Mayor Lee

Does Mayor Lee support Airbnb dodging its $1.8 million tax debt to SF?

Sasha Cuttler
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Does Mayor Lee support Airbnb dodging its $1.8 million tax debt to SF?

My story in this week’s Guardian about how Airbnb appears to be refusing to pay the hotel taxes it owes to the city has gotten a lot of attention. But I’m still getting stonewalled by representatives from the company and Mayor Ed Lee, who apparently refuses to take a public stand against corporate tax evasion, even when it means thousands of San Franciscans could get stuck with an unexpected tax bill.

How much money are we talking about? According to a study that Airbnb commissioned and publicized late last year, its hosts in San Francisco collect $12.7 million from their guests every year. That means that if the company was charging the 14 percent Transient Occupancy Tax – as the Tax Collector’s Office last year ruled that it must – it would be paying the city nearly $1.8 million annually.

But that doesn’t seem to be happening, although only Airbnb can say for sure, which is why its spokespeople have been dodging my questions for more than a week. As I reported, taxpayer privacy laws prevent city officials from disclosing how much individual businesses pay in local taxes, but we do know Airbnb doesn’t add the TOT to the online transactions it facilitates or specifically encourage its San Francisco hosts to collect the taxes (even though the tax codes make the hosts and Airbnb jointly responsible for this growing debt to city coffers). And with the company charging 6-12 percent per transaction, it’s a safe bet that it isn’t simply paying the taxes itself.

What makes this particular case of corporate tax dodging even more interesting is the fact that Mayor Lee has a close connection to this particular San Francisco-based corporation. Venture capitalist Ron Conway is a top investor in both Airbnb and Mayor Lee’s political campaigns, creating a potential conflict-of-interest in Room 200. Last year, Mayor Lee personally lobbied against the interpretation by the Tax Collector’s Office, and now he appears to be silently backing Airbnb’s resistance to paying its taxes.

Last week, when I was trying to get a comment for Lee spokesperson Francis Tsang on Airbnb’s apparent tax dodge, he replied, “It’s an incorrect assumption that Airbnb and hosts haven’t been paying any transient occupancy tax..” Of course, because of the taxpayer privacy laws, Tsang can’t actually support that statement and I responded by laying out the evidence that the city is getting stiffed by Airbnb.

Then, he and Airbnb simply stopped responding to my questions, even though I’ve made repeated inquiries and asked only whether Mayor Lee was willing to make a public statement calling for a major San Francisco corporation to meet its local tax obligations. And in the interests of fully transparency, I’ll close with the email that I sent to spokespersons for Airbnb and the Mayor’s Office on Wednesday as my story came out, along with their emails in case you want to push for answers yourself.

kim@airbnb.com, francis.tsang@sfgov.org, christine.falvey@sfgov.org.

Dear Airbnb and mayoral spokespeople,

Since I couldn’t get responsive answers from any of you about why Airbnb isn’t collecting the Transient Occupancy Tax from its guests, I wanted to forward the link to my story on the topic in our latest issue (http://www.sfbg.com/2013/03/19/airbnb-isnt-sharing) and to let you know that I will continue covering this issue in the Guardian and our sister newspapers until you address it publicly.

Because of privacy laws that limit the Tax Collector’s Office from addressing this directly, only Airbnb can say whether they’re paying any of the hotel taxes that the city last year conclusively ruled that they owe. As I reported in my story, that tax obligation is shared jointly by Airbnb and its hosts, who don’t appear to have been warned of this by the company, making this an issue of consumer protection as well as corporate greed.

Will the Mayor’s Office make a public statement opposing tax evasion? Will it stand up for San Franciscans who may be unwittingly stuck with the tax bill by Airbnb? Or will Mayor Lee stick up for a tax-dodging corporation funded by the same billionaire that funds his political campaigns? And how will people feel about San Franciscans and the city treasury paying for his political ambitions?

These are all questions that I plan to air and explore in the Guardian, and I think that our readers and the general public deserve answers to those questions. If there are reasons why Airbnb guests aren’t being charged the TOT, some other arrangement that has been made, or some other complex reasons why Airbnb feels it can’t comply with last year’s ruling by the Tax Collector’s Office, I’ll be happy to hear it and let you make your case to our readers. But I don’t think that continuing to stonewall me is going to be a viable strategy for any of you. I hope to hear from you soon.

Last gasp ends the sordid Mirkarimi saga

Sasha Cuttler
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167
Last gasp ends the sordid Mirkarimi saga

A San Francisco judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and his wife, Eliana Lopez, which is likely to be the last step in an ugly and protracted political, legal, and administrative battle stemming from Mirkarimi grabbing Lopez’s arm during an argument on Dec. 31, 2011.

The couple’s neighbors, attorney Abraham Mertens and his wife, Ivory Madison, reported the grabbing incident to police over the objections of Lopez, who had sought advice from Madison and allowed her to film a short but emotional video displaying a bruise on her arm, which became the main evidence against Mirkarimi.

That exploded into a high-profile drama in which Mirkarimi was vilified by the media, charged with domestic violence and witness dissuasion, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment, suspended without pay for six months by Mayor Ed Lee, and finally reinstated to office by the Board of Supervisors in October.

Along the way, the two couples – who are still neighbors, despite Mirkarimi’s efforts to sell his house and move – became increasingly bitter public rivals. Lopez consistently denied being abused and implied to reporters that Mertens and Madison had political motives for breaking her confidence and reporting the incident to police. Mertens and Madison maintained that Mirkarimi tried to dissuade their cooperation with police – an allegation that the long investigation failed to substantiate – and blasted Mirkarimi and Lopez in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed.

Other than that, Madison and Mertens refused to talk to the press as the saga unfolded – a stance they maintained today, with a man who answered the phone at the Red Room website business they run immediately telling us, “They’re not interested in talking.”

But Madison, who went to law school before becoming a fantasy writer, did let loose in June when she submitted a wild, incredible 22-page declaration to the Ethics Commission as part of the city’s effort to permanently remove Mirkarimi on official misconduct charges, purporting to describe the tyrannical way the Mirkarimi ran the household, as Madison claimed she was told by Lopez (which she disputes).

The commission criticized and gutted the declaration, finding that it was prejudicial and contained little usable evidence. Commissioner Paul Renne even dressed down the deputy city attorneys for submitting it, calling it “clearly hearsay, clearly having the intention of poisoning the well of this hearing,” causing Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith to apologize and explain they had little to do with the declaration because Madison had hired a private attorney who helped her prepare it.

The couple and their attorney have threatened to sue Mirkarimi and Lopez for more than a year, and they finally filed the defamation case in January, and it has now been quickly dismissed. Domestic violence advocates and allies of Mayor Lee also threatened a recall election against Mirkarimi, but that also seemed to wither late last year – meaning this is probably the last we’ll hear about this case, at least until Mirkarimi runs for reelection in two years, if he decides to do so.

Asked to comment on the lawsuit’s dismissal, Mirkarimi told the Guardian, “My family and I are very happy and have moved forward, and I hope they are too.” His attorney, David Waggoner, told us, “Hopefully, the dismissal represents the end of what has been a long and painful experience for everyone involved.”

Public broadband works; why not here?

Zelda Bronstein
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42
Public broadband works; why not here?

There’s a fascinating new map that the Institute for Local Self Reliance has put together that shows how 342 communities around the United States are now offering publicly owned, cheap, reliable broadband and cable service to local residents and businesses. Check it out here. Then check out why the fastest networks in the nation are built by local governments:

“It may surprise people that these cities in Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana have faster and lower cost access to the Internet than anyone in San Francisco, Seattle, or any other major city,” says Christopher Mitchell, Director of ILSR’s Telecommunications as Commons Initiative. “These publicly owned networks have each created hundreds of jobs and saved millions of dollars.”

Then sit back and ask yourself why you’re paying so much money every month for the rotten service you get from Comcast and AT&T. Ask your friends, ask around work; is anyone really happy with their broadband service? Do you think you’re getting a good deal for the price?

When I saw the map I called Mitchell, and he told me that every one of the cities and towns on his map has been successful with public ownership. “Within five years, everyone is either making money for the general fund or breaking even and offering really low rates,” he said. “The real benefit is lower prices, which leaves residents with more money in their pockets, which tends to get spent in their communities where it helps local business.”

Most of the cities that have muni broadband (and cable TV!) also have municipal electric power systems, which makes the whole thing easier. But Santa Monica did it bit by bit, installing fiber every time one of the streets was torn up for plumbing, sewers, etc. and gradually building out a network that so far only connects businesses but can be expanded as the money comes in. San Francisco streets are torn up all the time, and will be torn up regularly as water and sewer lines are replaced. The biggest expense of laying cable is cutting open and repaving streets; the cable itself is fairly cheap.

In some states, the big private telecoms have pushed through state legislation banning muni broadband — but not in California. San Francisco has every legal right to get into this business.

So why aren’t we doing it already? “What’s missing,” Mitchell said, “is the political will to really piss off Comcast and AT&T.”

I was just looking at the map when I got an email alerting me to this lovely discussion between Mayor Ed Lee and the head of PG&E, talking about the private utility’s plans to invest $1.2 billion in local infrastructure (more on that in a future blog post). That’s going to involve a lot of digging up streets. So what does Mayor Lee say? Maybe we could allow PRIVATE companies to lay fiber at the same time.

I want to throw up.

 

 

Gentrification’s simple math

Zelda Bronstein
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66
Gentrification’s simple math

Chuck Nevius is big into gentrification these days. He thinks it’s a dandy thing and “no longer a dirty word,” says the even longtime residents of the Mission love it, and has a nice photo of a person walking in Dogpatch, where two really cool dive bars just shut down — thanks to the gentrication that’s such a great thing.

Nevius quotes Randy Shaw, who has a bizarre statement:

In the ’70s and ’80s there was massive displacement of residents in the Haight, Noe Valley and the Castro,” says Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. “But now you are seeing a massive influx of upper-income people into previously unoccupied areas.”

What? “Previously unoccupied?” Like the Mission and Soma and Dogpatch? Unoccupied by the wealthy, maybe, but there are people living in almost every square inch of San Francisco, and in some parts of town, they are low-income people, and richer people force them out. That’s happening on the same scale today that it did in the 1980s, except worse: In the 80s, if you werer priced out of the Haight or Noe Valley or the Castro you could move to the Western Addition or the Mission or Soma. Now prices are so high everywhere in town that your only move is out of San Francisco altogether.

And while ol’ Chuck does admit there are downsides, he seems to think that somehow you can move wealthier people and more upscale establishments into existing lower-income areas without anything bad happening, as long as you respect “the delicate balancing act.”

But it isn’t a balancing act at all — it’s a zero-sum game. There’s finite space in this city, and when when something or someone comes in, something or someone has to leave. (Yes, you could build a lot more housing, but nobody’s building housing for working-class people.) But you can’t build more storefronts on Valencia or Mission; force out the existing community serving businesses and they have noplace else to go.

San Francisco has failed spectacularly at the fundamental challenge facing a city under this kind of pressure. First, before you allow more development, more upscaling, more of what C.W. Nevius loves, you have to protect existing vulnerable populations. That’s not a balancing act; that’s a mandate. If you don’t do it, you lose the character of the city and San Francisco becomes another sterile, corporate community.

Jesus. Why is this so hard to understand? I’ve lived through it several times, these booms that people like Mayor Lee and Nevius always celebrate, and every time, the pattern has been the same, the city has been damaged, and community institutions have been lost. I’m not one of those preservationists opposed to all change, but again: First protect existing vulnerable populations.

 

 

Does Ed Lee think moms can’t be supes?

Zelda Bronstein
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40
Does Ed Lee think moms can’t be supes?

As I expected, Mayor Lee appointed a new supervisor before the Democratic County Central Committee had a chance to weigh in on a resolution suggesting he appoint a mother. The resolution is moot now; Lee named Katy Tang, an aide to outgoing Sup. Carmen Chu, and my most accounts Tang is a smart young woman with plenty of experience in the district who will likely carry on the more conservative politics of her former boss. She will have to face the voters in November, but in a district where more than half the voters are Asian — and where Chu was popular, and Tang has been out and about on the streets for years — she’s going to be in a strong position to win.

So that should be over, and Rosenthal’s suggestion consigned to the Oh Well, That Was A Nice Idea file, and it would be … except that the mayor made a kinda stupid comment on KTVU. When asked about Rosenthal’s suggestion, he said there were lots of qualifications for office, one of them being “somone who’s going to be spending a lot of their personal time on the weekends.”

Now: I’m sure the mayor didn’t really mean to say that a woman with kids can’t hold a demanding public office, or that women with kids can’t spend time working on the weekends. “I know a dozen female law partners who would scoff at the idea that mothers don’t work at night and on weekends,” Rosenthal told me.

Sup. John Avalos has kids, and does a fine job on the board. Former Sup. Sean Elsbernd had a young family, and nobody ever said he didn’t devote enough time to the district. Sup. Eric Mar has a daughter, and just won a tough re-election race.

It’s absolutely true that none of the four women on the board right now has kids. I think that was sort of Rosenthal’s point. I don’t know; it’s 2013, and maybe I’m reading too much into this, but did the mayor of San Francisco just imply that women with kids don’t have the time to handle the responsibilities of elective office? I hope not.

Hearing called on America’s Cup “fundraising fiasco” as Mayor Lee talks about scaling back the event

Sasha Cuttler
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20
Hearing called on America’s Cup “fundraising fiasco” as Mayor Lee talks about scaling back the event

Amid reports that San Francisco taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $20 million in America’s Cup expenses because of anemic fundraising efforts by the America’s Cup Organizing Committee, today Mayor Ed Lee talked about scaling back the event and offering public naming rights to wealthy donors and Sup. John Avalos called for a Board of Supervisors hearing to look into the matter.

Following his monthly question time appearance before the Board of Supervisors, Lee was questioned about the issue by reporters, and he downplayed the idea that the city will go into the hole for its overzealous sponsorship of billionaire Larry Ellison’s big boat race.

“We’re not in the hole, but we will be if we don’t raise enough money. And I don’t want the pressure on the General Fund, and that would end up being an obligation that we have. By the way, while I’m raising, or helping to raise, some $20 million to cover that, I’m also asking all departments now that we have a, relative to what was going to be a larger race, now we don’t have as many boats, the expenses might be off so we have to kind of update it and reduce it. So with the combination of reducing the expense side and then raising some money as we’re doing from the private sector, we’re getting some new traction,” Lee said.

“We still have plans to spend upwards of $30 million to cover all the expenses, and we’re hoping that gets down to much less than that. But my goal right now is to get reports from all the departments about how to reduce their spending on this. I’m still going to try to raise the $20 million with the help of Senator Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Lt. Gov. Newsom,” Lee said.

He also alluded to public goodies that he may offer to wealthy potential donors, including making a passing reference that “we’ve created some ongoing legacies, naming rights in areas that haven’t been named yet, we’ve cleared that with the Port to make sure it’s a very attractive package for them.” But ultimately, he said that city taxpayers are on the hook to pay for the impacts of this race: “This is a financial obligation that we signed on.”

Earlier in the day, the Telegraph Hill Dwellers – which has been active since the America’s Cup was first proposed in trying to ensure the event makes financial sense for the city – sent a letter to the board calling for a hearing and highlighting the ethically dubious actions by city officials that got us into this mess.

That letter follows in its entirety:

February 12, 2013

Supervisor Carmen Chu, Chair

Supervisor David Campos

Supervisor Malia Cohen

Government Audit and Oversight Committee

San Francisco Board of Supervisors

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place

San Francisco, CA 94102

Re: Request for Oversight Hearing on America’s Cup Organizing Committee “Fundraising Fiasco”

Dear Members of the Government Audit and Oversight Committee:

As a northern waterfront neighborhood leader who has supported bringing the America’s Cup to San Francisco since Day One, I feel compelled to urge you to take urgent action to begin to restore a profound breach of public trust while there is still time left to salvage this event. 

News reports this week revealed the stunning news that San Francisco taxpayers may have to pay upwards of $20 million to subsidize the America’s Cup[1] despite public commitments stating that the event would not be taxpayer-funded and a signed contract designed to make that happen.[2]  In light of such astonishing news this close to the race, I request that you schedule a public hearing now to get answers to this critical question: what happened and how can we fix it?

Specifically, I encourage you to solicit testimony and an appearance before the Committee from the two individuals most responsible for the current $20 million shortfall out of the $32 million in private fundraising that was committed to prevent the need for taxpayer subsidies:  America’s Cup Organizing Committee Executive Director Kyri McClellan and America’s Cup Organizing Committee Chair Mark Buell.  These are the two individuals whose primary job it has been for the past two years to ensure that the America’s Cup Organizing Committee complied with its fundraising obligations.  Both Ms. McClellan and Mr. Buell have made numerous public statements over the past two years aimed at rebuffing all concerns about their ability to raise the $32 million. 

For example:

1)  “I have every confidence we will meet our obligations,” – Kyri McClellan, 6/13/11[3]

2)  “Yep, we are not running behind in the least bit,” – Kyri McClellan, 9/19/11[4]

3)  “I am confident that all the money will be raised,” – Mark Buell, 1/6/12[5]

4) “I’m busting my ass raising (money) for it.” – Mark Buell, 2/7/12[6]

5)  “we are confident that the agreement we have with the (America’s Cup) Event Authority coupled with our continued fundraising successes will ensure we meet our obligations to the city.” – Mark Buell, 2/7/12[7]

6)  “There is definitely more heavy lifting to be done, but we think we’re well-positioned to do that,” – Kyri McClellan, 2/8/12[8]

The role that Ms. McClellan has played in creating what is being referred to as a “fundraising fiasco”[9] should particularly be evaluated in light of the two ethics laws that were waived by the San Francisco Ethics Commission at the urging of members of the Board of Supervisors to enable her to shift seats across the negotiating table from her previous job working as the Mayor’s America’s Cup deal negotiator on behalf of the City into her private role working for the America’s Cup Organizing Committee.[10]  The twin dangers of reduced accountability and lax scrutiny that stem from this kind of “revolving door” between government and the private sector are precisely what the ethics laws that were summarily waived were put in place to prevent.  The question now must be asked whether the decision to waive ethics rules to allow someone playing such a central role to shift sides deserves a significant part of blame for the problems that have begun to come to light.

As a long-time supporter of the America’s Cup, I hope you will take swift action to get answers and correct the course of the event before it is too late.  Thank you very much for your time and consideration. 

Sincerely,

Jon Golinger

President

Telegraph Hill Dwellers

 

[1] America’s Cup could cost S.F. millions, Matier & Ross, S.F. Chronicle 2/10/13

[2] “[T]he [America’s Cup Organizing] Committee will endeavor to raise up to $32 million over a three year period from private sources, to reimburse the City for a portion of the City’s costs (including, without limitation, costs associated with CEQA review), and lost revenues, and City expenditures required to meet its obligations under Sections 8 and 10 (including resources from the police, and public works departments, the Port, DPT and MTA). The Committee’s fundraising targets for the three year period are $12 million for year one, and $10 million for years two and three.” – Section 9.4, 34th America’s Cup Host and Venue Agreement, 12/14/10

[3] America’s Cup Fundraising is Floundering, NBC News, 6/13/11

[4] America’s Cup reach tax exempt status, KGO ABC News, 9/19/11

[5] America’s Cup organizers hit first fundraising goal, SF Chronicle, 1/6/12

[6] America’s Cup needs ‘significant additional fundraising,’ SF Chronicle, 2/7/12

[7] ‘Significant’ fundraising needed for America’s Cup group, SF Business Times, 2/7/12

[8] Controller:  America’s Cup needs more fundraising to cover city costs, SF Examiner, 2/8/12

[9] City Pushes to Fill Fundraising Gap for America’s Cup, KTVU Ch. 2, 2/11/13

[10] “In order to accommodate McClellan, commissioners agreed to waive two post-employment restrictions for city officials.  The first is a yearlong post-employment communications ban, and the second prohibits former city employees from receiving compensation from city contractors for two years. . . . Asked what would happen if ACOC somehow failed to raise the agreed-upon funds, placing McClellan in the position of having to explain the shortfall or re-negotiate with her former coworkers, Ethics Commission Deputy Executive Director Mabel Ng allowed, ‘If something like that happened, there might be a conflict.’ And what justification was given for waiving the ban on former employees receiving compensation from city contractors? “For that one, in the law itself, it says the commission may waive it … if it would cause extreme hardship,” Ng explained. “There would be a hardship, because … this is a great opportunity for her, and there was a short timeline for her to do it.”  Pressed on that point, Ng confirmed that the “hardship” in this case was the possibility of being barred from a great job opportunity, not the threat of financial impact or job loss. The other issue, Ng said, was that without McClellan serving in that post, the committee’s fundraising effort might not be successful. “It just seemed like, you need to have somebody take charge,” she said. “The committee may suffer without her at the helm. If she were not able to do that, the committee — which plays a very crucial role in this — may not be able to meet its obligations.’” Mayoral staff member to direct America’s Cup Organizing Committee, SF Bay Guardian, 4/7/11

 

 

Two good questions for Mayor Lee

Sasha Cuttler
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74
Two good questions for Mayor Lee

UPDATED When Mayor Ed Lee appears before the Board of Supervisors this afternoon (Tues/12) for the voter-mandated monthly “Formal Policy Discussions” (aka Question Time), he will be asked a couple of good, relevant questions with no easy answers. This is exactly what voters and progressive supervisors intended, a serious policy discussion, rather than sterile, hollow ritual that our current crop of politicians have turned it into.

The first question is by Sup. Eric Mar, who asks, “The Municipal Transportation Agency recently released its Draft Bicycle Strategy, which lays out an aggressive plan to upgrade San Francisco’s bicycle facilities. It supports biking for everyone, including seniors, families, and persons with disabilities. However, I am hearing growing concerns both in my district and city-wide about the mismatch between verbal commitments to better bicycling and budget realities. Currently, bicycle projects account for just 0.46 percent of all MTA capital. This is not enough to get us to the goals laid out in the Bicycle Strategy. How will you fund the Bicycle Strategy to make San Francisco a national leader in bicycling safety and use?”

Great question! This report, which came out in December, has the modest, realistic goal of increasing the share of vehicle trips taken by bike from 3.5 percent last year up to 8-10 percent by 2018. That already seems to abandon the official city goal – heavily touted by Lee and Board President David Chiu – of 20 percent by 2020. But even this new plan isn’t fully funded, so the question is simply asking the mayor whether he will put his money where his mouth is.

The second question comes from Chiu, who is trying to find a way to mediate the very real and challenging dispute between the city’s renters and those trying to convert more apartments into condos. Understanding where Lee stands on the issue is important to solving this problem, and Chiu’s question seems to genuinely seek guidance from the chief executive.

He asks, “Mr. Mayor, the Board of Supervisors is considering legislation to allow existing owners of Tenancies in Common (TICs) to bypass the condominium conversion lottery and be converted after the payment of a fee. I recently asked supporters of the legislation and tenant advocates to engage in negotiations, which Supervisor Farrell and I are hosting.

“What is your position on this pending legislation? What protections would you support to prevent the loss of rent-controlled housing in our increasingly unaffordable city? How would you address the concern that if we allow the current generation of TIC owners to convert, we will replace then with a new generation of TIC owners and additional real estate investments that will lead us right back to an identical debate within a short time?”

Again, excellent questions that go right to heart of one of the central struggles facing this city: Who gets to live here? And given Lee’s role in relentlessly promoting taxpayer-subsidized economic development strategies that are gentrifying the city and fueling this clash, one could argue that he has a moral obligation to help find a solution to this problem, or at the very least to say where he stands so voters can judge him accordingly.

Mayor Lee received these questions last week, so he and his staff have had plenty of time to think about them and prepare real, substantive answers. Will we get real answers or just the normal political platitudes that kick the can down the road in dealing with these pressing problems? We’ll see. Tune in at 2 pm to SFGOVTV to watch yourself, or check back here later and I’ll tell you what Mayor Lee said.

4PM UPDATE: And the winner is…meaningless political platitudes, misleading data, and shameless fence-sitting.

“I can’t say that I have a magic solution to this issue that will make everyone happy,” was how Mayor Lee answered Chiu’s question about the condo lottery bypass legislation, after saying he understood the positions of TIC owners who want to convert to condos and tenant groups concerned about the loss of what he called “the precious few rent-controlled units.”

Lee said he hopes that the two sides can find a “consensus solution” to the problem, which seems to indicate that he does indeed believe in magic considering the diametrically opposed viewpoints of the two sides and the zero sum game this issue represents. Afterward, I told the mayor that he didn’t seem to take a position on the issue and asked him to elaborate on what should be done, and he maintained that, “I actually did take a position, even though it didn’t sound like it, because I actually believe they have good points on both sides.”

Yet when KCBS reporter Barbara Taylor tried to help discern what that position may be, asking whether we could at least say that Lee didn’t support the legislation in its current form, he wouldn’t even agree to that weak stance. No, his position was that both sides have good points, even though they’re opposing points, and he’s hoping for the best. Next question.

Lee didn’t provide a clear or responsive answer on the bike question either. He reiterated his support for cycling improvements and said, “SFMTA’s prime responsibility is to ensure the streets are safe for all San Franciscans, and that includes bicyclists.” And he tried to dispute Mar’s point about how less than a half of 1 percent of the agency’s capital budget goes to bicycling improvements.

“To look at the percentage might not tell the whole story,” Lee said, citing how the SFMTA and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority are now seeking about $40 million in state and federal grants for transportation projects that would include cycling infrastructure improvements.

And that might have seemed like a somewhat responsive answer to the casual listener who isn’t aware that the price tag for improvements identified in the SFMTA Bicycle Strategy total about $200 million, of which the agency has only identified about $30 million in available funding. So the question of “How will you fund the Bicycle Strategy?” remains unanswered.

Perhaps it was too much to expect straight answers from a politician.

Friends of London Breed

Zelda Bronstein
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97
Friends of London Breed

Got an interesting email invite: A group of the most pro-downtown, pro-landlord, conservative folks in town is holding a fundraiser for Sup. London Breed, who represents the most progressive district in the city.

Oh, and none of the members of the Host Committee lives in or has any direct connections to District Five.

The Feb. 25 event is at the home of Wade and Lorna Randlett. Wade Randlett is a scorched-earth political operative who created a group called SFSOS with the late Republican GAP mogul Don Fisher. His wife was the spokesperson for disgraced former school superintendant Arlene Ackerman. Randlett tried to shoot down a school bond after Ackerman was fired. He was the secret force behind an effort to recall former Sup. Sophie Maxwell.

Also on the list: Ron Conway and Anne Moeller Caen, who is a terrible, pro-PG&E member of the SFPUC.

Oddly, powerhouse lawyer Joe Cochette is on the invite, as is 49ers tight end (and generally cool guy) Vernon Davis.

Oh, and Mayor Ed Lee, who, I’m told, can’t stand Wade Randlett. Which puts him in good company.

I called Sup. Breed and asked her about the event, and she told me she met Randlett working on the first Obama campaign, “and he volunteered to do this.” She said she needed the money for office essentials like extra computer screens and a couch, and she has to pay off her inaugural celebration.

As she normally does, Breed went out of her way to say that her votes are not for sale, and that she won’t do the bidding of the people who give her money. “If you want to hold a fundraiser for me, I’d be happy to take your money too,” she said. As for a host committee that might be offensive to the majoirty of her constituents, she said “it is what it is.”

In the end, of course, Breed will be — and should be — judged by her votes, not by her associates, and we’ll have an excellent indication of where she’s headed when Sup. Scott Wiener’s TIC legislation comes before the board. But in the meantime, the reason this is all relevant (other than the fun of watching Ed Lee and Wade Randlett try to get along) is that it indicates that some very bad actors think (rightly or wrongly) that Breed is their ally.

 

 

 

Ed Lee’s State of the City: What evictions? What displacement?

Zelda Bronstein
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196
Ed Lee’s State of the City: What evictions? What displacement?

Mayor Ed Lee punctuated his State of the City speech with a nice little quip: “Every San Franciscan deserves a clean, safe place to call home.” I agree.

So why, in a speech lasting more than an hour, did the mayor not once mention that thousands of San Franciscans are facing the loss of their homes — and will be forced out of the city — because of the same policies that he’s proudly promoting?

These things are always self-congratualtory and full of the requisite bullshit. But Lee’s description of the State of the City was nothing more than a fantasy to the two-thirds of San Franciscans who live in rental housing, many of whom are living with an unacceptable level of insecurity. Much of the city’s rental stock — and the effectiveness of rent control — is at risk at speculators are buying up properties, tossing the tenants out with the Ellis Act, and converting them to tenancies in common. This is a massive civic crisis, brought on in part by the boom in tech jobs and the consequent boom in high-paid young people who want to live in a city that has virtually no vacant housing.

We saw this before, under Mayor Willie Brown; we called it the Economic Cleansing of San Francisco. It was awful, and it’s happening again.

But you wouldn’t know that to hear the mayor completely ignore the issue.

Oh, Lee gave it a toss-off line; gee, the rent is too high, but we can’t ignore the laws of supply and demand. Gee, we’re going to build 45,000 new housing units, and that will fix everything.

But Lee, of all people, ought to know that housing in San Francisco has never followed the laws of supply and demand. This is a highly irregular market, because demand is essentially unlimited. Housing fills us as fast as you build it. And none of the new housing that’s currently under construction or in the pipeline will be affordable to current SF residents who live in rent-controlled units and are at risk for eviction.

When you’re evicted under the Ellis Act in San Francisco today, to make room for someone with more money, you wind up having to leave the city. That’s the bottom line. And everywhere you turn, tenants are facing that ugly prospect.

The mayor spent much of his time talking about jobs. That’s fine; he’s proud that the unemployment rate in the city has fallen to 6.5 percent, but he insists he won’t rest until everyone has a job. Actually, most economists would say that’s impossible; capitalism, by its nature, exists with a structural unemployment rate that rarely falls below 4 percent. In fact, 4 percent is generally considered “full employment.”

More important, the overall rate is 6.5 percent, but it’s way higher for people without college degrees, for youth, and for African Americans. (It’s above 50 percent for transgender people.) The tech boom isn’t providing jobs for all of the unemployed current San Francisco residents; a lot of the jobs are going to people who don’t live here and are moving here for employment. They are putting pressure on the existing housing stock. That always leads to displacement.

None of this is to say that tech jobs are bad or that we shouldn’t have companies that pay high wages locate in San Francisco. What it means is that the city first has to protect its existing vulnerable populations — and that’s not happening.

I would encourage Mayor Lee to talk to the Housing Rights Committee, or the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, or any of the other tenant lawyers who are fighting desperately every day to state off evictions. He’d get a very different picture of the state of the city.

What did the mayor know?

Zelda Bronstein
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35
What did the mayor know?

So let’s get this straight:

Three lawsuits have been filed against the head of the Housing Authority. Some 30 staffers have complained about Alvarez to senior mayoral staffers. The HA even hired former City Attorney Louise Renne to investigate problems with Alvarez.

And Mayor Lee says he wasn’t aware of the problems?

This is the kind of thing that used to happen under Willie Brown — the mayor would hire cronies for top dollar, and defend them and brush aside charges of misbehavior. And I hate to see the same style happening under Lee.

Clearly, the two are pals, and I understand the urge to stand by your friends in public life, and at this point, we just have allegations — maybe none of it is true, and maybe Renne will find that everything is just grand over at the Housing Authority. But the mayor ought to at least express concern.

And if this was all really happening without his knowledge, then his staff isn’t doing a very good job of keeping him informed.

Either way, not a good scene in Room 200.

Aggressive Warriors

Andrew Lam
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0
Aggressive Warriors

steve@sfbg.com

No standard defensive strategy is likely to stop the Golden State Warriors, Mayor Ed Lee, and their huge team of partners and employees from dominating the game of approving construction of a new basketball and concert arena on San Francisco’s central waterfront. That became clear on Nov. 14, as the political operation overcame fire, darkness, and neighborhood-based opposition for the first big score.

The Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee was set to consider declaring the project, which the Warriors want to build on Piers 30-32 by the 2017 basketball season, to be “fiscally feasible,” recommending it move forward with more detailed environmental studies and a term sheet nailing down myriad administrative details.

Before the 11am hearing, the project team held a packed press conference to announce that the Warriors had volunteered to abide by the city’s local-hire standards for public works projects, hiring San Francisco residents or military veterans for at least 25 percent of total construction jobs and 50 percent of apprenticeships. A beaming Lee praised the deal as an “unprecedented” indicator of the Warriors’ willingness to partner with the city.

The event overflowed with union members in hard hats and orange “Build It Now!” T-shirts, as well as a full range of local political pros, from former mayoral and current project spokespersons PJ Johnston and Nathan Ballard to former aides to progressive supervisors, David Owen and David Loyola. Among the agreement’s four signatories were Joshua Arce, the Brightline Defense Project head who last year crusaded for Sup. John Avalos’s local hire ordinance, and building trades chief Michael Theriault.

Strikingly missing at the press conference was Sup. Jane Kim, in whose District 6 the project would be built — over the objections of many residents who are raising concerns about the loss of waterfront views, huge crowds attending what is projected to be more than 200 events per year, high interest rates paid by city taxpayers, the project’s accelerated approval schedule, and other concerns.

Kim is one of the three members of the Budget Committee, which held its meeting despite an electrical fire in the basement of City Hall that knocked out power to the building. Portable photography lighting was brought in to supplement the emergency backup lights, making it bright enough so the televised show could go on but giving a strangely surreal feel to the proceedings and reinforcing the urgency project supporters feel to move this forward without delay.

Kim raised the concerns of her constituents, winning support for amending the resolution to ensure the Citizens Advisory Committee — whose chair was given two minutes to convey how its members feel steamrolled by the accelerated process, asking it be delayed by a month or two — will be given chances to weigh in and pushing the EIR scoping meetings back a few weeks to January.

In the end, Kim and the committee voted to move the project forward. A few days later, on Nov. 19, the process repeated itself with another flashy press conference in the Mayor’s Office — with another important union endorsing the project — followed by the Land Use Committee responding favorably to the project.

The full Board of Supervisors was scheduled to approve the project’s fiscal feasibility the next day, after Guardian press time, but there was little chance that the full board would take any other action than giving the Warriors, Lee, and their huge roster of teammates what they want.

This despite unusual financing and some very real concerns about waterfront development.

 

 

JOBS, MONEY, AND SUPPORT

Mayor Lee — who has placed a high priority on this project since announcing his deal with the team in May — emphasized its job creation and contribution to the local economy during the Nov. 19 press conference.

“I remind people, this is a private investment of hundreds of millions of dollars,” Lee said of a project pegged to cost around $1 billion. “It means a lot of jobs, and that is so important to all of us.”

The project is expected to directly create 4,300 jobs: 2,600 construction jobs and 1,700 permanent jobs, including those at the 17,000-seat sports and entertainment arena and the 250-room hotel and 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurants that would be built as part of the project.

“We’ve been spending a lot of these last many months describing what it is we want to build,” Warriors President Rick Welts said at the press conference before casting the project in grander terms. “That’s not really what we’re building. What we’re really building are memories.”

But city residents and workers are looking for more tangible benefits than just the highs of watching big games or concerts. The building trades were already expected to strongly support the project, which only got stronger with last week’s local-hire deal. Labor’s support for the project was broadened on Nov. 19 with the announcement that the Warriors agreed to card-check neutrality for the hotel, making it easier for its employees to join UNITE-HERE Local 2.

“Thank you for being a partner and we’re looking forward to working with you in the future,” Local 2 head Mike Casey, who notably also serves as president of the San Francisco Labor Council, said to Welts at the event before the two signed a formal agreement.

In addition to allowing the hotel workers to easily organize, the Warriors agreed to card-check neutrality for vendors at the arena with at least 15 employees and those outside the arena with more than 45 employees, as well as giving those who now work Warriors’ games at Oracle Arena first dibs on jobs at the new arena.

“I think that speaks a lot about what the project is. It’s not just a San Francisco project, but a Bay Area project,” Casey said. He also said, “I want to thank the mayor for bringing people together and laying all this out.”

While Lee and the Warriors do seem to have this deal pretty well wired, this is still a San Francisco project, a complex one on the politically and environmentally sensitive waterfront that city taxpayers are helping to pay for and one for which the residents there will bear the brunt of its impacts.

 

PAYING FOR IT

Lee, Office of Economic and Workforce Development head Jennifer Matz, and other key project supporters have repeatedly claimed this project is funded completely with private money, noting how rare that is for urban sports stadiums these days.

But in reality, city taxpayers are spending up to $120 million for the Warriors to rebuild the unstable piers on which the arena will be built, plus an interest rate of 13 percent, an arrangement that has drawn criticism from a key source.

Rudy Nothenberg, who served as city administrator and other level fiscal advisory roles to six SF mayors and currently serves as president of the city’s Bond Oversight Committee, wrote a Nov. 12 letter to the Board of Supervisors urging it to reject the deal.

“Quite simply, I would have been ashamed of such a recommendation,” Nothenberg wrote of the high interest rate. “In today’s markets it is incomprehensible to have such a stunning recommendation brought to your honorable Board in such haste.”

Johnston and Matz each disputed Nothenberg’s characterization, citing a report by the project consultants, the Berkeley-based Economic and Planning Systems Inc. (EPS), that 13 percent is a “reasonable and appropriate market based return.”

Matz told us the rate was based on the risky nature of rebuilding the piers, for which the Warriors are responsible for any cost overruns. And she compared the project to the massive redevelopment projects now underway on Treasure Island and Hunters Point, from which the city is guaranteeing powerful developer Lennar returns on investment of 18.5 percent and 20 percent respectively.

Johnston, who was press secretary to former Mayor Willie Brown and worked with Nothenberg on building AT&T Park and other projects, told us “I have great respect for Rudy.” But then he went on to criticize him for taking a self-interested stand to defend the views from the condo he owns nearby: “They don’t want anything built in their neighborhood. They would rather leave it a dilapidated parking lot.”

But Nothenberg told us his stand is consistent with the work he did throughout his public service career in trying to keep the waterfront open and accessible to the public, rather than blocking those views with a 14-story stadium and hotel complex.

“I have a self-interest as a San Franciscan, and after 20 years of doing the right thing, I don’t want to see this rushed through in an arrogant way that would have been unthinkable even a year ago,” Nothenberg told us. “I spent 20 years of my life trying to deal with waterfront issues.”

He is being joined in his opposition by other neighborhood residents, land use experts such as attorney Sue Hestor, some opponents of the 8 Washington project concerned with the creeping rollback of waterfront development standards, and members of the Citizens Advisory Committee who have felt steamrolled by the rapid process so far and unable to thoroughly discuss the project or the neighborhood’s concerns.

“We would like to slow this process down,” committee Chair Katy Liddell told supervisors on Nov. 14. “Things are going so quickly.”

 

DETAILS OF THE DEAL

The $120 million plus interest that the city will owe the Warriors would be offset by the $30 million the team would pay for Seawall Lot 330 (the property across from the piers where the hotel would be built), a one-time payment of $53.8 million (mostly in development impact fees), annual rent of nearly $2 million on its 66-year lease of Piers 30-32, and annual tax and mitigation payments to the city of between $9.8 million and $19 million.

Kim raised concerns at the Budget Committee hearing about the more than 200 events a year that the arena will host, but she was told by Matz that’s necessary to make the project pencil out for the Warriors.

Many of the project’s financial and administrative details are still being worked out as part of a term sheet going to the Board of Supervisors for approval, probably in April. Other details will be studied in the project Environmental Impact Report, which is expected to come back to the board in the fall.

The Department of Public Works, Police Department, and — perhaps most critically given its impact on Muni and roadways — Municipal Transportation Agency have yet to estimate their costs.

“We do have a lot of concerns in the neighborhood about this project,” Kim told the Land Use Committee, singling out impacts to the transportation system as perhaps the most important, followed by quality-of-life issues associated with huge crowds of sports fans.

Kim noted that the area already has a problematic transportation infrastructure, with some of the highest rates of motorist-pedestrian collisions in the city and a public transit system that reaches capacity at peak times, and said that many residents worry this project will make things worse. The EIR will deal with the transportation details. But Kim praised how about half the space on the piers, about seven acres, will be maintained as public open space: “I think the open space aspect is incredible and it could actually increase access to the waterfront.” In the end, Kim urged project proponents to heed the input of the CAC and other concerned parties because, “This could be a very valuable project, or it could also be a disaster.”

SF’s newest political pole gets a new name: Moderate progressives

Sasha Cuttler
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101
SF’s newest political pole gets a new name: Moderate progressives

A Daily Kos blogger known as Kurykh has posted an interesting and insightful “crash course in San Francisco politics,” in which he correctly identifies the tri-polar dynamic of local politics. Everyone knows the progressives (Ammiano, Avalos, the Guardian) and the so-called moderates (Wiener, Ma, the Chronicle), and so Kurykh dubs the rising third pole (Chiu, Kim, Mayor Lee) “moderate progressives.”

He calls them “the new kids on the block,” noting that they sided with progressives in 2008 but ushered in a new political reality by siding with the moderates in 2010, now serving essentially as the swing votes on major issues and projects.

“Like other progressives, they are pro-tenant and advocate for more social services to the poor. However, they have pro-business and pro-development tendencies and tend to focus on streamlining bureaucracy and effective government,” he wrote of the moderate progressives.

Personally, I think a more accurate label for this rising new power center is “neoliberal” (I just called them “liberals” in my own San Francisco political primer that I wrote a year ago), a political term describing the belief that any reforms or progress needs to be negotiated with capitalists and corporations instead of coming directly through taxes or regulations.

And I think it underestimates the influence that so-called “moderates” who are actually quite conservative when it come to finances and land use – people like Lee fundraiser Ron Conway and Planning Commissioner Michael Antonini – have in influencing Lee and shaping politics in the city.

But I welcome this contribution to helping San Franciscans understand the political dynamics that are governing this city.

Sorting out a strange election

Andrew Lam
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120
Sorting out a strange election

steve@sfbg.com, tredmond@sfbg.com

The way the San Francisco Chronicle pundits put it, Mayor Ed Lee was the clear winner in a grand San Francisco election. “All his measures on the ballot won hands down,” noted Willie Brown, the high-paid lawyer and political operative who also functions as a Chron columnist. “It was a great day for Ed Lee,” proclaimed columnist C.W. Nevius.

Well, not really.

There are a lot of ways to explain and analyze the inconsistent results of one of the most heavily propagandized elections in recent San Francisco history. But no matter how you look at it, the election was at best a wash for the mayor. Indeed, we’d argue that voters rejected the basic premise of the mayor’s political agenda – that tax cuts and favors for big business are the best economic policy – despite record-breaking outside spending selling that agenda and targeting those who stood in its way.

Let’s take a look at the real facts:

• Every single initiative backed by the mayor, the ones he’s getting credit for – from the City College parcel tax to the housing fund to the business tax – was either a compromise with progressives or a measure that originated on the left. There was nothing the mayor pushed that had any significant progressive opposition; his wins were equally, if not more dramatically, wins for the left.

• Both people the mayor appointed to office were soundly rejected by the voters. Rodrigo Santos, his high-profile appointee to the troubled City College Board of Trustees, spent almost $200,000 and finished a distant sixth. Sup. Christina Olague lost to the candidate Lee had rejected for appointment, London Breed, in a complicated race where the mayor’s actual role was unclear (he never withdrew his endorsement of Olague even as his allies trashed her in nasty ways).

• A million-dollar effort funded by some of the mayor’s allies to oust Sup. Eric Mar was a spectacular failure, suggested some serious problems in the mayor’s political operation, and undermined his emphasis on “civility.”

• The voters made clear on every level that they believe higher taxes on the wealthy and closing tax loopholes on big business are the right approach to the economy and to funding government. From Prop. 30 to Prop. 39 to Prop. A to Prop. E, the message was pretty clear: The tax revolt that started in California in 1978 may be winding down, and the notion of making property owners and the wealthy pay for education and public services is no longer a radical idea.

Robert Cruikshank, who writes for the Calitics blog, argues that the November election signals a major sea change in California. “[The] vote to pass Prop 30 — by a larger margin than most observers expected — does more than just provide $6 billion of badly needed funding to the state’s public school,” he wrote. “It brings to a close a 34-year long tax revolt that came very close to destroying California’s middle class, locking its low income families into permanent poverty, and left the state on the edge of financial ruin.”

That sounds like a progressive message. The agenda put forward by the mayor’s closest allies, including right-wing billionaire Ron Conway, who played a heavy-handed role in this election, not only failed to carry the day; the big-money types may have overplayed their hand in a way that will shape the political narratives going forward.

A LOT OF CONSENSUS

Let’s start with the ballot measures (before we get to the huge and confusing mess that was D5).

Proposition A, the parcel tax for City College, didn’t come out of the Mayor’s Office at all; it came from a City College board whose direction the mayor tried to undermine with the appointment of Santos, a pro-development engineer so conservative that he actually endorsed the Republican opponent of Assembly member Tom Ammiano.

Lee didn’t even endorse Prop. A until a few weeks before the election, and played almost no role in raising money or campaigning for its passage (see “Words and deeds,” 9/11/12). Yet it got a higher percentage of the vote than any of the three measures that Lee actively campaigned for: Props. B, C, and E.

Then there’s Prop. C, the Housing Trust Fund. Lee’s office played a central role in drafting and promoting the measure -– but it wasn’t exactly a Lee initiative. Prop. C came out of the affordable housing community, and Lee, who has strong ties to that community, went along. There were tough negotiations -– the mayor wanted more guarantees and protections for private developers -– and the final product was much more what the progressives who have spent decades on the housing front wanted than what the mayor would have done on his own.

The way the mayor envisioned business-tax reform, the city would have eliminated the payroll tax, which tech firms hate, and replaced it with a gross-receipts tax -– and the result would have been revenue-neutral. It was only after Sup. John Avalos and the progressives demanded that the tax actually bring in more money that the outlines of Prop. E were drafted and it received strong support from groups across the ideological spectrum.

“You had a lot of consensus in the city about these ballot measures,” political consultant David Latterman, who usually works with downtown-backed campaigns, said at SPUR’s post-election round-up.

The supervisorial races were a different story, with unprecedented spending and nasty messaging aimed at tipping the balance in favor of real estate and development interests. Mayor Lee didn’t get directly involved in the District 1 race, but he was clearly not a supporter of incumbent Sup. Eric Mar.

The real-estate and tech folks who are allied with Lee spent more than $800,000 trying to oust Mar — and they failed miserably, with Mar winning by 15 points. While Mar did have the backing of Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak, who raised money and helped organize ground troops to help, Mar’s victory was primarily the result of a massive outpouring of support from labor and progressive activists, many reacting to the over-the-top effort to oust him.

Mar, who voted to put Lee in office, won’t feel a bit indebted to the mayor for his survival against a huge money onslaught. But in District 5, the story was a whole lot more complicated, and impact more difficult to discern.

THE D5 MESS

Before we get into what happened in D5, let’s dispel some of the simplistic and self-serving stories that circulated in the wake of this election, the most prominent being that Olague’s loss -– the first time an incumbent was defeated in a ranked-choice election –- was payback for crossing Mayor Lee and voting to reinstatement Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.

It’s certainly true that Lee’s allies went after Olague and supported London Breed, and that they tried to make an issue of domestic violence, but there was much, much more to this district election. Breed is an SF native with a compelling personal story who ran a strong campaign –- and that three strongest progressive candidates in the race each had major flaws that hurt their electability. By most accounts, the Olague campaign was a disaster until the very end. Equally important, the progressive community was divided over D5, leaving room for Breed to slip in.

“It’s hard to unravel what happened here,” Latterman said.

San Francisco Women for Responsibility and an Accountable Supervisor was an independent expenditure group fronted by domestic violence advocates and funded by more than $100,000 from the families of Conway and fellow right-wing billionaire Thomas Coates. It attacked Olague’s Mirkarimi vote as being soft on domestic violence — but it also did a last minute mailer criticizing Olague’s vote for CleanPowerSF, muddling its message of moral outrage.

On election night, Olague told us she believed her split with the Mayor’s Office really had more to do with CleanPowerSF –- which the board approved with a veto-proof majority over the objections of Lee and the business community –- and with her insisting on new revenue from Prop. E than it did with Mirkarimi, whose ouster she dismissed as “a power play” aimed at weakening progressives.

“They don’t want to say it, but it was the whole thing around CleanPowerSF. Do you think PG&E wanted to lose its monopoly?” she said.

Yet Olague said the blame from her loss was also shared by progressives, who were hard on her for supporting Lee, courting his appointment to the D5 seat, and for voting with him on 8 Washington luxury condo project and other high-profile issues. “The left and the right both came at me,” she told us. “From the beginning, people were hypercritical of me in ways that might not be completely fair.”

Fair or not, Olague’s divided loyalties hurt her campaign for the D5 seat, with most prominent progressives only getting behind her at the end of the race after concluding that John Rizzo’s lackluster campaign wasn’t going anywhere, and that Julian Davis, marred as he was by his mishandling of sexual impropriety accusations, couldn’t and shouldn’t win.

Olague told us she “can’t think of anything I would have done differently.” But she later mentioned that she should have raised the threats to renters earlier, worked more closely with other progressive candidates, and relied on grassroots activists more than political consultants connected to the Mayor’s Office.

“The left shouldn’t deal with consultants, we should use steering committees to drive the agenda,” Olague said, noting that her campaign finally found its footing in just the last couple weeks of the race.

Inside sources say Olague’s relations with Lee-connected campaign consultant Enrique Pearce soured months before the campaign finally sidelined him in the final weeks, the result of his wasteful spending on ineffective strategies and divided loyalties once a wedge began to develop between Olague and the Mayor’s Office.

Progressive endorsements were all over the map in the district: The Harvey Milk Club endorsed Davis then declined to withdraw that endorsement. The Tenants Union wasn’t with Olague. The Guardian endorsed Rizzo number one. And none of the leading progressive candidates had a credible ranked-choice voting strategy — Breed got nearly as many second-place votes from Davis and Rizzo supporters as Olague did.

Meanwhile, Breed had a high-profile falling out with Brown, her one-time political ally, after her profanity-laden criticism of Brown appeared in Fog City Journal and then the San Francisco Chronicle, causing US Sen. Dianne Feinstein to withdraw her endorsement of Breed. That incident and Olague’s ties to Lee, Brown, and Pak may have solidified perceptions of Breed’s independence among even progressive voters, which the late attacks on her support from landlords weren’t ever able to overcome.

Ironically, while Breed and some of her prominent supporters, including African American ministers in the district, weren’t happy when Lee bypassed her to appoint Olague, that may have been her key to victory. Latterman noted that while Olague was plagued by having to divide loyalties between Lee and her progressive district and make votes on tough issues like reinstating Mirkarimi –- a vote that could hurt the D5 supervisor in either direction -– Breed was free to run her race and reinforce her independence: “I think Supervisor Breed doesn’t win this race; challenger Breed did.”

But even if Breed lives up to progressive fears, the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors could be up in the air. District 7 soundly rejected Mike Garcia, the hand-picked successor of the conservative outgoing Sup. Sean Elsbernd.

At press time, progressive favorite Norman Yee seemed headed for victory, although FX Crowley was within about 30 votes, making this too close to call. But either way, the once-solid conservative seat will now be a swing vote on many issues, just as Breed will be in the once-solid progressive D5.

“The Board of Supervisors as a whole is becoming a helluva lot more interesting,” was how political consultant Alex Clemens put it at SPUR election wrap-up. “Determining what’s going to happen before it happens just got more difficult.”

GOBS OF MONEY

The other big story of this election was money, gobs of it, and how it can be spent effectively — or used to raise suspicions about hidden agendas.

Third-party spending on D1 loser David Lee’s behalf was $454,921, with another $219,039 to oppose Mar, pushing total spending to defeat Mar up over the $1 million mark, roughly doubling the previous record. Labor groups, meanwhile, spent $72,739 attacking Lee and $91,690 backing Mar. But many political analysts felt that lop-sided spending only served to turn off voters and reinforce the idea that powerful interests were trying to buy the seat.

In District 5, the landlords, Realtors, and tech moguls spent $177,556 in support of Breed, while labor spent $15,067 attacking her as a shill for the landlord lobby. The only other D5 candidate to attract significant spending by outside groups was Olague, who had $104,016 spent against her, mostly by the families of Conway and Coates, and $45,708 spent in support of her by SEIU 1021. Yet ultimately, none of these groups bought very much with their money. Conway, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and San Francisco Association of Realtors each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their money, and the most obvious result was to convince San Franciscans that they’re working together to move an agenda in San Francisco. They may have the mayor on their side, but in a politically sophisticated city like San Francisco –- with its cost of living being driven up by the schemes of Lee, Conway, and the Realtors -– they seem to have a long way to go before they achieve they’re stated desire of destroying the progressive movement, particularly with its rising new leaders on the left, including Matt Haney and Sandra Fewer on the school board and Steven Ngo and Rafael Mandelman on the City College board. As Haney said on Election Night, “It was a good night for progressive San Francisco,” which stands for important egalitarian values. “We are the ones about equity and compassion. That’s what this city is about.”

What the fuck, Chuck: No, Ed Lee is not God

Zelda Bronstein
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76
What the fuck, Chuck: No, Ed Lee is not God

So who were the big winners in the election? You could argue Ron Conway; you could argue surprise D5 winner London Breed. But to say it was all about Ed Lee?

Actually, no.

Every one of the initiatives that Lee backed was also supported by the entire progressive leadership on the board and almost every progressive group in the city, and other than Prop. B, there was little in the way of funded or credible opposition. The Yes on C campaign was run by the affordable housing folks, not the mayor. The mayor didn’t even endorse Prop. A, the City College parcel tax, until late in the game.

Oh, and the mayor’s appointee to the Community College Board? Got clobbered. The guy the mayor wanted in District 7? Out of the running.

The real story here — aside from the supervisors races, where I don’t think any one operation or political alliance won overall — was the remarkable civic consensus on the ballot measures. If Ed Lee had been out of town all fall, they all still would have won.

I know Chuck thinks the mayor is the greatest ever, but in this case, his impact was at best a wash.

 

 

 

D5 race displays key SF political dynamics

Sasha Cuttler
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70
D5 race displays key SF political dynamics

There’s so much to say about the District 5 supervisorial race, whose top five finishers’ parties I attended tonight, gathering interesting perspectives from each candidate. But given the late hour, I’m just going to run a few thoughts and quotes and save most of it for a more in-depth report tomorrow, because there’s a fascinating story to be told here.

Christina Olague, John Rizzo, and Julian Davis – respectively the second through fourth place candidates – each presented as more progressive than the likely winner, London Breed, who has an 8-point lead going into the final ballot tally and ranked choice tabulation. They and their allies raised concerns that renters were undermined by Breed’s victory in one of the city’s most progressive districts.

“It was a lie. I’m a renter, I live in a rent-controlled apartment,” she told us just before midnight outside in party at Nickie’s on Haight. “I will do everything to protect rent control. I will work with the Tenants’ Union. I’m here to be everybody’s supervisor.”

She pledged to work productively with all the progressive groups who opposed her, such at SEIU Local 1021, whose members “ take care of my mom at Laguna Honda,” while others are her friends.

“The pettiness of politics is over and it’s time to move forward,” Breed said.

It was a widely sounded theme among jubilant progressives tonight, but D5’s (likely) runner-up Olague sounded a bit of bitterness when we caught up with her a little after 11pm as she was leaving her party at Rassela’s on Fillmore. “The Left and the Right both came at me,” she told us.

She felt unfairly attacked by progressives after being appointed to the D5 seat by Mayor Ed Lee, saying her only bad vote was in favor of the 8 Washington luxury condo project, which Sup. Eric Mar also backed without losing progressive support. “From the beginning, people were hypercritical of me in ways that might not be completely fair.”

Then, this fall, Mayor Lee’s people – chief of staff Steve Kawa, tech point person Tony Winnicker, and billionaire backer Ron Conway – turned on her after a series of votes culminating in the one to reinstate Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, resisting what she labeled “a power play” aimed at progressives.

Yet she believes her key vote in favor of CleanPowerSF, coming after her support for Sup. John Avalos getting new revenue out of the business tax reform Prop. E, was really what turned Conway and the downtown crowd against her and attracted outrageous attacks that she condoned domestic violence and supported Big Oil.

“They don’t want to say it, but it was the whole thing around CleanPowerSF. Do you think PG&E wanted to lose its monopoly?” she said. “It’s not about disloyalty, it’s about power.”

Julian Davis was similarly deflective about his campaign’s fourth place finish, despite having a strong presence on the streets today and lots of energy at his crowded campaign party at Club Waziema, after he weathered a loss of prominent progressive endorsements over his handling of sexual misconduct allegations.

“It’s been a challenging few weeks, but I’ve kept my head held high in this campaign,” Davis said, decrying the “self-fulfilling prophecy of the local media” that didn’t focus on the progressive endorsers who stayed with him, such as former D5 Sup. Matt Gonzalez and the SF Tenants Union.

Third place finisher John Rizzo, whose party at Murio’s Trophy Room party reflected his less-than-exuberant campaign, was generally positive about the night, although he expressed some concerns about the agenda of the “people putting up hundreds of thousands of dollars” into this race and the D1 contest, where progressive favorite Eric Mar won a strong victory.

I stopped by Breed’s party twice tonight: at the end, and a little before 10pm, when the results were coming over the television proclaiming that voters in Maryland approved same-sex marriage and Colorado voter legalized marijuana – and the room erupted in cheers – and Oregon voters rejected legalizing weed, drawing big boos.

Breed’s was a liberal crowd, a D5 crowd, and a largely African American crowd. Rev. Arnold Townsend, who is on the Elections Commission and local NAACP board, told me as I left Breed’s party the second time, “It’s a good election for my community. The black community was energized by this.”

New school board member Matt Haney, whose party at Brick & Mortar was my final stop of the night, also likes Breed and said her likely victory was another part of “a good night for progressive San Francisco,” which stands for important egalitarian values. “We are the ones about equity and compassion. That’s what this city is about.”

The practice of politics

Andrew Lam
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119
The practice of politics

steve@sfbg.com

ESSAY San Francisco’s progressive movement needs restoration and renewal. Our focus on immediate fights and indignities has blurred our perspective on the larger, longer struggle for a more just, sustainable, and inclusive society. It’s time to regain that vision by taking a new path and practicing a different kind of politics.

Back-to-back local scandals involving progressive male politicians treating women badly have spawned waves of ugly reactions and recriminations on all sides. Those frustrations have bubbled up against an overwhelming tidal wave of money from wealthy individuals and corporations used to deceive and divide the voting public on the local and national levels.

Real concerns about domestic violence have been reduced to an election-year weapon, cheapening an important issue. Stubborn injustices like lack of gender equity in pay and promotions and access to contraception have been countered with mythical “binders full of women,” a new take on the old dodge of personal responsibility. Unacceptable groping or grabbing is alternatively denied, dismissed, or blamed on the women. Little has changed except the modern polish on our dated pronouncements.

The turbulence of this political year has tested our tolerance and we’ve lost our balance, if not our minds from time to time. But we can learn from our mistakes. San Franciscans should be leading the way forward, not just with our gadgets and technological innovations, but with the example we set in how we practice our politics.

Perhaps I’m not the best one to call out my comrades and propose our next steps. I’m a single, straight man, and I’ve fought as fiercely as anyone on behalf of the Guardian’s progressive values and worldview, sometimes resorting to the same nastiness that we’ve seen bubbling over this year.

But as I’ve covered this year’s high-profile political scandals involving Ross Mirkarimi and Julian Davis for the Guardian — and read the vitriolic comments reacting to my stories and expressed in public forums — it has caused me to rethink my own approach and that of the progressive movement. So I want to offer my insights, make amends, and contribute to the dialogue that our community desperately needs to have.

***

Let me start by saying that I understand why people perceive political conspiracies against Mirkarimi, Davis, and other progressive politicians in San Francisco. Wealthy interests really do have a disproportionate influence over the decisions that are shaping this city’s future, to the detriment of the working and creative classes.

A small group of powerful people installed Ed Lee as mayor using calculated deceptions, and he has largely been carrying out their agenda ever since, practicing dirty politics that have fractured and debilitated the progressive movement. In this election cycle, we saw the willingness of Lee’s deep-pocketed benefactors, such as right-wing billionaire Ron Conway, to shatter previous spending records to achieve their unapologetically stated goal of destroying San Francisco’s progressive movement.

But if we want to replace economic values with human values — emphasizing people’s needs over property and profits, which is the heart of progressivism — we can’t forget our humanity in that struggle. Choosing conflict and the politics of division plays into the hands of those who seek to divide and conquer us. We need to embody the change we want to see and build new systems to replace our ailing political and economic models.

When Mayor Lee decided in March to suspend Sheriff Mirkarimi without pay and without any investigation — and by the way, showing no interest in hearing from the alleged victim, Eliana Lopez — progressives had good reason to be outraged. Domestic violence advocates and the Chronicle’s editorial writers may not see it this way, but I understand why it seemed politically motivated.

I also understand why people wanted Mirkarimi gone, believing that someone who admitted to domestic violence couldn’t possibly remain San Francisco’s chief elected law-enforcement officer. This was a black-and-white issue for them, and they saw progressive opposition to his removal as condoning his actions, despite our arguments that his criminal punishment was separate from the question of what the standard should be for removing an elected official from office.

Both sides fervently believed in their respective positions and were largely talking past one another, unable to really communicate. Positions hardened and were charged with emotion until they boiled over during the Oct. 9 hearing on Mirkarimi’s removal.

But there’s never any excuse for booing or making derogatory comments to domestic violence advocates who braved a hostile crowd to offer their opinions on the issue. Tolerance and respect for differing opinion are core progressive tenets, and our faith in those values must override our emotional impulses, which only feeds a fight that we lose just by fighting.

It was against this backdrop — and partially as a result of this polarized climate — that revelations of Davis’ bad behavior toward women were made public. Davis is a friend of mine, and I was aware that he could act like an over-entitled jerk toward women, particularly during his worst period several years ago, although I had no idea how bad it really was.

As with many political scandals, the issue here wasn’t just the original incidents, but how someone responds to them. That’s the mark of someone’s character and integrity. Most people do the wrong thing sometimes, but if we learn from our mistakes and truly make amends — which isn’t something we claim, but something offered to us if our intentions seem true — then we become better people.

As we said in our editorial withdrawing our endorsement from Davis a few weeks ago, being a progressive has to be more about the movement than the person, and it’s time that we remember that. So as a movement, the moment has arrived to come clean, admit our flaws, start anew, and try to lead by our example rather than our rhetoric or our stands on the issues.

***

They say confession is good for soul, so let me give it a shot. Shortly after Sup. Jane Kim took office in 2010, we had a series of confrontational conflicts over some votes she made and her failure to come clean about what her relationship was with Willie Brown, which seemed to me related. She offered a misleading answer to my question and then said she wouldn’t answer any more questions from me, which infuriated me because I believe politicians have a duty to be accountable. And so I continued to be hard on her in print and in person.

Now, I realize that I was being something of a bully — as political reporters, particularly male reporters, have often been over the years. I want to offer a public apology for my behavior and hope for forgiveness and that our relationship — which was a friendly one since long before she took office — can be better in the future.

While I felt that I was treating Kim like I would any politician, and I probably was, the fact is that the style of combative political exchanges — embodied in the last decade by Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, Aaron Peskin, and many others, mostly men but some women like Carole Migden — is what has brought the progressive movement and San Francisco politics in general to the lowly point that we now find ourselves.

My old friend and ex-girlfriend Alix Rosenthal and other political women I know have long tried to impress upon me the value of having more females in office, regardless of their ideology, as long as they aren’t actual conservatives. I have always bristled at that idea, believing ideology and political values to be more important than identity politics, which has been used as a wedge to divide the progressive movement.

At first, I supported Davis because I saw in him a progressive warrior. But most progressives know in our hearts that nobody wins wars. We are all diminished just for fighting them, and their fallout can be felt in unexpected ways for years to come. Even though I agreed with the Board of Supervisors decision to reinstate Mirkarimi, I felt sad and sick watching the celebrations that followed, and I understood that winning that battle might do real damage to the progressive movement.

So I’m proposing that we just stop fighting. We need to stop demonizing those we don’t agree with. “We are not the enemy,” Domestic Violence Consortium head Beverly Upton told supervisors at the Mirkarimi hearing, and she’s right. We can still disagree with her position, and we can say so publicly and call for her to talk to Lopez or take other steps, but we shouldn’t make her an enemy.

***

Having written this essay before the Nov. 6 election, I don’t know the outcome, but I do know progressive power is waning just as we need it most. Landlords and Realtors are intent on rolling back renter protections, while technology titans and other corporate leaders will keep pushing the idea that city government must serve their interests, something the mayor and most supervisors already believe. And they’re all overtly hostile to progressives and our movement.

Against this onslaught, and with so much at stake, the temptation is to fight back with all our remaining strength and hope that’s enough to change the dynamics. But it won’t. Now is the time to organize and expand our movement, to reach out to communities of color and the younger generations. We need to grow our ability to counter those who see San Francisco as merely a place to make money, and who are increasingly hostile to those of us standing in their way.

It may sound trite, but we need to meet their hate with our love, we need to counter their greed with our generosity of spirit. In the year 2012, with all the signs we see in the world that the dominant economic and political systems are dying, we need to work on building our capacity to create new systems to replace them. If they want to build a condo for a billionaire, we should find a way to build two apartments for workers. If they want to bend the campaign rules and dump millions of dollars into one of their candidates, we should use free media and bodies on the street to stand up for someone with more integrity.

Our heroes are people like MLK and Gandhi, and — and most recently and perhaps more relevantly, Arundhati Roy, Amy Goodman, and Aung San Suu Kyi — and we should heed their examples now more than ever. I’m not going to presume to lay out a specific agenda or new tactics, leaving that leadership to those who embody the new approaches and visions that I’m willing to learn and lend my energies and experience to supporting.

But the one essential truth that I’ve come to embrace is that our current struggles and paradigms are as unsustainable as the system that we’re critiquing. It’s time to embrace a new way of doing things, and to join the vast majority of people around the world in creating a new era.

Olague attacks led by billionaires and a consultant/commissioner with undisclosed income

Sasha Cuttler
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72
Olague attacks led by billionaires and a consultant/commissioner with undisclosed income

Understanding how political activists are being paid is important to understanding what their motivations are. For example, is Andrea Shorter – a mayor-appointed former president of the Commission on the Status of Women – leading the campaigns against Sup. Christina Olague and Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi out of concern for domestic violence, or is it because of their progressive political stands, such as supporting rent control and opposing corporate tax breaks?

As a city commissioner who is required under state law to report her income on annual financial disclosure forms to the city, the public should be able to know who is paying this self-identified “political consultant.” But we can’t, because for each of the last five years, Shorter has claimed under penalty of perjury on Form 700 to have no reportable income, which means less than $500 from any source – an unlikely claim that was the source of complaints filed today with the Ethics Commission and Fair Political Practices Commission.

Shorter led efforts to have her commission support Mayor Ed Lee’s failed effort to remove Mirkarimi from office for official misconduct, and now she’s become one of the main public faces leading an independent expenditure campaign called San Francisco Women for Accountability and a Responsible Supervisor Opposing Christina Olague 2012, funded with more than $100,000 by Lee’s right-wing financial supporters: venture capitalist Ron Conway and Thomas Coates (and his wife), who has also funded statewide efforts to make rent control illegal.

Neither Shorter nor Conway responded to our requests for comment, but tenant advocates and Olague supporters are pushing back with an 11:30am rally at City Hall tomorrow (Thurs/1). Organizers are calling on activists “to beat back the attacks on rent control and workers by billionaires Ron Conway and the Coates family. The 1 Percent Club, Coates and Conway want San Francisco to be a playground for the rich. Take a stand to say that these opportunists CANNOT buy elections!”

The Ethics Commission complaint against Shorter was filed this morning by sunshine activist Bob Planthold, who also filed a similar complaint a couple weeks ago against District 1 supervisorial candidate David Lee, who also appears to have grossly understated his income of the same financial disclosure form during his service on the Recreation and Parks Commission.

“There’s been too little attention by mayor after mayor after mayor in that the people they appoint are allowed to be sloppy, negligent, unresponsive, and under-responsive to these financial disclosure requirements,” Planthold told us.

Although the Ethics Commission doesn’t confirm or deny receiving complaints or launching investigations, Planthold said Ethics investigators have already notified him that they were investigating the Lee complaint, and he expects similar action against Shorter. “Ethics is pursuing my complaint against David Lee. It’s not one of the many that they decided to ignore,” Planthold said.

The FPPC complaint against Shorter is being filed by former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who told us, “The complaint speaks for itself.”

Although Shorter claims no income on public forms, the political consulting firm Atlas Leadership Strategies lists Shorter as the CEO of Political Leadership Coaching, which works with political candidates and causes. Atlas also represents PJ Johnston, who was press secretary for then-Mayor Willie Brown and now represents a host of powerful corporate clients.

“Her brand of discreet, highly confidential, political coaching works to equip leaders with tools to exercise more effective, impactful, innovative and – where possible – transformative leadership,” was one way Atlas describes Shorter.

Is she working in a discreet and confidential way to elect moderate London Breed to one of the city’s most progressive districts? Is she being paid for that work by Conway or anyone else? Is she doing the bidding of Mayor Lee and his allies in hopes of greater rewards?

Or should voters just take at face value her claim to really be standing up for “accountability” from public officials? Is this really about the statement Shorter makes in the video prominently displayed on the sfwomenforaccountability.com website: “Christina Olague has lost the trust of victims’ advocates. She has set our cause back. I’m profoundly disappointed in her and I can’t support her anymore.”?

With less than a week until the election, voters can only speculate.

Man for the moment?

Andrew Lam
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25
Man for the moment?

steve@sfbg.com

This year’s supervisorial race in District 5 — representing the Haight, Panhandle, and Western Addition, some of the most reliably progressive precincts in the city — has been frustrating for local leftists. But as the long and turbulent campaign enters its final week, some are speculating that John Rizzo, whose politics are solid and campaign lackluster, could be well-positioned to capitalize on this strange political moment.

Appointed incumbent Sup. Christina Olague has been a disappointment to some of her longtime progressive allies, although she’s now enjoying a resurgence of support on the left in the wake of her vote to reinstate Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. Now two allies of the mayor — tech titan Ron Conway and landlord Thomas Coates — are funding a $120,000 last-minute attack on Olague.

The campaign of one-time left favorite Julian Davis lost most of its progressive supporters following his recent mishandling of accusations of bad behavior toward women (see “Julian Davis should drop out,” 10/16).

The biggest fear among progressive leaders is that London Breed, a well-funded moderate candidate being strongly supported by real estate and other powerful interests, will win the race and tip the Board of Supervisors to the right. The final leg of the campaign could be nasty battle between Breed and Olague and their supporters, who tend to see it as a two-person race at this point.

But in a divisive political climate fed by the Mirkarimi and Davis scandals and the unprecedented flood of hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate and tech money, it’s hard to say what D5 voters will do, particularly given the unpredictably of how they will use ranked-choice voting to sort through this mess.

Running just behind these three tarnished and targeted candidates in terms of money and endorsements are Rizzo and small business person Thea Selby, who described their candidacies as “the grown-ups in the room, so there’s an opportunity there and I’m hopeful.”

Selby hasn’t held elective office and doesn’t have same name-recognition and progressive history as Rizzo, although she has one of the Guardian’s endorsements. It probably didn’t help win progressive confidence when the downtown-backed Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth recently did an independent expenditure on behalf of both Selby and Breed.

And then there’s Rizzo, who has been like the tortoise in this race, quietly spending his days on the streets meeting voters. Between fundraising and public financing, Rizzo collected about $65,000 as of Oct. 20 (compared to Breed’s nearly $250,000), but he’s been smart and frugal with it and has almost $20,000 in the bank for the final stretch, more than either Olague or Davis.

But perhaps more important than money or retail politics, if indeed D5 voters continue their strongly progressive voting trends, are two key facts: Rizzo is the most clear and consistent longtime progressive activist in the race — and he’s a nice, dependable guy who lacks the oversized ego of many of this city’s leaders.

“I see consistency there and a lack of drama,” Assembly member Tom Ammiano, an early Rizzo endorser, told us. “He’s looking not like a flip-flopper, not like he owes anyone, and he doesn’t have a storied past.”

 

PROGRESSIVE HISTORY

Rizzo, who was born in New York City 54 years ago, is downright boring by San Francisco standards, particularly given his long history in a local progressive movement known for producing fiery warriors like Chris Daly, shrewd strategists like Aaron Peskin, colorful commenters like Ammiano, bohemian thinkers like Matt Gonzalez, and flawed idealists like Ross Mirkarimi.

Rizzo is a soft-spoken family man who has lived in the same building on Waller Street in the Haight-Ashbury for the last 27 years. Originally, he and Christine, his wife of 25 years, rented their apartment in a tenancy-in-common building before they bought it in the early 1990s, although he’s quick to add, “In all the years we’ve owned it, we never applied for condoship.”

He supports the city’s limits on condo conversions as important to protecting working-class housing, although he said, “The focus should be on building new affordable housing.” That’s an issue Rizzo has worked on since joining the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter more than 20 years ago, an early advocate for broadening the chapter’s view of environmentalism.

He’s a Muni rider who hasn’t owned a car since 1987.

Michelle Myers, director of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter, said Rizzo brings a wealth of experience, established relationships, and shrewd judgment to his role as the group’s political chair. “We really rely on John’s ability to weigh what is politically feasible, not just what’s ideal in our minds,” she told us.

Yet that political realism shouldn’t be confused for a lack of willingness to fight for big, important goals. Rizzo has been an advocate for public power in San Francisco for many years, strategizing with then-Sup. Ammiano in 2001 to implement a community choice aggregation program, efforts that led to this year’s historic passage of the CleanPowerSF program (with a key vote of support by Olague) over the objections of Mayor Lee and some business leaders.

“CleanPowerSF was carried by John Rizzo, who has been working on that issue for 10 years,” Myers said.

Rizzo is a technology writer, working for prospering computer magazines in the 1990s “until they all went away with the dot.com bubble,” as well as books (his 14th book, Mountain Lion Server for Dummies, comes out soon).

He sees the “positives and the negatives” of the last tech boom and this one, focusing on solving problems like the Google and Genetech buses blocking traffic or Muni bus stops. “On the one hand, these people aren’t driving, but on the other hand, they’re unregulated and using our bus stops,” he said. “We need to find some solution to accommodate them. Charge them for it, but accommodate them.”

That’s typical of how Rizzo approaches issues, wanting to work with people to find solutions. As president of the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees, Rizzo suffered the bad timing of the district having its accreditation threatened just as his supervisorial race was getting underway, but he’s steadily worked through the administrative problems that predated his tenure, starting with the criminal antics of former Chancellor Phil Day and continuing with “a management structure still in place, and it had calcified.”

Despite being on the campaign trail, Rizzo called the trustees together six times in August to deal with the accreditation problems. “We now have a plan that shows all the things the district needs to do to keep it afloat. City College is back on track.”

 

WEAKNESS BECOMES STRENGTH

Eileen Hansen — a longtime progressive activist, former D8 supervisorial candidate, and former Ethics Commissioner — gave her early endorsement to Rizzo, who never really seemed to catch fire. “There hasn’t been a lot of flash and I would love for there to be more energy,” she admitted.

So, like many progressive leaders, she later offered her endorsement to Davis, believing he had the energy needed to win the race. But after Davis’ problems, Hansen withdrew that endorsement and sees Rizzo as the antidote to its problems.

“We are in such a mess in D5, and I’m hoping they will say, ‘enough already, let’s find someone who’s just good on the issues, and that’s John,” Hansen said. “As a progressive, if you look at his stands over many years, I’d be hard-pressed to find an issue I don’t agree with him on. He’s a consistent, strong progressive voice, someone you can count on who’s not aligned with some power base.”

Other prominent progressive leaders agree.

“What some people may have viewed as his weak point may end up being his strength,” said former Board President Aaron Peskin, who endorsed Rizzo after the problems surfaced with Davis. “A calm, steady, cool, collected, dispassionate progressive may actually be the right thing for this moment.”

Sup. Malia Cohen, a likable candidate who rose from fourth place on election night to win a heated District 10 supervisorial race two years ago, is a testament to how ranked-choice voting opens up lots of new possibilities.

“Ranked choice voting defies conventional wisdom,” Peskin said. “There may be Julian Davis supporters and Christina Olague supporters and London Breed supporters who all place John Rizzo as their second.”

In fact, during our endorsement interviews and in a number of debates and campaign events, nearly every candidate in the race mentioned Rizzo as a good second choice.

Yet Rizzo doesn’t mince words when he talks about the need for reconstitute the progressive movement after the deceptions and big-money interests that brought Mayor Lee and “his fake age of civility” to power. Lee promised not to seek a full term “and he broke the deal,” Rizzo said. “And it was a public deal he broke, not some backroom deal.” 

That betrayal and the money-driven politics that Lee ushered in, combined with the divisive political climate that Lee’s long effort to remove Mirkarimi from office created, has deeply damaged the city’s political system. “I think the climate is very bad It’s bad for progressives, and just bad for politics because it’s turning voters off,” Rizzo said.

He wants to find ways to empower average San Franciscans and get them engaged with helping shape the city’s future.

“We need a new strategy. We need to regroup and think about things long and hard. I think it’s not working here. We’re doing the same things and it’s not working out. The money is winning.” He doesn’t think the answers lie in continued conflict, or with any individual politicians “because people are flawed, everyone is,” Rizzo said.

Yet Rizzo’s main flaw in the rough-and-tumble world of political campaigns may be that he’s too nice, too reluctant to toot his horn or beat his chest. “That kind of style is not me. That aggressive person is not who I am,” Rizzo said. “But I think voters like that. Voters do want someone who is going to focus on policy and not themselves.”

Move on, Mr. Mayor

Andrew Lam
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21

EDITORIAL San Francisco politics hasn’t been this tense in years — and it’s not just because of the upcoming election. The battle over Mayor Lee’s attempt to oust Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has left bitter divisions at City Hall and in communities all over town. And the mayor is only making things worse.

In an odd way — and we say odd because it was so expensive and a misuse of mayoral power — the system worked. Mirkarimi, who had a physical altercation with his wife that left a bruise on her arm, took responsibility and pled guilty to a misdemeanor; he’s now on probation and undergoing counseling.

After the mayor decided to invoke a rarely used Charter provision and suspend Mirkarimi without pay, the Ethics Commission held hearings, conducted and extensive inquiry and voted to uphold the charges, with the chair, Benjamin Hur, strongly dissenting. Every one of the commissioners raised thoughtful points; several poked big holes in the mayor’s case.

Then the Board of Supervisors met — and again, the members carefully considered Mirkarimi’s actions, the language and history of the City Charter, the prevailing law, and the facts of the case. There was remarkably little political grandstanding; we listened to the entire meeting, lasting more than seven hours, and were left with the impression that the supervisors took their job seriously, weighed the case, forced the City Attorney’s Office, representing the mayor, and Mirkarimi’s defense team, to justify their arguments, and rendered a ruling.

Nine votes were needed to remove the sheriff; that’s appropriate for such a profound sanction. Only seven supervisors sided with the mayor, and the four who rejected the charges had excellent, well-stated and credible reasons.

That’s the way the Charter outlined this process playing out, and in the end, the mayor lacked the overwhelming consensus he would have needed to use his executive authority to remove from office someone duly chosen by the voters. It’s done; it’s over. Most of the city would like to move on.

That’s not to say that Mirkarimi should be celebrating. He did an inexcusable thing. Domestic violence advocates have every right to be unhappy with his actions — and nobody, nobody in town should condone his behavior. He’s not denying it, either; he accepted the criminal consequences and will now have to demonstrate that he’s able to do his job.

But the mayor won’t move on. Mirkarimi sent him a note asking for a meeting, and Lee hasn’t responded. That shows a lack of leadership — and a lack of the civility that the mayor promised us when he took office. Ed Lee started this political process, and now that it’s over, he should be leading the effort to pull the city back together, to recognize that there were valid arguments on both sides of this case and his didn’t prevail — and to stop the demonization of people who didn’t agree with him.

Avalos, Campos, Kim, Olague: Four profiles of courage at City Hall

Maria Poblet
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30

Supervisors John Avalos, David Campos, Jane Kim, and Christina Olague earned profiles of courage for their votes to reinstate suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi up against enormous pressure for a political assassination, accelerated by Mayor Lee’s demand for a pre-election vote.

And the other seven supervisors, well, they helped answer the question, who’s afraid of Willie Brown? Who’s afraid of Rose Pak?

Note to Mirkarimi: It’s time to repair the damage and get back to work implementing the ambitious program of rehabilitation outlined in your splendid inaugural address as Sheriff.

Unsolicited advice to mayor Ed Lee: Stop taking bad advice.

See my “Profiles of courage” blog for the context of this crucial vote.

Mayor’s aide’s totally inappropriate text to Olague

Zelda Bronstein
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64
Mayor’s aide’s totally inappropriate text to Olague

Wow — a source just passed me the text messages that Tony Winnicker, a senior advisor to Mayor Lee, send to Sup. Christina Olague after her vote on the Mirkarimi case.

It’s totally crazy, outrageous — and inappropriate coming from a top mayoral staffer. Check it out:

As your constituent you (sic) disgust me and I will work night and day to defeat you. You are the most ungrateful and dishonorable person ever to serve on the board. You should resign in disgrace.

Winnicker confirmed to me that he wrote the text, but insisted he wasn’t speaking for the mayor:

As you know I am not the Mayor’s spokesperson and have not been for some time, especially on matters like this. I am, however, a district five constituent who disagrees strongly with my district supervisor’s vote last night and i took the opportunity to express my opinion and extreme disappointment in her decision and judgment. It is just that, however, my personal opinion and frustration with her vote, a frustration shared by many fellow district five residents who agree with Mayor Lee and the majority of the Board of Supervisors that Ross Mirkarimi should not be Sheriff.

Holy shit. I hope the mayor tells Mr. Winnicker that this is not an example of the “civility” Lee is trying to promote at City Hall.

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