Newsom

Newsom doesn’t read the Guardian!

Zelda Bronstein
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13
Newsom doesn’t read the Guardian!

 


Gav was on KQED this morning, talking about his run for Lite Guv, and he started right off by saying how he doesn’t ever — ever — read the Bay Guardian


Michael Krasny started off by asking why Newsom refused to appear on the radio in a debate with Janice Hahn. “She agreed, you didn’t.” Krasny asked. “Why?”


Newsom’s comment: Gee, I didn’t have time for a debate. Too busy running the city, and trying to balance a budget– “the most complex budget in city history.” He insisted that he’d solved a $522 million deficit without laying off police or firefighters, while protecting the soc sev safety net and investing in homeless service and universal health care.


Krasny: “So the Guardian can’t beat you up any more?”


Gav: “Honestly, I haven’t read it in years, with all due respect to Tim Redmond and Brugmann and whatever the team is over there.”


Krasny, politely, tried to bring up the idea that a no-new-taxes budget means fewer jobs, but Newsom had none of it: “They seem to have a tax first policy,” he said (although he doesn’t read us, so he doesn’t know. He complained that San Franciscans are already paying 10 percent in sales tax — “a regressive tax,” and that “they (presumably the Guardian) consistently support it, I don’t.”


Read our paper, Mr. Mayor. The Guardian has consistently, for many years, argued that sales taxes are regressive, and we’ve consistently, for years, argued that there are far better options, ways the city can reclaim money from the wealthy. And we’ve argued that Newsom’s no-new-taxes policy is bad for the economy.


Oh, and by the way: You talked over and over about universal health care in San Francisco, and how proud you were of that policy. But if you were reading the Bay Guardian, you might recall that it wasn’t your policy. That initiative came from then-Sup. Tom Ammiano, and you opposed the key employer mandates that fund it. Hey, you could even pick that up by reading the Chron:


 

Newsom’s budget includes a few ideas “Supervisors can’t stand”

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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2

City department heads, members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representatives from major news outlets, and others crowded into the Luggage Store Art Gallery at 6th and Market streets on June 1 to hear Mayor Gavin Newsom discuss his proposed 2010-2011 budget.

Colorful artwork, such as a collage fashioned from cereal boxes, adorned the walls, and Newsom said he’d selected the venue to emphasize his commitment to improving the blighted mid-Market area.

Newsom’s $6.48 billion budget is being put forth in the face of a roughly $480 million deficit, which places the city in a similar financial situation to last year, when the mayor’s budget proposal sparked an outcry from progressive supervisors and a wide array of advocacy organizations for its deep blows to public health programs and critical services.

At first glance, the Department of Public Health seems to have fared better this time around, as a partial result of outside funding through federal programs. However, Newsom proposed slashing $22 million from DPH, compared with a total department budget of approximately $1.4 billion.

Newsom’s budget eliminates a total of 993 positions that are filled and unfilled, though the mayor said he anticipated 350 actual layoffs, bringing the total number of city employees to the lowest level in more than a decade. He thanked those he referred to as “enlightened city employees” for wage concessions that made fewer layoffs possible. There were no layoffs in the San Francisco Police Department or the San Francisco Fire Department, Newsom noted. The mayor also announced that an additional $5.9 million would be allocated to remedy the plagued crime lab.

The most contentious issue to emerge from the budget announcement was a proposal to generate $8 million through condo-conversion fees, under a system that would make it easier for people to turn rental units and tenancy-in-common units into condominiums.

Newsom accounted for funding from this proposal despite a lack of support from the Board of Supervisors. “I know the Board of Supervisors can’t stand this,” he said. “But I can’t stand the alternative. … This is a debate that I want to have, because I think this is principled and right.” He added that he thought supervisors’ resistance to accelerated condo conversions was “so darn ideological that it gets in the way of having a real discussion.”

Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Budget & Finance Committee, said that he and other supervisors fear this could lead to more owner move-in evictions, a trend that would upend tenants’ lives and ultimately deplete the city’s affordable housing stock. “That’s been a concern of mine for months,” Avalos noted. Newsom’s decision to go forward with including it in the budget means that if the Supes reject it, they’ll have to find an additional $8 million to make up for the gap. “It’s kind of like putting a gun to our heads,” he said.

Newsom asserted that the budget was balanced “Without draconian cuts,” saying, “We were able to avoid the kind of cataclysmic devastation that some had argued … was inevitable in this budget.”

Yet Avalos described it as “pretty much an all-cuts budget,” because it contained no new revenue generating measures. “There are no new taxes in this budget,” Newsom said. “I know some folks prefer tax increases. I don’t.”

Avalos said he and other members of the board were working on a number of revenue-generating measures, including a nickel-per-drink tax on alcoholic beverages that would be aimed at the level of distributors, not small independent businesses.

Expect more on the mayor’s budget in coming weeks.

Political juggernaut

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Political juggernaut

sarah@sfbg.com

City officials are scrambling to secure final approvals to allow Lennar Corp. to move forward with its 770-acre Candlestick/Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment of San Francisco’s impoverished and polluted southeast sector. But the community remains divided on the project, raising concerns that wary residents will end up being steamrolled by this politically powerful juggernaut.

Some groups say the project needs major amendments, but fear it will be rushed to the finish for political reasons. Others say they are hungry to work and desperate to move into better housing units, so they don’t want all the myriad project details to slow that progress. And Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration is arguing that approving the project’s final environmental impact report by June 3 is crucial if San Francisco wants to keep the San Francisco 49ers in town.

But many observers fear Lennar wants its entitlements now before its project can be subjected to greater scrutiny that could come with the November elections. Newsom, who made Lennar’s project the centerpiece of his housing policy, will be replaced as mayor if he wins the lieutenant governor’s race. And a crowded field of candidates, many of them progressives concerned about the project’s impacts on the poor and the environment, are vying to replace termed-out Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes Lennar’s massive territory.

“It’s 180 percent about the 49ers,” land use attorney Sue Hestor told the Guardian, referring to the city’s proposed rush job, as evidenced by a rapid entitlement schedule that the Newsom’s administration wants city commissions and the board to follow.

Under that schedule, which Hestor procured from the Mayor’s Office, Planning and Redevelopment commissioners are expected to certify the project’s final 6,000-page EIR, adopt California Environmental Quality Act findings, approve amendments to the project’s original disposition and development agreement, and authorize land trust and open space reconfigurations — all during a June 3 meeting where public comment will likely last for many hours.

Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, a community-based nonprofit that tracks the development, says this schedule stretches the credulity that this is a deliberative process. “There’s no way anyone could make a functional reasoned assessment,” Bloom told us. “How do you have any meaningful public conversation under those circumstances?”

Michael Cohen, Newsom’s chief economic advisor, asserted in an April 29 article in The New York Times that Lennar’s plan is a “really, really good project,” echoing the glowing praise he’s heaped on the project since its conception.

“But there’s nothing new in their proposal,” Bloom told us. “That’s because they haven’t been listening to the public’s concerns. [Cohen] says, ‘Haven’t we talked enough? The community’s been waiting all these years!’ But waiting to get what done?”

Lennar’s project — which had early backing from Newsom, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and other political power brokers — was sold as creating “jobs, housing, and parks” and “revitalizing the abandoned shipyard” when voters approved the Lennar-financed Proposition G in 2008.

“Proposition G is from the community and for the community,” Lennar’s campaign promised. “You can turn the abandoned Hunters Point Shipyard into a clean, healthy, sustainable, livable neighborhood — a place where people can raise their children.”

The shipyard once employed thousands of workers, including African Americans who were recruited from the South in the 1940s and ’50s. But the district’s economic engine fell into disrepair when the military left in 1974. Today the neighboring Hunters Point and Bayview neighborhoods have the highest unemployment and crime rates and the largest concentration of African American families in the city.

But the city’s final EIR for the project, which the Planning Department released mid-May, shows that 68 percent of the developer’s proposed 10,500 new housing units will be sold at market rates unaffordable to area residents, and that many of these units will be built on state park land at Candlestick Point.

Lennar is also proposing to build a bridge across the environmentally sensitive Yosemite Slough, significantly changing the southeast waterfront. Lennar says it plans to develop the project’s remaining 3,000 units at below market prices, including one-for-one replacement of rundown Alice Griffith public housing units. Its proposal includes a dozen high-rise towers, 2.7 million square feet of commercial space, 1 million square feet of retail space, a performing arts theater, and an artists colony.

Lennar claims its proposal will create 1,500 construction jobs annually during the project’s 20-year build-out, along with 10,000 permanent jobs, thanks to a United Nations Global Compact Sustainability Center and a vaguely defined green technology office park.

The project and its impacts are already an issue in this year’s District 10 supervisor’s race (see “The battle for the forgotten district,” Feb. 23). Candidate Chris Jackson says Lennar’s proposal is weak when it comes to creating well-paying, low-skilled green collar jobs. He supports Arc’s proposal to including green maritime industrial use at the shipyard.

Arc recommends that the city’s final EIR allow recycling and repairing of ships, including the Suisun Bay Ghost fleet — decommissioned U.S. Navy, cruise, and ferry ships — arguing that “ship recycling and repair are resurgent strategic industrial activities yielding employment opportunities for our existing pool of skilled and unskilled workers.”

Jackson, who was elected to the Community College Board in 2008 and recently jumped into the District 10 race, wants the city to assert that the project is not a regional housing plan.

“It’s a local housing plan for local residents,” Jackson asserts. “It’s not here to provide housing for Silicon Valley. It’s for Bayview-Hunters Point and District 10 residents.”

Jackson understands why some local residents want no delays on final EIR approval: “I can never blame folks in Alice Griffith public housing for coming out and saying ‘no delays.’ They really want something real, housing that is not rat and cockroach infested.”

As a policy analyst (a position he’s quitting to focus on the District 10 race) for the San Francisco Labor Council — which gave key backing to the project in the 2008 election — Jackson knows labor is frustrated by all the project meetings. “I try to tell them it’s better to get this project right than rush it through and find out later that it goes against the interests of labor,” Jackson said.

In May 2008, the Labor Council signed a community benefits agreement (CBA) with Lennar. Since then labor leaders have urged no delays on the project’s draft EIR review. But Jackson believes the city must demand that financial consequences, such as liquidated damages, be a project approval condition if the developer reneges on the CBA.

“Right now the only push-back the city has is to threaten to kill the whole project if Lennar doesn’t meet its timeline,” Jackson said. “But people are really invested in this project, and I don’t believe anyone would pull the trigger and end the entire development. We don’t need to throw everything out; we just need to change them.”

Jackson wants to see the inclusion of a special-use district that would create a cooperative land trust to ensure affordability and home ownership opportunities for local residents. “I love open space and sustainability, but I also want affordable housing and real light-industrial opportunities that can employ people living in the district now.”

Special-use districts, Jackson argues, give city commissioners a way to amend this project to make it more acceptable.

Jackson wants to see strong tenant protections for public housing residents. “The vast majority of those residents are African American. At the end of the day, I want to see economic and environmental justice, so we can say we brought the right change to our community.”

Jackson also would like to see a more independent Mayor’s Office. “Don’t you feel like its 2002/2003, and that if you speak out against the project, it’s like you are speaking out against the Iraq war, and all of a sudden you are not patriotic?”

Fellow District 10 candidate Eric Smith concurred. “The powers that be are definitely moving this thing forward,” he said. “And this is a monster train, a juggernaut that is gathering steam. But how it shakes out down the road remains to be seen. My whole mantra is that there needs to be greater transparency down the line. If I become the sheriff, I’ll be shining a light on all this stuff.”

Smith warned that the community needs to work together or it won’t win a better deal. “It’s clear that folks in the city are hoping against all odds that Lennar can pull this stuff off so they can prove all the naysayers wrong and these community benefits can be realized, and that scrutiny of the projects can go on while all this happens,” he said.

But Arthur Feinstein, the Sierra Club’s political chair, worries that the city’s rush job is resulting in seriously flawed documents and decision-making. “It’s difficult for folks to digest 6,000 pages of comments and responses on the draft EIR in the three weeks since planning posted them online,” Feinstein said. “And nothing has changed despite all the comments, which is why it continues to be a nonsense process.”

Feinstein says the Sierra Club’s top concerns are the Parcel E-2 cleanup on the shipyard, a deal to transfer 23 acres at Candlestick Park for development, and the bridge over Yosemite Slough.

“You can cover most of the site,” he said. “But when it comes to Parcel E-2, where the dump burned for six months in 2002, that’s only 20 acres, it could and should be removed. This is the environmental justice issue that has the community up in arms.”

Feinstein worries about the precedent that selling a state park for condos sets. “This is our park, and they are shrinking it.” He is also concerned that the developer wants to bridge Yosemite Slough for cars.

How many of these concerns will be addressed at the June 3 hearing, which is just days before Santa Clara County voters decide whether to try to lure away the 49ers with a new publicly financed stadium? We’ll see.

Let the ICE picket begin

Mary Magee
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7
Let the ICE picket begin

Members of the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee launched a picket outside US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s Detention and Removal Operations office at 630 Sansome Street today to decry the activation of Secure Communities, which they describe as a “dangerous police-ICE collaboration program that threatens public safety.”


“In the wake of massive protests this weekend against Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, a broad coalition of immigrant rights advocates will stage a protest Tuesday in San Francisco against the implementation of a new police-ICE collaboration initiative which will harm public safety, the so-called ‘Secure’ Communities or S-Comm program,” SFIRDC’s press release states.

Concerned community members plan to form a picket line holding placards of enlarged fingerprints and multi-lingual messages “to expose the danger the program poses to the community.”

 “If we oppose Arizona’s SB1070, then we cannot stand aside while a dangerous policy with disturbing similarities to SB1070 is forced on our own city,” Carolina Morales of Community United Against Violence stated. “S-Comm gives dangerous discretion to police officers to falsely arrest or overcharge immigrant residents, who would then be automatically reported for deportation.”

The picket comes as a veto-proof majority of eight SF Supervisors stands poised to vote next week (there is no Board meeting today) on a resolution calling on local law enforcement to opt-out of S-Comm, noting that the policy “puts at risk even those subject to arrest for a minor infraction and those who did not commit any crime at all but were falsely arrested. “

To date, the Mayor’s Office has not indicated that Newsom has any concerns with the program.
But San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who requested to opt out of the program, has stated that S-Comm “will widen the net (of people reported to ICE) excessively” and that ICE has a “record of secrecy.”

Last year, the California Dept. of Justice signed a memorandum with ICE on the S-Comm program; the cover letter indicated that counties needed to agree to the program by signing a “statement of intent.” But last week, Attorney General Brown denied the Sheriff’s request to opt out, so community and legal advocates continue to explore their options.
 
 “The Attorney General is mistaken in believing that this program will only affect people who have already been apprehended and deported by ICE or charged with serious offenses,” said Francisco Ugarte, an immigrant rights attorney with Dolores Street Community Services.

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 According to ICE’s own data, 5  percent of the people identified under the S-Comm program were U.S. citizens, and some 9 out of 10 of the total identified were charged with low level offenses, including property and traffic violations, not serious crimes.
And then there’s the fact that ICE’s data does not indicate whether those deported were actually found guilty of crimes, or were simply charged with crimes—a key distinction for anyone who professes to believe in human rights.

 “Our city’s families are living in fear that if they report a threat to their own safety, they or their family member may risk deportation, “ Nour Chammas with the Arab Resource and Organizing Center stated in SFIRDC’s press release. “This policy will tear at the very fabric of San Francisco’s rich and diverse culture.”

And Bobbi Lopez of La Voz Latina observed that folks are working on a federal level for immigration reform because they know real solutions to a broken immigration system.  “However, we cannot just sit idly by and wait while ICE’s police collaboration schemes threaten our families daily,” Lopez warned. “ We are proud that city officials are standing with community members to halt this attack on our San Francisco community.” 

Today’s picket was called for by the following members of SFIRDC:
African Advocacy Network, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Asian Law Caucus,
CARECEN, Causa Justa: Just Cause, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Chinese Progressive Association, Communities United Against Violence, Dolores Street Community Services, East Bay Alliance for Sustainable Economy, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Instituto Familiar de la Raza, La Raza Centro Legal / SF Day Labor Program, La Voz Parents Council, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, National Lawyers Guild SF Bay Area Chapter, People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, SF Pride at Work, and South of Market Community Action Network.

Newsom’s lousy economics

David Talbot
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0

EDITORIAL Every major newspaper in California should have plastered the May 2010 report from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research across the front page. The headline: “Governor’s budget will destroy 331,000 jobs.”

It’s a stunning analysis. Ken Jacobs, who heads the center, and two associates used a sophisticated computer program to track exactly how the cuts would play out in the current California economy. If the governor’s proposals are adopted, the job losses would greatly exceed any new job creation, causing the unemployment rate in the state to rise by 1.8 percent.

On the other hand, the study shows, raising taxes on rich people and oil companies would save 244,000 jobs.

So if, as nearly every politician of every party in the state insists, the biggest policy goal in California today is job creation, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going about it entirely the wrong way.

The good news is that the Democrats in the state Legislature are finally talking seriously about an alternative budget plan that includes about $5 billion in new revenue. The plans by the Assembly and Senate leadership aren’t perfect and will still require significant cuts to cover the budget gap. But after years of cuts-only budgets and a pervasive fear of tax increases in Sacramento, the Democratic proposals are encouraging. (Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor, shouldn’t worry about associating himself with the plans: two-thirds of Californians favor increased taxes on wealthy people to pay for better public education, according to the most recent Public Policy Institute of California poll.)

So at the very least, the state Capitol — a place not known as a bastion of progressive thought — is going to have an intelligent debate over how to address the budget deficit without further damaging the economy. Yet in San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom continues to cling to a no-new-taxes budget that will devastate community services — and add to the city’s unemployment rate.

That’s just disgraceful.

Every city-employee union has stepped up to the plate and offered concessions. City workers are taking furloughs (actually, pay cuts) and layoffs. They’re giving back scheduled raises. They’re making a good faith effort to be part of the solution — in fact, labor is now pushing for an increase in the hotel tax to help cover the costs of public services.

Newsom isn’t asking any of the wealthy businesses or individuals in town to give anything.

That’s not just bad politics, it’s bad economics.

The Berkeley study acknowledges that raising taxes on the rich and big corporations has an economic impact — an oil severance tax, for example, would raise $1.4 billion a year for the state, reduce economic output by $128 million, and lead to the loss of 400 jobs. A 1.5 percent increase in the top income tax rate for individuals who earn more than $250,000 would bring the state $2.1 billion, and lead to the loss of 13,000 jobs.

But on balance, both of those are a good deal for the state — because cutting that $3.5 billion from the budget would cost the state far, far more than 13,400 jobs. That’s because when you eliminate public sector jobs, particularly lower-paid jobs, there’s a direct, immediate impact on consumer spending. Although a rich person may spend slightly less if he or she has to pay slightly higher taxes, a middle-income worker who gets laid off stops spending much of anything — and the local merchants who relied on that person’s spending see the impact.

In fact, the Berkeley study points out, more than half the jobs that would be lost under Schwarzenegger’s plan would be in the private sector. The same goes for San Francisco: saving jobs requires new revenue solutions. And if Newsom’s budget doesn’t address that, the San Francisco supervisors must.

Newsom’s lousy economics

David Talbot
-
0
Newsom’s lousy economics

EDITORIAL Every major newspaper in California should have plastered the May 2010 report from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research across the front page. The headline: “Governor’s budget will destroy 331,000 jobs.”

It’s a stunning analysis. Ken Jacobs, who heads the center, and two associates used a sophisticated computer program to track exactly how the cuts would play out in the current California economy. If the governor’s proposals are adopted, the job losses would greatly exceed any new job creation, causing the unemployment rate in the state to rise by 1.8 percent.

On the other hand, the study shows, raising taxes on rich people and oil companies would save 244,000 jobs.

So if, as nearly every politician of every party in the state insists, the biggest policy goal in California today is job creation, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going about it entirely the wrong way.

The good news is that the Democrats in the state Legislature are finally talking seriously about an alternative budget plan that includes about $5 billion in new revenue. The plans by the Assembly and Senate leadership aren’t perfect and will still require significant cuts to cover the budget gap. But after years of cuts-only budgets and a pervasive fear of tax increases in Sacramento, the Democratic proposals are encouraging. (Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor, shouldn’t worry about associating himself with the plans: two-thirds of Californians favor increased taxes on wealthy people to pay for better public education, according to the most recent Public Policy Institute of California poll.)

So at the very least, the state Capitol — a place not known as a bastion of progressive thought — is going to have an intelligent debate over how to address the budget deficit without further damaging the economy. Yet in San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom continues to cling to a no-new-taxes budget that will devastate community services — and add to the city’s unemployment rate.

That’s just disgraceful.

Every city-employee union has stepped up to the plate and offered concessions. City workers are taking furloughs (actually, pay cuts) and layoffs. They’re giving back scheduled raises. They’re making a good faith effort to be part of the solution — in fact, labor is now pushing for an increase in the hotel tax to help cover the costs of public services.

Newsom isn’t asking any of the wealthy businesses or individuals in town to give anything.

That’s not just bad politics, it’s bad economics.

The Berkeley study acknowledges that raising taxes on the rich and big corporations has an economic impact — an oil severance tax, for example, would raise $1.4 billion a year for the state, reduce economic output by $128 million, and lead to the loss of 400 jobs. A 1.5 percent increase in the top income tax rate for individuals who earn more than $250,000 would bring the state $2.1 billion, and lead to the loss of 13,000 jobs.

But on balance, both of those are a good deal for the state — because cutting that $3.5 billion from the budget would cost the state far, far more than 13,400 jobs. That’s because when you eliminate public sector jobs, particularly lower-paid jobs, there’s a direct, immediate impact on consumer spending. Although a rich person may spend slightly less if he or she has to pay slightly higher taxes, a middle-income worker who gets laid off stops spending much of anything — and the local merchants who relied on that person’s spending see the impact.

In fact, the Berkeley study points out, more than half the jobs that would be lost under Schwarzenegger’s plan would be in the private sector. The same goes for San Francisco: saving jobs requires new revenue solutions. And if Newsom’s budget doesn’t address that, the San Francisco supervisors must.

 

Public employees step up; when will Newsom and downtown?

Sasha Cuttler
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7
Public employees step up; when will Newsom and downtown?

With news that Muni union leaders are backing salary givebacks to help close San Francisco’s $483 million budget deficit, all city employees are now making sacrifices to preserve city services that we all rely on. But as we eagerly await the release of the mayor’s budget on June 1 – in which some city departments have been asked to make cuts of up to 30 percent – the question is whether Mayor Gavin Newsom will find the courage to ask other San Francisco entities to help.

For example, will he support the 2 percent increase in the hotel tax that labor is pushing (and which polls show would probably pass muster with voters if Newsom backed it), a real estate transfer tax that would hit the comfortably rich, or a downtown transit assessment district that would make corporations finally help pay for the transit services their employees rely on?

So far, it’s doesn’t look like it (and his Communications Office won’t respond to the question). Instead, Newsom has cynically engaged in deceptive blame games that scapegoat public employees for a problem he created (for example, by approving bloated police and fire contracts to win political support and then blocking efforts to seek new revenue sources), while still pushing gimmicky new spending programs designed to burnish his political image as he runs for state office.

This could be Newsom’s last chance to finally show some leadership, and now is the time when it’s needed most. After offering cuts-only city budgets his entire tenure in office, most city departments are unable to go any further without sacrificing needed services.

The situation has become dire, as workers said Wednesday during a budget rally outside City Hall. Guardian news intern Kaitlyn Paris was there covering the action and offers this report:

Community groups from around San Francisco rallied in front of City Hall on Wednesday to protest the drastic reductions that health and human services face in the Governor’s proposed state budget and Mayor Newsom’s impending city budget.

A graveyard of tombstones representing each of the organizations stuck out of the sand next to the grassy square where participants gathered. Identifiable by their maroon sweatshirts, the largest faction present was the Community Housing Partnership. The proposed budget would cut over $100,000 from the agency and its programs that provide help with employment, substance abuse, and habitation development.

“Supervisors need to be constantly reminded of the merits of these services,” CHP employee Gabriel Haywood told us.

The partnership runs a jobs retention program that Haywood says has exceeded its city-mandated job retention rate by 25 percent, keeping 75 percent of the people it serves employed for longer than three months. Still, Cameron McHenry told the Guardian the city thinks the groups services are duplicative. [Editor’s Note: information in this paragraph has been corrected since his article was posted].

The city’s OneStop employment service is suited to workers displaced by the recession, not the multiple-burdened clients helped by CHP, said McHenry: “We can’t take a 30 percent cut and still do the work we do.”

After speakers from various groups addressed the crowd from a flatbed truck, District 5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi took to the stage to demand alternative ways of generating revenue. The progressive revenue tactics championed mainly involved increased hotel tax to reduce the budget burden felt by community service groups. Mirkarimi and members of the crowd also criticized the city for its continued funding of Sharp golf course in Pacifica.

“We’re trying to force the Mayor to have a fair budget,” Coalition on Homelessness Director Jennifer Fredenbach told us. “We believe he can do it through alternative revenue like the hotel tax, a more progressive tax base, and a property transfer tax on high end real estate. It has real consequences for poor San Franciscans, not only in quality of life, but in the ability to live.”

Fees rise in SF, but some supervisors prefer taxes

Sasha Cuttler
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5
Fees rise in SF, but some supervisors prefer taxes

By Brittany Baguio

 The Board of Supervisors this week voted to impose non-resident fees for admission into Botanical Gardens in an effort to help alleviate the city’s $483 million budget deficit, as requested by the Mayor’s Office. But even supervisors who supported it say they hope to end the fees if they can find some general revenue sources, a process that will begin next week after Mayor Gavin Newsom releases his budget on June 1.

Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Budget Committee, began Tuesday’s discussion by stating that he believed that this non-resident fee would stop the layoffs of Botanical Gardens staff and help offset the 30 percent drop in their budget. Despite supporting the fees, Avalos expressed hope that they could be replaced by a 2 percent increase in the hotel tax, something labor and community groups are pushing that would raise $38 million to $45 million per year.

He even amended the item to include a provision that the non-resident fee will be eliminated within 90 days from the effective date of the new tax. Despite Avalos’s amendment, AIDS Grove founder and volunteer community gardener Nancy McNally said she was appalled that Avalos would support a non-resident fee. “He is not committed to preserving significant public park commons that San Franciscan generations before him have paid taxes to preserve,” McNally told the Guardian. “No one wants to brainstorm and come up with creative options to alleviate this crisis that is not really a crisis. Greed is the crisis.”

One thing McNally did appreciate was sober assessments made at the hearing by Sup. Eric Mar, who stated that Botanical Gardens serves as a haven for low-income and immigrant families who can only enjoy the facilities because admission is free. He declared that once fees are attached to Botanical Gardens, it will lose its appeal. He also added that passing this fee will be the first step in initiating fees for all.

San Francisco resident Daniele Erville shared Mar’s concerns. “A fee acts as a deterrent to a place that by its very nature is welcoming,” Erville told us. “The place makes us feel at home, it reminds us that we are a part of nature and reminds us of our common humanity. Spirituality means that you are in touch with what unites us all, and so differentiating on any level just clashes.”

The imposition of fees – $7 for non-resident adults, $5 for seniors, and $2 for children – was approved on a 8-3 vote, with Sups. Mar, Bevan Dufty, and Ross Mirkarimi in dissent.

Insecure Sanctuary

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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9
Insecure Sanctuary

Sarah@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors is urging San Francisco officials not to participate in Secure Communities, a controversial federal-local fingerprinting collaboration set to be activated June 1. But opting out of a program that threatens to make debates over “sanctuary city” protections of immigrants irrelevant may not be easy.

Speaking at a May 18 rally, Sup. Eric Mar warned that the use of Secure Communities by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could cause the deportation of innocent residents and destroy local community policing efforts. “The police-ICE entanglement will hurt our communities and many people accused of minor crimes will see families torn apart,” Mar warned, as he urged the city to opt out of the Department of Homeland Security initiative, which identifies immigrants who are sitting in U.S. jails and may be deportable under federal immigration laws.

Cosponsored by Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, Chris Daly, Bevan Dufty, Sophie Maxwell, and Ross Mirkarimi, Mar’s resolution was scheduled for a May 25 vote that would make San Francisco the first jurisdiction in the nation to pursue withdrawing from the system.

“The shadow of Arizona is starting to cover other cities,” Mar said, referring to Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation, SB 1070. “We can’t let Arizona come to San Francisco.”

ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice said the program’s focus is on criminal aliens. “These are folks who have been charged with or found guilty of felonies and have ignored deportation orders,” Kice said.

But ICE statistics show that the program mostly deports those with minor offenses. Between October 2008 and March 2010, Secure Communities submitted 1.9 million sets of digital fingerprints and deported 33,326 people nationwide. Fifteen percent of those deported (4,903 people) had criminal histories that included major drug and violent offenses such as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and kidnapping (Level 1 crimes). The other 85 percent (28,423 people) were deported for less serious drug and property offenses (Level 2 crimes) and other minor charges (Level 3 crimes).

Kice admits that Level 2 and 3 offenders constitute the largest percentage of SC cases. “That’s because representatively more people are arrested for Level 2 and 3 offenses than Level 1,” she said. “That’s probably fortunate, because Level 1 crimes are very serious.”

But American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Joanne Lin warns that Secure Communities allows the federal government to circumvent local sanctuary policies and fast-track deportation. “It allows the Department of Homeland Security to identifty everyone who is booked, whether they are here lawfully or their charges are subsequently dropped or dismissed,” Lin said.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said he has no reservations about the program, which the Bush administration first announced in March 2008. “Sanctuary city policies were never meant to protect criminal behavior,” mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker said May 7, when San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey blew the whistle on the federal-local fingerprinting collaboration. “At the end of the day, federal officials should enforce immigration laws. We report — we don’t deport.”

The program links local law enforcement databases to the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric system through interoperability agreements with states, allowing instantaneous information-sharing among local jails, ICE, and the FBI.

ICE implemented the program in North Carolina and Texas in October 2008. Under President Obama, the program has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states. ICE plans to have a Secure Communities presence in each state by 2011, and in each of the 3,100 state and local jails nationwide by 2013, according to its Web site.

Under the program, participating jails submit fingerprints of arrestees to immigration and criminal databases, thereby giving ICE a technological presence in prisons and jails. An overview conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan National Immigration Law Center observes that “the critical element” of the program is that, during booking in jail, arrestees’ fingerprints will be checked against DHS databases, rather than just against FBI criminal databases.

“ICE asserts that the purpose of the Secure Communities program is to target violent criminals for removal,” NILC observed. “Advocates had criticized the program’s operation because it took place at the beginning of the criminal process and therefore indiscriminately targeted persons arrested for crimes of all magnitudes, rather than persons convicted of serious crimes.”

“The underlying purpose may be to lay the groundwork for real immigration reform,” NILC concludes. “But the mechanisms put in place will be difficult to dismantle, and the civil rights violations they produce cannot be undone.”

Scott Lorigan of the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information signed an interoperability agreement with ICE’s John P. Torres in April 2009. Since then, the system has been activated in Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura counties. Now it’s set to get switched on in San Francisco.

Campos thanks Hennessey for blowing the whistle, and lays the blame at Obama’s door. “None of us would have known this was happening,” Campos said. “This is the time for all San Francisco’s elected officials to stand up in support of the principles that led us to establish a sanctuary city. It’s not just the board, but also the mayor who needs to step up and say what just happened is not acceptable. This program eviscerates sanctuary city.”

Hennessey has written to California Attorney General Jerry Brown asking for assistance in opting out of the ICE program. Brown’s office is reviewing his request. “The California Department of Justice manages the statewide database of fingerprints that are essential to solving crimes, but we have no direct role in enforcing federal immigration laws,” Brown’s press secretary Christine Gasparac clarified. “We were informed by ICE that they will work with counties to opt out of their program. Because that is a process directly between the county and ICE, we’re advising local authorities who want to opt out to contact ICE directly.”

But it’s not clear what opting out will achieve. ICE’s Kice said jurisdictions can choose not to receive the immigration-related information on individuals who are fingerprinted, but that information will still be provided to ICE, which can act on it. Kice said that after an arrestee’s biometrics are forwarded to the feds, the information is bounced off FBI and DHS databases, and the information that comes back says if they have a record.

“What comes out is a recap of whatever relevant information is in the database,” she said. “For example, whether there has been a prior formal deportation or a prior arrest. It also shows if they have an adjusted status — whether they have legal permanent status. It will indicate if they are naturalized, in which case they are not subject to removal. That’s the information the community could cut off.”

“ICE always did these checks, but it was only available to local law enforcement agencies if they queried the system themselves, which required them to take a couple of extra steps,” Kice continued. “And it was name based. And that could be problematic, given duplicate names in system. That’s what fingerprints eliminate. Our concern is that municipalities are dependent to a large extent on information provided by the individual at the moment of arrest. We think the use of biometrics will ensure that folks who provide false information to local law enforcement officials don’t escape detection.”

Kice acknowledged that not everyone in the database is a violator. “The fact of having a record does not mean that you are a deportable alien,” she said. “And we understand that someone may get arrested and may not get convicted on their current charges. But what about a prior history? We know that folks have eluded detection, escaped, or been released from custody. So the individual may be someone who has other prior convictions. It’s the totality of their record that we are talking about here.”

At present, the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department only reports noncitizens who are booked on felony charges. Hennessey expressed concerns about the unintended consequences of ICE technology interfacing with that of the Department of Justice’s fingerprint database.

He also warned that the 2,000 or so ICE referrals his office makes annually could explode. “We’ll be fingerprinting 35,000-40,000 persons annually,” Hennessey claimed. “And ICE has a record of secrecy. They won’t tell me what happened to folks they pick up. They won’t say if they are still in custody, been released or deported. The basis of sanctuary city is to protect immigrants who are not doing anything wrong or serious. When ICE grabs someone who failed to pay a traffic ticket and that person is supporting a family, I don’t think those crimes should rise to the level of deportation.”

Dems in Sacto want to raise taxes — what about Newsom?

Zelda Bronstein
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Dems in Sacto want to raise taxes — what about Newsom?

Well, the Democrats in Sacramento have finally decided that they aren’t completely terrified of tax hikes; they’re proposing a $5 billion package to help make the bloody cuts for next year a little less horrible. It’s mostly stuff that a majority of the voters would approve — a modest income tax hike on high earners, an increase in the vehicle license fee, and the reduction of some corporate tax breaks. And it’s nowhere near enough — but it’s a start. In fact, politically it’s a huge deal, because it puts the debate in the right place: Tax cars and rich people, or devastate public education, public safety and social services.


So here’s the question: Now that the leaders of the not-terribly-progressive state Senate are willing to talk about new sources of revenue, where is the mayor of San Francisco?

The politics of sit/lie

Zelda Bronstein
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The politics of sit/lie

It’s no surprise that Mayor Gavin Newsom wants to put a sit/lie law on the ballot, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the supervisors are moving slowly on his proposal. It has nothing to do with any facts — the cops could enforce existing laws and address the problem.


No, this is all about politics. Newsom never wanted the supervisors to approve a sit.lie law; he and his operatives want to put it on the November ballot, so they can use it as a wedge issue to attack progressive candidates. They can also use it to raise money, which can be spread around through slate cards to support his supervisorial picks.


Remember, this is how Newsom got elected mayor: He picked a wedge issue (general assistance payments to homeless people), created a slogan (“care, not cash”), raised a ton of money, and made it his signature campaign strategy. It worked, so he’s trying again.


Before Arthur Evans leaps in and attacks me, let me say: I know there are people in the Haight who want this law. (There are also people in the Haight, including the venerable Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council, who oppose it.) But I don’t think Newsom really cares about that; if he did, he’d work with the supervisors on a compromise or alternatives. Instead, he’s refusing to participate in the board’s debates.


This is all about November’s board elections. Sorry, Arthur, but your pet cause is now the mayor’s political tool.

Sit/Lie: The Movie

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Directors Ricky Angel and Samuel Hernandez sent over this energetic and colorful short documentary about the screwy rationale — and possibly devastating impact — of the proposed sit/lie law that Mayor Newsom now intends to put before voters, bypassing the Board of Supervisors. Local activists and San Francisco citizens express dismay and hope.

The Mitchell sister

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The Mitchell sister

sarah@sfbg.com

Porn heiress Meta Jane Mitchell Johnson is running a little late when I arrive at the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater, the adult entertainment establishment her father Jim Mitchell and uncle Artie Mitchell founded on the edge of the Tenderloin, just blocks from City Hall, July 4, 1969.

Johnson, 32, recently became co-owner of the theater and invited me over to discuss her vision for this notoriously hardcore strip club and the challenges she faces in an industry dominated by the Déjà Vu corporate strip club chain, in a town whose political leaders are still trying to figure out how best to regulate the clubs to ensure that their predominantly female workforce is properly compensated and protected from harassment in safe, sanitary conditions.

A young guy on the front register ushers me into a side room. The walls are decorated with photographs that recall the people and players who have made this club such a storied San Francisco institution and a landmark in the history of the sex industry.

There’s an image of a topless Marilyn Chambers, the star of Behind the Green Door, the porn film the Mitchell brothers shot and screened at the theater in 1972 and was a major hit after it became known that Chambers was also the wholesome face on Ivory Snow soap flakes box.

There is a photo of Artie with a young raven perched over his shoulder. It was taken in 1990 during a trip to Aspen, Colo., to support gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who worked at the club in the 1980s and was facing serious charges, including sexual assault and possession of drugs and explosives, that eventually got dropped.

Another shows both the Mitchell brothers, photographed when they were still young and rakish and battling the vice squad, even as they entertained the local political elite.

Today the brothers are dead, Artie from bullet wounds inflicted when Jim shot him with a rifle in February 1991; Jim from a heart attack in July 2007. And now Jim’s oldest son, James Mitchell, 28, is in jail awaiting trial for allegedly beating his ex-girlfriend Danielle Keller to death with a baseball bat in July 2009 and abducting their baby daughter, Samantha.

Unlike his father, who continued to run the Mitchell porn empire after serving less than three years for voluntary manslaughter, James is facing life behind bars.

“He is charged with six serious felonies and is facing life imprisonment with no possibility of parole,” Marin County Deputy Chief District Attorney Barry Borden said recently. Johnson told me that her brother no longer owns stock in Cinema 7, the corporation the Mitchell brothers founded to oversee their burgeoning sex business.

This latest family tragedy occurred in the wake of a $3.74 million class action suit that was settled in 2008. Brought by three MBOT dancers, the suit led to valid claims by 370 dancers who complained about Cinema 7’s “piece-rate” wage system. Under that system, the club compensated dancers solely for the number of private dances performed, waived meal and rest periods, and failed to reimburse dancers for costumes, props, and makeup.

Since then the club ended the piece-rate system, but introduced chips customers must buy to procure lap dances and encounters in small, curtained private rooms. On a recent night, the girls at the O’Farrell Theater remained smiling and bright-eyed as they succeeded in getting some customers to purchase chips for lap dances and private encounters. But the rest of the crowd remained largely silent and mostly tight-fisted as customers watched the club’s exotic dancers perform on its disco-balled stage.

All of which left me wondering if Johnson can succeed in overcoming her family history and reputation to make a difference for her workers and community while facing a nationwide recession in an industry dominated by an out-of-state chain.

 

THE UNLIKELY SAVIOR

Johnson greets me dressed in Ugg boots and jeans, apologizes for being tardy, and leads the way upstairs to the theater’s office so we can talk.

I first met Johnson in 2007 (“Behind the Mitchell’s Door,” 07/22/09) when she arrived at the theater in knee-high boots, clutching a massive lime handbag and a tiny dog named Baby. During that first encounter, three months after her father died, Johnson confided that when she took over the office, it was full of dildos dancers had given the Mitchell brothers. Placing her dog on the pool table that dominated the office, she said she planned to massage all this male energy toward femininity.

Today it looks as if she has started to deliver on that promise. The pool table is gone. The sofa where Hunter S. Thompson used to sit remains in the room. But now a clothesline runs between the office walls, draped with a stripper’s glove, stilettos, and a G-string emblazoned with the word “Gonzo,” presumably in honor of Thompson.

“It was a little thing we made to give away,” Johnson laughs.

She introduces her youngest brother and club co-owner, Justin. “Me and Justin are close. We are the owners and we are making some changes,” Johnson explains. “We are making the prices more reasonable so customers don’t have to spend an arm and a leg just to get a lap dance. And we’re going to hold events like poetry slams. We are trying to make the club fun again. We definitely see a hit due to the economy, but we’ve also been hit by the decision from the class action lawsuit.”

Johnson insists she and her brother aren’t “your typical strip club owners.”

“We‘re in a symbiotic relationship with our dancers,“ she says. “That sets us apart from other clubs. The dancers are our employees. We pay them minimum wage and workers comp. We cover their Healthy San Francisco costs. We incur a lot of expenses legally employing our dancers. But instead of crying about ‘our handicap,’ she said, referring to treating dancers as employees, “my goal is to show we can manage the club without a pimp mentality, without a ‘How much can you shake them down for?‘ approach.

“A lot of our employees have been here a long time and have had to deal with all the painful violent stuff too,” she continued. “And folks are still here, even though their hours got cut and they are not making as much money.“

In 2007, Johnson told me that she resented the family business when she was growing up. “The boys could go inside, and I couldn’t,” she recalled. It wasn’t until 2004, when she was working as a mortgage consultant in a cubical farm in San Ramon that Johnson began to take pride in the business “as something that had taken care of us through the years.”

Johnson, who became the club’s scheduling manager in 2005, recalls the shock of losing her dad in 2007. “It was like being dumped in icy water,” she says. “At first we didn’t know how to handle it. But we learned. Five years ago, I was much more liable to listen to advice. But I need to be able to fall asleep feeling good. That involves treating people a certain way. I don’t think any other strip club in the country is being run the way this one is.”

Johnson got married and went on maternity leave in 2008. ” When my son was six months old, I came back for the club’s 40th anniversary party and I realized, they need me — both of us [she and her brother]— as owners, steering the proverbial ship. No one else wants to be held accountable. We never discussed selling. Our father built this place. It’s completely shaped our lives. Good or bad, it’s ours.”

 

TOUGH INDUSTRY

As a nude strip club, Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre stands in direct competition with Crazy Horse on Market Street and the Déjà Vu-owned clubs including the Market Street Theaters, Gold Clubs and other spots in SoMa, and most of the clubs in North Beach. The exception is Lusty Lady, the only unionized, worker-owned peepshow in the country.

“If you walk into the Gold Club in San Francisco, well, there are 50 other Gold Clubs in the country, so, it‘s generic,“ Johnson says. “But they‘ve got their business model. We‘re not trying to copy Déjà Vu or Crazy Horse. We‘re the Mitchell Brothers. It‘s been part of us and our whole history.“

Dancers agree that the Lusty Lady isn’t in competition with Déjà Vu.

“They’re Walmart, and we’re the mom and pop store on the corner,” Lorelei*, a dancer at Lusty Lady, said. “At the Lusty, we pride ourselves on being alternative and having tattoos and piercings.”

Some dancers, who we’ve indicated with an asterisk after their altered names, voiced fear of being identified as critics of Déjà Vu’s business model.

“If Deja Vu found out I was shit-talking them I would probably get fired and be blacklisted from all their clubs,” Sugar* said. “If I were to get blacklisted, I’d be totally screwed because there are no other clubs in San Francisco,” where she doesn’t feel pressure to do more than dance, “which is not my thing.”

“Or the Lusty Lady, which doesn’t pay enough to cover my bills,” she continued. “But Deja Vu is notorious for being a terrible company to work for, mainly because of their outrageously high stage fees.”

Other dancers say they had to pay stage fees at the Déjà Vu-owned Hungry I, and sometimes went home empty-handed after eight-hour shifts when uninvited touching was common.

“The number one thing that would improve our work experience is if someone actually forced Deja Vu to stop charging us stage fees,” Amber* said. “Almost no one outside the industry knows that dancers pay money to go to work. A lot of customers think the clubs pay us, like, thousands of dollars. In San Francisco we pay between $100–$200 per shift, sometimes more.”

By law, dancers have the right to choose employee status, versus being considered independent contractors. “But that’s a joke,” Amber added. “If we choose employee status, we’re required to do a minimum of 10 lap dances per shift. The club keeps all that money, and we would get paid $12–$15 an hour.”

But Edi Thomas, counsel for Déjà Vu‘s Centerfolds club, flatly denies that the dancers who perform at Centerfolds (the only nightclub in San Francisco authorized to operate as a “Deja Vu Showgirls“ club) pay stage fees.

“Rather, entertainers who perform at Centerfolds (and/or at Hungry I, the Condor, and Market Street) are paid a substantial percentage of the patron revenues generated from individual dance sales,“ Thomas stated.

“The entertainers are issued Forms 1099 at year-end, reflecting the amounts they were paid by the nightclub,“ she said, which means the dancers are independent contractors, not employees. “These nightclubs operate within the law and make every effort to assure that entertainers are well compensated and perform in safe and lawful environments.

“There are, as in any industry, former and disgruntled workers carrying a desire to harm a nightclub or the industry for their own personal reasons,“ Thomas added. “But those workers do not represent the voice of the majority.“

 

CENTER OF THE STORM

When the Mitchell Brothers founded their empire, it was against a backdrop of organized crime trying to exercise a monopoly on the porn industry. According to a 1977 U.S. Department of Justice report, members of La Cosa Nostra tried to request exclusive distribution of Mitchell Brothers’ porn films.

The Mitchells resisted for years, but DOJ claims they eventually entered into a contract with LCN’s Michael Zaffarano to distribute “Autobiography of a Flea.” the Mitchells also fought City Hall.

During the 1980s, Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s vice squad tried to close the Mitchell Brothers’ operations. But under Mayor Willie Brown, the former attorney for late Déjà Vu strip club owner Sam Conti, SFPD enforcement reportedly eased.

Then in 1997, Déjà Vu started to take control of the city’s sex clubs, introducing stage fees and private rooms. In 2002, three former MBOT dancers filed their suit against Cinema 7. The next year, three other dancers brought suits against Market Street Cinema and Century Theater. And in 2005, Deja Vu settled a class action labor suit with its dancers. Attorney Greg Walston, representing the dancers, said at the time that minimum pay rate would protect dancers from being forced into prostitution to make money.

Deja Vu threatened a counter-suit based on the allegations of prostitution at their clubs, but Walston told reporters: “The record speaks for itself.” Walston used police reports with prostitution allegations to bolster his case and said he was doing the job the District Attorney’s Office should have done.

In July 2008, when MBOT reached its $3.74 million class action settlement, Cinema 7 president Jeffrey Armstrong said that the corporation was “not able to pay the entire amount up front.” Instead, Mitchell matriarch Georgia Mitchell and her business partner John P. Morgan, then cotrustees of the Jim Mitchell 1990 Family Trust, which holds two-thirds of Cinema 7’s shares, pledged stock certificates as security interest.

But the debate about how to treat sex work in San Francisco continues. In November 2008, District Attorney Kamala Harris and Mayor Gavin Newsom opposed Proposition K, a local measure that tried to decriminalize prostitution by forbidding local authorities from investigating, arresting or prosecuting sex workers. They argued that the measure would increase prostitution on the streets, give pimps cover, and hamper efforts to stop sex trafficking. The measure failed.

At the time, Prop. K advocate Carol Leigh and cofounder of the Bay Area Sex Workers Advocacy Network said, “We feel that repressive policies don’t help trafficking victims, and that human rights-based approaches, including decriminalization, are actually more effective.”

Today, erotic dancers must identify which of a tangle of regulatory entities is the appropriate venue to lodge complaints. District Attorney spokesperson Erica Derryck said Harris is dedicated to prosecuting violent crimes committed against all San Franciscans, regardless of whether they happen in a club or an alley.

“If there are two drug dealers and one attacks the other, we’d prosecute. But that’s not to say there won’t also be consequences for underlying criminal behavior too,” she said. “But anyone who has been victimized should be confident of going to the police and reporting any incident.”

Derryck said public health and safety complaints can be lodged at entities that provide permits and licenses, including the Planning Department and Entertainment Commission.

“There might not be any criminal activity involved, but this route hits clubs in the pocket and is worth considering if dancers want to represent their grievances,” she said.

Meanwhile dancers say there is still pressure to do more than just dance in some clubs. “For some dancers, the clubs feel fine,” Lorelei says. “It’s a safe space where no ads are needed. They see it as a fair exchange. But if you just want to dance — when one girl is doing this, and another that, how are you supposed to make money?”

Other dancers wish managers wouldn’t abuse their power. “Sometimes they back you up,” Amber said. “Other nights, someone insults you and they won’t help.” And many wish management would try to make the clubs fun again.

“It used to be a party, but now it’s about the cheapest dirtiest fuck you can get,” Lorelei said. “Taking stage fees created a dark environment that carries over to the customers. It’s like we’re goats in a petting zoo begging, saying give me money, give me coke.”

 

FAMILY BUSINESS

Attorney Jim Quadra, who represented the dancers in the MBOT class action suit, said that for all the talk about treating dancers right, the Mitchells’ interest was money.

“At the time, a group of people thought the agenda was to get dancers to do more than dancing because that’s what brings in the revenue,” Quadra said. “But Meta comes off much better than the rest of her family.”

During the trial, Jim was asked if there were meetings where Cinema 7 personnel defined what they meant by a “lap dance” in the piece rate system.

“You need a lap for a lap dance,” Mitchell replied. “You are getting down to like, you know, lap dance, erotic theater, America. And your question is like just a waste of the public’s slender resources, like drop[ping] a basketball in the ghetto and asking, ‘Did you define what that is for them?'<0x2009>”

Johnson, who voluntarily took the witness stand, was asked if there was any reason dancers would be afraid of her father. “He can be a little gruff and he can be cranky, a grouchy old man,” she replied.

Today Johnson is moving ahead with a vision she began to outline in 2007, then put on hold until December 2009, when a law suit about the family trust fund was settled.

“We settled everything out of court in December with my grandmother, which was a nice Christmas present,” she says, confirming that she and her siblings succeeded in removing their 83-year grandmother, Georgia Mae Mitchell, as trustee of the Jim Mitchell family fund. They replaced her with their mother, Jim Mitchell’s ex-wife, Mary Jane Whitty-Grimm, who also has custody of James’s baby daughter, Samantha.

“Danielle’s mother has some personal problems … that made the court reluctant to give her custody of the baby. so they gave Samantha to Mary, who is a nice woman, who is married with a family,” former San Francisco D.A. Terence Hallinan told me, after James Mitchell replaced him with another private criminal defense attorney, Douglas Horngrad, in March.

In court filings related to the family trust fund, Mitchell matriarch Georgia Mae claimed her grandchildren’s lawsuit was intended to deny her jailed grandson James his share of the trust to defend against his serious felony charges.

“Justin asked me to take money out of the trust account of his brother James, and send it to his mother instead of paying his criminal defense attorney, Terence Hallinan,” the Mitchell matriarch claimed.

I asked Hallinan if the trust fund was the reason James Mitchell changed attorneys. “Yes and no,” Hallinan said. “It definitely had to do with money and who was going to run the club. The poor grandma, she is such a nice person. She was trying to play fair and be nice to all the kids. It’s not a really healthy family. ‘Rafe’ [James] is where he is. In my opinion, he is still not clear what happened or why.”

Johnson, for her part, says her brother James has mental health issues. “I don’t accept what he did,” she said. “I’m not making any excuses for it. He’s either insane or he’s a monster. But the family has an obligation to make sure he has legal defense. He was always a beneficiary of the trust. But he fired his lawyer, which is the worst thing he could have done.”

A restraining order Keller secured five days before she was murdered claims Mitchell abused her for years, had mood swings, used cocaine, and was addicted to methamphetamines.

“Danny should have left,” Johnson said.

“It’s been painful to read the comments people leave,” she continued, referring to online reaction to her brother’s arrest that suggest the Mitchells are bad seed and should be wiped out. “It’s not because James is a Mitchell, or because there’s some bad gene.”

Rather, she said he had serious unaddressed problems, “a time bomb that was going to explode and then it did in just about the most horrific way imaginable.”

“When I was 13, my father shot my uncle Artie. And when I was 31, James killed Danny,” she adds. “So I hope I don’t live to be 103.”

 

WOMEN’S WORK

In 1985, the O’Farrell Theater’s marquee famously read, “For show times call … ” followed by Mayor Feinstein’s phone number. But that was another era.

“I don’t know Dianne Feinstein,” Johnson says, as she shows me a cartoon R. Crumb drew in 1985 of then-Mayor Feinstein as Little Bo Peep, with a bunch of men, including political and law enforcement leaders, peeking out from under her skirts. “I know my father was never very fond of her. And I’m sure her reasons for wanting to shut the club down were based on the idea that women are being exploited and that we need to save them.”

Johnson says some of their dancers are single moms; some are young girls who can’t get enough work at retail jobs to pay their bills; and others are college students and graduates.

“There are as many stories as there are dancers. But the stereotype is that dancers are being exploited and have to be protected because they can’t protect themselves and no one really wants to dance. But when I came through the club door, I realized that many women want to do this and get upset if people try to save them. Some people feel that working in a strip club is bad, wrong, dirty. No. But it can be if you are pushed into it and don’t want to do it.”

Dancers the Guardian spoke to confirmed that they dislike being framed as victims. “When we are painted as victims, we look stupid,“ Lorelei said. “All we want is to make sure that folks are following the labor code and providing the same basic, decent working conditions you‘d get if you were working at a coffee shop.“

But dancers know that some people are titillated by the idea of women being taken advantage of. “They don’t want that fantasy to go away, that she’s really a good girl and doesn’t want to do it,” Lorelei said. “If it turns out we are not traumatized, horrified, or disenfranchised, it ruins the whole fantasy.”

She fears that political leaders know bad things are happening but don’t want to talk about them for fear it implies they are permitting them. “The attitude is these women aren’t real, they are sex workers, so if they get raped or go missing, who cares?” Lorelei claimed. “We can’t admit they are the babysitter, the girl who sits next to you at the office.”

When Johnson began working at MBOT, she was shocked that the dancers were naked. “But no one is forcing anyone to be here,” she says. “Sure, some women dance out of necessity. But there are women who are really into it … What’s bad is the exploitation.”

It’s hard to tell from the outside whether the MBOT dancers are feeling better about their working conditions these days or whether having a woman in charge makes a big difference.

On a recent Saturday night, we were charged $40 to enter the club. The ticket gave us access to the theater’s main stage, where a succession of ethnically diverse and athletically built girls pranced, pole danced, and eventually took it all off — in tasteful fashion — as the customers threw tips on stage.

A friendly girl asked if we’d like some company but backed off gracefully when we declined to do more than chat. No one else tried to hustle us for the next hour, and we didn’t get the sense that these women were desperate to make more money. The private rooms remained empty during our visit. But there are VIP rooms that we didn’t have access to, and it’s possible more hardcore stuff was going on elsewhere in the club.

As we left, a tour bus pulled up outside, full of tourists who pressed their noses against the bus windows to eyeball the famed Mitchell Brothers establishment, drawn just to gawk at this titillating and complicated San Francisco institution.

Johnson and Mitchell believe their club gives women a path to financial independence and that having a female in charge makes a difference. “They don’t need a man,” Johnson says. “In most strip clubs, the pay is all under the table, and the girls keep cash in shoe box under the bed.”

“Dodging the IRS,” Mitchell adds.

But they recognize that some dancers may be coming from abusive situations. Johnson said she realized one dancer was in trouble when she asked to be booked for every shift. “I looked at the situation and saw 16-hour days in stilettos and an exhausting schedule. It took a woman’s insight to work out what was going on.”

“It goes back to a woman’s touch, ” Mitchell says.

Johnson blames this nation’s puritanical roots for the abiding disapproval toward the sex industry and those who work in it.

“But it’s come a long way,” Mitchell interjects.” When this place first started, it got raided non-stop. Now it’s much more acceptable than 20 years ago. In the next 20 years, I’m optimistic that prostitution will be decriminalized, at least in our city, if not in our state.”

So is prostitution happening as much as some dancers say it is? “You can’t penalize people for surviving,” Johnson says. “What dancers do outside clubs is their business. We don’t have control over them. All we can do is worry about them. We don’t condone illegal activity inside the club. We don’t encourage or support it. That’s our official take.”

Johnson acknowledges the O’Farrell Theater may have the reputation for being perhaps the most hardcore club in the city. “But everything that happens here, happens elsewhere,” she says. “It’s the same exact deal except they don’t care at all, and we’re a family-run business.”

Mitchell observes that the O’Farrell Theater is huge part of the city’s tourism industry. “When conventions come through, we’re one of the prime tourist spots, along with Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge,” he said.

“San Francisco is known for its freewheeling sexuality, like the Folsom Street Fair,” Johnson adds. “People say San Francisco is Oakland’s slutty sister. And people come here because this club is an institution, a landmark in San Francisco.”

So can Johnson make a difference against this convoluted backdrop?

“It’s a benefit to have a female in management,” Johnson claims. “When we come up with an idea, I think: How will the dancers feel? We’re on the same team. I treat them like teammates. We’re not in a battle over who gets the most money. I can see through things. Women manipulate men, and dancers are in the business of manipulating men. It’s a sale. It’s a hustle. They have that mindset. But I say, no, you don’t need to make up situations. You just tell us what’s up. But that’s not the normal attitude. In most clubs, it’s ‘Shut up, do what we say, and pay your fees.'”

Johnson says she was recently at the AT&T store, and the girl asked where she worked. “I said, at a strip club. People find that incredibly interesting. This girl was 23 and she was not comfortable with the idea of dancing, but at the same time she was fascinated by it. And it’s not going away, women dancing and stripping, You can hate it; you can love it — it doesn’t matter.”

After so many years on the San Francisco scene, MBOT is striving to be a legitimate part of its neighborhood and the city’s business community. And to Johnson, some of that involves unfinished business.

“Lou Silva was the artist who did the original mural of whales on the club‘s wall. That‘s what I remember as a child. My dad and uncle were connected to that community and the underground comic movement in the late 1970s. They made money, they wanted to spread the love around, so they did a giant art project on the side wall. And a couple of years before my uncle died, they started to redo it. But the project stopped when my uncle was shot. We are going to bring the whales back. We‘re working on it with an Academy of Art class. It will be far more peaceful and calm than a crazy jungle scene on the wall. We want to redo whales to demonstrate that we are interested in more than just sex and exploitation. We want to be connected to our community again.“

Noting that the new mural is part of the beautification of Polk Street, Johnson concludes: “The mural on the wall is unfinished because of Artie‘s death. Now it‘s time to finish it, not to have unfinished art on the wall because of some horrible, violent incident. It‘s an investment to show we are not the Mitchells everyone thinks we are.“

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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3
Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

The governor of California released his last official state budget proposal May 14, just a few weeks before Mayor Gavin Newsom releases what might be his last official city budget proposal. The guv’s is truly ugly, so bad it’s almost hard to imagine what would happen if it passes. The mayor’s may not be a whole lot different.

Here’s why Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget is so hypocritical. In his message, Schwarzenegger said that "employment remains the biggest source of concern" as the state emerges from the Great Recession. Then he moved to guarantee more unemployment.

I remember when a Democratic Assembly Member from San Francisco first proposed the idea that would later become the philosophical basis for the CALWORKS program. Art Agnos, who went on to serve as mayor of this city, suggested that it wasn’t such a bad idea to make welfare recipients work — as long as the state offered education, training, and, most important, affordable child care. A lot of us complained about it, warning that it would never get fully funded; it costs a lot up front to provide the services that allow long-term unemployed to transition into the workforce. Ultimately, however, most states have now created some sort of welfare-to-work program.

Now Schwarzenegger wants that completely eliminated. Along with all state-subsidized child care. So how are low-income people with kids supposed to get a job?

They’re not. They’re supposed to become a permanent underclass in a rich state. That’s exactly what the governor is talking about — destroying opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people, keeping them from joining in the productivity boom we’re going to need to get the economy going again, forcing them to live a third-world existence, at a massive cost to the state’s future. All to avoid modest taxes on the rich. If that’s not class warfare, I don’t know what is.

So how are we going to respond in San Francisco? Will Newsom’s budget — the one he will have to answer for as he runs for lieutenant governor — be cuts only? Or does he have the courage to tell the truth — that the only way the state and the city are ever going to emerge from this recession is if the folks on top of the economic pyramid chip in a little more? Well, I asked his press person, Tony Winnicker, and here’s what he said: "The mayor’s budget will not rely on taxes to achieve balance."

Nice.

Never mind the budget, Gavin’s worried about himself

Zelda Bronstein
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2
Never mind the budget, Gavin’s worried about himself

So this afternoon, the governor released a truly horrifying mid-year budget revise, a bloody proposal that would eliminate CALWORKS, the state’s major welfare program, and cut billions out of other essential services. Calitics puts it nicely:


At today’s press conference unveiling the May Revise of the 2010-11 budget, Arnold Schwarzenegger said “the budget should be a reflection of California’s values.” If that’s the case, then California’s values are protecting the wealthy and the large corporations from having to contribute anything to this society while making old people and children suffer. Arnold’s California is a place where if you aren’t wealthy, you don’t deserve to have health, food, or any other form of economic security.


And about an hour later, the mayor of San Francisco sends a text to Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who represents the city. Was he asking for Ammiano’s help in fighting the budget cuts? Was he suggesting they work together on strategy to save the city’s most needy from the governor’s axe? No. Here’s what the text from Newsom, who is running for Lt. Governor, said:


I hear you voted for Hahn at the convention.


That’s right — a month after the state Democratic Convention, Newsom is complaining that Ammiano voted for his opponent in the endorsement derby. That’s what he cares about? More than the worse budget in state history?


Ammiano’s response:


And what???


Good question.
 


 


 

SFBG Radio: Tim and Johnny on Pelosi and how Newsom could be really green

Zelda Bronstein
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0
SFBG Radio: Tim and Johnny on Pelosi and how Newsom could be really green

Today on SFBG.COM Radio: Tim and Johnny talk about why Nancy Pelosi isn’t more of a progressive — and how Gavin Newsom could follow the lead of a Republican from Utah and cut down dramatically on car use in San Francisco. You can listen after the jump.

SFBG.COM Radio 5/14/2010 by SFBG

Bicycling set a record in SF today

Sasha Cuttler
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7
Bicycling set a record in SF today

It was only two years ago that bicycle advocates celebrated Bike to Work Day traffic surveys that for the first time counted more bikes than cars on Market Street during the morning commute, a feat repeated last year. But today (5/13), that ratio had jumped to three bicycles for every car. The counts, which found a record-breaking 75 percent of vehicles were bikes, were performed by employees of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority and announced in a press release from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

“I was thrilled to ride alongside Mayor Newsom and scores of smiling people this morning in the newly separated and green Market Street bike lanes. So many more people are bicycling on Market, because they feel safer in these separated, green bike lanes,” Renee Rivera, acting Executive Director of the SF Bicycle Coalition, said in the press release, which also quoted Newsom as saying, “We are taking hold of an incredible opportunity to transform Market Street into one of the greatest streets in the world. San Francisco is an innovator and this newly separated, green bike lane is one example of how we can make Market Street safer and more bike friendly for the tens of thousands of people who use it everyday.”

For his part, Newsom seemed to be riding a cooler bike than in years past, when he rode a Blazing Saddles rental. But some bike advocates still grumbled about his choice of attire: he once again donned a sweat suit, rather than work clothes, which doesn’t exactly send the message that cycling can be an everyday transportation option. But for bike advocates, this was a day for celebration, both of the huge numbers and recent improvements such as the five on-street bicycle parking areas that have been added to Valencia Street in the last week, part of a trend toward rethinking the streets of San Francisco.

Ending the crackdown is as easy as ABC

Sasha Cuttler
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0

Sup. Bevan Dufty brought a surprise guest to the “Death of Fun” panel at SPUR that we each served on last night: Steve Hardy, director of the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, an agency that has played a key role in the crackdown on San Francisco nightlife.

Hardy sounded a conciliatory tone, telling me that ABC agent Michelle Ott is no longer working with SFPD officer Larry Bertrand – the undercover duo has wreaked havoc on clubs and parties – and telling the large crowd that he’s trying to heed the criticisms and change his agency’s ways. Well, sort of.

“We’re working very hard to create an image that does not draw so much hostility,” Hardy said, later complaining about the state budget shortfall’s squeeze on his agency and saying, “It’s wearing thin and there’s no relief.”

Hardy said he was raised and still lives in San Francisco and served as an SFPD beat cop before a 25-year career staffing the California Legislature, mostly with the Senate Committee on Government Organization. Three years ago, he was appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to run the ABC, an agency that has cited many SF clubs for noise complaints and not serving enough food with their booze, and private parties for serving alcohol without permits.

“We do have a tremendous relationship with the SFPD,” he told the crowd, as if that weren’t already clear.

SFPD Inspector Dave Falzon of the Vice Crimes Division, another panelist, repeatedly emphasized the department’s desire to improve communications with the community, which has organized against the crackdown by forming the California Music and Culture Association. And Falzon announced a new SFPD initiative to centralize and streamline its permitting functions for clubs and special events.

But when I was answered a question about what we’d like to see in terms of improved communication by saying I wanted the SFPD to finally grant the Guardian’s longstanding request to interview Bertrand (whose brutal and illegal actions have been publicly condoned by his captain) and to directly address the community’s concerns about the SFPD’s hostility to nightlife, I didn’t get much of a responsive answer from Falzon.

Two separate legal teams who are suing the department for its overreaching tactics are also seeking to depose Bertrand and his superiors, and to review Bertrand’s personnel file, but the city has so far been stonewalling them. The consensus on the panel was that city leaders haven’t adequately valued nightlife or special events or sent the message to various city departments that protecting the urban culture from bureaucratic excess is important.

For example, in the current budget crisis, most departments that deal with clubs and special events have adopted full cost recovery policies, and then jacked up those costs with demands that promoters pay for excessive police protection and other services. Just a few weeks ago, the Municipal Transportation Agency approved a budget that made full cost recovery official policy, thus jacking up prices for all events that require street closures or Muni diversions.

Who’s to blame? Well, Dufty and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi (who also served on the panel) each laid the blame squarely on Mayor Gavin Newsom, who they say has abdicated his responsibility to lead city departments through the sometimes complicated balancing act between protecting the urban culture and being sensitive to neighborhood concerns, leaving the city essentially rudderless on an issue vital to maintaining San Francisco’s status as a world-class city.

Democratizing the streets

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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26
Democratizing the streets

steve@sbg.com

It’s hard to keep up with all the changes occurring on the streets of San Francisco, where an evolving view of who and what roadways are for cuts across ideological lines. The car is no longer king, dethroned by buses, bikes, pedestrians, and a movement to reclaim the streets as essential public spaces.

Sure, there are still divisive battles now underway over street space and funding, many centered around the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which has more control over the streets than any other local agency, particularly after the passage of Proposition A in 2007 placed all transportation modes under its purview.

Transit riders, environmentalists, and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors are frustrated that Mayor Gavin Newsom and his appointed SFMTA board members have raised Muni fares and slashed service rather than tapping downtown corporations, property owners, and/or car drivers for more revenue.

Board President David Chiu is leading the effort to reject the latest SFMTA budget and its 10 percent Muni service cut, and he and fellow progressive Sups. David Campos, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi have been working on SFMTA reform measures for the fall ballot, which need to be introduced by May 18.

But as nasty as those fights might get in the coming weeks, they mask a surprising amount of consensus around a new view of streets. “The mayor has made democratizing the streets one of his major initiatives,” Newsom Press Secretary Tony Winnicker told the Guardian.

And it’s true. Newsom has promoted removing cars from the streets for a few hours at a time through Sunday Streets and his “parklets” in parking spaces, for a few weeks or months at a time through Pavement to Parks, and permanently through Market Street traffic diversions and many projects in the city’s Bicycle Plan, which could finally be removed from a four-year court injunction after a hearing next month.

Even after this long ban on new bike projects, San Francisco has seen the number of regular bicycle commuters double in recent years. Bike to Work Day, this year held on May 13, has become like a civic holiday as almost every elected official pedals to work and traffic surveys from the last two years show bikes outnumbering cars on Market Street during the morning commute.

If it wasn’t for the fiscal crisis gripping this and other California cities, this could be a real kumbaya moment for the streets of San Francisco. Instead, it’s something closer to a moment of truth — when we’ll have to decide whether to put our money and political will into “democratizing the streets.”

 

RECONSIDERING ROADWAYS

After some early clashes between Newsom and progressives on the Board of Supervisors and in the alternative transportation community over a proposal to ban cars from a portion of John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park — a polarizing debate that ended in compromise after almost two acrimonious years — there’s been a remarkable harmony over once-controversial changes to the streets.

In fact, the changes have come so fast and furious in the last couple of years that it’s tough to keep track of all the parking spaces turned into miniparks or extended sidewalks, replacement of once-banished benches on Market and other streets, car-free street closures and festivals, and healthy competition with other U.S. cities to offer bike-sharing or other green innovations.

So much is happening in the streets that SF Streetsblog has quickly become a popular, go-to clearinghouse for stories about and discussions of our evolving streets, a role that the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition — itself the largest grassroots group in the city, with more than 11,000 paid members — recently recognized with its Golden Wheel award.

“I think we are at a tipping point. All these little things have been percolating,” said San Francisco Planning Urban Research Association director Gabriel Metcalf, listing examples such as the creative reuse of San Francisco street space by Rebar and other groups (see “Seizing space,” 11/18/09), experiments in New York and other cities to convert traffic lanes to bicycle and pedestrian spaces, a new generation of more forward-thinking traffic engineers and planning professionals working in government, and more aggressive advocacy work by the SFBC, SPUR, and other groups.

“I think it’s all starting to coalesce,” Metcalf said. “Go to 17th and Valencia [streets] and feel what it’s like to have a sidewalk that’s wide enough to be comfortable. Or go ride in the physically separated bike lane on Market Street. Or take your kids to the playground at Hayes Green that used to be a freeway ramp.”

Politically, this is a rare area of almost universal agreement. “This is an issue where this mayor and this board have been very aligned,” Metcalf said. Winnicker, Newsom’s spokesperson, agreed: “The mayor and the board do see this issue very similarly.”

Mirkarimi, a progressive who chairs the Transportation Authority, also agreed that this new way of looking at the streets has been a bright spot in board-mayoral relations. “It is evolving and developing, and that’s a very good thing,” Mirkarimi said.

Both Winnicker and Mirkarimi separately singled out the improvements on Divisidero Street — where the median and sidewalks have been planted with trees and vegetation and some street parking spaces have been turned into designated bicycle parking and outdoor seating — as an example of the new approach.

“It really is a microcosm of an evolving consciousness,” Mirkarimi said of the strip.

Sunday Streets, a series of events when the streets are closed to cars and blossom with life, is an initiative proposed by SFBC and Livable City that has been championed by Newsom and supported by the board as it overcame initial opposition from the business community and some car drivers.

“There is a growing synergy toward connecting the movements that deal with repurposing space that has been used primarily for automobiles,” Sunday Streets coordinator Susan King told us.

Newsom has cast the greening initiatives as simply common sense uses of space and low-cost ways of improving the city. “A lot of what the mayor and the board have disagreements on, some of that is ideological,” Winnicker said. “But streets, parks, medians, and green spaces, they are not ideological.”

Maybe not, but where the rubber is starting to meet the road is on how to fund this shift, particularly when it comes to transit services that aren’t cheap — and to Newsom’s seemingly ideological aversion to new taxes or charges on motorists.

“We’re completely aligned when it comes to the Bike Plan and testing different things as far as our streets, but that all changes with the MTA budget,” said board President David Chiu, who is leading the charge to reject the budget because of its deep Muni service cuts. “Progressives are focused on the plight of everyday people who can’t afford to drive and park a car and have to rely on Muni. So it’s a question of on whose back will you balance the MTA budget.”

 

WHOSE STREETS?

The MTA governs San Francisco’s streets, from deciding how their space is allocated to who pays for their upkeep. The agency runs Muni, sets and administers parking policies, regulates taxis, approves bicycle-related improvements, and tries to protect pedestrians.

So when the mayoral-appointed MTA Board of Directors last month approved a budget that cuts Muni service by 10 percent without sharing the pain with motorists or pursuing significant new revenue sources — in defiance of pleas by the public and progressive supervisors over the last 18 months — it triggered a real street fight.

The Budget and Finance Committee will begin taking up the MTA budget May 12. And progressive supervisors, frustrated at having to replay this fight for a second year in a row, are pursuing a variety of MTA reforms for the November ballot, which must be submitted by May 18.

“We’re going to have a very serious discussion about MTA reform,” Chiu said, adding, “I expect there to be a very robust discussion about the MTA and balancing that budget on the backs of transit riders.”

Among the reforms being discussed are shared appointments between the mayor and board, greater ability for the board to reject individual initiatives rather than just the whole budget, changes to Muni work rules and compensation, and revenue measures like a local surcharge on vehicle license fees or a downtown transit assessment district.

Last week Chiu met with Newsom on the MTA budget issue and didn’t come away hopeful that there will be a collaborative solution such as last year’s compromise. But Chiu said he and other supervisors were committed to holding the line on Muni service cuts.

“I think the MTA needs to get more creative. We have to make sure the MTA isn’t being used as an ATM with these work orders,” Chiu said, referring to the $65 million the MTA pays to the Police Department and other agencies every year, a figure that steeply increased after 2007. “My hope is that the MTA board does the right thing and rolls back some of these service reductions.”

Transit riders have been universal in condemning the MTA budget. “The budget is irresponsible and dishonest,” said San Francisco Transit Riders Union project director Dave Snyder. “It reveals the hypocrisy in the mayor’s stated environmental commitments. This action will cut public transit permanently and that’s irresponsible.”

But the Mayor’s Office blames declining state funding and says the MTA had no choice. “It’s an economic reality. None of us want service reductions, but show us the money,” Winnicker said.

That’s precisely what the progressive supervisors are trying to do by exploring several revenue measures for the November ballot. But they say Newsom’s lack of leadership on the issue has made that difficult, particularly given the two-third vote requirement.

“There’s been a real failure of leadership by Gavin Newsom,” Mirkarimi said.

Newsom addressed the issue in December as he, Mirkarimi, and other city officials and bicycle advocates helped create the city’s first green “bike box” and honor the partial lifting of the bike injunction, sounding a message of unity on the issue.

“I can say this is the best relationship we’ve had for years with the advocacy community, with the Bicycle Coalition. We’ve begun to strike a nice balance where this is not about cars versus bikes. This is about cars and bikes and pedestrians cohabitating in a different mindset,” Newsom said.

Yet afterward, during an impromptu press conference, Newsom spoke with disdain about those who argued that improving the streets and maintaining Muni service during hard economic times requires money, and Newsom has been the biggest impediment to finding new revenue sources.

“Everyone is just so aggressive on trying to raise revenue. We’ve been increasing the cost of going on Muni the last few years. I think people need to consider that,” Newsom said. “We’ve increased the cost of parking tickets, increased the cost of using a parking meter, and we’ve raised the fares. It’s important to remind people of that. The first answer to every question shouldn’t be, OK, we’re going to tax people more or increase their costs.

“You have to be careful about that,” he continued. “So my answer to your question is two-fold. We’re going to look at revenue, but not necessarily tax increases. We’re going to look at revenue, but not necessarily fine increases. We’re going to look at revenue, but not necessarily parking meter increases. We’re going to look at new strategies.”

Yet that was six months ago, and with the exception of grudgingly agreeing to allow a small pilot program in a few commercial corridors to eliminate free parking in metered spots on Sunday, Newsom still hasn’t proposed any new revenue options.

“The voters aren’t receptive to new taxes now,” Winnicker said last week. Mirkarimi doesn’t necessarily agree, citing polling data showing that voters in San Francisco may be open to the VLF surcharge, if we can muster the same kind of political will we’re applying to other street questions.

“It polls well, even in a climate when taxation scares people,” Mirkarimi said.

 

BIKING IS BACK

It was almost four years ago that a judge stuck down the San Francisco Bicycle Plan, ruling that it should have been subjected to a full-blown environmental impact report (EIR) and ordering an injunction against any projects in the plan.

That EIR was completed and certified by the city last year, but the same anti-bike duo who originally sued to stop the plan again challenged it as inadequate. The case will finally be heard June 22, with a ruling on lifting the injunction expected within a month.

“The San Francisco Bicycle Plan project eliminates 56 traffic lanes and more than 2,000 parking spaces on city streets,” attorney Mary Miles wrote in her April 23 brief challenging the plan. “According to City’s EIR, the project will cause ‘significant unavoidable impacts’ on traffic, transit, and loading; degrade level of service to unacceptable levels at many major intersections; and cause delays of more than six minutes per street segment to many bus lines. The EIR admits that the “near-term” parts of the project alone will have 89 significant impacts of traffic, transit, and loading but fails to mitigate or offer feasible alternatives to each of these impacts.”

Yet for all that, elected officials in San Francisco are nearly unanimous in their support for the plan, signaling how far San Francisco has come in viewing the streets as more than just conduits for cars.

City officials deny that the bike plan is legally inadequate and they may quibble with a few of the details Miles cites, but they basically agree with her main point. The plan will take away parking spaces and it will slow traffic in some areas. But they also say those are acceptable trade-offs for facilitating safe urban bicycling.

The city’s main overriding consideration is that we must do more to get people out of their cars, for reasons ranging from traffic congestion to global warming. City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey said that it’s absurd that the state’s main environmental law has been used to hinder progress toward the most environmentally beneficial and efficient transportation option.

“We have to stop solving for cars, and that’s an objective shared by the Board of Supervisors, and other cities, and the mayor as well,” Dorsey said.

Even anti-bike activist Rob Anderson, who brought the lawsuit challenging the bike plan, admits the City Hall has united around this plan to facilitate bicycling even if it means taking space from automobiles, although he believes that it’s a misguided effort.

“It’s a leap of faith they’re making here that this will be good for the city,” Anderson told us. “This is a complicated legal argument, and I don’t think the city has made the case.”

A judge will decide that question following the June 22 hearing. But whatever way that legal case is decided, it’s clear that San Francisco has already changed its view of its streets and other once-marginalized transportation choices like the bicycle.

Even the local business community has benefited from this new sensibility, with bicycle shops thriving around San Francisco and local bike messenger bag companies Timbuk2 and Rickshaw Bags experiencing rapid growth thanks to a doubling of the number of regular bicyclists in recent years.

“That’s who we’re aiming at, people who bike every day and make bikes a central part of their lives,” said Mike Waffenfels, CEO of Timbuk2, which in February moved into a larger location to handle it’s growth. “It’s about a lifestyle.”

For urban planners and advocates, it’s about making the streets of San Francisco work for everyone. As Metcalf said, “People need to be able to get where they’re going without a car.”

Immigrant rights – in Arizona and at home

David Talbot
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0
Immigrant rights – in Arizona and at home

By Angela Chan


Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera have publicly opposed the anti-immigrant bill, SB 1070, in Arizona. A diverse coalition of civil rights organizations — including the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Asian Law Caucus, Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, Central American Resource Center, Community United Against Violence, Equal Justice Society, La Raza Centro Legal, National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, POWER, and Pride at Work SF — applauds both city officials for taking a strong stand against the Arizona bill. At the same time, we urge Newsom and Herrera to firmly and unequivocally support the implementation of a local policy that protects the due process rights of immigrant youths in San Francisco.

As with SB 1070 in Arizona, the mayor’s policy of requiring juvenile probation officers to report young people to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before they receive due process has opened the door to racial profiling and torn many innocent youth from their families.

Since July 2008, pursuant to Newsom’s draconian reporting policy, more than 160 youth have been reported to ICE right after arrest, before they even have had a chance to be heard in juvenile court. That means that youth who are completely innocent of any crimes and youth who are overcharged have been reported to ICE.

Despite the veto-proof passage of a policy by the Board of Supervisors last fall that moves the point of reporting from the arrest stage to after a youth is found to have committed a felony, Newsom has insisted on ignoring the new city law. Herrera, in turn, has yet to advise implementation of the new law.

Like the Arizona bill, Newsom’s policy requires reporting to ICE when local officials — in this case juvenile probation officers — merely have "reasonable suspicion" that an individual is undocumented. The factors that probation officers are required to use to determine reasonable suspicion have come under fire for codifying racial profiling into law.

In March, a year and a half after the mayor’s policy went into effect, Chief Probation Officer William Siffermann admitted before the Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors that the latter factor could lead to racial profiling. A few days later, Herrera stated that this factor had been removed from the policy. However, if any changes have been made to the written policy, they have not been made available to the public.

Another similarity with the Arizona bill: probation officers in San Francisco have not been properly trained and do not have the expertise in immigration law to accurately determine which youth are actually undocumented. Rather, these officers rely on race, ethnicity, language ability, surnames, and accent as a basis for assuming immigration status.
Much like the Arizona bill, Newsom’s policy goes well beyond any obligations under federal law by requiring that probation officers report suspected undocumented youth to ICE. Finally, as with the Arizona bill, the mayor’s draconian policy only compounds the harm to immigrant families caused by an already flawed federal immigration system, which is in drastic need of comprehensive reform. We need humane reform at the federal level. But in the meantime, Newsom and Herrera need to take swift action to restore due process and protect family unity by ending San Francisco’s draconian policy. *

Angela Chan is a staff attorney with the Juvenile Justice and Education Project at the Asian Law Caucus.

Muni reform that might actually work

David Talbot
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0
Muni reform that might actually work

EDITORIAL The 2007 ballot measure that was supposed to give Muni more political independence and more money has failed to provide either. It’s time to say that Proposition A, which we supported, hasn’t worked — in significant part because the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom hasn’t allowed it to work. It’s time for a new reform effort, one that looks at Muni’s governance structure, funding, and the way it spends money.

There are several proposals in the works. Sup. David Campos has asked for a management audit of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, and that’s likely to show some shoddy oversight practices and hugely wasteful overtime spending. Sup. Sean Elsbernd wants to change the way Muni workers get paid, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu are talking about changing the way the MTA board is appointed. There are merits to all the reform plans, but in the end, none of them will work if they don’t address the fundamental fact that Muni doesn’t have enough money to provide the level of transit service San Francisco needs.

The basic outlines of what a progressive Muni reform measure would look like are pretty obvious. It ought to include three basic principles: work-rule and overtime reform; a change in the way other departments, particularly the police, charge Muni for work orders — and a sizable new source of revenue.

The work orders are, in many ways, the easiest issue. Last year, the San Francisco Police Department charged Muni more than $12 million in work orders. For what? Well, for doing what the Police Department gets paid to do anyway: patrolling Muni garages, putting cops on the buses, and dealing with Muni-related traffic issues. And a lot of that $12 million is police overtime.

The labor and revenue issues are trickier — mostly because they’re being addressed separately. Elsbernd, for example, wants to Muni workers to engage in the same collective bargaining that other city unions do, which makes a certain amount of sense. But he’s wrong to make it appear that the union and the workers are the major source of Muni’s financial problems — and that approach won’t get far. The bus drivers and mechanics didn’t make millions on large commercial developments that put a huge strain on the transit system — and the developers who profit from having bus service for the occupants of their buildings have never paid their fair share. Nor is it the fault of the union that car traffic downtown clogs the streets and makes it hard for buses to run on time.

We agree that the transit union needs to come to the table and talk, seriously, about work-rule changes. Every other city union, particularly SEIU Local 1021, whose members are among the lowest-paid workers in the city, has given something up to help the city’s budget problems.

But any attempt to change Muni’s labor contract needs to be paired with a serious new revenue program aimed at putting the transit system on a stronger financial footing — and traffic management plans that give buses an advantage over cars. The city can add a modest fee on car owners now, and if a Democratic governor wins in November, it’s likely that state Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow a local car tax will become law. That’s part of the solution, as is expanded parking meter hours. (And someone needs to talk about charging churchgoers for parking in the middle of the streets on Sundays.) But Muni also needs a regular stream of income from fees on developers.

And a seven-member MTA appointed entirely by the mayor does nothing for political independence; at the very least, the supervisors should get three of the appointments.

The city badly needs Muni reform — and the elements are all in place. But it can’t be a piecemeal approach.

Muni reform that might actually work

David Talbot
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7

EDITORIAL The 2007 ballot measure that was supposed to give Muni more political independence and more money has failed to provide either. It’s time to say that Proposition A, which we supported, hasn’t worked — in significant part because the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom hasn’t allowed it to work. It’s time for a new reform effort, one that looks at Muni’s governance structure, funding, and the way it spends money.

There are several proposals in the works. Sup. David Campos has asked for a management audit of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, and that’s likely to show some shoddy oversight practices and hugely wasteful overtime spending. Sup. Sean Elsbernd wants to change the way Muni workers get paid, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu are talking about changing the way the MTA board is appointed. There are merits to all the reform plans, but in the end, none of them will work if they don’t address the fundamental fact that Muni doesn’t have enough money to provide the level of transit service San Francisco needs.

The basic outlines of what a progressive Muni reform measure would look like are pretty obvious. It ought to include three basic principles: work-rule and overtime reform; a change in the way other departments, particularly the police, charge Muni for work orders — and a sizable new source of revenue.

The work orders are, in many ways, the easiest issue. Last year, the San Francisco Police Department charged Muni more than $12 million in work orders. For what? Well, for doing what the Police Department gets paid to do anyway: patrolling Muni garages, putting cops on the buses, and dealing with Muni-related traffic issues. And a lot of that $12 million is police overtime.

The labor and revenue issues are trickier — mostly because they’re being addressed separately. Elsbernd, for example, wants to Muni workers to engage in the same collective bargaining that other city unions do, which makes a certain amount of sense. But he’s wrong to make it appear that the union and the workers are the major source of Muni’s financial problems — and that approach won’t get far. The bus drivers and mechanics didn’t make millions on large commercial developments that put a huge strain on the transit system — and the developers who profit from having bus service for the occupants of their buildings have never paid their fair share. Nor is it the fault of the union that car traffic downtown clogs the streets and makes it hard for buses to run on time.

We agree that the transit union needs to come to the table and talk, seriously, about work-rule changes. Every other city union, particularly SEIU Local 1021, whose members are among the lowest-paid workers in the city, has given something up to help the city’s budget problems.

But any attempt to change Muni’s labor contract needs to be paired with a serious new revenue program aimed at putting the transit system on a stronger financial footing — and traffic management plans that give buses an advantage over cars. The city can add a modest fee on car owners now, and if a Democratic governor wins in November, it’s likely that state Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow a local car tax will become law. That’s part of the solution, as is expanded parking meter hours. (And someone needs to talk about charging churchgoers for parking in the middle of the streets on Sundays.) But Muni also needs a regular stream of income from fees on developers.

And a seven-member MTA appointed entirely by the mayor does nothing for political independence; at the very least, the supervisors should get three of the appointments.

The city badly needs Muni reform — and the elements are all in place. But it can’t be a piecemeal approach.

ICE says it will automatically vet juvenile immigrants fingerprints

Mary Magee
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25
ICE says it will automatically vet juvenile immigrants fingerprints

In what appears to be another fatal blow for San Francisco’s sanctuary laws–and due process in general— officials for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) say the fingerprints of juvenile immigrants charged with serious offenses will also be automatically forwarded to ICE

“My colleagues in SF advise that the fingerprints of juveniles arrested for criminal offenses will also be vetted through Secure Communities,” Virginia Kice, ICE’s Western Regional Communications Director, told the Guardian.

“If that’s the case, that’s pretty significant,” said Sup. David Campos, who was under the impression that the Secure Communities initiative would not touch juveniles. The thinking, Campos said, was that juveniles’ fingerprints were handled through a separate database and therefore would be exempt from the new federal initiative.

Sheriff Mike Hennessey, who does not handle juvenile detainees, told the Guardian,  “If I had to guess, I would say that Ms. Kice is correct, but it’s possible that the computer could be bifurcated.”

Calls to Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department Chief William Siffermann and California Attorney General Jerry Brown (whose office maintains fingerprinting databases) remained unanswered, as of blog posting time.

SF nightclubs fight back with new organization

Sasha Cuttler
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8
SF nightclubs fight back with new organization

In the ongoing War on Fun in San Francisco, a new combatant officially entered the battlefield last night with the launch of the California Music And Culture Association (which strangely goes by the acronym CMAC rather than CMCA). It aims to be a political advocacy organization and to provide members with services such as neighbor relations advice, group insurance, and discounted legal services.

“We’re here to celebrate a new era of nightlife and entertainment in San Francisco,” CMAC President Sean Manchester, owner of Mighty and Wish, told a crowd at Mezzanine that included club owners, lawyers, promoters, performers, and politicians ranging from supervisorial candidates Scott Wiener from D8 to Debra Walker in D6. California Sen. Mark Leno also sent a formal resolution of support for CMAC.

A video prepared for the event included an even wider array of local figures extolling the importance of nightlife to San Francisco, including SF Convention & Visitors Bureau chief Joe D’Alessandro and San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) director Gabriel Metcalf, who said, “I think it’s great that the nightlife industry is getting organized.”

That organization was prompted by threats and harassment from the San Francisco Police Department, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, neighbors of some clubs, and Mayor Gavin Newsom and others who have been on a campaign to demonize the industry and its regulation by the Entertainment Commission.

It’s a trend that the Guardian has been writing about for years, and one that I’ll be discussing this Tuesday as part of a panel assembled by SPUR that includes representatives from the SFPD and Entertainment Commission, as well as Sup. Bevan Dufty, who spearheaded the cancellation of Halloween in the Castro.

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