was a good deal and noting that it would create 71 jobs.

Daly weighed in heavily against it, calling the deal a politicized “rush job.” The result, in his opinion, is that “we get electricity that is green, but it is too expensive to give anyone else the opportunity to do it too. … Going green doesn’t mean going green stupid. If it seems like gymnastics for a deal, there is a better way.”

The solar project heads for a vote

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By Tim Redmond

Lots of talk about the Sunset reservoir Solar proposal over the weekend; the Chron weighed in with a fairly weak story that just did the he-says-she-says without getting into any of the real issues. And Julian Davis has a pretty detailed analysis here, at Fog City Journal.

The simple point is that the contract the supes are about to sign off on isn’t a great deal for the city. We’re going to be paying a lot of money to a private company to do something the city ought to be able to do itself.

I had conversations last week with a number of supervisors, and it’s looking like some of the progressives — John Avalos and Eric Mar, for example — are leaning toward supporting the project. Mar told me he’s been listening to the Sierra Club, which is often a good thing to do when it comes to alternative energy, but in this case I think the traditional enviros are so thrilled that there’s actual a viable solar project on the horizon that they’re not spending enough time on the details.

In fact, I spoke with John Rizzo, the Sierra Club’s point person on the project, and he told me that “The Sierra Club doesn’t care about the details of the contract. We’re not contract experts. We just want to see this happen.”

He agreed that it’s infuriating that so much of the federal alternative-energy money is going to the private sector, and said he’d support legislation that would give public agencies access to the same sort of money private companies get in tax breaks. “But global warming isn’t waiting,” he said. “Let’s build this one with this kind of a deal, and try the have the city build the next one.”

I with Rizzo in spirt, but the truth is, we’re going to regret this deal.

The only reason it makes sense to pay Recurrent Energy to do this is that Recurrent gets a $12 million tax break, and the city, as a public agency, doesn’t qualify for that money.

Let me make a humble suggestion. Rep. Nancy Pelosi is, I believe, still the speaker of the House. She’s managed to get San Francisco something like a billion dollars for the Chinatown subway. I’m willing to bet a case of Bud Light (and I don’t make bets that valuable easily) that if the mayor of San Francisco called Rep. Pelosi and told her that the difference between building a five-megawatt solar project and not building it was $12 million in federal money — so little in terms of federal spending that it’s what Mirkarimi calls “decimal dust” — San Francisco would have a promise of that cash so fast that Newsom couldn’t even find a shovel to break ground before the check arrived.

And the thing that frustrates me is that nobody’s even trying.

The supes ought to send this deal back to committee and take a real look at ways the city can do the same project, and own it, for less money. I refuse to believe that’s not possible.

And if Gavin Newsom wants to say he can’t make this work, then he’s going to have a hell of a time convincing any of us that he has the ability to run the State of California.

Public access TV faces the axe

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By TIm Redmond

San Francisco stands to lose the vast majority of its public-access cable programming June 30th unless Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is able to convince his colleagues to try to force Comcast, the local cable operator, to keep paying the tab.

Comcast for years has paid enough money through its francise agreement with the city to fund the San Francisco Community Television Corporation, a nonprofit, at a level of roughly $700,000 a year. That pays for the studios on Market Street and a staff to manage 134 local programs that show on channels 29 and 76. It’s a wonderful mix of stuff, put together for what amounts to a bargain price in decidedly low-overhead studios, and demonstrates exactly what the notion of public-access TV is all about.

But in 2006, the state Legislature took the authority to regulate cable franchises away from cities — and that left San Francisco unable to continue demanding the payment for public access. Mirkarimi has figured out a way around it, and he has the support of state Sen. Mark Leno, who argues that the state legislation never intended to prevent cities from mandating public-access fees.

The technical glitch is language that seems to imply that the city can force Comcast to pay for facilities, but not for operating costs. Since the city’s pretty broke right now, it’s going to be hard to get $700,000 in General Fund money to pay the CTC staff. In fact, CTC applied to renew its contract, but the city said it was only going to be able to pay some $100,000 a year going forward.

But frankly, without a staff to operate the access channels, the whole enterprise will die.

Mirkarimi’s bill would hit Comcast with a new fee — and based on a letter he’s received from Leno, he thinks it will fly legally. But the cable company says it will simply pass that on to customers (who frankly don’t have a lot of choice in the market). The Chronicle’s Marisa Lagos put it this way:

A city report estimates that consumers, who currently shell out $6.24 per year, could end up paying 352 percent more, or $28.20 per year

That sounds like a whopping fee hike — 352 percent more! — but in reality, we’re talking about all of $21.96 a YEAR, or $1.83 a month. Which is pretty minimal.

At the Budget Committee, Mirkarimi and Sup. John Avalos voted to send the bill to the full board, which takes it up tomorrow, May 5th. Saving public access TV isn’t as important as saving public health, but it’s a part of San Francisco, and it’s a way for diverse and creative voices to get on the air — and it would cost the taxpayers nothing and cable subscribers pennies. This one needs community support.

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

Gray Davis was a pretty poor governor. He ran as a moderate who could manage the state, but utterly failed to deal with the energy crisis of 2000-01, leaving rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity bills as his legacy. He cost the state billions. He presided over a legislative budget stalemate. He was a captive of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. He gave the Democratic Party a bad name.

And for all that, nothing he did was close to what his replacement, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the Republicans in Sacramento are doing today.

Under Gov. Davis, California reduced the size of public school classes, mandating that K-4 teachers have no more than 20 students. That has made a huge difference in the classrooms, and the results show it. But it’s going to be almost impossible for most school districts to stick to that target now, because the schools are getting huge budget cuts.

So are all the other state services, and aid to counties, which means more layoffs and cuts at the local level. And still, the state is $8 billion more in the hole.

Democrats in the Legislature have tried everything they could think of. They negotiated with the Republicans, who have a veto over the budget because of the crazy two-thirds rule. They came up with a plan that fit what Schwarzenegger had been asking for, and he still refused to accept it. And now the Democratic leadership is forced to try to sell a series of state propositions that nobody likes, that will put California in worst financial straights, and that will have as bad a long-term impact on the state as Proposition 13.

Propositions 1A-1F are a terrible deal, the result of GOP blackmail and extortion — and they won’t even solve the problem. This governor is going to leave the state in the worse shape it’s been since the Great Depression. Almost makes you long for the days of Gray Davis.

In 1967, at the height of the antiwar movement, when American cities were in political chaos, a young tenant organizer named John Ross ran for San Francisco supervisor as a radical out of the Mission advocating rent control and an end to U.S. involvement in Vietnam, among other things. But one of his opponents discovered that Ross was a convicted felon who served two years and six months in federal prison for refusing the draft, so they took his name off the ballot.

Now, 42 years later, Ross — the writer, poet, unrepentant radical, and longtime Guardian correspondent, may be getting some recognition from the city. Sup. John Avalos is going to introduce a resolution honoring Ross for his extensive literary and political contributions to San Francisco. The May 12 ceremony, at 3:30 in the Board of Supervisors chambers, will be followed by "poems under the dome" — a poetry reading at City Hall at 5:30. If you want to help out (or donate money — please) contact Diamond Dave Whitaker at 240-0286 or Avalos’ office at 554-6975. *

Send the solar project back to committee

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By Tim Redmond

We’re all in favor of buidling a solar-energy generating station on the Sunset reservoir. But the plan that’s coming before the Board of Supervisors today is deeply flawed. At best, it ought to be amended to ensure that the city winds up with the power plant after seven years at an affordable rate; at worst, it ought to be scrapped and the city should start over again, with the idea that this is and ought to be a public-power project, built and run by the city.

“I don’t understand how we can keep talking about public power while we give these resources over to private businesses,” Sup. David Campos told me. He’s right.

He and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi are trying to slow this thing down. Sup. John Avalos voted for it in the Budget Committee, but told me he’d consider sending it back for more discussion. I hope he does that; this thing isn’t ready for approval at this point, and the progressives on the board ought to stick together and make sure it’s a better contract.

Otherwise we’ll wind up with a private company controlling local energy resources, and Gavin Newsom trumpeting it as his latest environmental triumph.

Sunset solar project moves forward

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By Tim Redmond

The Examiner claims the Sunset Reservoir solar project has run into problems, but actually, the supervisors Budget Committee sent it forward to the full board yesterday on a 2-1 vote. That means the board will vote on it this Tuesday.

I’ve got problems with the project — I’m not sure it’s a good idea to sign a long-term contract with a private company to do something the city ought to be able to do itself. And I have a suspicion that 15 years from now we’ll look back at this as a bad deal.

At the very least, the city ought to take the position that it intends to exercise its right to buy the plant in seven years. But it’s going to be harder to amend language like that into the contract at the full board.

Interestingly, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who sits on the Budget Committee, has been opposed to the current deal and wants it amended; he asked the chair, Sup. John Avalos, to continue the item, since Mirkarimi, whose son was born Tuesday, was a bit distracted this week. Avalos got Sup. David Campos, who is also a critic of the project, to take Mirkarimi’s seat for the hearing.

But when the vote came down, Avalos voted to send the matter forward without a recommendation. “The room was full of people who had come to speak on this, and I didn’t want to send them away thinking we’d just continued it,” Avalos told me. “I thought we should act on it.”

Avalos said he’s not gung-ho on the deal, but is a “soft supporter.” He promised that he would look at it again at Tuesday’s board meeting and consider resending it to commitee.

That’s what ought to happen — there are two many issues on this to just approve it without more discussion and amendments.

What’s in a Mayor’s Office merger? Pots of money it seems

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You can’t blame folks for being confused about and/or suspicious of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s attempted merger of the Mayor’s Office of Community Investment and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, or whatever they are calling themselves these days.

(When you call folks in the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, some identify themselves on their voice mail like so: “This is so-and-so with the Mayor’s Office.” I won’t name names, but you know who you are. And besides, this seems like an accurate description of where people feel OEWD stands in Newsom’s pantheon, no matter what the department is called.)

Following the Boards’ April 15 Budget committee hearing, it became clear for the first time since Newsom announced the merger in December, that the resulting shift in funding and staff is not a done deal, since it needs Board approval, per the city charter.

As a result of yesterday’s legislative revelations, the Board budget committee has convened a task force to examine Newsom’s proposal, which apparently, is part of his 2009-10 budget submission, which is due in June. The Board then has 30 days to decide, on the basis of these recommendations and its own impressions, whether to approve or disapprove of the merger.

Judging from the reactions and comments of Budget Chair Sup. John Avalos and Sups. David Campos, Carmen Chu, Bevan Dufty, Eric Mar and Ross Mirkarimi, approval seems far from automatic, with many folks worried that the merger is really about raiding the community development cookie jar in a time of ballooning deficits.

At yesterday hearing, OEWD deputy director Jennifer Entine Matz clarified that OEWD has not been part of the Mayor’s Office for years.

Green-collar heat

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› sarah@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Local residents, workers, and businesses are anxious to learn who and what will be stimulated by the billions of dollars that President Barack Obama authorized for release when he signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Since January 2008, unemployment in the Bay Area has risen from 4.9 percent to 8.4 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, and house prices and consumer spending are down.

Despite all the anxiety, representatives from local low-income community groups hope to turn Obama’s stimulus package into an opportunity to make local government accountable for creating decent green-collar jobs. And Sups. Eric Mar, John Avalos, Sophie Maxwell, and Board President David Chiu seem happy to help further the community in this environmentally friendly cause.

Mar scheduled a March 23 hearing of the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee "to obtain community input on the creation of jobs, particularly green-collar jobs, in San Francisco as the city positions itself for federal investment dollars."

"The hearing was the first step toward building a grassroots coalition to hold government accountable," continued Mar, who worries that the Mayor’s Office is not sharing enough information related to the stimulus package. "Labor and community groups, not just department heads and City Hall, should be at the table."

At the hearing, representatives from the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development said that a substantial part of the first wave of stimulus package dollars has already been allocated, mostly to shovel-ready projects such as the Doyle Drive rebuild and massive development projects at Treasure Island and the Hunter’s Point Shipyard.

OEWD representatives also indicated that more waves of formula funding are expected, for which San Francisco must compete with other cities, and that the city’s Department of Technology is constructing a Web site to track all local money from Obama’s $787 billion package.

OEWD deputy director Jennifer Entine Matz says community-based organizations, unions, and community colleges need to work together to ensure that people are successfully brought through any work program. "In many cases, green collar jobs are existing jobs," Matz said. "If we are successful in training people with green power technology, they will be more marketable here and beyond. We can also train and modify people in existing programs."

But representatives from the Chinese Progressive Association, PODER (People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights), and POWER (People Organizing to Win Employment Rights) expressed their belief that stimulus package funds should go to help low-income communities, not rich corporations.

"Let’s make sure we stimulate quality to make sure we stimulate the economy," said PODER’s Oscar Grande, who warned against using the funds on low-paid jobs with few advancement opportunities. He and others suggested tracking what communities receive funding. "We want to go past the green hype, the green-washing, and the green lifestyle marketing," Grande said.

Raquel Pinderhughes, an urban studies professor at San Francisco State University who helped Berkeley’s Green Business Council and Oakland’s Green Jobs Corp program, defined green-collar jobs as "blue collar jobs in green businesses.

"Green collar jobs can function to get more people out of poverty," Pinderhughes said. "They can provide living wages. They have low barriers to entry. They provide an opportunity for occupational mobility. They are inherently dignified, and they have a shortage of entry-level workers, so there is room for people."

But Pinderhughes warned that cities must link improving environmental quality to social justice to avoid creating temporary jobs and preserve industrially zoned lands for green-collar jobs. She also said that cities must fund case management services "so folks don’t quickly drop out."

The Land Use Committee has scheduled an April 6 continuation to address a plethora of outstanding issues like how much money is going to specific corporations and departments, the division of funds between public transportation and freeway projects, and how much Lennar Corp. is getting for its Hunters Point Shipyard/Candlestick Point redevelopment project.

Saving SF’s human services

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EDITORIAL San Francisco stands to get more than $50 million in federal stimulus money designed to prevent cuts to health and human services. That could be a huge help to the city’s efforts to close a half-billion dollar budget gap. And the Department of Public Health is counting on its $27 million share to prevent layoffs and program closures.

But the city’s Human Services Agency, which ought to be able to spend some $25 million in federal money to keep alive programs for the homeless and the needy, is refusing to include that revenue as part of its budget for next year. That’s a terrible mistake that will literally cost lives.

The money comes under the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage program, known as FMAP. When President Obama announced that the additional funding would be available to cities and states Feb. 23, he specifically stated that the cash should prevent a loss of services: "This plan will also help ensure that you don’t need to make cuts to essential services Americans rely on now more than ever," he told the nation’s governors at a press event.

Somehow, though, Mayor Gavin Newsom doesn’t see it that way. The Newsom administration seems to believe that since the money is a one-time grant, it shouldn’t be used to pay salaries and keep ongoing operations afloat. That has infuriated critics, like Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Budget Committee. "I’d like to see us use the money to prevent cuts to human services," he told the Guardian. "I think maybe the Newsom people want to make cuts and eliminate service programs anyway, and this doesn’t fit their plan."

We’re talking about employment services, homeless supportive housing, the Tenderloin drop-in scenter, job training for homeless people, and more essential services. Obviously, the city is facing a spike in unemployment and homelessness — the last thing that makes financial or policy sense is to cut the programs that unemployed and homeless people rely on.

We understand the problems with one-time federal grants. Money like that is typically put toward one-time uses — setting up a new program that will have to find its own funding later, or building something, or funding a temporary position. Use one-year grants for regular operating expenses and you run into trouble when the money is gone.

But this is an emergency situation, and the money that Washington is handing out is designed specifically to prevent cuts to health and human services. The stimulus money is supposed to be spent, now — and saving jobs, programs, and lives by preventing further budget cuts is exactly the sort of thing Obama intended when he made the money available.

But this is the best Newsom’s press flak, Nathan Ballard, can offer: "The mayor has not decided yet how this additional revenue will be used to solve the city’s $575 million budget shortfall," Ballard wrote us, "and he and his staff will be working with the directors of the DPH and HSA throughout the course of this decision-making process."

Mayor Newsom ought to be doing two basic things right now: Looking for every dollar that’s on the table or can be grabbed from somewhere to prevent the worst of this year’s budget cuts, and convening meetings and putting together a proposal to fix the city’s long-term revenue problems. We suggested holding a special election this spring or summer to put some new tax measures before the voters, but Newsom opposed that idea — and it’s looking less and likely to happen. But there’s no way to pass a credible budget in this city without planning for, and counting on, some significant revenue package in November.

Newsom’s still acting as if this budget crisis is nothing much to worry about. It’s time he took it seriously.

The pain of Newsom’s immigrant policies

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EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS STORY CONTAINS TWO CORRECTIONS.

By Deia de Brito

When a coalition of 30 immigrant rights organizations held a town hall meeting at Horace Mann Elementary School last week, Mayor Newsom skipped the session and sent an aide. That’s too bad-the testimony was chilling and the mayor might have learned something about the tragic consequences of his policies.

The San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee has been mobilizing since Newsom announced last July that the city would contact federal immigration authorities whenever youth suspected of being undocumented were arrested on felony charges. The key word is “arrested” – young people in this city are taken into custody and charged on thin or false evidence all the time. So an innocent person whose charges are later dropped could still face deportation.

Among those present were City Assessor Phil Ting, representatives of the San Francisco Police Department, the Immigrant Rights Commission, the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, the San Francisco Unified School District, and supervisors David Chiu, David Campos, Eric Mar, and John Avalos.

“The biggest problem was that the mayor didn’t attend,” said SFIRDC organizer and Asian Law Caucus attorney Angela Chan. “There’s been no discussion about a policy that has had such a huge impact on the immigrant community.”

And there’s no doubt, based on what we heard that day, that the impact is indeed huge – and disturbing.

“ICE came to my home and took five people, including my husband. He’s in jail and I don’t know when he’ll be home,” said a Mission District resident. Similar stories echoed across the room. Fear and uncertainty were tangible.

Russoniello and Ryan in the cross hairs

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Text by Sarah Phelan.

As the city searches for a new police chief, the Board of Supervisors is intensifying efforts to oust the US Attorney for Northern California, Joseph Russoniello, and the former US Attorney for Northern California, Kevin Ryan, who is currently Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top crime advisor, and replace them with folks more in tune with San Francisco values.

Ryan and Russoniello, who were both appointed a year ago, have come under increasing scrutiny since July, when the mayor ordered the city to report undocumented youth to federal authorities the minute these youth are arrested on suspicion of committing a felony.

Immigrant rights groups nationwide have decried Newsom’s decision as robbing youth of their right to due process. But, city insiders say Newsom is refusing to reopen the conversation, in face of a Grand Jury investigation that Russoniello convened. Russoniello has claimed that the city’s previous policy direction, which included flying Honduran youth back to their families, was tantamount to harboring and thus was a violation of federal law.

At last Tuesday’s Board meeting, Sups. David Campos, John Avalos, Chris Daly, Eric Mar, Ross Mirkarimi and Board President David Chiu introduced a resolution urging President Barack Obama and Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to appoint a new U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California.

The resolution cites five examples that “highlight Mr. Russoniello’s questionable judgment,” and states that the Board “recognizes the importance of having a U.S. Attorney that understands San Francisco’s diversity, values and commitment to equal justice, especially as s/he works closely with the City’s law enforcement agencies on public safety measures. The resolution also observes that the Board “has a duty to safeguard the well being of its residents and ensure their equal protection.”

The next night, Campos, who came from Guatemala to this country at age 14 as an undocumented immigrant, joined speakers at an immigrant rights forum that denounced recent changes in the sanctuary city ordinance, called for the ouster of Kevin Ryan and expressed disappointment that Newsom did not attend the forum.

“I understand Newsom sent a representative and I appreciate that, but for a lot of people it would have meant a lot if the mayor had attended himself,” Campos told the Guardian.

With the heat on Newsom locally and statewide—many voters in the upcoming gubernatorial race are of immigrant descent and/or have undocumented relatives here—will the mayor meet community members face to face? Or is he afraid of alienating the powerful Police Officers Association and losing vital campaign contributions?

Mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard reportedly told the Chronicle that, “the mayor supports Ryan but ‘is willing and eager to listen to feedback from the community.”

Asked if the Mayor has scheduled a meeting yet, Campos told the Guardian, “Newsom has said he wants to meet with me and members of the community, so until I hear otherwise, I will believe that is what is going to happen.”

Stay tuned.

A couple of interesting candidates

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By Tim Redmond

A couple of interesting candidates looking at runs for those even-numbered supervisorial seats in 2010.

In district two, where the progressives have never had much of a chance (Gavin Newsom, then Michela Alioto-Pier), Janet Reilly, who ran a strong race against Fiona Ma for state Assembly, told me she’s looking at the race. She’d be well financed – her husband, Clint Reilly, is one of the top campaign donors in the city and she’s proven she can raise money on her own. She’s clearly not as far to the left as John Avalos or Eric Mar, but it’s a conservative district – and she’s a smart, articulate woman with strong policy ideas who would probably vote with the progressives some of the time and would be independent of the mayor.

Then there’s district 6. I’m starting to sense that Jane Kim isn’t pushing herself out there as a candidate right now — but another activist is, and his campaign raises some interesting questions.

Paul Hogarth, managing editor of BeyondChron, an online newspaper, is planning to file a statement of intent to run sometime this spring. “Yes, the rumor is true. I’m the candidate who can get things done for the District — having worked in the community for about 9 years,” he told me by email.

I like Paul, and I like BeyondChron, which by any standard is part of the progressive community. We’ve had some disagreements, but that’s pretty common in the San Francisco left.

And he’s certainly qualified – he’s a lawyer, a former Berkeley Rent Board commissioner, and has been a tenant organizer with the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. He’s also been pretty active in the Democratic Party and has shown some solid journalistic instincts and abilities.

So I just assumed that he would take a leave of absence from Beyond Chron when he launched his campaign. I mean, it’s a brave new world, and the line between journalists and activists has been getting pretty blurry, but I’m not sure how you can be the managing editor of a political newspaper, and actively report on and write about local politicians and campaigns, when you’re actually running for office yourself.

But no – when I asked Paul about that, he told me he saw no conflict at all. I tried to reach his boss, Randy Shaw, by phone but after we played tag a little, I went to email and asked:

“Hi, Randy, sorry we didn’t connect by phone today. I hear Paul is running for D6 supe; how you going to handle that at BeyondChron? Can he possibly cover local politics while he’s running for office? Strikes me as a problem.”

Shaw’s response:

“Why?

I pursued it: “Well, one reason is that people will think he’s promoting his own interests by the way he covers candidates and issues. For example, there might be a perception that he was writing more positive things about people who endorsed him. It’s pretty basic journalistic ethics. I have immense respect for Paul, and I don’t think he’d do anything unethical, but in the media. appearance matters. I know you aren’t a traditional news outlet, but people trust and respect you in part for your independence.”

Shaw: “This recalls a past discussion I’ve had with the Guardian, where it became clear we have different views of activists as journalists.”

I don’t recall that discussion, although I’m sure it happened, since I talk about this stuff all the time. I am an activist and a journalist, and the Guardian is a newspaper that cares about and promotes causes. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with BeyondChron, which is part of Randy Shaw’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic shop, covering the city from a pro-tenant, progressive perspective. I’m glad BeyondChron is around.

But there’s a difference between writing about and promoting causes that you care about and promoting something that gives you, personally, a direct financial or career benefit. How will we know that a piece Paul Hogarth writes about a local politician isn’t tainted by the fact that he wants that person to endorse him?

Paul seems to be aware of the problem; when he wrote about Mark Leno in the state Senate primary, he was careful to run disclosures like

EDITOR’S NOTE: As a private citizen, Paul Hogarth has endorsed Mark Leno in the State Senate race. He does not play an advisory role in the campaign, nor did he coordinate with Leno’s staff in writing this article.

Fair enough. Full disclosure is good. But what’s he going to do now – stop writing about local politics? Or end all his articles with

EDITORS NOTE: Paul Hogarth is running for supervisor in District 6, but none of the commentary about any other office holder here should be construed as a possible pitch for an endorsement?

And what if one of the other candidates argues that his paid promotional platform is in fact an in-kind campaign contribution? I’m not sure I’d buy that – there’s a First Amendment issue here – but the Ethics Commission might consider it worth investigation, which would be a huge distraction to both the candidate and his online newspaper.

It’s going to be tricky. That’s all I’m saying.

The wheels come off

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› sarah@sfbg.com

Criticism of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s handling of the city’s budget crisis has intensified since the mayor refused to attend consensus-building sessions at City Hall, instead choosing to promote his gubernatorial bid and push a flawed "local economic stimulus package" that will only make the deficit larger.

The wheels began to come off Newsom’s public relations machine when news hit that Newsom refused to attend roundtables that board president David Chiu convened to discuss the city’s financial emergency. These meetings marked the first time business and labor leaders were brought together since the mayor announced the city’s $575 million deficit two months ago.

"I’ve asked the mayor to convene these meetings, but obviously that hasn’t happened," Chiu told the Guardian last week. "He has said he plans to convene them soon."

Insiders say Chiu was told that the mayor, his chief of staff, and his budget analyst will not attend the roundtables until a June special election is off the table, but that Newsom is open to considering revenue measures for a November election. As a compromise, Chiu proposed moving the election to late summer.

Mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard told the Guardian that the mayor has been holding a series of meetings with labor, business, elected officials, and community leaders on the budget, but Ballard hasn’t yet fulfilled the Guardian‘s Sunshine Ordinance request for details and documents connected to those meetings.

"Some of those meetings have included Supervisor Chiu and other supervisors," Ballard said. "However, the mayor is not scheduled to attend meetings about a summer special election to raise taxes, which he opposes."

That position places Newsom squarely with the business community, which continues to maintain that it is too early to develop revenue measures and that structural budget reforms should be considered first.

On Jan. 29, Steve Falk, executive director of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, wrote to Chiu that "Any action to call a special election without the specifics of proposed tax measures and Charter amendments would be premature and doomed to failure. City government can take steps that either help to stimulate a quick recovery or, through the wrong actions, extend the downturn by placing greater burdens on local employers."

But labor groups believe that revenue boosts are necessary if San Francisco is to weather the economic tsunami, and that it’s unreasonable to demand that their members give back millions in negotiated pay raises while forgoing revenue options. These concerns, attendees report, are publicly aired at Chiu’s roundtables, and Newsom’s refusal to participate has left city workers feeling alienated.

"He wants Labor to come to the table, but the problem is, his whole approach is all stick and no carrot, all doom and gloom and no hope that there is revenue on the horizon," SEIU Local 1021’s Robert Haaland told the Guardian.

Noting that labor anticipates 2,500 layoffs in the coming year, on top of the 400 city workers who were laid off this month, Haaland said, "Our people provide frontline services. This is about the wheels of government coming off."

Sup. Bevan Dufty, who participated in Chiu’s roundtables with Sups. John Avalos and Sean Elsbernd, praised Chiu for bringing together stakeholders, even as he extended hope that Newsom will assume the leadership role. "It always helps to have people face-to-face," Dufty said. "David primed the pump, got people to start talking. I’m looking forward to the mayor taking it to the next level."

Dufty said Newsom was "disappointed with the board’s override of his veto [of the June special election], doesn’t see a June election working, and doesn’t understand why the board is reluctant to let it go…. But from our point of view, it’s hard to ask employees to give back $90 million in negotiated benefits if they are going to be laid off in three months anyway."

Falk, who represents almost 2,000 local businesses, wrote that "The business community recognizes that a $500 million budget shortfall can only be bridged through a combination of reductions in the size of city government, program consolidations, work-rule reforms, and new fees and revenues. However, any solution must be the product of discussions with all affected parties at the table. To date, these meetings have not happened."

Chiu replied to that letter by inviting key business and labor groups to his Feb. 8 City Hall roundtable. Attendees report that a productive dialogue ensued, and two days later, when the board overturned Newsom’s veto of its special election legislation, the impacts of that first roundtable were palpable.

"I respect the mayor’s perspective, but I believe that by getting on with the election, less damage will be done," Chiu explained as the supervisors pushed ahead with their plans to hold a special election this summer.

Elsbernd opposed the election but expressed frustration with the current situation: "The city is facing a multi-year problem. People are missing the big picture here. I don’t want to be part of brokering a deal that is simply going to be a Band-Aid. Let’s fix the problems now. "

"You could tell the impact of Sean having sat in on the discussions," Dufty observed. "Instead of ‘Get over it, this is the way it’s going to be,’ he understands that we have to work together."

Falk told the Guardian that he found Chiu’s roundtable "very productive."

"Everyone is feeling the pain of this recession," Falk continued. "People are losing jobs, businesses are losing sales, which results in layoffs, which results in a bigger strain on the city’s services. It’s all connected."

But he also noted that a special election on taxes requires a two-thirds vote. "That is a very difficult hurdle," Falk noted, "which is why we have to consider all the pieces, and as we do, the more we realize that June is out of the question."

Chiu continues to reach out to his critics, countering arguments that a special election will cost $3.5 million — and will be impossible to do by summer — with the observation that, done right, it could result in $50 million to $100 million in additional revenues and thereby spare some vital jobs and programs.

"We’re facing a $565 million budget deficit, so if we can raise $100 million, we’ll still have to cut $465 million. But it would save us from making the most painful cuts," Chiu said, noting he would support pushing the election to no later than Aug. 31 "if there were more firm agreement on elements of a plan that must include structural reforms, layoffs and wage concessions, and new revenues."

But Ballard said, "The mayor doesn’t support more revenue without real reform," while promising that Newsom would shortly announce "new cost-saving reforms."

Unveiled the next morning, Feb. 11, during a mayor’s breakfast with business leaders, Newsom’s so-called local economic stimulus package included more spending on tourism marketing, targeted reduction in the payroll and property taxes, a $23 million interest-free revolving loan program for local businesses, and tax relief for Healthy San Francisco participants. The package, which must be approved by the board, would actually increase the city’s budget deficit.

Chiu says he is open to discussing most ideas in Newsom’s economic stimulus package, but that he’s concerned about widening the deficit, telling us, "That is why this needs to be done in the context of an overall revenue package and not in a vacuum."

Public safety adrift

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› sarah@sfbg.com

Shortly into his first term as mayor, Gavin Newsom told a caller on talk radio — who was threatening to start a recall campaign if the mayor didn’t solve the city’s homicide problem — that Newsom might sign his own recall petition if he didn’t succeed in reducing violent crime.

But Newsom didn’t reduce violence — indeed, it spiked during his tenure — nor did he hold himself or anyone else accountable. Guardian interviews and research show that the city doesn’t have a clear and consistent public safety strategy. Instead, politics and personal loyalty to Newsom are driving what little official debate there is about issues ranging from the high murder rate to protecting immigrants.

The dynamic has played out repeatedly in recent years, on issues that include police foot patrols, crime cameras, the Community Justice Court, policies toward cannabis clubs, gang injunctions, immigration policy, municipal identification cards, police-community relations, reform of San Francisco Police Department policies on the use of force, and the question of whether SFPD long ago needed new leadership.

Newsom’s supporters insist he is committed to criminal justice. But detractors say that Newsom’s political ambition, management style, and personal hang-ups are the key to understanding why, over and over again, he fires strong but politically threatening leaders and stands by mediocre but loyal managers. And it explains how and why a vacuum opened at the top of the city’s criminal justice system, a black hole that was promptly exploited by San Francisco-based U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, who successfully pressured Newsom to weaken city policies that protected undocumented immigrants accused of crimes.

Since appointing Heather Fong as chief of the San Francisco Police Department in 2004, Newsom has heard plenty of praise for this hardworking, morally upright administrator. But her lack of leadership skills contributed to declining morale in the ranks. So when he hired the conservative and controversial Kevin Ryan as director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice — the only U.S. Attorney fired for incompetence during the Bush administration’s politicized 2006 purge of the Department of Justice, despite Ryan’s statements of political loyalty to Bush — most folks assumed it was because Newsom had gubernatorial ambitions and wanted to look tough on crime.

Now, with Fong set to retire and a new presidential administration signaling that Russoniello’s days may be numbered, some change may be in the offing. But with immigrant communities angrily urging reform, and Newsom and Ryan resisting it, there are key battles ahead before San Francisco can move toward a coherent and compassionate public safety strategy.

SHIFTING POLICIES


The combination of Ryan, Fong, and Newsom created a schizophrenic approach to public policy, particularly when it came to immigrants. Fong supported the sanctuary city policies that barred SFPD from notifying federal authorities about interactions with undocumented immigrants, but Ryan and many cops opposed them. That led to media leaks of juvenile crime records that embarrassed Newsom and allowed Russoniello and other conservatives to force key changes to this cherished ordinance.

Russoniello had opposed the city’s sanctuary legislation from the moment it was introduced by then Mayor Dianne Feinstein in the 1980s, when he serving his first term as the U.S. Attorney for Northern California. But it wasn’t until two decades later that Russoniello succeeded in forcing Newsom to adopt a new policy direction, a move that means local police and probation officials must notify federal authorities at the time of booking adults and juveniles whom they suspect of committing felonies

Newsom’s turnabout left the immigrant community wondering if political ambition had blinded the mayor to their constitutional right to due process since his decision came on the heels of his announcement that he was running for governor. Juvenile and immigrant advocates argue that all youth have the right to defend themselves, yet they say innocent kids can now be deported without due process to countries where they don’t speak the native language and no longer have family members, making them likely to undertake potentially fatal border crossings in an effort to return to San Francisco.

Abigail Trillin of Legal Services for Children, cites the case of a 14-year-old who is in deportation proceedings after being arrested for bringing a BB gun to school. "He says he was going to play with it in the park afterwards, cops and robbers," Trillin says. "His deportation proceedings were triggered not because he was found guilty of a felony, but because he was charged with one when he was booked. He spent Christmas in a federal detention facility in Washington state. Now he’s back in San Francisco, but only temporarily. This boy’s family has other kids, they are part of our community. His father is a big, strong man, but every time he comes into our office to talk, he is in tears."

Another client almost got referred to U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) even though he was a victim of child abuse. And a recent referral involved a kid who has been here since he was nine months old. "If the mayor genuinely wants to reach out to the immigrant community, he needs to understand how this community has perceived what has happened," Trillin said. "Namely, having a policy that allows innocent youth to be turned over to ICE."

Social workers point out that deporting juveniles for selling crack, rather than diverting them into rehabilitation programs, does nothing to guarantee that they won’t return to sell drugs on the streets. And making the immigrant community afraid to speak to law enforcement and social workers allows gangs and bullies to act with impunity.

"This is bad policy," Trillin stated. "Forget about the rights issues. You are creating a sub class. These youths are getting deported, but they are coming back. And when they do, they don’t live with their families or ask for services. They are going far underground. They can’t show up at their family’s home, their schools or services, or in hospitals. So the gang becomes their family, and they probably owe the gang money."

Noting that someone who is deported may have children or siblings or parents who depend on them for support, Sup. John Avalos said, "There need to be standards. The city has the capability and knows how to work this out. I think the new policy direction was a choice that was made to try and minimize impacts to the mayor’s career."

But Matt Dorsey, spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office, told the Guardian that the Sanctuary City ordinance never did assure anyone due process. "The language actually said that protection did not apply if an individual was arrested for felony crimes," Dorsey said. "People have lost sight of the fact that the policy was adopted because of a law enforcement rationale, namely so victims of crime and those who knew what was going on at the street level wouldn’t be afraid to talk to police."

Angela Chan of the Asian Law Caucus, along with the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee, a coalition of more than 30 community groups, has sought — so far in vain — to get the city to revisit the amended policy. "The city could have reformulated its ordinance to say that we’ll notify ICE if kids are found guilty, do not qualify for immigration relief, and are repeat or violent offenders," Chan said. "That’s what we are pushing. We are not saying never refer youth. We are saying respect due process."

Asked if Newsom will attend a Feb. 25 town hall meeting that immigrant rights advocates have invited him to, so as to reopen the dialogue about this policy shift, mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard told the Guardian, "I can’t confirm that at this time."

Sitting in Newsom’s craw is the grand jury investigation that Russoniello convened last fall to investigate whether the Juvenile Probation Department violated federal law. "Ever since the City found out that the grand jury is looking into it, they brought in outside counsel and everything is in deep freeze," an insider said. "The attitude around here is, let the whole thing play out. The city is taking it seriously. But I hope it’s a lot of saber rattling [by Russoniello’s office]."

Dorsey told the Guardian that "the only reason the city knew that a grand jury had been convened was when they sent us a subpoena for our 1994 opinion on the Sanctuary City policy, a document that was actually posted online at our website. Talk about firing a shot over the bow!"

Others joke that one reason why the city hired well-connected attorney Cristina Arguedas to defend the city in the grand jury investigation was the city’s way of saying, ‘Fuck You, Russoniello!" "She is Carole Migden’s partner and was on O.J. Simpson’s dream team," an insider said. "She and Russoniello tangled over the Barry Bonds stuff. They hate each other."

Shannon Wilber, executive director of Legal Services for Children, says Russoniello’s theory seems to be that by providing any services to these people, public or private, you are somehow vioutf8g federal statutes related to harboring fugitives. "But if you were successful in making that argument, that would make child protection a crime," Wilber says, adding that her organization is happy to work with young people, but it has decided that it is not going to accept any more referrals from the Juvenile Probation Department.

"We no longer have the same agenda," Wilber said. "Our purpose in screening these kids is to see if they qualify for any relief, not to deport people or cut them off from services."

Wilber’s group now communicates with the Public Defender’s Office instead. "Between 80 and 100 kids, maybe more, have been funneled to ICE since this new policy was adopted," Wilber said. "This is creating an under class of teens, who are marginalized, in hiding and not accessing educational and health services for fear of being stopped and arrested for no good reason, other than that their skin is brown and they look Latino".

Wilber understands that the new policy direction came from the Mayor’s Office, in consultation with JPD, plus representatives from the US Attorney’s office and ICE. "They bargained with them," Wilber said. "They basically said, what are you guys going to be satisfied with, and the answer was that the city should contact them about anyone who has been charged and booked with a felony, and who is suspected of being undocumented."

She hopes "something shifts" with the new administration of President Barack Obama, and that there will be "enough pressure in the community to persuade the Mayor’s Office to at least amend, if not eliminate, the new policy," Wilber said "The cost of what the city is doing, compared to what it did, is the flashing light that everyone should be looking at."

"It costs so much more to incarcerate kids and deport them, compared to flying them home," she explained. "And we have cast a pall over the entire immigrant community. It will be difficult to undo that. Once people have been subjected to these tactics, it’s not easy to return to a situation of trust. We are sowing the seeds of revolution."

WEAKEST LINK


When Newsom tapped Republican attorney Kevin Ryan to head the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice a year ago, the idea was that this high-profile guy might bring a coherent approach to setting public safety policy, rather than lurch from issue to issue as Newsom had.

Even City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who isn’t considered close to Newsom, praised the decision in a press release: "In Kevin Ryan, Mayor Newsom has landed a stellar pick to lead the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. Kevin has been a distinguished jurist, an accomplished prosecutor, and a valued partner to my office in helping us develop protocols for civil gang injunctions. San Franciscans will be extremely well served by the talent and dedication he will bring to addressing some of the most important and difficult problems facing our city."

But the choice left most folks speechless, particularly given Ryan’s history of prosecuting local journalists and supporting federal drug raids. Why on earth had the Democratic mayor of one of the most liberal cities in the nation hired the one and only Bush loyalist who had managed to get himself fired for being incompetent instead of being disloyal like the other fired U.S. Attorneys?

The answer, from those in the know, was that Newsom was seriously flirting with the idea of running for governor and hired Ryan to beef up his criminal justice chops. "If you are going to run for governor, you’ve got to get to a bunch of law and order people," one insider told us.

Ryan proceeded to upset civil libertarians with calls to actively monitor police surveillance cameras (which can only be reviewed now if a crime is reported), medical marijuana activists with recommendations to collect detailed patient information, and immigrant communities by delaying the rollout of the municipal identity card program.

"In the long run, hopefully, dissatisfaction with Ryan will grow," Assembly Member Tom Ammiano told us last year when he was a supervisor. "He could become a liability for [Newsom], and only then will Newsom fire him, because that’s how he operates."

Others felt that Ryan’s impact was overstated and that the city continued to have a leadership vacuum on public safety issues. "What has happened to MOCJ since Ryan took over?" one insider said. "He doesn’t have much of a staff anymore. No one knows what he is doing. He does not return calls. He has no connections. He’s not performing. Everyone basically describes him with the same words – paranoid, retaliatory, and explosive – as they did during the investigation of the U.S. attorneys firing scandal."

"I’ve only met him three times since he took the job," Delagnes said. "I guess he takes his direction from the mayor. He’s supposed to be liaison between Mayor’s Office and the SFPD. When he accepted the job, I was, OK, what does that mean? He has never done anything to help or hinder us."

But it was when the sanctuary city controversy hit last fall that Ryan began to take a more active role. Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Eileen Hirst recalls that "MOCJ was essentially leaderless for five years, and Ryan was brought in to create order and revitalize the office. And the first thing that really happened was the controversy over handling undocumented immigrant detainees."

One prime example of Ryan’s incompetence was how it enabled Russoniello to wage his successful assault on the city’s cherished sanctuary ordinance last year. Internal communications obtained by the Guardian through the Sunshine Ordinance show efforts by the Newsom administration to contain the political damage from reports of undocumented immigrants who escaped from city custody.

Newsom solidly supported the Sanctuary City Ordinance during his first term, as evidenced by an April 2007 e-mail that aide Wade Crowfoot sent to probation leaders asking for written Sanctuary City protocols. But these demands may have drawn unwelcome attention.

"This is what caused the firestorm regarding undocumented persons," JPD Assistant Chief Allen Nance wrote in August 2008 as he forwarded an e-mail thread that begins with Crowfoot’s request.

"Agreed," replied probation chief William Siffermann. "The deniability on the part of one is not plausible."

Shortly after Ryan started his MOCJ gig, the Juvenile Probation Department reached out to him about a conflict with ICE. They asked if they could set up something with the U.S. Attorney’s Office but the meeting got canceled and Ryan never rescheduled it.

Six weeks passed before the city was hit with the bombshell that another San Francisco probation officer had been intercepted at Houston Airport by ICE special agents as he escorted two minors to connecting flights to Honduras. They threatened him with arrest.

"Special Agent Mark Fluitt indicated that federal law requires that we report all undocumenteds, and San Francisco Juvenile Court is vioutf8g federal law," JPD’s Carlos Gonzalez reported. "Although I was not arrested, the threat was looming throughout the interrogation."

Asked to name the biggest factors that influenced Newsom’s decision to shift policy, mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard cites a May 19 meeting in which Siffermann briefed the mayor about JPD’s handling of undocumented felons on matters related to transportation to other countries and notification of ICE.

"That morning Mayor Newsom directed Siffermann to stop the flights immediately," Ballard told the Guardian. "That same morning the mayor directed Judge Kevin Ryan to gather the facts about whether JPD’s notification practices were appropriate and legal. By noon, Judge Ryan had requested a meeting with ICE, the U.S. Attorney, and Chief Siffermann to discuss the issue. On May 21, that meeting occurred at 10:30 a.m. in Room 305 of City Hall."

Ballard claims Ryan advised the mayor that some of JPD’s court-sanctioned practices might be inconsistent with federal law and initiated the process of reviewing and changing the city’s policies in collaboration with JPD, ICE, the U.S. Attorney, and the City Attorney.

Asked how much Ryan has influenced the city’s public safety policy, Ballard replied, "He is the mayor’s key public safety adviser."

Records show Ryan advising Ballard and Ginsburg to "gird your loins in the face of an August 2008 San Francisco Chronicle article that further attacked the city’s policy. "Russoniello is quoted as saying, "This is the closest thing I have ever seen to harboring,’" Ryan warned. And that set the scene for Newsom to change his position on Sanctuary City.

PUSHED OR JUMPED?


When Fong, the city’s first female chief and one of the first Asian American women to lead a major metropolitan police force nationwide, announced her retirement in December, Police Commission President Theresa Sparks noted that she had brought "a sense of integrity to the department." Fellow commissioner David Onek described her as "a model public servant" and residents praised her outreach to the local Asian community.

Fong was appointed in 2004 in the aftermath of Fajitagate, a legal and political scandal that began in 2002 with a street fight involving three off-duty SFPD cops and two local residents, and ended several years later with one chief taking a leave of absense, another resigning, and Fong struggling to lead the department. "It’s bad news to have poor managerial skills leading any department. But when everyone in that department is waiting for you to fail, then you are in real trouble," an SFPD source said.

Gary Delagnes, executive director of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, hasn’t been afraid to criticize Fong publicly, or Newsom for standing by her as morale suffered. "Chief Fong has her own style, a very introverted, quiet, docile method of leadership. And it simply hasn’t worked for the members of the department. A high percentage [of officers] believe change should have been made a long time ago."

But Newsom refused to consider replacing Fong, even as the stand began to sour his relationship with the SFPOA, which has enthusiastically supported Newsom and the mayor’s candidates for other city offices.

"The day the music died," as Delagnes explains it, was in the wake of the SFPD’s December 2005 Videogate scandal. Fong drew heavy fire when she supported the mayor in his conflict with officer Andrew Cohen and 21 other officers who made a videotape for a police Christmas party. Newsom angrily deemed the tape racist, sexist, and homophobic at a press conference where Fong called the incident SFPD’s "darkest day."

"Heather let the mayor make her look like a fool. Who is running this department? And aren’t the department’s darkest days when cops die?" Delagnes said, sitting in SFPOA’s Sixth Street office, where photographs and plaques commemorate officers who have died in service.

Delagnes supports the proposal to give the new chief a five-year contract, which was part of a package of police reforms recommended by a recent report that Newsom commissioned but hasn’t acted on. "You don’t want to feel you are working at the whim of every politician and police commission," Delagnes said. But he doubts a charter amendment is doable this time around, given that the Newsom doesn’t support the idea and Fong has said she wants to retire at the end of April.

"I’d like to see a transition to a new chief on May 1," Delagnes said. "And so far, there’s been no shortage of applications. Whoever that person is, whether from inside or outside [of SFPD], must be able to lead us out of the abysmally low state of morale the department is in."

Delagnes claims that police chiefs have little to do with homicide rates, and that San Francisco is way below the average compared to other cities. "But when that rate goes from 80 to 100, everyone goes crazy and blames it on the cops. None of us want to see people killed, but homicides are a reality of any big city. So what can you do to reduce them? Stop them from happening."

But critics of SFPD note that few homicide cases result in arrests, and there is a perception that officers are lazy. That view was bolstered by the case of Hugues de la Plaza, a French national who was living in San Francisco when he was stabbed to death in 2007. SFPD investigators suggested it was a suicide because the door was locked from the inside and did little to thoroughly investigate, although an investigation by the French government recently concluded that it was clearly a homicide.

Delagnes defended his colleagues, saying two of SFPD’s most experienced homicide detectives handled the case and that "our guys are standing behind it."

A NEW DIRECTION?


Sparks said she didn’t know Fong was planning to retire in April until 45 minutes before Chief Fong made the announcement on Newsom’s December 20 Saturday morning radio show. "I think she decided it was time," Sparks told the Guardian. "But she’s not leaving tomorrow. She’s waiting so there can be an orderly transition."

By announcing she will be leaving in four months, Fong made it less likely that voters would have a chance to weigh in on the D.C.-based Police Executives Reform Forum’s recommendation that the next SFPD chief be given a five-year contract.

"The mayor believes that the chief executive of a city needs to have the power to hire and fire his department heads in order to ensure accountability," Newsom’s communications director Nathan Ballard told the Guardian.

According to the city charter, the Police Commission reviews all applications for police chief before sending three recommendations to the mayor. Newsom then either makes the final pick, or the process repeats. This is same process used to select Fong in 2004, with one crucial difference: the commission then was made up of five mayoral appointees. Today it consists of seven members, four appointed by the mayor, three by the Board of Supervisors.

Last month the commission hired Roseville-based headhunter Bob Murray and Associates to conduct the search in a joint venture with the Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum, which recently completed an organizational assessment of the SFPD. Intended to guide the SFPD over the next decade, the study recommends expanding community policies, enhancing information services, and employing Tasers to minimize the number of deadly shootings by officers.

"The mayor tends to favor the idea [of Tasers] but is concerned about what he is hearing about the BART case and wants closer scrutiny of the issue," Ballard told us last week.

Potential candidates with San Francisco experience include former SFPD deputy chief Greg Suhr, Taraval Station Captain Paul Chignell, and San Mateo’s first female police chief, Susan Manheimer, who began her career with the SFPD, where her last assignment was as captain of the Tenderloin Task Force.

"It would be wildly premature to comment on the mayor’s preference for police chief at this time," Ballard told the Guardian.

Among the rank and file, SFPD insider Greg Suhr is said to be the leading contender. "He’s very politically connected, and he is Sup. Bevan Dufty’s favorite," said a knowledgeable source. "The mayor would be afraid to not get someone from the SFPD rank and file."

Even if Newsom is able to find compromise with the immigrant communities and soften his tough new stance on the Sanctuary City policy, sources say he and the new chief would need to be able to stand up to SFPD hardliners who push back with arguments that deporting those arrested for felonies is how we need to get rid of criminals, reduce homicides, and stem the narcotics trade.

"The police will say, you have very dangerous and violent potential felons preying on other immigrants in the Mission and beyond," one source told us. "They would say [that] these are the people who are dying. So if you are going to try and take away our tools — including referring youth to ICE on booking — then we will fight and keep on doing it."

While that attitude is understandable from the strictly law and order perspective, is this the public safety policy San Francisco residents really want? And is it a decision based on sound policy and principles, or merely political expediency?

Sup. David Campos, who arrived in this country at age 14 as an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, says he is trying to get his arms around the city’s public safety strategy. "For me, the most immediate issue is the traffic stops in some of the neighborhoods, especially in the Mission and the Tenderloin," said Campos, a member of the Public Safety Committee whose next priority is revisiting the Sanctuary City Ordinance. "I’m hopeful the Mayor’s Office will reconsider its position. But if not, I’m looking at what avenues the board can pursue.

"I understand there was a horrible and tragic incident," Campos added, referring to the June 22, 2008 slaying of three members of the Bologna family, for which Edwin Ramos, who had cycled in and out of the city’s juvenile justice system and is an alleged member of the notoriously violent MS-13 gang, charged with murder for shooting with an AK-47 assault weapon. "But I think it is bad to make public policy based on one incident like that. To me, the focus should be, how do we get violent crime down and how do we deal with homicides?"

Campos believes Ryan has sidetracked the administration with conservative hot-button issues like giving municipal ID cards to undocumented residents, installing more crime cameras, and cracking down on the cannabis clubs. "I’m trying to understand the role of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice," Campos said, raising the possibility that it might be eliminated as part of current efforts to close a large budget deficit. "In tough times, can we afford to have them?"

The change in Washington could also counter San Francisco’s move to the right. Federal authorities, swamped by claims of economic fraud and Ponzi schemes, might lose interest in punishing San Francisco for its Sanctuary City-related activities now that President Barack Obama has vowed to address immigration reform, saying he wants to help "12 million people step out of the shadows."

"It’s hard to believe that there isn’t going to be some kind of change," another criminal justice community source told us. "A lot of this is Joe Russoniello’s thing. Sanctuary City ordinances and policies have been a target of his for years."

Rumors swirled last week that Russoniello might have already received his marching orders when Sen. Barbara Boxer announced her judicial nomination committees, which make recommendations to Obama for U.S. District Court judges, attorneys, and marshals.
Boxer will likely be responsible for any vacancies in the northern and southern districts, while Feinstein, who is socially friendly with the Russoniello family, will take charge of the central and eastern districts. Criminal justice noted that Arguedas, who San Francisco hired to defend itself against Russoniello’s grand jury investigation, is on Boxer’s Northern District nomination committee.
Boxer spokesperson Natalie Ravitz told the Guardian she was not going to comment on the protocol or process for handling a possible vacancy. "What I can tell you is that Sen. Boxer is accepting applications for the position of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District (San Diego), a position that is considered vacant," Ravitz told us. "Sen. Feinstein is handling the vacancy for the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District. Beyond that I am not going to comment. If you have further questions, I suggest you call the Department of Justice press office."
DOJ referred us to the White House, where a spokesperson did not reply before press time. Meanwhile Russoniello has been publicly making the case for why he should stay, telling The Recorder legal newspaper in SF that morale in the U.S. Attorney’s San Francisco office is much improved, with fewer lawyers choosing to leave since he took over from Ryan.
That’s small consolation, given widespread press reports that Ryan had destroyed morale in the office with leadership that was incompetent, paranoid, and fueled by conservative ideological crusades. Now the question is whether a city whose criminal justice approach has been dictated by Ryan, Fong, and Newsom — none of whom would speak directly to the Guardian for this story — can also be reformed.

Without a net

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The Board of Supervisors heard more than four hours of public comment at its Jan. 27 meeting, as hundreds of labor representatives, public-health workers, homeless advocates, hospital staffers, and others crowded into the board chambers to sound off on the deep budget cuts that many charged would leave they city’s critical-services safety net in shreds.

The message was chilling.

On the ground, the budget cuts Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing translate into staggering losses in services that segments of the city’s most disadvantaged populations rely on. Among those who will lose their jobs: some San Francisco General Hospital staffers who are trained to watch the cardiac monitors. "They are the first responders when someone goes into cardiac arrest," nurse Leslie Harrison told the board during public comment. "This is a life and death job — literally."

The Huckleberry House, which was established in 1967 and provides assistance to more than 7,000 homeless youth each year, may face closure.

Homeless shelters are already being forced to turn away two out of three clients seeking a bed due to lack of space, according to Coalition on Homelessness Executive Director Jennifer Friedenbach.

Demand for hot meals from the St. James Infirmary, a clinic for uninsured sex workers, has tripled since the onset of the recession, Executive Director Naomi Akres told the Guardian. As a result of the cuts, the clinic will lose its ability to continue either the food program or an outreach program that aims to get people off the streets.

Other areas that face funding reductions, according to a tally of midyear reductions issued by the mayor’s office, include some programs that administer STD testing and HIV prevention services, the Adult Day Health programs at Laguna Honda Hospital, aid for foster care, and the Single Room Occupancy Collaborative (which assists low-income tenants living in dilapidated hotel rooms across the city). San Francisco’s Human Services Agency will lay off 67 staffers.

Of the $118 million in midyear cuts rolled out by the mayor’s office last December, some $46 million will be shed from health, human welfare, and neighborhood-development services.

The midyear reductions, which will begin to take effect Feb. 20, are aimed at addressing a steep drop-off in revenue for the 2008–09 fiscal year. Now, health and human services providers and others across the board are anxiously looking ahead to the next round of blows, which will be dealt to address a projected $576 million deficit for the 2009–10 fiscal year, which begins in July. That figure could be reduced to $461 million after budget cuts, according to Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda.

Newsom has known about the gravity of the current budget problem since late October, when City Controller Ben Rosenfield issued a memo projecting fiscal disaster. "Since the adoption of the budget in July, the City’s economic outlook has significantly worsened, particularly since the onset of the global financial market upheavals that began in September," the memo states. It goes on to predict a worst-case scenario of $125 million in tax-revenue shortfalls for the 2008–09 fiscal year.

Cuts in frontline services don’t have to be the only answer. Supervisor Chris Daly has introduced an alternative budget proposal, which includes reductions in funding for management positions, cuts in the city’s subsidy to the symphony, and a reduction in the size of the mayor’s press office in an effort to free up funds that could then be diverted back to critical services. "I don’t think any of the choices are good. There’s really only the lesser of the evil," Daly noted at the meeting.

The choices the city faces were described in clear terms. "I’m sorry to say it, but you have some tough decisions in front of you," Friedenbach told supervisors when it was her turn at the podium during public comment. "You have to choose between abused children, or the symphony. You have to choose whether you want to decimate the mental-health treatment system — or do you want to get rid of the newly hired managers since the hiring freeze? You have to decide whether you want to cut half of the substance-abuse treatment system — or do you want to create a new community justice center that will have nowhere to refer its defendants?" Rather than choose, however, supervisors voted 6–5 to send Daly’s alternative package back to the Budget and Finance Committee for further consideration. The swing vote was Board President David Chiu, who was elected president with the support of the progressive bloc.

Had Chiu voted for Daly’s alternative, it wouldn’t have mattered much — the mayor would almost certainly have vetoed it.

Eight supervisors — enough to override a veto — did demonstrate a willingness to move forward with a June special election. With Supervisors Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Carmen Chu dissenting, the board voted to waive deadlines that would have prevented new tax measures from being placed on a June 2 ballot.

Several different tax ideas are under discussion. According to a list of preliminary estimates calculated by the Office of the Controller, slight increases over the current rates of taxes levied on business registration, payroll, sales, hotel-room stays, commercial utility users, parking, property transfers, and Access Line fees together could bring the city an estimated $121.6 million per year.

Other proposals include creating parcel taxes for both residential and industrial property, gross-receipts taxes on rental income for commercial and residential properties, a local vehicle license fee, and a residential utility users tax. If all of those proposed new taxes were voted into effect, the city would have the potential to raise an additional $112.9 million.

The problem: under state law, unless the mayor and supervisors unanimously declare an emergency, any tax increase would require a two-thirds vote to pass.

Supervisor John Avalos voiced strong support for the special election. "I think that the people of this city are still grappling with the meaning of the crisis that we’re in," Avalos told his colleagues.

Avalos amended out the possible new parcel tax, increased parking tax, and utility-users taxes, and instead proposed two new revenue measures that could be added to the ballot: a vehicle-impact fee, and "a possible new tax to discourage the consumption of energy that produces a large carbon footprint."

It won’t be easy to pass any of these proposals. Business interests are mobilizing against the very idea of a special election. In an e-mail newsletter distributed by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, a "call to action" urged supporters to contact Supervisors and voice opposition to the emergency election.

The language in the Chamber of Commerce message closely resembled that of Small Business California, which put out a message to the small-business community warning that higher taxes "would be the straw that breaks the already strained back of our local businesses, resulting in more layoffs and acceleration of our downward spiral."

Labor organizer Robert Haaland asked supervisors why they would be afraid of allowing voters to decide on the tax-revenue measures. A poll commissioned by his union, SEIU Local 1021, demonstrated that a significant portion of voters would rather raise revenues than allow vital services to disintegrate.

Even if new revenue is raised, Haaland told us, no one is under the illusion that there won’t be painful cuts. "Everyone’s going to feel some pain," he said. "It’s a question of how much pain."

Immigrant activists seek Newsom meeting

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As cops pushed their way through City Hall’s crowded hallways the day after the presidential inauguration, telling immigrant-rights demonstrators to make a clear pathway, a woman pulled her friend closer to the wall.

"Be careful," she said in Spanish. "You don’t want to be detained."

The mostly Latino protesters placed a candle and an invitation to an immigrant rights meeting in front of each supervisor’s door. The event was meant to bid good riddance to George W. Bush and demand policy change from both President Barack Obama and Mayor Gavin Newsom in light of the escautf8g nationwide crackdowns on undocumented immigrants.

Angered by what they see as a lack of local political leadership in the face of federal assaults on San Francisco’s sanctuary city ordinance, the protesters, numbering in the hundreds, sang social justice songs and chanted "Si se puede" before stopping in front of the Mayor’s Office to shout, "Let us in!"

Organized by the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee, a coalition of 30 organizations that has been working on an immigrants’ rights platform since last July, the action was intended to place additional pressure on Newsom to meet directly with activists.

Newsom has refused to hold a public meeting with immigrant-rights groups since announcing last summer that the city would contact federal authorities whenever youth suspected of being undocumented are arrested on felony charges. That means even innocent kids, arrested by mistake, could be deported.

Newsom’s abrupt policy shift came on the heels of a series of racially charged San Francisco Chronicle articles that hit newsstands just as he was announcing his intention to run for California governor.

Since then, SFIRDC has organized protests and met individually with nine supervisors to persuade them to uphold the city’s sanctuary ordinance and municipal ID program, and to work to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, police checkpoints, and budget cuts to immigrant community programs.

To date, the four newly elected supervisors — John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, and Eric Mar, all direct descendants of immigrant families — along with two returning board members, Sups. Chris Daly and Bevan Dufty, have signed SFIRDC’s pledge.

But while Sup. Sophie Maxwell is said to be open to the idea and Ross Mirkarimi is likely to sign it, Sups. Michela Alioto-Pier, Sean Elsbernd, and Carmen Chu, Newsom’s closest allies on the board, have not.

SFIRDC co-organizer and Asian Law Caucus staff attorney Angela Chan said the coalition hopes Newsom will be receptive to the idea of a Feb. 25 town hall meeting, and that Obama will heed calls to stop raids and suspend detentions and deportations — moves that have increased in frequency locally since Joseph Russoniello was appointed U.S. Attorney for Northern California in December 2007.

"Russoniello’s priorities don’t seem to be in line with the Obama administration," Chan told the Guardian, further noting that the success of SFIRDC’s February 25th meeting, which will be held at the office of St. Peter’s Housing Committee, hinges on the presence of the mayor: If he doesn’t show, the discussion cannot move forward.

San Francisco’s 1989 Sanctuary Ordinance prohibits the use of city funds to enforce federal immigration law, but a 1993 amendment requires the city to report immigrants suspected of felonies to the federal government.

But San Francisco law-enforcement officials chose not to apply that rule to young people — until last summer’s policy shift. Since then, the Juvenile Probation Department has referred an estimated 100 San Francisco youth (who were arrested on suspicion of a crime, but not yet convicted) to ICE. The feds can detain undocumented youth in county jails with adult criminals or transfer them to other facilities, often in other states, without notifying an attorney or a family member.

"We want to narrow the 1993 felony exception to be applied only if a youth has gotten due process and been found to have committed a felony," Chan said.

The city’s crackdown is part of a larger national picture. The amped-up federal campaign against undocumented immigrants, a product of post-9/11 programs, began when ICE was created to replace the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 2003.

"There are victims of domestic violence who will not call the police because they are afraid of their families getting deported," Guillermina Castellano, a domestic worker and activist with Mujeres Unidas and La Raza Central, said at the protest."The main difference between now and before is the scale," said Francisco Ugarte, a lawyer with the Immigrant Legal Education Network. "It’s hard to describe the kind of fear that exists now."

BOS committee assignments

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By Tim Redmond

Board President David Chiu has released the list of committee assignments, which look good — there are three solid progressive votes on the Budget Committee. The winners: David Campos and Ross Mirkarimi both have three good committee assigments. The losers: Sean Elsbernd, who gets only one job. Not sure I would have put him in charge of the school district committee (I’d have put him on budget instead of Carmen Chu), but overall, I don’t think the progressives will have a lot to complain about.

(UPDATE: Elsbernd just called me to say that he had requested not to be on budget because his first child is due in June and he wants to have enough time to spend with his family. “And the biggest issue I hear about these days is education,” he said. He is thrilled with the assignment he got.)

Here’s the rundown:

Budget & Finance
John Avalos, Chair
Ross Mirkarimi, Vice Chair
Carmen Chu, Member
David Campos, Temporary Member
Bevan Dufty, Temporary Member

City Operations & Neighborhood Services
Bevan Dufty, Chair
Chris Daly, Vice Chair
Michela Alioto-Pier, Member

City & School District
Sean Elsbernd, Chair
Bevan Dufty, Vice Chair
John Avalos, Member

Government Audits & Oversight
Ross Mirkarimi, Chair
Eric Mar, Vice Chair
Sophie Maxwell, Member

Land Use & Economic Development
Sophie Maxwell, Chair
Eric Mar, Vice Chair
David Chiu, Member

Public Safety
David Campos, Chair
Ross Mirkarimi, Vice Chair
Michela Alioto-Pier, Member

Rules Committee
Chris Daly, Chair
Carmen Chu, Vice Chair
David Campos, Member

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