Mayor

Place of refuge?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Place of refuge?

LIT If you’ve been tracking the battle over San Francisco’s sanctuary ordinance, or you’re simply interested in the fight for immigration reform at the federal level, then check out Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America (Scribner, 400 pages, $27.99). Written by Helen Thorp, a journalist married to Denver mayor and Colorado gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper, Just Like Us is the true story of four young girls whom Thorp tracked for five years, starting with their senior year in high school.

“All had at least one parent who entered the country from Mexico without the right documentation,” Thorp says over the phone. “One was born here; one had a green card; and two didn’t have papers, so they were split down the middle on their legal status — through no fault of their own — but because of a situation they inherited.” This split led to differing experiences as all four girls came of age in the United States, even though all excelled in public high school.

“Two of them didn’t have the same opportunities, privileges, or even ways to pay for college as the two with papers had,” Thorp explains, noting that she changed the names of all four students to protect their identities. The main narrative of Thorp’s book sticks closely to the experiences of these four exemplary girls — including the political firestorm that broke out in Denver (and spread statewide) after an undocumented Denver resident committed a violent crime.

The echoes for San Francisco are obvious. The slaying in 2008 of three members of the Bologna family by the alleged killer Edwin Ramos, an immigrant who repeatedly passed through the city’s justice system as a juvenile, increased the heat in a political firestorm that had been crackling since the city passed its City of Refuge ordinance in 1989 and burst into flames in December 2007. That was when federal agents intercepted San Francisco probation officers at a Houston airport as they tried to repatriate Honduran teenagers by flying them home instead of reporting them for formal federal deportation.

In the Denver-based story Thorp recounts in Just Like Us, a young man who never had much schooling and was in Colorado without the necessary paperwork shot two police officers at a party, killing one. To add to the intrigue, the man was employed as a dishwasher at a restaurant owned in part by Thorp’s husband.

“It certainly was a heinous crime, since this young man shot two police officers in the back,” Thorp recalls. “Even the Mexican immigrant community was horrified, and no one rallied to his side. He was disrupting a baptismal party for a Mexican family in a popular social hall. He destroyed the celebration and he had a young daughter, who he essentially ended up abandoning, when he went to jail. He had lived in Los Angeles — that’s where he purchased the gun — and may have had gang ties. That, at least, was what was alleged at his sentencing. He shot the police officers because he felt one of them had insulted him and allegedly had mishandled him. His pride was wounded, but his response was so aggravated, there was no justification for it.”

As a result of this tragedy, which touched one of the high school students she was tracking, Thorp ended up becoming close to the widow of the police officer. “His family had an immigrant background, and he grew up in a Spanish-speaking family — though that was not reported in the media — and his widow’s mother was an immigrant from England who kept her green card and never became a citizen,” Thorp continues. “So the widow ended up having an incredibly nuanced point of view and would comment on what happened to her family with more grace and generosity than you would ever expect a human being to muster in those circumstances.”

Thorp feels that heated debates between advocates on opposing sides of the immigration equation is a result of what she calls “a collision of different beliefs.”

“We believe strongly that you are innocent until proven guilty, and we believe in the United States as a nation founded by immigrants. But we also believe in the value of law and order, so we don’t have a favorable view of illegal immigrants, and definitely not of illegal immigrants who commit crimes,” Thorp observes. She also noted that people tend to view juvenile immigrants in a kinder light: “They are morally in a different category than people who made the decision to come here without documents.”

But Thorp suggests that tackling immigration locally may be a losing proposition. “I understand why people want to tackle the subject at a local level since the federal government continues not to resolve the issue,” she says. “But you run into the fact that, peculiarly, this issue needs a federal solution even though we feel the impacts at the local level.” She believes the Obama administration needs to create reform that clarifies whether the feds are offering people a path to citizenship and that involves penalties for those who knowingly broke the law when they came here without papers,

“I understand that San Francisco is on the cutting edge of many things, but I can’t imagine that my husband, as mayor, would adopt a sanctuary policy in Denver,” she says. “And that’s because the concept of a sanctuary city in Colorado is only used by social conservatives with derision. The way ‘sanctuary city’ is used here signals a flagrant disrespect for law and order.”

That said, Thorp notes that the question of whether local police should become an arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and an enforcer of federal immigration laws has been debated, and that people generally agree that this is not the job of the local police. “Local police department budgets are exhausted simply by doing the other tasks we’ve given them. If you add to that locking up nonviolent offenders [accused of being here illegally], it would break the bank.”

SOC it to ’em

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
SOC it to ’em

sarah@sfbg.com

On the same evening the Police Commission shot down Chief George Gascón’s plan to arm his officers with Tasers, a Sunshine Ordinance Task Force (SOTF) committee reviewed a proposal to give itself a set of enforcement tools that, if approved, could help nail governmental agencies and officials that violate public information laws.

These proposals include the right to appoint outside counsel to enforce serious, willful violations of the voter-approved Sunshine Ordinance against respondents who fail to comply with SOTF orders, thereby allowing enforcement actions to be brought in civil court.

Despite the potential significance of these amendments to the cause of open government and the history of SOTF findings being blatantly ignored by Mayor Gavin Newsom and other officials who have refused to release public documents, only a small posse of regular sunshine advocates attended the March 4 meeting of SOTF’s Compliance and Amendments Committee.

This lack of public interest underscores how the inability to enforce its findings has undercut its power, and why its members believe the legal equivalent of a stun gun is needed if people are going to start taking the work of this Board of Supervisors appointed body seriously.

Erica Craven-Green, an attorney who has served on SOTF for six years, has seen a number of departments not take the body’s proceedings seriously.

“There are very few penalties for individuals and departments that choose not to comply with the ordinance,” Craven-Green observed. “We’ve had numerous instances where representatives from city departments and the offices of elected officials failed to show up at our hearings and explain how they did or did not comply with the ordinance.”

Angela Chan, staff attorney of the Asian Law Caucus, filed a complaint with SOTF in October 2009 after the Mayor’s Office refused to explain why it gave a confidential City Attorney’s Office memo about sanctuary city reforms to the San Francisco Chronicle but not her organization for two full weeks, despite her requests.

At a December 2009 SOTF hearing, Brian Purchia of the Mayor’s Office of Communications handed SOTF a note that read, “I had to leave to respond to the press,” shortly before Chan’s complaint was heard. As a result, the task force decided to continue the matter to January so someone from the Mayor’s Office could attend. Yet despite repeated requests, no mayoral representatives attended that or subsequent SOTF’s meetings about Chan’s complaint.

“It is deeply disappointing that the Mayor’s Office has not shown any respect for the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, which works hard to try to improve government transparency and accountability for the residents of San Francisco,” Chan told the Guardian. “The mayor appears to be acting like a monarch rather than a democratically-elected official who is accountable and responsive to the people. Reform is needed to ensure all city officials comply with our Sunshine Ordinance and heed [SOTF’s] orders.”

And it’s not just members of the public who feel their time is being wasted. “I think it is very frustrating and, quite frankly, a waste, not only of the task force’s [time], but of city resources as well, to have a hearing on a matter that the city decides not to reply to and/or show up for,” said Craven-Green, who steps down from SOTF later this year.

SOTF is seeking to address this sense of powerlessness by renaming SOTF the Sunshine Ordinance Commission (SOC), giving it the ability to hire an attorney and propose fines, and requiring that departments post notices of sunshine violations on their Web sites. The amendments also expand the list of public officials required to keep working calendars and clarify access requirements for electronic records and systems.

Craven Green said changing the SOTF’s name is a “nonsubstantive” amendment, but that it “makes it sound more permanent.”

The key difference between SOTF and SOC is that, under the proposed amendments, SOC could, with a two-thirds vote, appoint outside counsel to enforce serious and willful violations of the ordinance by bringing action against them in civil court. Right now, only the Ethics Commission and District Attorney’s Office can enforce SOTF decisions, and neither has been willing to do so.

Retired attorney and sunshine advocate Allen Grossman recently won a $25,000 settlement to cover legal fees in a lawsuit he brought against the Ethics Commission and its executive director John St. Croix to force the city to provide him with previously withheld public records about why Ethics dismissed 14 sunshine cases SOFT had referred to it. The amendment would give SOC that same authority.

“Where we feel there hasn’t been sufficient action by the Ethics Commission or sufficient compliance on issues we think are very important for public access, we could instigate outside counsel to prosecute serious and willful violations,” Craven-Green said.

The amendments also lay out penalties for officials who willfully flout sunshine laws. Government officers and employees found to have committed official misconduct would be required to personally pay $500 to $5,000, while public agency violations would have that amount taken from their budgets.

SOC would recommend the level of these fines, and any fines that Ethics decided to impose would be placed in SOC’s litigation fund. “That should be enough for most departments to comply,” Craven-Green said.

Terry Francke, general counsel of Californians Aware, a Sacramento-based center for public forum rights, has been consulting with SOTF on the changes. He says the Achilles’ heel of the Sunshine Ordinance, which the board enacted in 1993 and voters amended in 1999 through Proposition G, has been what happens to a department or official who refuses to comply with what SOTF thinks is required.

Under the state’s Brown Act open meeting law and the California Public Records Act, correcting the unlawful withholding of public information requires a civil lawsuit. “You go into court, tell them this or that practice violates the Brown Act and ask the court to order a correction,” Francke said. “Or you go to court with a request for public records that you believe are being unlawfully withheld.”

But now SOTF is folding Francke’s recommendations to hire a litigator into the SOC amendment package, along with establishing a $50,000 annual litigation fund. The amendments would require voter approval and the willingness of four members of the Board of Supervisors to place them on the ballot.

Francke acknowledges that this litigation fund could sound odd, “but it’s a kick start that’s needed” to encourage compliance. “It’s not so much a net outflow of funds as a kind of transfer of funds from the operating fund of a particular agency that violated law to the litigation fund of the SO commission.”

Francke says Grossman’s lawsuit is a good example of a successful effort to take the city to court. “But the difference, under the proposed amendments, is that $25,000 payment would go into SOC’s litigation fund,” Francke said. “If the lawsuit by Mr. Grossman had been filed by SOC with its enforcement attorney, that would not have meant a net loss by the city, it would mean a net gain to the commission’s litigation fund.”

The problem now, Francke observes, is that Ethics dismisses most complaints on the grounds that it was not official misconduct or willful failure because employees or officials were acting on City Attorney’s Office advice.

“It’s less important that the occasional willful violation of the Sunshine laws gets punished personally than that the violation gets stopped,” Francke said. “And someone saying, ‘Harry/Judy, what you did there cost $25, 000’ is not a career morale builder.”

Craven-Green agrees that the problem to date has been that departments rely on the advice of the City Attorney’s Office, and SOTF often disagrees with its positions. “One of the reasons we referred these cases to Ethics was so it would take a neutral look,” she explained. “What’s been frustrating is that the Ethics Commission has not done that. It’s simply sided with the City Attorney’s Office.”

Last year, following a joint meeting between the Ethics Commission and SOFT to discuss difficulties those bodies have had with one another, Ethics’ St. Croix introduced changes in how the agency handles SOTF referrals, including defining when he may simply dismiss a referral and allow some documents from its investigations to be made public.

“We are really working to resolve these difficulties,” St. Croix told us. “The core of the conflict has been that when they refer complaints, we investigate. But from their point of view, they’ve done an investigation, and our response should be to assign penalties.”

Grossman is hopeful that SOTF’s proposed amendment package will resolve some problems. As he told us, “It substantially reduces Ethics’ ability to dismiss cases arbitrarily.”

Waste of paper

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Waste of paper

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Several weeks ago, Sup. Chris Daly e-mailed the San Francisco Ethics Commission to ask what seemed like a simple question. Daly is spearheading a June citywide ballot measure to ask voters to support the designation of the new Transbay Transit Center as the end point for the planned California High Speed Rail project, a response to the California High Speed Rail Authority’s move to explore alternative locations.

As an elected official, Daly knew there were certain individuals he might be barred from accepting money from for this effort. A San Francisco campaign finance law prohibits entities holding city contracts worth $50,000 or more from donating to political campaigns run by the elected officials who approve those contracts, a rule crafted to eliminate quid pro quo dealings that can corrupt the political process.

But when Daly tried to find out whose checks he shouldn’t be accepting, he didn’t receive a simple list of names in response. Instead he got a dense e-mail highlighting the complexity of this area of campaign finance law, offering no easy answers. For one, it wasn’t clear whether the law applied to his committee. Assuming it did, however, there was another hurdle.

“Determining which contributors are prohibited from contributing to your committee is a bit complex at the moment,” Oliver Luby, an Ethics Commission staffer, wrote in the e-mail, “because the contractor disclosures filed … are only in hard copy format.”

This vexing detail meant that obtaining a searchable list of banned contributors would require scanning hundreds of Ethics Commission forms filed on behalf of the Board of Supervisors, then manually entering potentially thousands of data rows into a spreadsheet, a project that could suck up significant time and resources.

The campaign contribution ban applies not only to major contractors, but the executive officers, subcontractors, and major shareholders of those contracting firms, so there could be a long list of individuals prohibited from making a political donation once a single contract is approved.

These restrictions theoretically create an excellent safeguard against corruption — but since it’s not recorded in electronic format, the filings amount to an almost useless sea of data. In fact, even the Ethics Commission, which is supposed to regulate violations of this ban and issue fines, isn’t able to routinely do so.

Luby pointed out the shortcoming of the system and an easy solution to Executive Director John St. Croix and Deputy Director Mabel Ng in an internal e-mail last December. “Private interests that can afford to manually create databases using the data … will have an advantage over other interests (perhaps even our own office) where the resources are not available to manually create such databases,” he wrote. “The obvious solution to this problem is e-filing.”

For example, if city agencies and political campaigns were required to submit their data in Excel spreadsheets or through an online system that automatically created spreadsheets, it would be easy to compare them to see who is violating the law.

When asked about this, St. Croix said the resources just don’t exist to upgrade the commission’s online capabilities. “We don’t have the resources to develop the software right now,” he told us. “So someday, yes. After we go through the next election season, and people see that they have a lot of difficulties in complying with this, then we may be able to build some support to make these changes.”

The e-mails were among hundreds of documents included in response to a Sunshine Ordinance public information request the Guardian submitted to the Ethics Commission in February. The assortment of documents relating to the contractor contribution ban revealed just how difficult it is for the average person to discern whether any entities striking deals with the city are at the same time trying to curry favor with the politicians who approve their contracts.

In 2006, a batch of reforms were approved to tighten restrictions on campaign contributions from major city contractors and require filing disclosure forms. Intended to point a floodlight on pay-to-play practices, the rules were championed by former Ethics Commissioner Joe Lynn, who died late last year.

Since it was established in 2006, however, the law has seen neither steady enforcement nor routine compliance from elected officials, documents show. The Mayor’s Office, for example, did not start filing the forms until April 2009, a month after critical media reports pointed out that few city departments were in compliance. While many more have started filing regularly, it appears that certain state agencies covered by the law — including the Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA) — have not.

Nor does the Ethics Commission itself seem focused on ferreting out potential violators. “I am reluctant to ask my auditors or enforcement staff to review [contract disclosure] filings and compare them against campaign filings because the sheer amount of data will make the search wasteful and likely fruitless,” St. Croix wrote in a memo to his staff last October.

At the same time, attempts have been made to scale back the scope of the law, based on the argument that it is difficult to enforce. St. Croix’s memo recommended that the contribution ban not apply to contractors who deal with state agencies such as TIDA or the Redevelopment Agency, which are controlled by mayoral appointees and oversee development contracts worth millions of dollars. “Although city elective officers appoint some members of those bodies, city officials rarely have any involvement with those agencies’ contracts,” he argued.

Asked if these suggestions will be discussed formally anytime soon, St. Croix was doubtful. “Unfortunately, even though we think they’re necessary, it’s going to be a very difficult sell at the Board [of Supervisors],” he said. “Even though we think we’re fixing a problem, it looks like you’re rolling back reform, and that’s not popular.”

On the eve of an election season featuring hotly contested seats on the Board of Supervisors, the Democratic County Central Committee, and other high-profile local and statewide offices, the relatively arcane archive of the contractor disclosure forms stored away at the Ethics Commission might get more attention. Are major corporations that do business with the city scratching the backs of politicians who want to advance their political careers to keep the wheels greased for their own business ambitions?

Without a user-friendly, functional system for tracking contracts and comparing them against campaign contributions, it’s tough to say.

A very different approach to the sit-lie law

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A very different approach to the sit-lie law

By Gabriel Haaland


OPINION Last week, Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced legislation that would make it illegal for anyone to sit or lie on the sidewalk in San Francisco’s commercial corridors. The move came after an intense media campaign by the San Francisco Chronicle, which once again created a “crisis” between young street people and other residents of the Haight, much as the paper did with immigrant youth.


The crisis? Youths are sitting on the sidewalk. As a long time resident of the Haight, the dynamics I see are far more complex than that. I understand that my neighbors feel overwhelmed and upset. They want options, want solutions, and, at first blush, it seems some want to get the youths off our streets. However, citing or jailing the kids will not make them go away or improve their relationships with the rest of the community.


The real frustrations my neighbors are voicing are not primarily about whether someone is sitting on the sidewalk, but over genuine concern about violence in our neighborhood. They are looking for safety and respect; however, this legislation does not create conditions for increased safety and respect.


Most experts recognize that the criminal justice system for youths has failed, and putting people in jail for a nonviolent crime doesn’t make a lot of sense. Most of the youths on San Francisco streets come from broken homes from around the country. Some of them, LGBTQ youths in particular, are forced out of their homes and come here because we are still a beacon of hope for those who are marginalized and discriminated against.


If the criminal justice system is failing these young people, how can we address that in a way that creates real, positive change for everyone involved?


I would like to suggest a different path, one that has been wildly successful working with young people. It’s based on restorative justice principles. Restorative justice refers to a growing number of practices around the world that set out to bring together those most affected by a crime or conflict in order to understand and address the harm that has been done. At their best, these practices also support changes in the conditions in which these actions or crimes are taking place, making them less likely to happen in the same way in the future.


One example of this is the Restorative Circle process, which I was introduced to by Dominic Barter, who began developing this process 15 years ago with others in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where drug gangs are the main employers and homicide is the most common cause of death for people under 25. The process has been used in pilot programs by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice for the last five years and shown to be very effective. And now Restorative Circle pilot programs are starting in other countries.


Restorative Circles bring together the three parties involved in crimes or other painful acts: those who committed the act, those most directly affected, and the community of those indirectly affected. After each party has a pre-circle meeting with a facilitator, they all come together using a dialogue process intended for each to speak and be heard about the impact the conflict is having on them and about what motivated them to choose the actions they took. With the new understanding established, all are invited to collaborate in devising specific actions, with doable timeframes, involving accessible resources, in an attempt to repair the harm done and restore the sense of dignity, security, and justice of all present, and the wider community.


In Brazil, people across the political spectrum acknowledge the success of Restorative Circles. I would ask people across the political spectrum in San Francisco to join me in creating a new paradigm of public safety in the Haight and across the city based on Restorative Circles, a model that will empower our communities and transform systemic problems into real solutions. *


Gabriel, a.k.a. Robert, Haaland is a 15-year resident of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and serves on the board of SF Pride at Work and the Democratic County Central Committee. This proposal was reviewed by Li Morales and by Becky Sutton, community outreach coordinator for Restorative Circles, North America. For more info, go to www.restorativecircles.org.


 

Some teeth for the sunshine law

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Some teeth for the sunshine law

EDITORIAL The San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance is a national model for open government, the first and strongest local sunshine law in the country. It was written to improve public access to government records and meetings, and to clear up some of the problems and loopholes in state law. On paper, it makes San Francisco a shining example of how concerned residents can come together and eliminate secrecy at City Hall.

But 17 years after its passage, it’s still not working. That’s because city officials routinely ignore the law — and the city attorney, the district attorney, and the Ethics Commission have utterly failed to enforce it.

Here’s how it works, in theory: A San Franciscan makes a request for records in the office of a public official. The official is supposed to make the documents available promptly — within 48 hours for immediate disclosure requests and within 10 working days for routine requests. If the records aren’t forthcoming, the resident can complain to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, which brings both sides in, holds a hearing, gets legal advice, and determines whether the complain is valid. If the task force finds that the official should have made the records available, the matter gets referred to the Ethics Commission, which can file charges of official misconduct.

Here’s how it happens in practice: Some officials, like Mayor Gavin Newsom, simply ignore sunshine requests, or delay responding well beyond the statutory limit, or refuse to release records on grounds that clearly violate the law. The task force holds a hearing, and nobody from the Mayor’s Office shows up. Then the task force finds in favor of the person seeking the records, sends the file to the Ethics Commission — and the whole thing dies.

Not once in the history of the ordinance has the Ethics Commission actually filed misconduct charges. Not once. Violating the Sunshine Ordinance is a crime, but D.A. Kamala Harris has never once prosecuted a miscreant. And public officials who disobey the law hide under the protection of advice from the city attorney — although that advice itself is secret.

The message to City Hall is clear: you can defy the sunshine law with impunity; nothing will ever happen.

The task force is offering a series of amendments to the law that would improve enforcement and give the measure some teeth. The supervisors ought to support those proposals — but the board ought to go even further.

The proposals would turn the task force into a commission, which is a fine idea. But more important, the new commission would have something extraordinary: a $50,000 litigation fund to pay for an outside lawyer — not the city attorney — to sue officials who flout the law. If those lawsuits succeed, the city would have to pay attorneys’ fees, which would replenish the fund. And the very threat of that could have a huge impact on the way City Hall responds to sunshine requests.

We support the plan — and since nobody else will enforce the law, we think the task force (or commission) needs the authority to do it. The body overseeing sunshine complaints should be able to force public officials to release records or open meetings; rulings from that body should have the force of law. That works well in Connecticut, where a state Freedom of Information Commission has the authority to order anyone, from the governor to a city council, to open up files. Government in that state hasn’t become unwieldy; officials secrets haven’t fallen into the hands of terrorists. But ordinary citizens who can’t afford a lawsuit have a forum to force reluctant public officials to do their business in public.

San Francisco should adopt that model, and the sooner the better.

Editor’s Notes

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Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

The crowd protesting at San Francisco’s Civic Center March 4 had a different demographic than we’re used to. There were families, moms and dads with their kids. A lot of the people there don’t demonstrate and protest on a regular basis; they have jobs and families and can barely keep up with their day-to-day responsibilities. I know the drill.

But they were out in the streets because they’re furious at what’s happening to public education in California — and they should be. It’s criminal. The state is headed for the very bottom, and at this rate we’ll soon have the worst-funded public schools in America. And a gem of a state higher education system is on its way to becoming a set of overpriced, second-rate institutions.

And now everyone who stood up to be counted last week needs to take the next step and support the only solution that will actually work. It’s called raising taxes.

California’s more than $20 billion in the hole. There’s money going to waste, plenty of it. We could release every prisoner doing time on drug charges and save a few billion. But even that wouldn’t be enough to save the education system.

We all knew, or should have known, back in 1978, when Proposition 13 passed, that this day was coming. When you cut off the main source of revenue for schools — local property taxes — and rely on state funding, and the state Legislature can’t raise new revenue without a two-thirds vote, which means a handful of troglodyte Republicans can prevent it, this kind of crisis is inevitable.

So some intense, ongoing political action has to come out of the exciting and wonderful Day of Action. And if it’s going to make a difference, the action has to take place on three fronts.

1. We’ve got to get rid of the two-thirds majority requirement. There’s a ballot initiative circulating now that would do that.

2. We’ve got to amend Prop. 13. Assembly Member Tom Ammiano is pushing for a split-roll, to tax commercial property at a higher rate. That’s an excellent start.

3. We’ve got to push local government to raise taxes — right here at home — to help fund schools and public services. That means pushing Mayor Gavin Newsom, who loves to crow about education, to work with the supervisors on some major new revenue measures.

Either that or we let the politicians point fingers and blame each other. And the schools fall apart.

Newsom’s silly trick

Zelda Bronstein
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Newsom’s silly trick

Gavin Newsom’s got a plan: He’s going to stop those damn district-elected progressives from appoining a new mayor even if it takes some wacky legal footwork. According to the Chron’s Matier and Ross:


For the past two weeks, Newsom’s political team has been combing the state Constitution to determine if the mayor, assuming he’s elected statewide, could legally push back his Jan. 3 swearing-in for the new job until after Jan. 8.


If he can, the job of naming his successor would go to the newly elected Board of Supervisors, which is sworn in Jan. 8, instead of the current lineup.


I don’t know where that team is looking in the state Constitution, but the language seems pretty clear to me. Article V, section 2, provides that the “Governor shall be elected every fourth year…and hold office from the Monday after January 1….” In 2011, that’s Jan. 3. It also says (article V, section 11) that “The Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Controller, Secretary of State, and Treasurer shall be elected at the same time and places and for the same term as the Governor.”


And since the mayor of San Francisco is, by Charter, a full-time job, Newsom can’t be both mayor and lt. governor. Which means, I think, that he’s got to start the new job Jan. 3, and the new Board of Supervisors doesn’t take office until a week later.


There’s another twist here: The City Charter discusses a “vacancy” in the office of mayor, and authorizes the Board of Supervisors to select someone to fill the remainder of a vacant term. If Newsom wins in November, it will be clear that a vacancy is looming — and there’s no reason why the supervisors can’t pass a motion right away designating the person who they intend to have fill that vacancy. In other words, this current board could select the next mayor even before Newsom officially resigns.


Now, it’s also true that the motion wouldn’t become effective until the mayor actually left office, and could be rescinded at any time up until that moment. But if the supervisors find six votes for a candidate, and designate that person as Newsom’s successor, it’s unlikely the board would decide to change its mind and rescind in just a few weeks.


And even if all that doesn’t fly, there’s a very good chance that progressives will still control the next board. Four progressive supes will carry over — Ross Mirkarimi, John Avalos, Eric Mar and David Campos. If progressive candidates win two of the three swing races — in districts 6, 8 and 10 — then the overall politics of the board won’t change dramatically.


So there’s actually a chance that a progressive mayor could take office next January. Whether Newsom likes it or not


 



 

Newsom’s Orwellian doublespeak on city layoffs

Sasha Cuttler
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Newsom’s Orwellian doublespeak on city layoffs

One of the things that irritates people most about Mayor Gavin Newsom is his Orwellian doublespeak, in which he makes claims that conflict with his actions, and that was on vivid display with his recent decision to lay off 15,000 city workers and then hire most of them back for shorter workweeks.

These are frontline workers (managers, cops, and firefighters were excluded) who will either be fired or take a 6.25 percent pay cut – while the public will see a rollback in the hours devoted to providing city services – but Newsom’s press release claims that he’s actually helping both the workers and the public.

“Mayor Newsom used his YouTube update this week to discuss the City’s budget and his plan to save thousands of city jobs and services by offering 37.5 hour part time positions to most city employees. This proposal will allow the City to maintain services for residents, while saving the City an estimated $50 million. San Francisco faces a projected $522 million budget deficit for the 2010-11 fiscal year.” the press release, which was sent out on Saturday (presumably so the media ignores it), begins.

As the Chronicle reported that day, none of the affected employees are happy about this “offer” they can’t refuse, and their unions are even talking about suing the city. As for this plan to “maintain services,” that’s based simply on Newsom’s demand that city employees – who, because of the layoffs in previous years, are often already doing several people’s jobs – do 40 hours of work in 37.5 hours.

Now, this reduced workweek plan might not be so terrible if Newsom had worked on it with the unions, made deeper cuts to senior management and his taxpayer-paid political team in recent years, coupled it with a push to try to increase local taxes, and been honest about its impact to city services and the local economy.

Instead, we hear that we must burn the village in order to save it, which was dubbed the “enlightened approach” in the press release (which failed to mention that Newsom plans to not rehire an unspecified number of the employees he’s firing). “The point is to keep people employed and to keep their benefits,” Big Brother Newsom said in the press release.

Later in the release, Newsom goes on to laud Thursday’s Day of Action events, in which speaker after speaker called for increased taxes on wealthy corporations and individuals in order to prevent continued cuts to the public education system – despite the fact that Newsom has been the single biggest obstacle in San Francisco to such tax increases. “They’re shutting down opportunities. Its [sic] impacted faculty, its [sic] impacted morale, and it’s going to devastate the economy of the state unless we wake up and say enough’s enough,” Newsom said, sounding like the sympathetic populist instead the mayor who has proudly touted the fact that his budgets haven’t raised taxes, relying entirely on cuts.

Big Brother couldn’t have said it better himself.

Making the protests count

Zelda Bronstein
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Making the protests count

It was wonderful to see so many people all over the state taking to the streets to protest cuts in education and public services. The rally at San Francisco’s Civic Center wasn’t just young radical agitators, either — most of the people there were parents with kids, families, people who are just fed up with the threats to the future of this state and don’t want to take it any more.


And now that the press and public and maybe even the elected officials are focused on the issue, it’s time to move to the next step. Politicians can talk all they want about “standing with the families” and supporting education, but in the end, there’s only one way to adequately fund K-12 and higher education in California. And that’s to raise taxes.


You can talk about waste all you want, and there’s certainly waste at the University of California. But we’re looking at a need that runs into the billions, multiple billions, tens of billions — and eliminating a few million bucks of waste here and there isn’t going to solve the problem.


You’re not going to solve it by reallocating the state’s budget money, either, since there’s no single large pot of cash that can be taken and given to the schools without devastating another necessary public service. The only real possibility is the prison system, a financial sink hole if ever there were one — but again: You can’t just cut prison spending by eliminating services to prisoners. They get so little as it is — and the federal courts won’t allow any reductions in health care and the state’s already under court order to reduce overcrowding.


You could probably solve half of the schools’ fiscal problems by releasing from prison every single inmate serving time for a drug offense; that’s the kind of dramatic steps we’re talking about. And if anyone wants to launch a political campaign to let 30,000 prisoners free tomorrow, I’m with you.


But it’s not going to happen, not in this climate. So the only real option is to get more revenue. That means raising taxes at the state level, repealing Prop. 13 to allow local property tax hikes, or raising taxes at the city level.


And here’s who the protesters need to be targeting:


1. The governor. Arnold Schwarzenegger not only refuses to allow new taxes as part of the budget, he vetoed Sen. Mark Leno’s bill that would have allowed local government to raise its own car taxes. He’s at (916)-445-2841.


2. The Republican leadership of the state Legislature. These folks go into the budget talks with the power of a minority that can block the two-thirds vote required for tax hikes, and they’ve both signed “no new taxes” pledges. These two people are among the single largest reason that the California school are facing such huge cuts. Assemblymember Martin Garrick,  916-319-2074. Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, (916) 651-4036.


3. Attorney General Jerry Brown. He’s running for governor as the Democratic candidate, and he has already announced that he won’t raise taxes and that Prop. 13 is untouchable. He won’t even support Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s bill to legalize and tax marijuana. He needs to hear from his constituents that those positions won’t fly. (916) 322-3360


4. The mayor of San Francisco. Gavin Newsom is happy to announce that he supports education funding, but he’s never come forward with a single significant new tax increase for the city. Local taxes could be split between the general fund and the schools, and the progressives on the Board of Supervisors are looking for revenue options. Call the mayor and tell him: If Sacramento won’t raise taxes to educate our kids, we’d like to do it at home, in San Francisco. 415-554-6141.


5. Any state or local official who claims to support the schools but won’t publicly endorse and work for higher taxes. Folks, there’s no other way out of this.


And at the next rally, let’s chant: Repeal Prop. 13, Now! Tax the rich in San Francisco — Now!

MUNI driver: luck, not system, saved my family

Mary Magee
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MUNI driver: luck, not system, saved my family

MUNI bus driver Charles Washington says it was luck that won his family a reprieve from a federal deportation order. His Australian bride Tracey, who he married in Reno last April, and her 13-year-old son were served deportation orders after the boy got into a schoolyard fight and a police officer wrote him up with three felony charges. Under the city’s current policy, felony charges against undocumented youth triggers an immediate referral to ICE before the youth can prove their innocence.

Charles and Tracey Washington hug outside a hearing on the city’s policy towards immigrant youth. After the hearing, the juvenile probation department dropped language from its policy that advocates say could lead to racial profiling, but JPD Chief William Sifferman said the department cann’t allow kids due process for fear of being accused of harboring and transporting aliens.

Washington’s family won a reprieve after the media learned of their plight, an outcome Charles puts down to luck, not evidence that the system is working. He believes the nightmare his family is going through proves that the city’s policy towards immigrant youth isn’t working. And he wants those responsible for setting that policy to take responsibility and fix what’s broken,  not pass the buck by trying to hide behind federal laws they claim prevent them from fixing their own policy.

“The problem with the policy is that is doesn’t allow for due process,” Washington said during a March 4 hearing on the city’s policy which Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered in 2008.”The policy is based upon the original charges that a police officer made, a  field officer who has to make a quick decison based upon a couple of known facts,” Washington said. “Kids get treated as if they are guilty before they are proven innocent. There has to be a better way for the system to work.”

Washington doesn’t blame the city’s police or probation officers for his stepson getting referred to the feds before he could prove he was innocent of felony-level charges.

Gabe Calvillo, president of the city’s probation officers union, congratulated the Washington family on their reprieve, but repeated concerns that giving kids their day in court would put his members at risk.

And Washington does not blame city workers for the fact that federal immigration agents used his stepson as bait to get his wife to come in to their Sansome Street office where they handed her and her son deportation orders and slapped an electronic monitoring device on her ankle–a device she is still wearing to this day.

 Tracey Washington demonstrates the device that the feds are forcing her to wear, making her feel like a “murderer,” even though the couple say federal contractors gave them misinformation about when to apply for a green card, after she got married to  Charles Washington while she and her two sons were here on a visa waiver.

As a city worker, Washington gets that these city workers were simply following orders. But as a husband, father and US citizen who is still fighting to keep his family intact, he believes that those responsible for the policy that led to this nightmarish sequence of events are hiding behind claims that their hands are tied by federal law. And he wants them to get off their hands and back to the drawing board, so other families don’t have to go through what his family just experienced.

And unlike many families that feel they were unnecessarily ripped apart by the city’s policy towards immigrant kids, Washington can articulate his concerns without fear of being deported himself.

“It’s unbelievable how any family could have been put in that position,” Washington said, recalling how his son landed in ICE’s hands, after a SFPD officer wrote him up for three felony charges, following a schoolyard fight over 46 cents.

When an SFPD officer charges a juvenile with a felony, juvenile probation is required to refer the kid to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), if they suspect the youth is here without legal documentation.

Once Washington’s stepson was referred to ICE, under a policy that Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered in 2008, the feds ordered him and his mother deported, without waiting to see if local courts actually find the boy guilty of any felony charges.

It was only when Washington went public with his family’s nightmare and the media started making calls that ICE backed off.

But while it was the city’s flawed policy that landed the Washingtons in this dilemma, the Mayor’s Office did not offer to try and help. Instead, the Mayor’s office claimed that their case proves that Newsom’s policy is “not draconian.” (You can read Newsom’s full statement at the end of this post.)

“The Mayor’s Office could have contacted me, tracked me down,” Washington said. “But they just sat back and waited to jump on the band wagon, whichever way it went.”

Mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker said the Mayor’s Office was sympathetic to the family’s plight but could see no reason to get involved in what he described as “a federal immigration matter.”

But Washington notes that it was Newsom’s policy that led to his stepson being referred to ICE, and the feds would have deported his family this week, if they hadn’t gone public with their case,a step most immigrant families are afraid to take.

“The bottom line is that we got lucky,” Washington said. “How many families wouldn’t know what to do in this situation? When I spoke at the press conference at the Asian Law Caucus,  I didn’t know what to do either. What if the Asian Law Caucus had been too busy, or the media hadn’t come to the press conference? Does everybody have to contact a lawyer. Our story shows that the system failed, and that it was luck that saved us.”

While folks are acting as if the Washingtons’ problems are over, the family still faces huge financial and legal challenges.

“For the time being, we’ve had a huge burden lifted off of us, but the next huge problem is that we are bing requested to have one-way plane tickets ready for the first part of April, though we are not being asked to leave now until May 4, that’s several thousand dollars that we have to lose,” Washington said, noting that it will cost over $4,000 to apply for green cards.
“Meanwhile, It looks like everyone wants to point the finger at someone else instead of focusing on the fact that there is a problem.”

Washington made his comments after a hearing that Sup. David Campos called to determine why the Juvenile Probation department hasn’t implemented an amendment that Campos introduced in 2009 to address the Catch 22 situation that’s  hidden within Newsom’s current policy and that ensnared the Washingtons’ kid.

Campos’ amendment instructed probation officers to wait until kids have had their day in court before referring them to ICE. But Mayor Newsom said he will ignore the amendment, and JPD Chief Sifferman has refused to implement it.

Either way, Campos’ March 4 hearing offered a rare insight into the, some would say, dysfunctional dynamics within the city’s juvenile justice department since it came under the microscope of US Attorney Joe Russoniello in 2008.

A Bush appointee, Russoniello has been ideologically opposed to the concept of sanctuary ever since the city enacted its City of Refuge ordinance in the 1980s, when he was first US Attorney for Northern California.

After Kevin Ryan was fired as US Attorney in 2006 and hired as Newsom’s director of criminal justice in 2007, Russoniello resumed his post as top federal prosecutor, a position of power that let him launch a federal Grand Jury investigation in 2008 to determine if JPD’s former practices violated federal law.

Ryan has since resigned from the Mayor’s Office, and the Obama adminstration is vetting Russoniello’s replacement, but the City claims it can’t give immigrant kids their day in court for fear of federal retaliation. And some believe the unresolved tension between the city’s sanctuary policy and the federal immigration laws will continue, unless national immigration reform occurs.

Juvenile Probation Department Chief William Sifferman said today that his department is eliminating language from its juvenile immigrant policy that could be an invitation to racial profiling.

JPD Chief William Sifferman told Campos that his department looked into Campos’ amendment, which directs JPD to modify its policies and practices to the “extent permitted by federal law”‘and concluded that it cannot modify them.

Sifferman recalled what happened when JPD used to return immigrant youth to their country of origin or place them in group homes, with no notification to ICE.

“Many of these youth were arrested for selling crack cocaine in the Tenderloin, were placed in group homes, ran away, were rearrested, selling drugs again,” Sifferman testified.

He recalled how JPD officers were interrogated and threatened with arrest by federal agents who intercepted them at Houston airport as they were accompanying minors to Honduras. And that Russoniello subsequently convened a Grand Jury to investigate JPD’s actions.

“That investigation continues to this day,” Sifferman said. “The department’s current policy was adpoted becoasue of these concerns.”

“Until a court rules otherwise, the department must conclude that [federal] law would not allow the city to change its policy,” Sifferman said.

He said probation officers are trained not to directly question juveniles or their parents about their immigration status. And hee noted “a marked reduction” in the number of unaccompanied Honduran minors who have been arrested for selling crack cocaine.

“We believe our policy has significantly reversed a 15-year trend in the city’s history,” he said.

Sifferman said he did not receive Campos’ request for time estimate information until 48 hours before the March 4 hearing, though Campos said he made his request weeks ago.

But he offered some statistics, including the fact that “since July 2008, JPD has released 107 unduplicated youth to ICE, 125 times.”

“This means that 17 were referred to ICE twice, that they returned to country of origin, then reoffended,” Sifferman explained.

He also noted that 92 percent of the youth are released to ICE after a felony finding.

“Only a small number are released to ICE without having determined if they had committed a felony,” Sifferman said.

The monthly average of kids referred to ICE for the first four months of the city’s new policy was ten, Sifferman said.

“And for the past 16 months, it’s been five,” he said. “We attribute this decline to undocumented Honduran youth no longer returning to the Tenderloin to sell crack with the same frequency.”

But he claimed that while there has been a reduction in releases to ICE, there had been no measurable decline in probation officer’s case or work load.

‘They continue to supervise kids who have not been referred to ICE,” he said.

“We have dedicated none of our resources to working with ICE,” he added.

Contact with ICE is limited to fax transmissions, follow-up phone calls, and follow-up responses, Sifferman said.

“Probation officers do not arrest or detain youth based on their undocumented status nor do they assist in taking youth into ICE custody,” Sifferman said. “We must always recognize the public safety impliations of our policy.”

Asked what kind of resources JPD spends on this contact, Sifferman said, “De minimus.”

Pressed  for more details,  Sifferman said, “It’s difficult to estimate given that our staffing level functions are ministerial—a fax being sent a record placed in a file, a phone call about a potential release date. We haven’t done a time study.”

Campos noted that unlike JPD’s former policy, the amendment he enacted last fall does not call for prior policing and actual transport of youth across the country. But Sifferman countered that if youth are released back into the community, JPD could be aked to transport them “to various locales.”

Campos questioned Sifferman as to the origin of language in Newsom’s current policy that immigrant advocates believe could lead to racial profiling (language that, as the Guardian learned today, has now been deleted from the policy).

“In determining whether there is reasonable suspicion that youth is undocumented, one of the criteria listed in the policy says, ‘presence of undocumented persons, ‘ but how would you know when a person is undocumented?” Campos asked.

“There could be information in the arresting report describing the conditions,” Sifferman suggested.

“How did you decide to include this language in the policy?” Campos asked.

“It was based on research and advice we received from the City Attorney’s office,” Sifferman said. “The entire policy is based on review and approval of the City Attorney’s office.”

“Can you see how something as open-ended as this could lead to racial profiling?” Campos asked.

‘It could, it requires vigilant oversight, if that criterion was taken alone, we’d have  a problem wth that,” Sifferman said.

Sup. Eric Mar said he was “very upset,” that Sifferman did not have the cost estimates available.
Mar also voiced concerns that the policy sounded “like a justification for racial profiling.”

“I really respect you, but it sure sounds like you’re flying in the face of San Francicso values when you are not implementing a policy to protect due process,” Mar said.

“I disagree that we have been intentionally stalling,” said Sifferman, who has been hit with budget cuts and staffing reductions in the past couple of years like other department heads.

Campos took issue with Sifferman citing Title 8, Section 1373 of the US code as justification for not implementing his policy amendment.

That section of the US code states that, “Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual. “

“Can you point to a section of the federal law that requires you to report?” Campos said
“No, I can’t,” Sifferman said.

But Sifferman subsequently noted  that there is a prohibition against “transporting and harboring any person known to be undocumented,” a position that leaves JPD officers feeling vulnerable given that the department has received three federal Granf Jury subpoenas related to JPD’s previous policy towards juveniles.

During public comment, UC Davis Law Professor Bill Ong Hing addressed the fact that a bunch of misinformation continues to swirl around the city’s immigrant juvenile policy.

“I would encourage the Board, Chief Sifferman, the Mayor’s Office and City Attorney’s office to sit down together,” Hing said. “A lot of misinformation is floating around.”

Hing noted that there is nothing in the Campos amendment that prohibits reporting kids to ICE.

“But you do not have to volunteer information to them, if it’s not required,” Hing said.

“The vast majority of jurisdictions don’t contact ICE [before kids have day in court], they recognize that’s not good policing, ” Hing continued. “Under the rules of federalism, there is nothing that prohibits this ordinance.”

“And there has never been a prosecution of a city worker [for following a city’s sanctuary policy], and [a prosecution of a city worker for that] wouldn’t be authorized by the Obama admininstration,” Hing claimed.

He also said that a confidential memo that Mayor Newsom leaked to the Chronicle was ‘laughable”.

“It exagerrates the likelihood of a successfully overruling the sanctuary ordinance,” Hing said.

Hing concluded that City Attorney approved language in Newsom’s current policy, “is a complete inviation for racial profiling.”

City Attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey responded forcefully to these accusations.

“Racial profiling is illegal, and something we take very seriously,” Dorsey wrote in an email.” Part of the City Attorney’s duty is to advise against illegal conduct. If a client department informs us that a policy could risk illegality, we will work with our clients to make sure laws aren’t broken, and that no one’s rights are violated. That’s a job lawyers do every day.  And that’s especially true here, where the matter involves litigation, threats of litigation, and a federal criminal investigation.”

And today, JPD decided to eliminate the language that was triggering racial profiling concerns.

Meanwhile, mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker noted that of the 125 reports to ICE since July 2008, 97 percent were for felony arrests, and the other 3 percent were “misdemeanors with priors.”

Winnicker also emailed a statement from Newsom that reads as follows:

“I have long supported our sanctuary policy and a range of policies and programs designed to assist our immigrant community. I believe San Francisco continues to be an international leader with our efforts to protect immigrants in our community. However, the sanctuary ordinance as originally conceived and adopted was designed to protect all residents of our city, not as a shield for felons and criminal behavior. I will not put City staff, our sanctuary city policy and thousands of residents at risk to shield felony criminal behavior by a few. Immigration and Customs enforcement is a federal responsibility. San Francisco cannot be the arbiter of immigration cases that take place within the City. That’s why many other counties in California have a similar policy of reporting suspected juvenile felons to Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the booking stage. The recent example of the Washington family validates that our current policy is appropriate. Juvenile Probation officials report undocumented felony arrests to Immigration & Customs Enforcement, and Immigration & Customs Enforcement officials determine the appropriate response. In this case, once President Obama’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office became aware of the exceptional circumstances around the case, they took commendable action to ensure that the young boy and his family were given time to resolve their residency status.San Francisco’s Sanctuary Ordinance continues to strike the appropriate balance between offering a welcoming hand to our immigrant community and protecting the public safety of law-abiding residents of our City.”

That’s a fine statement, and I’m sure the mayor cares about youth, whatever their nationality and immigration status. But  immigrant youth still face a  Catch 22 trap within his policy that has led kids who haven’t committed felonies being referred to ICE for deporation. The question now becomes, can a miracle happen? Will everyone involved–at the city and federal level–sit down and hash out an equitable solution? Will heads of other city departments acknowledge their role in this process or will Sifferman be hung out to dry all on his lonesome? And will a bunch more kids get thrown under the bus before we as a nation find our way towards a saner and more equitable immigration process? Stay tuned.

Police Commission shoots down Tasers

Zelda Bronstein
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Police Commission shoots down Tasers

The San Francisco Police Commission came to its senses last night, and — after an immense amount of work by community activists and Commissioner Petra DeJesus — voted 4-3 not to move forward with a plan for giving the cops Tasers.


A lot of the discussion revolved around the safety of the stun guns; zapping someone with 50,000 volts can cause injury and sometimes death. But there’s another issue here, and the pres coverage only touched on it.


When, exactly, would Tasers be used?


From the Chron:


After becoming chief in July, Gascón commissioned a study of officer-involved shootings in San Francisco over five years that found that as many as one-third could have been avoided had police been able to use Tasers.


…


But 38-year SFPD veteran Vince Repetto, who joined a contingent of officers waiting to speak in favor of Tasers, said before the meeting that the Taser proposal is literally “a life-or-death decision.”
“It’s not if, but when, a Taser is used to stop a knife-wielding suspect and a life is saved,” he said. “Then you will see the results of your decision. Let us hope that same suspect is not shot dead because an officer lacked a valuable option to deadly force.”
Okay, so the idea here is that a Taser is a replacement for lethal force? That cops should use Tasers instead of their service pistol in an instance when a shooting would otherwise be justified?


Remember: Under police general orders, it’s only okay to draw and fire a gun when an officer’s life of the life of another person is in imminent danger. That means a suspect has a lethal weapon of his or her own, and is directly threatening someone with it.


Gascon says that there were five instances where a police shooting could have been prevented if the cops had Tasers. As he told my colleague Rebecca Bowe in an interview:


We just did a study of San Francisco police shootings in the last five years. We looked at 15 or 16 shootings, and of those we have determined at least five that, if the officer would’ve had a Taser available, they would have been able to control the situation without having to unload their firearm. And some of those shootings, by the way, resulted in the death of the other individuals. So we believe that even within the deadly force universe if you will, the Tasers sometimes have a very useful place in reducing violence.


What this says to me — since a Taser isn’t considered a substitute for a gun in a case where there’s a real threat — is that there were five cases where the cops shouldn’t have shot someone. Somehow, I can’t see the SF cops using Tasers on people they think are about to kill another person. 


What I do see is officers using their Tasers on people who are just a pain in the ass; it’s way easier to cuff a difficult suspect if you zap him immobile first.


The chief acknowledged to Bowe that Tasers could be misused:


Any time that you have human beings involved  there will be sometimes when they will be involved in aberrant behavior.


Do we have officers that overdrive? We do.


One of the deadliest weapons we have is an automobile, but I don’t hear people saying we should take their cars away and make them walk. It’s a tool, and it it’s a tool that has the potential for being misused. How do you reduce that misuse? Training, discipline and supervision.


The problem is that people in San Francisco — particularly people of color, low-income people and people in some neighborhoods — have had such a bad experience with the SFPD in the past that they aren’t going to trust the department to properly train, discipline and supervise its armed force. I think Gascon needs to rebuild that trust first — and one way to start is by demonstrating that the department is serious about internal discipline. Then we can talk about adding more firepower.


(Oh, and by the way: This entire episode demonstrates the value of having appointments to the Police Commission split between the mayor and the supervisors. The differing perspectives and opinions allowed for some real debate.

Day of Action field reports

Sasha Cuttler
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We’re starting to get some field reports from today’s big Strike and Day of Action — which culminates in a 5 p.m. rally in Civic Center Plaza — from some Guardianistas who we have covering various marches. And it sounds like the turnout is big and lively.

Over at SF State, hundreds of protesting students blocked 19th Avenue before being cleared by police. Then, for those students who hadn’t walked out in protest of rising fees and declining class offerings, someone pulled a fire alarm and shut down classes that way.

Meanwhile, in the East Bay, intern Jobert Poblete is with a march that he estimates to be a couple thousand people that has taken Telegraph Avenue and is trying to go all the way from the UC Berkeley campus to downtown Oakland, where they’ll rally in the Frank Ogawa Plaza outside Oakland City Hall this afternoon. So far, they’ve met with little resistance or police activity.

Currently, there are already hundreds of protesters outside Oakland City Hall, which has been locked down, and the crowd is expected to swell to several thousand once the Telegraph protest and other East Bay events converge there. It’s the same story outside San Francisco City Hall, where a rally is now underway with several satellite protests making their way there now.

See Alerts for more on the various marches and check back to this post later for updates and photos.  

2:15 update: Brady Welch reports that around 100 Mission High students have walked off campus together and are now marching up Valencia Streets, banging drums and chanting slogans, with some SFPD squad cars providing an escort. We’ve also heard from various sources through SF and the East Bay that there’s been more than a dozen smaller protests, many of them involving grade school children carrying protest signs. SF Public Press has an interesting report by a former Guardian intern on that phenomenon.

Shot of crowd at East Bay march.

And a couple photos from Brady Welch:

 

This photo (taken from inside Oakland City Hall by my friend, Deputy City Attorney Alix Rosenthal, less than an hour ago) shows a smaller than expected turnout:

Meanwhile, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has issued a statement of support for the Day of Action that begins, ““I join the thousands of students, parents and teachers across California and here in San Francisco today calling for adequate, equitable education funding for our public schools and universities.”

Newsom also opposed the Iraq War but never took part in any of the peace marches (unlike progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, who marched and gave speeches at the events), but I’m headed to the Civic Center rally soon, so I’ll let you know if he makes an appearance. We’ll have more extensive coverage of today’s events and what they mean tomorrow.

UPDATE: Guardian intern Jobert Poblete was among 150-200 people arrested in the East Bay during the Day of Action protests this evening, a group that he says including several journalists. Details are sketchy in the brief messages that we’ve had from him, but most of the arrests reportedly occurred when the protesters briefly blocked Interstate 880. They’ve been taken to Alameda County Jail in Dublin where jail personnel tell us most of those arrested are likely to be cited and released sometime tonight. Meanwhile, a 5 p.m. rally at Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco was packed with an exhuberant crowd of several thousand, the largest demonstration there in years. We’ll have a full report of the day’s events tomorrow.

Editorial: Where landlords, developers, and cars are king

David Talbot
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EDITORIAL Are cars more important than people? Is it OK to evict a tenant just to make space for a garage? Should new garages be designed to preserve on-street parking too? Seems like a no-brainer to us. But legislation by Sup. David Chiu that would put some limits on the expansion of garages — an increasing problem in Chinatown and North Beach — has infuriated some real estate interests, and it’s possible that this eminently reasonable bill might fail.

It’s a sad statement on San Francisco politics, and the implications go way beyond this one planning measure.

The problem has its roots in the Ellis Act, the state law that allows landlords to clear all the tenants out of a building, then sell it to wealthier people who want to buy their units as tenants in common (TICs). The Ellis Act has been responsible for thousands of San Franciscans losing their homes — and a new twist has been developing in Chiu’s district.

In the crowded Chinatown-North Beach area, parking is at a premium and people who are buying TICs want a place to put their cars. So landlords and speculators are throwing out tenants not just for new owners, but to make room for garages.

Chiu’s law — which would apply only in parts of District 3 — would deny building owners a permit to construct a new garage if a tenant was evicted under the Ellis Act in the past 10 years. And it would require a conditional use authorization from the City Planning Department for any new garage construction.

Chiu also wants new rules for curb cuts — the openings in sidewalks that allow cars to drive into garages. The cuts would have to be as small as possible and designed to preserve on-street parking.

On a larger level, the bill would make it easier to construct new housing without parking — a significant change in how San Francisco has handled off-street parking for many years. Instead of mandating garages in new apartment buildings, Chiu wants to discourage them. He’s saying, in essence, that space for people is more important than space for cars.

That’s a logical step in a city that is trying to enforce a transit-first policy. It’s a small piece of a larger political battle to transform a city planning system that for too long has been driven by the needs of the private automobile. It should have passed unanimously and Mayor Newsom should sign it into law.

In fact, the bill passed on first reading Feb. 9, with only Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Carmen Chu voting against it. But Sup. Bevan Dufty now says he has concerns about the measure, and Chiu has agreed to postpone the final vote until March 9.

Dufty’s a key vote, because it’s likely at this point that the mayor will veto the measure. And with Elsbernd and Chu opposed and Michela Alioto-Pier still out with health problems, supporters can’t override a veto without Dufty.

We couldn’t reach Dufty, but supporters of the bill say he wants the measure watered down to eliminate the conditional use requirement — which would force city planners to check and make sure the builder or landlord was following the rules — and replace it with a discretionary review requirement, which would allow the garage construction unless someone objected. That puts the burden on the tenants (who in many cases are low income people whose primary language isn’t English) to protect themselves. And it would undermine much of the power of the bill.

It’s insane for Dufty to oppose a reasonable measure that only applies to a small part of one district, protects vulnerable tenants, and pushes the city away from further automobile dependence. It’s insane that the mayor is expected to veto the bill. It’s insane that it’s even an issue. And if the ordinance fails, it will be a sign that even in San Francisco, in 2010, landlords, developers, and cars are still king.

 

Where landlords, developers, and cars are king

David Talbot
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3
Where landlords, developers, and cars are king

EDITORIAL Are cars more important than people? Is it okay to evict a tenant just to make space for a garage? Should new garages be designed to preserve on-street parking too? Seems like a no-brainer to us. But legislation by Sup. David Chiu that would put some limits on the expansion of garages — an increasing problem in Chinatown and North Beach — has infuriated some real estate interests, and it’s possible that this eminently reasonable bill might fail.

It’s a sad statement on San Francisco politics, and the implications go way beyond this one planning measure.

The problem has its roots in the Ellis Act, the state law that allows landlords to clear all the tenants out of a building, then sell it to wealthier people who want to buy their units as tenants in common (TICs). The Ellis Act has been responsible for thousands of San Franciscans losing their homes — and a new twist has been developing in Chiu’s district.

In the crowded Chinatown-North Beach area, parking is at a premium and people who are buying TICs want a place to put their cars. So landlords and speculators are throwing out tenants not just for new owners, but to make room for garages.

Chiu’s law — which would apply only in parts of District 3 — would deny building owners a permit to construct a new garage if a tenant was evicted under the Ellis Act in the past 10 years. And it would require a conditional use authorization from the City Planning Department for any new garage construction.

Chiu also wants new rules for curb cuts — the openings in sidewalks that allow cars to drive into garages. The cuts would have to be as small as possible and designed to preserve on-street parking.

On a larger level, the bill would make it easier to construct new housing without parking — a significant change in how San Francisco has handled off-street parking for many years. Instead of mandating garages in new apartment buildings, Chiu wants to discourage them. He’s saying, in essence, that space for people is more important than space for cars.

That’s a logical step in a city that is trying to enforce a transit-first policy. It’s a small piece of a larger political battle to transform a city planning system that for too long has been driven by the needs of the private automobile. It should have passed unanimously and Mayor Newsom should sign it into law.

In fact, the bill passed on first reading Feb. 9, with only Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Carmen Chu voting against it. But Sup. Bevan Dufty now says he has concerns about the measure, and Chiu has agreed to postpone the final vote until March 9.

Dufty’s a key vote, because it’s likely at this point that the mayor will veto the measure. And with Elsbernd and Chu opposed and Michela Alioto-Pier still out with health problems, supporters can’t override a veto without Dufty.

We couldn’t reach Dufty, but supporters of the bill say he wants the measure watered down to eliminate the conditional use requirement — which would force city planners to check and make sure the builder or landlord was following the rules — and replace it with a discretionary review requirement, which would allow the garage construction unless someone objected. That puts the burden on the tenants (who in many cases are low income people whose primary language isn’t English) to protect themselves. And it would undermine much of the power of the bill.

It’s insane for Dufty to oppose a reasonable measure that only applies to a small part of one district, protects vulnerable tenants, and pushes the city away from further automobile dependence. It’s insane that the mayor is expected to veto the bill. It’s insane that it’s even an issue. And if the ordinance fails, it will be a sign that even in San Francisco, in 2010, landlords, developers, and cars are still king.

MTA board ponders bad options

Sasha Cuttler
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MTA board ponders bad options

By Adam Lesser

If Friday’s San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency decision to cut Muni service by 10 percent was met with a backlash, it didn’t get much better this afternoon as MTA Chief Financial Officer Sonali Bose laid out further options for closing next fiscal year’s $56.4 million projected budget deficit.

One option that was very unpopular but potentially lucrative is the possibility of eliminating transfers. That’s right. Going from the Sunset to North Beach, and need to transfer from the N to the 8X? You’ll be paying twice if the MTA Board of directors goes with this option. It would generate $20.4 million to help close the budget gap.

Other proposed changes included a consolidation of transit stops in the system, charging for metered street parking on Sundays, extending meter hours into the evenings, a reduction in work orders requiring payments to other city departments, window wrapping advertising on MTA buses, and dedicated tax measures that would raise additional funding for Muni.

A further 5 percent service reduction was also not ruled out, though CEO Nathaniel Ford suggested that Bose remove it as part of the list of solutions to the budget crunch. For every 5 percent reduction in service, the MTA saves $7.2 million.

Ford tried to strike a conciliatory tone. “Last Friday was a very difficult day. People were understandably upset,” he said. “We must recognize we can only deliver the services we can afford. Going forward our choices are going to get that much more difficult.”

The criticism of the MTA Board was diverse. Tom Radulovich, Executive Director of Livable City, questioned the future of the board. “I think there’s a very good chance the MTA in it current form won’t see its 11th anniversary because it isn’t doing what voters want it to do.” Radulovich said the MTA had failed to live up to its charter mandate by not seeking new funding for the agency.

Many pro-transit groups argued that the Board should extend meter hours and eliminate free parking on Sunday. They felt the best way to promote public transportation and deal with the budget is to increase costs on drivers in San Francisco.

“There is some easily implementable low hanging fruit,” said Marc Caswell, program manager for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “By increasing parking meters, you will help make transit affordable. You must extend meter hours.” Caswell suggested the board was receiving “political pressure” from the mayor’s office not to extend meter hours or eliminate free Sunday parking.

Two issues from Friday’s meeting were continued this afternoon. One was the proposal to exclude the 8X bus lines from the premium pass. Eric Williams from Transport Workers Union Local 250-A was vocal. “You’re putting these raises on the less fortunate. The 8X are coming from the Sunnydale neighborhood. They’re going to get on the local 9 and pack buses. These people are coming off housing projects to get to work.”

The second continued item surrounded the proposed elimination of free parking for employees who work at city garages, effectively charging them to park in the garage where they work. The irony of the proposal was not lost on Mission and Fifth Garage Supervisor Jorge Carrillo who showed up at the hearing to explain to the MTA board that one of his security guards will have to work 30 hours just to pay the monthly 300 dollar parking fee. “It’s outrageous. I live 50 miles away from the garage. That’s two to three hours to get home on public transportation.”

In line with projected budge deficits was a request to extend the current state of fiscal emergency through 2012. Declaring a fiscal emergency allows the MTA to avoid the California Environment Quality Act (CEQA) requirements should it decide to cut service or increase fares over the next two years.

Bose concluded her presentation with a reminder that there will be a town hall meeting on the proposals next Wednesday, March 10th at 6:00pm at 1 South Van Ness on the second floor. The SFMTA Board meets again March 30th.

Family’s deportation illustrates why Campos’ amendment is needed

Mary Magee
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The case of MUNI bus driver Charles Washington, whose wife Tracey and her 13-year old son face deportation on Friday after the boy tried to take 46 cents from another kid, helps illustrate why Sup. David Campos spent over a year working with local immigration experts to figure out a way to amend the city’s sanctuary policy. Under the Campos amendment, which Mayor Gavin Newsom has refused to implement, kids like Charles Washington’s 13-year-old stepson would only be referred to US immigration and Customs Enforcement after a juvenile justice determined that they were actually guilty of a felony.

Unfortunately, the city’s juvenile probation department, under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s orders, and running scared of rightwing nuts who have unsuccesfully tried to sue the city, has refused to implement Campos amendment. Campos, who spent over a year working with immigration experts to develop a measured and legally defensible amendment, has called a hearing to determine why juvenile probation is refusing to implement his amendment, which a super majority of the Board supported last year,thereby overriding Newsom’s mayoral veto.

And now, with the face of the Washingtons all over the local media, city officials are either rushing to clarify their positions, or avoiding reporters altogether, as the Washingtons fight to keep their family intact–and in San Francisco.

Sgt Tomioka of the San Francisco police Department left me a message this morning to clarify that the SFPD doesn’t refer immigrant youth to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“That is not a function of the SFPD,” Tomioka said in a voice message.
And she’s right. That job is left to the city’s probation officers. But the city’s probation officers are required, under Newsom’s policy, to refer kids to ICE if the arresting SFPD officer charges them with a felony. So, in that sense the SFPD is involved in the ICE referral process, albeit indirectly.

As the SFPD’s Sgt. Wilfred Williams explained, SFPD officers make the arrests, write up the charges and transport suspected juvenile felons to the Juvenile Justice Center.

And it’s at the Juvenile Justice Center that members of the city’s Juvenile Probation Department are required, under Newsom’s orders, to pick up the phone and refer kids to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when kids they suspect of being undocumented are booked with felony charges.

In the case of Charles Washington’s skinny 13-year-old stepson, the kid was arrested by the SFPD on Jan. 25 and charged with felony assault, extortion and robbery. I haven’t seen a police report of the incident, yet. But Washington said it was based on what the other kid’s family told the police, and that there were no witnesses to the incident. And felony charges are all that’s needed, under Newsom’s current policy to require a probation officer to refer a kid to ICE.

And once juveniles are in the hands of ICE, a nightmarish Catch 22 kicks in, in which local protections no longer apply, and ICE’s deportation orders can trump any legal immigration application, including green card applications.

In the case of the Washingtons, the family was applying for green cards–applications that cost thousands of dollars. And US Citizenship and Immigration Services had agreed to review their case. But then came their son’s arrest by the SFPD who charged him with three felonies and transported him to Juvenile Probation, whose officers were required to refer him to ICE. And ICE, according to Washington, then used his son “as bait” to get his wife to show up at their office, where they slapped an electronic monitoring device on her ankle and gave her and her son their deportation marching orders.

Angela Chan, staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, and the lawyer helping the Washingtons’ negogiate their way through this immigration nightmare, clarified that USCIS isn’t refusing to consider their case, because of the stepson’s referral.
Instead, the problem is that USCIS  won’t be able to finish that process before Friday, when the Washingtons are due to be deported.

“Unfortunately, the mother and her child will be deported by ICE well before their greencard application can be processed by USCIS, which can take months,” Chan said.

Further compounding the Washingtons’ legal problems is the fact that their 13-year-old is supposed to appear before a juvenile justice on Monday (March 8) to review the charges against him.Chan said it’s likely that a juvenile justice would review the boy’s case and reduce the charges, probably requiring him to do six months informal probation. In other words, the felony charges that led to his referral to ICE likely wouldn’t be upheld in court.

Now, under the amendment that Sup. Campos authored and the Board approved last fall, but Newsom is refusing to implement, the boy’s probation oficer would not be required to refer him to ICE if the felony charges aren’t upheld. In which case, the boy would go free, his parents could continue applying for green cards, and the family could remain intact

But since ICE want to deport Washington’s stepson before his March 8 hearing, the boy won’t have his day in court. Even worse, he will likely be slapped with a bench warrant by the juvenile justice department–the kind of Catch 22 detail that will play havoc with future attempts to apply for green cards from outside the US.

I asked Lori Haley of US ICE what’s the big hurry to deport the Washingtons by Friday.
“They overstayed their visas,” was all Haley would say, along with the comment that “We don’t confirm when someone is going to be deported.”

Asked who was responsible for telling the Washingtons that they needn’t rush to apply for green cards, which is what Charles Washington said happened, Haley referred me to UC CIS, whose spokesperson Sharon Rummery said it was impossible to ascertain if a contractor with the US government misinformed the family.

‘I can’t say that it’s true or not, because it was a private conversation between one of the operators who works on our customer service line,” Rummery said. “Our operators are highly trained and are backed up by our trained officers,” Rummery continued, confirming that the operators are contractors, not US CIS staff.

Rummery offered that folks who are deported to their native country can file for a waiver of deportation and also a waiver of a ban on reentering the country.

“They have to demonstrate that an immediate relative, who has legal status, in this case the husband, will suffer severe hardship,” Rummery said. “When they are sent away, then they can apply for a waiver and return with a green card.”

But Rummery said she could not provide a reliable time estimate as to how long all this would take, nor did she know how the stepson’s felony charges and possible bench warrant would impact the family’s chances of getting a green card through this process.

So, I called Sens. Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and President Barack Obama’s press office to see if any of them are aware of this case and whether they would consider a private bill. As the Asian Law Caucus’ Chan explained to me, earlier today, “A private bill is when a bill is passed to grant immigration relief for an individual.  It doesn’t change SF’s policy or the way the feds are bullying us, but it may help this family.
  
No one in Boxer, Feinstein, Pelosi or Obama’s press offices was aware of this case when I called, but they all said they’d look into it,and the folks in Feinstein’s office sounded horrified that a kid could be deported thanks to a schoolyard fight over 46 cents. So, maybe there is hope after all.

To date, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s new media spokesperson Tony Winnicker hasn’t returned my calls.

But I did read that Winnicker had told the Chronicle that it was “‘an unfortunate situation for the family, and we’re sympathetic to it.”

“But [Winnicker] said the mayor is actually protecting ‘hard-working, law-abiding residents of this city, including undocumented residents’ by reporting youths after felony arrests,” the Chronicle continued.

Somehow, I don’t think that Charles Washington, a hard-working law-abiding resident of San Francisco, would agree that anybody is protecting him by deporting his wife and her two kids. Especially since the 13-year old hasn’t even had his day in court to determine if he is even guilty as charged.

And while the Chron wrote that Washington “hopes to visit them in Australia,” the Chron’s reporter must have left the press conference by the time Washington explained  how often he is likely to get to visit Australia. As Washington noted,  if you are deported, you typically have to wait 3-10 years to visit the US again.
“So, if it’s a 10-year ban, I’ll get to visit them 3 times, and if it’s a 3-year ban, I’ll get to visit them once,” Washington, who drives a MUNI bus, said.

“I refer to them as my sons, because I’m still going to be their dad,” continued Washington, who is praying for a miracle.

In the meantime, Sup. David Campos is holding a March 4 hearing before the Board’s rules committee to explore why the City’s Juvenile Probation Department has refused to implement Campos’ amendment to Newsom’s sanctuary policy. Up unitl now, Newsom’s office has claimed that taking this extra precaution would violate the US Constitution. I wonder how many families like the Washingtons are going to have to be destroyed before someone in the Mayor’s Office decides that it’s time to revaluate their position and prevent local families from get ripped apart, simply because their kids, green cards or not, insist on acting like kids.

 

 

Jerry Brown and the Rose Bird factor

Zelda Bronstein
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Jerry Brown and the Rose Bird factor

Jerry Brown hadn’t even formally announced that he was running for governor when the San Francisco Chronicle brought up the name of Rose Bird.


It’s fine to talk about where Brown is vulnerable, and there’s no shortage of material. The guy has a long public record; anyone who served two terms as governor in the 1970s and early 1980s, and two terms as mayor of Oakland, and one term as chair of the state Democratic Party, and did a couple of years as a KPFA talk show host, is going to have baggage. He’s also got a wealth of experience.


But the Rose Bird stuff is a cheap shot.



Here’s how the Chron describes it:


Rose Bird: As governor, Brown appointed Bird to be chief justice of the state Supreme Court. After she invalidated the death sentence of every case she reviewed, voters in 1986 made her and two others the first judges unseated from the court. To voters older than 45, Bird’s name is shorthand for “liberal judges.”


Actually, voters ousted her after a savage campaign funded by big business interests who were mad at her pro-labor and pro-free speech rulings. The death penalty was their weapon, and even then it was pretty bogus: The Bird Court consistently upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty.


But in the early 1980s, death-penalty law was unsettled in the United States; the U.S. Supreme Court had in 1977 ruled that executions were legal in America, but set strict standards for states to follow. Most states were struggling to sort out what the ruling meant and to figure out how to comply. By 1986, when Bird was under assault, 38 states had adopted death-penalty laws, but only 13 had actually executed anyone. In conservative states like Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, judges were trying to determine if the laws fit the Supreme Court’s standards — essentially what the Bird Court was doing in California.


And in California, the death-penalty statute had been written by John Briggs, the guy who wanted to keep gay people from teaching in the schools. The Briggs law was, by all accounts, poorly drafted, unclear and convoluted, and applying it under the federal standard was a challenge.


In other words, as we wrote at the time (In Defense of Rose Bird, Sept. 3, 1986):


The charge that the Bird court has refused to enforce the death penalty is simply inaccurate … the California Supreme Court has simply been doing what most state and federal courts have done over the past ten years: carefully scrutinizing death sentences to ensure that they are valid under the federal and state constitutions and complex and ever-changing standards of the U.S. Supreme Court.


The real issue didn’t make the press. Again, from our cover story at the time:


For nine years, the California Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Bird, has led the nation in advancing the causes of free speech, civil liberties, environmental protection and the rights of tenants, senior citizens, women, minorities and organized labor.


 Big-business interests organized and funded a massive campaign to get rid of Bird — not because of the death penalty but for purely economic reasons.


The Chronicle got it wrong back then, and is getting it wrong again today.

Taxi turbulence

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Taxi turbulence

By Skyler Swezy

news@sfbg.com

It’s 10:20 p.m. on a recent Saturday night. Cab driver Dorian Lavender picks up a middle-aged couple outside the Gold Club, a strip joint in SoMa.

The couple is sharply dressed for a night out. After requesting the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre as their destination, the man brags to Lavender about having had sex with a stripper in one of the club’s private rooms. His female companion smiles and says nothing.

“This is before I met her,” the man explains. “We’re swingers.”

Minutes later, beneath the theater’s flashing marquee, the man hands the driver a $20 bill for the $10 fare. “Keep the change,” he says.

A few blocks away, a young couple flags the cab from the corner of Bush and Polk streets. They are talkative and entertained as Lavender tells them about the swingers. Ten minutes later, the meter reads $9.86. Apologizing, the young man hands him $11.

Lavender folds the bills into the cash-wad kept in his pocket.

“That’s how it goes with cab driving,” he says. “The nice couple tips 10 percent, the weird swingers tip 100 percent — and they were more interesting to talk to.”

At 25, Lavender considers cab driving a great gig and survives working only three shifts a week. He enjoys the cash, freedom, and unpredictable encounters. He’s even landed a few dates. A lot of career cabbies start driving for the same reasons. But after the excitement wears off, it turns out to be a tough job.

A typical cab driver in San Francisco makes less than $30,000 a year. Before drivers even start a shift, gate fees (covering the rental on the cab and the use of its permit, known here as a medallion), gas, and graft have already set them back close to $100. Bribes are commonplace in the industry, used to ensure weekend shifts, airport fares, and newer cars.

The industry offers no retirement plan or health coverage. In fact, the primary reason some people stay behind the wheel long after the thrill is gone is the promise that at some point, after maybe 15 years, an active driver becomes eligible for his or her own medallion. It costs almost nothing, and offers a tremendous benefit: drivers with medallions no longer pay high gate fees, get better shifts — and can lease out the permit when they’re not working. The lease revenue alone can nearly double a driver’s income.

Since 1978, medallions have been issued only to working drivers, and entirely on the basis of a waiting list that now numbers 3,200 names. New medallions become available when permit-holders retire, die, or are forced by disability to stop driving.

That system — and the entire cab industry — is about to change, profoundly. On Feb. 26, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency agreed to allow some permits to be sold on the open market to help close its huge budget deficit. When the dust settles and the implications of that decision become clear, life for cab drivers and passengers will be very different.

Some say the industry will be better; some say it will be much worse — but the truth is, nobody really knows.

 

PRIVATIZING PERMITS

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s adminstration has talked about allowing the sale of permits for several years, but only in the past few months has Christine Hayashi, SFMTA’s deputy director of taxi services, come up with a detailed plan.

It’s aimed at addressing what some drivers call an unfair and flawed system. Permit-holders by law must drive a minimum number of shifts, and it they get hurt or just get too old to drive, they have to surrender their medallions, leaving them with no source of income.

It will also help SFMTA’s budget — the city could sell unclaimed permits for big money and would get a cut of every other sale.

But critics, including Judge Quentin Kopp, the former San Francisco supervisor who wrote the 1978 law that created the old system, say the medallion holders just want to cash in on something that has always been city property.

The pilot project approved by the SFMTA board allows the city to sell up to 60 medallions directly to drivers and allow about 300 drivers over the age of 70 to sell their medallions to any qualified driver who can come up with the cash. The program aims to set a fixed selling price, but has yet to do so, instead setting a $400,000 limit. It is estimated that medallions will sell for no less than $200,000.

That, of course, will be a huge windfall to the sellers, who paid nothing for their permits.

The pilot program was essentially a done deal even before the Feb. 26 vote. In an e-mail to the Guardian, agency spokesperson Judson True confirmed that $11 million in taxi revenue had been added into the MTA budget before the vote took place.

 

THE GREED FACTOR

Kopp sat behind the desk in his West Portal neighborhood office a week before the MTA vote, bitterly condemning the medallion sales program. “It’s based on greed. It’s based on City Hall greed,” he said. The stentorian 82-year-old occasionally thumped the desk with his fist for emphasis as he launched into the history of Proposition K. Then-Sup. Kopp authored that landmark legislation prohibiting private companies from owning driving permits, instead granting control to drivers.

“This will reverse a system that gave a genuine cab driver the opportunity to obtain a permit and replace it with a system that restores the ability of people with lots of money to buy a permit,” he said.

But Kopp’s bill had some unforeseen consequences. The list has become so long that medallions are being issued to people in their 60s and 70s — and some of those people are driving passengers around town despite failing reflexes, eyesight, and motor skills.

Carl Macmurdo, president of the Medallion Holders Association (MHA), believes that selling medallions will provide an exit plan for geriatric drivers while giving younger cabbies an entry opportunity. At 59, Macmurdo is still a full-time driver and has been in the industry 27 years.

It makes sense that MHA members are generally in favor of the pilot program — they could potentially make a mountain of money. Although only those over the age of 70 are now eligible to sell them, the age limit could be lowered in the future.

 

INDENTURED SERVANTS

The United Taxi Workers (UTW) headquarters consists of a few cramped offices on the fourth floor of an old office building in the Mission District. All the interior trim is painted taxi-yellow. In late January, UTW spokespersons Mark Gruberg and Rua Graffis sat at a large table, fearing the worst.

They predict the sale of medallions will provide large cab companies with the equivalent of indentured servants. They say drivers will need upwards of a $200,000 loan to purchase a medallion, requiring a hefty downpayment.

Few drivers will be able to pay for a permit with savings, so the system will only work if someone is willing to finance those purchases. And drivers who are recent immigrants or have bad credit may not be able to get traditional loans. So they could wind up borrowing from their employers, the cab companies, UTW activists say — and by owning the debt the companies will essentially own the medallion.

“Supposedly there’s going to be a provision that says a cab company can’t lend money to a driver toward purchasing a medallion. But it would be so easy to get around that by hooking up with an outside lender,” Gruberg said.

Another fear is that the pilot program will favor young drivers and punish veterans. “Suppose a 27 year-old is on the list and I’m 63. Which one of us is the bank more likely to lend money to?” Graffis asked.

Under the pilot program, drivers will have the option to purchase according to seniority on the list. But without a lender, that’s little help.

 

WHO’S GETTING SCREWED

At 1 p.m. the day of the SFMTA vote, Bill Mounsey and David Barlow were sitting on a bench outside the hearing room. Both are members of UTW and planned to speak in protest of the pilot program.

Mounsey is 63. He’s been on the list for 13 years and is No. 200. He is part of the group most vulnerable in the medallion reform process — drivers who have already waited more than a decade but still have years to go.

If at any point the board decides to eradicate the list before he receives a medallion, Mounsey’s years of waiting will be wasted. “I would never buy one. I’m 63 years-old, no one would ever give me a loan,” he said.

For now, the wait list survives. Under the pilot program, one medallion will be given away for every one sold until the list is exhausted. However, with only half as many medallions being given out, Mounsey fears the list will move half as fast.

Around 50 people attended the meeting, a small fraction of the city’s cab drivers. At 3:56 p.m. the board passed the pilot program and Prop. K moved a little closer toward death.

Hayashi spent more than 175 hours trying to create a pilot program that provides the city with revenue and benefits the taxi drivers. She has made an effort to engage the taxi community and worked with a group of drivers to draft the proposal. She even plans on getting a taxi license.

After the City Hall meeting, Hayashi explained the challenges facing the pilot program over coffee in a downtown cafe. Before March 30, when the proposal is set for a final SFMTA vote, Hayashi must lock down lenders, create lending programs feasible for drivers, and set a fixed selling price for the medallions.

The blaring problem with the pilot program is a lack of committed lenders ready to finance cab drivers’ loans. Bank of the West has expressed interest, as well as two New York credit unions experienced in medallion loans and two San Francisco credit unions.

But how will those loans be structured? Who will qualify? How much of a downpayment will drivers need? And how, in the end, will this change the experience and qualifications of the drivers — and the quality of cab service in the city?

Hayashi sounds confident. “Good service depends on happy drivers. Our goal is to restore professional pride for the drivers, allow them to feel that taxi driving is a career and a respected profession,” she said.

But a lot — a whole lot — can go wrong with this major change in a complex industry that provides essential service to residents and tourists alike. And once the city moves down the path to private medallions, it’s going to be hard to go back.

Newsom’s sanctuary policy destroys MUNI worker’s family

Mary Magee
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Newsom’s sanctuary policy destroys MUNI worker’s family

“They used our son as bait, just to get the mother to come in,” Washington said.

When San Francisco native and MUNI bus driver Charles Washington married Tracey, his Australian girlfriend in Reno last April, he never imagined that she and her sons would be deported after her 13-year-old bullied another kid at school for 46 cents.

But that’s what will happen Friday, March 5, almost a year after their wedding, unless a miracle happens. And this travesty is happening thanks to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s overreaching juvenile sanctuary policy, a broken federal immigration system, and a couple who tried to do the right thing, but were told they didn’t need to apply for a green card in a hurry, when they called an immigration number for information last year.

‘What more could we have done other than call the number?” Washington asked, noting that once they were told it wasn’t urgent, they began saving up, so they could afford the several thousand dollars a green card for his wife and two kids was going to cost.

 

But now, thanks to a bullying incident at school, and the city’s overly draconian policy towards immigrant youth, Washington’s wife and her 13-year-old son will be deported to Australia on Friday, and her 5-year-old boy will accompany them, while Washington  stays in San Francisco to look after his 12-year old daughter (pictured in a photograph taken at the March 1 press conference at Asian Law Caucus).

“There are no laws that prevent me from going to Australia, but I have joint custody of my daughter from a previous marriage and her mother is not going to authorize the child to move, so I’m hoping for a miracle,” Washington explained.

His wife Tracey, who has been forced to wear a federal electronic monitoring bracelet since February, looked on in silence, flanked by her sons and step-daughter.

Washington, who grew up on Mt. Davidson Terrace, and was formerly in the military, had been driving a MUNI bus for a year and a half, when he woke one morning after he got home from his late-night MUNI shift, to hear the phone ringing with a call from his stepson’s school to say there where problems between him and a sixth grader.

“The school told me it was their policy to call the parents any time the police are going to talk to a child,” Washington said. Twenty minutes later, he and his wife were at the school, talking to an SFPD officer, who said a report had been filed by another parent about the incident and the police now wanted to talk to their kid.

After the interview with the police, Washington thought the worst thing that could happen was that the officer would write a citation to say his son needed to appear at juvenile court. Instead, the police arrested his stepson, putting him in handcuffs and saying that they were going to take him to the Juvenile Justice center.

“I think my son was in shock, as I was, “ Washington said. “What he actually did, and what the actual charges are, they are universes apart. Back when I was in school, at worst, a bully was sent home for the day, creating problems for them at home, when they explain to their parents why they’ve been sent home.”

Instead, Washington’s stepson was charged with felony robbery, extortion and assault after the parents of a sixth-grader at his school called the police, but his case has yet to be adjudicated by a juvenile justice, –and a bench warrant will be issued if he fails to attend a March 8 hearing in San Francisco—3 days after he and his mother are deported.

According to Washington, (pictured here (left) with Angela Chan, (right) staff attorney for the Asian Law Caucus) no weapons, no injuries and no witnesses were involved in his stepson’s incident. “And it was strictly one kids’ words against the other,” Washington said.

So, why did the police decide to refer his stepson to the federal immigration authorities?

“I think the officer picked up on the fact that he had an accent,” Washington said. “And when asked where he was born, my stepson said, ‘Australia.’ He is 13 years old. He doesn’t know if he is undocumented or not. As far as he is concerned, he was born in Australia, moved to San Francisco, and this is his family, his new family.”

Washington said his stepson was held for a week at Juvenile Hall for a week, during which the atmosphere at home became tense and stressful.

“We did not understand why this was happening,” Washington said. “Kids on my bus get on and do way worse things than he actually did, and the police usually make their presence known, but there is no worry about going to Juvenile Hall.”

But the worst was yet to come.
After his stepson had been at Juvenile Hall for about a week, Washington got a call from his stepson’s probation officer, saying that he was going to have to contact federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“He said he had to contact ICE, that he was just doing his job, that it’s what’s required under his job title,” Washington said.

Under a new policy that Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered in the summer of 2008, the city’s juvenile probation officers are required to contact the feds when a juvenile is booked on suspected felony charges. This means, the probation officers are required to contact ICE before immigrant kids have even had a hearing before a juvenile judge to determine if they are in fact, guilty, as charged.

‘They didn’t say, ‘he might be deported,’” Washington said.” I was just told that there might be a ‘ICE hold put on him,’ but at this point I was still not understanding the importance of ICE.”

Once ICE picked up his stepson and transferred him to ICE’s facility on Sansome Street, Washington got a call from his stepson, who said he was OK.

“At this point, we were aware of the immigration issue, so I told my wife to stay at home and I went down there with a lawyer, and I was able to meet with my son,” Washington recalled.

But when he got back home, he received a call from his lawyer who notified him that if his wife was willing to go in and put on an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, the feds would release their son.

“So, I drove my wife to Sansome Street, and that’s when we were informed that she was being handed her deportation orders, along with our 13-year-old son,” he said

His wife has been wearing the electronic monitoring ankle bracelet ever since.

“She wore pants today because it makes her feel ashamed, and she cries nightly over the fact that she feels like she’s being treated like an animal,” Washington said. “She says, ‘I feel like they think I’m a murderer, but I’m not, I haven’t done anything wrong.’”

According to Washington, his wife arrived in the country along with her kids on a 90-day visa-waiver, and the couple got married about 45 days into that visa.

“We had known each other for seven years, and we looked into getting a green card, two days after we were married, and we were told, not once, but twice, that if you enter on a visa-waiver, there is no deadline to apply for your green card. We were misinformed.”

But while Washington notes that the office that he spoke to was a contractor for the federal government and had its information wrong, he still can’t get over the fact that the federal government would treat him and his wife this way, using their son as bait.

‘This is all shocking to me,” Washington said. “I never dreamed America would treat not only someone from America, but someone not from America, this way. All we want is for our application to be reviewed based upon the facts. We are being told it’s too late.”

Equally upsetting for Washington was the experience of seeing his stepson used as bait.

‘They used our son as bait, just to get the mother to come in,” he said. “ Our son wasn’t there for more than 4 or 5 hours ,and we had no clue that the deportation papers would be served until we walked in. They hadn’t even put the monitoring bracelet on her. She could easily have run, but we still don’t want to break the law, regardless of the outcome. Even though we did something wrong according to ICE, it wasn’t intentionally. If we had been given the correct information, we wouldn’t be here. Yes, we couldn’t afford the money at that time, but we’d have made sacrifices.”

Washington said he is reaching out to the media in a last ditch effort to save his family.

“I don’t know any other way but to network, maybe someone might know someone else who can save my family,” he said. ‘My stepson, he’s just a nerd, he’s not a violent person, he’s not aggressive at all, he’s just being a boy, and he really hasn’t had a father figure in his life, until he moved here.”

Angela Chan, staff attorney for the Asian Law Caucus, which has been helping the Washington family try to get their green cards, said that if the son had never been reported to ICE, then the family likely would have received green cards.

“But now they are refusing to consider it, because of the ICE referral,” Chan said.

Chan also explained that if the boy was able to appear before a juvenile justice, he’d likely get informal probation for a first-time minor offense.

“He only had a hearing, but the juvenile proceedings were halted, when he got handed off to ICE,” Chan said. “The District Attorney had filed charges, but they had not yet been adjudicated, and a judge had not yet reduced the charges.”

Jane Kim, President of the San Francisco United School District said the School Board unanimously supported the amendment to Newsom’s policy that Sup. David Campos introduced last year and which a supermajority of the Board of Supervisors supports.

“We have seen how changes in the Juvenile Probation Department as of August 2008 have been used as a blunt tool to separate family members, regardless of whether the juvenile is convicted of the charges, and regardless of the family’s circumstances. And we don’t believe that the Campos amendment violates the US Constitution.”

“Newsom’s policy has put a lot of burden on our staff,’ Kim said, explaining how schools are now worried about calling the police, lest students end up being deported because the police referred them to ICE, based merely on accusations, 

“For those worried about public safety, I think this type of situation encourages under reporting,” Kim said.

Washington for his worries that his wife and her kids will be homeless in Australia.

‘My wife sold her furniture and gave up her apartment in Melbourne to come here, and her mother and father have a one-bedroom apartment, so there is no space for her and two kids,” he said

He also worries that if they ever manage to come back, his stepson will have a warrant out for his arrests:
 ‘Today we were notified that if my stepson doesn’t show up for his March 8 pre-hearing (in the juvenile justice system where the DA’s office is pressing charges), we’ll have to worry about a warrant for his arrest, which will make it even more difficult for him to move back” Washington said.

If a person is deported, they are barred from reentering the country for 3-10 years.

The Washingtons’ federal deportation will occur the day after the Board of Supervisors holds a hearing into why the city’s Juvenile Probation Department has failed to implement the city’s new policy towards immigrant youth: under the new policy, which the Board passed in 2009, a teenager like Tracey Washington’s son would get his day in court before being referred to federal immigration.

Since July 2008, when Newsom first began requiring probation officers to report all suspected undocumented youth for deportation right after arrest – before the youth  receives an attorney or a hearing on the alleged charges, over 160 children have been reported to ICE without regard to their innocence or how minor the offense.

In November 2009, a community-based based campaign resulted in the passage of a new policy that restores due process to immigrant youth. The new policy gives youth an opportunity to have a hearing and requires a finding that the youth committed a felony before any referral to ICE. If implemented, the new policy would boost public safety for all residents because it would put an end to the Mayor’s policy, which has caused immigrant residents to be afraid to have contact with city employees.

 “Until Mayor Newsom restores due process to all youth in San Francisco, many more hard-working families like the Washingtons will be torn apart,” said Chan.
On Thursday, March 4, the Board’s’ Rules Committee will hold a 10.30 am hearing at City Hall regarding Juvenile Probation Department’s refusal to implement the Campos amendment which would restore due process to youth.

Pressure builds to save Muni

Sasha Cuttler
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Pressure builds to save Muni

Widespread frustration with Muni service cuts and fare hikes – passionately expressed by the public on Friday at a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency meeting that continues tomorrow (Tuesday, March 2, starting at noon in City Hall Room 400) – has prompted a surprisingly diverse backlash.

From angry, street-level progressive activists to the downtown-friendly San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), San Franciscans are criticizing the SFMTA’s budget plan (including the 10 percent service cuts approved on Friday, which could be revisited tomorrow) as short-sighted and unnecessarily divisive, prompting the biggest and most diffuse progressive organizing effort in years.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” SFMTA spokesperson Judson True told me as he surveyed the huge, passionate crowd assembled for Friday’s meeting, adding, “It’s clear grassroots organizing is alive and well in San Francisco.”

It’s true that grassroots organizing helped with Friday’s massive turnout, with hundreds of people lined up to give almost five hours worth of public testimony, much of it expressing frustration with poor city leadership (particularly by Mayor Gavin Newsom and his appointed SFMTA board and director) and declining public services.

But these weren’t the talking points of a centrally organized effort, which is what’s so remarkable about this movement. While many progressive groups joined forces under the Transit Not Traffic banner (coordinated by MTA Citizens Advisory Board member Sue Vaughn and others), and there’s a new San Francisco transit riders union (coordinated by transportation activist Dave Synder), the huge turnout on Friday came also from disability rights groups, ethnically identified groups from the Mission and Chinatown, the Senior Action Network, San Francisco Tomorrow, the social justice group POWER, the antiwar ANSWER Coalition, and several other groups, with very little coordination among them.

“We are really seeing a diverse group of people arguing for transit justice,” said Marc Caswell of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which was part of the Transit Not Traffic coalition.

In fact, with Muni fares increasing and services declining since Newsom became mayor, a wide variety of groups seems to have figured out independently that there’s something seriously wrong with Newsom’s no-new-taxes approach to running the city, particularly given declining transit funding from the state and feds.

“These aren’t solutions. They’re just pitting one group against another,” said Frank Lara of the ANSWER Coalition, which opposes a proposal for extended parking meter hours, much to the chagrin of progressive groups who want motorists to help close the budget gap by giving up their free parking on Sundays.

One SPUR proposal also seeks to eliminate this pitting of groups against each other, listing as its biggest dollar proposal the elimination of work orders from the San Francisco Police Department, which would save $12.2 million per year, which the SFPD charges SFMTA for unspecified services that it has yet to document, despite agreeing to as part of last year’s budget deal.

When asked about the work order proposal, Newsom press secretary Tony Winnicker said doing so would make Muni less safe by discouraging officers from riding buses, saying such work orders were a “good accounting practice” rather than the budgetary shell game that progressive supervisors and SPUR director Gabriel Metcalf have called it.

“The gamesmanship with work orders has got to stop,” Metcalf told the Guardian, criticizing the SFMTA for cutting service across the board and raising fares for express bus service and cable cars. “They don’t have to do that and they shouldn’t do that. They just need some political courage right now.”

The next largest SPUR proposals are to charge $300 per year for disabled placards that allow drivers to park for free (which would raise $10 million per year) and to enforce existing city codes that require garages to charge by the hour rather than all day (which would raise $6.85 million), followed by Muni work rule changes that would need union approval.

Winnicker said Newsom was aware of the big turnout on Friday and the anger voiced by the crowd, telling us, “He understands people are concerned and he shares those concerns.” But rather than accepting that many people blame Newsom, Winnicker blamed Muni’s Transportation Workers Union for voting down about $5 million worth of wage concessions and work rule changes. Yet many speakers criticized Newsom’s finger-pointing on Friday, saying he and the SFMTA were too focused on targeting workers rather than the downtown corporations that Newsom has refused to adequately tax.

“There was already a fare increase last year, so for the low-income popular, this is major,” Wing Hoo Leung, vice president of the Community Tenants Association, told me in Mandarin, translated by Tan Chow, an organizer with Chinatown Community Development Center. “In a bad economy, the low-income people can’t get hit again and again. We need to cut from the top.”

Tax measures will be a big part of tomorrow’s SFMTA discussion of the $100 million budget deficit looming for the next two years – such as a parcel tax, downtown transit assessment district, parking tax increase, or local vehicle license fee — and several SFMTA board members agreed with the statement made Friday by Trustee Malcolm Heinicke that, “We need to look for other sources of revenue.”

Even Winnicker said Newsom acknowledges the need to discuss tax measures, even though he philosophically opposes them: “He understands that many things have to be on the table to close next year’s budget gap.”

But he’s far from advocating for any revenue-side solutions.

“The mayor doesn’t think the tax measures will have much public support,” Winnicker said. Yet progressive groups say that’s because Newsom has undermined people’s faith in local government and actively opposed tax increases rather than trying to make the case to the public that they’re needed to present public transit and other vital services.

“Newsom has to be out there fighting, one at the state level, and he needs to show some leadership here,” said Bob Allen of the group Urban Habitat. “I don’t want to hear Gavin Newsom say again that this is a transit-first city if he’s not going to do anything to support it.”

But Allen said that if Newsom and other city leaders made the case for new taxes to support transit and ran a strong campaign, “This city will support a ballot measure to protect Muni and expand it.”

Yet right now, he said one of the things frustrating low-income San Franciscans is there is a basic inequity between motorists and Muni riders: “If parking is going to be free on Sunday, transit should be free on Sunday. If parking is going to be free in the evenings, transit should be free in the evenings.”  

Newsom has long voiced opposition to extended meter hours, only recently softening that position slightly to possibly allow for a small pilot program for Sundays. But his appointed trustees might be willing to go even further, with Bruce Oka saying on Friday, “I know the mayor doesn’t like it, but it has to be tried.”

Bill Bennett, the only public official in California to take on PG&E

David Talbot
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Bill Bennett, the only public official in California to take on PG&E

William Morgan Bennett, 1918-2010

On the front page of the Guardian of Oct. 19, 1988, we ran a big picture of Bill Bennett with a caption that read: “Bill Bennett, the only public official in California to take on PG&E.”

The reason we featured Bennett was because the California Public Utilities Commission was poised to make yet another multi-billion giveaway to the Pacific Gas & Electric Company.

This time the CPUC would force the public to pay $3.4 billion worth of PG&E’s mistakes  at its Diable Canyon nuclear power plant and not one public official in San Francisco, home of the PG&E/Raker Act scandal, and not one from any other public agency or public institution was on hand to monitor the CPUC hearings and testify about the horrible impacts the Diablo rate hike will have on the public.

The lone, honorable exception was Bill Bennett. Our editorial noted, “The only public official in California who has taken on the case is Bill Bennett, a member of the State Board of Equalization and a former member of the CPUC, a determined old warrior who fought Diablo from the start and continues to do so today, on his own, against the odds and at considerable personal cost.”

To drive the point home about Bennett’s couirageous stand, we continued, “Those who ignored the case–for example, the supervisors, mayor and city attorney of San Francisco, the board of directors of BART, the regents of the University of California and their counterparts in every other public agency and institution that pays or represents people who pay PG&E bills–ought to be ashamed. The citizens of every city, county and district ought to look at their representatives and ask: Where were you when PG&E walked away with all the marbles.”

 The press in Northern California was ignoring the story, despite the colorful,  forceful and newsworthy campaign that Bennett was waging. He said he had called the  Chronicle and Examiner reporters to try to interest them in the story, but “it was useless so I gave up.”  Guardian Reporter Jim Balderston did the story and quoted Bennett  as saying, among other things, “This commission (the CPUC) must think long and hard of the welfare of the ratepayers and the shareholders of PG&E.” With no Bill Bennett on the CPUC, PG&E once again quietly walked away with billions in ratepayer money.

William Morgan Bennett, the public attorney  who for more than five decades fought the corporate goliaths from taking all the marbles, died Feb.9th at his home in Kentfield after a short illness. He was 91. An overflow crowd paid tribute  to his extraordinary life and career at services held on Feb. 12th at St. Patrick’s Church in Larkspur

When his daughter Joan phoned me about Bennett’s death, I realized once again how much the Guardian and the consumer and the rate-payer would miss Bennett. We are in the middle of PG&E’s biggest monopoly scam ever –Prop l6 and PG&E’s initiative to kill public power and community choice aggregation (CCA)– and Bennett is alas missing in action, for one of the first times in his life. Today, there are other public officials out there fighting PG&E, but there is nobody who can  take on PG&E and its allies as effectively as Bennett.

Our 1988 story had a sidebar with the head, “Bennett vs. PG&E: The 30 years war.” The sidebar recounted an incident characteristic of Bennett and the way he gave new meaning to the term public service.  In 1959 the El Paso/Pacific Northwest natural gas pipeline merger was all but approved by the CPUC, except for an appeal from Bennett as CPUC general counsel.  Before Bennett could file the appeal, he got a phone call from Gregory Harrison, a partner in the politically powerful law firm of Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison. Harrison asked Bennett if he was going to file. Bennett said yes and Harrison responded, “I told them you would say that.”

Harrison told Bennett he would be removed from the case if he filed the appeal. Bennett told Harrison he was going to call a press conference. Harrison responded. “I told them you would say that,” and hung up. Shortly thereafter, Bennett got a call from Gov. Brown, who asked him if he was going to file the appeal. Bennett said yes and Brown refused to discuss the matter further.

Twenty minutes later, Bennett got a telegram from Brown that stated, “You no longer represent me or the State of California in USA v El Paso.” This infuriated Bennett and fueled his relentless 14-year crusade to compel El Paso to divest itself of Pacific Northwest. because of its price-fixing and monopolistic implications for California. In 1969, appearing as a private citizen, he successfully argued the final U.S. Supreme Court appeal in the case, the last oral argument heard by the Earl Warren court.

The Washington Monthly caught the drama and precedent of Bennett’s appearance in its November 1971 issue. “His last appearance before the court in 1969
needs to have been witnessed. Standing alone against an array of the best legal talent that could be provided by El Paso, the states of California and Utah, lawyers for other gas companies and the U.S. government, represented personally by Solicitor General Erwin Griswold, Bennett attacked as the lone surviving avenging angel of the original antitrust action. Finger in the air, voice crying out in toners of retribution, he spoke brilliantly and forcefully without notes for an hour…In the process, Bennett impressed at least one justice privately, and many more observers, as one of the most brilliant and effective lawyers to have gotten to his feet to present oral arguments to the court during the last 14 years.”

 As the final footnote in this legal saga, Bennett  stopped El Paso’s efforts in Congress to pass legislation to void the breakup of El Paso. The result: the largest refund for California ratepayers in the history of regulation to date.  The decision set a  national precedent in antitrust law.

Bennett was born Feb. 20, 1918 in San Francisco to Lt. William M. Bennett of the San Francisco Police Department and Eva Curran of Amador. He attended Most Holy Redeemer Elementary School, St. Ignatius High School, the University of San Francisco and the Hastings College of Law. At the outbreak of World War II, he suspended his law studies and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps.

He was a B-17 pilot in the North African, Mediterranean and European theater of operations, l5th Air Force, 483rd Bombardment Group, 815th Squadron, stationed in North Africa and then in Foggia, Italy. The 483rd flew a total of 215 combat missions during 14 months of combat duty and Bennett was in the middle of it all. “Wherever there were major oil refineries, aircraft and parts factories, tank works, railroad terminals and marshaling yards, supply dumps, bridges and communication networks, he saw action,” Jane Bennett said.  He flew 35 missions and encountered severe flak and fighter attacks at some of the most heavily defended targets in Europe:  Linz’ Herman Goering Tank Works; Berlin’s Daimler-Benz Tank Works; Innsbruck; Vienna; Regensburg; Blechhhammer; Schweinfurt; Salzburg; Landshut; Moosbierbaum, and Ruhland where ME 262 German jets attacked his squadron.

The Tuskegee Airmen, the famous black squadron, escorted Bennett’s missions. “Their base was right next to my father’s,” Joan Bennett said. “They were separated on the ground but equal in the air. That is, they were  equal targets for the Germans.” Bennett often visited some of the fighters across the runway that segregated the blacks.   George McGovern,  the bomber pilot who later became a presidential candidate in l972, was stationed at a nearby base.  He flew B-24s.

Bennett flew some of the first shuttle missions into Russia.  As the bomber squadrons flew deeper into Germany, the planes did not have fuel or were too shot up  to return to their base in Italy. So the squadrons continued on to Poltova,  Russia, to get refueled  and repaired, and  then either flew back  immediately back to their base or stayed over night and flew back the next day.  The missions were kept secret during the war  but later became known as the “Poltova missions.”

 Of the original 646 crew members sent to Italy in March 1944, 38 per cent were killed or missing in action. His bomb group received numerous battle awards, including two outstanding unit presidential citations. Bennett was highly decorated and won three Oak Leaf Clusters, four Bronze Stars and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was awarded the DFC  for his courage and skill in miraculously bringing his plane back from a mission over Worgi, Austria, in February, 1945.  Bennett’s plane was hit by heavy enemy fire and the two right engines were shot out. He told his crew to bail out but they refused because they counted on Bennett to pull  them through.  Bennett did, safely piloting his crippled plane over the Alps. When the plane limped back to its base in Italy, there was nothing left inside, because the crew had ditched everything to lighten the load.


Col. Paul L. Barton, Bennett’s commanding officer, pins the Distinguished Flying Cross on Bennett in a ceremony on May 12, l945, at the air base on the Sterparone farm in Foggia, Italy.  Gen. Twining, head of the l5th Air Force who ended up as Chief of Staff of the USAF after the war,  attended the ceremony.  “There was no Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise WWII move glamor,”  Bennett’s daughter Jane told me.  “The base itself was primitive: steel mats for runways.  Ankle deep mud in the winter along with snow, ice and rain. Open latrines, no toilet paper, tent-living with one crew per tent. No mess halls. One canteen of water per day, etc.”  She said the Bennetts visited the farm in l982.  “The runways were vineyards,” she recalled. “The briefing hall for the men still stands. The interior of white plaster is still lined with drawings of pinup girls. The young girl who lived on the farm during the war is now the owner of the family land. She was very gracious.  She invited us in for coffee.”

 After the war, Bennett finished  law school at the University of San Francisco and then embarked upon a remarkable career of public service. Until I started working on his obituary,  I knew nothing about Bennett’s distinguished war record as a bomber pilot.   But it is clear to me that, having followed Bennett through the years, that  his combat experience under artillery fire and with flak coming at him from all directions served him well in public life.  He spent most of his public career  as a tough, smart and  aggressive attorney who relished  taking on the big cases and the big corporate behemoths who were screwing the public on illegal mergers or monopoly rate increases. To him, this was just combat in a different theater of operations. Sometimes as a public attorney, sometimes acting as an individual citizen, he handled precedent-setting cases  in antitrust, regulatory and criminal law and argued six times before the U.S. Supreme Court. He earned the nickname “the legal Houdini” but I always thought of him as “Fighting Bill” Bennett.

 As a deputy attorney general, he successfully prosecuted public corruption trials in 1954-55 against the State Board of Equalization in San Diego and put l3 public officials in jail. From 1957-59, he handled the celebrated case of Caryl Chessman, known as “the redlight bandit.” After his argument before the U.S. Supreme Court, the court clerk quietly handed him a note from Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter. He wrote, “There is no reason why I should not tell you how admirably you represented the state in this important case.” The clerk told Bennett he should save the note because it was only the second such note that Frankfurter had ever written.

From 1957-58, Bennett represented the state before the CPUC and won many cases against utilities that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in ratepayer rebates. Gov. Brown appointed him chief counsel of the PUC in 1958.

In 1960 Bennett was invited to join Sen. John F. Kennedy’s campaign as an advance man canvassing a territory from Chicago to New York.  He became friends with JFK and was considered part of Kennedy’s “Irish mafia.” Kennedy asked him to head the Federal Power Commission but he rejected it to remain with his family.

Bill Bennett and then presidential candidate John F. Kennedy  are pictured in 1960 as they got off the campaign plane at O’Hare field in Chicago.  Bennett was an advance man for JFK and helped stage several rallies in Chicago. Then JFK and Bennett headed east to Hamtramck, Michigan, and finished up at the garment center in New York.  JFK asked Bennett to be head of the Federal Power Commission but Bennett turned the appointment down to remain in California with his family.

In 1962, after Brown appointed Bennett to the CPUC, he promptly took on PG&E with gusto.  With the support of the Sierra Club, Bennett filed the lone dissenting opinion against the CPUC’s approval of a nuclear power plant upwind of San Francisco at Bodega Bay. The  Bodega fight was started in the living room of Prof. Joe Neilands, a UC-Berkeley biochemistry professor and stoked along by the Neilands/CharlieSmith/David Pesonen gang, with help from the Chronicle and its executive editor Scott Newhall and environmental writer Harold Gilliam.  The battle caught on and became a national story and focal point for the emerging anti-nuclear movement. PG&E was forced by public opinion to withdrew its application and skedall down  to Diablo Canyon. And so did Bennett.
Bennett was later visited by the chairman of PG&E, Robert Gerdes. told Bennett, “We don’t mind you dissenting, but do you realize the Russians are trying to stop us from building atomic plants.”

During his CPUC tenure, Bennett led the commission to regularly reduce electricity and gas rates in response to rate cases before the commission. In 1968, then Gov. Ronald Reagan refused to reappoint Bennett to the commission and sent Bennett a letter apologizing for not being able to reappoint him. Reagan did not explain the reason. Before Reagan could kick him off the CPUC,  Bennett  had saved the consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. Ever after Bennett, the CPUC has operated on a supine  basis with PG&E and other utilities and has handed down rate increases and goodies to them on a virtual assembly line basis.  

I first met Bennett in 1967 in his CPUC office overlooking the Civic Center  in the  state building. Lee Fremstad, then the San Francisco correndent for the Sacramento Bee, took me in and introduced me. I had rarely seen a public official like Bennett. He knew about the Guardian and me, had some juicy story ideas for me, and a batch more for Fremstad. Fremstad bantered back and forth with Bennett, noting a couple of ideas but rejecting others as too much even for the Bee and its longtime public power posture.  Bennett was open, expansive,  full of Irish humor,  a populist Democrat full of opinions I liked, jutting the Bennett jaw to make a point, and the kind of guy  who might be good for a lively  three martini lunch.

I thought he would have made a wonderful newspaper columnist or editorial writer, if he could find a newspaper that would publish his  tough consumer-oriented opinions that so  agitated the PG&Es and Hearsts  of the region.  We always enjoyed  Bennett at the Guardian, endorsed and supported him and used him as a friendly source and inspiration.all through the years. 

When Bennett left the CPUC, Neilands and Smith held an appeciation dinner for him in Berkeley that brought together the Bodega Bay/public power warriors of the era.   This was a watershed moment for the Guardian and me.  My wife Jean and I went, met Bennett and Neilands et al and got initiated. We also met Peter Petrakis, a fan of Bennett’s, and a graduate student of Neilands. Neilands did our pioneering expose of the PG&E/Raker Act  scandal in l969.   Petrakis joined the Guardian and  followed up Neilands’ work with a series of investigative storiies that revived the scandal and  the public power movement in San Francisco.  Bennett, as I realized, was a catalyst.  

Bennett’s next move to stay in public service was to run for the State Board of Equalization and Franchise Tax Board. He won his first campaign in l970 even though his opponent outspent him $450,000 to $4,000, all his own money. He was relected to five more terms, despite refusing to accept campaign contributions, and continued to fight the good fight against the special interests in Sacramento and beyond. He was also a professor of law at Hastings while on the board.

Bill Bennett with his wife Jane in 1943 at the primary cadet school in King City, Calif. They were married 67 years.

Bennett is survived by his wife of 67 years, Jane, and sons William (wife Gwendolyn) of Lafayette, James (Paula) of Kentfield, Michael (Roxanne) of Manhattan, Kansas, and daughter Joan of Kentfield and grandsons Jimmy, Will, Jack, and Brendan of Kentfield.

The Bennett family obituary  sums up their patriarch: “Despite his friendships with president and esteemed jurists, his out-going nature was such that he was a friend to all. He was a populist democrat, consumer rights advocate, and a veritable David against the corporate world’s Goliaths, in the vein of his mentor and ultimately friend, Earl Warren. Even with such achievements, his most important and cherished career was as a father and family man. Upon retirement, he embarked upon his most rewarding and enjoyable career: a devoted, loving, entertaining husband, father, and grandfather. For them and through them, he will live forever ‘in his way.'” 

For me, I will stick with our cutline under Bennett’s picture on our l988 front page: “Bill Bennett, the only public official in California to take on PG&E.”

 

The Bennett family photo was taken in May,  2009, at the Napa airport. A B-l7 was touring the country and Bennett wanted to see it. Jane Bennett said he actually went through the plane. “It was not easy. The access was a skinny, steep, metal ladder to the cockpit. I don’t know how he got up it. He refused a ride in the plane. As he said, ‘If I cannot fly it, what’s the point.'”

SEIU members oust the old guard

Sasha Cuttler
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SEIU members oust the old guard

In a stunning repudiation of the union leadership installed by Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern – whose autocratic style, aggressive expansion, and friendly relationships with big employers has caused a rift in the national labor movement – members of SEIU Local 1021 have voted overwhelmingly for a reform slate of new leaders.

As we wrote recently, the stakes were high here in San Francisco, where the old guard leaders threatened to undermine the union’s progressive tendencies just as Mayor Gavin Newsom is threatening mass layoffs and pay cuts for city employees, and the San Francisco Labor Council’s ideological balance was being tipped by the pro-development push of the building trades.

But the results couldn’t have been more clear in the first local election since Stern installed the Local 1021 after merging 10 union locals together, including the former Local 790, which represents most city employees. Stern’s whole slate was voted out by a substantial margin, including current President Damita Davis-Howard, who had 1445 votes to the 2141 votes garnered by Sin Yee Poon, who now takes over the top spot after having led SF Human Services Agency workers.

Also pushed out was James Bryant, a political ally of Newsom and enabler of Pacific Gas & Electric and other downtown power brokers, who was defeated in his run for Political Action Committee Chair. Alysabeth Alexander, who is in her 20s, beat him by a vote of 2552-1506.

The vote will certainly strengthen the hand of progressives in San Francisco going into what’s expected to be a tough budget fight with Newsom, as well as helping progressive supervisorial candidates in the November election against what is expected to be a strong push by downtown to break the progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors.

In addition, it could roil SEIU’s internal politics after a turbulent year, in which Stern created divisive clashes with his own local health care workers (causing Sal Rosselli to create the rival National Union of Healthcare Workers), UNITE-HERE, and the California Nurses Association.

 

The press release from the winning reform slate follows: 

Reformers Sweep in SEIU 1021 Election; Members Vote for Transparency and Democracy for Northern California’s Largest Public Sector Union 

On Friday, thousands of public sector votes were counted to determine the future leadership of one of the largest unions in Northern California.  This is the first election for SEIU 1021, formed only three years ago after the merging of 10 locals.

The reform slate, Change 1021, swept the elections taking a clear majority of the executive leadership seats. This all-member slate easily defeated the former administration-appointees by the International SEIU.  Some candidates won by a 3 to 1 margin while others enjoyed a comfortable 2 to 1 lead on their opponents. See attached list of election results.

“We are excited about the opportunity to give the leadership of this Union back to the membership,” stated Karen Bishop, the San Francisco County Area Representative Elect.  Former San Francisco Board of Supervisors President and current Chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party  Aaron Peskin agreed, affirming, “It is very heartening to see that real democracy has prevailed.”

Change 1021 campaigned on a platform for reform, seeking a stronger union that would prioritize member representation at work sites; fiscal transparency; and an internal democratic structure. “Members spoke with their votes, sending a clear message about priorities,” said Roxanne Sanchez, President Elect.

The challenges for the new board are daunting-they must reunite and reinvigorate a membership hit hard by the economic downturn, with thousands to receive lay-off notices this week.  The Board Elect is ready to make the budget fight a priority to fight layoffs and preserve important public and non-profit services for our communities.

 “Our members have spoken, loudly and clearly, that business as usual is absolutely no longer tolerable and that a fundamental change in the focus of our union towards the needs and priorities of our members are in prompt order,” says Sin Yee Poon, Chief Elected Officer Elect. For now, there is cause for celebration as the congratulatory calls have been flooding across California from members, elected officials, labor leaders, and community partners.

Newly  elected members will assume office at the next Executive Board meeting, March 9th.   International Union leaders are expected to be in attendance.           

Change 1021 Candidates who were elected are: Chief Elected Officer, Sin Yee Poon; President, Roxanne Sanchez; First Vice President, Gary Jimenez; Second Vice President, Crawford Johnson; Third Vice President, Larry Bradshaw; Secretary, Pamela Morton; Treasurer, Kathy O’Neil; Political Action Comm. Chair, Alysabeth Alexander; Social & Economic Justice Comm. Chair, Gladys Gray; Capital Stewardship Comm. Chair, Harry Baker; Cities Industry Chair, Renita Terry; Counties Industry Chair, Ken Tam; Special Districts Industry Chair, Saul Almanza; Schools Industry Chair, Mynette Theard; Sacramento County Rep, Ken Bloomberg; Registered Nurses Industry Chair, David Fleming; City & County of SF Industry Chair, Kathy Basconcillo; San Francisco Area Reps- Karen Bishop, David Turner, Jacqueline Sowers; Alameda County Area Reps,- Amy Dooha, Eric Stern, Gregory Correa; Sonoma County Area Rep, Nancy Atwell; Budget & Finance Comm Region 3, Michael Tong; and Budget & Finance Comm. Region 4, Mary Jane Logan.

The Chronicle’s dishonest hit on district elections

Zelda Bronstein
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8

The move to get rid of district elections – which is based entirely on the fact that big business and more conservative voices (including the Chron) don’t like the progressive policy positions of the current board – is now well under way. The Chron devoted its Insight section to the issue Feb. 28, leading with a long editorial that wandered back and forth between points and never really made the case.


An example of the Chron’s logic:


But sitting atop the decision-making tree [in San Francisco] are small-time politicos, some elected with fewer than 10,000 votes in a city with a population of 808,976.


Horrifying! It’s as if the United States Congress – which has to decide issues like war and peace — was made up of local politicos who were elected with as few as 100,000 votes in a nation of 350 million.


Or as if the California Assembly – which has to deal with a $28 billion budget deficit – was made up of local politicos who were elected with as few as 50,000 votes in a state of more than 35 million.


A district supes votes could represent about 1.2 percent of the entire city. A state Assembly member could represent only 0.1 percent of the population of the state. And yet, I don’t hear the Chron calling for the state Assembly to be replaced with an at-large body.


More:


A town with sweeping plans to develop two empty Navy bases at Hunters Point and Treasure Island, fill vacant offices with new jobs, and cut its budget by more than a half billion dollars isn’t getting the thought, expertise – and citywide vision – it needs for these challenges.
This lack of broad leadership obstructs the city’s future. A major cause is the district election system that magnifies neighborhood and tight-knit interest groups to produce officeholders with little stake in citywide questions. If all politics is local, as former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously declared, then San Francisco has pushed this dictum to the max. It’s all about me and my neighborhood.


That’s absolutely, factually untrue – the district elected board has done more to advance citywide issues – from minimum wage to health care to the rainy day fund to infrastructure planning – than any at-large board in the previous 20 years.


And the Chron’s own editorial contradicts that argument:


Supervisor David Campos (a winner with 9,440 votes) led a move to keep illegal immigrants who are juveniles accused of felonies from being turned over to federal authorities, despite a city legal opinion that the idea wouldn’t fly. Supervisor John Avalos (6,918 votes) dreamed up the “must spend” order directing the mayor to maintain expenditures in a record deficit year. Thankfully, he dropped the idea at the 11th hour


Okay, I get that the Chronicle editorial board doesn’t like the Campos sanctuary bill or the Avalos must-spend legislation – but that are both citywide issues. They have nothing to do with “me and my neighborhood.”


Which is really the entire point here. The Chron doesn’t like the outcome of district elections – because over the past ten years, the progressives have shown they can win district races. There’s a good reason for that; in district races, you don’t need to raise huge amounts of money.


As Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and Supervisor David Chiu point out in an opposing editorial:


Part of that increased accessibility to government is the result of the decrease in the cost of running a district versus a citywide election. In the 1994 citywide elections, the average winning candidate spent $456,000 in today’s dollars. That’s 225 percent greater than the amount spent today: In 2008, the winning candidates spent an average of $204,000. Candidates needing to raise money for a citywide race will inevitably turn to special interests for contributions. If you believe elected representatives should speak up for people, not just the special interests that donated to their campaigns, today’s district system serves you better.



They also note:


Before district elections were passed, under a citywide election system, many neighborhoods – the Excelsior, the Sunset, the Mission and Bayview-Hunters Point – had no supervisor of their own. Today, all residents can pick up the phone and reach an office responsible for their neighborhood and responsive to their concerns – a broken streetlight, a dangerous pothole or a consistently tardy Muni line.


A lot of people don’t like Chris Daly’s personality, and some don’t like his politics, but if you’re a person living on SSI in a grubby little hotel room in the Tenderloin and you need help, you can walk into his office and get a welcome reception and assistance with your needs. You won’t get that from the mayor.


On the other hand, do you think, Don Fisher ever needed to stand in line and try to make a 15-minute appointment to talk to Gavin Newsom? Seriously?


And while we’re on the personality stuff: Yeah, some of Daly’s antics have been over the top. But he’s no worse than some of the others who have served on citywide boards. Former Sup. Bill Maher once accused one of his opponents of having a small penis, and waved around two fingers spread about an inch apart to the press and public.


More important, we had supervisors who did nothing. We had supervisors who did exactly what the mayor said without any question. We had supervisors who were wholly-owned subsidiaries of major local corporations. I’ll take Chris Daly over those folks any day.


By any rational standard, the district board over the past ten years has been more productive, more accountable, more representative and more accessible than any at-large board I’ve seen in my almost 30 years of covering this city.


So the Chron needs to shut up about “citywide perspective”’ and personalities. If the paper wants to oppose district elections, it needs to drop the poll-tested downtown talking points and tell the truth:


The current board is too liberal for the Chron. The moderate candidates the paper prefers can’t win in districts. So they want to change the rules.


That’s the story, beginning, middle and end.


 

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