OPINION When Mayor Ed Lee announced in February 2011 that he understood both the critical importance and the severe dangers inherent in the current bicycle infrastructure along the dual three-block stretches of Fell and Oak between Scott and Baker, a shot went through the community of people who had worked for so long to bring awareness to this troubled path.
Finally, it seemed, we had a mayor who understood that if San Francisco was serious about living up to its own nearly 40-year-old pledge to be a transit-first city, a narrow bike lane sandwiched between parked cars and fast-moving traffic on Fell Street and a complete absence of any bicycle infrastructure on Oak simply wouldn’t do.
Finally, we had a mayor who wouldn’t be satisfied with mere words on a page, who had the courage to carve out one single safe bike route from the east side of town to the west, to create a viable alternative to automobile transportation, to prepare our city for the inevitable challenges presented by climate change, peak oil, and economic collapse, and to do it in the face of the predictable objections from a few small-picture citizens who couldn’t look at the 60 square feet of a parking spot and imagine anything other than a privately owned two-ton pile of steel taking up precious public space.
The community of people who had waited nearly 40 years for the city to live up to its own word kept on waiting throughout 2011, patiently allowing the Municipal Transportation Agency to perform its due diligence, attending multiple public meetings in the hundreds, and delivering a resounding verdict: bring us our separated bike lanes. Make this neighborhood a better place to live. Begin the long work of preparing our city for a way of living that doesn’t center around the automobile.
With the public process complete and the calendar turning to nearly one year since Lee called for the MTA to “move quickly” to create separated bike lanes on Fell and Oak, the MTA handed down a jarring announcement. The Fell and Oak Bikeways were being delayed because the agency needed to take extra time to do all that could be done to find nearby replacements for the 80 parking spots set to be removed for the bike lanes.
That’s right — in a city that has for 40 years had an explicit policy of giving preference to transit options that weren’t the automobile, in a city that, nevertheless, has over 440,000 public parking spots and zero safe, accessible bike routes from the east side of town to the west, the creation of a separated bikeway that the vast majority of the community wants, and that the mayor’s own newly appointed District Supervisor, Christina Olague, is in support of, was being delayed by nearly a year so that the loss of private automobile parking would be as small as possible.
How does this happen? In a word: fear. The mayor and MTA are afraid of ruffling a few feathers to do what they know is right.
Cities like New York, Portland, and Minneapolis are leapfrogging us in building the cities of tomorrow. Chicago is creating 100 miles of separated bike lanes in the next four years. Don’t call us America’s Greenest City — you’re thinking of the San Francisco of 40 years ago.
Morgan Fitzgibbons is co-founder of the Wigg Party, a Western Addition neighborhood sustainability group
A complicated civil lawsuit alleging corruption and fraud and involving several prominent current and former city officials — including Mayor Ed Lee, who took the witness stand to discuss actions he took as city purchaser a decade ago — could end up costing city taxpayers as much as $10 million.
City and County of San Francisco vs. Cobra Solutions and Telecon was being deliberated by jurors in Superior Court at press time. It centers on a fraud and kickback scheme engineered by convicted felon Marcus Armstrong, a former Department of Building Inspection information technology manager who bilked the city out of at least $482,000 between 1999 and 2001 (see “Dirty Business,” 2/8/11). His scheme was exposed by an FBI investigation following a whistleblower’s complaints in September 2001 that sub-contractors were not being paid.
The City Attorney’s Office accused Cobra Solutions of participating in Armstrong’s fraud, but Cobra’s owners denied being part of the scheme and they say their business was wrongfully damaged when their contracts were frozen by city officials.
Armstrong created two phony companies, Monarch Enterprises and Mindstorm Technologies, and ordered master contractor Cobra Solutions to use the phony sub-contractor companies to provide technology services to the city’s Computer Store (a list of approved contractors) under an agreement awarded to Cobra by the Committee on Information Technology (COIT). It also partnered with another company alleged by the city to be fraudulent, Government Computer Sales, Inc. (GCSI), whose principals fled and whose whereabouts are unknown.
Cobra Solutions founder and president James Brady had raised questions about Armstrong as early as 2000, questions that triggered an unfruitful investigation by the city. Brady maintained in court testimony that Cobra, unaware of Armstrong’s fraud, relied on him to sign off on work services that Armstrong’s phony companies were supposed to have supplied to the city.
The Computer Store was set up by then-Purchaser Ed Lee under the administration of then-Mayor Willie Brown to centralize technology procurement across departments. Now-Mayor Lee was deposed in the case and called to the witness stand on Feb. 6, where he said he awarded Cobra Solutions the highest-rated ranking among several vendors being evaluated by COIT for master contract award status. Each of the other city evaluators, including Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda, also ranked Cobra the top service provider.
According to Armstrong’s guilty plea agreement, GCSI partnered with Armstrong to defraud the City out of $240,000. Deborah Vincent James — then-director of COIT and now deceased — testified in a pre-trial deposition that GCSI was “fraudulent,” that city staffers recommended against certifying the company, and that it was only awarded master contract status because of its political ties to Brown, who directed Lee to overrule the staff recommendation. In his deposition, Lee claimed he could not remember GCSI.
Vincent-James and former Purchasing Directory Judith Blackwell forwarded whistleblower complaints about GCSI to the City Attorney’s Office in early 2001, but neither that office nor the Controller’s Office acted on the complaints until GCSI had gone bankrupt and GCSI’s owners, two foreign nationals, had disappeared.
Of note, Lee was not questioned about his and Brown’s involvement in awarding GCSI its master contract status in 1998. Time restrictions placed on attorneys by Judge James McBride limited the scope of witness examinations, so the most politically explosive charges went largely unexplored in court.
The city completed a subsequent investigation in January 2003 that resulted in stopped payments to Cobra, contract termination, and the city’s civil lawsuit filed by City Attorney Dennis Herrera against Cobra in April 2003. Following Herrera’s filing against Cobra, Herrera demanded an audit of Cobra which Cobra refused, citing a conflict of interest. Herrera had previously represented Cobra in private practice before he was elected City Attorney in 2001.
A trial court ruled in that Herrera had a conflict of interest, disqualifying Herrera and his office from participating in the Cobra case, a ruling later upheld by the California Supreme Court. Yet the suit alleges Herrera and his office continued to supply work to various City agencies and to effectively prevent Cobra from doing further business with city. By withholding the $2 million Cobra was owed by the City, COIT was able to disbar Cobra from entering into master contract agreements with the city, claiming Cobra was fiscally “non-responsible,” according to court testimony.
Blackwell, in her testimony at trial, said the determination of Cobra’s non-responsibility was used as a “pretext” for Cobra’s disbarment, a procedure that should have triggered a hearing to allow Cobra to defend itself against debarment. That never happened.
An FBI investigation into Armstrong’s kickback scheme resulted in Armstrong pleading guilty to mail fraud, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice in July 2003. No criminal charges were ever brought against Cobra Solutions or Telecon and yet the city’s outside law firm, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy LLP, which tried the case on behalf of the city, held on to the city’s allegation of fraud committed by Cobra and Telecon throughout the case and trial until closing arguments on Feb. 9.
In his closing arguments, attorney Ara Jabagchourian made no mention of Telecon, effectively dropping the city’s claims against Telecon, and constricted the city’s damage claims against Cobra. He asked the jury to award the city up to $266,000, money paid to Cobra for work authorized and signed-off by the city, via Armstrong, for breaching a provision in the contract agreement between the city and Cobra that requires the master contractor to “supervise” sub-contractors.
But Cobra’s lawyers — the firm of Gonzalez & Leigh, which includes former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez, who took a leave from his current job as deputy public defender to consult on the case — says it is the city that should pay for fatally harming a business without just cause.
“The City and City Attorney’s office falsely accused Cobra and Telecon of stealing $2.4 million dollars from the City, destroying these companies and ruining the lives of good, decent people who were the victims of a city tech official who should not have been hired in the first place,” said attorney Whitney Leigh. “Then the City Attorney made it worse, flatly defying an order disqualifying the City Attorney’s Office and instead driving efforts to run Cobra and Telecon out of business just because Cobra raised the issue of the conflict of interest. I’ve been unable to find any case in which an attorney has so flagrantly ignored a disqualification order.”
Herrera can’t comment on the case, but his office previously told the Guardian, “Immediately upon discovery of Cobra’s role, the office screened Herrera off from further involvement in the investigation and all matters related to it in accordance with a stringent ethical screening policy Herrera established when he took office.”
The-City Controller Ed Harrington, who exerted significant influence over contract awards and debarment proceedings as chair of COIT, conceded in court testimony that internal controls failed to detect Armstrong’s scheme.
“In the case of Marcus Armstrong, the control within the city failed and the control within Cobra failed,” Harrington, now head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, told the court. “We had both controls in place. If they had worked, the city would have been protected. Both failed.”
Cobra is seeking damages for breach of contract (the city’s failure to pay monies owed Cobra), and civil rights due process violations in connection with the city’s apparent conspiracy to bar Cobra from doing further business with the city.
A business valuation expert testified Cobra Solutions was valued between $5.2 million and $8.8 million based on future lost profits from the city’s debarment. With attorney fees and court costs, the city could be on the hook for as much as $10 million.
The city has subsequently established more stringent controls as it relates to the authorization of work assigned to master contractors and sub-contractors. The jury was expected to resume deliberations on Feb. 14 and deliver its verdict by week’s end. Check the SFBG.com Politics blog for the latest.
Bad news for medical marijuana patients in the Bay Area: as reported by the SF Examiner, the DEA has requested records from the city’s Department of Public Health for 12 of San Francisco’s existing 21 cannabis dispensaries. This is the same move the DEA made before sending the threatening letters to five other cannabis collectives last fall. Those five dispensaries are now closed.
In fall of 2010, US Attorney Melinda Haag targeted five SF dispensaries in school zones with letters declaring them in violation of federal law. In the face of potential jail time for dispensary staff and even the landlords of the buildings that housed the dispensaries, they shut their doors. Now, more than 50 percent of the city’s dispensaries could have to follow suit.
The really upsetting part about all of this? The sheer randomness of it all. In our recent Cannabis Issue, the Guardian interviewed Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who said that in his meeting with Haag over the matter, the US Attorney said the orders to persue the dispensaries came from above. “She said she was only doing what the boss was telling her to do,” Ammiano told the Guardian. “We had a hard time with that.” The Obama Administration has been frustratingly opaque about the motives behind, and future plans for, persecuting an industry that Attorney General Eric Holder once called a “low priority” for federal law enforcement.
The Guardian has sent an email to Mayor Ed Lee for his comments on the request for records, and will update this post when we hear back. Even then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, as the Examiner pointed out, sent a letter in 2008 to Congress to encourage it to act against the DEA’s attempts to intervene in California’s medical marijuana industry.
Assemblymember Ammiano and Senator Mark Leno are leading the efforts to establish a statewide regulatory board cannabis that would, among other things, demonstrate to the feds that the industry is being well-regulated in California. Americans for Safe Access and UFCW (the union representing cannabis workers in California) have also introduced a ballot initiative called the Medical Marijuana Regulation, Control, and Taxation Act that would establish a regulating board made of patients, government representatives, medical professionals, and cannabis industry folks. A poll conducted by Probolsky Research recently put voter support for that measure at 59.2 percent.
But who knows if California voters will get a chance to regulate marijuana as they see fit. If these requests for records proceed as the last round of them did, SF could be down to nine dispensaries in a city with not only a large base of cannabis patients, but also a thriving cannabis culture.
The dispensaries whose records were requested by the DEA were:
Christina Olague, the newest member of the Board of Supervisors, faces a difficult balancing act. She was appointed by Mayor Ed Lee, whom she supported as co-chair of the controversial “Run Ed Run” campaign, to fill the vacancy in District 5, an ultra-progressive district whose voters rejected Lee in favor of John Avalos by a 2-1 margin.
So now Olague faces the challenge of keeping her district happy while staying on good terms with the Mayor’s Office, all while running in her first campaign for elected office against what could be a large field of challengers scrutinizing her every vote and statement.
Olague has strong progressive activist credentials, from working with the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition to protect low-income renters during the last dot-com boom to her more recent community organizing for the Senior Action Network. She co-chaired the 2003 campaign that established the city’s minimum wage and has been actively involved in such progressive organizations as the Milk Club, Transit Riders Union, and the short-lived San Francisco People’s Organization.
“One of the reasons many of us are so supportive of Christina is she is grounded in the issues of low-income San Franciscans,” said Gabriel Haaland, who works with SEIU Local 1021 and accompanied Olague to a recent interview at the Guardian office.
She also served two terms on the Planning Commission — appointed by Board of Supervisors then-President Matt Gonzalez in 2004 and reappointed by then-President Aaron Peskin in 2008 — where she was known for doing her homework on complicated land use issues and usually landing on the progressive side of divided votes.
“Coming from the Planning Commission, she can do a lot of good,” said Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City and a supporter who has worked with Olague for 15 years. “We lost a lot of collective memory on land use issues,” he said, citing the expertise of Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin. “We do need that on the board. There is so much at stake in land use.”
Olague disappointed many progressives by co-chairing Progress for All, which was created by Chinatown power broker Rose Pak to push the deceptive “Run Ed Run” campaign that was widely criticized for its secrecy and other ethical violations. At the time, Olague told us she appreciated how Lee was willing to consider community input and she thought it was important for progressives to support him to maintain that open door policy.
In announcing his appointment of Olague, Lee said, “This is not about counting votes, it’s about what’s best for San Francisco and her district.” Olague also sounded that post-partisan theme, telling the crowd at her swearing-in, “I think this is an incredible time for our city and a time when we are coming together and moving past old political pigeonholes.”
With some big projects coming to the board and the working class being rapidly driven out of the city, progressives are hoping Olague will be a committed ally. There’s some concern, though, about her connections to Progress For All campaign’s secretive political consultant, Enrique Pearce.
Pearce has become a bit of a pariah in progressive circles for his shady campaign tactics on behalf of powerful players. In 2010, his Left Coast Communications got caught running an independent expenditure campaign partly funded by Willie Brown out of Pearce’s office, even though Sup. Jane Kim was both its beneficiary and his client — and that level of coordination is illegal. Last year, Pearce was hired by Pak to create the “Run Ed Run” campaign and write the hagiographic book, The Ed Lee Story, which also seemed to have some connections with Lee’s campaign. The Ethics Commission hasn’t fined Pearce for either incident, and he didn’t return a Guardian call for comment.
Olague told us not to worry. “He’s a friend…and I think it’s an exaggerated concern,” she said, confirming but minimizing his role so far. Yet she hired one of Pearce’s former employees, Jen Low, as one of her board aide. Olague’s other aides are Chris Durazo from South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN) and Dominica Henderson, formerly of the SF Housing Authority.
Debra Walker, a progressive activist who served on the Building Inspection Commission and has worked with Olague for decades, said she’s a reliable ally: “She’s from the progressive community and I have no equivocation about that.”
Olague makes no apologies for her alliances, saying that she is both independent and progressive and that she should be judged by her actions as a supervisor. “People will have to decide who I am based on how I vote,” she said, later adding, “I support the mayor and I’m not going to apologize for that.”
OLAGUE’S PRIORITIES
Olague was born in Merced in 1961 to a Mexican immigrant father who fixed farming equipment and a stay-at-home mother. She went to high school in Fresno and moved to the Bay Area in 1982. She attended San Francisco State University but had to drop out to help support her family, working at various stock brokerage firms in the Financial District. She later got a degree in liberal studies from California Institute of Integral Studies.
In 1992, Olague’s mother was in serious car accident that left her a quadriplegic, so Olague spent the next seven years caring for her. After her mother died, Olague left the financial services industry and became a community organizer for the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, battling the forces of gentrification and then-Mayor Brown and becoming an active player in the ascendant progressive movement.
But Olague never abided progressive orthodoxy. She backed Mark Leno over the more progressive Harry Britt in their 2002 Assembly race and backed Leno again in 2007 when he ran for state Senate against Carole Migden. She also voted for the Home Depot project on Bayshore Boulevard despite a progressive campaign against the project.
Olague worked with then-Sup. Chris Daly to win more community benefits and other concessions from developers of the Trinity Plaza and Rincon Tower projects, but now she is critical of Daly’s confrontational tactics. “Daly’s style isn’t what I agree with anymore,” Olague said, criticizing the deals that were cut on those projects to approve them with larger than required community benefits packages. “I think we romanticized what we got.”
So how does Olague plan to approach big development proposals, and is she willing to practice the brinksmanship that many progressives believe is necessary to win concessions? While she says her approach will be more conciliatory than Daly’s, she says the answer is still yes. “You push back, you make demands, and if you don’t think it’s going to benefit the city holistically, you just fucking say no,” Olague said.
Walker said Olague has proven she can stand up to pressure. “I think she’ll do as well as she did on the Planning Commission. She served as president and there is an enormous amount of pressure that is applied behind the scenes,” Walker said. “She’s already stood up to mayoral pressure on some issues.”
Yet even some of Olague’s strongest supporters say her dual — and perhaps dueling — loyalties to the Mayor’s Office and her progressive district are likely to be tested this year.
“It’ll be challenging for her to navigate,” Radulovich said. “The Mayor’s Office is going to say I want you to do X and Y, and it won’t always be progressive stuff, so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.”
But he said Olague’s land use expertise and progressive background will likely count for more than any bitter pills that she’s asked to swallow. “Sometimes, as a policy maker, you have to push the envelope and say we can get more,” he said. “It helps if you’re willing to say no to things and set boundaries.”
When we asked Olague to lay out her philosophy on dealing with land-use issues, she said that her approach will vary: “I have a very gray approach, project by project and neighborhood by neighborhood.”
Only a couple weeks into her new role, Olague said that she’s still getting a lay of the land: “I’m in information gathering mode, meeting with neighborhood groups to try to figure out what their issues are.”
But Olague said she understands that part of her job is making decisions that will disappoint some groups. For example, after Mayor Lee pledged to install bike lanes on Fell and Oak streets to connect the Panhandle to The Wiggle and lessen the danger to bicyclists, he recently stalled the project after motorists opposed the idea.
“I’m a transit-first person, for sure. I don’t even drive,” Olague said of her approach to that issue, which she has now begun to work on. “We’ll try to craft a solution, but then at some point you have to fall on one side or the other.”
THE “JOBS” FOCUS
One issue on which Olague’s core loyalities are likely to be tested is on the so-called “jobs” issue, which both Lee and Olague call their top priority. “Jobs and economic revitalization are very important,” she told us.
Progressives have begun to push back on Lee for valuing private sector job creation over all other priorities, such as workers’ rights, environmental safeguards, and public services. That came to a head on Jan. 26 at the Rules Committee hearing on Lee’s proposed charter amendment to delay legislation that might cost private sector jobs and require extra hearings before the Small Business Commission. Progressives and labor leaders slammed the proposal as unfair, divisive, unnecessary, and reminiscent of right-wing political tactics.
But when we interviewed Olague the next day, she was reluctant to criticize the measure on the record, even though it seemed so dead-on-arrival at the Board of Supervisors that Mayor Lee voluntarily withdrew it the next week.
Olague told us job creation is important, but she said it can’t squeeze out other priorities, such as protecting affordable rental housing.
“We always have to look at how the community will benefit from things. So if we want to incentivize for businesses, how do we also make it work for neighborhoods and for people so that we don’t end up with where we were in the Mission District in the ’90s?” she said.
Olague also said that she didn’t share Lee’s focus on jobs in the technology sector. “There’s a lot of talk of technology, and that’s fine and I’m not against that, and we can see how it works in the city. But at the same time, I’m concerned about folks who aren’t interested necessarily in working in technology. We need other types of jobs, so I think we shouldn’t let go of the small scale manufacturing idea.”
Sup. Jane Kim has introduced legislation to the Board of Supervisors calling for a re-examination of the San Francisco Police Department’s participation in some aspects of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which was created by the Federal Bureau of Investigations to do domestic surveillance.
The proposed ordinance would prohibit the SFPD from working with the JTTF to collect intelligence on individuals in the absence of criminal wrongdoing, which has been a concern of civil libertarians since last year when a secret memo revealed that local officers were under FBI command and not bound by local and state restrictions on such surveillance (see “Spies in blue,” 4/26/11).
Kim said the ordinance was necessary to ensure the “requirement of reasonable suspicion before we do any type of investigation of criminal activity. And we don’t base it on ethnic identification or religious practice as some of the members of the community have been experiencing the last couple of years.
“Our office is sponsoring this because many members of the Arab, Asian and the Muslim community worship in the district and own many small businesses,” she said.
Critics of the relationship between local and federal law enforcement agencies, facilitated through participation in the JTTF, have long raised concerns about racial profiling and unnecessary spying ordered at the federal level, and carried out by SFPD inspectors assigned full time to the task force.
Federal regulations governing FBI intelligence gathering are weaker than standards set by San Francisco and California’s Constitution. In 1990, the San Francisco Police Commission established rules requiring that intelligence-gathering involving any First Amendment activity be based on reasonable suspicion of significant criminal activity. Those rules reflect the California Constitutional requirement of an “articulable criminal predicate” before law enforcement agencies engage in intelligence-gathering activity.
However, because the SFPD inspectors assigned to the JTTF work under the direction of the FBI, the local regulation and control of law enforcement is effectively limited in JTTF investigations.
“It’s important that a clear prohibition against policing based on race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion applies to all of our officers, all of the time,” said John Crew, police practices expert for the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is one of more than 30 civil rights and community organizations participating in the Coalition for Safe SF, which helped develop the proposed ordinance.
According to the coalition, current rules prevent the SFPD from barring its inspectors assigned to the JTTF from joining FBI agents in collecting intelligence on San Franciscans without any “particular factual predication.”
“The purpose of this legislation is to restore local control, civilian oversight, and transparency over the SFPD’s participation in FBI intelligence-gathering,” stated attorney Nasrina Bargzie of the Asian Law Caucus, which is part of the coalition.
The coalition was a major participant in the San Francisco Human Rights Commission hearing in 2010 on the issue of baseless spying and racial profiling in JTTF investigations. The result was a comprehensive report, endorsed by the Board of Supervisors last spring.
But in 2011, the ACLU and Asian Law Caucus learned that key protections for civil liberties — including civilian oversight of intelligence activity and safeguards to limit intrusive tactics — were thrown out the window and replaced by a secret Memorandum of Understanding with federal law enforcement in 2007.
Under the MOU, SFPD paid officers work out of the local FBI office. The secure nature of their work means they must seek federal permission to even talk to their superiors in the SFPD about their work, effectively removing them from the local chain of command. Despite mandated requirements on local law enforcement, the MOU does not allow for any civilian oversight of the work of officers assigned to the JTTF.
San Francisco Chief of Police Greg Suhr said he believes that the concerns have already been addressed. In his first days in office, Chief Suhr issued a binding Bureau Order #2011-07 setting forth the requirement that officers comply with local standards.
An excerpt of the order reads, “SFPD officers shall work with the JTTF only on investigations of suspected terrorism that have a criminal nexus. In situations where the statutory law of California is more restrictive of law enforcement than comparable federal law, the investigative methods employed by SFPD officers working on JTTF investigations shall conform to the requirements of such California statutes.”
“With this Bureau Order, the language of the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding no longer applies and SFPD personnel are bound by the provisions of the 2011 Order,” SFPD Public Information Officer Albie Esparza told the Guardian.
But Crew said that as long as the MOU between the SFPD and federal law enforcement remains in place, Suhr’s order at best creates contradictory policy. “The Memorandum of Understanding is a binding legal contact with the federal government. Which do you think will take legal precedence when it comes up against a local police chief’s departmental order?” said Crew, who urged the department to clarify the matter by withdrawing from the MOU, a step the SFPD has thus far been unwilling to take.
A letter from Sept. 28 of last year to Coalition for Safe SF from FBI Special Agent Stephanie Douglas regarding the contradiction clarifies the matter. “I do retain the right to assign FBI JTTF cases,” states Douglas, who goes on to assert it is she who makes the confidential judgment of which cases fall afoul of the state and city rules and which do not.
After years of intelligence-gathering authorized under a secret memorandum, public mistrust in the SFPD’s relationship to federal law enforcement persists. Kim says she believes the proposed ordinance will still help make San Francisco safer. “It increases the trust of the community members that are working with public safety in reporting, and in cooperating around many of the actual criminal activities that might be going on in the city,” she said.
The proposed legislative approach of regulating the scope of local participation in federal JTTF work is not unprecedented. The city has the option of terminating the MOU with 30 days notice, a step that the city of Portland, Oregon has taken to prevent its police force from spying on citizens in violation of local and state law.
In December, the city of Berkeley suspended its agreement with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (an arm of the Joint Terrorism Task Force) as part of a broad review of that city’s relationship to other local and federal law enforcement agencies (see “Policing the police,” 12/13/11).
“What this is about is maintaining local control of law enforcement and ensuring the civil liberties of the people of San Francisco,” Crew said. “Don’t San Franciscans deserve the same protection of their civil liberties as the people of Portland?”
Kim was joined by Sups. David Compos and John Avalos in sponsoring the ordinance. Supervisors are expected to vote on the whether to adopt the ordinance this spring after the measure is heard by the city’s Public Safety Committee following the normal 30-day hold. The measure seems to have the support it needs to pass the Board of Supervisors, but it remains unclear whether Mayor Ed Lee, who did not answer our inquiries, will sign it.
While the usual procession of heterosexual couples beamed as they said their wedding vows on City Hall’s Grand Staircase this morning, a historic celebration took place in the South Light Court: hundreds applauded the announcement that same-sex couples are a big step closer to achieving equality in the basic right to marry.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held today that Proposition 8, which eliminated same sex marriage rights for couples in California, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The court ruled that Prop. 8 served no purpose but to discriminate against one class of people, and the Constitution does not allow for “laws of this sort.”
The ruling specifically addressed the arguments advanced by proponents of Prop 8 that gay marriage would interfere with childrearing and religious freedom in the state.
“All parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only. It stripped same-sex couples…of the right to obtain and use the designation ‘marriage’ to describe their relationships. Nothing more, nothing less,” the judges wrote.
The ruling does not mean that marriage licenses will immediately be issued to same sex couples. A stay on the ruling has not been lifted. But the stay could be lifted in as early as 21 days from now. But more probably, it will take months or even years; the case is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chief Deputy City Attorney Terry Stewart – the lead attorney that defended San Francisco’s 2004 decision to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, which later triggered the Prop. 8 campaign – said the city is eager to see marriage equality, and that “city mechanisms and machinery stand ready to do whatever we can to expedite the process.”
The decision was based partly on logic that, since LGBTQ Californians already have parental rights and the right to domestic partnerships, denying them the right to marry could not be rationalized. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said that this is a “narrow decision,” meaning that if the Supreme Court upholds the ruling, it would apply only to California.
There remains a possibility that the Supreme Court will reject the case, and in that situation the Ninth Circuit decision striking down Prop. 8 would take immediate affect.
Members of the Bay Area coalition of Welcoming Congregations were present at the announcement.
“I’m jubilant,” said Rev. Roland Stringfellow of the Pacific School of Theology in Berkeley. “When it comes to equality, this is something we preach.”
He adding that his church had been performing same-sex marriages since the 1970s, and that he eagerly awaits legal recognition of his own union with his partner.
Sup. Scott Wiener acknowledged, “the fight is not over yet.”
But he said, “Every so often we get a court ruling that reaffirms our faith in the judicial system…this is a time for us to come together and celebrate.”
California political leaders issued several statements praised the court’s decision.
“The court has rendered a powerful affirmation of the right of same-sex couples to marry. I applaud the wisdom and courage of this decision,” said Gov. Jerry Brown.
Mayor Ed Lee issued a statement saying: “I celebrate the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court today. This is a great day for marriage equality and a great day for California families. The Court affirmed today that there is nothing in the Constitution that allows discrimination and we are on our way to protecting the fundamental rights of everyone in our State. And, we will continue the fight until everyone is treated equally.
“San Francisco stands ready to begin marrying same sex couples, and we remain as deeply committed to the fight for marriage equality today as we did nearly eight years ago when then Mayor Gavin Newsom started one of the most important civil rights issues of our generation to ensure equality for all.
“I would also like to acknowledge the tireless work of our City Attorney Dennis Herrera and his team in defense of marriage equality and the California Constitution these last eight years. Together, we will take this fight all the way to the nation’s highest court, if necessary.”
UPDATE 2/15: READ OUR CURRENT STORY ON THE CASE HERE. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross love to poke snarky fun at progressives such as Matt Gonzalez, as they did again today when they wrote about his work on the Cobra Solutions vs. San Francisco case, for the second time. But they waited until the last paragraph in this second-to-last item in their column to reveal the real news: Mayor Ed Lee was deposed in the case last week and may be called as a witness.
Wow, talk about burying the lead. Here you have a sitting mayor implicated in a major corruption scandal – acting on orders from then-Mayor Willie Brown, who last year helped elevate Lee into Room 200 (and who just happens to write a weekly column for the Chronicle) – in a case that could cost city taxpayers $16 million.
The Chron hasn’t really covered the substance of the case, but Guardian readers may remember our investigative report on it last year. That’s when we unearthed evidence that Ed Lee, who was the city purchaser at the time, approved a fraudulent city contract – overruling city staff in the process – allegedly on orders from Brown.
It’s a complicated case and a long story well worth reading, but essentially it involves a company called Government Computer Sales Inc. (GCSI) that had ties to Brown. It’s accused of improperly getting a multi-million-dollar city contract with Lee’s help and then soliciting kickbacks from its subcontractors, including Cobra Solutions.
Cobra claims it didn’t know payments to GCSI were kickbacks and that it was damaged by the accusations and being frozen out of its city work by the City Attorney’s Office (under Dennis Herrera, who has his own interesting conflicts in the case). Also implicated in the case are SFPUC Director (and then-Controller) Ed Harrington; Monique Zmuda, still a top official in the Controller’s Office; and Steve Kawa, the chief-of-staff for Lee, Brown, and Gavin Newsom, and a powerful player at City Hall.
In a deposition, a city computer operations manager named Deborah Vincent-James testified that she and other city staffers knew GCSI was a fraudulent company, but that they were placed in the Computer Store (a list of qualified city contractors) to do work for the Department of Building Inspection on orders from above: “[Lee] was directed by the Mayor’s Office and told to do an evaluation process. They evaluated them. They were put in the store.”
UPDATE 2/7: Mayor Lee took the witness stand in court yesterday, where he was questioned by attorney Whitney Leigh about overruling staff to certify GCSI, which the City Attorney’s Office has deemed a fraudulent company that has since left town and evaded justice. More on what he said later.
Feb. 1 marks the first day that San Francisco and other California cities no longer have redevelopment as a tool for building affordable housing or dealing with urban blight, but questions remain about how the power and functions of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) will now be used.
On Dec. 29, the California Supreme Court upheld the validity of Assembly Bill 26, which dissolved all redevelopment agencies throughout the state and redirected the property tax revenue they accumulated to prevent deep cuts to public schools.
Redevelopment agencies, established in California in 1948, were charged with revitalizing “blighted” areas of cities. There were 400 such agencies throughout California, funded by incremental increases in property taxes within a redevelopment zone. Agencies could borrow against that revenue source to subsidize development projects.
AB 26 mandated that all cities dissolve their redevelopment agencies by Feb. 1 and transfer assets to successor agencies meant to “expeditiously wind down the affairs of the dissolved redevelopment agencies,” according the bill’s text.
A resolution passed by the Board of Supervisors on Jan. 24 authorized the transfer of SFRA affordable housing assets to the Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH) and its non-housing assets to the city’s Department of Administrative Services. It also created a board to oversee the implementation of the SFRA’s ongoing projects.
Now, San Francisco is faced with the task of continuing to fund affordable housing projects and other development without the SFRA, and the board’s resolution laid out some of the terms for how the city will do that, although much remains to be determined.
Mayor Ed Lee appointed all members of the oversight board, which includes Planning Director John Rahaim; MOH Director Olson Lee; Nadia Sesay, director of the Mayor’s Office of Public Finance; and Bob Muscat, director of International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, Local 21.
In recent weeks, some groups have raised concerns that these appointees are not representative of the communities impacted by the ongoing redevelopment projects that they will be entrusted with overseeing, and that too much power is concentrated in the Mayor’s Office.
“One of our biggest concerns is that the oversight body could be made much more accountable and democratic,” said Jeron Browne of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER)-Bayview. Much of Bayview-Hunters Point is no longer under the authority of the Planning Commission or any regular zoning laws since it was declared a redevelopment project site in 2000.
Sup. Malia Cohen, who represents the area, added an amendment to the board’s resolution that would impose term limits on oversight board positions. “I understand that there are a number of concerns that have been raised about the composition of the board. However, given the short time frame and the technical nature of the board and its obligations, I’m very comfortable with these appointees that they will be able to make decisions necessary to make the projects move forward. Additionally, with the inclusion of staggering terms we will be able to ensure that there is ample opportunity to include representation from affected communities,” Cohen said at the meeting.
The board also passed an amendment to “clarify that the land use controls granted by the oversight board are consistent with previous land use authority granted by the Board of Supervisors and the redevelopment commission,” as a response to concerns that the oversight board will have too much power over land use in project areas.
Tiffany Bohee, interim director of the SFRA, said that the court’s ruling was the “least desirable possible outcome.” Bohee said the SFRA has spent recent weeks analyzing all enforceable obligations outlined by the ruling to make sure that the transition complies with the law and is as fair as possible to SFRA employees.
The positions that these 101 workers filled at the SFRA will no longer exist as of Feb. 1, and layoffs are underway. However, most will remain employed throughout a transition period that ends March 31, and Bohee said that many will find work in city agencies that will be charged with continuing the work of the SFRA, such as MOH and the Planning Department.
MOH was historically responsible for allocating federal housing grants to city agencies. In past decades, federal budget cuts have severely limited the grants to build affordable housing. Now, although MOH has some power over city housing policy and allocation of funds to build housing, many of those responsibilities had been transferred to the Planning Department — or, until recently, the Redevelopment Agency.
The Planning Department is governed by the Planning Commission with four mayor-appointed members and three members appointed by the Board of Supervisors. The Planning Department implements planning standards and signs off on structural changes to the city, ranging from homeowner requests to alter houses to developer requests to build high-rises.
In many ways, the Redevelopment Agency was redundant, shadowing work done by the Planning Department. When an area was designated an SFRA project area, the planning code and zoning restrictions no longer applied, and developers working in partnership with the city had the power to define new land-use regulations.
Many critics of the SFRA said that private developers were able to use this lack of regulation to take advantage of the significant amount of money reserved for the agency. Deepening this concern was the fact that the Redevelopment Commission, which oversaw the SFRA, was composed entirely of mayoral appointees, which some felt were less accountable to the public interest than the Planning Commission.
Some feel that the oversight board, composed entirely of mayoral appointees, will repeat the same lack of accountability to neighborhoods.
“The city is setting up a planning commission for the 1 percent. And the Planning Commission that we have is the for the 99 percent,” said Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, which works on land use issues. He said that with the dissolution of the SFRA, the city has an opportunity to facilitate the construction of affordable housing in a more democratic fashion. His organization expressed concerns to the Board of Supervisors, cautioning that the Oversight Board should not have undue power over land-use in development project areas and that the new structure in city government for facilitating development projects should be created with the input of communities. The Board of Supervisors made clear Jan. 24 that the Oversight Board and its appointees are a temporary measure to comply with AB26 by the Feb. 1 deadline. As Sup. Christina Olague said, “I just want to assure the public that this isn’t the end-all, be-all of this discussion, that it will be ongoing, and we welcome any of your concerns at any time.”
Labor and the Left came out strongly against Mayor Ed Lee’s proposed charter amendment to require all city legislation be delayed and subjected to hearings by the Small Business Commission and other commissions if it might cost private sector jobs, putting its prospects of making the ballot in doubt.
“This legislation is one, unnecessary; two, unbalanced; and three, divisive,” Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council – whose executive committee voted unanimously to oppose the legislation – said during today’s Rules Committee hearing on the measure.
He and other labor leaders noted that members of the business community have plenty of opportunities to weigh in on legislation it opposes, but Lee’s proposal would elevate employers’ interests far above those concerning the environment, consumers, public health, or workers. “This legislation gives one stakeholder undue power in the democratic process, which is undemocratic,” said Kate Hegé of La Raza Centro Legal, which represents day laborers and other immigrants.
Teacher Ken Tray of United Educators of San Francisco said, “Often times ‘jobs’ is used as a red herring to divert the city from doing what it needs to do.” It was a common theme, as opponents of the proposal noted that paid sick leave, the local minimum wage, and requiring employee health benefits were all fiercely opposed by the business community. “Anything that raises workers up, we’re told it’s a job killer,” said Larry Bradshaw of SEIU Local 1021.
Small business representatives – a bit sheepishly, given the tenor of the hearing, and without support from their downtown brethren – said they were simply looking for the ability to express their concerns. “We’ve tried to let small business have a voice at the Board of Supervisors,” said longtime small business advocate Scott Hauge, a regular at City Hall. Keith Goldstein of Potrero Dogpatch Merchants Association said, “We feel we don’t have a say in this process.”
Mayor’s Office board liaison Jason Elliott emphasized that Lee’s charter amendment would create a delay and an extra hearing or two, but that supervisors would still be free to approve the legislation anyway. “This is about public participation and feedback,” Elliott said.
But Sup. David Campos, who led the questioning of Elliott, wasn’t buying it. “What’s the reason behind this? Is there a specific reason the Mayor’s Office has decided to do this now and through a charter amendment?” Campos said, probing for instances in which the Mayor’s Office thought the business community hadn’t been heard.
Elliott continued to say it was about emphasizing jobs and taking more public input, but he couldn’t explain what’s lacking currently or what’s muting employers. Campos thanked the Mayor’s Office for being willing to work with supervisors and accept amendments – including many introduced today, which delayed the vote on the measure until next week. But Campos questioned the need for the legislation, comparing it to the hollow jobs rhetoric from the current field of Republican presidential candidates. “It’s not just the number of jobs you have, it’s the quality of those jobs,” Campos said.
(Side note: the Mayor’s Office issued a press release today celebrating the first two businesses to take advantage of last year’s controversial mid-Market payroll tax exemption, Zendesk and Pearl’s Deluxe Burgers, which created 56 jobs between them. And to help create those great burger joint jobs, Pearl’s got Redevelopment Agency assistance, a low-interest city loan, and an exemption from the payroll tax. For hiring burger flippers that probably make minimum wage. But I digress…)
Campos said that everyone in City Hall wants to see more good jobs in the city, “but I don’t believe this is a constructive approach.” Sup. Jane Kim echoed the sentiment, saying private sector job creation isn’t the only imperative. “Lowering our minimum wage to $3 or $1 an hour would create plenty of jobs in San Francisco,” she said.
Even the more conservative third committee member, Sup. Mark Farrell, said he tends to agree with his committee colleagues and made the motion to continue the item until next week, when its prospects for passage look weak unless Lee can convince them that there’s more to this measure than just political grandstanding.
Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi may be guilty of domestic violence, and if he is — as I’ve saidrepeatedly — it’s a serious crime and he should be held accountable. It will be very hard for him to remain in office with a DV conviction, even if it’s just a misdemeanor.
But right now, the charges are just that — charges. In the eyes of the law, he’s innocent until proven guilty. So I don’t see how Mayor Ed Lee can suspend him.
Lee’s under a lot of pressure, and under the City Charter, he has the sole authority to suspend an office holder for “official misconduct,” which is defined as “wrongful behavior by a public officer in relation to the duties of his or her office.” If there’s a suspension, the Ethics Commission and the Board of Supervisors would both have to vote to remove Mirkarimi permanently.
But here’s the thing: Lee has no evidence of official misconduct — not unless the district attorney decides to turn over to the mayor all of the files in the criminal case, at which point Ethics and the supes would be holding mini trials of their own on evidence that hasn’t been adjudicated in court (and a court may rule some of it inadmissable).
That doesn’t seem likely (and it would be very odd for the D.A. to join the mayor in what would amount to a second prosecution).
And all of this would be going on at a time when the actual criminal trial is only four weeks away.
The courts have interpreted “official misconduct” fairly narrowly. If Mirkarimi is convicted, then the city attorney can get into the argument over whether domestic violence has any “relation to the duties” of the Sheriff’s Office, and since he’s a law-enforcement officer, that might not be too hard to argue. Certainly the charge of influencing a witness would be subject to that interpretation. So after a conviction, Lee would be in a position to think seriously about suspension — if Mirkarmi didn’t step down on his own.
But right now, there’s no conviction. In terms of the court system (that would have to get involved) Mirkarimi isn’t guilty of anything yet.
Mirkarimi could decide to take a leave of absence, although he doesn’t seem inclined to do that. But whatever the merits of the case, and whatever the political arguments about whether the sheriff can do his job in the middle of this media circus, I — admittedly as a nonlawyer — can’t see how Lee could possibly invoke the suspension provisions of the Charter.
After weeks of attacks from critics of the high-speed rail system now being built in California — a campaign that even came home to San Francisco City Hall last week, when Sup. Sean Elsbernd challenged Mayor Ed Lee on the issue and called for a hearing — Gov. Jerry Brown and other supporters have stepped up efforts to keep the train from being derailed.
With seed money from a $10 billion bond measure that California voters approved in 2008 and an initial federal grant of $3.3 billion to help build the Central Valley section of the track, the California High Speed Rail Authority is working on construction of a bullet train that would carry riders from San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in about 2.5 hours, traveling at speeds of up to 220 mph. That project is slated to cost nearly $100 billion, and the next phase would extend service to Sacramento and San Diego.
But Republicans in Congress and the California Legislature began to balk at funding the project last year. Earlier this month, a report by the California High-Speed Peer Review Group recommended that the Legislature indefinitely delay issuing $2.7 billion in rail bonds, citing the uncertainty of future funding sources and problems with the project’s business plan.
“It does not take a rocket scientist to see the future of high-speed rail is in serious doubt,” Elsbernd said at the Jan. 10 Board of Supervisors meeting, where he used the monthly mayoral question time to ask Lee, “What is Plan B with Transbay Terminal if the high-speed rail money does indeed go away? What do we do?”
The Transbay Terminal is now being rebuilt downtown. The first phase includes a $400 million “train box” being built with high-speed rail funds, and the next phase will require billions of dollars more to build train tunnels into the station from the current Caltrain terminus at 4th and King streets.
“I’m committed to seeing the full implementation of high speed rail, which includes having a northern terminus at the Transbay center,” Lee replied, refusing to entertain the idea that the bullet trains won’t be coming into San Francisco, a stand he communicated to state officials in a recent letter. “I want to state my unwavering support for the notion of high-speed rail. It is the future of transportation in this state.”
Lee acknowledged that cost estimates for the project have gone up and there are uncertainties over future funding, but he said the state will need to make the investment either way. “California is growing and those people need to move up and down the state. The question is do we make transportation investments on bigger, wider highways and airport runways? I’d say no, that this perpetuates a car-dependent culture.”
Instead, Lee says the state must find a way to build high-speed rail, whatever the obstacles. But Elsbernd called for a hearing on the issue before the Board of Supervisors, telling the Guardian that he supports the project, “but high-speed rail is in trouble and we need to acknowledge that.”
Meanwhile Gov. Brown — who has rejected calls to delay issuing the rail bonds — was working behind-the-scenes to get the project back on track. Sources say he asked for CHSRA Executive Director Roelof van Ark and CHSRA Board Chair Tom Umberg to resign, which they did at the Jan. 12 meeting, with Brown appointee Dan Richard becoming the new chair.
Richard and fellow new Brown appointee Mike Rossi spearheaded the creation of a proposed new business plan for the project that was unveiled in November. While it addresses some of the criticisms of the project, it raises fresh concerns about whether the bullet trains will arrive in Transbay Terminal.
In fact, it calls for high-speed rail service to end in San Jose, where S.F.-bound riders would have to transfer to Caltrain, largely to placate citizens and politicians on the peninsula who have objected to trains rocketing through their communities and filed lawsuits challenging the project.
“That business plan is unrealistic and unreasonable,” said Quentin Kopp, the former state senator from San Francisco who authored of the original legislation to create high-speed rail and has helped shepherd the project. He said having to transfer twice from S.F. to L.A. would discourage riders and hurt the project.
Kopp isn’t a fan of the Transbay Terminal rebuild, which he derides as “a real estate project” because its funding plan relies on significant private residential and commercial development; he’s called for the trains to stop at the current Caltrain station for financial reasons. But Elsbernd — who also chairs the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Authority, which operates Caltrain — wants to ensure the Transbay project is completed and worth the investment.
“I’m terrified that we continue moving along and then we end up with that being just a big, beautiful bus terminal,” he told us.
Adam Alberti, a spokesperson for the TJPA, said California needs to have improved rail service to handle a growing population and the Transbay Terminal is being build to accommodate that, whether it be Amtrak, Caltrain, or high-speed rail trains coming into the station.
“We are steadfast in our belief that it makes sense to have high-speed rail in California,” he said. “When it does happen, we will have the infrastructure already in place to receive it.”
Furthermore, he expects that the CHSRA business plan, which is the subject of a public comment period that ends Jan. 17, will extend the service beyond San Jose. “They’ll lose significant ridership and revenues if they don’t bring it into San Francisco,” Alberti said.
Sen. Mark Leno, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, also expressed confidence that current efforts to derail high-speed rail won’t be successful.
“What is the alternative if we don’t do this? California will grow by 10-20 million people in the next decade. There’s no way we could build enough freeways and airport expansions to handle that,” Leno told us. “I don’t think we have the option not to make this work.” Leno also said he was pleased to see top political leaders stepping up to defend the project: “I’m impressed by the governor’s steadfastness, as well as President Obama’s stand. Leadership from the top is important, particularly during difficult times like this.”
EDITORIAL You want a quick way to cut a huge chunk out of the city’s budget deficit? A way to save essential services without having to put a tax increase before the voters?
Just force the owners of large commercial properties to pay their property taxes.
It’s an open secret in California that the biggest properties are bought and sold under a loophole in the Proposition 13 that prevents city’s from reassessing them. It’s a fairly easy scam, one that almost never happens with lower-priced residential property: Instead of selling, say, a large commercial office building, the owners simply incorporate the building as a limited liability corporation and then sell shares in the LLC. That doesn’t count as a property transfer under Proposition 13, so the building is never reassessed.
That means a building that may have sold for $500 million still pays taxes on an earlier assessment, which is often far, far lower. That loophole alone is costing San Francisco millions of dollars a year, according to Assessor Phil Ting.
The California Tax Reform Association, in a May, 2010 report, notes that many of the biggest mergers, acquisitions, and property sales in the state over the past 30 years have taken place with legal tricks that keep property taxes artificially low.
Assembly Member Tom Ammiano has introduced a bill, AB 448, that would classify any substantive transfer of property, even if it’s done through subsidiaries and corporate shells, as a sale and allow counties to reassess the property. It’s a fairly mild step, far short of a split-roll measure that would treat commercial and residential property differently. In fact, Ting told us, 99 percent of all commercial sales (mostly smaller properties) don’t use the loophole. It’s just (once again) the 1 percent taking advantage of everyone else.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has contacted Ammiano and asked to testify and help pass the bill. But at press time, Ammiano had heard nothing from San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. (Lee’s spokesperson, Christine Falvey, told us she didn’t think the bill was still alive. It is.)
Lee needs to take a high-profile position in support of this bill — and he needs to encourage every other mayor in the state to do the same. The Board of Supervisors ought to pass a resolution of support — and push the County Supervisors Association of California to make this bill a top priority.
Making even a minor, eminently reasonable change in Prop. 13 is tough, and Ammiano’s best chance is if local elected officials really push for this. It’s crazy that Mayor Lee isn’t leading the way.
In his inaugural address on Jan. 8, and then again the next day as he appointed progressive Christina Olague to the District 5 seat on the Board of Supervisors, Mayor Ed Lee signaled an intention to bring all sides together to solve vexing city problems, from job creation to the need for more affordable housing.
“At its best, San Francisco is a city for everyone,” Lee said at his inauguration. “We are a city for the 100 percent.”
But that analysis, with his clever riff off of the Occupy movement’s 99 percent paradigm, masks deep political divisions and challenges that will likely play out repeatedly this year, particularly as he partners with a handful of wealthy individuals and corporations — members of the 1 percent, on which he lavished praise during his speech, such as venture capitalist Ron Conway — to craft his economic agenda.
Lee stressed his focus on creating private-sector jobs and his acceptance that “local government will have to do more with less,” while arguing that he can create broad prosperity by embracing high-tech innovations. “We’re poised to invent the future, right here and right now,” he said, shortly before interrupting his speech to post an employment infographic on Twitter.
The next day, after she was sworn in as supervisor representing one of the city’s most progressive districts (replacing Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi), Olague echoed Lee’s focus on job creation and the belief that “it’s time to roll up our sleeves to get things done” in a fashion that transcends ideology.
“I think this is an incredible time for our city and a time when we are coming together and moving past old political pigeonholes,” Olague said, while Lee said, “This is not about counting votes, it’s about what’s best for San Francisco and her district.”
Yet that optimistic spirit alone won’t provide for the renters and low-income homeowners being squeezed out of this gentrifying city, battles that both fought as activists — Olague with the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, Lee with the Asian Law Caucus — before joining city government. “We both came from backgrounds fighting for the rights of tenants and immigrants,” Lee said.
At his inauguration, he said he would take on that challenge directly.
“We need to create a permanent stream of revenue to fund housing in San Francisco,” Lee said, announcing the formation of a working group to craft a measure for the November ballot that would create a “permanent housing trust fund” to help finance low- to middle-income homes. “San Francisco must remain a place every one of us can call home.”
Olague listed her top priorities as job creation, affordable housing, helping shepherd redevelopment projects after the state abolished redevelopment agencies, and public safety. And she pledged to be an independent vote: “Every decision will be based on what’s best for my constituents and the people of San Francisco.”
Progressive political leaders were nonetheless thrilled with the choice. While Olague was an early supporter of Lee’s mayoral bid, she has deep roots in the progressive community and was a consistently good vote during her eight years on the Planning Commission.
“I am surprised by the choice, but I think it’s a good one,” Matt Gonzalez, the former D5 supervisor who appointed Olague to the commission, told us. “It’s an appointment that recognizes that D5 is the most progressive district in the city.”
Activist and building inspection commissioner Debra Walker agreed: “It’s an acknowledgment that District 5 is progressive.”
Green Party activist Susan King noted that Olague used to be a Green, as was new Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and Sup. Jane Kim, before all switched to the Democratic Party in recent years. “It’s the second former Green sworn in over the last 24 hours,” King said. “It’s very exciting.”
“I’m elated. This is the best political news I’ve heard this year. I’ve known Christina for 15 years and I think she’ll be a fantastic supervisor,” Tom Radulovich, director of Livable City, told us. He also praised Lee for the gesture, saying, “He said he wants to work with everyone and this is a signal that he really means it.”
Sup. David Campos said Olague has good values and a wealth of experience in land use issue. “She brings a lot to the table and I can see why he chose her,” he told us.
Even Sup. Scott Wiener, a moderate, praised the Lee’s pick. “I think it’s an excellent choice. She’s thoughtful and independent,” he said. “I don’t always agree with her, but I respect her and I’ve always enjoyed working with her.”
Gonzalez told us he wonders whether the appointment would clear the field of progressive candidates, a long list of whom have expressed interest in running this year. The answer: probably not. Community College Board member John Rizzo contacted the Guardian shortly after the appointment to say, “I’m still in the race and planning to mount a vigorous campaign.”
It’s hard for California cities to raise taxes. Almost anything that amounts to a tax hike has to go before the voters, and most of the time, it requires a two-thirds vote.
But in a year when the local legislators are also up for election — and six of the supervisorial districts are up this fall — the voters can pass taxes with a simple majority.
That’s one reason that 2012 is a perfect year for tax reform in San Francisco. The other is the spirit of Occupy.
The tent-city protests changed the political dynamics all over the country, putting the message of economic injustice on the agenda and on the front pages. That’s even more true in this city, which was one of the epicenters of the national movement.
Mayor Ed Lee announced in his inauguration speech that he’s going to be the mayor “of the 100 percent,” an effort to preach the message that we’re all good pals and we all love each other here in this great city of ours, but the truth is we aren’t, and we don’t. The very rich in San Francisco not only have little in common with the rest of us; for the most part, they like it that way. The biggest corporations and wealthiest individuals have an interest in preserving economic injustice, and they’ve shown repeatedly that they will go to great lengths to prevent progressive change.
San Francisco needs to change the way it raises revenue, and one of the key elements of that is the local business tax. Right now it’s a flat tax on payroll, and a lot of people (including me) don’t like it. So there’s movement for a new type of tax, maybe on gross receipts.
That’s fine — but it has to be more than a shift in how taxes are determined. San Francisco desperately needs more money — probably at least $250 million a year — to balance the budget without further cuts and to make up for what the state and federal government have taken away. And a new business tax needs to be progressive — to hit the biggest and the richest harder than the small and struggling.
I fear the mayor is not going to be pushing that kind of agenda, so someone on the board has to do it. This is the year that a “tax the one percent” measure can win. But we need to get started now.
EDITORIAL Mayor Ed Lee’s first big decision — the appointment of a District 5 supervisor — demonstrated something very positive:
The mayor knows that he can’t do what his predecessor did and ignore and dismiss the progressive community.
His inauguration speech demonstrated something else: That he has no intention of being a mayor who takes on and defies the interests of downtown.
Part of the reason Gavin Newsom was a failure as mayor is that he was constantly at war with the left. He ran the city as if his was the only way, as if there were no good ideas coming out of anywhere except his office — and as if anyone who disgreed with or voted against him was his enemy.
That didn’t work, and it doesn’t seem to be Lee’s style. He was under pressure to appoint a supervisor who would go along with him on key votes, but he also knew that a moderate or a lackey would deeply offend the voters in D5, who supported John Avalos for mayor and remain among the most progressive voters in the city. The choice of Christina Olague shows a willingless to accept that progressives play a significant role in San Francisco politics. (It also shows that he is better than any mayor in recent memory at keeping a secret — nobody outside of his inner circle had any idea who his choice was until he announced it Jan 9.)
Olague was, overall, an excellent planning commissioner, and has the potential to be an excellent supervisor. But she will need to make clear from the start that she is representing the district, not the person who gave her the job. Because on some of the key issues that will come before the board this spring, her constituents are well to the left of the mayor. If she can’t vote against his wishes, she’ll have trouble in November.
Olague also needs to be sure that some of the issues her predecessor, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, championed (public power and community policing, for example) don’t fall by the wayside. Her expertise in land use issues should be helpful as the board wrangles with waterfront development, affordable housing and the giant California Pacific Medical Center hospital project.
Lee’s inaugural speech was mostly a typical political speech for a new mayor, but it contained a nugget that’s worthy of note. He proclaimed that San Francisco should be a “city of the 100 percent,” a takeoff on the Occupy movement’s 99 percent slogan. And while that’s mostly rhetoric, it’s also a sign that the former housing activist is not going to be a mayor who wants to make a legacy of challenging the economic and political powers of San Francisco.
Working together is fine — but there are a small number of very wealthy and powerful people who have interests that are utterly opposed to the interests of the rest of us. Economic injustice is every bit as real in this city as it is elsewhere in the country — and that’s something the mayor didn’t even mention or acknowledge. Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the big real-estate developers, the landlords out at ParkMerced, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Board of Realtors … they don’t want to work together. They want their way.
So it’s a mixed report for Mayor Lee — and over the next few months, he’s going to have to realize that everyone in the city can’t and shouldn’t work together, that there are battles where politicians have to take sides, and that all of us will be watching very closely to see where he draws the line.
Sources say Mayor Ed Lee will appoint Christina Olague, the Planning Commission president and longtime progressive, to the District 5 seat on the Board of Supervisors that was vacated by Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. Formal announcement set for 10 am. More after the ceremony.
UPDATE 11:30 AM: Lee announced his decision and administered the oath of office to Olague this morning at City Hall before a large crowd of mostly progressive political activists who said they were pleasantly surprised to see one of their own get the nod, taking it as a positive gesture from a moderate mayor who has pledged to work with all sides.
In their remarks, both Lee and Olague talked about the need to get past political labels and stressed her detailed knowledge of planning and land use issues, which they hope will help with Lee’s main focus on job creation.
“This is not about counting votes, it’s about what’s best for San Francisco and her district,” Lee said. Olague echoed the sentiment: “I think this is an incredible time for our city and a time when we are coming together and moving past old political pigeonholes.”
She pledged to get right to work on pressing issues facing the city and with winning the “respect and trust” of voters in District 5, one of the city’s most progressive.
We’ll have more analysis and reaction to this appointment and Lee’s inaugural address yesterday in this week’s Guardian.
Mayor Ed Lee talked to the Examiner about his plans for the next year, and it’s a lot of the usual political crap: I’m going to create jobs, I’m going to bring people together and promote civility, ho hum. But he did mention, briefly, the need to change the city’s business tax, and here’s how he put it:
We have given ourselves four months to reach out to all the business groups. There will be different views and opinions. You can have a hybrid [between a payroll and gross receipts tax], and you can also have a phase-in period of time. We want to have a good conversation with everybody and get their best ideas, and then use those ideas to craft what we think could be on the ballot. We’re not saying it has to be on the November ballot, but it could be. We want to have something that is not job punishing, but also something that does not decrease our revenue.
First: He’s going to reach out to all the business groups — but what about everyone else in the city? The level of business taxes has a direct impact on city services; is that not part of the equation? Clearly, he’s talking about something that’s at best revenue-neutral, something that “does not decrease our revenue.”
And please, don’t tell me about “job punishing” — it makes me even crazier than I already am. Look: There has to be a business tax in San Francisco. And any time you tax businesses, you take money for the city that could be used for other things. In some cases — not that many — the extra money might be used to hire a few people. In reality, for most businesses, the payroll tax is absolutely NOT a factor in job creation. It sounds bad — Gasp! a tax on jobs! — but the truth is that payroll is a rough approximation for the size of a company, and that’s what the city uses as a tax base.
Of course, we could change that to a gross receipts tax — another rough approximation for the size of a company. It’s also imperfect — some companies have a lot of money (VC funding, for example) and a lot of employees, but at this point not much in the way of sales. Some companies (supermarkets, for example) have high gross receipts but relatively low profit margins. And, of course, if you do a gross receipts tax the same people who complain about the payroll tax will have a new line: The GR tax penalizes growth! It penalizes success! The more money you make the more you pay! Unfair! Un-American! Job killer!
Because some people in this town (mostly big business types) just want lower taxes, period — not different taxes, lower taxes
So let’s get rid of the “job killer” rhetoric and start talking about what the city’s tax policy should be. And it should go like this: The individuals and businesses with the most money should pay the highest tax rates. The rich don’t pay their fare share anywhere in the U.S., and while the mayor and the supervisors can’t change federal policy, they can do their part on a modest level at home.
This a great year for tax reform in San Francisco. The spirit of Occupy is very much alive. There is, for the first time in decades, a national discussion about income and wealth inequality. There’s strong evidence that the middle class is vanishing in San Francisco. And, thanks to the wierdness of state law, in 2012, when there’s an election for the Board of Supervisors, a tax measure can pass with a simple majority vote In many ways, this is the single most important policy issue in the city, the one that defines who pays for what and who gets what and whether (public sector) jobs are created or destroyed and what kind of a city we want to be.
So let’s take it seriously. Instead of allowing Mayor Lee and the (big) business folks set the agenda, the progressives really need to move forward on a tax-reform plan that looks at making big business pay more and small business pay less — and that brings in another $250 million a year for the local coffers If gross receipts is the flavor of the day, I’m good with that — but not a flat tax. Exempt, say, the first $250,000 (or the first $500,000, whatever, run the numbers and see what we can afford). Put a 1 percent tax on the next million, a 1.5 percent tax on all receipts between $1.5 million and $5 million, a 2 percent tax on $5 million to $10 million and 3 percent on everything higher. Adjust the numbers either way, but that’s the general idea. Then add in a tax on commercial rents (again, exempt the first $500,000 or whatever) to make sure the the big landlords (who get away with murder under Prop. 13) are paying, too. And yes, based on market supply and demand, some will try to pass that on to their tenants, but companies (including a lot of law firms) that rent enough space to be paying millions of dollars a year in rent can afford to modest tax hike.
It will take the city controller or the city’s economist to do the math and see what the options are and how you get to $250 million net new revenue, so my proposal is just a start. But somebody needs to take this on, some member of the Board of Supervisors — or else we’ll just be responding to what the Chamber of Commerce wants. Who wants to be the champion of Tax Reform for the 99 Percent? Time is getting short.
Some days, you wake up, check the news, and wonder just what the hell happened to this country. And I’m not talking about that nutty right-wing view that we’ve strayed from the original vision laid out for us by the authors of the Constitution or the Bible. I have just the opposite view: I’m wondering why those people seem so intent on dragging us back into the bad old days of bygone centuries, when white male property owners ran things as they saw fit.
It’s no better in the Golden State, where the yestercentury crowd now wants to abandon plans for a high-speed rail system that has already been awarded $3.5 billion in federal transportation funding and for which California voters authorized another $10 billion in bond funding. Why? Because a panel headed by an Orange County douchebag says the business plan isn’t detailed enough and the money for the entire $100 billion buildout isn’t nailed down yet. Well guess what? California also doesn’t have a plan for when its highway and airport systems get overwhelmed by population growth over the next 20 years. And criticizing the viability of high-speed rail – something most other advanced countries figured out how to build decades ago – isn’t exactly going to help secure private equity commitments. It’s a super fast train, folks – not some scary satanic iron horse from the future – people will pay to ride it.
But the situation must be better here in liberal San Francisco, right? Wrong! Mayor Ed Lee, the San Francisco Chronicle, and all their business community allies continue to relentlessly push their belief that the main job of government is to create private sector jobs, even though most economists say a politician’s ability to do so is limited at best.
Lee is pushing for all city legislation to be measured by whether it creates private sector jobs, as if protecting the environment, preserving public sector jobs, or safeguarding the health, welfare, and workers’ rights of citizens weren’t also under the purview of local government. A Chronicle editorial today called Lee the most “realistic city leader in memory. He’s all about creating jobs, repaving streets, sprucing up faded Market Street and fixing Muni’s flaws,” the same goals the paper was focused on a century ago.
But the main trust of the editorial was calling for Lee to also focus on homelessness. Not poverty, mind you, but homelessness. “A decrease in jobless numbers is important, but so are fewer shopping carts pushed along sidewalks and a drop in the numbers of mentally ill in doorways and on park benches,” they wrote. In other words, they just don’t want to see poor people on the streets, because that newspaper and its fiscally conservative editorial writers and base of readers certainly haven’t been calling for a fairer distribution of this city’s wealth, or even higher taxes on the rich that might fund more subsidized housing programs or mental health treatment. I get the feeling they’d be content to just allow shanty towns on our southern border where our low-wage workers can live, just like the Third World cities that they seem to want to emulate.
Ugh, so depressing, so ridiculous, so regressive. I think I’m going back to bed now.
Redevelopment agencies were dealt a statewide hit after a unanimous ruling Dec. 29 by the California Supreme Court decided not only that lawmakers had the ability to terminate the agencies, but that those agencies could not continue forward with redevelopment projects as smaller entities.
Assembly Bills 1X 26, which eliminates redevelopment agencies but makes existing redevelopment housing projects an “enforceable obligation,” and 1X 27, which would have required agencies to make payments to the state of California in exchange for continuing to exist in smaller form, both came under scrutiny by the state Supreme Court. AB26 was upheld, but AB27 was considered illegal.
While large-scale redevelopment projects in San Francisco have generated no shortage of criticism and controversy, Mayor Ed Lee described the decision as disappointing and harmful for the city’s future.
“Redevelopment has not only played a critical role in creating jobs, transforming disadvantaged communities and delivering affordable housing, but it has spurred economic growth for our entire City at a time when we needed it most,” Lee said in a statement issued earlier today.
Gov. Jerry Brown introduced the idea of eliminating redevelopment agencies about a year ago as part of budget cuts designed to revitalize the state economy, as the Guardian reported last January. Today’s decision, which leaves the state with $1.7 billion more to work with in the first year of implementation of this plan, may help cushion the blow as state legislators seek to balance the budget.
However, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency isn’t giving up.
“We are aggressively looking at solutions, most likely a legislative fix, to provide for redevelopment to continue,” S.F. Redevelopment Agency executive director, Tiffany Bohee, told the Guardian. “The state will do what it needs to do to fill the hole [in the state budget] but there are unintended consequences.”
Private funding from companies like Lennar Homes supplementing state funding has made the continuation of redevelopment projects in San Francisco’s Mission Bay, Bayview Hunters Point Shipyard, and Treasure Island possible. Lee maintains that these areas will remain unaffected.
The legislation does, however, affect future projects. “We call on the state to find a legislative solution to this problem” Lee’s statement noted. “And while we are committed to working with the state, we have already started to look at local solutions and alternatives.”
Bohee echoed the mayor’s resolve. “We are committed to the long haul and focused on what the next steps are,” she said.
EDITORIAL There’s no question that officials from Santa Clara — thrilled to have finalized financing for a new 49ers stadium — were taking full political advantage of the Dec. 19 blackouts at Candlestick Park. There’s no question that the event Mayor Ed Lee called a “national embarrassment” helped guarantee that the team will leave San Francisco after one more season.
But this is about more than football — and the mayor and the supervisors ought to using this latest PG&E screw-up to take a serious look at the company’s reliability and its impact on the city.
This is hardly the first embarrassing PG&E blackout in San Francisco. For the past few years, the private utility’s aging infrastructure has been failing, leaving businesses and residents in the dark. And while PG&E officials are trying to blame the city for the latest snafu, everyone admits that the problem started when a PG&E power line snapped.
Snapping power lines are a dangerous prospect — in this case, nobody was hurt and the arcing electricity didn’t start any fires. But that was largely a matter of luck — the jolt from the broken line lit up TV screens all over the country and if it had happened close to some flammable object (or, worse, some live person), the damage could have been serious.
As it was, millions of people watched San Francisco’s football stadium go dark — twice. The electricians at Candlestick patched things together and the game went on, but the message was clear: PG&E can’t be trusted to keep its equipment in safe, operating condition.
The city of San Bruno is still trying to recover from the natural gas explosion that killed eight people and leveled a neighborhood. And while local and state officials are giving increased scrutiny to PG&E’s underground gas pipes, the electricity system isn’t in much better shape.
Blackouts are more than an embarrassment — they cost the city and its businesses money. And, as the almost certain loss of the 49ers shows, unreliable infrastructure doesn’t help the local business climate. As Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews told the Bay Citizen: “The reason they moved to Santa Clara is the reliability of our services. We have reliability in our electricity system that is unparalleled.”
One reason: Santa Clara has its own municipal power system. Rates are lower, blackouts are unheard of and the equipment is well maintained. Compare that to PG&E, where company executives diverted gas line maintenance money to pay themselves bonuses, and you see why San Francisco, which relies on the private monopoly, has a problem.
The supervisors ought to take this opportunity to hold hearings on the reliability of PG&E’s electric and gas system in the city — looking not just at the Candlestick problem but at the maintenance records, the age of crucial equipment, the company’s replacement plans and the economic impact of a shoddy electrical system. That should be part of Mayor Lee’s investigation, too.
At some point, San Francisco residents are going to have to pay to rebuild this system. They can pay through higher PG&E rates when the utility finally gets around to it — or they can begin the process of creating a municipal utility, which can do the job right, bring down rates and improve the business climate that the mayor so loves to discuss.
EDITORIAL There’s no question that officials from Santa Clara — thrilled to have finalized financing for a new 49ers stadium — were taking full political advantage of the Dec. 19 blackouts at Candlestick Park. There’s no question that the event Mayor Ed Lee called a “national embarrassment” helped guarantee that the team will leave San Francisco after one more season.
But this is about more than football — and the mayor and the supervisors ought to be using this latest PG&E screw-up to take a serious look at the company’s reliability and its impact on the city.
This is hardly the first embarrassing PG&E blackout in San Francisco. For the past few years, the private utility’s aging infrastructure has been failing, leaving businesses and residents in the dark. And while PG&E officials are trying to blame the city for the latest snafu, everyone admits that the problem started when a PG&E power line snapped.
Snapping power lines are a dangerous prospect — in this case, nobody was hurt and the arcing electricity didn’t start any fires. But that was largely a matter of luck — the jolt from the broken line lit up TV screens all over the country and if it had happened close to some flammable object (or, worse, some live person), the damage could have been serious.
As it was, millions of people watched San Francisco’s football stadium go dark — twice. The electricians at Candlestick patched things together and the game went on, but the message was clear: PG&E can’t be trusted to keep its equipment in safe, operating condition.
The city of San Bruno is still trying to recover from the natural gas explosion that killed eight people and leveled a neighborhood. And while local and state officials are giving increased scrutiny to PG&E’s underground gas pipes, the electricity system isn’t in much better shape.
Blackouts are more than an embarrassment — they cost the city and its businesses money. And, as the almost certain loss of the 49ers shows, unreliable infrastructure doesn’t help the local business climate. As Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews told the Bay Citizen: “The reason they moved to Santa Clara is the reliability of our services. We have reliability in our electricity system that is unparalleled.”
One reason: Santa Clara has its own municipal power system with a much better service and reliability record than PG&E. Rates are lower, blackouts are unheard of and the equipment is well maintained. Compare that to PG&E, where company executives diverted gas line maintenance money to pay themselves bonuses, and you see why San Francisco, which relies on the private monopoly, has a problem.
The supervisors ought to take this opportunity to hold hearings on the reliability of PG&E’s electric and gas system in the city — looking not just at the Candlestick problem but at the maintenance records, the age of crucial equipment, the company’s replacement plans, the expensive loss of the city’s Hetch Hetchy power being wheeled on PG&E lines, and the economic impact of a shoddy electrical system. That should be part of Mayor Lee’s investigation, too.
At some point, San Francisco residents are going to have to pay to rebuild this system. They can pay through higher PG&E rates when the utility finally gets around to it — or they can begin the process of creating a municipal utility, which can do the job right, bring down rates, improve the business climate that the mayor so loves to discuss, and move the city into compliance with the federal Raker Act mandating public power for San Francisco.
There is eager speculation – and lots of public and private pressure being applied to Mayor Ed Lee – over the question of who he will appoint to fill the District 5 seat on the Board of Supervisors that is being vacated by Sheriff-elect Ross Mirkarimi.
Anti-progressive entities from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce to the San Francisco Chronicle are urging Lee to appoint a fellow moderate to the solidly progressive seat, despite the outrage that would trigger on the left and the difficulty that appointee would likely have keeping the seat after the November election.
Chron columnist CW Nevius today published a weird little puff piece plugging London Breed – a moderate who wants the D5 seat, a fact he strangely didn’t mention – and her leadership of the African American Art & Cultural Center. Chron columnist Leah Garchik also pumped up Breed as a D5 appointee last week. Nevius’ column in particular seemed to be a thinly veiled attempt to influence the decision, despite the regular insistence by Nevius and others at the Chron that they never have a political agenda or try to influence City Hall. Yeah, right – at least we at the Guardian are honest about our advocacy for more progressive city leadership.
Breed is being strongly pushed by Willie Brown, the former mayor and current Chron columnist, as well as most of the city’s African American ministers, such as Revs. Amos Brown and Arnold Townsend, who showed up at last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting and followed Lee back to his office after his appearance before the board.
Sources connected to the ministers told us that Lee hadn’t returned their phone calls in recent weeks and they were angry about the snub, so they showed up to let him know and mau-mau him into appointing Breed. Indeed, Brown did get a private meeting with Lee after his followers wedged their way into the office.
Reporters had asked Lee about the D5 appointment just moments before and he said that he was in no hurry to make a decision. “I want to pay my respects to many groups in District 5,” Lee said.
While many names have been floated as D5 contenders, there are a few that rise to the top. Malcolm Yeung, public policy director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, is being pushed by Rose Pak, the Chinatown power broker who worked with Brown to get Lee into Room 200.
But given Lee will probably avoid simply choosing between the Brown and Pak choices – unless they can privately coalesce around someone, which is certainly a possibility – most City Hall speculation these days falls on Christina Olague. The Planning Commission president comes from the progressive camp but she also served as a co-chair of Progress for All, creators of the Run, Ed, Run campaign that persuaded Lee to run for a full term.
Speaking to the Guardian in October, Olague denied that her early endorsement of Lee had anything to do with the D5 seat, which she said she wasn’t seeking but would take if offered. “If we get progressives to support him early on, maybe we’ll have a seat at the table,” was how she explained her support for Lee.
On Friday, Olague showed up for Mirkarimi’s art opening and holiday party in his City Hall office, and she chatted with other possible contenders for the D5 seat, including Quintin Mecke, Julian Davis, Gabriel Haaland, Jason Henderson, and Michael O’Connor. Asked by the Guardian if she had any insights into how the appointment was going, she said all she knows is what she’s read online and in the newspapers.
As San Francisco grapples with a record-high number of homeless families seeking shelter space during the holiday season, a pair of homeless policy discussions at yesterday’s Board of Supervisors meeting highlighted shortcomings and missed opportunities in the city’s approach to the issue.
Mayor Ed Lee announced that he is opening up more shelter space and public housing units for homeless families, finally relenting to weeks of pressure to address the pressing problem. Yet the board also narrowly approved turning surplus city property over to neighborhood residents rather than using proceeds from selling it to benefit homeless families, as city policies call for.
The property in question, 341 Corbett Avenue, is a vegetated hillside near Upper Market that the city declared a surplus property in 2004, transferring it to the Mayor’s Office of Housing to either develop as housing for poor families or to put the proceeds from its sale toward that purpose. Providing housing for the homeless is what city policy calls for surplus property to be used for, according to 2002’s Surplus City Property Ordinance. The property was assessed at $2.2 million, but it wasn’t developed because of costs associated with the steep hillside, nor was it listed for sale.
Neighbors of the property have sought to use the property for open space and a community garden, so the district’s Sup. Scott Wiener authored legislation to facilitate a community garden by transferring it to the Department of Public Works. The transfer would involve no money, leaving homeless advocates concerned about depriving homeless families of any revenues from the property.
“There are a lot of public assets we could sell if we wanted to fund this need or that,” Wiener told his colleagues, noting that neighbors would rather see a community garden on the site and that Upper Market lacks adequate open space.
But Sups. Jane Kim and Eric Mar led the opposition to the move, saying they didn’t object to that kind of community use of this property, but that city policies need to be followed, particularly considering the dire need for more resources to address the needs of homeless families. “I do have concerns about the precedent we set and also being consistent,” she said, arguing for a delay in the action until city officials find a way to compensate MOH for at least some of the property’s value.
“Overriding the surplus property ordinance is not something I want to do right now,” Sup. John Avalos said.
But the board voted 6-5 to approve the transfer, with progressive Sups. Kim, Avalos, Mar, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi in dissent. Housing advocates upset by the action directly their ire at the swing vote, one-time progressive Sup. David Chiu, with activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca sending out an e-mail blast saying, “david chiu betrayed us again — he wouldn’t support continuing the 341 Corbett item so that affordable housing advocates could try and work out a better deal with the Mayor’s Office on Housing and others.”
During yesterday’s monthly mayoral question time, Kim asked Lee what he was doing to address the “alarming rate” of homeless families in the city – with 267 families now on a wait list for emergency shelter space, a 356 percent increase since 2007 – specifically challenging him to expand the city’s Rental Subsidy Program by 50 families and open new emergency winter shelters. She also noted three recent suicides in the city by individuals facing homelessness.
“I share your concern about family homelessness in San Francisco. My staff has been hard at work for a long time now trying to proactively respond to this very serious challenge and I’m proud to offer some very constructive, tangible solutions,” Lee said. He announced that his administration had just this week starting expediting the placement of homeless families into vacant public housing units, with 18 families now being processed and a goal of placing about 30 of the 79 families now in shelters into public housing units.
Lee also said that SalesForce.com CEO Marc Benioff is donating $1.5 million to the Home for the Holidays program the city is creating to provide rent subsidies and case management to 160 families, a donation that the city will match. “Their generosity is inspiring,” Lee said.
He also pledged to open up an unspecified number of new family shelter spots and, somewhat bizarrely, tried to wrap this issue into his relentless focus on promoting private sector job creation, mostly through tax breaks that actually cut into the city’s ability to provide direct assistance to homeless families. As Lee said, “The long-term goal is to increase these families’ incomes and to place them into permanent unsubsidized housing.”
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors yesterday (Tues/13) approved a resolution calling for the city to adopt stronger policies for resisting federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants who live here. It is the latest move to support the city’s Sanctuary City status and counter the federal Secure Communities (S-Com) program, a new database that allows the feds to circumvent local policies protecting local immigrants who have been arrested but not convicted of any crimes.
The resolution urges the Sheriff’s and Juvenile Probation departments not to honor civil immigration detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement until there is a written agreement to have ICE pay for all local costs associated with the incarcerations. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors adopted a similar policy in October, a move also being pursued in Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, and other jurisdictions.
“It doesn’t make communities safer. In fact, it makes immigrant communities less safe,” Sup. Eric Mar, who authored the resolution, said of S-Com, noting that it makes immigrants less likely to report crimes or cooperate with police. “I urge you to support this message and to follow the lead of jurisdictions like Santa Clara and Chicago, Cook County.”
Sups. David Campos and Jane Kim asked to join Mar and Board President David Chiu as co-sponsors of the measure, which was then approved on an 8-3 vote, with Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, and Carmen Chu in dissent. Members of the San Francisco Immigrant Right Defense Committee, who had lobbied hard for the resolution and who packed board chambers, erupted in a sustained standing ovation after the vote.
Angela Chan, an attorney with Asian Law Caucus who helped lead the effort, afterward told supporters, “It’s because of this group’s hard work that we got a lot more votes than we thought we’d get,” noting they only had six solid votes going in. “Thank you, happy holiday, and we have lots more work to do.”
Chan hopes the resolution will give political cover to Ross Mirkarimi – who supported the measure as a supervisor and who takes over as sheriff at the end of the month – to expand policies created this year by Sheriff Michael Hennessey to resist some immigration detainer requests. Mirkarimi hasn’t yet returned calls for comment on the issue.
San Francisco has a fraught recent history on how to handle undocumented immigrants accused of crimes. Two years ago, the board adopted a policy of refusing to report them to the feds until they had been convicted of serious crimes, approving the Campos-authored legislation on a veto-proof 8-3 vote, only to have then-Mayor Gavin Newsom refuse to enforce the policy. After that highly charged fight, the creation of the S-Com program allowed the feds to circumvent those restrictions by directly finding out whether local inmates are undocumented, making moot Mayor Ed Lee’s agreement to partially implement the Campos legislation.
As we report in this week’s paper, this is one of a number of issues related to local control and an overreaching police state where Bay Area communities such as Berkeley, San Francisco, Richmond, and San Jose are trying to push back on the federal government. Sup. Jane Kim is currently working on an ordinance to restrict the participation of San Francisco http://www.sfbg.com/2011/04/26/spies-blue. Advocates say she plans to introduce the measure next month, but Kim told us she’s have some difficulty getting sign-off from the City Attorney’s Office.
