Supervisors

Petition to name Bay Bridge after Emperor Norton gains 1,000 signatures

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
12

San Francisco freelance writer John Lumea disagrees with California state legislators who want to name the western span of the Bay Bridge after former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

Nothing personal against Brown, says Lumea. He just believes that honor belongs instead to 19th century San Francisco eccentric Joshua Abraham Norton (1819-1880), the Scotsman who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States in 1859 and printed his own currency.

Lumea has drafted and launched a Change.org petition asking the California Legislature to rename the iconic thoroughfare “The Emperor Norton Bay Bridge.” The petition cleared its initial goal of 1,000 signatures on Aug. 12. The Bay Bridge, the petition argues, fulfills Emperor Norton’s “140-year-old vision” of a bridge from San Francisco to Oakland “that has shaped the lives of generations.”

In 1872 Emperor Norton famously proclaimed the need for a suspension bridge between San Francisco, Goat Island (now Yerba Buena), and Oakland. While the Bay Bridge matches the literal proclamation, it also matches Emperor Norton’s social vision for the area, according to Lumea. 

“Emperor Norton was an early visionary of a regional economy,” said Lumea, “and a herald of the whole idea of a Bay Area as a region that shares ideas and relationships beyond economics.” A harbinger of Bay Area progressivism, Emperor Norton also used his local notoriety to advocate on behalf of women’s suffrage and the rights of marginalized populations. 

Past attempts to commemorate Emperor Norton’s special relationship to the Bay Bridge never got off the ground. In 2004, former San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin introduced a resolution to name the entire Bay Bridge after Emperor Norton, but the Board of Supervisors passed a modified version to dedicate just the new additions to the bridge. To date, Oakland and Alameda haven’t obliged.

This June, California State Assembly members had a completely different public figure in mind for the bridge’s name, and introduced a resolution to name the western span of the Bay Bridge after the former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. In answer to that proposal, an online petition surfaced in July calling for state legislators to name that span of the Bay Bridge after Emperor Norton instead.

Less than two weeks ago, Lumea’s petition took things a step further, calling on the Legislature and the Governor to name the entire bridge after Emperor Norton.

“As for Willie Brown,” said Lumea, “surely any number of buildings in California could be used for his honor.”

Surrounded by kids, David Campos files to run for State Assembly

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
25

On the morning of Aug. 1, San Francisco District 9 Sup. David Campos joined a group of parents and kids at the 24th Street BART station, climbed aboard the 49-Mission/Van Ness, and rode to City Hall, where he filed paperwork to run for the California Assembly.

“Running for office is not an easy thing. It’s a very personal decision,” he said. “And thinking about it, I am where I am because I was given a lot of opportunity as a kid coming in, as an undocumented kid. It was the opportunity of getting a quality education, the opportunity to really get a degree,” and to stay motivated by the idea that “if you really work hard and play by the rules, that you can really fulfill your potential.”

Campos was elected to represent San Francisco’s District 9, which spans the Mission, Bernal Heights, and surrounding areas, in November of 2008. The gay Latino elected official is regarded as one of the most progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, and he is credited with spearheading Free Muni for Youth, a city program offering free public transit access to some 40,000 low-income kids.

Campos stressed that many of the policies he’s tackled on the Board of Supervisors have been aimed toward aiding low-income families and youth, “whether it’s helping families who are struggling with free Muni for low-income kids, to improving the quality of schools in the Mission, to focusing on public safety in a progressive way that tries to build a relationship between the police and the community.”

Naturally, Muni took longer than expected.

Some of the kids amused themselves with a clapping game while they waited.

Many of the parents were monolingual Spanish speakers, and their kids were Free Muni for Youth participants. Raul Foneza (pictured in the first shot, with his thumbs up), spoke to the Guardian through a translator and said he had come out for the supervisor that day because he respected Campos’ support for the city’s young people and was there with his friend and her two kids.

When the bus arrived at City Hall, another group of kids was there awaiting Campos’ arrival, with signs. So was Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, who has already granted Campos his endorsement.

Ammiano spent a few moments on the steps of City Hall speaking to the kids. “I hope you tell people to vote for David Campos, I hope you all do your homework, be good to your teachers, and go to college. How does that sound?” After they cheered, “yeeeah!” in unison, Ammiano half-jokingly added something about how then they could all get good-paying jobs, so they could afford an apartment.

Once inside, the crowd of kids and parents squeezed into the basement-level Department of Elections office, where Campos filled out the paperwork to make his candidacy for State Assembly official. He turned to face his supporters, most of whom will have to wait eight years till they’re old enough to vote, and explained that he had decided to run “because we want to make sure our state makes you the top priority.”

Immigrants vulnerable to domestic violence

Michael Redmond
-
0

In San Francisco Sup. John Avalos’ District 11, half of all residents were born outside the U.S. In Sup. Jane Kim’s District 6, more than a third of residents are foreign-born, and almost half speak a language other than English.

Given the sizable immigrant population in San Francisco, it may not come as a surprise that Secure Communities (S-Comm), a federal immigration program administered by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is highly unpopular. What might not be so obvious is how dramatically S-Comm can impact the lives of foreign-born women who are survivors of domestic violence.

The reason for this is simple. “If you are a victim or a survivor of domestic violence and you call the police, you do not want to end up deported,” Beverly Upton of the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium explained at a July 23 rally, where advocates from organizations such as Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Causa Justa, the Filipino Community Center, and others stood and held banners demonstrating opposition to S-Comm. “We want it to be safer to call the police, not less safe.”

A member of Mujeres Unidas y Activas who introduced herself as Lourdes and spoke through a translator delivered a personal account of feeling fearful of police as well as an abusive partner. “Many times, abusers tell us not to call the police, because the police will not believe us. They say the police will probably deport us.”

The domestic violence and immigrant community advocates were there to champion Avalos’ Due Process for All Ordinance, which is being introduced at today’s Board meeting and is co-sponsored by seven other supervisors, essentially guaranteeing its passage. Avalos himself didn’t speak, and Sups. David Campos and Board President David Chiu, co-sponsors of the legislation, sent female staff members to make statements on their behalf as part of the all-female roster of speakers.

The legislation prohibits law enforcement officials from detaining individuals solely in response to immigration detainer requests issued by immigration authorities under S-Comm. As things stand, “the request has been honored in many cases,” Avalos explained in comments to the Guardian, even though California Attorney General Kamala Harris has affirmed that local law enforcement agencies are not obligated to comply with ICE detainers because they are mere “requests” and not legally binding. Since 2010, according to data provided be Avalos’ office, 784 San Franciscans have been deported after being turned over to federal authorities due to ICE detainers.

Sup. Jane Kim called S-Comm “a giant step backward when it comes to equality and fairness,” and added that S-Comm “makes our neighborhoods less safe.”

Legal Counsel Freya Horne read a statement on behalf of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, stating that the sheriff has reduced the number of ICE detainers leading to deportations, and was supportive of Avalos’ legislation. She added that Mirkarimi had made it a policy to honor immigration detainer requests only in cases of criminal convictions of serious or violent felonies.

Avalos said he was compelled to move the legislation forward because “I’ve talked to so many people whose families have been separated, and have been devastated,” due to deportations under S-Comm. “We want to make sure we’re maintaining a level of due process,” he added, since the detainer requests are routinely issued without warrants or a requirement to show probable cause.

Chiu: centrist compromiser, effective legislator, or both

Michael Redmond
-
0
Chiu: centrist compromiser, effective legislator, or both

At the start of this year, when I wrote a Guardian cover story profile of Sup. Scott Wiener (which SF Weekly and San Francisco Magazine followed shortly thereafter with their own long Wiener profiles), he seemed like the one to watch on the Board of Supervisors, even though I noted at the time that Board President David Chiu was actually the more prolific legislator.

Now, it’s starting to seem like maybe we all focused on the wrong guy, because it is Chiu and his bustling office of top aides that have done most of the heavy legislative lifting this year, finding compromise solutions to some of the most vexing issues facing the city (ironically, even cleaning up some of Wiener’s messes).

The latest example is Wiener’s CEQA reform legislation, which the board unanimously approved on July 23, a kumbaya moment that belies the opposition and acrimony that accompanied its introduction.

That effort comes on the heels of Chiu’s office solving another big, ugly, seemingly intractable fight: the condominium lottery bypass legislation sponsored by Wiener and Sup. Mark Farrell. To solve that one in the face of real estate industry intransigence, Chiu showed a willingness to play hardball, winning over swing vote Sup. Norman Yee to get six votes using some hostile amendments.

In the end, Chiu won enough support to override a possible veto by the waffling Mayor Ed Lee, who has always echoed Chiu’s rhetoric on seeking compromise and consensus and “getting things done,” but who lacks the political skills and willingness to really engage with all sides. For example, it was Chiu — along with Sups. Farrell and David Campos — who spent months forging a true compromise on the hospital projects proposed by California Pacific Medical Center, replacing the truly awful CPMC proposal that Lee readily accepted.

“It’s been a very long year,” Chiu told the Guardian. “It’s been important for me to not just to seek common ground, but legislative solutions that reflect our shared San Francisco values.”

Next, Chiu will wade into another thorny legislative thicket by introducing legislation that will regulate the operations of Airbnb, the online housing rental corporation with a problematic business model.

After posting the preceding analysis of Chiu on the SFBG.com Politics blog on July 23, we heard lots of back channel concerns and complaints from progressive San Franciscans (and even some from moderates and conservatives who consider Chiu a raving socialist for helping suspend the condo lottery).

Nobody really wanted to speak on the record against Chiu, which is understandable given the powerful and pivotal position that he’s carved out for himself as a swing vote between the two ideological poles and on the Land Use Committee, whose makeup he personally created to enhance that role.

The main issue seems to be that Chiu allows both progressive and anti-progressive legislation to be watered down until it is palatable to both sides, empowering the moderates over the progressives. That’s a legitimate point. It’s certainly true that Chiu’s worldview is generally more centrist than that of the Guardian and its progressive community, and we’ve leveled that criticism at Chiu many times over the years.

The fact that he ends up in a deciding role on controversial legislation is clearly a role that Chiu has carved out from himself, no doubt about it. And that’s certainly why he played the pivotal role that he has this year. But when he uses that role to empower and support tenant groups, as he did on the condo lottery bypass measure, I think that’s something worth noting and praising.

On the CEQA reform legislation, it’s also a valid criticism of Chiu to note that Sup. Jane Kim had five votes for her legislation and that it was only Chiu who stood in the way of its passage (whether Mayor Ed Lee would have vetoed it, necessitating the need for two more votes, is another question).

In the end, Chiu can be seen as an effective legislator, a centrist compromiser, or both. Perspective is everything in politics.

Under fire again

Michael Redmond
-
0
Under fire again

rebecca@sfbg.com

At a recent hearing on San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance — once-controversial legislation that is now in the business community’s crosshairs once again — a nursing student stood at the podium to address members of the Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services & Safety Committee.

She told them about her mother, who battled illness but did not have access to healthcare for 14 years due to her immigration status, recalling a day when her mother explained why she wasn’t seeking medical attention: “If I go to the hospital, I’ll bury you in debt.”

For the uninsured and undocumented, going without medical care or going into insurmountable debt could be the only options if it weren’t for Healthy San Francisco, a medical services safety net that was created by the HSCO in 2006. The program is expected to continue to provide care for undocumented enrollees who won’t be eligible for federal assistance once the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, takes effect early next year.

The HCSO’s mandate that businesses provide some healthcare coverage for their employees was fiercely opposed by the business community, which challenged it all the way to the US Supreme Court. Now, those same powerful forces are gearing up for a fresh challenge that could jeopardize HCSO’s potential to fill coverage gaps that will be created under Obamacare.

Under federal health care reform, two-thirds of the enrollees in Healthy San Francisco will become ineligible to continue receiving coverage because they will automatically gain eligibility for some form of federal assistance. Those earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level will be guaranteed coverage under Medi-Cal. But for low-income earners whose wages hover around $14 an hour, things are far less certain because they will be eligible to enroll in the federally created health benefit exchange, Covered California, although they won’t necessarily be able to afford it. For someone earning around $30,000 per year before taxes, the estimated monthly cost for a health insurance plan under Covered California hovers at more than $200 per month, in many cases making it too much of a stretch.

As things stand, uninsured San Francisco employees who earn too much to qualify for Medi-Cal, but not enough to afford enrollment in Covered California — despite being eligible — can still access funds set aside for them in medical reimbursement accounts under the HCSO. This option may provide enough of a financial boost for low-wage earners to take advantage of federally subsidized health insurance after all.

“For working people, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act actually makes the Health Care Security Ordinance more important,” explains Ian Lewis, research director at UNITE-HERE Local 2. “There are many consequences of the ACA … and the Health Care Security Ordinance is a buffer against them.”

As it stands, the local law “makes Covered California actually work in a high-cost city like ours,” Lewis added.

Under HCSO, San Francisco employers are required to contribute toward employees’ health care on a per-hour basis for each employee working more than eight hours per week, regardless of immigration status or city of residence, amounting to an estimated $255 per participant per month.

This mandate, known as the Employer Spending Requirement, has been the target of multiple lawsuits brought against the city by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association since the landmark health care ordinance, authored by then-Sup. Tom Ammiano, was first enacted in 2006.

That same requirement also makes the local ordinance stronger than the federal law when it comes to worker protections, because the federal mandate only requires employers to offer coverage for workers who put in 30 hours a week or more. That has prompted businesses nationwide to reschedule their workers down to 29 hours per week in a gesture of opposition to health care reform, but no such incentive exists in San Francisco because of the hourly contribution requirement.

Now that federal health care reform is poised for implementation, with enrollment set to begin in October and a transition to the new system slated for early next year, GGRA and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce are urging the city to open up a new policy dialogue about employer requirements under the local health care law — and Mayor Ed Lee has been receptive.

“We question whether Healthy San Francisco should continue in its current form with the ACA coming in,” Small Business California President Scott Hauge told the San Francisco Business Times (“Healthy San Francisco, related program to shrink dramatically, but not price tag,” July 16). Hauge has met with Jim Lazarus, the Chamber’s senior vice president for public policy, and GGRA Director Rob Black on the issue, the article noted.

Reached by phone, Black emphasized to the Guardian that GGRA employers are merely seeking guidance on how businesses should comply with the local and federal mandates. “It’s important that we really focus on getting together, and getting together quickly,” Black said, to ensure “San Franciscans have access to the full benefits and subsidies of the Affordable Care Act.”

Longtime advocates of Healthy San Francisco and progressive policymakers are watching closely. “They’ve been trying to get out of their responsibility to provide worker’s health care since the law was passed,” Hillary Ronen, a legislative aide for Sup. David Campos, said of business interests who are airing complaints about employer requirements.

Once the federal law takes effect, San Francisco employers will have the option of either providing coverage, or contributing to a city program that establishes medical reimbursement accounts for employees administered by city government, Ronen explained. A third option, “standalone health reimbursement accounts,” under which employers manage reimbursement funds for employees, will be rendered illegal under Obamacare. That system generated controversy in recent years because employers were placing undue restrictions on the use of those funds, and in some cases even pocketing the money after neglecting to inform their workers that it was available (see “Check, please,” 4/23/13).

On July 25, Lee announced that the city’s Universal Health Care Council, a body previously tasked with guiding local health care policy, would be reconvened to “examine San Francisco’s implementation of the Federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) and engage stakeholders in identifying necessary local policies” to support the transition.

In response to signals that the business community is gearing up for a fresh challenge to the city’s health care law using the ACA as ammunition, Campos convened a hearing July 25 to discuss the importance of the HCSO in relation to the federal law.

For several hours, advocates of Healthy San Francisco — many of them members of the immigrant community who would have no other options if it weren’t for the program — delivered passionate defenses of the current program. Campos emphasized that federal health care reform stood to be a great success in combination with the local health care ordinance, which would serve to fill in any gaps in coverage.

Deputy Director of the Department of Public Health Colleen Chawla explained during the hearing that of the 60,000 San Franciscans currently enrolled either in Healthy San Francisco or SF Path, a second medical assistance program, roughly 40,500 will automatically become eligible to enroll either in Medi-Cal or Covered California under federal health care reform come January. The remaining 19,500 won’t be eligible, however, mostly due to immigration status. Healthy San Francisco is expected to continue providing a safety net for those who would otherwise fall through the cracks. But when it comes to the two-thirds who are eligible for federal assistance, but may not be able to actually afford it, things would be thrown into uncertainty if the Employer Spending Requirement were altered or eliminated. “Folks in the business community would be happy to say, the Affordable Care Act is enough, and businesses shouldn’t be complicated with an additional burden,” notes Le Ly, program director at the Chinese Progressive Association. But the HCSO “is an important pillar of the total continuum of care,” he said. “We see it as continuing to complement and strengthen health care coverage.”

Pedaling slowly

Michael Redmond
-
0
Pedaling slowly

news@sfbg.com

With San Francisco bicycle rental companies such as Blazing Saddles and Bay City Bicycle Rentals and Tours having bike fleets numbering in the thousands, why does the new San Francisco bike share program only have 350 bikes? And can that really be effective?

In August, San Francisco and a handful of other Bay Area cities will join the ranks of the dozens of cities in the country that have bicycle share programs, although most are more robust than ours. For example, New York City’s bike share program offer 6,000 bikes.

Sponsored by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and bankrolled by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission with more than $7 million, the program will bring 700 bikes to the region — half of which will make their way to San Francisco.

In the following months, San Francisco could be allotted 500 total bikes. For the initial launch, 35 bike share stations will be spread throughout the city, and when the bicycle count rises, the number of stations will jump to 50.

MTC spokesperson Sean Co told us that most of the money for the program goes to the cost of the bikes themselves. Each bike costs $5,000, is outfitted with tracking technology, and is expected to last 10 years. In addition to being high-tech, all bike share bikes are unique to Alta Bike Share Systems, and require special tools to be taken apart, another factor in the high price tag.

The rest of money goes toward the stations and fees for a consultant that helps run the program. Co believes that the membership fees alone will make up for the over $7 million spent on the program. But that’s assuming the program isn’t a flop, which some fear it could be given the anemic number of bikes being offered.

 

WHY SO FEW?

New York City’s bike share, Citi Bike — financed completely by Citigroup Inc. with no public funds — launched in May with 6,000 bikes and 300 stations. That program is already approaching a million total rides. Chicago’s Divvy bike share system started off with 750 bikes at the beginning of July and will increase to 3,000 at the end of August.

Kit Hodge, deputy director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, is one of the people who says that 350 bikes just isn’t enough for San Francisco. “The city and SFMTA have estimated that it would take 3,000 bikes to have an effective bicycle share,” Hodge told us. “We definitely are pushing for more bikes.”

But San Francisco’s bicycle share may get the thousands of bikes that some believe it needs. The Board of Supervisors recently passed a resolution that calls on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Department of Public Works to have a much larger system by 2014.

“Five hundred bikes isn’t enough for a citywide bike share,” Sup. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the resolution, told us. “If you look at other cities with a large population and a lot of people biking, bicycle share stations have to be heavily concentrated in many different areas. With the 500 bikes, other areas of the city will be excluded.”

But critics like Wiener and Hodge may not have taken into account that this program is only a trial run, with enough funding to last a year, according to BAAQMD representatives.

BAAQMD Director of Strategic Incentives Damian Breen told us the program is just the right size: “We feel the pilot is appropriately sized. I don’t think we’ve limited ourselves at all. This is to test the waters and see what it can grow into.”

Breen also thinks that mainly focusing on San Francisco for the Bay Area-wide bicycle sharing program would be unfair to other cities. Unlike other bicycle sharing programs, such as New York City and Chicago, San Francisco’s bicycle sharing system is just one part of a regional program that includes Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and San Jose.

“This stage of the program is to see what works and what doesn’t,” Breen said. “Maybe the bicycle share might be used more in the suburbs than in San Francisco. When you do something regionally you have to take all cities and all outcomes into account.”

When asked if the bicycle sharing program would have increased the number of bikes in San Francisco if there was additional funding, he said no.

“I think obviously all partners would have liked the program to be bigger in certain areas,” Breen said. “Whether or not it would have been bigger in places like San Francisco, if there was more funding, I cannot say.”

Breen says BAAQMD will consider corporate sponsorship for the bike share once the initial money from the pilot runs out.

 

THE LAST MILE

The possibility of more stations and bike share rides in the city isn’t appealing to Blazing Saddles bicycle rental company owner Jeff Sears.

“If stations are placed in areas like the Fisherman’s Wharf, or North Beach, people may be tempted to use bike share instead,” Sears said. “But, we’ve been assured by the BAAQMD that that’s not going to happen.”

Breen says the service is directed at residents who commute, and may need the bike for that “last mile” of their trek.

“This is different than bicycle rentals, which are usually meant for a day of riding,” Breen said. “They are designed for 30 minute use — the main audience is folks who are looking for that last mile after they get off of Caltrain or BART.”

Breen went on to say that areas with bicycle sharing programs also saw bicycle renting programs go up as a whole. But Jeanne Orellana of Bay City Bicycle Rentals and Tours believes otherwise.

“We absolutely feel that it would affect business,” Orellana said. “We wish that it would coexist with our business, but other cities with bicycle sharing programs have seen bicycle rental shops close down due to the competition.” A scenario similar to what Orellana imagined played out in Miami Beach, Fla. Unlike the program in store for the Bay Area, Miami Beach’s DecoBike offers pricing plans for residents and tourists, and many of the tourists find themselves choosing the bike share over rental shops in the area, causing business in bicycle rental shops to reportedly drop 40 to 50 percent. Wiener acknowledges the reservations that Orellana and Sears hold about bike share, but he said that both options can coexist in the same city. “They’re two completely different markets,” Wiener said. “I understand the concerns that they have but comparing bike sharing and bicycle rental is like comparing apples to oranges.” And the BAAQMD, SFBC, SFMTA, and Wiener all agree on one thing: Tourists choosing bike share over bicycle rental companies just doesn’t make sense economically. Renting a bicycle for a day at Bay City Bicycle Rentals and Tours is $32. Taking a bicycle out for the day at the bike share comes at a heftier price. For $9, customers can get a 24-hour subscription with unlimited 30 minute rides from station to station. But after those 30 minutes are up, fees get added. A 31- to 60-minute ride costs $4, and each 30-minute increment after that costs $7, which can build up to over $150 in a day if the bicycle is not returned to a station. In the meantime, Orellana hopes that consumers will make the right decision for themselves. “I trust and hope that many people will do the math and find that bike share isn’t cheaper for exploring the city,” Orellana said. Co said that more than 300 people purchased memberships for the Bay Area bicycle share 24 hours after memberships were up for grabs a couple weeks ago. BAAQMD is pleased with the results, and viewed it as a good turnout. The official launch date has not been released, but its infrastructure is now being put into place with its imminent launch.

Is the Guardian empowering Chiu or just recognizing his power?

Sasha Cuttler
-
67
Is the Guardian empowering Chiu or just recognizing his power?

I’ve been hearing lots of back channel complaints and concerns from progressive San Franciscans since last week’s blog post on Board of Supervisors President David Chiu and the role he’s played forging compromises on controversial pieces of legislation this year.

Some have even suggested that the Guardian has gone centrist under my freshly minted editorship, which I actually find kinda funny given my history, perspective, and the righteously anti-corporate and progressive perspective stories that I’ve written and edited in recent weeks. I can honestly tell you that I call ‘em like I see ‘em, now as always, even if that doesn’t always hew to the progressive orthodoxy of some.

Nobody really wants to speak on the record against Chiu, which is understandable given the powerful and pivotal position that he’s carved out for himself as a swing vote between the two ideological poles and on the Land Use Committee, whose makeup he personally created to enhance that role.

So for now, let me just air some of the criticisms and offer some responses and perspective. The main issue seems to be that Chiu allows both progressive and anti-progressive legislation to be watered down until it is palatable to both sides, empowering the moderates over the progressives.

That’s a legitimate point, it’s certainly true that Chiu’s worldview is generally more centrist than that of the Guardian and its progressive community, and we’ve leveled that criticism at Chiu many times over the years. The fact that he ends up in a deciding role on controversial legislation is clearly a role that Chiu has carved out from himself, no doubt about it. And that’s certainly why he played the pivotal role that he has this year.

But when he uses that role to empower and support tenant groups, as he did on the condo lottery bypass measure, I think that’s something worth noting and praising, particularly in my quick little blog post that seems to have grown in perceived significance beyond what I may have intended.   

Many of the criticisms involved the CEQA reform legislation that was unanimously approved by the board last week after progressives opposed its initial iteration by Sup. Scott Wiener.

As some have suggested, Sup. Jane Kim does deserve tremendous credit for resisting the initial legislation and working with activists on an alternative, and I included that recognition in my initial story on the legislation. And it’s valid criticism of Chiu to note that Kim had five votes for her legislation and that it was only Chiu who stood in the way of its passage (whether Mayor Ed Lee would have vetoed it, necessitating the need for two more votes, is another question).

But I quoted Eric Brooks, an activist who spent months working on the compromise, as saying the CEQA legislation ultimately does make it easier to oppose bad projects. And when it was approved unanimously by the board, I figured it was safe to place that piece of legislation on the list of Chiu legislative accomplishments for the year.

We at the Guardian will make mistakes, as we always have from time to time. But I’m going to try to err on the side of open, transparent public debates — while supporting a rejuvenation of the city’s progressive movement, so that it is able to start playing offense and protecting this city’s diversity, vitality, and progressive values.

And if you have any criticisms or advice for the Guardian, please come to our forum on Wednesday or offer them to me directly. Thanks for reading.

New director triggers a brain drain at SFDPH

Michael Redmond
-
1

The San Francisco Department of Public Health has seen an exodus of top officials over the 18 months since Barbara Garcia took the reins from longtime chief Mitch Katz, the most recent being Environmental Health Director Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, who was placed on administrative leave last month pending an investigation into unspecified concerns.

Bhatia has been a hero to many progressive San Franciscans and public health professionals for his innovative work supporting expanded worker protections, regulation of cannabis dispensaries and restaurants, environmental justice initiatives, and other work that has landed him in the pages of the Guardian many, many times.

“The poorest Americans are about two times as likely to die. People in low-wage jobs have less access to health care … food, shelter, clothing, and transit,” Bhatia testified during the 2002 Board of Supervisors hearing that led to the creation of a city minimum wage.

Neither Bhatia nor the department would comment on his leave, although sources tell us that he has not been informed of the charges against him (which an item in the Chronicle last month suggested was a possible conflict of interest issue relating to his regulation of restaurants) and that Garcia has clashed with many top officials in the department since taking over.

Among those who have left the department are Dr. Susan Fernyak, Director of Communicable Disease Prevention and Control; Dr. Masae Kawamura, Director of TB Control; Dr. Grant Colfax, Director of HIV Prevention; Elizabeth Jacobi, Director of Human Resources; Tangerine Brigham, Director of Healthy San Francisco; Mark Trotz, Director of Housing and Urban Health; and Dr. Erica Pan, Director of Emergency Preparedness.

“SFDPH has a national and worldwide reputation for innovative solutions to traditional public health problems. As a citizen of this city, I’m concerned that the current leadership is fostering an environment that is driving out and stifling that innovation to the detriment of all of us. A number of staff people have told me they have been instructed not to stretch themselves to innovate, to do only what their job description says and no more,” said the source, who works for a nonprofit that partners with the department.

Asked to comment on the exodus and her role in it, Garcia issued the following statement in response to questions from the Guardian: “Three staff that reported to me directly were recruited and provided promotions in the Los Angeles Department of Health Services. I’m very proud of these staff who are now involved with Health Care Reform efforts for the Los Angeles area. Several other staff that reported to our Public Health Division left for positions that were closer to home and the majority of these departures were promotions. All staff left in good standing with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.”

Meanwhile, 93 “members of the public health, social and environmental justice, foundation and education communities” wrote a signed letter to Mayor Ed Lee on July 10 on behalf of Dr. Bhatia, highlighting his work and appealing for a just resolution to the situation.

“Many across the nation have been grappling with how to improve the social and environmental conditions that are the cause of poor health and health inequities. Under Dr. Bhatia’s leadership, the San Francisco Department of Public Health Environmental Health Section has found practical ways — using research, policy, regulation, and cross-sector collaboration — to produce measurable improvements to environmental and social conditions throughout San Francisco’s diverse communities,” they wrote.

While writing that they “have no knowledge or commentary on the details of the leave or investigations, they went on to note the initiative that Bhatia has shown in going beyond his prescribed duties to work with various San Francisco constituencies to support equitable solutions to this city’s problems: “He takes his responsibilities as a public servant seriously, working well beyond required hours, and he is committed to improving the life-chances of socially, economically, and politically marginalized communities.”

Privatizing the Botanical Gardens

Michael Redmond
-
48
Privatizing the Botanical Gardens

news@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors last week voted to continue the collection of “non-resident fees” at the Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park for a minimum 10-year period. Then it approved a companion measure to allow construction of a new, privately run nursery that will be the home of corporate parties and members-only activities, giving a private group unusual control over a public space.

The proposed plan will replace the existing nursery with a new Center For Sustainable Growth, funded as a “gift-in place” from the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society, a nonprofit that has supported the gardens since 1955, when it was known as Strybing Arboretum.

“This vote means we are basically privatizing 55 acres of Golden Gate Park and handing it over to a nonprofit with no public accountability,” Harry Pariser, a longtime resident of the Inner Sunset, activist, and author told the Bay Guardian. “Essentially we’re allowing the government to make us show an ID to come onto public land. It’s also going to be a space where there’s going to be a lot more commercial activity. I think inevitably there is going to be fees for everyone.”

The new agreement consists of demolishing an existing 4,600 square foot greenhouse, which will be replaced by a new 9,800 square foot nursery. A real estate evaluation report on the nursery project performed by Clifford Advisory, a limited liability corporation, compares the project to allegedly positive public-private development efforts such as the Hunter’s Point Shipyard project.

The lease agreement between the Botanical Garden Society and the City of San Francisco allows the society to use the premises for “special events,” designate members-only hours for the facility, and waive the non-resident fee for those events. According to the lease, the city shall avoid interfering with the Society’s “quiet use and enjoyment of the premises,” namely by allowing them to throw private parties.

“The Botanical Gardens is an incredible asset to the city, it’s a great place for families and kids, and now they’re no longer treating it as a public asset,” Sup. John Avalos, who recently voted against the non-resident fees and the lease agreement, told the Guardian. “They’re making it more exclusive.”

 

LAND GRAB

The SFBGS has a history of campaigning for private exclusivity on public land as well as generating new revenue sources. In 2010, Avalos pushed a plan to replace the revenue brought in by non-resident fees with $250,000 pulled from the city’s real estate transfer tax.

SFBGS, backed by London Breed before she was elected the supervisor of District 5, which includes the Botanical Gardens, opposed Avalos’ effort and helped shoot down the proposed plans, continuing the fee collections.

A large part of the board’s approval is derived from the lobbying efforts of Sam Lauter, a lobbyist hired by SFBGS who has continually pushed for permanent fees and the new conservatory. Lauter also helped support and fund Breed’s supervisorial campaign last year.

While the lease and management agreement purports that the SFBGS’s management shall be subject to the city’s definition of the gardens as a public space, it offers an exception in cases of SFBGS-sponsored special events, circumventing its status as a public space. The lease also allows the Society to use other buildings on the premises, such as the County Fair Building, for special events, free of charge.

Although the SFBGS is essentially taking over operation of the gardens, the city will continue to pay for utilities and offer a “rent credit” that requires the Society to pay just $100 in rent annually. Additionally, SFBGS will be reimbursed for non-resident fee collection expenses.

“We understand the logic of providing benefits for people who donate to the facility,” Breed legislative aide Conor Johnston told us. “It’s very important to remember all San Francisco residents have free access and [organized groups of] youth from outside the city have free access. This structure allows the arboretum to stay open.”

While San Francisco residents still have free access, the agreements with the SFBGS strongly limit this access by instituting members-only hours, forcing residents to show identification at security gates, and renting out buildings for exclusive corporate parties.

Another part of the Botanical Garden’s master plan consists of providing food services in a new visitors center. Consequently, the “public” gardens will enforce a rule barring visitors from bringing in outside food. The plan also details the SFBGS’s plan to bring in new revenue streams through corporate events.

“This is about weeding people out, controlling people and deciding who has access to this place,” said Pariser. “They put up a wall that must cost thousands of dollars and they destroyed this meadow that even London Breed was appalled by. They control this place like it’s a domain and you’re not allowed to say anything.”

 

QUIET TRANSFER

The lack of public outreach and input on the SFBGS’s buyout has left residents like Pariser feeling robbed of public land that their taxes pay to support. Nancy McNally, founder of the San Francisco AIDS Grove, voiced similar concerns regarding the misplaced priorities of both SFBGS and the Recreation and Parks Department, which in recent years has been under growing criticism for monetizing public spaces (see “Parks Inc.,” 7/12/11).

“For me, I can’t even be in the same room as Recreation and Park Director Phil Ginsburg. I think he has done so much harm to the parks,” McNally told us. “He’s created a ton of positions in the marketing and PR department. What do they need four people for to run public marketing for a public space?”

Frederick Law Olmsted, the co-designer of Central Park, is said to have influenced the style of Golden Gate Park. Olmsted’s theory was to bring wilderness into the city. For McNally, this non-manicured, rustic aspect of Golden Gate Park is what makes it so appealing.

“They’re taking away the basic foundation of the park, which is wildness,” said McNally. “The new building is so big, obtrusive, and unnecessary. It’s only about income for the Botanical Society’s select group.”

McNally views the RPD and SFBGS as predatory entities who target residents attempting to use the land by charging egregious fees for weddings, memorials, and other events.

McNally recalled a friend who wanted to have a memorial for another gardening enthusiast in the Arboretum. For 10 people, the RPD wanted $1,000 and to hire a security guard for a group of elderly gardening enthusiasts.

SFRPD did not return the Guardian’s phone calls regarding the management under the SFBGS, which also did not return our call.

Jane Glasby, an ex-librarian for the SFBGS, whose job was terminated in 2010 due to widespread cuts to the garden’s education program, expressed her inside views on the changing tides of park’s atmosphere in a letter written to “friends and garden lovers” as her tenure came to an end.

“Over the last few years, the library budget has been slashed, the children’s program cut back, and the adult education program all but eliminated,” Glasby wrote at the time. ‘With money available to pay a firm to lobby for an entrance fee $10,000 every month for at least the last seven months, it looks very odd to close the library [that was at the Arboretum] with the excuse of saving just $10,000 a year. Charging admissions would put the garden in danger of becoming an exclusive but shallow and flashy entertainment (I am thinking of the Tea Garden and the Academy [of Science]), rather than the living museum that we all love and respect.”

While Glasby’s comments refer to cutbacks dating back to 2010, her experience denotes what is seemingly becoming the protocol of SFBGS. Three years later, the Society has succeeded in charging non-residents indefinitely and turning what was once a public place of solitude for residents and non-residents alike into an increasingly privatized hub for members willing to pay extra for exclusivity of an allegedly public space.

McNally, who is now retired, has taken it upon herself to document the decreasing local attendance of the arboretum, which was once a frequent lunch spot for residents and nearby UCSF students. “On a sunny day at noon it used to be to be carpeted with people having lunch. It’s not anymore,” said McNally. “I have four years of documentation of that empty lawn at high noon, showing it completely empty, with just geese shitting everywhere.”

 

Corrections: The permit fee for the gardening club was corrected. We also added the parenthetical to Johnston’s quote to clarify visitor fees.

 

 

 

Why democracy matters

Michael Redmond
-
21

EDITORIAL There’s a troubling anti-democratic trend taking place in this country, one that’s been recently reflected everywhere from the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down key provisions of the landmark Voting Rights Act to City College of San Francisco losing its accreditation and being placed under state control.

Maybe you’ve only been passively following the City College story, either because it doesn’t seem to directly affect you or simply because of mid-summer distractions, but here’s why you should care: power has been unilaterally stripped from the Board of Trustees, the people we elect to carry out our will, spend our money (including the parcel tax for CCSF that local voters overwhelmingly approved just last year), and strike the right balance between training students for jobs and universities and offering more community-based programming.

That can be a difficult balance to strike in San Francisco, with its multitude of interests and needs, and we can legitimately criticize how decisions are made or not made by this often dysfunctional board (as we’ve repeatedly done in these pages over the years). Democracy isn’t always the cleanest or most effective way to govern, but we as a country long ago decided that it’s an important experiment worth trying, and that it beats more autocratic alternatives.

But Mayor Ed Lee has been all too eager to give up on that experiment when it comes to City College, as he’s made clear in repeated public statements since the decision. Asked about the issue during the July 9 Board of Supervisors meeting, including the loss of local control over vital public assets and meeting halls, Lee once again praised the move “to save City College through a state intervention.”

Maybe that’s not a surprising position coming from a career bureaucrat who was appointed mayor with the support of powerful economic interests, but it should trouble those of us who haven’t yet given up on democracy, which is the stuff that happens between elections even more than casting ballots every couple years.

It’s about process and protests, coalitions and consensus-building, trial and error. As strange as it may seem to some, the Egyptian military’s recent removal of President Mohamed Morsi, whose unilateral dismantling of democratic mechanisms prompted widespread protests, was essentially a democratic act (albeit an imperfect choice between untenable options). That’s because that unilateral action was driven by popular will and accompanied by strong assurances to rapidly restore democratic institutions and leadership — something that has not yet happened in relation to City College.

Detroit has long been one of the most troubled big cities in the US, thanks to this country’s evaporating industrial sector and other factors. But when Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder implemented a state takeover of the city in March, fully half of the state’s African-American population was denied democratic representation. And since then, Snyder and other Republican leaders have magically found the funds that could and should have been offered in the first place to bail this city out. Instead, they’ve begun packaging up Detroit for the capitalist speculators.

If we aren’t vigilant, financially troubled California cities such as Vallejo and Stockton could be next on the urban auction block, and that list could grow from there given the ability of coordinated capitalists to withdraw investments and cripple any jurisdiction that opposes their interests (as writer Naomi Klein compellingly showed in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism).

Are we being a little alarmist about the state takeover of one, small democratic institution? Maybe, but there is good reason to draw bright, clear lines in defense of our experiment in democracy. The conservative-dominated US Supreme Court has already signaled its willingness to grease this slippery slope, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, who clearly is playing the long game and will likely be quarterbacking this effort for decades to come.

As the New York Times and other legal analysts noted after the court’s latest session ended, Roberts has been carefully laying the groundwork for an undermining of democracy, even when issuing rulings that ostensibly side with the liberals, as he did in helping strike down Prop. 8.

While we in San Francisco cheered the resulting legalization of same-sex marriage, what the ruling actually did was limit the power of the people to defend decisions made through the initiative process. And earlier that week, Roberts also wrote the ruling that the racial discrimination guarded against in the Voting Rights Act no longer existed, despite aggressive current efforts by Republicans to disenfranchise African American, Hispanic, and poor voters through disingenuous voter fraud laws, scrubbing voter rolls, and other mechanisms.

It was Thomas Jefferson, the greatest advocate for democracy among our founding fathers, who said, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” In other words, we lose our liberty a chunk at a time if we don’t resist those who would trade democracy for efficiency (or in the parlance of Mayor Lee, “getting things done.”).

So the loss of local control over City College is something that should not stand, and we should all put be putting pressure on Lee and other locally elected representatives to demand a clear plan for when and how this important institution will be returned to local democratic control. If the Egyptian military can do it, clearly state education officials can as well.

Due Process for All ordinance may offer better protection for domestic violence victims

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
7

In San Francisco Sup. John Avalos’ District 11, half of all residents were born outside the U.S. In Sup. Jane Kim’s District 6, more than a third of residents are foreign-born, and almost half speak a language other than English.

Given the sizable immigrant population in San Francisco, it may not come as a surprise that Secure Communities (S-Comm), a federal immigration program administered by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is highly unpopular. What might not be so obvious is how dramatically S-Comm can impact the lives of foreign-born women who are survivors of domestic violence.

The reason for this is simple. “If you are a victim or a survivor of domestic violence and you call the police, you do not want to end up deported,” Beverly Upton of the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium explained at a rally this afternoon, where advocates from organizations such as Mujeres Unidas Activas, Causa Justa, the Filipino Community Center and others stood and held banners demonstrating opposition to S-Comm. “We want it to be safer to call the police, not less safe.”

A member of Mujeres Unidas y Activas who introduced herself as Lourdes and spoke through a translator delivered a personal account of feeling fearful of police as well as an abusive partner. “Many times, abusers tell us not to call the police, because the police will not believe us. They say the police will probably deport us.”

The domestic violence and immigrant community advocates were there to champion Avalos’ Due Process for All Ordinance, which is being introduced at today’s Board meeting and is co-sponsored by seven other supervisors, essentially guaranteeing its passage. Avalos himself didn’t speak, and Sups. David Campos and Board President David Chiu, who were co-sponsors of the legislation, sent female staff members to make statements on their behalf as part of the all-female roster of speakers.

The legislation prohibits law enforcement officials from detaining individuals solely in response to immigration detainer requests issued by immigration authorities under S-Comm. As things stand, “the request has been honored in many cases,” Avalos explained in comments to the Guardian, even though California Attorney General Kamala Harris has affirmed that local law enforcement agencies are not obligated to comply with ICE detainers because they are mere “requests” and not legally binding. Since 2010, according to data provided be Avalos’ office, 784 San Franciscans have been deported after being turned over to federal authorities due to ICE detainers.

Sup. Jane Kim called S-Comm “a giant step backward when it comes to equality and fairness,” and added that S-Comm “makes our neighborhoods less safe.” 

Legal Counsel Freya Horne read a statement on behalf of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, stating that the sheriff has reduced the number of ICE detainers leading to deportations, and was supportive of Avalos’ legislation. She added that Mirkarimi had made it a policy to honor immigration detainer requests only in cases of criminal convictions of serious or violent felonies.

Avalos said he was compelled to move the legislation forward because “I’ve talked to so many people whose families have been separated, and have been devastated,” due to deportations under S-Comm. “We want to make sure we’re maintaining a level of due process,” he added, since the detainer requests are routinely issued without warrants or a requirement to show probable cause.

Chiu becomes City Hall’s go-to guy for solving tough problems

Sasha Cuttler
-
60
Chiu becomes City Hall’s go-to guy for solving tough problems

At the start of this year, when I wrote a Guardian cover story profile of Sup. Scott Wiener (which SF Weekly and San Francisco Magazine followed shortly thereafter with their own long Wiener profiles), he seemed like the one to watch on the Board of Supervisors, even though I noted at the time that Board President David Chiu was actually the more prolific legislator.

Now, it’s starting to seem like maybe we all focused on the wrong guy, because it is Chiu and his bustling office of top aides that have done most of the heavy legislative lifting this year, finding compromise solutions to some of the most vexing issues facing the city (ironically, even cleaning up some of Wiener’s messes).

The latest example is Wiener’s CEQA reform legislation, which the board is poised to unanimously approve at today’s meeting, a kumbaya moment that belies the opposition and acrimony that accompanied its introduction. Rather than a battle between developers and the coalition of progressives, environmentalists, neighborhood activists, and historic preservationists, Chiu and board aide Judson True transformed the legislation into something that benefited both sides.

[UPDATE: For reactions to this post and another perspective on Chiu, read this.]

That effort comes on the heels of Chiu’s office solving another big, ugly, seemingly intractable fight: the condominium lottery bypass legislation sponsored by Wiener and Sup. Mark Farrell. To solve that one in the face of real estate industry intransigence, Chiu showed a willingness to play hardball and practice a bit of gamesmanship, winning over swing vote Sup. Norman Yee to get six votes using some hostile amendments to the legislation.

In the end, Chiu won enough support to override a possible veto by the waffling Mayor Ed Lee, who has always echoed Chiu’s rhetoric on seeking compromise and consensus and “getting things done,” but who lacks the political skills and willingness to really engage with all sides. For example, it was Chiu — along with Sups. Farrell and David Campos — who spent months forging a true compromise on the hospital projects proposed by California Pacific Medical Center, replacing the truly awful CPMC proposal that Lee readily accepted.

“It’s been a very long year,” Chiu told the Guardian. “It’s been important for me to not just to seek common ground, but legislative solutions that reflect our shared San Francisco values.”

Next, Chiu will wade into another thorny legislative thicket by introducing legislation that will regulate the operations of Airbnb, the online shared housing share corporation whose basic business model often violates local landlord-tenant laws, zoning codes, and lease conditions, in addition to openly defying rulings that it should be paying the city’s transient occupancy tax.      

“This challenge has been particularly difficult,” Chiu told us, referring the many hard-to-solve issues raised by companies such as Airbnb, who Chiu and board aide Amy Chan have been working with for several months. In fact, after originally predicting the legislation would be introduced before the board takes its August recess, Chiu now tells us it may need a bit more time to hammer out the details.

We’ll be watching to see how he sorts through the many tough issues raised by Airbnb’s approach, here and in other big cities with complicated landlord-tenant relations, which I will be exploring in-depth in an upcoming Guardian cover story. But if there’s anyone at City Hall capable of solving this one, it’s probably Chiu.

Street Fight: Plan Bay Area falls short of a worthy goal

Sasha Cuttler
-
20
Street Fight: Plan Bay Area falls short of a worthy goal

Last week’s adoption of Plan Bay Area by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission was a watershed moment in regional planning. The plan links regional planning to state policies mandating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and aims to limit future sprawl by accommodating 2.1 million people, 1 million jobs, and 660,000 housing units largely within the existing built-up areas of the nine-county region.

Newly designated priority development areas (PDAs) will enable modest-density, walkable development in city and suburb alike, while preserving both existing single-family neighborhoods and open space. In a time of urgent need to address global warming, the Bay Area has once again proved a leader by enabling compact housing around transit, and its supporting studies expect the per capita greenhouse gas emissions from driving to decline by 15 percent in 2040.

This will not save the world and it’s not without some challenging byproducts — such as preventing displacement of low-income residents from San Francisco and other urban centers — but it is a start. And in a nation hell-bent on denying the urgency of global warming, it is refreshing and inspiring that someone, somewhere, is trying to do something.   

Yet the transportation component – the lynchpin and impetus of Plan Bay Area, according to many local leaders –is mediocre, uninspiring, and inadequate.  Despite land use policies enabling compact development, 80 percent of all travel in the Bay Area will still be in cars in 2040, not much different from today, and far short of the real change that is needed in this time of urgency. With 2 million more people, this is a recipe for gridlock, inequity, and ecological disaster – not sound public policy. 

 It should be no surprise that a big part of the problem is funding. The MTC, charged with assessing future regional transit potential, identifies just $289 billion between now and 2040 for roads, bridges, and transit — far short of what’s needed.  At $10.3 billion a year that may seem like a lot, but upwards of 87 percent of this is already committed to maintenance of existing roads and transit– not transit capacity expansion.  New homes and jobs might be focused around BART and Caltrain stations, but because there’s no real capacity expansion, the current iteration of Plan Bay Area can’t even reach its own modest goal of 74 percent of trips by car in 2040. 

With 2 million more people, cumulative emissions from driving will actually increase by 18 percent because so few new residents will be able to squeeze onto our already crowded transit systems.  Today BART is breaking ridership records but it is crowded. Extensions to far flung suburbs might be worthwhile but they don’t expand capacity in the system’s core. What we need is a second BART line and/or Amtrak service between San Francisco and Oakland, but this is absent from the plan. Meanwhile, most mainline Muni buses and railcars are currently jam-packed, yet San Francisco is somehow expected to absorb 92,000 housing units in Plan Bay Area.

Supervisors David Campos and Scott Weiner, representing San Francisco in the Plan Bay Area process, are to be commended for drawing attention to the transit problem and for asking MTC staff to show how to meet future funding gaps. By broaching the subject, they show that San Francisco might be poised to lead on this critical issue. But Campos and Weiner, working within the “fiscally constrained envelope” as framed by MTC planners, were only seeking to cover deficits for existing service – not visionary expanded service.  In the end, there was no real vision for adequate transit capacity expansion.

This foretells a troubling transit future – and one that will likely be more and more private. While many San Franciscans decry the proliferation of Google buses and other private corporate shuttles hogging Muni stops, these buses do lay bare the transit conundrum in the Bay Area. Without well-funded, visionary capacity expansion of public transit, those with the means (and high wage jobs) will shift to private buses while everyone else is left to duke it out on crowded highways, buses, and trains.

This conundrum demands that progressives in the Bay Area ramp up their transit politics to lead locally and nationally. The debate about transit finance needs to be redirected – away from regressive local sales tax measures (which often include more roads) back towards more progressive measures, such as transit assessment districts – which could require developers who profit from Plan Bay Area’s growth incentives to adequately finance transit expansion.

The debate needs to move away from demonizing public transit employees to a discussion of the role and responsibility of corporate health care, banks, and the real estate industry in causing economic instability (which has harmed public transit finance more in the last decade than a bus driver expecting a living wage and healthcare). The debate needs to move away from creating new roadway capacity, such as exclusive toll lanes, and focus on how to convert existing highway lanes into transit-only lanes with fast, frequent, reliable regional bus service open to all.

Plan Bay Area is a living document, a work in progress. Within the next four-five years it will need to be revised and can be improved.  The current version of the plan, weak on transit funding, has been dominated by a loud, irrational mob of Tea Party cranks bent on sabotaging anything that hints of progressive ideas. They were successful in diluting Plan Bay Area. While a smattering of progressive transit activists showed up and attempted to shape the plan, next time the plan needs a broader progressive movement — including housing, social justice, and environmental activists — to demand a truly visionary transportation plan.

 

Jason Henderson is a geography professor at San Francisco State University and the author of Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco. We’ll be sharing his perspective regularly in the Bay Guardian.

Change in leadership at DPH triggers brain (and heart) drain

Sasha Cuttler
-
26

The San Francisco Department of Public Health has seen an exodus of top officials over the 18 months since Barbara Garcia took the reins from longtime chief Mitch Katz, the most recent being Environmental Health Director Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, who was placed on administrative leave last month pending an investigation into unspecified concerns.

Bhatia has been a hero to many progressive San Franciscans and public health professionals for his innovative work supporting expanded worker protections, regulation of cannabis dispensaries and restaurants, environmental justice initiatives, and other work that has landed him in the pages of the Guardian many, many times.

“The poorest Americans are about two times as likely to die. People in low-wage jobs have less access to health care … food, shelter, clothing, and transit,” Bhatia testified during the 2002 Board of Supervisors hearing that led to the creation of a city minimum wage.

Neither Bhatia nor the department would comment on his leave, although sources tell us that he has not been informed of the charges against him (which an item in the Chronicle last month suggested was a possible conflict of interest issue relating to his regulation of restaurants) and that Garcia has clashed with many of top officials in the department since taking over.

Among those who have left the department, said one knowledgeable source, are Dr. Susan Fernyak, Director of Communicable Disease Prevention and Control; Dr. Masae Kawamura, Director of TB Control; Dr. Grant Colfax, Director of HIV Prevention; Elizabeth Jacobi, Director of Human Resources; Tangerine Brigham, Director of Healthy San Francisco; Mark Trotz, Director of Housing and Urban Health; and Dr. Erica Pan, Director of Emergency Preparedness.

“SFDPH has a national and worldwide reputation for innovative solutions to traditional public health problems. As a citizen of this city, I’m concerned that the current leadership is fostering an environment that is driving out and stifling that innovation to the detriment of all of us. A number of staff people have told me they have been instructed not to stretch themselves to innovate, to do only what their job description says and no more,” said the source, who works for nonprofit that deals with the department.

Asked to comment on the exodus and her role in it, Garcia issued the following statement in response to questions from the Guardian: “Three staff that reported to me directly were recruited and provided promotions in the Los Angeles Department of Health Services.   I’m very proud of these staff  who are now involved with Health Care Reform efforts for the Los Angeles area.  Several other staff that reported to our Public Health Division left for positions that were closer to home and the majority of these departures were promotions. All staff left  in good standing with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.”

Meanwhile, 93 “members of the public health, social and environmental justice, foundation and education communities” wrote a signed letter to Mayor Ed Lee on July 10 on behalf of Dr. Bhatia, highlighting his work and appealing for a just resolution to the situation.

“Many across the nation have been grappling with how to improve the social and environmental conditions that are the cause of poor health and health inequities. Under Dr. Bhatia’s leadership, the San Francisco Department of Public Health Environmental Health Section has found practical ways — using research, policy, regulation, and cross-sector collaboration — to produce measurable improvements to environmental and social conditions throughout San Francisco’s diverse communities,” they wrote.

While writing that they “have no knowledge or commentary on the details of the leave or investigations, they went on to note the initiative that Bhatia has shown in going beyond his prescribed duties to work with various San Francisco constituencies to support equitable solutions to this city’s problems: “He takes his responsibilities as a public servant seriously, working well beyond required hours, and he is committed to improving the life-chances of socially, economically, and politically marginalized communities.”

Trayvon Martin: Guns escalate conflicts

Michael Redmond
-
86

OPINION The tragedy of Trayvon Martin’s death is not merely the loss an innocent young boy’s life, nor the criminal justice system’s failure to provide justice, though those are wounds we struggle to bear. The tragedy is that these wounds are not unique. We have felt this pain before. Trayvon is but one of thousands of young African American men who have lost their lives to gun violence. And George Zimmerman’s acquittal represents the dismissive attitude our country seems to have about those lives.

People from all walks of life are angry about Trayvon’s death and George Zimmerman’s acquittal. Our anger in the face of such tragedy is understandable. I share it. But I also believe that even in our darkest hours, there is hope. There is something to be learned here.

Let this be the start of a greater debate on gun laws, racism, and our national climate of fear for our own personal safety and the safety of our children.

We have to do something about the prevalence of guns in our society. If not for the introduction of a gun into the situation, Mr. Zimmerman likely would have been beaten up—something he probably deserved—and that would have been the end of it. His firearm needlessly escalated the situation far beyond where it needed to go.

This case is a very real example of a nation that puts someone’s right to carry a handgun over someone’s right to not be pointlessly murdered. Let me add my voice to the multitudes calling for greater firearm accountability.

And why did the situation that night begin in the first place? “Neighborhood Watch” means “watch” and “report suspicious activity,” not “chase” or “pursue.” What is so suspicious about walking, wearing a hoodie, and talking on a cell phone? Nothing. Unless you are black.

Although the African American community is, sadly, used to being profiled, used to grieving the loss of our young boys and men to gun violence, Trayvon’s case has opened the eyes of others who are finally as outraged as we are. For the first time, I feel that something has changed. The outpouring of support from non-African Americans for Trayvon Martin and his family has given me hope that our cries for boys and men in our community are finally being heard.

Anger is a great motivator. And progress is often borne from tragedy. I hope for the African American community and for our country that this tragedy is more than just a passing media spectacle. I hope it’s the beginning of something meaningful, a reevaluation of gun laws, of the violence young black men face every day, and of the way we empower our communities.

London Breed represents the Western Addition and the Haight on the Board of Supervisors

 

Trayvon Martin: Can it happen here?

Michael Redmond
-
25

OPINION Like many others I have been captivated by the proceedings in the Trayvon Martin case. Personally, and as a member of the Board of Supervisors, it has inspired disappointment, outrage, frustration, and more questions about our criminal justice system than I have answers. But more than anything else this case prompts me to ask: Can this happen here?

However you feel about this particular case, we all like to think that in San Francisco we are more advanced than the rest of the country, and in most ways we are. From our Sanctuary City to our community policing strategies, we have always been conscious about race in our criminal justice system and City policies.

The neighborhoods I represent have 33 percent of the City’s African American population, more than any other area of our City, and we also have the highest concentration of young people, nearly 23 percent. More than half of the individuals who are incarcerated in San Francisco are African American and last year District 10 had the City’s highest number of youth on probation.

Regardless of their ethnicity, residents of areas that experience public safety challenges have a heightened sense of awareness or tension about what goes on in their neighborhoods. Unfortunately, sometimes seeing a young African American man is a trigger. It is a trigger to walk faster, be more alert, notify neighbors, or even call the police to report suspicious behavior.

This is the exact tension that a year ago led Mayor Lee to discuss implementing a version of New York City’s controversial Stop and Frisk Policy. Under this policy, each year police officers stop hundreds of law abiding citizens, the vast majority of which are African American, Latino, and young men on the suspicion that they may be engaging in illegal behavior. I was proud to join with many residents, faith leaders, and even our Police Chief in outlining more productive ways that we can interrupt violent behavior without instituting a policy based on racial profiling.

Thankfully, Stop and Frisk was never implemented in San Francisco, but the debate we had about it demonstrated that we still struggle with the role race plays in our criminal justice system and crime in our neighborhoods.

This verdict serves as a call to action for all of us that if we don’t want a similar tragedy to occur here, we must continue to do what San Francisco has always done best — lead the way. I will continue to push our City to have open dialogues about race in all of our public safety policies. I have spent the last year and will continue to do everything possible to strengthen our City’s regulations on gun control and work collaboratively with all of our communities to develop real solutions to violence that are rooted in protecting and supporting our neighborhoods instead of racial profiling.

Malia Cohen represents southeast San Francisco on the Board of Supervisors.

CEQA reform battle sparks welcome changes even before final compromise

Sasha Cuttler
-
32

UPDATED When Sup. Scott Wiener last year introduced legislation that would limit people’s ability to appeal development projects by reforming the California Environmental Quality Act’s local procedures, progressives and neighborhood activists rose up in strong opposition. But now, with that measure and a competing alternative up for approval by the Board of Supervisors tomorrow (Tues/16), there is a compromise in the offing that all sides may see as an improvement on the status quo, particularly given administrative changes that the Planning Department has made along the way.

“We made a series of amendments in April that addressed almost all the concerns raised by the neighborhood activists,” said Judson True, the top aide to Board President David Chiu, who has once again taken the lead role in crafting a compromise on controversial legislation. 

Final details of the deal are still being worked out, but sources on both sides say there is an agreement on the broad outlines of a true compromise. It would accomplish Wiener’s main goal of limiting the current ability of project opponents to file a CEQA appeal at any time while also improving the public notification process.

“It’s still pretty fluid now, but we’re working to get to a consensus measure, we hope,” True told us.

Wiener has always emphasized that his legislation applies only to relatively small projects, those that are “categorically exempt” under CEQA from having to do detailed environmental studies. And he said the compromises now being developed appear to meet his initial goals.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that it will be approved,” Wiener told us, adding that, “If this turns out to be a kumbaya moment, that will show the legislative process works.” [UPDATE: The compromise legislation was unanimously approved by the board.]

One byproduct of that process was recent changes on the Planning Department’s website that make it much easier for activists to track the status of projects — with a new map showing projects that have been granted CEQA exemptions that would move forward unless challenged — which activists requested during the Land Use Committee hearings on this legislation.

“We heard from members of the public that our existing posting process was cumbersome. It was also time-consuming for staff. We decided to revamp the system, using technology we’ve developed in recent years. By converting the checklist into electronic format and having it searchable by location, it’ll be easier for the public to search for a particular project and more efficient for staff to process,” Planning Department spokesperson Joanna Linsangan told us.

True said the hearings on the legislation have helped to illuminate problems that could be addressed administratively: “There’s been a real push from supervisors and the Planning Department itself to improve noticing.”

Eric Brooks, who has been working with the 42 groups that coalesced to oppose Wiener’s legislation — including environmentalists, neighborhood groups, labor, and historic preservationists — said ensuring proper noticing was half the battle. He gave credit to Sup. Jane Kim for resisting the Wiener legislation and working with activists to put forward a competing measure, sowing the seeds for the Chiu compromise.

“This was  a real community process and Jane Kim needs to be lauded for taking part in this,” Brooks said, although he later added, “Whatever happens with this, David Chiu owns it because he’s put himself in the middle of this.”

One key piece of the puzzle that might not be resolved tomorrow is with what has always been the biggest concern for activists, which is how the legislation limits appeals to a project’s initial approval. “We knew that it would be way too early and it cuts off our ability to negotiate with developers,” Brooks said.

For complicated legal reasons, it was difficult to build into this legislation a process for activists to challenge a project that changes after its initial approval, so Kim has introduced trailing legislation that would do so (which is set to be heard Wednesday by the Historic Preservation Commission and Thursday by the Planning Commission).

It would allow activists to appeal changes to a project that they find environmentally significant, even if city staff doesn’t (or, in planning parlance, to appeal the environmental review officer’s categorical exemption determination — to that same officer).

“If the environmental review officer has to suffer the hearing if she makes a bad call, she will make fewer bad calls,” Brooks said. “And if we don’t change the environmental review officers’ mind, we’ll be able to take it to court.”

A community-based coalition, a trio of supervisors and a very special mediator helped seal CPMC deal

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
0

The takeaway message from a July 11 press conference held in the Mayor’s office touting legislation authorizing California Pacific Medical Center’s construction of two new San Francisco hospitals was seemingly this: Everyone hearts Lou Giraudo.

A part owner of Boudin Bakery and former president of the San Francisco Police Commission, Giraudo was called in last year to help mediate a deal that seemed doomed when CPMC, city officials, and a coalition of labor and community organizations were unable to hash out an agreement that was acceptable to all sides.

Negotiations have been contentious over the past year due to early indications that CPMC would not guarantee that St. Luke’s, a health care facility relied upon by many low-income San Franciscans, would keep its doors open as a condition of moving forward with the new Cathedral Hill facility, a centerpiece of CPMC’s $2.5 billion project.

Enter Lou Giraudo, everybody’s favorite public servant who was, according to a not-so-subtle hint dropped by former Mayor Willie Brown in his San Francisco Chronicle column last year, “quietly brought in” by the mayor’s office to fix the half-baked mess that the CPMC deal had evidently devolved into.

“He’s often said he’s just a businessman. A baker, if you will,” Lee said during yesterday’s press conference. But Giraudo came to the table with the right “recipe” and the “main ingredients” for a successful deal, Lee added.

Sup. David Campos also sang Giraudo’s praises, saying, “I have yet to meet a finer public servant,” and calling Giraudo “a real hero of mine.” 

Giraudo himself told the Guardian that his strategy was “to de-politicize the process and get people to think about the community.”

Board President David Chiu, who worked closely with Sups. David Campos and Mark Farrell to negotiate with CPMC and other parties on behalf of the Board, went so far as to compare Giraudo to Batman. He even joked that he was going to shine a bat signal the next time a negotiator was needed, in hopes that Giraudo would save the day.

Presumably, when this happens, Giraudo will dust the flour off his apron after toiling away at some sourdough bread shaped like an alligator, duck into a Boudin Bakery bathroom to squeeze into a superhero costume, strap on his jet pack and take off for the gold-capped dome.

Giraudo may have provided the catalyst needed for a deal, but it was community advocates who ensured that the public at large benefitted from the CPMC plan more than they would have otherwise – since the mayor’s office seemed willing to go along with the health care giant’s original terms.

Long before Giraudo’s involvement, a coalition of labor and community organizations waged a campaign to rebuild CPMC “the right way,” holding strong on the issue of St. Lukes and refusing to agree to anything that would leave open the possibility that the hospital, a critically important facility for low-income patients, would be shuttered.

“That coalition has been working for quite some time … to save St. Lukes,” Campos said yesterday. The diverse coalition of community and labor leaders, who formed under the name San Franciscans for Healthcare, Housing, Jobs and Justice, commissioned studies on the need for health care services for low-income populations, studied housing and transportation impacts, and developed a broad base of support for a better deal than what was originally floated by the healthcare giant. “It kept working for many years,” Campos noted.

Under the terms of the agreement that was ultimately agreed upon, St. Luke’s will have a number of specified services to ensure it remains a full-service hospital, and CPMC will commit to providing services to 30,000 charity care patients and 5,400 Medi-Cal managed care patients per year. CPMC will also contribute $36.5 million to the city’s affordable housing fund, and it will pay $4.1 million to replace the homes it displaces on Cathedral Hill.

But wait, one last thing we’ve just learned about Giraudo: Did you know he also served as chairman at Pabst Brewing Company? The next time you get drunk off PBR while gorging yourself on sourdough baked into the shape of a teddy bear, or for that matter receive emergency medical care at St. Luke’s after an unsuccessful attempt at building a DIY jetpack, you’ll know who to thank.

Jazzie Collins: forever fighting the good fight

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
24
Jazzie Collins: forever fighting the good fight

Dedicated trans rights and economic equality activist Jazzie Collins passed away this week. She was honored in June in the State Assembly for LGBT History Month, and was on the board of the annual Trans March, among many other honors and activities. There will be a legacy party and fundraiser for Jazzie’s end-of-life expenses at El Rio tomorrow, Sat/13, 3pm-8pm. Below is a remembrance from her good friend Tommi Avicolli Mecca.

Some people die, but they remain with you for the rest of your life. Death just can’t keep them away.

Such a person is Jazzie Collins, African American transgender woman and tireless fighter for social and economic justice for tenants, seniors, people with disabilities, the homeless, those without healthcare, LGBT folks, and so many others. An organizer of the annual Trans March and co-chair of the city’s LGBT Aging Policy Task Force, she recently received an award from the LGBT caucus of the state assembly for her many years of activism.


Born in Memphis, Jazzie, 54, died in the early morning hours of July 11 at Kaiser Hospital, leaving a huge hole in the heart of San Francisco.

I don’t remember when I first met Jazzie. I’m pretty certain it was at one of the countless demos in the late 90s we attended to protest the displacement of working-class and poor people during the dot-com boom. She was involved in so much of the incredible activism happening in the Mission at that time, whether it involved feeding people from Mission Agenda’s food pantry, planning direct action with the Mission AntiDisplacement Coalition, or helping elect fellow activist Chris Daly as the neighborhood’s district supervisor.

Our paths crossed often, sometimes at the monthly meetings of Senior Action Network (now Senior Disability Action) where she worked, or a tenants rights demo on the steps of City Hall just before we went inside to take advantage of our two minutes at the mic during public comment. Jazzie was never at a loss for words.

One of the original members of QUEEN (Queers for Economic Equality  Now), she helped organize several protests, including one outside the store run by the Human Rights Campaign in the Castro. We were furious that the national gay rights group pushed to exclude transgender people from ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act), the federal gay employment rights bill.

When a call went out from the Board of Supervisors for its newly formed LGBT Aging Policy Task Force, Jazzie called me and told me in no uncertain terms that I had to apply. She had already sent in her application and wanted to make sure another strong housing advocate was on the task force.

We sat together at the hearing, waiting for our chance to sell ourselves to the supervisors. After we were both appointed, and as we left the room, Jazzie started talking about what she wanted the task force to do, especially on housing issues. She was always a woman with a vision. Or a cause.

Jazzie called me whenever there was something to be done. She’d say, “We gotta do something about this.” It didn’t matter how busy I was. I knew I could never say no to her.

Jazzie, my sister, wherever you are now, I know you’ll always be beside me when I’m out there fighting the good fight.

City College supporters protest state takeover and the agenda behind it

Sasha Cuttler
-
9

By Dalton Amador

Around 350 students, faculty members and other San Franciscans marched from City College’s downtown campus to the U.S. Department of Education Tuesday afternoon to protest the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior College’s (ACCJC) decision to terminate City College’s accreditation effective July 31, 2014.

The Save CCSF Coalition sponsored the event. “We are not here to mourn, we are here to fight,” Shanell Williams, City College’s newly elected student trustee and one of the leaders of the coalition, told a cheering crowd. “ACCJC is a private, rogue group.”

The coalition sought to convince the Department of Education, which oversees the ACCJC, to immediately reverse the commission’s decision.

Behind Aztec dancers dressed in feathers and loincloths, protesters chanted “No more deception, no more lies, we don’t want to privatize” and held picket signs that read “Stop the corporate overthrow of public education at CCSF” as they marched down Market Street.

The coalition said that revoking City College’s accreditation is part of a systematic effort to undermine affordable education. Eric Blanc, one of the coalition’s leaders and a current City College student, said that the ACCJC’s decision to terminate City College’s accreditation was motivated in part by forcing would-be transfer students to take out student loans for private or for-profit universities.

“It’s clear that from the arbitrary norms the commission is using as its excuse to shut down City College that there is something much bigger going on,” he said. “(Students) are going to go to the University of Phoenix or prison.”

Williams agreed. “Where would I go?” she said, referring to a hypothetical City College student’s hope to transfer to a California State University or University of California campus without first going to a private university.  

City College Board of Trustees members Chris Jackson, Vice President Anita Grier and Rafael Mandelman addressed the crowd in front of the Department of Education.

Grier said that the “democratic process” that elected the Board of Trustees was “replaced by a feudal lord dictator,” referring to the ACCJC-appointed Special Trustee Robert Agrella, who now holds unilateral power over the board following the ACCJC’s decision. He had canceled a meeting scheduled for that day by President John Rizzo.

Supervisors Scott Wiener and David Campos also spoke, both saying that many of their constituents depend on City College. “Where is Ed Lee?” the crowd chanted spontaneously during different speakers’ addresses.

Lee did address the City College situation earlier in the day when he asked about it at the Board of Supervisors meeting, reiterating his previous statements supporting a state takeover. “It’s been a difficult decision and we had been hoping the decision of the accrediting commission would be different,” Lee said, going on to praise California Community College Chancellor Brice Harris, who Lee said, “has agreed to save City College through a state intervention.”

But on the streets, protesters rued the loss of local control and the agenda behind it.

Some independent organizations, not part of the Save CCSF Coalition, participated to show their support. Adam Wood, a firefighter of 18 years, held a sign that said, “San Francisco Firefighters support City College.”

“A lot of aspiring firefighters go through fire academy at City College,” he said. “It would be a real loss if it closed.”

City College will remain open for the following fall and spring semesters. It can ask for a review of the decision to the ACCJC. Should the ACCJC affirm its decisions, the college can appeal. The college would remain open during the appeal process.

Last train

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
17
Last train

steve@sfbg.com

Last week’s four-day strike by Bay Area Rapid Transit workers dominated the news and made headlines around the country, marking the latest battleground in a national war between public employee unions and the austerity agenda pushed by conservatives and neoliberals.

Of course, that wasn’t how the conflict was framed by BART, most journalists, or even the two BART unions involved, all of whom dutifully reported the details of each sides’ offers and counter-offers, the competing “safety” narratives (new security procedures demands by unions versus spending more on capital improvements than raises), and the strike’s impact on commuters and the local economy.

But once this long-simmering labor standoff seized the attention of a public heavily reliant on BART, fueling the popular anger and resentment increasingly directed at public employee unions in recent years, familiar basic storylines emerged.

At that point, the Bay Area could have been placed in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, or Illinois — the most recent high-profile labor union battlegrounds, with their narratives of greedy public employees clinging to their fully funded pensions and higher than average salaries while the rest of us suffer through this stubbornly lingering hangover from the Great Recession.

Around water coolers and online message boards, there were common refrains: How dare those unions demand the raises that the rest of us are being denied! Pensions? Who has fully funded pensions anymore? Why can’t they just be more realistic?

When Bay Area residents were finally forced to find other ways of getting around, within a transportation system that is already at the breaking point during peak hours thanks to years of austerity budgets and under-investment in basic infrastructure, those seething resentments exploded into outright anger.

And those political dynamics could only get worse in a month. The BART strike could resume full strength on a non-holiday workweek if the two sides aren’t able to come to an agreement before the recently extended contract expires.

This is the Bay Area’s most visible and impactful labor standoff, and it could prove to be a pivotal one for the modern American labor movement.

 

BART AS BELLWETHER

Chris Daly was a clarion voice for progressive values while serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2000-2010. Now, as political director of Service Employee International Union Local 1021, one of the BART unions, he says this standoff is about more than just the issues being discussed at the bargaining table.

“The terms and conditions of workers in the public sector is a buoy for other workers,” Daly told us, explaining how everyone’s wages and benefits tend to follow the gains and setbacks negotiated by unions. “The right understands this, which is why the right has been mercilessly attacking public sector workers.”

Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center, confirmed that union contracts affect the overall labor market. “When unions improve wages and benefits, it does have a ripple effect,” Jacobs said. He agreed that the outcome at BART could be a bellwether for the question, “As the economy comes back, how much will workers share in that prosperity?”

Demonizing public sector workers as greedy or lazy also serves to undercut the entire labor movement, Daly said, considering that public employees make up a far higher percentage of union members than their private sector counterparts. And during election time, it is union money and ground troops that typically contest wealthy individuals and corporations’ efforts to maintain or expand power.

“Labor is one of the main checks on unbridled corporate power, and public sector unions are the backbone of labor,” Daly told us.

So in that context, BART’s battle is about more than just the wages and benefits of train drivers and station agents, with their average base salary of $62,000, just barely above the area median income, and their demand for raises after accepting wage freezes in recent years.

Daly sees this as part of a much broader political standoff, and he said there are indications that BART management also sees it that way, starting with the $399,000 the transit agency is paying its lead negotiator Thomas Hock, a veteran of union-busting standoffs around the country.

“He has a history of bargaining toward strikes, with the goal of breaking unions,” Daly said, noting that Hock’s opening offer would have taken money from BART employees, with new pension and healthcare contributions outweighing raises. “It was a takeaway proposal when you add it up, while they have a $100 million surplus in their budget and the cost of living in the Bay Area is shooting up.”

But BART spokesperson Rick Rice told us that Hock is simply trying to get the best deal possible for this taxpayer-funded agency, and he denied there is any intention to break the union or connection to some larger anti-worker agenda.

“There is definitely a need to start funding the capital needs of the district,” Rice told us. “I don’t see that we’re pushing an austerity agenda as much as a realistic agenda.”

 

AUSTERITY AND EXPANSION

But Daly said the very idea that austerity measures are “realistic” excuses the banks and other powerful players whose reckless pursuit of profits caused the financial meltdown of 2008. The underlying expectation is that workers should continue to pay for that debacle, rather than bouncing back with the rebounding economy.

“They get in this austerity mindset, and we see it in every contract we’re negotiating,” Daly said, noting that capital needs and benefits have always needed funding, despite their elevation now as immediate imperatives. “You have good people with good intentions like [BART Board President] Tom Radulovich pushing this austerity mindset.”

Radulovich, a longtime progressive activist, told us he agrees with some of how Daly is framing the standoff, but not all of it. He said that BART is being squeezed into its position by unique factors.

Radulovich said that healthcare and pension costs really are rising faster then ever, creating a challenge in maintaining those benefit levels. And he said that Hock isn’t simply carrying out some larger anti-union agenda. “He’s negotiating what the district wants him to negotiate,” he said.

Radulovich said that while BART’s workers may deserve raises, most of BART’s revenues come from fares. “So it’s taking from workers to give to other workers,” Radulovich said. “It’s a little more complicated because it is a public agency and Chris is aware of that.”

Yet Radulovich acknowledged that BART has opted to pursue an aggressive expansion policy that is diverting both capital and operating expenditures into new lines — such as the East Contra Costa, Oakland Airport, and Warm Springs extensions now underway — rather than setting some of that money aside for workers.

“And for a lot of those, we were being cheered on by the [San Francisco] Labor Council, one of many ironies,” said Radulovich, who favors infill projects over new extensions. “These are some of the conversations I’ve had with labor leaders in the last few weeks, how we think strategically about these things.”

But if BART wanted to defeat the union, it may have miscalculated the level of worker discontent with austerity measures.

“What they didn’t plan on is some high-level Bay Area political pressure,” Daly said, referring to the local uproar over the strike that led Gov. Jerry Brown to send in the state’s two top mediators, who made progress and created a one month cooling off period before the strike can resume.

 

RETIREMENT SECURITY

One of the hardest issues to overcome in the court of public opinion may be the fully funded pensions of BART employees. “Times are changing, costs are escalating rapidly, and we’re asking for a modest contribution,” Rice said of BART’s demand that employees help fund their pensions.

Daly acknowledges the resentments about the pension issue, even though it was essentially a trap set for public employee unions back in the 1980s, when BART and other public agencies were the ones offering to pay for employee pensions in lieu of raises.

But rather than resenting public employees for having pensions, he said the public should be asking why most workers don’t have retirement security and how to fix that problem.

“At what point do we organize and demand retirement security for all workers?” Daly said, noting that SEIU is now leading that fight on behalf of all workers, not just its members. “What we ought to be talking about is how we restore the social contract.”

Jacobs confirmed that SEIU has indeed been pushing the retirement security issue at the state and federal levels. And it’s a crucial issue, he said, noting that just 45 percent of workers have pensions and that the average retirement savings is just $12,000.

“The retirement problem we have is not the pension crisis, it is the lack of pensions crisis,” Jacobs said.

That’s one reason that he said this standoff has implications that extend far beyond the Bay Area.

“The fight goes beyond these particular workers,” Jacobs said. “It’s an important set of negotiations and an important strike in terms of looking at what happens in this country as the economy improves.”

Daly agrees there’s a lot at stake, for more than just his members.

“Losing on this means we’d be hard pressed to win elsewhere, anytime,” Daly said. “It is important symbolically, and it is important to the strength and morale of the movement.”

 

8 Washington opponents try to torpedo counter-initiative

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
29

Opponents of 8 Washington, a hotly contested development project that would erect 134 new condos priced at $5 million apiece and up along the San Francisco waterfront, are seeking to thwart a counter-initiative developers have launched to solicit voter approval for the project on the November ballot.

In a July 1 letter from The Sutton Law Firm to Hanson Bridgett LLP, a firm representing the project proponents, political lawyer and fixer Jim Sutton highlights “fatal legal flaws” he claims would invalidate each and every signature collected in support of the 8 Washington initiative. It’s likely a precursor to a lawsuit. Apparently, Sutton got involved through his connection with former City Attorney Louise Renne, who opposes the 8 Washington plan.

Organized under No Wall on the Northeast Waterfront, opponents circulated petitions of their own earlier this year to challenge San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ approval of 8 Washington, asking voters to weigh in on the Board’s waiver of building height limit restrictions. Polling has indicated they’ll succeed (a win in their case is a majority of “no” votes), effectively sinking the project. That prompted 8 Washington proponents to generate their own counter-initiative.

Sutton’s letter demands that 8 Washington proponents not submit the initiative to the Department of Elections for signature verification, unless they first re-circulate the petitions. Of course, that would torpedo the whole endeavor, since there’s no way proponents could gather enough signatures in time for the imminent filing deadline.

The aforementioned “fatal legal flaws,” meanwhile, seem to illustrate why high-powered attorneys like Sutton rake in the big bucks. Apparently, the initiative proponents neglected to attach a few maps detailing the height limit increases, in violation of a requirement that proponents present the “full text” of a proposal to voters. And then there’s this:

Whether it’s a photocopying error or an attempt at obfuscation, the map on the left (circulated by the pro-development camp) makes it impossible to read the height limit increase. (The map on the right was circulated by opponents.) This seemingly minute detail matters, according to No Wall on the Northeast Waterfront spokesperson Jon Golinger, because “the whole point of this is the height increase.”

David Beltran, a spokesperson for the pro- 8 Washington folks, responded to a Guardian request for comment by saying, “Our opponents are offering up yet another baseless claim.” He called it a distraction “from having to justify why they are asking our City to give up new parks, jobs, and housing and millions of dollars in city benefits that includes $11 million for new affordable housing—to protect an asphalt parking lot and private club,” referencing a recreational center that’s served a predominantly middle class clientele for years that would be razed to make way for 8 Washington.

Beltran also attached a complaint Hanson Bridgett had filed with the San Francisco Ethics Commission, charging that No Wall on the Northeast Waterfront had failed to meet campaign filing deadlines, and urging city officials to “immediately investigate the delay” and impose fines of $5,000 per violation.

1...131415...103Page 14 of 103

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org