Public Health

Protest HIV program cuts

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By C. Nellie Nelson

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Pride At Work protests the mayor’s budget on Pride day. Photo: Luke Thomas, Fog CIty Journal

Today at 5 pm the LGBT labor group Pride at Work will hold a vigil on the steps of City Hall protesting the mayor’s deep budget cuts to programs that are vital to much of the queer community. The vigil runs until midnight, so you can stop by after work.

As Fog City Journal reports, this is the second major Pride at Work protest over the budget cuts — the group staged a die-in in front of Mayor Newsom’s car in the Pride Parade. As Newsom attempted to step around the protesters, they let him have an earful on the effects of his budget cuts that slashed funding for the Departments of Public Health and Human Services

“The die-in demonstrated reality. When you cut HIV programs, people will sero-convert. When you cut the drug programs, people will die,” Harvey Milk Club president Rafael Mandelman told the Guardian today. He said the protest indicates that the mayor “can’t ride same-sex marriage forever. We’re grateful for the mayor’s efforts in that area, but we need budgets that will protect vulnerable populations and queers. People’s lives are at stake.”

Despite the passage of Prop. 8, Newsom does indeed seem to still be riding the crest of same sex marriage. In a recent fundraising letter for his gubernatorial campaign, a supporter enthuses: “Mayor Newsom married S– and I in his office in 2004. He always held our relationship equal to his own… S– and I will always love him for standing with us and fighting for us.”

But some LGBT leaders are starting to feel that the choices of what departments to cut back are not equal in the least.

Robert Haaland is a labor activist and long time leader of the local chapter of Pride at Work. He told us the budget cuts “are no different from what Schwarzenegger is doing. No new revenue, deep cuts to health and human services. It’d be fine if he was running as a Republican governor.”

Haaland pointed out that when Newsom ran against Supervisor Matt Gonzales in 2003, Newsom was neutral on gay marriage, and Gonzales got the majority of votes in District 8, which includes the Castro.

“He changed his position on marriage, but that doesn’t give him license to use marriage as a shield for budget cuts affecting LGBT and poor people,” Haaland said.

And Mandelman sums up, “It’s great to celebrate marriage, but for a lot of people it’s a luxury.”

Judge tosses Newsom’s political payback suits against Minister Muhammad

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Text and photos by Sarah Phelan

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For several years, Minister Christopher Muhammad (at lectern) has been trying to get Mayor Gavin Newsom to temporarily stop work at the Hunters Point shipyard, until the children at Muhammad’s school and members of the surrounding Bayview community get asbestos dust-related health tests.

The city’s health department claims there is no health problem related to the dust and that there are no tests available, other than autopsies.
But thanks to Lennar’s failure to properly install and maintain air monitors, there is no data available to prove exactly what levels of dust the community was exposed to, when the developer’s massive grading project began at the shipyard in 2006.

Since then, air monitors at the site have repeatedly recorded exceedances that, the city claims, have triggered protective shutdowns, though often these shutdowns did not occur as fast as the community would like. And the ongoing exceedances have raised additional questions about the cumulative risk to public health and safety of all these dust clouds, where exactly the dust is coming from, and what exactly it contains.

Under new EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, the community’s request for additional assessments of the dust situation is reportedly being reviewed. But meanwhile, Muhammad’s refusal to shut up about the dust, has clearly angered Mayor Gavin Newsom, who recently said, via his spokesperson Nathan Ballard, that he supported a lawsuit that was filed against Muhammad and his group’s school, via the San Francisco Housing Authority, allegedly to recover unpaid back rent.

It was Chronicle columnists Phil Matier and Andy Ross who first asked whether the lawsuit that the San Francisco Housing Authority recently filed against Muhammad and the Nation of Islam’s Center for Self-Improvement, which operates the K-12 school next to the shipyard’s Parcel A in the Bayview, was “pay up or pay back”.

“You decide” the duo wrote on April 1, when they broke the news that the San Francisco Housing Authority had filed a lawsuit against Muhammad, alleging irregularities at the school, shortly after Muhammad and other activists showed up at Newsom’s gubernatorial town halls, asking loud and embarrassing questions about asbestos dust at the shipyard.

But the M&R column has remained deafeningly silent about the outcome of that lawsuit, even though Ross phoned the Nation of Islam’s lawyer Richard Drury minutes after the judge threw out not just one, but all three lawsuits that the SFHA had filed against Muhammad. That was over a week ago, on June 16.

So, does this mean the Chronicle only wants to write about stuff that they can spin to make Newsom look good and Muhammad bad? You decide.

It also turns out that it cost the city very little to file what appears to have been a series of frivolous lawsuits as payback for the Minister’s ongoing questions about asbestos dust: the city used in-house counsel at the Housing Authority, and the City is exempt from filing fees.

Reached by phone, Muhammad’s attorney Drury said he felt all three the lawsuits were “payback” against Muhammad for his attempts to try and get help from Newsom around ongoing issues with dust and asbestos at the shipyard.

“When the Minister didn’t get Newsom’s help, he attended a town hall meeting—and shortly afterwards, the San Francisco Housing Authority sued the Minister for breach of contract, payment of rent and unlawful detained,” Drury said. “In other words, the San Francisco Housing Authority is trying to evict a K-12 school, where 70 percent of the kids were failing in the public school system, and where 80 percent of the center’s graduates go to college.”

No surrender, no retreat

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rebeccab@sfbg.com

The dueling budget rallies that preceded the June 16 Board of Supervisors hearing on the city’s spending priorities officially ended the conciliatory approach offered by Mayor Gavin Newsom — a rhetorical political gambit that the Mayor’s Office never really put into practice.

The emotionally charged police and fire workers’ rally — where Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes riled up the crowd by ridiculing supervisors as "idiots" and "carpetbaggers" — featured Newsom as the guest of honor at an event overseen by Eric Jaye, the political consultant running both the firefighters’ union budget offensive and Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign.

On a stage lined with American flags and burly public safety workers, Newsom condemned the progressive supervisor’s proposal to amend his budget over a blaring sound system. "They’re asking us to retreat," Newsom said, in full battle cry mode, "and we’re not going to do that."

Across the street, city employees from the Department of Public Health held a competing rally, flying a banner that read "No Cuts to Vital Services!" It was painfully obvious that in a squabble between city employees, the mayor was positioning himself on the side of well-paid, powerful union members who got raises instead of layoffs, rather than the public health workers and advocates for the poor whom Newsom’s budget cut the deepest.

But before progressive supervisors challenged Newsom’s proposed budget — which ignored the supervisors’ stated priorities, despite Newsom’s December pledge to work closely with the board on it — the rhetoric was quite different. "We work through our differences and ultimately try to look at the budget as apolitically as possible," Newsom said during a June 1 event unveiling his budget. "It’ll only happen by working together."

Six months earlier, when the mayor made a rare appearance at a Board of Supervisors meeting to announce the unprecedented budget shortfall of more than $500 million, he adopted a similar tone. "We have the capacity, the ingenuity and the spirit to solve this," Newsom told the board in December. "It’s going to take all of us working together. It’s in that spirit that I am here."

The mayor’s proposed budget has spurred outrage from poor people and progressive supervisors, who charge that his decision to cut critical services while simultaneously bolstering funding to the police and fire departments is morally repugnant.

Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and David Chiu responded by passing an amendment in committee to slash $82 million from the public-safety budget in order to restore some of the cuts to public health and social services. After that move, the spirit of "working together" quickly eroded, and seemed to be replaced by the bare knuckles politics of fear and division.

After the rallies, which even spilled indoors and devolved into shouting matches between the two camps, supervisors finally got to work on the budget. And they didn’t ask Newsom to retreat, they just asked him to listen and work with them.

The $82 million dent in the public-safety budget was described as a symbolic gesture to get the mayor to take progressive concerns seriously. "For many of us, it was the only way we felt we could have a seat at the table — a seat that was real, where the discussion was going to be meaningful," Campos said.

"I do not think that this budget is bilateral. It is a unilateral budget," Chiu noted at a Budget and Finance Committee meeting.

This year’s budget battle is especially intense because of the unprecedented size of the deficit, as well as the dire economic conditions facing many San Franciscans. California’s unemployment rate climbed to 11.5 percent in May, and stood at an only slightly less miserable 9.1 percent in San Francisco, according to the state’s Employment Development Department.

Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of San Franciscans in need of emergency food assistance, homeless services, and help with other basic necessities has spiked. Everyone seems to be feeling the pinch, but for the least fortunate, falling on hard times can mean relying on city-funded services for survival.

Against this dismal backdrop, big questions are emerging about the role of government. "The city’s budget," City Attorney Dennis Herrera noted at a recent hearing, "is correctly called the city’s most meaningful policy document. More than any other piece of legislation, it sets out the priorities that tangibly express the values of the City and County of San Francisco."

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi took this idea even farther at the budget hearing. "Aside from the politicking and any of the hyperbole, we [have to] do the best we possibly can for all the people of San Francisco," he said. "But in particular, the vulnerable classes, because what is also at stake is … the key question: Who’s this city for? And who gets to live here over the next 10 to 20 years, considering how cost-prohibitive it is to be in San Francisco?"

The budget battle is shaping up around some fundamental questions: is this budget going to protect the politically powerful while ignoring the thousands who are in danger of slipping through the cracks? Or will everyone be asked to make sacrifices to preserve the city’s safety net? And as these difficult decisions are hashed out, is the mayor going to sit down with the board to seek common ground?

A board hearing on the cuts to health services — which state law requires cities to hold when those cuts are deep — illustrated the divide with hours of testimony from the city’s most disadvantaged residents: those with mental health problems, seniors, SRO tenants, AIDS patients, and others.

"If we make the wrong decisions, it will mean that our homeless folks will be in ever-increasing numbers on the street. It means that folks with HIV will not receive the care they need. It will mean that kids will not have the after-school programs they need during their critical years. It will mean that our tenants will continue to live in substandard housing," Chiu summarized the testimony.

Avalos, the Budget Committee chair who has led the fight to alter Newsom’s budget priorities, has said repeatedly that cutting critical services does not work in San Francisco. And even as he proposed the amendment, he expressed a desire to reach a solution that everyone, not just progressives, would find palatable.

"We want to talk directly to the mayor, to have him meet us half-way, about how we can share the pain in this budget to ensure that we have a balance in equity on how we run the city government," Avalos noted as his committee began its detailed, tedious work on the budget. "We can do that across the hall here at City Hall, and we can do it across every district in San Francisco."

The Board approved the interim budget that more evenly shared the budget pain on a 7-3 vote, with Sups. Bevan Dufty, Carmen Chu, and Michela Alioto-Pier dissenting (Sup. Sean Elsbernd was absent because his wife was giving birth to their first child, but was also likely to dissent).

If Newsom chooses to veto the interim budget or the permanent one next month — which the board would need eight votes to override — San Francisco could be in for a protracted budget standoff, the least "apolitical" of all options. But for now, the political theater is yielding to the detailed, difficult work of the Budget and Finance Committee.

Progressive members of the committee have already signaled their intention to scrutinize city jobs with salaries of $100,000 or positions in each department that deal with public relations.

Among those highlighted in a budget analysts’ report is Newsom’s public relations team, a fleet of five helmed by a Director of Communications Nate Ballard, who pulls down $141,700 a year. Yet when the Guardian and others seek information from the office — for this story and many others — we are often stonewalled, ignored, or insulted.

During the budget hearings, the disproportionately high number of positions with six-figure salaries in the city’s police and fire departments also came under scrutiny. "What has worked in a lot of other agencies is you have employees who care deeply enough about the City and County of San Francisco that they are willing to give back in terms of salaries," Campos commented to Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White during a budget hearing, referring to firefighters’ refusal to forgo raises.

Another looming question is whether new revenue measures will be included as part of the solution. While progressive supervisors continue to call for tax measures as a way to stave off the worst cuts to critical services, Newsom proudly proclaimed his budget’s lack of new taxes.

A press release posted on Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign Web site suggests that since raising revenues doesn’t fit with his bid for governor, it’s not likely to be entertained as a possibility. "Mayor Newsom crafted a balanced budget on time," a press release notes, "without any new general tax increases, without reducing public safety services."

It’s a stand that’s certain to yield more political clashes down the line.

"I don’t see how we can get out of this budget without bringing additional revenue into the system," Campos noted at the committee hearing. "Once people learn about the situation we are facing, they will understand the need for the city and county as a whole to contribute."

The price of normal

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news@sfbg.com

With a 2010 state proposition on gay marriage in the works and a national gay rally on the Washington Mall being planned for October 10-11 of that year, it’s obvious that more and more of the LGBT community’s resources are being funneled into the battle for marriage equality, while other causes go begging.

Already gay marriage has become a black hole that is sucking untold amounts of money, time, and energy out of our community. In the 2008 election alone, gay marriage supporters raised $43.3 million to defeat Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative that California voters passed by 52 percent. It may be the biggest chunk of change the community has ever spent for a single fight.

A QUESTION OF PRIORITIES


I’m not against gay marriage. If queer couples want to be as miserable as straight ones, that’s their choice. Marriage is a failed institution. With a 54.8 percent divorce rate nationally and a 60 percent rate here in California, there’s no doubt in my mind that heterosexual "wedded bliss" is more of an oxymoron than a reality.

What’s troubling to me as a queer activist of almost 40 years (much of that time spent on economic justice work) is that, with the tremendous amount of homelessness, poverty, and unemployment in our community, we are spending so much dough on the fight to give a minority of folks — those who opt for tying the knot — rights and privileges that straight married folks have.

Sure, it’s unfair that married straights get tax breaks, not to mention the status of next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions when one partner is ill, and queers don’t. Altogether, married couples have 1,400 benefits, both state and federal, that domestic partners and single people don’t enjoy. It’s a matter of simple justice that the playing field be leveled. Only a right-wing idiot could disagree with that. Now, if only we could fight to give everyone (including singles) those 1,400 benefits.

For me it’s a question of priorities. We are living in scary times. Unemployment is sky-high; millions are without healthcare, including children; foreclosures are robbing homeowners and tenants alike of their housing; and business collapses are leaving a lot of people out in the cold and unable to pay the rent or the mortgage.

DINKS NO MORE


The queer community is no better off.

It’s a popular misconception that queers have a lot of disposable income. The "double income, no kids" (DINK) myth was promoted in the 1980s by gay publishers who wanted to expand their advertising base and their profits. These days, to read many gay publications, you’d think that all queers are going on fabulous vacations and buying expensive clothes, jewelry, and electronic gizmos.

That myth was easily dispelled by a recent study, "Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community," published this March by the Williams Institute at UCLA. Like "Income Inflation: the myth of affluence among gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans," the groundbreaking 1998 study by M.V. Lee Badgett of the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Williams report found that many members of our community aren’t shopping ’til they drop. They can barely afford to put food on the table.

Nationally, 24 percent of lesbians and bisexual women are poor compared to 19 percent of heterosexual women; 15 percent of gay and bisexual men are poor compared to 13 percent of heterosexual men.

Queers aren’t just low on cash — we’re homeless, too. A 2006 report, "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness" from the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force and the National Coalition on Homelessness, showed that 20 percent to 40 percent of the 1.6 million homeless youth in America identify as LGBT. In San Francisco, the number of queers in the homeless youth population (estimated at 4,000 by the Mayor’s Office) is "roughly 44 percent," according to Dr. Mike Toohey of the Homeless Youth Alliance in the Haight.

Brian Basinger of the AIDS Housing Alliance says that 40 percent of people with HIV/AIDS, in the city once acclaimed for its care of those with the disease, are either "unstably housed or are homeless." In the Castro, Basinger said, there are only "12 dedicated HOPWA beds" for people with the disease. HOPWA (Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS) is a federal voucher program for low-income people with AIDS that is similar to federal housing assistance program Section 8.

Certain members of our community don’t fare much better in the area of employment. A 2006 survey by the Guardian and the Transgender Law Center reported that 75 percent of transgender people are not employed full-time, and 59 percent make less than $15,299 a year. A mere 4 percent of respondents earned more than $61,200, the then-median income average for San Francisco.

Fifty-seven percent of trangendered people said they suffered employment discrimination, demonstrating the need for the inclusion of "gender identity" in the federal Employment Non-discrimination Act. Human Rights Campaign, a national gay organization, and out Congress member Barney Frank (D-Mass.) cut transgenders out of that legislation the last time it was up before Congress.

It could all get a whole lot worse.

AXING THE FUTURE


Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to lop at least $81 million from California’s AIDS budget, including money for AIDS drugs, leaving low-income people stranded without their medication. Senior services are also on his cutting block, including $230.8 million from in-home services and $117 million from adult health-care programs. (As we go to press, the state Legislature is working to restore the AIDS money to the budget.)

Mayor Gavin Newsom, in his proposed city budget cuts, is axing $128.4 million from public health and $15.9 million from human services. There’s no doubt these cuts in health and human services will severely affect people with AIDS, seniors, youth, the homeless, and others in our community who can least afford to pay for the city’s budget shortfall.

The millions spent on gay marriage in the past few years could have gone a long way in these lean times. It could have helped make the proposed queer senior housing project, Open House, a reality. With 88 units in the works at 55 Laguna St., the site of the old UC extension, it will be the only such housing for LGBT seniors in San Francisco.

The money also could have funded housing in the Castro for homeless queer youth or people with AIDS. It could have been used as seed money for a much-needed war against poverty in the LGBT community.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF LIBERATION


The queer movement hasn’t always been this obsessed about getting hitched. Forty years ago this week, drag queens and others fought back against the cops who were raiding a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s West Village. Three days of protests led to the creation of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), a revolutionary group dedicated to the sexual liberation of all people. GLFers weren’t looking to walk down the aisle or form binary couples. In a desire to "abolish existing social institutions," as the NYC branch of GLF said in its statement of purpose, some GLFers explored polyamory (more than one relationship at a time).

That’s why I edited Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation, just published by City Lights Books, a collection of writings by former GLF members and other gay liberationists. I wanted to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall and the birth of GLF with a reminder of who we were and what we did. After all these years, I still don’t want to head to the chapel to get married.

When it really comes down to it, gay marriage is a conservative issue. It’s about wanting to fit in, to be like everyone else. Beyond the important issues of tax breaks and next-of-kin status — and the fact that if any institution exists, it shouldn’t discriminate against queers — marriage is ultimately a means of normalizing binary queer relationships, especially for gay men who have always enjoyed the freedom to be promiscuous. It’s a way to try and rein in our libidos, though the prevalence of extramarital sex among straight couples — 50 percent for women, 60 percent for men, according to a recent issue of Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy — shows that marriage doesn’t come with a chastity belt.

It also doesn’t come with any guarantees, as researchers discovered in Sweden, where queers were able to contract for same-sex partnerships from 1995 until recently, when full same-sex marriage was instituted. According to a study by the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Swedish queers have been divorcing in high numbers, like their straight counterparts, who have a divorce rate that’s just a little higher than the United States.

For queers in Sweden, that’s the price of being normal.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who has been a queer activist since he was involved with the Gay Liberation Front at Temple University in Philadelphia in the early 1970s, is editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation (City Lights Books).

Fireworks at the DCCC

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By C. Nellie Nelson

The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee heard a resolution urging city agencies to not privatize city services last night. It’s the sort of measure that would normally pass without much debate — the local Democratic Party has always taken the side of the unions on contracting-out disputes.

But in the midst of the budget mess, the head of the firefighters’ union, John Hanley, showed up to berate the committee members, some of whom are also supervisors, over the latest budget moves.

As Hanley raged about putting firefighters’ lives on the line, committee chair Aaron Peskin and other members tried to make the point of order that this resolution was about privatizing city services, not changes to the budget. Hanley raised his voice louder yet, and, with his face a deep shade of red, he waved a pointed finger around as he yelled about $80 million in cuts.

At that point DCCC member and supervisor Chris Daly rose from his chair and pointing his finger at Hanley demanded, “Don’t point at me!” Hanley became even further agitated, and some committee members demanded that both Daly and Hanley leave. Both then ultimately quieted down, and neither was forced to leave.

In spite of the jarring display and repeated attempts to bring the focus back to the privatization of city services, commenters continued to speak on budget concerns. Former DCCC member and Deputy Sheriff David Wong said the Democratic Party should be for working people, and asked to not have the sheriff’s budget cut. Committee member Robert Haaland asked him if he supported or opposed contracting out sheriff services, but Wong didn’t answer.

Several SEIU members and Department of Public Health workers followed, speaking of seniors missing meals, nursing-to-staff ratios at SF General that result in less skilled workers doing responsibilities above their level of training, and even clients who had just been killed while on a wait list for city services.

When public comment closed, committee members addressed the hotly contended budget decision in a general way. Peskin began, “I want to refute the politics of fear and demagoguery,” referring to Hanley’s intimidating style of speaking. “There’s no question the pie has shrunk,” he continued, reiterating that in a fundamental notion of fairness, all departments must share the pain.

Haaland noted that 1,500 people would be laid off in the Department of Public Health, and that just wouldn’t be true of all departments. He said that cutting the DPH by $100 million would gut the Healthy San Francisco program, and result in $4 million cut from HIV services.

Peskin followed, declaring flatly, “I don’t want my house to burn down either.” He urged everyone to be part of the solution.

The members moved to take out language referring to specific professions that might be privatized, and with those changes, overwhelmingly passed the resolution against privatizing city services.

Arnold isn’t tough, he’s a coward

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By Steven T. Jones
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I’ve had it with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s action hero bullshit, wherein he masks his cowardly failures with a tough-talking veneer. The latest example is his campaign’s (yes, the termed out governor’s Join Arnold campaign team is still quite active) latest missive on California’s $24 billion budget deficit deadlock titled “Tough Times, Tough Choices.”

“To close California’s budget gap, the Governor has proposed deep cuts to education, public safety, and health and human services. He has also made clear his commitment to making government more efficient and to finding innovative ways to stretch taxpayer dollars. Tough choices must be made to get the state through this crisis, but if these tough choices are not made, the state will again be on the brink of insolvency,” they write.

Ending public health programs, robbing schools, closing parks, letting infrastructure deteriorate, and weakening the state’s ability to keep citizens safe isn’t tough. It’s the act of a coward, a bully beating up on the weak to appear strong while cowering before the actual tough guys. Taking on his political base and advocating higher taxes on millionaires – which this state desperately needs to do – that would be tough.

Dueling rallies pit “public safety” against “safety net”

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By Rebecca Bowe

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Mayor Gavin Newsom joined the city’s police, fire and sheriff departments yesterday afternoon in protesting the Board of Supervisors’ move to slash funding to those departments in order to restore cuts to critical services that the mayor had included in his interim budget.

In essence, the mayor was sending a very divisive message, pitting one set of city employees against another. Because just a few yards away from Newsom’s rally, health and human service employees were holding an event of their own.

Standing upon a stage equipped with a very loud sound system and decorated with American flags, Newsom praised police and firefighters for being willing to step up and be part of the solution to the budget crisis. He was greeted warmly by cheering and drumming, and before they introduced him they blasted a song with the lyrics “A family affair.”

Across the street, public-health workers were joined by Sup. John Avalos in their own rally against the deep cuts to the department of public health. “All we’re asking is to give a little so that we can share the pain of this deficit,” Avalos said.

Eliminating dissent

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sarah@sfbg.com

For years, the Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board has served as the Bayview-Hunters Point community’s main voice in the U.S. Navy’s environmental cleanup plans for the toxic former naval station. But the committee is suddenly being disbanded just as the cleanup enters a crucial phase.

Used for shipbuilding and submarine maintenance and repair, and the decontamination, storage, and disposal of radioactive and atomic weapons testing materials, the shipyard was added to the Superfund national toxic site cleanup list in 1989. But it is also at the heart of where Mayor Gavin Newsom has partnered with Lennar Corp. on the city’s biggest development proposal, involving 10,500 homes and a new stadium for the 49ers.

As the Navy prepares to release a series of important studies and reports concerning the cleanup of the dirtiest parcels on the former shipyard, community members were outraged by the Navy’s announcement in late May that it is preparing to dissolve the RAB in the next 30 days.

In July the Navy will release draft feasibility studies for the cleanup of Parcel E, along with a final remedial investigation/feasibility study for Parcel E2, the dirtiest parcel on the base, and a radiological data-gathering investigation in the sediment surrounding Parcel F, which is the underwater portion of the base.

Some insiders say the announcement was not unexpected, given an escautf8g series of confrontational RAB meetings with the Navy over the last two years. But they fear the community will lose its ability to give the Navy direct, timely, and meaningful feedback, even if many believe the Navy wasn’t listening.

"The Navy fully supports the need for open, meaningful dialogue with the diverse Bayview-Hunters Point community regarding our environmental cleanup actions and decisions. However, the RAB is not fulfilling this objective," the Navy’s Laura Duchnak wrote in a May 22 letter to the RAB.

In her letter, Duchnak said the RAB meetings no longer provide community input on the Navy’s environmental cleanup program, that their atmosphere is not productive to effective public discourse, and that Navy attempts to improve the process have failed. "The revised community involvement program may include community environmental forums, including using Internet-based technologies to more easily reach a diverse audience, expanded monthly progress reports and fact sheets, and hosting technical discussions and tours of cleanup sites for interested community members," Duchnak wrote.

Duchnak’s announcement followed a tense January meeting in which RAB members reacted with horror when the Navy announced it was moving forward with controversial plans to cap radiologically-affected areas on the shipyard’s Parcel B instead of digging and hauling them, which the community preferred (see "Nuclear Fallout," 07/16/08).

Led by RAB co-chair Leon Muhammad, who teaches at the Nation of Islam’s Center for Self Improvement, which has been repeatedly dusted by unmonitored asbestos (see "The corporation that ate San Francisco," 03/17/07), and joined by newly sworn-in members Archbishop King, Marie Harrison, and Daniel Landry, the board voted to seek a civil grand jury investigation into whether local truckers are getting their fair share of the Navy’s shipyard contracts.

Members then voted to remove the city’s public health representative Amy Brownell from the RAB, and to call for the stoppage of all work on the yard until the Department of Defense, the Navy, and the city can prove, as Muhammad said, "where the ongoing dust exceedences are coming from."

The final straw, insiders say, occurred in February when members voted to remove the Navy’s RAB co-chair Keith Forman from the advisory board. Eric Smith, who was sworn onto the RAB in January but did not vote to remove Brownell and Forman, said the Navy’s dissolution response wasn’t surprising.

"The dissolution of RAB is not a good thing in terms of what it is supposed to do. But it was also doing things that were dysfunctional," Smith said. "The bitter irony is that the folks who caused the trouble were trying to get the Navy to sit up and take notice."

Smith said there is frustration with the Navy’s communication style, which the community feels is patronizing. "But the RAB was naïve to think the Navy would allow a forum over which it has unilateral authority to become a platform for attacks," Smith said.

RAB member Kristine Enea, who missed the RAB’s last two meetings, confirmed that the atmosphere got increasingly confrontational but added that the Navy ignored suggestions her calls for wider community involvement.

"It’s ironic that the Navy had decided to respond to criticisms, which include the charge that it is a poor communicator, by cutting off communications with the community," said Enea, who works at the India Basin Neighborhood Association. "Dissolving the RAB is a drastic step. There is so much going on, and so much that we need to know."

But Enea hopes IBNA can help fill that void, noting that the association has applied for a US Environmental Protection Agency technical assistant grant to review shipyard clean-up documents, provide fact sheets, and host community meetings.

The Sierra Club’s Arthur Feinstein said that his group’s main concern around the dissolution is that Parcel E2, which contains an industrial and radiologically-impacted dump that burned for six months in 2000, and Parcel F are both coming up for analysis.

"These are some of the most significantly contaminated areas on the shipyard, so the timing is terrible," Feinstein told the Guardian, observing that some RAB members did not appear to be looking for solutions and were so aggressive they destroyed meetings.

"Unfortunately there weren’t enough forceful people to say ‘shut up and sit down,’" Feinstein said. "But without a RAB, there will be no public forum where folks are able to get and read materials ahead of the meeting, and then ask and submit questions."

Harrison, a member of the environmental justice group Green Action, believes the Navy’s intent is that there be no meaningful interaction with the community. "When you don’t toe the line and play like good little children, the Navy shuts you down," said Harrison, whose group, along with the Nation of Islam and the Caravan for Justice, are planning a June 30 demonstration at the shipyard to protest the move.

In another point of controversy, Sen. Mark Leno has legislation that seeks to trade 25 percent of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, the only major piece of open space in the Bayview, for small strips on the shipyard so Lennar can build condos on the parkland.

Noting that Sen. Leland Yee and Assembly Members Tom Ammiano and Fiona Ma oppose the parks-for-condos plan (see "Going Nuclear," April 29), Harrison said, "What possessed anyone to believe that we’d say, okay, take the only open space in the Bayview, and in exchange we’ll accept contaminated land scattered around on the shipyard?"

Environmental advocates believe the Sierra Club intends to fight Leno’s legislation with a challenge under the California Environmental Quality Act, but Leno told the Guardian that he is "continuing to work and meet with the lobbyists for the Sierra Club here in Sacramento to see if there are any additional amendments we can take that would get them to a neutral position on the bill.

"I think there is a good possibility we can get there," Leno said.

In February, Arc Ecology released a 133-report titled "Alternatives for study" that recommended the removal of the Parcel E2 landfill and explored changes in land use arrangements in the current redevelopment proposal to avoid environmental impacts (see "Concrete Plans," Feb. 4). Unfortunately, they were largely ignored by the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, which is working with Lennar on the public-private development deal.

Arc Ecology executive director Saul Bloom remains undaunted, recalling how 87 percent of voters citywide supported Proposition P, an advisory measure he wrote and that then-Sups. Ammiano, Leno, Michael Yaki, and the late Sue Bierman placed on the ballot in 1989 to establish community acceptance criteria for the shipyard, under federal toxic cleanup guidelines.

"The Navy had offered their opinion that voters in San Francisco, and especially in the Bayview, would accept a nonresidential industrial level cleanup for the shipyard because they were primarily interested in jobs," Bloom recalled. "We said that this was a mischaracterization and we’d go ahead and prove them wrong."

He believes the current struggle with the Navy over the RAB, and with the city and Lennar over Arc’s alternatives, are "emblematic of the problem facing the Bayview with regard to accessing good information and being told the straight story on health and development issues."

This one’s ugly

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news@sfbg.com

The most painful and divisive city budget season in many years was just getting under way as this issue went to press, with dueling City Hall rallies preceding the June 16 Board of Supervisors vote on an interim budget and the board’s Budget and Finance Committee slated to finally delve into the 2009-10 general fund budgets on June 17.

Both sides have adopted the rhetoric of a life-or-death struggle, with firefighters warning at a rally and in an advertising campaign that any cuts to their budget is akin to playing Russian Roulette, while city service providers say the deep public health cuts proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom will also cost lives and carry dire long-term costs and consequences.

Despite Newsom’s pledges in January and again on June 1 to work closely with the Board of Supervisors on budget issues, that hasn’t happened. Instead, Newsom’s proposed budget would decimate the social services supported by board progressives, who responded by proposing an interim budget that would share that pain with police, fire, and sheriff’s budgets — which Newsom proposed to increase.

Rather than simply adopting the mayor’s proposed budget as the interim spending plan for the month of July, as the board traditionally has done, progressive supporters proposed an interim budget that would make up to $82 million in cuts to the three public safety agencies and use that money to prevent the more draconian cuts to social services.

“It’s the start of a discussion to figure out what that number should be. I don’t know where we’re going to end up,” Sup. David Campos, who sits on the budget committee, told us.

Board President David Chiu said Newsom did finally meet with him and Budget Committee chair John Avalos on June 15 to try to resolve the impasse. But he said, “We didn’t hear anything from the mayor that would change where we were last week.” They planned to meet again on June 19.

“What we proposed represents the magnitude of the challenge we face this year,” Chiu said of the interim budget proposal, seeming to indicate that supervisors are open to negotiation.

The real work begins the morning of June 17 when the Budget and Finance Committee dissects the budgets of 15 city departments, including the Mayor’s Office, of which Avalos told us, “I don’t think the mayor has made the same concessions as he’s had other departments make.”

The next day, another 13 city departments go under the committee’s microscope, including the public safety departments that were spared the mayor’s budget ax and even given small increases, and the budget of the Public Defenders Office, where Newsom proposes cutting 16 positions.

“This creates a severe imbalance in the criminal justice system,” Public Defender Jeff Adachi told us. “Why is he cutting public defender services while fully funding police, fully funding the sheriff’s department, and essentially creating a situation where poor people are going to get second-rate representation?”

That theme of rich vs. poor has pervaded the budget season debate, both overtly and in budget priorities that each side is supporting.

 

BUDGET JUSTICE

Hundreds of people whose lives would be affected by cuts marched on City Hall under the banner Budget Justice on June 10. Some of San Francisco’s most vulnerable citizens, including homeless people, immigrants, seniors, and public housing residents, turned out for the march, chanting and waving signs asking the mayor to “invest in us.”

Sups. John Avalos and Chris Daly delivered resounding speeches mirroring the anger in the crowd, and promised to fix the budget by reallocating money to protect the city’s safety net. Daly charged that even as services to the city’s vulnerable populations are being slashed, “the politically connected and the powerful get huge increases.”

Avalos took the podium just before heading into City Hall to lead the Budget and Finance Committee meeting and implored the hundreds of people gathered out front to make their voices heard. “Mayor Newsom, he told us, he said, ‘We have a near-perfect budget.’ Do we have a near-perfect budget?” Avalos asked, and then paused while the crowd cried out, “Nooo!!!!!”

During an interview discussing Newsom’s budget priorities, Avalos twice made references to The Shock Doctrine, using the Naomi Klein book about how crises are used as opportunities to unilaterally implement corporatist policies. “We have a budget deficit that is real, but it’s being used to do other things,” Avalos said. “I look at it as a way to remake San Francisco. It’s a Shock Doctrine effect.”

He referred to the privatization of government services (an aspect of every Newsom budget), promoting condo conversions and gentrification, defunding nonprofits that provides social services (groups that often side with progressives), and helping corporations raid the public treasury (Newsom proposed beefing up the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development by a whopping 32 percent).

“It’s things that the most conservative parts of San Francisco have wanted for years, and now they have the conditions to make it happen,” Avalos said.

Much of that agenda involves slashing services to the homeless and other low-income San Francisco and de-funding the nonprofit network that provides services and jobs. “There’s an effort to say nonprofit jobs aren’t real jobs, but they are an important economic engine of the city,” Avalos told us. Those cuts were decried during the June 10 budget rally.

“What people don’t realize,” Office & Professional Employees International Union Local 3 representative Natalie Naylor said, “is that everything that’s being proposed to be cut from the city is creating no place for homeless people to go during the daytime. I don’t think Newsom’s constituents realize that we’re going to see more homeless people on the street than ever before.”

Pablo Rodriguez of the Coalition on Homelessness told the crowd that he was furious that the mayor would make such deep cuts to social services. “Stop riding on the back of the homeless, and the seniors and the children and all the community-based organizations,” Rodriguez said. “Why make the poor people pay for the rich people’s mistakes? The poor people didn’t make the mistakes.”

 

WHOM TO CUT?

The public safety unions were equally caustic in their arguments. An announcement for the Save Our Firehouses rally — which was heavily promoted by members of the Mayor’s Office and Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign team — claimed that “the Board of Supervisors voted to endanger the progress that we’ve made in public safety by laying off hundreds of police officers, closing up to 12 out of 42 fire stations and closing part of our jail.”

Actually, all sides have said the interim budget probably won’t lead to layoffs, station closures, or prisoner releases, but those could be a part of next year’s budget.

Tensions temporarily cooled a bit in the days that have followed, but the two sides still seemed far apart on their priorities, mayoral spin aside. Asked about the impasse, Newsom spokesperson Nate Ballard told the Guardian, “The mayor has already included over 90 percent of the supervisors’ priorities in the budget. But he’s against the supervisors’ efforts to gut public safety. He’s willing to work with people who have reasonable ideas to balance the budget. Balancing the budget with draconian cuts to police and fire is unreasonable.”

Campos disputed Ballard’s figure and logic. “I don’t know where that number comes from,” Campos said. “A lot of the things we wanted to protect, the mayor cut anyway.”

Campos said Newsom’s slick budget presentation glossed over painful cuts to essential services, cuts that activists and Budget Analyst Harvey Rose have been discovering over the last two weeks. “I felt the mayor has done a real good job of presenting things to make it look like it’s not as bad as it really is,” Campos said.

 

COMMITTEE WORK

Avalos expressed confidence that his committee will produce a document to the full board in July that reflects progressive priorities.

“We’re going to pass to the full board a budget that we have control over,” Avalos said, noting that a committee majority that also includes Sups. Campos and Ross Mirkarimi strongly favors progressive budget priorities.

He also praised the committee’s more conservative members, Sups. Bevan Dufty and Carmen Chu, as engaged participants in improving the mayor’s budget. “I think the tension on the committee is healthy.”

Ultimately, Avalos says, he knows the board members can alter Newsom’s budget priorities. But his goal is to go even further and develop a consensus budget that creatively spreads the pain.

“Ideally, I want a unanimous vote on the Board of Supervisors,” Avalos said.

In the current polarized budget climate, that’s an ambitious goal that may be out of reach. But there are some real benefits to attaining a unanimous board vote, including the ability to place revenue measures on the November ballot that can be passed by a simply majority vote (state law generally requires a two-third vote to increase taxes, but it makes provisions for fiscal emergencies, when a unanimous Board of Supervisors vote can waive the two-thirds rule).

Avalos has proposed placing sales tax and parcel tax measures on the fall ballot. Other proposals that have been discussed by a stakeholder committee assembled by Chiu include a measure to replace the payroll tax with a new gross receipts tax and general obligation bond measures to pay for things like park and road maintenance, which would allow those budget expenses to be applied elsewhere.

But Avalos said Newsom will need to step up and show some leadership if the measures are going to have any hope of being approved. “To get the two-thirds vote we need to win a revenue measure in this bad economy is going to be really hard,” Avalos said.

“The mayor is open to new revenue measures as long as they include significant reforms and are conceived and supported by a wide swath of the community including labor and business,” Ballard said.

Sup. Sean Elsbernd — one of the most conservative supervisors — has repeatedly said he won’t support new revenue measures unless they are accompanied by substantial budget reforms that will rein in ballooning expenditures in areas like city employee pensions.

“Pension reform. Health care reform. Spending reform. One of the above. A combination of the above,” Elsbernd told the Guardian when asked what he wants to see in a budget revenue deal.

Avalos says he’s mindful that not every progressive priority can be fully funded as the city wrestles with a budget deficit of almost $500 million, fully half the city’s discretionary budget. “It’s a crappy situation, and we can make it just a crummy situation.”

Let’s get ready to ruuuuuuuuummmmmble!!!

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By Steven T. Jones

The budget battle of the decade will erupt at City Hall over the next few hours, with firefighters, cops, and representatives of Mayor Gavin Newsom rallying out front at 1 p.m. and the providers and users of other city services – those slashed by Newsom, from public health to parks to social services – rallying with progressive supervisors in the same spot at 12:30 p.m.
Newsom spokesperson Nate Ballard denied accusations of improper coordination between Newsom and firefighters, who are represented by Eric Jaye, who is also running Newsom gubernatorial campaign. “There is an ethical wall between the Mayor and Eric Jaye on these issues, ” Ballard said. “[Newsom] agrees with the firefighters, but he is not involved with planning the rally. Maybe he’ll stop by.”
Expect fireworks and angry accusations being traded before both sides file into Board Chambers at 2 p.m. as supervisors consider an interim budget that shifts $82 million in Newsom cuts over to the public safety departments that actually got small budget increases despite the $438 million deficit.
Newsom did finally follow through on his seven-month-old pledge to work with supervisors yesterday, meeting with Board President David Chiu and Budget Committee Chair John Avalos, but they failed to resolve the impasse. As Chiu told us, “We didn’t hear anything from the mayor that would change where we were last week.”
In other words: Game on!

Why homicides are down

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By Tim Redmond

I’ve always been fascinated by this trend: The number of near-fatal shootings in San Francisco greatly exceeds the number of homicides, and while the mayor trumpets the falling murder rate, the number of people shot in the city isn’t dropping at all.

What’s happening? Well, I’m with Sup. Ross Mirkarimi:

San Francisco General Hospital’s trauma unit, one of the best in the country and where virtually all gunshot victims in The City are treated, also deserves some credit, Mirkarimi said.

“They are an unsung hero in this case,” he said.

Let’s face it: The reason only 20 people are dead from homidices in San Francisco so far this year is in part because the folks at the SF General Trauma Center are stitching a lot of shooting victims back together and keeping them alive. In a lot of places in the world (and sad to say, in a lot of places in the US) the number of people who dies after getting shot would be considerably higher.

And I wonder: At some point, will all these cuts to the public health budget start to impact the Trauma Center? And at that point, will the homicide rate go up — not because of more shootings but because we can’t afford as a city to save as many lives?

Grim thought, but sadly appropriate.

Newsom’s telling tantrum

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By Steven T. Jones
379-cover.web.jpg
In today’s Chronicle, Mayor Gavin Newsom wonderfully illustrates some of the main points I made in this week’s cover story, playing petulant political games instead of trying to honestly work with the Board of Supervisors.

At issue is the board’s effort to prevent deep cuts in the social safety net and public health system by asking the police, fire, and sheriff’s departments – whose budgets Newsom proposes to increase while cutting everything else – to share some of the fiscal pain. Newsom used the disagreement to claim that it’s prevented him from being able to reach a contract with the new police chief.

“This board acted without my understanding of their intent,” he told the Chron. “It’s a very dangerous game. I don’t know what they’re trying to do. I am stunned. Thank God we have a mayor.”

Unfortunately, we have a mayor who disingenuously promised – twice — to work closely with the supervisors on budget revisions, but couldn’t manage to walk down the hall or pick up a phone to learn “their intent” and “what they’re to do.” Instead, he simply lashes out and tacks on the ridiculously pompous self-praise.

But thank God we have progressive supervisors who resist getting sucked into this transparent ploy to pander to cops and firefighters and play to people’s fears. “I’m surprised at the mayor’s emotional reaction to a legitimate, genuine policy debate,” board President David Chiu told the Chron. “When he calms down, I look forward to working with him to develop a budget that reflects our shared policy priorities.”

Dismantling the Newsom budget

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EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom was upbeat when he delivered his budget proposal last week. It won’t be that bad, he told everyone — "At the end of the day, it’s a math problem."

Well, actually, it’s not. At the end of the day, it’s job losses, major cuts to city services, and hidden taxes — most of them, despite the mayor’s rhetoric, falling on the backs of the poor.

You can’t cut $70 million from the Department of Public Health — which is already operating at bare-bones levels after years of previous cuts — without significant impacts on health care for San Franciscans. You can’t cut $19 million out of the Human Services Agency without badly hurting homeless and needy people. You can’t raise Muni fares to $2 without taking cash out of the pockets of working-class people. The mayor’s cheery line may sound good when he’s out of town running for governor, but it’s not going to play so well on the streets of San Francisco.

Just for the record, here are a few of the proposed cuts:

A 21-bed acute psychiatric unit would be shut and replaced with an 18-bed unit for milder cases. Where would the seriously mentally ill go?

The number of home-healthcare workers, the folks who take care of the very sick who need skilled clinical services in the home, would be cut by 30 percent. Those clients would either suffer, go to (expensive) hospitals, or die.

Ongoing outpatient mental health services would be limited to the most severe cases. People who are, for now, only moderately mentally ill would lose access to care (until, without care, they become severely mentally ill).

The emergency food-bag program for seniors will lose $50,000, so hungry senior citizens won’t get to eat.

Almost $3 million will be cut from community-based organizations that provide direct, frontline services to the homeless.

Almost half of the city’s recreation directors — people who provide direct services and mentoring to at-risk youth — will be laid off.

The Tenderloin Housing Clinic Eviction Defense Center, the only place that offers free legal defense for Ellis Act evictions, will lose funding, leaving hundreds of tenants at risk of losing their homes.

Drop-in centers will close. Programs for homeless youth will shut down. More homeless people with increasingly more serious mental illness will be wandering the streets with nowhere to go for help.

Mayor Newsom brags in his campaign ads about creating private-sector jobs — but the budget will mean layoffs not just for city employees but for perhaps 1,000 nonprofit workers. That dwarfs the job creation he’s claiming — and defies the Obama administration’s call for government and private business to try to preserve and create jobs.

This isn’t a math problem. It’s a political problem, and the supervisors need to make it very clear that the mayor’s budget isn’t going to fly.

The supervisors need to take the budget apart, piece by piece, and reset its priorities. Newsom increases funding for police investigators by $7 million, while cutting the Public Defender’s Office by $2 million. He’s preserving his own bloated political operation (a big press office, highly paid special assistants and programs like 311 that are part of his gubernatorial campaign) while eliminating big parts of the social safety net. He’s raising bus fares, but not taxes on downtown.

"The mayor has presented his vision," Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Budget Committee, explained. "Now our priorities have to be presented."

This can’t be a modest, typical budget negotiation with the supervisors tweaking a few items here and there. This is a battle for San Francisco, for its future and its soul, and the supervisors need to start talking, today, about how they’re going to fight back. *

Editorial: Dismantling the Newsom budget

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The mayor’s cheery line may sound good when he’s out of town running for governor, but it’s not going to play so well on the streets of San Francisco.

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom was upbeat when he delivered his budget proposal last week. It won’t be that bad, he told everyone — "At the end of the day, it’s a math problem."

Well, actually, it’s not. At the end of the day, it’s job losses, major cuts to city services, and hidden taxes — most of them, despite the mayor’s rhetoric, falling on the backs of the poor.

You can’t cut $70 million from the Department of Public Health — which is already operating at bare-bones levels after years of previous cuts — without significant impacts on health care for San Franciscans. You can’t cut $19 million out of the Human Services Agency without badly hurting homeless and needy people. You can’t raise Muni fares to $2 without taking cash out of the pockets of working-class people. The mayor’s cheery line may sound good when he’s out of town running for governor, but it’s not going to play so well on the streets of San Francisco.

Shrinking government

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steve@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom released his proposed 2009-10 city budget June 1, proclaiming it far better than doomsayers predicted and emphasizing how he minimized cuts to health and human services that he once said could be as deep as 25 percent in order to bridge a $438 million budget deficit.

"It doesn’t come close to balancing on the backs of our health and human services agencies, as some had feared," Newsom told the department heads, elected supervisors, and journalists who were tightly packed into his office for the announcement event.

But there’s still plenty of pain in a city budget where the General Fund — the portion of the budget local officials can control — would be reduced by more than 11 percent, its only reduction in recent memory. And at a time when every reasonable Democrat in Sacramento has been nearly begging for tax hikes to prevent budget blood, San Francisco’s Democratic mayor proudly proclaimed that there are no new taxes in the budget.

"We didn’t raise taxes, and we didn’t borrow," he said. You can almost hear that line being repeated in the ads he’ll be running as he campaigns for governor.

Newsom proposes slashing the city’s public health budget by $128.4 million, or 8 percent (a total of 400 employees), while the human services budget would take a $15.9 million hit, or 2 percent. "That’s a lot, but by no means is it devastating," Newsom said, noting that he restored some of the deepest cuts that were the subject of alarming public hearings. "I listened to the public comments at the Board of Supervisors… Things got a lot better than the headlines and the hearings."

The proposed budget includes 1,603 full-time-equivalent layoffs, or a 5.8 reduction in the city’s workforce, trimming more than $75.5 million from the general fund budget. In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services is cutting back its workweek to 37.5 hours to further trim costs.

"The smoke hasn’t cleared yet and there’s a lot of devastation in this budget that isn’t being talked about," Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Board of Supervisors Budget Committee, said at the event. Newsom’s budget will be analyzed and then face its first committee hearing June 17, with approval by the full board required by July 31.

"The mayor told us a lot about what’s in the budget, but not a lot about what’s not in the budget, so we’ll spend a few days figuring that out," board President David Chiu told the Guardian.

The budget was aided greatly by more than $80 million in federal stimulus funds and other one-time revenue sources (such as $10 million from the sale of city-owned energy turbines) that were used to plug this year’s gap and offset cuts by the state and depressed tax revenue.

Although Newsom doesn’t want to raise taxes, licenses and fees would go up 41 percent, increasing revenue by $64 million to $220 million. Some of those proposed fee hikes range from the cost of parking in city-owned garages to admission fees for city-owned facilities such as the Strybing Arboretum. Muni riders will also see fares hiked to $2.

There will also be deep cuts to some key city functions. The Department of Emergency Management would take a 24 percent cut under the mayor’s plan, while the Department of Building Inspection faces a 20 percent cut to expenditures and a 29 percent reduction in staff.

The Planning Department would also take a hit of about 7 percent, with most of that focused on the department’s long-range planning functions, which were slashed by 19 percent to $4.7 million.

But it’s not an entirely austere budget. The police and fire departments have status quo budgets with no layoffs. Travel expenses would increase 13.5 percent to $2.9 million and the cost of food purchased by the city would rise 127 percent to $7 million.

The Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development — which often uses public funds to subsidize private sector projects — would get a 32 percent increase, to $24.7 million.

It’s unclear how much the Mayor’s Office has shared the budget pain. During the presentation, Newsom said his office’s budget has been cut by 28 percent, but he later clarified that was spread over the five years he has been mayor. Yet even that is tough to account for given that some functions have been shuffled to other departments.

The document shows a proposed 60 percent increase in the Mayor’s Office budget, although the lion’s share of that comes from the Mayor’s Office of Housing’s one-time financial support for some long-awaited projects, including rebuilding the Hunters View housing and support services project for low-income people connected to the Central YMCA, and an apartment project on 29th Avenue for people with disabilities.

Avalos has said he will look to find money by cutting some of the highly paid policy czars and communications specialists added to the Mayor’s Office in recent years, as well as Newsom’s cherished 311 call center and the Community Justice Court he created. Supervisors are also expected to resist Newsom’s penchant for privatization. Newsom proposed to privatize seven city functions, from jail health services and security guards and city-owned facilities, and to consolidate another 14 functions between various city departments.

Newsom pledged to work with supervisors who want to change the budget, continuing the rhetoric of cooperation that he opened the budget season with in January, which supervisors say hasn’t been matched by his actions or the secretive nature of this budget. "This budget is by no means done," Newsom said. "It’s an ongoing process."

In fact, Newsom warned that the budget news could be even worse than his budget outlines. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is talking about new cuts that could total $175 million or more for San Francisco only, although Newsom only included $25 million of that in his budget because it went to the printer on May 22 and the total hit is still unclear. "So," Newsom said, "we’re by no means out of the woods."

Editor’s Notes

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› Tredmond@sfbg.com

The absolute most stunning statement of how messed up the state of California is emerged last week from the state director of finance, explaining why the proposed budget cuts fall so heavily on services for the poor. Let me quote directly from The New York Times:

"Government doesn’t provide services to rich people," Mike Genest, the state’s finance director, said on a conference call with reporters on Friday. "It doesn’t even really provide services to the middle class.

"You have to cut where the money is," he added.

Um … government doesn’t provide services to rich people? What about, say, the roads they drive on, and the airports they fly in and out of? What about the vast sums the state spends putting out fires that threaten wealthy enclaves in Southern California? What about the public education system, which trains workers for businesses? What about the entire criminal justice system, which exists to a significant extent to prevent poor people from taking rich people’s money?

Do you think Sergey Brin and Larry Page would have become Google billionaires if the Internet — developed and paid for by the government — didn’t exist?

No. Federal, state, and local governments all spend money on services for the rich. And by and large, those services don’t get cut when budgets are busted, and by and large, the rich don’t pay their fair share for the services they get — and by and large, nobody in politics talks about that when these nasty decisions get made.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s just remember that as 900,000 kids lose their health insurance and California becomes, in the words of Mayor Gavin Newsom, the first state in the industrialized world to have no welfare system at all. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Cutting services for the poor, as opposed to cutting things rich people want and need, or making them pay a tiny bit more to keep society stable, is a political choice.

The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees just put out a fascinating document looking at alternatives to the governor’s cuts — including a bunch of things that can be done without the two-thirds vote required to raise taxes. There are, for example, about $2.5 billion worth of useless and wasteful tax loopholes identified by AFSCME that could be closed (hurting the rich, helping the rest of us). That would save a lot of health and welfare programs.

San Francisco has choices, too. Downtown parking fees hit wealthier people; Muni fare hikes are a tax on the poor. A congestion management fee on downtown would overwhelmingly hit wealthier commuters; cuts in public health overwhelmingly hit the poor. The Tenderloin’s Community Justice Center hurts low-income people (and helps rich tourists and the hotels scare away the homeless).

The thing that kills me is that some of us have been saying over and over — for years and years — that the city needs to develop a better tax system (which will require a public vote) to minimize these cyclical crises. And some of us have been pointing out that a public power system would generate several hundred million a year (and that private power is sucking $600 million a year out of the local economy).

Do we have to keep blundering from disaster to disaster? For how long?

*

Dazed and confused

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news@sfbg.com

Police officers in the Tenderloin have routinely violated city policies and wasted scarce public money sending people busted for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana to the Community Justice Center (CJC), a pet project of Mayor Gavin Newsom that was supposed to save money and clean up the Tenderloin.

Instead, all these minor drug possession cases have been dismissed by an already overtaxed court system. And as the police have only just begun to ease up on referring these cases to the CJC in its second month of operations, they continue to bust the homeless for quality-of-life violations.

The Tenderloin police station referred at least 17 cases of simple pot possession cases to the CJC since its inception in March. After only one month of the CJC’s operations in the Tenderloin, Public Defender Jeff Adachi could already see that such police referrals represented a larger misuse of resources occurring throughout the city.

Adachi’s office has handled more than 300 cases at the CJC. Of his caseload, he estimates that "about 80 percent of the cases have involved loitering, illegal camping, possession of marijuana, possession of paraphernalia, and blocking the sidewalk. The remainder of the cases were petty thefts, batteries, and other miscellaneous crimes."

Clarence Wilson, a 67-year-old African American Rastafarian, had his marijuana possession case dismissed at the CJC with Adachi’s help. Wilson’s ordeal began after he finished crossing the street at Hyde and Ellis at 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 8. He recalls walking in the crosswalk during a green light. But when he gazed up while reaching the other side, it had just turned red.

Two Tenderloin station police officers stopped him for jaywalking and proceeded to question him to see if he was carrying anything. "Just herbal," he admitted, referring to the small amount of marijuana he had just purchased.

The officers faced Wilson against the wall, handcuffed him, and drove him to the Tenderloin police station where he spent 45 minutes handcuffed to a bench. Before they released him with a court date for the following Monday at the CJC, they booked him under a jaywalking infraction and a misdemeanor violation of marijuana possession of less than 28.5 grams (an ounce).

Wilson’s case stands out because he has lived in the city for 33 years with a clean record, but has now been sucked into Newsom’s costly criminal justice experiment. "I was the guinea pig for that day," he said. "All these other people were crossing the red light walking, and you chose me — and you wouldn’t even tell me why I was being arrested. You wouldn’t even read me my rights."

"If the officer wanted to cite Mr. Wilson for jaywalking, he could have written a citation and released him on the spot," Adachi said. "But to handcuff him, treat him as a common criminal for possession of a small amount of marijuana is exactly what the city’s directive prohibits."

Possession of less than one ounce of marijuana is a misdemeanor and carries a maximum sentence of a $100 fine. But city law, specifically Administrative Code Chapter 12X, calls for police to make possession of less than an ounce of marijuana their "lowest priority" and to focus their resources elsewhere. The Board of Supervisors approved the law in 2006, sponsored by then-Sup. Tom Ammiano, who wrote, "the federal government’s war on drugs has failed" and called for a more sensible approach in San Francisco.

Particularly at a time when Newsom is asking every city department to makes budget cuts of 25 percent to cope with a $438 million budget deficit, Adachi said many CJC cases are a waste of precious public resources.

The CJC only takes misdemeanors and nonviolent felony cases in its court system. Modeled after New York City’s Center for Court Innovation, it serves as a one-stop location for the court to refer offenders to social services to address the root causes of criminal behavior — although those programs dealing with substance abuse, mental health treatment, and other social needs are also on the budget chopping block.

CJC only handled violations in four selected central neighborhoods deemed to be burdened by chronic crime: the Tenderloin, SoMa, Civic Center, and Union Square communities. Capt. Gary Jimenez of the Tenderloin Police Station could not be reached for an extensive interview, but told the Guardian that his officers are simply enforcing the law by citing offenders and referring such cases to the CJC.

CJC coordinator Tomiquia Moss has weighed in by facilitating talks between Adachi and Deputy Chief of Police Kevin Cashman, who sits on the CJC advisory board to address which cases get referred. While all 17 of the pot cases have been dismissed at the CJC, Moss believes that Adachi must continue to communicate with Tenderloin police officers to advise on citation referrals. "We don’t have any impact on how the police department administers enforcement," she said. "We can only be responsible for what happens to the case once it gets here."

Moss takes pride in the CJC for providing services even to clients whose cases are dismissed. She believes that almost all the people who have been referred to the CJC accept assistance because caseworkers are respectful and culturally competent, although she has yet to compile comprehensive statistics on CJC cases.

To get a sense on of the big picture at CJC, the Guardian reviewed a report from the Coalition on Homelessness based on the court’s calendar for its first two months in existence. Out of 336 total cases between March 4 and May 1, 100 (30 percent) were for sleeping outside; 71 (21 percent) were for possession of a crack pipe; and 99 (29 percent) were "public nuisance" citations to the court, a subjective violation often given with another citation such as obstructing the sidewalk.

However, among the pending cases that faced trial, the CJC reports that more severe crimes like theft, fraud, disorderly conduct, possession with intent to sell drugs, and soliciting drugs — cases routinely heard in other courtrooms — make up the majority.

Moss acknowledged the limitations of the CJC during tight budget times. "We anticipate people not being able to get all their needs met because there aren’t enough funds. Services are in jeopardy … You gotta consolidate. You have higher client-to-service-provider ratios. It’s a significant issue."

If the CJC is to continue operating with limited resources, Adachi and homeless advocates say Tenderloin police need to focus their resources on serious crimes, rather than quality of life violations that predominately criminalize the homeless.

Bob Offer-Westort, the civil rights organizer for Coalition on Homelessness and coordinating editor of the local paper Street Sheet, says it’s a shame to continue funding the CJC while service centers like the Tenderloin Health drop-in center are being closed due to budget cuts. Offer-Westort acknowledges the laudable social services provided at the CJC, but said "its front-end is conducted by law enforcement officers" who treat it as a "homeless court".

While Newsom hoped the CJC would be popular with city residents concerned about the homeless, 57 percent of San Franciscan voters weighed in last November against allocating extra funding to the CJC with Proposition L.

Although the mayor is proposing a 25 percent cut in the public defender’s budget, Adachi fears this would mean firing 38 lawyers, or one-third of his staff. This could translate to a withdrawal from representing approximately 6,000 clients at his office. In turn, low-income defendants stretched thin by the economic crisis would have to turn to being assigned to private lawyers with costly hourly rates that will still have to be paid for by the city.

Adachi told the Guardian that the marijuana possession cases at the CJC represent the benign types of cases squeezing his office dry, and that Newsom still has not provided Adachi with the two lawyers he promised to handle CJC cases. Newsom’s spokesperson, Nathan Ballard, would not comment on the cases going to the CJC, telling the Guardian, "I’m not going to play along."

Bruce Mirken, communications director of the Marijuana Policy Project, sees San Francisco’s use of scarce resources for marijuana cases as parallel to state and federal policy. "In a sense, it’s a small piece of a larger puzzle, which is that we waste billions and billions of dollars every year in tax money that could be being used for schools, roads, healthcare, etc. in arresting and prosecuting people for possession of a drug that’s safer than alcohol. It’s just crazy, it’s pointless, and every dollar spent on it is a dollar wasted — particularly when government is strapped for cash and cutting vital services to try to balance the budget."

The city and state continue to reassess their marijuana regulations and enforcement on a broader scale. In April, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi proposed legislation allowing the city to sell medical marijuana through the Department of Public Health. And in March, Assembly Member Ammiano began pushing for the state to legalize and tax marijuana.

In the meantime, the CJC, the District Attorney’s Office, and the Public Defender’s Office are still stretching their resources to handle small possession of marijuana cases cited by Tenderloin police station — in spite of the city’s stated priorities. And homeless individuals continue to get cited for quality of life violations while city workers providing social services see their budgets running dry.

Uphill climb

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steve@sfbg.com

Bicyclists generally try to avoid hills, so one of the most popular bike routes in town is a series of turns called the Wiggle, which snakes along a valley through the Lower Haight. The route — a sort of bridge between east and west — is traveled by a growing number of bicyclists, from hipster kids on colorful fixies to grizzled seniors on comfortable touring bikes.

I ride the Wiggle every day. Coming from the Panhandle, the most harrowing approach is the three blocks I have to travel on busy Oak Street, competing for space with impatient motorists who often seem to forget that they’re wielding deadly weapons. Many times I’ve had cars zip by me within inches, honk (a very startling sound when you’re not wrapped in metal and glass), zoom up right behind me, or flip me off.

But then I turn right onto Scott Street — and the world suddenly changes. My heart rate drops and I breathe deeply. Rain or shine, there are almost as many bikes there as cars. The cyclists smile and nod at one another and even the motorists seem more respectful, sometimes waving us through the stop signs even when it’s their turn. It feels like an informally functional community. It’s how traveling around this city ought to be.

Even though the citywide percentage of vehicle trips taken by bicycle in San Francisco is still in single digits (compared to more than 20 percent in many European cities), and even though a court injunction that’s expected to be lifted this summer has banned any new bike projects in the city for the past three years, bicycling is booming in San Francisco, increasing by almost 50 percent since 2006. I’m never alone these days on my solo commute.

My decision to ride a bike and sell my car wasn’t about joining a movement. I just like to ride my bike, a simple joy that I really began to rediscover about 10 years ago. It’s fun, cheap, and an easy way to get exercise. And it connects me with my surroundings — the people, buildings, and streetscapes of this beautiful city — in a way I didn’t even realize I was missing when I drove.

But as pressing political and planetary realities have welled up around my personal transportation choice, I’ve come to see that I am part of a movement, one that encapsulates just about every major issue progressive San Franciscans care about: public health, environmentalism, energy policy, economics, urban planning, social justice, public safety, sustainability, personal responsibility, and the belief that we can make our communities better places, that we’re not captive to past societal choices.

As a bicyclist and a journalist, I’ve been actively engaged in these struggles for many years. I understand that bicyclists are criticized in many quarters as a vocal minority with a self-righteous sense of superiority and entitlement, and that I’m personally accused of bias for writing empathetically about bicyclists in dozens of bike-related stories.

Well, guess what? I don’t apologize. We are better than motorists, by every important measure. We use less space and fewer resources and create less waste and pollution. Bikes are available to almost every segment of society, and we don’t need to fight wars to power them. They improve the community’s health and happiness. And when we get into accidents, we don’t kill or maim the people we hit.

And you know what else? This really is going to be the Year of the Bicycle, as it’s been dubbed by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, the city’s largest grassroots civic organization, with more than 10,000 dues-paying members. There are more of us than ever, politicians now listen to us, and San Francisco is on the verge of the most rapid expansion of its bike network that any American city has ever seen.

This is the moment we’ve been moving toward for many years, a turning point that the Guardian has meticulously chronicled and proudly promoted. The bicycle has become a metaphor for progress that is long overdue. So mount up on May 14, Bike to Work Day, if you’d like to be a part of the solution to what’s ailing our city and planet.

I love my bike, and so do most people who see it. San Franciscans appreciate the little things, like someone who rides a silly-looking bike.

It started as a basic used mountain bike, but I styled it out for Burning Man a few years ago, covering it with heavy red acrylic paint that looks like stucco, a big basket covered in fake fur and ringed with electro-luminescent wire, and custom-welded high handlebars topped by a lizard horn.

Maybe you’ve seen me around town — and if so, maybe you’ve seen me blow through stop signs or red lights. Yes, I’m that guy, and I only apologize if I’m stealing a motorist’s right-of-way, which I try to avoid. Rob Anderson, who successfully sued San Francisco to force detailed studies of its Bike Plan (and blogs at district5diary.blogspot.com), regularly calls me and my ilk the "bike fanatics."

I’ve interviewed Anderson by phone a few times and tangled with him online many times. He’s actually a pretty well-informed and well-reasoned guy, except for his near pathological disdain for bicycling, which he considers an inherently dangerous activity that government has no business promoting and is not a serious transportation option.

But San Francisco would be a gridlocked nightmare without bikes. Transportation officials say this is already one of the most traffic-choked cities in the country (second after Houston), a big factor in Muni never reaching its voter-mandated 85 percent on-time performance. During peak hours, most Muni lines reach their holding capacity. Imagine 37,500 additional people (the estimated number of San Franciscans who primarily travel by bike) driving or taking Muni every day.

Conversely, imagine the transportation system if bicycling rates doubled and some of those bulky cars and buses became zippy bikes. Quality of life would improve; the air would be cleaner; we would emit far less greenhouse gases (transportation accounts for about half of the Bay Area’s carbon emissions); housing would get cheaper (building parking increases costs and decreases the number of housing units); pressure would decrease to drill for oil offshore and prop up despotic regimes in oil-rich countries; pedestrians would be safer (about a dozen are killed by cars here every year); and public health would improve (by reducing obesity and respiratory ailments associated with air pollution).

Increase bicycling rates even more, to the levels of Berlin, Copenhagen, or Amsterdam, and San Francisco would be utterly transformed, with many streets converted to car-free boulevards as the demand shifts from facilitating speeding cars to creating space for more bicyclists and pedestrians.

Sure, as Anderson points out, many people will never ride a bike. The elderly, those with disabilities, some families with kids, and a few other groups can credibly argue that the bicycle isn’t a realistic daily transportation option. But that’s a small percentage of the population.

For the rest of you: what’s your excuse? Why would you continue to rely on such wasteful and expensive transportation options — a label that applies to both cars and buses — when you could use the most efficient vehicle ever invented?

At the SFBC’s annual Golden Wheels Awards banquet on May 5, SFBC director Leah Shahum described a bike movement at the peak of its power, reach, and influence. "In the last two years, we’ve seen an unprecedented political embrace of bicycling," she said, praising Mayor Gavin Newsom for his championing of the Sunday Streets car-free space and calling the progressive-dominated Board of Supervisors "the most bike-friendly board we’ve ever seen."

In just a few years, the SFBC went from fighting pitched battles with Newsom over closing some Golden Gate Park roads to cars on Saturdays — a two-year fight that ended in a compromise after some serious ill-will on both sides — to Newsom’s championing an even larger Sunday Streets road closure on six days this spring and summer, even fighting through business community opposition to do so.

As with many Newsom initiatives, it’s difficult to discern his motivation, which seems to be a mixture of political posturing and a desire to keep San Francisco on the cutting edge of the green movement. Whatever the case, the will to take street space from automobiles — which will be the crux of the struggles to come — is probably greater now than it has ever been.

Because at the end of the day, Anderson is right: bicyclists do have a radical agenda. We want to take space from cars, both lanes and parking spaces, all over this city. That’s what has to happen to create a safe, complete bicycle system, which is a prerequisite to encouraging more people to cycle. We need to realize that designing the city around automobiles is an increasingly costly and unsustainable model.

"The streets do not have to be solely — or even primarily — for cars anymore," Shahum told an audience that included City Attorney Dennis Herrera, top mayoral aide Mike Farrah, and several members of the Board of Supervisors (including President David Chiu, a regular cyclist and occasional bike commuter), drawing warm applause.

Shahum was certainly correct when she called the politically engaged community of bicyclists "one of the strongest and most successful movements in this city," one she believes is capable of moving an ambitious agenda. "During the next six weeks, we have the opportunity to win a literal doubling of the city’s bike network."

She’s referring to the imminent completion of environmental studies that support the city’s Bike Plan, which will allow the courts to lift the nearly three-year-old injunction against new bike projects in the city. The SFBC has been aggressively organizing and advocating for the immediate approval of all 56 near-term bikeway improvements outlined in the plan, which have been studied and are ready to go, most with grant funding already in the bank.

"I think San Francisco is hungry for a higher use of public space," she said. "Imagine streets moving so calmly and slowly that you’d let your six-year-old ride on them."

That’s the standard advocated by the international car-free movement, which I interacted with last year when I covered the International Carfree Conference in Portland, Ore. These influential advocates believe bikeways should be so safe and insulated from fast-moving traffic that both the young and old feel comfortable riding them.

"Streets belong to us — they are the public spaces of the city — but they don’t feel like they belong to us," said Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, a sponsor of Sunday Streets, which was honored at the Golden Wheel Awards. The streets, he told the crowd, "don’t need to be the objects of fear."

Later, as we spoke, Radulovich said it’s not enough to create narrow bikes lanes on busy streets. One of the great joys of riding a bike with a friend is to be able to talk as you ride, something he said transportation advocates around the world refer to as the "conversational standard."

Politically, there’s a long way to go before San Francisco embraces the conversational standard, the creation of permanent car-free bike boulevards, or traffic law changes that promote bicycling. Anderson and his ilk reacted with outrage last year when the Guardian and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission began discussing adopting Idaho’s bike laws here, in which bicyclists treat stop signs as yield signs and stop lights as stop signs (see "Don’t stop: Bike lessons from Idaho," 5/14/08).

Yet until bicycling is taken more seriously as a real transportation option, all this talk about sustainability and green-everything is going to continue falling woefully short of its objectives.

The powerhouse environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council held a gala awards dinner May 9 at the California Academy of Sciences for its first Growing Green Awards, an effort to honor innovators in the growing sustainable food movement.

The award selection panel was chaired by journalist Michael Pollan, whose The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Penguin Press, 2006) and other works have made him a leading voice calling for recognition and reform of a corporate food system that is unsustainable, unhealthy, and harmful to the environment.

That movement has garnered some high-profile support and attention, but has so far failed to effectively counter the influence of agribusiness interests, he told me. "We need an organization like the NRDC in the food area, or we need to get NRDC to embrace our issues."

The awards banquet showed that Pollan and his allies have made progress with the NRDC, which should be a natural ally of advocates for better food and transportation systems, two realms that have the biggest impact on this country’s natural resources.

But when I left the ceremony as hundreds of guests were being seated for dinner, I rode away — on the only bicycle there.

Recurrent debacle

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By Julian Davis

(Julian Davis is on the board of San Francisco Tomorrow, an urban environmental organization. He chaired last November’s Clean Energy campaign, prop H.)

In the wake of Tuesday’s vote on the Recurrent solar power deal for the Sunset Reservoir, long time progressive activists have to ask themselves, what happened?

A widespread commitment to positive government courses through the veins of San Francisco’s political community. Whether it’s defending the public health care system against cuts or the perennial advocacy of public power, one thing that unites progressives is a belief that government should work for the people and that corporate special interests have no place dictating or writing the terms at City Hall.

“Failing to grasp the big picture”

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By Steven T. Jones

The supervisors that voted 4-1 yesterday to reject the MTA’s budget were smart, deliberate, curious, and forward-looking, so it’s no surprise that the Mayor Gavin Newsom’s flack Nathan Ballard told the Chronicle that they were “failing to grasp the big picture” and causing cuts in public health and other city services.

If those cuts happen, that’s Newsom’s fault for blocking the new revenue measures that President David Chiu, who also led this charge in questioning a budget that will hurt Muni and the city, tried to create. Instead, Newsom supports this utterly dishonest MTA budget, which takes even more than the $26 million per year that voters in 2007 said they wanted Muni to have by approving Prop. A and using it to fund pet projects that he wants to claim in his run for governor.

Newsom was also the one who decided to pay MTA director Nat Ford $316,000, the highest salary in the city, and to negotiate overly generous contracts with city police, fire, and management unions that he’s now having to try to go back and undo. He lets taxpayers pay Ballard and other highly paid political operatives and lets his precious 311 call center charge the MTA almost $2 per call, which is more than it costs to ride the bus. And he wants MTA is increase the number of fare inspectors, even though that program costs $8 million and only netted $350,000 in fines. On and on it goes, as the hearing yesterday clearly highlighted.

But don’t take my word for it, go to SFGTV and watch the Budget and Finance Committee hearing, starting around the third hour when this item began. Watch Chiu respectfully and intelligently ask insightful questions of Ford that clearly showed just how bad this budget is. Then you’ll grasp the big picture and appreciate who’s really running the city and who’s willing to sacrifice this city on the altar of his personal ambitions.

Public access TV faces the axe

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By TIm Redmond

San Francisco stands to lose the vast majority of its public-access cable programming June 30th unless Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is able to convince his colleagues to try to force Comcast, the local cable operator, to keep paying the tab.

Comcast for years has paid enough money through its francise agreement with the city to fund the San Francisco Community Television Corporation, a nonprofit, at a level of roughly $700,000 a year. That pays for the studios on Market Street and a staff to manage 134 local programs that show on channels 29 and 76. It’s a wonderful mix of stuff, put together for what amounts to a bargain price in decidedly low-overhead studios, and demonstrates exactly what the notion of public-access TV is all about.

But in 2006, the state Legislature took the authority to regulate cable franchises away from cities — and that left San Francisco unable to continue demanding the payment for public access. Mirkarimi has figured out a way around it, and he has the support of state Sen. Mark Leno, who argues that the state legislation never intended to prevent cities from mandating public-access fees.

The technical glitch is language that seems to imply that the city can force Comcast to pay for facilities, but not for operating costs. Since the city’s pretty broke right now, it’s going to be hard to get $700,000 in General Fund money to pay the CTC staff. In fact, CTC applied to renew its contract, but the city said it was only going to be able to pay some $100,000 a year going forward.

But frankly, without a staff to operate the access channels, the whole enterprise will die.

Mirkarimi’s bill would hit Comcast with a new fee — and based on a letter he’s received from Leno, he thinks it will fly legally. But the cable company says it will simply pass that on to customers (who frankly don’t have a lot of choice in the market). The Chronicle’s Marisa Lagos put it this way:

A city report estimates that consumers, who currently shell out $6.24 per year, could end up paying 352 percent more, or $28.20 per year

That sounds like a whopping fee hike — 352 percent more! — but in reality, we’re talking about all of $21.96 a YEAR, or $1.83 a month. Which is pretty minimal.

At the Budget Committee, Mirkarimi and Sup. John Avalos voted to send the bill to the full board, which takes it up tomorrow, May 5th. Saving public access TV isn’t as important as saving public health, but it’s a part of San Francisco, and it’s a way for diverse and creative voices to get on the air — and it would cost the taxpayers nothing and cable subscribers pennies. This one needs community support.

Pitting poor against poor

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OPINION In 2004, California voters passed Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), to fund the expansion of community-based mental health services. MHSA is funded through a 1 percent tax on the portion of a taxpayer’s income in excess of $1 million. It was a form of uniquely appropriate progressive taxation, making the rich pay for all the ways they test our sanity, made especially acute today in the wake of foreclosures and job losses.

Today, Gov. Schwarzenegger is leading a bipartisan assault on Prop. 63, which funds an array of needed services in California and San Francisco. By placing Proposition 1E on the May ballot, the governor is asking voters to divert MHSA money to pay for the budget deficit. This maneuver ignores the fact that California is a safer, saner place because of the act — 200,000 people are now enrolled in mental health services who were not in 2004.

The proposition pits the poor against the poor, making mental health consumers pay the price for the budget deadlock in Sacramento. Mental health services are designed to improve the lives of communities by minimizing the potential for homelessness and hospitalization. Prop. 1E, pitched as a two-year measure, leaves effective programs in the lurch, threatening resources in every neighborhood.

MHSA funds programs for youth and families affected by street and gang violence, queer youth showing early signs of mental health issues, and residents in supportive housing. One of its key accomplishments has been the expansion of resources designed to reach consumers in culturally appropriate ways, with an open process, allowing communities to design solutions to their own problems.

"After Prop. 63 was passed, people with untreated mental health needs saw a glimmer of hope," remarked James Keyes, who serves as a member of the San Francisco Mental Health Board. "In San Francisco alone, we were able to do workforce training, prevention, and housing retention among people with mental health concerns. These innovative programs might not be with us if Prop. 1E passes."

For whatever short-term savings Prop. 1E might provide, the long-term consequences are disastrous. The costs of untreated mental illnesses affect our public health system. Those who never get care, or who lose care, will likely find their jobs, housing, and relationships in peril, and will rely on the remaining (and much more expensive) threads of the social safety net.

Vote No on 1E and send a message to the state government that long-term budget solutions start with Prop. 63’s logic — progressive taxation on those with the most ability to pay. Letting the governor and the legislature cut essential survival services to balance the budget sets a horrible precedent. If voters let them get away with it, they will surely target poor people every time the budget is deadlocked. *

James Tracy works with Community Housing Partnership.

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.

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