Ross Mirkarimi

Will the “real” progressives please stand up?

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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9

Before Ed Lee was unanimously appointed interim mayor at the Jan. 11 Board of Supervisors meeting, Sup. David Campos delivered a speech about the progressive movement in San Francisco.

“Progressives are no longer in control of this Board of Supervisors,” Campos noted. “We have a president of the Board of Supervisors who was elected without a clear progressive majority, and who was elected with a clear backing of the moderate block of supervisors.”

Speaking to the notion that supervisors were not elected to take positions, but to get things done, an idea aired by Board President David Chiu, Campos demurred. “I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to say that none of us are elected to take certain positions,” he said.

“It’s important to get things done,” Campos continued. “But I don’t think getting things done is enough. We have to ask ourselves, what is it that we’re getting done? How is it that we’re getting things done? And for whom is it that we’re doing what we’re doing?”

Would things be done in the interests of the people, Campos wanted to know, “or the downtown corporate interests?”

Would things be done in a transparent way? “I hope we’re not getting things done behind closed doors,” Campos said.

Campos also took issue with the implication that “progressives cannot get things done.” He pointed to district elections, universal healthcare, domestic partner benefits, and police reform as accomplishments of the progressive community.

Despite Campos’ pronouncement that progressives were on the losing end, nearly every elected official who stood to speak throughout the course of the historic day uttered the P-word — including Lee himself.

“I was a progressive,” Lee said during his inaugural speech, “before progressive was a political faction in this town.” Lee pointed to his history of fighting for the rights of African Americans and Latinos, his move to establish a whistle-blower program, and his role in creating a recycling program for the city as evidence of his progressive credentials.

Supervisors Eric Mar, Ross Mirkarimi, and Chiu also touched on the issue of progressive politics in comments delivered before Lee was unanimously appointed. “Progressive politics needs to qualify its new definition,” Mirkarimi said, “which is more than just who we are by name or

by ethnicity or culture but by what we stand for.” Mirkarimi also spoke about the transition representing an opportunity to “inject a level of smart politics, not necessarily branded as a progressive or moderate or conservative, but smart politics that take us forward.”

Mar spoke about “our changing progressive movement,” and Board President David Chiu countered Campos’ charge that progressives had lost their control of the board, saying, “I do believe that the majority of this board shares progressive values.”

Chiu also said he believed that there is “a danger in an overly narrow definition of what is progressive.”

At this point, given so many different opinions and affiliations with the label, the very word “progressive” is starting to take on a confusing quality. Does this stem from a lack of a better term? Is it simply that many people with different sets of alliances and perspectives, sometimes at odds with one another, nonetheless identify as “progressives?”

Or is does this new, more complex version of “progressive” relate to the void left behind by two polarizing figures, who drew definitive battle lines between “progressives” and “moderates” by staking out furious opposition to each other? The transition of power in City Hall was marked not only by the introduction of new elected officials in the board chambers and Room 200, but by the departure of former Sup. Chris Daly and former Mayor Gavin Newsom, both towering white men known for relishing the limelight, delivering long-winded addresses, and waging fierce battles against their enemies.

If those elected officials once viewed as the solidly progressive block – former Sup. Chris Daly and Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi – were swept out of power with this shift, as Campos suggested, their political label seems to have survived intact. Despite the approving nod of the board’s moderates and two business-friendly powerhouses who hold tremendous sway even if they don’t hold office, the city’s top two officials — Chiu and Lee — nonetheless seemed eager to be associated with “progressive” values.

Power and pragmatism

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
Power and pragmatism

steve@sfbg.com

After an epic week at City Hall, the political dynamics in San Francisco have undergone a seismic shift, with pragmatism replacing progressivism, longtime adversarial relationships morphing into close collaborations, and Chinese Americans as mayor and board president.

It was a week of surprises, starting Jan. 4 when City Administrator Ed Lee came out of nowhere to become the consensus choice for interim mayor, and ending Jan. 9 when Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed Police Chief George Gascón to be the new district attorney, Newsom’s last official act as mayor before belatedly taking his oath of office as lieutenant governor on Jan. 10.

In between, the outgoing Board of Supervisors held a special final meeting Jan. 7, at which progressive supervisors fell into line behind Lee, some of them reluctantly, and accepted the new political reality. The next day, the new Board of Supervisors took office and overwhelmingly reelected David Chiu as board president, with only the three most progressive supervisors in dissent.

After Chiu played kingmaker as the swing vote for making Lee the new mayor, the board and Mayor’s Office are likely to enjoy far closer and more cooperative relations than they’ve had in many years. And the sometimes prickly, blame-game relations between the Police Department and D.A.’s Office should also get better now that the top cop has switched sides. But what it all means for the average San Franciscan, particularly the progressive voters who created what they thought was a majority on the Board of Supervisors, is still an open question.

One thing that is clear is the ideological battles that have defined City Hall politics — what Chiu called the “oppositional politics of personality” during his closing remarks on Jan. 8 — have been moved to the back burner while the new leaders try a fresh approach.

Newsom — with his rigid fiscal conservatism and open disdain for the Board of Supervisors, particularly its progressive wing — is gone. Also leaving City Hall is Sup. Chris Daly, a passionate and calculating progressive leader whose over-the-top antics caused a popular backlash against the movement.

In a way, Newsom and Daly were perfect foils for one another, caustic adversaries who often reduced one another to two-dimensional caricatures of themselves. But they were each strongly driven by rival ideologies and political priorities, despite Newsom’s rhetorical efforts to turn “ideology” into a dirty word applied only to his opponents.

“This year represents a changing of the guard, a transition,” Chiu said, pledging to continue pushing for progressive reforms, only with a more conciliatory approach, a theme also sounded by Sups. Eric Mar and Jane Kim, who each broke with their progressive colleagues to support Chiu over rival presidential nominee Sup. John Avalos.

“I will always support policies that will make our city more equitable and just,” Kim said after being sworn in to replace Daly, although she also made a claim about the new board with which her predecessor probably wouldn’t agree: “I think we have a lot more in common than we don’t.”

With a focus on diversity and compromise, “respect and camaraderie,” Mar said, “I think this new board represents the evolution of the progressive movement in San Francisco.”

If indeed City Hall is enjoying a “Kumbaya” moment, the path to this point was marred by backroom deal-making and old-school power politics, much of it engineered by a pair of figures from the previous era who are by no means progressives: former Mayor Willie Brown and Rose Pak, head of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce.

Pak was seated front and center — literally and figuratively — during the board’s Jan. 7 vote for Lee and its Jan. 8 vote for Chiu, following media reports that it was she and Brown who persuaded Lee to take the job and city leaders (particularly Newsom, Chiu, and outgoing Sups. Bevan Dufty and Sophie Maxwell) to give it to him.

It all seemed sneaky and unsettling to board progressives, who questioned what kind of secret deal had been cut, even as they voiced their respect for Lee’s progressive roots and long history of service to the city. The sense that something unseemly was happening was exacerbated on Jan. 4 when Dufty abandoned a pledge of support for Sheriff Michael Hennessey — who five progressive supervisors supported for interim mayor — and left the meeting to confer with the Mayor’s Office before returning to announce his support for Lee.

Sups. David Campos, Ross Mirkarimi, and Avalos pleaded with their colleagues for time to at least talk with Lee, who was traveling in China since he reportedly changed his mind about wanting the interim mayor job. Maxwell was the only Lee supporter in the 6-5 vote for delaying the interim mayor item by a few days so the supervisors could speak with Lee by phone.

Pak and other Chinatown leaders put together a strong show of force by the Chinese American community at that Jan. 7 meeting, where the board voted 10-1 for Lee, with only Daly in dissent. Afterward, some of Lee’s strongest supporters — including the Rev. Norman Fong and Gordon Chin with the Chinatown Community Development Center — admitted that the process of picking Lee was flawed.

“Part of the problem was Ed’s because he couldn’t make up his mind. The process was bad,” Fong told the Guardian after the vote. Although Fong said he knows Lee to be a strong and trustworthy progressive, he admitted that the way it went down raised questions: “Some people were concerned about who he’ll listen to.”

Specifically, the concern is that Lee will be unduly influenced Brown and Pak, who each represent corporate clients whose interests are often at odds with those of the general public. And both operate behind the scenes and play a kind of political hardball that runs contrary to progressive values on openness, inclusion, and accountability.

“If there is a phone call from Willie Brown to Rose Pak, Ed Lee is going to go along with it,” predicted a knowledgeable source who has worked closely with all three, recalling the way they did business during Brown’s mayoral administration. “There was no real discussion of issues. The fix was always in.”

But Pak insisted that there was nothing wrong with the process of selecting Lee, and that all concerns about the nomination were driven by anti-Asian racism. “You have a plantation mentality,” Pak told the Guardian as she held court in front of a crowded press box before the Jan. 8 meeting. “The Bay Guardian has never given people of color a fair shot.”

While Newsom, Chiu, and Pak-allied political consultant David Ho all insisted “there was no deal” to win support for Lee, Pak seemed to revel in the high-profile role she played, with Bay Citizen reporter Gerry Shih labeling her “boastful” in his Jan. 6 article “Behind-The-Scenes Power Politics: The Making of Ed Lee,” which ran the next day in The New York Times.

“This was finally our moment to make the first Chinese mayor of a major city,” Pak reportedly told Shih. “How could you let that slip by?”

Chiu downplayed Pak’s influence, telling the Guardian that Lee was his top choice since November, and telling his colleagues before the Jan. 7 vote, “Ed is someone who does represent our shared progressive values.” But he also made it clear that helping the city’s progressive movement wasn’t what drove his decision.

“This is a decision beyond who were are as progressives and who we are as moderates. It’s about who we are as San Franciscans,” Chiu said. “This is a historic moment for the Chinese-American community,” calling it “a community that has struggled, a community that has seen discrimination.”

The next day, shortly after being elected to a second term as board president, Chiu acknowledged the “very real differences” in ideology among the supervisors, “but leadership is about working through those differences.” Ultimately, he said, “none of us were voted into office to take positions. We were voted into office to get things done.”

Chiu and pragmatism win over the new board

Sasha Cuttler
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13

Despite the re-election of David Chiu as president of the Board of Supervisors today, there was a palpable shift in the political dynamics at City Hall. “Ideology” has been deemed a dirty word by a majority of the Board of Supervisors, while the politics of identity and “getting things done” is the new imperative.
That shift was most evident in the 8-3 vote for Chiu, with progressive Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi supporting Avalos for the post through two rounds of voting. Chiu won it on the second round after fiscal conservative Sup. Sean Elsbernd withdrew his nomination, with he and his other three backers – Sups. Carmen Chu, Scott Wiener, and Mark Farrell – all supporting Chiu in the second round.
“This year represents a changing of the guard, a transition,” Chiu told us, noting the departure of both Mayor Gavin Newsom and supervisors that include Chris Daly. “We’re going to have to get past the oppositional politics of personality.”
In place of a progressive politics based on principled positions and aggressively challenging the influence that powerful downtown interests still exert on City Hall, Chiu is advocating for more pragmatic solutions to the considerable challenges facing the city, starting with a projected budget deficit of almost $400 million.
“None of us were voted into office to take positions, we were voted into office to get things done,” Chiu said.
His approach has occasionally earned him the scorn of progressives over the last two years, particularly in Chiu’s high-profile compromises with Newsom over cuts to Muni and city programs, business tax breaks, and other issues, as Avalos noted. But as Avalos told Chiu, “Clearly today, you have been validated in your hard work.”
Chiu was backed in both rounds of voting by progressive Asian-American Sups. Jane Kim and Eric Mar, both of whom also struck pragmatic notes in their comments. But they also noted that the board’s new civility and diversity are progressive values. “I think this new board represents the evolution of the progressive movement in San Francisco,” Mar said.
Newsom has been pointedly criticizing the notion of ideology for years – apparently unaware that his anti-tax, pro-business philosophy is an ideology – and it was echoed by several supervisors, including Farrell, who said he wants “to turn City Hall into a place based on issues and ideas and not ideology.”
Now, we’re all left to wait and see what kinds of issues and ideas take root. We’ll have much more on an extraordinary week at City Hall – with a new board and new incoming Mayor-select Ed Lee – in next week’s Guardian.

Historic mayoral vote followed a flawed process

Sasha Cuttler
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6

Ed Lee would be San Francisco’s first Chinese-American mayor right now – if Mayor Gavin Newsom wasn’t delaying his swearing in as lieutenant governor. And Lee might also have had 10 votes on the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, as he had today, if the process hadn’t involved backroom deals and moderate, lame-duck supervisors kowtowing to the outgoing mayor. In other words, this historic occasion just didn’t need to be sullied the way it was this week.
There was real jubilation at City Hall when I left there a few minutes ago, and for good reason, even though today’s vote will have to be repeated by the new board after Newsom officially resigns. “This is a historic moment for the Chinese-American community,” Board President David Chiu told a packed board chambers, calling it, “a community that has struggled, a community that has seen discrimination.”
Chiu braved the taunts of Sup. Chris Daly and some progressive activists for supporting Lee on Tuesday, steadfastly maintaining that Lee is progressive and the best candidate for this job, despite his five progressive colleagues voting for Sheriff Michael Hennessey. And Lee does have progressive roots and support, as the progressive supervisors have attested publicly.
Once the progressive supervisors were given the chance to talk to Lee – whose openness to accepting the nomination came out of nowhere, reportedly at the urging of Chinatown power broker Rose Pak and former Mayor Willie Brown – all but Daly voted to support Lee.
Yet all of them also publicly noted how the process was deeply flawed and contrary to progressive principles of openness and accountability. “I have questions about the process and how we got to this point,” Sup. John Avalos said before announcing his support for Lee based on a half-hour telephone conversation yesterday (Lee has been in China through his public consideration as interim mayor).  
Sup. David Campos said he nominated Hennessey as a compromise caretaker mayor based on the representation from Newsom that he was acceptable and after being told by Sup. Bevan Dufty that he would support Hennessey. Instead, Dufty refused to vote until calling for a recess and marching down to the Mayor’s Office on Tuesday, returning to be the swing vote for Lee.
“I’m very disappointed in the way this process has gone down,” Campos said, adding that Hennessey “did not deserve the kind of treatment he received.” Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Eric Mar echoed the point, with Mirkarimi saying he still doesn’t understand why Dufty flipped or what happened when he went to visit the Mayor’s Office.
Through the whole hearing, Dufty – a candidate for mayor himself – didn’t say a word. At one point, he even started clearing out his desk in Board Chambers, throwing away recycled papers and filling a big envelope full of paper clips. He didn’t stick around the hallway for the celebration that he helped enable, instead going straight into his office, where I found him and asked for a reaction to his colleagues’ questioning of his motives and integrity.
“My actions speak for themselves,” was all Dufty would say.
Perhaps they do, but even Lee’s strongest supporters acknowledged that the process of picking him was flawed. “Part of the problem was Ed’s because he couldn’t make up his mind,” Rev. Norman Fong told the Guardian. “The process was bad.”
Without a public discussion or the ability of reporters or supervisors to talk to Lee, Fong acknowledged why some progressives worried that a deal had been cut to continue with Newsom’s policies and personnel. “Some people were concerned about who he’ll listen to,” Fong said, but he said, “I’ve fought with Ed Lee and I know his heart…He’ll do the right thing.”
Gordon Chin of Chinatown Community Development Center said he has worked closely with both Lee and Hennessey and both would have been good interim mayors, and he said this should not have been a partisan fight. “Who nominated Mike Hennessey as the nominee of all of progressive San Francisco?” Chin asked, noting that few progressive constituencies were consulted on the choice or offered their buy-in.
Yet he also acknowledged the unseemly way in which Lee came out of nowhere to get the nomination, with little public vetting, “If Ed was out there a week earlier, it would have been a lot better. It was a flawed process,” Chin said.
So flawed that Daly and many progressive activists are still smarting about what happened and wary of what kind of mayor Lee will be. “No more backroom deals,” queer activist and blogger Michael Petrelis repeatedly shouted at Rose Pak as she was being interviewed outside board chambers.
But Fong just shrugged and told me, “There’s backroom deals on the left too.”

Daly goes down swinging

Sasha Cuttler
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7

The League of Pissed of Voters made a Daly roast video honoring the “biggest asshole in San Francisco politics”

Between last night’s epic Chris Daly Roast and Daly’s crazy-man antics on Tuesday night, Daly is ending his 10-year tenure on the Board of Supervisors in fitting fashion: as a passionate leader of the progressive movement who has also been its – and his own – worst enemy.

A huge crowd packed The Independent to honor and make fun of Daly and other political figures, and it definitely had the feel of an alcohol-fueled progressive love-fest, right down to conservative Chronicle columnist CW Nevius taking a pie in the face after stepping off the stage for the evening’s most tedious session behind the microphone.

Well, at least it was until Daly took the mike, going on and on in often tasteless fashion and resisting efforts by his wife, Sarah Low, and others to get him to give up the spotlight. Daly just isn’t ready to leave the stage yet, despite buying and running the Buck Tavern, soon to be renamed Daly’s Dive. He’s even half seriously talking about running for mayor.

But for all of Daly’s many accomplishments – he is the most productive supervisor of his era and the most passionately progressive – his personal grudges also create problems for the movement. On Tuesday, Daly led the effort to name Sheriff Michael Hennessey as interim mayor, twisting Sup. Eric Mar’s arm to get him to come along, only to fall one vote short.

Even though Hennessey and Ed Lee are similar figures, Daly turned Board President David Chiu’s support for Lee into an act of epic ideological betrayal, aggressively menacing Chiu at the meeting and shouting at him, “I will haunt you! I will politically haunt you! It’s on like Donkey Kong.” He spoke over his colleagues as they had the floor and tried to talk, including repeatedly yelling at Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, “You are a representative of the rich!” And when the board reconvened after a short recess, Daly remained in the audience, periodically flipping the bird to the board.

But for all Daly’s current ire toward Chiu, it should be noted that Chiu became board president two years ago because Daly led the opposition to Sup. Ross Mirkarimi becoming board president, giving Chiu far more political power than he would otherwise have. Daly has long prided himself on his good political instincts, and at times he has indeed been a masterful political tactician, but his ego sometimes gets the better of him. He’s hyper competitive and just wants to win, even when victory carries an unacceptable price.

When the new Board of Supervisors takes the oath of office at noon on Saturday, the progressive movement will lose a passionate leader in Chris Daly. But as it elects a new president and its political dynamics take shape, someone will need to take Daly’s role as the whip and conscience of the board, a role even his enemies acknowledged that he played.

“Chris, I think San Francisco is better because you served,” Sup. Sophie Maxwell said on Tuesday, gritting her teeth in praising someone who has at times scorned and belittled her. It will be interesting to see how Daly’s role is filled on the new board, and whether we can still have the passion without its pitfalls.

Backroom Ed Lee mayoral deal raises suspicions

Sasha Cuttler
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11

Last night’s dramatic eight-hour Board of Supervisors meeting, at which six supervisors suddenly came together around naming City Administrator Ed Lee to succeed Gavin Newsom as mayor, was a classic case of backroom dealing making, the full results of which the public still doesn’t know. And it is those unknowns that have progressives rightfully pissed off and distrustful of the choice.
On the surface, both Lee and the progressives’ preferred pick, Sheriff Michael Hennessey, are similar figures who fit Newsom’s demand for a nonpolitical caretaker mayor. He has publicly said both would be acceptable, and both have some impressive progressive credentials as well.
Lee was a civil rights attorney who help run the Asian Law Caucus before being hired by then-Mayor Art Agnos as an investigator for whistleblower complaints, and he’s worked for the city ever since, serving as executive director of the Human Rights Commission and director of the Department of Public Works. Newsom moved him in the powerful post of city administrator in 2005 and he was recently approved for a second five-term for that job, unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors.
Sup. Bevan Dufty and other supervisors had even talked to Lee about being interim mayor, and he has consistently said that he didn’t want it – until a couple days ago. That’s when Newsom and the fiscal conservatives on the board suddenly coalesced around Lee, who apparently changed his mind while on a trip to China, from which he is scheduled to return on Sunday, although that might be moved up now that the board has delayed the vote choosing him until Friday afternoon.
That delay was won on a 6-5 vote, with moderate Sup. Sophie Maxwell heeding progressive requests for an opportunity to at least be able to speak with Lee before naming him the city’s 43rd mayor. “I don’t think we should make such a decision blindly,” Sup. John Avalos said.
It was a reasonable request that neither the fiscal conservatives nor Board President David Chiu, the swing vote for Lee in what his progressive supporters angrily call a betrayal, would heed. And the question is why. What exactly is going on here? Because it’s not just progressive paranoia to think that a deal has been cut to maintain the status quo in the Mayor’s Office, as Newsom’s downtown allies have desperately been seeking.
Just consider how all of this went down. Sources have confirmed for the Guardian that Chiu met with Newsom at least twice in recent days, and that Newsom offered Chiu the district attorney’s job, hoping to be able to put a fiscal conservative into the D3 seat and topple a bare progressive majority on the board. Chiu reportedly resisted the offer and tried to influence who Newsom would name to succeed him, and we’ll find out as soon as today who the new district attorney will be.
Closed door meetings also apparently yielded Lee as Newsom’s choice for successor mayor, with both Chiu and Sup. Eric Mar initially inclined to back Lee, who would be the city’s first Chinese-American mayor. After pushing his colleagues for weeks to name a new mayor, Daly tried to thwart the Lee pick by initially seeking a delay, then finally persuading Mar to go with Hennessey as his first choice.
“Politically, he will work for the other side, my progressive colleagues,” Daly said at the hearing, calling it “the biggest fumble in the history of progressive politics in San Francisco.”
As the deliberations began, Mar called Lee his mentor at the Asian Law Caucus and someone whom he respects, but that he preferred to keep Lee in his current post and to support Hennessey, who got five votes on the first round, while Lee got four, including Chiu.
Dufty – who said that he would be supportive of Hennessey for mayor – and Sup. Sophie Maxwell abstained from voting for anyone during the first round. On the second round, Maxwell went with Lee, leaving Dufty as the kingmaker. But rather than decide, he asked for a recess at 8:45 pm, and he and Maxwell went straight to Room 200 to confer with Newsom.
When the board reconvened, Dufty announced his support for Lee. Dufty denies that Newsom offered him anything, but he did confirm that Newsom indicated a preference for Lee and a willingly to help Lee return to his current post next year, which requires some tricky maneuvering around city ethics laws. Similarly, Chiu denies that his support for Lee was anything less than his unconditional preference.
But it’s hard to know. After weeks of Newsom playing games with leaving the Mayor’s Office to assume his duties at lieutenant governor (a stand egged on by his downtown allies and Chronicle editorial writers), it seems likely that Lee has given them some kind of assurance that he won’t rock the boat or side with board progressives on key issues.
Some progressives aren’t ready to accept that Lee will be our next mayor, believing that Chiu, Dufty, or Maxwell can still be shamed into changing their minds, but that seems unlikely. Instead, progressive Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi just want to talk to Lee and they hope to be convinced that he’ll work cooperatively with the board and not simply be a Newsom puppet.
“I have been open and I remain open to supporting Ed Lee,” Campos said in support of the motion to continue the meeting to Friday at 3 pm, the day before the new Board of Supervisors is sworn in.
But he and the other progressives are openly questioning the Lee power play. After all, Campos said, his nomination of Hennessey was already an olive branch to Newsom’s side, saying he wasn’t the progressives’ first choice but simply the most acceptable from Newsom’s list. “It was in the spirit of one side of the political spectrum saying to the other side, ‘We want to come together,’” Campos said.
Instead, it was a backroom political deal with carried the day, a deal that Chiu went along with.
“I feel amazingly betrayed right now,” Jon Golinger, Chiu’s campaign manager, told us after the meeting. “It’s a shock…Process-wise, Ed Lee came out of nowhere.”
And that’s antithetical to the progressive values on transparency and public process. So now, it’s up to Lee, Chiu, and the other involved in this deal to fill in a few of the many blanks, and to assure the public that this choice is in the best interests of the whole city.

The vote’s delayed until Friday

Zelda Bronstein
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5

Late at night, a bit of common sense at the board. After Supervisors David Campos, John Avalos and Ross Mirkarimi made the same basic point — that none of them had had a chance to talk to Ed Lee about the job, that Lee wasn’t even in town right now and that it was crazy to vote for a mayoral candidate who hasn’t been part of any process — six supervisors, including Sophie Maxwell, voted for a continuance until Friday, Jan. 7th at 3 pm. So it will be another crazy three days trying to figure all this out.

 

 

Backroom meetings precede today’s mayoral succession vote

Sasha Cuttler
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12
Backroom meetings precede today’s mayoral succession vote

There’s been a flurry of political speculation and backroom discussions leading up to today’s final meeting of the current Board of Supervisors, which is scheduled to consider appointment of a successor mayor to Gavin Newsom starting at 3 p.m., despite Newsom’s refusal to vacate the office and assume the duties of lieutenant governor as he was supposed to yesterday.

After Kamala Harris took her oath of office as attorney general yesterday, Newsom now has the power to appoint a new district attorney, which he’s likely to wrap into his efforts to thwart progressive supervisors from appointing an interim mayor of their liking. So all eyes are on Newsom, as well as Board President David Chiu, and sources tell the Guardian that the two men met this morning behind closed doors.

Could Newsom appoint Chiu as the new DA in exchange for his support on naming a moderate as caretaker mayor? That possibility has progressives bristling with anger and privately threatening to aggressively go after Chiu if he cuts that kind of deal. The other way that Chiu might earn the progressive wrath is if he cuts a deal to become interim mayor that involves lots of support from the moderates.

But it’s also possible that most board progressives would back Chiu for interim mayor, although Sup. David Campos has so far been the most reluctant among progressives to support Chiu, who generally votes with progressives but who has cut a few high-profile deals with Newsom. Sup. Chris Daly told us that he will nominate Aaron Peskin for interim mayor today and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is backing Art Agnos, who appears to have five votes but probably not six. The moderates are likely to push for Sheriff Michael Hennessey, although Newsom’s stated hope that the board consider his Chief of Staff Steve Kawa is a fantasy that only Newsom is seriously entertaining.

So far, Chiu and his people have been playing their cards fairly close to their vests, so it will be high drama going into today’s meeting. But what happens today is anyone’s guess, with the possibilities ranging from a deal to name a new mayor and DA to another anticlimactic punt of the decision on to the next board, which will be sworn in this Saturday.

Stay tuned.

Get out of the way, Mr. Mayor

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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4
Get out of the way, Mr. Mayor

EDITORIAL Let us begin with the obvious: Mayor Gavin Newsom has absolutely no business deciding who should replace him. His petulant statements suggesting that he will delay taking office as lieutenant governor until the supervisors pick a candidate he likes are an embarrassment to the city. If he actually refuses to take the oath of office Jan. 3, when his term in Sacramento begins, it will damage his reputation and political career.

Newsom knew when he decided to seek higher office that he’d be leaving the city early if he won. He knew that under the City Charter, the Board of Supervisors would choose a new mayor. He knew that a progressive majority on the board was likely to elect someone whose political views differ from his. If he didn’t want that to happen, he should have stayed in town and finished his term.

Instead, his ambition and ego drove him to Sacramento, and he needs to accept that he is now out of the process. He should publicly agree to follow the state Constitution and join Governor-elect Jerry Brown for a timely swearing-in ceremony. Meanwhile, the supervisors need to make it very clear that they won’t accept this sort of political blackmail and will choose the next mayor on their own terms.

There’s only one more regularly scheduled meeting of the current board, on Tuesday, Jan. 4, the day after Newsom’s term as lieutenant governor begins. It’s unfortunate that the progressive majority on the board hasn’t been able to find a consensus candidate, and it’s appearing more and more likely that the next mayor will be a short-termer, a caretaker who agrees to fill out Newsom’s term. We’ve consistently argued that Newsom’s successor ought to be someone who can run for a full term in November, but there’s certainly a case to be made for the right person to take on the job for just 11 months. A progressive caretaker could fire all the failed managers left over (at high salaries) from Newsom’s tenure and make cuts to sacred cows like the police and fire departments without worrying about reelection. We’d still rather see a candidate with the courage and skill to make the tough choices and run in November on that record. But if that’s not possible, it’s important that an interim mayor be chosen carefully.

It’s also important that the progressive supervisors consider the long-term implications of their choice: If the next mayor only serves out Newsom’s remaining time, who’s going to run in November — and what will the interim mayor do to promote the prospects of a progressive candidate?

A number of names are floating around as possible caretakers, and several would do at least an adequate and perhaps an exceptional job. Former Board President Aaron Peskin has brilliant political instincts and knows how to run the city; he’s let us down on a few votes, but would work well with the progressive board majority. Sheriff Mike Hennessey is popular with the voters and has good progressive credentials (other than the move to privatize jail health services, which makes him somewhat unpalatable to labor), but he’s never faced anything resembling the political nightmare of the city’s current fiscal crisis. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has a great legislative record and has hinted that he’d consider the job, but he still has two years to go as supervisor and would have to give up his seat and put his political career on hold. Former Mayor Art Agnos is the only one on the list who’s actually run the city at a time of crisis and would certainly be willing to make the tough decisions. If he could run an open office and listen to a diverse constituency, he might make up for the mistakes he made his first time in the job.

None of these candidates could do the job alone — and if they want to serve a short term as mayor, they need to start talking openly about it, explaining what their plans would be and give San Franciscans (and not just six supervisors) a reason to support them.

Mayoral dynamics

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Mayoral dynamics

steve@sfbg.com

Despite the best efforts of Sup. Chris Daly and some of his progressive colleagues to create an orderly transfer of authority in the city’s most powerful office, the selection of a successor to Mayor Gavin Newsom will come down to a frantic, unpredictable, last-minute drama starting a few days into the new year.

The board has convened to hear public testimony and consider choosing a new mayor three times, each time delaying the decision with little discussion by any supervisor except Daly, who pleaded with his colleagues on Dec. 14 to “Say something, the people deserve it,” and asking, “Are we going to take our charge?”

The current board will get one more crack at making the decision Jan. 4, a day after the California Constitution calls for Newsom to assume his duties as lieutenant governor — although Newsom has threatened to delay his swearing-in so Daly and company don’t get to the make the decision.

“I can’t just walk away and see everything blow up. And there are a few politicians in this town that want to serve an ideological agenda,” Newsom told KCBS radio reporter Barbara Taylor on Dec. 16, two days after praising the board for its “leadership and stewardship” in revising and unanimously approving the city’s bid to host the America’s Cup.

Newsom and his fiscally conservative political base fear that the board’s progressive majority will nominate one of its own as mayor, whereas Newsom told Taylor, “The board should pick a caretaker and not a politician — that’s my criteria.”

Some board members strongly disagree. “It’s not his to decide. Besides, what’s not ideological? That doesn’t make sense. Everyone’s ideological,” Sup. John Avalos told the Guardian, a point echoed by other progressives on the board and even many political moderates in town, who privately complain that Newsom’s stand is hypocritical, petty, and not in the city’s best interests.

The Guardian has interviewed a majority of members of the Board of Supervisors about the mayoral succession question, and all expect the board to finally start discussing mayoral succession and making nominations on Jan. 4.

But whether the current board, or the newly elected board that is sworn in on Jan. 8, ultimately chooses the new mayor is anyone’s guess. And at Guardian press time, who that new mayor will be (and what conditions that person will agree to) was still a matter of wild speculation, elaborate conspiracy theories, and backroom deal making.

 

GETTING TO SIX

A majority of supervisors say there’s a simple reason why the board hasn’t seriously discussed mayoral succession since it unanimously approved the procedures for doing so Nov. 23 (see “The process begins,” Nov. 30). Everyone seems to know that nobody has the required six votes.

Avalos said he thinks the current board is better situated to choose the new mayor because of its experience, even though he voted for the delay on Dec. 14 (in an 8-3 vote, with Daly and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos in dissent). “I supported the delay because we were not closer to having a real discussion about it than we were the week before,” Avalos told us, noting that those who were pushing for Campos “didn’t do enough to broaden the coalition to support David Campos.”

For his part, Campos agreed that “the progressive majority has not figured out what it wants to do yet,” a point echoed by Mirkarimi: “I don’t think there’s a plan.” Sup. Sophie Maxwell, who made both the successful motions to delay the vote, told us, “There’s a lot more thinking that people need to do.”

“We do not yet have consensus,” Chiu said of his reasons for supporting the delay, noting that state conflict-of-interest and open government laws also make it difficult for the board to have a frank discussion about who the new mayor should be.

For example, Chiu is barred from even declaring publicly that he wants the job and describing how he might lead, although he is widely known to be in the running.

The board can’t officially name a new mayor until the office is vacant. Sup. Bevan Dufty, who is already running for mayor, told us the board should wait for Newsom to act. “I felt the resignation should be in effect before the board makes a move,” Dufty said.

Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Carmen Chu, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Eric Mar did not return the Guardian’s calls for comment.

 

PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

Adding to the drama of the mayoral succession decision will be the new Board of Supervisors’ inaugural meeting on Jan. 8, when the first order of business will be the vote for a new board president, who will also immediately become acting mayor if the office has been vacated by then and the previous board hasn’t chosen a new mayor.

While Newsom and his downtown allies are clearly banking on the hope that the new board will select a politically moderate caretaker mayor, something that three of the four new supervisors say they want (see “Class of 2010,” Dec. 8), the reality is that the new board will have the same basic ideological breakdown as the current board and some personal relationships that could benefit progressives Chiu and Avalos.

Daly said downtown is probably correct that the current board is more likely than the new one to directly elect a progressive mayor who might run for the office in the fall, such as Campos or former board President Aaron Peskin. But he thinks the new board is likely to elect a progressive as president, probably Campos, Chiu, or Avalos, and that person could end up lingering as acting mayor indefinitely.

“They really haven’t thought through Jan. 8. Downtown doesn’t like to gamble, and I think it’s a gamble,” Daly said. “There’s a decent chance that we’ll get a more progressive mayor out of the leadership vote for board president.”

Avalos said it “would be a disaster” for the board president to linger as acting mayor for a long time, complicating the balance of power at City Hall. But he wouldn’t mind holding the board gavel. “I think I would do a good job as board president, but I’m not going to scratch and claw my way to be board president,” Avalos said. “I’d be just as happy to be chair of the Budget Committee again.”

Avalos said he thinks it’s important to have a mayor who is willing to work closely with board progressives and to support new revenues as part of the budget solution, which is why he would be willing to support Chiu, Campos, or Mirkarimi for mayor, saying “All of them could do a good job.”

Given the progressive majority on the board, it’s also possible that there will be a lingering standoff between supporters for Chiu, a swing vote in budget and other battles who has yet to win the full confidence of all the progressive supervisors, and former Mayor Art Agnos, who has offered to serve as a caretaker. Some see Agnos as more progressive than the other alternatives pushed by moderates, including Sheriff Michael Hennessey and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission head Ed Harrington.

Moderates like Dufty are hopeful that a couple of progressives might break off to support Hennessey (“From the first minute, he knows everything you’d need to know in an emergency situation,” Dufty said) or Harrington (“I could see him stepping in and closing the budget deficit and finding a good compromise on pension reform,” Dufty said) after a few rounds of voting.

Mirkarimi is openly backing Agnos. “He has evolved, as I’ve known him, in the days since being mayor,” Mirkarimi said. “I think we’ve spent too much time on finding the progressive guy to be mayor than on setting up what a progressive caretaker administration would look like.” And then there are the wild cards, like state Sen. Mark Leno and City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Herrera’s a declared candidate and Leno has made it clear that he’d take the job if it were offered to him.

Given the fact that supervisors can’t vote for themselves, it’s difficult for any of them to win. “I don’t think it’s likely that a member of the Board of Supervisors will get enough votes to be mayor,” Avalos told us, although he said that Chiu is the one possible exception.

But to get to six votes, Chiu would have to have most of the progressive supervisors supporting him and some moderates, such as D10 Supervisor-elect Malia Cohen (whom Chiu endorsed), D8’s Scott Wiener, and/or Chu (who might be persuaded to help elect the city’s first Chinese American mayor).

That would be a delicate dance, although it’s as likely as any of the other foreseeable scenarios.

Mirkarimi and mayoral hopefuls launch D5 Dem Club

Sasha Cuttler
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4
Mirkarimi and mayoral hopefuls launch D5 Dem Club

Democratic Party clubs are one of the most basic political building blocks in this basically one-party town, so it’s odd that politically active District 5 (the Haight and Western Addition) didn’t have one. But that changed last night with the launch of the District 5 Democratic Club, with fuel provided by current D5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and mayoral contenders Leland Yee and Dennis Herrera and with several potential Mirkarimi successors on-board.

“We saw it was a huge opportunity this year to get people engaged and involved,” newly elected D5DC president Jen Longley, a progressive activist who calls herself a “campaign gypsy,” told a gathering of about three dozen people at Cafe Divis. And she thanked Mirkarimi, who switched from the Green to Democratic parties about a year ago, for supporting the club’s creation. “This party would not have happened if not for the help of Ross Mirkarimi.”

And it wouldn’t have met its $1,000 fundraising goal if Yee and Herrera didn’t kick in big as they court D5 voters as part of their mayoral campaigns. Mirkarimi gave the keynote speech, calling D5 the “hippest district in the city” and one of its most progressive, something he wants to see the club help project onto the rest of the city. “I’m delighted to be a part of it,” he said, urging attendees to contribute financially.

In addition to being active in next year’s mayor’s race, the club will also play a role in determining who will succeed Mirkarimi in 2012, and there were some likely contenders for that slot on hand, including City College of San Francisco Trustee John Rizzo, progressive activist Julian Davis, and club owner Michael O’Connor, with labor activist Gabriel Haaland also supporting the club’s creation.

Longley noted that D5 has lots of very active neighborhood association, but few political organizations, and she said that she feel honored to be leading one at such a pivotal political moment.

Chiu wins holiday bake-off “most artistic” category

Mary Magee
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The 4th annual Board of Supervisors holiday treat throw down at City Hall today featured elegant trophies, celebrity judges and fierce competition. The desserts were judged in three categories: Most Tasty, Most Festive and Most Artistic. And the judges seemed to be enjoying themselves as they sampled the goodies and decided on the awards, as the rest of us waited hungrily, dessert forks in hand

Sup. Eric Mar’s legislative aide Cassandra Costello won—and lost—the “Most Tasty” category, after the judges (who city insiders say were playing by hardcore Top Chef rules) deemed her apple tart “most tasty” but too late to qualify.

Sup. Bevan Dufty’s former legislative aide Boe Hayward won the “Most Festive” category for his Giants inspired cake. It didn’t hurt that his super cute 51/2 week-old baby Eloise was on hand to help accept the award.

But when it came to the most artistic category, Board President David Chiu’s “Mud Wrestling on the Board” narrowly beat out Sup. Carmen Chu’s legislative aide Katy Tang’s “Board of Chess-Off”. (Oops: as readers will notice if they read the comments on this post, Katy Tang’s entry was actually titled “Board of Chess-Eff,” a subtle play on the Board of SF. Sorry for the error, KT, and thanks for your fabulous bake art.)

Chiu’s mud wrestling confection featured 11 snow people. Each snow person had a numbered clue attached to help cake eaters identify which supervisor they were supposedly eating.  The clues were as follows: 1 Happy Meals. 2 Swans. 3 Gavel. 4 Her Dog Birdie. 5 Plastic Bags. 6 F-Bomb. 7 Throwing the Microphone. 8 Sidney. 9 Progressive Fists in the Air. 10 Stylishly Dressed. 11 Budget Chair. (Scroll down to find answers to Chiu’s quizz).

Chiu’s entry also came with a print out of what the Board President says is his favorite President Roosevelt quote: “The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”  A clue, perhaps, as to how Chiu is feeling about his often-embattled position on the Board.

But while Tang’s Chess-Eff didn’t win the “most artistic award,” it was a classic illustration of what Chiu described as “the three-dimensional game of chess” being played around the choice of the next mayor. Featuring marshmallows for interim mayors and/or mayoral candidates, the Board of Chess-Eff came with a warning that the dessert wasn’t actually edible. No kidding. Don’t know about you, but the never-ending speculation about the mayor is giving me major indigestion.

Answers to Chiu’s Mud Wrestling quiz: 1 Eric Mar. 2 Michela Alioto-Pier. 3 David Chiu. 4 Carmen Chu. 5 Ross Mirkarimi. 6 Chris Daly. 7 Sean Elsbernd. 8 Bevan Dufty. 9 David Campos. 10 Sophie Maxwell. 11 John Avalos. (The answers correspond to the numeric district that each supervisor represents. And while this looks a tad too obvious, Chiu said that until he organized it this way, no one could figure out which supervisor he was talking about.)

The Mystery of the Missing Mayor

Sasha Cuttler
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13
The Mystery of the Missing Mayor

Again, the Board of Supervisors scheduled a vote to select a new mayor to succeed Gavin Newsom. Again, members of the public lined up for almost an hour to urge the board to do so and to suggest names and qualities they’d like to see in Room 200. And again, the board delayed the decision with no reason offered for why.

Well, actually, this time, Sup. Sophie Maxwell – the maker of the motion to continue the item this week and last – did at least say something. “We have three weeks and to have someone floating out there for that time is not in the board’s best interests,” Maxwell said, and that’s all she said.

It’s unclear what she meant, and none of the seven supervisors who supported the motion in a 8-3 vote – with Sups. Chris Daly, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi in dissent – had anything to say. But Daly certainly did, accusing his colleagues of “doing an incredible disservice to the people of the city and county of San Francisco.”

He restated his points from the two previous hearings on the issue, noting that supervisors should at least be willing to talk about what they’re looking for in a mayor and to provide some leadership going into a politically uncertain period after Newsom becomes lieutenant governor on Jan. 3.

“At some point, we need to be putting forward a vision for San Francisco,” Daly said, later asking, “Are we going to take our charge?”

“It’s almost as if the members of the board don’t want to be here,” he observed, urging them to at least inform the public what’s going on.

“If it’s that you want the next board to decide, say that,” Daly said. “Say something, the people deserve it.”

Is this an effort to stall the decision until the next board is seated on Jan. 8? Is the current board just waiting until Newsom is gone, afraid that he’ll delay his swearing in if they choose a progressive mayor now, and planning to spring into action on Jan. 4? Is there a secret deal in the offing? Or are supervisors just too distracted by the holiday season to make a big decision?

I don’t know, but I’m going to spend this week doing interviews to figure it out for a story in next weeks’ paper.

Larry Ellison, “city family” therapist

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Larry Ellison, “city family” therapist

If billionaire yachtsman and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison rejects San Francisco’s bid for the America’s Cup, the whole ordeal might conclude with the kind of sappy ending that used to punctuate every episode of the sitcom Full House. The moral of the story would go something like this: It was never about the $1.2 billion in economic activity generated by the Cup, San Francisco, but something far more precious — coming together as a “city family.”

I didn’t count how many times the phrase “city family” was uttered at yesterday’s Dec. 14 Board of Supervisors meeting, but it was repeated in so many glowing remarks that I half-expected all 11 supervisors to join hands and start swaying and singing Kumbaya. Board President David Chiu made an analogy of all the crew members having to work together to win a sailing race, and then he took that yachting reference one step further, saying, “I want to thank everyone on the starboard and port side of the Board of Supervisors.”

Even Sup. Chris Daly, who opposed the first plan, threw his support behind the new deal, making for a rare unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors.

Shortly after, during a ceremony called by Mayor Gavin Newsom to sign the America’s Cup bid, the mayor — who’s often at odds with Board progressives — praised Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and Board President David Chiu, saying, “This process was made better because of their leadership and stewardship.” Newsom also remarked on the unusual spirit of collaboration, saying, “I have rarely been part of something that brought more people of diverse backgrounds together.”

Even Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius jumped on the big-happy-family bandwagon with a nod to Daly, who’s typically on the receiving end of his rants. In a column published Dec. 14, advising the city to stick to its guns and approve the better deal, Nevius included this astounding assertion: “I will have to say (gulp) I agree with Supervisor Chris Daly.”
 
Although Ellison hasn’t yet selected San Francisco for the Cup, he’s already accomplished a feat that probably no one else — neither shaman nor top-dollar family therapist — could manage. He infused San Francisco City Hall with a sense of harmony. He put forward a deal that was so outrageous, yet with an economic benefit so immense, that the supervisors, the port, the mayor, and the economic advisors were forced to put their differences aside, rise to the challenge, and craft a compromise that everyone (except maybe Ellison) could live with.
 
We knew he was good at winning boat races and lawsuits, but who ever imagined that Ellison’s hidden talent could ever bring such warm holiday cheer to City Hall?

Steven T. Jones contributed to reporting for this piece.

Hiring at home

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Hiring at home

sarah@sfbg.com

The lame duck Board of Supervisors made history Dec. 7 when it voted 8-3 to approve mandatory local hire legislation for city-funded construction projects. The measure ends a decade-long effort to reach 50 percent local hiring goals through good-faith efforts.

“That’s a sea change in our local hiring discussion,” said Sup. John Avalos, who launched the legislation in October as part of the LOCAL-SF (Local Opportunities for Communities and Labor) campaign, which seeks to strengthen local hiring, address high unemployment rates, and boost the local economy.

The veto-proof passage of Avalos’ measure comes in the wake of a city-commissioned study indicating that San Francisco has failed to meet good-faith local hiring goals for public works projects even as unemployment levels rise in the local construction industry and several local neighborhoods face concentrated poverty.

Although Cleveland also has a local-hire law, the Avalos measure will be the strongest in the nation. Avalos’ legislative aide Raquel Redondiez told the Guardian that Cleveland’s 2003 legislation requires 20 percent local hire.

“This legislation doesn’t just have a mandated 50 percent goal,” Avalos explained, noting that San Francisco will require that each trade achieve a mandated rate and that 50 percent of apprentices be residents.

“This will ensure that our tax dollars get recycled back into the local economy, and that San Franciscans who are ready to work are provided the opportunity to do so,” Avalos said.

Avalos’ groundbreaking legislation phases in mandatory requirements that a portion of San Francisco public works jobs go to city residents and includes additional targets for hiring disadvantaged workers.

 

WHO GETS $25 BILLION?

The legislation replaces the city’s First Source program, under which contractors were required only to make good faith efforts to hire 50 percent local residents on publicly-funded projects. But the measure begins slowly by mandating levels some contractors are already reaching. According to a study commissioned by the city’s Office of Employment and Workforce Development and released in October, 20 percent of work hours on publicly-funded construction projects are going to San Francisco residents.

Avalos’ legislation, which is supported by a broad coalition of labor and community groups including PODER, the Filipino Community Center, Southeast Jobs Coalition, Kwan Wo Ironworks Inc., Rubecon, and Chinese for Affirmative Action, comes at a critical moment for the recession-battered construction industry.

Under the city’s capital plan, more than $25 billion will be spent on public works and other construction projects in the next decade — and two-thirds of this money will be spent over the next five years.

The measure has environmental benefits too. Transportation still accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions generated in the Bay Area than any other source, and San Francisco residents are more likely to take transit, walk, or bike to work than residents of other Bay Area counties. “When local citizens are able to work locally, there are fewer cars on the road and less air pollution,” Avalos said.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi said that Avalos’ legislation is “just a start.”

“People have talked a good game about local hiring,” observed Mirkarimi, whose district includes the high unemployment-affected Western Addition.

“We are going to have to go beyond construction and start thinking about delving into the private sector,” Mirkarimi continued, pointing to the need to build 100,000 housing units over the next 25 years if the city is to keep up with a projected population increase. “Who is going to build that housing?” he asked.

Sup. Eric Mar noted that “the Sierra Club endorsed the measure early on because of the environmental benefits of having people work close to where they live.”

Sup. David Campos, whose district includes the Mission, said the measure was one of the most significant pieces of legislation to emerge from the board in recent years. “In the past, a lot of obstacles got in the way, including some legal challenges,” said Campos, who credited Avalos for navigating a complicated legal structure. “At the end of the day, I think this is going to benefit everyone.”

Mike Theriault, secretary-treasurer for the San Francisco Building Trades Council, told the Guardian he remains opposed to the legislation because the union presers to allocate jobs based on seniority, not residency. But he said the amendments make the measure “less harmful and more survivable in the short-term.”

 

THE ECONOMIC GAP

Termed-out Sup. Sophie Maxwell, who represents the city’s economically distressed southeast sector, has often noted that the construction industry provides a path to the middle class for people without advanced degrees or facing barriers to employment. She thanked Avalos for pushing legislation that promises to provides opportunities for “growing the middle class instead of importing it.”

“This industry closes the economic gap,” she said.

Board President David Chiu and termed-out Sups. Chris Daly and Bevan Dufty also supported Avalos legislation. But Dufty, who is running in the 2011 mayoral race, cast the eighth vote, which gave the measure a veto-proof majority.

The board’s Dec. 7 vote came a few hours after Bayview-based Aboriginal Blacks United founder James Richards and a score of unemployed local residents rallied at City Hall in the hopes of securing Dufty’s vote.

ABU has recently been protesting at UCSF’s Mission Bay hospital buildings site on 16th and Third streets. Its members also triggered a shut down at the Sunset Reservoir last month after a court ruled that locals promised jobs installing solar panels at the plant be replaced by higher-skilled engineers,

“It’s been too long that we have been protesting and fighting this good faith effort,” Richards told the Guardian. “We need a mandatory policy.”

Dufty is also hoping the Avalos measure could spread to other cities and benefit workers nationwide. “At a certain point I looked at labor and said, ‘Yes, I’m going for this legislation. But not just for San Francisco — you want to take this concept to other cities,’ ” Dufty said, as he made good on his promise to Richards to vote to support Avalos’ law.

Dufty seemed hopeful that Mayor Gavin Newsom would get behind the legislation. “But I respect that there may be a little bit of coming together between now and the second reading.”

Newsom spokesman Tony Winniker told the Guardian that the mayor has 10 days to review Avalos’ legislation after its Dec. 14 second reading. “He supports stronger local hire requirements but does want to review the many amendments that were added before deciding,” Winnicker said.

But will Newsom, who is scheduled to be sworn in as California’s next lieutenant governor Jan. 3, issue a veto on or before Christmas Eve on legislation that has been amended to address the stated concerns of the building trades?

That would be ironic since the amended legislation appears to match recommendations that the Mayor’s Taskforce on African American Outmigration published in 2009. The California Department of Finance projected that San Francisco’s black population would continue to decline from 6.5 percent (according to 2005 census data) to 4.6 percent of the city’s total population by 2050 — in part because of a lack of good jobs.

 

WILL NEWSOM VETO?

Avalos originally proposed to start at 30 percent and reach 50 percent over three years. But after the building trades complained that these levels were unworkable, Avalos amended the legislation to require an initial mandatory participation level of 20 percent of all project work-hours within each trade performed by local residents, with no less than 10 percent of all project work-hours within each trade to be performed by disadvantaged workers.

He also amended his legislation to require that this mandatory level be increased annually over seven years in 5 percent increments up to 50 percent, with no less than 25 percent within each trade to be performed by disadvantaged workers in the legislation’s sixth year.

A Dec. 1 report from city economist Ted Egan estimated that the local hire legislation would create 350 jobs and cost the city $9 million annually. But Egan clarified for the Guardian that this cost equals only 1 percent of the city’s spending on public works in any given year.

Vincent Pan of Chinese Affirmative Action, which supports Avalos’ local hiring policy, suggested that the mayor “check the temperature.”

“It would be leadership on the part of the mayor not to veto legislation that’s about San Francisco,” Pan said.

And Mindy Kener, an organizing member of the Southeast Jobs Coalition breathed a deep sigh of relief when Dufty’s vote made the law veto-proof. “It’s gonna go across the country,” Kener said. “We just made history.”

Race against the clock

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Race against the clock

rebeccab@sfbg.com

City officials were poised to finalize an offer to host the 34th America’s Cup after amending a sweetheart deal that had city taxpayers heavily subsidizing Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison’s yacht race. But the question now is whether Ellison will accept the new proposal.

The original deal negotiated between representatives for Ellison and Mayor Gavin Newsom called for ceding 35 acres of city-owned waterfront property to Ellison’s America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA) rent-free, but it was criticized as too expensive for a city facing massive budget deficits (see "The biggest fish," Nov. 30).

So at the Dec. 8 meeting of the Board of Supervisors’ Budget & Finance Committee, that deal was jettisoned in favor of a cheaper alternative that shifted the race venue to the city’s Northern Waterfront and promised long-term leases on commercially reasonable terms. The new agreement appeared on track for approval at the Dec. 14 Board of Supervisors meeting, after Guardian press time.

At the same time, new doubts arose at the last minute when race organizers stated publicly that they were more likely to reject the new option than the original plan because the financial terms were not as attractive. Although expectations have been high all along that San Francisco would be selected to host the next Cup, the team cast doubt on the outcome by publicly criticizing the new plan. According to a source familiar with negotiations, that move came as a jarring surprise to city officials. Nonetheless, supervisors approved the proposal at a Dec. 13 special meeting and sent it on to the full board.

Newsom’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) spent about four months in negotiations with Ellison’s BMW Oracle Racing Team and the ACEA to hash out a host city agreement. The Northern Waterfront scenario emerged in late November after Budget & Legislative Analyst Harvey Rose cautioned in a fiscal impact assessment that the original deal would have cost the city an estimated $128 million, including impacts to the general fund and losses from entering into rent-free leases.

The fundamental shift in the plan at this late stage, less than three weeks before the deadline for a final decision, reflected some deft maneuvering on the part of the board even in the face of intense pressure to approve a binding long-term agreement on an unusually short timeline. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and Board President David Chiu, who expressed reservations about the original proposal but strongly favored the idea of bringing the race to San Francisco, were able to deflect a deal that would have harmed the city in favor of a wiser alternative by reshaping the proposal at the 11th hour.

"I was a little bit surprised by some of the recent press," Mirkarimi noted at the Dec. 13 meeting, referencing reports that the team was considering rejecting the bid. He asked everyone to keep in mind that "we’re working with public dollars and purse strings."

But the Mayor’s Office supported the modified deal. Press Secretary Tony Winnicker told the Guardian: "The Northern Waterfront bid is good for the city, great for the port, and will provide a spectacular experience for the America’s Cup. Hosting the America’s Cup will bring more than $1 billion in economic activity and thousands of jobs to San Francisco and showcase the city unlike almost any other event."

Speaking at the Dec. 8 committee meeting, Chiu also voiced his support for hosting the Cup. "Obviously this will have enormous benefits," Chiu said. "If this were to come to San Francisco, this will mean $1 billion and likely $1.2 billion in economic activity during the greatest recession since the Great Depression. We cannot ignore this opportunity."

The difference in the two scenarios amounts to tens of millions of dollars in savings. According to a fiscal feasibility analysis released Dec. 13 by the Budget Analyst, the net loss to the city under the Northern Waterfront alternative would be $11.9 million, compared to $57.8 million under the prior agreement (not including costs relating to the rent-free leases proposed earlier). However, that impact doesn’t account for a $32 million contribution that the America’s Cup Organizing Committee is expected to provide to the city to defray municipal costs.

Under the Northern Waterfront plan, Piers 30-32 and Seawall Lot 330 would be leased to race organizers for 66 and 75 years, respectively, on "commercially reasonable terms" with development rights included. The race organizers would receive a rent credit in exchange for investing an estimated $55 million for infrastructure improvements.

Rose’s office also found that the city would realize a net gain by transferring development rights for Piers 30-32 and Seawall Lot 330 with commercially reasonable rents, generating a net $12.3 million in new tax and lease revenues.

"This deal has significantly improved from the prior deal that went before you," Rose noted at the Dec. 13 Budget & Finance Committee meeting. The main reason for the reduction in costs was that under the original plan, ACEA would have been granted rent-free development rights to Pier 50, a 20-acre waterfront parcel needing costly renovations, for 66 years. Removing that costly improvement and shifting dredging costs from the city to race organizers made the prospect more feasible for San Francisco.

Piers 26 and 28 were added to the equation late in the game, too. Under the new plan, ACEA has the option to spend an additional $25 million renovating those piers in exchange for leasing them for 66 years with rent credits. Ted Egan, an economic analyst with the City Controller’s office, noted that the piers were expected to last for only 15 years if they weren’t renovated.

"Without the America’s Cup stepping forward, we lose them, and we lose any potential development that could take place at those piers," he noted. Port Director Monique Moyer also praised the plan at the Dec. 8 meeting, saying piers that would have continued to deteriorate could now be revitalized.

Chiu amended the agreement to secure greater assurance that the city would receive a $32 million contribution from the America’s Cup Organizing Committee (ACOC), the fund-raising arm of the race organizing team, to defray municipal costs. Prior to Chiu’s amendment, there was no guarantee that the city and county would receive that money, Rose pointed out.

Jennifer Matz, director of OEWD, noted that ACOC was "committed to using best efforts" to raise $32 million over the course of three years. Under the agreement, if the committee hasn’t successfully raised $12 million by one week after the environmental review has been completed, the city reserves the right to call off the deal.

The new plan seemed likely to pass muster even with Sup. Chris Daly, the most vocal opponent of the original plan. "One thing that’s clear is that it’s a whole lot better than the previous proposal," Daly said.

Ellison, who captured the 33rd America’s Cup off the coast of Spain and holds exclusive power to choose which city will host the next sailing match, has set Dec. 31 as the deadline for his final decision. But a source familiar with the negotiations told the Guardian an announcement was expected even sooner.

Ironically, there was little doubt that Ellison would select San Francisco until the very end of the process, when the city finally reached an agreement that seemed to satisfy the Mayor’s Office, the Board of Supervisors, and the economic analysts. At press time, it was still an open question whether Ellison will go for it.

"With this latest bit of vetting by us, I think the city has done the utmost it possibly could do in putting forth the best plan it possibly could craft in such a short period of time," Mirkarimi said at the close of the Dec. 13 meeting. "I think that San Francisco stands to be the best contender for hosting America’s Cup, and let that message ring well toward Mr. Ellison, and around the country, and abroad."

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

steve@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 15

 

Women’s Holiday Party

Come support and celebrate the holidays with San Francisco’s most politically active women. This annual party is thrown by the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee, and this year it’s being cohosted by NARAL Pro-Choice California, Good Ol Girls, Emerge California, and Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific. The first 100 women to arrive receive a free glass of champagne, and the first 200 people get a free drink ticket.

6–9 p.m., free

Carnelian By The Bay

1 Ferry Plaza, SF

www.sfwpc.org

Jaynry@sfwpc.org

 

The Green Party party

The San Francisco Green Party is throwing a Green Holiday Hoopla. “Spread the word and come out to support a true progressive alternative to the scandalous, corporate-controlled duopoly that screws us over year after year,” reads the invitation, in true SF Green fashion. Cosmic Selector and other DJs will rock the party, Phantom Power and Ryan Hayes perform live, and speakers Mark Sanchez, John-Marc Chandonia, and Laura Well drop the truth.

7 p.m., free

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

www.sfgreenparty.org

 

D5 Democratic Club Kickoff

If you want to see who’s lining up to play a lead role in choosing Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s successor in District 5 (Western Addition and the Haight) — or if you want to be in the group — stop by the District 5 Democratic Club’s Inaugural Fundraiser and Holiday Party. This is a qualifying membership for the newly reactivated D5DC, which only D5 residents may join. Mirkarimi hosts the event.

6:30–9 p.m., $30 (includes one-year membership) or $10 for hardship membership

Café Divis

359 Divisadero, SF

d5demclub@gmail.com

 

Bay Area Anarchist Salon

The Bay Area Anarchist Salon and Potluck is a monthly facilitated conversation by and for anarchists. This month, it poses the question: “In the spirit of the holiday season, what present-day gift-economy practices by anarchists and others point toward life after capitalism?” Bring a vegetarian item to share. The event is hosted by Station 40 Events Collective, which is trying to raise funds for new video projector.

7–10 p.m. $2–$5

Station 40

3030B 16th St, SF

SATURDAY, DEC. 18

 

Sidewalks are still for people

In the months leading up to the Nov. 2 election, Sidewalks Are For People held a series of events on sidewalks around San Francisco as part of its campaign against Prop. L, which makes it illegal to sit or stand on the sidewalks of San Francisco. Now that the measure passed, the group is taking to the sidewalks again for a similar event, this time in defiance of the new law. Stop by some of the events scattered around the city or create your own and register it at sidewalksareforpeople.org/december-18th-events/#register.

All day, free

Citywide

www.sidewalksareforpeople.org

Supes OK America’s Cup deal

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1
Supes OK America’s Cup deal

At its meeting today, Dec. 14, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a host city agreement for bringing the 34th America’s Cup to San Francisco. However, it’s still unclear whether billionaire yachtsman Larry Ellison and the BMW Oracle Racing Team will select San Francisco as the host city for the next world-famous sailing match.

The agreement solidified a less costly plan and a dramatic improvement over a prior proposal, which the Guardian covered in-depth in a recent cover story. Under the new terms, the America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA) would be granted long-term leases on commercially reasonable terms for Piers 30-32, Seawall Lot 330, and possibly Piers 26 and 28.

The ACEA would receive rent credits in exchange for investing $55 to $80 million in infrastructure improvements for San Francisco port properties, and San Francisco would benefit from an estimated $20 million boost in revenues from the event. The America’s Cup Organizing Committee would also raise $32 million to help defray municipal costs. The major difference from the prior plan is that Pier 50, a 20-acre waterfront parcel requiring costly renovations that would have been ceded rent-free to the ACEA with development rights for 66 years, was removed from the equation. The America’s Cup is expected to generate more than $1 billion in economic activity, plus create the equivalent of more than 8,000 jobs.

Board president David Chiu called the new plan, which shifts the race venue to the Northern Waterfront instead of the Central Waterfront, “much better, from a business perspective, for the city.”

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who supported early efforts to bring the Cup to San Francisco but expressed reservations about the original plan, commended city officials for working around the clock to hammer out a deal on an unusually short timeline.

While doubts arose over the weekend concerning whether or not the BMW Oracle Racing Team and billionaire yachtsman Larry Ellison would accept the latest plan, Port staff member Brad Benson told the Board that he’d met with Stephen Barclay, a representative of the race organizing team, for hours following a Dec. 13 special meeting of the Budget & Finance Committee held to consider the financial impacts of the latest draft.  “They would like to enter into an agreement by the end of this week,” Benson reported.

Sup. Chris Daly, who emerged as the most vocal opponent of the Cup in the early stages of the process, acknowledged that he had used “exciting language” to criticize the initial scheme. “The reason why I amplified the language is because I knew the city just could not afford that kind of financial outlay and cost,” he explained. Daly voted in favor of the revised deal because he said it would grant a “fair return for this city.”

Just before the vote, Daly likely caused representatives from the mayor’s office to groan when he announced that he wanted to propose one last amendment. “I need to borrow the Cup on Jan. 5,” he said. “I need a cup. To drink out of.” His joke elicited laughter. Daly will be the star of a roast scheduled for that date.

For more details on the improved America’s Cup agreement, see tomorrow’s issue of the Guardian.

Dufty was Avalos’ eighth vote on local hire

Mary Magee
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3

History was made at City Hall on December 7, when the Board voted 8-3 to approve local hire legislation for city-funded construction projects.
“This is the strongest local hiring measure in the nation, “ said Sup. John Avalos, the legislation’s chief sponsor. “It doesn’t just have a mandated 50 percent goal. It has a ‘by trade’ mandate. It requires 50 percent of apprentices to be residents. More than anything we are moving away from a good faith policy. That’s a sea change in our local hiring discussion.”
Sup. Sophie Maxwell thanked Avalos “for taking up the mantle” and pushing construction industry legislation that will provide opportunities for ”growing the middle class instead of importing it.”
“This industry closes the economic gap,” Maxwell said,
Board President David Chiu, Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Chris Daly, Bevan Dufty, Eric Mar, Sophie Maxwell and Ross Mirkarimi voted for the legislation. But Dufty was the eighth vote that gave the measure a veto-proof majority. His vote came after he met ABU (Aboriginal Blacks United) leader James Richards and other advocates of unemployed residents. They see the legislation as a way to invest local tax dollars in local communities, reduce crime and poverty, and lessen pollution by reducing workers’ commutes.


“It’s been too long that we have been protesting and fighting this good faith effort,” Richards said.” We need a mandatory policy.”
ABU member Troy, 47, who was born and raised in the Bayview, and has two sons, said he had been unemployed for six months.
“If we don’t work, nobody works, that’s ABU’s motto,” Troy said. ‘We can’t have nobody come from Marin, taking our jobs and pushing us back onto the streets, selling drugs. We gotta put the merry back into Christmas.”



“A lot of moving parts had to come together for this legislation to be successful,” Dufty told the Board, a couple of hours after he met ABU’s Richards. “This is very reminiscent of Healthy San Francisco, which was one of the most monumental changes in the city.”
Dufty said he believes that, much like Healthy San Francisco, local hire legislation is bigger than just San Francisco. “At a certain point, I looked at labor and said, yes, I’m going for this legislation, but not just for San Francisco,” Dufty said. “You want to take this concept to other cities.”


Dufty  was hopeful that Mayor Gavin Newsom will get behind the legislation, before its Dec.14 second reading.
“But I respect that there may be a little bit of coming together between now and the second reading,” he said.
Newsom spokesperson Tony Winniker told reporters that the mayor plans to review the amended legislation and consult with impacted contractors and unions before deciding whether to veto the legislation.
A December 1 report from city economist Ted Egan estimated that the local hire legislation will create 350 jobs and cost the city $9 million annually, or 1 percent of whatever it spends on public works. (San Francisco is set to spend an estimated $27 billion on capital projects over the next decade.)
Vincent Pan of Chinese Affirmative Action, which supports Avalos’ local hiring policy, suggested that the mayor “check the temperature.”
“It would be leadership on the part of the mayor not to veto legislation that’s about San Francisco,” Pan said.

The process begins

Andrew Lam
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0
The process begins

steve@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors has unanimously adopted a set of procedures for choosing a new mayor to replace Gavin Newsom when he becomes California’s lieutenant governor on Jan. 3. The board is scheduled to formally begin the mayoral selection process Dec. 7 with a discussion of what people want in a new mayor and perhaps even the first votes on nominees for the office.

If the process of approving a process was any indicator, choosing a new mayor won’t be easy. Just sorting out how supervisors will vote on nominees, which the board spent hours doing Nov. 23, illustrated the complex political dynamics and potential for parliamentary gamesmanship at play on a body with a deep ideological divide.

Progressives are on the dominant side of that divide, with Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, Chris Daly, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi sticking together on a pair of 6-5 procedural votes that sought to dilute their voting power, an effort led by Sup. Sean Elsbernd and supported by his moderate colleagues.

Both sides accused the other of playing games with this all-important process, but the greatest complicating factor seems to be the California Political Reform Act and related conflict-of-interests case law. Because the mayor is paid more than supervisors, board members are barred from doing anything to influence the process to become the new mayor.

That means they can’t publicly voice a desire to become mayor or lobby colleagues for votes. And once supervisors have been nominated to be mayor and they accept that nomination, they must immediately leave the room and be sequestered incommunicado until they decide to withdraw their nominations and participate in the process, after which they may not be renominated.

But the newly adopted details of exactly how that process plays out — including when the vote is called on each nominee, how it is taken, and in what order — will determine if any nominees can get the six votes they need to serve as mayor for the final year of Newsom’s term.

If the current board can’t do it, then the newly elected board — which has an ideological breakdown similar to the current board, but with slightly different personal relationships and alliances — will take up the matter when it is sworn in on Jan. 11. And that board’s challenge won’t be any easier.

Board of Supervisors Clerk Angela Calvillo and the Santa Clara County Counsel’s Office (legal counsel in the matter after our own City Attorney’s Office recused itself, largely because City Attorney Dennis Herrera wants to be mayor) proposed procedures whereby all nominees leave the room while the remaining supervisors vote.

But as Daly noted, clearing several supervisors from the room would make it unlikely that those remaining could come up with six votes for anyone. He also said the system would deny too many San Franciscans of a representative in this important decision and allow sabotage by just a few moderate supervisors, who could vote with a majority of supervisors present to adjourn the meeting in order to push the decision back to the next board.

“The process before us is flawed,” Daly said.

So Daly sought to have the board vote on every nomination as it comes up, but Elsbernd argued that under Robert’s Rules of Order, nominations don’t automatically close like that and to modify a board rule that contradicts Robert’s Rules requires a supermajority of eight votes. Calvillo, who serves as the parliamentarian, agreed with that interpretation and Chiu (who serves as chair and is the final word on such questions) ruled that a supermajority was required.

Although some of his progressive colleagues privately grumbled about a ruling that ultimately hurt the progressives’ preferred system, Chiu later told the Guardian, “I gotta play umpire as I see the rules … We need to ensure the process and how we arrive at a process is fair and transparent.”

Nonetheless, Chiu voted with the progressives on the rule change, which failed on a 6-5 vote. But Daly noted that supervisors may still refuse nominations and remain voting until they are ready to be considered themselves, which could practically have the same effect as the rejected rule change. “If we think that’s a better way to do it, we can do it. But we don’t need to fall into the trap and subterfuge of our opponents,” Daly told his colleagues.

Elsbernd then moved to approve the process as developed by Calvillo, but Daly instead made a motion to amend the process by incorporating some elements on his plan that don’t require a supermajority. After a short recess to clarify the motion, the next battleground was over the question of how nominees would be voted on.

Calvillo and Elsbernd preferred a system whereby supervisors would vote on the group of nominees all at once, but Daly argued that would dilute the vote and make it difficult to discern which of the nominees could get to six votes (and conversely, which nominees couldn’t and could thereby withdraw their nominations and participate in the process).

“It is not the only way to put together a process that relies on Robert’s Rules and board rules,” Daly noted, a point that was also confirmed at the meeting by Assistant Santa Clara County Counsel Orry Korb under questioning from Campos. “There are different ways to configure the nomination process,” Korb said. “Legally, there is no prohibition against taking single nominations at a time.”

So Daly made a motion to have each nominee in turn voted up or down by the voting board members, which required only a majority vote because it doesn’t contradict Robert’s Rules of Order. That motion was approved by the progressive supervisors on a 6-5 vote.

After the divisive procedural votes played out, Chiu stepped down from the podium and appealed for unity around the final set of procedures. He said that San Franciscans need to have confidence that the process is fair and accepted by all. So, he said, “It would be great if we have more than a 6-5 vote on this.”

As the role call was taken, Sup. Carmen Chu was the first moderate to vote yes, and her colleagues followed suit on a 11-0 vote to approve the process.

That unity isn’t likely to last long as supervisors fill an office that wields far more power than any other in city government. But both sides voiced an appreciation for what a monumental task they’re undertaking. “This is without a question the most important vote that any of us will take as a member of the Board of Supervisors and one that everyone is watching,” Elsbernd said of choosing a new mayor.

Daly called for supervisors to open the Dec. 7 meeting with a discussion about what qualities they all want to see in a mayor. “We owe it to the public, we owe it to the city, to discuss it and have it out in the open,” he said, going on to criticize the idea of a nonpolitical “caretaker mayor” and say, “I would like to see a mayor that works with the Board of Supervisors.”

But as the parliamentary jousting between Daly and Elsbernd en route to a bare-bones set of procedures shows, such high-minded ideals are likely to be mixed with some tough political brawls, back room deals, and power plays using arcane rules that guide the deliberations of legislative bodies.

In fact, when Korb was asked whether the adopted process precludes new amendments or procedural gambits, he noted that the Nov. 23 vote was probably just the beginning “given the parliamentary skills of this board.”

 

The America’s Cup rip-off

Andrew Lam
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10
The America’s Cup rip-off

EDITORIAL Gigantic international sporting events tend to be great fun for the people who attend. They make great promotional videos for the host city. They can generate big revenue and profits for some private businesses.

But when the party’s over and the bills come due, these extravaganzas aren’t always a boon to the municipal treasury. And at a time when San Francisco can’t afford to pay for teachers and nurses and recreation directors, the supervisors ought to be giving much greater scrutiny to the deal that could bring the America’s Cup yacht races to the bay.

In 2009, as the city of Chicago was preparing an unsuccessful bid for the 2016 Olympics, the Chicago Tribune took a look at what the 1996 games had meant to another U.S. city, Atlanta. The Trib’s conclusion: lots of private outfits and big institutions did well — the Atlanta Braves got a new baseball stadium and the Georgia Institute of Techology got a new swimming and diving center — but the city itself didn’t get much money at all.

That’s exactly the way the deal that Mayor Gavin Newsom negotiated with Larry Ellison, the multibillionaire database mogul and yachtsman, is shaping up. A shadowy new corporation controlled by Ellison would get control of more than 30 acres of prime waterfront land worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The city could lose $42 million, and possibly as much as $128 million.

We don’t dispute the huge economic impact of holding an event that could attract more than 1 million visitors to the Bay Area. Those people will spend money in bars, restaurants, shops, and hotels. The waterfront improvements and increased tourism will create, according to economic reports, 8,840 jobs.

But as the Board of Supervisors budget analyst points out, those are not permanent, full-time jobs; much of the increased employment needs would be met by increased productivity (bartenders and waiters handling more customers than usual), overtime, and temporary jobs. And again: Most of the benefits will go to the private businesses in the tourist industry. The city’s increased tax revenue won’t be nearly enough to cover the expenses. Even if the America’s Cup group raises $32 million — and that’s not guaranteed in the deal — the city would still be down $10 million.

So in effect, San Francisco is preparing to spend $42 million of taxpayer money (and to forego as much as $86 million more by giving away waterfront land that could be developed) to benefit the sixth-richest person in the world, a new company he’s going to create and control, and the tourist-related businesses in town.

Oh, and to make it even juicier: the city is promising to seek state approval for Ellison to build condos or a hotel on the waterfront — something nobody else can legally do.

This doesn’t strike us as a terribly good deal.

It looks worse when you consider how the negotiations proceeded: The mayor and other city officials insisted they were scrambling to give Ellison everything he wanted to make sure that San Francisco beat out two other competitors. But as Rebecca Bowe reports on page 12, there were no other formal bids; Ellison’s team, based at the Golden Gate Yacht Club, was only negotiating with one city, San Francisco.

There are alternative proposals. The Telegraph Hill Dwellers Association wants to see the race complex moved from the Central Waterfront to the Northern Waterfront, and there may be ways of saving money. And Sup. Ross Mirkarimi points out that if Ellison wins the races in 2013 and comes back again the next time around, San Francisco could become what Newport, R.I., once was: a repeat host to an event that will bring more and more benefits as time goes on. That, however, involves a number of risks and variables that are far from certain at this point.

We’d like to know a lot more about what Ellison’s development plans are. We’d like to know who, exactly, will be running his new corporation that will get development rights for a couple of nice waterfront parcels.

But before the supervisors sign off on any deal, they need to set a bottom line: this can’t cost the city any net revenue. The San Francisco city treasury and local taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing an event created by and for the very wealthy.

 

The biggest fish

Andrew Lam
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6
The biggest fish

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Shortly after Larry Ellison, the billionaire CEO of Oracle Corp. and owner of the BMW Oracle Racing Team, won the 33rd America’s Cup off the coast of Valencia, Spain, in February 2010, a reception was held in his honor in the rotunda at San Francisco City Hall.

The event drew members of Ellison’s sailing crew, business and political heavyweights such as former Secretary of State George Schultz, and other VIPs. Attendees posed for photographs with the tall, glittering silver trophy at the base of the grand staircase.

As part of the celebration, Ellison helped Mayor Gavin Newsom into an official BMW Oracle Racing Team jacket, and Newsom granted Ellison a key to the city, a symbolic honor usually reserved for heads of state and the San Francisco Giants after they won the World Series. Shortly after, the mayor and the guest of honor, whom Forbes magazine ranked as the sixth-richest person in the world, sat down for a face-to-face.

That meeting marked the beginning of the city’s bid to host the 34th America’s Cup in San Francisco in 2013. Since securing the Cup, Ellison has made no secret of his desire to stage the 159-year-old sailing match against the iconic backdrop of the San Francisco Bay, a natural amphitheater that could be ringed with spectators gathered ashore while media images of the stunningly expensive yachts are broadcast internationally.

Newsom and other elected officials have feverishly championed the idea, touting it as an opportunity for a boost to the region’s anemic economy. The city’s Budget & Legislative Analyst projects roughly $1.2 billion in economic activity associated with the event — the real prize, as far as business interests are concerned. It would also create the equivalent of 8,840 jobs, mostly in the form of overtime for city workers and short-term gigs for the private sector.

While the idea has won preliminary support from most members of the Board of Supervisors, serious questions are beginning to arise as the finer details of the agreement emerge and the date for a final decision draws near.

Ellison and the race organizers would be granted control of 35 acres of prime waterfront property in exchange for selecting San Francisco as the venue for the Cup and investing $150 million into Port of San Francisco infrastructure. But the event would result in a negative net impact to city coffers.

Hosting the event and meeting Ellison’s demands for property would cost the city about $128 million, according the Budget & Legislative Analyst, just as city leaders grapple with closing a projected $712 million deficit in the budget cycle spanning 2011 and 2012.

Part of the impact is an estimated $86 million in lost revenue associated with rent-free leases the city would enter into with Ellison’s LLC, the America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA). In exchange for selecting San Francisco as a venue and investing in port infrastructure, ACEA would win long-term control of Piers 30-32, Pier 50, and Seawall Lot 330 — waterfront real estate owned by the Port of San Francisco, with development rights included. Seawall Lot 330, a 2.5-acre triangular parcel bordered by the Embarcadero at the base of Bryant Street, would either be leased long-term or transferred outright to ACEA.

The most vociferous opponent of the America’s Cup plan is Sup. Chris Daly, who has voiced scathing criticism of the notion that the city would subsidize a billionaire’s yacht race at a time of fiscal instability. “The question is whether or not the package that San Francisco’s putting together is good or bad for the city,” Daly told the Guardian, “and whether or not it’s the best deal the city can get.”

 

THE CREW

According to a Forbes calculation from September 2010, Ellison’s net worth is $27 billion, making him several times wealthier than the City and County of San Francisco, which has a total annual budget of about $6 billion. Ellison reportedly spent $100 million and a decade pursuing the Cup.

As soon as Ellison expressed interest in bringing the Cup to San Francisco, Newsom began charting a course. Park Merced architect and Newsom campaign contributor Craig Hartman of the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was tapped to reimagine the piers south of the Bay Bridge as the central hub for the event, and soon Hartman’s vision for a viewing area beneath a whimsical sail-like canopy was forwarded to the media.

The mayor also issued letters of invitation to form the America’s Cup Organizing Committee (ACOC), a group that would be tasked with soliciting corporate funding for the event. ACOC was convened as a nonprofit corporation, and it’s a powerhouse of wealthy, politically connected, and influential members.

Hollywood mogul Steve Bing, who’s donated millions to the Democratic Party and funded former President Bill Clinton’s 2009 trip to North Korea to rescue two imprisoned American journalists, is on the committee. So is Tom Perkins, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, billionaire, and former mega-yacht owner who was once dubbed “the Captain of Capitalism” by 60 Minutes. George Schultz and his wife, Charlotte, are members. Thomas J. Coates, a powerful San Francisco real estate investor who dumped $1 million into a 2008 California ballot initiative to eliminate rent control, also has a seat. Coates resurfaced in the November 2010 election when he poured $200,000 into local anti-progressive ballot measures and the campaigns of economically conservative supervisorial candidates.

Billionaire Warren Hellman, San Francisco socialite Dede Wilsey, and former Newsom press secretary Peter Ragone are also on ACOC. There are representatives from Wells Fargo, AT&T, and United Airlines. One ACOC member directs a real estate firm that generated $2.5 billion in revenue in 2009. Another is Martin Koffel, CEO of URS Corp., an energy industry heavyweight that made $9.2 billion in revenue in 2009. There’s Richard Kramlich, a cofounder of a Menlo Park venture capital firm that controls $11 billion in “committed capital.” And then there’s Mike Latham, CEO of iShares, which traffics in pooled investment funds worth about $509 billion, according to a BusinessWeek article.

There’s also an honorary branch of ACOC composed of elected officials including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and others. Their role is to help the Cup interface with various governmental agencies to control air space, secure areas of the bay exclusively for the event, set up international broadcasts, and bring foreign crew members and fancy sailboats into the United States without a hassle from immigration authorities.

ACOC is expected to raise $270 million in corporate sponsorships for the America’s Cup. That money will be funneled into the budget for ACEA. It’s unclear whether the $150 million ACEA is required to invest in city piers will be derived from ACOC’s fund drive.

The city also anticipates that ACOC would raise $32 million to help defray municipal costs. “However,” the Budget & Legislative Analyst report cautions, “there is no guarantee that any of the anticipated $32 million in private contributions will be raised.”

A seven-member board, chaired by sports management executive Richard Worth, will direct the ACEA, according to Newsom’s economic advisors, but the other six seats have yet to be filled. ACEA’s newly minted CEO is Craig Thompson, a native Californian who previously worked with a governing body for the Olympics and has helped coordinate major sporting events internationally. In an interview with sports blog Valencia Sailing, Thompson provided some insight on why major corporations might be inspired to donate to the cause. Basically, the Cup is the holy grail of networking events.

“It’s a very difficult economic situation we are going through, and it’s not the best time to be looking for sponsors for a major event,” Thompson acknowledged. “On the other hand, the America’s Cup is one of the very few activities … that offer access to really top-level individuals in terms of education or economic situation. The America’s Cup is a unique platform for a lot of companies that want access to those individuals that are very difficult to reach under normal circumstances. I can tell you for example that Oracle is very pleased with the marketing opportunity the America’s Cup has presented to them. They invite their best customers and are very successful in turning the America’s Cup into a platform for generating business. The same thing can be true for a lot of different companies that need access to wealthy individuals.”

But should San Francisco taxpayers really be subsidizing a networking event for the some of the business world’s richest and most powerful players?

 

TRANSFORMING THE WATERFRONT

Over the past four months, Newsom’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) has been negotiating with race organizers to hash out a Host City Agreement outlining the terms of bringing the America’s Cup to San Francisco.

The proposal will go before the Board of Supervisor’s Budget & Finance Committee on Dec. 8, and to the full board Dec. 14. A final decision on whether San Francisco will host the race is expected by Dec. 31. ACEA and ACOC will each sign onto the agreement with the City and County of San Francisco.

From the beginning, the event was envisioned as “the twin transformation,” according to OEWD — the America’s Cup would be transformed by attracting greater crowds and heightened commercial interest while San Francisco’s crumbling piers would be revitalized through ACEA’s $150 million investment in port infrastructure.

The plan paints downtown San Francisco as the “America’s Cup Village” during the sailing events, and a study produced by Beacon Economics estimates that the financial boost would come primarily from hordes of visitors flocking to the event — more than 500,000 are expected to attend. The city expects a minimum of 45 race days, including one pre regatta in 2011 and one in 2012 (or two in 2012 if the one in 2011 doesn’t happen), a challenger series in 2013, and a final match in 2013.

The transformation of the city’s waterfront would be dramatic. In addition to the rent-free leases for Piers 30-32, 50, and Seawall Lot 330, ACEA would be granted exclusive use of much of the central waterfront, water, and piers around Mission Bay, and water and land near Islais Creek during the course of the event. Under the Host City Agreement, race organizers would have use of water space spanning Piers 14 to 22 ½; Piers 28, 38, 40, 48, and 54, a portion of Seawall Lot 337, and Pier 80, where a temporary heliport would be sited.

Seawall Lot 330, a 2.5-acre parcel valued by the Port at $33 million, lies at the base of Bryant Street along the Embarcadero and has a nice unimpeded view of the bay. Piers 30-32 span 12.5 acres, and Pier 50 is 20 acres.

The Budget & Legislative Analyst’s study predicts that the ACEA could opt to build a 250-unit condo high-rise on Seawall Lot 330, deemed the most lucrative use. Under the Host City Agreement, the city would be obligated to remove Tidelands Trust provisions from Seawall Lot 330, which guarantee under state law that waterfront property is used for maritime functions or public benefit. Tweaking the law for a single deal would require approval from the State Lands Commission, but Newsom, in his new capacity as lieutenant governor, would cast one of the three votes on that body.

The combination of construction, demolition, lost rent revenue, police and transit, environmental analysis, and other event costs would hit the city with a bill totaling around $64 million, according to the Budget & Legislative Analyst study. Since city government would recoup around $22 million in revenue from hosting the Cup, the net impact would be around $42 million. That doesn’t include the potential $32 million assistance from ACOC.

At the same time, the city would stand to lose another $86.2 million by granting long-term development rights to 35 acres of Port property for 66 to 75 years without charging rent, bringing the total cost to $128 million. OEWD representatives played down that loss in potential revenue, saying past attempts to redevelop piers hadn’t been successful because none could handle the upfront investment to revitalize the crumbling piers.

The Host City Agreement has raised skepticism among Port staff and the Budget Analyst that tempered initial enthusiasm for the event. “The terms of the Host City Agreement will require significant city capital investment and will result in substantial lost revenue to the Port,” a Port study determined. Faith in that plan seems to be eroding and it may be scrapped for an alternative plan that’s cheaper for the city.

The Northern Waterfront alternative substitutes Piers 19-29 as the primary location for the event and eliminates the Mission Bay piers from the equation. Under this scenario, ACEA would invest an estimated $55 million, instead of $150 million. In exchange, it would receive long-term development rights to Piers 30-32 and Seawall 330 on “commercially reasonable terms,” according to a Port staff report.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu requested that the Port explore that second option more fully, and the Port report notes that it would reduce the strain on Port revenue. The Northern Waterfront plan would cost the Port a total of $15.8 million, instead of $43 million, the report notes. Port staff recommended in its report that both the original agreement and the alternative be forwarded to the full board for consideration.

 

PHANTOM BIDS?

Under the competition’s official protocol, Ellison, as defender of the Cup, has unilateral power to decide where the next regatta will be held. Race organizers have said it’s a toss-up between San Francisco and an unnamed port in Italy — though it’s anyone’s guess how seriously a European site is being considered by a team headquartered at the Golden Gate Yacht Club, a stone’s throw from the Golden Gate Bridge.

According to a San Francisco Chronicle article published in early September, Newsom issued a memo stating that San Francisco was competing against Spain and Italy to become the chosen venue. Valencia was said to be offering a “generous financial bid,” and a group in Rome was rumored to have offered some $645 million to bring the Cup to Italian shores, the memo noted. It was a call for the city to present Ellison with the most attractive deal possible to compel him to pick San Francisco.

Speaking at an Oct. 4 Land Use Committee hearing, OEWD director Jennifer Matz told supervisors: “San Francisco was designated the only city under consideration back in July. Now we are competing against the prime minister of Italy and the king of Spain.”

However, the veracity of those claims came into question in mid-November. Daly, incensed that the Mayor’s Office never communicated with him about the Cup despite wanting to hold it in his sixth supervisorial district, launched his own personal investigation. He fired off an e-mail to Team Alinghi, a prior America’s Cup winner, and began communicating with other European contacts until he got in touch with someone in Valencia’s municipal government.

“I got a call back from a representative who basically said I should know something,” Daly recounted. Valencia, his source said, never submitted a bid to host the Cup. At a Nov. 13 press conference, Valencia’s mayor Rita Barbera confirmed this claim, according to a Spanish press report, expressing disappointment that the city had been eliminated from consideration as a host venue. “There was no formal bidding process,” she charged. She also denied reports that any money had been offered.

Meanwhile, the Budget Analyst was unable to find any concrete evidence that other host city bids had been submitted. “We have nothing to confirm that other offers have been made,” Fred Brousseau of the Budget Analyst’s office told the Guardian.

In response to Guardian queries about whether the Mayor’s Office had evidence that Italy had indeed submitted a bid, Project Manager Kyri McClellan of the OEWD forwarded a one-page resolution from the Italian prime minister assuring race organizers that there would be tax breaks, accelerated approvals, and other perks guaranteed if the Cup came to Italy. However, an Italian journalist who looked over the resolution told the Guardian that the document didn’t appear to be a formal bid, merely a response to a query from race organizers.

Daly has his doubts that either Valencia or the Italian port were ever seriously considered. “I think they were phantom bids,” he said, “created by either Larry Ellison or the Newsom administration … to place pressure on the Board of Supervisors.”

A representative from OEWD told the Guardian that officials have no reason to doubt that the European bids, and accompanying offers of money, were real. However, the city wasn’t privy to race organizer’s discussions about possible European venues. A final decision is expected before the end of the year.

Daly hasn’t held back in voicing opposition to the America’s Cup and blasted it at an Oct. 5 Board meeting. “This tacking around Sup. Daly will not get you in calmer waters,” Daly said. “I told myself I was not going to make a yachting reference. But I will bring a white squall onto this race and onto this Cup, and I will do everything in my power starting on Jan. 8 to make sure these boats never see that water.”

 

WIND IN WHOSE SAILS?

The America’s Cup would undoubtedly bring economic benefit to the area and create work at a time when jobs are scarce. Police officers would get overtime. Restaurant servers would be scrambling to keep up with demand. Construction workers seeking temporary employment would get gigs. Hotels would rake it in. Pier 39 would be booming. However, the Budget Analyst report cautioned: “It is unlikely that any labor benefits would remain in the years after the America’s Cup event is completed.”

Certain small businesses would catch a windfall. John Caine, owner the Hi Dive bar at Pier 28, didn’t hesitate when asked about his opinion on the city hosting the Cup. “Please come fix our piers. It’s a shout-out to Larry Ellison,” he said. Caine said he supports the America’s Cup bid 100 percent, and is excited about the boost it could give his business. The Hi Dive would not be required to relocate under the proposal, he added.

At the same time, other small business would be negatively affected, particularly those among the 87 Port tenants who would be forced to relocate to make way for the America’s Cup. The Budget Analyst’s report also notes that retail businesses in the area whose services had no appeal to race-goers might suffer from reduced access to their stores, since crowding and street closures would shut out their customers.

The sailing community has rallied in support of the Cup, and Newsom has received hundreds of e-mails from yachting enthusiasts from as far away as Hawaii and Florida promising to travel to San Francisco with all their sailing friends to watch the world-famous vessels compete.

Ariane Paul, commodore of a classic wooden boat club called the Master Mariners Benevolent Association, told the Guardian that she was excited about the opportunity for the America’s Cup to showcase sailing on the bay. “In the long term, it’s a win-win,” Paul said. “It would be great to have that boost.” As for the financial terms of the deal, she remained confident, saying, “I don’t think that the city is going to let Larry Ellison walk all over them.”

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is often politically aligned with Daly, but not when it comes to the issue of the America’s Cup. As a kid growing up on the island of Jamestown, a tiny blue-collar community located off the coast of Rhode Island, Mirkarimi learned to sail and occasionally spent summers working as a deckhand. Every few years, the America’s Cup would come to nearby Newport, transforming the area into a bustling hub and bringing the locals into contact with famous sailors. It left an everlasting impression. When the BMW Oracle Racing Team secured the 33rd Cup off the coast of Valencia, Mirkarimi did a double-take when he saw a photograph of the winning team — his childhood friend from Rhode Island was on the crew.

Mirkarimi told the Guardian he supports bringing the Cup to San Francisco because of the economic boost the area will receive — if the Cup continues to return to San Francisco as it did for 53 years in Newport, he said, the city could look forward to a free gift in improved revenue associated with the event, and that could help quiet the tired annual debates over painful budget cuts.

At the same time, he acknowledged that the Budget Analyst report had prompted what he called healthy skepticism. “I think the onus is on the city and Cup organizers to make sure the benefits far, far outweigh the investment,” Mirkarimi said. “This effort is not just about making one of the wealthiest men in the United States that much more wealthy … That can’t be the case,” he said. “It has to be about what will the Cup do in order to be a win-win for the people of San Francisco.” Mirkarimi said he expected scrutiny of the details of the agreement at the Dec. 8 Budget and Finance Committee hearing: “Naturally, in this time of economic downturn … people want to know, what’s the outlay of cost, and what are we going to get in return?” 

Emergency forum Tues. / 30 on HANC recycling center eviction

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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An emergency community forum will be held tonight, Nov. 30, about the Recreation and Parks Department’s plan to evict the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC) Recycling Center from a parking lot in Golden Gate Park. If Mayor Gavin Newsom and his former chief of staff, Rec & Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg, succeed in their plan to evict the 36-year old recycling center, they’ll kill 10 green jobs, eliminate a rare source of income for poor people, and put an end to a community resource that costs San Francisco taxpayers nothing.

HANC believes the recycling center is being targeted by Newsom’s administration as a form of political payback, since the progressive organization opposed Proposition L, the sit / lie ordinance, which Newsom supported.

Ginsburg wants to evict the recycling center, which pays rent to the city, and replace it with a community gardening center that would cost $250,000. The shaded lot doesn’t seem like an ideal site for growing produce.

A memo issued Nov. 29 from Ginsburg to Rec & Park Commissioners notes that it is legal for the department to move forward with the eviction without commission approval. Apparently, Newsom’s administration intends to send 10 people to the unemployment line and kick a 36-year-old green resource to the curb without any public input, despite receiving 400 postcards from San Francisco residents opposing the eviction. The Rec & Park Commission will take up the issue of the new community garden center at its Thurs., Dec. 2 meeting.

Tonight’s emergency forum, organized by Keep Arboretum Free, is an attempt to open up a space for public dialogue.

A stakeholder meeting took place this afternoon with Ginsburg, District 5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, Department of the Environment Director Melanie Nutter, representatives from the San Francisco Police Department, represenatives from the offices of Assembly Member Tom Ammiano and City Attorney Dennis Herrera, HANC, and area residents.

Jim Rhoads of the HANC Recycling Center told the Guardian just after the meeting, “They’re going to evict us by the end of December. That’s their goal. The mayor has it in for us and he wants to get us out before he leaves.”

The recycling center, located at Frederick and Arguello streets, operates a buyback program for recyclable materials as well as a San Francisco native plant nursery. Residents from the Inner Sunset Park Neighbors have voiced complaints about “quality-of-life issues” that they link with some of the center’s patrons. During buyback hours, held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., people arrive with shopping carts filled of cans and bottles to exchange for small amounts of cash. Some of them are homeless.

Representatives from HANC, Rec & Park, and the Inner Sunset Park Neighbors have been invited to speak at tonight’s forum. “There are strongly felt opinions on both sides,” a flier for the event notes. “In the interest of a broad discussion, a number of long time local residents organized this forum for a full public airing of the issues prior to the Dec. 2 Commission meeting.”

The forum will be held tonight, Tuesday, Nov. 30, from 7 to 9 p.m. at St. John of God, 5th Avenue at Irving St.

To voice your opinion about Rec & Park’s plan to evict HANC, call Phil Ginsburg at 415-831-2701 or email him at Philip.Ginsburg@sfgov.org.

Where the plastic bag ban started

Zelda Bronstein
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Where the plastic bag ban started

Even Gov. Schwarzenegger is now supporting a ban on plastic bags in California, saying the measure, which narrowly failed in the state Senate last session, is a top environmental priority. But let’s remember:

While Debra Saunders is making fun of those wacky supervisors in San Francisco who try all these crazy things, it was Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who pushed the first ban on plastic bags, and the San Francisco supervisors who approved it.

Of course, when the rest of the country starts to realize that pushing high-fat, high-calorie foods to kids by hawking plastic toys is a bad public policy idea, Saunders will be making fun of something else.

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