Mayor Ed Lee

And the next chief is…yes, Suhr!

Mary Magee
-
3

Mayor Ed Lee appointed a deeply emotional Captain Greg Suhr as Chief of the San Francisco Police Department during a swearing-in ceremony where the majority of folks were either elected officials, running for election, running each other’s electoral campaigns—or wearing SFPD uniforms.

And in the end it seemed that the choice may have been influenced by pressure from the powerful San Francisco Police Officers Association, judging from the comment Lee jokingly directed at SFPOA leader Gary Delagnes, saying, “Gary, it’s time to get quiet and go to work.”

Lee told a standing-room only crowd that when he returned from Hong Kong to San Francisco four months ago finding a new police chief was his top priority. And that initially it was suggested (Lee did not say by whom) that he leave the SFPD situation alone and allow an elected mayor to appoint the next Chief.

‘While I am an interim mayor, this is not an interim decision,” Lee told the crowd, signaling that while he may be out of office in January, Suhr may be here to stay as the city’s top cop.

“Today, I’ve chosen the best candidate,” Lee continued, thanking Acting Chief Jeff Godown for his work leading the SFPD since former Mayor Gavin Newsom made the shocking decision to appoint former Chief George Gascón as District Attorney.

But while Newsom’s move may have upset the apple cart in the D.A.’s race, it sure seems to be working out well for Suhr.

Describing Suhr as “a police and people’s Chief: and “a reformer from the inside out,” Lee ran through a long list of the new Chief’s contributions to the SFPD. These included Suhr’s 30 years of service, his climb through the ranks to become Captain of the Mission station, his gig as Captain of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in a Homeland Security capacity, and, since 2009, as Captain of the Bayview station.

Suhr began by saying he was “speechless.” Donning glasses to read a speech that he had prepared the night before, Suhr choked up when he talked of being “fourth-generation, born and raised in San Francisco.” Recovering his composure, Suhr smoothly changed gears, as he joked how his appointment therefore makes him “a local hire,”—an insider reference to Sup. John Avalos’ recently approved local hire legislation that Mayor Lee is helping enact citywide.

Suhr recalled how he started out as a rookie on the midnight shift in the Tenderloin in 1981. He thanked his family, his friends and his girlfriend Wendy. And then he asked for a moment of silence “ to honor the memory of all the brave officers who have given their lives in the line of duty.”

Lee reclaimed the podium long enough to jokingly ask Suhr  “to investigate the whereabouts of my birth certificate” as his first assignment as the new chief.

Then it was Board President David Chiu’s turn. Chiu described Suhr as someone, ”who knows our streets, walked the walk, and knows the beats, someone who we all feel confident will be able to bring the SFPD the reform that former Chief Godown, Chief Gascón and Chief Heather Fong initiated. “

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Katherine Feinstein, who is the daughter of Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the presiding judge of the Superior Court, recalled how she has known Suhr since the mid 1980s. “I have watched him as each of our careers have moved forward,” Feinstein said, noting how there were some “steps forward and some steps backward” and how, “there were those who thought this day would never come.” (Feinstein’s words were the only reference to some of the less sunny moments in Suhr’s long and distinguished career. These included his 2003 indictment as part of Fajitagate, an incident that involved off-duty officers, a bag of take-out food, a beer bottle and injuries sustained by two local residents. Suhr was cleared of wrongdoing the next year, but was reassigned by then Chief Heather Fong to the PUC position after an incident in 2005, in which a police officer was seriously injured at an anarchist protest, and videographer Josh Wolf was held in federal prison for 226 days after he refused to release unedited footage of the protest.)

Next up was D.A Gascón and his rooster-like shock of silver hair. Gascón noted that when he first came to San Francisco, in the summer of 2009, he had no allegiances to, and no prior knowledge of, people inside the SFPD.

“I looked at Greg Suhr and one of the things that impressed me is how he worked with and related to people,” Gascón said, explaining why he appointed Suhr as Bayview Captain “Not only has he exceeded all expectations he did an incredible job,” he said.

 Police Commission President Thomas Mazzucco said that in the 100 days since the Commission announced it was looking for a new chief, it became clear that Suhr has the support of SFPD’s rank-and-file.

Mazzuco noted that he met Suhr in high school. “I knew he could hold a ball,” Mazzuco added, noting that he subsequently became Suhr’s football coach, even though he is younger than Suhr. “What the Police Commission has brought to us is not only a native son but also a cop’s cop. It’s an honor to have him as his chief.”

And after the swearing-in, the sentiment among officers in blue appeared to be strongly in Suhr’s favor. Lt. Ken Lee of Central Station recalled how he and Suhr went through the police academy together about 30 years ago.

“We went to different assignments but we’ve maintained a friendship,” Lee said. “The moment I met him I liked him. He was a very stand-up person, and as a native San Franciscan like myself, you could tell he had strong ties to the city. He’s a hard worker, he’s very dedicated to what he does.”

Lt. Mario Delgadillo, also of Central Station, said Suhr hasn’t lost his connection to the street. “That also means a lot, when you have a boss who’s walking with you,” Delgadillo said.

Suhr takes over the SFPD as it’s grappling with the fallout from a recent spate of scandals, including videos that Public Defender Jeff Adachi released that appear to show police misconduct at residential hotels and that forced DA Gascón to hand over his investigation of this alleged police misconduct to the FBI. Asked during a media roundtable what his appointment means for Acting Chief Godown, Suhr said Godown has returned to being Assistant Chief of Operations, which was the post he held before Gascón, who recruited Godown from LAPD, was appointed DA.

In response to a question about his top priorities as police chief, Suhr noted, “When I sit down with the mayor this afternoon, the mayor’s going to tell me what his priorities are. My first priority will be blocking the door open on the 5th floor so that if you wanna come see me you can, like it used to be. Then I have to meet with the command staff and captains and get their take on where they think we are, where they think we’re moving forward best, and match that up against how I’ve seen from a position of Bayview, how that matches up. And then see if I can’t meet with different community groups, the different police employee groups and the command staff.”

He didn’t mince words when it came to indicating that SFPD officers are going to be asked to give back during upcoming budget negotiations
“I’m sure that there’s going to have to be adjustments and I look forward to working with a collaborative effort with the mayor and the board and the unions and the rank and file,” Suhr said. “When the economy’s been good we’ve benefited by it, and now that the economy has … gone the other way, to some extent I think that the officers are willing to give back to do whatever needs to be done to keep the city safe.”

So, how does Suhr think he differs from former Chief Gascón? 

”He has a gorgeous head of hair,” Suhr joked. “To put it in a sports analogy, he’s a quarterback shortstop guy, and I’m more of a catcher, lineman, linebacker kind of guy. But I admire him, I think he moved a lot of issues forward for the police department, and I look forward to continuing those initiatives and giving a few of them a shot in the arm that I think were beginning to wane a bit.”

Suhr also talked about how he has always wanted to become a police officer (a comment that suggests he’s not planning to use the Chief’s post as a stepping stone to the District Attorney’s Office).

”When I went into the police department. on Silver Avenue which is now Willie Brown Academy — that was the police academy back in 1991 when I came in — man, we looked at just the regular uniformed police officers with just stars in our eyes, because they were just the sharpest, classiest folks that we were aspiring to be,” Suhr said.

And he indicated that as Chief, he won’t tolerate dishonesty in the face of ongoing investigations into alleged police misconduct. ”The character of a police officer must be above reproach,” Suhr said. “And I think that the investigation will show what it ends up showing, but I don’t think that there’s a police officer in San Francisco that would want to have a dishonest cop and I’d be at the top of that list. So I want all my officers to be of character that is above reproach.

Asked if he welcome clarification around the duties of SFPD officers assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Taskforce, Suhr said he believed an examination of the wording of the FBI’s most recent memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the department was already under way.

“I believe that the MOU is being revisited,” Suhr said. “I have not been a part of that, but again I think we have a real good policy with regard to our intelligence gathering and that does supercede any ask of any other agency. The officers are bound by policies and procedures. And that policy was well thought out with tremendous community and group input years and years ago, from situations that have not since repeated themselves. I think a lot of people back then couldn’t believe they happened in the first place, but I think measures were well thought out and put in place to make sure we don’t have a problem again.”

And at the end of the day, Suhr expressed the hope that his tenure as Chief would endure long after the interim mayor is replaced by an elected mayor.

”I’m a native San Franciscan, and this is a dream come true,” he said. “It’s my first day. However this story ends, with a little bit of luck (raps on the wood tabletop) it’s not going to end today.”

Earth Day in City Hall … on Wells Fargo’s dime

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
1

Who was lucky enough to get treated to Mayor Ed Lee’s Earth Day Breakfast in City Hall, with the city’s top politicos and a smattering of high-profile San Franciscans? After noticing that the Board of Supervisors had approved a grant of $12,000 from Wells Fargo a few weeks ago to sponsor the event, the Guardian contacted the Mayor’s Office to ask for the guest list. The response came from the city’s Department of the Environment, which accepted the donation and organized the affair.

The 472-person invite list (we don’t know how many actually attended) included prominent figures such as Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, billionaire investor Warren Hellman, and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. All 11 members of the Board of Supervisors were invited, too, as were mayoral hopefuls City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, and state Sen. Leland Yee.
 
Invitations were extended to some truly green organizations, too, such as Green for All, Save the Bay, Rainforest Action Network, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the Sierra Club, the Apollo Alliance, Greenaction, and others.

And many seats were reserved for the corporate sector. A total of nine representatives of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. were on the list. There were seven from Cisco, several from consulting and design firm CH2MHill, and a couple representatives from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill — the firm that’s doing the Parkmerced overhaul and which was tapped to envision waterfront venues for the America’s Cup. 

Seven representatives — including the CEO — were invited from Recology, which is in the midst of a debate over its high-stakes, $275 million no-bid garbage contract with the city.

According to Mark Westlund of the Department of the Environment, only half of the Wells Fargo grant went toward the mayor’s Earth Day Breakfast, “the remainder to a series of community events held in the Department’s EcoCenter lobby.” The other sponsors included Blue Shield of California ($2,000); CH2MHill; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; United Airlines; Environmental Science Associates ($4,000); Levi Strauss & Co.; Cisco ($6,000) and Starbucks — which provided BPA-free travel mugs (double green points!).

It’s nice that San Francisco taxpayers didn’t have to shell out the $18,000 for all these people to celebrate Earth Day together. But at an event such as this, with so many millions of dollars in city contracts and major development projects flying around (not to mention the half a dozen or so people in need of campaign contributions), you can bet they weren’t all talking to one another about saving the planet.

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
-
2
Editor’s notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

You lose a lot on the left. We all get used to it; we’re fighting against a rich, entrenched power structure and the rules of the game are rigged against us. For people in the labor movement, it’s been a particularly bad year; all over the country, politicians are looking for ways to undermine collective bargaining rights.

So it’s nice to win one every now and then — and it’s nice to be able to say that labor, progressive labor, just won a major victory in San Francisco. But it’s no surprise that the San Francisco Chronicle got the story wrong.

For several years now, the owners of the Fairmont Hotel have wanted to tear down a tower built in the 1960s, eliminate 226 hotel rooms, and build about 160 luxury condos instead. The hotel workers union, not surprisingly, worried about a loss of jobs; condo owners don’t use housekeeping. But it’s a larger issue than that: people who buy hotel condos don’t live there much. Most of the rooms that have been converted nationwide become pieds à terre for very wealthy people. They spend a few nights a year in their units; the rest of the time, the places are empty. Nobody there to shop, eat, or get entertained in SF; nobody spending money here.

So it’s a nice little bit of class warfare: The city loses hotel and restaurant jobs — and part of the city’s tourist infrastructure — so that the owners (including a Saudi prince and Oakland A’s owner Lou Wolff) can make a fast windfall profit. (Think $1 million to $2 million each for 160 condos and you get the picture.)

The owners hired Willie Brown to make their case at City hall; Mayor Ed Lee quickly introduced legislation that would allow the conversion. The Chron picked up the ownership line: only condos can save the Fairmont. “The business has migrated downhill to new hotels near the Moscone Convention Center south of Market,” the paper lamented in an April 17 editorial. Done deal, right?

Well, no. Local 2, the hotel workers union, did an amazing job of organizing, working with Nob Hill neighbors and, by the way, pointing out the facts — the Fairmont has outperformed the SoMa hotels during 10 of the past 11 years, has enviable occupancy rates and stands to reap the benefits of the America’s Cup. Facing a possible strike and a battle royal at City Hall, the Fairmont blinked. The condo plan is dead. Good work, my friends. 

 

Extra! Nevius finds a bad landlord!

Zelda Bronstein
-
6
Extra! Nevius finds a bad landlord!

Our old buddy C.W. Nevius actually found a landlord he doesn’t like — a guy named Peter Iskander who is trying to toss some seniors and disabled people out on the streets. In a classic bleeding-heart column April 17, he lamented the pending evictions, which would pave the way for the landlord to turn some rental units into tenancies in common:


Imagine the sight of Carlo Tarrone, who is in his 70s and uses a walker, and Sandy Bishop, who is 70 and has lung cancer, forced out of their homes.


Imagine it, Chuck. It happens all the time. It’s been happening for years in this city (and elsewhere), in large part because of the Ellis Act, a truly abominable law that paves the way for landlords to evict tenants and then sell the units for fast cash. Nevius seems to understand that the Ellis Act is behind this particular horror story — but instead of suggesting that the law ought to be changed, he ends his column by suggesting that San Francisco ought to make these sorts of evictions more profitable:


Maybe it is time to start looking at ways to get middle-class buyers into San Francisco real estate. Mayor Ed Lee is looking at a one-time “condo bypass,” an idea floated by Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2010, where tenancies in common residents could pay a large fee to be allowed to convert to a condo. No one would be evicted, and the cash-strapped city could gain millions in fees.


Another plan is “fractional” mortgages for tenants in common. Rather than the old model where everyone in the building is part of a large single mortgage, each unit would have its own mortgage, making it sort of a pseudo-condo.


Actually, Chuck,  both of those plans will make condos and TICs more attractive. That means more evictions of old people — and poor people, and middle-class people who want to live in the city and are getting forced out by somewhat richer middle class people. It’s an awful situation, and what Nevius calls for would just make it worse.


When there’s enough publicity, sometimes bad landlords back off, and I’m sure Nevius will celebrate if that happens as the result of his column. I’ll be happy, too; every inappropriate eviction averted is another small victory. But most tenants don’t get daily newspaper columns written about tham, and you can’t fight this battle one case at a time. You need structural reforms, and repealing the Ellis Act is step one.  




Mayor derails hearing on nightclub crackdown

Sasha Cuttler
-
3

Will entering a large nightclub in San Francisco be akin to a TSA pat down? We won’t know for a while, as the proposal for heightened security measures by San Francisco Police has caught the interest of Mayor Ed Lee and further discussion has been stalled pending his analysis.

A hearing last night (Tues/12) at the Entertainment Commission proved to be a disappointment for the dozens of people who attended in hopes of getting closure on the hotly contested proposal, which has drawn criticism for its infringement on freedom and privacy and burdensome cost to club owners, as well as being the latest battle in San Francisco’s War on Fun.

“We need to protect our events,” said Liam Shy of the organization Save the Rave, a coalition of people dedicated to keeping electronic dance parties alive. “They are in a state of crisis right now, and this would make it much worse.”

Shy and fellow Save the Rave member Matt Kaftor saw the mayor’s interest in the issue was a good indication that community dissent has been heard.

“I would be truly shocked if this passed,” said Kaftor. “If it does, we will be protesting constantly.”

The proposal would require all venues with an occupancy of 100 or more people to record the faces of all patrons and employees and scan their IDs for storage in a database, which would be available to law enforcement on request for at least two weeks. Metal detectors, security cameras and brighter lights in the venues would also be required. The proposal was created in response to recent violence in and around nightclubs, most notably the shooting outside Suede in Fisherman’s Wharf last year that resulted in the closing of the club.

However, critics say this is an overreaction that unfairly targets events as sources of violence.

“What I keep getting from measures like this is that police work is hard,” said SF resident Jonathan Duggan. “But instead of doing their hard work, they are just creating another avenue for privacy invasion that shifts the responsibility to everyone else.”

Although the main target is nightclubs, many events in San Francisco would be affected. Events with strong cultural, ideological, and political components are frequently held at venues that would be affected by these rules.

Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation showed up last night prepared to give the commission a piece of her mind. She shared a letter with us outlining her concerns, which listed the support of many other civil liberty and privacy protection groups such as the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

“The city of San Francisco has a long history of political activism and cultural diversity which would be profoundly threatened by this proposed rule,” Galperin wrote. “Scanning the IDs of all attendees at an anti-war rally, a gay night club, or a fundraiser for a civil liberties organization would result in a deeply chilling effect on speech…This would transform the politically and culturally tolerant environment for which San Francisco is famous into a police state.”

District 8 Supervisor Scott Weiner, who has been instrumental in the effort to keep events in San Francisco alive, told us that he does not support the proposal. His resolution to protect events passed the Board of Supervisors on March 29 and focuses on collaboration between city agencies and nightclub owners to combat violence rather than simply cracking down on entertainment venues.

 “It’s one thing for a large club with a history of problems to receive those kinds of exceptional security measures, but for the majority of clubs, it strikes me as overkill as well as invasion of privacy,” Weiner told us.

Jocelyn Kane, executive director of the Entertainment Commission, could not give any indication as to when another hearing would be or what prompted the mayor’s decision.  Neither she nor the mayor’s office could elaborate on whether the mayor has problems with the proposal or is simply responding to the public outrage.

Supes vote on Botanical Garden fees

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
3

The Board of Supervisors voted on April 12 to keep in place nonresident fees at the San Francisco Botanical Garden for at least another two years, rejecting a proposal by Sup. John Avalos to do away with the fees and make up for the shortfall with a portion of revenues brought in by a real-estate transfer tax that was approved by voters last year.

Advocating for his position, Avalos stood to tell a story about his last visit to the Botanical Garden. “A couple months ago, I was able to go there with my kids,” he began. “I went in, I was asked for my ID, I showed my ID. I noticed the next person who came in after me looked very agitated when she got to the gate. She said the F-word very loud, and she started to walk away. I approached her, and I said, ‘hey what’s going on?’ And she said, ‘I come here everyday, and I’m being asked for my ID, and I have to go back to my house to get it because I don’t have it with me today.'”

She wasn’t the only person who seemed disgruntled by the gatekeeper that day. “On my way out, I noticed a few tourists coming up,” Avalos continued. “It looked like they were from Germany. They walked up to the gate and then they walked back away from the gate. They clearly did not go in because they did not want to pay the fee.” A couple in their 60s tried to enter, but they did not go in because they didn’t have their IDs proving that they lived in San Francisco, he added.

Bottom line: “The gate and the fee has really diminished what people’s enjoyment of the park has been like for decades,” he said. “Can’t there just be one fee that we don’t raise? Can this be that one fee? I don’t think that’s asking too much.” He also noted that budget analyst’s report showed that the fees did not bring in the revenue that had been anticipated, a point echoed by Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos.

Yet Avalos’ pitch wasn’t enough to persuade his colleagues. On the question of whether money from the real-estate transfer tax revenues should be used to make up for the nonresident fees so that the Botanical Garden could be free for everyone, supervisors said no on a 7-4 vote, with Sups. Eric Mar, Mirkarimi, Campos, and Avalos voting yes.

The board also voted on whether the nonresident admission fees should be extended beyond June 30, 2011 (a date set when the fee was initially imposed), as proposed by Mayor Ed Lee. Board President David Chiu offered an amendment that the fees would only remain in place for two years, after which point the debate could be rehashed. The amendment was adopted, and the mayor’s proposal passed on a 6-5 vote, with Sups. Jane Kim, Mar, Mirkarimi, Avalos, and Campos voting no.

So, that’s how it went down at the board. If you’re a nonresident, the Botanical Garden still isn’t free.

Since Kim and Avalos both shared their accounts of visiting the Botanical Garden, I thought I’d share my own photos and impressions from a visit on a recent afternoon, when I had several hours to myself to explore Golden Gate Park’s haven of greenery. Admission was free, since I’d planned ahead to bring my ID.

The day was sunny and warm, and I spent a long time photographing the light streaming through a cluster of bamboo and sitting by a pond watching some water bugs skip around on the surface. It was a welcome escape from city life with an element of educational value, since all the plants are labeled with plaques identifying their Latin names, common names, and places of origin.

I noticed two people sitting wordlessly together in the sun. The woman, who seemed to be a caregiver, was seated on a bench, and beside her was an elderly man in a wheelchair with a blanket over his lap. The man seemed to be very frail. Yet he wore a serene expression, and was clearly enjoying the calm and quiet afternoon.

I don’t know if they paid to get in or not. As Board President David Chiu noted at the meeting before voting in favor of keeping the fee in place, “We don’t live in a perfect world.” You can argue about the privatization of parks, or about the need to find all possible sources of revenue in order to fend off cuts to city-funded services. Nevertheless, it’s sad to think of the folks who would be barred from the simple pleasure of sitting in the sun surrounded by natural beauty, because they can’t afford to pay.

Question time’s a waste of time

Zelda Bronstein
-
8
Question time’s a waste of time

I strongly supported the measure that mandates that the mayor of San Francisco appear before the supervisors once a month to take questions. But the rules adopted by the board — with waaay too much consultation between Mayor Ed Lee and Board president David Chiu — have turned this great idea into a farce.


The supervisors have to submit questions in writing a week in advance. The mayor in essence stands there and reads pre-written answers. Aaron Peskin, one of the backers of question time, sent a text to Sup. Chiu’s office during the April 12th board meeting and made the point:



“Your idiotic question time rules have led 2 an absurd charade of folks reading (poorly) 2 eachother.  What a joke.” 


It’s embarassing. The board needs to rewrite the rules, now, and allow some actual interchange and debate, which is what the whole thing was supposed to be about in the first place.

No cuts-only pension deal

Andrew Lam
-
5
No cuts-only pension deal

EDITORIAL Mayor Ed Lee has released a draft set of proposals for pension reform, and union leaders continue to meet with financier Warren Hellman to try to craft an alternative. Meanwhile, Public Defender Jeff Adachi is narrowing his options and appears ready to move forward to put his own plan on the ballot.

Everyone involved claims to be interested in a compromise, in some proposal that would reduce the city’s burden of paying $350 million this year (and potentially as much as $790 million in five years) into the employee pension fund. We support that idea, too — there are plenty of necessary, progressive moves to fix the city’s pension system and free up more cash for local programs.

But so far, none of the proposals on the table include any new revenue sources — which means, in effect, that the mayor, Hellman, and Adachi all want city workers to bear the entire brunt of the impact of a Wall Street-driven recession. The message: only city employees should share the pain; the wealthiest San Franciscans and biggest, richest businesses don’t have to contribute at all.

It’s a dangerous part of the tax mythology that Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston discusses in his article in the Guardian this week. He notes that the argument in favor of tax cuts for the rich — that lower taxes will lead to more investment and thus more jobs — has been tested in this country for 30 years. And it hasn’t worked.

Most San Franciscans probably realize that. Most city officials vote for Democrats, opposed the Bush-era tax cuts on the rich, and argue for more federal aid to cities. This is a progressive town.

But when it comes to something as fundamental as local economic policy — who pays for city services and who gets the benefits — the story becomes completely different.

The mayor and eight of the 11 supervisors are celebrating a broad-based tax cut as a way to create jobs in the Tenderloin and mid-Market (although the evidence that tax cuts don’t create jobs is overwhelming). The mayor is looking at the equivalent of a cuts-only budget (although everyone at City Hall opposes the notion of a cuts-only budget in Sacramento). And while it’s almost certain that some sort of pension reform will be on the November ballot, none of the players involved in the negotiations have openly taken what seems to us to be the only logical position:

Pension reform has to be linked to tax reform — a commercial rent tax, a progressive gross receipts tax, a city income tax, an increase in the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. franchise fee or something else that hits those who can afford to pay. Otherwise, we can’t support it.

Even the city employee unions are being awfully quiet about the need for a deal that includes new taxes. They ought to be leading the charge here, telling everyone that a cuts-only pension deal isn’t going to be acceptable. (The tax measures could hold until the November 2012 budget, when they’ll be easier to pass — if there’s a firm assurance that the mayor, Hellman, Adachi, the supervisors, and all the other players will support them.)

City employees are being asked to take what amount to pay cuts — which will reduce their purchasing power and have a depressing impact on the local economy. Taxing the wealthy (who spend a much smaller percentage of their income) has no such depressing impact. Those are hard, cold facts. They need to be part of the discussion.

Robert Reich, the former labor secretary who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, has an interesting essay on his blog April 9 that discusses Obama’s budget capitulations. The president, he notes, “is losing the war of ideas because he won’t tell the American public the truth: that we need more government spending now — not less — in order to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. That we got into the Great Recession because Wall Street went bonkers and government failed to do its job at regulating financial markets … That the only ways to deal with the long-term budget problem is to demand that the rich pay their fair share of taxes.

“And that, at a deeper level, the increasingly lopsided distribution of income and wealth has robbed the vast working middle class of the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going at full capacity.”

That’s as true here as it is in Washington. And if city officials want progressive support for pension reform, they need to acknowledge it.

 

Editorial: Link pension reform to tax reform (Second in a series on pension reform)

Maria Poblet
-
14

Mayor Ed Lee has released a draft set of proposals for pension reform, and union leaders continue to meet with financier Warren Hellman to try to craft an alternative. Meanwhile, Public Defender Jeff Adachi is narrowing his options and appears ready to move forward to put his own plan on the ballot.

Everyone involved claims to be interested in a compromise, in some proposal that would reduce the city’s burden of paying $350 million this year (and potentially as much as $790 million in five years) into the employee pension fund. We support that idea, too — there are plenty of necessary, progressive moves to fix the city’s pension system and free up more cash for local programs.

But so far, none of the proposals on the table include any new revenue sources — which means, in effect, that the mayor, Hellman, and Adachi all want city workers to bear the entire brunt of the impact of a Wall Street-driven recession. The message: only city employees should share the pain; the wealthiest San Franciscans and biggest, richest businesses don’t have to contribute at all.

It’s a dangerous part of the tax mythology that Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston discusses on page 10. He notes that the argument in favor of tax cuts for the rich — that lower taxes will lead to more investment and thus more jobs — has been tested in this country for 30 years. And it hasn’t worked.

Most San Franciscans probably realize that. Most city officials vote for Democrats, opposed the Bush-era tax cuts on the rich, and argue for more federal aid to cities. This is a progressive town.

But when it comes to something as fundamental as local economic policy — who pays for city services and who gets the benefits — the story becomes completely different.

The mayor and eight of the 11 supervisors are celebrating a broad-based tax cut as a way to create jobs in the Tenderloin and mid-Market (although the evidence that tax cuts don’t create jobs is overwhelming). The mayor is looking at the equivalent of a cuts-only budget (although everyone at City Hall opposes the notion of a cuts-only budget in Sacramento). And while it’s almost certain that some sort of pension reform will be on the November ballot, none of the players involved in the negotiations have openly taken what seems to us to be the only logical position:

Pension reform has to be linked to tax reform — a commercial rent tax, a progressive gross receipts tax, a city income tax, an increase in the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. franchise fee or something else that hits those who can afford to pay. Otherwise, we can’t support it.

Even the city employee unions are being awfully quiet about the need for a deal that includes new taxes. They ought to be leading the charge here, telling everyone that a cuts-only pension deal isn’t going to be acceptable. (The tax measures could hold until the November 2012 budget, when they’ll be easier to pass — if there’s a firm assurance that the mayor, Hellman, Adachi, the supervisors, and all the other players will support them.)

City employees are being asked to take what amount to pay cuts — which will reduce their purchasing power and have a depressing impact on the local economy. Taxing the wealthy (who spend a much smaller percentage of their income) has no such depressing impact. Those are hard, cold facts. They need to be part of the discussion.

Robert Reich, the former labor secretary who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, has an interesting essay on his blog April 9 that discusses Obama’s budget capitulations. The president, he notes, “is losing the war of ideas because he won’t tell the American public the truth: that we need more government spending now — not less — in order to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. That we got into the Great Recession because Wall Street went bonkers and government failed to do its job at regulating financial markets … That the only ways to deal with the long-term budget problem is to demand that the rich pay their fair share of taxes.

“And that, at a deeper level, the increasingly lopsided distribution of income and wealth has robbed the vast working middle class of the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going at full capacity.”

That’s as true here as it is in Washington. And if city officials want progressive support for pension reform, they need to acknowledge it.

Ethics Commissioner: No surprises, please

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
0
Ethics Commissioner: No surprises, please

The San Francisco Ethics Commission voted unanimously on April 11 to amend a post-employment ban under the city’s Campaign and Governmental Conduct Code, creating a provision that’s designed to allow Mayor Ed Lee to resume his post as City Administrator following the completion of his term as interim mayor.

The change allows an appointed mayor to obtain city employment immediately after serving out a term, provided that he or she doesn’t pull papers to run for office, was previously employed by the city, and doesn’t receive a salary that’s higher than the last year of city employment prior to taking office. The amendment builds in an exception to a rule banning the mayor and members of the Board of Supervisors from obtaining city employment for one year after leaving office.

Ethics Commission staff had recommended that this provision be expanded to apply to appointed members of the Board of Supervisors. While Mayor Lee’s circumstance is a rare occurrence, supervisors are appointed far more often. “The underlying ordinance applies only to the mayor and the board, so we thought, why just do one, why not do both?” Ethics Commission director John St. Croix explained.

But a couple commissioners took issue with that idea, saying it was too far outside the scope of the law that voters enacted, and it ultimately did not win approval. “I don’t see the compelling reason to include the supervisors,” noted commissioner Charles Ward, “and I expect that members of the public are going to be awfully surprised. As a member of the public, I’d be surprised myself.”

Rule change for Mayor Ed Lee could expand beyond special case

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
4

Last week, the Guardian reported on the Ethics Commission’s decision to waive two post-employment bans for city officials in order to allow mayoral staffer Kyri McClellan to take a job as executive director of the America’s Cup Organizing Committee, a role that will put her into direct contact with the same office she’s departing from as a representative of private-sector interests.

The April 11 Ethics Commission meeting will feature another discussion on whether to bend the rules on post-employment for city officials.

Shortly after former City Administrator Ed Lee was appointed as interim Mayor, Board President David Chiu introduced legislation that would modify post-employment restrictions to allow Lee to go back to his former job directly after serving out his mayoral term. Under the Campaign and Governmental Conduct Code, the mayor and members of the Board of Supervisors must wait a full year after serving office to obtain employment with the city. Unlike in McClellan’s case, this rule cannot be waived for an interim mayor, so the law must to be changed to include an exception to accommodate Lee in this special case.

As it stands, “This rule is designed to restrict these elected officials from using their influence to create golden parachutes as they leave office,” according to a memo issued by Ethics Commission Deputy Executive Director Mabel Ng.

Yet Ng’s memo proposes expanding the reach of the rule change, advocating for it to apply not only to an interim mayor but any appointed member of the Board of Supervisors who does not plan to seek office after filling out a term.

“If the commission approves this legislation, staff recommends that the Commission also extend the exception to a member of the Board of Supervisors in the same circumstances,” Ng’s memo notes. “Staff makes this recommendation because the same arguments supporting an exception for appointed mayors like Mayor Lee apply equally to appointed members of the board.”

Not so fast, says Jon Golinger of San Franciscans for Clean Government, who issued a press release warning of the possible rule change on April 11. While Lee’s case is rare indeed, supervisors are appointed to fill vacant seats far more frequently, Golinger pointed out. “It introduces a whole new level of uncertainty and political abuse,” he charged. “We don’t want our top officials playing games with public funds so that they can have a job with the city” after leaving office.

Golinger said his group thought the provision that would allow for Lee to resume his old post should include a sunset clause to make it a temporary change, since in his view, “there’s no reason that should be a permanent change.”

As for going a step further to include appointed members of the board, “It’s a major change,” Golinger said, “and it does raise the broader issue of whether Ethics Commission reform is needed.”

In order to be approved, the rule change would have to win at least four votes at the Ethics Commission and at least eight votes at the Board of Supervisors.

Ng’s memo noted that a representative of Chiu’s office would attend the April 11 meeting and respond to questions from staff about the proposed legislation to create an exemption from the post-employment ban for Lee. Reached by phone, Chiu’s legislative aide Judson True said his office had not yet formed an opinion on whether the rule change ought to be extended to the Board of Supervisors.

Sunday Streets could spawn skating world records

Sasha Cuttler
-
0
Sunday Streets could spawn skating world records

A Guinness world record for the longest roller skating chain may be broken here in San Francisco this weekend. The car-free Sunday Streets returns to the Great Highway and Golden Gate Park, where “godfather of skating” David Miles plans to break the record now held by Samsung Asia Pte Ltd. in Singapore, with 280 skaters on August 6, 2006.

In addition to the going for the longest chain of skaters record, he’ll also create the record for longest skating serpentine and longest chain of inline skating as well. For the longest inline skater record, each skater must hold onto the other skaters hips as the group moves together a distance of at least 400 meters without breaking the chain. For the longest serpentine, which includes both inline and regular roller skates, participants must hold hands and follow the head of the serpentine as he or she makes turns to the left and right and moves forward creating a snake like motion with the skaters.

Mayor Ed Lee has agreed to participate and possibly lead a group as well. Although Sunday Streets event is free, registration to participate in this record is $10 and skate rental is $5. Skaters who plan to be part of the record must be registered and can do so here. Miles says there are currently 120 participants signed up but people wanting to participate can register the day of the event starting at 8a.m. The first attempt to break the record starts at 11 a.m. starting at the skating center at 6th Ave and JFK. In addition, Miles and his crew will be performing a “Thriller” dance on skate and “Cha-Cha-Cha Slide” starting at 2:30 p.m.

Sunday Streets also offers free bike rentals for one hour from Bike and Roll and Bay City Bikes at JFK and Transverse or at Lincoln and Great Highway. The seven-person funcycle will be on route and can be flagged down for a try. Roller skate rentals will be at 6th Ave and JFK. Rock the Bike returns with a bike pedal-powered stage at the Rivera sea wall on the Great Highway. For five hours, feel free to walk, run, bike, skate, or waddle. Other fun activities will start at the end of Martin Luther King Drive.

At this event, The Department of Public Works in collaboration with the SF Arts will host a free mural wall painting at The Great Highway and Lincoln. The art piece will be 40 foot long on a blank wall and everyone is invited to paint on it. Spray paint is provided and Francisco “Twick” Aquino, who created the mural at 21st and Capp streets in the Mission, will be the guest host at the free wall.

Sunday Streets encourages people to enjoy streets as open space and perform or lead activities such as yoga. The idea of this event comes from Bogota, Columbia and San Francisco joined this global movement in 2008 to create a healthier city.

“As San Franciscans, we are tapping into what communal creating is,” Sunday Street Coordinator Susan King said. “For 2011, Sunday Streets created a new policy for programming events, allowing for greater community participation and, allowing for more spontaneous activities. We are making participation more accessible and leading activities at Sunday Streets easier…the space itself is the activity.”

Miles also says, “when roads are closed to traffic, we can do all the things we are supposed to do, like be active and be healthy.”

The car- free event will last from 11am to 4pm, rain or shine.

How to move 200,000 people around America’s Cup

Mary Magee
-
3
How to move 200,000 people around America’s Cup

I’ve been wondering how the city plans to move the thousands of spectators expected to show up for a series of regattas in 2012 and 2013, leading up to and including the 34th America’s Cup Final.

And today I had a chance to start perusing the city’s draft People Plan which aims to move up to 200,000 residents and visitors daily to the city’s waterfront and is promising to be “the most transit, bicycle and pedestrian-friendly major sporting event in history.”

(Note to compulsive printers of online government documents: thanks to some nifty maps in this document, your printer may experience replication difficulties. For instance, I had to print everything but the maps on pages 13 and 14 of the document.)

Anyways, my preliminary review revealed that there is a special section in the draft dedicated to the “special transportation needs” of America’s Cup “participants” and that these participants include teams, event staff and, ta da!, accredited media.

“Special transportation needs for the ‘participant” group include but are not limited to staff access to race-related areas and other constricted waterfront areas,” states the plan. “These activities may require unique and frequent vehicle access to various sites.”

[Note to self: Remember to check out what is required to qualify as “accredited media” for a seat in one of the vehicles frequently accessing the area.]

Just kidding, and now, back to the needs of regular people who want to see the event.

“Part of the appeal that brought the Events to San Francisco Bay was the opportunity to create a new kind of viewing experience for the highest level of competitive sailing, with races held in close proximity to urban areas and accessible shoreline instead of open seas,” states the plan’s “Strategic Adaptability” section.

“The novelty of this concept creates excitement but it also creates uncertainty, in that there are few instructive examples of how spectators will choose to attend an America’s Cup Final-level sailing event in the middle of a weekend day, or how a large event in San Francisco Bay during a weekday will affect the ability of Bay Area residents to commute to work or their other daytime destinations,” the section notes.

{This sounds like the city is trying to figure out how many of us will choose to be anywhere but San Francisco on the weekends in question, how many of us who work in San Francisco are planning to play hookey to attend week day events, and how many will show up even if the Bay is swathed in fog.]

Un its draft plan,  the city promises  “to seed the strategies set forth in the People Plan with a measure of adaptability to allow for the strategic deployment of a finite amount of transportation resources across the spectrum of transportation demands associated with the Events in accordance with the expected demands of each day.”

Beyond that, the document is divided into three main parts. One itemizes likely destinations, the next describes transportation strategies to serve these key destinations, and the final section describes “additional considerations and strategies.”

To learn a) which race facilities, waterfront locations, and race viewing locations will be accessible to the public, b) which bus, rail, cable car, bike, automobile and ferry routes will be modified, and c) which parking and special locations will be added, be sure to check out the plan. And then eave your comments at the city’s feedback site here.

For, as the city’s website warns, “The early draft of the People Plan is the product of analysis by city and SFMTA staff, with early input from stakeholder groups. The draft People Plan announced today will also undergo significant and further revisions, following input from members of the public, advocates, city and agency staff, the environmental community and other stakeholders in the coming months. Final approval and consideration will occur following the completion of environmental review.”

In other words, review the documents now and speak your piece soon, otherwise your ideas won’t have any chance of making it into the final plan.

Or at Mayor Ed Lee put it in a press release, “We are moving rapidly to meet our commitments to host a spectacular 34th America’s Cup in 2013 and set a new standard for sustainable event-planning. The America’s Cup is a unique opportunity to leverage our region’s transportation resources and our enthusiasm to deliver the most transit, bicycle and pedestrian-friendly international major sporting event in history for residents and visitors alike.”

And here’s hoping that we will all be “moving rapidly” when the regatta finally rolls into town…

Unregistered lobbyist

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Unregistered lobbyist

tredmond@sfbg.com

In 2007 and 2008, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. paid former Mayor Willie Brown a total of $480,000 for consulting work. Since Brown has never been utility lawyer, it’s almost certain that money has bought political advice and access.

Brown is also working for the owners of the Fairmont Hotel, which wants to tear down one of its towers and build as many as 180 luxury condos.

His public affairs institute shares office space with one of the most powerful lobbying firms in town. He meets with or talks regularly with the mayor and members of the Board of Supervisors.

Yet unlike dozens of others who seek to influence public policy for hire, Brown is not registered as a lobbyist at City Hall.

On the surface, it’s a fairly modest issue — all Brown would have to do to comply with the letter and spirit of the city’s law is to fill out a form, list his clients, and reveal which officials he’s been talking to. It would take him 10 minutes.

But the fact that someone who is widely acknowledged to be among the most influential power brokers in San Francisco refuses to disclose whom he’s working for leaves city officials and the public in the dark — and raises a long list of questions about the effectiveness of the city’s ethics laws.

There’s a reason city law requires people who seek to influence city officials for money to disclose what they’re up to. When elected officials, commissioners, or department heads meet with advocates, they need to know who’s paying the bills. If, for example, Sup. Jane Kim has breakfast with Brown (which Brown himself reported on in a recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle), she needs to know: Does he have a client with an agenda? If he asks her to meet with someone, is he just looking out for the interests of the city — or is he pushing a paid special interest?

When Brown has dinner with Mayor Ed Lee (as he did several weeks ago) the voters need to know: Is this dinner companion pushing the mayor to make policy decisions that might help a private interest?

 

THE RULES

The definition of “lobbyist” in city law is designed to avoid putting special requirements on advocates who push issues on their own or for purely political reasons. A neighborhood activist pushing for a stop sign or better police patrols doesn’t have to register. Neither does a restaurant owner looking for a permit to put tables on the street. The only people who have to register are those who represent a client who pays them more than $3,000 in any given three-month period.

Lawyers are exempt if they’re contacting city officials purely about specific pending litigation or claims. Labor leaders are exempt if they’re talking about wages or benefits for their union members.

The requirements aren’t onerous. Lobbyists simply disclose their clients, the issues they’re working on, the city officials they have contacted, and any campaign contributions they’ve made.

There’s no doubt Brown meets the financial threshold in at least one instance. Documents on file with the state Public Utilities Commission show that PG&E paid him $280,000 in 2007 and almost $200,000 in 2008. And although Brown is a lawyer, there’s no indication that he is representing PG&E in any litigation against the city.

On the other hand, PG&E is fighting hard to derail the city’s community choice aggregation program. Is Brown part of that effort? There’s no way to know.

It’s clear he talks to local officials regularly. Most members of the Board of Supervisors we contacted said they had talked to Brown at some point in the past year. “He called me to ask how he could help with the local hire legislation,” Sup. John Avalos told us. “I told him he could call (then-Sup.) Bevan Dufty. He said he would, but I don’t know if it ever happened.” Sup. Sean Elsbernd told us he speaks to Brown about “the state of local political dynamics,” but said he can’t remember being lobbied on any particular issue.

Insiders say that’s typical — Brown rarely lets anyone know exactly what his interests are. “The talent of Willie is his ability to create plausible deniability,” one city official, who asked not to be named, told us.

But when Brown is involved, things have a funny way of happening. Take the Fairmont Hotel.

 

FRONT OF THE LINE

The Fairmont’s owners, who include the Saudi royal family and a group of American investors, want to tear down one of the hotel’s towers, eliminate several hundred hotel rooms, and replace them with high-end condominiums. That requires a city permit — legislation by former Sup. Aaron Peskin limits the number of hotel rooms that can be converted to condos and requires applicants to submit to a lottery for the right to convert.

The Fairmont applied for a permit in 2009, and won tentative approval. But in October 2010, the Planning Commission refused to certify the project’s environmental impact report. With no valid EIR, the permits expired, meaning the hotel would have to go back and reenter the lottery, with no guarantee of success.

So the Fairmont owners are seeking special legislation that would allow them to submit a new EIR without going to the back of the line — in essence, an exemption from the lottery. So far there’s no champion on the Board of Supervisors, and the hotel workers union has been dubious about the project, fearing it will cost union jobs in the long run.

But early in March, Mayor Lee quietly submitted his own legislation to the board, offering the Fairmont everything the owners want.

Who’s working for the owners? Willie Brown.

Bill Oberndorf, part of the local ownership group, told us Brown was an “advisor” to the project. “Nobody in the city has more knowledge about how to get things done than Mayor Brown,” he said.

So did Brown talk to Lee before the mayor introduced his Fairmont bill? And isn’t that a valid question? At press time, Lee’s office hadn’t responded to my questions. But if Brown was a registered lobbyist, he’d have to report that information.

Who else are Brown’s clients? Since he doesn’t register, there’s no list. But there are some clues.

For example, the headquarters of the Willie Brown Institute is situated at One Market Plaza, Suite 2250. That’s the same address as Platinum Advisors, the high-powered lobbying firm founded by Darius Anderson. Among the firm’s clients: AECOM, the engineering and construction giant, which has a $147 million contract on the Chinatown subway project; PG&E; and Sutter Health, which wants to build a $1 billion hospital on Van Ness Avenue.

Others who lobby regularly at City Hall don’t always register. Rob Black, who works for the Chamber of Commerce, is a constant presence.

Black told us the chamber used to be considered a “registered lobby entity” that was required to report all contacts with public officials and the issue involved. But the Board of Supervisors changed that law last year, requiring lobbyist registration only from individuals who are paid at least $3,000 per quarter for lobbying. Furthermore, the definition of lobbying doesn’t include attending or speaking at public hearings or writing letters. So while the SF Chamber’s Black, Steve Falk, and Jim Lazarus all lobby city officials, Black said, none have exceeded that threshold. “If we hit the monetary threshold, we’ll start filing individually,” he said.

The fact that Brown is a lawyer doesn’t excuse him from registering, said Ethics Commission director John St. Croix “If someone is paid specifically to lobby government, they should register,” St. Croix said.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi told us that the city needs to take a look at the lobbyist registration law to make sure that everyone who has private interests is properly registered.

Elsbernd said that others — particularly labor leaders and union staffers — also regularly lobby but don’t register. And while the law may allow them to skate underneath (like Black), there’s a huge difference between, say, Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson appearing at City Hall and Brown meeting with city officials.

When Paulson appears, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind whom he represents. The same could be said of Black. Although the chamber has many members, it’s clear that he’s pushing the interests of the big-business community.

On the other hand, Ken Cleaveland, public affairs director of the Building Owners and Managers Association, is duly registered with the Ethics Commission.

Brown — as is his typical practice — didn’t return my calls seeking comment. But by flouting the rules, he’s able to operate completely behind the scenes, influencing policy decisions in secrecy, with no accountability whatsoever. That’s a violation of the exact reason the lobbyist registration laws exist.

The lobbyist loophole

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
1
The lobbyist loophole

EDITORIAL As the stories in this issue show, open government laws are critical to democracy. Without the city’s sunshine law, we wouldn’t know how the proposal to give Twitter a tax break ballooned into a major giveaway. Without the sunshine laws, Tim Crews, the embattled publisher of the Sacramento Valley Mirror, wouldn’t have been able to use his small paper to hold public officials accountable.

That’s why the laws on the books need to be enforced — and sometimes strengthened. One example in San Francisco is the lobbyist registration requirement.

Here’s the problem: Former Mayor Willie Brown, who now works for at least two major outfits with business before City Hall. As Tim Redmond reports on page 10, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. paid Brown some $480,000 in 2007 and 2008. And although Brown is a lawyer, nobody can honestly believe that was for legal work. He was clearly paid to give the embattled utility political advice and to pull political strings. And PG&E has major interests at City Hall — San Francisco is trying to set up a community choice aggregation system that PG&E opposes, and (of course) the utility has spent almost 90 years trying to block public power in this town. There are dozens of other city issues, from facility safety to the franchise fee, that affect PG&E’s bottom line.

Has Brown tried to influence city officials on behalf of the utility? The public has no way to know. By law, any individual who lobbies for a private client (and earns more than $3,000 a quarter doing so) has to register with the Ethics Commission, reveal his or her clients, and report on all contacts with city officials. Brown has never done that.

Brown also works for the owners of the Fairmont Hotel, who want the right to convert hotel rooms to condos. Mayor Ed Lee just submitted legislation giving the hoteliers what they want, and Brown is Lee’s political mentor. Connection?

The public has a right to know who’s trying to do what deals behind closed doors; that’s why the city has a lobbyist registration law. The voters have a right to know whether lobbyists are giving money to elected officials; that’s why the law requires registered lobbyists to itemize those contributions. But it’s not always honored — and as Brown shows, it can be openly defied. And nothing happens.

Part of the problem is that the Ethics Commission has been far too lax in pursuing enforcement of the laws. The agency lacks the resources to do serious investigations. As a result, its director John St. Croix told us, all the staff can do is respond to complaints. But even with the limited money it has, the commission can do a lot more. Public hearings on the failures of lobbyist registration and campaign contribution reporting would be a good first step. And how hard would it be to cross-check campaign filings with lobbyist filings to see which lobbyists don’t properly report their contributions? A simple computer program could do that in a few minutes.

The commission also needs to do a better job making its funding case to the supervisors. The utter lack of serious enforcement of laws involving powerful interests doesn’t instill confidence in the agency.

But the law is also vague in parts, and the supervisors need to fix it. A clearer definition of “lobbyist” is a clear mandate. And enforcement needs to be increased. Willful violation of the state’s Political Reform Act is a misdemeanor crime. Violating the city’s lobbyist law should be too.

Board considers extra $75.4 million for Mission Bay redevelopment

Mary Magee
-
0
Board considers extra $75.4 million for Mission Bay redevelopment

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post reported that the Board was meeting in closed session. This was incorrect.

The Board is meeting today  to consider amending the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency’s (SFRA)  budget to issue an additional $70 million in tax increment bonds and appropriate $75.4 million ($70 million in bond proceeds, plus $5.4 million tax increment). The request, which comes on the heels of last year’s $64 million request, represents a 109.4 increase of tax increment bonds in 2010-2011. The city says thiis has nothing to do with Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to eliminate redevelopment agencies. But the last-minute timing of today’s session looks a tad fishy at best. And it’s playing out as a vote on Treasure Island’s final environmental impact report approaches, and against a backdrop of extreme funcertaintly related to all things Redevelopment, as Mayor Ed Lee and other city leaders try to figure out ways to prevent or reduce the affordable housing fallout from the governor’s elimination proposal.

According to a Budget and Legislative Analyst’s summary of today’s request, the requested bond issuance and expenditure is part of the “SFRA’s normal course of fulfilling its obligations under the tax increment allocation pledge agreements between the city, SFRA and FOCIL-MB (Catellus’ successor entity at the Mission Bay redevelopment sites), and not as a result of the Governor’s proposal to eliminate local redevelopment agencies. Ms. Lee [deputy executive director at the SFRA] states, that, as of the writing of this report, the impact of the Governor’s proposal on the Mission Bay Redevelopment Project is currently unclear and ambiguous as to whether approval of the Governor’s proposal would affect the requested bond issuance and expenditure authority.”

“At the time of the development and approval of the FY 2010-2011 budget, the Agency and Tax Assessor did not have available tax roll information that resulted in a significant increase in property taxes in Mission Bay due to the accelerated assessment agreement between the Assessor and the Agency,” states today’s Board resolution that Mayor Lee sponsored, explaining why there’s a request for an additional $70 million in bonds, so soon on the heels of the $64 million that the Board approved last year.

“The Agency wishes to amend its budget for the fiscal year 2010-2011 to permit the receipt of additional tax increment of $5.44 million and bond proceeds in the amount of $70 million for the purposes of low moderate housing and for the reimbursement of public improvements made by Catellus pursuant to the tax increment allocation pledge agreement between the City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and Catellus made in November 16,1998 for Mission Bay North and South,” the resolution continues.

 Mission Bay North and South are two separate redevelopment areas that encompass 303 acres, bounded by King Street and AT&T Park on the north, the San Francisco Bay and the I-280 freeway on the east and west, and Mariposa Street to the south, according to Redevelopment Agency documents.

The Budget and Legislative Analyst notes that of the $5.4 million in additional tax increment, an estimated $3.48 million would fund a portion of the Agency’s required educational revenue augmentation fund payment to the state for FY 2010-2011. And that the remaining $1.95 million would be distributed to tax entities, with $870,400 to be expended on the agency’s low and moderate income housing fund.

 The BLA notes that the proposed sale of $70 million in tax increment bonds will provide $60.345 million bond proceeds, including $12 million (20 percent) to fund the construction of 1180 4th Street, a development of 150 units of family rental housing, including 25 units for formerly homeless families and $48. 276 million (80 percent) to reimburse Catellus’ successor, FOCIL-MB, LLC, for public infrastructure development that FOCIL-MB constructed..

“If the proposed resolution is approved, of the $177 million total estimated debt service, $100, 890,000 or 57 percent will be paid from the City’s General Fund. The City’s General Fund estimated additional annual cost would be $3,648,000 for the first 20 years, decreasing to $2,793,000 for the next ten years.” The BLA concludes, explaining that approval of the proposed resolution is a Board policy decision because it adds up to a total General Fund cost of more than $100 million.

 According to the BLA report, Amy Lee, SF Redevelopment Agency deputy executive director, the requested $70 million in tax increment bonds would be sold in late March 2011, “such that no debt service payments would be required in FY 2010-2011.

 The BLA also notes that if the Board approves the proposed resolution, the net effect of each property tax dollar expended for tax increment that is provided to SFRA would result in a reduction of $0.57 on each dollar from the city’s General Fund.

“In other words, for each tax increment dollar provided to SFRA, the City would no longer have to provide payments to other tax entities,” the BLA observes.

These entities include the city’s Children’s Fund, Library Preservation Fund, Open Space Acquisition Fund, and the General City Bond Debt fund, the Community College district, the San Francisco United School District, BART, and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which total approximately $0.43 of each property tax dollar.

It’s because of these property tax dollar equations that the annual cost to the city’s general fund for proposed increased debt service would rise, if the Board approves today’s Redevelopment resolution, by more than $100 million over the next 30 years.

And as local Democratic Party chair and former Board President Aaron Peskin explains, there’s nothing much the Board can do about the deal today, but they might want to reconsider getting into more deals like this at Treasure Island and beyond, in future.

“A deal is a deal is a deal,” Peskin said. ‘So, there’s nothing the Board could do differently, but that’s $3.648 million that otherwise would be going into the General Fund, and it’s a sign we should pay attention to, when considering Treasure Island, as deals like this will continue to impoverish the General Fund.”

 “Even though they deny it has nothing to do with Gov. Jerry Brown’s pending legislation to eliminate redevelopment agencies, I have never seen something scheduled so quickly,” Peskin added, noting that the Board’s agenda is published Thursday evening or Friday morning, but this item wasn’t on that agenda, hence the need to publish a separate notice.

Meanwhile, Treasure Island’s final environmental impact report has been released, and the way the current plan looks, will forever alter our view of the Bay.

“It will have enormous impacts on services for the City and traffic for the entire Bay Area,” Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, told the Guardian.

On April 7, a joint session of the San Francisco Planning Commission and Treasure Island Development Authority will be meeting to consider certifying the EIR, but Arc is asking for an extension of two more weeks to provide the public with 42 days for review.

“Fourteen additional days for public review is a very modest request for a project with such significant impacts yet, the City has thus far refused,” Bloom notes.

Editorial: The Willie Brown loophole

-
0

As the stories in this issue show, open government laws are critical to democracy. Without the city’s sunshine law, we wouldn’t know how the proposal to give Twitter a tax break ballooned into a major giveaway. Without the sunshine laws, Tim Crews, the embattled publisher of the Sacramento Valley Mirror, wouldn’t have been able to use his small paper to hold public officials accountable.

That’s why the laws on the books need to be enforced — and sometimes strengthened. One example in San Francisco is the lobbyist registration requirement.

Here’s the problem: Former Mayor Willie Brown, who now works for at least two major outfits with business before City Hall. As Tim Redmond reports on page 10, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. paid Brown some $480,000 in 2007 and 2008. And although Brown is a lawyer, nobody can honestly believe that was for legal work. He was clearly paid to give the embattled utility political advice and to pull political strings. And PG&E has major interests at City Hall — San Francisco is trying to set up a community choice aggregation system that PG&E opposes, and (of course) the utility has spent almost 90 years trying to block public power in this town. There are dozens of other city issues, from facility safety to the franchise fee, that affect PG&E’s bottom line.

Has Brown tried to influence city officials on behalf of the utility? The public has no way to know. By law, any individual who lobbies for a private client (and earns more than $3,000 a quarter doing so) has to register with the Ethics Commission, reveal his or her clients, and report on all contacts with city officials. Brown has never done that.

Brown also works for the owners of the Fairmont Hotel, who want the right to convert hotel rooms to condos. Mayor Ed Lee just submitted legislation giving the hoteliers what they want, and Brown is Lee’s political mentor. Connection?

The public has a right to know who’s trying to do what deals behind closed doors; that’s why the city has a lobbyist registration law. The voters have a right to know whether lobbyists are giving money to elected officials; that’s why the law requires registered lobbyists to itemize those contributions. But it’s not always honored — and as Brown shows, it can be openly defied. And nothing happens.

Part of the problem is that the Ethics Commission has been far too lax in pursuing enforcement of the laws. The agency lacks the resources to do serious investigations. As a result, its director John St. Croix told us, all the staff can do is respond to complaints. But even with the limited money it has, the commission can do a lot more. Public hearings on the failures of lobbyist registration and campaign contribution reporting would be a good first step. And how hard would it be to cross-check campaign filings with lobbyist filings to see which lobbyists don’t properly report their contributions? A simple computer program could do that in a few minutes.

The commission also needs to do a better job making its funding case to the supervisors. The utter lack of serious enforcement of laws involving powerful interests doesn’t instill confidence in the agency.

But the law is also vague in parts, and the supervisors need to fix it. A clearer definition of “lobbyist” is a clear mandate. And enforcement needs to be increased. Willful violation of the state’s Political Reform Act is a misdemeanor crime. Violating the city’s lobbyist law should be too.

 

A meeting of Mayor Lee and Bloomberg’s minds

Mary Magee
-
0

Mayor Ed Lee described New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as “a model of mine” as the two men exchanged gifts in the Mayor’s Office, and reporters unsuccessfully tried to figure out which of the two men is taller.

Bloomberg gave Lee a box of golf balls, Lee gave Bloomberg a trolley bell, organic hot dogs, a lifetime membership to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the two men had a meeting of the minds when it came to the need for big cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Lee prefaced his gift giving by saying he intended to make Bloomberg an honorary citizen of San Francisco.

“Does that mean I’ll have to pay taxes?” Bloomberg quipped.
“If they go up, you’ll be the first to know,” Lee replied.

Bloomberg said it was “fun to talk” with Mayor Lee about energy conservation and environmental activism. “Things like the environment are things mayors have to deal with every day,” Bloomberg said, noting that cities account for 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.”

Bloomberg praised San Francisco for approving an ordinance that requires owners of non-residential buildings to make public how much energy each building consumes each year. The legislation is meant to improve energy efficiency in existing buildings, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lower energy costs and create green jobs. It also requires commercial buildings over 10,000 square feet to conduct energy-efficiency audits every five years.

“Each can profit from each other’s experiences,” Bloomberg said, noting that because NYC has a more carbon efficient mass transit than most U.S. cities, its buildings are responsible for creating 80 percent of NYC’s emissions. 

Asked about a lawsuit that his transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan reportedly triggered by installing a bike lane along the boundary of an affluent Brooklyn neighborhood, Bloomberg flashed a smile that didn’t suggest he thinks Sadik-Khan is now a PR liability for his administration.

“Change is difficult,” Bloomberg replied, acknowledging that there are “battles between those who drive cars and ride bikes.”

“Mass transit is the solution for every big city,” he continued. “And the bicycle is one of the answers, but they can be dangerous. Roads are not just for motor vehicles. They are also for bikes and pedestrians. The key is pedestrian safety.”

“Our transportation commissioner is very innovative,” Bloomberg continued, referring back to the reportedly embattled Sadik-Khan. “She therefore does come under criticism, but I should be the one taking the heat, not her!”

“Closing Times Square was one of the most successful things we’ve done,” he added, referring to another initiative that Sadik-Khan championed, in addition to installing bike lanes on crowded streets and proposing to shut part of NYC’s 34th Street to cars.

Asked for his impressions of San Francisco’s homeless problem, Bloomberg pointed out that he had just traveled straight from the airport to City Hall by BART, and therefore didn’t have a deep grasp of the issue locally. “I don’t know the specifics,” he said.

But he was happy to outline how New York set “a very aggressive goal” of reducing its homeless population that it then failed to meet it, in part because the economy tanked. “The numbers are down about 13 percent each year,” he said, noting that he hasn’t seen the 2010 statistics.  “But only a small number sleep on the streets,” he continued, noting that folks in NYC, “have to work to qualify for rental assistance.”

Asked to give Lee some mayoral advice, Bloomberg said, “The public wants elected officials who are genuine, who are doing things for what they think are the right reasons.

Asked to give Lee specific advice on how to stay out of trouble as the city’s top official, Bloomberg joked that Lee should move to New York until the end of the year, when his term as interim mayor expires. “But then he’d get into trouble for doing that,” he said. And then he and his coterie of security guards and photographers were out of the press conference and into the elevators, faster than a cabbie trying to beat a red light on a sweltering night in the Big Apple.

Census no surprise to outmigration taskforce

Mary Magee
-
37
Census no surprise to outmigration taskforce

 “San Francisco is losing its black population faster than any other large city in the United States — and the trend is unlikely to stop unless the city takes immediate action.” That’s what the Guardian wrote in August 2008, when we covered a draft report that the Mayor’s African American out-migration task force produced.

But despite the taskforce’s dire warnings, the Mayor’s Office didn’t hold a press conference when the final report was published in 2009. Instead, it was quietly posted on the Redevelopment Agency’s Website, where you can still find it today tucked into the bottom lefthand corner.

And despite the report’s numerous recommendations, taskforce members say that little funding had been made available to turn their ideas into realities.
So, it comes as no surprise that San Francisco’s black population continues to shrink while that of Asian Americans and Latinos make big gains.
According to newly released 2010 Census figures, San Francisco’s total population grew by 3.7 percent to 805,235 in the past decade, the Asian and Latino populations each swelled by 11 percent, the white population shrank by 12.5 percent—and the black population shrank by 22.6 percent.

This means, San Francisco now has 337,451 white residents (42 percent of total population), 265,700 Asian residents (33 percent of population), 121,774 Latinos (15.1 percent of the population), and 46,781 blacks (5.8 percent of population).
In 2009, the out-migration task force, which used 2005 US Census and state demographic data, placed the city’s African American population at 1/16 of San Francisco’s total population, compared to its two largest minorities, Asians and Hispanics, which made up 1/3 and 1/8, respectively.

“We saw that the African American population has declined by 40.8 percent since 1990, and as a share of the population decreased from 10.9 percent in 1990 to 6.5 percent in 2005,” the AAOMTF’s 2009 report states.

(As it happens 6.5 percent of the population in 2005 translated into 46,779 black residents. So, while the black population appears to have grown by two people, when viewed as a share of the city’s entire population in 2010, it can be seen to have shrunk by 22.6 percent, reflecting a flight to the East Bay and other states.)

“That’s not enough people to fill Candlestick Park,” Fred Blackwell, executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, stated in 2008, during a presentation about the taskforce’s draft report. He cited a lack of affordable housing and educational and economic opportunity, severe environmental injustice, an epidemic of violence, and lack of cultural and social pride, as the reasons blacks were leaving.

But sadly not much has changed, including the frustration of local black leaders.
“We could paper the walls of this building with reports that have been made on this issue,” task force chair Aileen Hernandez said in 2008, pointing to similar studies that were done in 1995 and 1972, while fellow task force member Barbara Cohen said the draft recommendations “should have long ago been called the final recommendations.”

Reached by phone today, AAOMTF task force member Sharen Hewitt recalled how she and London Breed called for the creation of the taskforce, only to see many crucial recommendations ignored.
“We called for the creation of the taskforce in face of an imminent threat to the sustained presence of African Americans in San Francisco, especially low-income residents,” Hewitt said. “The taskforce’s draft report did not capture 80 percent of the discussion.”
Hewitt says a key flaw was the absence of a “real plan to address the fate of  African Americans who live in subsidized low-income housing.”

Fellow AAOMTF task force member Regina Davis, director of the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation, agrees that a lack of action didn’t help.
“Today’s numbers could have looked different based on actions,” Davis said.
She hopes that today’s increasingly dire financial system will be a call to action.
“Especially with the threat of the elimination of redevelopment agencies, because a lot of the housing for low-income folks is jeopardized in ways we haven’t experienced for three decades,” she said. “People are understanding that this is a market they haven’t seen before.”

Davis remains optimistic that the 2010 Census figures will galvanize folks.
“I’ve been mystified why people haven’t protested the war more,” she mused. “Maybe they will now that dollars they have taken for granted aren’t on the table. And maybe they’ll start to realize that tax cuts cost money. I don’t know where folks get the notion that tax cuts are free.”

Other AAOMTF members say the whole taskforce process was very discouraging for those who worked so diligently to find solutions.

”After all that intense work, we were all left with no notable action taken, (At least no action that I am aware of),” wrote AAOMTF member Larry Saxxon in an email. “At the least, the report should have been released to the general public for their review and feedback. It left me questioning the motives for the process from a political point of view.”

Saxxon said that because of feeling a great deal of dissatisfaction with the AAOMTF’s Education Committee’s findings, he and fellow taskforce member Barbara Cohen wrote a minority report on the needs for greater educational services for the African American community.

In their report, Cohen and Saxxon noted that there was a need to increase awareness and advocacy for African American students who are classified as special needs students.

And in his email, Saxxon noted that as an African American and an active advocate for the African immigrant community, he strongly suggested that AAOMTF include the presence of the African immigrant community in the final report as this was the only known incoming source of Blacks arriving in San Francisco. 

“From the statistical data that we had access to, we know that the African immigrant comprises, at a minimum, of 10 percent of the overall African American presence in San Francisco. This 10 percent is only counting those that are documented.  When we view the ratio of undocumented African immigrants… that number increases considerably! Sadly, that fact never manifested in the final report.”

“This is an issue that is very dear to my heart, as I too feel like an endangered species as an African American man and father trying to survive, and indeed thrive, in San Francisco,” he said. “The prospects seem to get dimmer as the months and years go by.”

Saxxon was pleased Mayor Ed Lee “did at least acknowledge the nature of
the problem and also by his alluding to the fact that some concerted action
needs to be taken.”

And it’s true that Lee has signaled a commitment to the African American community through his support for Sup. John Avalos’ local hire legislation, which kicks in March 25. (The AAOMTF identified jobs, as well as housing, education, economic development, cultural and social life, and public safety and quality of life as key policies and practices that can “help stem the outflow and even entire more African-Americans to make a home and establish roots in San Francisco, while making them feel like an integral part of the City’s stability and vibrancy.”)

But will Lee take other significant steps to stem the outflow in his ten remaining months in office (assuming he doesn’t throw his hat into the ring of the mayoral race, after all?) And will the plight of the city’s African American community even become an issue in the 2011 mayoral race?

Board to approve highly staged mayoral question time

Sasha Cuttler
-
8

When San Franciscans voted on two occasions to require the mayor to meet publicly with the Board of Supervisors to answer questions – most recently in November when voters approved a binding measure after Gavin Newsom ignored the preview measure – I don’t think they had in mind the sterile, staged process that the board is poised to approve today.

Sponsored by Sups. David Chiu and Eric Mar (an early endorser of Chiu for mayor) and rubber-stamped by the Chiu-stacked Rules Committee, the procedures are a far cry from England’s raucous question time, which supporters and critics have always compared the proposal to. And it seems to let board-appointed Mayor Ed Lee and his successor off very easy.

The rules call for the mayor to appear on the second regular board meeting of each month (meaning Lee’s first session will be five months after voters approved it) and for only supervisors from odd-numbered districts to be allowed to ask questions one month, followed by even-numbered supes the next.

Supervisors are then required to submit their questions in writing almost a week in advance – and even then a supermajority of eight supervisors can vote the question down, meaning the mayor won’t have to answer. Conversely, a supermajority can also approve questions after the deadline when they arise about pressing business.

That’s quite a neat and tidy little democratic exercise that the new powers-that-be at City Hall are trying to create.

UPDATE: Chris Daly, who authored the question time measure as a supervisor, told us that neither of its sponsors nor any Rules Committee members who asked him about the legislative intent of the measure or the language he wrote in it, which Daly said the board and the mayor are violating.

“The intent of the charter amendment was to increase the dialogue and discourse, but the rules seem to dampen the ability of that discourse to take the city somewhere,” Daly told us. He also said that the measure calls for the mayor to appear monthly before the board and it contained no provision suspending that requirement while the board and mayor spend months coming up with ground rules, so “the mayor has been in violation of the charter since then.”

Board to vote on resolution opposing HANC eviction

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
31

Last week, Mayor Ed Lee met for around 45 minutes with Ed Dunn and Jim Rhoads of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC) Recycling Center, Melanie Nutter of the Department of the Environment, and some others who have been in discussions over HANC’s pending eviction from Golden Gate Park.

“The mayor wanted us to consider alternatives to the site we’re in,” Rhoads told the Guardian after the meeting. He noted that ideas had been floated about relocating HANC to a parcel owned by the Port of San Francisco in District 10, or creating a mobile recycling unit.

“He clearly had been lobbied hard by his own staff,” Rhoads said of Lee, referring to Rec & Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg and others in that department who recommended HANC’s removal from Golden Gate Park.

But HANC doesn’t want to relocate, and the organization has the support of several members of the Board of Supervisors. At today’s March 8 Board of Supervisors meeting, the board will vote on a resolution “requesting the Recreation and Parks Department to rescind the eviction of the HANC Recycling Center from Golden Gate Park,” sponsored by Sups. Ross Mirkarimi, John Avalos, Eric Mar, and David Campos. While the Board cannot compel the Recreation & Park department to reverse its decision, Lee does have that authority.

Meanwhile, HANC’s attorney, Robert DeVries, believes that the notice of termination issued by Rec & Park was improper under state tenant laws, and he issued a letter to the city last week stating as much. March 4, the date Rec & Park named as the termination of HANC’s lease, came and went without incident, and HANC is likely to file a lawsuit if the city moves to carry out an eviction.

Until that happens, “We’re just going to continue to operate,” Rhoads said, “for what period of time, I don’t know.”

Redevelopment debate full of bum choices

Mary Magee
-
3
Redevelopment debate full of bum choices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Messages to the next police chief

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
2

While researching Tasers in the wake of last week’s police commission hearing, I came upon an online series published while the city of San Jose was considering candidates for police chief. Created by Silicon Valley De-Bug as part of an effort with San Jose’s Coalition for Justice and Accountability, the project featured the messages of people who wished to share their personal stories with the next top cop. Each week leading up to the selection of the new chief, the group posted another “Message to the Next Police Chief.”

One video featured Art Calderon, whose 68-year old father was beaten by San Jose police, addressing how officers could improve their relationship with the Latino community. A young homeless person weighed in on their interactions with the police. Another contributor wrote that he was bipolar and wanted the next chief to train officers to be sensitive to people with mental-health issues, since he was slammed against a squad car once while delusional.

Raj Jayadev, director of Silicon Valley De-Bug, told the Guardian that the project also included surveying 3,000 community members in three different languages, and organizing seven community forums to generate input from communities of color on what qualities and characteristics they hoped to see in the next chief. When the former chief retired, “We knew for sure that we were standing at this really historic moment,” Jayadev said. “We wanted to get as much community input as possible.” The coalition was motivated to improve relations between police and communities of color in San Jose amid a history of fatal officer-involved shootings, accidental deaths following deployment of Tasers, and disturbing accounts of excessive use of force, particularly against young people of color.

The group focused their questions on three “hot-button issues,” Jayadev said, including use of force, racial profiling, and concern surrounding police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Based on a review of the survey responses, the coalition generated a list of six tenets they hoped would guide the selection process for the new police chief.

San Jose Police Chief Chris Moore, who was sworn in last week, wasn’t DeBug’s first choice, Jayadev said. However, Moore has met with the Coalition for Justice and Accountability and plans to sit down with them a second time. Although the community lacked decision-making power, Jayadev noted, thanks to De-Bug’s project “there’s going to be clarity on what the community wants.”

Meanwhile, San Francisco is undergoing its own process of selecting a new police chief, and the San Francisco Police Commission is expected to submit the names of up to three applicants to Mayor Ed Lee by March 15. The process is overshadowed by the mayor’s race, since a newly elected mayor could opt to initiate a new candidate search if he or she isn’t satisfied with Lee’s pick.

That uncertainty hasn’t discouraged the 75 hopefuls who reportedly submitted applications. Police Commission Secretary Lt. Tim Falvey told the Guardian that the number of candidates under consideration was recently whittled down to 25, but he declined to say how many candidates were to be interviewed by commissioners. Nor would he say when the interviews were taking place, or where they were being held.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Commission held three community meetings in February to garner community input on the selection of the next chief, with three commissioners present at each forum. Asked if there were any notes, recordings, or other documentation of those meetings available, Falvey said nothing like that was required since they weren’t official commission meetings. “I don’t know if [commissioners] just took mental notes, or maybe they took notes for themselves, but that’s not something I have here,” he said.

Falvey said the turnout ranged from 25 to 45 people at the three meetings, which were held at the United Irish Cultural Center on 45th Avenue, the Southeast Community Facility in the Bayview, and the San Francisco LGBT Center in the Castro. “A lot of people wanted a track record in community policing,” Falvey noted when asked what points came up repeatedly during the community forums. Another common issue was improved relations with the nightlife and entertainment industry, he said.

At the end of the day, the choice lies with the police commissioners — four of whom were appointees of former Mayor Gavin Newsom — and of course, Mayor Lee.

Falvey said that candidates had expressed concern that they did not want their names publicized, and that every effort was being made to keep the applicants’ identities secret until Mayor Lee makes his final announcement.

What do San Francisco community members want in a new police chief? And in the end, how much will their opinions matter?

1...31323334Page 32 of 34

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org