Mayor

Is Adachi’s pension reform a Tea Party initiative?

Mary Magee
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54
Is Adachi’s pension reform a Tea Party initiative?

With all eyes on Wisconsin, local labor leaders are suggesting that Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s proposed retirement/health plan reforms are really Tea Party initiatives, even as Adachi threatens to place another Measure B-like initiative on the fall ballot if city leaders can’t agree on a fix for the city’s fiscal problems

Last fall, Adachi started a war with the local labor movement when he placed Measure B on the November ballot. Measure B proposed increasing employee contributions for retirement benefits, decreasing employer contributions for heath benefits for employees, retirees and their dependents, and changing rules for arbitration proceedings about city collective bargaining agreements,

Measure B ultimately failed, but not after both sides spent a ton of cash. And now labor is refusing to have Adachi sit in on their pension reform talks with Mayor Ed Lee, former SEIU President Andy Stern is describing the fight in Wisconsin as a ’15 state GOP Power grab,” and SEIU Local 1021 leader Gabriel Haaland is pointing to Wisconsin as a reason for excluding Adachi from pension reform talks

“Adachi’s obviously scapegoating a group that’s part of a national agenda,” Haaland said, noting that in the states where Republicans gained statehouse control in 2010, there’s talk about eliminating collective bargaining, and ending defined benefit plans and paycheck protection.

“The problem is that pension reform has been blowing on the anti-public sector worker winds that are blowing in Wisconsin and other states, whether progressives want to acknowledge it or not,” Haaland continued. “There is a reason that Adachi got so much money last year, and the corporate interests behind him are part of this effort to bash public sector workers.”

Prop. B’s campaign finance records show the campaign raised $1.125 million in 2010, and that the lion’s share came from wealthy individuals.

Billionaire venture capitalist, former Google board member and Obama supporter Michael Moritz gave $245,000. Author Harrier Heyman, Moritz’ wife, donated $172,500. financial analyst Richard Beleson donated $110,000. George Hume of Basic American Foods donated $50,000. Gov. Schwarzenegger’s former economic policy advisor David Crane gave $37,500. Philanthropist Warren Hellman donated $50,000. Republican investor Howard Leach, who co-hosted a Prop. B fundraiser with former Mayor Willie L. Brown, gave $25,000. Investor Joseph Tobin gave $15,750. Maverick Capital partner David Singer gave $15,000. JGE Capital Partners donated  $15,000; Bechtel owner  Stephen Bechtel Jr gave $10,000: Matthew Cohler, a general partner of Benchmark Capital, donated $10,000; the California Chamber of Commerce donated $5,000 and philanthropist Dede Wilsey gave $1,000.

But records also show that Measure B opponents, which included San Francisco Firefighters, SF Police Officers Association, SF First Responders, the California Nurses Association, United Educators, San Francisco Gardeners, San Francisco Teachers, Library Workers, laguna Honda Workers, donated over $1 million in their successful bid to squash Adachi’s reform. And that just about every elected Democrat, including Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, then mayor Gavin Newsom, Sheriff Mike Hennessey, and Board President David Chiu, came out against Adachi’s original plan.
 
Haaland acknowledged that the argument could be made that the progressives’ version of the hotel tax didn’t pass and less attention was paid to the district elections last fall, because labor focused primarily on defeating Adachi’s Measure B.

“But at the end of the day, we did get the real estate transfer tax and we defeated Measure B,” Haaland observed. “So, we need to keep fighting anti-worker pressure. It’s challenging times, but I feel like the connections need to be made.”

Adachi was swift to refute Haaland’s claim that his Measure B pension reform is and was a Tea Party initiative.
“What’s not been reported is the fact that there are all these people supporting pension reform who are progressive Democrats,” Adachi said, pointing to Moritz, Crane and former Board President and Green Party member Matt Gonzalez, who all supported Measure B last fall.

“You are talking about saving basic services and that’s a progressive cause,” Adachi continued. “You might argue that pension reform isn’t a progressive solution. But then you are saying that the needs of one group of workers are subservient to the needs of other workers. And even if you raised every tax in the city, you’d not be able to keep up with pension and healthcare costs.”

“Even if we could raise parking tickets to $200 a pop, and tax folks who make more than $100,000 a year, that still wouldn’t solve the problem, because the problem is so huge,” Adachi added. “When you look at this crisis, you can’t simply redbait and say, you are a Republican, or Sarah Palin. Matt Gonzales has always spoken for progressive values, but because he supports pension reform, he’s suddenly a member of the Tea Party? At a certain point, it begins to become absurd.”

Haaland countered that he’s  “challenged by the notion that thousands show up in Wisconsin to fight some of the same people behind Measure B, but our discourse has lowered to whether or not Jeff Adachi is a good guy.”

And Adachi expressed doubt that Mayor Ed Lee can come up with a suitable pension reform plan.

“I’ve heard Lee say there has to be a solution involving pension reform and underfunded healthcare benefits that would save $300 million to $400 million in annual savings, and that corresponds with the solution he needs to come up with to close the budget deficit,” Adachi said.

Adachi said that he has met with Lee on his own to discuss pension reform, but the new mayor did not list specifics.
“He didn’t tell me what his plan was,” Adachi said, “The Prop. B supporters have a plan, but Lee did not ask what that was. But he said he sincerely wants to solve that problem, and that his preference would be one ballot initiative that everyone would agree on. And I fully support a solution that is going to truly solve the problem. I’ve always believed it’s important for the public to understand the gravity of the situation. For too long, it’s been the elephant in the room and there hasn’t been enough public information.”

Adachi said he had a beef with the idea of “groups of labor unions holding meetings at City Hall and deciding who can participate.”

“It’s also troubling that there is no information publicly available about what the ideas on the table are, no explanation of how they got there, and no documenting of the extent of the problem,” Adachi continued. “And that’s what got us here in the first place: a lack of transparency, and voters being asked to weigh in without the full information.”

Adachi said he has an upcoming meeting with Lee, the Department of Human Resources and Sup. Sean Elsbernd about pension reform that is separate from the working group that includes labor and philanthropist Warren Hellmann.

And Elsbernd told the Guardian he believes the pension reform process would go smoother if Adachi were at the table.
“I have no problem with Jeff at the table, it makes sense to have him there to avoid two ballot measures,” Elsbernd said.

Elsbernd added that it was too early to cite numbers when it comes to talk of capping pensions.
“It’s a mistake to pick a number right now because you don’t know what it’s worth,” he said, noting that the pension reform working group has sent a bunch of different scenarios to retirement actuaries to crunch the numbers to see how much they would save the city.

“I can see a case being made for asking the highest paid city workers to contribute higher amounts for healthcare benefits,” Elsbernd said. “But I’m not sure that’s equitable on retirement benefits, though I could see a situation where safety pays more, regardless, because they have better pensions.”

Mirkarimi running for sheriff

Zelda Bronstein
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17
Mirkarimi running for sheriff

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is going to file papers today (Feb 22) to begin his campaign for sheriff.

Mirkarimi told us he wants to continue the progressive legacy of Mike Hennessey and to work to reduce recidivism. “Eventually, almost everyone who’s incarcerated comes back to the community,” he said, noting that more than 60 percent of people released from the county jail are re-arrested at some point. “We have to work on re-entry programs to lower that number,” he said. “It’s about keeping communities safe.”

Hennessey, long regarded as one of the city’s most progressive elected officials, has served as sheriff for 31 years. He’s been a national leader in progressive law-enforcement programs, and last year made headlines by fighting the federal mandate that local authorities turn over to immigration offices anyone arrested in the city without proper documentation. He announced recently that he won’t seek another term in November.

Since nobody else has announced an interest in the job — and nobody with Mirkarimi’s record and name recognition is even being mentioned — he becomes the instant front-runner. But it won’t be an easy campaign — the last thing downtown wants is another progressive in citywide office — particularly someone who, like Mirkarimi, could one day use the sheriff’s office as a platform to run for mayor.

Mirkarimi is a graduate of the San Francisco Police Academy and former investigator in the district attorney’s office. He’s been a champion of community policing and antiviolence programs — but as someone who has never been part of the local law-enforcement community, he comes to the race with political independence.

“One of the greatest successes of Mike Hennessey was that he was an independent sheriff,” Mirkarimi noted.

We’ll have more details in the Feb. 23 issue.

Onek to SFPD Chief turned D.A. Gascon: release records of officers cleared in shootings

Mary Magee
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3
Onek to SFPD Chief turned D.A. Gascon: release records of officers cleared in shootings

Calitics has a revealing letter from David Onek, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, a former member of the San Francisco Police Commission and a candidate in the 2011 District Attorney’s race, demanding greater transparency from the D.A.’s office when it comes to explaining why officers have been cleared in officer-related shootings.

“After spending my career working to identify and implement the most effective public safety strategies, I have seen one constant – the community is safest when the police and prosecutors earn and keep the public’s trust,” Onek writes in a letter that is guaranteed to turn up the ante in an already intriguing race. “That’s why I read with real concern that the San Francisco District Attorney’s office would not produce reports related to officer-involved shootings pursuant to a recent public records request from NPR-affiliate KALW.”

(The KALW report shows that the person in the D.A.’s office who penned the letter denying its request for records was Paul Henderson, D.A. Kamala Harris’ chief of staff and her preferred pick as replacement D.A. before Gavin Newsom appointed former SFPD Chief George Gascón as his last act as mayor, shocking just about everyone except Willie Brown, especially when it came out that Gascón used to be a Republican and is not philosophically opposed to the death penalty. And while Gascón, who was registered in recent years as decline-to-state, promptly turned around and registered as a Democrat, he also filed papers in the D.A.’s race that cite the phone number of notorious campaign attorney Jim Sutton.)

In his post on Calitics, Onek notes that as a former Police Commissioner, he was briefed in closed session on the details of officer-involved shootings, and he often heard complaints from community members about how little public information was released about officer-involved shootings.
“This lack of transparency breeds distrust,” Onek observes.

Onek acknowledges that in all officer-involved shootings, the DA’s office conducts an independent review to determine if there is criminal liability, and that if such liability is found, the DA presses charges, which are public. “But when the DA determines that there is no liability, it is equally important that the DA publicly explain the reasons for its decision,” Onek states.

In short, he believes the D.A.’ office should issue a very detailed report on every officer-involved shooting in which it does not file charges and should make the report publicly available on its website. “The report should detail the facts, the law and the reasons for the decision not to file charges,” Onek says, arguing that complete transparency would make the job of police and prosecutors much easier by building trust between law enforcement and the community, making it more likely that community members will work in partnership with police and prosecutors, and that victims and witnesses will come forward to testify.

“Publishing detailed reports that clear officers when they acted within the law can dispel public misconceptions about what actually happened,” Onek concludes. “Of course, officers’ privacy rights need to be respected and investigations cannot be compromised. But once an investigation is complete, and an officer has been cleared, it is imperative that the District Attorney’s office share its findings with the public. “

And as Onek points out, this standard is already in place in communities in California. “The District Attorney’s office in San Diego, hardly a bastion of liberalism, actually lists these cases on its website,” Onek states. “Many other counties – including Los Angeles, Orange and Fresno – also make them matters of public record and available on request. Building trust with the community is the key to enhancing public safety. Let’s not violate that trust by refusing to release documents that the public has the right to see.”

I’ve got a call into D.A. Gascón’s office to learn more about the rationale for denying KALW’s request, and I’ll be sure to post his reply here, so stay tuned.

Warren Hellman: The rich are undertaxed

Zelda Bronstein
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31
Warren Hellman: The rich are undertaxed

I couldn’t reach financier Warren Hellman before I wrote my column in this week’s paper talking about the employee pension discussions. But he called me yesterday (Feb. 16) after he’d seen it, and I expected he’d give me some shit.


Wrong.


In fact, Hellman had only one problem with my analysis: “Your article is didn’t go far enough.” Turns out he thinks I was a bit too easy on the billionaires.


“When you compare upper-echelon tax rates [in America] to any developed country in the world,” Hellman said, “the rich pay very low taxes here. You’re article is exactly correct — the wealthy are undertaxed.” He told me that he’s stopped trying to amass more personal wealth (“it’s all going into a foundation”) because he realizes that he couldn’t possibly spend all the money he has “and all that happens if you leave it all to the next generation is that you spoil your kids.” 


Quite a statement coming from one of the city’s richest and most influential business leaders.


Of course, putting all the money in a foundation isn’t the only answer.   The only way to address the wealth gap, and the decline in social, education and infrastructure spending, to for the government to get more involved — and that means collecting more tax money from the people who can afford to pay it. Hellman told me that he’s not about to accept a reduction in his lifestyle — but we both agreed that he doesn’t have to. He could pay a lot more in taxes and still be really, really rich.


So we talked about my proposal, which goes like this:


I’ve got a suggestion for the pension reform negotiators. Why not talk a little about parity.


 Yes, pensions have to be fixed; let’s start at the top. Maybe nobody should have a pension of more than $100,000 a year; certainly, a former police chief shouldn’t get $250,000 a year for life. Maybe the highest-paid city employees should have to pay more into the pension system to protect the pensions of the people who make less. I could easily support progressive pension reform that would save the city money.


 I just think tax reform should also be part of the equation.


 Hellman wants $300 million in pension savings? Good — how about pairing it with $300 million in new taxes on the wealthy? How about big business and rich people give up something this time around, instead of all of the cuts falling on public employees and poor San Franciscans?


And Hellman, to his credit, didn’t disagree with the concept. His problem he said, was with the politics. “Taxes are the third rail of politics,” he said. “I’ve gotten my head handed to me three times now when I’ve supported tax increases.” 


But I still think there’s a way to move forward here. The city employee unions agree to some sort of pension reform, which starts with a pension cap and higher payments from higher earners (not with what amounts to a pay cut for lower-wage employees who have already taken pay cuts in the past few years). Then Hellman, Mayor Ed Lee and Sup. Sean Elsbernd agree to support a progressive tax measure that would bring in badly needed revenue for public services and education.


It’s possible that the tax measure would have to wait until Nov. 2012, when it would only require a 50 percent vote. Maybe both measures go on that ballot. And Hellman, Elsbernd and Lee use their clout with downtown to push the Chamber of Commerce and the Commitee on JOBS to at least stay neutral and cut off any big-money campaign against the tax measure. Then they all agree to help raise money and campaign to pass it. And labor agrees to work for both measures.


Hellman said he feared that “one would kill the other” and both measures might fail. But I believe the people of San Francisco are willing to support new taxes — progressive new taxes — if they don’t think the money’s going to waste. And pairing pension refrom with new taxes sends a strong message: We’re all sharing the pain. Particularly if Hellman, Elsbernd and Lee can sell the tax package part of the deal to the business community.


It’s worth a try. Because otherwise, we’re going to have another Prop. B battle, both sides are going to spend a ton of money, and nobody’s going to walk away happy.


“It’s worth thinking about,” Hellman told me. I hope so.

Adachi and Ballard’s pension reform gloves come off

Mary Magee
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64
Adachi and Ballard’s pension reform gloves come off

Yesterday, I talked to Public Defender Jeff Adachi about the latest efforts to address pension reform in San Francisco. Readers may remember that Adachi roused the ire of the labor unions last year, with the ultimately unsuccessful Proposition B. At the time, most folks felt Adachi’s measure didn’t have a snowball’s chance because it asked public employees to bear the brunt of the city’s ballooning retirement and health plan costs. Yet, they all praised Adachi as a great city leader who has been on the right side of many other battles in this city’s rich political history.
But the pension reform issue hasn’t gone away, and now that Adachi is threatening to introduce another measure this fall, the gloves have apparently come off, as witnessed by a Bay Citizen article that reported that union leaders don’t want Adachi to be part of a pension-reform working group at City Hall
In that Bay Citizen article, Nathan Ballard, who served as communications director for former Mayor Gavin Newsom from 2007 to 2009, said, “Inviting Jeff Adachi to our talks would be like inviting Sarah Palin to speak at the Democratic convention.”
The Bay Citizen characterized Ballard as “a Democratic strategist who has been involved in the working group since its inception.” And it noted that Mayor Lee had reached out to Adachi—an effort that it framed as a “complicating move.”
But it didn’t get Adachi’s thoughts on Ballard’s comments. So, I asked Adachi how he felt about being compared to Sarah “Moose in the headlights” Palin.
“It’s ironic that a spokesperson from Burson-Marsteller, which is headed by Republican operatives such as President Bush’s former press secretary (Dana Perino) and represents some of the most reactionary corporate interests, such as USA Blackwater, is accusing me of being a Republican for trying to solving our city’s pension crisis,” Adachi replied, referring to the fact that Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations firm, appointed Ballard as a managing director in March 2010.
“This is a company that is known for representing the worst corporate criminals in modern history,” Adachi continued. “They organized a campaign against civil rights in Argentina, supported a government massacre in Indonesia and tried to justify the killing of over 2,000 people in India’s Bhopal disaster. You have a hired mouthpiece, Nathan Ballard, who’s been paid $50,000 out of union member dues deciding who can attend meetings at City Hall. “
Asked for his thoughts on Adachi’s response, Ballard replied, “Burson-Marsteller employs talented operatives from both sides of the aisle. Although I won’t speak to the specifics of Jeff Adachi’s allegations, Burson is well known as the world’s go-to firm for crisis communications, and that tends to involve handling high-stakes disputes for controversial clients. As a criminal defense lawyer, Jeff Adachi should resist the temptation to assign blame to an advocate for accusations made against a client.”

So, buckle your seats, ladies and gentlemen. The pension reform battle is ON. And if the exchange posted above is any indication, it’s only going to get uglier

Dense in the west

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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9
Dense in the west

rebeccab@sfbg.com

A marathon special meeting of the San Francisco Planning Commission on Feb. 10 demonstrated a clear split over Parkmerced, a $1.2 billion private development project that will rebuild an entire existing neighborhood on the west side of San Francisco.

While some expressed strong enthusiasm for moving forward with the ambitious plan, many residents turned out to voice vehement opposition, citing concerns about traffic congestion, noise, dust, and the demolition of affordable apartments that some Parkmerced tenants have occupied for decades.

The votes to certify the project’s environmental analysis and send the plan onto the Board of Supervisors with a commission endorsement were split 4-3, with Commissioners Christina Olague, Hisashi Sugaya, and Kathrin Moore dissenting.

Those who voted no were appointees of the Board of Supervisors, while the four commissioners who voted in favor were appointees of former Mayor Gavin Newsom, suggesting a break along clear political lines. State Assemblymember Tom Ammiano also submitted a letter urging commissioners not to approve the project.

While Parkmerced Investors LLC, the project sponsor, eagerly awaits groundbreaking, spokesperson P.J. Johnston noted that they weren’t there yet. “First,” he said, “we have to break ground at the Board of Supervisors.”

 

IS IT GREEN?

The Parkmerced redesign has been touted as an ecological and sustainable beacon for urban development and, indeed, some features of the grand plan read as if they were plucked from a checklist from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green-neighborhood standards.

Walkable, bikeable streets with proximity to transit? Check. Water-efficient landscaping? Check. Energy-efficient dwellings? Check. Project sponsors claim that through dramatic reductions in per capita resource consumption, three times as many residents would consume the same amount of water and electricity as Parkmerced’s current population does today.

Johnston emphasized how adding new units to the west side of the city also helped contribute to “density equality,” since most new projects tend to be concentrated in the eastern neighborhoods.

Johnston was particularly jazzed about an innovative storm-water discharge system envisioned for the plan, which he described as a design that could “regenerate and repair the environment.” It would recirculate rainwater through a naturally filtrating system of ponds and bioswales to recharge Lake Merced, a water body that has been slowly shrinking due to being choked off from its natural watershed by a concrete urban barrier.

Green points might be awarded for plans for an on-site organic garden, but Commissioner Michael Antonini, who said he lives less than a mile from Parkmerced, cautioned that developers shouldn’t get too attached to that idea. After all, he said, many kinds of vegetables won’t thrive in that part of the city.

Meanwhile, the wholesale destruction of existing units is decidedly not eco-chic. The Green Building Council’s LEED neighborhood standards insist that “historic resource preservation and adaptive reuse” is always preferable in a green development — and that’s the point that Aaron Goodman, an architect who previously lived at Parkmerced, has been driving at for more than a year. Proponents maintain that Parkmerced’s wartime construction meant it was built with inferior materials, and that property owners have battled dry rot and other infrastructure problems.

Another not-so-green Parkmerced project feature has also raised eyebrows: parking. While proponents portray the redesign as a switch from a suburban, love-affair-with-the-automobile style to an enlightened departure from car-centrism, plans nonetheless include a parking space for every single unit.

That creates the potential for more than 6,000 new cars on the road in that area, and the 19th Avenue corridor is already notorious for traffic snarls. According to calculations by the Environmental Protection Agency, the typical American motorist generates more than five metric tons of carbon dioxide by driving in a given year.

 

REPLACING WHAT’S THERE

Before the Planning Commission meeting, residents from the Parkmerced Action Coalition — a relatively new residents’ group formed to oppose the redevelopment and a wholly different entity from the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization — made a public show of their dissatisfaction outside City Hall. Holding signs with slogans such as “Don’t Bulldoze Our Homes,” residents sang protest songs and chanted, “We are Parkmerced!”

With the dramatic makeover, Parkmerced would expand to around 8,900 units, tripling the number of residents who could be accommodated. Existing 1940’s-era garden apartments would be razed to make way for higher, denser housing. The plan comes at a time when neighboring San Francisco State University is undergoing its own phase of expansion.

“This project in its current state is a vision that is not in harmony with the people, place, or the environment,” charged Cathy Lentz, an organizer with the Parkmerced Action Coalition, in a vociferous plea to the commissioners. “It is a narrow vision, a corporate vision … a true vision would be inclusive of present dwellings, inclusive of animals, trees, and present environment.”

One resident lamented the pending loss of his garden courtyard, noting how much his children had enjoyed the green space growing up and listing the different kinds of birds that would surely be driven away by heavy-duty construction and tree removal. For many, the point was not so much what developers intended to build, but what would be lost to make way for it. One speaker dismissed the plan as “architectural clear-cutting.”

Commissioner Moore, an architect, sounded a similar note when she rejected the notion that the Parkmerced redevelopment should be hailed as infill, a desirable development concept that curbs sprawl by utilizing space efficiently. “Urban infill housing is defined as infill on vacant sites,” Moore said, “not sites that have become vacant by demolition.” She added that she believed the environmental impact review “fails to sufficiently examine why housing demolition is even necessary.”

In Moore’s view, “the only reasonable alternative is a significantly redesigned … project.”

 

WORKING-CLASS NEIGHBORHOOD

Unlike a luxury condominium development, the Parkmerced plan emphasizes built-in economic diversity — yet critics point out that as it stands, the housing complex is already inclusive of many lower-income, working-class residents.

The plan will incorporate several hundred below-market rate units, in accordance with the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance. Commissioner Antonini also emphasized the boost to city coffers from tax revenue associated with the project.

Meanwhile, questions are still arising on the issue of rent control. “We do not believe it is appropriate for the City and County of San Francisco to be displacing rent-controlled residents,” noted Michael Yarne, a mayoral development advisor. A binding agreement between Parkmerced Investors LLC and the city of San Francisco, which will be linked to the land, promises that new units will be made available to rent-controlled tenants at the same monthly rate they now pay, with rent control intact (See “Weighing a Landlord’s Promise,” Dec. 21, 2010).

Yet Polly Marshall, a commissioner on the San Francisco Rent Board, noted that she still didn’t believe tenant protections were adequate. She also spoke to the pitfalls of tearing down and redoing an entire neighborhood.

“The proposed Parkmerced development is the kind of development that I normally would support. It’s the kind of thing I work on in my profession,” noted Marshall, an attorney who has worked on redevelopment projects. “What’s different about this project is that it involves an existing community. It requires devastation of that community. It reminds me of the old-style redevelopment projects that went on in the Fillmore that destroyed existing neighborhoods. Look around that area now … there’s high density housing there, but that’s about all. The community — the networks of the people — was destroyed decades ago.”

Marshall took it a step further, offering her analysis on why Parkmerced was targeted. “It’s because it’s a working-class neighborhood of renters,” she said. “That’s why we’re going to destroy Parkmerced.”

Green Bay Packers’ Desmond Bishop drops in on Lee

Mary Magee
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3
Green Bay Packers’ Desmond Bishop drops in on Lee

So, there I was sitting in the Mayor’s Office with fellow Guardian reporter Rebecca Bowe waiting to see Mayor Ed Lee when in walks Green Bay Packers linebacker and D10 native Desmond Lamont Bishop, who helped win the Super Bowl XLV, this month.

Turns out Bishop was there to see Lee, shortly before D10 Sup. Malia Cohen honored Bishop during the Board’s Black History month commendations’ ceremony.

We didn’t get a chance to interview Bishop (he was whisked into Lee’s office super quick), but Bowe and I surfed the web while waiting for our appointment with Lee and soon learned that Bishop was born in San Francisco on July 24, 1984, is 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighs 238 pounds, and was at Cal in 2005/06, before being drafted by the Packers in 2007, where he wears jersey number 55.
 
Cohen later confirmed that Bishop was born in Hunters Point and went to Visitacion Valley Junior High, before going to high school in Fairfield, and then returned to San Francisco to attend City College before heading to the University of California.

“Desmond is also deeply involved in his community,” Cohen said in a press release, which notes that Bishop started the Desmond Bishop Football Camp and participates in programs to help kids to be healthy and learn to read, including the Boys and Girls Club.“The Bishop family moved to San Francisco over 50 years ago, and Desmond’s grandfather still lives in Bayview Hunters Point.”

Too bad we didn’t have a chance to get Bishop’s autograph, but hopefully next time…

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

In a heartwarming Valentine’s Day blog, Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, talks about an old cartoon that ran in the 1980s showing Democrats trying to develop a centrist economic policy that cut spending on social programs. “How is this different from Republicans?” one Democrat asks. The answer: “We care about the victims of our policies.”

That, Krugman says, “is pretty much my reaction to the Obama budget.” The president talks about how awful the cuts will be, how programs he cares about will have to go, how painful this all is for him. Not that he’s going to miss any meals or wind up homeless, but whatever: we can all feel his pain.

It’s also pretty much my reaction to The Bay Citizen report that ran in The New York Times Feb. 13 on the pension reform negotiations going on at City Hall and in the office of billionaire financier Warren Hellman.

Hellman, Mayor Ed Lee, Sup. Sean Elsbernd, and some labor leaders are talking about how to avoid another bruising ballot measure fight this fall. Hellman backed off from supporting Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s Proposition B last year after some labor folks convinced him they could come up with a better plan.

Hellman’s new bottom line: the group needs to find between $300 million and $400 million in savings. He is quoted as saying: “I hate that it comes out of the hide” of city workers. “It is going to be really painful.”

Warren Hellman’s not a bad guy. I’ve met him, he’s polite and friendly, sometimes even almost sort of a liberal on some issues, and I think he does feel bad about cutting the pensions of low-level city employees. I even agree with him that the pension system needs reform.

But here’s the problem: nothing ever comes out of the hides of the rich.

Over the past five years, San Francisco has cut hundreds of millions in city spending. City employees have given back many millions more in concessions. Nonprofits have cut back services to the poor, the disabled, the sick.

But we haven’t asked big business and wealthy people to give up anything. Hellman hasn’t had to tighten his belt. Corporate executives in the city still make huge salaries. They’re not closing the swimming pool at the Olympic Club.

I could support pension reform — if Hellman, Elsbernd, and Lee would support tax reform. Then we can all feel each other’s pain. For once.

Mayor Ed Lee willing to disclose work calendar

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1

Among the many issues that rankled progressives under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration was Newsom’s unwillingness to turn over his work calendar to members of the public who formally requested it. Beginning in 2006, a group of sunshine activists routinely submitted public-information requests for the mayor’s daily schedule in hopes of finding out who Newsom was meeting with, what events he attended, and just how he spent his time on the job as mayor of San Francisco. After years of battle, Newsom finally agreed to release a watered-down calendar containing very little information.

On this matter, it does not seem as if Interim Mayor Ed Lee will follow in the footsteps of his predecessor.

In an interview with Guardian reporters today, Mayor Lee indicated that he would be willing to make his calendar available to the public. “Sure,” he said when we asked him about it. “I have no problem with that.”

Lee noted that he has complied with similar requests in the past. “I’ve had those already reviewed as the City Administrator, so I’m used to it,” Lee said.

He added that while he was willing to share his work-related calendar, “I may not want to share where I privately go every night.”

That’s OK. Thanks to former Mayor Willie Brown, we already know Lee went out to dinner in North Beach the other night with Brown, Rose Pak, and several others.

Hellman and Obama feel your pain

Zelda Bronstein
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Hellman and Obama feel your pain

The Bay Citizen has a detailed report on the backroom discussions taking place around pension reform, and there aren’t any real surprises. The cops and firefighters seem to be leading the talks from the public-employee union perspective, although the other unions are there, and Mayor Lee has taken over the gavel from financier Warren Hellman. Sean Elsbernd is involved, but they’ve kept Jeff Adachi out. (And what the hell is Nathan Ballard doing in this mix?)


But what got me when I read the story this weekend was the quote from Hellman:


In an interview Thursday afternoon, Hellman said the group must come up with annual savings of $300 million to $400 million. (Proposition B was to have saved the city $120 million.)


“I hate that it comes out of the hide” of city workers, particularly those making modest salaries, Hellman said. “It is going to be really painful.”


It reminds me of Obama’s comments on his budget cuts: They’ll be painful and he hates to do it, but these tough decisions have to be made for the good of all of us.


My question: Why doesn’t anything ever come out of the hides of the billionaires?


From the start of this recession, working-class people, public employees and the poor have taken huge hits. Nothing — nothing — has happened to the top echelon of society. If anything, they’ve only gotten richer. The bankers who destoryed the economy with financial instruments even they didn’t understand? They’re not in the poor house. They haven’t had their homes foreclosed. They’re all doing just fine.


In fact, the United States government just kindly allowed them to keep their tax cuts for another two years.


Obama isn’t going to miss any meals. His kids will still have their fancy private school. He won’t have to worry about his pension vanishing or eating cat food in his old age. Same goes for Hellman; there’s nothing in the world that he could possibly want to buy that he can’t have.


So it makes me really mad to hear them talk about feeling bad about budget cuts and reducing pensions. If they feel bad, then why not do something about it?


Hellman’s not a bad guy. I’ve met him, he’s pleasant and polite and sincere about wanting to help the city. I couldn’t reach him on the phone today, but I’ll keep trying, because I have a question:


Over the past five years, city employees have given back hundreds of millions of dollars in wage and benefit concessions. Social programs have been cut by hundreds of millions more. And the rich in this town have given back nothing. Mr. Hellman: Is that fair?


I’ve got a suggestion for the pension reform negotiators. Why not talk a little about parity.


Yes, pensions have to be fixed; let’s start at the top. Maybe nobody should have a pension of more than $100,000 a year; certainly, a former police chief shouldn’t get $250,000 a year for life. Maybe the highest-paid city employees should have to pay more into the pension system to protect the pensions of the people who make less. I could easily support progressive pension reform that would save the city money.


I just think tax reform should also be part of the equation.


Hellman wants $300 million in pension savings? Good — how about pairing it with $300 million in new taxes on the wealthy? How about big business and rich people give up something this time around, instead of all of the cuts falling on public employees and poor San Franciscans?


I’m good with pension reform, really I am. And I’m not involved in the negotiations. But I’m a San Francisco progressive who will have to vote on the ultimate outcome. Give me something to work with here, guys.


 


 

Twitter tax break could help a well-connected landlord

Sasha Cuttler
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Opposition to the proposal to give millions of dollars in city payroll tax breaks to Twitter and other companies that open for business in the mid-Market area has focused on the bad precedent of caving into demands for corporate welfare and the lead role that two people who call themselves progressives – Sup. Jane Kim and Board President David Chiu – are taking in pushing the deal.

But behind-the-scenes, there’s another aspect of the deal that is troubling to advocates for transparent government that acts in the broad public interest, rather than that of powerful individuals. And once again, the specter at the center of this insider deal-making is none other that former mayor Willie Brown, whose close allies seem to once again have the run of City Hall.

The mid-Market property that Twitter wants to move into is San Francisco Mart, a million-square-foot building at Market and 9th streets, which sources say has been having a hard time finding tenants to fulfill its ambitious plan to “transition and reinvent” the old furniture outlet as a modern home for high-tech businesses. Most recently, they were unable to seal the deal with Twitter – until the tax break proposal popped up.

The building is owned by millionaire developer Alwin Dworman, founder of the ADCO Group and someone who has had a 30-plus-year friendship with Brown, who sang Dworman’s praises in this 2007 article from the San Francisco Business Times discussing this property and others. The property is also operated by Linda Corso, longtime partner of Warren Hinckle, a local media figure with close ties to Brown (as well as Gavin Newsom, who last year named Hinckle as his alternative representative to the DCCC). Reached by phone yesterday, Corso said she wasn’t directly involved in the negotiations with Twitter and would have someone call us, but nobody did.

Brown’s name has been popping up quite a bit in recent months as he and his allies re-exert their deal-making influence on the city, starting four months ago with his stealth support for Kim’s campaign and continuing with his role in elevating his protege Ed Lee to the interim mayor post (the way the pair ran City Hall when Brown was mayor is also the subject of an investigative report in this week’s Guardian) and placing ally Richard Johns onto the Historic Preservation Commission over progressive objections that he was unqualified.

Reached on his cell phone, Brown refused to comment, telling us, “I don’t want to talk to the the Bay Guardian ever in my life. Goodbye.” There is no indication that Brown or other representatives for Dworman lobbied the supervisors over the deal, and both Kim and Chiu say they weren’t contacted. “I’ve never spoken to the man and I don’t know much about his business,” Chiu said of Dworman, although he said that he was told by people in the Mayor Office, which brokered the deal, that Twitter was looking at moving into Dworman’s building.

Kim has maintained that she has very little contact with Brown and doesn’t know why he supported her candidacy. And she said the benefits for Dworman and other big mid-Market landlords who will profit from her legislation wasn’t a factor in her decision to sponsor it. In a prepared statement to the Guardian, she wrote, “I am not aware of any lobbyists for the Mid-Market legislation and therefore certainly have not met with any.  I have communicated directly with Twitter, who are [sic] excited to be a part of revitalizing the Mid-Market corridor and about partnering with community-based organizations and schools who serve the neighboring communities of SOMA and the Tenderloin.  Our office has convened neighborhood stakeholders who will be directly impacted by this legislation and they are currently committed to being a part of this dialogue over the next month.”

Kim told us last week that she philosophically opposes business tax breaks, but that she wanted to help stimulate the mid-Market area and keep Twitter from following through on its threat to leave town. Despite calling himself a progressive, Chiu has supported using targeted tax breaks as a economic development tool, including the biotech tax credit. And yesterday, he told us, “I would love to bring more companies in the mid-Market area…If we don’t do this policy, we will see future years of zero economic activity in that area.”

But progressives say these tax breaks are nothing but corporate welfare that will exacerbate the city’s budget deficit. During a benefit event for Lyon Martin Health Services last night at the Buck Tavern, which is owned by Kim predecessor Chris Daly, signs plastered throughout the bar urged the public to oppose the Twitter tax break in order to preserve public health and other vital city services.

The Ed Lee documents

Zelda Bronstein
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The Ed Lee documents

One of the depositions taken in a case involving fraud and corruption in city contracting contains some fascinating detail about how City Hall worked under Mayor Willie Brown — and the role the current mayor, Ed Lee, played in the behind-the-scenes action. The deposition of Deborah Vincent-James, who used to run the city’s technology purchasing agency, was taken by Matt Springman, an attorney with Gonzalez and Leigh. You can read the whole thing here (pdf).It gets pretty interesting around page 49, and the Ed Lee/Willie Brown stuff starts on p. 85.

Garbage curveball

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Garbage curveball

sarah@sfbg.com

A newly released report from the Budget and Legislative Analyst has thrown a curve ball at the Department of the Environment’s proposal to transport the city’s garbage by truck and rail to Yuba County for disposal in Recology’s Ostrom Road landfill.

Recology’s proposal would kick in when the city’s disposal contract with Waste Management’s Altamont landfill reaches its 15 million ton limit, which is anticipated to occur in 2015, or beyond (see “A tale of two landfills,” 06/15/10). But as that much-anticipated proposal finally comes to a Board of Supervisors committee on Feb. 9, the debate has suddenly been significantly broadened.

The Budget and Legislative Analyst’s report recommends replacing existing trash collection and disposal laws with legislation that requires competitive bidding on all aspects of the city’s waste collection, transportation, and disposal system. It also recommends that the Board of Supervisors require that refuse collection rates for both residential and commercial services be subject to board approval, and that competitive bidding could result in reduced refuse collection rates in San Francisco.

The annual cost to ratepayers of the city’s entire refuse system is $206 million, but only the landfill disposal contract, worth $11.2 million a year, gets put out to competitive bid, the BLA observes.

Debra Newman, an analyst with he BLA, told the Guardian that she has been asked why she brought up all these issues in advance of the Board’s Feb. 9 Budget and Finance committee hearing to discuss the Department of Environment’s recommendation that Recology be awarded the disposal contract. The company already has a monopoly over collection and transportation of waste in San Francisco thanks to an 79-year-old voter-approved agreement.

“Our position is that this is the only opportunity to address these issues with the board because of the way the city’s 1932 refuse collection and disposal ordinance reads,” Newman said. “This is the only vehicle we would have because nothing else is going to come to them. The residential rates don’t come to them, the commercial rates don’t even come to the Rate Board. This is our chance to discuss the whole kit and caboodle of waste collection, transportation, and disposal.”

The BLA’s Feb. 4 report notes that “Unlike water rates charged by the SF Public Utilities Commission, neither residential or collection rates are currently subject to Board approval, under the city’s 1932 refuse ordinance.”

Residential rates are approved by the director of Public Works, unless such rates are appealed, in which case they are subject to the approval of the city’s Rate Board, which consists of the city administrator, the controller and the SF Public Utilities Commission director. Recology sets the commercial rates, which are not subject to city approval.

Voters previously rejected two attempts to allow for competitive bidding for refuse collection and transportation (Prop. Z in 1993 and Prop. K in 1994). And the BLA observes that if the Board doesn’t go to the ballot box, it could ask DoE to analyze costs and benefits of using Recology to collect refuse, and using a separate firm to provide transportation, if that firm can avoid transporting refuse through San Francisco’s streets.

Under the never-ending waste ordinance that the city approved during the Great Depression, 97 permits exist to collect refuse within the city, and only authorized refuse collectors that have these permits may transport refuse “through the streets of the City and County of San Francisco.” Due to a number of corporate acquisitions, Recology now owns all 97 permits and so has a monopoly over refuse collected in and transported through the streets of San Francisco.

But the BLA report was unable to identify any portion of the city’s 1932 refuse ordinance that governs the transport of refuse that does not occur through the city’s streets.

“Therefore, it may be possible for a second firm, other than Recology, to transport refuse after it has been collected by Recology, if that second firm’s transfer station was located either outside the city limits or was located near marine or rail facilities, such that refuse from the transfer station to the city’s designated landfill could avoid being transported through the streets of the city and county of San Francisco,” the BLA states.

“These are nuanced issues and they’ve evolved,” Newman observed. “All we are doing is trying to help the board try and decide what to do on this matter. We are saying that the current approach is a policy matter for the board, and recommending that the board submit a proposal to the voters to amend the refuse collection and disposal ordinance.”

The BLA report comes 15 months after the city tentatively awarded the new landfill disposal agreement to Recology to deposit up to 5 million tons of waste collected in San Francisco in Recology’s landfill in Yuba County for 10 years. The award was based on score sheets from a three-member evaluation panel composed of City Administrator (now Mayor) Ed Lee, DoE Deputy Director David Assmann, and Oakland environmental services director Susan Katchee.

The trio scored competing proposals from Recology and Waste Management, and awarded Recology 254, and WM 240, out of a possible 300 points. Lee’s scores in favor of Recology were disproportionately higher than other panelists, and the BLA notes that the largest differences in the scoring occurred around cost.

The BLA concluded that the city’s proposed agreement with Recology was subject to the city’s normal competitive process, “because the landfill disposal agreement is the sole portion of the refuse collection, transportation and disposal process which is subject to the City’s normal competitive bidding process.” And it found that because the transfer and collection of the city’s refuse has never been subject to the city’s normal bidding process, approval of the proposed resolution is a policy decision for the board.

But while DoE’s Assmann has said that California cities must maintain a plan for 15 years of landfill disposal capacity, the BLA notes that such plans can include executed agreements and anticipated agreements. And WM officials confirm that Altamont has capacity for 30 to 40 years. This means the board need not rush its disposal decision.

The BLA report comes against a backdrop of intense lobbying around Recology’s proposal. Records show that in 2010, Alex Clemens of Barbary Coast Consulting recorded $82,500 from Recology, and Chris Gruwell of Platinum Advisors recorded $70,000 from Waste Management to lobby around the city’s landfill disposal contract.

And now both firms continue to press their case in face of the BLA report.

“Folks are trying to cloud the issue,” Recology’s consultant Adam Alberti, who works for Sam Singer Associates, said. He claims the BLA report concludes that Recology’s proposed contract is the lowest cost to rate payers, saving an estimated $130 million over 10 years, that Recology’s green rail option is the environmentally superior approach, and that the city’s contract procurement process was open, thorough, and fair. “In short, the process works—and it works well,” Alberti said. “The rate setting process is an important subject, and one the board should review, but the one before the board now is a fully vetted contract.”

Alberti claimed that contrary to the conclusions of the BLA, which found commercial collection rates are significantly higher in San Francisco than Oakland, Recology’s rates are cheaper than Oakland—once you factor in Recology’s recycling discounts.

Waste Management’s David Tucker said the BLA report “raises lots of good questions.”

“We have said from day one that transportation was a component of the request for proposals [for the landfill disposal contract] that no other company other than Recology had an option to bid on,” Tucker said. “Had we been able to bid on the transportation component, our costs would have been lower.”

Tucker believes that no matter who wins the landfill contract, the BLA report points to a lack of transparency and openness under the city’s existing refuse ordinance.

“Up until this time, no one has been able to understand the process,” Tucker said. “If the Budget and Legislative Analyst has shown that there are some inconsistencies in the statements made by the Department of the Environment, if the process has slight flaws, then the whole process from the request for proposals to the pricing needs to be revised. And time is on the City’s side. There is no need to rush into a decision. Yes, our contract with the city is ending, but our capacity at the Altamont clearly goes into 2030 and 2040. So, this is an opportunity to toss out [Recology’s] proposal and start again.”

Asked if Recology is planning to rail haul waste to Nevada, once its Ostrom Road Yuba County landfill, Alberti said that the city’s current procurement process prohibits that.

“Will that be around next time? I don’t know,” he said. “Recology’s first goal is reducing waste, and managing it responsibly. We believe rail haul is an integral part of that.”

And he insisted BLA’s report should not be connected to Recology’s disposal contract.

“Recology believes that the system is working very well, as evidenced by the fact that it’s yielded the best diversion rates, lower rates than average, and has an open and thorough rate-setting process set by an independent body,” he said. ” We feel the recommendations are separate from the matter-at-hand. But if the board so chooses to have this debate, we’re anxious and happy to be part of that discussion.”

David Gavrich, CEO of Waste Solutions Group, which transports waste by rail and barge from San Francisco, praised the BLA report for “finally peeling back the layers of the onion” on the city’s entire waste system. Gavrich notes that in June 2009, he and Port Director Monique Moyer advised DoE of an option on a piece of long-vacant port property that offers direct rail and barge transportation of waste and could result in tremendous long-term savings to ratepayers.

“But we never got a reply to our letter,” Gavrich said. “Instead, DoE pushed forward with Recology’s trucking of waste to the East Bay, the transloading of waste from truck to railcar in the East Bay, and the railing of waste east to Yuba County.”

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, which sits on the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee, is concerned that the city is considering enlarging Recology’s monopoly, without calling into question the reform of the 1932 charter.

“I don’t think these two questions should be disconnected in the way they are in the proposal to award Recology the landfill disposal contract,” Mirkarimi said. “The city and the DOE are very defensive about this and have a well laid-out defense to show that they followed the letter of the law in awarding this contract. But that leads to a secondary set of concerns: namely are we getting the best bang for our bucks, and is there something less than competitive about the current process.”

Mirkarimi admits that Recology has been committed to many of the city’s environmental policy advances. “But that’s aside from the larger question of what this mean in terms of institutionalizing further the expansion of a monopoly,” he said. “Our utilities are governed by monopolies like PG&E. So, should we be going in the same direction as 1932, or thinking if we want to diversify our utility portfolio?”

SF’s redevelopment miracle

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
SF’s redevelopment miracle

OPINION While many of us (and most of the rest of the state) can tire from time to time when we hear San Francisco “exceptionalism” being touted, especially when Gavin Newsom is doing the touting, there are some cases in which it’s justified. One of the most salient is the way San Franciscans transformed the city’s Redevelopment Agency and used tax-increment financing to build housing and infrastructure that served its residents, not elite developers.

This is an exceptional story that Gov. Brown does not want to hear. He should both listen and learn from San Francisco’s experience.

The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency started out like all others: destroying low income neighborhoods to create what the San Francisco Planning and Renewal Association, a strong agency supporter at the time, called ” ‘clean’ industries [and a] population … closer to ‘standard white Anglo-Saxon Protestant’ characteristics … ” But the big difference was that San Franciscans fought back.

In the 1960s in the Western Addition and SoMa, community organizations were formed that sought legal assistance and stopped the agency in its tracks. In the 1970s, new community coalitions were formed to deny the agency new federal funding. By the 1980s, the agency was broke and its mission of urban renewal so blocked and discredited that SPUR changed the last two words in its name from “Urban Renewal” to “Urban Research.”

In 1988, Mayor Art Agnos brought in the opponents of redevelopment and asked them how to redesign the agency. The product of that collaboration was a new mission statement and an ordinance fully integrating the agency into city government — transforming it into a financing agency, with no operational role.

Since 1990, the agency has become the major funder of affordable housing in San Francisco, pouring more than $500 million into low-cost housing both inside and outside redevelopment areas. More than 10,000 units have been built for working and low-income residents, more than half of those units for families with children. The urban infrastructure needed to transform Mission Bay from a toxic rail yard to a residential and biotech center came from the agency. Since 1990, not one neighborhood has been bulldozed by the agency and two new ones are being created (Mission Bay and Transbay).

Yes, some of the tax increment has been used to do some infrastructure work at ATT Park, and former Mayor Gavin Newsom wanted to entice the 49ers with agency funds for a new stadium at the shipyard. And yes, former Mayor Willie Brown gave Bloomingdale’s some agency money for its Market Street store. But the reality is that 50 percent of all tax increment since 1990 has gone to affordable housing development, and the bulk of the remaining 50 percent has gone for critical needed infrastructural work that has produced new property taxes more than paying for the investments. As the state and federal government turned their backs on central cities it was the only form of financing available.

And now Gov. Brown wants to end tax-increment financing. He points to the excess of other redevelopment agencies in other places. He does not, however, look to us and our experience. He should. San Francisco should be the model for what is required of all redevelopment agencies.

After serving as mayor of Oakland, Brown is probably tired of hearing about how different San Francisco is, how exceptional we are. That’s too bad, because in this case it isn’t hype. It’s real. *

Calvin Welch lives and works in San Francisco.

Dirty business

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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24
Dirty business

rebeccab@sfbg.com

The owner of a certified minority-owned business in San Francisco is suing the city, charging that his telecommunications company went belly up after city officials falsely accused him of participating in a fraudulent kickback scheme within the city’s Department of Building Inspection (DBI).

The case and depositions of high-ranking officials offer a rare window into the inner workings of city government at a time when corruption was rife within DBI and regulations governing city contracting were considerably less strict. They also provide a glimpse at how city business was sometimes conducted under the administration of Mayor Willie Brown, a powerful figure who has resurfaced recently in San Francisco politics.

In addition, the case alleges inappropriate behavior by current Mayor Ed Lee when he was the city’s purchasing director. One of the depositions includes allegations that Lee, at Brown’s direction, approved a city contractor who was utterly unqualified and was later accused of being part of a criminal scam.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit — James Brady, CEO of Cobra Solutions — closed up shop years ago and moved to Sacramento with his wife and business partner, Debra. But he’s been locked in an ongoing legal battle against powerful forces in City Hall since 2003, when he claims the city stopped issuing payments to his company, terminated its contract, and declined to award it a new contract on suspicions of bribery.

“They want to make us look like we’re Bonnie and Clyde,” Brady told the Guardian. “We’ve never done a thing.”

Nancy Fineman, an attorney with the firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, which is representing the city in the case, said the corruption allegations against Cobra still stand and she emphasized, “The city attorney was not involved in doing anything wrong.”

In a complaint filed Jan. 7, attorney G. Whitney Leigh — law partner of former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez — alleges that a host of city officials are responsible for precipitating Brady’s financial ruin.

According to Leigh’s version of events, Cobra was dragged into an overzealous campaign to hold someone accountable after a contractor the city alleged was corrupt vanished, leaving a number of subcontractors unpaid and the city “with egg on its face.”

Leigh subpoenaed Ed Harrington, former city controller and current head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission; Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda; former officials from the Office of Contract Administration, and others to testify out of court during discovery. Leigh describes the case as “a Shakespearean tragedy combined with a cartoon combined with a soap opera.”

For City Attorney Dennis Herrera, it might be more like a zombie flick. The city attorney is gaining momentum in his campaign for mayor and has taken an early lead in fundraising against his opponents. The Cobra Solutions saga might be one that he — and other top city officials — would rather forget.

 

CONFLICTS AND CRACKDOWNS

Appeals in the case have reached all the way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled that Herrera had a conflict of interest that should have disqualified his office from suing Cobra. Beginning in September 2000, before he was elected city attorney, Herrera provided legal representation to Cobra while working with a private firm called Kelly, Gill, Sherburne & Herrera.

Due to the disqualification, Herrera could not discuss specifics in the case. But he did offer us a general comment. “I’ve made it very clear that me and my office are going to have zero tolerance for corruption and individuals who would violate the public trust,” he said. “This case, I think, represents that philosophy.”

When Herrera was campaigning for city attorney in the November 2001 race, he ran on a platform of cracking down on fraud and corruption. The DBI case began as a triumphant delivery of that campaign promise.

In 2003, following a yearlong investigation by a Public Integrity Task Force that Herrera had convened, a corrupt DBI official named Marcus Armstrong got busted by the feds. He’d allegedly falsified the qualifications on his resume and set up shell companies to funnel money out of city coffers for his own personal gain. He pleaded guilty to corruption charges brought by the U.S. Attorney, and spent time in prison for cheating the city out of about $500,000.

Herrera brought a civil suit against Armstrong and a DBI contractor, Government Computer Sales, Inc. (GCSI), which allegedly partnered with Armstrong in a kickback scheme. Questions surrounded GCSI from the start. It only gained certification as a city contractor after being rejected multiple times by city staff as unqualified. Deborah Vincent-James, who directed the city’s Committee on Information Technology (COIT) at the time and has since died, testified in a 2008 deposition that GCSI was “fraudulent” and got the contract only because of ties to Mayor Brown.

Herrera hit a stumbling block when he amended the complaint to name Cobra Solutions and its management company, TeleCon Ltd., as another city contractor in on Armstrong’s kickback scheme. (Debra Brady was president of TeleCon, which predated Cobra. Although the Bradys insist the two entities were separate, Herrera named TeleCon in the suit as an alter ego of Cobra.)

Cobra struck back, claiming the City Attorney’s Office wasn’t entitled to file suit against the company because Herrera’s old firm had represented Brady. Herrera told us the whole thing came about “because of the 18 minutes that I billed to work for Cobra.”

Herrera’s office initially denied any conflict of interest. “Immediately upon discovery of Cobra’s role, the office screened Herrera off from further involvement in the investigation and all matters related to it in accordance with a stringent ethical screening policy Herrera established when he took office,” according to a statement issued by the City Attorney’s Office.

But the Supreme Court disagreed in a 2006 ruling. “The possibility that the City Attorney’s former client might be prosecuted for civil fraud by the City Attorney’s office may test public faith in the integrity of the judicial system,” the ruling stated, “raising the specter of perceptions that the former client will be treated more leniently because of its connections, or more harshly because of leaked confidences.”

 

COBRA’S CASH

The city’s lawsuit alleged that Cobra paid Armstrong about $240,000 in bribes in exchange for $2.4 million worth of business with DBI from April 1999 through 2000. The allegation was based on checks Cobra sent to Monarch Enterprises, which the city said was an Armstrong front. The investigation found that GCSI paid Armstrong about 10 percent of the contract amount in a similar fashion.

“Armstrong used these and all other funds received from Cobra for his personal benefit and gain,” the suit claimed. The complaint also charges, “Cobra … knew that Monarch enterprises was wholly owned and controlled by Armstrong, and that any payment made by Cobra was in fact a payment to Armstrong.”

But Cobra’s suit claims an FBI investigation into Cobra’s involvement found no wrongdoing. Additionally, “We turned all of our records over to the U.S. Attorney,” Leigh noted, and that didn’t lead to a criminal prosecution.

Brady calls the corruption allegation “a big lie,” and says his company’s name has been wrongfully sullied. He says Armstrong led him to believe Monarch Enterprises was an Internet company performing training, support, and computer security upgrades as a subcontractor. The bills came in, and Cobra believed it was responsible for paying for the service, Brady said. “We mailed the checks, and never thought about it.”

Before the trouble started, Cobra Solutions was in a growth phase, having gone from four employees to 35 in just a few years. James and Debra Brady moved from Colorado to San Francisco in the late 1980s with nothing. James Brady worked as a manager in several SROs, became a member of the Tenderloin Merchant’s Association and helped establish a credit union serving low-income residents.

The couple established TeleCon Ltd. and started out as city subcontractors providing voicemail services. At first, they had very limited resources. “Prior to being able to afford an office, Debra frequently used the telephones in the women’s lounge at Nordstrom to conduct business,” according to her bio.

Cobra was established after Vincent-James urged the Bradys to submit a bid for an upcoming contract. The city had opened up a Request for Proposals (RFP) for vendors who wanted to be admitted to the Computer Store, an entity created to speed up municipal orders for technical services.

Before then, it could take six months for the city to purchase so much as a desktop computer. A Human Rights Commission vetting process, designed to ensure that city contractors adhered to environmental and social justice criteria, caused long delays. Then-City Purchaser Ed Lee created the Computer Store to solve this logistical challenge. Vendors who applied for membership were vetted in the RFP (minority-owned businesses were given preference), admitted as certified contractors, and granted preference by city departments in need of IT services.

Cobra’s first departmental contract through the Computer Store was a $1.3 million agreement to provide technical services for DBI, working with Armstrong. Things got off to a rough start.

“We could never find the guy, he would never be at work, and when we did see him, he was complaining,” Brady recounted. According to Cobra’s complaint, “it ran into a series of disputes with DBI and Armstrong over the scope of work and particular payment issues,” and Cobra was eventually awarded a settlement reflecting services it provided after Armstrong changed the scope of the work.

Brady says he sought city help in dealing with Armstrong. According to Cobra’s complaint, he appealed for assistance to COIT, which oversaw the Computer Store. Cobra’s relationship with Armstrong soon soured, and the DBI deal dissolved.

According to the description of Vincent-James, “The relationship between James Brady … and Marcus got worse … Marcus got another company involved because James Brady would not do what Marcus wanted to do.”

The other company was GCSI.

 

NEW PHASE

Things got better for the Bradys before they got worse. Cobra became one of the city’s largest technology services providers, netting $14.5 million in contracts with various city agencies by 2003. They relocated to a nicer, more spacious office in the Financial District.

A partnership with IBM granted them access to higher credit limits than ever. The couple had a home custom-built in El Sobrante. When GCSI vanished without a trace, Vincent-James called on Cobra to hire some of the GCSI subcontractors who had gotten burned in the process, according to a deposition from former city purchaser Judith Blackwell.

By 2003, the Public Integrity Task Force’s DBI investigation was in full swing, but Brady didn’t know it. He says he started experiencing problems getting paid, yet couldn’t get an explanation from city agencies.

According to Cobra’s complaint, “The city intentionally frustrated payments to Cobra and TeleCon because investigators hastily and incorrectly concluded that the companies had conspired with Armstrong in a GCSI-type scheme to defraud the city.”

Fineman, the city’s attorney, said she strongly disagrees with “the idea that we just stopped and left them in the lurch,” emphasizing that there had been a whole separate legal proceeding arising out of the fact that “Cobra was not paying its subcontractors,” in violation of its contract.

The city defended its decision to delay Cobra’s payments by pointing to the GCSI scandal, which had left city agencies high and dry. “By the time the City discovered GCSI’s fraud and stopped making payments to GCSI, GCSI had already received millions of dollars in city payments that were not then passed on to the subcontractors,” a letter from the City Attorney’s Office to Brady’s attorneys explained. “Once the city started investigating the payments to GCSI that Marcus Armstrong authorized, GCSI’s assets, officers and staff disappeared. … The city has an obligation to its taxpayers to prevent the GCSI scenario from unfolding with regard to Cobra / TeleCon.”

Brady insists that because Cobra couldn’t get paid, it couldn’t pay its subcontractors, or its creditors, either — and the financial holdup triggered a cascade of losses. “I’ve got IBM, Booz Allen Hamilton, and American Express breathing down on me like a dragon,” he said. “Everybody wants to get paid. We owed folks after we couldn’t collect our receivables.”

The bills were piling up. “We were sinking fast,” said Debra Brady, “so we sold our house in El Sobrante.”

Brady said he was stunned to learn that Cobra had been named in Herrera’s suit.

“I have 37 employees, and I had to go in and tell them. I was all choked up and the phone was ringing, and it was my attorney on the line telling me that the FBI was coming. I could not believe that after everything we had achieved in the last three years, my former attorney was filing a lawsuit against me.”

 

CLEARING THEIR NAMES

After filing the complaint against Cobra, the City Attorney’s Office called on the company to submit to an audit — but Cobra refused on the basis that Herrera’s firm had represented it in the past. “The City Attorney’s assumption of the role of auditor seems calculated to exacerbate and expand the existing conflict of interest,” Cobra attorney Ethan Balogh wrote in an April 2003 letter. “This problem could easily be solved by allowing an agency other than the City Attorney to conduct the audit.”

In a lengthy back-and-forth, Herrera’s office responded: “You have never explained why your client, having been caught sending over $240,000 in cash to a San Francisco IT manager who authorized over $2.4 million in payments to Cobra/TeleCon during the period of time which he received those payments, has elected not to immediately … open its books and records to the city. Instead … you have raised a host of constantly-shifting objections and arguments as to why the city’s demand was inappropriate.”

Cobra’s lawsuit charges that the City Attorney’s Office never informed the Controller’s Office that Cobra would have allowed an audit by another party. At the same time, it charges, city attorneys weren’t allowing Cobra to communicate with the controller directly, due to the legal dispute.

“The question of who would do the audit and whether or not the City Attorney was doing the audit was not something that I was aware of or certainly had not agreed to,” Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda said during her deposition.

Meanwhile, Cobra had received the highest Human Rights Commission score of any bidder for a renewal on the Computer Store contract, an HRC document shows. Brady received a letter stating that his company would be awarded a new Computer Store contract — but shortly after, he got a second letter reversing that award.

Judith Blackwell, who oversaw city purchasing under Brown’s administration, explained why during her deposition with Leigh. After Cobra’s bid evaluation, Blackwell testified, her office moved to award the contract — but the controller intervened, saying Cobra shouldn’t be awarded a new contract because of the Armstrong scandal. Blackwell wasn’t willing to throw Cobra out, however.

“I learned from watching politics that I cannot afford to bend the rules,” Blackwell testified. “If I step outside the precise boundaries in any way, or if any African American administrator does, they are probably not going to be interpreted in the same way as if anyone else did it. Based on the … procurement code, there is no way that I could, as the purchasing director, just throw them out.”

Blackwell testified that Zmuda requested that she sign paperwork denying Cobra the contract, and Blackwell received a warning when she refused. “She told me that I needed to remember that when [Mayor Brown] was gone that they, the Controller’s Office, and [Chief of Staff Steve Kawa] — I knew that is what she was implying — were in charge,” Blackwell said. Once Mayor Gavin Newsom replaced Brown, Blackwell was let go. She now lives in New York City.

Blackwell testified that losing her job came as a surprise, since she’d worked on Newsom’s campaign and expected to keep her position. “I had asked him something about why it happened and he said … he knew nothing about it and people were acting without, you know, basically not at his direction,” Blackwell testified. “I said, well, Mayor Newsom, you are in charge. And his response was, oh, I wish that were so.” 

 

ED LEE APPROVED UNQUALIFIED CONTRACTOR ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION

GCSI — a company accused of defrauding the city after improperly being given a city contract by Ed Lee, allegedly at the urging of then-Mayor Willie Brown — is long gone.

“I don’t think they’re around,” Nancy Fineman, an attorney representing the city, told the Guardian. “We’ve just been focused on Cobra and TeleCon.”

The story of how GCSI came to be a city contractor may be the most fascinating part of this case, one that could have repercussions today, even though it happened in the late-1990s.

Like Cobra Solutions, GCSI was a contractor with the city’s Computer Store — gaining admission after being repeatedly rejected by city staff, according to a 2008 deposition with former COIT director Deborah Vincent-James, who has died.

Vincent-James testified that GCSI didn’t meet the minimum qualifications and recounted how, during an interview with city officials about the bid, a member of the City Attorney’s Office noticed a wire peeking out from the suit of a GCSI representative who had been surreptitiously taping the meeting.

“San Francisco was not aware of GCSI’s wrongful conduct, financial problems, or legal difficulties at the time it hired GCSI to work on the DBI projects,” a city lawsuit claimed. Nor had the city realized that, “GCSI’s president and owner had been arrested and imprisoned by a federal judge for contempt of court and for disbursing funds in an effort to avoid …efforts to collect its loan.”

GCSI principal Robert Fowler resided in both Washington, D.C., and California, was believed to be a citizen of Sweden, and was also the director and owner of a bank located on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, according to Herrera’s complaint.

“From day one, I knew that they were not qualified,” Vincent-James’ deposition transcript reads. She went on to say that the official city process for evaluating contractors was “totally bypassed.” Nonetheless, “We had to admit them to the Computer Store.”

“Who told you, you had to admit them to the Computer Store?” attorney Whitney Leigh asked.

“The director of purchasing,” states Vincent-James’ deposition transcript. “Ed Lee.”

She went on to testify that Lee had been acting under the direction of Mayor Brown. According to her deposition, “[Lee] was directed by the Mayor’s Office and told to do an evaluation process. They evaluated them. They were put in the store.” She also testified, “Principals of GCSI hired an attorney who had been in the State Legislature with Mayor Brown and … GCSI had felt that because we were asking intrusive questions during the oral interview, such as ‘Why do you have that wire hanging out of your coat?’ … They felt that biased the committee toward … not hiring them.”

Neither Brown nor Mayor Lee’s office responded to requests for comment.

GCSI is still a codefendant in the complaint, but the principals of the defunct company seem to be off the hook. A 2008 story from the Anchorage Daily News noted that Fowler had emerged as the head of a natural gas company in Alaska. The Bradys, meanwhile, are getting ready for another court date in March. “We keep going to court,” Debra Brady said. “I’m kind of like, when is the end coming?”

Richard Johns is closer to developers than preservationists

Sasha Cuttler
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2
Richard Johns is closer to developers than preservationists

The controversial mayoral appointment of attorney Richard Johns to historian’s seat on the Historic Preservation Commission is being challenged in court by Gertrude Platt and a group of local preservationists calling itself The Prop. J Committee. They are asking the judge to remove Johns from his post.

“Voters approved Proposition J creating the Historic Preservation Commission for the clear and distinct purpose of protecting San Francisco’s historic resources. To erode the voter-mandated qualifications and expertise on the Commission undermines the will of the voters and the intent of the law,” Platt, a 14-year member of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board (which 2008’s Prop. J replaced with the commission), said last week in a prepared statement.

The group’s press release noted that “Johns is a business attorney and husband to Eleanor Johns, former Mayor Willie Brown’s longtime senior staffer and confidante dating back to his tenure as Speaker of the California Assembly. Mr. Johns is not an historian….No testimony or material was presented to the Board of Supervisors to establish otherwise.”

In fact, Johns’ resume and comments to the Guardian two weeks ago (when he dismissed concerns about his connections to Brown as “lame” and “silly”) indicate that his only experience in historic preservation has been working for almost 20 years to preserve the Old Mint, by serving on the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society Board of Directors. But a review of that body doesn’t inspire much confidence that he’ll stand for historic preservation in the face of pressure from developers.

The president of the board is Jim Lazarus, who is the senior vice president for public policy at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and a regular advocate for greater development of the city. There are other real estate and corporate representatives on that board as well, most notably Martin Cepkauskas, director of real estate for the Western Properties Division of Hearst Corporation, which is the middle of seeking city permits and approval to redevelop its historically significant Chronicle Building, where the paper has been since 1924, adjacent to Mint Plaza.

So we asked Lazarus, Johns, and Cepkauskas about what would seem to be a conflict of interests between board members who are pushing for development and John’s new role as a guardian of historically significant buildings. After I e-mailed the trio, Lazarus responded to the group “I will respond to this guy,” to which Johns wrote “good” and refused to answer further Guardian inquiries.

In a phone interview, Lazarus said there was no conflict because “nobody has any financial interest in the Mint Project. It’s a pure nonprofit board.” He also made the distinction that “we’re concerned with preserving San Francisco history, not buildings.” But in the name preserving history, the society helped create Mint Plaza, a welcoming plaza across from the Chronicle Building that is ringed by restaurants, retail, and office space.

Lazarus personally bought Cepkauskas onto the society’s board last year because the Hearst project “will have to do community mitigation and I want the Mint to be the beneficiary of that mitigation.” Yet he denies that there is a conflict between the interests of his board and the Hearst project and that of historic preservation and the public interest.

Lazarus also said “I assume Richard would like to stay on our board,” and Lazarus sees no reason why Johns should resign even though the Hearst project is likely to come before the commission later this year.

Black history, local hire, living color

Mary Magee
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City Hall kicked off its annual Black History month celebrations with a talk by Los Angeles philanthropist and former Xerox Corp. VP Bernard Kinsey about the importance of debunking myths about the absence of blacks in American history. And Mayor Ed Lee, who had just met with five dozen unemployed black construction workers from the Bayview, revealed how, when he was growing up in the projects in Seattle, his neighbors were black, and an African American named Darnell was one of the most loyal patrons of the restaurant that Lee’s father was trying to make succeed.


“And when my dad suddenly died of a heart attack, Darnell was the first person to offer my brother a job at his gas station,” Lee said. “So, this is not just about recognizing African American history, but recognizing what they did for us, and  making sure that no there are jobs and we protect the family structure. I know what it is to be helped by the African American culture.”


Lee’s recollections of Darnell came less than an hour after he met with Aboriginal Blackmen United, a group that represents unemployed construction workers in the Bayview, to discuss how its members can get hired at UCSF’s $1.5 billion hospital complex at Mission Bay and other local building sites.


At that meeting, ABU President James Richards thanked Lee for getting UC to clarify the details of its voluntary local hire plan at the Mission Bay hospitals.
But he warned that the fight is just starting. “We’ve got the unions to deal with,” Richards told Lee, referring to the reality that the unions also want their members to get work at the UCSF site.


Lee said he’d do his best to help.
“The African American community in San Francisco has not got its fair share,” he said. “I can’t say that everyone in the room is going to get a job, but I’ll open up doors and do my best.”


And then Lee confirmed that local hire is one of his top five priorities.
“My top priorities are the budget, pension reform, the America’s Cup, finding a good police chief and local hire,” he said. “I said that directly to every union leader yesterday. Some unions will be there, others will resist.”


ABU’s Richards said the need to have a G.E.D. to get into the city’s ob training programs is a barrier to employment for many in the Bayview.
“We have a lot of people, who are not able to get into CityBuild because they don’t take folks anymore who don’t have their G.E.D,” he said.


And he warned that the city’s black community is in crisis.
“I know there is a budget crisis, but this is a life crisis,” Richards said. “Young people are dying and it’s not even newsworthy any more.”


Lee suggested ABU work with the City to avoid the need to hold protests at construction sites in future,
“Let’s plan together, so you don’t have to go to all the sites,” Lee said. “I am for people getting their GED. But if someone has evidence that they are making an attempt to get their GED, we need to reward that with jobs. So that the GED is not a barrier, it’s a hope.”


And then Lee was off to attend his next round of meetings, which included the city’s Black History month event, where speakers noted that during Bernard Kinsey’s career with Xerox, he helped increase the hiring of blacks, Latinos and women,


Kinsey told the audience that he and Shirley Kinsey, his wife of 44 years, share a passion for African-American history and art. And that their world-famous Kinsey Collection, which contains art, books and manuscripts documenting African American triumphs and struggles from 1632 to the present, is currently on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C, and a number of pieces are at the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society. He noted that the posters of African Americans in the Civil War were reproductions of some of the art in those exhibits. 


Sup. Malia Cohen noted that about 200,000 African Americans participated in that war. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who represents the city’s Western Addition, where redevelopment triggered massive displacement of the black community in the 1960s, noted that eight members of the current Board of Supervisors, who selected Lee as the city’s first Chinese American mayor, are people of color.


“This is true representation,” Mirkarimi said, noting that the fact that the city’s African American population continues to drop (reportedly down from 6 percent to 3.9 percent, according to the 2010 Census) to “is a reminder that even the most forward-thinking cities have a lot of work to do.”


And Kinsey urged African Americans to start describing their ancestors as “enslaved.”


‘It will change how you look at your ancestors,” he said, “You don’t have a clue about what they sacrificed to get you to where you are today. We don’t tell you the ‘ain’t-it-awful’ story about slavery. We tell you the story of how we overcame.”


“You need three things for a successful life,” Kinsey added “Something to do. Someone to love. And something to look forward to.”


Kinsey said he and his wife have espoused two life principles, ‘To whom much is given much is required” and live “A life of no regrets.” And then he told a story about an eagle who was raised by a chicken.


The eagle ended up ashamed of his feathers, because the chickens never told him he was an eagle because they were afraid he’d end up ruling the barnyard.“He even grew up ashamed of his daughters,” Kinsey said.


Eventually, the eagle met another eagle, who told him the truth. “You ain’t no chicken,” the other eagle said.


“And this is the message,” Kinsey said. “Don’t think chicken thoughts, or dream chicken dreams. Think like an eagle.”


He warned the audience to be careful of buying into myths that would have them believe that African Americans played no role in building the U.S.
“There are stories that made America and stories that America made up,” Kinsey said. “And too often, the myth becomes the choice.”


And then he concluded by expounding on “the myth of absence.”
‘”African Americans are not seen, not because of their absence, but because of the presence of a myth that prepares and requires their absence,” Kinsey said. “And the manipulation of the myth changes the color of the past. It’s no accident that the dominate images from the past are white. And many of us have swallowed the pill.”


 


 

Why aren’t Brown and Pak registered lobbyists?

Sasha Cuttler
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13
Why aren’t Brown and Pak registered lobbyists?

Powerful business interests constantly put pressure on City Hall to do their bidding rather than act in the public interest. Theoretically, they’re supposed to report who they’re lobbying, on whose behalf, and how much they’re being paid, but that doesn’t always happen. Instead, some of this city’s most powerful players operate with little public scrutiny.

Consider former Mayor Willie Brown – a corporate attorney and Chronicle columnist – and his close ally, Chinatown Chamber of Commerce head Rose Pak. Much was made, from the New York Times to local blogs, of how they engineered the selection of Ed Lee as interim mayor. More recently, there were questions about whether they influenced the narrow and controversial appointment of Richard Johns to the Historic Preservation Commission.

But neither Brown nor Pak is on the long list of lobbyists registered with the city. Neither is Rob Black, who lobbies City Hall on behalf of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and is a regular fixture at Board of Supervisors meetings. Why? I don’t know because none of the three would return my calls asking that question [see UPDATE below for Black’s comments].

So I asked John St. Croix, who runs the Ethics Commission, the regulatory agency that oversees lobbying and other activities by which wealth influences government. But he didn’t know the answer either. “If someone is paid specifically to lobby government, they should register,” St. Croix told us.

But his underfunded agency is mostly complaint-driven in its enforcement actions, and even though I complained, he didn’t seem inclined to act against these powerful local players. Hell, his agency hasn’t even done anything about the blatantly illegal collusion between a Brown-funded independent expenditure and the campaign of Jane Kim, despite reports in both the Guardian and the Bay Citizen (the local arm of the New York Times) back in October.

And so it goes in this supposedly progressive city.

UPDATE ON 2/4: Black just got back to me after being out sick with the flu. He said the Chamber used to be considered a “registered lobby entity” that was required to report all contacts with public officials and the issue involved. But the Board of Supervisors changed that law last year, requiring lobbyist registration only from individuals who are paid at least $3,000 per quarter for lobbying. And the definition of lobbying doesn’t include attending or speaking at public hearings or writing letters. So while the SF Chamber’s Black, Steve Falk, and Jim Lazarus all lobby city officials, Black said, none of them have exceeded that threshold. “If we hit the monetary threshold, we’ll start filing individually,” he said.

Division of labor

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Division of labor

sarah@sfbg.com


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

Early indicators

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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13
Early indicators

Land use politics and the way development decisions are made at City Hall fed San Francisco’s ascendant progressive movement over the last decade. So in the wake of a still-unfolding political realignment, an early key vote is making some preservationists and developer foes nervous.

At the center of that concern is Sup. Jane Kim, who broke with her progressive colleagues Jan. 25 to be the swing vote in the board’s 6-5 approval of attorney Richard Johns to the historian’s seat on the Historic Preservation Commission. Progressives and preservationists opposed the nomination on the grounds that Johns isn’t a historian and that he has close ties to former Mayor Willie Brown, a friend of developers whose longtime chief of staff was Johns’ wife, Eleanor.

And they’re suspicious of Brown’s support – both overt and stealthy – for Kim’s supervisorial campaign (see “Willie Brown and the accusations of machine politics in D6,” 10/16/10, Guardian Politics blog).

Kim didn’t explain her vote at the full board meeting, and her comments at the Rules Committee (which she chairs) and to the Guardian that Johns “was qualified” and she could “see no reason not to support his nomination” irked many of her progressive supporters who consider development the big issue.

Feeding concerns about the potential blunting of historic preservation and other tools used to scrutinize development projects was the Jan. 25 announcement by Sup. Scott Wiener that he is calling for hearings into whether the commission is improperly hindering development and other policy priorities.

“The Historic Preservation Commission — and I supported the creation of the Historic Preservation Commission — has become an increasingly powerful commission reaching into a lot of different areas of policy in the city,” Wiener said during the discussion of Johns’ nomination, citing housing, parks, and libraries as areas the commission has affected. “It’s important to have a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints on this commission, and if we’re going to have a committee made up exclusively of advocates for historic preservation, only advocates, that is a problem.”

Former board President Aaron Peskin, who led the effort to create the commission through the voter-approved Proposition J in 2008, disputes the allegation that the commission has become too powerful, as well as the claim that Johns is qualified to serve in the historian’s seat, one of six seats on the commission that now requires professional qualifications.

“The facts do not support Sup. Wiener’s allegations,” Peskin told us, noting that the Board of Supervisors and the mayor retain the authority to decide what is and isn’t historically significant. Yet Wiener said that even commission- and staff-level actions affect other city goals. “The conducting of a survey does have legal impact,” Wiener told us.

But Peskin said San Francisco has very few protected buildings compared with other major U.S. cities, something voters sought to change through Prop. J, and Peskin said he was disappointed that Kim didn’t support the law’s dictates. “This is the second time in 2011 when the slim alleged progressive majority has not stayed together,” he said, referring also to the election of David Chiu as board president.

Peskin and others who fight land-use battles say they don’t yet want to jump to the conclusion that developers might have an easier time with this board. “It’s my profound hope is that this is a learning experience,” Peskin said of Kim’s vote.

Veteran land use attorney Sue Hestor noted that neither Kim nor Wiener has a record on land use issues by which to judge them and she didn’t want to make a big deal of their Jan. 25 actions. Yet she said that development is a huge issue in the Tenderloin, SoMa, and Rincon Hill areas that Kim represents, so there are major tests of her progressive values coming soon.

“In District 6, it’s the defining issue because it’s the most explosive district in terms of growth,” Hestor said. “Land use is about who gets to live in the city.”

 

WHOSE CITY?

While most of the discussion about the Johns nomination focused on his qualifications as a historian — indeed, that was the basis of most of the opposition to his nomination, by both activists and progressive supervisors — there was some telling subtext focused on Hestor’s point that land use is the most fundamental progressive issue.

At the Jan. 20 Rules Committee meeting, Kim even asked Johns about his “vision for affordable housing as it related to preservation.” But the answer she received wasn’t terribly reassuring to those who see the lack of affordable housing for low-income city residents as a serious problem that the city is failing to address (see “Dollars or sense?” 9/29/10).

“San Francisco is made up of lots of different groups of people with lots of different backgrounds,” Johns said at the hearing, noting that it is important to “preserve the culture and the past that have brought us to where we are. But part of that past is the ability to grow.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Johns expanded on the point, sounding a more pro-growth point-of-view than many of his colleagues on the commission are likely to share. “Development and preservation can go hand-in-hand,” Johns said. “Maybe it’s the development that allows what might be a slowly deteriorating building to be fixed up properly.”

As an example, he cited his 20 years of work on preserving the Old Mint Building — his main claim to expertise as a historian — which was ultimately accomplished as part of the development project that included office and commercial development and the Mint Plaza public space.

“People of all income levels have a right to live in San Francisco,” Johns said, adding, “The real need some people would say is the need for middle class housing.” When we noted that it’s often the low-income residents who are ousted when old buildings get modernized, he said, “You have to think about the desirability of people to live in crummy housing.”

Chiu and Kim both downplayed the importance of the Johns vote. “People are trying to read too much into this,” Chiu said, explaining that he opposed the nomination because he simply felt Johns didn’t meet the criteria as a historian. “What was relevant is what city law says.”

Kim told us that it wasn’t until the full board meeting that she learned how her progressive colleagues felt about the matter, and that she didn’t want to change how she voted in committee. “It was not important enough for me to change my vote based on my verbal commitments,” Kim said later.

Yet on the evening of the vote, Kim told the Guardian that she felt “pressure” to support Johns, although she wouldn’t say from whom. “I was put in a bad position on this issue,” she said. Many progressives have speculated that pressure came from Brown, which Kim denies. “We didn’t talk about this, not once,” she said.

But in his Jan. 30 column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Brown crowed about the victory by “my friend Richard Johns” and called Chiu’s opposition to him “a mistake that could haunt him for some time,” saying Chiu has set up Sups. Malia Cohen and Kim “to be the swing votes on every issue where moderates and progressives split.”

Rebecca Bowe contributed to this report.

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