Supervisors

SF values and OccupySF

Andrew Lam
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5

EDITORIAL This is what civility and compromise looks like:

At a little after 10 P.m. Oct 16, a squadron of San Francisco police equipped with riot gear raided and attempted to shut down the OccupySF protest. It was the second time San Francisco has embarrassed itself, becoming the only major U.S. city to attempt to evict members of the growing Occupation movement — and this time, the cops used a lot more force.

The first crackdown, on Oct. 5, was supposedly driven by concerns that the activists were using an open flame for their communal kitchen without the proper permits. This time around, the alleged lawbreaking was confined to a Park Code section that bans sleeping in city parkland after 10 p.m. And since Justin Herman Plaza, where OccupySF is camped, is technically under the jurisdiction of the Recreation and Park Department, that ordinance could be enforced.

But let’s be serious: The encampment endangered nobody, and if any Rec-Park officials had actually complained, the police couldn’t provide their names. This was all about rousting a protest against corporate greed and economic injustice. It came with police batons, several beatings and five arrests.

And the mayor of what many call the most liberal city in America hasn’t said a word. Mayor Ed Lee was clearly consulted on the raid, clearly approved it — and now becomes unique among the chief executives of big cities across the country, most of whom have worked to find ways to avoid police confrontations.

David Chiu, the president of the Board of Supervisors, issued a ridiculous statement saying that “Both the Occupy SF protesters and the San Francisco Police Department need to redouble their efforts to avoid confrontations like the ones we saw last night.” No: The protesters didn’t start it, didn’t provoke it, didn’t want it — and frankly, did their best to avoid it. The crackdown is all about the folks at City Hall trying to get rid of one of the most important political actions in at least a decade — and doing it with riot police.

This is what the civility and compromise so touted by Mayor Lee and Board President Chiu looks like. And it’s a disgrace.

In Oakland, where the encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza, renamed Oscar Grant Plaza for the event, has far more people than Occupy SF, city officials approached the activists and offered to issue whatever permits were needed. Mayor Jean Quan visited the general assembly, waited her turn to speak, and then politely asked the group not to damage the somewhat fragile old oak tree on the site. In deference to her wishes, the group surrounded the tree with a fence.

In New York, the private owner of the park where Occupy Wall Street is camped agreed not to evict the demonstrators — or even move some of them to all for a regular park cleaning.

Why is San Francisco acting so hostile? Is this not a city with a reputation for political activism and tolerance? Is it really that big a problem to allow activists to peacefully occupy public space to denounce the greatest corporate thievery in a generation?

San Francisco ought to be supporting the OccupySF movement, not harassing it. Lee should immediately call off the police raids. The Board of Supervisors should have a hearing on this, bring Police Chief Greg Suhr, Mayor Lee and representatives of Rec-Park and the Department of Public Health and work out a solution that doesn’t involve repeatedly rousting the protesters in the middle of the night. And if this continues, perhaps OccupySF should move to the plaza in front of City Hall.

Sup. John Avalos is the only person at City Hall who is making an outspoken effort to protect the protest; he needs some support.

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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0

tredmond@sfbg.com

I feel like was just getting over the 40th anniversary party, and now here comes 45. Guardian anniversaries are like birthday parties; they keep creeping up on you. Except that, in this case, getting older isn’t something to worry about. It’s a sign of strength that a weekly paper founded with a little money scraped together by two Midwesterners in 1966 has survived, grown, and become a standard-bearer for the alternative press in America.

I missed 15, but I was here for 16, and 20, and 25, and 30, and 40, and I’ve watched the Guardian — and San Francisco — emerge and change. And I can say, after almost 30 years as a reporter and editor here, that the demise of the old Brown Machine and the advent of district elections in 2000 were the most important advances in modern local political history.

District elections diffused power at City Hall. You didn’t need a huge downtown-funded campaign war chest to get elected supervisor. You didn’t need the support of the power brokers. And all parts of the city were represented.

By the time Willie Brown left office in 2004 — mostly in political disgrace — a long era of corrupt machine politics was ending. He had lost control of the Board of Supervisors. Almost none of the candidates he endorsed got elected. His approach to running the city was utterly repudiated by the voters. It was like the city drew a collective breath of very fresh air.

Yeah, we had to fight with Gavin Newsom. Yeah, we lost some critical battles. Yeah, the city’s till building housing just for millionaires. But at least with Brown gone and district supervisors calling the shots, I always thought we had a chance.

And maybe we will with Mayor Ed Lee, too, if, as projected, he wins in November. Maybe he can show some independence. Maybe the Ed Lee who started as a tenant lawyer will arise again in Room 200.

But Brown doesn’t think so. Neither do the billionaires and lobbyists and a cast of dozens from the old Brown Machine. They think they’re coming back into power.

And these folks are savvy, experienced and clever. They don’t put this sort of money and personal clout into candidates unless they’re pretty damn sure they’ll get a return on their investment. That’s how it works in Willie’s World.

SF’s foreclosure crisis

Andrew Lam
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0

OPINION Foreclosures are still ravaging San Francisco neighborhoods.

As steward of the city’s property roll and head of the department that appraises every home in San Francisco, I see every day the toll the mortgage crisis is having on real estate values and the city budget.

Thousands of Notices of Default have been filed with my office in the last few years, and every Monday there’s a vivid reminder San Francisco is far from out of the woods on foreclosures as homes are auctioned off on the steps of City Hall.

Two Mondays ago, lifelong Bayview-Hunter’s Point resident Curtis Warren’s home — which my office assessed to be worth $165,000 — was scheduled to be auctioned because he had fallen behind on a $15,000 debt.

Imagine having your home foreclosed upon over a loan less than 10 percent of the value of the property. Imagine a family in your neighborhood being put on the street and a home in your community sitting vacant under such circumstances.

Fortunately, the foreclosure sale of Curtis’s home was canceled. Curtis is a member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) — a grassroots organization working to help victims of the mortgage meltdown.

Unfortunately, cases like Curtis’s are all too common. That is why I am fighting foreclosure as your Assessor-Recorder and working to get Sacramento to act, too.

ACCE recently published startling findings in their “The Wall Street Wrecking Ball” report.

San Francisco homeowners are estimated to lose $6.9 billion in property values as a result of foreclosures.

Foreclosure costs San Francisco government an estimated $42 million in lost revenue.

Local government spends an additional $19,229 on increased safety inspections, police and fire calls, and trash removal and maintenance for every foreclosure. This costs San Francisco $73 million.

San Francisco LITERALLY cannot afford this foreclosure crisis, which is why I have joined with Supervisors John Avalos, Malia Cohen and Ross Mirkarimi in support of the following plan of action:

A foreclosure fee to ensure banks pay their fair share: The city should charge a $10,000 to $20,000 fee per foreclosure to defray loss of home values and costs to taxpayers. This fee would raise roughly $2 billion to $4 billion over the next year to partially reimburse local governments.

A strong AG settlement. Any agreement between banks and the 50 attorneys general must include 1) a monetary settlement commensurate with the harm caused by banks; 2) limited release of bank liability; 3) principal reductions fairly distributed to communities hardest hit by predatory lending and foreclosure; and 4) homeowner restitution for irresponsible and illegal foreclosure practices.

Stop preventable foreclosures: The city should require court-based mediation programs to help homeowners modify loans and end the “dual track” process, whereby banks continue foreclosure proceedings while simultaneously negotiating loan modifications.

Wall Street must pay for foreclosure-related blight: Banks must maintain and pay for the cleanup of blighted, vacant homes in neighborhoods.

As long as our economy and housing market is being hampered by foreclosures caused by banks and Wall Street, we must continue to fight for common-sense solutions that protect our neighborhoods and the city.

Phil Ting is assessor-recorder of San Francisco.

On Guard!

Andrew Lam
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1
On Guard!

news@sfbg.com

ORACLE’S DIRTY SECRET

If wealth trickled down from Oracle’s OpenWorld conference in San Francisco last week, very little of it reached a small group of low-wage laborers hired from out of state to set up for a concert hosted as an event highlight on Treasure Island.

Oracle is a prominent Bay Area tech company helmed by Larry Ellison, the billionaire CEO who worked closely with top city officials to bring the America’s Cup sailing regatta to San Francisco.

The Oct. 5 Oracle OpenWorld concert on Treasure Island featured Sting and Tom Petty as headliners. Registration packages for the weeklong tech conference, which drew some 45,000 attendees to San Francisco, ranged from $1,395 to $2,595.

A member of the carpenters union contacted the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards & Enforcement (OLSE) Sept. 16 to formally complain that a construction crew assembling a large seating structure for the event was being paid less than the city-mandated minimum wage of $9.92 per hour, city documents show.

Josh Pastreich, an OLSE official, went to the worksite to interview crew members. Their names were redacted from public records, but Pastreich described them as monolingual Spanish speakers who travel from city to city building seating arrangements for major events.

“Everyone is being paid $8 an hour (except for the supervisors),” he reported in a city document. “Workers generally started at 6:30 am but there was a little confusion about quitting times.” At least one work day lasted 11 and a half hours, according to a timesheet. The workers were hired by subcontractors brought in by Hartmann Studios, an events management outfit working directly for Oracle.

“We made a phone call, and sent them some emails,” OLSE director Donna Levitt explained. “Nobody said, ‘we intended to pay them the [legal] rate,'” but the subcontractors increased workers’ hourly wages to comply with San Francisco minimum wage ordinance requirements, Levitt said. Since the company adjusted the rate immediately, no fines were issued. There were fewer than 20 workers on the project.

OLSE did not correspond with Oracle directly, but spoke to the subcontractors. One was T & B Equipment, a Virginia-based company. “We were not aware of the minimum wage there, but we fixed it before the payroll was done,” a T & B representative identified only as Mr. Waller told the Guardian. Lewmar, a Florida-based subcontractor, assisted with staffing for the job. Oracle, Hartmann Studios, and Lewmar did not respond to Guardian requests for comment.

Since the enforcement agency intervened, the laborers earned $9.92 per hour instead of $8 — still well below the average Bay Area payscale for similar work. Building bleachers is comparable to raising scaffolding for major construction projects, and the prevailing wage for unionized scaffolding erectors in California is $37.65 per hour, or $62.63 when benefits are factored in.

None of the workers were from San Francisco, which likely spurred the carpenters union complaint — Carpenters Local 22 has faced significant losses in membership since the economic downturn due to high levels of unemployment disproportionately impacting the construction sector. Represenatives from Local 22 did not return calls seeking comment.

Boosters of the America’s Cup have hailed the upcoming sailing event as an engine for local job creation, but Oracle’s use of low-wage, out-of-state laborers at its pricey, high-profile OpenWorld event raises questions. While the tech company is a separate outfit from the America’s Cup organizing team, Ellison holds leadership positions at both.

Ellison was named the world’s sixth wealthiest individual in a Forbes profile in 2010, with a net worth of $28 billion. His total compensation last year was listed as $70,143,075. That’s 3,399 times the amount a person earning $9.92 an hour would make in a year working 40 hours every week — before taxes, of course. (Rebecca Bowe)

 

LEE’S TELLING VETO

The Board of Supervisors approved legislation to close a gaping loophole in the city’s landmark Health Security Ordinance on Oct. 4, in the process forcing Mayor Ed Lee to promise his first veto and reveal his allegiance to business interests over labor and consumer groups.

Sup. David Campos sponsored legislation that would prevent SF businesses from pocketing money they are required to set aside for employee health care, seizures that totaled about $50 million last year. These health savings accounts are often used by restaurants who charge their customers a 3-5 percent surcharge, ostensibly for employee health care, instead simply keeping most of the money.

Despite aggressive lobbying against the measure by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce — which went so far as to threaten to withdraw support for Prop. C, the pension reform measure it helped craft with Lee and labor unions — the Board of Supervisors approved the measure on a 6-5 vote on first reading (final approval was expected Oct. 11 after press time).

But then Lee announced that he would veto the measure, claiming it was about “protecting jobs,” a stand that was criticized in an Oct. 5 rally on the steps of City Hall featuring labor unions, consumer advocates, and mayoral candidates John Avalos, Leland Yee, Dennis Herrera, and Phil Ting.

Lee and Board President David Chiu — who voted against the Campos legislation, along with Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, Carmen Chu, and Scott Wiener — have each offered alternative legislation that lets businesses keep the money but make some minor reforms, such as requiring businesses to notify employees that these funds exist.

Both Lee and Chiu talk about seeking “compromise” and “consensus” on the issue, but Campos and his allies say it’s simply wrong for businesses to take money that belongs to the employees, to gain a competitive advantage over rivals who actually offer health insurance or pay into the city’s Healthy San Francisco program, and to essentially commit fraud against restaurant customers.

“This money belongs to the workers and it’s something that consumers are paying for,” Campos said. “We have a fundamental disagreement.” (Steven T. Jones)

 

ET TU, DAVID CHIU?

In a press release on Oct. 6, mayoral candidate David Chiu stated his concerns over Mayor Ed Lee’s potentially illegal campaign contributions from employees of the GO Lorrie airport shuttle service. That company benefited from a decision by airport officials in September and then offered to reimburse employees for making $500 contributions to Lee, according to a Bay Citizen report.

“These revelations raise deeply troubling questions that merit a full investigation by state authorities. City Hall cannot be for sale. Pay-to-play politics has no place in San Francisco, and will have no place in a Chiu administration — you can count on that,” he said in the release.

But has Chiu — one of the top fundraisers in the mayoral field — been engaging in a little pay-to-play of his own? That was the question we had after we saw that he had received lots of donations from restaurant owners, whose side he took last week in opposing Sup. David Campos’ legislation to keep them from raiding their employee health care funds.

The Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA) waged unsuccessful legal battles against the Health Care Security Ordinance and lobbied against Campos’ recent reforms of its loophole. And in the latest donation cycle, the GGRA donated the maximum $500 to the Chiu campaign. Other Bay Area food services contributed up to $5,950.

So the question remains, despite Chiu’s posturing against “pay-to play politics”— are these food service companies contributing to Chiu’s campaign because he’s doing their bidding in opposing the Campos measure and sponsoring an alternative that lets them keep most of the money?

When Liane Quan, co-owner of SF’s Lee’s Deli, was asked if the health care legislation was a reason she donated, she said, “Yes, that’s one reason.” She then hesitated to elaborate why. Members of the Quan family associated with Lee’s Deli contributed a total of $1,000 to the campaign.

Maurizio Florese, an Italian-speaking co-owner of Mona Lisa’s Restaurant who contributed $100, didn’t want to talk about his contribution or employee health care. Neither did his wife and co-owner, Filomena Florese, who is also President of Mona Lisa Inc., which manufactures chocolate and pastry products.

In fact, despite leaving messages at seven local restaurants who donated to Chiu, none wanted to talk. But we did finally get ahold of Chiu campaign manager Nicole Derse, who said Chiu has a broad array of supporters and his donations from restaurants had nothing to do with his stance on the Campos legislation.

“There definitely is no correlation at all,” she told us. “Any suggestion to the contrary is ludicrous.” (Christine Deakers)

Lee’s talking points sound familiar

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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15
Lee’s talking points sound familiar

Interim Mayor Ed Lee released a 17-point jobs plan last week as part of his bid for mayor, prompting City Attorney Dennis Herrera to accuse the interim mayor of “plagiarism” since Herrera, also a contender for mayor, issued a 17-point jobs plan himself earlier this year.

Herrera’s campaign also criticized Lee for ending his plan with Herrera’s signature slogan, “a city that works.”

But Herrera isn’t the only mayoral candidate for whom Lee’s campaign rhetoric rings a bell. Board President David Chiu, who attracted a great deal of attention earlier this year for his statement that supervisors are elected not to take positions but to “get things done,” seems to have served as a muse to the campaign consultants who thought up Lee’s campaign slogan: “Ed Lee Gets it Done.”

(Which — is it just me? — or does having that phrase plastered everywhere bring to mind something more like this?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnDO5VTge6w

Lee’s “new era of civility in City Hall,” meanwhile, closely echoes language Chiu has used on the campaign trail. At a campaign stop in June, Chiu told a room of supporters that before civility was restored this year, “City government was frankly pretty dysfunctional.” Politicians from different political factions bickered with one another, he said, and “they literally couldn’t even sit in the same room.”

At an Aug. 11 rally, Lee told supporters, “We have changed the tone in which we run government,” and added, “I still have in my mind the screaming and the yelling” that the city family used to engage in. 

A few more striking similarities, taken from the candidates’ respective campaign websites:

*  David Chiu says he’ll “Prioritize hiring of local residents.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Hire San Franciscans.”

*  David Chiu says he’ll “Invest in community institutions and infrastructure.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Invest in infrastructure jobs.”

*  David Chiu says he’ll “Support the continued growth of the technology sector.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Attract & grow the jobs of the future.”

*  David Chiu says he’ll “[Expand] the impact of SFMade.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Revive local manufacturing – ‘Made in San Francisco.’”

*  David Chiu says he’ll “Fill vacant storefronts.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Improve blighted areas.”

*  David Chiu says he’ll “Reform our broken business tax. San Francisco is the only city in California that levies a tax on businesses exclusively on payroll.”
*  Ed Lee says he’ll “Reform the Payroll tax  … Mayor Lee knows that San Francisco’s current business tax structure punishes job creation when it should reward it.”

Asked to comment on the remarkable similarities in campaign materials, Lee spokesperson Tony Winnicker told the Guardian, “It’s just another baseless attack from Dennis Herrera’s campaign, only this one sounds like he’s in the third grade.

“Mayor Lee has been giving small business loans and recruiting new jobs to San Francisco from his first days as Mayor,” Winnicker continued. “His economic plan builds on the good work and projects underway and includes many genuinely new ideas to create even more jobs for the future.”

Winnicker added, “As for President Chiu, it’s no surprise that he and Mayor Lee would share many views on how to create jobs for our City as they’ve worked together closely on many issues throughout the year. He thinks President Chiu has many good ideas in addition to Mayor Lee’s own new proposals in our 17-point economic plan. Mayor Lee looks forward to continuing to work with Board President Chiu to create jobs for every neighborhood of our City.”

Low-income tenants face possible eviction at Parkmerced

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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106
Low-income tenants face possible eviction at Parkmerced

At least nine eviction proceedings have started at the Parkmerced housing complex, the site of a controversial new housing development, in response to an effort by the property management company to collect back payments on rent and utility bills, the Guardian has learned.

In recent months, nearly 200 residents received official notices warning that they would face eviction if they did not take steps to bring their accounts current within three days, according to Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco. About 80 three-day notices were issued to tenants who are on Section 8, a federal low-income housing assistance program that subsidizes rental payments using public funds provided by the local housing authority.

“They’re extremely low-income renters, and they’re suddenly being asked to pay large balances,” Shortt explained. “It’s blood from a turnip.” Most of the amounts owed ranged between $600 and $800, she added.

Shortt said that while some tenants were being allowed to set up payment plans, this measure wasn’t guaranteed for every tenant attempting to address the problem within the three-day timeframe. And she was skeptical that the payment-plan arrangements being presented by management were realistic in every case.

“I don’t know if Parkmerced is doing anything illegal,” Shortt said, acknowledging that she was receiving conflicting accounts of the situation. “But they’re executing something about legitimate recovery of money in an unfair manner. To allow people to slide for years and suddenly come at them for back bills is a one-way ticket for eviction.”

The Guardian was unable to reach Stellar Management, the real-estate management company at Parkmerced, but Shortt said she had spoken with Stellar representatives on behalf of tenants who were contacting the Housing Rights Committee in a panic.

Stellar representative Bryce Boddie explained the situation to her by saying a previous property management company had left billing records in disarray, and the company was finally getting around to straightening out its books by demanding payments that had long since been owed. “Their contention was that they basically decided it was time to clean house and recoup payments,” she said. Shortt said she’d also been told that Stellar had come under pressure from Fortress Investment Group, a firm that took ownership of the property last year, to get payments in order.

But P.J. Johnston, a public relations representative for Parkmerced, rejected that account, saying, “We absolutely follow up with residents who are not paying their bills.” Johnston said the number of three-day notices served this year were in keeping with last year, indicating that there had been no drastic changes in policy since the approval of the new housing project. He did not know how many Section 8 tenants received the warning notices in 2010. “Whether someone is a Section 8 certificate holder or just a regular resident, everybody’s got to pay their rent,” he said.

Johnston bristled at the criticism that renters were being asked to fork over unrealistically high sums on the spot for payments that had lapsed for long periods, saying, “If we had moved swiftly to evict residents sooner, we’d be hearing that we didn’t give them a chance.”

The issue comes on the heels of Board of Supervisors approval for a controversial housing development project at Parkmerced that tenant groups opposed because they felt it didn’t go far enough to protect renters. A development agreement negotiated between Parkmerced Investors and the city guarantees that rent-controlled tenants will be able to move into brand-new units at the same rent-controlled rate once the old units are demolished. Some residents are suspicious that management’s decision to issue three-day notices and take steps to evict tenants who cannot pay is a strategy for skirting these requirements.

Shortt said she couldn’t be sure that this was the case, but worried nevertheless that low-income tenants could wind up being tossed out of Parkmerced, which is just the scenario that tenant advocates had feared. “The end result really is in clear conflict with the spirit of negotiations and tenant protections,” she said.

Endorsement interviews: Bevan Dufty

Zelda Bronstein
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1
Endorsement interviews: Bevan Dufty

Bevan Dufty’s been running for mayor for about two years now. He’s often the star of the debates — if only because he has an engaging personality and is willing to laugh at himself, a rare trait in a politicians. And although he way typcially aligned with the fiscal conservatives on the Board of Supervisors, he has the support of the progressive SEIU Local 1021 — in large part because he’s talking about working with city employees instead of demonizing them. He also told us that the next mayor of San Franciisco needs to have a black agenda — to address the alarming outmigration of African Americans and the economic damage that’s been done to that community. You can listen to the full interview and watch video after the jump.


Dufty by endorsements2011


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPohsxUCQao

Lee seeks to lessen political damage from his promised veto

Sasha Cuttler
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3
Lee seeks to lessen political damage from his promised veto

Mayor Ed Lee says he will veto legislation that the Board of Supervisors approved yesterday that would have banned San Francisco businesses from keeping money they’re required to set aside for employee health care costs. But he seems to be worried about how that move will be seen by voters, touting his support for a “consensus strategy” that doesn’t yet exist and might not be possible given the fundamentally different way both sides see the issue.

The legislation by Sup. David Campos addresses the $50 million per year that businesses have been taking from their employees’ health savings accounts, which they set up to comply with city law requiring them to cover employee health care costs and which many restaurants subsidize by placing a 3-5 percent surcharge on their customers’ bills.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and opponents of the Campos legislation defend the practice and cast efforts to reserve that money for employee health care as a job-killing loss to the business community, although some have finally come around to calling the practice a “loophole” that should be addressed with minor reforms. Yet labor groups and consumer advocates say businesses have no valid claim to that money, making it difficult to see where this elusive common ground might lie.

Supporters of the legislation – including mayoral candidates Leland Yee, Dennis Herrera, John Avalos, and Phil Ting, as well as Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who authored the Health Care Security Ordinance as a supervisor – rallied on the steps of the City Hall today, calling for Lee to sign the legislation.

Shortly thereafter, the Mayor’s Office issued a press release with the headline “Mayor Lee Convenes Group to Improve Health Care Access & Protect Job,” announcing a “consensus building effort” that includes business groups and Campos and other supporters of the measure. Campos tells the Guardian that he did get a call from the Mayor’s Office today and he agreed to take part in the effort – just as he did in fruitless negotiations with Chamber officials – but he still has a fundamental disagreement with Lee and other Chamber allies over the issue.

“I talked to the Mayor’s Office about their proposal and I have indicated my concerns,” Campos said. He noted that both Lee’s proposal and another alternative by Board President David Chiu – who was quoted in Lee’s press release saying “I am committed to continuing the collaborative effort to ensure health care access to workers while protecting jobs.” – let businesses profit from money that’s supposed to be dedicated to employee health care

“So far, none of the proposals except for mine ensure that whatever consumers pay goes to health care,” Campos said, expressing confidence that public opinion is on his side. “It’s one of those issues that the more everyday San Franciscans hear what’s happening, the more outraged they are.”

But while Lee and Chiu each use the language of seeking compromise and trying to “close the loophole,” both rely on the basic Chamber paradigm that this money belongs to the businesses and setting it aside for employee health care as city law calls for would hurt “jobs.”

When Lee was asked about the issue by a group of reporters today, he said: “Next week, we’re forging a labor and management entities’ meeting with the Mayor’s Office and supervisors to try to forge changes to the Campos legislation. I cannot sign it the way it is now, because of two reasons. One, it does not focus on the healthcare needs of the employees; and two, it will force the employers to just keep millions of dollars lying around without any use and that will decrease the efforts to create more jobs. So both objectives have to be reflected in the ordinance, and I want to make the changes appropriate for that.”

The first reason seems to ignore the fact that the city is barred by federal ERISA law from telling businesses how to provide health coverage, which is why so many of them opted to create these health savings accounts – which are almost useless for people facing serious medical costs – rather than providing health insurance or paying into the city’s Healthy San Francisco program. And supporters of the legislation simply reject the validity of Lee’s second reason.

“That position is based on a false premise. This money belongs to the workers and it’s something that consumers are paying for,” Campos said. “We have a fundamental disagreement.”

Will Mayor Lee veto legislation that helps workers and protects consumers?

Sasha Cuttler
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10
Will Mayor Lee veto legislation that helps workers and protects consumers?

After the Board of Supervisors today voted 6-5 to bar San Francisco businesses from pocketing money they and their patrons set aside for employee health care, Mayor Ed Lee faces a tough but telling choice: Whether to heed business community demands that he veto legislation that has wide labor and consumer support.
A veto is widely expected, but complicating that decision is the position that was staked out today by one of his main rivals as a mayoral candidate, Leland Yee, who issued a statement echoing supporters claims that this is an issue of workers’ rights and consumer protection versus corporate greed: “This is a defining issue of who we are as a city. If Ed Lee vetoes this legislation, one of my first acts as Mayor will be to reverse his veto and sign this legislation into law.”
Neither Lee’s mayoral nor campaign spokespersons answered a Guardian email about whether he will veto the measure, which would kill it unless two supervisors who opposed the measure (David Chiu, Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, Carmen Chu, and Scott Wiener) break ranks, which is unlikely given the polarization on this measure. San Francisco Chamber of Commerce officials have made a top priority of killing the measure, even threatening to withdraw support from Prop. C, the pension reform measure that they helped create with Lee.
At issue is the roughly $50 million per year that San Francisco businesses have been taking from health savings accounts they create for employee health care – funds that are often subsidized by 3-5 percent surcharges that many restaurants have chosen to tack onto their customers bills – under legislation that then-Sup. Tom Ammiano created to require employers to provide health care coverage for their employees.
The position of the Chamber – which fought Ammiano’s legislation and supported years of unsuccessful lawsuits challenging it – is that this $50 million “loss” to city businesses would be a “job killer.” Chiu has also accepted that paradigm and introduced legislation that would let businesses use that money, but require them to let employees know they can tap into it and other reforms. But supporters of the legislation say these businesses are deceiving their customers, defying city law, and stealing from their employees.
“People have tried to complicate this issue, but it is a simple issue. It’s about the right of workers to have health care,” Sup. David Campos, the author of the legislation, said at today’s hearing.
Campos said he would limit his comments, given how widely the issue has already been discussed, and he announced a limitation on how long employees could tap the fund after their termination “in the spirit of compromise.” But then opposing supervisors attacked the measure, its timing, and supporters’ refusal to “compromise,” with Elsbernd chiding Campos that his legislation is “not the best way to encourage jobs.”
So Campos went into more detail about why his measure was needed, noting that Chiu’s alternative would cap an employee’s access to health care at just $4,300, far less than the cost of a night’s hospital stay and a small fraction of the cost of a serious ailment. “You’re looking at a situation where very little could be provided for them,” Campos said.
He also said how important it is to ban the fraudulent practice of restaurants charging customers for employee health care costs and then simply keeping the money, a practice that a recent Wall Street Journal investigation discovered was widespread. Campos said 80 percent of the money collected on diners’ bills is pocketed by the restaurants.
“When consumers are paying for this, the expectation is that workers will have basic coverage,” Campos said, noting that his legislation would guarantee that “every cent that that consumer pays is actually spent on health care…This is not just about workers, it’s about consumer protection.”
Even worse, Campos noted that these consumers are actually paying twice for restaurant employees’ health coverage, first on their dinner bills, and then again as taxpayers when those uninsured employees end up in General Hospital with their expenses paid for by the city.
Under the federal ERISA law – which was the basis for the failed lawsuit challenging the city program, brought primarily by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association – the city cannot tell employers how to provide health coverage, and so they have the option of providing health insurance, paying into the city’s Healthy San Francisco plan, or providing the medical savings accounts that this legislation addresses.
Sup. Jane Kim said she supported the legislation largely because of the horror stories she’s heard from employees who not only weren’t told of the existence of these accounts, but who were denied payment for medical procedures even after they learned about them. She also said the city could be vulnerable to another ERISA lawsuit if it took Chiu’s approach of directing how businesses used their funds, citing an earlier discussion of the board’s role in protecting the city from litigation.
On that issue, Kim today introduced an alternative to legislation by Farrell and Elsbernd that would end the city’s program of providing matching funds to publicly financed mayoral and supervisorial candidates once their privately financed competitors break the spending cap. The US Supreme Court recently ruled a similar program in Arizona to be unconstitutional.
The Chamber and other downtown groups – mostly supporters of Mayor Lee, who are close to breaking the spending limits – had signaled their intent to sue the city over the issue. The Farrell/Elsbernd legislation, which needed eight votes to change the voter-approved program, today failed on a 6-5 vote, with Sups. Campos, Kim, John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi opposed.

Will Brown sign Leno’s VLF bill?

Zelda Bronstein
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Will Brown sign Leno’s VLF bill?

We’re still waiting. A bill that could bring San Francisco another $75 million a year — just by restoring the vehicle license fee that people in this city paid before Arnold Schwarzenegger gutted it — is still sitting on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. And we have no idea what action he’s going to take on Sen. Mark Leno’s SB 223.

The good news is that he has already signed one bill that grants local governments in the East Bay to raise sales taxes with a vote of the people. So he’s clearly open to the idea. Leno told us he remains hopeful. “We’ve been working on this for eight years,” he told me. “And there’s never been a time when local government needs it more.”

Mayor Ed Lee has voiced his support; so has the Board of Supervisors. The SF Chamber of Commerce and the Labor Council are on board. “You can’t get much more broad-based support than we have in San Francisco,” Leno said.

There’s a form to email the governor here.

Progressives battle downtown over economic and political reforms

Sasha Cuttler
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Progressives battle downtown over economic and political reforms

Battles between progressive members of the Board of Supervisors and downtown power brokers such as the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce defined City Hall politics for much of the last decade, until the new politics of “civility” and compromise took hold this year, a dynamic that has favored downtown interests. But now, a pair of important, high-profile issues headed to the full board on Tuesday has revived the old dynamic. And in both cases, wealthy interests are putting enormous pressure on the board.

The first involves a proposal – put forward by Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell, the two most conservative supervisors – to gut the city’s system for publicly financing campaigns because downtown is threatening a lawsuit. They propose to end San Francisco’s program of giving publicly financed candidates more money when a privately funded candidate exceeds the spending cap because the Supreme Court recently struck down similar provisions in Arizona.

This week, after convening in closed session to discuss the threat of litigation by downtown groups, the board voted 7-3 – with Sups. David Campos, Jane Kim, and Eric Mar opposed, and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi absent because he rushed out to large structure fire in his district – for the Elsbernd/Farrell measure, one vote short of the supermajority needed to amend the current city law.

Campaign finance reform advocates such as Steven Hill argue that it’s unfair to modify the city program right in the middle of an election season in which Mayor Ed Lee and the wealthy independent expenditure groups supporting him are poised to spend millions of dollars to defeat a large field of mostly publicly funded mayoral candidates.

Hill and his allies are appealing to Mirkarimi – who told the Chronicle that he is leaning toward supporting the amendment when the measure returns to the board on Tuesday – not to support what they consider an overly broad capitulation to downtown’s threats. They’re also lobbying Sup. John Avalos to switch his vote, while downtown players are putting the screws to supervisors as well.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mirkarimi clarified his stance, noting that he was the sponsor of the original public financing law and his goal is to protect it, even if it needs to be modified to withstand a legal challenge. “I’m looking for alternatives to fortify San Francisco’s program,” he told us, noting that he missed some of this week’s discussion and he’s hoping something can be done to retain provisions that level the financial playing field with wealthy candidates.

Meanwhile, downtown forces are pulling out the stops to kill Sup. David Campos’ legislation that would prevent San Francisco businesses from pocketing money they set aside for their employees’ health care under a city mandate that they provide health coverage – totaling about $50 million last year – legislation that gets its first hearing tomorrow (Friday/30) at 10 am.

Board President David Chiu has put forward competing legislation that is more to the Chamber’s liking, letting businesses (mostly restaurants that are even placing surcharges of customers’ bills, ostensibly to subsidize their legal obligations) keep the money. But Campos and his labor allies believe they have the six votes they need to pass the legislation, thanks largely to moderate Sup. Malia Cohen’s pledge to support the measure.

While even some supporters have quibbled with the timing of this measure, Campos notes the urgency of keeping money intended for workers in their hands. “It’s an outrage and the longer we wait, the worse it gets,” Campos tells us, noting that the practice, “is what many of us consider fraud.”

Unfortunately, even if the board approves the measure this Tuesday, it will still need the signature of Mayor Lee to become law. While he hasn’t formally taken a position, given that his political base is the downtown crowd, he’s expected to veto the measure. But we’ll ask him about it tomorrow when he’s scheduled to meet with the Guardian for an endorsement interview at 2 pm.

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
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THURSDAY 29

Lesbian werewolf party El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325, www.elriosf.com. 9 p.m.-close, free. Allison Moon didn’t sit around waiting for a big publishing house to bring her tale of werewolf hunter-werewolf love to the masses. She up and published it herself, which explains why Moon has been showing up in the most unexpected spots to promote her supernatural story. Not that El Rio should be considered unexpected. Where else would this party happen but at that Outer Mission be-patioed dive?

Litquake Epicenter California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission, SF. www.litquake.org. 7 p.m., free. An expert panel – including a freelance artists, poets, editors, and curators – examines the trends in inter-disciplinary arts. Talk will travel from social media to technology and cross-media storytelling. Get your teeth sharpened for Litquake’s onslaught of bookish happenings with this appetizer course.

FRIDAY 30

“Lessons from the Battle of Benton Harbor: Confronting Police Brutality, Courtroom Abuse, and Corporate Dictatorship” ArtInternationale, 963 Pacific, SF. 7 p.m., free. Listen to tales from Reverend Edward Pinkney and Dorothy Pinkney, who’ve been crusading against the corporate-government takeover of Benton Harbor, Mich. Their stories will blend with those of ex-San Francisco poet laureate devorah major and community activist and ex-president of the Board of Supervisors Matt Gonzalez, who will also bring their stories of police violence and racist government policies.

SATURDAY 1

Open Studios: Mission, Bernal Heights, Castro, Eureka Valley, Excelsior See map of participating SF galleries. www.artspan.org. Also Sun/2. 11 a.m.-6 p.m., free. If you start drinking coffee really early and wear really comfortable shoes and your art enthusiast’s hat… well you still probably won’t see all the galleries whose doors are being thrown open today. But you can try. Featured artists include All Over Coffee’s Paul Madonna, installation artist Cynthia Toms, the Metal Arts Guild, and queer creative activist Doyle Johnson.

Arab Cultural Festival Union Square, SF. www.arabculturalcenter.org. Noon-6 p.m., $6. In typical festival fashion, this event bills itself as the largest – in this case, the largest fete of Arab art and culture in Northern Cali. Regardless of its ranking, the program will bring a Palestinian folkloric dance company, an NY-based band inspired by the Sudanese pentatonic scale, a Jordanian-American virtuoso, and Syrian-American hip-hop. Did we mention that traditional food will be served?

Filipino International Book Festival San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF. www.sfpl.org. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., free. Also Sun/2, noon-5 p.m. Wander amidst the stacks – today and tomorrow this literary event will focus on the works of Filipino and Filipino-American artists. Food will be on offer, come celebrate a culture with great significance in the Bay Area.

SUNDAY 2

Oakland Centennial Suffrage Parade Starts at Edoff Memorial Bandstand, 666 Bellevue, Oakl. www.waterfrontaction.org/parade. 11:30 a.m., free. In 1908, 300 Oakland women marched these selfsame city streets to the Republican Convention to ask the party to prioritize their right to vote in their country’s elections. It wasn’t until three years later that their civil rights were made law, but let’s continue to honor their legacy. This parade – with speeches by Oakland mayor Jean Quan and others, is a great way to give thanks to our ancestors.

Modern Times 40th anniversary party Modern Times Bookstore, 2919 24th St., SF. (415) 282-9246, www.moderntimesbookstore.com. 1 p.m., free. This recent move to 24th isn’t the first time that the Mission’s iconic bookstore has had to pack up its volumes – it’s actually the third, which might explain the uninterrupted focusing on bringing literature to the people. Today, the shop is hosting the 90th birthday of Jean Pauline, who has been working at the store’s shifting locations since 1971. It coincides with Modern Times’ 40 year marker, a fact which its new neighbor La Victoria Bakery and Kitchen will be commemorating with a custom-made cake.

MONDAY 3

First Monday Movies: High Sierra Excelsior Branch Library, 4400 Mission, SF. www.sfpl.org. 6:30-8:30 p.m., free. Settle into the Excelsior’s book palace for a screening of this 1941 Humphrey Bogart movie. Bogey plays Roy “Mad Dog” Earle, an ex-con who is compelled by a mobster to rob a resort for lots of loot. Sadly, Earle loses his stomach for the heist when his sweetie dumps him after fixing her deformed foot. The ensuing chase with the police takes him all the way up to the peak of Mt. Whitney.

“Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America” First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., Oakl. www.brownpapertickets.com. 7 p.m., free. How’s this for a solution the drug wars on American inner-city streets? Huge interventions with drug offenders, in which they sit with their families and policies to hear about how their actions affect their community. If it sounds Pollyanna-esque, you should attend this lecture. David Kennedy has helped to coordinate these happenings in over 50 cities, and has seen decent results throughout.

 

Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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tredmond@sfbg.com

Every mayoral candidate who wants the progressive vote showed up for the Guardian forum Sept. 21. Everyone except Mayor Ed Lee.

Yeah, the mayor’s a busy guy. But state senators and city attorneys and public defenders and city assessors and supervisors are busy, too, and those people managed to get to the LGBT Center, where more than 100 people were packed into the fourth floor room.

Jeff Adachi made a point of talking about “showing up” — and everyone knew exactly what he was saying. Where was Ed?

Well, maybe the mayor isn’t interested in votes from the city’s left, but I kind of doubt he’s written off such a huge sector of the population. In fact, by that standard, he would have written off most of the neighborhoods, and most of the political clubs. Because the mayor isn’t showing up much at all.

There have been more than 50 forums, debates and candidates nights over the course of the election season. Sure, some of them happened before Lee got in the race — but since the day he filed his papers, the other candidates have gone to between 12 and 15 events. Lee has made it to maybe two or three — and when he does show up, he often answers one question then leaves.

I get the strategy: Lee is pretending to be above the political fray. He’s the incumbent in the Rose Garden, refusing to lower himself to the level of all that riffraff out there trying to communicate with the voters. He’s making sure nobody gets to ask him any embarrassing questions; that way he won’t make any mistakes. And his entire reelection will be one big scripted event, paid for with big corporate money and managed from behind the scenes by the same slick operators who brought you Gavin Newsom.

Do we really want four more years of that?

Tony Winnicker, who was Newsom’s press secretary, is now handing the media for Lee. He’s just as hostile and dismissive of legitimate journalistic inquiries as he ever was, just as full of spin and vinegar. He acts as if campaigning — you know, the stuff all the others are doing — is beneath the dignity of His Honor.

Come on, Mr. Mayor. Come out and campaign like everyone else. We’re starting to wonder what you’re trying to hide.

The attack on public finance

Andrew Lam
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0

EDITORIAL The two most important political reforms in modern San Francisco history were the restoration of district elections and the creation of a public-finance system for mayoral and supervisorial elections. Both give candidates who lack big-business support a chance to win elective office. Both give independents a chance to compete against the downtown interests. Both have improved local government considerably in the past decade. And now public financing is directly under attack.

The Board of Supervisors was slated to meet in closed session Sept. 27 to discuss amendments to the public disclosure law — allegedly, according to Supervisors Mark Farrell and Sean Elsbernd, to avoid legal liability. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down in July that an Arizona law giving increased public money to candidates who were being badly outspent by well-financed opponents. One aspect of the city’s law, which allows extra public money for candidates once their opponents break the spending cap, might fall under the high court’s ruling.

But the city’s right in the middle of a heated mayoral election, and all of the candidates entered knowing the current rules — and more important, nobody has come forward to sue, or even threaten to sue, over the city’s law. So there’s no urgent reason to rewrite the ordinance.

The very fact that so many qualified candidates are in the race is an argument for public financing. Many of the current candidates would be unable to raise the vast sums required for a serious campaign without the help of public finance — and that opens up the field to more ideas, more debate, more policy discussions. It also gives the voters more of a choice — which, is, after all, what democracy is about.

Besides, as activist Larry Bush pointed out to us, “you have two choices with money in elections — you can pay up from with public funding or you can pay afterward with sweetheart contracts. And we all know which one is cheaper.”

Mayor Ed Lee, who has refused to take public money (because he doesn’t have to — he’s got plenty of rich and powerful backers) is attacking the campaign law, complaining in a TV ad that his opponents are “using taxpayer money” for “attack ads” — and that’s spurring discussion about whether there ought to be limits on how public money can be used. Any move in that direction would undermine the whole point of the law — if candidates can’t do negative ads (which, like it or not, are part of the modern campaign world) with public funds, they’ll raise outside money instead.

There are plenty of ways to improve the city’s public finance law (increasing disclosure requirements for late money and expanding the restrictions on donation by city contractors would be a good start). But amending the law in the middle of a campaign when there are no existing legal threats is a bad idea, and the supervisors should scrap it.

PS: If Lee wants to be mayor, he needs to start showing up — at debates and forums. That’s part of the job.

Endorsement Interviews: Leland Yee

Zelda Bronstein
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73
Endorsement Interviews: Leland Yee

State Sen. Leland Yee, who is running for mayor, has been involved in local politics since the 1980s, when he joined the School Board. He’s been a supervisor elected at-large, a district supervisor, a state Assembly member and now a senator. And he stirs up strong passions in the city — supporters of Mayor Ed Lee say they urged him to get into the mayor’s race in part to stop Yee from winning. Yee was a fiscal conservative on the Board of Supervisors, but in Sacramento, he’s been a foe of budget cuts. And he told us he wants to see new revenue — including a city income tax — to make sure that “the people who need services get them.”

You can listen to our interview with Yee and see the video after the jump.

Yee by endorsements2011

Guardian editorial: The attack on public finance

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ATTACKING PUBLIC FINANCE, COURTESY OF SUPERVISORS SEAN ELSBERND AND MARK FARRELL WHO ARE  CARRYING THE WATER FOR THE DOWNTOWN GANG AND ITS WELL-FUNDED CANDIDATE MAYOR ED LEE

Impertinent questions for the supervisors:
Why are you discussing amending/gutting a damn good thing (the public finance system)  for reasons of “liability” when nobody has sued the city?
Why not tell Mayor Ed Lee to start showing up at debates and forums instead of hiding behind the gushers of PG&E/Chamber/downtown/real estate money flowing  into his campaign?  B3

 

EDITORIAL: The two most important political reforms in modern San Francisco history were the restoration of district elections and the creation of a public-finance system for mayoral and supervisorial elections. Both give candidates who lack big-business support a chance to win elective office. Both give independents a chance to compete against the downtown interests. Both have improved local government considerably in the past decade. And now public financing is directly under attack.

The Board of Supervisors was slated to meet in closed session Sept. 27 to discuss amendments to the public disclosure law — allegedly, according to Supervisors Mark Farrell and Sean Elsbernd, to avoid legal liability. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down in July that an Arizona law giving increased public money to candidates who were being badly outspent by well-financed opponents. One aspect of the city’s law, which allows extra public money for candidates once their opponents break the spending cap, might fall under the high court’s ruling.

But the city’s right in the middle of a heated mayoral election, and all of the candidates entered knowing the current rules — and more important, nobody has come forward to sue, or even threaten to sue, over the city’s law. So there’s no urgent reason to rewrite the ordinance.

The very fact that so many qualified candidates are in the race is an argument for public financing. Many of the current candidates would be unable to raise the vast sums required for a serious campaign without the help of public finance — and that opens up the field to more ideas, more debate, more policy discussions. It also gives the voters more of a choice — which, is, after all, what democracy is about.

Besides, as activist Larry Bush pointed out to us, “you have two choices with money in elections — you can pay up from with public funding or you can pay afterward with sweetheart contracts. And we all know which one is cheaper.”

Mayor Ed Lee, who has refused to take public money (because he doesn’t have to — he’s got plenty of rich and powerful backers) is attacking the campaign law, complaining in a TV ad that his opponents are “using taxpayer money” for “attack ads” — and that’s spurring discussion about whether there ought to be limits on how public money can be used. Any move in that direction would undermine the whole point of the law — if candidates can’t do negative ads (which, like it or not, are part of the modern campaign world) with public funds, they’ll raise outside money instead.

There are plenty of ways to improve the city’s public finance law (increasing disclosure requirements for late money and expanding the restrictions on donation by city contractors would be a good start). But amending the law in the middle of a campaign when there are no existing legal threats is a bad idea, and the supervisors should scrap it.

PS: If Lee wants to be mayor, he needs to start showing up — at debates and forums. That’s part of the job.
 

On Guard!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
On Guard!

news@sfbg.com

 

CENTRAL SUBTERFUGE

While supporters of the controversial Central Subway project — from Mayor Ed Lee and his allies in Chinatown to almost the entire Board of Supervisors — dismiss the growing chorus of critics as everything from ill-informed to racist, they refuse to address the biggest concerns about the project.

In a nutshell, the main concerns center on serious design flaws (such as the lack of direct connections to either Muni or BART), the city’s responsibility for any cost overruns on this complex $1.6 billion project, its estimated $15.2 million increase to Muni’s already strained annual operating budget (a figure used by the Federal Transportation Administration, well over the local estimate of $1.7 million), and the city’s unwillingness to implement its own plans for improving north-south transit service on congested Stockton Street rather than relying solely on such an expensive option for serving Chinatown that doesn’t start until 2019.

Judge Quentin Kopp, a longtime former legislator, called this summer’s grand jury report, “Central Subway: Too Much Money for Too Little Benefit,” the best he’s ever read and one that should be heeded. He recently wrote a letter to top state officials urging them to reconsider the $488 million in state funding pledged to the project. As we reported last week, mayoral candidate Dennis Herrera is also challenging a project that he supported before its most recent cost overruns and design changes.

But supporters of the project pushed back hard on Sept. 14, using taunts and emotional rhetoric that avoided addressing the core criticisms. “Beneath the unfounded criticism about costs is actually a disagreement over values. The grand jury report relied upon by critics makes a only brief and superficial criticism about costs,” Norman Fong and Mike Casey wrote in an op-ed in last week’s Guardian.

Actually, the 56-page grand jury report goes into great detail about why it believes cost overruns are likely, citing the myriad risks from tunneling and SFMTA’s administrative shortcomings and history of mismanagement, including on this project’s less-complicated first phase, the T-Third line, which was 22 percent over budget and a year and half late in completion. Even with the contingencies built into the Central Subway budget, the report notes that a similar overrun would increase the local share of this project from $124 million to more than $150 million.

Mayor Lee purportedly addressed criticism of the project during the Question Time session in the Sept. 14 Board of Supervisors meeting, prompted by a loaded question from Sup. Sean Elsbernd offering Lee the “opportunity to move beyond the clichés and one-liners of political campaigns.”

But Lee’s answer was classically political, touting the estimated 30,000 jobs it would create, praising those who have pushed this project since the 1980s, offering optimistic ridership estimates (that exceed current FTA figures by about 9,000 daily riders), and ignoring concerns about whether the city can cover the ever-increasing capital and operating costs.

“Now is the time to support the Central Subway,” Lee said, flashing his trademark mustachioed grin.

We called the normally responsive Elsbernd, who prides himself on his fiscal responsibility, twice, to ask about financial concerns surrounding the project and he didn’t call back. During their mayoral endorsement interviews with the Guardian last week, we also asked Sups. John Avalos and David Chiu to address how they think the city will be able to afford this project, and neither had good answers about the most substantive issues (listen for yourself to the audio recordings on our Politics blog).

Once Congress gives final approval to $966 million in federal funding for this project sometime in the next couple months, the city will be formally committed to the Central Subway and all its costs. It’s too bad that, even during election season, all its supporters have to offer to address valid concerns are “clichés and one-liners.”(Steven T. Jones)

 

BLACK AGENDA

Mayoral candidates faced tougher questions than usual at a Sept. 15 forum hosted by the Harvey Matthews Bayview Hunters Point Democratic Club. Whereas debates hosted in the Castro and Mission Bay, for instance, featured questions on how candidates planned to clean up city streets, what they thought about AT&T’s plan to place utility boxes on city sidewalks, or how they’d promote a more business-friendly environment, residents brought a thornier set of concerns to the Bayview Opera House.

One question pointed to an alarming statistic based on U.S. Census data and cited by racial justice advocates, showing that residents of the predominantly African American Bayview Hunters Point have a life expectancy that’s 14 years lower, on average, than that of residents of the more well-to-do Russian Hill.

Someone else asked about improving mental health services for lower-income community members struggling with post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). High unemployment figured in as a key concern. And one member of the audience wanted to know how candidates planned to “improve the behavior of the police,” alluding to the mid-July officer-involved shooting that left 19-year-old Seattle resident Kenneth Harding dead, triggering community outrage.

Mayor Ed Lee attended the beginning of the forum but left early to attend an anniversary celebration for the Bayview Hunters Point Foundation; other participants included Terry Joan Baum, Jeff Adachi, Bevan Dufty, Dennis Herrera, David Chiu, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Joanna Rees.

Answers to Bayview residents’ sweeping concerns varied, yet many acknowledged that the southeastern neighborhood had been neglected and ill-served by city government for years.

“There is no economic justice here in Bayview Hunters Point,” Adachi said. “There never has been. That’s the reality.” He pointed to his record in the Pubic Defender’s Office on aggressively targeting police misconduct, and played up his pension reform measure, Prop. D, as a vehicle for freeing up public resources for critical services.

Dufty, who has repeatedly challenged mayoral contenders to incorporate a “black agenda” into their platforms, spoke of his vision for a mayor’s office with greater African American representation, and emphasized his commitment to improving contracting opportunities for minority-owned businesses.

Herrera, meanwhile, was singled out and asked to explain his support for gang injunctions, an issue that has drawn the ire of civil liberties groups. “I only support gang injunctions as a last resort,” he responded. “We shouldn’t have to use them. But … people should be able to walk around without being caught in a web of gang violence. I put additional restrictions on myself to go above and beyond what the law requires, to make sure that I am balancing safe streets with protecting civil liberties.”

Herrera asserted that gang violence had been reduced by 60 percent in areas where he’d imposed the controversial bans on contact between targeted individuals, and noted that the majority of those he’d sought injunctions against in Oakdale weren’t San Francisco residents.

Baum brought questions about a lack of services back to the overarching issue of the widening income and wealth gaps. “Right now, the money is being sucked upward as we speak,” she said. “We have to bring that money back down.”

She closed with her signature phrase: “Tax the rich. Duuuuh.” (Rebecca Bowe)

 

DUFTY REMEMBERS

The selection of Ed Lee as interim (or not-so-interim) mayor of San Francisco was one of those moments that left just about everyone dazed — how did a guy who wasn’t even in town, who had shown no interest in the job, who had never held elective office, suddenly wind up in Room 200?

Well, former Sup. Bevan Dufty, who was going to nominate Sheriff Mike Hennessey and switched to providing the crucial sixth vote for Lee at the last minute, told us the story during his mayoral endorsement interview last week.

Remember: Lee, as recently as a few days earlier, had told people he didn’t want to be mayor. “An hour before the meeting, Gavin (Newsom) called Michela (Alioto-Pier) and me into his office and said Ed Lee had changed his mind,” Dufty told us. He walked out of the Mayor’s Office uncommitted, he said, and even Newsom wasn’t sure where Dufty would go.

After two rounds of voting, with Dufty abstaining, there were five votes for Lee. So Dufty asked for a recess and went back to talk to Newsom — where he was told that the mayor thought the reason the progressives were supporting Hennessey was that the sheriff had agreed to get rid of about 20 mayoral staffers — including Chief of Staff Steve Kawa, “who had engineered Ed Lee running.”

So Kawa, with Newsom’s help, preserved his job and power base. “It’s all turnabout,” Dufty said. “I figure Mike Hennessey’s had a couple of beers and a couple of good times thinking about my vote. But that’s politics.” (Tim Redmond)

 

ALMOST FREE?

Friends and supporters of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were kept in a state of agonizing suspense over whether the two men, both 29, would be released from the Iranian prison where they’ve been held for more than two years following an ill-fated hiking trip in Iraqi Kurdistan.

On Sept. 13, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated publicly that Bauer and Fattal could be freed “in a couple of days.” The announcement brought hope for family and friends who, just weeks earlier, had absorbed the news that the men were sentenced to eight years in prison after an Iranian court found them guilty of committing espionage, a charge that the hikers, the United States government, religious leaders, and human rights advocates have characterized as completely baseless.

Reports followed that the Iranian judiciary would commute the hikers’ sentences and release them in exchange for bail payments totaling $1 million. But by Sept. 16, when supporters gathered in San Francisco in hopes that of an imminent announcement, they were instead greeted with new delays.

The constantly shifting accounts hinted at internal strife within the Iranian government, and contributed to the sense that Bauer and Fattal were trapped as pawns in a power struggle. By Sept. 19, their Iranian lawyer remained in limbo, awaiting the signature of a judge who was scheduled to return from vacation Sept. 20.

“Shane and Josh’s freedom means more to us than anything and it’s a huge relief to read that they are going to be released,” the hikers’ families said in a statement Sept. 13. “We’re grateful to everyone who has supported us and looking forward to our reunion with Shane and Josh. We hope to say more when they are finally back in our arms.” (Rebecca Bowe)

Consequences of inaction

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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8
Consequences of inaction

news@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance, although it sounds bright and cheery, remains shrouded in a cloud of inaction. Meant to increase transparency in city government, it hasn’t emerged from the bureaucratic fog since its establishment in 1994. Cases wait years to be heard and even blatant violations go unpunished, due to infighting and power disputes between the commissions that are supposed to enforce government compliance.

The Sunshine Ordinance outlines citizen’s rights to request document and information. Citizens can take their complaints about request denials to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, an 11-member committee appointed by the Board of Supervisors to ensure government compliance. If the task force decides a violation has occurred the case is handed over to the Ethics Commission, a five-member appointed board that will supposedly enforce the rulings with fines or ordering documents to be made public.

George Wooding, reporter for the Westside Observer and president of the West of Twin Peaks Central Council, is the complainant in one of the task force’s most recent cases. This spring Wooding requested emails from the Recreation and Park Department multiple times but was told the documents did not exist. What RPD didn’t know was that Wooding had the emails all along.

The task force unanimously found RPD guilty of withholding emails. This is the third major sunshine violation by RPD in three years. Even more surprising, not one RPD employee has been fined, suspended, or faced any kind of punishment or corrective action.

The episode is a case study in the total eclipse of sunshine enforcement in the city, and how one embattled department — the RPD, which has come under heavy scrutiny for efforts to monetize park resources (see “Parks Inc.”, July 12) — used that dysfunction to stifle dissent.

 

DILUTING DISSENT

George Wooding v. RPD began when Wooding was asked to be a panelist at a Commonwealth Club event on May 11. The event, titled “Golden Gate Park Under Siege,” was to be a discussion about possible development projects in the park. Other panelists were representatives of environmental and anti-development groups who claimed they were not given time to voice their concerns in Board of Supervisors meetings, and wanted a forum to do so.

Wooding says that the Commonwealth Club was bombarded with phone calls and emails weeks before the discussion.

“They were saying our panel was one-sided, which is really unusual, and the Commonwealth Club told us they were getting a lot of heat for such a little panel discussion,” Wooding said. “It was not going to be a big deal, in all honesty.”

The emails that Wooding had and the department denied include correspondence from Sarah Ballard, RPD’s director of policy and public affairs, to Kerry Curtis, co-chair of the Commonwealth Club Environment & Natural Resources Forum, indicating she had phoned the club as well and asked that the discussion be canceled due to its “deeply biased panel that has no interest in discussing facts.”

There are also emails between Susan Hirsch, director of the City Fields Foundation, a private group that has been installing artificial turf in public parks, from her business email address to the panel moderator Jim Chappell’s private email, urging him to reconsider the event.

“You and I discussed this project years ago; the private sector is contributing far more than $20 million to provide safe, accessibly, and yes, environmentally sound fields for kids all across San Francisco to use. We have a unique private/public partnership with Rec and Park; it’s too bad the focus is on something negative, rather than the positive impact,” Hirsch wrote.

Mark Buell, president of the Recreation and Park Commission, also emailed Greg Dalton, Commonwealth Club’s COO, from his private email address: “I find the title inflammatory, the participants biased, and the fact that no one from the Rec and Park Department invited hard to understand. As president of the Commission I would like to urge the club to both alter the title of the event to ‘issues facing the park’ and have the club ask a representative of the department to be on the panel.”

Shortly thereafter, Buell was added to the panel and the event was renamed “Golden Gate Park Under Siege?”

Buell says the situation has been blown out of proportion. “I got on the panel because I’ve been active with the Commonwealth Club for years and all of a sudden I read a very slanted title about something tantamount to the ruination of Golden Gate Park, and a panel of people who are all critics,” Buell told us.

Wooding says the panel went smoothly, but he was unsettled by the last minute changes. He asked around for any information about what happened and got the emails through a knowledgeable source close to the RPD.

“[RPD] has pissed off a lot of people because they came in with a hammer when they didn’t need a sledge hammer. One of the people they pissed off was really upset and ended up giving me the correspondence,” Wooding told us.

As a journalist, Wooding said, “I was thinking, ‘this is a great story but wait, I can’t use any of this information,’ so I thought about how I could get the information legitimately?”

Wooding immediately emailed Olivia Gong, a RPD secretary, making clear that he was requesting the emails in accordance with the Sunshine Ordinance. Gong replied that the department did not have any documents matching the request.

“Imagine how amazed I was when they claimed they didn’t exist,” Wooding said.

After a second request turned up nothing, Wooding knew they were hiding the emails. He then asked Gong how she had determined the emails did not exist. Gong forwarded emails she had sent to department members who replied they did not have responsive documents.

Wooding then filed a complaint with the task force, which voted unanimously that RPD was in the wrong. Not only did it claim the emails did not exist, but when it became clear that they did, the department said that members deleted the emails because some were sent on private accounts and did not directly pertain to RPD affairs.

“I just delete everything,” Buell says. “It’s not that I did anything, it’s just that I didn’t know the rules that you’re supposed to keep everything.”

Task Force Chair Hope Johnson says she was shocked by this argument. The California Public Records Act, which is more lenient than the Sunshine Ordinance, clearly lists emails as a form of government document that must be handed over on request. The Sunshine Ordinance covers emails as well, and all officials who serve on city boards were required to undergo sunshine training last year, outlining what public documents are and noting that it’s illegal under state law to destroy them.

“Just switching over to another email address lends itself to the idea that this is something they knew was underhanded and would not be received positively by the public,” Johnson said.

She says this is becoming a problem throughout city government.

“There’s not a lot of specificity about keeping emails. They need a retention policy,” Johnson says. “Obviously I think that they prefer it to be as vague as possible.”

 

POSSIBLE PUNISHMENT?

Although the task force found RDP in violation, punishment is up to the Ethics Commission, a separate entity at City Hall.

Enter bureaucratic gloom and doom.

Since 1993 the task force has given the Ethics Commission 19 sunshine violation cases. Only one has even been heard. The other 18 were dismissed or are still “pending investigation.” Government officials are therefore under no serious threat if they disobey the law.

Richard Knee, former chair of the task force, says there is obvious animosity between the task force and commission staff. Rather than enforcing punishment, the Ethic Commission staff claim that cases can be dismissed on the grounds of insufficient evidence, or require additional investigation, which stalls the process indefinitely.

“I don’t think there’s any confusion, I think it’s merely resistance,” Knee said. “We are not asking the Ethics Commission to re-adjudicate something we have already adjudicated. When we refer a matter to the Ethics Commission we are asking them to tack some kind of enforcement action on a violation we have already found exists.”

In the one case Ethics did hear, it turned the punishment decision over to the mayor as the “appointing officer,” who did nothing. It has, therefore, never enforced a penalty on any government official that the task force found guilty.

A report released in August by the Civil Grand Jury, entitled “San Francisco’s Ethics Commission: The Sleeping Watchdog,” criticizes the body’s record of inaction on both sunshine and campaign finance complaints.

“Because of the Ethics Commission’s lack of enforcement, no city employee has been disciplined for failing to adhere to the Sunshine Ordinance. The Commission has allowed some city officials to ignore the rulings of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force,” the report says.

Johnson says that since the report came out, her correspondence with the Ethics Commission has shifted slightly.

“They used to send us letters back saying they dismissed it, but recently we’ve sent over two cases and they agreed that there had been a violation,” Johnson said. “But they said they wouldn’t be able to do enforcements of any kind.”

She says that the Sunshine Ordinance won’t be taken seriously until the very people it is meant to monitor begin to enforce its stipulations.

“It’s difficult with the Ethics Commission because they keep all of their investigations secret,” Johnson says. “There is no external oversight, it is all the politicians, all of the people who appointed them, they are the only people who monitor what they’re doing.”

In response to the report, Johnson hopes the Ethics Commission will be urged to actually hear sunshine cases, and Wooding’s could be one of the first.

“The George Wooding case is a good example of how the Sunshine Ordinance can reveal oppression of a group of people who wanted to come together and have a constructive analysis,” Johnson said. “That should be something that’s allowed, and here’s the very entity that they want to have an analysis and discussion about shutting them down. And here are some documents that prove it.”

Wooding’s case will be heard once more by the task force on Sept. 27. It will almost certainly be sent to the Ethics Commission, but Wooding may be waiting awhile for any resolution.

“It’s probably going to take forever,” Wooding says. “Either I’ll just end up being another file in a cabinet somewhere, or this may even become an example, if it moves through, of how things should be done. There might be a lot more life in this than anyone ever imagined.”

A case for Avalos, Yee and Dufty

Andrew Lam
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121

OPINION Like all of us, SEIU 1021 can take three dates to the prom when it comes to voting for mayor, but narrowing it down in a field of so many candidates was still challenging. After a month-long process, we arrived at a dual endorsement of Supervisor John Avalos and State Senator Leland Yee for first and second choice, and Supervisor Bevan Dufty for our third choice.

It’s a diverse slate, and the choices are representative of the constituencies, perspectives and priorities in our membership.

Yee’s record on labor issues in Sacramento has been impeccable, and he has long been a staunch supporter of our union, so endorsing him was a no-brainer. The Guardian asked me personally, as I am also a transgender activist, how I could support Leland after his vote against transgender health benefits. Frankly, I was disappointed in how my response was framed.

Leland approached transgender activists a number of years ago and apologized for his vote. Instead of denying or rationalizing like other politicians might do, he had the courage to come to a community meeting of transgender activists, stand in front of us, admit he was wrong, and apologize. For people to continue to attack an individual for having a true change of heart is very discouraging. We would never make any advancement of our rights if we continued to shun those who have come to understand and support the transgender fight for equality. In fact, Yee’s support was critical to the collective effort to save Lyon-Martin, a clinic that is a key service provider for trans folks, after it almost closed earlier this year.

That’s why so many in the transgender community now support Yee so strongly and why he has become an even closer, tested ally through this experience.

SEIU 1021 has always had a very close relationship with John Avalos. Avalos has been a steadfast supporter of crucial social and health- care services, and has been a leader in creating needed progressive revenue measures. But most importantly, John understands how essential jobs are for lifting people out of poverty and stimulating the local economy for everyone in San Francisco.

Last year, he introduced a Local Hire ordinance that is becoming a real jobs generator in our city and a national model. Like many of our members when they first started working for the city, workers hired under the Local Hire ordinance may for the first time have a living-wage job with benefits.

And while some in labor have been critical of this legislation — in fact, it cost him the endorsement of the San Francisco Labor Council — that’s a short-sighted criticism.

As more people are employed in San Francisco with living wage jobs, they spend money in San Francisco, boosting tax revenues and in turn creating more jobs across the city. Moreover, this visionary legislation has other benefits — workers coming from low-income communities bring a new found pride in and community spirit to what could be otherwise economically depressed areas. That’s why SEIU 1021 supports Avalos, and why I am proud to endorse him as well.

Rounding out SEIU’s endorsements in this campaign is former Supervisor Bevan Dufty. Dufty has a history of supporting preserving city services. Some have argued that Dufty can’t handle downtown pressure, and yet, Dufty has consistently supported public power, took a stance against Sit-Lie despite intense pressure, and several years ago, at a critical juncture for Tom Ammiano’s signature health care legislation, Healthy San Francisco, he didn’t blink when we called on him to be our 8th vote. In fact, he committed to the bill, unequivocally, and called on other supervisors, like Fiona Ma, to say it was time. She immediately co-sponsored and eventually it was a unanimous 11-0 vote.

For labor and progressives, Ammiano’s Healthy San Francisco legislation was the single most important piece of legislation of the last decade. And while history has been rewritten, and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom now takes credit for the legislation, then-Mayor Newsom did not come on board until after Dufty declared his support, and as the 8th supporter, created a veto-proof majority.

Each of these candidates have shown their capacity to grow and transform as leaders making them the best choices for progressive labor, and we believe for the San Francisco. Whatever you do, you have three votes, make them count. 

Gabriel Haaland is a transgender labor activist and the SEIU 1021 San Francisco political coordinator.

 

SF’s foreclosure crisis

Andrew Lam
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2

EDITORIAL Here’s a great issue for the San Francisco mayor’s race: The big banks that the city uses to hold nearly half a billion in cash deposits are part of a group of financial institutions that are costing the taxpayers $115 million.

That’s the amount the city will wind up paying to cover the lost property taxes and other costs associated with home foreclosures, according to a new report. And the authors of the report, the Community Reinvestment Coalition and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, estimate that San Francisco homeowners are going to lose a total of $6.9 billion in value because of the foreclosure crisis.

Most of the discussion around foreclosures has focused on the national picture — but there’s plenty the city can do.

The numbers are alarming: 16,355 San Francisco homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, meaning they owe more than the house is currently worth. By 2012, the report estimates, 12,410 local homes will be in foreclosure.

That means 12,400 families facing displacement — which adds to the homeless crisis, puts more pressure on the rental housing market and most likely will force many people who work in the city to find housing a long commute away.

Foreclosures also drive down the value of neighboring property — which means the city collects less property tax. The cost of sending deputy sheriffs out to evict families, of patrolling and monitoring vacant houses, dealing with increased crime in the area — all of that adds up. According to the report, every foreclosure costs the city $19,229. Add up the loss of property taxes and the direct costs to taxpayers and the bill exceeds $115 million.

Two of the top four banks involved in foreclosures in California are Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Those just happen to be two of the three banks that have to contract to handle the city’s cash accounts — which contain $406 million, according to an Aug. 16, 2011 report by Budget Analyst Harvey Rose. So the city is giving its money to banks that are costing the city money.

The banks aren’t paupers, either — and have accepted huge amounts of federal tax money. B of A and Wells together received $270 billion in bailout money — and both are now making nice profits (enough that the CEO of Wells, John Stumpf, earned $17 million last year). They can afford to write down the underwater mortgages and arrange for foreclosure relief for people behind on the bills.

The report suggests that the banks be charged a fee — between $10,000 and $20,000 — for each foreclosure. That would offset the costs and provide a disincentive for throwing families out on the street. The candidates for mayor ought to be pushing that — but the city can do more.

The supervisors ought to call a hearing on the crisis and demand that the B of A and Wells executives come down and explain why they’re moving so slowly on write-downs and relief. And they should be told, in very clear terms, that the city will no longer put a penny of its money in banks that are damaging, instead of investing in, San Francisco.

Editorial: SF’s foreclosure crisis–the city shouldn’t put another penny in banks that are destroying San Francisco

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8

 

Here’s a great issue for the San Francisco mayor’s race: The big banks that the city uses to hold nearly half a billion in cash deposits are part of a group of financial institutions that are costing the taxpayers $115 million.

That’s the amount the city will wind up paying to cover the lost property taxes and other costs associated with home foreclosures, according to a new report. And the authors of the report, the Community Reinvestment Coalition and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, estimate that San Francisco homeowners are going to lose a total of $6.9 billion in value because of the foreclosure crisis.

Most of the discussion around foreclosures has focused on the national picture — but there’s plenty the city can do.

The numbers are alarming: 16,355 San Francisco homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, meaning they owe more than the house is currently worth. By 2012, the report estimates, 12,410 local homes will be in foreclosure.

That means 12,400 families facing displacement — which adds to the homeless crisis, puts more pressure on the rental housing market and most likely will force many people who work in the city to find housing a long commute away.

Foreclosures also drive down the value of neighboring property — which means the city collects less property tax. The cost of sending deputy sheriffs out to evict families, of patrolling and monitoring vacant houses, dealing with increased crime in the area — all of that adds up. According to the report, every foreclosure costs the city $19,229. Add up the loss of property taxes and the direct costs to taxpayers and the bill exceeds $115 million.

Two of the top four banks involved in foreclosures in California are Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Those just happen to be two of the three banks that have to contract to handle the city’s cash accounts — which contain $406 million, according to an Aug. 16, 2011 report by Budget Analyst Harvey Rose. So the city is giving its money to banks that are costing the city money.

The banks aren’t paupers, either — and have accepted huge amounts of federal tax money. B of A and Wells together received $270 billion in bailout money — and both are now making nice profits (enough that the CEO of Wells, John Stumpf, earned $17 million last year). They can afford to write down the underwater mortgages and arrange for foreclosure relief for people behind on the bills.

The report suggests that the banks be charged a fee — between $10,000 and $20,000 — for each foreclosure. That would offset the costs and provide a disincentive for throwing families out on the street. The candidates for mayor ought to be pushing that — but the city can do more.

The supervisors ought to call a hearing on the crisis and demand that the B of A and Wells executives come down and explain why they’re moving so slowly on write-downs and relief. And they should be told, in very clear terms, that the city will no longer put a penny of its money in banks that are damaging, instead of investing in, San Francisco.

 

Is Peskin plotting a comeback/payback?

Sasha Cuttler
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36
Is Peskin plotting a comeback/payback?

Many progressives have been disappointed in Board President David Chiu, particularly after his pivotal role in putting Ed Lee into the Mayor’s Office and stacking key board committees with moderates, as well as his controversial swing votes on Parkmerced and other projects. But nobody has been more disappointed than Chiu’s predecessor and one-time mentor, Aaron Peskin (as we detailed in a cover story earlier this year).

Now, knowledgable sources tell the Guardian that Peskin is seriously considering running against Chiu next year for his old District 3 seat on the Board of Supervisors — and that Peskin recently told Chiu that directly — although neither of them is commenting on the record.

So far, Chiu’s run for mayor doesn’t really appear to be catching fire, with Lee leading and only Dennis Herrera, Leland Yee, or Jeff Adachi exhibiting a credible chance of catching him. With many progressive activists actively searching for someone to run against Chiu next year (as Peskin said about another matter, “payback is a bitch”), Chiu is rumored to be eyeing a run for Tom Ammiano’s Assembly seat (which fellow Sup. David Campos is also said to be looking at, probably with Ammiano’s blessing if it happens), either next year or when Ammiano is termed out in 2014.

But Chiu campaign manager Nicole Derse dismisses such speculation, telling us, “The only thing David Chiu is running for is Mayor of San Francisco.  He is not thinking about the 2012 re-election for Supervisor and he is certainly not thinking for a minute about the Assembly race.  If Aaron Peskin decides to run in District 3 next year, it is a free country.”

On Guard!

Andrew Lam
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0
On Guard!

news@sfbg.com

BART’S CRACKDOWN

For weeks now, protesters have descended on Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) stations to denounce the fatal July 3 shooting of homeless passenger Charles Hill by a BART Police officer, and to call for the agency’s long-controversial police force to be disbanded. Commuters have had to contend with service disruptions and delays, and costs to the transit agency have exceeded $300,000. Yet it isn’t just bullhorn-wielding protesters who’ve been thrust into the spotlight — BART’s police force is also facing scrutiny for its conduct under pressure.

BART drew the ire of numerous media outlets after a Sept. 8 protest when transit cops detained members of the press along with protesters on suspected violation of California Penal Code Section 369i, which prohibits interfering with the operations of a railroad. Most journalists were eventually released, but the protest resulted in 24 arrests.

Although BART police later contended that they issued dispersal orders prior to closing in, many who were encircled and detained (including me) insisted they’d heard no such announcement. BART police also instructed San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officers who were on hand to assist to seize reporters’ SFPD-issued press passes — a move that SFPD spokesperson Troy Dangerfield later told the Guardian was an error that went against normal SFPD protocol.

In a Sept. 10 editorial, the San Francisco Chronicle blasted BART police for placing Chronicle reporter Vivian Ho in handcuffs despite being informed that she was there as a journalist. Ho’s experience was mild compared with that of Indybay reporter David Morse (aka Dave Id), who told the Guardian he was singled out for arrest by BART Deputy Police Chief Daniel Hartwig and isolated from the scene — even though Hartwig is familiar with Morse and knows he’s been covering protests and BART board meetings for the free online publication. Asked why Morse was arrested when other journalists detained for the same violation were released, BART spokesperson Jim Allison told us, “The courts will answer that, won’t they?”

No Justice, No BART — a group that was instrumental in organizing the Sept. 8 protest — telegraphed to media and police at the outset that they intended to test BART’s assertions that people’s constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech would be upheld as long as they remained outside the paid areas of the station, in what was dubbed a “free speech zone.” (Rebecca Bowe)

 

CHRON VS. WIENER(S)

Scott Wiener tried to do something eminently reasonable, and ask the naked guys in the Castro to put down a towel before they sit on public benches. Although the Department of Public Health hasn’t made any statements about the issue (and people put their naked butts on public toilet seats without creating major social problems), it’s pretty much an ick factor thing — and using a towel is an unwritten (sometimes written) rule at almost every nudist resort in the country.

The whole thing is a bit ironic, since it’s already illegal for fully clothed poor people to sit on the street — but so far, it’s not illegal for naked people to sit on benches. So far.

Wiener’s move set off an anti-nudity campaign at the San Francisco Chronicle, starting with columnist C.W. Nevius suggesting that the nudies are all perverts: “If these guys were opening a trench coat and exposing themselves to bystanders in a supermarket parking lot we’d call them creeps.” A Chron editorial called for a new law banning nudity in the city (an excellent use of time for a police department that already says it can’t afford community policing). The national (right-wing) press is having a field day. The commenters on sfbg.com are arguing about whether the pantsless men are shedding scrotal hair, or whether they’re mostly shaved. For the record, we haven’t checked.

And for the record, in a couple of months it’s going to get way too cold and rainy for this sort of thing anyway. (Tim Redmond)

 

HERRERA’S SMACKDOWNS

City Attorney Dennis Herrera has always been limited by his office’s neutral role in criticizing city policies and officials. But as a mayoral candidate, he seems to have really discovered his political voice, offering more full-throated criticisms of Mayor Ed Lee and his policies than any of the other top-tier candidates.

“I think it’s kind of liberating for him that he can talk policy instead of just about legal issues,” Herrera’s longtime spokesperson Matt Dorsey, who recently took a leave from his city job to work on the campaign full-time, told the Guardian.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Herrera’s shift began a little more than a month ago when Lee bowed to pressure from Willie Brown, Rose Pak, and other top power brokers to get into mayor’s race, prompting Herrera’s biting analysis that, “Ed Lee’s biggest problem isn’t that he’s a dishonest man — it’s that he’s not his own man. The fact is, if Ed Lee is elected mayor, powerful people will continue to insist on things. And I don’t think San Franciscans can be blamed for having serious doubts about whether Ed Lee would have the courage to say no.”

Herrera followed up last week by providing an example of something Lee and most other mayoral candidates don’t have the courage to say no to: the Central Subway project, with its runaway price tag and growing number of critics that say it’s a wasteful and inefficient boondoggle that will worsen Muni’s operating budget deficit.

“Fiascos aren’t born that way. They typically grow from the seeds of worthy idea, and their laudable promise is betrayed in subtle increments over time,” was how Herrera began a paper he released Sept. 8 called “It’s time to rethink the Central Subway,” in which he calls for a reevaluation of a project that he and the entire Board of Supervisors once supported.

He notes that the project’s costs have tripled and its design flaws have been criticized by the Civil Grand Jury and numerous transit experts. “Let’s look at this thing and see if it still makes sense,” Herrera told us, a stand that was greeted as blasphemy from the project’s supporters in Chinatown, who called at least two press conferences to decry that they called a “cheap political stunt.”

While the stand does indeed help distinguish Herrera from a crowded mayoral field, he insists that it was the grand jury report and other critiques that prompted him to raise the issue. “Good policy is good politics, so let’s have a debate on it and let the validity of the project stand or fall on its merits,” he said.

Herrera and fellow candidate John Avalos were also the ones who called out Lee on Sept. 2 for praising Pacific Gas & Electric Co. as “a great company that get it” for contributing $250,000 to a literacy program, despite PG&E’s deadly negligence in the San Bruno pipeline explosion and its spending of tens of millions of dollars to sabotage public power efforts and otherwise corrupt the political process.

“It shows insensitivity to victims’ families, and poor judgment for allowing his office to be used as a corporate PR tool. No less troubling, it ignores the serious work my office and others have done to protect San Franciscans from PG&E’s negligence,” Herrera said in a prepared statement.

Now, his rhetoric isn’t quite up to that of Green Party mayoral candidate Terry Baum, who last week called for PG&E executives to be jailed for their negligence, but it’s not bad for a lawyerly type. Herrera insists that he’s always wielded a big stick, expressed through filing public interest lawsuits rather than campaign missives, “but the motivation in how I do either is not really different.” (Steven T. Jones)

 

JACK IS BACK

The mayor’s race just got a new player, someone who is guaranteed to liven things up. His name is Jack Davis — and he’s already gone on the attack.

Davis, the infamous bad boy of political consulting who is so feared that Gavin Newsom paid him handsomely just to stay out of the 2003 mayor’s race, has been keeping a low profile of late. But he’s come out of semi-retirement to work for Jeff Adachi, the public defender who is both running for mayor and promoting Prop. D, his pension-reform plan.

Davis and Adachi first bonded when Adachi ran against appointed incumbent Kim Burton in 2002. Now, Davis has begun firing away at Mayor Ed Lee, with a new mailer that calls the competing Lee pension plan a “backroom deal.” The piece features a shadowy figure (who looks nothing like Ed Lee) slipping through a closing door, a fancy ashtray full of cigars and an allegation that Lee gave the cops a sweet pension deal in exchange for the police union endorsement.

Trust us, that’s just the start. (tr)

 

PENSION PALS

Meanwhile, Adachi sent Lee a letter on Sept. 8 challenging him to debate the merits of their rival pension measures — Lee spearheaded the creation of Prop. C, with input from labor unions and other stakeholders — sometime in the next month.

“I believe there is a vital need — if not an obligation — for us to ensure that the voters of San Francisco understand both the severity of our pension crisis as well as the significant differences between our two proposals,” Adachi wrote, later adding, “As the two principals behind the competing ballot measures, I hope that we can work together to increase awareness of this important issue and work toward a better future for our city.”

Lee’s campaign didn’t respond directly to Adachi, but Lee’s ever-caustic campaign spokesperson Tony Winnicker told the Guardian that the request was “the oldest political trick in book” and one they were rejecting, going on to say, “Voters deserve to hear from all the candidates on pension reform, not just two of them.”

Perhaps, but given the mind-numbing minutiae that differentiates the two measures, some kind of public airing of their differences might be good for all of us. Or I suppose we can just trust all those dueling mailers headed our way, right? (stj)

For more, visit our Politics blog at www.sfbg.com.

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