Mayor

Activists score big victory as Jack Spade gives up on the Mission

Sasha Cuttler
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275

Score one for people power. Anti-gentrification activists in the Mission scored a major victory last night in their months-long battle to keep Jack Spade, an upscale men’s clothing chain, from opening a store on 16th Street — first by winning over the Board of Appeals, then by convincing the company to just give up.

So Jack Spade won’t be opening in the site of the old Adobe Book Store location near Valencia Street, an outcome engineered by the grassroots activism of the Stop Jack Spade Coalition, Valencia Corridor Merchants Association, and progressive politicians who supported the cause.

At issue at last night’s packed hearing was an appeal of the Planning Department’s ruling that Jack Spade didn’t fall under formula retail rules because it had one short of the 11 stores needed to meet the definition, even though it’s an expanding part of 5th and Pacific Co. and a brother brand to Kate Spade, which has dozens of stores around the country.

Activists considered it a long shot given the supermajority needed to overrule the decision and force a conditional use permit hearing before the store could open, particularly after falling short with the board in August. But this time, the activists won, with the board voting 4-1 to set a full rehearing for Dec. 11.

As representatives of the corporation left the hearing, they told a few activists and business owners that they “were done.” And when the Guardian reached 5th and Pacific CEO Bill McComb by email today, he confirmed that the company is giving up on this controversial location, where activists were concerned its deep-pocketed presence would accelerate gentrification of the neighborhood.

“[We’re] not going to war with the neighbors. We like those people and their neighborhood and we are not fighting the issue. There are many a fine location for Jack Spade. Peace to the city!” McComb wrote to us.

It was a thrilling surprise for the activists that have been organizing against the project for months, and it was reminiscent of the successful 2009 effort to stop American Apparel from opening up shop on Valencia, involving some of the same activists and organizing tactics.

“We’re very pleased about last night,” said Andy Blue, an activist working with local merchants. “We saw a significant shift in momentum and a tremendous community showing. It was clearly a victory for the neighborhood.”

It was a big turnaround from just a few weeks ago, when it looked like Jack Spade had won, and a sign of the rising importance of gentrification issues to San Franciscans who face rising residential and commercial rents fueled by the latest dot-com boom and Mayor Ed Lee’s corporate welfare policies.

“Six months ago, a lot of people in San Francisco felt powerless with the rapid displacement of residents,” said Blue. “It was like, ‘What can we do, you know?'”
But then, as Blue said, “the resistance started boiling up.”

The local merchants decided to appeal the Planning Department decision that would have allowed Jack Spade to simply open its doors with no public hearing. “So many people who were being affected by it started sharing their stories, and things started happening. People had had enough,” said Blue. “The San Francisco that we love is this diverse, unique place and we were watching  it transform into something totally different.”

Simply getting to yesterday’s hearing was a huge step for the activist population standing up against the retailer, Blue said. But after the rehearing request was granted, the local merchants still needed to prove that “manifest injustice” had taken place during Jack Spade’s permit acquisition process if the merchants wanted the actual rehearing. 

This presented a problem to the VCMA and others. To prove “manifest injustice” had taken place during the permit application process, the merchants needed to prove that Jack Spade not only applied for their permits under a dubious guise, but that they were well aware of just how dubious it was. To be manifestly unjust, the unfairness must be “direct, obvious and observable,” a list that isn’t always easy to satisfy. 

While the two sides can’t seem to come to a consensus on how much the rent will actually increase in the surrounding area due to Jack Spade’s arrival, this controversy arose at a time when neighborhoods throughout the city have been rising up against gentrification.

And this may not be the last time that this company is in the crosshairs of that concern. Asked whether its decision applies to the whole city or just this one location, McComb told us, “Just that spot. We have many brand fans in SF.” 

Cyclists testify to SFPD bias as supervisors call for reforms

Sasha Cuttler
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66
Cyclists testify to SFPD bias as supervisors call for reforms

The cyclists of San Francisco were angry. Sup. Jane Kim was skeptical. Sup. Scott Wiener was unconvinced. Sup. Eric Mar said bikers were “pissed.” Deputy Chief of Police Mike Biel said he was too, but his anger could have just as easily been attributed to the 35 minutes he spent at the stand, acting as a whipping post for frustrations with the SFPD, as it could be to the department’s mistreatment of San Francisco cyclists.

Either way, the cyclists ruled the day.

During Thursday’s (10/3) Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee, Sup. David Campos called for a joint Board of Supervisors-Police Commission hearing regarding SFPD investigation protocol for bike accidents, but no immediate timetable has been set for the matter.

Without Police Chief Greg Suhr in attendance — his chiefly presence was required “reading to the children,” as Biel noted multiple times — Biel was left to stand solo in front of both frustrated supervisors and an incensed public.

At one point, following a particularly ambiguous response from Biel regarding accident checklists, Wiener asked bluntly, “Do you think there’s enough traffic cops in San Francisco? I don’t see bike cops, personally.”

To which Biel responded, “I’d like to see more.”

In fact, there was little defense on the part of Biel — and by extension, the Police Department — when it came to the seemingly lax (at best, malicious at worst) approach the SFPD has taken toward bike accidents in the past four years.

He even echoed Mar’s “pissed” comment, saying, “I was pissed too,” in regards to both what Mar called the “supposed investigation” of the Aug. 14 death of 24-year-old Amelie Le Moullac and the flippant attitude some in the department had taken towards cyclists in the days and weeks following. But he also stated that he didn’t think there was a negative bias in the SFPD.

The board’s decision to continue the conversation was bolstered by nearly 40 often-horrific testimonials regarding police treatment of cyclists in the City. And nearly all the stories could make the average person cring with the frustration, anger, and outrage they had the power to illicit.

Leah Shahum, executive director for the San Francisco Bike Coalition, told a story of a woman who was unable to make it to the hearing due to the injuries sustained in an April accident.

The woman, whom she didn’t identify, was biking in Golden Gate Park with her husband and son — the son was on the back of the woman’s bike — when she was hit from behind by a car, while she was stopped in the designated bike lane.

Witnesses stated that the driver was at fault. Her husband said the same thing. The police insisted on questioning the two of them more about their helmet usage — “which they were wearing,” according to Shahum — than they did about the actual events of the accident. Incidentally, adults aren’t required to wear bike helmets in California.

Robin Levitt, a Hayes Valley resident, talked about the strange “culture of blaming the victim” that has seemingly been propagated in the City, and how “in Germany, it’s immediately assumed that the vehicle is at fault, so drivers are safer.”

(And for what it’s worth, when Biel denied that same sentiment’s existence earlier with the committee, supervisors didn’t seem too convinced either. Mar even asked Biel, “Is there a bias or blame-the-victim attitude in the San Francisco Police Department?” which Biel promptly denied.)

And then there was Edward Hasbrouk, a former professional cyclist who has “never owned a motor vehicle.” He was biking home from work one evening when his progress in a Valencia Street bike line was impeded by a double-parked car in line for a valet service.

(Wiener has called for increased police enforcement of laws against double-parking. During today’s (Tues/8) Board of Supervisors meeting, he asked Mayor Ed Lee to support the effort, noting that SFPD rarely issues tickets to double-parkers despite “its impacts on traffic, Muni, cycling, and pedestrians.”)

Hasbrouk said that after a somewhat heated back-and-forth between the valet drivers, he flagged down a police officer to help him resolve the dispute, but the officer instead made Hasbrouk “carry [his] bicycle to the sidewalk.” Hasbrouk then said, “What would I have to do to get you to ticket these cars double-parked?” That comment got him arrested for felony vandalism, according to Hasbrouk. Expunging the arrest cost him nearly $3,000 and a night in jail.

But given the SFPD’s lack of pragmatism when it comes to investigating these accidents (for instance, Biel said SFPD doesn’t require a continuing education for officers assigned to traffic enforcement, despite what Shahum says are complex issues surrounding a rapidly growing population of cyclists), and it’s boorish behavior following the Le Moullac tragedy in August, it’s high time for change.

And a joint hearing could be just the place to start.

Airbnb says its hosts should pay taxes

Michael Redmond
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7
Airbnb says its hosts should pay taxes

Under pressure in San Francisco and New York City for violating local tenant and land use laws and refusing to pay local taxes, Airbnb has finally acknowledged that transient occupancy taxes apply to the room rentals it facilitates. But the company still hasn’t taken any steps to collect the tax or admitted that it shares this tax debt with its hosts.

“Our hosts are not hotels, but we believe that it makes sense for our community to pay occupancy tax, with limited exemptions for those who earn under certain thresholds,” CEO Brian Chesky wrote on the Airbnb blog on Oct. 3, addressing the post to New York City and not San Francisco, where it is headquartered and where we have shown the company is shirking an annual tax debt of nearly $2 million.

Contacted by the Guardian, a company spokesperson extended the pledge to San Francisco, writing, “Yesterday, our CEO Brian Chesky announced that we believe it makes sense for our community of hosts to pay occupancy tax to the cities in which they live, with exceptions under certain thresholds, and we are eager to discuss how this might be made possible. We have been in substantive discussions with Board President David Chiu on these issues for some time, and we’d like to thank him for the open dialogue that helped lead to today’s announcement. We look forward to continuing our work with him and others in San Francisco to set forth clear, fair laws that allow regular people to rent out their own homes, while giving back to the city that makes it possible.”

As the Guardian has repeatedly reported, most recently in our Aug. 6 cover story “Into Thin Air,” the San Francisco Treasurer/Tax Collectors Office has ruled that the city’s TOT of about 15 percent applies to Airbnb guests, and that Airbnb shares that joint tax liability with its hosts.

The ability of individual hosts to receive business licenses for renting out rooms and to collect and remit the TOT is complicated by the fact that such rentals violate land use, tenant, and other city laws — and Chiu has been developing legislation that would legalize and regulate the stays.

Airbnb could easily collect the TOT on each San Francisco transaction, as some of its online competitors have already been doing, but it has so far refused to do so. And when the Guardian asked Airbnb whether it now plans to include the tax in its transactions, the company ignored the question.

In fact, Airbnb’s public statements and private communications indicate its intention to pass the buck to its hosts rather that paying the tax liability itself, and several hosts who commented on Chesky’s blog post expressed hopes they would get more support from the company.

Nonetheless, Chiu took the Airbnb’s statement yesterday as a positive sign, telling us, “I am pleased to hear that Airbnb has acknowledged the need for their users to pay the occupancy tax. This policy was developed as a result of discussions that I’ve led in the past year to regulate and tax shareable housing activity in San Francisco. While we continue to negotiate with shareable housing companies, housing advocates, and the Mayor’s Office to find sensible solutions, I am confident that we will be able to move forward on a regulatory framework that provides flexibility to residents, protects our affordable housing stock, and collects the fair share of taxes for the City. I look forward to introducing legislation in the coming months.”

Friends in the shadows

Michael Redmond
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Friends in the shadows

rebecca@sfbg.com, joe@sfbg.com

It’s a simple fact of life: Money buys influence. But in San Francisco, despite strict sunshine laws to illuminate donations to city agencies and gifts to the regulators from the regulated, money still circulates in the shadows when it flows through the coffers of “Friends” in high places.

Major real estate developers, city contractors, and large corporations often lend financial support to San Francisco city departments, to the tune of millions of dollars every year. But the money doesn’t just flow directly to city agencies, where it’s easily tracked by disclosure laws. Instead, it goes through private nonprofits that sometimes label themselves as “Friends Of…” these departments.

They include Friends of City Planning, Friends of the Library, a foundation formerly known as Friends of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Friends of SF Environment, and Friends of San Francisco Animal Care and Control.

The Friends pay for programs the departments supposedly cannot cover on their own. Bond money can build a skyscraper, but sometimes not fill it with furniture. Agencies are barred by law from funding an employee mixer or a conference trip, so departments turn to their Friends to fill in the gaps. Adding bells and whistles to city websites, holding lunchtime lectures, hiring a grant writer — or, in the case of the Department of Public Health, bolstering health services for vulnerable populations — these are all examples of what gets funded.

The extra help can clearly be a good thing, but the lack of transparency around who’s giving money raises questions — especially if it’s a business gunning for a major contract or a permit to build a high-rise.

City agencies receive outside funding from a wide variety of sources. Sometimes grants are made by the federal government, or a well-established philanthropic foundation — and according to city law, gifts of $10,000 or higher must be approved by the Board of Supervisors. But in the case of organizations like Friends, which are created specifically to assist city government agencies, the original funders aren’t always identifiable. And the collaboration is frequently much closer, with city staff members serving on Friends boards in a few cases.

the circle of donations to "friends of" foundations

Friends board members told the Guardian that their partnership with government helps bolster city agencies in a time of increasing austerity, in service of the public good. But do the special relationships these influential insiders hold with high-ranking city officials come into play when awarding a contract, issuing a permit, making a hiring decision, or determining whether a developer’s request for a rule exemption should be honored? Without more transparency, it’s tough to tell.

City disclosure rules state that any gift to a department must be prominently displayed on that department’s website, along with any financial interest the donor has involving the city. But Friends and other outside funders are under no obligation to share their supporters’ names, much less financial ties, when they distribute grants. Meanwhile, the disclosure rules that are on the books seem to be frequently ignored, misunderstood, or unenforced, our investigation discovered.

How are donors repaid for their support? Consider the controversy earlier this year around Pet Food Express, which won approval in June for another store in the Marina District despite opposition from four locally owned pet stores in the area that fear competing with a large national chain. Pet Food Express won the unlikely support of the city’s Small Business Commissioners, some of whom reversed their 2009 positions opposing the chain’s previous application.

SF Animal Care and Control Director Rebecca Katz personally lobbied the commission to support Pet Food Express, at least partially because the company has donated pet supplies valued at $50,000 to $70,000 per year to the department. That’s a lot of money for a cash-strapped city department, but a pittance compared to the profits of an expanding national chain.

It’s moments of clarity like those, when the public can easily trace the line from donations to political influence, that show why disclosure is so crucial. But those moments are few and far between when trying to trace the funders of private foundations and Friends organizations, where deals often happen in the dark.

 

WHEN DEVELOPERS ARE FRIENDS

At the Merchant Exchange Building in May, a crowd of high-profile real-estate developers mixed and mingled with city planners, commissioners, and even Mayor Ed Lee, wine glasses in hand. Sources told the Guardian that most of the planning staff was present, and not all were happy about having ribbons and name tags affixed to their shirts, as if they were being auctioned off.

With around 500 in attendance, the event was an annual fundraiser hosted by the Friends of San Francisco City Planning, a nonprofit organization that accepts contributions of up to $2,500 per individual to lend a helping hand to the Planning Department. This year’s event was titled “Incubator Startups, New Jobs for the Future,” hinting that the development community shares the mayor’s affinity for new tech startups and the droves of high-salaried IT professionals they’ve attracted to the city.

Some Friends of City Planning board members are major real-estate developers who routinely seek approval for major construction projects. Others are former planning commissioners, or have a background in community advocacy.

Amid widespread concern about displacement, gentrification, and the overall character of San Francisco’s built environment, no city department has greater influence than Planning. An individual’s interpretation of the Planning Code can carry tremendous weight; it’s a series of small decisions that shape a project’s profits and the look and feel of San Francisco’s future. And with cranes dotting the city’s skyline and market-rate construction catering to the wealthy while middle income residents get priced out, the amount of capital flowing through the development sector these days is astonishing.

In this dizzy climate, there might seem to be something askew about affluent developers and land-use attorneys rubbing elbows with city regulators, all eager to pass the hat for the Planning Department. Whiff of impropriety or no, the fundraiser appears to be totally legal.

“We aren’t violating the law — that I know,” Friends of City Planning Chair Dennis Antenore told the Guardian. “We’ve had legal advice on that for years.”

There is close collaboration between Friends of San Francisco City Planning and the Planning Department — a partnership so entrenched that it’s almost as if the nonprofit is an unofficial, private-sector branch of the agency.

“We are certainly thankful and appreciative,” Planning spokesperson Joanna Linsangan told the Guardian. “They’ve helped us for many, many years.” The additional funding is needed, she said, because “there isn’t a lot of wiggle room” in the departmental budget.

Each year, Planning Director John Rahaim submits a wish list to the Friends, outlining projects he wants funding for. This year, he requested $122,000 for a variety of initiatives, including training support to help planners assess proposals for formula retail (read: chain stores). That’s a hot-button issue lately, and one that shows how seemingly small decisions by planners can have big impacts.

When the department’s zoning administrator ruled that Jack Spade, a high-end clothing chain that opened up in the old Adobe Books location on 16th Street, wasn’t considered formula retail and therefore didn’t need a conditional use permit, neither widespread community outrage nor a majority vote by the Board of Appeals could reverse that flawed decision. It was a similar story with the Planning Commission’s Oct. 3 approval of the 555 Fulton mixed use project, where Planning Department support for exempting the grocery store for the area’s formula retail ban made it happen, to the delight of that developer.

Even though the planning director makes specific funding requests each year to the Friends and pitches the projects in person at their meetings — and the Friends publishes a list of the grants it awards to the department online — the Planning Department is not reporting those gifts to the Board of Supervisors.

“I confirm that the Planning Department did not receive any gifts,” Finance and IT Manager Keith DeMartini wrote in official gift reports submitted to the Board of Supervisors for the years 2011-12 and 2012-13. Those reports were sent to the board on Oct. 7 and Oct. 4, respectively, well after the July filing deadline and after the Guardian requested the missing reports.

The Friends typically funds two-thirds of the requests, said board member Alec Bash, totaling around $80,000 a year. In 2012, the Friends awarded a $25,000 grant to make the department’s new online permit-tracking system more user-friendly, making life a lot easier for developers.

When asked what safeguards are in place to prevent undue influence when the director is soliciting funding from a nonprofit partially controlled by developers, Linsangan responded, “those are two very separate things. One does not influence the other.”

She stated repeatedly that planners are not privy to information about individual contributors — but the fundraisers are organized by a board that includes identifiable developers, and anyone who attends can plainly see the donors in attendance. Nevertheless, Linsangan insisted that planners would not be swayed by this special relationship, saying, “That’s simply not the way we do things around here. We do things according to the Planning Code.”

But as the ruling on Jack Spade shows, as well as countless rulings by planners on whether a project is categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, interpreting the codes can involve considerable discretion.

The public can’t review a list of who wrote checks to the Friends of San Francisco City Planning for the May fundraiser. Since the organization waits a year between collecting the money and disbursing grants, donors stay shielded from required annual disclosures in tax filings.

But Antenore says the system was established with the public interest in mind. “We don’t reveal the contributors, because we don’t want anybody to have increased influence by a donation,” he insisted. Bash echoed this idea, saying the delay was to “allow for some breathing room.”

Unlike some of his fellow board members from the high-end development sector, Antenore has a history of being aligned with neighborhood interests on planning issues, helping author a 1986 ballot measure limiting downtown high-rise development. He emphasized that the developers on the Friends board are balanced out by more civic-minded individuals.

Still, developers who regularly submit permit applications for major construction projects sit on the Friends board. Among them are Larry Nibbi, a partial owner of Nibbi Bros.; Clark Manus, CEO of Heller Manus Architects; and Oz Erikson, CEO of the Emerald Fund development firm.

“We’re not making use of [the funding] in a way that benefits these people,” Antenore said. “I wouldn’t do this if I thought otherwise. I have been careful to maintain the integrity of this organization.” The money is meant to facilitate better planning, he added. “I don’t think there’s any conspiracy,” he said. “We’re not financing anything evil.”

Both the Planning Department and its Friends dismissed the idea that the donations could open the door to favoritism or undue influence. So why isn’t the department reporting gifts it receives from the Friends to the Board of Supervisors, or disclosing them on its website, as required by city law?

According to a 2008 City Attorney memo on reporting gifts to city departments, when an agency receives a gift of $100 or more, it “must report the gift in a public record and on the department’s website. The public disclosure must include the name of the donor(s) and the amount of the gift [and] a statement as to any financial interest the contributor has involving the city.”

John St. Croix, director of the San Francisco Ethics Commission, confirmed that’s the current standard, telling us, “The actual disclosure should be on the website of the department that received the gift.”

Linsangan said records of the gifts are indeed available — listed as “grants” in the department’s Annual Report. But while the 2011-12 report lists grants from sources such as the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency, there was no mention of Friends of City Planning.

The memo also says any gift of $10,000 and above must first be approved by a resolution of the Board of Supervisors. But last year, when the Friends provided $25,000 to upgrade the permit-tracking system, it wasn’t sanctioned by a board resolution. Asked why, Linsangan made it clear that she was not aware of any such requirement.

As is common, when it comes to adhering to disclosure laws, confusion abounds. And sometimes, only sometimes, politicos get caught.

 

READING UP ON DISCLOSURE LAWS

When the head of a city agency fails to report gifts totaling $130,000, how much do you think he is fined?

City Librarian Luis Herrera failed to report receiving that amount in gifts and he was fined exactly $600 by the California Fair Political Practices Commission on Sept. 19. Specifically, Herrera had to file a form 700 with the FPPC to state the gifts he received. From 2008-2010, the forms he turned in had the “no reportable interests” box checked.

The money was used in what he calls the City Librarian’s Fund, which is the money he keeps on hand to pay for office parties and giving honorariums to poets and speakers who perform at the library’s branches, money that wasn’t disclosed on the very forms designed for reporting it.

There are two stories of how the fine came about. Longtime library advocate James Chaffee said that it was the result of a complaint he filed with the FPPC in April, and indeed, he sought and obtained many public documents revealing the money trail. San Francisco Public Library spokesperson Michelle Jeffers disagreed, saying that the fine was the result of an ongoing conversation with the FPPC to figure how exactly to file the gifts appropriately.

“The law wasn’t clear around these forms and it wasn’t clear if he had to report them,” she told the Guardian. “For amending the reports you have to pay a $200 fine for every year it was proposed. We keep scrupulous records on every pizza party we have.”

When government officials receive “gift of cash or goods,” they must report them annually in statements of economic interest, known as a Form 700, to the city Controller’s Office. The form is kind of a running tally of who is receiving gifts from whom, a way for the public to track money’s influence in government.

The gifts came from the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, another nonprofit that bolsters city agency funding. Now Herrera has to list the $130,000 gifts from fiscal years 2008-09 and 2009-10 on his website.

What exactly does that accomplish? As it turns out, not a whole lot.

City Administrative Code 67.29-6 defines the reporting of gifts to city departments, and one of those requirements is to make a statement of “any financial interest the contributor has involving the city.” Now that Herrera lists the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library as donors on the department website, the statement of financial interest by the friends group is this: “none.”

There are myriad donors to the Friends of the SFPL, and the group doesn’t have to state the economic interests of its donors, or even mention who its donors are. The code requires gifts be reported to the controller, and the deputy city controller told us this doesn’t apply to the “friends of” organizations, or any nonprofit foundation arms of city departments.

“If gifts are made to a department, yes, they have to disclose, so people don’t get preferential interest in getting city contracts,” Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda told us. “I know it’s a fine line. The foundations don’t provide us with anything.”

Friends of the SFPL doesn’t provide money just for pizza parties. A breakdown of a funding request from the library to its Friends shows requests up to $750,000 to advertise the library on Muni and in newspapers, funding for permanent exhibits, and the City Librarian’s personal fund. That’s just the money it gives to the library. Other monies are spent directly on activities supporting the library.

As Jeffers pointed out to the Guardian, the money isn’t spent on “trips to Tahiti.” Friends of the SPL do good city works, from a neighborhood photo project in the Bayview branch library to providing books for children. But the question is: Who’s buying that goodwill and why?

The millions of dollars in donations made to the Friends of the SFPL don’t need to be approved by the Board of Supervisors, like gifts to departments do. They’re not checked for conflicts of interest or financial interest by any governmental body. Donors give and the Friends of SFPL spend freely, financial interest or not.

When our research for this story began, no financial statements were available of the Friends of the SFPL website. After a few days of inquiries, the most recent year’s financial statements from 2011-12 were posted to the website.

Ultimately, the San Francisco Public Library is one of the smaller city departments, with an annual budget that hovers around $86 million. The Department of Public Health is a much bigger beast, with a 2011-12 budget of around $1.5 billion.

One of its main foundations, the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, is also one of the largest nonprofits that supplements city spending. In many ways, it could be described as the model of disclosure for city foundations, although its disclosures are not by law, but by choice.

 

FOUNDATION OF FRIENDS

The Department of Public Health relies on a few entities that fundraise on its behalf: the San Francisco Public Health Foundation, the Friends of Laguna Honda Hospital, and the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.

“They’re private nonprofit entities that are separate from the department,” CFO Greg Wagner told us. “But their roles are to support the department in its efforts.” He cited examples such as sending its staff to conferences or hosting meetings, “things that we don’t have the budget for or don’t have the staff or resources.”

The lion’s share of the DPH’s gifts are funneled through the SFGHF. Unlike many of the assorted Friends groups or foundations that support city services, the SFGHF extensively reports the sources of its $5 million in donations. The donors include a veritable who’s who of San Francisco: the Giants, Sutter Health, Xerox, Pacific Union, and Kohl’s all donated between $1,000 and $10,000 in the past two years.

But the largest gifts to the SFGHF came from Kaiser Permanente, and its financial interests in the city run deep. Kaiser came into the city’s crosshairs in July, when the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution calling on Kaiser to disclose its pricing model after a sudden, unexplained increase in health care costs for city employees. Kaiser holds a $323 million city contract to provide health coverage, and supervisors took the healthcare giant to task for failing to produce data to back up its rate hikes.

In the meantime, Kaiser has also been a generous donor. It contributed $364,950 toward SFGHF and another $25,000 to SFPHF in fiscal year 2011-12.

The funding from Kaiser and a host of other contributors — which include Chevron, Intel, Genentech, Macy’s, Wells Fargo (another city contractor), and a pharmaceutical company called Vertex — does support needed programs. They include research into the health of marginalized communities, services through Project Homeless Connect, screening for HIV, and immunization shots for travelers.

But because DPH doesn’t count much of this support as “gifts” formally received by the city, it isn’t subject to prior approval by the Board of Supervisors, or posted on the department’s website along with the contributors’ financial interests. Major contributions are disclosed in a report to the Health Commission, something Wagner described as a voluntary gesture in response to commissioners’ requests.

“Most gifts to foundations are donations to a nonprofit and do not come through the city or DPH at all,” he noted.

This distance is maintained on paper despite close collaboration with the department. In the case of Project Homeless Connect, a program that holds a bimonthly event to aid the homeless, it supports programs headquartered in city facilities. Penny Eardley, executive director of SFPHF— which used to be called Friends of San Francisco Public Health — noted that her organization occasionally makes grants or seeks funding in response to department requests. And Deputy Director of Health Colleen Chawla is a foundation board member. It’s almost like these foundations are extensions of the department, except they’re not.

SFPHF also earns revenue as a city contractor. When DPH received a grant from the Centers for Disease Control, it contracted with SFPHF to manage subcontracts with about a dozen community-based organizations.

The web gets even more tangled. The president of SFPHF is Randy Wittorp — who’s also Director of Public Affairs for Kaiser Permanente’s San Francisco Service Area. It’s a similar story with SFGHF, whose board includes several General Hospital administrators, including CEO Susan Currin.

Former Health Commissioner James Illig said people shouldn’t worry, that hospital the staff would never direct foundation funds to pet projects or mishandle funds. “They maintain a separation and a firewall,” he said, for example noting, “Sue Currin is not directing funds to her own hospital.”

But he did admit that since SFGHF’s minutes are not public documents, that “raises a few concerns,” arguing the public should be able to inspect financial documents to decide if the foundations are directing funds lawfully to city departments.

Even when the public by law has a right to access financial records of a city department, rooting out corruption can be like pushing a boulder up a San Francisco hill.

 

FROM PATIENTS TO PARTIES

In 2010 and 2011, Laguna Honda Hospital administrators and staff used money from the hospital’s patient gift fund to throw a party. And then they spent it on airfare. And then they gave laser-engraved pedometers to the staff. All told, they spent nearly $350,000 meant for the dying and the infirm, nearly half of the total funds.

The incident was big, messy, and out in the public eye. It was an all-too-rare glimpse into the shady use of public funds by public officials. But when hospital staff members Dr. Derek Kerr and Dr. Maria Rivero blew the whistle on Laguna Honda’s misuse of patient funds in 2010, they were drummed out of their jobs.

Eventually litigation on behalf of the whistleblowers and their complaints of corruption were found to have merit.

Kerr’s vindication came at a meeting of the Health Commission in April 2013. In the packed City Hall meeting room, the public watched as Laguna Honda Executive Director Mivic Hirose read her apology to Kerr and Rivero aloud, even announcing a plaque in Kerr’s honor.

“The hospital will install the plaque in the South 3 Hospice,” she read, stiltedly, from a written statement, surrounded by microphones at the podium. “The plaque will say: In recognition of Derek Kerr MD of his contributions to the Laguna Honda’s hospice and palliative care program 1989-2010.”

Kerr received a settlement of $750,000 and something more important: His good name cleared.

But that conflict of interest was rooted out only after years of litigation that revealed the financial abuse through legal discovery of the department’s documents — documents that should’ve been public in the first place. ABC 7’s I-Team broke the story and did much of the reporting at the time, otherwise the entire affair may have been swept under the rug.

The misuse of funds was only brought to light with the revelation of public documents — revelations not possible with most Friends groups. The Laguna Honda Hospital Foundation has also had financial dealings with potential conflicts and a lack of transparency.

The now-defunct LHHF’s board chair, former City Attorney Louise Renne, made an interesting choice for her vice chair after she formed the nonprofit in 2003. Derek Parker was vice chair of the LHHF while simultaneously heading architecture firm Anshen-Allen, with a $585 million city contract to rebuild the hospital.

So he was not only rebuilding Laguna Honda under city contract, but soliciting and spending donations meant to supplement his project. Renne wrote to the Health Commission in December 2011 that LHHF’s purpose was to manage over $15 million in donations meant to furnish the hospital with beds, chairs, and other necessities. Eventually, then-Mayor Willie Brown found funding for the hospital, reducing the foundation’s role.

In a phone interview with the Guardian, Renne said the goals of the LHHF were only ever to furnish the newly christened hospital. “Our purpose was to fill the void, if you will, for what the city and its services could not do,” she said.

But in her letter, Renne advocated for LHHF to take an active role in fundraising for the hospital for years to come. “Today, the members of the Board of Directors of the Foundation continue to assist the hospital in various phases of its new projects and operations with projects approved by the City and/or the hospital administration,” she wrote to the Health Commission.

And Parker would have potentially managed millions of dollars flowing through donations for countless other hospital projects, while heading an architectural firm with contracts to build in San Francisco. We were unable to reach Parker for comment.

“I never saw Derek use his position as an architect or position for any political gain, I never saw it,” Renne told us. But no one else would see it either, because organizations like the now closed Laguna Honda Hospital Foundation operate without public oversight.

The Health Commission itself even noted this in its March 2012 meeting, the minutes describing then-commissioner James Illig as critiquing the foundation for not being open about its source of funding.

“Commissioner Illig thanks Ms. Renne and Mr. Parker for coming to the Commission,” the minutes read. “Because (LHHF) is a project of Community Initiatives, a fiscal sponsor for nonprofits, it is not possible to find basic financial information about the Foundation or its activities.”

Divided interests on hospital board

Due to a quirk of her foundation being under the “umbrella” of a separate entity, Community Initiatives, Illig was never able to even get the LHHF’s IRS forms, he told us. “We tried to get information and reports, and the Community Initiatives [Form] 990 was giant,” Illig said. “It didn’t separate anything out.”

Illig told us that it made sense to have Parker on the board because he is monied and well connected, making it easier to solicit donations. But insiders close to the board told us that Parker’s position may have made it easier to swing getting other contracts for his firm.

Parker got another city contract building the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital at Mission Bay, slated to open in 2015. No doubt his firm got the job partly due to his reputation as pioneering architecture that leads to healthy patient outcomes — but then again, the board he served on also approved donations to research at UCSF.

Laguna Honda Hospital Foundation may now be defunct, but it serves to illustrate the lack of controls and oversight of the foundations beyond even gift disclosure.

 

OFF THE BOOKS

It might be characterized as a web of influence, cronyism, or just the way business is done. But is there something improper about all of this?

Private funding often represents a needed boost that allows for important work to take place beyond what could happen under ordinary budgeting. At the same time, it smacks of privatization. While departments and funders point to lean times in the public sector to justify the need for this help, the funding continues to flow whether it’s a good year or a bad year for city government. And at the end of the day, the most glaring issue of all seems to be the lack of transparency.

Are city departments ever tempted to bend the rules to lend a little help to their Friends? As long as the funding is in the dark, the public has no way of knowing.

Ethics chief St. Croix told us his office lacks the resources to visit every city website and check up on whether departments are following the disclosure rules. “If someone brought it to my attention that a department received a gift and didn’t post it [on the website],” he said, “we would look into it.”

But if the watchdogs need watchdogs, citizens who can’t even review documents that should be publicly available, then these quasi-governmental functions and the people who fund them will remain in the shadows.  

Danielle Parenteau contributed to this report.  

ADDENDUM  

When city funders operate in the dark, one of the best ways to learn about corrupt influence, misuse of funds, and other transgressions is from whistleblowers. If you have a tip for us, send us snail mail at SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN, 225 Bush, 17th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94104. Or email us at news@sfbg.com. Just make sure not to use an email address provided by your workplace, which is less secure.

Airbnb makes small admission on tax issue, saying its hosts should pay

Sasha Cuttler
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105
Airbnb makes small admission on tax issue, saying its hosts should pay

Under pressure in San Francisco and New York City for violating local tenant and land use laws and refusing to pay local taxes, Airbnb has finally acknowledged that transient occupany taxes apply to the room rentals it facilitates. But the company still hasn’t taken any public steps to collect the tax, nor has it admitted that it shares this tax debt with its hosts.

“Our hosts are not hotels, but we believe that it makes sense for our community to pay occupancy tax, with limited exemptions for those who earn under certain thresholds,” CEO Brian Chesky wrote on the Airbnb blog yesterday, addressing the post to New York City and not San Francisco, where it is headquartered and where we have shown the company is shirking an annual tax debt of nearly $2 million.

Contacted by the Guardian, a company spokesperson extended the pledge to San Francisco, writing, “Yesterday, our CEO Brian Chesky announced that we believe it makes sense for our community of hosts to pay occupancy tax to the cities in which they live, with exceptions under certain thresholds, and we are eager to discuss how this might be made possible. We have been in substantive discussions with Board President David Chiu on these issues for some time, and we’d like to thank him for the open dialogue that helped lead to today’s announcement. We look forward to continuing our work with him and others in San Francisco to set forth clear, fair laws that allow regular people to rent out their own homes, while giving back to the city that makes it possible.”

As the Guardian has repeatedly reported, most recently in our Aug. 6 cover story “Into Thin Air,” the San Francisco Treasurer/Tax Collectors Office has ruled that the city’s TOT of about 15 percent applies to Airbnb guests, and that Airbnb shares that joint tax liability with its hosts.

The ability of individual hosts to receive business licenses for renting out rooms and to collect and remit the TOT is complicated by the fact that such rentals violate land use, tenant, and other city laws — and Chiu has been developing legislation that would legalize and regulate the stays.

Airbnb could easily collect the TOT on each San Francisco transaction, as some of its online competitors have already been doing, but it has so far refused to do so. And when the Guardian asked Airbnb whether it now plans to do so, the company ignored the question.

In fact, Airbnb’s public statements and private communications indicate its intention to pass the buck to its hosts rather than collect and pay the taxes itself, and several hosts who commented on Chesky’s blog post expressed hopes they would get more support from the company on the myriad issues that complicate its simplistic business model.

Nonetheless, Chiu took the Airbnb’s statement yesterday as a positive sign, telling us, “I am pleased to hear that Airbnb has acknowledged the need for their users to pay the occupancy tax. This policy was developed as a result of discussions that I’ve led in the past year to regulate and tax shareable housing activity in San Francisco. While we continue to negotiate with shareable housing companies, housing advocates, and the Mayor’s Office to find sensible solutions, I am confident that we will be able to move forward on a regulatory framework that provides flexibility to residents, protects our affordable housing stock and collects the fair share of taxes for the City. I look forward to introducing legislation in the coming months.”

 

Chain store ban and affordable groceries at issue in 555 Fulton debate UPDATED

Sasha Cuttler
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77
Chain store ban and affordable groceries at issue in 555 Fulton debate UPDATED

UPDATED San Francisco’s resistance to formula retail stores will be put to the test tomorrow (Thu/3), when the San Francisco Planning Commission will vote on the 555 Fulton St. project.

The project — a five-story, 136-unit residential building with a ground-floor supermarket, complete with up to 275 total parking spaces— has been bobbing in purgatory since 2010, when developers were stalled by the withering economy.

But dried-up finances aren’t what’s now holding up the development of this project in an area governed by the Market and Octavia Better Neighborhood Plan and the Formula Retail Use Ordinance, both of which discourage national chains in favor of locally owned businesses.

Debate is centering on the question of whether the formula retail ban prevents an affordable grocery store from going in at the site, as the developer contends. The politics surrounding the project have gotten heated, with Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association supporting the ban on chain stores; the Mayor’s Office, Chinatown power broker Rose Pak, and Planning Director John Rahaim supporting the developer and project contractor Walter Wong; and Dist. 5 Sup. London Breed caught in the middle.

Last week, her legislative aide Vallie Brown told HVNA that Breed would support their request for a continuance at tomorrow’s meeting while they explore ways to attract an affordable local grocer, but Breed seems torn between what she told the New Yorker recently were desires to make affordable groceries available and prevent the boutiqueing of Hayes Valley, and her support for the formula retail ban.

“Breed said that despite the ban, she’s willing to allow a chain grocery store into the area to make it more affordable for residents,” reporter Lauren Smiley wrote in the article. The Guardian has been unable to reach Breed or Brown this week.

[UPDATE: Breed told the Guardian that her biggest concern is that the grocery store is affordable to the three low-income housing projects located right across the street, and she has yet to be convinced that can happen without breaking the formula retail ban at the site, despite working on the issue with both activists and the developer.

“It’s a challenge, I get that,” Breed told us. “I want the developer to operate with me in good faith and make a serious long-term commitment to me that this will be an affordable grocery store.”

But she doesn’t yet have that full commitment, and she says that she’s planning to honor her commitment to activists and ask that the formula retail waiver be delayed today even if the rest of the project goes through. “Ultimately, I asked them to be a good community partner,” she told us.]

For Hayes Valley, this has been a near decade-long process. In 2004, the Board of Supervisors first outlawed these generic retailers from opening up shop within the Hayes-Gough Neighborhood Commercial Transit (NCT) District when it passed Ordinance No. 62-04, classifying “formula retailers” and limiting their impact within unique neighborhoods. The ordinance keeps local businesses viable, keeping deep-pocketed corporations out.

The 555 Fulton project falls somewhere between the Hayes-Gough NCT and the Residential Transit Oriented District (RTO), and currently, a two-story, 19,620-square-foot office and industrial building with about 70 surface parking spots inhabits the address.

Both the neighborhood residents and the developers have historically felt that the property would make for an excellent grocery store. “What” has never been an issue with the property. “Who” on the other hand, has been the biggest issue.

In order for 555 Fulton to be developed by a “formula retail” outlet — which have been the only types of occupants the current developers believe to be able to pay the exorbitant established rent costs  — the property technically located in the Hayes-Gough NTC needs to be designated as a “Special Use District” (SUD).

An SUD adjusts the land use controls and height restrictions for a specific piece of property, in this case allowing for a “grocery store larger than 15,000 square feet of gross occupied floor area, as well as residential uses meeting a minimum density of one dwelling unit per 600 feet of lot area.” And up until April, the property was an SUD.

Back in 2008, 555 Fulton was granted its SUD by Section 249.35A of the Planning Code Section, which established the “Fulton Street Grocery Store Special Use District.” In 2010, the Planning Commission approved both a Conditional Use Authorization and a Planned Unit Development, allowing the developer of the subject property to build their mixed-use grocery store-residential building. Neither of these exceptions allowed for a “formula retail” outlet at the time, but interest still seemed solid.

Then everything stalled. And stalled. And stalled some more. Things have remained idle for so long that the five-year window given to the Fulton Street Grocery Store SUD expired this past April. Now, the developers are asking for five more years on the same Fulton Street Grocery Store SUD that was allowed to a different development group in 2008.

But it isn’t exactly the same request this time: Now the developers are trying to get an SUD without a provision on “formula retail” outlets, and both sides are expected to turn out big numbers on each side of the question at tomorrow’s hearing, which starts at noon in City Hall Room 400.

Endorsements 2013

Michael Redmond
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125

We’re heading into a lackluster election on Nov. 5. The four incumbents on the ballot have no serious challengers and voter turnout could hit an all-time low. That’s all the more reason to read up on the issues, show up at the polls, and exert an outsized influence on important questions concerning development standards and the fate of the city’s waterfront, the cost of prescription drugs, and the long-term fiscal health of the city.

 

PROP. A — RETIREE HEALTH CARE TRUST FUND

YES

Note: This article has been corrected from an earlier version, which incorrectly stated that Prop A increases employee contributions to health benefits.

Throughout the United States, the long-term employee pension and health care obligations of government agencies have been used as wedge issues for anti-government activists to attack public employee unions, even in San Francisco. The fiscal concerns are real, but they’re often exaggerated or manipulated for political reasons.

That’s one reason why the consensus-based approach to the issue that San Francisco has undertaken in recent years has been so important, and why we endorse Prop. A, which safeguards the city’s Retiree Health Care Trust Fund and helps solve this vexing problem.

Following up on the consensus pension reform measure Prop. B, which increased how much new city employees paid for lifetime health benefits, this year’s Prop. A puts the fund into a lock-box to ensure it is there to fund the city’s long-term retiree health care obligations, which are projected at $4.4 billion over the next 30 years.

“The core of it says you can’t touch the assets until it’s fully funded,” Sup. Mark Farrell, who has taken a lead role on addressing the issue, told us. “The notion of playing political football with employee health care will be gone.”

The measure has the support of the entire Board of Supervisors and the San Francisco Labor Council. Progressive Sup. David Campos strongly supports the measure and he told us, “I think it makes sense and is something that goes beyond political divides.”

There are provisions that would allow the city to tap the fund in emergencies, but only after it is fully funded or if the mayor, controller, the Trust Board, and two-thirds of the Board of Supervisors signs off, a very high bar. So vote yes and let’s put this distracting issue behind us.

 

PROP. B — 8 WASHINGTON SPECIAL USE DISTRICT

NO, NO, NO!

Well-meaning people can arrive at different conclusions on the 8 Washington project, the waterfront luxury condo development that was approved by the Board of Supervisors last year and challenged with a referendum that became Prop. C. But Prop. B is simply the developer writing his own rules and exempting them from normal city review.

We oppose the 8 Washington project, as we explain in our next endorsement, but we can understand how even some progressive-minded people might think the developers’ $11 million affordable housing and $4.8 million transit impact payments to the city are worth letting this project slide through.

But Prop. B is a different story, and it’s something that those who believe in honesty, accountability, and good planning should oppose on principle, even if they support the underlying project. Contrary to the well-funded deceptions its backers are circulating, claiming this measure is about parks, Prop. B is nothing more than a developer and his attorneys preventing meaningful review and enforcement by the city of their vague and deceptive promises.

It’s hard to know where to begin to refute the wall of mendacity its backers have erected to fool voters into supporting this measure, but we can start with their claim that it will “open the way for new public parks, increased access to the Embarcadero Waterfront, hundreds of construction jobs, new sustainable residential housing and funding for new affordable housing.”

There’s nothing the public will get from Prop. B that it won’t get from Prop. C or the already approved 8 Washington project. Nothing. Same parks, same jobs, same housing, same funding formulas. But the developer would get an unprecedented free pass, with the measure barring discretionary review by the Planning Department — which involves planners using their professional judgment to decide if the developer is really delivering what he’s promising — forcing them to rubber-stamp the myriad details still being developed rather than acting as advocates for the general public.

“This measure would also create a new ‘administrative clearance’ process that would limit the Planning Director’s time and discretion to review a proposed plan for the Site,” is how the official ballot summary describes that provision to voters.

Proponents of the measure also claim “it empowers voters with the decision on how to best utilize our waterfront,” which is another deception. Will you be able to tweak details of the project to make it better, as the Board of Supervisors was able to do, making a long list of changes to the deal’s terms? No. You’re simply being given the opportunity to approve a 34-page initiative, written by crafty attorneys for a developer who stands to make millions of dollars in profits, the fine details of which most people will never read nor fully understand.

Ballot box budgeting is bad, but ballot box regulation of complex development deals is even worse. And if it works here, we can all expect to see more ballot measures by developers who want to write their own “special use district” rules to tie the hands of planning professionals.

When we ask proponents of this measure why they needed Prop. B, they claimed that Prop. C limited them to just talking about the project’s building height increases, a ridiculous claim for a well-funded campaign now filling mailers and broadcast ads with all kinds of misleading propaganda.

With more than $1 million and counting being funneled into this measure by the developer and his allies, this measure amounts to an outrageous, shameless lie being told to voters, which Mayors Ed Lee and Gavin Newsom have shamefully chosen to align themselves with over the city they were elected to serve.

As we said, people can differ on how they see certain development deals. But we should all agree that it’s recipe for disaster when developers can write every last detail of their own deals and limit the ability of professional planners to act in the public interest. Don’t just vote no, vote hell no, or NO, No, no!

 

PROPOSITION C — 8 WASHINGTON REFERENDUM

NO

San Francisco’s northeastern waterfront is a special place, particularly since the old Embarcadero Freeway was removed, opening up views and public access to the Ferry Building and other recently renovated buildings, piers, and walkways along the Embarcadero.

The postcard-perfect stretch is a major draw for visiting tourists, and the waterfront is protected by state law as a public trust and overseen by multiple government agencies, all of whom have prevented development of residential or hotel high-rises along the Embarcadero.

Then along came developer Simon Snellgrove, who took advantage of the Port of San Francisco’s desperate financial situation, offered to buy its Seawall Lot 351 and adjacent property from the Bay Club at 8 Washington St., and won approval to build 134 luxury condos up to 12 stories high, exceeding the city’s height limit at the site by 62 percent.

So opponents challenged the project with a referendum, a rarely used but important tool for standing up to deep-pocketed developers who can exert an outsized influence on politicians. San Franciscans now have the chance to demand a project more in scale with its surroundings.

The waterfront is supposed to be for everyone, not just those who can afford the most expensive condominiums in the city, costing an average of $5 million each. The high-end project also violates city standards by creating a parking space for every unit and an additional 200 spots for the Port, on a property with the best public transit access and options in the city.

This would set a terrible precedent, encouraging other developers of properties on or near the waterfront to also seek taller high-rises and parking for more cars, changes that defy decades of good planning work done for the sensitive, high-stakes waterfront.

The developers would have you believe this is a battle between rival groups of rich people (noting that many opponents come from the million-dollar condos adjacent to the site), or that it’s a choice between parks and the surface parking lot and ugly green fence that now surrounds the Bay Club (the owner of which, who will profit from this project, has resisted petitions to open up the site).

But there’s a reason why the 8 Washington project has stirred more emotion and widespread opposition that any development project in recent years, which former City Attorney Louise Renne summed up when she told us, “I personally feel rich people shouldn’t monopolize the waterfront.”

A poll commissioned by project opponents recently found that 63 percent of respondents think the city is building too much luxury housing, which it certainly is. But it’s even more outrageous when that luxury housing uses valuable public land along our precious waterfront, and it can’t even play by the rules in doing so.

Vote no and send the 8 Washington project back to the drawing board.

 

PROP. D — PRESCRIPTION DRUG PURCHASING

YES

San Francisco is looking to rectify a problem consumers face every day in their local pharmacy: How can we save money on our prescription drugs?

Prop. D doesn’t solve that problem outright, but it mandates our politicians start the conversation on reducing the $23 million a year the city spends on pharmaceuticals, and to urge state and federal governments to negotiate for better drug prices as well.

San Francisco spends $3.5 million annually on HIV treatment alone, so it makes sense that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation is the main proponent of Prop. D, and funder of the Committee on Fair Drug Pricing. Being diagnosed as HIV positive can be life changing, not only for the health effects, but for the $2,000-5,000 monthly drug cost.

Drug prices have gotten so out-of-control that many consumers take the less than legal route of buying their drugs from Canada, because our neighbors up north put limits on what pharmaceutical companies can charge, resulting in prices at least half those of the United States.

The high price of pharmaceuticals affects our most vulnerable, the elderly and the infirm. Proponents of Prop. D are hopeful that a push from San Francisco could be the beginning of a social justice movement in cities to hold pharmaceutical companies to task, a place where the federal government has abundantly failed.

Even though Obamacare would aid some consumers, notably paying 100 percent of prescription drug purchases for some Medicare patients, the cost to government is still astronomically high. Turning that around could start here in San Francisco. Vote yes on D.

 

ASSESSOR-RECORDER

CARMEN CHU

With residential and commercial property in San Francisco assessed at around $177 billion, property taxes bring in enough revenue to make up roughly 40 percent of the city’s General Fund. That money can be allocated for anything from after-school programs and homeless services to maintaining vital civic infrastructure.

Former District 4 Sup. Carmen Chu was appointed by Mayor Ed Lee to serve as Assessor-Recorder when her predecessor, Phil Ting, was elected to the California Assembly. Six months later, she’s running an office responsible for property valuation and the recording of official documents like property deeds and marriage licenses (about 55 percent of marriage licenses since the Supreme Court decision on Prop. 8 have been issued to same-sex couples).

San Francisco property values rose nearly 5 percent in the past year, reflecting a $7.8 billion increase. Meanwhile, appeals have tripled from taxpayers disputing their assessments, challenging Chu’s staff and her resolve. As a district supervisor, Chu was a staunch fiscal conservative whose votes aligned with downtown and the mayor, so our endorsement isn’t without some serious reservations.

That said, she struck a few notes that resonated with the Guardian during our endorsement interview. She wants to create a system to automatically notify homeowners when banks begin the foreclosure process, to warn them and connect them with helpful resources before it’s too late. Why hasn’t this happened before?

She’s also interested in improving system to capture lost revenue in cases where property transfers are never officially recorded, continuing work that Ting began. We support the idea of giving this office the tools it needs to go out there and haul in the millions of potentially lost revenue that property owners may owe the city, and Chu has our support for that effort.

 

CITY ATTORNEY

DENNIS HERRERA

Dennis Herrera doesn’t claim to be a progressive, describing himself as a good liberal Democrat, but he’s been doing some of the most progressive deeds in City Hall these days: Challenging landlords, bad employers, rogue restaurants, PG&E, the healthcare industry, opponents of City College of San Francisco, and those who fought to keep same-sex marriage illegal.

The legal realm can be more decisive than the political, and it’s especially effective when they work together. Herrera has recently used his office to compel restaurants to meet their health care obligations to employees, enforcing an earlier legislative gain. And his long court battle to defend marriage equality in California validated an act by the executive branch.

But Herrera has also shown a willingness and skill to blaze new ground and carry on important regulation of corporate players that the political world seemed powerless to touch, from his near-constant legal battles with PG&E over various issues to defending tenants from illegal harassment and evictions to his recent lawsuit challenging the Accreditation Commission of Community and Junior Colleges over its threats to CCSF.

We have issues with some of the tactics his office used in its aggressive and unsuccessful effort to remove Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office. But we understand that is was his obligation to act on behalf of Mayor Ed Lee, and we admire Herrera’s professionalism, which he also exhibited by opposing the Central Subway as a mayoral candidate yet defending it as city attorney.

“How do you use the power of the law to make a difference in people’s lives every single day?” was the question that Herrera posed to us during his endorsement interview, one that he says is always on his mind.

We at the Guardian have been happy to watch how he’s answered that question for nearly 11 years, and we offer him our strong endorsement.

 

TREASURER/TAX COLLECTOR

JOSE CISNEROS

It’s hard not to like Treasurer/Tax Collector Jose Cisneros. He’s charming, smart, compassionate, and has run this important office well for nine years, just the person that we need there to implement the complicated, voter-approved transition to a new form of business tax, a truly gargantuan undertaking.

Even our recent conflicts with Cisneros — stemming from frustrations that he won’t assure the public that he’s doing something about hotel tax scofflaw Airbnb (see “Into thin air,” Aug. 6) — are dwarfed by our understanding of taxpayer privacy laws and admiration that Cisneros ruled against Airbnb and its ilk in the first place, defying political pressure to drop the rare tax interpretation.

So Cisneros has the Guardian’s enthusiastic endorsement. He also has our sympathies for having to create a new system for taxing local businesses based on their gross receipts rather than their payroll costs, more than doubling the number of affected businesses, placing them into one of eight different categories, and applying complex formulas assessing how much of their revenues comes from in the city.

“This is going to be the biggest change to taxes in a generation,” Cisneros told us of the system that he will start to implement next year, calling the new regime “a million times more complicated than the payroll tax.”

Yet Cisneros has still found time to delve into the controversial realm of short-term apartment sublets. Although he’s barred from saying precisely what he’s doing to make Airbnb pay the $1.8 million in Transient Occupancy Taxes that we have shown the company is dodging, he told us, “We are here to enforce the law and collect the taxes.”

And Cisneros has continued to expand his department’s financial empowerment programs such as Bank on San Francisco, which help low-income city residents establish bank accounts and avoid being gouged by the high interest rates of check cashing outlets. That and similar programs are now spreading to other cities, and we’re encouraged to see Cisneros enthusiastically exporting San Francisco values, which will be helped by his recent election as president of the League of California Cities.

 

SUPERVISOR, DIST. 4

KATY TANG

With just six months on the job after being appointed by Mayor Ed Lee, Sup. Katy Tang faces only token opposition in this race. She’s got a single opponent, accountant Ivan Seredni, who’s lived in San Francisco for three years and decided to run for office because his wife told him to “stop complaining and do something,” according to his ballot statement.

Tang worked in City Hall as a legislative aide to her predecessor, Carmen Chu, for six years. She told us she works well with Sups. Mark Farrell and Scott Wiener, who help make up the board’s conservative flank. In a predominantly Chinese district, where voters tend to be more conservative, Tang is a consistently moderate vote who grew up in the district and speaks Mandarin.

Representing the Sunset District, Tang, who is not yet 30 years old, faces some new challenges. Illegal “in-law” units are sprouting up in basements and backyards throughout the area. This presents the thorny dilemma of whether to crack down on unpermitted construction — thus hindering a source of housing stock that is at least within reach for lower-income residents — look the other way, or “legalize” the units in an effort to mitigate potential fire hazards or health risks. Tang told us one of the greatest concerns named by Sunset residents is the increasing cost of living in San Francisco; she’s even open to accepting a little more housing density in her district to deal with the issue.

Needless to say, the Guardian hasn’t exactly seen eye-to-eye with the board’s fiscally conservative supervisors, including Tang and her predecessor, Chu. We’re granting Tang an endorsement nevertheless, because she strikes us as dedicated to serving the Sunset over the long haul, and in touch with the concerns of young people who are finding it increasingly difficult to gain a foothold in San Francisco.

Alerts: October 2 – 8, 2013

Michael Redmond
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0

THURSDAY 3

Storytelling tools for change The Eric Quezeda Center for Culture and Politics, 518 Valencia, SF. www.518valencia.org. 7-8:30pm, free. Come join Immigrant Nation for a workshop and community event focusing on the power of storytelling within the immigrant community, and the ways in which those stories are shared. There will be an open discussion forum, with refreshments served. Featuring two short films: The Caretaker, a seven minute film on the life of an undocumented immigrant from Fiji providing home support for a 95-year old woman who has lost the ability to speak; and The Mayor, a 10-minute film on Paul Bridges, bilingual mayor of Uvalda, Georgia.

 

FRIDAY 4

March for Elephants 733 Kearny, SF. www.marchforelephants.org. 11am-2pm, free. There will be a march from Portsmouth Square at 733 Kearny to Union Square to peacefully protest the poaching of elephants and the illegal ivory trade. This will be one of several marches held globally in conjunction with World Animal Day. Participants are asked to arrive at 10am, and can register in advance on the website. Questions should be directed to march4elephants@gmail.com.

 

SATURDAY 5

San Francisco Veterans Film Festival 2013 Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission St., SF. at eduardo.ramirez@att.net. tinyurl.com/sfvetsfilm. Noon-6pm screenings, 6-9 p.m. fundraiser, donations requested. Join the MCCLA for the 2nd Annual San Francisco Veterans Film Festival and Fundraiser and experience more than just great filmmaking. The SFVFF is a wonderful opportunity to learn about the issues facing our returning vets, especially here in San Francisco. Films and discussion will touch on the “Salute to Women,” women in combat, same sex marriage in the military and the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

A Night for the Last Wild Buffalo Ecology Center, 2350 San Pablo, Berk. tinyurl.com/buffalonight. 7-10pm, $5-25 on sliding scale; no one will be denied entry for lack of funds. Come for a night of storytelling, poetry, music and videos in honor of wild buffalo. This event is meant to raise awareness about the relationship between the buffalo and native peoples, threats buffalo face and how people can do their part for this cause. The night’s special guest will be John Trudell, a Santee Sioux poet, actor and activist. Goodshield Aguilar and Mignon Geli, Native American musicians/activists, will perform. This event is one stop of a West Coast tour by the Buffalo Field Campaign.

Problems arise from Due Process for All amendments

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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10

At today’s (Tue/1) meeting, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is expected to grant final approval to Sup. John Avalos’ historic legislation, Due Process for All, which limits cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities under the Secure Communities program (S-Comm). But now that amendments have been incorporated in an effort to fend off a mayoral veto, the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department has raised questions about whether the law can actually be implemented as written.

With the aim of reducing deportations and extending the Constitutional right to due process to all San Francisco residents, the legislation prohibits local law enforcement from complying with requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to detain individuals who are otherwise eligible for release from custody. The requests are made under S-Comm, an information-sharing program between ICE, the California Department of Justice and the FBI that allows authorities to check fingerprints against immigration databases.

ICE issues civil detainer requests, which aren’t mandatory, asking local agencies to hold individuals for up to 48 hours to make time for the detainee to be taken into immigration custody. While warrants must be supported by probable cause, there is no such requirement for a detainer request.

An earlier draft of Avalos’ legislation barred the Sheriff’s department from ever honoring such requests. But now that the legislation has been amended with “carve-outs” directing the sheriff to comply with the ICE requests in certain cases, Sheriff Assistant Legal Counsel Mark Nicco is uncertain about whether his staff will actually be able to do the things the law requires of them.

“I ask that there be a consult about operational concerns. It’s the unintended consequences which brings me here before you today,” Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi told supervisors at the Sept. 24 meeting.

“The sheriff does want to comply with the intent and details of this legislation,” Nicco told us. But as things stood late last week, there were “concerns about whether we’d be able to implement certain aspects.” Nicco said his office has been meeting with the City Attorney and Avalos since the Sept. 24 meeting, in an effort to iron out some of those problems. “We want guidance on what their intent is, and for them to understand our physical roadblocks and operational issues,” he said.

The amended legislation directs the sheriff’s department to detain someone in response to an ICE request in cases where that person has been “convicted of a violent felony in the seven years immediately prior.” But the definition states, oddly, “the date an individual is convicted starts from the date of release.”

That’s confusing, Nicco told us. For one thing, there’s a big difference between the date someone is convicted of a crime, and the date they’re released after having served time as punishment for that crime. Unless the person was arrested and held in San Francisco, Nicco said, “The date of release from a prior conviction is not something … we can easily determine.”

The second criteria for when a person can be detained for ICE presents another obstacle, Nicco said. According to the amended law, someone can be held if “a magistrate has determined that there is probable cause to believe the person is guilty of a violent felony and has ordered the individual to answer to the same.”

But Nicco said the Sheriff’s department has no ready access to this information. “We do not have access to whether a person has been held to answer a certain charge,” he explained. “We would have to go to Superior Court and request information.”

The carve-outs were added, in part, to garner enough votes for a veto-proof majority approval. Mayor Ed Lee had threatened to veto the law as it was previously written, and police chief Greg Suhr had expressed concerns that it would shield violent felons from deportation.

But those exceptions to the rule have resulted in a lack of clarity and obstacles to implementation, Nicco said. “If it were flat-out, no ICE detainers, it wouldn’t be an issue,” he noted.

A coalition of advocates from immigrant communities plans to attend the Tue/1 meeting to celebrate the final approval of the law, even though it is a compromised version.

“The amendments, unfortunately, do allow potentially unconstitutional immigration ‘holds’ under very limited circumstances,” advocates with the California Immigrant Policy Centered noted in a media advisory. “But the ordinance will protect most San Franciscans from the abusive requests.” 

Mayor Lee responds to political furor with more funding to fight evictions

Sasha Cuttler
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136

We’re not sure whether it was the high-profile recent protests against the eviction of the Lee family, our well-read “City Hall must address rising rents” editorial or eviction and gentrification coverage last week, our earlier focus on record eviction rates, or just the growing view that City Hall is too friendly to landlords and neglectful of tenants, but the Mayor’s Office has finally awoken to the biggest issue facing this city.

With skyrocketing rents — and with increasingly common efforts by the landlords of rent-controlled apartments to take advantage of that market by forcing out their tenants — Mayor Lee this afternoon announced that he’s tripling funding to fight illegal Ellis Act evictions, making populist statements along the way.

Now, spending an additional $700,000 to fight greedy, deep-pocketed landlords is not exactly going to change the playing field, but it’s a nice gesture and an indicator that Mayor Lee is starting to notice the problem. Hopefully, with pressure by progressive politicians and activists, this will be just the first of many such actions.

His press releases follows in it entirety:

*** PRESS RELEASE ***

MAYOR LEE ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR EVICTION PREVENTION IN SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco to increase resources to support residents and families affected by illegal Ellis Act evictions and releases Eviction Prevention Funding from Housing Trust Fund

San Francisco, CA—Mayor Edwin M. Lee announced San Francisco will triple the amount of funding to prevent illegal Ellis Act evictions and that the City will release $700,000 in funding for other eviction prevention services from the Housing Trust Fund.

“San Francisco must remain a viable place to live and work for people at all levels of the economic spectrum,” said Mayor Lee. “That’s why I am providing additional resources to stop unlawful evictions and provide tenant counseling for our residents, so that San Francisco remains a City for the 100 percent.”

The Human Services Agency (HSA) currently provides nearly $8 million in homeless prevention and eviction defense services, an increase of $1.3 million from last year’s budget. In this year’s budget, the City was providing nearly $125,000 to fund free legal advice and represent 55 San Francisco families who have been affected by illegal Ellis Act eviction threats. Today, Mayor Lee tripled the amount of funding with an additional $250,000, which will immediately be available to eligible organizations that provide Ellis Act prevention legal work and will help more families and people at all levels of the economic spectrum remain in San Francisco.

“Providing resources to stop unlawful evictions has proven to be one of the most effective strategies to prevent displacement and homelessness in our City,” said Trent Rhorer, Director of the San Francisco Human Services Agency. “This additional $250,000 will help keep San Francisco families in their homes.”

The Mayor’s Office of Housing will also provide $700,000, from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, to fund tenant counseling services. This is a 63 percent increase in funding and brings the total amount to more than $2.3 million in eviction prevention services from the Mayor’s Office of Housing. These additional resources will be distributed to community based organizations specifically expanding legal representation for individuals facing eviction; rental assistance to individuals and families who are currently homeless or are struggling to keep their current rental housing; and to provide outreach to San Franciscans to better inform them about their legal rights.

The Mayor’s Office of Housing has prioritized eviction prevention services and funds activities including legal services, tenant counseling, rental assistance, move-in assistance, know your rights trainings, and other types of tenant support.  Services are offered through a diverse group of community based organizations that reach San Francisco’s many communities including seniors, people with disabilities, immigrants, the homeless and families.

The HSA will issue an ‘Invitation to Bid’ this week so eligible organizations can apply and use the HSA funding to expand their legal services in order for them to be available to vulnerable tenants within 30 days. It is anticipated that the additional HSA funds will help at least 150 households receive legal advice and representation.

 

 

 

 

Mayor Lee supports PG&E’s monopoly

Sasha Cuttler
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21
Mayor Lee supports PG&E’s monopoly

After watching Mayor Ed Lee and his appointees subvert the launch of CleanPowerSF and support PG&E’s illegal monopoly control of local energy users — and PG&E’s regular attempts to greenwash its dirty power portfolio — artist Michael Ortlieb developed and submitted this editorial cartoon. Enjoy. 

SF supervisors approve policy of denying federal immigration hold requests

Sasha Cuttler
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35

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Chambers erupted in raucous celebration and chants of “Si se puede!” this afternoon as the board gave unanimous approval to a new city policy of refusing most detention hold requests from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has used its controversial Secure Communities program to learn when undocumented immigrants end up in local jails and to have them held for deportation.

The legislation by Sup. John Avalos is intended to build trust between law enforcement and immigrants, which can be reluctant to report crimes such a domestic violence or buglaries for fear of deportation. “People who have to deal with the devastation that Secure Communities causes, they’re the ones who brought this forward,” Avalos said.

Those advocates had to wait a week for this momentus occasion because of amendments that were introduced last week, prompted by opposition to the measure by Mayor Ed Lee and Police Chief Greg Suhr, who expressed concern that it would shield violent felons from deportation.

Those amendments were introduced by Sup. Jane Kim, who had supported the original measure without them but sought to broaden support for the measure. Her amendments make exceptions for those convicted of violent felonies, sex trafficking, child molestation, and use of a gun in commission of a felony, although they call for police to consider factors such as a dependent child before allowing ICE to take custody of an undocumented immigrant.

Avalos opposed the amendments, saying “any carve-outs deter the victims of crimes from reaching out to law enforcement.” The amendments were also criticized by Sup. David Campos, who called them “counterproductive to public safety.” But both accepted them and called the measure an important victory.

“What’s happening in this chamber is a victory for the immigrant communities of San Francisco and all communities in San Francisco,” Campos said in English before repeating it in Spanish. “Let’s emphasize the common ground that we have found.”

The ordinance is set to receive final approval next week when it’s heard on second reading. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi — who has supported the legislation since its inception and who will oversee its implementation in the jail — said his office had just received the latest amendments and is still reviewing them.

“It’s the unintended consequences that bring me here before you today,” Mirkarimi told his former colleagues at the board, saying he wants to make sure the new policy is clear enough so that even deputies working in the middle of the night would know how to handle ICE requests. “Changes in the legislation do pose some operational concerns.”

Mirkarimi had already instituted policies of resisting many federal immigration hold requests, joining with San Jose, Berkeley, and other cities who oppose the S-Comm program, and this ordinance broadened and codified those policies.

The legislation was strongly supported by the city’s Domestic Violence Consortium, representing an ironic turn of events when Mayor Lee — who waged a protracted and unsuccessful campaign to remove Sheriff Mirkarimi from office for grabbing his wife’s arm last year — threatened to veto it. Avalos also placed second in a crowded field of candidates when Lee was elected mayor in 2011.

It was Lee’s veto threat that ultimately weakened the legislation, a move opposed by activists who work on domestic violence issues. But Kim made clear that despite her amendments, she strongly opposes S-Comm and its local impacts.

“We believe the S-Comm program is deeply flawed,” Kim said, telling the story of a constituent who feared calling the police after their home had been burglarized. “No one should fear calling the police when they need help.”  

Immigration detainer limits watered down

Michael Redmond
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Sup. John Avalos’ Due Process for All ordinance, legislation barring San Francisco law enforcement agencies from honoring detainer requests issued by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the federal Secure Communities (S-Comm) program, faced obstacles at the Sept. 17 Board of Supervisors meeting.

But an amended version returned to the board on Sept. 24, where it was expected to be approved (after Guardian press time for this issue, so check out the SFBG.com Politics blog to see what happened).

The legislation initially had enough support for a veto-proof supermajority, but opposition has surfaced to prevent the legislation from winning approval as written, most notably from Police Chief Greg Suhr and Mayor Ed Lee, who threatened to veto the legislation.

At issue was whether to amend the legislation by including “carve-outs” — exceptions requiring law enforcement to honor ICE requests in cases where offenders are suspected of serious violent crimes, child molestation or human trafficking. Sup. Jane Kim offered amendments giving the Sheriff’s Department discretion in such cases, which she characterized as “thoughtful and limited,” but which were opposed by Avalos and Sup. David Campos.

In San Francisco, ICE detainer requests issued under S-Comm have resulted in at least 784 deportations since 2010. Avalos’ legislation seeks to extend due process to all San Franciscans by making it illegal for local law enforcement to comply with such requests.

–Reed Nelson

LAFCo should launch CleanPowerSF

Michael Redmond
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OPINION Last month, the Mayor’s Office and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) — largely at the mayor’s behest — refused to launch CleanPowerSF, a program which is absolutely crucial to leading the country and the world to reverse the climate crisis (see “Power struggle,” Sept. 18).

The Board of Supervisors must now use its state-granted authority to activate San Francisco’s Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) to launch CleanPowerSF, regardless of SFPUC.

CleanPowerSF plans currently waiting to be implemented would create 1,500 jobs a year for the next 10 years, and install over 400 megawatts of local clean electricity projects. By 2024, 50 percent of our electricity would be generated by such local clean installations.

The newest proposed rates for CleanPowerSF are now fully competitive with PG&E, and the SFPUC’s staff (before the mayor intervened) was making unprecedented progress on the local clean energy installation plans. So at the SFPUC’s Aug. 13 hearing on CleanPowerSF rate-setting, community and environmental advocates stood unanimously to urge that the program be launched.

For the mayor and SFPUC of what is supposed to be one of the most environmental cities on Earth to completely ignore those community advocates, and throw a monkey wrench into the launching of CleanPowerSF, is simply beyond the pale.

Thankfully, in its wisdom, when the 2002 California Legislature passed the Community Choice law that made CleanPowerSF possible, it put city councils and county boards legally in charge of such programs (not mayors).

So is not up to the Mayor’s Office whether or not CleanPowerSF is launched. It is instead the job of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. And in a resounding 9-2 vote on Sept. 17, the Board of Supervisors raked the SFPUC (and by extension, the mayor) over the coals for not initiating CleanPowerSF. The vote was in favor of Sup. London Breed’s resolution demanding that the SFPUC obey the will of the board and launch CleanPowerSF immediately.

That’s a great first step, but the board now needs to go beyond resolutions and take decisive action through LAFCo, its most powerful tool for moving CleanPowerSF. LAFCo is independent of city government, is funded and tasked to oversee new enterprise programs like CleanPowerSF, and four of its five members are elected supervisors.

 

This independent supermajority can check mayoral overreach, and the LAFCo’s current board commissioners are John Avalos, David Campos, Eric Mar, and London Breed, all advocates of CleanPowerSF.

LAFCo was specifically given the budget and authority to act on CleanPowerSF when SFPUC fails to do so, and has already done this successfully in the past. When CleanPowerSF was first created in 2004, SFPUC refused to draft an implementation plan. In response, LAFCo stepped in with its own implementation plan and SFPUC, not wanting to lose influence, got back to work.

In 2011, SFPUC tried to sidetrack CleanPowerSF into only purchasing (but not building) clean power, refusing to fund planning work to establish a local installation and green jobs program. LAFCO stepped in to fund that work itself, and again SFPUC came back to the fold and hired Community Choice experts Local Power to do the work.

Now, yet again, SFPUC is refusing to do its job. Six months ago, it abruptly halted work on the local buildout and green jobs plan, and last month SFPUC put the whole program on hold by not setting rates.

LAFCo must now use its authority and leverage to both remove the rate-setting road block, and get the CleanPowerSF local buildout planning back on track. Eric Brooks is the sustainability chair of the San Francisco Green Party.

Battle of the Bulb

Michael Redmond
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Battle of the Bulb

news@sfbg.com

On a sunny September afternoon, Osha Neumann slowly walks onto the dirt path leading to the Albany Bulb, using a walking stick for balance against the pebbles. With a white beard and lanky frame, the 74-year-old artist and attorney is no stranger to this landfill turned art space turned homeless encampment that juts out of the East Bay shoreline near the Berkeley Marina and the Golden Gate Fields racetrack.

Neumann has been coming for more than a decade, with his son-in-law Jason DeAntonis to build driftwood sculptures, and as an attorney fighting for the rights of the homeless who live on the 31-acre plot. He’s witnessed its evolution from rubble-filled no man’s land to one of the last undeveloped stretches of open shoreline in the Bay Area.

“The Bulb has been a refuge, a solace, a place of inspiration,” he said. “It’s a place where I can get off the grid and live in this wonderful, successful, fruitful anarchy. I came to really love this place.”

But the Albany Bulb is now facing another transition point in its evolution, one that pits nature lovers and city officials against those who have call this strange stretch of shoreline “home.”

>>Check out a slideshow of the Albany Bulb here

 

 

TRASH TO TREASURE

The Albany Bulb is a radical space of massive debris sculptures and structures, huge concrete slabs of graffiti, tents and tree houses, and artifacts from wreckage that, incorporated into the natural landscape of acacia and eucalyptus trees, is a unique and beloved slice of land symbolizing the free spirit of the region.

It’s where sparrows and other birds come to nest, and where dog walkers take dirt paths to the water’s edge. It’s also a space that major organizations such as the East Bay Regional Parks District, the Sierra Club, Save the Bay, the state park system, and the city of Albany have all fought for decades to preserve, with the idea that humans should not be allowed to live there. And in October, due to the enforcement of a no-camping policy approved on May 6 by the Albany City Council, the people living at the Albany Bulb will have to tear down their makeshift homes and say goodbye permanently.

“This has been in the works for 40 years,” said Robert Cheasty, a former Albany mayor and the current president of Citizens for East Bay Parks.

The Bulb became a part of the Eastshore State Park, a stretch of land with a trail along the East Bay shoreline that connects Oakland to Richmond, in the mid 1980s. And with the proclamation of a park came the people. Cheasty has become one of the most outspoken critics of people occupying the Bulb.

“It cannot be allowed to be privatized by any group or person,” he said.

It’s an argument that’s been made many times over the years, but now it seems to be on the verge of coming true.

The first people living in the Bulb came to take up residence after the eviction of the homeless campers from People’s Park in Berkeley in the mid ’90s. Before that, it was used as a landfill for BART and highway construction materials.

Nature inevitably took over, and much of the debris has been moved to certain areas within the park. Some of the first residents were immortalized in the documentary film Bum’s Paradise, where they lived in harmony with four artists known as Sniff, whose paintings and sculptures came to beautify the unconventional living space. In 1999, the first major eviction took place.

“Then, as now, the city provided them no place to go,” Neumann said. “People just scattered with no place to go, into the surrounding jurisdictions primarily.”

Neumann said he worked unsuccessfully with the people living at the Bulb in fighting the 1999 eviction, telling the Guardian, “People were unorganized and it felt hopeless and despairing.”

Neumann said little has changed. The Bulb remained the same, a landfill, albeit without a regular crew of humans living on it. In 2002 the planning of the Eastshore State Park moved ahead, and Neumann, not content to let the Bulb become homogenized, formed the group Let It Be, advocating to keep the “wildness” of the space. It didn’t go over well, and plans moved forward to clear the plateau of its coyote bush, in an area directly north of the racetrack, and fill it in with dirt.

Norman Laforce, who chairs the Sierra Club’s East Bay Shoreline Park Task Force and East Bay Public Lands Committee, has been involved in the planning since its creation. He says hundreds of people worked to make the park possible. He believes that because the city of Albany did not engage in strict enforcement of illegally camping after 1999, it was ripe to be occupied again. And it was.

The city of Albany handed over the deed of the park to the state park system, and the cap and seal order from the Regional Water Board — which stated that the area was clear of any hazardous waste leaching into the bay — was lifted in 2005. Over time, the Bulb’s current 64 residents sought refuge there, about the same number of people who were forced to leave in 1999.

Of those, at least 36 residents don’t have any regular income, while those who do rely mostly on government programs such as Supplemental Security Income. Laforce and Neumann may not agree on much, but both understand the impending enforcement of the no-camping policy to be a new chapter in the Bulb’s story.

 

 

WHOSE PARK?

As Neumann makes his way to one of the resident campsites, he stops to take in the view. It’s an unrivaled panoramic portrait of the San Francisco skyline against the glittering bay. He shakes his head when I ask him about the people who oppose campers at the Bulb.

“I think there is a small group of people who are committed to kicking people out of here,” he said.

“Our position has been that the Albany Bulb is a part of the McLaughlin East Shore State Park and is not to be privatized,” Laforce said of the Sierra Club’s view. “We fully support the removal of the illegal campers that are currently out there.”

The Sierra Club and the Citizens for East Bay Parks cite safety concerns as a reason the campers need to leave.

“I was attacked by somebody’s pit bull,” Cheasty said. “It’s happening regularly out there. It’s the antithesis of open space and public land.”

The city of Albany, hesitant at first to ruffle feathers, now supports the removal of campers. “The City Council is working to achieve the Strategic Plan Goals, adopted in 2012,” said Albany City Clerk Nicole Almaguer in an email.” The goals include maximizing park and open space for all members of the community.”

Almaguer noted that the Albany City Council retained the services of Berkeley Food and Housing Project with a $60,000 contract to conduct outreach and engagement services to the city’s homeless, and voted unanimously to extend this agreement to help the campers at the Bulb.

But she made it clear that once October arrives, the people will need to leave. They will receive verbal and written warnings if they don’t. (A camping violation generally amounts to $161 in fines, according to one of the Bulb campers.) One of the major problems, both Laforce and Cheasty say, is that some of the campers don’t want BFHP’s or the city’s help.

They just want to stay on the Bulb.

Neumann introduces me to three-year resident Katherine Cody, or KC. With pink hair and a wide smile, she seems younger than her 60 years. She babies her shih tzu Eva and makes beaded jewelry. Before living in a tent at the Bulb, she lived in her van. One of the perks to living at the Bulb, she explained, is seeing dolphins swimming in the bay, and watching the 50 to 100 hummingbirds nest in the tree above her tent every year.

KC’s past isn’t so idyllic. She said she was stabbed 20 years ago and the traumatic experience of yelling for help to no avail made her grateful to find a place like the Bulb.

“I am terminally ill,” she said on a recent afternoon, “So I need a lot of help sometimes, and without my having to ask or go begging door to door, my neighbors show up.”

After losing a lot of blood from the stabbing, Cody contracted Hepatitis C from a blood transfusion. Despite its rough exterior, KC and other residents argue that their neighborhood at the Bulb is not any more conducive to drug addiction or infighting than any other neighborhood or town.

“They are not capable of doing this job,” KC said of the Berkeley Food and Housing Project’s efforts. “It’s ridiculous to expect in that time span to be able to get the job done. It’s just long enough to make it look like they were being kind and not throw us out immediately, but it’s not long enough to really do anything.”

For Neumann, who has never been homeless himself, watching his friends and people he has known for years struggle to find a place to live makes him want to resist the city’s enforcement.

“They are criminalizing the status of being homeless in Albany,” Neumann said outside of KC’s tent. “Albany doesn’t have anything. It doesn’t have a shelter, it doesn’t have transitional housing, it doesn’t have available subsided housing, doesn’t have any services. Nothing. Zero.”

Neumann and some of the Bulb campers claim that police from surrounding jurisdictions told many homeless people, forced to leave their encampments in other areas, to go to the Bulb. Albany Police deny the charge, with a spokesperson telling us, “the Albany Police Department did not/does not have a policy of instructing homeless people to relocate to the Bulb.”

Nonetheless, Neumann says, “For a long while, this was Albany’s homeless shelter.”

Amber Lynn Whitson, 32, said that she will celebrate her seventh year living at the Bulb on Oct. 31, if she is able to stay. But she is one of the few inhabitants, she said, who is actually preparing to leave.

“Me and my boyfriend have gotten rid of almost everything we own,” she said between cigarettes. Whitson said she came to stay at the Bulb after moving around a lot.

“It’s so nice here,” she laughed. “When you have been kicked around from place to place and told you don’t belong here, you don’t belong there, it’s so refreshing to be told by the local authorities you belong there.”

Whitson said she isn’t sure where she will go after the no-camping policy is enforced. She is sure though, that the fight to resist will continue.

“This won’t be over in October,” she said. “Even if we are out, it won’t be over in October.”

 

LIGHTS OUT

After we speak with some of the residents, Neumann and I part ways. Before he leaves, he encourages me to take a look around, meet people, and enjoy the art.

Along with the people residing at the Bulb, the art has become a major sticking point surrounding what the Bulb is and what it could be. Cheasty, while not wanting the people to stay, personally doesn’t see the harm in keeping the art intact. In contrast, Laforce believes that part of making the Bulb into a “usable” park requires the removal of the art.

But many people want it to stay. An activist group known as Friends of the Bulb organized a concert with Santa Cruz band Blackbird RAUM at the Bulb for Sept. 28, hoping to draw a large crowd to resist the city’s efforts to remove the campers, and discuss the future of the Bulb.

“We hope it will bring people that live on the Bulb and those that use it to enjoy it together, because who knows how much longer it’s going to be there,” said Doug Gilbert, one of the event’s organizers.

Gilbert said the group started out of the necessity to answer the question of who will control the space: “There are two fundamentally different world views. Those that use the space are the ones in control of it, and those who are truly privatizing it, by deciding who can go there, if the dogs have to be leashed, if the art will stay.”

In the coming month, Laforce said the Sierra Club will continue to support the city’s efforts to relocate the people living there.

“The Albany Bulb is not going to be the homeless solution to the East Bay,” he said. “It’s not just some wasteland.”

Neumann, for his own part, remains skeptical about what will actually take place in October, but he’s certain that, from now on, things at the Bulb will be different. “They do not want to have a repeat of what happened in ’99,” he said before he left for the day. “And that will be the end of this incredible experiment.”

Is Art Torres helping PG&E, helping his son’s political career, or both?

Sasha Cuttler
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54

As I’ve been reporting on how CleanPowerSF is being blocked by Mayor Ed Lee and his political appointees on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, one piece of the puzzle that I couldn’t quite figure out was why SFPUC President Art Torres took the position he did, offering little public explanation for his stance.

“His opposition to the rate vote was strange because he didn’t give clear reasons,” Eric Brooks, who has been led the grassroots campaign in support of CleanPowerSF, told us. Torres also hasn’t returned Guardian calls on the issue, and he refused a formal request from Sup. John Avalos to explain his position.

As a former state senator and longtime former chair of the California Democratic Party, Torres certainly has connections to Pacific Gas & Electric and the array of politicians that support it, include Willie Brown. But that just didn’t seem like enough for a senior statesman with a decent environmental record to sabotage San Francisco’s only plan for building renewable energy projects.

But some of my political sources have clued me into another possible motive, and it seems to make sense. Art Torres’ son is Joaquin Torres, who works in the Mayor’s Office and who Lee in February appointed to the Housing Commission, where Torres now serves as president.

And here’s the kicker: those sources also say that Joaquin Torres has already started running for the District 9 seat on the Board of Supervisors, which is now held by Sup. David Campos, who is running for Tom Ammiano’s seat in the California Assembly. And if Campos wins that race next year, Mayor Lee will get to fill it, possibly naming Torres to one of the most progressive seats in the city.

So dad gets to score political points with some powerful friends, and help launch his son’s political career in the process. These motives are beginning to add up.

Joaquin Torres is now deputy director of the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, “where he leads Mayor Lee’s Invest In Neighborhoods Initiative to leverage City resources across city departments to maximize positive economic and social impact in low-moderate income neighborhoods and throughout San Francisco’s commercial corridors,” the Mayor’s Office wrote in February when Torres got appointed to the Housing Commission.

Sounds like the perfect job for someone being groomed for the Board of Supervisors, where he could have a serious impact on this city’s political dynamic, tipping policies in the neoliberal to moderate direction of expanding corporate welfare programs and speeding up gentrification.

Neither Torres has returned our calls, but I’ll update this post when and if they do. And while this is clearly just political speculation and conjecture, I have a feeling that I’m onto something here. So remember where you read it first.  

Due Process For All must wait another week

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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54

Sup. John Avalos’ Due Process for All ordinance, legislation barring San Francisco law enforcement agencies from honoring detainer requests issued by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the federal Secure Communities (S-Comm) program, faced obstacles at the Sept. 17 Board of Supervisors meeting and was ultimately continued to the following week.

The legislation initially had enough support for a veto-proof supermajority, but opposition has surfaced to prevent the legislation from winning approval as written.

In a recent editorial, Police Chief Greg Suhr called for it to be scaled back. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association came out against it and Mayor Ed Lee threatened to veto the legislation in its current form.

At issue was whether to amend the legislation by including “carve-outs” — exceptions requiring law enforcement to honor ICE requests in cases where offenders are suspected of serious violent crimes, child molestation or human trafficking.

District 6 Sup. Jane Kim, an initial supporter of Avalos’ Due Process for All Ordinance, proposed an amendment that would grant the Sheriff discretion to honor ICE detainer requests in cases where the offender had been convicted of one of the aforementioned crimes in the past seven years.

Kim characterized her amendment as “thoughtful and limited,” but the proposal met with resistance from Avalos and Sup. David Campos. “I am afraid that in the process of trying to do the right thing, we’re going to end up with unintended consequences,” Campos said.

Board President David Chiu indicated that he agreed with including carve-outs in narrow circumstances.

Under S-Comm, if an arrestee shows up in a shared database as an undocumented immigrant, ICE can ask the arresting local law enforcement agency to detain the person in question, even after they would be otherwise eligible for release. Detainer requests, which police have no legal obligation to comply with, are routinely issued without warrants or a requirement to show probable cause.

Avalos’ legislation seeks to extend due process to all San Franciscans by making it illegal for local law enforcement to comply with such requests. In San Francisco, ICE detainer requests issued under S-Comm have resulted in at least 784 deportations since 2010.

The Board Chamber at City Hall was filled to capacity with supporters of Avalos’ legislation before the hearing even began. The line to get into the main chamber stretched all the way down the hallway to the first overflow room, which had standing room only just five minutes after the meeting began. When Avalos initially stood to speak, the chamber resonated with chants of “Si se puede! Si se puede!”

 

Cinthya Muñoz, Immigrant Rights Organizer with Causa Justa, remained hopeful despite the setbacks. “We’re excited that we were able to push back on the amendments being proposed because of how they would impact the vast majority of our communities,” she said. “And we’re still hopeful that we’ll be able to get our Due Process for All policy passed next week.”

Up until recently, Lee lacked veto power due to the ordinance’s supermajority approval. But when Avalos lost his supermajority support due to what he called “political pressure,” Lee regained that power. “Whether it’s relationships directly with the police chief, the mayor, the Police Officers Association,” Avalos told the Guardian, “[the pressure] kind of withered eight sponsor support for not having carve-outs.”

Not to be deterred, however, are those groups and individuals fighting for Due Process for All. Following the continuation announcement, the throngs of supporters filed out of the main chamber and down into the lobby of City Hall, where they gathered and prepared for another hearing, same time, same place.

“It’s actually really great because I think it gives us a bigger chance for the supervisors to hear from community members,” Muñoz said. “That what community wants is Due Process for All, everybody to be treated equally and to not make a differentiation between who’s worth it in our communities.”

Bay Bridge turns Brown

Michael Redmond
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15

The California Senate gave its blessing to the rename the western span of the Bay Bridge after former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown on Sept. 12, blatantly disregarding its own rules and strong local opposition to the proposal.

Since ACR 65 is a nonbinding resolution, Gov. Jerry Brown cannot veto it even though he went on record earlier this week saying the 77-year-old bridge should keep the same name it’s always had.

San Francisco Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee both voted in favor of the resolution.

As the Senate gave final approval to the measure, attorneys G. Whitney Leigh and Lee Hepner filed a complaint seeking injunctive relief to overturn the resolution on behalf of their client, good government advocate Bob Planthold.

At a press conference, Planthold said the lawsuit “has nothing to do with Willie,” but rather sought to remedy what he perceived as state lawmakers ignoring their own rules, including reserving such honors for the deceased, a state of affairs he characterized as “Orwellian.”

Leigh questioned why Sacramento legislators were in such a rush to rename part of the Bay Bridge when construction of the eastern span had only just been completed, following long delays and overruns partly caused by Brown when he was mayor.

“There is a shadiness and irregularity to this procedure,” Leigh said.

The suit alleges “arbitrary suspension and/or violation of legislative rules and policies” to fast track the legislation. Specifically, Hepner said, lawmakers ignored an established timeline for introducing new proposals, instead allowing ACR 65 to be submitted four months after the formal deadline.

Formal Assembly criteria states that clear community consensus must be in place when a major piece of public infrastructure is renamed. Yet in the case of the Willie L. Brown Jr. Bridge, no such consensus exists.

Leigh is the former law partner of Matt Gonzalez, a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who joined former board presidents Quentin Kopp and Aaron Peskin to formally call on Senate pro Tem Darrell Steinberg to stop the resolution from going forward.

On Aug. 29, the trio fired off an open letter to Steinberg in an attempt to halt the proposal from going any further, claiming “there exists significant concern in our community that naming the Bay Bridge for him is not appropriate.”

Peskin had a more colorful take on Brown and bridge when he spoke to the Guardian: “I think they should name the old eastern span, that they’re demolishing, after him. You know why? Because it’s old and crooked and a danger to society.”

Fighting foreclosures

Michael Redmond
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1
Fighting foreclosures

joe@sfbg.com

It will be a long war, but for now, Richmond is winning.

Two battles in the start of the city of Richmond’s war on foreclosures were fought and won in the past week. A US District Court of Appeals judge dismissed Wells Fargo’s lawsuit against Richmond’s controversial plan to use eminent domain to save residents with underwater mortgages (see “Not for sale,” Sept. 3). And Mayor Gayle McLaughlin successfully fought off legislation at the Richmond City Council to torpedo the plan before it started.

“I’m willing to go as high as the Supreme Court to settle this on behalf of our community,” McLaughlin told us. These are the first fledgling steps in that long fight, a fight McLaughlin calls a just cause.

Half of all mortgages in Richmond are underwater, and as homes get foreclosed upon, the problems stack up: blighted neighborhoods, declining property tax revenues, public employee layoffs, rising crime, and homeless families. To stem the tide of foreclosures, Richmond teamed with Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP) to attempt to buy the loans of 624 underwater mortgages and allow the owners to keep their homes.

Richmond’s government sent out offers, and it is still waiting to hear back from the owners of the loans.

The controversy comes when the banks that hold the loans refuse to sell. In that case, Richmond would invoke the power of eminent domain to seize the mortgage loans.

Wells Fargo said in its lawsuit that this is a plan to line the pockets of MRP and the city of Richmond, a greedy and unconstitutional land grab. Eminent domain has never been used for this purpose, but as the judge noted in the lawsuit’s first hearing Sept. 12 in San Francisco, the plan has yet to be acted on.

“Okay, let’s end the suspense, I don’t believe (the case) is ripe for determination,” Judge Charles Breyer told the attorneys from Wells Fargo. “There are a series of steps that can or cannot take place…. If they do take place, that’s the time for the court to take a look at it.”

Breyer noted that if and when Richmond wanted to use eminent domain to seize mortgage loans, the council would need to file a resolution of necessity through state court. At that point, he could act.

On Sept. 16, the case was dismissed. Too little has happened, and it is entirely too early to make any decisions, Breyer said.

Stacey Leyton, a lawyer representing Richmond in the lawsuit, explained the judge’s decision plainly: “Courts are not supposed to review legislative actions before the (legislative body) has decided which action to take.”

The Guardian reached out to Wells Fargo but we were told that it had nothing to say beyond its court filings, and referred us to the investors in the loans, of which Wells Fargo is a trustee.

But why is Wells Fargo pushing so fast for the courts to intervene? The eminent domain plan could mean a possible loss of revenue for Wells Fargo and the investors it represents, sending chills down the spine of Wall Street, a representative of MRP said.

MRP founder John Vlahoplus told us the eminent domain tactic is powerful because for Wells Fargo, legally challenging every municipality in the United States is much tougher than paying off a few fat cats in Congress.

So the stakes are high: if Richmond wins the eminent domain battle, cities across the country could use the tactic to rescue underwater mortgages, and the families that would otherwise lose their homes, swinging the balance of power from Wall Street toward cities.

Score one for Richmond, and zip for Wells Fargo, so far.

 

LOCAL FRONT

But the real drama happened closer to home. Before Richmond could fight the enemies from without, it fought the enemies within.

On Sept. 10, Richmond’s controversial plan for preventing home foreclosures using eminent domain was almost torpedoed at the Richmond City Council meeting, where its members waged a nasty fight before more than 300 attendees.

Advocates for city intervention against the banks won when the council voted 5-2 against a resolution to rescind the city’s offer to purchase 624 underwater mortgages and halt any effort by the city to seize those mortgages through eminent domain.

A separate resolution by Mayor McLaughlin to establish a joint powers authority, uniting cities to battle litigation against the eminent domain plan, also passed.

Vice Mayor Courtland “Corky” Boozé and Councilmember Nathaniel Bates sponsored the resolution attacking the plan, and cast the only votes in its favor.

Boozé and Bates said the city risks bankruptcy if Well Fargo wins its lawsuit, putting Richmond’s financial solvency on the line, but their colleagues were dubious.

“My vote is not supposed to be if (Wall Street investors) are a bunch of jerks and I want to stick it to them,” Councilmember Jim Rogers said to the audience.

After the city laid off a third of the government’s workforce in lean economic years, Rogers has reason to worry. City Manager Bill Lindsay laid out the risks for those in the auditorium.

Because no city has ever tried this before, he said, no liability insurance exists for this kind of work, which MRP has acknowledged. “If you believe the potential loss (of a lawsuit) is catastrophic, it’s important to acknowledge that’s an issue,” he said.

He also said it was tough for the city go it alone as a single entity, explaining the need for a joint powers authority, which would build a coalition of cities against Wells Fargo and other litigants.

State law requires a supermajority of the council, five members, to back any eminent domain action and only at the time that it would take place, he said.

Hours of back and forth passed between the city manager and Boozé who, after some arguing, asked the audience in frustration, “Are 110,000 people worth fighting Wall Street for?”

The crowd roared its answer immediately: “YES!”

The ideological split of the audience was clear: Eminent domain supporters wore yellow shirts with a logo of the activist group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and those against wore red shirts branded “Stop Investor Greed.”

Those sporting the red shirts were mostly from the real estate industry, and in public comment they generally expressed that if someone were to lose their home, well, “so what?”

Lisa Johnson, clad in red, said, “My house is an investment, not a right.”

A representative from Richmond’s Council of Industries asked the mayor to reconsider the eminent domain plan, and to rescind the initiative.

Jerry Feagley, whose Feagley Realtors has sold homes since 1966, said the plan risks damaging all of Richmond’s ability to get credit. He was a seemingly mild-mannered man who is exactly who you’d picture if you think of a businessman from the ’50s, gray suit and all. “If this would go into effect, this would change loans in the entire country,” he said, passionately.

Well, that’s the idea, the supporters countered.

“I was at the March on Washington with Martin Luther King 50 years ago. Yes, I’m that old,” said one woman. She was bent over with age but spoke with volume. “That’s exactly what we have to do. We’re going to have to meet power with power and challenge the status quo.”

More than 50 supporters spoke at the podium. The meeting started at 7pm, and stretched on well past 1am. If there was one central theme to their sentiments, it was this: Richmond has hit rock bottom, and now is the time to fight back.

Councilmember Tom Butt put it in plain terms. “What we’re voting for is a giant game of chicken, and it’s clear two of my colleagues have blinked,” he said, referring to Boozé and Bates. “I’m not blinking.”

The council voted, and amid the turmoil and arguing and anger, the Boozé and Bates measure was rejected.

Having already lost once that night, Bates did not fare well when time came to vote on forming a joint powers authority. El Monte may be the first to join, McLaughlin said, which would help homeowners in need who are often people of color. Bates countered that McLaughlin should look out for “her people” and not try to use “his people” as a front for her legislation. “You don’t speak for my community,” he said, referring to African Americans. When another black council member, Jovanka Beckles, spoke up to thank her “white brothers and sisters” for joining in a fight for justice, Bates was uncompromising. “You are not African American,” he told her. Boozé also had words for the other dissenting African American Councilmember Jael Myrick. “One day you’ll have to stand up and be black,” he said. McLaughlin’s measure then passed 4-3, with council members Boozé, Bates and Rogers dissenting. The last remaining supporters waved their yellow flags and the dwindling crowd clad in yellow shirts left victorious, for now.

Challenge Mayor Lee and his lies

Michael Redmond
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67

EDITORIAL In the long history of San Francisco political corruption caused by Pacific Gas & Electric’s willingness to do and spend whatever it takes to hold onto the energy monopoly that it illegally obtained generations ago, in violation of the federal Raker Act, there have been countless ugly and shameful episodes, many of them chronicled in the pages of the Bay Guardian.

Mayor Ed Lee’s misleading Sept. 10 testimony to the Board of Supervisors, where he deliberately distorted CleanPowerSF and defended the dubious actions of his appointees to kill the program, ranks right up there with some of the worst episodes (see “Power struggle,” page 12). If there were any doubts about Lee’s lack of political integrity and independence, about his unwillingness stand up to his corporate benefactors on the behalf of the people he was elected to serve, this appalling performance should settle them.

It was bad enough when PG&E used money from San Francisco ratepayers to bury public power advocates under an avalanche of lies, fear-mongering, and the testimony of paid political allies every election when its monopoly was being challenged, making it virtually impossible to have an honest conversation about the city’s energy and environmental needs.

But now that advocates for consumer choice and renewable energy have spent more than a decade developing a program that doesn’t require a popular vote, is competitive with PG&E’s rates, would create city-owned green energy projects serving residents for generations to come, and which was approved by a veto-proof majority on the Board of Supervisors, Mayor Lee has stooped to new lows in a desperate and transparent ploy to stop it.

Once again, as he did during his rash decision to remove Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office before even investigating his most serious official misconduct allegations, Mayor Lee has blithely created what Sen. Mark Leno calls a “Charter crisis.” Then, it was over the question of when one elected official should remove another; now, it is whether a trio of mayoral appointees can usurp the authority of the elected Board of Supervisors, the top policymaking body under the City Charter.

Relying on tortured logic and Clinton-esque legalese backflips doesn’t justify the SFPUC commissioners refusal to do their jobs — and it would be deemed official misconduct by a less corrupt mayor. But this mayor sees his job as simply carrying water for the people who put him there, whether that be Willie Brown and his longtime client PG&E, or venture capital Ron Conway and the companies that Lee is heaping with unprecedented tax breaks (see “Corporate welfare boom,” page 14). Please, isn’t there someone out there willing to challenge this corruption and run for mayor? This city, and the future generations living in the warming world we’re creating, deserve better.

Power struggle

Michael Redmond
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51
Power struggle

steve@sfbg.com

Jason Fried could barely believe what was coming out of the squawk box in his office at the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission on Sept. 10, as he listened to Mayor Ed Lee describe the CleanPowerSF program Fried had spent years helping to develop.

The program would give San Franciscans the choice of buying their electricity from clean, renewable energy sources rather than Pacific Gas & Electric’s oil, coal, hydro, and nuclear dominated power portfolio, a program that was finally able to become competitive with PG&E on price and still fund the creation of local clean energy projects.

But the program that Lee described — which three of his appointees on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission have recently decided to block, against the wishes of the Board of Supervisors supermajority that approved it (see “Fizzling energy,” Aug. 21) — sounded nothing like the program that Fried, LAFCo’s senior program officer, knows so well.

As Lee described it, CleanPowerSF is “based on vague promises” and has “questionable environmental benefits,” claiming it has “gotten progressively more expensive” and “creates no local jobs.”

“What the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission did was in the best interests of the city,” Lee said. The city has spent untold hours and dollars over the last decade developing and approving CleanPowerSF.

“It was very frustrating to watch, particularly when you see him just making stuff up,” said Fried. “If he wants to be against CCAs [Community Choice Aggregation, that state-created program the CleanPowerSF is a part of], fine, just say that…But he wasn’t even getting his numbers right.”

 

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND STATISTICS

Questioned by the Guardian following his monthly mayoral policy discussion at the board, where all five questions from frustrated supervisors were about CleanPowerSF, Lee cast himself as sticking to the facts.

“I know that elements of this are somewhat complicated because you have to actually read a lot of volumes of materials to understand the choice aggregation program,” Lee said, claiming, “I’m taking it exactly from facts that were presented.”

But in reality, Lee was cherry-picking facts that were either out-of-date or presented in a misleading way, while ignoring inconvenient questions like how the city can still achieve its clean energy goals without it, or why his appointees are subverting broadly supported public policy on technical grounds that appear to exceed their authority.

Take Lee’s claim that the CleanPowerSF program approved by the board “was 95 percent renewable on day one,” which he used to support his argument that “when the final project is so vastly different than the original intent, the SFPUC has to intervene.”

Lee is referring to the “three buckets” from which the program will draw its energy, as defined by the California Public Utilities Commission. Bucket 1 is the gold standard: juice coming directly from certified renewable energy sources in California. Bucket 2 is renewable energy that isn’t reliable and must be “firmed and shaped” by other energy sources, such as wind or solar farms supplemented by fossil fuels when there’s little wind or sunshine. And Bucket 3 is Renewable Energy Credits, which support creation of renewable energy facilities or green power purchased from other states.

When the board approved the program in September 2012, the SFPUC called for it to secure 10 percent of the power from Bucket 1, 85 percent from Bucket 2, and 5 percent from Bucket 3, although these were just guidelines and the SFPUC was specifically authorized to change that mix.

Lee and other critics of the program decried the program’s cost of more than 14 cents per kilowatt-hour, while supporters worried the price would cause more customers to opt-out, so the SFPUC decided to allow more RECs, while also substantially increasing the amount of guaranteed green power.

“The difference between buckets two and three is not that big a difference,” Fried said, noting the Bucket 2 can actually include a substantial amount of dirty energy. “It really depends on how you’re firming and shaping.”

So the SFPUC increased the size of Bucket 1 to 25 percent and Bucket 3 to 75 percent, with idea being that RECs are only an interim step toward issuance of revenue-bonds to build renewable energy projects that would eventually fill Bucket 1 to overflowing. All for the not-to-exceed rate of 11.5 cents per kilowatt-hour that the SFPUC is refusing to approve.

“Our entire mix would be 100 percent greenhouse-gas-free, but the mayor is ignoring that because it doesn’t fit his ‘green’ argument,” Fried said, also noting that it would be generated in-state by union workers. “PG&E can’t make that same claim.”

CPUC statistics show PG&E derives less than the state-mandated 20 percent of its energy from clean, renewable sources, and that the percentage of its portfolio that is greenhouse gas-free actually dropped in 2012, to 51 percent from 59 percent in 2011. And despite Lee’s emphasis on local jobs, PG&E’s three largest solar projects built in 2012 are outside California.

By contrast, CPSF contractor Shell Energy North America wrote in an Aug. 12 letter that in addition to setting aside $1.5 million for local buildout after its first year, which “should create local jobs,” it is now negotiating in-state wind and hydroelectric (“operated by union labor”) contracts to meet the program’s demands.

But at this point, supporters of the program are running out of options to get that contract approved.

 

“CHARTER CRISIS”

CleanPowerSF has broad political support in San Francisco, from Sups. David Campos, John Avalos, and other progressives, to moderates including Sup. Scott Wiener and state Sen. Mark Leno, who authored legislation to protect nascent CCAs from PG&E meddling and has been a steadfast supporter of CleanPowerSF.

“There’s a constitutional crisis, or a [City] Charter crisis, of sorts,” Leno said, referring to the standoff. “The legislative body has been unequivocal in its desire to proceed and it’s not for this commission to interfere with that decision.”

Leno said PG&E and its allies have played strong behind-the-scenes roles in sabotaging this program. “They are definitely exerting their influence,” Leno said, “they have never stopped trying to derail this.” SFPUC Chair Art Torres, who is leading the obstruction, didn’t return a Guardian call for comment.

If there is a silver lining, Leno said it’s that “PG&E has had to present its own version of green energy. But the two can coexist. We want competition.”

So does Fried, LAFCo, and all of the supervisors who sit on that commission, which has long tried to break PG&E’s monopoly.

“It’s close to checkmate, but we’re trying to breathe new life into this,” Sup. John Avalos, who sits on LAFCo, told us. “Part of the politics can be seen in the mayor’s statements, which are full of misinformation.”

Sup. David Campos, also on LAFCo, told us CleanPowerSF is “a good program, and it’s consistent with what the Board of Supervisors approved. I think it’s a mistake for the city not to move on this and it’s a bad thing for consumers.”

The newest member of LAFCo, Sup. London Breed, authored a resolution supporting CPSF that the Board of Supervisors was set to consider on Sept. 17, after Guardian press time. It recites a history of strong support for the program by the Board of Supervisors, starting with a unanimous votes in 2004 and 2007 to launch the CCA and continuing through the supermajority approval of CleanPowerSF and a $20 million appropriation to launch it in September 2012.

It noted that the SFPUC held 18 meetings on the program between September 2012 and August 2013, and that its Rate Fairness Board determined that rates for the Phase 1 are “technically fair.”

The resolution emphasizes an important governance issue at stake: “Irrespective of the particular policy decision, the Board of Supervisors must protect and defend its authority to make policy decisions.”

Yet there’s been a concerted effort to undermine CleanPowerSF this summer, led by appointees and allies of Lee and PG&E.

At the Aug. 6 Commission on the Environment meeting, Commissioner Joshua Arce pushed Department of the Environment head Melanie Nutter to renounce CPSF as no longer a green power program, something she refused to do. Arce fell a vote short of approving a resolution characterizing the program as not meeting “all of the commission’s original goals” and urging the SFPUC “to work with the Department of the Environment to craft a program that is acceptable to the San Francisco Environment Commission.”

Breed said she was disappointed in Lee’s approach, although she takes him at his word when he says he’s open to alternatives.

“The questions were answered, but there wasn’t any closure in terms of what this means for the future,” Breed said. “If not this program, what’s the alternative?”

If the city is going to meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals, which call for reducing 1990’s carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2017 and 40 percent by 2025, it’s going to have to offer some alternative.

“We need to be aggressive about moving in this direction,” Breed said, “and we need to make sure the public has an alternative to PG&E.”

 

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