This should be a great time for the Green Party. Its namesake color is being cited by every corporation and politician who wants to get in good with the environmentally-minded public; voters in San Francisco are more independent than ever; and progressives have been increasingly losing the hope they placed on President Barack Obama.
But the Green Party of San Francisco — which once had an influence on city politics that was disproportionate to its membership numbers — has hit a nadir. The number of Greens has steadily dwindled since its peak in 2003; the party closed its San Francisco office in November; and it has now lost almost all its marquee members.
Former mayoral candidate Matt Gonzalez, school board member Jane Kim, community college board member John Rizzo, and Planning Commissioner Christina Olague have all left the party in the last year or so. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi — a founding member of the Green Party of California and its last elected official in San Francisco — has also been openly struggling with whether to remain with an organization that doesn’t have much to offer him anymore, particularly as he contemplates a bid for higher office.
While a growing progressive movement within the Democratic Party has encouraged some Greens to defect, particularly among those with political ambitions, that doesn’t seem to be the biggest factor. After all, the fastest growing political affiliation is “Decline to State” and San Francisco now has a higher percentage of these independent voters than any other California county: 29.3 percent, according to state figures.
Democratic Party registration in San Francisco stood at 56.7 percent in November, the second-highest percentage in the state after Alameda County, making this essentially a one-party town (at last count, there were 256,233 Democrats, 42,097 Republicans, and 8,776 Greens in SF). Although Republicans in San Francisco have always outnumbered Greens by about 4-1, the only elected San Francisco Republican in more than a decade was BART board member James Fang.
But Republicans could never have made a real bid for power in San Francisco, as Gonzalez did in his electrifying 2003 mayoral run, coming within 5 percentage points of beating Gavin Newsom, who outspent the insurgent campaign 6-1 and had almost the entire Democratic Party establishment behind him.
That race, and the failure of Democrats in Congress to avert the ill-fated invasion of Iraq, caused Green Party membership to swell, reaching its peak in San Francisco and statewide in November 2003. But it’s been a steady downward slide since then, locally and statewide.
So now, as the Green Party of California prepares to mark its 20th anniversary next month in Berkeley, it’s worth exploring what happened to the party and what it means for progressive people’s movements at a time when they seem to be needed more than ever. Mirkarimi was one of about 20 core progressive activists who founded the Green Party of California in 1990, laying the groundwork in the late 1980s when he spent almost two years studying the Green Party in Germany, which was an effective member of a coalition government there and something he thought the United States desperately needed.
“It was in direct response to the right-wing shift of the Democrats during the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. It was so obvious that there had been an evacuation of the left-of-center values and policies that needed attention. So the era was just crying out woefully for a third party,” Mirkarimi said of the Green Party of California and its feminist, antiwar, ecological, and social justice belief system.
But he and the other founding Greens have discovered how strongly the American legal, political, and economic structures maintain the two-party system (or what Mirkarimi called “one party with two conservative wings”), locking out rival parties through restrictive electoral laws, control of political debates, and campaign financing mechanisms.
“I’m still very impassioned about the idea of having a Green Party here in the United States and here in California and San Francisco, vibrantly so. But I’m concerned that the Green Party will follow a trend like all third parties, which have proven that this country is absolutely uninviting — and in fact unwelcoming — of third parties and multiparty democracy,” Mirkarimi said.
Unlike some Greens, Mirkarimi has always sought to build coalitions and make common cause with Democrats when there were opportunities to advance the progressive agenda, a lesson he learned in Germany.
When he worked on Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign — a race that solidified the view of Greens as “spoilers” in the minds of many Democrats — Mirkarimi was involved in high-level negotiations with Democratic nominee Al Gore’s campaign, trying to broker some kind of leftist partnership that would elect Gore while advancing the progressive movement.
“There was great effort to try to make that happen, but unfortunately, everyone defaulted to their own anxieties and insecurities,” Mirkarimi said. “It was uncharted territory. It had never happened before. Everyone who held responsibility had the prospect of promise, and frankly, everybody felt deflated that the conversation did not become actualized into something real between Democrats and Greens. It could have.”
Instead, George W. Bush was narrowly elected president and many Democrats blamed Nader and the Greens, unfairly or not. And Mirkarimi said the Greens never did the post-election soul-searching and retooling that they should have. Instead, they got caught up in local contests, such as the Gonzalez run for mayor — “that beautiful distraction” — a campaign Mirkarimi helped run before succeeding Gonzalez on the board a year later.
Today, as he considers running for mayor himself, Mirkarimi is weighing whether to leave the party he founded. “I’m in a purgatory. I believe in multiparty democracy,” Mirkarimi said. “Yet tactically speaking, I feel like if I’m earnest in my intent to run for higher office, as I’ve shared with Greens, I’m not so sure I can do so as a Green.”
That’s a remarkable statement — in effect, an acknowledgement that despite some success on the local level, the Green Party still can’t compete for bigger prizes, leaving its leaders with nowhere to go. Mirkarimi said he plans to announce his decision — about his party and political plans — soon.
Gonzalez left the Green Party in 2008, changing his registration to DTS when he decided to be the running mate of Nader in an independent presidential campaign. That move was partly necessitated by ballot access rules in some states. But Gonzalez also thought Nader needed to make an independent run and let the Green Party choose its own candidate, which ended up being former Congress member Cynthia McKinney.
“I expressly said to Nader that I would not run with him if he sought the Green Party nomination,” Gonzalez told us. “The question after the campaign was: is there a reason to go back to the Green Party?”
Gonzalez concluded that there wasn’t, that the Greens had ceased to be a viable political party and that it “lacks a certain discipline and maturity.” Among the reasons he cited for the party’s slide were infighting, inadequate party-building work, and the party’s failure to effectively counter criticisms of Nader’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns.
“We were losing the public relations campaign of explaining what the hell happened,” he said.
Gonzalez was also critical of the decision by Mirkarimi and other Greens to endorse the Democratic Party presidential nominees in 2004 and 2008, saying it compromised the Greens’ critique of the two-party system. “It sort of brings that effort to an end.”
But Gonzalez credits the Green Party with invigorating San Francisco politics at an important time. “It was an articulation of an independence from the Democratic Party machine,” Gonzalez said of his decision to go from D to G in 2000, the year he was elected to the Board of Supervisors.
Anger at that machine and its unresponsiveness to progressive issues was running high at the time, and Gonzalez said the Green Party became one of the “four corners of the San Francisco left,” along with the San Francisco Tenants Union, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which helped set a progressive agenda for the city.
“Those groups helped articulate what issues were important,” Gonzalez said, citing economic, environmental, electoral reform, and social justice issues as examples. “So you saw the rise of candidates who began to articulate our platform.” But the success of the progressive movement in San Francisco also sowed the seeds for the Green Party’s downfall, particularly after progressive Democrats Chris Daly, Tom Ammiano, and Aaron Peskin waged ideological battles with Mayor Gavin Newsom and other so-called “moderate Democrats” last year taking control of the San Francisco Democratic Party County Central Committee.
“Historically, the San Francisco Democratic Party has been a political weapon for whoever was in power. But now, it’s actually a democratic party. And it’s gotten progressive as well,” Peskin, the party chair, told us. “And for a lot of Greens, that’s attractive.”
The opportunity to take part in that intra-party fight was a draw for Rizzo and Kim, both elected office-holders with further political ambitions who recently switched from Green to Democrat.
“I am really concerned about the Democratic Party,” Rizzo, a Green since 1992, told us. “I’ve been working in politics to try to influence things from the outside. Now I’m going to try to influence it from the inside.”
Rizzo said he’s frustrated by the inability of Obama and Congressional Democrats to capitalize on their 2008 electoral gains and he’s worried about the long-term implications of that failure. “What’s going on in Washington is really counterproductive for the Democrats. These people [young, progressive voters] aren’t going to want to vote again.”
Rizzo and Kim both endorsed Obama and both say there needs to be more progressive movement-building to get him back on track with the hopes he offered during his campaign.
“I think it’s important for progressives in San Francisco to try to move the Democratic Party back to the left,” Kim, who is considering running for the District 6 seat on the Board of Supervisors, told us. “I’ve actually been leaning toward doing this for a while.”
Kim was a Democrat who changed her registration to Green in 2004, encouraged to do so by Gonzalez. “For me, joining the Green Party was important because I really believed in third-party politics and I hope we can get beyond the two-party system,” Kim said, noting the dim hopes for that change was also a factor in her decision to switch back.
Another Green protégé of Gonzalez was Olague, whom he appointed to the Planning Commission. Olague said she was frustrated by Green Party infighting and the party’s inability to present any real political alternative.
“We had some strong things happening locally, but I didn’t see any action on the state or national level,” Olague said. “They have integrity and they work hard, but is that enough to stay in a party that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere?”
But many loyal Greens dispute the assertion that their party is on the rocks. “I think the party is going pretty well. It’s always an uphill battle building an alternative party,” said Erika McDonald, spokesperson for the Green Party of San Francisco, noting that the party plans to put the money it saved on its former Howard Street headquarters space into more organizing and outreach. “The biggest problem is money.”
Green Party activist Eric Brooks agrees. “We held onto that office for year and year and didn’t spend the money on party building, like we should have done a long time ago,” he said. “That’s the plan now, to do some crucial party organizing.”
Mirkarimi recalls the early party-building days when he and other “Ironing Board Cowboys” would canvas the city on Muni with voter registration forms and ironing boards to recruit new members, activities that fell away as the party achieved electoral successes and got involved with policy work.
“It distracted us from the basics,” Mirkarimi said. Now the Green Party has to again show that it’s capable of that kind of field work in support of a broad array of campaigns and candidates: “If I want to grow, there has to be a companion strategy that will lift all boats. All of those who have left the Green Party say they still support its values and wish it future success. And the feeling is mostly mutual, although some Greens grumble about how their party is now being hurt by the departure of its biggest names.
“I don’t begrudge an ambitious politician leaving the Green Party,” said Dave Snyder, a member of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District Board of Directors, and one of the few remaining Greens in local government.
But Snyder said he won’t abandon the Green Party, which he said best represents his political values. “To join a party means you subscribe to its ideals. But you can’t separate its ideals from its actions. Based on its actions, there’s no way I could be a member of the Democratic Party,” Snyder said.
Current Greens say many of President Obama’s actions — particularly his support for Wall Street, a health reform effort that leaves insurance companies in control, and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan — vindicate their position and illustrate why the Green Party is still relevant.
“The disillusionment with Obama is a very good opportunity for us,” McDonald said, voicing hope they Green can begin to capture more DTS voters and perhaps even a few Democrats. And Brooks said, “The Obama wake-up call should tell Greens that they should stick with the party.”
Snyder also said now is the time for Greens to more assertively make the case for progressive organizing: “The Democrats can’t live up to the hopes that people put on them.”
Even Peskin agrees that Obama’s candidacy was one of several factors that hurt the Green Party. “The liberal to progressive support for the Obama presidency deflated the Greens locally and beyond. In terms of organizing, they didn’t have the organizational support and a handful of folks alienated newcomers.”
In fact, when Mirkarmi and the other Green pioneers were trying to get the party qualified as a legal political party in California — no small task — Democratic Party leaders acted as if the Greens were the end of the world, or at least the end of Democratic control of the state Legislature and the California Congressional delegation. They went to great lengths to block the young party’s efforts.
It turns out that the Greens haven’t harmed the Democrats much at all; Democrats have even larger majorities at every legislative level today.
What has happened is that the Obama campaign, and the progressive inroads into the local party, have made the Greens less relevant. In a sense, it’s a reflection of exactly what Green leaders said years ago: if the Democrats were more progressive, there would be less need for a third party.
But Mirkarimi and other Greens who endorsed Obama see this moment differently, and they don’t share the hope that people disappointed with Obama are going to naturally gravitate toward the Greens. Rizzo and Kim fear these voters, deprived of the hope they once had, will instead just check out of politics. “They need to reorganize for a new time and new reality,” Rizzo said of the Greens.
Part of that new reality involves working with candidates like Obama and trying to pull them to the left through grassroots organizing. Mirkarimi stands by his decision to endorse Obama, for which the Green Party disinvited him to speak at its annual national convention, even though he was one of his party’s founders and top elected officials.
“After a while, we have to take responsibility to try to green the Democrats instead of just throwing barbs at them,” Mirkarimi said. “Our critique of Obama now would be much more effective if we had supported him.”
Yet that’s a claim of some dispute within the Green Party, a party that has often torn itself apart with differences over strategy and ideology, as it did in 2006 when many party activists vocally opposed the gubernatorial campaign of former Socialist Peter Camejo. And old comrades Mirkarimi and Gonzalez still don’t agree on the best Obama strategy, even in retrospect.
But they and other former Greens remain hopeful that the country can expand its political dialogue, and they say they are committed to continuing to work toward that goal. “I think there will be some new third party effort that emerges,” Gonzalez said. “It can’t be enough to not be President Bush. People want to see the implementation of a larger vision.”
MUNI
The Green Party’s nadir
Newsom’s plan means service cuts
The San Francisco Controller’s Office says that Mayor Newsom’s plan to lay off 15,000 city employees then hire most of them back at a reduced workweek will save $110 million. The Examiner quotes the mayor:
“The 37½-hour idea was a way of equalizing,” Newsom said in an interview Tuesday. “I would have to go to every single labor union, open contracts that are closed and engage with those open contracts in collective bargaining for each and every local.
“Every labor union is in this together. We aren’t going to pick and choose. That being said, they are coming back Thursday with a set of alternatives, and I will keep an open mind.”
Actually, it’s not exactly equalizing — no police officers or firefighters will get what amounts to 6.25 percent pay cuts. But here’s the more important issue:
The mayor — and, to a great extent, the newspapers — present this as a simple way of saving money; sure, the workers take a little hit in their pay, but jobs are preserved. What nobody’s saying is that this will amount to more very significant service cuts.
Take 15,000 employees and cut 2.5 hours from each of their workweeks. That’s 37,500 hours of work a week, or the equivalent of 937 full-time jobs. So one of two things are going to happen: Either city employees are going to be working 40 hours for 37.5 hours pay — that is, taking a direct pay cut, which is what I think Newsom really wants — or the city’s going to lose the equivalent of 937 workers.
If you assume that it’s unfair to ask people to work 40 hours for 37.5 hours pay (and if you assume, as I do, that the unions won’t stand for that), we’re going to be talking about service cuts — work that doesn’t get done. And where will those cuts happen? Guess what — it’s the usual places.
Public health takes the biggest hit, with $35.5 million in “savings” (actually, cuts) over the next 14 months. Human Services gets $10 million cut, and Muni about $8 million.
That means longer lines and sicker people at SF General, and more broken buses with no mechanics to fix them, which means slower Muni service … you get the picture.
I’m not saying that we don’t need cuts, and you could argue that it’s more fair to cut everyone’s pay a little than to eliminate 937 jobs altogether. But let’s be honest about this — it’s not just “salary savings.” It’s service cuts. On top of last year’s service cuts, on top of the previous year’s service cuts … and it’s being done without any real overall plan for what services we need to provide and what takes priority.
And of course, it’s being done with no discussion at all of raising new revenue.
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.
ICE postpones deporting SF MUNI worker’s family
I just got a call from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement advising me that ICE has decided to postpone deporting the wife and son of MUNI bus driver Charles Washington for 60 days.
“We’re hoping that postponing their removal will afford them the opportunity to get their affairs in order and address outstanding legal issues,” ICE spokesperson VIrginia Kice told me. Kice said this extension should give the family time to deal with their “pending adjustment application,” and determine “whether they have the opportunity to gain legal status.”
That’s great news for the Washingtons and another sign that may be hope, after all. (Angela Chan, staff attorney for the Asian Law Caucus, is now trying to get ICE to give the family 6 months, since this is how long US Citizenship and Immigration Service (US CIS) has told her it would take for them to process the Washingtons’ green card applications, and hopefully all the federal agencies involved are going to coordinate their efforts on this case.)
Meanwhile, Sup. David Campos is still trying to get the Juvenile Probation Department to implement his amendment to the sanctuary ordinance to stop nightmares like this from happening. Campos has scheduled a hearing at 10 a.m., Thursday March 4. So, stay tuned.
Editor’s Notes
Tredmond@sfbg.com
Hundreds of parents packed the Marina Middle School auditorium last week to talk about cuts to public education — and Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, who spoke about reforming Proposition 13, said he thought the response to his suggestions was overwhelmingly positive. That’s not surprising — public school parents in San Francisco are not really the demographic you worry about when you talk about raising taxes to pay for education.
And until fairly recently, I thought it was impossible to do anything worthwhile about tax policy on a statewide level. I figured the state Legislature, with its obstinate Republicans, could never launch a tax reform movement, and that passing a ballot measure to alter Prop. 13 was a long shot at the very best. I was the one telling local officials that we had to look to our own resources, right here in San Francisco.
But when I see hundreds of parents organizing around school cuts, and hundreds of Muni riders organizing around transit cuts, and tens of thousands of students organizing around cuts to higher education, I start to think: maybe there’s hope.
Maybe the state has gotten so bad, the red ink so awful, that Californians will finally realize that they can’t have good public services for free. And maybe they’ll realize that Prop. 13 does a lot more for big commercial property owners than for homeowners, and that a split-roll measure like the one Ammiano is proposing could raise the kind of money we need for decent schools and public services.
I have to hope so.
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.
Expanding movement
rebeccab@sfbg.com
When University of California Berkeley students staged building occupations last fall, their furious, brazen response to startling tuition hikes and staff cutbacks captured the attention of the world, recalling the radical actions of earlier generations.
Yet the thrust behind the March 4 Strike and Day of Action, a mass mobilization for public education and services that is reaching into all corners of the state and spreading nationwide, appears to stem from widespread agitation that extends well beyond the flare-ups on college campuses.
"What’s historic about this is that pre-K through PhD has never walked together," said Lillian Taiz, president of the California Faculty Association, which represents faculty in the California State University system. "We have often been pitted against one another, and I think everyone feels finally, in the end, there is no difference in importance between pre-K and PhD. We need it all."
The historic new alliance faces an uphill climb in an environment characterized by a devastating budget crisis at the state level. California — the world’s eighth-largest economy — hovers around 47th in the nation in terms of per-pupil spending, and the most recent wave of budget rollbacks has cut to the bone.
Students and teachers across the Bay Area argue that with dramatic slashes in funding, the educational system is failing youth. Class sizes are ballooning to claustrophobic levels, students are unable to take their desired courses, fees are going up, bathrooms are getting cleaned less frequently, and staffers are getting stressed by overwhelming workloads. "Classes are jam-packed," Taiz says. "You have kids sitting on the floor. You have students just begging to be allowed in a class."
As University of California students decry a 32 percent hike in fees, the California State University system is suffering from damage inflicted by 2,000 faculty layoffs over the past year. The San Francisco Unified School District, meanwhile, is staring down an estimated $113 million budget deficit over the next two years, and 900 layoff notices recently were issued to teachers, librarians, secretaries, and other school employees to warn them that their jobs could be slashed by the end of the school year.
When San Francisco’s school district faced a gaping budget shortfall during the last budget cycle, it was propped up by a combination of Rainy Day Fund reserve dollars and stimulus funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. With no such safety nets in place this time around, anxiety levels are higher and the outlook is uncertain.
March 4 is shaping up to be more than an opportunity to vent frustrations to elected leaders. Instead, organizers describe it as a rallying point for a movement to defend public education that has caught on like wildfire, uniting people from different worlds. Pickets and rallies will be staged throughout the region. Thousands are expected to swarm Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco. Students from a handful of East Bay campuses are organizing marches to Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland. Students and faculty from Berkeley will be boarding buses to take the message to Sacramento. The Oakland Unified School district will host a districtwide mock "disaster drill" to call attention to the disastrous budget. Even public transit activists opposed to the latest round of Muni service cuts and fare hikes are joining the protests, hoping to expand the discussion to support vital public services (for details on these and other events, see "Alerts" opposite this page).
"We’ve never gotten this level of activism over anything in SF since I’ve been here," says Matthew Hardy, communications director for United Educators of San Francisco. "There’s a growing movement for progressive taxation and budget reform instead of draconian cuts."
Taiz, who teaches history at Cal State Los Angeles, described March 4 as an opportunity to fill a void in leadership. "Historically, in these moments where ordinary people step up to the plate, you end up leading the leaders," she said. "We are kind of shocked, but in truth, we do know what has to be done." Quality education isn’t just important for young people, but for society as a whole, she argued. "I am a baby boomer, and if the folks coming up behind me don’t have really, really good jobs, I’m going to be eating dog food. Because those are the people who pay Social Security and pay the taxes."
In the week preceding March 4, teachers and students throughout the Bay Area were in a frenzy of preparation.
Carlos Baron, a theater professor at SF State, was wondering whether the grand procession of papier-mâché puppets his theater students will unveil on the March 4 Day of Action should take a V-shape or some other form. "The main puppet is the Draculator," explained Baron, a Chilean who directed plays in the Salvador Allende era before he began teaching at SF State in 1978. "It’s a cross between the Terminator-Governor and Dracula. But also it doubles as a banker and a general."
When asked how funding cutbacks affect students, Baron didn’t hesitate. "It impedes the creation of a positive vision for themselves and this society," he said. It stunts "the development of the imagination," he added. "We are trained as individuals to accept our failure and our smallness because we’re familiar with it. They don’t want an educated population, a sensitive population, a dreaming population. Would we select Schwarzenegger?"
Nicole Abreu Shepard, a first-grade teacher at Buena Vista Elementary in San Francisco’s Mission District, was collecting permission slips from parents to take her students to a rally and march down 24th Street. "The entire school is walking out," Abreu Shepherd said. Buena Vista’s art program exists solely because parents volunteer their time, she explained. More than half the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and many incoming kindergarteners or preschoolers are new to the English language. Now there are proposals on the table to increase kindergarten class sizes to 25 or possibly even 30 students. "It’s sort of tying their hands behind their back and asking them to teach on one foot," she noted, and worried about the eventual result. "It’s going to be harder and harder to keep parents who could afford private school in a public school system."
Meanwhile, at the UC Berkeley campus, Krystof Cantor was sitting behind a table heaped with piles of radical literature bearing titles such as "After the Fall: Communiques from an Occupied California." Cantor, who earned his PhD in vision science in 2005, was joining student organizers in making one last push to drum up student interest in March 4 events at a multi-faceted event called "Rolling University." Late on the evening of Feb. 26, a dance party on the Berkeley campus morphed into a street riot — replete with ignited Dumpsters — in downtown Berkeley. The incident attracted media attention and drew public criticism from administrative officials.
The radicalized student movement that has erupted on the UC Berkeley campus is "very much about seizing power," Cantor told the Guardian several days before. "It’s been disruptive, it’s been militant, and it’s been creative. That’s very scary," to the administrators the movement is targeting, he added.
That focused pressure on UC administrators sets these students apart from the coalition of UC Berkeley faculty members and student government members and allies who are coordinating bus trips to protest in Sacramento March 4, he explained. "Sacramento’s not innocent, but it’s not like the administrators are just doing what they have to do," he charged, pointing to new construction projects on campus even as workers are hit with layoffs and furloughs, plus an increasing trend of privatizing on-campus jobs and services. "You can save the public sector by pouring money into it. But it won’t work if the people in charge … want to privatize everything."
Jasper Bernes, a graduate student in English who was seated next to Cantor, noted that the occupation tactic is catching on at other campuses. "I have no doubt that March 4 will greet us with news of many occupations," he said.
Baron, the Chilean theater professor, noted that some SF State students had occupied a business school building in protest of budget cuts. "They were pissed," he said. "They wanted to do something radical. They really inconvenienced a lot of people — but they took chances nonetheless. I went there, and I locked arms with them for awhile." At the same time, he wondered about how effective it was, he said.
And for all the months of preparation and visioning, Baron said he also wonders what will ultimately be borne out of the marches, rallies, pickets, and procession of lovingly crafted street puppets he helped breathe life into. For all the hard work and planning, he says, "My problem is not so much March 4. It’s March 5."
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
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.”
It’s so easy to go after public employees
The always-insightful Robert Cruickshank has a fascinating piece on Calitics today talking about the investigative reports showing that some state employees save up all their vacation time and get big payouts when they retire. It’s true that some state workers walk away with upwards of $100,000, and it’s true that it pisses people off, and it’s true that there probably ought to be some reforms that limit the amount of vacation time you can save and cash in.
But as Cruickshank notes, the payouts have cost the state $486 million since 2006, and:
$486 million sounds like a lot of money. But that is just 2.43% of the current $20 billion deficit. In other words, if we had eliminated that practice in 2006, or capped it, the budget deficit would not be meaningfully impacted. In fact, given that we’ve had about $60 billion in budget shortfalls since 2007, these vacation payouts are 0.81% of the overall deficit.
He explains:
Of course, these kinds of articles help build a larger narrative that the budget problem is in large part caused by greedy public sector workers who are paid too much. The actual numbers here indicate that the vacation payouts are not a meaningful part of the budget problem at all. Similarly, Meg Whitman’s desire to layoff 40,000 state workers would probably save about $2.5 billion (assuming those workers make the state average). That’s a bigger chunk of the projected $20 billion deficit, but it’s still only 12.5%. Whitman and other critics of public employees need to come up with solutions for the other 87.5% of the deficit.
Maybe one place to start is by looking at how the rich evade their tax obligations. Last week the LA Times’s Michael Hiltzik showed that Frank and Jamie McCourt paid no federal or state income tax between 2004 and 2009. Many wealthy Californians and large corporations have similarly evaded taxes.
So why do the relatively minor excesses by state employees get much more press attention that the vast cheating and looting of the public treasury by the rich and by big businness? Well, after 30 years in journalism, I can tell you one reason:
It’s easy.
State employee payrolls are public record. It’s easy to find out how much overtime Muni drivers make, or how many city workers earn more than $100,000 a year, or what the firefighters contract allows. Editors love these kinds of stories, because they always stir up populist indignation and outrage.
I’ve done it myself. We all do.
On the other hand, try to figure out how a big commercial property owner is using complicated stock transfers to hide a change in ownership and avoid tens of millions of dollars in property-tax liability. It’s a bitch. That kind of work takes weeks, months of investigation and requires some sophisticated legal and financial knowledge. See, the private sector — particularly the folks who are hiding behind tax shelters and scams — is big on secrecy, and the laws don’t help reporters.
Investigative reporting on the private sector is expensive. And in these days of diminished news budgets, not that much of it happens any more.
So the message you get in the press is that public employees are busting the budgets, and if we could just quit paying them so much money all would be fine. And the real budget busters, the real scam artists, the real crooks who are sucking the public treasury dry … they just keep right one going. And nobody’s paying attention.
The Chronicle’s dishonest hit on district elections
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.
Marching on Sacramento
Angry parents, hundreds of them, met in Marina Middle School to demand an end to cuts in education.
Angry Muni riders, hundreds of them, jammed City Hall to oppose Muni fare hikes and service cuts.
Angry students from the University of California — thousands of them — will hold a huge event March 4th to push for better education funding and lower fees.
There’s something going on here — because in every case, grassroots activists in huge numbers (numbers that dwarf the so-called Tea Party events) want to force the state of California to change its budget priorities. And they are starting to talk seriously about taxes.
The Republicans are pretty intransigent up in Sacramento. But if these groups — the public school parents, the UC students, the transit users and the wide range of other middle-class folks who are sick to death of California’s budget mess and how it’s screwing them — could start working together, we could see a powerful coalition emerging.
And what that coalition needs to do, among other things, is push for Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s legislation to change Prop. 13 and Sen. Mark Leno’s efforts to allow a local vehicle license fee, and a Constitutional amendment to get rid of the two-thirds majority for budget approval and tax hikes.
The Republicans have all signed this no-new-taxes pledge and it’s going to be hard to move them. Any attempt to change Prop. 13 will be met with huge opposition from big business. I used to think that it was hopeless even to talk about that … but maybe it’s not. Maybe if everyone who’s angry about government cuts understood that the only way to solve the problem in the end is to allow local government to raise money for the schools through property taxes, and allow state government to raise income taxes on the rich and impose taxes on big businesses, we’d be able to build a movement that could make some progress.
It’s worth thinking about.
Transit activists swarm City Hall
Hundreds of transit supporters, angrily opposed to the package of Muni fare hikes and service cuts proposed to close a $16.9 million mid-year budget deficit, are now packed into City Hall demanding equity and justice.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Judson True, spokesperson for the SF Municipal Transportation Agency, told me as he surveyed the huge overflow crowd packed into South Light Court, watching the upstairs budget meeting on closed circuit television. “We should all get on buses and go to Sacramento. It’s clear that grassroots organizing is alive and well in San Francisco.”
It may be true that budget cuts and lack of political will to raise taxes in Sacramento helped cause this problem, but this crowd was angry and they directed most of that ire at the MTA board and the man who appointed them, Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Even True wasn’t spared, as college student Glo Pereira laid into him as we spoke: “I’m a person who doesn’t appreciate this,” she glowered.
That was the dominant mood among the wide coalition of groups represented here today, including a strong presence by communities of color, those with disabilities, and social justice groups.
MTA spokesperson Judson True is confronted by activist Glo Pereira
“You folks should resign! You aren’t doing your job and you haven’t done your job,” activist Bob Planthold told the board. “This is an agency run by one man, Gavin Newsom, in the interests of one man, Gavin Newsom.”
That’s a common theme, one of complete exasperperation, with regular calls to tax the rich and lay off the poor, and for more engaged leadership from the Mayor’s Office.
As I write, there’s still lots of public testimony to go before the board deliberates and votes, so check back to this blog post, which I’ll update periodically.
Update: The MTA board seems to have heeded much the public input, voting 6-1 (with Trustee Cameron Beach in dissent) to remove the increases in Fast Pass fares for youth, senior, and the disabled and to approve the rest of the fare increases, which will increase prices for express buses and cable cars. That package was then approved on a 4-3 (with McCray, Lee, and Beach in dissent, although they didn’t make clear the reason for their votes).
Similarly, another 4-3 vote by the same trustees approved a package of service reductions that total about a 10 percent overall cut, although there was a consensus direction for the board to try to spare cuts on the busiest lines, including 14, 49, 30, 38, M, and the Owl, as well as ensuring nightime cuts are minimized. Overall, the results of the vote weren’t entirely clear and the meeting wasn’t formally adjourned, but instead will be recessed until Tuesday when the board will discuss the larger budget picture going into the next fiscal year.
At that time, the board will consider placing a parcel tax or other new revenues measures on the November ballot, something that seemed to have the support of most board members. In addition, Director Malcom Heinicke today outlined his support for a extended parking meter hours, which he would like to see done as a pilot program along five or six selected commercial corridors on Sundays and on a single commercial corridor on weeknights until 10 p.m. Several board members voiced support for the idea.
While today’s vote didn’t close the $16.9 million deficit that was the purpose of this meeting and the public testimony that went for nearly five hours, MTA executive director Nat Ford noted that “there is some softness” in the revenue picture, including the possibility of getting a $7 million from the Board of Supervisors and using a greater portion of the $17 million windfall that the MTA received after the feds decided to discontinue the Oakland airport connector service on operations rather than maintenance, as staff had proposed. In addition, the MTA board is currently discussing a privatization plan for taxi medallions, which could affect the revenue picture.
I’ll try to help sort this out with another post before day’s end, including more testimony from the occassionally raucous meeting, but it appears that this meeting essentially ended with a “To Be Continued,” and the board will pick up where it left off on Tuesday, when the big new revenue proposals (which Mayor Gavin Newsom has resisted supporting) could be at the very center of the debate.
Muni cuts spark popular backlash
Tomorrow’s big showdown over the latest round of Muni service cuts and fare hikes seems to be galvanizing transit supporters and giving birth to a rejuvenated progressive advocacy effort, including a new transit riders union led by noted alternative transportation advocate Dave Snyder. And that hearing is just a prelude to a taxi medallion privatization plan that will be heard in the afternoon and another big Muni budget blowout on Tuesday.
“We are asking everyone to show up and complain about the mayor and the MTA board’s failure to prepare for this and find alternatives to the drastic cuts they’re proposing,” Snyder told us, referring to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s plans to close a $16.9 million mid-year budget deficit (which is what’s left after the $11 million from the taxi permit selloff, which the MTA has already figured into the budget) almost entirely on the backs of Muni riders, who have already seen their fares double since Gavin Newsom became mayor in 2004.
The hearing is Friday at 9 a.m. in City Hall Room 400. That afternoon, Snyder will meet with a broad-based advisory board that he’s assembled to lead (and to name) the new transit riders union that he’s been working on for months, and his tentative plan is to formally launch it on Monday.
For now, those interested in being part of this fledgling organization can sign up here. The new organization is being launched as the MTA board moves from tomorrow’s controversial meeting into another one on Tuesday, that one to start grappling with the huge budget deficit the agency will still face in the next fiscal year that begins in June, even if it’s successful in closing this year’s.
Snyder is probably just the right person to lead this effort, having directed the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition in its formative years before founding Transportation for a Livable City (now known as Livable City) and then becoming the transportation policy director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), a post he left last year during a controversy surrounding Snyder’s appointment to the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District Board of Directors.
Snyder said Newsom and the MTA board have failed to plan for this foreseeable funding shortfall, saying they should have accelerated plans for extended parking meter hours (particularly ending the free parking on Sundays), a congestion pricing program, a local vehicle license fee, or measures like a gas tax, transit assessment fee, or a parcel tax – all of which the MTA board and mayor could have placed on the ballot for voter approval. Instead, they did nothing and are now pursuing a 10 percent reduction in Muni service, which could start a disastrous downward spiral.
“They need a stable, long-term funding source,” Snyder told us. “The charter actually says they’re supposed to aggressively seek new sources of funding.”
MTA spokesperson Judson True said that neither tax increases nor extended parking meter hours among the proposed solutions for Friday’s discussion, but they’re likely to be raised as part of a longer term strategy during the meeting on Tuesday: “It’s likely that the various tax measures will be part of that discussion.”
That could include reviving the extended parking meter hours proposal, which the MTA board heard last year during a rancorous public meeting, directing staff to do more community outreach on it. As True said, “We did a fair amount of outreach on it so we’ll see where the discussion goes on the two-year budget.”
Snyder is hardly alone in his local advocacy for budget solutions that spare Muni from deep cuts. In fact, the Transit Not Traffic coalition that successfully pushed the 2007 MTA reform measure Prop. A – which includes the Bike Coalition, Livable City, Walk SF, and other progressive groups – has revived itself in advance of tomorrow’s meeting and will be flying outside City Hall starting at 8:30 a.m.
There is broad support on the left for seeking more funding from drivers and the general public, but it’s not unanimous. The anti-war ANSWER Coalition frustrated many of its usual progressive allies last year by organizing against extended meter hours, claiming it was a hidden tax of low-income motorists. And Newsom has stubbornly resisted supporting new revenue measures, even in the face of unprecedented budget shortfalls, which makes the quest to win the support of two-thirds of voters difficult.
But the popular outrage that’s been expressed in recent weeks about how much Muni has been cut, year after year since Newsom became mayor, will likely put pressure on him and the MTA board (all of whom Newsom appointed) to pursue new revenue options.
True sounded weary as we spoke, noting how much anger has been expressed at the recent series of town hall meetings. “We know where people stand on these proposals,” True said. “The board is going to have some tough decisions to make, clearly.”
An open letter to the Transit Workers Union
By Gabriel Metcalf
OPINION Last week, the Transit Workers Union refused to accept a deal with San Francisco that would have modestly reduced major service cuts and eliminated another increase in discount fares at least for this year. The proposal would have involved two things: first, a one-time contribution by drivers to their own pension plans (worth $8.9 million for next year, almost precisely cancelled by the automatic raise of $8 million the drivers will receive next year); and second, a change in work rules that would have required drivers to actually work 40 hours in a week before earning overtime, which would have saved $3.8 million over the next 14 months.
Muni is facing a deficit of at least $17 million in the current fiscal year and around $55 million next year. Future years will be worse. Given these pressures, the TWU is getting ready to re-vote. I presume that, eventually, union members will accept the deal. But either way, given how utterly marginal this deal is for the riders, progressives need to begin a public conversation about what responsibility the union has for making Muni work better.
The problem is not that TWU salaries are too high. The problem is the work rules. These include: drivers not having to let their managers know how long they will be absent from work, making it impossible to set schedules; drivers earning overtime pay before actually working 40 hours a week; and perhaps most significantly, a set of rules that makes it virtually impossible to hire part time drivers. Currently, Muni is forced by the work rules to pay drivers at full hourly rates to sit around between the morning and afternoon peaks. That rule costs MTA about $11 million each year.
If the TWU is willing to give on just the overtime and part-time driver rules, MTA would save $12.4 million in next year’s budget — and this savings would grow in the future. Other work rule changes could save much, much more, while dramatically increasing service to riders.
Probably the underlying cause of Muni’s work rules is the fact that the TWU, unlike other bargaining units in the city, has its salary and benefits set by formula in the City Charter — which means that management has nothing to offer during labor negotiations. Friends of mine in the labor movement argue that TWU is just doing its job in trying to get a good deal for members. I would argue that TWU needs to do more than that, and needs to begin taking responsibility for building a transit system that works well and can grow over time.
Maybe this public sector union needs to take a page from the Swedish labor movement.
Early into the post World War II economic boom, the Swedish unions learned that, since they controlled the government and increasingly controlled the boards of directors of the corporations they had organized, they were essentially always going to get their major demands met. This forced a big shift in their culture, causing them to have to take responsibility not just for cutting a good deal for their members, but for ensuring the profitability of the companies. Labor could easily “win too much” and drive the companies out of business, thereby returning its members to unemployment. Once labor controlled the businesses, it had to come up with a proactive agenda for how to run them successfully.
Closer to home, we’ve seen the teachers union accept cuts and changes to their equivalent of work rules in order to prevent teacher layoffs. And we’ve seen the Service Employees International Union at the national level put immense resources into passing health care reform — something that will benefit all Americans, not just SEIU members.
Something similar needs to happen now at Muni.
Muni workers deserve a good wage. It’s a hard job under the best of circumstances. And as Muni tries to keep service on the streets without enough money for equipment and maintenance, workers on the front lines will bear the brunt of the bigger problems. But a lot of people resent the things the union has chosen to ask for in addition to a good wage.
Muni’s troubles are multifaceted. They involve bad management, bad street design, bad land use planning, and certainly insufficient funding. But work rules are undeniably part of the issue as well. It cannot be progressive for the TWU, in the middle of the worst financial crisis to hit our country since the Great Depression, to cling to the same work rules it has had in the past. Muni needs TWU to help it be successful.
Gabriel Metcalf is executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).
Sunday parking in the Mission
I’m not surprised that merchants in the Mission want to retain free parking on Sundays. Times are tough for neighborhood businesses, and anything that would seem to discourage customers is frightening.
Of course, if the city doesn’t expand parking meter hours, it’s going to have to make even further cuts in Muni, which could impact the merchants even more.
But the thing that always kills me about this discussion is all the illegal parking that goes on every Sunday all over the Mission. The entire center of Valencia Street is a big parking lot — and nobody ever gets a ticket. That’s because the cops have an unwritten, uncodified, long-standing policy of letting people park in the middle of the street if they’re going to church.
If we’re going to turn the streets into parking lots, fine: Let’s allow people to park there and go to breakfast at a local restaurant, or go shopping at a local store, or go to yoga at a local studio. Ofrelse — much better, in my mind — let’s start charging the churchgoers for the right to clog up the streets. Then maybe we won’t have to extend meter hours.
Nothing against churchgoers, of course. But if they don’t want to pay for parking, they can ride the bus to services. It’s far more holy to take the bus, anyway.
Now, let’s see: Which San Francisco supervisor wants to take on THAT political nightmare?
The people vs. corporate power
steve@sfbg.com
The June 8 election is shaping up to be one that pits the people against powerful business interests, a contest that will demonstrate either that money still rules or that growing public opposition to corporate con-jobs has finally taken root.
On the state level, the five ballot measures include two brazen money-making schemes and two experiments in election reform, along with primary races that are still in flux. In San Francisco, where the ballot measures still have a few more weeks to shake out, the election will feature two rarely contested judges races, recession relief for renters, City Hall fiscal reforms, and a fight for control of the local Democratic Party.
So far, only four local measures have qualified for the San Francisco ballot, all placed there by members of the Board of Supervisors. Progressives qualified the Renters Economic Relief package (which limits rent increases during recessions and sets conditions for landlords passing costs to tenants), an initiative establishing community policing standards, and one affirming city support for making Transbay Terminal the northern high-speed rail terminus. Supervisors were unanimous in supporting a charter amendment governing the Film Commission.
But the board is still hashing out changes to the more controversial ballot proposals, a debate that will continue at its Feb. 23 meeting. They include an overhaul of how the city funds its pension program and an effort to remove Muni salary minimums from the city charter, both by Sup. Sean Elsbernd; a $652 million seismic safety bond proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom; and a Sup. John Avalos charter amendment that would prevent the mayor from unilaterally defunding certain budget expenditures. All measures must be approved by March 5.
Also still forming up in the coming weeks are primary races for legislative seats (although no incumbents appear to be facing strong challenges) and all eight state constitutional offices, including governor (where Attorney General Jerry Brown seems poised to easily win the Democratic nomination), lieutenant governor, and attorney general (which District Attorney Kamala Harris is running for).
Candidates have until March 12 to declare themselves for statewide and legislative offices, as well as for the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, which could play a key role in this fall’s Board of Supervisors elections. Two years ago, a slate of progressives led by Aaron Peskin and Chris Daly launched a surprise attack to wrest control of the board away from the moderates who have long controlled it. Newsom, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and their downtown allies are expected to try hard to regain control over their party’s purse-strings and endorsements.
JUDGING THE JUDGES
Another struggle from two years ago is also being replayed. In 2008, then-Sup. Gerardo Sandoval successfully challenged Superior Court Judge Thomas Mellon, arguing the Republican-appointed jurist was too conservative (and the entire court is not diverse enough) for San Francisco. This time the target is Judge Richard Ulmer, a conservative appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ulmer is being challenged by two LGBT attorneys, Daniel Dean and Michael Nava, the latter endorsed by Sen. Mark Leno, Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, and Peskin, who chairs the Democratic Party and could be helpful in the race. “He’s a brilliant guy,” Leno said of Nava.
Leno also has endorsed deputy public defender Linda Colfax, a Latina lesbian, in a four-way race to replace retiring Judge Wallace Douglass. The other candidates are Harry Dorfman, Roderick McLeod, and Robert Retana. If no candidate wins a majority of votes, the top two finishers square off in a runoff election in November.
Leno said he’s thrilled to see a diverse crowd of attorneys seeking judgeships: “This governor has failed horribly in his appointments, not only with the LGBT community, but with communities of color as well.”
TWO COMPANIES TRY TO BUY CALIF.
The struggle between the broad public interest and the wealthy power brokers that have long-dominated California politics is most apparent in the state propositions, which have been certified and for which ballot arguments are now being collected by the California Secretary of State’s Office.
Two of those ballot measures, Propositions 16 and 17, are blatantly self-serving efforts by a pair of powerful corporations to increase their profitability, however deceptively and with overwhelming amounts of campaign cash they are presented.
Prop. 16, sponsored by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., would require local governments to get two-thirds of voters to approve creation of energy programs like Clean Power SF, San Francisco’s plan for developing renewable energy projects and selling that power directly to citizens.
As we’ve reported (“Battle royale,” Jan. 13, and “PG&E attack mailer puts City Hall on defensive,” Dec. 22, 2009), PG&E placed the measure on the ballot to avoid having to repeatedly crush public power initiatives around the state with multimillion dollar campaigns, even though political leaders like Leno and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi say the measure violates the state’s community choice aggregation law. That law allows local governments to create energy programs and prohibits PG&E from interfering with those efforts.
“The unregulated behavior of corporate arrogance is killing our democracy. Prop. 17, sponsored by Mercury Insurance, would let companies increase car insurance premiums for a variety of reasons that are now prohibited by the 1988 measure Prop. 103. Mercury has continuously attacked that landmark law, using lawsuits, huge political contributions, sponsored legislation, and, according to newly released documents from the California Department of Insurance (see “The malevolence of Mercury Insurance,” Feb. 10, Guardian Politics blog), blatantly illegal activity in setting premiums and excluding certain customers, such as artists, bartenders, and members of the military.
“The Mercury initiative is even more pernicious than what it was doing before,” Harvey Rosenfield, who wrote Prop. 103 and works for Consumer Watchdog, told the Guardian. “Under Mercury’s initiative, if you’ve never had prior insurance, you can be surcharged for the first time. Then they’ve thrown in some other tricks and traps.”
Mercury spokesperson Coby King told us the company has been unfairly maligned and denies that the measure is simply about boosting its profits: “Prop. 103 is the law of the land, but to the extent there are improvements that can be made that are pro-business and pro-consumer, Mercury has not been shy about acting in the public interest.”
Yet few public interest groups or public officials believe the claims being made by Mercury or PG&E, and they hope that the public won’t be fooled.
“These are measures designed to give a financial advantage to a specific industry or company,” U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, who battled Mercury as California’s first insurance commissioner, told us. He strongly opposes both measures, but did say, “Money talks. It always has, particularly in propositions.”
Yet Leno said he’s a bit more hopeful: “Californians have been savvy in the past, and I do believe they’ll be able to see through the tens of millions of dollars in misleading ads.”
“To me, it’s a classic case study of what’s going on with the initiative process in California and with politics in general,” said Derek Cressman, western regional director of California Common Cause. “There are two initiatives literally sponsored by corporations to push very narrow interests.”
Yet Cressman said recent events could help. There’s been a big public outcry in recent weeks over the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow unlimited corporate spending to influence elections, the role that insurance companies played in sinking federal health care reform efforts, and the way businesses interests are hindering efforts to deal with global warming.
“It makes people aware of the overwhelming role corporations are playing in dictating government policy,” Cressman said.
TAKE OUT THE MONEY
A pair of election reform measures might help lessen the influence of money and political parties. Prop. 14 is an open primaries measure that Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) got placed on the ballot as a condition for breaking last year’s budget stalemate. It would create a single primary ballot and send the top two finishers to the general election, regardless of party.
Prop. 15, the California Fair Elections Act, takes direct aim at the corrupting influence of money in elections, creating a pilot public finance program in the secretary of state races for 2014 and 2018. The measure, which has broad support from politicians and good government groups in the Bay Area, is modeled on successful programs in Maine and Arizona.
“No elected official should be in the fundraising game the way they are now,” campaign chair Trent Lange told us. “This is a way to change how we fund elections.”
The idea is to create a model that will eventually be used for other offices. The campaign fund would be generated by a $350 annual fee on lobbyists, lobbying firms, and lobbyist employers. Currently lobbyists pay just $12.50 per year to register, which Lange said, “just shows the power of lobbyists in Sacramento.” *
MTA works on deep Muni service cuts
By Nima Maghame
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni, has pushed back a City Hall meeting (originally set for today) to make a decision on budget-related plans for cutting transit services by 10 percent across the city and raising prices on monthly passes, setting it for Friday 26th at 9 a.m. instead.
The proposal seeks “a savings of 313,000 annual service hours, which would result in $4.8 million in savings for the fiscal year 2010. The annual savings would be $28.5 million.”
At the Feb. 8 meeting, where the MTA formally announced its new plans, representatives from disability and senior citizen communities voiced their frustrations with the monthly pass price increase. Both groups not only rely on public transportation to get around the city, but many are members of organizations that subsidize passes for those in need. Many of these organizations can’t budget the new price hikes, which could mean that people who depend on these hand-outs may not get them.
“The people of San Francisco need transit. We were there to stop the MTA — 99 percent of the people at the meeting were there to say don’t cut services, don’t cut rates, there are other ways,” Forrest Schmidt, an organizer for the ANSWER Coalition, told us.
The 10 percent cut in service would hit the residents of Treasure Island hard because many rely on buses to get on and off the island. Several came to the meeting to voice their Muni needs and point out that the 108 bus is the only alternative to driving a car. They criticized MTA calculations that determine the appropriate amount of service that can be cut without causing too many problems for commuters.
“Alternative means don’t exist when you live on Treasure Island. They have to acknowledge that we have unique factors,” Treasure Island resident and art student Drew Williams said at the meeting.
The MTA board heard the plea, MTA spokesperson Judson True told us: “The board has decided to reevaluate their plans for the 108 line.” It was one of several factors that has caused the MTA board of delay its budget decisions.
Critics are infuriated at the MTA for not taking a proactive approach at dealing with its fiscal challenges. “It’s a damn shame it came to this. The severity was not predictable but the deficit was predictable,” said longtime transportation activist Dave Snyder, who recently formed a new transit riders union to advocate on behalf of Muni riders. “The revenue panel met a couple of years ago and the MTA declined all their recommendations.”
Wise “Blood”
MUSIC Most bands change over time. Change makes most people uncomfortable. I — for all intents and purposes — am most people. Therefore, when a band I care about changes, most of the time I feel uncomfortable.
I must admit that the first few times I heard Yeasayer’s sophomore LP, Odd Blood (Secretly Canadian, 2010), my level of discomfort was hovering somewhere between a middle seat of the Muni No. 9 during rush hour and a trip to a swingin’ singles club with Larry Craig and John Edwards. Expecting another slice of the eclectic, experimental indie rock of their fantastic debut, All Hour Cymbals (We Are Free, 2007), I was shocked to find 10 surprisingly streamlined, often danceable cuts, generally devoid of the varied Middle Eastern influences that peppered their debut. But after a few listens, something funny happened. My discomfort turned into enjoyment, my disappointment into excitement.
In reality, I should have seen this coming. A band as creative and fiercely individual as Yeasayer was never going to make the same album twice. Tracks from All Hour Cymbals like “2080” and “Sunrise” hinted that the Brooklyn-ites had this in them, and Odd Blood is the sound of a band saying, “Fuck it, let’s go for it.” It would have actually been a safer decision for the group to move in an even more esoteric sonic direction since they’ve already got the hipster, faux-intellectual demographic on lock. As groups like Animal Collective and Of Montreal have proven, you can do pretty damn well just by hanging on to those kids.
Don’t get me wrong, while Odd Blood represents an ostensibly poppier direction for the group, it’s not like they turned into the All American Rejects. Even the most mainstream-friendly cuts — the lead singles “Ambling Alp” and “O.N.E.” — are heavily layered, multifaceted tracks that simply don’t sound like anything anyone else is doing. “Ambling Alp” — an upbeat, immediate number built from agitated stabs of synth, a busy bassline, and vocalist Chris Keating’s confident, dexterous vocals — twists and turns for four exhilarating minutes. “O.N.E.” has a distinctly island feel and is ready to soundtrack the summer, even if it’s still February.
Keating and Co. (multi-instrumentalists Ira Wolf Tuton and Anand Wilder) keep throwing curveballs, especially on the ballad “I Remember.” Keating’s emotive, graceful falsetto is at the heart of the plaintive track, sure to strike a chord in those who are missing a loved one. The surprisingly simple and direct (in lyrical content and melody) number shows off a totally different side of the group and creates a palpable sense of nostalgia and longing. More flappers-and-the-Charleston than flannel-and-thick-rimmed-glasses, “Rome” sounds like something out of an indie cabaret show. “Love Me Girl” would be a lost MJ track if he’d been dropping acid instead of hanging out with mannequins.
Is Odd Blood a step forward or a step back? To borrow a Wonka-ism, it is a step slantways. And it was always going to be. All I can say for sure is there is no way to tell where Yeasayer will go from here, because the members themselves don’t seem to know (or care) what the future holds. Honestly, if their next album is an Uzbek folk rolk-influenced dubstep/crunk/easy listening mashup, I wouldn’t bat an eye. Would I be apprehensive about it at first? Of course. Would it stop me from giving it a long listen? No fucking way. In fact, it would only be a true letdown if it sounded like a copy of a previous album.
Muni’s driving people off the bus
By Tim Redmond
If I owned a bicycle shop in San Francisco, I’d be putting a big poster in my window right now saying something like:
$840 a year to ride Muni? Save your cash — buy a bike!
Seriously — you can get a decent new bicycle for $350, a good used one for half of that. Which means if you switch from riding Muni to riding your bike, you pay for your new ride in about six months. And after that, you save $70 a month (the proposed new price for a fast pass that lets you ride express buses).
And If I owned a parking lot on the edge of downtown, I’d be sticking fliers on utility poles near Muni bus stops saying:
$70 a month for a Fast Pass? Why wait for the bus? We have monthly parking at that price!
Which pretty much sums up the problem with Muni’s plans to continue raising fares.
At a certain point — and if we’re not there yet, we’re getting damn close — the alternatives to Muni become more cost-effective, and people stop riding the bus. Fewer riders means less fare revenue, which means the deficit gets worse, and the downward death spiral of our public transit system continues.
You can’t keep raising the price of a product or service forever without losing customers — unless you have a near-total monopoly, like oil cartels and Microsoft. And while Muni is the only bus game in town, it’s not the only way to get around a 49-square mile city. Bicycling has costs — you have to buy a bike, you have to exert energy to ride it, you might get wet in the rain, and the hills are a bitch. Cars have costs, too — but if, like many San Franciscans, you already own a car, then the cost of driving it to work depends largely on the cost of parking. Even walking has a cost — particularly time, since walking is a slow way to get to work.
But when the service provided by Muni declines (the buses are dirtier and come less frequently) and the price goes up, then the relative cost of the alternatives declines, too.
I’m a big fan of Muni; I think our system is still way better than anything you’ll find in most California cities. But when you can park downtown for about the same as it costs to buy a fast pass, something’s very wrong.
If the Newsom Administration is serious about saving Muni, the mayor has to look at the competition. I’m all for people buying bicycles — it’s healthy, and so is walking, and the locally owned independent bike shops in the city need the business. But nobody wants more drivers downtown — and the obvious solution is to raise the price of parking. Not just meters; raise the tax on parking lots. Impose a surtax on monthly parking. Put that money in to Muni — and keep the fares down.
How bad does Muni have to get
By Tim Redmond
Before Gavin Newsom is willing to consider extending parking meter hours to make drivers pay their fair share?
The budget picture is increasingly bleak, and Muni’s talking about some very unpleasant cuts that may wind up to be ineffective; if buses are slower, dirtier and cost more, then fewer people will ride, and Muni will collect less fare money.
So how bad does it have to get? Does the system have to reach total collapse before Newsom is willing to take a little political risk and raise some money from people who drive downtown and park their cars?