Newsom

The real defenders of San Francisco values

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By Steven T. Jones
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While Mayor Gavin Newsom gallivants around the country – he’s been back east accepting accolades for same-sex marriage and Healthy San Francisco and trying to shore up White House support for his Treasure Island and Hunters Point redevelopment schemes – other city leaders are doing the hard work of restoring San Francisco values.

On Wednesday, there are two shining examples of this uphill battle that take place on opposite ends of Civic Center Plaza. First, SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi hosts “Justice Summit 2009: Defending the Public and the Constitution,” which highlights the importance of constitutional guarantees of quality legal representation for all defendants, regardless of income level, a right that has been eroded by budgetary pressures in San Francisco and around the country.

Among the long list of respected legal thinkers will be a keynote speech by US District Judge Thelton Henderson, who has ordered California to finally do something about severe overcrowding and substandard medical care in its prisons – a laudable and courageous stand that has been met with utter cowardice, contempt, and pandering by state officials. That event begins at 10 a.m. in the main library’s Koret Auditorium.

Then, at 1:30 in City Hall, the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee will consider a proposal by Board President David Chiu to reject the terrible and short-sighted budget that was just approved by the Municipal Transportation Agency, which reduces Muni service and increases the fare to $2 while asking little from motorists (who will increase in numbers as more people eschew taking transit) or from Muni chief Nat Ford, whose $316,459 salary is the highest in city government (again, Newsom’s doing).

These are difficult issues that require hard work (and more revenue from the well-heeled city residents that Newsom is siding with in blocking a special election on tax measures), but it’s good to see we still have some public-spirited elected officials who are willing to take risks and work for San Francisco values instead of simply campaigning on them.

CBDG switcheroo is not a done deal

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For anyone who believed that Mayor Newsom was merely proposing a) to merge the Mayor’s Office of Community Investment with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and b) change how community block development grants are spent, and that none of this would happen until he got the Board of Supervisors’s approval, as is required, according to the City charter, here’s a letterthat suggests that the MOCI/OEWD merger is a done deal, and that changes to community development block grants use are about to be rammed through, give or take a community comment, or two.

Dated April 16, the missive states that, “The Mayor’s Office of Community Investment (MOCI), now merged with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, is proposing to amend the 2005-2009 Consolidated Plan.”

The Consolidated Plan, in case you are wondering, sets forth the strategy and goals for the city’s use of four federal funding sources: community block development grants, emergency shelter grants, home investment partnerships and housing opportunities for persons with AIDS.

According to the OEWD April 16 missive, Newsom’s proposed amendment seeks to undertake “economic development, housing and public service activities with CDBG funds” and promote “innovative programs in economically disadvantaged areas.” It also designates the Western Addition as a “neighborhood revitalization strategy area.”

You can check out the entire draft plan here.

The solar project heads for a vote

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By Tim Redmond

Lots of talk about the Sunset reservoir Solar proposal over the weekend; the Chron weighed in with a fairly weak story that just did the he-says-she-says without getting into any of the real issues. And Julian Davis has a pretty detailed analysis here, at Fog City Journal.

The simple point is that the contract the supes are about to sign off on isn’t a great deal for the city. We’re going to be paying a lot of money to a private company to do something the city ought to be able to do itself.

I had conversations last week with a number of supervisors, and it’s looking like some of the progressives — John Avalos and Eric Mar, for example — are leaning toward supporting the project. Mar told me he’s been listening to the Sierra Club, which is often a good thing to do when it comes to alternative energy, but in this case I think the traditional enviros are so thrilled that there’s actual a viable solar project on the horizon that they’re not spending enough time on the details.

In fact, I spoke with John Rizzo, the Sierra Club’s point person on the project, and he told me that “The Sierra Club doesn’t care about the details of the contract. We’re not contract experts. We just want to see this happen.”

He agreed that it’s infuriating that so much of the federal alternative-energy money is going to the private sector, and said he’d support legislation that would give public agencies access to the same sort of money private companies get in tax breaks. “But global warming isn’t waiting,” he said. “Let’s build this one with this kind of a deal, and try the have the city build the next one.”

I with Rizzo in spirt, but the truth is, we’re going to regret this deal.

The only reason it makes sense to pay Recurrent Energy to do this is that Recurrent gets a $12 million tax break, and the city, as a public agency, doesn’t qualify for that money.

Let me make a humble suggestion. Rep. Nancy Pelosi is, I believe, still the speaker of the House. She’s managed to get San Francisco something like a billion dollars for the Chinatown subway. I’m willing to bet a case of Bud Light (and I don’t make bets that valuable easily) that if the mayor of San Francisco called Rep. Pelosi and told her that the difference between building a five-megawatt solar project and not building it was $12 million in federal money — so little in terms of federal spending that it’s what Mirkarimi calls “decimal dust” — San Francisco would have a promise of that cash so fast that Newsom couldn’t even find a shovel to break ground before the check arrived.

And the thing that frustrates me is that nobody’s even trying.

The supes ought to send this deal back to committee and take a real look at ways the city can do the same project, and own it, for less money. I refuse to believe that’s not possible.

And if Gavin Newsom wants to say he can’t make this work, then he’s going to have a hell of a time convincing any of us that he has the ability to run the State of California.

Newsom’s Spanish-speaking ringer

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By Tim Redmond

The San Jose Mercury News just busted Gavin Newsom for using a Spanish-speaking (sorta) ringer in his campaign announcement. Turns out the guy isn’t an immigrant; he’s a Mission District doctor who is the ex-husband of Newsom’s education advisor and SF School Board member Hydra Mendoza.

Don’t shoot the shipyard messengers

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Rev. Amos’ Brown’s recent op-ed in the Examiner is the latest in a string of attacks on anyone who suggests that anything about Lennar’s redevelopment plan could be improved.

These types of attacks are called “shooting the messenger.” And while they can be effective in silencing critics, they don’t address the problems contained in the message that the (now smeared) messenger was delivering.

In this latest instance of shooting the messenger, Amos’ target is the outspoken Minister Christopher Muhammad, who leads the Nation of Islam mosque on Third Street in Bayview Hunter’s Point and represents the Muslim school that sits adjacent to the shipyard.

Muhammad, who is good at firing up his followers with feisty soul-shaking speeches, has taken to comparing Florida-based developer Lennar to an invasive Burmese python, ever since Lennar failed to control toxic asbestos at the shipyard.

Muhammad also has taken to saying that if Lennar had screwed up in Pacific Heights and the kids at the school had been white, the response from Mayor Gavin Newsom and corporation would have been very different—and Lennar would likely have been fined more than $500,000, which is equal to the cost of one of the 10,500 condos that they are planning to build on the shipyard and Candlestick Point in the next decade.

Muhammad, who has been making these comments at just about every commission, hearing, and meeting citywide, recently took his show on the road to embarrass Newsom at the townhalls in Napa and San Jose, where the man who wants to be California’s next governor was hoping to seduce supporters with speeches and a sunny smile, not be shouted down by a black minister shouting about asbestos and poor innocent children.

Last month, Newsom responded to Muhammad’s crashing of his gubernatorial run in what seemed like sour grapes manner: according to columnists Matier and Ross, Newsom saw that a letter was fired off to Muhammad’s school, with the help of Brown, demanding that $24,000 (of unpaid back rent totaling $168,000) be settled in 30 days, or the school—and with it the kids—will face eviction.

Herrera lobbies for Healthy San Francisco

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By Steven T. Jones
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When I arrived back at San Francisco International Airport last night, weary after a long trip from Prague, I was surprised to bump into City Attorney Dennis Herrera. We chatted a moment and he told me that he was taking a red eye flight to DC to lobby the US Labor Department into supporting our Healthy San Francisco program.

As you may remember, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association has been mounting an aggressive (but so far unsuccessful) legal challenge of the city’s universal healthcare program, which is partially funded by employer contributions. GGRA is now trying to get the US Supreme Court to overturn the 9th Circuit’s ruling in the city’s favor.

Bush’s Labor Department filed an amicus brief supporting GGRA’s contention that the program violates the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, a stance Herrera hopes the new administration will reverse. “We have higher hopes for the Obama Labor Department, so this is a preliminary discussion that Dennis is having with them,” Herrera spokesperson Matt Dorsey told me today.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, a former restaurateur who belonged to GGRA, claims credit on the gubernatorial campaign trail for Healthy San Francisco (which was actually created by then-Sup. Tom Ammiano), but did little to either get it passed or to defend it against attack from his allies. As with same-sex marriage, the other big feather Newsom tries to wear in his candidate’s cap, it is Herrera who’s doing the heavy lifting while Newsom pretends to Californians that he’s leading San Francisco.

Short-sighted solar

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By Tim Redmond

The supervisors voted yesterday to continue for one week the proposal to let a private company build a solar plant on the Sunset reservoir. I’m glad the supes didn’t approve the project, but a week’s delay isn’t enough. This contract has real problems, and needs to be sent back to committee for a complete overhaul.

Harvey Rose, the supervisors budget analyst, pointed out one flaw that he urged the board not to accept: The deal would require the supes to waive their right to oversee annual appropriations for the project, essentially locking the city into spending money on it every year for the next 25 years.

The Sierra Club is pushing this, arguing that right now the city doesn’t have the money and only a private contactor can make this sort of project happen. I disagree: The city has the ability to float bonds for a project like this, and a solar bond act would pass by about 75 percent in San Francisco, and if local officials think there’s no way to lverage some federal money for this, they aren’t trying hard enough.

In fact, the appropriations deal means that the city will be financing the project, anyway, for all practical purposes. The vendor, Recurrent Energy, wants to use the contractual guarantee of annual funding to convince lenders to support the project.

Why is San Francisco so insistent on letting the private sector run our energy business? Oh, I can think of one reason: I see campaign video now.

“Gavin Newsom built the largest solar energy project in any American city — without taxypayer money.”

Great campaign line when you’re running for governor. And by the time the taxpayers actually get stuck with the bill, this mayor will be long gone.

Historic proportions

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news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY "110 The Embarcadero" is the stately address of a building that doesn’t exist yet. But the battle that continues to be waged over this proposed development, along with skirmishes that are brewing over other proposed buildings nearby, speaks volumes about a complicated tug-of-war that is emerging over a prominent slice of the city’s northern waterfront.

Preservationists are concerned about saving a union hall on Steuart Street that housed the International Longshoremen’s Association during the strike of 1934, which would be razed to build 110 The Embarcadero. That’s one of a number of historic properties critics say could face the wrecking ball as new building plans are drafted. Other proposals, among them 8 Washington and 555 Washington, have neighborhood activists anxious about long skyscraper shadows that could be cast on public parks, the development pressure that would result from allowing skyscrapers to exceed height limits, and views of the bay that would be enhanced from inside luxury high rises but blocked to others.

On the other side of the coin, building-trades union members increasingly desperate for work are fervently advocating for new construction projects that would open the spigot on jobs. And the Port of San Francisco hopes development money will help cover its huge infrastructure backlog.

Meanwhile a report released in early April by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission noted that the waterfront stretch from Pier 35 to the Bay Bridge is one of the most vulnerable to sea-level rise. As plans for this part of the Embarcadero are hashed out in public hearings and architects’ sketches, a new reality must be factored into the mix: some of that land could soon be underwater.

MISSING HISTORY


110 The Embarcadero initially won praise for its goal of attaining the highest certification level for nationwide green-building standards. Sponsored by Hines Interests, it was a shining example of ecodesign that even featured living vines climbing the sides. Even though it would shoot 40 percent above the allowable height limit of 84 feet, the San Francisco Planning Commission gave it a green light.

Enthusiasm waned, however, when historic preservationists pointed out that the building slated for demolition — 113 Steuart St. — was an ILA labor hall during the famous maritime strike of 1934, which erupted into violence after two union members were gunned down by police and led to a four-day general strike that paralyzed the city. "Harry Bridges rose to fame in this building," says architectural historian Bradley Weidmeier, referring to the famous labor leader. "Labor historians from around the country are going to be blocking this."

Hines hired a leading historic architecture firm, Page & Turnbull, to conduct a historic assessment of that building as part of the planning process. Yet the initial report neglected to mention anything about the building being at the center of a profound moment in San Francisco’s labor history.

Former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, an opponent of the project, says the gaps in information weren’t hard to miss. "The fact that it was ground zero for bloody Thursday, that it was ground zero for the general strike … that people were shot in front of there, that their bodies lay inside. You want to know how we found that out? We got it online," Peskin said.

Page & Turnbull later submitted an addendum, including historic photos depicting people crowding into the two-story building to pay respects to the slain union members. The firm acknowledged its historic significance this time, but asserted that the now-empty building had undergone too many retrofits to comply with historic landmark requirements.

This, too, was challenged by project opponents. "You can look at pictures of dead people laying there on the sidewalk with that building in the background, and look at it today, and godammit, it’s pretty much the same building," Peskin says.

The Board of Supervisors in mid-March approved an appeal of the project and instructed city planners to prepare an environmental impact report. Ralph Schoenman, a preservation advocate who says he met with board members about the project, told us that "members of the board were plainly shocked by finding out that the historic report was so flawed and untrue."

That feeling may have lingered for some at the April 21 bard meeting when Supervisors voted 7-4 to reject Mayor Gavin Newsom’s nomination of Ruth Todd, a Page & Turnbull principal, to the city’s Historic Preservation Commission.

WHOSE WATERFRONT?


Though the project has been stalled, the issues it stirred are gaining momentum. The picture of what this stretch of the Embarcadero could look like is shaping up to be quite different from developers’ gauzy artistic renderings. Sue Hestor, a land-use lawyer, is a driving force behind a community-led meeting scheduled for June 24 at the headquarters of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 34 (the successor to ILA) to initiate a new approach to development along the western edge of the Embarcadero.

"Threatened demolition of the 1934 Waterfront Strike headquarters at 113 Steuart has pulled us together," Hestor wrote in a widely disseminated e-mail. "The community will proactively start defining changes we want. No more waiting for a developer proposal, then meekly responding. The community gets to define how the city should look … along the northeast waterfront. When you start at the Embarcadero it is possible to weave in so many areas, so many neighborhoods, so much of our political and immigrant and labor history."

ILWU members are joining with preservationists in the effort to preserve 113 Steuart. "We are at a historic moment when working people are under unprecedented attack," a team of six Local 34 leaders wrote in a recent statement opposing the demolition. "That living history is a prologue to our struggles of the future."

Not all labor unions agree. At a picket staged by San Francisco’s Building and Construction Trades Council outside a Democratic Party luncheon April 21, protesters carried a few flew signs reading "How can we feed our kids with history?" The signs referenced the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, but the same question might be asked of 110 The Embarcadero, which was favored by building-trade workers.

Neighborhood groups are also worried because the construction of the two proposed 84-foot condominium towers at 8 Washington could cause the adjacent Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club to lose half its facility. "Six hundred to 700 kids come every summer to learn to swim and to play tennis," Club director Lee Radner says. "To us, it’s just a matter of the developer not considering the moral issues of the neighborhood club that has given so much to the community." Friends of Golden Gateway (FOGG), which formed to preserve the club in the face of development, has hired Hestor as its attorney.

Because the development would be partially built on a surface parking lot controlled by the Port Commission, a parcel held to be in the public trust under state law, developers proposed a land-swap to get around provisions prohibiting residential uses in those parcels. Renee Dunn, a spokesperson for the Port Commission, noted that the Port’s annual revenues total $65 million, while the amount that would be needed for repairs and maintenance of its century-old infrastructure is almost $2 billion. In general, "Public-private developments provide the dollars needed to make improvements," she told us.

In the wake of concerns about 8 Washington, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu sent a letter to the Port Commission requesting an update to the waterfront plan for that area. "Concerns are currently being raised regarding the proposed development … and the future development of seawall lots along the northern waterfront, and I share many of these concerns," Chiu wrote. In response, the Port agreed to conduct a six-to-eight month focus study for those seawall lots.

Meanwhile, a quietly growing problem may mean that plans for this stretch of the Embarcadero will get more complicated. A report released in early April by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission predicts a 16-inch rise in the level of the San Francisco Bay by 2050, and a 55-inch rise by 2100, based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Along San Francisco’s waterfront, the most vulnerable area will be from Pier 35 to the Bay Bridge, the report found. "Sea-level rise has been linear, and it’s continuing, and we expect that based on what we know about climate change, it will accelerate," notes Joe LaClair of BCDC. In the event of storm surges, he adds, "we will have to find a way to protect the financial district from inundation."

As local governments begin to get up to speed on mitigating the effects of climate change, new questions — beyond developers’ plans vs. neighborhood input — will have to come into play. One that BCDC plans to tackle in coming months, LaClair notes, is: "What does resilient shoreline development look like?" It’s a good one to start asking now.

Going nuclear

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news@sfbg.com

April Fool’s Day is known as a day for practical jokes designed to embarrass the gullible.

But Assembly Member Tom Ammiano’s legislative aide Quentin Mecke says the April 1 letter that Ammiano and fellow Assembly Members Fiona Ma and state Sen. Leland Yee sent Mayor Gavin Newsom urging him not to support a proposal to bury a radiologically-contaminated dump beneath a concrete cap on the Hunters Point Shipyard was dead serious.

In their letter, Ammiano, Ma, and Lee expressed concern over that fact that federal officials don’t want to pay to haul toxic and radioactive dirt off the site before it’s used for parkland. They noted that an "estimated 1.5 million tons of toxics and radioactive material still remain" on the site.

A 1999 ordinance passed by San Francisco voters as Proposition P "recognized that the U.S. Navy had for decades negligently polluted the seismically-active shipyard, and that the city should not accept early transfer of the shipyard to San Francisco’s jurisdiction, unless and until it is cleaned up to the highest standards," the legislators wrote. "Given the information we have, a full cleanup needs to happen," Mecke told us.

But Newsom’s response so far suggests he may be willing to accept the Navy’s proposal.

WAR WASTE


From the 1940s to 1974, according to the Navy’s 2004 historical radiological assessment, the Navy dumped industrial, domestic, and solid waste, including sandblast waste, on a portion of the site known as Parcel E. Among the materials that may be underground: decontamination waste from ships returning from Operation Crossroads — in which atomic tests in the South Pacific went awry, showering Navy vessels with a tidal wave of radioactive material.

"We have serious questions about the city accepting what is essentially a hazardous and radioactive waste landfill adjacent to a state park along the bay, in a high liquefaction zone with rising sea levels," the letter reads. "We understand that the Navy is pushing for a comparatively low-cost engineering solution which the Navy believes will contain toxins and radioactive waste in this very unstable geology. We hope that you and your staff aggressively oppose this option."

Keith Forman, the Navy’s base realignment and closure environmental coordinator for the shipyard, told the Guardian that the Navy produced a report that did a thorough analysis of the site.

The Pentagon estimates that excavating the dump would cost $332 million, last four years, and cause plenty of nasty smells. Simply leaving the toxic stew in place and putting a cap on it would cost $82 million.

Espanola Jackson, who has lived in Bayview Hunters Point for half a century, says the community has put up with bad smells for decades thanks to the nearby sewage treatment plant. "So what’s four more years?" Jackson told the Guardian.

Judging from his April 21 reply to the three legislators, who represent San Francisco in Sacramento, Newsom is committed only to a technically acceptable cleanup — which is not the same thing as pushing to completely dig up and haul away the foul material in the dump.

He noted that during his administration federal funding for shipyard clean-up "increased dramatically, with almost a half-billion dollars secured in the last six years." Newsom also told Ammiamo, Ma, and Yee that the city won’t accept the Parcel E landfill until both the state Department of Toxic Substances Control and the federal Environmental Protection Agency "agree that it will be safe for its intended use."

The intended use for Parcel E-2 is parks and open space, said Michael Cohen, Newsom’s right-hand man in the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. The Navy won’t issue its final recommendations until next summer. "That’s when regulatory agencies decide what the clean up should be, whether that’s a dig and haul, a cap, or a mix of the two, " Cohen explained.

TRUCKS OR TRAINS?


Part of the Navy’s concern is the expense of trucking the toxic waste from San Francisco to a secure landfill elsewhere — someplace designed to contain this sort of material (and someplace less likely to have earthquakes that could shatter a cap and let the nasty muck escape).

David Gavrich and Eric Smith say the Navy is looking at the wrong solution. Gavrich, founder of the shipyard-based Waste Solutions Group and the San Francisco Bay Railroad, which transports waste and recyclables, and Eric Smith, founder of the biodiesel-converting company Green Depot, who shares space with Gavrich and a herd of goats that help keep the railyard surrounding their Cargo Way office weed-free, say the military solution is long-haul diesel trucks. But, he observes, the waste could be moved at far less cost (and less environmental impact) if it went by train.

Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, a nonprofit that specializes in tracking military base reuse and cleanup operations, would also like to see the landfill removed, even though he’s not sure about the trucks vs. train options.

"We don’t have confidence about having a dump on San Francisco Bay," Bloom said. "I’m concerned about the relationship between budgetary dollars and remediation of the site. I’m concerned that the community’s voice, which is saying they’d like to see the landfill removed, is not being heard."

Mark Ripperda of EPA’s Region 9 told us that community acceptance is important, but a remedy must also be evaluated using nine specific criteria.

"A remedy must first meet the threshold criteria," Ripperda said. "If it passes the threshold test, then it is evaluated against the primary balancing criteria and finally the modifying criteria are applied."

Noting that he has not received any communication from either the Assembly Members or the Mayor’s Office concerning the Parcel E-2 cleanup, Ripperda said that "the evaluation of alternatives considered rail, barge, and truck transport, with rail being the most favorable transportation mode for the complete excavation alternative. However, the waste would still be transported and disposed into a landfill somewhere else and the alternatives must be evaluated under all nine criteria."

Ripperda said it’s feasible to remove the worst stuff — the "hot spots" — and cap the rest. "A cap will eliminate pathways for exposure and can be designed to withstand seismic events," he told us. "The landfill has been in place for decades and the groundwater data shows little leaching of contaminants."

Meanwhile Newsom has tried to redirect the problem to Ammiano, Ma, and Yee, saying he seeks their "active support in directing even more state and federal funds" toward cleaning up the shipyard. He made clear he wants to move the redevelopment project forward — now.

Sen. Mark Leno is carrying legislation that includes a state land swap vital to the city’s plans to allow Lennar Corp. to build housing and commercial space on the site.

But while Cohen claims the aim of the land trade is to "build another Crissy Field," some environmentalists worry it will bifurcate the southeast sector’s only major open space. They also suspect that was the reason Leno didn’t sign Ammiano’s April 1 letter.

Leno says that omission occurred because Sacramento-based lobbyist Bob Jiroux, who Leno claims drafted the letter, never asked Leno to sign. (Jiroux refused to comment.)

Claiming he would have signed Ammiano’s letter given the chance, Leno described Jiroux as a "good Democrat" who used to work for Sen. John Burton, but now works for Lang, Hansen, O’Malley, and Miller, a Republican-leaning lobbying firm in Sacramento whose clients include Energy Solutions, a Utah-based low-level nuclear waste disposal facility that stands to profit if San Francisco excavates Parcel E-2.

Ammiano dismisses the ensuing furor over Energy Solutions as a "tempest in a teapot.

"I signed that letter to Newsom because of the truth that it contains," Ammiano said. "Sure, there’s crazy stuff going on. But within the insanity, there’s a progressive message: the community wants radiological contaminants removed from the shipyard."

Send the solar project back to committee

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By Tim Redmond

We’re all in favor of buidling a solar-energy generating station on the Sunset reservoir. But the plan that’s coming before the Board of Supervisors today is deeply flawed. At best, it ought to be amended to ensure that the city winds up with the power plant after seven years at an affordable rate; at worst, it ought to be scrapped and the city should start over again, with the idea that this is and ought to be a public-power project, built and run by the city.

“I don’t understand how we can keep talking about public power while we give these resources over to private businesses,” Sup. David Campos told me. He’s right.

He and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi are trying to slow this thing down. Sup. John Avalos voted for it in the Budget Committee, but told me he’d consider sending it back for more discussion. I hope he does that; this thing isn’t ready for approval at this point, and the progressives on the board ought to stick together and make sure it’s a better contract.

Otherwise we’ll wind up with a private company controlling local energy resources, and Gavin Newsom trumpeting it as his latest environmental triumph.

Newsom’s kitchen

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By Tim Redmond

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Okay, I know this is totally unfair, since the real-estate agents typically do a staging setup for these photos, but if this is really Gavin Newsom’s kitchen, I have to ask: Does he ever eat there? Nothing in the scene suggests that anything is ever cooked here. No knives, no pans, no cutting boards … on the other hand, that there is one hell of a well-stocked liquor cabinet — and since the mayor doesn’t drink, he must be quite the host. (One advantage of brown — it doesn’t show the spills.)

Newsom video, corrected

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By Tim Redmond

Gavin Newsom went to Sacramento this weekend to once again take credit for what others (particularly Assemblymember Tom Ammiano) have done.

But at least there’s a video now that corrects the record. Check it out.

Ammiano for governor?

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By Tim Redmond

I don’t see why not — after all, Tom Ammiano as a supervisor was responsible for the two main accomplishments Mayor Gavin Newsom takes credit for in his slick campaign video.

Newsom says that San Francisco is “well on our way to universal health care.” Yes, that’s true — and it’s because Ammiano — with zero help from Newsom — pushed through the Healthy San Francisco law.

The mayor also claims that the city’s bond rating is up and that San Francisco is relatively fiscally sound because of the Rainy Day Fund. Again — that was Ammiano’s bill, and Newsom did absolutely nothing to help pass it.

“He want to be the governor of appropriations, because he appropriates everyone else’s ideas,” Ammiano told me.

Truthfully, Newsom has very little in the way of actual accomplishments (except for same-sex marraige, which is a major accomplishment he can take a lot of credit for, but isn’t pushing and doesn’t even mention in his campaign video.)

What a fucking fraud.

Slow down the solar project

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EDITORIAL The concept is so good it’s hard to imagine why anyone would criticize it: the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission wants to cover the Sunset Reservoir with solar panels, creating the largest municipal solar generating project in the country. The money would come from existing SFPUC revenue — no new taxpayer dollars. The Sierra Club loves the idea, and Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing it.

We agree that the reservoir is a perfect place for a solar project, and that the city ought to be pursuing this.

But the structure of the deal makes us uncomfortable — and the financing shows a serious flaw in how federal money for renewable energy is allocated.

Under the terms of the proposal, a private company, Recurrent Energy, would finance and build the plant at a cost of perhaps $40 million. The facility would have the capacity to generate 5 MW of electricity, enough to power 2,500 houses. The city, in turn, would agree to buy that power for the next 25 years, at about 23.5 cents per kilowatt hour — far more than the current market rate for electricity but less than what other cities have agreed to pay for long-term solar contracts.

The city would have an option to buy the plant from Recurrent after seven years for $33 million.

The good news is that this would be a public-power project — the city would own the electricity and could use it to power public buildings and eventually, once the community choice aggregation (CCA) system is running, could sell it as retail power to residents and businesses.

But Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos have asked the obvious question: Why is a private company even involved? Why can’t the city build the solar generating station itself? The CPUC’s answer: It’s cheaper to let Recurrent do the work — because the private outfit will get a $12 million tax break from the federal government.

That’s a serious problem — why is the Obama administration giving tax breaks for private projects that aren’t available to cities? "What we should be looking at is why San Francisco, with all its clout in Washington, can’t get that same sort of subsidy for a public project," Campos told us.

Or as Mirkarimi put it: "This only makes sense to me if there’s some guarantee that the city will actually buy the plant in seven years. Otherwise we’re going to look back at this in year 15 and realize it’s not such a good deal."

The city’s energy future is very much up in the air right now — CCA is on the cusp of viability, there’s still an active public-power movement, and it’s very hard to say what the city’s needs will be (or what the price of solar energy will be) 10 years from now, much less 25. So we’re very nervous about signing a contract of that length with a private company.

Yes, the Recurrent deal offers solar now — and that’s important. But the supervisors shouldn’t rush this through. At the very least, they should pass a resolution asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to seek to direct the same subsidies that private companies can get to public solar projects — and to delay a final vote on this until there’s a better analysis of why a private company should be given a long-term contract for what ought to be a public project. *

Uncivil unions

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steve@sfbg.com

Who really cares about an appointment to the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors? There isn’t a delicate balance of power on the board or any major initiative at stake in this fairly obscure district. San Francisco certainly has more pressing issues and concerns.

Yet the Board of Supervisors’ April 14 vote to reject Larry Mazzola Jr. and select Dave Snyder for that board says more about San Francisco’s political dynamics, the state of the American labor movement, the psychological impact of the recession, how the city will grow, and the possibilities and pitfalls facing the board’s new progressive majority than any in recent memory.

It was a vote that meant nothing and everything at the same time, a complex and telling story of brinksmanship in which both sides of the progressive movement arguably lost. And it was a vote that came at a time when they need each other more than ever.

"It was a win for the Newsom-oriented elements of labor," Sup. Chris Daly, who helped spark the conflict, told the Guardian.

The bloc of six progressive supervisors who shot down Mazzola — who helps run the powerful plumbers union and was the San Francisco Labor Council’s unwavering choice for an appointment that has traditionally been labor’s seat on the bridge board — is the same bloc the unions helped elected last year. It is also the same bloc that has been fighting the hardest to minimize budget-related layoffs.

The vote says a tremendous amount about the crucial alliance between progressives and labor, how that delicate partnership formed, and what the future holds.

PLUMBERS VS. PROGRESSIVES


The Mazzola name carries a lot of weight in San Francisco labor circles. The Web site for the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry Local 38 (UA 38) features a photo of U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis standing between Larry Mazzola Sr. and Larry Mazzola Jr., the father and son team that runs the union.

But the Mazzolas and their union are also controversial. As the Guardian has reported ("Plumbers gone wild," 2/1/06), the union owns a large share of the Konocti Harbor Resort (which a lawsuit by the Department of Labor said was a misuse of the union’s pension funds) and owns the Civic Center Hotel, which tenants and city officials say has been willfully neglected by a union suspected of wanting to bulldoze and develop the site. The plumbers and other members of the building trades have also fought with progressives over development issues and generally back moderate-to-conservative candidates.

Sup. Chris Daly and several progressive groups locked horns with the union over the hotel a few years ago, and Mazzola Sr. responded by opposing Daly’s 2006 reelection campaign, targeting him with nasty mailers and donating office space to Daly’s opponent, Rob Black. Yet more progressive unions like Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents city employees, convinced the Labor Council to back Daly and union support helped Daly win.

So when Mazzola Jr. came before Daly’s Rules Committee last month, the supervisor unloaded on him, and Mazzola gave as good as he got, telling Daly he didn’t want his support and defiantly telling the committee he didn’t know much about the bridge district, or its issues, but he expected the job anyway. Those on all sides of the issue agree it was a disaster.

"He was just patently unqualified for the position," Daly told the Guardian. Mazzola tells us his experience with labor contracts would be an asset for the position, but he admits the committee meeting didn’t go well. "I was caught off-guard and put in a defensive mode that altered my planned presentation," Mazzola told us.

Whatever the case, Sup. David Campos joined Daly in keeping the Mazzola nomination stuck in committee while the progressive supervisors privately asked labor leaders to offer another choice. "We said, ‘Give us anyone else as long as they can intelligently talk about transportation issues and the bridge district," Daly said.

But labor dug in. "It seemed as though the board was trying to dictate to labor what labor should do," Michael Theriault, who heads the San Francisco Building and Construction Trade Council. And the other unions decided to back the trades, for a number of complicated reasons.

"The reason we supported Larry Mazzola is because this was important to the plumbers union," said Mike Casey, president of the Labor Council and head of Unite Here (which includes the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union). "To the extent we can support the trades, we want to."

So when the four most conservative members of the Board of Supervisors used a parliamentary trick to call the Mazzola nomination up to the full board on April 14, the stage was set for the standoff.

THE STATE OF LABOR


Labor is truly a house divided, despite its universal interest in minimizing recession-related layoffs and taking advantage of a new Congress and White House that is generally supportive of labor’s holy grail: the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it far easier to form unions.

The April 25 founding convention of National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) in San Francisco caps a years-long battle between Sal Rosselli’s United Healthcare Workers (UHW) and their SEIU masters (see "Union showdown," 1/28/09). Rosselli and many others say SEIU under Andy Stern has become undemocratic and has climbed in bed with corporate America, while SEIU says getting bigger has made the union better able to advocate for workers. Both accuse the other of being power-hungry and not fighting fair.

"Inside SEIU, we’ve been struggling for four years basically on a difference of ideology and vision of what the labor movement is," Rosselli told us. David Regan, who SEIU named as a UHW trustee after ousting Rosselli, told us the union divisions have been overstated by the media. "Everyone is together in pushing the Employee Free Choice Act," he said, glossing over the fact that the legislation is in trouble and recently lost the support of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Nationally, SEIU has been at war with all of the most progressive unions. The union recently made peace with the California Nurses Association after a particularly nasty struggle that involves many of the same dynamics as SEIU vs. NUHW, including accusations by CNA that SEIU was a barrier to achieving single-payer healthcare and was illegally meddling in its internal affairs.

SEIU is also accused of breaking up Unite Here, which fought the most high-profile labor battle here since Newsom became mayor in its contract fight with the big hotel chains. Last month, a large faction from the old Unite affiliated with SEIU, whose officials say they were just helping out after the end of what all knew was a bad marriage. "This is an example of a merger that didn’t take," SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette told us. But the building trades have backed Unite Here in its fight against Sterns’ SEIU. As Casey told us, "We’re in a major fight over our right to exist. There’s no other way to characterize it."

Yet in San Francisco, SEIU plays a different role. Local 1021 is the advocate for the little guy, representing front-line city workers who deliver social and public health services. It is the union facing the deepest layoffs in the coming city budget fight and is still negotiating contract givebacks with the Mayor’s Office. The union’s biggest allies in City Hall are the exact same six supervisors who voted against Mazzola.

So why this standoff? SEIU, Unite Here, and other progressive unions share the Labor Council with the building trades, which are traditionally more conservative and friendly with downtown and, these days, starting to really get desperate for work. "We have thousands of guys on the verge of losing their homes and families," Theriault said. "We are desperate."

That was one reason the San Francisco Labor Council last year cut a deal with Lennar Corporation to back Proposition G, which lets Lennar develop more than 10,000 homes in the southeast sector of the city. Daly, who wanted firmer guarantees of more affordable housing, was livid over the deal and has been at odds with the council ever since. But Daly said labor’s undercutting of progressives goes back even further and includes the early reelection endorsement Rosselli’s UHW gave Newsom in 2007, which helped keep big-name local progressives out of the race.

Tenants groups, affordable housing advocates, and alternative transportation supporters form the backbone of progressive politics, but on development projects, they often clash with the trade unionists who just want work. And labor expects support from the progressive supervisors. As Mazzola pointed out, "It was labor that got most of those guys elected."

But labor has its own fights on the horizon. SEIU fears deep city job cuts if the Mayor’s Office can’t be persuaded to start supporting new revenue measures. NUHW is getting challenged by SEIU for every member the try to sign up. And Unite Here’s hotel contracts start expiring in six months, reopening its battle with downtown hotel managers.

"We’re going to be in a real war with some of those employers," Casey said. Yet he said its actually good time for the otherwise distracting fights with SEIU over how nice to play with big corporations. "I embrace this fight because I think this is exactly the struggle we need to have in the labor movement."

But the Mazzola fight was one that neither side relished.

TO THE BRINK


The Board of Supervisors chambers was filled with union members flying their colors on April 14, but the progressive supervisors were just as unified, voting 6-5 to reject Mazzola. All that was left was the political posturing, the decision of what to do next, and the fallout.

"I am disappointed and surprised by the board’s action," Sup. Sean Elsbernd (who voted for Mazzola and publicly called it "a sin" to deny him) told us, refusing to confirm the private joy over the outcome that many sources say he has expressed. "What shocked me is a majority of the board turned their back on labor."

Daly admits that the standoff hurt progressives. "I’m not sure who came up with it, but it’s certainly true that the Sean Elsbernds of the world were able to take full advantage of the situation to drive a wedge between unions and progressives," Daly said.

Yet Daly noted how ridiculous is was for Sups. Elsbernd and Michela Alioto-Pier to be publicly professing such fealty to labor while opposing revenue measures that would minimize layoffs. "At the same time the plumbers were attacking me, I was sponsoring paid sick days," Daly said. "It’s the six members of the board that are the most pro-labor who voted against Larry Mazzola."

Politically, Elsbernd says the progressives misplaced their hand. "I think the easy middle ground for them was to reject Mazzola and send it back to committee," Elsbernd said. Others echoed that point. Instead, supervisors appointed Synder, a widely acclaimed transportation expert who created the modern San Francisco Bicycle Coalition then started Transportation for a Livable City (now Livable City) before becoming the first transportation policy director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

"I don’t like how that went down, and I’m not happy with the inability of the board and labor to come to an agreement," Snyder told us. "I was stuck in the middle. I wish they had sent someone the board could have agreed to."

After the vote, Snyder went back to the SPUR office and resigned. SPUR director Gabriel Metcalf admits that labor leaders lobbied him to pressure Snyder to withdraw his name, and that he asked Snyder to do so. But Metcalf said he didn’t want to lose Snyder, whose vast knowledge of transportation issues as been a real asset to SPUR. "It was his choice and not my preference."

"This issue is not why I left SPUR, but it was the precipitating event," said Snyder, whose progressive values have occasionally differed from SPUR’s stands. "My sense of social justice has more to do with class issues than I was able to pursue at SPUR."

In fact, the clashes between progressives and developers (who are often backed by the trade unions) often revolve around how much affordable housing and community benefits will be required with each project approval. Snyder said the defining question is, "How do we accommodate development in San Francisco and maintain progressive values in a capitalist economy?"

He didn’t answer that question, but it is one the building trades also understand. Theriault said he supports holding developers to high standards, even when progressives have block certain projects to get them. "I’m okay with that as long as I see the endgame," Theriault said.

He expects the progressive board to listen to labor more than Daly or Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin, who Theriault said helped shore up the progressive opposition to Mazzola (which Peskin denies). "With the exception of Daly, the relationships are reparable. But they have to show some independence from Daly and Peskin," Theriault said. "The real fear for me is what comes next."

Theriault was referring to things like new historic preservation standards that supervisors will soon consider, as well as the string of big development projects coming forward this year. And for progressives, they hope their efforts to save city jobs will be followed by labor support for progressive candidates for the Board of Supervisors (such as Debra Walker and Rafael Mandelman) in next year’s election.

"The one thing I know about labor is, we’ve been screwed by politicians on the left and the right," Casey said. "Are we angry about this and disappointed? Yes. But does that mean the alliance between labor and progressives is dead? No. We’re going to work through this stuff, talk, take deep breaths, and move forward."

NUHW’s founding convention takes place April 25 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Everett Middle School, 450 Church St., San Francisco.

Editorial: Slow down the Sunset solar project

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Why is the Obama administration giving tax breaks for private projects that aren’t available to cities?

EDITORIAL
The concept is so good it’s hard to imagine why anyone would criticize it: the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission wants to cover the Sunset Reservoir with solar panels, creating the largest municipal solar generating project in the country. The money would come from existing SFPUC revenue — no new taxpayer dollars. The Sierra Club loves the idea, and Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing it.

We agree that the reservoir is a perfect place for a solar project, and that the city ought to be pursuing this.
But the structure of the deal makes us uncomfortable — and the financing shows a serious flaw in how federal money for renewable energy is allocated.

POA agrees to $17 million cut over two fiscal years

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Mayor Gavin Newsom has announced that the city’s labor contract with the San Francisco Police Officers’ Association (SFPOA) has been amended and will net the City nearly $17 million in savings over the next two fiscal years.

“These officers, whose own jobs are not in jeopardy, are reaching out to save the jobs of other city employees,” Newsom said in a press release. “We appreciate their public spirit and leadership.”

“It was the right thing to do,” said SFPOA President Gary Delagnes.

The amendment reduces police contract expenses by 5 percent over fiscal years 2009-10 and 2010-11, by deferring 2 percent in wage increases, reducing night shift differential payments, and suspending a sick leave cash-out program.

The agreement will be extended one year beyond its original term, to June 30, 2012, with a final-year wage increase based on a survey of local police agency pay rates, the statement said.

Cab drivers rally against privatization

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By Tim Redmond

One of the tricky ways Mayor Gavin Newsom is going to try to pretend to balance the city budget is by selling off taxi medallions, the permits needed to operate a cab in the city. And the drivers, with the help of Sup. Eric Mar, are organizing to fight back.

Mar, the Asian Law Caucus, the United Taxi Workers and others will hold a demonstration tomorrow, Tuesday May 21, on the steps of City Hall to denounce the plan. This is going to be an epic battle — the mayor sees the permits as a source of tens of millions of dollars, and drivers and their advocates say a public resource is being put on the auction block — and that ordinary drivers will get screwed.

I’m glad to see that Mar is taking this on — cab-industry politics is complicated and often rough, and the anti-privatization folks in the cab industry need an ally at City Hall.

What’s in a Mayor’s Office merger? Pots of money it seems

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You can’t blame folks for being confused about and/or suspicious of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s attempted merger of the Mayor’s Office of Community Investment and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, or whatever they are calling themselves these days.

(When you call folks in the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, some identify themselves on their voice mail like so: “This is so-and-so with the Mayor’s Office.” I won’t name names, but you know who you are. And besides, this seems like an accurate description of where people feel OEWD stands in Newsom’s pantheon, no matter what the department is called.)

Following the Boards’ April 15 Budget committee hearing, it became clear for the first time since Newsom announced the merger in December, that the resulting shift in funding and staff is not a done deal, since it needs Board approval, per the city charter.

As a result of yesterday’s legislative revelations, the Board budget committee has convened a task force to examine Newsom’s proposal, which apparently, is part of his 2009-10 budget submission, which is due in June. The Board then has 30 days to decide, on the basis of these recommendations and its own impressions, whether to approve or disapprove of the merger.

Judging from the reactions and comments of Budget Chair Sup. John Avalos and Sups. David Campos, Carmen Chu, Bevan Dufty, Eric Mar and Ross Mirkarimi, approval seems far from automatic, with many folks worried that the merger is really about raiding the community development cookie jar in a time of ballooning deficits.

At yesterday hearing, OEWD deputy director Jennifer Entine Matz clarified that OEWD has not been part of the Mayor’s Office for years.

Sunday Streets corporate sponsorships, writ small

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By Steven T. Jones

Responding to criticism of the corporate sponsorships of this year’s Sunday Streets events, which begin April 26, organizers say it was a necessary evil that will barely be noticeable to attendees of the six street closure events.

“It will be the same exact Sunday Streets that you saw last year,” Wade Crowfoot, who is coordinating the event for the Mayor’s Office, told us, promising that corporate signage and promotion would be minimal. “The average person will not be aware that there’s private entities funding the direct costs.”

Crowfoot headed up fundraising for the events, tapping many of the same entities that have funded Mayor Gavin Newsom’s political ambitions, including Lennar, PG&E, WebCor Builders, Clear Channel, and Warren Hellman. But with six events costing up to $300,000, he said the grassroots help from Livable City, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Walk SF and other progressive groups is more important that ever.

Members of those groups love the Sunday Streets concept and recognize the city’s fiscal realities, but say this isn’t ideal. “I would have loved to have a city-sponsored event,” Livable City director Tom Radulovich told us. “It ought to be the city’s responsibility to create safe recreational spaces for people.”

Shades of green

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sarah@sfbg.com

When President Barack Obama signed the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act in mid-February, folks across the country were hopeful that the $787 billion stimulus package would help preserve and create decent jobs in their communities.

And in mid-March, when the Obama administration announced that Bay Area social justice activist Van Jones was joining the White House Council on Environmental Quality, advocates for green jobs took it as a sign that Obama shares Jones’ belief that we can fix our nation’s two biggest problems — excessive greenhouse gas production and not enough good jobs for the working class — by creating a green-collar economy.

Jones cofounded Oakland’s Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which opposes police abuse and promotes alternatives to incarceration, and founded Oakland’s Green for All, which aims to create green-collar jobs in low-income communities. He defines a green-collar job as "a family-supporting, career-track job that directly contributes to preserving or enhancing environmental quality."

"Think of them as the 2.0 version of old-fashioned blue-collar jobs, upgraded to respect the Earth and meet the environmental challenges of today," Jones wrote in his New York Times bestseller The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems (HarperOne, 2008).

But is Jones’ definition codified into Obama’s Recovery Act? And in San Francisco, where Mayor Gavin Newsom speaks incessantly about green jobs and regularly praises Jones, will the jobs we create be for the people who need them most? And how will that play out in a city where blacks, Latinos and Asians experience higher unemployment, poverty, and incarceration rates than whites, and building construction has stalled, pitting skilled union workers against training program graduates?

Last month, an alliance of community and worker organizations from San Francisco’s working class neighborhoods sent a letter to Newsom outlining concerns about the Recovery Act’s equity, job quality, and transparency requirements.

Antonio Diaz of PODER (People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights), Alex Tom of the Chinese Progressive Association, Steve Williams of POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights), and Terry Valen of the Filipino Community Center asked Newsom to ensure that ARRA funds would be used to create "green jobs and opportunities primarily for low-income people and people of color" and "high quality jobs with family-supporting wages and benefits, safe and healthy working conditions, and career ladders."

"We ask for your commitment to greater transparency and community input in shaping and monitoring the infusion of ARRA funds for San Francisco’s developing green collar economy," they wrote.

Two weeks later Newsom announced the launching of www.recoverysf.org, a Web site that seeks to track stimpack funds coming to San Francisco. Although the Web site shows that $150 million of the first quarter-billion of formula funding is headed toward infrastructure projects, it does not include estimates of the numbers of green jobs created.

Wade Crowfoot of the Mayor’s Office told the Guardian that the city is focused on ensuring that green jobs are created with these funds and that the City Attorney’s Office is figuring out what is "allowable" under Recovery Act’s guidelines.

On April 3, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget issued a 172-page memo outlining the Recovery Act’s policy goals. The goals included ensuring compliance with equal opportunity laws and principles, promoting local hiring, providing maximum practicable opportunities for small business and equal opportunities for disadvantaged business, encouraging sound labor practices, and engaging with community-based organizations.

"But will all cities include achievable, measurable requirements?" Crowfoot said. "I don’t think so, without federal guidelines."

This lack of specifics, Crowfoot says, has the City Attorney figuring out if San Francisco can include "first source" hiring requirements, in which hiring halls agree to interview graduates from local training programs first. If so, Crowfoot says, the city will seek to leverage existing funding for energy efficiency programs and conduct hire-locally campaigns in low-income communities.

But as Crowfoot notes, although we know that $1.5 million in ARRA funding is coming to San Francisco for weatherizing homes — helping to decrease the energy costs of low-income residents, reduce the city’s energy demands, and increase the number of people hired from the local community to do energy audits and retrofits — we still don’t know how many jobs will be created per project, which is the basic goal of economic stimulation.

"If we spend the dollars, say, on boiler replacement, that’s more equipment and less labor," Crowfoot said. "But the more you hire locally, the more those folks get experience, the more they’ll be well positioned to get jobs in the non-subsidized sector once the stimulus funds are gone."

Acknowledging the tension between laid-off union workers and graduates of apprentice training programs, Crowfoot said, "We are trying to figure out a balance, whereby the community is not shut out, but the unions’ needs are addressed. We want to be careful about how many jobs we say are going to be created. We don’t want to build hope in populations who already have a lot of mistrust in the government."

Michael Theriault, secretary and treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, told us that 25 percent of the region’s 16,000 building trades workers are out of work, compared to nearly full employment last year.

In the past, the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council provided CityBuild with instructors and took the lion’s share of the program graduates, Theriault explains. But under present conditions, the Council isn’t keen on another CityBuild cycle.

"I think they should work to sponsor another cycle, but the ball is also in the city’s court," Theriault said, noting that the ARRA-funded weatherization program could soon be offering prevailing union wages ($20 an hour for roofers, $40 to $50 for plumbers and electricians) that could help ease the tension. And then there’s the inconvenient truth that some union members view non-unionized solar panel installers as "scabs," creating another barrier to using green jobs to lift the underemployed.

Mayor Newsom has until June to secure and implement stimpack funding as part of upcoming local budget proposals, a timetable that has Green for All issuing a call for action to ensure that Recovery Act implementation creates green-collar jobs, ensures transparency and accountability, and supports pathways out of poverty.

"This may be the most important opportunity you’ll ever have to bring green-collar jobs to your community," Green For All wrote in a public statement. "But the planning process will be over in the blink of an eye, and your community could miss out. That’s why we’re calling on you to take action now."

Green for All field organizer Julian Mocine-McQueen is scheduled to sit down with Crowfoot this week in an effort to get Newsom to sign his group’s pledge. He said there’s been an expansion of the city’s lighting and refrigeration cooling retrofitting program, starting with small business owners who speak English as a second language. "It’s good," McQueen said. "But it’s not enough."

He believes green job success will depend, in part, on including hiring parameters. "A job in the city’s southeast sector may not pay $70,000 a year, but it would be a huge step toward creating a family-sustaining job," McQueen said, noting that the Obama administration has "to a certain extent" adopted Jones’ definition of green-collar jobs. "I’m not sure that they have codified it," McQueen said. "They have recommendations."

Asked to define green jobs during a recent media roundtable on projected budget deficits, Newsom talked about weatherization and sustainability and plans to expand the city’s training academies before handing the floor to the Office of Economic and Workforce Development’s Kyri McClellan, whom he described as his "green czarina."

McClellan, who describes herself as "the lead cat-herder" of Recovery Act funds, told reporters that San Francisco is expected to receive a quarter of a billion dollars in formula funds in the coming fiscal year, 95 percent of which have been allocated to "shovel-ready" projects that were already queued up under the city’s 10-year capital plan.

During a subsequent board committee hearing, McClellan shared job estimates — 30 jobs from the $11 million Department of Public Works street paving allocation and 250 jobs from the $18 million Housing Authority retrofitting allocation — that raised eyebrows.

McClellan said that OEWD is "moving as quickly as possible to take the dollars we’ve been allocated, get approval from the Board of Supervisors, and get programs up and running."

Observing that the city also has parallel funding for training programs such as CityBuild and a Green Academy, McClellan added that "no one is working harder than Rhonda Simmons." Reached by phone, OEWD’s Simmons said she has been working with San Francisco State University professor Raquel Pinderhughes to identify five job sectors that have "the capacity to grow the greatest number of green jobs."

These include solar installation, energy efficiency, landscaping/public greening, recycling, and green building. "In an economy like this, you have to be competitive," Simmons said. "And almost all the programs that come out of my shop are geared toward low-income to moderate-income folks."

Observing that OEWD is using a $238,000 federal earmark to seed a Green Academy and that will expand the GoSolarSF workforce incentive, compete for a $500,000 EPA brownfield cleanup training grant, and coordinate with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to develop "workforce incentive language" for biodiesel reuse program and energy efficiency projects, Simmons notes that it was the unions that helped create CityBuild in the first place, and the city is working to ease current concerns.

"It is our intent as OEWD designs the academy that any training programs must demonstrate that they train individuals for occupations with opportunity for upward mobility," Simmons said, after emerging from a meeting cochaired by Crowfoot and Pinderhughes to help community-based organizations understand green jobs and figure out how to link with the Green Jobs Corps that Pinderhughes set up in Oakland.

Eric Smith runs the Bayview-based Green Depot, a nonprofit that promotes biodiesel use in neighborhoods facing environmental justice issues and ran a $9,000-per intern pilot program with Global Exchange. He worries that administrative costs will chew up much of the stimulus money, citing SFPUC figures that the cost ratio for trainers to interns is about 3:1.

"There is a lot of concern in the Bayview that the money will end up going to consultants and administrators when we have people who are hungry and desperate to work," Smith said.

After two green jobs hearings, Sup. Eric Mar says that he and Sups. Sophie Maxwell and David Chiu have concluded "that unless the board takes action and gives clear guidelines and expectations, green collar job creation will be miniscule."
Noting that Oakland’s Green Job Corps and Richmond’s solar program seem years ahead of San Francisco’s efforts, Mar said his next step will be to talk with labor, environmental groups, businesses, and nonprofits to get a sense of an appropriate structure to prioritize the low-income communities as the main beneficiaries of green-collar job creation. "It’s pretty clear that the [Newsom] administration’s commitment to the numbers of jobs created is pretty small," Mar said. "The community is going to have to push for more."

Energy deficiency

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More in this issue:

>>Fed money for green jobs?

>>Green living resource guide

rebeccab@sfbg.com

As the window of opportunity for averting the worst-case global warming scenarios narrows, wise use of energy seems increasingly urgent. So millions of dollars in state and federal funding and significant contributions from utility customers are devoted each year to improving energy efficiency in California.

It’s a crucial program designed to reduce consumption and planet-damaging emissions and eliminate the need for new fossil-fuel burning power plants. Yet the state’s energy-efficiency programs are often run by investor-owned utility companies, such as Pacific Gas & Electric, that have been missing efficiency targets yet demanding ever more public money anyway.

Critics say the programs would yield more energy savings on the dollar if local governments or nonprofits were in charge. The utilities have not only fought to maintain control of these programs, they’re now seeking even more taxpayer money by trying to claim federal economic stimulus funds.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is engaged in a long, slow process of rolling out an ambitious community choice aggregation (CCA) program, Clean Power SF, which would utilize 50 percent renewable energy and promote green technologies in the city.

While state law guarantees that energy-efficiency funding generated by San Franciscans could be funneled into Clean Power SF, it isn’t likely to happen without a fight from the state’s most powerful utility.

AN ‘A’ FOR EFFORT


Although PG&E and other utilities are entrusted with millions in ratepayers’ money to promote energy efficiency, independent analysis demonstrates that they’ve had limited success. But last December, they garnered rich rewards anyway, at ratepayers’ expense.

In 2007, the California Public Utilities Commission adopted a system to encourage utilities to strive for high energy efficiency standards. Utilities could receive hearty payouts for achieving a certain threshold of energy savings, the commission decided. Conversely, if the companies failed miserably, they’d be slapped with penalty fees. Rather than take the utilities’ word for it, the CPUC directed its Energy Division to inspect the companies’ energy efficiency program performance and report on it each year.

About a third of the funding for these programs is amassed with a mandatory fee on every ratepayer’s monthly energy bill, called the Public Goods Charge. This is combined with a second pot of ratepayer money and collected by utilities to fund initiatives such as rebates, light-bulb discounts, energy retrofits, and consumer-education drives. The program budget for all the utilities from 2006 through 2008 was around $2 billion. For the 2009 to 2011 program, the utilities are collectively seeking closer to $4 billion.

Last December, based on the utilities’ own claims that they’d hit the targets for the 2006 — 2007 program, the CPUC handed over nearly $82 million in incentive payments — with some $41 million going to PG&E. The commission accepted the utilities’ claims because the Energy Division’s verification report was behind schedule, and the utilities argued that this delay would postpone their payments and thus undermine the whole incentive.

At the same time, the commission noted, "We have profound concerns that accepting the [utilities’] proposal … would subject ratepayers to significant risk of overpayment." In an attempt to strike a balance, the CPUC voted to award $82 million rather than the $152.7 million that the utilities claimed they were owed.

But the independent report, which was finally released two months later, concluded that PG&E and two other utilities shouldn’t have been entitled to any incentive payments at all. Based on this analysis, they’d missed the targets.

The move drew criticism from groups like The Utilities Reform Network (TURN), Women’s Energy Matters, and the California Public Utilities Commission’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates, which charged that investor-owned utilities are more concerned about the payouts they receive for running these programs than maximizing energy savings.

"They didn’t seem troubled by the fact that they hadn’t met the goals. They were only troubled by the fact that they weren’t going to get the financial reward," said Mindy Spatt, communications director for the Utility Reform Network (TURN). "I suppose there’s a message in there about just how seriously they take energy efficiency."

Loretta Lynch, a former CPUC commissioner, told the Guardian that she’d been watching the proceedings closely. "They had already promised Wall Street they were going to get this money, and so they had to meet Wall Street’s expectations regardless of whether or not they met the technical requirements of the program," Lynch said.

The CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates opposed the decision to award the incentive money. "[The utilities] are being rewarded for something they say they’ve done, but that independent analysis shows they just didn’t do," DRA Regulatory Analyst Thomas Roberts told the Guardian. "It’s like rewarding a student for getting a D."

Part of the problem is that PG&E’s program relied heavily on giving away compact-fluorescent light bulbs, and then the utility inflated estimates for how much energy savings they would provide and how long they would last. In other words, CFLs are a good first step to energy conservation, but not enough to make the greatest strides in reducing demand.

Roberts also said PG&E often delivered the bulbs to what he called "free riders," or people who would’ve made the switch on their own. TURN once discovered a box of light bulbs posted on eBay by some crafty entrepreneurs who had purchased them at a discount, courtesy of PG&E. At that point, the bulbs could have wound up anywhere in the country, Spatt points out, instead of reducing electricity demand in California.

"There is no clear connection that we are not building new power plants due to energy efficiency programs," said Cheryl Cox, senior policy analyst and project manager for energy efficiency at the CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates. "And we do not appear to be on track to achieve long-term, persistent energy savings. Given the dependence of energy efficiency portfolios on short-term savings like lighting, it appears that the utilities would have to spend additional dollars to play catch-up — yet they persist on proposing the same old, non-progressive, CFL programs."

WHO’S IN CHARGE OF YOUR SURCHARGE?


For some, the incentive payouts provided new fuel for a longstanding argument that utilities shouldn’t be in charge of administering state-mandated energy efficiency programs in the first place. Barbara George, executive director of Women’s Energy Matters, points out that states with financially disinterested third parties managing energy efficiency measures tend to be more careful with the money they’re granted, resulting in more energy savings per dollar.

She points to a report completed by analyst Richard Estevez, which ranked 37 statewide energy efficiency programs by cost-effectiveness. "Non-utility implemented programs make up 18 out of the top 20 rankings; utility-implemented programs make up 15 out of the 17 poorest rankings," that report concludes.

Under the current system, "PG&E makes a profit on every dollar," says Lynch. "In addition, all of PG&E’s costs are covered. Then, of course, all the subcontractors’ costs are covered too, so it gets down to only 50 or 60 cents of every dollar that is actually going into programs. The rest of the money is going into PG&E’s profit, PG&E’s overhead, and the subcontractors’ overhead. Not surprisingly, if you’re a nonprofit or a government, you’re doing that service directly at no profit and lower administrative costs."

Paul Fenn, a consultant to Clean Power SF, sounds a similar note. In his view, PG&E "doesn’t want to reduce energy consumption. Why? Because every year, they go to their shareholders and they predict next year’s load growth. That’s their business. They burn gas, and they sell power. They’re a gas and electric company. The idea that a gas and electric company could be adequately incented to reduce their sales is naïve."

Fenn is the founder of Local Power, Inc. and the author of Assembly Bill 117 — a state bill passed in 2002 under the sponsorship of then-Assembly Member Carole Migden that allows municipalities to set up community choice aggregation programs. Local Power has been a key player in San Francisco’s own embryonic CCA.

AB 117 also gave cities the option to gain control of Public Goods Charge funds generated by their own ratepayers. In SF, that would mean funneling roughly $18 million annually into Clean Power SF’s energy efficiency budget.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who chairs a committee overseeing the CCA implementation, told the Guardian he supports the idea. But he warned that the city probably wouldn’t be able to wrest the funding away from PG&E without a fight. "It’s completely appropriate for city government to be in charge of those funds," he says. "PG&E shouldn’t be in the driver’s seat with all that money anyway."

San Francisco is already hailed as a green city, but Clean Power SF, which has renewable energy as its centerpiece, would set a new standard for what cities can do to address climate change. The plan calls for 50 percent renewable energy, compared with PG&E’s energy mix of 11 to 12 percent renewable power. The SFPUC is slated to present CCA program plans to the state next year.

SFPUC’s Michael Campbell, the CCA program director, rejects the idea of going after Public Goods Charge funds just yet. "It’s premature to do that now," Campbell says. "About one-third of the energy efficiency dollars that PG&E collects … come from Public Goods Charge, and the other two-thirds are charges associated with procurement portions of customers’ bills. If a CCA were formed … to have an equal amount of dollars, we would need to have additional charges to CCA customers that would be associated with the energy portion of their bill."

Yet Fenn said applying to administer those funds is long overdue. Not knowing whether that $18 million is in place every year could derail the CCA bidding process, Fenn argues, since it would be difficult for prospective power suppliers to draft a plan if they lack clarity on the program budget.

The other problem, Fenn said, is that without the energy-efficiency funds, it would be harder for the city’s CCA to get its rates down low enough to compete with PG&E. Given the CCA is required to beat PG&E rates, it could make or break the success of the project.

"Energy efficiency is the cheapest resource," Fenn said. "It helps the economic feasibility of the portfolio by creating surplus revenue. If you’re just doing green supply, and not green load reduction, it’s going to be really hard not to pay more than PG&E."

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PG&E


While Clean Power SF lags, energy efficiency programs are percoutf8g throughout the city — usually touted by Mayor Gavin Newsom and funded through public-private partnerships with PG&E.

In a recent post on TriplePundit.com, Newsom announced the creation of an Existing Buildings Efficiency Task Force — composed of landlords, developers, PG&E, and other downtown interests — tasked with greening buildings and creating green jobs.

"The Task Force builds upon a great deal of work we’re doing already — taking full advantage of the $7 [million] to $11 million provided in energy efficiency block grants by the federal stimulus, leveraging our ongoing … partnership with PG&E, and working with private partners to create a San Francisco Clean Energy Fund," Newsom wrote.

A recent initiative to install energy efficient streetlights in the Tenderloin is the result of another PG&E partnership. While there’s no doubt that these programs will have positive results, they also serve to further entrench PG&E into citywide green initiatives, which render it more difficult for Clean Power SF to gain footing further down the road.

With federal stimulus money flowing into state coffers, the utilities are back at the table, recommending to the CPUC that some of the federal funding go into their existing energy-efficiency programs. "We believe that the Recovery Act or ARRA funds should work in conjunction with [investor-owned utility] programs to minimize potential customer confusion and leverage the success we have had with the programs," Marc Gaines, a representative for the state’s four investor-owned utilities, said during a recent All-Party CPUC meeting to discuss the stimulus funds. "Rather than competing with the programs, we would like to use ARRA funding to supplement existing energy efficiency [and other] programs."

Not so fast, countered George, who stood up to speak during the meeting. "We have to worry about if these funds are commingled with current programs, are the utilities going to rake off profits?" she wondered. "These funds need to be used for authorized purposes, and not for fraud, waste, error, and abuse. The energy efficiency programs have been used to fight public power and community choice efforts. The competition is brutal when it comes to the utilities."

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