Mark Leno

The creepy circumcision comics

Zelda Bronstein
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92
The creepy circumcision comics

I’m not the sort to cry racism, or sexism, or anti-thisorthat-ism every time something offends me. There’s stuff that’s intentionally offensive and still funny, stuff that’s unintentionally offensive and harmless and all sorts of other stuff that might be in poor taste but doesn’t rise to the “ism” level. But I have to say: The comics that the anti-circumcision folks are putting out are just creepy.  

The Chron story on this was a classic of its kind, with quotes from both “sides” and an academic interlude. But it all becomes a bit more clear with this comparison of the circumcision comics and some classic graphics from Nazi Germany (thanks to Sen. Mark Leno, who passed these along to me).

I’m not going to claim the authors of the comics were motivated by anti-Semitism; I don’t even know them. But folks, get a clue — this is beyond offensive. Anyone with any sense at all should know better.

Tipping point

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Tipping point

sarah@sfbg.com

On June 14, members of the Board of Supervisors will vote to appoint a new member of the Police Commission — in the wake of a messy string of alleged police misconduct scandals that, progressives argue, underscore why having strong civilian oversight is critical to ensuring a transparent, accountable police department the public can trust.

The appointment comes less than two months after San Francisco native Greg Suhr was sworn in as chief in the wake of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to appoint former Chief George Gascón as the next district attorney — a move that has served to muddy the D.A. Office’s efforts to investigate the alleged police misconduct.

Further complicating the board’s choice is the heated battle that erupted over the appointment, led in part by members of two Democratic clubs that represent lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities.

The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club has officially endorsed Julius Turman, a gay attorney and community activist who was a former assistant U.S. attorney and the first African American president of the Alice club. Turman currently works for Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he represents companies in actions for wrongful termination, employment discrimination, and unfair competition. He is also state Sen. Mark Leno’s (D-SF) proxy to the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee and serves on the Human Rights Commission.

On the other side, members of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, the voice of the city’s queer left, are supporting David Waggoner, an attorney and community activist who is a former Milk Club president. Waggoner has worked on police use-of-force policy and as a pro bono attorney for the National Lawyers Guild at the Oakland Citizen’s Police Review Board, and been a passionate advocate for the LGBT community, immigrants’ rights, people with disabilities, and the homeless.

The other two applicants for the post are Vanessa Jackson, a staffer at a women’s shelter with experience in counseling ex-offenders; and Phillip Hogan, a former police officer who serves on the board of the Nob Hill Association and has been trying to get on a commission for years.

Although both Jackson and Hogan have diverse experience with law enforcement — Jackson as an African American woman who claims the police have “no respect for people of color” and Hogan as a former police officer of Lebanese-Irish descent who manages real estate — neither has the support of the LGBT community. The position occupied by Deputy District Attorney James Hammer for the last two years, and Human Rights Commission director Theresa Sparks occupied before that, is widely considered to be an LGBT seat.

 

WHO’S THE REFORMER?

So now the fight is about whether Turman or Waggoner would be the strongest reformer.

In a recent open letter, former Board Presidents Harry Britt, Aaron Peskin. and Matt Gonzalez expressed support for Waggoner. “While most hardworking police officers perform their jobs admirably, insufficient oversight and poor management systems have led to significant problems,” their letter stated. “Despite these widely reported problems, the Police Commission has failed to adequately address these issues. San Francisco needs real reform, not more of the same. We believe David Waggoner will be that voice at this critical time.”

At the June 2 Rules Committee hearing, Waggoner proposed taking away master keys to single-resident occupancy (SRO) hotels from the police. “Significant abuse of that resulted in seriously tarnishing the department,” he said.

Turman made an equally impassioned — if less stridently reformist-sounding — speech. “Why would we allow an officer to enter a home, regardless of the master key rule, which I’m not a fan of?” Turman asked. He also said Tasers are dangerous weapons with unintended consequences. “I fear communities of color will suffer more from Taser use.”

Waggoner’s supporters noted that their candidate has more than 15 years of police accountability experience. Turman’s supporters vouched for his integrity, maturity, ability to build consensus, and “belief in strategically serving his community.”

In the end, Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell voted for Turman, while Rules Committee Chair Sup. Jane Kim voted for Waggoner.

That means Turman’s name has been forwarded to the full board with a recommendation. But because the Rules Committee interviewed all the candidates, the board can still appoint any of them.

At the Rules Committee, Sup. Scott Wiener voiced support for Turman. And Board President David Chiu recently told the Guardian that he has known Turman for years, has worked with him professionally, and will vote for him. “I found him to be fair, thoughtful, and compassionate,” Chiu said, noting that he believes the role of the commission is “to provide oversight and set policy.”

Sup. David Campos, one of the solid progressive votes on the board and a longtime Milk Club member, believes Waggoner would make an excellent commissioner but is a friend of Turman, and believes he’ll be a strong voice for reform. “Sean [Elsbernd] and Mark [Farrell] could be in for a big surprise if Julius gets appointed,” Campos mused shortly after Elsbernd and Farrell voted for Turman.

Campos recalled how he and Turman started working at the same firm years ago. “So I got to know him well,” he said, adding he is “like a family member.

“By virtue of his involvement with Alice, some folks think Julius will be a certain way,” Campos added. “But I believe he’ll take a progressive point of view on the issues. He has both the knowledge and the experience with the police, he understand the important role that police oversight and the Police Commission play in making the SFPD accountable.”

Kim told us that she primarily voted for Waggoner because she knows him the best, and not out of concern that Turman wouldn’t do a good job. “I’m more familiar with David and that’s what tipped the scale,” Kim said. “It’s great to have two strong LGBT attorneys who have a clear understanding of public safety issues, the law, and are advocates for the community.”

But Debra Walker, who ran against Kim last November, steadfastly supports Waggoner. “Julius has been active in the Alice B. Toklas club for a while, he’s a prosecutor, while David is more of a citizen’s defense attorney,” she said.

Turman continues to be dogged by reports of domestic violence, thanks to a lawsuit that Turman’s former domestic partner Philip Horne filed in March 2006 alleging that Turman came into his house when he was sleeping on New Year’s Day 2006 and tried to strangle him.

Horne claimed he “was terrified that the lack of air supply would cause him to pass out and potentially die at the hands of such a jealous and unmerciful former lover.” He alleged he was able to calm Turman down only to see him get enraged again and punch Horne in the face seven to 10 times. When Horne decided he needed to go to the emergency room, the complaint states, Turman grabbed his phone and keys saying, “If you leave, you’ll never see the cats (alive) again,” and “I will report you to the state bar.”

Horne claimed he ran outside screaming for help and that when SFPD arrived, they arrested Turman for domestic violence and called an ambulance for Horne.

Turman responded in July 2006 to what he described as Horne’s “unverified complaint,” arguing he acted in “self-defense” and that the conduct Horne complained of “constituted mutual combat.” He added that “damages, if any, suffered by Horne were caused in whole or in part by entities or persons other than Turman.”

In the end, no criminal charges were ever filed against Turman and the case was settled out of court. Turman now says “I’ve done nothing wrong and these allegations are false.”

Campos warns people not to jump to conclusions. “We need to remember that there is a presumption of innocence,” Campos said. “Yes, there was a court case, but there was never a conviction. Yes, there was a settlement, but people do that for a lot of reasons.”

Turman told the Rules Committee that the incident was from “an extremely difficult time that is now being used against me as a political sideshow.”

Meanwhile, Campos notes that without a reform-minded mayor, there will be only so much any board-appointed police commissioners can do. “What we really need to implement police reform is a mayor who is willing to do that,” he said. “Otherwise it’s going to be very difficult because the mayor still gets to appoint four commissioners and mayor still gets to control who is in charge of the police department.”

 

WHAT DIRECTION?

Civil liberties advocates praised as a “first step in the right direction” Suhr’s May 18 decision to issue an order clarifying that SFPD officers assigned to the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce should adhere to SFPD policies and procedures set by the Police Commission, not FBI guidelines.

But in the coming months, the commission will have to decide whether to push a Portland-style resolution around SFPD involvement with the FBI. The commission also will be dealing with fallout from the other scandals, including the crime lab, the use of force against mentally ill suspects, and videos that allegedly show police conducting warrantless search and seizure raids in single residential occupancy hotels.

These scandals have progressives arguing that it’s critical that the board’s three seats on the commission are occupied by applicants with proven track records of reform.

Waggoner notes that in 2003, voters approved Prop. H., which changed the composition of the commission from five to seven members. Four are appointed by the mayor; three by the board.

Last year, he said, the commission made significant progress in the right direction when it adopted new rules after the Jan. 2 shooting of a man in a wheelchair in SoMa. “That was not the first time an unarmed person with a disability was killed,” he said. “After Prop. H and a crisis, the commission finally took steps. It remains to be seen if Chief Suhr will implement that.”

Waggonner said the current arrangement “creates tension between people who are more willing to defer to the chief on policy issues and being in an advisory capacity, as opposed to people who want to be in the forefront of setting policy.”

That tension played out when Commissioners James Hammer, Angela Chan, and Petra DeJesus tried to find consensus on the Taser controversy last year. “Overall they worked well together. But there’s been no progress yet on Tasers,” he said, noting that the commission eventually decided on a pilot project.

Waggoner said he would be in favor of the commission having a more active role and exerting its authority under the city charter to set policy, but in collaboration with the chief.

The Police Commission’s May 18 joint hearing with the Human Rights Commission about FBI spying concerns was a symbol of the broader issue at the Police Commission. The majority of the commission didn’t see any major problems — but the progressives were highly critical. “Is the commission there to set policy and take leadership, or is it there in an advisory capacity?” Waggoner asked.

With Hammer’s departure, Chan and DeJesus, both board-appointed women of color, are the most progressive members of the commission. Chan hopes Hammer’s replacement believes in strong civilian oversight. “We should never be a rubber stamp for the police department,” he said. “We need to take community concerns very seriously. When the police department is doing great things, we should support them — but if we see something wrong, we should not be afraid to speak out.”

Turman told the Guardian that “being the voice for reform and advising are not mutually exclusive roles — and an effective police commissioner needs to be both.

“I would advocate for series of meetings with representatives from the Arab community, the SFPD, and the FBI to increase communication and understanding of each side’s perspective on exactly what we need to implement in San Francisco,” Turman said.

Asked more about Tasers, Turman said that “one of the things I would be interested in pursuing is a recognition by some that female officers are less likely to incapacitate during an arrest, which could lead to learning for the larger police force.”

But does this means Turman will turn out to be a swing vote for Tasers? Only time — and the board’s June 14 vote — will tell.

Stopping foreclosure secrecy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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4
Stopping foreclosure secrecy

OPINION Thanks to a shadowy corporate mortgage recording system, millions of Californians have no idea who owns their home loans.

As we suffer through this recession triggered by reckless subprime lending and Wall Street speculation, our recovery is being held back in part because people are struggling with foreclosures and underwater home values — exacerbated by a lack of mortgage transparency.

The mess created by Wall Street is causing wrongful foreclosures and wreaking havoc. Real people — often lower-income families and communities of color — are enduring the devastation of foreclosure processes because of the excesses of bankers and investment firms.

In San Francisco, we’ve seen the highest number of foreclosures in the Ingleside-Excelsior, Bayview, Tenderloin, and Mission neighborhoods — many of the places where home values have fallen most. Whether or not you face foreclosure, we all pay for this crisis by losing vital tax revenue that could go to support our schools, protect our neighborhoods, or build our economy.

When Wall Street realized it could make billions by bundling mortgages and selling them to investors, banks and financial institutions needed a way around recording the ownership and assignment of home loans. What the banks and Wall Street came up with is a shadowy, industry-backed reporting system called MERS — mortgage electronic reporting system.

Simply stated, subprime and predatory lending allowed banks to create millions of questionable mortgages, Wall Street bundled these risky mortgages together to sell to investors, and MERS made it quicker and easier to conduct these risky transactions with impunity.

As San Francisco’s assessor-recorder and a financial advocate for low-income communities, we have seen harmful industry practices wreak havoc on families trying to stay in their homes — whether by use of MERS that clouds property titles, wrongful foreclosures, or denied loan modifications.

The state Legislature considered several good foreclosure bills this year. One proposal placed a $20,000 fee on financial institutions attempting a foreclosure. This would have discouraged foreclosure and helped defray costs to communities if the process went ahead.

State Sen. Mark Leno( D-SF) and Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) offered legislation stopping banks from proceeding with foreclosures when a homeowner is attempting to modify his or her mortgage.

Assessor-Recorder Ting is sponsoring a bill requiring that all mortgage assignments and transfers be recorded with counties, thus taking this process out of the murky MERS system.

Unfortunately, the banks and their armies of lawyers and lobbyists have been able to stymie these reforms.

We must continue to fight these wealthy, powerful lobbies so that the long road to recovery in our housing markets and communities can begin. We cannot let Sacramento forget it was financial institutions that fueled the housing bubble, crashed the stock market, and sent shockwaves throughout the economy with their reckless practices.

Few states have been ravaged by subprime lending and the meltdown of mortgage-backed securities the way California has, so we must continue reforming the practices of banks and Wall Street that have thrown our economy and communities into turmoil.

Phil Ting is San Francisco assessor-recorder. Kevin Stein works with the California Reinvestment Coalition.

Will SF lose a senate seat?

Zelda Bronstein
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7
Will SF lose a senate seat?

The new draft lines for state Assembly and Senate seats are out, and it’s not good news for San Francisco. It’s particularly bad news for Sen. Mark Leno, who could potentially be reapportioned out of a seat.


It’s a tricky process, but here’s how I understand it will work. The draft lines now, which put Leno and Sen. Leland Yee in the same seat (covering all of San Francisco and some of San Mateo County, down to Colma), will be updated June 9th. At some point a few weeks later, the redistricting commission will also decide whether to give the San Francisco seat (just one, we used to have two) an even or an odd number. If it’s an even number, it’s Yee’s seat — and as of Jan. 1, 2013, Leno is out of office for two years, at which point he could run again for the new seat.


Of course, if it’s an odd number, then it’s Leno’s seat, and Yee would finish his term representing his old seat — assuming he’s not elected mayor, which would create a vacancy in a seat that might only exist for a year.


More important in the long run than the individuals is the harsh reality that this will be a more conservative seat (tougher, say, for Tom Ammiano to win). The Marin County seat will be more conservative, too. And San Francisco will have only one state senator.


Ammiano still has an Assembly seat, but it includes more of the Peninsula.


The whole process is going to turn the state Legislature more conservative. We’ll likely get more Republicans in a state that has an overwhelming Democratic majority. And it’s not as if the new maps are free of what used to be called gerrymandering: “When voters get a look at the new districts, they’ll see as much modern art as Phil Burton ever created,” Leno said.


 


 


 

Avalos introduces SF-San Mateo Local Hire agreement

Mary Magee
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7
Avalos introduces SF-San Mateo Local Hire agreement

Last year, when Sup. John Avalos introduced and eventually won passage of the city’s landmark local hiring ordinance, a number of battles broke out, as folks in neighboring municipalities began fretting that the new law could shut them out of construction jobs in San Francisco. Avalos worked hard to make sure their concerns were addressed, but he continued to encounter resistance from San Mateo County.
And in February Assemblymember Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) who is facing term limits and reapportionment, introduced a bill in Sacramento that was intended to limit the reach of the Avalos legislation, which aimed to put more San Francisco residents to work on city-funded construction projects.
Hill’s legislation, AB 356, sought to prohibit the use of state money on local-hire projects and prevent Avalos’ legislation from being applied to the city’s projects in counties within 70 miles of San Francisco, including upgrades to the Hetch Hetchy water system on the Peninsula.
“San Francisco can use its own money any way it wants,” Hill said at the time, “Taxpayers from San Mateo, Ventura, Solano and other California counties shouldn’t have to pay for the increased construction costs that will result from San Francisco’s local-hire ordinance.”
Plus, he said the city should be thinking regionally, not hyper-local.
But, as Avalos repeatedly pointed out, his local hire law doesn’t apply to projects funded with state money, and it only mandates 20 percent local hire this year, gradually increasing to 50 percent local hire over the next seven years.
At the time, the Guardian predicted that Hill’s bill would “probably go down the crapper because the San Francisco legislators, who have a fair amount of clout up in Sacramento these days, aren’t going to support it. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and state Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee have all signed a letter supporting the city’s local hire law.”
And sure enough, after the mayors of San Francisco and Los Angeles, not to mention organizations from San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego, and the State Building Trades Council made their views known, Assemblymember Charles Calderon requested June 3 that Hill’s legislation by ordered to the inactive file.
Local supporters of Avalos’ legislation say Hill’s bill got pulled because there was no chance in hell that it would ever get out of the State Assembly.
But Hill’s office claims it was because San Francisco and San Mateo reached a deal last week, and that this outcome was Hill’s intention all along.
“What happened was that the Assemblymember Jerry Hill put together a bill and his intention was to get his constituents in San Mateo a memorandum of understanding with San Francisco—and that MOU was signed last Friday (June 3) by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and San Mateo County Board President Carole Groom,” Hill’s legislative aide Aurelio Rojos told the Guardian.
And according to a statement that Hill’s office released June 3, Hill welcomed the signing of a reciprocity agreement that “ends a dispute between the counties of San Mateo and San Francisco by creating a level playing field for San Mateo County residents working on construction  projects in the county funded by San Francisco.”
Hill’s press release claims the MOU was “forged following weeks of negotiations that began in February after Hill introduced legislation that would have limited San Francisco’s recently enacted local hire ordinance to its geographic boundaries. The agreement allows contractors working on San Francisco public works projects located in San Mateo County to hire an equal number of workers from the two counties.  As a result of the agreement, Hill has agreed not to move forward with his legislation, Assembly Bill 356.”
 “San Mateo County construction workers will no longer be penalized by San Francisco’s local hire ordinance as a result of the agreement,” Hill said.  “I applaud Mayor Lee and Supervisor Groom for creating a level playing field that will enable San Mateo residents to work on construction projects within their county.”
 Hill claims that  with San Francisco scheduled to award $27 billion in public contracts during the next decade, the city’s local hire  provision would have impacted the ability of San Mateo County residents to work on construction projects in their county, including the San Francisco International Airport, the jail in San Bruno, Hetch Hetchy waterworks and other facilities on the Peninsula.”
Either way, today, Avalos, who has long maintained that Hill either didn’t understand his legislation or was refusing to understand the legislation, and Mayor Ed Lee are introducing a resolution, “approving a local hiring agreement between San Francisco and San Mateo County,” and reinforcing equal opportunity guaranteed under San Francisco’s Local Hire Policy and community-labor partnerships
Avalos, who is running for mayor, apparently led the negotiations alongside Lee to forge the agreement which allows contractors performing San Francisco public works projects in San Mateo County to equally draw workers from San Francisco and San Mateo to meet required staffing levels under the local hiring ordinance.
The agreement covers San Francisco-funded projects located in San Mateo County, including the San Francisco airport.  Under the agreement, San Mateo workers are included by the local hiring requirement for projects  in San Mateo County, and will be able to fill up to half of the local hiring requirement.
“This is a win-win for workers in San Francisco and San Mateo. Whatever we can do to support job creation in the Bay Area region during this very long recession is going to be very meaningful to the families that are struggling to stay in this area,” Avalos said.
“The achievement in securing this resolution is really a testament to the strength of communities united,” said Brightline executive director Joshua Arce. “Sup. Avalos always intended that his legislation would expand, in terms of opportunities on city-funded projects, outside San Francisco. On San Francisco-funded work in San Mateo, San Francisco and San Mateo workers will be working side by side, taking advantage of the local and regional aspects of the legislation.”
Or as Avalos put it,  “The local hiring ordinance is about making sure we create job opportunities in San Francisco when the city invests taxpayer dollars in construction projects. We included the flexibility to craft reciprocal agreements with other cities and counties, and that’s exactly what was accomplished in the deal that was reached between San Francisco and San Mateo.”

Sacramento deadline: Some key bills

Zelda Bronstein
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0
Sacramento deadline: Some key bills

A bunch of key bills come up in the state Legislature this week — and some of them are going to be very close. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano is pushing hard to get AB 1017, which would eliminate mandatory felony charges for pot cultivation, throught the Assembly floor (in fact, when I called his press secretary, Quintin Mecke, today (June 1) at about 11 a.m., Ammiano was on the floor making his 1017 pitch.) Ammiano also has a key tenant bill, AB 265, which would allow tenants who are a few days late with the rent to avoid eviction.


Dean Preston, executive director of Tenants Together, has a great rundown on the major tenant bills here. Sen. Mark Leno’s bill, SB 184, which is critical to protecting the rights of cities to demand affordable housing as part of a development deal, is going to be very close. So is Assemblymember Mike Feuer’s AB 934 — a nobrainer that simply clarifies tenant protections that have been threatened by recent court cases. (Preston told me that San Francisco Assemblymember Fiona Ma is not among the bill’s supporters at this point; you can call her office at  557-2312 and let her know you want her to vote for it.)


Sen. Leland Yee has gotten two bills through, one that would allow pharmacies to sell sterile syringes without a prescription and one that mandates more sunshine in the courts. His bill forcing the University of California to open up its foundation records will almost certainly clear the Senate now that UC had dropped its opposition. Tougher going, I expect, for SB 9, which would end life without parole sentences for juveniles.


Leno’s bill legalizing infusion drinks at bars cleared the Senate. He’s also pushing a Community Choice Aggregation bill, SB 790, and  the long-awaited, much-fought-over cell phone, SB 932, which would require modest disclosure of cell-phone radiation.


The difference between this session and the last one is that a lot of these bills might actually get the governor’s signature.

The secret life of Michael Peevey

Maria Poblet
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11
The secret life of Michael Peevey

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Inside a legislative hearing room at the state capitol, things were beginning to get uncomfortable. Roughly five weeks had passed since a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. pipeline explosion killed eight and leveled an entire San Bruno neighborhood, and this California Senate committee hearing was an early attempt to get answers.

San Bruno residents who lost loved ones in the deadly explosion huddled in the front row, their eyes fixed on company representatives and agency bureaucrats as they spoke. At the back of the room, a band of immaculately dressed PG&E executives and utility lawyers sat clustered together.

Richard Clark, director of the consumer protection and safety division of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), fielded questions from visibly frustrated state legislators. Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter) wanted know why the CPUC hadn’t done anything when PG&E ignored an impaired section of the ruptured pipeline even after it was granted $5 million to fix it.

“Did the PUC do any accounting when you gave them $5 million?” Florez demanded. “Do we just give them money and cross our fingers and hope they fix it? Is that what we do? Until some terrible tragedy occurs?”

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) said the CPUC needed to step it up and start practicing serious hands-on oversight. He recalled a tragedy that occurred in 2008 when a gas leak in Rancho Cordova triggered a pipeline explosion, killing one person and injuring several others. Although an investigation determined that PG&E was at fault, the CPUC hadn’t yet gotten around to fining the company.

“We’ve got a pattern here,” Leno said. “And we’re not doing anything differently.”

Less than three weeks after CPUC staff members were grilled in Sacramento, Michael Peevey — president of the CPUC and the top energy official in the state — boarded an airplane for Madrid. He was embarking on a 12-day travel-study excursion, with stops in Sevilla and Barcelona, sponsored by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy (CFEE).

Peevey’s wife, California Sen. Carol Liu (D-Glendale), was along for the trip. So were two other state senators, several members of the state Assembly, CPUC commissioner Nancy Ryan, and a host of representatives from the energy industry. The group included executives from Chevron, Mirant (now GenOn, the owner of the Potrero power plant), Covanta Energy Corporation, Shell Energy North America, and engineering giant AECOM. High-ranking executives of the state’s investor-owned utilities also participated, including Fong Wan, the senior vice president of energy procurement for PG&E.

Although strict rules normally govern commissioners’ interactions with parties that have a financial stake in the outcomes of commission rulings, there wasn’t anything especially unusual about Peevey traveling internationally with a group that included representatives from the same companies his regulatory commission oversees. CFEE trips happen every year. The nonprofit has footed the bill to fly groups of regulators, legislators, and utility executives to prime vacation destinations like Italy, Brazil, and South Africa in recent years, excursions organizers say are critical for educating top-level stakeholders about worldwide best practices for sustainable systems. However, groups such as The Utility Reform Network (TURN) have decried CFEE trips as “lobbying junkets.”

As PG&E and the CPUC both work to win back the public’s confidence after their latest deadly failure, it’s worth analyzing whether their relationship — shaped by vacations together at exotic locales — has grown too cozy.

 

THE BUDDY SYSTEM

CFEE isn’t the only nonprofit that regularly flies Peevey overseas for green travel tours with high-ranking utility executives, and the 12 days he spent in Spain wasn’t the only time he spent away from official duties and in the company of the corporations his commission regulates.

These controversial getaways are just a small part of Peevey’s involvement with private-sector interests. He also chairs the board of a nonprofit investment fund created as part of a $30 million settlement agreement with PG&E. Called the California Clean Energy Fund, it funnels money into private venture-capital funds that invest in green start-ups, plus a few companies in the fossil-fuel sector.

While legislators have voiced frustration that lax CPUC oversight of PG&E on pipeline-safety issues opened the door to disaster in San Bruno, inside observers are critical of the outright favors Peevey has granted utilities, such as guaranteeing an unprecedented, higher-than-ever profit margin for PG&E as part of the company’s 2004 bankruptcy settlement.

The CPUC is set up to perform as a watchdog agency, yet social and professional ties running deep within California’s insular energy community mean regulators sometimes run in the same circles as the executives who answer to them, making for cozier relationships than the general public might anticipate. It’s an old-fashioned insider game that one longtime observer wryly characterizes as “the buddy system.” But the buddy system can bring consequences.

As the public face of the CPUC, Peevey repeatedly has been thrust into the spotlight. He has absorbed advocates’ concerns about pipeline safety, rising electricity rates, SmartMeters, missed targets for energy efficiency, and municipalities’ David-vs.-Goliath battles with PG&E to implement community choice aggregation (CCA), to name a few. He’s a magnet for public scrutiny while occupying the center seat at commission meetings, but Peevey’s behind-the-scenes engagements with private-sector organizations bent on shaping statewide energy policy demonstrate how power is wielded in California’s energy world, a system in which regulators seem to be partnering with utilities rather than policing them.

Based at Pier 35 in San Francisco, CFEE’s board of directors is composed of a small group of officers, plus a long list of members who hail from some of the most prominent businesses nationwide. Shell, Chevron, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, AT&T, and PG&E all hold positions on CFEE’s membership board, and each entity chips in to fund the foundation’s activities and travel excursions.

The group also includes representatives from labor organizations like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and mainstream environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council. Among the emeritus members of CFEE’s governing board are some high-ranking figures, such as CIA director-turned-Pentagon boss Leon Panetta. CFEE received $45,000 in donations from PG&E in 2009 (the most recent year available) and was granted similar amounts in prior years.

CFEE spokesperson P.J. Johnston, the son of former state senator and CFEE officer Patrick Johnston and the press secretary under former Mayor Willie Brown, described the trips as valuable opportunities for top-level stakeholders to gain insight on best practices and engage in noncombative dialogue on key issues.

“The idea for us was that it made sense to have someplace where it was nonconfrontational to engage in policy, work-type discussions,” Johnston explained. He added that the trips are “all about policy, on the 30,000-foot level,” and emphasized that discussions aren’t about specific decisions pending before the CPUC.

Loretta Lynch, a former president of the CPUC who brought a reformist spirit to the agency and was never shy about rebuking utilities, is skeptical of CFEE’s stated program goals. When she was first appointed to the commission, Lynch said, CFEE contacted her to ask where she wanted to travel. If the trips are arranged to fly regulators to destinations they’ve been itching to visit, she reasoned, must-see green innovations probably aren’t dictating the itineraries. “To me,” Lynch said, “they don’t have anything to study in mind.”

 

“PARTYING WITH THE JUDGE”

The CFEE trip to Spain included a briefing on developing wind energy from AES, a company working on wind and solar development in California that also operates polluting, gas-fired power plants in Huntington Beach, Long Beach, and Redondo Beach. There was a round table on solar energy featuring a presentation from the Independent Energy Producers Association, a trade group that regularly files petitions and comments on CPUC proceedings. The trip included a tour of a desalination plant, a talk from the president of the Madrid Chamber of Commerce, and discussions about California’s energy market. Scheduled activities ended by midafternoon on some days, and the itinerary left a Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday in Sevilla wide open.

Asked to comment on concerns about inappropriate lobbying, Johnston said: “We’re not guarding against anyone’s potential behavior any more than we would be on the streets of Sacramento. We’re not setting ourselves up as the guardians. We’re not facilitating that, per se, either.” He added, “I realize there are critics of any kind of travel and any kind of commingling. But it is wise for us not to close our eyes to the rest of the world, and there’s not a great appetite for spending taxpayer money on these trips.”

Yet Lynch countered that there is an important distinction between the roles of Sacramento legislators and that of utility commissioners. “Regulators are not legislators,” Lynch said. “They’re more like judges. Their decisions have the power of a judge’s decision.” By inviting commissioners along on these lavish getaways, she said, “it’s as if you’re partying with the judge.”

Mindy Spatt, a spokesperson for TURN, echoed Lynch’s concerns. “These ostensibly educational trips are essentially lobbying junkets, where utilities … wine and dine legislators,” Spatt said. TURN raised the issue several years ago, she said, when Peevey joined a CFEE trip attended by a representative of Southern California Edison “just coincidentally at the exact same time that he was penning an alternate decision in Edison’s rate case.” She added: “In TURN’s perspective, the commissioners need to be more in touch with what actual utility customers are experiencing, rather than in touch with the top restaurants in Brazil.”

While Peevey is only one of a host of officials who attend CFEE trips, he has more than just a casual tie to the nonprofit. From 1973 to 1983, he served as president of the California Coalition for Environment and Economic Balance (CCEEB), an organization CFEE grew out of and whose membership shares some overlap with CFEE.

Based in San Francisco, CCEEB was founded by Edmund G. “Pat” Brown (Gov. Jerry Brown’s father) in 1973. CCEEB backed a late-1970s proposal to construct a series of nuclear power plants along the California coastline. More recently, the group honored BP with a 2009 award for environmental education — shortly before the company and lax federal regulators were responsible for the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

 

A YEAR IN THE LIFE

Spain wasn’t the only country Peevey jetted off to with complimentary airfare in 2010. According to a Form 700 filing with the Fair Political Practices Commission, he also traveled to Germany from Aug. 1–5 for a sustainable energy study tour organized by the Energy Coalition. Joining that trip were representatives from investor-owned utilities PG&E, Southern California Edison, and Sempra, plus various city officials and energy experts from the Swedish Energy Agency.

The group stayed at the Radisson Blu Berlin Hotel, which is famous for its AquaDom. “Standing at 25 meters high, it is the world’s largest cylindrical aquarium containing 1 million liters of saltwater,” according to the hotel website. All Radisson Blu Berlin guests have free access to “the hotel’s well-being area,” called Splash, which features a pool, sauna, steam bath, and fitness room.

Based in Irvine, the Energy Coalition’s Board of Directors is chaired by Warren Mitchell, a retired chair of the Southern California Gas Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co.. Another director is a utility lawyer who also sits on the board of directors of the Northeast Gas Association, a consortium of natural gas companies in the northeastern U.S.

Founded in the late 1970s by John Phillips to get large businesses to reduce energy consumption in partnership with utilities, the Energy Coalition has arranged excursions for years to bring energy regulators, city officials, and utility executives to Sweden (where Phillips’ wife was born) to exchange ideas on energy issues. The nonprofit organizes an annual summit called the Aspen Accord, “an energy policy forum where cities, utilities, regulators, and end-users collaborate to identify problems and propose solutions to our most pressing energy issues,” according to a 2009 tax filing. While it used to be held in Aspen, Colo., the most recent Aspen Accord was held at San Francisco’s Westin St. Francis. Peevey gave introductory remarks, and the conference featured talks from PG&E, among others.

Craig Perkins, executive director, told the Guardian that the Aspen Accord and study trips are designed to create a venue for major stakeholders to arrive at outside-the-box solutions. “What we try to do is get everybody out of their comfort zone, if you will — that’s the best way to support more creative thinking,” he said. Official regulatory proceedings are “so rigidly legalistic and bureaucratic that it almost prevents any creative thought from happening,” he added. “We’re not in San Francisco, we’re not in Sacramento, we’re not in corporate offices — let’s just talk about these really big issues, and really big challenges.”

The Germany tour included meetings with the Berlin Energy Agency, talks about climate policy, and a tour of an eco-community in Freiburg. Perkins said utility companies must to pay their own way on the trips, but costs are covered for governmental officials.

An Energy Coalition tax filing reveals that board members receive a monthly retainer of $1,000, quarterly meeting fees of $1,000, plus $500 for each board committee meeting. Teleconferences also result in $500 meeting fees.

Several years ago, the Energy Coalition partnered with PG&E to create the Business Energy Coalition, which paid businesses including Bank of America and the Westin St. Francis $50 per KW of energy savings for banding together to reduce energy during peak load hours. According to a tax filing, total annual Energy Coalition revenue dropped from $10.7 million in 2008 to $3.75 million in 2009 “due to large revenue receipts for participant incentives” for the Business Energy Coalition program, as “revenues were used for direct pass-through payments to program participants and contractors.” In 2006, according to a CPUC filing, PG&E paid the Energy Coalition $227,373 for unspecified consulting services.

In addition to the $8,880 trip to Spain (comped), and the $6,583 trip to Germany last year (comped), Peevey’s 2010 disclosure form shows that he also went to Australia May 14-19 to participate in a conference hosted by the Sydney-based Total Environment Center called “Smart Metering to Empower the Smart Grid” ($12,577, comped). And while it doesn’t show up on his FPPC filing, an agenda for CFEE’s Energy Roundtable Summit from Dec. 9-10 at the Carneros Inn in Napa lists Peevey as a participant. A glance through past filings suggests that 2010 was no anomaly; it’s a typical year in the life of a jet-setting utilities regulator.

 

GREEN CAPITALISM

Peevey once served as president of the Southern California Edison, an investor-owned utility, and was president of NewEnergy, Inc., an electricity company that later was sold to Williams Energy. Yet his professional image is that of a forward-thinker on climate change. According to a bio on the CPUC website, he’s received awards for achievements on green and sustainable energy from various organizations throughout California.

In 2005, speaking in Berkeley at an annual conference for the California Climate Action Registry, Peevey touted a list of his accomplishments on sustainable energy. “My final example of PUC actions on climate change is related to PG&E‘s bankruptcy,“ he said. “When they emerged from bankruptcy last year, one of many conditions of our support for their reorganization plan was that they create a $30 million Clean Energy Fund, devoted to investing in California businesses developing and producing clean technologies.“

What Peevey didn‘t mention is that he chairs the board of directors of that fund. As a “nonprofit venture capital fund,“ the obscure, San Francisco-based CalCEF sounds like an oxymoron. Based on the terms of the PG&E bankruptcy settlement, it‘s governed by a nine-member board consisting of three CPUC appointees, three PG&E appointees, and the rest selected jointly by the CPUC and PG&E appointees. Other board members include past PG&E executives, a former member of the California Energy Commission, and a former chair of the board of governors of the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), the body that ensures statewide grid reliability and blocked the closure of the Mirant Potrero Power Plant for years.

The nonprofit’s stated mission is to catalyze clean energy investment to aid in the state’s transition away from fossil fuels. CalCEF president Dan Adler described it as a sort of seasoned guide for fledgling green companies that might otherwise fail to navigate the murky, complicated clean-energy sector. CalCEF is in a position to usher start-ups toward success with a combination of funding, networking, and insider wisdom on state energy policy.

Among the challenges that the clean-energy sector faces, Adler said, are the utilities themselves. “They are effectively monopoly, or oligopoly, controllers of the energy industry,” he said. “And they don’t like outside innovation coming and disrupting their work process or their relationship with their customers.”

CalCEF aims to guide the finance community “to be partners with what public policy is doing around clean tech and clean energy,” Adler went on. “There’s a tremendous amount of money to be made, but there’s also a lot of opportunity for money to be wasted. If you don’t have a private-sector investment community that understands these rules and can put their money alongside these rules in a collaborative framework, we’re very unlikely to achieve the really aggressive energy targets that California has set.”

Yet as one skeptical energy insider noted, “there are 15 to 20 other funds, with 10 times as much money, an hour south in the same field,” referring to the burgeoning clean-tech hub in Silicon Valley. It’s questionable whether the CPUC is actually fulfilling some dire need with CalCEF, this person said.

Lynch, not surprisingly, takes a dim view of CalCEF. The former CPUC president questions what business the CPUC has creating a private foundation to guide venture capital investment. “It is a fundamental distortion of the PUC’s authority,” she charged, “all in service of Peevey’s ambitions.”

Peevey’s economic disclosure showed that he holds more than $1 million in a private family trust, without disclosing whether private investments contributed to that fund.

Adler stressed that there is arms-length relationship between CalCEF board members and the companies that benefit from the fund’s investments. “Because we are a nonprofit, and because we have on our board members of the regulatory community, we recognized quickly that we can’t be making direct investments into companies,” said Adler, a former CPUC staff member who was highly regarded even by the critics of CalCEF. “So … we’ve picked the venture-capital funds that we wanted to partner with.”

CalCEF funnels its capital into three different for-profit investment firms, which in turn select the companies that will be included in CalCEF’s investment portfolio. Several directors of the partnering investment firms also sit on the boards of directors of the companies they invest in. The startups run the gamut, from carbon-offset outfits, to energy-efficient lighting manufacturers to solar and wind companies, to biofuels startups to various kinds of technology firms related to the smart grid.

But CalCEF has also poured money into companies that bolster the fossil-fuel industry. One of its first investments was CoalTek, a company developing technology for so-called “clean coal.” Asked to explain why, Adler told the Guardian, “We don’t have veto power on every deal that goes down.”

Adler said he personally believes that “there’s no such thing as clean coal,” but tempered this by adding, “there are some very smart people in our community who will tell you that there’s no future … without coal.”

Another CalCEF investment, DynaPump, is developing technology to make it more energy efficient to pump oil and gas. Asked about this decision, Adler responded: “I will say that when we were approached with this investment by the venture partner that ultimately undertook it, we had our misgivings. If you can save energy in the production of oil and gas, then you’re definitely making a contribution to overall energy efficiency.”

 

TAX-EXEMPT TESLA

There appear to be some closer-than-arms-length links between CalCEF board members and the investment fund’s beneficiaries. A bio for CalCEF director Nancy Pfund, for example, notes that in her capacity as manager of an outside investment fund, she had “worked closely” with Tesla Motors, a CalCEF investment. Tesla provided CalCEF’s first investment return earlier this year after Tesla went public. A principal of one of the investment firms that works with CalCEF, Stephen Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, holds Tesla shares in a personal trust, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tesla manufactures sleek, electric, zero-emission sports cars with prices in the six-figures, and it’s gearing up to roll out a model that will cost somewhere closer to $50,000. The company’s success was helped by a sales-and-use-tax exclusion granted by the state of California last year. Peevey had a hand in that, too. Few Californians may have heard of the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority (CAEATFA), a state body within the Office of the Treasurer, which has the power to authorize sales-tax exclusions for companies that are developing alternative energy technologies. Peevey has a seat on it.

In October 2009, according to a CAEATFA document, Tesla was granted a sales tax exclusion from that financing authority. The sports car manufacturer had received a tax break of $3.3 million as of December 2010, and stands to gain a tax break as large as $29.1 million, depending on its property purchases. As a CAEATFA member, Peevey approved the deal by proxy.

A central question is whether the CalCEF dollars that benefited Tesla and other CalCEF portfolio investments were originally derived from PG&E shareholder profits or ratepayer funds. Adler was careful to note that the initial $30 million came from company shareholders, not PG&E customers. But Lynch pointed out that every dime in PG&E coffers originates with the millions of customers who pay utility bills.

Lynch noted another provision of the bankruptcy settlement agreement, which guarantees PG&E a minimum annual profit of 11.2 percent, catapulting it forever into a higher rate of return than the 8 percent to 11 percent profit traditionally granted by the CPUC in prior decades. “They’re manipulating how big this bucket is to siphon off funds into programs like CalCEF,” Lynch said. “It’s all to give Peevey and his friends access — and to greenwash what was a very stinky deal for the ratepayer.”

 

ELUSIVE CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE

In California, a national leader in addressing climate change, the stakes are high in the energy sector. The CPUC is tasked not only with shoring up transmission-pipeline safety to prevent another San Bruno disaster, but helping to chart a course away from reliance on fossil fuel-powered energy sources.

CFEE, the Energy Coalition, and CalCEF share a common thread — their missions relate to advancing the cause of a clean energy future in California. And while utility funding and partnership is evident in all three operations, the overarching goal is understood to be green.

But as Adler observed, the utilities themselves present one of the greatest obstacles to progress on a clean-energy transition. While California has increased renewable energy sources, it’s done a poor job at supplanting fossil fuel generation with green alternatives, in part because the CPUC has allowed for increasing fossil fuel power generation even as renewable energy expands. According to a listing on the California Energy Commission website, nine natural gas power plants have won approval statewide and are moving toward construction, while six new ones are under review.

The CalCEF approach to addressing climate change, rather than aggressively targeting polluting industries, is to encourage the fledgling green industry in hopes of facilitating success in partnership with the financial sector. In many cases, the backers of the clean-tech companies are the same players behind the big energy giants.

Environmental advocates are critical. “If anyone thinks the CPUC is set up to serve public interests, forget that,” says Al Weinrub, executive director of the Local Clean Energy Alliance, a group that organized against PG&E’s ill-fated Proposition 16 last year. “They never have and they never will.”

Weinrub said he viewed proponents of green energy as falling into two camps: Moneyed interests motivated by a growing new market sector, and activists motivated by environmental and social justice causes. Major green investment firms “want to de-carbonize capitalism,” he observed. “But everything else stays the same.”

Peevey is considered a major driver behind the state’s climate change legislation, and he’s highly regarded for his dedication to green energy. Yet as long as the interlocking dynamic between energy regulators and California’s largest utilities goes unchallenged, change will only come in a way that’s as comfortable, profitable, and manageable for the state’s top polluters as they wish. And in a state with an aging energy infrastructure that’s vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, that pace isn’t nearly quick enough. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Held underwater

Maria Poblet
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1
Held underwater

sarah@sfbg.com

Since the recession began four years ago, 2,000 homes have been lost to foreclosure in San Francisco. These numbers sound insignificant compared to other counties in the Bay Area, but they primarily have hit communities of color already struggling to remain in this expensive city.

As panelists at a recent seminar on foreclosures noted, the first wave hit the Bayview and the Excelsior, while the second hit the Richmond and the Sunset. And as the recession drags on and more borrowers go underwater, another 2,000 foreclosures are on the local horizon.

Although foreclosures continue to destabilize communities and drain resources from local governments, the banking lobby continues to oppose legislative reforms that would allow more people to remain in their homes. And this deep-pocketed resistance has labor, religious, and educational organizations forming the New Bottom Line coalition in an effort to find grassroots solutions to the crisis.

“Foreclosures are the new f-word,” said Regina Davis, CEO of Bayview’s San Francisco Housing Development Corporation, at SFHDC’s April 29 foreclosure seminar.

Sups. John Avalos and Malia Cohen illustrated that there is no shortage of horror stories about predatory lending and dual tracking, in which borrowers apply for loan modifications while the bank continues to pursue foreclosure. Representatives for Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting noted that the banking lobby has blocked even the most modest reforms, even as uncertainty continues to devastate the housing market.

Avalos said his family underwent a housing crisis in 2009, when his wife left her job to home school their special-needs daughter. “We tried to get a loan modification and were told we could only get it by going into default,” he said, recalling how Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) helped them navigate the process. “If this could happen to an elected official, it could happen to anyone.”

Cohen, who lost her condo in the Bayview to foreclosure earlier this year, described foreclosure as “an incredible beast that has ravaged and wrecked the finances of many Latino, African American, and Asian communities who were sold the American dream of homeownership but then had the rug pulled away.”

Mirkarimi aide Robert Selna, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter, said the banking industry spent $70 million last year to kill legislation by state Sen. Mark Leno (D-SF) and Senate President Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) to end dual tracking. This year, the industry has been opposing SB729, Leno and Steinberg’s latest attempt to require banks to give people a definitive answer on loan modification, identify who owns the loan, and give borrowers legal recourse if banks don’t take these steps.

“SB729 gets to the heart of helping to keep people in their homes, but it’s difficult to combat the spending power of the banking industry,” Selna said.

Ben Weber, an analyst in the Assessor-Recorder’s Office, said approximately 277,000 homes in California are going through the foreclosure process; an estimated 1.8 million California residents are underwater on their mortgage; and California is sixth in “negative equity” nationwide. “Negative equity is one of the best indicators of foreclosures — so can we expect another 1.5 million to 1.6 million foreclosures statewide?” he asked.

Weber noted that Ting is supporting AB 1321 by Assemblymember Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont), which would require that all mortgage assignments be recorded within 30 days of their execution; prevent notices of default from being recorded until 45 days after any deed of trust has been recorded; and provide consumers with better transparency about who owns their debt. Yet Ting’s office reports that the banking industry has lobbied against this and other foreclosure-related legislation

Weber said the legislation is a response to problems with the industry’s Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS), which was introduced 15 years ago. “The mortgage industry wanted to expedite the transfer of mortgages between entities so that they could be sold and resold on Wall Street,” Weber said, noting that the system also allowed the industry to avoid paying recording fees to counties.

MERS records an average of 6,700 deeds of trust annually in San Francisco, and MERS deeds of trust are usually transferred two to four times, Weber observed. “So MERS members avoided — conservatively — $134,000 per year in fees.”

Grace Martinez of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment noted that the banking lobby already killed AB935 by Assemblymember Bob Blumenfield (D-Northridge), which sought to charge a $20,000 fee to compensate for the estimated cost of a foreclosure to local government. “That money would have gone back to the city,” she said.

In an April 14 letter, the banking lobby claimed Blumenfield’s bill was a tax that increases the costs of homeownership for new borrowers. “It also serves to discourage the importation of capital into California at a time when the federal government is winding down their involvement in mortgage finance and protracts and complicates California’s economic recovery,” stated the letter, which the California Bankers Association, the California Chamber of Commerce, and other business groups signed.

But Dan Byrd, research director at Berkeley’s Greenlining Institute, reminded the mostly black and brown crowd at SFHDC’s foreclosure seminar that declining property values due to foreclosures have drained $193 billion from African American and $180 billion from Latino communities nationwide. “Folks from these communities who had credit good enough to qualify for a prime loan were given subprime loans with adjustable mortgage rates,” he said

Byrd stressed that homeowners facing foreclosures need to be more financially literate. “A lot of loan documents are written in language that people can’t understand, and they don’t have the money to hire a lawyer,” Byrd said, as he urged politicians to fund organizations that provide financial counseling and education. “Our elected federal officials just cut the budget that supports SFHDC and similar groups.”

SFHDC housing counselor Ed Donaldson said appraisal values make it hard to sell the below-market-rate units that are coming online. “So if we don’t do something about the foreclosure problem, the housing market will continue to unwind,” he said, urging people to protests banks and show up at City Hall and in Sacramento to support reform.

The Rev. Arnold Townsend, vice president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said San Francisco likes to pretend that the foreclosure crisis didn’t really affect the city. “But it did,” he said. “It badly hit people of color that the city, by its policies, doesn’t seem to care if they leave.”

Attorney Henri Norris noted that bankruptcy can be an alternative to foreclosure. “A bankruptcy can stop a foreclosure, at least temporarily,” Norris said. He recommends that people make their loans current and try to get a loan modification approved. “But it’s going to take running a marathon.”

Avalos, who is running for mayor, noted that the city does not fund enough affordable housing and he proposed an affordable housing bond that would include assistance for mortgage assistance, ownership downpayment, seismic retrofitting, and energy efficiency. “I understand that voters see no personal benefit, but it would raise wealth in property values,” he said.

Cohen observed that the federal Homeowners Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which President Obama unveiled in March 2009, “hasn’t worked” and that most of the important reform proposals are “happening at the state level.” She encouraged people to show support for SB729, but wasn’t ready to declare support for Avalos’ housing bond.

“I want to make sure the climate is ripe, that Sups. Carmen Chu and Eric Mar are included, because their districts will be impacted by foreclosures, and that the support is broad-based,” she said. “But folks can divest from banks that have not treated us right.”

Noting that divestment was the most effective way to end apartheid in South Africa, SFHDC’s Davis invited seminar participants to a free screening of Charles Ferguson’s documentary Inside Job, which shows how subprime loans, dual tracking, and mortgage bundling triggered the 2008 financial meltdown — and how many of the main players are still calling the shots.

But despite SFHDC’s informative seminar and the New Bottom Line campaign’s May 3 protest at Wells Fargo’s annual shareholder meetings in San Francisco, SB729 failed to make it out of committee May 4, when Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Van Nuys) announced he would introduce an alternative dual tracking bill. In addition, Wieckowski turned his MERS reform into a two-year bill, suggesting the votes weren’t there to approve it.

Paul Leonard, California director of the Center for Responsible Lending, observed that SB729 supporters include a broad array of consumer, civil rights, labor, faith-based groups, and homeowners, but the only groups in opposition were the California Bankers Association, the Mortgage Bankers Association, and the Chamber of Commerce.

“I find it remarkable that after the exposure of deep-seeded scandals about robo-signing and the systematic shortcomings of mortgage loan service operators, none of the bills intended to address these issues got out of their first committee hearing,” Leonard said.

In an April 20 letter, the banking lobby claimed that SB729 was “unnecessarily complex,” could overlap and contradict actions by federal regulators and state attorneys general, and promote strategic defaults that would negatively affect communities and cloud title for a year following a foreclosure, leaving properties vacant.

Dustin Hobbs of the California Mortgage Bankers Association claims the average time for a foreclosure is more than 300 days. “This would have dragged it out further, and the last thing we need is more vacant homes and more homes in foreclosure,” he said.

Ting noted that Wieckowski made the call to turn AB1321 into a two-year bill. “But you would have thought we were offering the end of home ownership,” Ting said, noting that the banking industry was shocked when advocates produced a MERS memo that encourages banks to record documents and pay fees. “It basically recommended our legislation,” Ting observed.

“Assignments out of MERS name should be recorded in the county land records, even if the state law does not require such a recording,” a Feb. 16 MERS memo said.

Ting describes MERS as “a Wall Street set-up, the ultimate in smoke and mirrors.”

“We did a little poking around in MERS and found that it would help if the name of the loan owner was recorded,” Ting said, noting that the confusion MERS created is bad for consumers, the real estate industry, and homeowners.

“Part of the problem is computer systems doing what banks used to do,” Ting said. “It ended up with robo-signing and foreclosures being sent to the wrong people. I thought AB1321 was a no-brainer, but we had to take it to five or six legislators before anyone would pick it up. This is a prime example of how a particular industry has made a huge amount of money and is unwilling to bend any rules to give consumers any recourse.”

But CMBA’s Hobbs described AB1321 as “part of a broader attack on MERS.” And an April 21 opposition letter from the banking industry describes it as “creating impediments for attracting capital to California’s mortgage marketplace and imposing significant new workloads on county recorders and clerks.”

Ting says he has heard lobbyists make that argument. “But my assessor recorders organization supported it — and they are mostly not elected officials,” he said, noting the group usually doesn’t get involved in promoting legislation.

Ting admits that it’s hard to get the national reforms that are needed. “San Francisco still has a big part to play. And our legislators are still very powerful, so we have no excuse not to be fighting in Sacramento where the Democrats have a supermajority. I mean, how could these bills not get out of committee? It’s not like we didn’t take amendments, but no level of amendments would have made anything happen.”

“Foreclosures typify this financial and political era,” he continued. “They are about all the things we should have seen coming — and some of us did. But even then, and now, there is political amnesia. For all the families that lost their homes, shouldn’t we do something to make sure this doesn’t happen again? Wall Street was bailed out two years ago, but Main Street is still waiting.”

Editorial: Let counties raise taxes

Maria Poblet
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3

The president of the state Senate, Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), has a bill that could profoundly change that way California pays for government. At lot of insiders think it’s just a ploy, a way to force Republicans to come to the table and accept some tax measures, but Steinberg appears serious. He’s presenting the bill to the Governance and Finance Committee May 4, and a simple party-line majority vote could get it to the governor’s desk.

The bill, SB653, would allow counties and school districts to approve taxes — a wide range of taxes, the type that are now entirely under the control of the state. Local governments could impose an income tax, a transactions and use tax, an oil severance tax, a vehicle license fee, or a tax on alcohol, cigarettes, or marijuana. It’s part of what Gov. Jerry Brown calls “realignment” — returning more authority to local government, which is complicated and has advantages and disadvantages. But on its own, the tax measure makes perfect sense: if the residents of San Francisco want to pay a higher car tax, or income tax, or tax on booze, and use the money for better schools and public services, why shouldn’t they be allowed to do it?

San Franciscans pay far more in state taxes than the city gets in state money. That’s one of the great ironies of California finance: the more liberal counties, where the voters support adequate public services, wind up subsidizing the more conservative areas that demand tax cuts. A certain amount of that is inevitable, and even laudable: richer areas should be helping pay for schools, police, and roads in poorer areas. It’s certainly true in the arena of public education, where the courts have, properly, ruled that that state has to make sure every school district gets adequate funding so that kids in Marin County don’t get better educational opportunities than the kids in Tulare County.

And there’s always the risk that realignment will push the state back to the days when geographic inequality was even more dramatic, that California will wind up being, as Sen. Mark Leno (D-SF) once put it: “Hollywood next to Mississippi.”

But Steinberg’s bill doesn’t cut state funding at all; in fact, he’s among the Democrats working to avoid more budget cuts. SB653, properly administered, wouldn’t mean less money for any local agency. It would just remove the ceiling.

California is becoming too big to govern effectively with the current rules — and under the state Constitution, written in a very different era with a smaller, more homogeneous population, even a tiny number of Republicans can hold the budget process hostage. That means, for better or worse, that cities like San Francisco, where residents want decent services and a credible social safety net, are on their own. And if Brown’s proposals to put more of the service burden on the counties (for example, by shifting thousands of state prisoners into county jails) move forward, local governments are going to need the ability to raise their own resources.

Unfortunately, many of the taxes that state law currently allows local government to impose (sales taxes, for example) are regressive. Taxes on income and motor vehicles are far more fair and progressive, and ought to at least be available to cities and counties.

The Democrats in Sacramento need to take this seriously and work for its passage. It’s not the entire solution to the budget crisis and to economic inequality — but it’s an excellent start.

Let counties raise taxes

Andrew Lam
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2
Let counties raise taxes

EDITORIAL The president of the state Senate, Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), has a bill that could profoundly change that way California pays for government. At lot of insiders think it’s just a ploy, a way to force Republicans to come to the table and accept some tax measures, but Steinberg appears serious. He’s presenting the bill to the Governance and Finance Committee May 4, and a simple party-line majority vote could get it to the governor’s desk.

The bill, SB653, would allow counties and school districts to approve taxes — a wide range of taxes, the type that are now entirely under the control of the state. Local governments could impose an income tax, a transactions and use tax, an oil severance tax, a vehicle license fee, or a tax on alcohol, cigarettes, or marijuana. It’s part of what Gov. Jerry Brown calls “realignment” — returning more authority to local government, which is complicated and has advantages and disadvantages. But on its own, the tax measure makes perfect sense: if the residents of San Francisco want to pay a higher car tax, or income tax, or tax on booze, and use the money for better schools and public services, why shouldn’t they be allowed to do it?

San Franciscans pay far more in state taxes than the city gets in state money. That’s one of the great ironies of California finance: the more liberal counties, where the voters support adequate public services, wind up subsidizing the more conservative areas that demand tax cuts. A certain amount of that is inevitable, and even laudable: richer areas should be helping pay for schools, police, and roads in poorer areas. It’s certainly true in the arena of public education, where the courts have, properly, ruled that that state has to make sure every school district gets adequate funding so that kids in Marin County don’t get better educational opportunities than the kids in Tulare County.

And there’s always the risk that realignment will push the state back to the days when geographic inequality was even more dramatic, that California will wind up being, as Sen. Mark Leno (D-SF) once put it: “Hollywood next to Mississippi.”

But Steinberg’s bill doesn’t cut state funding at all; in fact, he’s among the Democrats working to avoid more budget cuts. SB653, properly administered, wouldn’t mean less money for any local agency. It would just remove the ceiling.

California is becoming too big to govern effectively with the current rules — and under the state Constitution, written in a very different era with a smaller, more homogeneous population, even a tiny number of Republicans can hold the budget process hostage. That means, for better or worse, that cities like San Francisco, where residents want decent services and a credible social safety net, are on their own. And if Brown’s proposals to put more of the service burden on the counties (for example, by shifting thousands of state prisoners into county jails) move forward, local governments are going to need the ability to raise their own resources.

Unfortunately, many of the taxes that state law currently allows local government to impose (sales taxes, for example) are regressive. Taxes on income and motor vehicles are far more fair and progressive, and ought to at least be available to cities and counties.

The Democrats in Sacramento need to take this seriously and work for its passage. It’s not the entire solution to the budget crisis and to economic inequality — but it’s an excellent start.

 

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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6
Editor’s notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

The candidates for mayor of San Francisco are already lining up endorsements — the Sierra Club held its interviews April 23, which seems awfully early to me, since some of the most interesting contenders in this town (Tom Ammiano, Matt Gonzalez) have a tendency to jump in at the last minute. And the filing deadline isn’t until August.

But the sooner the big names and organizations are lined up and the money is locked in, the harder it will be for anyone to pull off an August surprise. So unless the redistricting commission seriously messes with Mark Leno’s state Senate seat or Ed Lee bows to the pressure from Willie Brown, Rose Pak, and their allies and decides to go back on his promise and seek a full term, we’re probably looking at a rough approximation of what the voters will face in November.

With John Avalos in the race, the ballot’s become a lot more attractive to progressives. It’s not as if the other major candidates don’t have a lot to offer, and in some cases, they have a lot to offer to the left. There are smart, experienced, qualified people running.

But let’s be honest here: David Chiu, Dennis Herrera, Phil Ting, Leland Yee, and Bevan Dufty all operate somewhere in the squishy political center, a place where tax breaks for corporations are okay, where “homeownership opportunities” tend to trump the needs of tenants, where deals with big private developers are sculpted around the edges but never rejected outright, and where cuts in services are a larger part of the budget solution than taxes on the rich.

Michela Alioto-Pier is off on the far right of the San Francisco political world, and if she looks at all credible and gets any significant traction (and that’s a big if) she’ll be downtown’s favorite candidate. But until now, there was nobody holding the solid progressive banner.

I don’t think that means Avalos’ appeal is limited to the left; he’s in a swing district, and he’s very popular there, and he can talk about small business and community development and open, honest government. He doesn’t sound like a crazy radical; he’s polite and respectful and listens to people.

But I’m glad we have a candidate who won’t try to argue that 25 percent affordable housing at Treasure Island is something to be proud of, or that the Twitter tax break will create jobs, or that social inequality can’t be addressed through local policy. I’m glad there’s someone who can push the discussion and debate out of the middle, can force some of the others who want progressive support to take strong stands, and can liven things up a bit. Because without him, all of the candidates were sounding a lot alike — and I really don’t want to be bored this fall.

Let cities raise taxes

Zelda Bronstein
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44
Let cities raise taxes

There’s a move in the California legislature to allow local government much broader authority to raise taxes — and the GOP types have their panties in a major bunch.


Dan Morain at the Sacramento Bee says it’s all a tactical move: The Republicans won’t allow any tax hikes at the state level, but the Democrats, by simple majority vote, can authorize cities and counties to do all kinds of things that the no-tax crowd hates. Maybe, Morain suggests, this is just a way to bring the recalcitrant Reps back to the budget table. But I don’t know about that: Senate President Darrel Steinberg may be playing games, but his legislative partner, Budget Chair Mark Leno, has been pushing for years to allow cities to raise their own vehicle license fees.


Leno’s brought that bill back this year, and it’s going to commitee next week. And I have to say, tactical or not, the Steinberg bill (PDF) is one of the best things I’ve seen out of Sacramento in years. It would allow local government agencies to impose an income tax, a car tax, an oil severance tax, and a series of excise taxes. It could make the budget deficit in San Francisco vanish.


I agree with Brian at Calitics: There are problems here.


What we’ll end up with is Bay Area counties with more stable revenue streams, while the Central Valley faces ever deepening cuts.  The inequality would be both troubling, and possibly violate some laws.   


And if the state Legislature weren’t paralyzed by a ridiculous two-thrids rule and a handful of die-hard no-tax Republicans, we might not need to go in this direction. But even so, it’s fair to ask: Why can’t the San Francisco voters decide they’d rather pay higher taxes than see the schools collapse?


It’s the same reason I’ve argued in favor of splitting California into three states. Those of us who live in the Bay Area have a very different vision of government than those who live in the no-tax districts. Why should they be able to hold us hostage?


Yes, there will be inequities. But there are only a few parts of the state that so utterly lack economic activity and wealth that there simply is nothing to tax (and the state would have to help them out). Much of Ag Land (and much of no-tax burbland) has plenty of wealthy people and businesses. The poverty is as much a result of inequality as it is a bum economy. In other words: those places can raise taxes, too.


And maybe over time the people in those crumbling tax-free towns will look over at San Francisco, with good schools, healthy, well-educated kids, clean, well-maintained streets, professional fire and police services and the like and say: Why can’t we have that?


And the answer will be: You can.

Beyond 420

Andrew Lam
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0
Beyond 420

steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY When the clock or the calendar hits 420 — and particularly at that magical moment of 4:20 p.m. on April 20 — the air of Northern California fills with the fragrant smell of green buds being set ablaze. But this year, some longtime cannabis advocates are trying to focus the public’s attention on images other than stoners getting high.

“I hope the house of hemp will replace the six-foot-long burning joint as the symbol of 420,” says Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside Health Center, an Oakland cannabis collective, and one of the organizers of an April 23 festival in Richmond dubbed Deep Green that offers an expanded view of cannabis culture.

In addition to big musical acts, guest speakers, and vendors covering just about every aspect of the cannabis industry, the event will feature a house made almost entirely of industrial hemp. That exhibit and many others will highlight the myriad environmental and economic benefits of legalizing hemp, as California Sen. Mark Leno has been trying to do for years, with his latest effort, SB676, The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act, clearing the Senate Agriculture Committee on a 5–1 vote April 5.

Public opinion polls show overwhelming support for ending the war on drugs, particularly as it pertains to socially benign substances like industrial hemp, a strain of cannabis that doesn’t share the psychoactive qualities of its intoxicating sister plants. Yet DeAngelo said that after 40 years of advocating for legalization, he’s learned to be patient because “unfortunately, our politicians are lagging behind public opinion.”

In San Francisco and many other cities, marijuana dispensaries have become a legitimate and important part of the business community (see “Marijuana goes mainstream,” 1/27/10), spawning offshoots like the edibles industry that provide more safe and effective ways of ingesting marijuana (see “Haute pot,” 1/25/11).

But the proof that the medical marijuana is about more than just getting people high also continues to grow, from the endless touching tales of cancer, AIDS, and other patients who have been saved from suffering by this wonder weed to the lengths that the industry is going to cultivate cannabidiol (CBD), a compound found in marijuana that doesn’t get people high but offers many other benefits, including acting as an antidepressant and antiinflammatory medicine.

CBD and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive compound in marijuana, generally have an inverse relationship in cannabis plants, so the efforts by generations’ worth of pot cultivators to breed strains with higher THC content have almost completely bred the CBD out of the plants. “In the underground markets, it didn’t have any value,” DeAngelo said.

When Harborside Health Center first started laboratory-testing marijuana many years ago, DeAngelo said that of 2,000 strains tested, only nine had “appreciable quantities of CBD.” In addition to efforts by Harborside and the San Francisco Patient and Resource Center (SPARC) to work with growers on bringing back CBD-heavy strains, modern scientific techniques are allowing CBD to be extracted from the strains that do exist.

“It’s not psychoactive, but let me tell you, it is mood-altering,” says Albert Coles, founder of CBD Sciences in Stinson Beach. “A lot of people, when they smoke pot go inward, but that often isn’t good for social interactions.”

His company makes laboratory-tested cannabis tinctures called Alta California that have been increasingly popular in San Francisco, offering three different varieties: high THC/low CBD, low THC/high CBD, and a 50-50 mix. “It’s good for creative thinking because it just clears out all the noise,” Coles said of CBD.

But even when talking about THC, many in the industry dispute the criticism that most marijuana use is merely recreational drug use. Vapor Room founder Martin Olive has said most pot use isn’t strictly medical or recreational, but a third category he calls “therapeutic,” people who smoke pot to help cope with the stress of modern life.

DeAngelo agrees, although he puts it slightly differently: “The vast majority of cannabis users use it for the purpose of wellness.” 

DEEP GREEN FESTIVAL Saturday, April 23. Performances by The Coup, Heavyweight Dub Champion, and more; speakers include pot cultivation columnist Ed Rosenthal, Steve DeAngelo, and business owner David Bronner. $20 advance/$30 door ($20 for bicyclists and carpoolers, $100 VIP).

Craneway Pavilion, 1414 Harbour Way South, Richmond. www.deepgreenfest.com

 

Endangered Eagle may still have hope

Andrew Lam
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4
Endangered Eagle may still have hope

news@sfbg.com

An important community institution never truly dies. It remains in the hearts and minds of everyone it has touched — a fact that that patrons who have lived and loved (sometimes literally) in the Eagle Tavern understand. But that doesn’t mean they’re ready to loosen their talons and let go.

With the help of San Francisco’s supervisors, some seriously committed community energy — and maybe even a Dallas cowboy who likes his leather — they may not have to.

For the past week, patrons of one of San Francisco’s oldest and boldest gay leather bars have been rallying to save their stomping ground from uncertain fate. It started when they found that rumors swirling since early in the year were true: the Eagle was slated to close at the end of April and faced a May 1 eviction.

Since then, defenders of the 12th Street space have scraped together emergency meetings and impromptu marches, a surprise leather night at the Skylark Bar (owned by a believed-to-be buyer), and a demonstration on the steps of City Hall. Letters were sent to the Board of Supervisors, petitions signed, and pink tent campouts planned as vigils.

Through it all, the message carrying most clearly was that the Eagle Tavern is far more than a swingin’ hot spot. “It’s our history and it’s our culture,” said organizer Kyle DeVries at a rally on the steps of City Hall last Tuesday. “And we’re proud of what we’ve given to this city.”

That “what” includes more than $1 million raised through the years at popular Sunday beer busts supporting everything from breast cancer research to AIDS awareness. But it also includes providing a safe haven and sense of belonging for San Francisco’s queer community for more than three decades.

And now, patrons have learned they will eek out another month. Thanks to the huge outpouring of support from Eagle denizens, and political pressure from three San Francisco supervisors, the end-of-April plan to fly the coop has been delayed at least until the end of May, Eagle manager Ron Hennis said.

But since the issue first exploded April 11, efforts to save the sacred space haven’t slowed down. At press time, supporters were planning an April 19 “Tuesday roost” at the Eagle in hopes of pumping energy and cash back into the tavern on a night known to be quiet.

Sup. Scott Wiener, along with Sups. David Campos and Jane Kim, sent a letter to the San Francisco Police Department that reviews liquor license sales in connection with the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control. The letter reviewed the Eagle’s importance in SF’s queer community and stated that its authors are “adamantly opposed to any sale that would result in the Eagle’s destruction.”

The supervisors urged the SFPD to “closely scrutinize, consistent with applicable legal standards, any requested liquor license transfer relating to the Eagle to ensure that any such transfer will not harm the LGBT community by putting an end to the Eagle.”

So far, these efforts have been promising for Eagle patrons. In a phone interview, Wiener told us that Skylark owner Steve Englebrecht has pulled out of negotiations to buy the place. But the situation remains complex.

Eagle manager Ron Hennis explained that current owners John Gardiner and Joe Banks decided to sell the Eagle a year ago to focus on their other SoMa leather bar, Hole in the Wall Saloon, which has been plagued with high-cost property battles of its own.

Gardiner and Banks didn’t respond to our e-mails. But Hennis said they intended to sell the business — which includes the Eagle name, equipment, and liquor license — to people they felt would maintain the existing spirit of the bar: Hennis, Eagle entertainment coordinator Doug Hilsinger, and Lila Thirkield, owner of the Lexington Club.

Hennis and Hilsinger told us a contract was signed and the deal had progressed through an initial set of inspections and into escrow when the property’s owner, John Nikitopoulos, refused to negotiate a new lease with the prospective owners.

Despite successful conversations up to that point, Gardiner and Banks “turned off and didn’t say why,” Hennis said.

Further complicating the matter, Gardiner and Banks’ lease ran out and Nikitopoulos hasn’t renewed it. He’s been renting the property month-to-month and is reportedly raising the monthly price tag, which has remained the same for the past 10 years.

Hennis said the owners were still paying rent when they were threatened with eviction — which would mean a death sentence for the Eagle unless they could sell the business to a party Nikitopoulos would be willing to negotiate a lease with.

In the midst of the stalemate, Nikitopoulos offered to buy the business (and most important, the liquor license) from Gardiner and Banks, who refused saying they’d already agreed to sell to Hennis and his partners. Nikitopoulos then approached Hennis, suggesting Hennis purchase the business as planned and then sell him the liquor license. When Hennis also turned down the landlord’s offer — without the liquor license, Hennis wouldn’t actually own the bar — he disappeared from the conversations.

At the April 12 demonstration, mayoral candidate Bevan Dufty called for the stakeholders involved to recognize that in a city that “values history — indeed, is defined by history,” the lease on the Eagle is “more than just a business transaction.

“The owner of this building needs to come to the table and talk about this,” he urged.

But Nikitopoulos, a resident of Santa Rosa who inherited the property from his father, hasn’t responded to Hennis, reporters, or even to calls from Sup. Wiener. He was, however, reportedly in communication with Englebrecht when the Skylark owner swept in to purchase the space and liquor license — but not the name or the leather culture.

Though Englebrecht withdrew, supporters worry Nikitopoulos could potentially negotiate a lease with a different tenant — leaving the bar a casualty of SoMa’s continued gentrification.

Longtime Eagle patron Mike Talley, who has lived in SoMa for more than two decades, fears the Eagle would fit perfectly into a familiar story of luxury lofts, astronomical rent increases, and — inevitably — mass evictions. He explained that what the Chronicle’s late columnist Herb Caen called the Miracle Mile — a strip of SoMa gay and leather bars that once numbered in the dozens — now consists of just a few properties “hanging in there.”

Mark Kliem, a.k.a Sister Zsa Zsa Glamour of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, echoed Talley’s concern, saying, “The rest of the entire world is family-friendly. Why can’t we have this one little half-mile area to call queer space?”

It’s worth noting that the Eagle is by no means exclusively gay. It is famous for its Thursday-night rock shows where, according to an Eagle DJ, “a melting pot of hipsters, stoners, and rockers mixed with the leather crowd.”

“Everyone was cool,” he said. “Everyone was welcome.”

Still, the bar has become an icon of San Francisco’s queer community.

Kim, who represents the district, presented the Eagle with a letter of commendation recognizing its 30 outstanding years as a “venue, cultural institution, safe haven, and home for the LGBT community” at the April 12 meeting.

“You can’t threaten something as important as this institution,” Campos added.

Wiener, Kim, and California Sen. Mark Leno also praised the Eagle at Sunday’s regularly scheduled beer bust. Leno lauded the efforts of local drag queen/community organizer Anna Conda, and referred to the week’s events as “Stonewall West.”

If anything, the week of demonstrations has drawn San Francisco’s queer community closer. And there is hope that the crowd can stay together in the spot they claimed for themselves. One white-horse possibility is Mark Frazier, owner of a Dallas bar also named the Eagle — and also home to a leather crowd.

Seth Munter of Herth Realty in San Francisco said Frazier has been eyeing the SF Eagle for more than a year, and that he is “interested and able to participate in continuing the Eagle as it has been, either with partners or on his own.”

Reached by phone in Dallas, Frazier told us he’s dreamt of the business since before his own Eagle took flight in 1995. “I think the San Francisco Eagle has a lot of history and a core base of support,” he said. “Any time you go into a business with so much support, it’s going to be successful.”

Frazier stressed that like the SF original, his Eagle has raised substantial sums for charity. Though he acknowledged that the bottom line of all businesses is to make money, “the successful ones continue to give back to the community — and not only monetarily.”

So far, Frazier said he has “exchanged e-mails with the powers that be” and that he is confident the Eagle’s troubles stem from a “communication gap” he could help fix.

Hennis expressed hope about the possibility of working with Frazier in addition to pursuing other options like historical preservation.

Demonstrators have penned more than 100 hand-written letters to the Historic Preservation Commission urging it to assign the Eagle landmark status. Commissioner Alan Martinez said such a process could cost thousands of dollars and would not “grant the right to dictate businesses or tenants.”

Still, he announced publicly that giving the building historic status is not “about turning the city into a museum — it’s about our history.”

Though landmark status protects the physical property, it would also provide legitimacy, an instantaneous way to tell the building’s story and bind the community together. And no matter what happens with the sale of the Eagle, that’s one possibility that flies.

 

March to the rainbow

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
March to the rainbow

culture@sfbg.com

IRISH Whether you live in Dallas or settle in SoMa, March is the month when Americans throw out their stale V-Day candy hearts and bring out the greens. Not the ones you smoke, silly, we’re talking St. Patrick’s Day here. Along with the rest of the country, San Franciscans will bite into green bagels, take a swig of something Irish, and head down to the St. Patrick’s Day parade (ours is early this year, Saturday, March 12) to join in the Celtic revelry. But — typical — there’s something about our Irish celebrations that set SF apart — our St. Patrick’s Day parade is one of few in the country to welcome the LGBT community to the party.

While it’s easy to forget over here at the end of the rainbow, most St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the U.S.A. have a strict no-gays policy when it comes to who is allowed to march — which is sad and ironic considering that Irish Americans once faced the same discrimination that their parade associations now seem to be condoning when it comes to gay Americans.

Three cities in the country allow gay groups to participate in their St. Paddy’s parades: Queens, N.Y., SF, and Key West, Fla. (editor’s note: not exactly true, as it turns out — check out our correction for the other bergs around the country to welcome the queer community into the St. Paddy’s fold) The Queens parade was created as an all-inclusive alternative to the New York City parade, which still does not allow LGBT groups to participate despite years of protests — after Irish pride, these demonstrations may be NYC’s second highest profile St. Paddy’s Day tradition. This year the president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, has refused to participate in the Big Apple’s march on account of the parade’s regrettable policy. She’s not the only one: Boston’s mayor has refused to march in his city’s parade for the past few years.

But here in the country’s queer mecca, we can shake our heads in smug, gay disapproval at the St. Patty’s wars of the rest of the country. SF has a history of hoisting our rainbow shamrock high: this city’s parade is all-inclusive, which the president of SF’s Irish Societies (the organization behind the parade and concurrent Civic Center Plaza festival), Dermot Philpot is glad about.

“We include everybody, and we look for them to be in the parade,” Philpot told us in a recent phone interview. “When we include LGBT groups and individuals in our parade, it shows that [the SF Irish community] is part of a larger community.” Although there are no nominally gay groups marching in the parade, unlike in years past, Philpot says he hopes “[the LGBT community] feels included and that they will be there.”

The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band is one LGBT group that has high-stepped for Irish pride, making its most recent St. Patrick’s Day parade appearance in 2000. Doug Litwin, who is the secretary for the band’s board of directors, says the band had been participating in the parade even before he and his clarinet joined the group in 1985. Although marching on St. Paddy’s Day is a subject of contention for queer groups in other parts of the country, for the SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band the parade is about as run-of-the-mill as any. “The bottom line is in San Francisco it’s just not that big of a deal to be openly gay anymore,” says Litwin. “Our band was declared the official band of San Francisco by two different mayors. Some of these parade organizers practically beg us to march.”

Openly gay senator Mark Leno is another familiar face on parade day. Leno is unable to attend the event this year because of an out-of-town speaking engagement, but says he’s been included in the parade as far back as 1998, when he was first elected to office. “I’ve always been proud of the fact that San Francisco’s parade is inclusive. And as long as I have been in office, I’ve always felt welcome in the parade.” Only once has he ever gotten negative reactions from the parade crowds. As Leno recalls, that year he had opted to ride through the parade in a Jaguar. “I heard booing and hissing right as I got up to Second Street.” At issue: red-blooded parade watchers were upset that Leno hadn’t chosen an American car for his cruise through the crowds.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE

Sat/12, 11:30 a.m., free

Begins at Market and Second streets, SF

(415) 203-1027

www.uissf.org

Redevelopment debate full of bum choices

Mary Magee
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3
Redevelopment debate full of bum choices

At the Potrero Hill Democratic Club’s debate about Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to ax local redevelopment agencies to balance the state’s $26 billion deficit, folks attempted to evaluate if redevelopment agencies are essential for job creation and community revitalization, if reform, not total destruction, is possible, and if bum choices are all we have to look forward to.

The Chronicle’s Marisa Lagos, who moderated the debate, noted that redevelopment agencies were created over 60 years ago to create economic development opportunities by borrowing against future tax increases that agencies think they can create.

 “That’s a fancy way to say ‘borrow against future taxes,’” Lagos joked, pointing to the Candlestick Point/Hunters Point Shipyard project as an example of an ongoing project, and the Yerba Buena project as an example of a completed success.

 “The Governor is arguing that when the state is cutting schools and other essential services, this is not the best use of tax dollars,” Lagos stated.

 Panelist Olson Lee, deputy executive director of San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency, pointed to affordable housing as evidence of the agency’s positive impact.

 “I think Redevelopment is important because of the good things it has done,” Lee said, pointing to 11,000 units of affordable housing that the agency helped build in the city.

 Panelist Carroll Wills, the communications director for the California Professional Firefighters, said “many wonderful projects” have occurred under Redevelopment. But he pointed to what he called “a decade of tricks and games,” on the part of Redevelopment agencies as one reason why the state is in a fiscal crisis that threatens firefighters’ jobs.

 “Concrete does not trump core services,” Wills said, arguing that it’s not clear that many affordable housing projects would not have been built without redevelopment aid

Arc Ecology’s Saul Bloom accused Gov. Brown of “short-circuiting” what could have been an important statewide discussion about redevelopment reform, with his bombshell suggestion in January to eliminate redevelopment agencies entirely

 “I’m sympathetic to the argument that Redevelopment takes money away from core services,” Bloom said. “But what do we do to replace it? And is economic development versus core services a false choice?”

Lee pointed to Mission Bay as further evidence of Redevelopment’s success.

“It was considered a brown field, and through development, it’s much different,” Lee said, noting that 20 percent of tax increment financing goes to the General Fund to pay for redevelopment infrastructure. “Clearly the university would not have been there. It was an opportunity to place UC there and generate economic opportunities.”

 Wills argued that Redevelopment Agencies are a luxury we can no longer afford, even as he acknowledged being unfamiliar with local redevelopment projects.

“At best, redevelopment moves around the pieces,” Wills said. “It doesn’t increase economic development and it doesn’t necessarily pay for itself.”

Bloom noted that developments like Mission Bay are dependent on large institutions, like the University of California, which can’t be forced to implement city laws like local hire.

And he said he found it “disappointing” that there wasn’t much more of a dialogue around the plans to redevelop Candlestick Point and the Shipyard, despite the fact that the city held hundreds of meetings over the past decade.

“It was more a case of, Here’s our idea, tell us what you think of it,’” Bloom said. “Perhaps if we had invited the nation’s largest industrial developer, instead of the nation’s second largest home developer, we would have had a different dialogue.”

 Lee replied that the Shipyard has been under discussion for 15 years.

“It’s a very large project, the largest in the Western United States,” Lee said. “It’s a brownfield, though I know Espanola will say it’s a Superfund site,” he continued, as Bayview elder Espanola Jackson bristled under her hat, and the audience wondered if Lee meant that the US E.P.A. somehow got it all wrong.

Lee further shocked audience members by saying Treasure Island was not a redevelopment project (leading Bloom to clarify that Treasure Island is under the jurisdiction of the local Treasure Island Development Authority, if not the SF Agency).

“People felt they wanted economic development at the shipyard,” Lee continued, noting that the neighborhood suffered after the Navy withdrew from the shipyard in the 1970s. But he did not mention that major bones of contention around the redevelopment proposal, centered on plans to build 10,000 mostly market-rate condos, a bridge over an environmentally sensitive slough, the taking of a chunk of the community’s only major park, and no proof that thousands of promised jobs will materialize.

Wills noted that most local redevelopment commissions are peopled by the members of each municipality’s city council, a situation he believes leads to a lack of accountability. But members of the audience, including this reporter, noted that San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency consists entirely of mayoral appointees, who, unlike elected officials, can’t easily be voted off the proverbial island.

It was at this point that panelist Calvin Welch, a longtime housing activist, showed up at the debate, apologizing for being late, but blaming his tardiness on being on a phone call with Sen. Mark Leno to discuss Brown’s redevelopment proposal.

And from there, the conversation veered towards discussions of what could happen to existing redevelopment projects if Brown goes through with his elimination threat.

 Lee noted that if projects simply had a disposition and development Aagreement (DDA), but Redevelopment was no longer there, there would be no project financing. “The devil’s in the details,” Lee said. “Because if you don’t have bonds, what’s the point of having an agreement.”

 Wills opined that Gov. Brown’s proposal has “a vehicle to roll back the bum’s rush” of projects that local municipalities have been trying to push across the finish line, ever since Brown dropped his Redevelopment elimination bomb in January.

 Welch went off on a historical riff about how the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) was met with controversy and outrage until 1988, when Art Agnos was elected mayor, and brokered a deal under which SFRA could do tax increment financing, provided the majority of funds were used for affordable housing.

“It became a finance agency to build infrastructure and affordable housing,” Welch said, noting that attempts to build out Mission Bay around commercial offices and high rises failed, until the Agency used tif to redevelop the site.

 “But mark my words, Lennar is going to come out of this just fine,” Welch added, reminding me of a recent comment that former Lennar executive Emile Haddad reportedly made that suggests Haddad believes the California housing market is poised for a rebound.

(The article outlined how Haddad sold 12,000 acres in California for a $277 million profit at the housing market’s peak four years ago, reacquired it at half the price in 2009, and is now saying it’s time to build in his new role as CEO of FivePoint Communities Inc., which is developing four new master-planned communities with a combined 45,000 residences at Newhall Ranch north of L.A., the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County, the Candlestick Point/Hunters Point shipyard and Treasure Island  in San Francisco, with investors including Lennar, Michael S. Dell’s MSD Capital LP, Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood Development Co. and Rockpoint Group LLC. “I don’t want the party to show up and I’m not dressed,” Haddad, 52, reportedly said in a recent interview. “When the market says ‘I’m here,’ we’ll be one of the few that can deliver inventory.” 

(The Haddad article, which appears to be a non-bylined reprint from Bloomberg News, also claimed that Hunters Point sales are set to begin by late 2012 with prices starting at $525,000, as the Navy continues its cleanup of the 700-acre site. And that the plan now calls for as many as 12,000 homes, 3 million square feet (of commercial space and a new stadium for the 49ers. And that 7,000 homes may eventually be built on Treasure Island and adjoining Yerba Buena Island, under terms of a final development agreement that may go before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for approval in May, with units averaging  $800,000 and reaching up to $2 million, according to Lennar V.P Kofi Bonner.)

And during the Potrero Hill Dems debate, Bloom noted that the Treasure Island plan is being “sped up” and that the Board is expected to vote on the plan as soon as possible. “But since these plans were not bonded before January [when Gov. Brown took office], what’s the point of speeding up the process?” Bloom asked.

“We’re basically seeing a brick wall,” Welch interjected. “There are virtually no funds for permanent affordable housing in San Francisco.But Jerry Brown is not going to commit financial hari kari. Every major developer of market rate housing will come out just fine, because of state actions, not because of a local vote. Deals are going to be made. It’s the question of affordable housing that’s our challenge. You’re gonna be stuck with public housing, as it is, unless there’s affordable housing financing.”

 Wills claimed that Prop. 22, which voters approved last November, “created a mechanism so rigid,” that the state’s only option was to eliminate redevelopment. “Basic services are dying on the vine,” he said. “We can’t afford to give developers subsidies.”

 Lee noted that SFRA built thousands of affordable units over the years that saved the city thousands in terms of core services it would otherwise have to provide. “Affordable housing is so basic, you can’t do things we take for granted if you are living under a freeway,” he said.

 Bloom suggested Redevelopment could do a better job of economic development, including the creation of permanent and sustainable jobs, like his proposal to create maritime uses at the Shipyard—something not entertained under the city’s Shipyard plan.

 Welch connected the dots between the taxpayer revolt that led to Prop. 13’s passage and the current fiscal woes of municipalities unable to raise taxes on commercial development. “That’s a killer,” he said, noting that housing costs more to build and maintain than it generates property taxes, especially if it’s family housing. ‘It’s those damn kids,” he joked.

Welch noted that Gov. Brown used redevelopment money to enable market rate development in downtown Oakland when he was mayor of Oakland—and claimed that Brown equated affordable housing with crime, at the time.

“We love Brown better than Meg Whitman, but it’s 2011 and we face bum choices.”

Community advocate Sharen Hewitt, who heads the C.L.A.E.R. project, asked if the panel thought San Francisco could be a “demonstration model” for using Redevelopment funds to build 50 percent affordable housing.

Welch said conversations have “already happened” between Mayor Ed Lee and Gov. Jerry Brown that have led him to believe that, “all of San Francisco’s redevelopment projects will be made whole, affordable housing will be protected and Brown will be committed to a San Francisco model.”

“It’s like the film Casablanca, when people are shocked to find out that gambling is going on in a casino,” Welch said. “People are shocked to find out that capital talks in a capitalist system.”

 Espanola Jackson asked Welch what will happen to the shipyard development, in face of a lawsuit that POWER brought that’s due to be heard March 24.

“The shipyard plan has a political function,” Welch said, noting that it was the result of a citywide vote in 2008. ‘We opposed it, but we lost. The structure of that deal flows from the vote.”

 City College Board member Chris Jackson expressed frustration that the Redevelopment conversation had devolved into a housing conversation.

“Mission Bay is all about biotech, but who works at UCSF?” Jackson said, noting that Redevelopment, as a state-funded agency, does not have to agree to the city’s newly approved local hire law.

Welch acknowledged that there has never been a study to determine the tipping point required to lift the Bayview out of poverty.

Lee admitted that Redevelopment’s focus has been housing, “because San Francisco is such an unaffordable city.” But he claimed that SFRA had a “much more aggressive program on local hire than the city, for many years.” Noting that SFRA has tried to attract restaurants and food establishments to Third Street, over the years, Lee said, “It hasn’t been something we’ve been particularly successful at.”

Welch opined that the “skills and abilities of the San Francisco community are far greater at stopping projects and protecting neighborhood character, but we can’t figure out how community-based organizations can employ their own people.”

 And then it was time to go back out into the cold March wind and try to wrap our minds about the true meaning of “bum choices” in 2011.

Leno forces GOP hand

Zelda Bronstein
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5
Leno forces GOP hand

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


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


It’s really, really scary.


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


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


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


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


 

Obama’s going to screw California

Zelda Bronstein
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6
Obama’s going to screw California

The giant cuts proposed by the Obama Administration (and worse ones suggested by the GOP) will hurt the economic recovery, hurt the poor, hurt the nation’s future — and hurt California. Let’s remember, as Brian Leubitz notes at Calitics, we live in a net donor state — for every dollar Californians send to Washington, the state gets 80 cents back. And now the president wants to make cuts that will further mess up the state budget — and since Gov. Jerry Brown is sending a lot of Sacramento’s work back to the counties, the shit will keep rolling downhill.


It’s true that Obama is also talking about tax hikes, but that’s going to be hard to get through the House. And even if he gets his higher taxes on oil and gas producers and high-income individuals, he still wants to cut spending — that is, non-military spending.


So over the next few months, as Washington politicians try to out-cut each other and talk about “living within our means” (except for wars that nobody wants to pay for but we keep fighting anyway), look for the budget crisis in Sacramento and San Francisco to get worse.


One ray of hope: If Jerry Brown is willing to back up his “local-government-does-it-better” campaign by giving local government the right to raise taxes abit more easily, then he’ll support Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow counties to raise the Vehicle License Fee. That might even come close to saving SF what Washington and Sacramento take away.

Jerry Hill grandstands on local hire

Zelda Bronstein
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Jerry Hill grandstands on local hire

Assemblymember Jerry Hill — who’s facing term limits and reapportionment — has launched a pretty silly attack on San Francisco’s local hire law. He wants to make sure that no state money is used on local-hire projects (because the San Mateo County folks are mad about it.)


But the law doesn’t apply to projects funded with state money anyway, and it only mandates 50 percent local hire, and Hill’s bill will probably go down the crapper because the San Francisco legislators, who have a fair amount of clout up in Sacramento these days, aren’t going to support it. Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and state Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee have all signed a letter supporting the city’s local hire law.


And, of course, the Hill bill could mess with local hire efforts elsewhere.


Looks like a cheap publicity stunt to me.


Also in the Chron’s news briefs: A plan to raise the salaries of School Board members may make it to the ballot in San Francisco. I’ve been pushing this for years. It’s crazy to pay $500 a month to people who oversee a half-billion budget and do one of the most important jobs in the city — a job that by any account is a full-time-occupation. Yeah, it seems crazy to spend money on school board salaries when the district is laying off teachers, but some very good board members have quit because they can’t afford to have a job, a family and a seat on the School Board, and that’s nuts.


 

Saving Lyon-Martin

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Saving Lyon-Martin

rebeccab@sfbg.com

When word got out that the Lyon-Martin Health Services clinic faced imminent closure, Luette Chavez’s cell phone started ringing off the hook. Her friends were going into panic mode.

“It’s shocking to think that something that’s so important to so many people could just be lost so easily,” Chavez told us. The clinic serves nearly 2,500 patients, regardless of their ability to pay for health care. It offers specialized services for queer women and transgender people, providing everything from primary care to mental health services to hormone treatment. A Hurricane Katrina survivor, medical school student, and part-time sex worker, Chavez volunteers at the clinic and relies on it for health care. Her dream is to someday start a free clinic in New Orleans that is cast in the mold of Lyon-Martin. But for now, all of her energy is consumed with the widespread effort to raise enough money to keep the clinic afloat. To survive, Lyon-Martin must pay off a $250,000 debt immediately.

 

CASH FLOW PROBLEM

As one volunteer among many, Chavez has adopted the mindset that failure is not an option. “I have absolutely every confidence that we will be able to save it ourselves because we’re running ourselves into the ground doing it,” she said.

Lyon-Martin’s board of directors initially voted to shut down the clinic at the close of business Jan. 27, citing insurmountable financial problems. That decision was rescinded, however, following an emergency meeting held at the LGBT Center shortly after news of its pending closure went viral. By Jan. 28, an emergency fund drive had netted close to $100,000 in pledges and cash donations. A fundraiser held Jan. 30 at El Rio drew nearly 700 supporters and roped in another $28,000.

Despite the outpouring of support, the long-term future of the 30-year-old clinic remains uncertain. Lyon-Martin can restructure and avoid shutdown if it manages to clear the $250,000 urgently owed, but it must find $500,000 to continue operating in the same capacity as it has. It has stopped accepting new patients, but will likely be able to serve current patients until at least the end of February.

“Without Lyon-Martin, a community that is historically marginalized won’t have anywhere to turn,” stated an open letter to supporters from Board Chair Lauren Winter, who was unavailable for comment.

A combination of state funding cuts, increased demand, and poor financial management created a perfect storm for Lyon-Martin. A key source of the trouble was that the clinic had not been keeping up with its billing, and after a certain amount of time, it could no longer claim reimbursements from Medi-Cal. Yet external factors such as state and local budget cuts contributed to the problem, too, and Lyon-Martin is not alone in that respect.

All across San Francisco, community clinics that serve low-income and uninsured people are struggling to do more with less. Jim Illig, president of the San Francisco Health Commission, told us that he knows of several other clinics in dire financial straits.

“There are a lot of clinics on the edge because they have dedicated their mission to serving the uninsured,” he said. “Any nonprofit clinic that you see — they’re struggling.” The Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, another nonprofit healthcare organization serving the uninsured, recently announced a merger with Walden House, a substance-abuse treatment center. The merger allowed the venerable health-care nonprofit to continue offering services after its budget was slashed by 50 percent due to reduced support from the city’s General Fund. Even as the cuts took effect, demand for the free clinic’s services rose 10 percent from 2009 to 2010.

“Every time I look into the waiting room, it’s full,” said Jeff Schindler, chief development officer.

If Lyon-Martin closes, its patients will have to be transferred to other clinics, but there’s high demand everywhere. Such an outcome might evoke a sense of dèjá vu for some. Last fall, when an LGBT-focused clinic called New Leaf shut down due to crippling financial problems, many of its clients were transferred to Lyon-Martin.

 

COMMUNITY SURPRISED, UPSET

The front office manager at Lyon-Martin, who wished to be identified only as Braz, said she’d had no warning that closure was imminent. “Just closing down like that seemed impossible. We couldn’t ethically do that,” she said. “Our patients are freaking out right now.”

Once people became aware that the clinic was on the brink of closure, some aired the criticism that the board should have been more forthright about financial troubles. The Bay Area Reporter, a San Francisco publication covering LGBT issues, published an editorial calling for the resignation of the six-member board, and several sources told the Guardian they expected the board members to step down.

Meanwhile, health officials and elected representatives have stepped into the mix, but no promises of governmental financial assistance had been secured by the time the Guardian went to press.

Department of Public Health Director Barbara Garcia was unavailable for comment, but released a prepared statement: “The Department of Public Health has been in close discussions with Lyon-Martin and the pressing need to make immediate changes to the way they conduct their financial affairs. We value the important health care services they deliver and will continue to work with them to find the best long-term outcome for the clinic and the patients.”

Sup. Scott Wiener told the Guardian that he’d been in discussions about Lyon-Martin with Garcia and Sup. David Campos. Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Jane Kim also attended the emergency meeting, and California Sen. Mark Leno was said to be attempting to secure some state funding for the clinic. As the push to save the clinic continues, a parallel effort is moving forward to craft a contingency plan for how Lyon-Martin’s nearly 2,500 patients can access care in the event that it doesn’t survive.

 

COMPETENT CARE

Lyon-Martin patients and others familiar with its services stressed that the women’s clinic is a critical resource for lesbians and the transgender population, because medical staff are trained in that specialized area of care.

“The service there is incredible,” noted Cheryl Simas, who has been a patient there for three years. “They explain everything to you, you’re listened to, and you’re treated with care and respect.” Simas said it was a dramatic difference from an experience she’d had in the mid-1990s, when her healthcare provider was barely comfortable pronouncing the word “lesbian.”

Lyon-Martin medical staffers receive training on transgender patient care, and it even offers training in that realm for medical professionals from cities throughout the United States. “They are internationally renowned as a model for what it means to offer transgender care,” noted labor organizer Gabriel Haaland, who said he was once denied health care due to his transgender identity. “The healthcare system is a fairly traumatic experience for most transgender people,” he added.

If Lyon-Martin closed, “it’d be pretty tragic,” noted Carlina Hansen, executive director of the Women’s Community Clinic, which works closely with Lyon-Martin. When it comes to health care, “We live in an unusual city, in that there is a lot of need among low-income people, due in part to a high cost of living. “Every clinic in San Francisco provides an integral part of that network,” and each clinic fills a specific need, Hansen noted. “The diversity of the clinics matches the diversity of our community.”

Division of labor

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Division of labor

sarah@sfbg.com


In the wake of a three-day protest by unemployed workers outside UCSF’s Mission Bay hospital construction site — and under pressure from city leaders — UC officials have announced voluntary local hiring targets at the $1.5 billion complex.


Targets start at hiring 20 percent of the project’s workers in San Francisco during 2011 and increase that by 5 percent each year until the hospital complex is completed, UCSF news director Amy Pyle told us. But she denies that UC was pressured into its decision. UC is a state agency that is exempt from local rules when it builds facilities for UCSF and other campuses.


“Our voluntary goals are not a result of their protest,” Pyle insisted. “We have been aware of the local hire concerns since before they were protesting.”


The protests have focused on the need to hire workers for southeast San Francisco, where unemployment rates are the highest in the city, particularly among the city’s African American population.


“Of course we are looking to be good neighbors and hire people from an area we know has been hard hit,” Pyle said, clarifying that under the University of California’s hiring program, “local residents mean people who live in San Francisco generally.”


Mission Bay Hospitals Projects executive director Cindy Lima said uproar at the site stemmed in part from perceptions that lots of work is available now, but she said that isn’t true.


“Job opportunities should ramp up in May, but right now, they are installing structural piles,” Lima said. “So if there is an opportunity for a carpenter or a laborer to get decks built, we call the union.” UC’s voluntary local hire announcement came after Mayor Ed Lee urged UC officials to formalize a community hiring plan for Mission Bay, and Aboriginal Blackmen United (ABU) president James Richards agreed to call off his group’s protest outside UC’s Mission Bay hospital complex, at least for now.


ABU member Fred Green, an unemployed construction worker who has lived in the Bayview for 50 years and has five children, said the protesters tried to remain peaceful. “But an empty belly makes you do strange things,” Green said. “If there’s enough work for everybody, why should we be stuck at home while someone comes into my community and takes food out of my kids’ mouths?”


Troy Moor, who has lived in the Bayview for 47 years and has two kids, speculated that if ABU blocked both gates to the project, it would cost UC thousands of dollars a day in lost productivity. “Here at the front gates, we are visible. But we figure that if by next week, nothing is happening, we’ll start making them lose money,” he said.


Michelle Carrington is a 58-year-old flagger and operating engineer from the Bayview who has been unemployed for 10 years. She said Dwayne Jones, who worked in the Mayor’s Office and helped her graduate from Young Community Developers, was “working to try and get us jobs.”


Jones, who is now with Platinum Advisors as a consultant to DPR Construction, UC’s prime contractor at its Mission Bay site, put in an appearance on day three of ABU’s protest. But he said his work with DPR had nothing to do with the ABU protest.


“UC is very committed to maximizing local hire where we can,” Lima told the Guardian. “It’s unfortunate there is a protest because it gives the sense we haven’t been working with the community when in fact we have been working with the Mayor’s Office, CityBuild, and every stakeholder interested in this project, including ABU.”


Richards said ABU mounted its protest to challenge UC’s claims that it has hired more local residents at the site. They were also angry over a flyer that encouraged residents interested in working at the site to sign up with the San Francisco Workforce Collaborative, in partnership with Rev. Arelious Walker’s BayView Hope Community Development Corporation, feeling as if the UC was trying to divide their community. Walker did not return our calls for comment.


“We were with Walker when he was fighting the Nation of Islam’s attempt to stop development at the shipyard, so it hurts so bad to see this,” Richards said. “Never again will we stand by and let people come into the southeast community and take our jobs. We’re going to fight until the end. If the community doesn’t work, no one works.”


But even as UC announced its voluntary Mission Bay goals, community advocates pressed UCSF to set higher targets, citing the city’s failure to attain 50 percent local hire goals under San Francisco’s decade-long policy of seeking to hit that goal.


Joshua Arce of the Brightline Defense Project said he is glad Lee expressed support for Sup. John Avalos’ local hire legislation, “but we are waiting to see if he implements the law as written or a watered-down version.”


Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed Avalos’ legislation to become law without signing it, bowing to the veto-proof 8-3 majority that approved it. But in a 12/23/10 letter explaining his position, Newsom recommended modifications to accommodate the concerns of the building trades, whose members come from across the Bay Area.


“I know the passage of this policy has created high expectations among some residents of San Francisco,” Newsom wrote. “The city owes it to them to implement this policy in a way that will result in a successful program that is fiscally responsible and reflects the best thinking of the many stakeholders invested in San Francisco.”


But with Newsom moving to Sacramento, California Assembly member Tom Ammiano and Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee are urging legislators to support San Francisco’s newly approved local hire law as approved.


In a Jan. 25 letter that Leno and Yee signed, Ammiano encouraged Bay Area officials to work with the city to explore mutually beneficial “reciprocity agreements” in which local cities would support one another’s programs “aimed at providing disadvantaged job seekers opportunities in the construction sector.”


“In neighborhoods like the Bayview, the Mission, and the Western Addition, the promise of jobs — particularly living wage construction jobs — has been an unfulfilled promise for generations,” Ammiano wrote.


But in a Jan. 28 press release, UC officials clarified that “as one of 10 campuses of a statewide constitutional corporation and public trust,” UCSF is not subject to Avalos’ mandatory requirement and is prohibited from adopting mandatory requirements based upon residency.


Instead, UC promised to do more community outreach and try to carve out financial incentives to encourage contractors to hit UC’s targets at Mission Bay.


Lima said the hospital complex is a historic opportunity to put as many San Franciscans to work as possible. “We have set an ambitious hiring target but we recognize that the economic activity generated by the project can significantly benefit our neighbors and local residents,” she said


After his Jan. 27 meeting with UC, Richards told ABU members that “when DPR needs someone for a job, they’re gonna call Dwayne Jones, and then Dwayne will let us know. There are hundreds of jobs, but I don’t know if they are in every trade. So, I feel good. But not so good that I can say that 10 carpenters will be hired tomorrow. There’s not enough need for that right now. But the work that’s there, when they call, you’re going to know it.”


Lima said UC’s meeting with Richards was “positive”.


“We clarified some misunderstandings and made some progress,” Lima said, noting that work at the site will become increasingly available starting in May. “Our goal is still to create jobs for San Francisco residents and make this project happen. We are continuing to try and match people who need to go to work with available job opportunities. The bottom line is that there are a lot of people in this city who are out of work and a lot of groups with different intentions in mind and we get tangled in that process.”


Lima vowed to work closely with DPR Construction and major subcontractors to ensure qualified local residents — including those from neighborhoods closest to the site — can access the construction jobs. And she promised that results will be reported regularly and the size of the workforce will increase steadily, peaking with 1,000 workers in 2012.


“We are mindful that while these goals challenge us, they are also within reach,” Lima said, noting that UCSF has been engaged in creating job opportunities in the construction trades for San Franciscans since 1993. “Our success will depend on the participation and commitment of the broader community and the trade unions.”


UC’s move comes less than two weeks after Lee announced at the annual San Francisco Labor Council Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast that one of his top priorities is implementing Avalos’ mandatory local hire policy.


Lee’s comments suggest a different approach from Newsom’s, but it’s still not clear whether Lee intends to follow the “critical steps” that Newsom felt the city should take “to ensure the responsible and successful implementation of Avalos’ legislation.”


Arce said he was happy to see Lee address the issue at the MLK Day event. “Lee said that if we are using local dollars to create local jobs, those jobs should go to local workers,” Arce recalled, noting that the following week Lee started to coordinate with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and CityBuild to engage community stakeholders and lay out a road map to implement Avalos’ legislation.


“They set a deadline of March 25 as the target date by which the language of Avalos’ mandatory legislation must be included in all public bids and contracts,” Arce said. “And it’s our understanding that Mayor Lee called UC Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann directly on the morning of Jan. 27 [before ABU’s Richards met with UC officials] to ask that UCSF formalize a community hiring plan for Mission Bay as soon as possible.”


Avalos said he was “very encouraged” by Lee’s remarks. “To say that at the Martin Luther King Labor Breakfast was a big deal,” Avalos said, noting that the building trades were also in the room. “I feel Ed Lee wants to implement the legislation how it is written. He needs help doing that. He needs to create a process to make it happen, and I believe the folks who helped draft the legislation will be ready to do that. That’s not to say that this couldn’t go wrong, but I feel pretty confident that he will implement as strong a local hire model as possible.”

What if everybody ran for mayor?

Zelda Bronstein
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66
What if everybody ran for mayor?

I mean, not everybody. I’m not running. Tom Ammiano isn’t running. Mark Leno isn’t running. Ed Lee isn’t running, unless he is.


But as the progressives think about the 2011 mayor’s race, there’s a strategy that’s been floating around, mostly in bars, that’s crazy and I’m not even sure I’m serious about it myself, but it might actually make sense.


See, right now there’s no one progressive candidate that everyone can get behind. And there’s no single progressive candidate who has the resources and the citywide base to win a contest where millions of dollars will be spent, not only by the candidates but by indepenent expenditure groups.


So suppose a whole bunch of people ran? Suppose the field included Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly, David Campos, John Avalos, Ross Mirkarimi (although he might want to run for Sheriff), Eric Mar … a half dozen decent candidates get in the race, each of them bringing along constituencies who might not otherwise vote. And in the end, it all comes down to ranked-choice voting, and as we know from the Oakland mayor’s race and D10, anything can happen.


Aaron Peskin gets 15 percent of the vote, comes in first, gets enough second-place votes and suddenly — he’s mayor! Take that, Arthur Evans!


Seriously, the point isn’t to elect Peskin or any other individual. It’s too see if a concerted progressive campaign, involving candidates who work together, the way Jean Quan and Rebecca Kaplan did in Oakland, could get enough voters excited and involved to put one of the candidates over the top.


Again: I’m not even sure this is a good idea. But it’s worth thinking about.

Leno will not run for mayor

Zelda Bronstein
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1
Leno will not run for mayor

Just as the supervisors were meeting to select a successor mayor, Mark Leno called me to tell me that, after a lot of thought, he has decided he won’t be a candidate for mayor in November. He’s going to be running the state Senate Budget Committee, dealing with the worst fiscal crisis in California history, and “I just wouldn’t have the time to run a campaign.”


Leno would have brought a lot to the race, particularly as it’s shaking down now, but I certainly understand his choice.

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

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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