Newsom Archives — Page 36 of 85 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Does Newsom protest too much?

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October 22, 2009

By Tim Redmond

Gavin Newsom is strongly denying the “swirling rumors” that he might drop out of the race for governor and settle for second fiddle. He kind of has to do that if he wants to keep raising money — although all these reports, some of which come from his own shop, aren’t going to help him. And the more vocally he insists he will never drop out of the governor’s race, the more embarrassing it will be if he gets to the point where he has no choice. I don’t think he’ll stay in the race to the bitter end if the polls and the money show him getting clobbered; nothing worse for a political career than a 20-point loss in a primary.

I agree that the polls at this point are pretty meaningless — it’s mostly about name ID and the few issues Newsom is known for, like same-sex marriage (which plays badly with older voters, who are the ones most likely to be contacted by pollsters. Newsom’s voters all use cell phones.) What’s more significant is that our mayor is having trouble raising money — and sadly, in California, it take tens of millions to reach voters who might not know much about you (and need to change their opinions pretty radically).

So I can understand why some Newsom allies think he should just cut a deal with Jerry Brown and run for lieutenant gov. It makes a certain amount of political sense: Newsom is young, and the Lt. job is perfect for him — it’s all about holding press conferences and cutting ribbons. Four years of that, plenty of time to make statewide connections, build a donor base and create the image he wants, and he’ll be ready to go for the top job — which might very well be open. Brown is 71; by the time he’d be up for re-election he’d be 76, and looking at serving in one of the toughest jobs in American into his 80s. One term might be all he’s up for.

And besides, not to be ghoulish or anything, but whenever you take the Number Two spot behind a septuagenarian office holder, the possibility that you’ll wind up Number One is always on your mind. Brown is pretty damn healthy; all that meditation and stuff is good for you. But you never know.

The problem is that someone else will want the LT job, and if he waits too long, it looks like he’s taking the consolation prize and doesn’t really care about it, and all these quotes will come back to haunt him. Imagine how much it would suck to agree to be the understudy — and then get beat for that job.

Conspiracy to get deported

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October 21, 2009

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By Tim Redmond

I was arrested once for “Conspiracy to Loiter.”

Think about that, for a second. Try to figure out what that exact crime entails. Then consider that it took place in the Federal Building in San Francisco, and under federal law, conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor can be charged as a felony. So my crime, as it were, could have landed me in a federal pen, serving five years hard time.

I was actually just a reporter, wearing an press pass issued by the SFPD, covering a demonstration that involved some activists chaining themselves to the front door of the Federal Building. Most of the reporters were outside, trying to do interviews as the cops blocked off access to the protesters. So I walked around to the side door, walked into the (public) building and started doing interviews as the chain gang was broken up and taken into custody.

An infuriated member of the Federal Protective Service pointed to me and told his assistant to “arrest that man.” When the younger cop asked what the charge would be, the red-faced officer blurted out “uh, conspiracy to loiter.”

So that’s what went down on the paperwork, and as a suspected felon, I was chained to a radiator in the FPS office while they figured out what to do with me next. It took an hour or two for some U.S. attorney to get involved and realize that there was no such crime as conspiracy to loiter, and if there was I hadn’t committed it, and eventually I was unchained and released. I still had to get a lawyer to get the charge formally dismissed.

All these years later, it’s just a funny story — but if I had been a young person with brown skin who had arrived in the United States with his parents at age two and never attained proper legal status, I could have been deported, to a country I’d never known where I had no ties or connections and might not even speak the language.

That’s one of the problems with deporting people just on the basis of an arrest — sometimes people get arrested by mistake. Sometimes they turn out to be not guilty.

That’s why the Examiner’s front page headline — “Commit a crime, stay in The City” — is so crazy. You don’t have to commit a crime to get arrested. Any young man with black or brown skin in this country knows that.

There’s a reason why people have the right to a preliminary hearing and a trial before they have to pay for a crime. Maybe they didn’t do it.

All that David Campos’ legislation does is move the time when you refer someone for potential deportation (which, frankly, is worse punishment than most of the sentences most people will get for the crimes in question) from the arrest period to the conviction period.

It’s pretty simple, really. And I remain convinced that the only reason Mayor Newsom opposes it is that he’s running for governor and doesn’t want to look soft on crime.

Mayor to ignore San Francisco’s wishes

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October 21, 2009

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Text and images by Sarah Phelan

Sups. David Campos, Ross Mirkarimi and Bevan Dufty shortly after they joined Board President David Chiu and Sups. John Avalos, Eric Mar, Sophie Maxwell and Chris Daly in amending the city’s sanctuary policy. Dufty has said that Mayor Newsom threatened not to endorse Dufty’s bid for mayor, if he supported the amendment.

Yesterday’s celebration of the Board’s veto-proof amendment of the sanctuary ordinance felt similar to the joy that surrounded the city’s decision to start marrying same-sex couples. Only this time, instead of leading the civil rights charge, Mayor Gavin Newsom appears to be opposing it, citing fears that the city could be sued.

Following the supervisors’ vote, supporters of the Campos amendment poured out of the Board Chambers, chanting “Yes we can,” in Spanish and English, and into the second-floor rotunda, joined by Sup. David Campos.

Campos and immigration attorney Francisco Ugarte celebrate the Board’s historic Oct. 20 vote.

But even as Campos talked to the crowd about the importance of fighting for civil rights and against the slippery slope of a two-tiered system of justice, mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard appeared to be belittling the work of Campos and numerous civil and immigration rights experts, while vowing to ignore the Board’s amendment.

“The Campos bill isn’t worth the paper it’s written on—it’s unenforceable and he knows that,” Ballard told the Chron.
‘We are not going to put our law enforcement officers in legal jeopardy just because the Board of Supervisors wants to make a statement.”

Ana Perez the director of CARECEN SF, shares her thoughts on the Board’s vote with the media.

But can Newsom selectively ignore laws that have been passed by a veto-proof majority of the Board, and have been vetted as being legally tenable by the City Attorney?

“I don’t know,” Campos told the Guardian. ” I’m still trying to figure out whether the mayor can do that. We’re going into uncharted legal territory.”

A crowd of supporters, including civil rights experts, immigration attorneys and community leaders, gathered in the rotunda to celebrate, even as the Mayor’s Office announced it intends to ignore the Board’s sanctuary amendment.

Board changes sanctuary policy to give kids day in court

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October 20, 2009

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Text and images by Sarah Phelan

Civil rights groups celebrated today, as the Board of Supervisors amended the city’s sanctuary policy to ensure that immigrant youth get their day in court before being handed over to the feds for deportation.

Under the new policy, which Sup. David Campos, Eric Mar, Ross Mirkarimi, Sophie Maxwell, Chris Daly, John Avalos, Bevan Dufty and Board President David Chiu co-sponsored, juveniles won’t be handed over to federal immigration authorities unless they are found guilty of a felony.

That marks a shift from the draconian olicy that Newsom ordered last year, the day after he announced his gubernatorial run. Under that policy, kids were referred to the feds at booking, meaning US citizens and immigrants who hadn’t committed a felony could be wrongly deported.

A huge crowd, including immigrants, civil rights experts, teachers and local high school kids, cheered when Board President Chiu announced that the Campos amendment (so-called because Sup. David Campos spearheaded the effort to move this legislation) passed on its first reading

“This is really for our youth, for our kids, because they deserve nothing more, nothing less, than just full equality when it comes to how the law treats them,” Campos said after the vote.

“The fact that you’re undocumented doesn’t mean you’re not a person under the United States Constitution,,” he said. “ If we can’t stand up for the Constitution in San Francisco, then where can we stand up for it in this country?”

Campos worked for over a year to fashion today’s amendment, working with civil rights experts and immigration lawyers to come up with a proposal that City Attorney Dennis Herrera has deemed legally tenable.

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office vowed today to ensure that probation officers aren’t forced to break federal law in order to abide by the Campos legislation.

But Campos said the city’s CEO can’t pick and choose which city laws to follow.
“We expect the mayor’s office to follow the laws of the city and county of San Francisco – that’s his job,” Campos said. . “If he refuses to do that, the board will have to figure out what our options are.”

Meanwhile, Juvenile Probation Chief William Siffermann said he can’t prohibit officials from reporting instances where there’s a reasonable belief that civil immigration laws have been violated.

Extended meter hours proposal gets heard today

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October 20, 2009

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By Steven T. Jones

In a couple hours, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors will consider a controversial proposal to extend parking meter hours to evenings and Sundays, but it’s still unclear whether that body is inclined to take any action.

Alternative transportation and urban planning activists are excited about the chance to weigh in on a proposal that would raise nearly $9 million per year and begin to balance out the fare hikes and service cuts that Muni riders absorbed this year, while some motorists and business owners are likely to express their opposition.

Mayor Gavin Newsom has been expressing opposition to the item through the San Francisco Chronicle, but an item buried in yesterday’s Matier & Ross column seems to indicate that he’s backing off a bit, although they don’t seem to understand that this is a decision for the MTA board, not the Board of Supervisors.

As I’ve written before, this proposal will be a big test of whether the MTA board, whose seven members are all appointed by Newsom, is actually the independent agency capable of making tough decisions without regard to political consequences that the intent of 2007’s Proposition A, which gave them full authority over parking and public transit in San Francisco.

The meeting starts at 2 p.m. in City Hall’s Room 400, and the parking meter proposal follows a discussion of the agency’s deficit-plagued budget, appropriately enough.

P.S. Streetsblog SF has an excellent discussion of the proposal with parking guru Donald Shoup, who makes it clear why this study is so different for the meter rates increases in Oakland that caused such controversy.

Prop. D and privatization

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October 19, 2009

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By Tim Redmond

Randy Shaw has a piece in Beyond Chron today that takes issue with our endorsement on Prop. D.

It’s a fair discussion and a reasonable debate — I understand why some progressives support Prop. D, and I don’t think they’re wrong or evil for doing so. This one’s a tough call — I’m willing to accept stuff like electronic billboards that I don’t want to see in most parts of the city if it will really bring new life mid-Market, which desperately needs investment and energy.

But Shaw’s piece brings up a larger issue, one that’s part of the topic of our anniversary issue next week, so it’s worth comment.

Here’s what he wrote:

The San Francisco Bay Guardian said many good things about Prop D, but urged a No vote after focusing on the CBD factor: “But the process this measure describes isn’t at all democratic. The CBD board selects its own members, and the only oversight the city has is the ability of the Board of Supervisors to abolish the agency.”

Of course, any funding allocation process used by Prop D could have been similarly attacked. Would the Guardian prefer that the Mayor’s Office allocate Prop D funds? If so, its editorial board should reread my pieces on the Newsom Administration’s rigged RFP/RFQ processes.

Hard to argue with that, on the surface: Yes, the bidding process out of the Mayor’s Office is fucked up. Yes, there is almost always some level of corruption at City Hall (any City Hall).

But that doesn’t mean that the private sector ought to take over thing like zoning and resource allocation.

Private nonprofits like the Central Market Community Benefits District play a role in the city’s life, and that’s fine. Some nonprofits (like the one Randy Shaw runs) get city contracts to do work the city can’t do very well, and that’s also fine.

But the public sector — however flawed, however corrupt at times — still has to have the final say over regulations and the way money gets spent on public services. That’s how democracy works.

I remember once when we were intervieweing a very appealing, smart and generally progressive candidate for city assessor a few years back, and we asked him how he would go about bringing in more revenue. He told us he wasn’t sure that was a good idea, because “Willie Brown and his friends will just waste it.”

True — Brown and his friends wasted a lot of money. And that kind of corruption in government has helped the right wing push its anti-public-sector agenda. And people who says that “at least Willie Brown made the trains run on time” miss the point – corruption undermines faith in government.

But overall, using that argument to push for privatization of public resources is a dangerous way to go.

Remember: The money that would be paid by billboard owners to the CBD amounts to a tax on the new billboards. That tax ought to be collected by the city, and elected city officials should decide how it’s spent. Proponents of the measure told us they didn’t want to let the supervisors hold hearings, write the legislation or put it on the ballot because the city would then have control over the final shape of the measure. For example, Sup. Chris Daly wanted much of the billboard money to go for low-income housing — which isn’t where the CBD folks wanted it to go.

Sorry, but that’s a decision for elected officials to make. I’ll support new billboards when I know that there will be a public process (and public-sector process) determining how the boards are sited, how they’re taxed and where the extra cash is spent.

Fighting for juvenile justice

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October 13, 2009

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sarah@sfbg.com

Sup. David Campos’ proposal to amend San Francisco’s sanctuary policy so that the city guarantees due process to juvenile immigrants heads for a full vote of the board next week with the support of a veto-proof majority of supervisors.

Board President David Chiu and Sups. John Avalos, Chris Daly, Bevan Dufty, Eric Mar, Sophie Maxwell, and Ross Mirkarimi have signed on as cosponsors of the amendment, which also has the support of a broad coalition of civil and immigrants’ rights organizations.

But with the mayor opposed to the bill and the daily newspapers agitating against reform, it’s important to remember what’s really at stake here.

As a team of civil rights experts notes, the Campos bill "will ensure that families are not torn apart because a youth is mistakenly referred for deportation and will encourage cooperation between law enforcement and immigrant communities by reestablishing a relationship based on trust, therefore increasing public safety."

Campos, who came to this country as an undocumented youth from Guatemala and represents San Francisco’s heavily immigrant Mission District, says his proposal is a balanced solution to the draconian policy Newsom ordered last summer, without public input, the day after the mayor launched his 2010 gubernatorial bid.

When Campos introduced his amendment this summer, after months of public conversations with law enforcement agencies and the immigrant community, Newsom responded by leaking a confidential legal memo that outlined possible challenges to the proposal.

Angered but undaunted, a group of civil rights organizations responded by issuing their own brief explaining why Campos’ proposal is legally tenable and defensible.

As Angie Junck of the Immigrant Legal Resources Center, Robert Rubin of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, Julia Mass of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, professor Bill Ong Hing of UC Davis Law School, and Angela Chan of the Asian Law Caucus explained, Campos’ proposal "will allow immigrant youths to have their day in court and be heard by an impartial judge, ensuring due process is upheld for all of San Francisco’s youth."

They argue that Campos’ legislation seeks to "lessen the risk that the city will be liable for racial profiling, unlawful detention, and mistaken referrals of U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants for deportation while bringing the city’s juvenile probation practices into compliance with state confidentiality laws for youth."

And as they point out, Campos’ proposal won’t prevent youths who have been found by a court to have committed a felony from being referred to ICE.

"The sanctuary ordinance has stood strong for 20 years, and the proposed amendment strengthens the ordinance by taking steps to bring the city’s practices more into compliance with state juvenile justice law," the brief states. "The legislation is a measured step in the right direction that will help restore accountability and fairness in the city’s treatment of immigrant youth."

Or as Campos put it: "It’s something we drafted very carefully in close consultation with the City Attorney’s Office."

ARRESTED OR CONVICTED?

Campos’ amendment seeks to shift the point at which immigrant kids get referred to ICE agents for possible deportation. Newsom’s policy allows the police to refer kids to ICE the moment they’re arrested. That means someone who turns out to be innocent and was arrested in error can still be deported. Campos wants the cops to wait until the felony charge is upheld in juvenile court.

Since July 2008, when Newsom ordered the city’s current policy shift, 160 youths have been referred to ICE, increasing the risk they will be sent to detention facilities across the country, far from their families, without access to immigration legal services, based on accusations and racial profiling.

Abigail Trillin, staff attorney with the Legal Services for Children, told us that the Newsom policy makes San Francisco bedfellows with Texas and Orange County.

"A bunch of our kids go to Yolo County and Oregon, a lot to Los Angeles, others to Miami, Virginia, and Indiana, and some have already been deported," Trillin said.

Trillin noted that Newsom’s policy is destroying families by allowing innocent kids to be reported for deportation without the basic right to due process — often for minor offenses. She has already seen youth who are documented or innocent erroneously referred to ICE by juvenile probation officers, who often lack expertise in immigration law.

She also fears this miscarriage of justice could result in abuse and even death — especially if kids try to return to their homes and families by crossing the border, which has became increasingly militarized and perilous in the aftermath of the Bush administration’s decision to spend billions to build a fence along the border.

Last week, the battle for juvenile justice took a fresh twist locally when Newsom’s newly appointed Police Chief George Gascón said he hoped for a compromise involving third party review by the District Attorney’s Office.

"I fully understand the concerns Campos brings to the table," Gascón said, referring to his previous job as chief of police in Mesa, Ariz., where he saw the anti-immigrant excesses of Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio.

"I have the benefit of seeing the other side, where you have police agencies aggressively engaged in immigration enforcement, where people that were frankly not engaged in any criminal activity other than that of being here without authority, are being deported," Gascón said. He noted that being here without papers often is not a crime; it’s just an administrative violation.

"I’ve seen very young people, people that basically came to this country when they were three or four years old and are staying clean and going to school, get stopped for a traffic violation at age 17 or 18, and now all of a sudden they’re getting deported to a country where they have no roots," he said.

But the chief remains convinced that the criminal justice system needs to be able to use all legally available tools to deal with violent criminal juveniles.

"I’m not saying the district attorney needs to make the reporting. The triggering event could be the determination to file the case," Gascón said. "Frankly, I wish I’d been here a year earlier to deal with this issue," he added, noting that federal immigration hearings are "a kangaroo court."

"It’s not a beyond-reasonable-doubt standard for people to get deported," he said.

"The other side of the coin is that this would be putting people in situations where they could be federally indicted for violations of law. And you also have problems at state," he continued, noting that two federal grand juries are currently reviewing the behavior of the Juvenile Probation Department.

DUE PROCESS

Campos, a lawyer, appreciates that the new police chief is "genuinely trying to see if there is something he can do to resolve the situation. I believe if he had been in place where this discussion was going on a year ago, the mayor would have received better advice."

"The chief’s comments reflect that what is happening here is pretty extreme," Campos added. "I recognize that changing the reporting process to a third party would definitely be better than what we have now, where the final decision rests with a police officer. But while it’s better, it’s not sufficient. Due process necessarily entails giving people their day in court, and letting a judge decide what actually happens."

Sup. Chiu, a former prosecutor, also said he appreciates Gascón’s resolution attempt. "But the point of our system is that once you are arrested and charged, there are due process rights so you can respond to those charges."

Sup. Dufty, a mayoral candidate, said he expects that when the board passes laws, those laws will be implemented by Newsom. "As CEO of San Francisco, he has to comply with all legislation, including local laws the legislative body passes that he may not like," Dufty said.

"My mother was born in Czechoslovakia and was stateless when I was a boy," he added. "She had to register every year as an alien, so this is very visceral for me. If we are to be a sanctuary city, it’s because everyone has due process. It’s denying people’s humanity and dignity and creating a two-tiered system for justice."

But mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard continued to assert that Newsom’s current policy is balanced. "While he remains open to argument, the mayor believes the current policy strikes the right balance between protecting public safety and safeguarding the rights of accused criminals," Ballard, who had not replied to the Guardian‘s questions as of press time, told the Examiner last week.

But Trillin says she can’t stand to hear Ballard falsely claim, one more time, that the city is going to shield criminals. "Ballard keeps repeating a completely false position, because Newsom’s actual position is morally indefensible," Trillin said. "You can’t have the mayor publicly say that young people don’t deserve due process, so you have to make up stuff like this instead."

New coach, new approach

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October 13, 2009

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news@sfbg.com

The chief was running late. As a group of Guardian reporters filed into his modest, comfortable conference room on the fifth floor of the Hall of Justice, an aide told us that Police Chief George Gascón was still meeting with Mayor Gavin Newsom at City Hall, and that we’d all have to cool our heels for a while.

While we were waiting, Michelangelo Apodaca, a public affairs officer in the chief’s office (he called himself an “image strategist”) stressed the recent sea change at SFPD, labeling it “new coach, new approach.” (It appears, however, that the mayor is still pushing his so-called “quality of life” agenda. “I just came from a meeting where I got beat up for not doing enough about public drinking and public disorder,” the chief belatedly told us.)

But once we got into the interview, Gascón was friendly, candid, thoughtful, and accommodating, and spent nearly an hour discussing his philosophy of law enforcement, his vision for San Francisco, and his positions on some tricky and divisive problems.

We left with the impression that the new chief, although hardly in agreement with us on a number of issues, is far more open than his predecessor, willing to shake things up in the moribund department — and sometimes, interested in discussion and compromise on progressive concerns.

“My philosophy of policing is very heavy in community involvement, very transparent,” Gascón told us.

Gascón said he’s moving quickly on implementing many of the items that he’s promised, such as creating a COMPSTAT (computerized crime and staffing statistics) system that will be accessible to the public. He plans to launch it Oct. 21.

And beyond the technology, he seems interested in shifting the top-down structure of the department. “I said that we would reorganize the department in certain levels and do certain levels of decentralization to increase resources at the neighborhood level so that we actually have people within the police department who have greater ownership of neighborhood issues,” he said. “And we’re going to do that in November. I stated that we would have community police advisory boards at each of the stations, and those basically will be neighborhood-level people, anywhere from 10 to 20, for each station. We’ll work with our local captains on neighborhood-related issues.”

He said that improving how the department does community policing will have a two-fold impact. “One is, the cops get to understand better what the community really wants. The other is that the community gets to understand better what the resources really are.

“Everybody wants a foot-beat cop,” he continued. “Everybody wants a fixed-post cop. Everybody wants a cop in every bus. If we had 10,000 people, then perhaps we could fulfill all those wishes. The reality is that we don’t.”

EXPENSIVE CRACKDOWN

But the most tangible impact of Gascón’s tenure so far has been his crackdowns on drug-related activity in the Tenderloin, where more than 300 people at a time have been swept up in sting operations, and on marijuana-growing operations in the Sunset District, where 36 locations were raided (four of which Gascón said were discovered to be “legitimate” medical marijuana growers who had their crops returned by police).

The arrest surge generated a lot of positive press — but also is costing the city a bundle. Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who runs the county jail, told us that he had to reopen several jail housing units that had been slated to close to meet his budget for the current fiscal year. He said the average daily jail population in July was 1,861, but that it has risen to 2,146 in September, a 285 inmate increase.

If it stays at this level, Hennessey estimates that he’ll need up to $3.5 million in additional annual funding to house the larger population, as he indicated in a letter that he wrote to the Board of Supervisors last month, letting them know that he will probably need a supplemental budget appropriate this year.

When we asked Gascón whether affected city agencies — including the Sheriff’s Department, District Attorney’s Office, and Public Defender’s Office — should increase their budgets to deal with the SFPD’s new approach, he said they should.

There’s a touch of the corporate manager about Gascón. When we challenged him to defend the efficacy of the crackdowns, Gascón pulled out a pen and paper and started drawing a Venn diagram, with its three overlapping circles. He explained that many criminal justice studies have shown that about 10 percent of criminal suspects commit about 55 percent of the crime, that 10 percent of crime victims are the targets of about 40 percent of crimes, and that crime is often concentrated in certain geographic areas.

By concentrating on the overlap of these realms, Gascón said police can have a major impact on crime in the city. Although Gascón admits that “police can never arrest themselves out of social problem,” he also said “there are people who do need to be arrested … Most of the arrests are for serious felonies.”

It’s a potentially tricky approach — in essence, Gascón is saying that when you mix some people and some places (in this case, mostly people of color and mostly poor neighborhoods) you create crime zones. The difference between that and racial profiling is, potentially, a matter of degree.

But Gascón defended the surge in arrests over the last two months as targeting those who need to be arrested and, just as important, sending a message to the greater Bay Area that San Francisco is no longer a place where open-air drug dealing, fencing stolen goods, and other visible crimes will be tolerated.

“We need to adjust the DNA of the region,” he said.

And while Gascón said the arrest surge might not be sustained indefinitely, he also frankly said that the city will probably need to spend more money on criminal justice going forward. In other realms of the recent crackdown, such as the police sweeps of Dolores Park and other parks ticketing those drinking alcohol, Gascón said that was more of a balancing act that will involve ongoing community input and weighing concerns on both sides of the issue.

It was when we pushed for the SFPD to ease up busting people in the parks who were drinking but not causing other problems that Gascón told us that the mayor had a different opinion and had been chiding his new chief to be tougher on public drinking.

In light of several recent shootings by SFPD officers of mentally ill suspects, we asked Gascón whether he’s satisfied with how the department and its personnel handle such cases. He didn’t exactly admit any problems (saying only that “there’s always room for improvement”) but said he was concerned enough to create a task force to investigate the issue last month, headed by Deputy Chief Morris Tabak.

When we asked if we can see the report on the 90-day review, Gascón didn’t hesitate in answering yes, “the report will be public.”

FIRE TEN COPS?

If Gascón follows through with his promises, internal discipline — one of the worst problems facing the department — could get a dramatic overhaul. The new chief wants to clear up a serious backlog of discipline cases, possibly by reducing the penalties — but claims to be willing to take a much tougher stand on the serious problem cases.

In fact, Gascón said he wants the authority to fire cops — that power now rests entirely with the Police Commission — and said there are eight to 10 police officers on the San Francisco force who should be fired, now, for their past record of bad behavior. That would be a radical change — in the past 20 years, fewer than five officers have ever been fired for misconduct, despite the fact that the city has paid out millions in legal settlements in police-abuse cases.

Gascón also discussed controversial legislation by Sup. David Campos that would require due process before undocumented immigrant youths arrested by the SFPD are turned over to federal immigration authorities, an amendment to the sanctuary city policy that was weakened by Newsom.

Just days after arrived in town, Gascón had made comments to the San Francisco Chronicle supporting Newsom’s position and saying that under Campos’ legislation, “drug or even violent offenders could be released by judges on reduced charges in lieu of reporting them for possible deportation.”

But in the interview with us, while not backing away from his previous statement, Gascón seemed to take a more nuanced position that pointed toward the possibility of compromise. He reminded us that he’d spent time in Mesa, Ariz., tangling with a county sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who has gone far beyond any reasonable standard in trying to arrest and deport undocumented residents. He also told us that he doesn’t think the cops, by themselves, should decide who gets turned over the feds for deportation.

That alone is a significant step — and suggests that Gascón could turn out to be one of Newsom’s best hires.

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GASCON ON IMMIGRATION

SFBG Are you still concerned about waiting for the courts to determine a suspect’s guilt before turning him over to the feds? Gascón Yes, it’s very much a concern. And by the way, I fully understand the concerns Sup. David Campos brings to the table.

I have the benefit of being on the other side also, where you have police agencies aggressively engaged in immigration enforcement, where people that frankly were not engaged in any criminal activity other than being here without authority — which sometimes, by the way, is not criminal. In fact, depending on whose numbers you listen to, anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of people who are here without authority in this country have not committed a criminal violation; they have committed an administrative violation.

And people get deported. I have seen very young people, people that basically came to this country when they were three, four years old, they are actually staying clean, they are going to school, and they get stopped for a traffic violation at age 17 or 18, and now all of a sudden they are getting deported to a country where they really have no roots at all. I have seen that, and I’m very sensitive to that.

On the other hand, I think it’s important also to recognize that in any group, whether you were here legally or not legally, whether you were born here or not, whether you are green, red, or brown, there are people that for a variety of reasons aren’t willing to live by the social norms we all need to live by to be able to have a peaceful environment.

I think that allowing the process to go all the way to the point where a judge decides whether to allow this to continue … is probably too far down the food chain for my comfort level. On the other hand, I would not want to have police officers on the streets stopping people and trying to assess whether they are here legally or not.

So I think we need to find somewhere down the middle, that if person is arrested, there is a non-law enforcement review. And quite frankly, probably the best person would be the D.A. They determine whether they have a prosecutable case or not. If it’s prosecutable case and a predictable offense that requires reporting, then that would be a good time where a flag could go up.

SFBG But that’s not the process right now. Gascón No, the process now is triggered by the Probation Department, which is a law enforcement entity. So I think we have a process where law enforcement is making a decision and Sup. Campos is looking at a process of adjudication.

SFBG It sounds as if you agree substantially with Sup. David Campos. Is there room for compromise?

Gascón I’m hoping there is room for compromise, that is something we’re trying to work with.

Sarah Phelan and Rebecca Bowe contributed to this report.

Endorsements

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October 13, 2009

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San Francisco is facing the worst budget crisis in modern history. More than 1,000 employees, mostly front-line workers in the Department of Public Health, have been laid off, and the red ink continues. Yet the only measure on the November ballot that would raise any money for the city is Sup. Bevan Dufty’s plan to sell off naming rights for Candlestick Park.

That’s pathetic. During the summer budget discussions, Mayor Newsom vowed to work with business, labor, and the supervisors to come up with a reasonable plan to bring in some new cash for the city. But that collapsed — largely because state law would have made it hard to raise taxes this fall without a unanimous vote of the supervisors. And while eight members were willing to put a revenue measure on the ballot, the three supervisors closest to the mayor — Sean Elsbernd, Carmen Chu, and Michela Alioto-Pier, all Newsom appointees — refused to go along. And the mayor made only a weak effort to change their minds.

So while Democrats everywhere decry Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s insistence on a cuts-only budget, the Democratic mayor of San Francisco has forced essentially the same approach on this city. The only revenue increases we’re seeing are fees, like Muni fare hikes, that amount to taxes on the poor.

That’s the state of San Francisco as we head into what will almost certainly be a low-turnout election. Only two elected officials are on the ballot, and both are unopposed. Five ballot measures — several fairly significant — round out the local ballot. And with no big-name races at the top, they will win or lose on the votes of a small majority.

That’s too bad, because the issues matter. Vote Nov. 3 — and let’s hope next year’s ballot actually includes some new, progressive taxes.

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS

City Attorney

Dennis Herrera

San Francisco hasn’t always had a good track record with city attorneys. George Agnost, who ran the office in the 1970s and 1980s, was a dour, secretive, conservative lawyer who let downtown call all the shots. Louise Renne, who took over from Agnost, ran the office in the 1990s as if it was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Herrera, who took over in 2001, has been a major improvement. He’s turned the office into a modern operation, professionalized the administration, and taken on an activist role on consumer, environmental, and public-interest issues. He’s been a big supporter of marriage equality and of the city’s landmark health-care legislation. On his own initiative, he sued to end gender rating in health insurance and crack down on predatory payday lenders. He also moved to enforce health codes in housing and has been out front going after corrupt landlords like Skyline Realty.

We have some concerns about Herrera. Although he’s been far more sunshine-friendly than his predecessors, open-government activists are still sometimes forced to sue the city to get access to records. He won’t use his power as city attorney to enforce the Raker Act and bring public power to San Francisco. And during the current budget crisis, he cut the number of city attorney hours the supervisors can use to draft legislation.

And if, as rumored, he wants to run for mayor, Herrera needs to start taking public stands on major issues — like the unfairness of the local tax code and the need for new revenue.

But we’re happy to endorse him for another term.

Treasurer

Jose Cisneros

The incumbent treasurer is running unopposed, and we see no reason not to endorse him. He’s done some very positive things: Cisneros worked to get the big downtown law firms and other partnerships to pay their fair share of city taxes. He closed a tax loophole exploited by the big airlines that put up flight crews in local hotels.

He also convinced local banks and credit unions to accept consular identification cards to allow immigrants to open accounts and has pushed those institutions to offer "second-chance banking" to people with past credit problems. During his tenure, more than half of the 50,000 households in the city that lacked bank accounts have been able to get away from predatory check-cashing outfits and open legitimate accounts.

As an elected official, however, he could be doing a lot more. The city still keeps all its short-term accounts in one bank — Bank of America, which isn’t even local. Cisneros has promised to open that deal up to competitive bidding, but doesn’t have a timeline. And although nobody knows better than the treasurer how unfair and regressive the city’s tax codes are, he has never spoken out or offered any solutions. Cisneros says he wants his office to be apolitical, but city money is, by its nature, a political issue, and we’d like to see a little more leadership from the person who handles it. But overall, he’s a professional money manager who’s done a decent job and deserves another term.

Proposition A

Budget process

YES

We’re a little nervous about Prop. A, which would institute a two-year budget cycle for the city. Sup. Chris Daly, who opposes it, points out that the city controller’s budget projections are often wrong — badly wrong — and trying to plan 24 months ahead when economic conditions (and thus the city’s revenue stream) can change so quickly and unpredictably is a dangerous game.

But on balance, the approach in Prop. A makes sense. The budget debates would still take place every year, and the supervisors would still have to approve an annual budget — although the budget would be a rolling two-year projection. So next year, the board would approve a budget for 2010 and 2011, the following year for 2011 and 2012, and so on — leaving plenty of room for adjusting to meet economic changes. And two-year cycles might make it easier for nonprofits that rely on city funding to do some serious long-term planning.

Equally important, Prop. A requires the police and firefighters to negotiate their union contracts the same time the other unions do — before the budget deadline. The current system allows those unions to make demands that are unrelated to — and often outside — the current year’s budget realities.

Every progressive on the board except Daly supports this, and Sups. Alioto-Pier, Elsbernd and Chu oppose it.

Proposition B

Board of Supervisors aides

YES

This one’s a no-brainer. The City Charter mandates that each supervisor be allowed to hire two aides. The requirement dates back to a long-ago era when city budgets were far smaller, problems were less pressing and complex, and the supervisors worked part-time. It makes perfect sense to take such an archaic law out of the City Charter and allow the supervisors to set their own budgets — and staffing levels — the same way the mayor does. Vote yes.

Proposition C

Candlestick Park Naming Rights

NO

You have to give Sup. Bevan Dufty, the author of Prop. C, credit for trying. He’s looking for any angle he can use to help keep the 49ers in town, and allowing a corporate sponsor to pay for naming rights might possibly help cover the immense cost of substantially renovating aging Candlestick Park. And, like Prop. D (see below), this measure has a nice beneficiary: part of the money from naming rights would go to save the jobs of recreation directors, many of whom have faced budget-driven layoffs.

We agree that rec directors play a crucial role, particularly in neighborhoods with large numbers of at-risk youth. And we wish the Chamber of Commerce, Sup. Elsbernd, and other supporters of Prop. C were willing to accept some progressive tax hikes to fund those jobs.

But this isn’t a good deal. The city owns the stadium; the taxpayers financed its construction and spent 30 years paying off the bonds. But the 49ers, a private outfit owned by a very wealthy family, would get half the money from any naming deal. And the money that would come in would be radically short of what the team would need to rebuild the ‘Stick. Vote no.

Proposition D

Mid-Market special sign district

NO

Again: credit for the effort. David Addington, who owns the Warfield Theater and several other properties on mid-Market Street, accurately notes that the city’s main thoroughfare, between Fifth and Seventh streets, is rundown, ignored, and badly in need of an economic boost. He argues that allowing new digital billboards would create something of a Times Square in San Francisco, attracting tourists and turning mid-Market into a thriving theater district. Nothing else the city has done has worked — why not give this a try?

We aren’t necessarily opposed to digital billboards and we’d love to see mid-Market reinvigorated. But Prop. D would give too much authority to an unelected, unrepresentative group. It would amount to privatizing city planning and set a terrible precedent.

Under the measure, the Central Market Community Benefits District, a private group of property owners, organizations, and residents, would be authorized to approve new general advertising billboards as large as 500 square feet. The ads would have to meet city codes, but the Planning Department and supervisors would have no ability to block new installations. And the money — potentially millions of dollars a year — would go entirely to the property owners and the CBD, which would decide how to distribute it.

Yes, like Prop. C, this measure would help a worthy group: some of the new money would go to youth programs in the Tenderloin. But the process this measure describes isn’t at all democratic. The CBD board selects its own members, and the only oversight the city has is the ability of the Board of Supervisors to abolish the agency and start over.

We’re open to new ideas for central Market Street. We’re open to lights and ads and maybe even billboards. But we’re not willing to turn over zoning and public finance decisions to a private group. Vote no.

Proposition E

Advertisements on city property

YES

Proposition E, written by former Sup. Jake McGoldrick, would freeze new commercial billboards and ads on street furniture at 2008 levels and outlaw advertising on public buildings. It’s an extension of existing city policy, which seeks to limit the increasing blight of commercial ads in public space. Vote yes.

SFMTA report recommends extended parking meter hours

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October 13, 2009

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By Steven T. Jones

A just-released San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency study has recommend extending parking meter hours to Sundays and nights as a means of raising $8.8 million in annual revenue, increasing parking availability, and reducing traffic congestion and illegal parking – setting up a potential clash with Mayor Gavin Newsom, who opposes the idea and who appointed the MTA board members who will make the decision.

The detailed SFMTA study, launched in May as part of a budget compromise, took a neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach to its analysis, recommending varying hours and conditions to try to achieve the 85 percent occupancy rate it considers ideal. For example, 59 percent of metered spaces would have hours extended to 9 pm Monday through Thursday and until midnight Friday and Saturday, while 23 percent of spaces would remain at 6 pm on weekdays and 9 pm on weekends. And at 17 percent of meters with the lowest parking availability, drivers would need to plug meters until midnight everyday except Sunday, when metering hours would end at 6 p.m. citywide.

“This proposal for extended meter hours fits into a larger vision of the SFMTA’s overall transportation and parking policy goals and furthers San Francisco’s Transit First policy,” Nathaniel P. Ford Sr., executive director of the SFMTA, said today in a prepared statement. “Parking meters create parking availability and they support economic vitality by helping business customers find parking when they need it.”

Gavin Newsom’s “reform” pitch

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October 13, 2009

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By Tim Redmond

Mayor Gavin Newsom doesn’t have enough money to do a major statewide TV buy, but he’s making his early pitch, and trying to define the race, with a new internet ad. Calitics points out that the ad

mentions not once, but twice, both the Constitutional Convention and eliminating the 2/3rds rule. Newsom is positioning himself as the candidate of not just “change” but of structural reform:

Of course, those of us who live in San Francisco know that Newsom has done nothing — nothing — in terms of real structural reform in the city, and has pused a Schwarzenegger-style no-new-taxes budget. He was at first very wary about Constitutional change, but now is embracing it, sensing, no doubt, that the mood of the public is so down on Sacramento and Sacto politiciians that the concept of fundamental change is attractive — even when peddled by someone who has no credentials as a “change” candidate.

But for Jerry Brown, this is serious stuff — the candidate who defines the race first is often in a much better position to make the case for his or her election. And Newsom is trying to define the race as insider-outsider, change v. politics as usual. Brown may have the poll numbers and the money, but if he sits around and lets Newsom define the race, he’s playing a dangerous game.

Newsom’s fundraising and ethics challenged

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October 13, 2009

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By Steven T. Jones

The San Francisco Chronicle has a solid lead story today about how Mayor Gavin Newsom seems to be violating Prop. H, a campaign finance reform measure that he wrote and promoted last year. Reporter Heather Knight unearthed compelling evidence, but then unfortunately bought the bullshit excuses from Newsom’s notoriously unethical treasurer Jim Sutton and concluded the contributions “don’t appear to violate the letter of Proposition H.”

I suspect it was Knight’s editors who made her pull the punch because some of the donations seem squarely banned by Prop. H – with Newsom essentially giving away public funds to entities that then gave to his gubernatorial campaign (not to mention giving his wife an acting job). What do you think?

Meanwhile, the ironically named “I Love You Gavin Newsom” has an interesting post today on a similar topic, questioning whether Newsom is getting unreported in-kind political contributions from Twitter. The story isn’t well-sourced, but it does raise an interesting question and is worth a read.

Newsom reneges on parking, but the MTA shouldn’t

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October 7, 2009

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By Steven T. Jones
409-cover.web.jpg
The Guardian explored the politics of parking in our July 1 cover package.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which will soon consider a long-awaited study into how to generate more than $1 million in additional parking meter revenue that was part of a May budget deal, faces another test of whether it is truly an independent agency or merely Mayor Gavin Newsom’s puppet.

As the backlash over extended meter hours in Oakland caused the City Council there to cave in to driver and merchant demands, Newsom – who likes to dress in green but has never really challenged the dominant car culture’s sense of entitlement – has signaled that he now wants to break the deal he helped broker and stop meter hours from being extended.

But under 2007’s Proposition A, which Newsom supported, this isn’t a decision for either the mayor or the Board of Supervisors, but instead for the theoretically independent MTA board. In fact, the whole argument for that change was based on giving that body the power to do the right thing even when craven, conflict-averse politicians get cold feet.

“Any decision on whether to extend meter hours is under the SFMTA Board of Directors,” confirmed SFMTA spokesperson Judson True, who also said the study is almost complete and could be released as soon as next week. He said it is a “study of parking with a variety of factors that will determine whether extended hours is a good idea.”

Drivers and merchants may squawk over extending meters into the evening hours, but with the city failing to put general revenue measures on the ballot and motorists not even coming close to paying for their full impacts and use of public spaces, this is a basic equity issue.

Muni riders took the biggest hit in the May budget deal, with their fares doubling since Newsom took office. Unlike in Oakland, San Francisco is well-served by public transportation, so there’s no good reason why motorists need such fiscal coddling. Newsom may be afraid, but the MTA board shouldn’t be.

SF vs. Frank Lembi

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October 6, 2009

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news@sfbg.com

One of San Francisco’s largest and most notorious landlords and the many shell corporations under his control have been withholding money from their tenants, the banks that financed their rapid real estate acquisitions, and even San Francisco’s public treasury.

But while the banks have acted, seizing property from the delinquent borrowers, city officials have let Skyline Realty, CitiApartments, Lembi Group, and related corporations stonewall the city and pay far less property taxes than they should have owed, depriving city programs of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The various corporations run by real estate mogul Frank E. Lembi (who has not returned our calls seeking comment) have earned a terrible reputation in San Francisco, even as they’ve expanded their rental property holdings in recent years.

An award-winning, three-part Guardian series ("The Scumlords," March 2006) documented how the companies used intimidating goons and an arsenal of nefarious tactics meant to drive out low-income tenants from rent-controlled units, prompting City Hall hearings and an ongoing lawsuit against the enterprise by the City Attorney’s Office.

Then, earlier this year, many tenants joined a class action lawsuit against the Lembi enterprises, alleging the landlords have been illegally withholding deposits from departing tenants as a routine business practice, even after admitting that the tenants were entitled to full refunds (see "CitiApartments once again accused of mistreating tenants," Politics blog, July 15).

Attorneys for the firm Seeger Salvas LLP filed the complaint, which tells several appalling stories, including that of Joy Anderson. When Anderson went to retrieve the deposit she was owed, CitiApartments employees allegedly threatened her in front of her eight-year-old son, telling her that if she wanted her money back, she should talk to a lawyer.

Yet in that lawsuit and the one filed by City Attorney Dennis Herrera, which deals with harassment of tenants and other business practices that the city contends are illegal, Lembi’s empire has refused to cooperate, employing a variety of delay tactics. The city’s lawsuit has been stuck in the discovery process for years.

A court filing by the city alleges Lembi’s enterprise has participated in "well over a year of discovery gamesmanship." New counsel for the defendants has promised to speed things up, but Herrera told us it is still an ongoing battle. "It has been incredibly hard to get documents and information in this case. He’s been stonewalling us," Herrera told the Guardian.

Seegar Salvas attorney Brian Devine said six defendants named in his complaint didn’t respond to discovery requests and were found to be in default by the judge, meaning they basically opted not to contest their culpability. Meanwhile, 75 other defendants did respond but haven’t turned over any documents to the plaintiffs, dragging out the discovery process.

"It’ll take sometime for anything to happen," Devine told us. "There’s no Matlock moment where it all comes to a head. There are a lot of procedures to go through."

And apparently the Lembi enterprises know a little something about how to use legal and bureaucratic procedures to hang onto their money for as long as possible, judging from how they’ve worked the process to avoid paying the full amount of property taxes on their holdings.

At last count, there were 13 property foreclosure lawsuits pending on Lembi properties because he couldn’t pay the loans. The banks have seized many of his properties and started selling them off. But while the banks are getting their due, the Assessor’s Office and city taxpayers seem to be getting stiffed.

Lembi has been on the radar of city officials for quite awhile, but he is still managing to avoid getting some of his recently purchased properties reassessed, according to a Guardian investigation of city records. For example, one Lembi-controlled corporation — Trophy Properties X — snatched up a Russian Hill parking garage for $4.7 million in 2007.

Under Proposition 13, that property should have been reassessed when it was purchased, but it wasn’t. The current taxable price tag on the property is still slightly more than $443,000, a gap that costs the city upwards of $50,000 a year in taxes.

In general, property is reassessed at fair market value when there is a change in ownership, increasing the taxes owed on the property. According to the California Board of Equalization, the purchase price is the basis for reassessed value in most cases, although officials can also take into account comparable sales and other factors to increase value even more.

Yet nearly three years later, this property still hasn’t been reassessed.

Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting told the Guardian the reason for the delay is because Lembi hasn’t been cooperative in providing the information needed to do a reassessment. We obtained an October 2007 letter sent out by the Assessor’s Office requesting Lembi’s limited liability corporation provide information on the acquisition of the property and statistics on the garage itself. That letter and others went unanswered.

Common sense suggests that the sale price be used to reassess the garage and be done with it. Yet Ting said he fears that using that price would result in an inaccurate reassessment, which in turn might screw up the amount of taxes the city could ultimately collect. Then again, simply waiting on the unresponsive Lembi enterprise has resulted in less taxes being collected on the parking garage last year and again this year, according to public tax records.

"We try to get it right the first time. If we don’t get it right the first time, then oftentimes it creates a lengthier appeals process and a much lengthier, more adversarial [relationship] between us and the taxpayer," Ting said. "We absolutely don’t want to reassess that property too low because of Prop. 13. You only get one chance, so you have to be high."

Ting told us that the only recourse he has with an uncooperative taxpayer like Lembi is to reassess using information from similar properties in the same area. Once this is done, the negligent taxpayer can either agree with or challenge the new market value, a move that would switch the burden to Lembi. But that wasn’t done for the Russian Hill parking garage.

"That’s the only recourse we have, meaning that we can’t fine them; we can’t subpoena them; we can’t force them to give us the information," Ting said. "By law, they’re supposed to give us the information. But there are no real enforcement powers behind it."

According to Section 480 of the Revenue and Taxation Code, the assessor does have an option and can levy a penalty if a property owner fails to file a change in ownership statement, which can be up to 10 percent of the taxes due on the newly appraised value.

Several other Lembi-controlled properties have been reassessed recently after a delay, including 19,650-square-foot apartment building down the street from the parking garage at 2238 Hyde St. Before the reassessment, the property was valued at a little over $1 million. The current value is $11.7 million, which amounts to a tax bill of more than $137,000 this year.

Lembi bought the building in December 2005, and the Assessor’s Office got in just under the wire of the four-year statue of limitations for reassessments. Last year the taxes paid on the building came to a little more than $13,000, based on its previous $1 million value.

Then there is the 31,812-square-foot apartment building on 1735 Van Ness Ave. that Lembi bought back in June 2006. According the city records, the taxes paid last year on the property were nearly $48,000 based on a market value of $3.9 million. Recently the building was reassessed with a value of $9.6 million. This year’s taxes amount to more than $114,000. Whether or not the Van Ness Avenue building is a case in which the Lembi Group also withheld information is currently being looked into by the Assessor’s Office.

Yet on the Russian Hill parking garage, Lembi is still getting away with withholding the necessary documents for an accurate reassessment — and time is running out. In a little over a year, the statue of limitations runs out and the city will no longer be able to collect anything from Lembi.

Further complicating the city’s efforts to collect is the fact that some other the properties in question have been foreclosed on.

When the Russian Hill garage and other Lembi properties went back to the banks, the Assessor’s Office looked into what could be done to collect the city’s lost revenue. Its solution: a transfer tax. But that was not an option because the bank held the main mortgage, so it wasn’t considered a change of ownership.

Even though the parking garage and other properties have slipped out of Lembi’s control, he is still responsible for the taxes on them during his period of ownership, according to Ting. But given the experiences of others who have tried to collect money from Lembi, that could be a long, expensive process.

While the Lembi enterprises may be stingy in giving the city and tenants their money, they haven’t had a problem making political campaign contributions. Taylor Lembi, grandson of Frank, gave $500 to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s reelection campaign in 2006, according to public campaign contribution records, although Newsom’s campaign offices returned the money exactly two months later (Newsom’s campaign office didn’t respond to our questions about the contributions or reason for returning it).

Skyline Properties, parent of Skyline Realty, also donated $100 to Newsom’s initial mayoral campaign in 2003, and supported Mayor Willie Brown before that. Lembi continues to be a prominent landlord, the subject of a sympathetic profile by the San Francisco Apartment Association in August 2008.

Yet with lawsuits mounting, the banks foreclosing, and the real estate market slumping, the multigenerational Lembi empire that once controlled more rental units in San Francisco than any other entity appears to be in trouble.

And lest anyone slide under its control unaware, the Lembi empire’s many enemies have organized into a group called CitiStop, supported by groups that include the San Francisco Tenants Union and Pride at Work, which argues that "nothing frightens CitiApartments more than knowledgeable tenants."

www.citistop.live.radicaldesigns.org/index.php

www.sfaa.org/aug2008/0808chapleau.html

Editor’s Notes

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October 6, 2009

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

The folks at SEIU Local 1021 have been getting the mayor’s panties in a bunch lately — and it’s caused Newsom to make something of an ass of himself.

The union, which represents city employees, is still seething about the mayor’s failure to follow through on a deal he cut during the summer budget crunch. The way it was supposed to work, the union members gave $38 million in concessions, and Newsom agreed to hold off on major layoffs until this November — when he was going to support a measure to raise new revenue for San Francisco.

That never happened, and the layoff notices — more than 600 of them — have gone out, mostly to women of color who work on the front lines in the Department of Public Health. At the same time, the city’s forcing some skilled workers into lower-paid job classifications, in essence slicing their pay by more than 20 percent.

So the union put out a flyer demanding that Newsom stop the layoffs — and when a Local 1021 member handed it to the mayor at an event Sept. 28, Newsom went ballistic. According to union member (and certified nursing assistant assistant) Evalyn Morales, the mayor "said, ‘this is a lie,’" referring to the flyer. He then went on to say: "I don’t want to do anything to deal with the union. I hate Robert [SEIU organizer Robert Haaland]. What you’re doing now is hurting me … I hate Robert. I don’t want to do anything for the union."

Which is all too typical of how Newsom responds to criticism — particularly when the critics are going around to his gubernatorial campaign events and reminding people that this is the mayor who, like (Republican) Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, produced an all cuts, no-new-taxes budget. He gets pissy. He loses his shit. He looks like … well, like someone who isn’t quite ready to be the governor of the nation’s most populous and probably most complex and contentious state.

Wake up, City Hall – and get moving on CCA

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October 6, 2009

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Wake up, City Hall – and get moving on CCA

EDITORIAL San Francisco’s chance to create a semblance of public power, through community choice aggregation, faces a devastating threat from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. — and the city needs to move with a sense of real urgency to get this program off the ground.

CCA would allow San Francisco to buy electric power in bulk and sell it to customers at a reduced cost. It wouldn’t create a true public-power system — PG&E would still own the transmission facilities. And while customers would see price breaks, the city wouldn’t make much money off the deal. But it would be a major step toward breaking PG&E’s illegal monopoly.

The giant private utility desperately wants to avoid that, but right now its options are limited: The state law that authorizes CCAs, written by then-state Sen. Carole Migden (D-San Francisco), bars utilities from interfering with or trying to shoot down community attempts are creating the buying coops. So PG&E is paying to collect signatures for a statewide ballot initiative that would mandate a two-thirds vote before any city, county, or public agency can attempt to create or expand a public-power utility.

We all know what the two-thirds vote requirement has done in Sacramento — it’s paralyzed the Legislature. The PG&E initiative would do the same thing, making it almost impossible for any community to get rid of the dirty, high-priced power the utility peddles.

It’s going to take a huge statewide effort to defeat that initiative, and San Francisco — the only city with a federal mandate for public power — ought to be leading the way. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has been pushing the issue, and the supervisors have passed a resolution opposing the measure. That’s a start, but city officials need to do a lot more. We suspect the initiative may violate Midgden’s law — by any reasonable standard, PG&E is interfering with the rights of local government here — and San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is investigating the issue. He needs to move aggressively and quickly to determine whether the city has a legal case that could get the measure thrown off the ballot. If so, he needs to connect with city attorneys in other public-power cities and launch a full-scale legal assault.

But if it looks as if a legal strategy won’t fly. Herrera, Mayor Gavin Newsom, the city’s state Legislative delegation and every other elected official in San Francisco needs to be speaking out against the measure — and working to set up a statewide coalition that can raise money to defeat it. The measure can’t be fought just with a few press conferences and statements of support — every public-power city, including Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Santa Clara, needs to be on board, with a high-profile campaign committee and public officials across the state holding fundraisers and looking to build a war chest in the millions of dollars.

And in the meantime, San Francisco absolutely must be moving at full speed to get its own CCA measure passed, in place and under way before this initiative gets on the ballot. For several years now, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has been dragging its feet on CCA, and General Manager Ed Harrington is hardly making it a top priority. That has to change, now. Mirkarimi, as chair of the board’s Local Agency Formation Commission, is pushing the PUC to get the process moving, and the mayor, who claims to support CCA, needs to direct Harrington to press forward as if there were a hard deadline of next spring for implementation. Because if the PG&E measure makes the spring 2010 ballot, and wins, San Francisco’s program will have to be fully under way — or it will be dead.

Other than Mirkarimi, who is trying to organize statewide opposition, nobody at City Hall seems to be taking this threat seriously. It’s time to wake up, folks — the future of public power, and all the benefits it could bring San Francisco, is on the line. *

Who’s afraid of the angry nativists?

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October 6, 2009

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Text and photos by Sarah Phelan

Is this man the true face of those who want immigrant kids deported without a chance to prove their innocence?

Yesterday, hundreds showed up to support Sup. David Campos proposal that the city’s sanctuary policy be amended so that only immigrant youth who have actually committed a felony be referred to the feds for deportation. And during the four-hour hearing that ensued, only two people showed up to oppose the Campos amendment.

One of these two opponents is pictured above (forgive the ochre hue, but lighting in the Board chambers is tricky) and he seemed to be slurring his words.

The other described himself as an “openly gay person” and asserted that his sexual orientation is “not a choice.”

“But coming here is in violation of federal law,” this gentleman continued. “As a tax paying resident, I resent my tax dollars being used to settle a claim of the Bologna family, because the city failed to deport Edwin Ramos.”

Kudos to this gentleman, who didn’t share his name, for laying out the nativist argument against giving immigrant kids a chance to prove their innocence. (Especially since no one from the Mayor’s Office showed up to defend Newsom’s policy, which he implemented last July without any public input or notice.)

But as Campos politely pointed out to this gay, tax-paying resident, if the amendment which Campos is proposing was already in place, Ramos would have been deported while he was a youth.

And as others pointed out during yesterday’s hearing, some youth come here to escape persecution for their sexual orientation, others come because their parents brought them when they were very young, others come to send money to their cash-strapped families, and others were born here to undocumented parents and have never set foot in Latin America, even though some folks assume they are undocumented just because they are brown.

But let’s face it, those on the right who oppose the Campos amendment aren’t going to be swayed by reason, not when it comes to banging the drum for a good ol’ wedge issue like immigration, just before the 2010 elections.

Campos’ civil rights legislation heads to Board

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October 5, 2009

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Text and photos by Sarah Phelan

Sup. David Campos’ proposal to amend the city’s sanctuary ordinance so that it extends due process to youth inched one step closer to becoming law, today.

During the Oct. 5 meeting of the Board’s Public Safety Committee, Board President David Chiu and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi recommended that the Campos proposal be sent to the full Board for consideration later this month.

Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, who said she wanted the Campos proposal to be first heard in a closed session of the Board, voted against Chiu and Mirkarimi’s recommendation.

But as Campos noted, the legal implications of his proposal have already been publicly aired, thanks to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to leak a confidential City Attorney memo to the Chronicle—a memo now posted at the Mayor’s website.

“I know a lot has been said about this piece of civil rights legislation,” Campos said at today’s hearing “And this is a piece of civil rights legislation that deals with the specifics of the city’s sanctuary ordinance and more precisely a very narrow and measured amendment to that legislation.”

“And I understand the very important role that the supervisors play in a number of issues involving civil rights,” added Campos, noting that he was sitting in the seat once occupied by Sup. Harvey Milk, the now legendary gay rights activist.

Campos also thanked the dozens of civil and human rights organizations that support his legislation, including several LGBTQ groups, and his seven co-sponsors on the Board—Board President David Chiu and Sups. John Avalos, Bevan Dufty, Eric Mar, Sophie Maxwell, Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly.

Together, these colleagues have given Campos a veto-proof majority in face of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ongoing opposition towards Campos’ proposed changes.

That opposition crystallized in August, when Newsom leaked a confidential memo to the Chronicle, in an apparent effort to deal the Campos legislation a preemptive strike.

Newsom agrees to meet with Local 1021

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October 5, 2009

4

By Tim Redmond

The members of SEIU Local 1021 have agreed to stand down for a day, suspend their unfair labor practices claim and hold off on sending protesters to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s campaign events — and he’s agreed to meet with the union tomorrow (Tuesday) morning to discuss their grievances.

Larry Bevan, a Local 1021 shop steward who works as a site tech at Laguna Honda Hospital, told me that Labor Council director Tim Paulson has agreed to mediate the discussion.

“I am told that the mayor will be there personally,” Bevan said. “Going through intermediaries doesn’t seem to be working.”

The union wants to challenge the mayor to live up to his promise during budget season — that he’d work to find a way to raise new revenue this fall so that 600 union members, most of them women of color, most of them front-line service workers in the Department of Public Health, wouldn’t face layoffs.

It’s too late for a ballot measure to raise new revenue. That plan fell apart when it became clear that the supervisors would not unanimously declare a state of fiscal emergency — a move that would have allowed a revenue measure to pass with a simple majority of the vote. WIthout all 11 supervisors, any attempt to raise taxes would require an insurmountable two-thirds majority.

The Oakland City Council agreed unanimously to seek new revenue, but in San Francisco, Supervisors Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto and Carmen Chu refused. All three were originally Newsom appointees.

Elsbernd told me that the mayor’s office tried to get him on board, but he refused to bend. The reforms that the mayor was proposing weren’t strong enough to get the relatively conservative supervisor to drop his opposition to new taxes. “Oh, they tried, all right,” Elsbernd said. “But the reform was bogus. I said no.”

But I have to wonder how serious Newsom was: He never picked up the phone and called Elsbernd personally. His chief of staff, Steve Kava, did that job.

Sorry, Mr. Mayor — when there are millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs on the line, if you actually want to get a reluctant supervisor who owes his career to you on your side, you talk to him personally. It still might not have worked — but sending an aide over with the message was clearly doomed to fail. It almost seems as if Newsom was fine with that.

At any rate, the unions will try to get Newsom’s support for a new fee on alcoholic beverages, money that could go directly to DPH. Maybe he’ll go along; maybe he’ll drag his feet. Still, Local 1021 got him to the table, which these days, with this mayor, is quite an accomplishment.

The local list of censored stories

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October 2, 2009

2

539-cover.web.jpg
By Guardian News Staff
Every year, when the Guardian covers the release of Project Censored’s list of underreported news story, we also try to list a few local stories that didn’t get the coverage they deserve. For 2009, they include:

Gavin Newsom’s no-new-taxes budget
When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Republicans in Sacramento insisted that they wouldn’t raise taxes to address the budget deficit, it was big news — and plenty of San Francisco officials were critical. When Mayor Gavin Newsom took the exact same stance — no new taxes — the news media largely ignored the story and let him off the hook.

What happened to the tax measures?
Last winter, there were big fights over putting revenue measures on the fall ballot. Progressives dug in and fought through a mayoral veto. Commissions were convened. Polls were taken. Promises were made. And then the election deadline simply passed and it was as if the whole thing never happened.

The demise of newspapers
The San Francisco Chronicle has done a few, weak stories about its own extensive layoffs, and other news outlets have discussed the paper’s shaky finances. And the news industry fretted about MediaNews gobbling up most Bay Area newspapers. But there’s been little deep analysis or attention to the end game: What would San Francisco be like with no daily newspaper? Is that where this city is headed? Who will speak truth to power?

Newsom goes ballistic at SEIU

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October 2, 2009

11

By Tim Redmond

The mayor is getting a wee bit sensitive about a flier from SEIU local 1021 that accuses him of breaking his word during contract talks. And he’s clearly getting more and more angry at the 1021 activists who are following him to fundraising events and making noise about his labor record. (The union plans to appear in Los Angeles Oct. 5 when Newsom holds a gala with Bill Clinton)

In fact, on Sept 28th, around 6:45 p.m., union member (and certified nurses assistant) Evalyn Morales approached the mayor at a Filipino Americans for Progress event and handed him a copy of the flier (PDF). It charges that the mayor had cut a deal with the union that he hasn’t kept:

“The deal was that city workers would make $38 million in concessions to help with the city’s half-billion budget deficit if the city would let the workers keep their jobs long enough (5 more months) for government, business and city workers to put a revenue measure on the Nov. 2009 ballot. …. Suddenly, the deal’s off … Newsom and his board allies prevented a revenue measure from reaching the ballot.”

And it notes that 600 union workers have received layoff notices — and virtually all of them are women of color.

(They’re also mostly lower-level jobs — the Management Employees Association hasn’t faced any real layoffs, and the mayor’s staffers — including five people in the press office — continue to be well compensated.)

Newsom, according to Morales, was furious to see the flier. And apparently he lost his shit. Here’s her account of the interaction, taken from a sworn statement she filed with the union:

“He said ‘this is a lie,’ referring to the flier. “I don’t want to do anything to deal with the union. I hate Robert [SEIU organizer Robert Haaland]. What you’re doing now is hurting me …. I hate Robert. I don’t want to do anything for the union.”

Harsh.

In fact, Local 1021 is planning to file a complaint with California’s Public Employee Relations Board citing the mayor’s statements as intimidation and harassment.

Now: I can’t speak to the legality of what the mayor did under labor law, but I can say that it fits in with something we’ve seen all too much over the years: Newsom loses his temper over little stuff. He can’t take a punch; the minute you go after him he gets all pissy and says stupid stuff (like “I hate Robert.” How statesmanlike and gubernatorial.)

Nathan Ballard, his press secretary, isn’t exactly conciliatory, either. Here’s what he sent me when I asked him about the incident:

Jerry Brown turns up gubernatorial fundraising heat

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October 1, 2009

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Text by Sarah Phelan

Jerry Brown is reporting via Twitter that Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen–Hollywood’s Big Three in terms of political fundraising–are throwing down in support of Brown’s gubernatorial bid.

Obama raised millions via this threesome’s efforts, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Newsom campaign responds to this fiscal challenge…

Pushing back against Newsom’s leaked memo war

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September 30, 2009

3

Text and photos by Sarah Phelan

Remember how Mayor Gavin Newsom leaked a confidential City Attorney memo about the implications of Sup. David Campos’ proposal to extend due process to undocumented youth?

And how Newsom made everyone else wait two weeks before deigning to release said memo, even though he told the Guardian that he had every right to waive his attorney-client privilege and distribute the Campos memo to whomsoever he pleased?

Well, this week a number of folks are preparing to file complaints with the Sunshine Taskforce a) about the Mayor’s Office’s selective release of this memo and b) his office’s subsequent refusal to release any other communications related to the leak.

And today, a group of civil rights organizations released a legal brief that responds to City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s leaked memo on the city’s immigrant youth policy. (You can read the brief in full here.)

Also today, Sup. David Campos participated in a tele-press conference in which legal experts and professors explained why Campos’ proposed amendment, which has an Oct. 5 hearing before the Board of Supervisors’ Public Safety Committee, is legally tenable and defensible.

And along the way, Campos and these experts, who included Angie Junck of the Immigrant Legal Resources Center, Robert Rubin of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, Julia Mass of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, Professor Bill Ong Hing of UC Davis Law School and Angela Chan of the Asian Law Caucus, succeeded in debunking a number of myths about the Campos amendment.

As the brief explains, the Campos’ proposal, “will allow immigrant youth to have their day in court and be heard by an impartial judge, ensuring due process is upheld for all of San Frnacisco’s youth,” “ensure that families are not torn apart because a youth is mistakenly referred for deportation,” “encourage cooperation between law enforcement and immigrant communities by reestablishing a relationship based on trust and therefore increasing public safety,” “lessen the risk that the city will be liable for racial profiling, unlawful detention and mistaken referrals of U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants for deportation,” and “bring the city’s juvenile probation practices into compliance with state confidentiality laws for youth.”

And as today’s brief further explains, the Campos proposal won’t prevent referral to ICE of youth who have sustained felony charges and won’t put the sanctuary ordinance at risk.

“The sanctuary ordinance has stood strong for twenty years, and the proposed amendment strengthens the ordinance by taking steps to bring the city’s practices more into compliance with state juvenile justice law,” states the civil rights brief, which was prepared by the Asian Law Caucus, Legal Services for Children, Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, San Francisco Immigrant Legal & Education Network, and the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee.

“In short, the legislation is a measured step in the right direction that will help restore accountability and fairness in the City’s treatment of immigrant youth.”

And as Campos told reporters today, his proposed amendment, “ is something we drafted very carefully in close consultation with the City Attorney’s office.”

Mayor Gavin Newsom directs wind power energy to the Guardian!

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September 29, 2009

5

By Rebecca Bowe

Newsom wind.jpg
Photo courtesy Luke Thomas, Fog City Journal

Here’s the scoop: The San Francisco Bay Guardian will get 50 megawatts of wind power, courtesy of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Don’t get excited — the mayor was only kidding. Newsom’s witty remark came in response to a question by local journalist and blogger Luke Thomas, when he asked the mayor who would own the energy being generated by the municipal wind turbines that are envisioned throughout the city in a report unveiled today.

Newsom’s response: “I hope it’s the Bay Guardian.”

SFBG publisher Bruce B. Brugmann was delighted by the news, and immediately emailed a San Francisco Chronicle City Hall reporter to say he was available for comment on how he plans to use the power.

The press conference was held to announce the recommendations of San Francisco’s Urban Wind Power Task Force, a group convened to study possibilities for small urban wind projects in the city. The vision involves siting turbines at famous city landmarks, mapping micro-climates to figure out how best to harness wind energy potential, and making it easier for small urban wind projects to be permitted.

“Wind needs to be part of the urban mix,” Newsom said. “There are still a lot of questions, but nonetheless there’s a lot of enthusiasm.” Wind-power demonstration sites could include the Civic Center Plaza, The W Hotel, a new San Francisco Public Utilities Commission headquarters on Golden Gate Ave., and Treasure Island, Newsom said.

My question for Newsom was whether the city’s Community Choice Aggregation effort, which has a stated goal of supplying publicly owned power generated by 51 percent renewable energy by 2017, would be integrated into the bold new wind-development plans. The overarching vision of the Wind Power Task Force report is to develop 50 megawatts of wind power over the next few decades, a much longer time line than the initial 2017 target established by CCA. Newsom replied, “It certainly could be. I haven’t gotten that far along.”

To which we’d like to respond: Did you have a nice time on that PG&E-funded trip to Mexico?