Newsom Archives — Page 20 of 85 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

DCCC endorsements — how the hell did this happen?

Mary Magee

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September 9, 2010

Everyone knew that the DCCC, the endorsing arm of the San Francisco Democratic Party, would have trouble choosing candidates in the heavily contested D. 10 race. After all, the member decided at the August endorsement meeting to punt the D. 10 decision for four weeks.

But the DCCC’s September 8 endorsement of civil rights attorney Dewitt Lacy, former Newsom staffer Malia Cohen, and biodiesel activist Eric Smith, in that order, was somewhat mind-boggling. It left the San Francisco Democratic Party in the position of endorsing a candidate who is utterly unreliable on tenant issues and passing over perhaps the most progressive contender in the race.

D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly, who has a long history of progressive involvement in the district and who thought he had strong support on the DCCC, felt as if he’d been thrown under the endorsement bus. And it left fellow progressive Chris Jackson feeling that the DCCC endorsement process didn’t take the community’s wishes into consideration.

It’s common knowledge that DCCC members felt they had to endorse an African American in this district, since it contains the city’s largest remaining black community, and since it’s unlikely that a black candidate will get elected from any other district this fall, potentially leaving the board with no African American representation.

But that does not explain why the DCCC, after giving Lacy its first place endorsement, gave its second slot to Cohen, a moderate who told the Guardian in a recent endorsement interview that she doesn’t support further controls on evictions and condo conversions because that would infringe on property owners’ rights.

And in the end, you have to wonder: Does this end up helping Steve Moss, the candidate most progressives on the DCCC most fear?

Insiders point to two hidden plays that worked against Kelly, and for Cohen, in terms of getting the DCCC’s nod.

The first was a push by downtown interests to have their representatives on the DCCC make no endorsements in the race. The idea was to keep Kelly off the slate, so that downtown’s preferred D. 10 candidate Steve Moss would have a better chance of sewing up the vote on Potrero Hill, where Kelly is expected to do well.

The other play was a push among some DCCC members to put a black woman on the slate. This made Cohen, despite her moderate stance on some progressive issues, their choice, since she was born and raised in the district and has raised enough money to run a competitive campaign.

DCCC chair Aaron Peskin told the Guardian that he wanted Kelly to get one of the slots.

“My failure to do so proves that the DCCC isn’t a machine,” Peskin said. “I wanted Tony on there somewhere, and for a while it was looking like he might get second or third place.”

Kelly told the Guardian that he was surprised not to get the DCCC endorsement—and that he has received 8 phone calls from DCCC members apologizing for what happened.

“Nobody wanted those three candidates, except perhaps Scott Wiener,” Kelly said.

“At the same time, there have been so many gyrations around this in the last week. I’ve had more than half of the DCCC members tell me directly, ‘You’ll make the best supervisor—and I’m supporting someone else.’ But now they don’t even have three progressives in the slate.”

Kelly added: “This is a weak moment for the Democratic Party. This is not a machine, it’s not something that has strength or relevance to the district. This is the most clueless endorsement possible.”

Jackson believes that what happened last night was purely politics.

“This was a very political process and they made a political decision,” Jackson said. “But ultimately, it’ll be up to the neighborhoods and community to make their own choice.”

“Unbelievable,” is how Smith described the DCCC’s D. 10 slate. “Right before this vote started, Eric Quezada told me, no matter what happens, there are better things in life than this. But now I feel great. It’s given my campaign a big boost.”

“I’m close to Tony Kelly, I consider him as a friend,” Smith added. “But in some ridiculous karmic way, the stars aligned, and I’m one lucky bro.”

Lacy for his part was clearly elated at getting the DCCC’s top slot.

“I’m really excited,” Lacy said. “I believe this means D. 10 has a strong opportunity to get its fair share of good things and the Democratic Party will take part in making that happen.”

It also means Lacy — whose campaign has been a little slow and underfunded — is really going to have to ramp up his efforts in the next few weeks to take advantage of the DCCC nod. And it means Moss will get a boost, since Kelly could take Potrero Hill votes away from him. Kelly’s the only candidate who got the Potrero Hill Democratic Club endorsement.

The Nevius rumor mill

Zelda Bronstein

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September 7, 2010

1

After defending Pet Food Express, a chain that worries local independent pet stores, the Chron’s C.W. Nevius has the latest rumor in the who-will-be-the-next-mayor game. Here’s how it goes: Newsom becomes lieutenant gov, the supes pick Dennis Herrera as mayor, Herrera appoints David Chiu city attorney, and David Campos becomes board prez.

I’m not buying it. Herrera is well short of six votes on the current board, and Chiu has sufficiently pissed off progressives that he can’t cut that deal and make it happen. Besides, Chiu doesn’t want to be city attorney, he wants to be D.A. Or mayor.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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September 7, 2010

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tredmond@sfbg.com

California politics starts early. The campaigns in this state were underway long before the traditional Labor Day launch of the fall campaign season. Except for Jerry Brown, who only in the past week has started acting like a candidate for governor of the most populous state in the nation.

And that’s not a mistake.

Here’s how I’m seeing things shape up at what is more accurately described as a midpoint in the campaign season:

Jerry Brown’s starting to hit back. The once and maybe future governor has much of the state’s political class mystified; with Meg Whitman blanketing the airwaves, promoting herself and whacking away at him, why has he waited so long to fight back? Actually, it’s a calculated strategy, Jerry’s version of the old Muhammed Ali rope-a-dope. He knew he couldn’t match Whitman blow for blow — and he also suspected that at a certain point, she’d start to punch herself out. It’s been working: after spending more than $100 million, Whitman hasn’t cracked 45 percent in the polls. And some polls now show that the more people view her ads, the less they like her.

So now Jerry Brown appears — a 72-year-old career politician who’s going to look like a fresh face. And all he has to do is knock her back a little and the race is his.

Barbara Boxer’s nailed Carly Fiorina where she’s most vulnerable. Boxer’s got incumbency trouble — that is, everyone’s sick of incumbents. But she has an opponent who has something even worse — a record of sending jobs offshore while collecting $100 million for herself. Boxer hammered that point home in the first and only Senate debate — and I can see that clip appearing in TV ads all fall.

And I hate to say it, but those two campaigns are going to eat up all the statewide campaign oxygen between now and November. Between those four candidates, we’ll see upwards of $120 million in TV spending — and the rest of the campaigns probably won’t even be able to buy much time in major markets.

That could be good for Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. They’re Democrats in a state where Democrats way outnumber Republicans, and Republicans only win when they make a strong case that the Democrat sucks. Whitman can try to do that, and so can Fiorina, but even if they had the money, I don’t see Abel Maldonado or Steve Cooley, the GOP candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general, getting their messages heard in the cacophony that will be the top of the ticket.

So maybe Whitman is not only hurting herself with her excessive spending. Maybe she’s hurting the rest of the party, too. Not that she cares.

Play at work, or more at play?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 7, 2010

8

rebeccab@sfbg.com

There’s a long-standing perception in San Francisco that certain development firms are treated more favorably than others thanks to insider politics. And while supporters of Mayor Gavin Newsom say he’s cleaned up the pay-to-play culture, a look at the list of contributors to Newsom’s run for lieutenant governor at the very least raises questions.

For example, according to campaign filings, Newsom received $6,500 from a business called 706 Mission Street Co. LLC, which was formed to construct a condo high-rise at Yerba Buena Center. The building would also be a new permanent home for the city’s Mexican Museum. The 706 Mission project, which has been in the works for several years, is a joint venture between developer Millennium Partners and JMA Ventures, a San Francisco-based real estate investment firm. JMA Ventures contributed $5,000 to Newsom, campaign finance records show, and the firm’s president and CEO, Todd Chapman, also made a generous donation of $1,000. Effectively, Newsom’s campaign received a total of $12,500 from individuals or firms associated with 706 Mission.

The project has been under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency since 2008, when the Redevelopment Commission authorized an exclusive negotiations agreement with the developer for the mixed-use high-rise and museum, to be partially constructed on a parcel owned by Redevelopment and later included plans to integrate the landmark Mercantile Building. The project went dormant in the face of the economic downturn, but it’s now moving forward again, and the environmental review of the proposed 600-foot tower falls under the purview of the city’s Planning Department. On Sept. 1, Newsom mentioned 706 Mission, a “new, world-class facility,” in a press release announcing a new director for the Mexican Museum.

“The Redevelopment Agency and the city are fully committed to the public/private/nonprofit partnership that will eventually bring the Mexican Museum to a new home in the heart of Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco’s premier cultural district,” Redevelopment Agency executive director Fred Blackwell proclaimed.

Another contributor that demonstrated strong financial support for Newsom’s bid is a global technical firm that has a hand in several major infrastructure and development projects throughout San Francisco. AECOM contributed $13,000 to Newsom’s campaign, and a handful of people who work for AECOM chipped in smaller amounts totaling $3,600, according to campaign-finance records. In an April 15 news release for investors, AECOM noted that it had been awarded a $26 million contract for construction management of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Water Improvement Infrastructure Project. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in May, the firm was also awarded a five-year, $147 million contract with the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency for construction management on the Central Subway project. AECOM is also playing a role in a number of major developments currently under review in city planning. It is the prime environmental impact report consultant for the California Pacific Medical Center proposal for a giant new hospital on Van Ness Avenue. It’s also completing a traffic corridor analysis for 19th Avenue on behalf of the developers of Parkmerced, a renovation and in-fill project on track to be one of the largest new residential developments in the city.

A $2 MILLION BONUS

The Parkmerced developers have helped Newsom’s campaign along too. Craig Hartman, an internationally renowned architect with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill who is a design partner for the project, dropped $1,000 into Newsom’s hat. Two executives associated with Parkmerced each pitched in another $1,000.

A smaller project that has been in the works for years also seems close to home for Newsom. Michael Yarne, of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, is a former director of development of the Martin Building Co., the lead developer on mixed-use residential project located in Central Waterfront at 2235 Third St. The project has commendable features such as a reuse of an existing industrial building, proximity to transit, and 39 below-market-rate units — and the project developer managed to secure an incredible deal with the city.

This past April, the Planning Commission approved an unprecedented in-kind agreement with Martin Building Co. that waived nearly $2 million in development fees, including about $1.2 million for 2235 Third St. and the rest for a second Martin Building Co. project on Townsend Street, in exchange for the developer’s commitment to construct a space for a day-care facility on the Third Street site and lease that portion of the property to a childcare provider for free for 55 years. The provider would have to operate the facility without profit and would be required to have low-income child-care slots, so this bargain would serve to create affordable day care.

Yarne’s close ties to the mayor and the developer — plus a $2,000 campaign contribution to Newsom from the head of the project’s general contractor, a building company called Nibbi Bros. — could raise a few eyebrows in light of this unprecedented deal, especially given the city’s gaping deficit and the question of how else that $2 million might have been put to use. The project was also awarded more than $1.6 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to excavate lead-contaminated soil from the property and transport it away for off-site disposal. The project, which has already been approved and moved to the Department of Building Inspection phase, also incorporates a City CarShare space. Yarne’s on the board of City CarShare, too.

It’s always possible that there is no connection between Newsom’s campaign contributions, his personal staff, and contributors’ connections to the myriad development projects in the hopper — but that doesn’t stop observers from asking questions. Developers who are anxious about the economic downturn may be motivated do everything in their power to speed a project along, and it’s possible that throwing money at a political campaign is just one tool among many.

Or maybe they just think Newsom would make a great lieutenant governor.

PLANNERS COMPLAIN

Nonetheless, the perception that certain developers get special treatment is shared by at least two former planners in the city’s Planning Department — one of whom is facing termination in the wake of a recent investigation surrounding porn email.

Following an internal shake-up at the planning department triggered by the discovery that some staffers shared pornographic e-mails, messages started flying about what was behind the crackdown. “Porn is not the real story,” Lois Scott, a retired planner and former president of International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21 wrote in an e-mail to the Guardian.

After the porn scandal broke, the hammer came down. Five people were terminated effective this past May, and another 20 or more reportedly faced some form of disciplinary action.

Some have interpreted the move as a signal that Planning Director John Rahaim, a Newsom appointee, won’t stand for inappropriate conduct on his watch. At the same time, others have contacted the Guardian to voice concerns that the firings and internal shakeup were connected to something deeper than dirty emails.

Although speculative theories abound and there is a paucity of official comments on the firings due to privacy laws, one point is abundantly clear. In a city where powerful developers will go to great lengths to secure approval for lucrative projects, there’s a great deal of wariness surrounding city planning. San Francisco is host to leagues of developers, real estate investment groups, prestigious law firms specializing in land use, technical consultants, and politically powerful associations of residential builders, building owners, and building-trade unions — all with a huge financial stake in seeing projects make it past the approval finish line and onto groundbreaking.

When it comes to a major project that will transform a city block in San Francisco, the planning department (which relies on development fees to pay the bills) inevitably encounters pressure from two sides: well-connected development teams with economic interests on the one hand, and neighborhood groups or historic preservationists who aren’t shy about hurling criticism on the other.

So it’s no surprise than anything affecting the planning staff in a major way would not pass quietly.

One of the planners affected by the firings told the Guardian that the porn investigation went on for months. There were one-on-one interviews, and some 70 staff members were called in and questioned, some two or three times. Contents of computer hard drives and city e-mail accounts were analyzed. Later, huge posters went up, displaying questions like, “How Are You Going to Make a Better Planning Department?”

“It was bizarre,” the former planner said.

According to Leigh Kienker — a former planner who recently retired and was not implicated in the computer misuse investigation — the result of all this was to create a sort of chilling effect on the planning staff, especially since she said two of the five individuals who lost their jobs had been more likely to question management and speak up when they didn’t think a project was being handled properly. When it comes to ensuring that projects conform to the planning code, “We need to be able to speak up,” she said. “This is our expertise.”

Jim Miller, who had been with the department for more than 32 years and is regarded by his peers as very outspoken, discussed his own termination in an e-mail to a number of supporters. “I was given a loose-leaf binder indicating the reasons for the firing,” he wrote. “The information contained therein was decidedly very thin. This, plus the fact that others who had a greater role in the ‘wrongdoing’ received job suspension rather than termination, leads me to believe that there is some other reason for the action taken. This reason is heretofore unbeknownst to me.”

Cynthia Servetnick, shop steward for IFPTE Local 21 planner’s chapter and a historic preservation advocate, voiced concerns about how the department dealt with the porn problem in an e-mail to Rahaim. “Frankly, the firing of so many senior Planning Department staff members not only seems like a ‘witch hunt,’ but smacks of age discrimination against a class of union-represented employees for the purpose of shoring-up budget deficits and intimidating less senior employees,” she charged. In response, Rahaim dismissed her comments as baseless accusations.

BADINER GETS $82,500

At a Feb. 18 Planning Commission meeting, when the department’s proposed budget came under review, commissioners noted that Rahaim was in the unenviable position of having to lay off four to six staffers in order to balance the budget. Noting that a great deal of effort had gone into attracting fresh talent and hiring younger planners, several commissioners expressed hope that they wouldn’t be the first to go. Rahaim responded that, given the union’s seniority rules, his hands were tied to an extent. In light of that conversation, Servetnick suggested that the porn e-mails presented a convenient solution for a director faced with a thinly stretched budget. All of the five who were fired were 50 or older.

At the same time, others who closely follow city planning rejected the idea of any ulterior motive. Sue Hestor, a land-use attorney who seems to have her finger firmly on the pulse of San Francisco development, told the Guardian that she’d heard plenty of rumors, but wasn’t necessarily buying the hype. Charles Marsteller, a former director of Common Cause and a keen observer of the planning process, said he had little reason to suspect that what had happened was anything more than responding to inappropriate conduct.

Zoning Administrator Larry Badiner, a 28-year veteran of the department who critics say was friendly to high-end developers, was fired in the wake of the porn investigation along with three lower-level staffers — but he appeared to walk away with a better deal than his subordinates.

A Guardian sunshine request revealed that Badiner received a six-month severance package amounting to $82,500, plus benefits he was eligible for that could have amounted to more than $57,000 (but may be significantly less). In exchange, he agreed not to sue the city. None of the other planning staffers who were terminated appear to have received such a payout.

Meanwhile, Badiner may not have been the highest-ranking city employee to be snagged in the porn investigation. An e-mail address of dlmacris[at]aol.com was included on an e-mail provided to the Guardian that contained a rather tame pornographic image.

The planner who sent the e-mail was fired after the porn investigation, and so were three of the recipients. Former Planning Director Dean Macris, who more recently served as a special advisor to Newsom, stopped working for the city around the same time Badiner and the others were terminated. Mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker told the Guardian he could not discuss anything related to how or why Macris left city service.

Rahaim said he had no choice in the Badiner severance. “The issue with Larry Badiner was required as part of a MEA labor contract. It requires a payout in any situation where a person is terminated or laid off.” He added that the firings were “strictly because of inappropriate use of city resources and also because of the type of material” that was being viewed. There was “absolutely no other reason.”

And he insisted that no developers get favoritism: “I have no idea who’s contributing to whose campaign.”

At least one response to the rash of firings commended the planning director for taking action. “I applaud your efforts to address hostile working conditions related to gender and sexual preference, which have long existed in the Planning Department,” a retired senior planner wrote to Rahaim shortly after the firings. “There is, perhaps as you have realized, a deep undercurrent of unresolved and unpleasant practices which perhaps finally led to the present complaints.”

Does the planning department shake-up indicate a move away from the bad old days of quid pro quo dealings and hostile working conditions, thanks to a director who’s standing strong against inappropriate conduct — or is it a move to consolidate power in a department led by a mayoral appointee at a time when the development community is particularly hungry to move new projects forward? Given the knock-down, drag-out fights that have unfolded over planning in the city’s history, and the high sums of money that are gushing into project proposals and campaign coffers, it’s no wonder the question is being posed.

“The bottom line is, the public is not being served,” Servetnick said. “Developers shouldn’t be able to come in and say, ‘Just for me!’ If everybody who pays to play gets away with that, we’re going to end up with a really ugly city.”

Blocking the bridge

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 7, 2010

1

sarah@sfbg.com

The Sierra Club and Golden Gate Audubon Society have sued to block the final environmental impact report on the Lennar Corp. redevelopment project, a move that could force reconsideration of a bridge over Yosemite Slough.

The suit against the city, Board of Supervisors, and Redevelopment Agency charges that the final EIR for Lennar’s Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard project was inadequate, in part because it didn’t consider all the impacts of the bridge or look properly at alternatives.

The move comes as no big surprise: these environmental groups vowed to file a suit within 30 days of the city’s August certification of the project EIR. But advocates hope it will lead to a change in the proposal.

Arthur Feinstein, a member of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter, said the EIR didn’t comply with the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.

The introduction to the Sierra Club suit notes that “the FEIR failed to identify or underestimated the significance of environmental impacts associated with the project; failed to address the alternative proposed by Arc Ecology, which provides for a bus rapid transit route around Yosemite Slough; and failed to provide adequate responses to comments on the draft EIR.”

Or as Feinstein puts it: “There’s a bridge, and it’s going through a nature area where they say the sound level from the buses will be the equivalent to standing 50 feet from a freeway.

“They say there is no impact and that you can’t have an undisturbed nature experience in an urban area, but you can,” Feinstein continued, pointing to the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, and Crissy Field as examples of places where you can have undisturbed experiences.

Feinstein noted that Candlestick Point State Recreation Area is the only large park on the city’s eastern shoreline, and the only park that people in the Bayview can access easily.

“The city boasts about how much it was improving the Bayview, but this park is the only major open space where you can get away from urban stress — and folks have a lot of stress in the Bayview,” Feinstein said. He added that building the bridge will involve sinking pilings in Yosemite Slough that will disturb wildlife and stir up PCBs and other known contaminants.

“Noise, light and glare all have impacts on wildlife, but the city’s EIR said these are insignificant because these critters are insignificant,” Feinstein said.

Feinstein noted that the city’s final environmental impact report did make a finding of overriding concern that the project will cause air pollution at levels that exceed Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) health standards.

“But [the city] decided that this was a regional problem, so they did not attempt any mitigations for the 25,000 new residents that this 700-acre redevelopment plan is supposed to bring into the Bayview — which already has the city’s highest asthma and cancer rate and the largest number of polluting sources,” Feinstein said. “But they could say that all buses going into the development need to be electrified, or they could limit the number of parking spaces the way they did at Octavia-Market and South of Market.”

Feinstein said the next step in this CEQA lawsuit in a pretrial negotiation session to see if a settlement can be reached. “We’re not looking for a long drawn out fight. We’re ready for one, but we’re also ready to negotiate because that’s how you achieve things.”

Feinstein also noted that the Sierra Club had to go to Los Angeles to hire a traffic consultant to work on its suit because Lennar has contracts with just about every shop in the Bay Area, thanks to its various projects at Hunters Point, Treasure Island, and Mare Island.

“The related problem is that the city is no longer looking at the project with a steely eye,” Feinstein said. “Instead, they have become the developer — except that they are working with Lennar and not reviewing Lennar’s plans with objectivity. By filing this lawsuit, we’re keeping the conversation about this project alive and reminding folks that you don’t have to take everything this mayor and his administration gives you.”

The Sierra Club/Audubon Society suit came four days after the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the California State Parks Foundation entered into an agreement with Lennar to help prepare conceptual designs that reportedly will be used as the basis for the actual bridge over the Yosemite Slough.

Some critics interpreted the timing of CSPF’s announcement, which the Chronicle reported under a confusing “Environmentalists to help design span” headline, as an attempt by Lennar’s well-oiled PR machine to undermine the Sierra Club/Audubon Society suit.

They also questioned CSPF’s independence from Lennar, and from the Mayor’s Office, because Guillermo Rodriguez Jr. from the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development sits on CSPF’s board. So does Peter Weiner, a partner at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, which has contracts with Lennar. Representatives from Southern California Edison, Toyota, the Walt Disney Company, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and several other companies that either have contracts with Lennar or have given to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s campaign for lieutenant governor campaign also sit on the park foundation board.

CPSF’s President Elizabeth Goldstein told us that “as park supporters and defenders, we consider ourselves environmentalists.” CSPF originally planned to fight approval of the project’s final EIR when it came before the board in July. But unlike the Sierra Club, CSPF pulled its appeal at the last minute.

Goldstein told the Guardian that the foundation reversed its decision because it had initiated what she characterized as “a fruitful discussion with Lennar.”

“We wanted to play that out,” Goldstein said. “And now we’re glad we did, because the design criteria look quite good and hopefully will be compatible with the project.”

“What we’ve agreed with Lennar about is a set of design criteria to be applied to the bridge, she continued. “These criteria are intended to make sure the bridge fits aesthetically into the park as much as is possible. Lennar asked us, and we agreed, to develop the first set of conceptual plans — obviously in cooperation with them — to make sure that they are, from their first iteration, as sympathetic as possible to the park.”

Goldstein said that some of these design criteria are “quite global.”

“Some are big arcs of things that are very important to us, such as impact from light, glare and noise,” she said, noting that they don’t want to see the proposed bridge lighted at night, à la the Golden Gate Bridge.

“We want the environment at dusk to be as unimpacted as possible,” she said.

Other CSPF concerns are more situation specific.

“We want safe, attractive, easy-to-use signage,” Goldstein said, referring to need to help users and neighbors find their way around and across the bridge. “We also talk about minimizing piers in the water at the slough, and if possible, eliminating them altogether since they impact vehicles and kayaks.”

Goldstein agreed that the foundation’s roots are not in political advocacy. “We were founded as a philanthropic land acquisition partner to the Department of State Parks.” But she noted that the group was involved in blocking a proposed toll road through Orange County and is a leading supporter of Proposition 21, which seeks to raise nearly $500 million a year for state parks by tacking on an $18 vehicle registration fee that would give all vehicles registered in California free access to the majority of state parks.

As Feinstein observed, “The CSPF does great work, but they are not usually advocates for conservation and biodiversity. That is what the club and Audubon Society does.”

Stuart Flashman, attorney for the Sierra Club and the Golden Gate Audubon Society, said that in the long run the lawsuit won’t stop the project from going forward. “But in the short term, if the court finds that the EIR wasn’t adequate and that there are significant impacts from the bridge that could have been avoided, then the city has to go back and redo that part of the EIR, a process that could take two to four months. And if they conclude, yeah, the impacts from the bridge are unavoidable, then they’d have to redo it to go around the slough.”

Flashman says he hasn’t seen the proposal CPSF and Lennar are working on. “But as part of this suit, we are required to sit down with the city and see if we can settle — and we are hopeful we can do that.”

Lynette Sweet and the IRS: The strange story

Zelda Bronstein

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September 2, 2010

3

Lynette Sweet and the IRS: The strange story

Lots of people have trouble with the IRS. Almost everyone I know has run afoul of the tax man at some point in time, and the fact that BART Board member and District 10 candidate Lynette Sweet at one point owed the feds $14,500 isn’t exactly a major crime.

But there’s a part of her story, at least at Matier and Ross present it, that strikes me as odd:

Sweet says she thought the tax lien was cleared up years ago.

She said she cut a deal with the IRS in 2007 to pay $14,500 in back taxes plus interest, in return for additional fines being dropped.

Sweet said she sent the feds a cashier’s check and pretty much forgot about it.

The thing is, the IRS never cashed the cashier’s check – which, it turns out, was made out to Sweet herself, according to a copy of a 2007 check she provided to us.

IRS spokesman Jesse Weller declined to discuss details of the case, but said: “The IRS does not accept checks – personal or cashier – or money orders made out to individuals. We ask that the payment be made out to the United States Treasury.”

Sweet “sent a cashier’s check and pretty much forgot about it” — although the check was never cashed? And she didn’t notice? Here’s where it gets strange.

Sweet told me that she bought the cashier’s check from Wells Fargo, mistakenly made it out to herself and mailed it off to the IRS in 2007. At that point, the money had already come out of her account, so she assumed the debt was paid. But the IRS never cashed the check, since it wasn’t made out to the United States Treasury and, of course, the agency couldn’t cash a check made out to someone else.

And Wells, she said, never told her that the check hadn’t been cashed. (That makes sense, in an odd way; I just talked to a banker who couldn’t comment for the record but who comfirmed that cashier’s checks are like cash; once the bank issues one it doesn’t have any responsibility to call the buyer if the check is never cashed.)

“That’s why I don’t recommend the use of cashier’s checks for tax payments,” the banker said. “You want your own hard copy of your payment when it’s cashed.”

So how come the IRS didn’t contact Sweet for three years to tell her the check she sent was invalid? That’s not like the IRS I know. Sweet’s response: She was using a tax firm to help her with the account, and the notices must have gone there, and those people must never have told her.

And she never knew that she had an IRS lien on her house that had grown to $20,000.

Could be. But what a bizarre story.

(By the way, I also invited Sweet to come down to the Guardian for an endorsement interview, and she had her campaign manager call to say she’d declined to talk to us. That’s pretty unusual behavior, esp. for an elected official. Even Gavin Newsom came to talk to us when he was running for re-election for mayor and we’d been blasting him for four years. Pretty weak.)

ICE suggests SF Secure-Comm opt-out possible

Mary Magee

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September 1, 2010

1

ICE suggests SF Secure-Comm opt-out possible

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson Lori K. Haley sent the Guardian a statement today that suggests that ICE might change the city’s Secure-Communities activation status, after all.
“Once ICE receives the correspondence from the San Francisco County Sheriff, we will review the request and convene a meeting with the other agencies involved, including the California Department of Justice, to discuss the Sheriff’s specific issues and concerns. Based upon those discussions, ICE and its partners will examine the options and seek a feasible resolution, which may include changing the jurisdiction’s activation status,” ICE stated.

ICE’s statement came in the wake of a conference call from SF Sheriff Mike Hennessey and SF Police Commissioner Angela Chan, who have been leading the charge to opt-out of a program that is supposed to be voluntary.

“Secure-Comm is not a federal law, it’s a program and it’s voluntary,” Chan told the Guardian.

Chan says she considers ICE’s statement a positive sign, but she insists that San Francisco be at the negotiating table, moving forward.
“I think it’s important that ICE does not simply meet again with Attorney General Jerry Brown and not include San Francisco. Sheriff Mike Hennessey needs to be at the table,” Chan said.

ICE notes that since Secure-Comm’s activation in San Francisco in early June, the program has resulted in ICE taking custody of “89 potentially removable aliens, including 25 individuals with prior convictions for serious or violent offenses.”

“Secure Communities continues to be a vital tool for identifying potentially removable criminal aliens who’ve come into local law enforcement custody and expediting their removal from the United States,” ICE stated. “It’s a major step forward in ICE’s ongoing efforts to work with local law enforcement to prevent potentially dangerous criminal aliens from being released to our streets.”

But Chan points to an article in Bay City News, in which Hennessey clarifies that he does not have a problem with cooperating with ICE around serious criminal offenders.
“I am not unwilling to cooperate with ICE with regard to serious [offenders] charged with felonies,” Hennessey reportedly said during today’s conference call with ICE. He also clarified that he had reported felony suspects believed to be in the country without paperwork before Secure-Comm was implemented and will continue to do so under SF’s sanctuary ordinance.

SecureComm is currently in effect in 35 California counties, including all nine Bay Area counties, Los Angeles and San Diego. Under the program, California Attorney General Jerry Brown’s Justice Department shares fingerprints of anyone booked into jail after an arrest, be it for felony or misdemeanor charges, with ICE’s databases to determine if that person is here legally.

In May, when Brown rejected Hennessey’s initial opt-out request, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom backed Brown up, but police Chief George Gascon has reportedly indicated that he would like to see those arrested for minor crimes be exempted.

Today, Hennessey reminded reporters that he has already taken all the steps that ICE is recommending today to try to opt out, but that he was told in that previous go-around–by phone, no less–that opting-out was not an option.
“No meeting was held, no meeting was called, and they did not give me the courtesy of a written response,” Hennessey said.

ICE statistics’ also show that of the ten people already deported from San Francisco under Secure-Comm, only one had been convicted of a serious crime, and six had non-criminal backgrounds.
ICE’s Virginia Kice reportedly told BCN those with non-criminal histories may have had “extensive” histories of immigration-related arrests, which are typically handled administratively.

But Chan says that ICE’s latest statistics seem to prove that the program should be renamed Insecure Communities.
“This actually hurts public safety,” Chan said

Joanna Rees pole vaults into Mayor’s race

Mary Magee

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September 1, 2010

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Joanna Rees pole vaults into Mayor’s race

Matier & Ross have an interesting item about venture capitalist Joanna Rees running for mayor and declaring herself “a progressive independent”.

What they don’t mention –- or don’t know — is that Rees has given $6,500 to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Lt. Governor campaign.

That puts Rees on par with former Dreamworks co-founder David Geffen, Dreamworks’ Jeffrey Katzenberg, actress Kate Capshaw, film director Stephen Spielberg, and the three members of the Traina clan (Alexis, Todd and Trevor) who so far have each plunked down 6.5 K for Newsom’s latest political run.

Newsom’s campaign filings also record that Rees is with VSP Capital. So if you want to know more about Rees and her partner, you can read their official bios here.

But if you want the gossip on the VSP adultery scandal, read valleygawker’s piece here. And then there’s the piece on VSP’s website about the settlement that you can read here.

School board race shouldn’t be personal

David Talbot

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August 31, 2010

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The backroom anti-Brodkin campaign has to stop

EDITORIAL There are plenty of issues to talk about in the San Francisco School Board race. The new student assignment process marks a dramatic shift in the way parents and kids get to choose schools. The district’s decision to pursue federal Race to the Top money was a mistake. There are too many charter schools, and not enough money for basic programs. The district has made great strides in closing the achievement gap, but there’s more to do. Many school facilities still need upgrades, meaning — potentially — more bond acts. The austerity budget has meant teacher layoffs. Overall, the district is in better shape than it was five years ago, but the goal of quality education for all kids is still a long way off.

This is what candidates and interest groups ought to be talking about. Instead, it seems as if the entire race is about one candidate: Margaret Brodkin.

Brodkin, the former director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth and former head of the Mayor’s Office of Children, Youth, and Families is by all accounts among the most experienced people ever to run for the office. She’s also strong-willed, forceful, and sometimes difficult. That’s what’s made her such a successful advocate. Over the past 30 years, she’s been involved in almost every progressive cause involving children and youth in the city, from the creation of the Children’s Fund to the battle against privatization in the public schools.

You think she’d at least be considered a serious candidate and that elected officials and political groups would give her the respect she deserves as someone who has devoted her life to activism on behalf of children.

But some incumbent board members have been engaged in a full-scale, anti-Brodkin campaign the likes of which we’ve rarely seen, even in the rough and sometimes brutal politics of this city. It’s mostly quiet, backroom stuff — and as far as we can tell, it’s not about issues. But they’ve approached just about everyone in local politics to badmouth Brodkin.

Let us stipulate: there are issues, real issues, progressives can disagree on with Brodkin. We’ve fought with her ourselves over some of the programs she implemented when she worked in the Newsom administration. Brodkin was far too supportive of former school superintendent Arlene Ackerman, who was secretive and imperious, for far too long. She’s also a close ally of board member Jill Wynns, who was wrong on a lot of issues over the past few years.

Brodkin has extensive proposals about education reform that she has discussed over and over; if you don’t like them, then don’t vote for her. If you think her proposals would be bad for the kids in the public schools — and in the end, that’s what this is all about — then work to elect somebody else. That’s how politics works.

But the misleading whisper campaign annoys us, and is often based on inaccurate information. Brodkin, we’ve been told, opposed voting rights for noncitizens back in 2004. Not true — she personally wrote a ballot argument in favor of the law. She told us, for the record, on tape, that she disagrees with Wynns and opposes JROTC in the public schools.

There’s also the line (and it’s somewhat reminiscent of some of things that were said about Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign) that she’s hard to get along with, that she won’t be collegial on the board. At her campaign kickoff, incumbent Hydra Mendoza praised the lack of conflict on the current board and said she wanted to preserve that — the implication being that Brodkin would bring disunity.

But unanimity and lack of conflict isn’t always good for a public board. Too much consensus leads to complacency — and that’s always a big problem, particularly when it comes to oversight.

We’ll issue our endorsements Oct. 6, when we’ve had a chance to talk to all the candidates — and right now we’re not ready to give the nod to Brodkin or anyone else. And we’d be the first to say that she has made mistakes and they ought to be taken into account in any endorsement process.

But we don’t like personal attacks, and we don’t like the politics of personal destruction. It’s not good for the schools, not good for democracy, not good for San Francisco. Argue issues, debate public problems — but this nasty whisper campaign has to stop.

School board race shouldn’t be personal

David Talbot

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August 31, 2010

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