Supervisors

Editorial: Put new taxes in the budget

David Talbot
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5

Mayor Gavin Newsom still wants to balance this year’s municipal budget with no new taxes (although he’s happy to raise the fees to use city facilities). The supervisors are looking at a different approach: John Avalos, chair of the budget committee, told us he’d like to see $100 million in new revenue on the table.

Some of that might come from a fee on liquor sales. There’s a hotel tax measure being circulated, and the supervisors are also looking at a raising the real estate transfer tax on high-end properties and imposing a commercial rent tax. All but the liquor fee would require a majority vote on the November ballot.

So far, Newsom hasn’t given any indication that he’ll support any new taxes — and that’s due in significant part to his campaign for lieutenant governor. The mayor doesn’t want to get hit by his Republican opponent as a tax-and-spend liberal, so he’s holding the line, cutting essential services instead of looking for progressive ways to bring in new revenue.

But voters up and down the state have shown their willingness to approve new taxes to save essential services, and it’s likely that San Franciscans will do the same — particularly if the folks at City Hall are united in their support.

So here’s an idea for the supervisors: why not include that new revenue as part of this year’s budget?

There’s no legal reason the budget can’t be balanced in part on the assumption of new income. November is almost halfway through the fiscal year, but more than $50 million of that revenue would be available for the 2010-11 budget.

There are distinct advantages to including that money in the budget, starting with fewer budget cuts and layoffs now. There’s also a clear political advantage: if the voters realize what’s at stake — that the money has already been earmarked and that voting it down would mean immediate reduction in vital services — the message of the importance of approving the tax measures would be even stronger.

Equally important, it would force the mayor to show his hand. Newsom would almost certainly prefer to duck the issue, to take a neutral stand on the tax measures (“let the voters decide”). He might wind up opposing all of them. But if the money’s already in the budget, what can he do? Without that tax money, the budget won’t be legally balanced. Without his support, that tax money might not come through.

It’s a risky move. If the voters reject the tax hikes, the supervisors and the mayor would be forced to make painful midyear cuts. But they’ll have to make those cuts anyway, either now or in November. And once you shut down services or eliminate nonprofit contracts, it’s much harder and more expensive to start them up again.

So this might be the year to take the calculated gamble: assume that money’s going to be there. Then everyone, including the mayor, can help make sure that it actually is.

Put new taxes in the budget

David Talbot
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2
Put new taxes in the budget

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom still wants to balance this year’s municipal budget with no new taxes (although he’s happy to raise the fees to use city facilities). The supervisors are looking at a different approach: John Avalos, chair of the budget committee, told us he’d like to see $100 million in new revenue on the table.

Some of that might come from a fee on liquor sales. There’s a hotel tax measure being circulated, and the supervisors are also looking at raising the real estate transfer tax on high-end properties and imposing a commercial rent tax. All but the liquor fee would require a majority vote on the November ballot.

So far, Newsom hasn’t given any indication that he’ll support any new taxes — and that’s due in significant part to his campaign for lieutenant governor. The mayor doesn’t want to get hit by his Republican opponent as a tax-and-spend liberal, so he’s holding the line, cutting essential services instead of looking for progressive ways to bring in new revenue.

But voters up and down the state have shown their willingness to approve new taxes to save essential services, and it’s likely that San Franciscans will do the same — particularly if the folks at City Hall are united in their support.

So here’s an idea for the supervisors: why not include that new revenue as part of this year’s budget?

There’s no legal reason the budget can’t be balanced in part on the assumption of new income. November is almost halfway through the fiscal year, but more than $50 million of that revenue would be available for the 2010-11 budget.

There are distinct advantages to including that money in the budget, starting with fewer budget cuts and layoffs now. There’s also a clear political advantage: if the voters realize what’s at stake — that the money has already been earmarked and that voting it down would mean immediate reduction in vital services — the message of the importance of approving the tax measures would be even stronger.

Equally important, it would force the mayor to show his hand. Newsom would almost certainly prefer to duck the issue, to take a neutral stand on the tax measures ("let the voters decide"). He might wind up opposing all of them. But if the money’s already in the budget, what can he do? Without that tax money, the budget won’t be legally balanced. Without his support, that tax money might not come through.

It’s a risky move. If the voters reject the tax hikes, the supervisors and the mayor would be forced to make painful midyear cuts. But they’ll have to make those cuts anyway, either now or in November. And once you shut down services or eliminate nonprofit contracts, it’s much harder and more expensive to start them up again.

So this might be the year to take the calculated gamble: assume that money’s going to be there. Then everyone, including the mayor, can help make sure that it actually is.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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23
Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

Jane Kim, the San Francisco school board president running for supervisor in District 6, has a tough question to answer. When there’s already a solid progressive in the race, Debra Walker, someone who has lived in the district for years and agrees with Kim on almost all the key issues, why is Kim running?

She gave a hint at her campaign kickoff June 24 on how she’s going to portray herself: "I’m not part of anyone’s machine, and I’m certainly not part of anyone’s master plan." It’s an attractive statement — nobody likes machine politics — and the idea that she’s an independent candidate makes her all the more appealing.

Except that it also says something about the progressive movement in San Francisco — and that’s a little disturbing. Because no matter how you try to spin it, when you say you aren’t part of anyone’s machine, you’re implying that maybe your opponents are.

Let me take a step back here, because this is important stuff. There’s a fine line between an effective, organized political coalition that can actually win elections and a political machine, which stifles political innovation and grassroots candidates. And in part it’s about motivation.

When Willie Brown ran San Francisco, it was all about Willie Brown. I’ve never believed the guy had much of an ideology or that any political cause really mattered to him; he loved power, he knew how to use it and he didn’t want to give it up. That was the bottom line.

Now that he’s pretty much out of the picture — although he was at Kim’s party, he’s not a factor anymore — there’s a very different power balance in this city. There’s nobody at City Hall (or in Sacramento, or Washington, or downtown, or anywhere else) who has machine-style control of local politics.

There are people who can build coalitions that work — Aaron Peskin, for example, did exceptionally well with putting together a campaign to elect progressive Democratic County Central Committee elections. And there are people who would love to be power brokers.

But I’ve been around politics here a long time, and I can tell you: Aaron Peskin doesn’t have a machine. Neither does Mark Leno, or Gavin Newsom, or Tom Ammiano, or David Chiu, or anyone else. Thanks in part to district elections, there aren’t many call-up votes on the Board of Supervisors these days. In fact, the left in San Francisco is famously unable to agree on much of anything half the time. Note, for example, the fact that Chiu — often called a Peskin ally — is not supporting Peskin’s candidate in D-6. He’s with Jane Kim.

The thing is, unlike the players in a typical political machine, most of the progressives care about issues. It’s about a shared ideology more than it’s about power. That’s a hugely important difference.

The way the mainstream media has it, the San Francisco left is either fatally fractured and can’t do anything — or it’s becoming a machine. For the moment — a great moment — neither is true. Let’s all keep that in mind. Because when we beat each other up with words like "machine," we undermine the whole progressive movement.

Bad way to start a campaign.

Complicating the simple

David Talbot
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6
Complicating the simple

steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY San Francisco can legally give more street space to bicycles, even if it delays cars or Muni in some spots, a policy that enjoys universal support among elected officials here. So why have all the city’s proposed bike projects been held up by an unprecedented four-year court injunction, despite the judge’s clear affirmation of the city’s right to approve its current Bicycle Plan as written?

The answer involves a mind-numbing journey into the complex strictures of the California Environmental Quality Act and its related case law, which was the subject of a three-hour hearing before Superior Court Judge Peter Busch on June 22 that delved deeply into transportation engineering minutiae but did little to indicate when the city might be able to finally stripe the 45 bike lanes that have been studied, approved, funded, and are ready to go.

Anti-bike activist Rob Anderson and attorney Mary Miles have been on a long and lonely — but so far, quite successful — legal crusade to kill any proposed bike projects that remove parking spaces or cause traffic delays. They have argued that the city shouldn’t be allowed to hurt the majority of road users to help the minority who ride bikes, urging the city and court to remove those projects from the Bike Plan.

But Busch repeatedly said the court can’t do that. “That’s the policy question that’s not for the court to decide,” he told Miles in court, later adding: “I don’t get to decide that the Board of Supervisors’ policy is misguided.”

Yet city officials have offered detailed arguments that the policy of facilitating safe bicycling isn’t misguided, but instead is consistent with the transit-first policy in the city charter and with the goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving public health, and even alleviating overall traffic congestion by giving more people good alternatives to driving a car.

Busch hasn’t indicated that he has any issues with that rationale. Instead, the question is whether policymakers had enough information — in the proper manner spelled out by two generations’ worth of legal battles over land use decisions in California — to make their unanimous decisions to approve the Bike Plan in 2005 and again in 2009, after completing a court-ordered, four-volume, two-year, $2 million environmental impact report.

Miles argues that the EIR is legally inadequate in every way possible, employing such gross hyperbole in condemning it as a hollow document that does nothing to explain or justify any of its conclusions that Busch told her at one point, “That’s such an over-argument, it leaves me wondering about the rest of your argument.”

But he’s certainly considering the rest of her argument that more analysis was required, going into great detail on the questions of whether the city studied and spelled out enough alternatives and mitigation measures, how much of the voluminous traffic survey data should be in the plan, whether there was enough support for the thresholds of significant impacts, and what the remedy should be if he finds some minor errors in the methodology.

Yet even Busch said there wasn’t a clear regulatory road map for the city to follow on this project. “There probably has never been an EIR for a project like this,” he acknowledged. It was the city’s decision in 2004 to do a Bike Plan that mentioned specific projects without studying them that led to the injunction and this extraordinarily complex EIR, which did detailed analysis on more than 60 projects.

“Once you get that complexity, the toeholds are everywhere to fight it,” activist Mark Salomon, who has long criticized city officials and bicycle activists for their approach to the Bike Plan, told us.

But Kate Stacey, who heads the land use team in the City Attorney’s Office, says the city will be in a good position to quickly create lots of bike lanes once this plan passes legal muster.

“The city can now go through the specific bike projects without having another step of analysis,” she told us. “I think it’s a complete and elegant approach even if it was more time-consuming at the outset.” Busch asked both sides to submit proposed orders by July 6 and responses to those orders by July 13, with a ruling and possible lifting of the injunction expected later this summer.

Raising revenues on the backs of the East Bay/working class

Mary Magee
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32

If you are one of the many thousands of people who commute the Bay Bridge each day, then you already know that the  toll is going to increase on Thursday, July 1 to $6 during commute hours, and that the car pool is going to stop being free and start costing $2:50 (and you’ll need a Fastrak pass to use it). Tolls will also rise to $5 on Antioch, Benicia-Martinez, Carquinez, Dumbarton, Richmond-San Rafael and San Mateo-Hayward bridges. What you may not know is that San Francisco is also planning to start charging fees this summer to  “out-of-towners” to access certain facilities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCivf4OMuqY

As an East Bay resident and a member of San Francisco’s workforce, I understand the logic behind all these toll and fee increases: raise tolls to get cars off roads, people onto public transit, and spare the air in the process. And raise entrance fees for tourists, so as to generate revenue for cash-strapped city departments.

And yet, it feels like working-class folks who can’t afford to raise their families in San Francisco keep getting stuck with the bill for the excesses of the city’s real estate market, while the folks who made money gaming the real estate market in the ’90s and the Noughties keep leading the “no new taxes, lots of new fees” mantra.

That extra $2 a day to get to work is going to cost working folks about $500 more a year, at a time when wages are either stagnant or being cut. So, don’t be surprised if we stop spending any money on buying food in the city, to make ends meet. But should we also plan to stop visiting fee-charging city facilities?

I ask because a recent article in the Chronicle pointed out that “Out-of-town visitors will have to start paying an admission fee to San Francisco’s tranquil and well-tended Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park, now that the Board of Supervisors signed off on the proposal after months of heated public debate.”

San Francisco residents will continue to get free entry, the article reported, but other adults will have to pay $7 to get into the Botanical Garden, starting in late July or early August. (Discounts will be offered to seniors and youth.)

“The total price for a family will be capped at $15,” the Chron reported, ” and the money-making initiative is expected to generate $250,000 a year for the city’s strapped Recreation and Park Department, officials say.”

It’s not clear from that report whether the city’s commuters who now account for more than 50 percent of the city’s workforce) are classified as “out-of-towners?” And if it turns out that we are not, I’ll post an update here in short order. But I suspect we are, since we don’t actually live here, (even if we do spend half our lives working in a building within city limits).

Update: Lisa Van Cleef, public spokesperson for the Botanical Gardens (a former SFBG worker, when the Guardian was still on York Street) confirmed that Mayor Gavin Newsom is expected to sign the Botanical Gardens fee hike legislation by the end of this week.

“All San Francisco residents have free admission,” Van Cleef emailed. “Non-residents including those who work in SF, will pay the $7.00.”

In her email, Van Cleef made a great case for visiting the Botanical Gardens.

“It is very different than a park,” she wrote. “With 26 distinct gardens and collections, our visitors can experience incredible rarities from  Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Central and South America, and South Africa, plus our award-winning California Native Plant Garden 
complete with a century-old redwood forest. Hundreds of our plants are rare and/or endangered in the wild.Right now, the Passionflowers, Chilean, Australian and Perennial gardens are looking exceptionally great with lots in bloom.”

So, I guess I’ll be tempted to visit, fee or no, even as I wish for a more equitable way to generate new city revenues, in future.

Now, it’s easy to demonize folks who drive to work from the East Bay, as being irresponsible climate change inducing air polluters. But I can’t help noticing that many folks on the road alongside me each morning are driving beat-up pick-ups full of work tools and cars full of infant seats and toys. These are working class family-oriented folks who definitely pay their “entrance fee” into the city each day. (And then there’s the fact that we are paying to cross a bridge that no longer feels entirely safe to drive across, but that’s a whole other story.)

But when out-of-town commuters use public transit, it can take several hours each way–between bad connections and cut services–unless we live and work close to BART. And those hours spent waiting for the T-Third or changing buses adds up to precious time we don’t spend with our families, and costs a lot in child care.

That’s why I’m getting sick of the  “cyclists v drivers” debate in San Francisco. Because it’s a divisive, misleading debate. There are saints and sinners on both sides of that debate’s equation, but when it comes to actually getting folks off the road and onto public transit, the real issue continues to be the cost of housing and the lack of a truly comprehensive public transit system in San Francisco. And I’m not seeing the kind of planning in the pipeline that would allow working-class families to move back into town and/or make traveling to and from the East Bay less of a nightmare.

Instead, there are plans to build thousands and thousands of condos where a couple could possibly raise one child–until the crying and the constant bits of Lego underfoot in the condo’s swag carpetting get them fleeing to the Oakland hills, and beyond.

So, go ahead and bite me and the rest of the working class commuters with more fees, both at the toll booths and at the entrance gate to  the Botanical Gardens. We don’t have much choice but to pay them, if we want to keep our jobs in the city, and enjoy ourselves in our downtime before making the return commute. But milking us is not going to solve the underlying problem in a city that sold out to the highest bidder a long time ago. Yes, this is a bit of a “whine” piece, and it’s coming from someone who enjoys navigating her “London Taxi” as I like to call my anonomobile, through the roughest of city streets. But seriously folks, when is someone going to have the balls to raise taxes on the rich in this richest of cities and stop sticking it to the poor?

The D6 progressive primary is defunct

Zelda Bronstein
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1
The D6 progressive primary is defunct

Luke Thomas at Fog City Journal had it first: Sup Chris Daly’s progressive primary for district six didn’t work out. But there will be a District Six Symposium at the same place, at the same time. Daly told me that the primary hadn’t exactly morphed into the symposium: “I’ve been planning to do a symposium anyway, and I scheduled it for that day because, well, I had the day free.”


He had the day free because his call for a primary among the progressive candidates in the district pretty much collapsed when most of them said they weren’t interested. I never quite saw this as working out, but I give Daly credit for trying to do something to prevent the competing progressives from fighting (and wounding) each other and allowing a more moderate candidate to win his seat. In the end, he said, “I’m just one guy, and I didn’t have to power to prevent a train wreck.”


Of course, a primary battle could have had the opposite effect, stirring up competing negative campaigns. And that’s what we simply have to avoid this fall. With ranked-choice voting, Debra Walker, Jane Kim and Jim Meko don’t have to run the kinds of campaigns that would cost the district its progressive representation. But if things get nasty, that could easily happen.


In District Five in 2004, the progressive candidates (and lord, there were a lot of them) pretty much all agreed to keep it positive and civil, and it worked. If the D6 symposium can lead to some discussion of how the candidates can work together, it will be worthwhile.


In the end, I supposed it’s too much to ask people who have decided they really want to be supervisors to think about the progressive movement first, and their own ambitions second. But they could try.

“No new taxes,” but fees and restrictions may apply

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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4

The agenda for the June 29 Board of Supervisors meeting reads like the fine print of a credit card statement, with fees piled upon more fees.  Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing a slew of increases to sums that must be forked over for a wide array of city services or permits as a way to bridge a gaping budget gap. With major cuts to critical services in the face of a dramatic revenue shortfall, it’s not surprising that the city is tightening its squeeze to make up for some of the damage.

Some of the proposals make a certain amount of sense. There are higher fees proposed for an underground parking lot at Golden Gate Park, which could potentially help dissuade motorists and promote more environmentally friendly transportation options. There are higher fees for tow truck operators, which most anyone who’s ever involuntarily had their car towed could get behind. And the fee for discharging a cannon may go up from $400 to $636. While we’re pretty sure that last one is more likely to irk people who attend military ceremonies, we nonetheless take delight in imagining a rambunctious crew of pirates spilling into the board chambers to oppose it.

But this roster of Newsom’s new hidden fees begs an important question: Why is a mayor so adamantly against raising taxes bent on vacuuming more money out of the pockets of small business owners with higher fees? After all, many of these proposed increases will squeeze struggling, Mom-and-Pop businesses just a little tighter. City permits for auto wreckers, billiard parlors, junk dealers, and massage establishments may go up significantly. The fee for taking an EMT course may get higher. Permits for selling food on the street, driving a pedicab, dealing in second-hand auto parts, or operating a shooting gallery could also increase. Even the annual permit fee for street artists (several of whom we wrote about in our Streets Issue) is getting more expensive.
 
The list of fee hikes is on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, and was referred to the full board by the Budget & Finance Subcommittee. Supervisors recently proposed a number of new revenue generating measures including a nickel-per-drink tax on alcoholic beverages, an increase to the hotel tax, and a restructuring of the business payroll tax.

“There are no new taxes in this budget,” Newsom declared during a June 1 announcement in which he unveiled his 2010-2011 budget. “I know some folks just prefer tax increases. I don’t.”

But why reject taxes outright and then quietly propose a bunch of fees that will place a higher burden on the individuals they impact?

“No new taxes” may sound like music to the ears of a public awash in financial woes, but Newsom’s hidden fees are not unlike taxes. Under this philosophy, it’s not desirable to ask everyone to pitch in an extra nickel the next time they buy a cocktail, but there’s no problem with asking the bar to fork over hundreds more annually for a health inspection. That doesn’t seem to be as simple as a campaign-ready “no new taxes” slogan, but then again, there’s a reason credit card companies bury their hidden fees in the fine print.

Mirkarimi wants state franchise fee change

Zelda Bronstein
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1
Mirkarimi wants state franchise fee change

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has introduced a resolution calling on the state Legislature to reform the law that allows Pacific Gas and Electric Company to pay a miniscule fee, in perpetuity, for the right to run its lines, poles and cables on and below the city streets.


The franchise fee was signed in 1939, and requires PG&E to pay just one half of one percent of its revenue to the city. Berkeley charges ten times that much. But since the deal has no expiration date, the supervisors can’t renegotiate it.


If San Francisco raised its fee to 5 percent for both electricity and gas the city would pick up an extra $50 million a year.


Both state Sen. Mark Leno and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano have told us they’re looking at ways the state Legislature could end perpetual franchise deals.


 

Supreme Court rejects Healthy SF challenge

Sasha Cuttler
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1
Supreme Court rejects Healthy SF challenge

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to consider a challenge to the Healthy San Francisco program that provides low-cost health coverage to city residents, partially funded by employers who refuse to provide health insurance for their employees, a mandate that prompted a lawsuit from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association.

The decision was a big victory for low-wage workers in the city, as well as California Assembly member Tom Ammiano, who was the driving force behind the program as a member of the Board of Supervisors, taking abuse from the business community for almost a year and holding firm on the need for employers to take responsibility for their employees. Without that mandate, Ammiano successfully argued, businesses that didn’t offer health benefits would enjoy a competitive advantage and their employees’ health care costs would often end up be paid by city taxpayers.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision is an affirmation of San Francisco’s landmark efforts to provide affordable health care to the uninsured. With over 50,000 people receiving health care services and prescription drugs, Healthy San Francisco is a national model for what can be accomplished when the public and private sector work in partnership towards a common goal”, Ammiano said in a prepared statement.

Mayor Gavin Newsom was eventually persuaded to support the mandate and he worked with Ammiano in crafting the final program, which he has since trumpeted as his own while campaigning for governor and then lieutenant governor, for which he won the Democratic nomination.

“The Supreme Court’s rejection of the challenge to Healthy San Francisco is a victory for the 53,000 San Franciscans who have healthcare today through our groundbreaking universal healthcare program. Healthy San Francisco is a model for healthcare reform that works. The High Court’s decision today ensures we can continue providing health care coverage to thousands who would otherwise go without care,” Newsom said in a prepared statement.

Newsom is a former restauranteur and GGRA member, but he did little to dissuade the group from bringing the lawsuit or in urging them to drop it. Many restaurants in San Francisco have taken to adding surcharges on customers’ bills, explicitly citing the increased cost of offering health insurance. But no restaurants that I know of include explicit surcharges for the membership dues they pay to GGRA or the extra contributions some restaurants made to continue pushing this lawsuit after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the city’s favor.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who personally lobbied the Obama Administration to change the federal government stance on whether employer mandates violate federal law, also released a statement thanking the relevant players and singling out businesses that opposed the GGRA lawsuit: “I applaud Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and Mayor Gavin Newsom for their leadership in crafting this policy.  We should be very thankful to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, too, whose thorough decision powerfully affirmed our arguments that Healthy San Francisco’s spending provisions were reasonable, fair and legal.  I would finally express my gratitude to all those from the business community who voiced their support for this program — especially Zazie and Medjool Restaurants, and Nibbi Construction, which filed amicus briefs on our behalf.”

Agnos: “I think Gavin’s gonna lose”

Sasha Cuttler
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11
Agnos: “I think Gavin’s gonna lose”

Former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos told the Guardian last night that he’d welcome the chance to be appointed a “caretaker mayor” for a year if Mayor Gavin Newsom wins his race for lieutenant governor, but he doesn’t think he’ll get that chance because “I think Gavin’s gonna lose.”

Agnos is one of several names that have been bandied about in the discussions of who the Board of Supervisors might appoint as acting mayor for a year if none of the top candidates running for mayor in 2011 – such as Aaron Peskin, Mark Leno, Leland Yee, or Dennis Herrera – are able to get six votes on the board in January 2010, when Newsom would vacate the Mayor’s Office if he moves on to Sacramento.

“I’m available, but I don’t need it,” Agnos said, noting that he would agree to not run for a full-term in 2011, which would be the main criteria for a caretaker mayor, a concept that would prevent any mayoral candidate from gaining the advantage of incumbency.

But Agnos said that Abel Maldonado, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, will be a tough challenge for Newsom, both because he’s a moderate Latino with a compelling personnel story, and because rich Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman will likely give Maldonado all the money and support he needs so she doesn’t have a Democratic rival as lieutenant governor.

As Agnos told us, “She will give him whatever he need to bury Newsom.”

Kim launches D6 campaign, stressing independence from “machine” politics

Sasha Cuttler
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45

Jane Kim launched her campaign for the District 6 seat on the Board of Supervisors last night during a spirited event at 111 Minna, showcasing some high-profile supporters and giving a speech that began with touting her early work on immigrant rights and homeless issues and ended with the declaration, “I’m not part of anyone’s machine and I’m certainly not a part of anyone’s master plan.”

That emphasis on her independence could be seen as a subtle dig at Debra Walker, another progressive who has been running for the seat for the last two years, who locked down early support from many progressive groups and officials, and whose supporters were unhappy with Kim’s late decision to enter the race, concerned it might split the vote and allow downtown-backed Theresa Sparks — who could be viewed as a “machine” candidate on the other end of the political spectrum — to steal the seat for the moderates.

When I asked what “machine” she meant and whether the comment was a reference to Walker’s supporters, Kim wouldn’t clarify the comment, refusing to criticize the Walker campaign and saying only, “I want to be a part of a new political process.”

And that new process seems to rely heavily on the energy of young people, including many of color, who dominated the crowd last night. Kim also signaled that she will be pushing a fairly bold progressive agenda that includes more city support for schools, Muni, immigrants, and low-income families, and making the streets more vibrant and democratic.

“The mantra of our campaign is to make our neighborhoods complete,” Kim said.

She proposed making substantial pedestian and bicycle improvements on several streets in her district, including 2nd, Folsom, Taylor, and Turk streets, creating more bikes lanes that are separated from car traffic, and turning many of the alleys in her district into more active public spaces. She called for the city to help fund youth programs and a longer school year and to offer more support to small businesses, which she called the city’s most important job generator.

Kim, a civil rights attorney and president of the school board, also emphasized the need to improve the tone of political debate in the city, which she helped accomplish on the school board (whose vice president, Hydra Mendoza, an employee of Mayor Gavin Newsom, was there in support). “People are disillusioned and disappointed with the process and the bickering,” Kim said.

Among Kim’s supporters at the event were Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, former Mayor Art Agnos, filmmaker Kevin Epps, Police Commissioner and immigrant rights activist Angela Chan, transportation activist Dave Synder, and representatives from a wide variety of community groups.

“She has epitomized the progressive values that I think all of San Francisco shares,” Chiu told the crowd, later adding, “She will be a part of the next generation of political leaders of San Francisco.”

“I’m really proud that Jane has put herself out there as a future leader and our supervisor,” said Epps, later adding, “I think Jane really has her ear to the streets.”

Kim pledged to run a clean campaign focused on her issues, and her only supporter to voice overt criticism of Walker was Agnos, who said he was impressed with Kim’s work with him last year in fighting Prop. D, which would have removed mid-Market from the city ban on new billboards, a measure that Walker supported.

“Prop. D for me was a tipping point, and Debra went with the commercial interests,” Agnos told the Guardian.

But Kim, 32, says her reason for running is to help push a progressive vision for the city and bring new blood into the political process.

“I have to tell you, I never wanted to go into politics,” she told the crowd. “But I had the desire to see some real change.”

Environmental groups appeal final EIR on Lennar’s Candlestick/Shipyard plan

Mary Magee
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0
Environmental groups appeal final EIR on Lennar’s Candlestick/Shipyard plan

The Sierra Club, the Golden Gate Audubon Society, the California Native Plant Society’ and San Francisco Tomorrow have filed an appeal with the Board of Supervisor’s and the city’s Planning Department over the Planning Commission’s June 3 certification of the city’s controversial final environment report (FEIR) for Lennar’s Candlestick Point/ Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment project.

The move means that the FEIR, which otherwise would not have come before the Board for review, now heads to the Board for a hearing within 30 days of the group’s June 21 appeal filing. The move also means that the City, which laid out an aggressive schedule for seeking approvals from a myriad of government agencies and departments, cannot seek further approval actions on the project until the Board holds a hearing, which will likely occur on or before July 20.

The San Francisco Bay chapter of the Sierra Club, the Golden Gate Audubon Society, the California Native Plant Society’s Yerba Buena Chapter and San Francisco Tomorrow cited nine major deficiencies in their appeal , but noted that by removing plans to a) build a bridge over Yosemite Slough, b)erect luxury condos on state parkland and b) compromise clean-up efforts at Parcel E2, which is the most polluted land at the shipyard, resolution of many of these disputed issues could be expedited.

“If the Board of Supervisors acts promptly, revisions to the EIR may be made quickly and result in a minimal delay in the progress of the project,” the appeal warns. “Alternately, resolution of many of these disputed issues may be expedited by a decision to remove from the FEIR and Project Plan the provisions for the bridge over the Yosemite Slough, the transfer of land in Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, and compromised clean-up efforts at Parcel E2.”

In their appeal, the four groups noted that they each group and its members represent “a sizeable constituency that has been actively participating in the development of the EIR” for almost a decade and that has conducted or funded studies to inform the Draft EIR and has filed comments to the DEIR and other planning documents.

“Unfortunately, the data, comments and testimony provided by the Appellants and their members have been dismissed or outright ignored by the Planning Department and the developer in this process, resulting in fatal flaws in the FEIR and necessitating this appeal,” the four groups state.

‘Because many portions of the FEIR are inaccurate and incomplete, the Planning Commission erred in adopting several findings and certifying the FEIR,” the appeal concludes. ‘Therefore, we are appealing the FEIR because:
1.    The FEIR failed to adequately analyze an alternate Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) router around Yosemite Slough;
2.    The FEIR failed to adequately assess impacts resulting form the landfill cap on Parcel E2, which is a lower standard for the clean-up than required by San Francisco voters as expressed in Proposition P;
3.    The FEIR inaccurately and incompletely assessed the impacts from transferring approximately 20 acres of public shoreline land in Candlestick Point State Recreation Area to the developer for construction of high-end housing;
4.    The FEIR failed to analyze those elements of the project’s Sustainability Plan that could have significant environmental impacts, including two proposed heating and cooling plants (which appear to be power plants) to serve at least 10,500 units in the Project and a Project-wide recycling collection system;
5.    The FEIR failed to adequately consider impacts to the bird-nesting island component of the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area’s proposed 34-acre Wetland Restoration Project, which is already permitted and planned for construction this year;
6.    The FEIR failed to adequately address impacts to eight MUNI lines, which would significantly increase transit times, increase delays during peak hours, potentially dissuade ridership, and/or require increased service, busses, or drivers;
7.    The FEIR failed to adequately assess impacts resulting from the construction and maintenance of the Project’s underground utility matrix;
8.    The FEIR failed to adequately address the fact that the Project will result in increases in air pollution that will exceed existing air quality standards—indeed even though the FEIR admits exceedences of air quality levels will occur, those statements are underestimates because the FEIR failed to consider that the development in combination with other development plans will result in significant traffic congestion on Highway 101 and Interstate 280 and fore more traffic onto surface streets; and
9.    The FEIR included conclusions based on false, inaccurate and/or biased statements as “evidence,” including (but not limited to) that one cannot have an ‘undisturbed nature experience” in an urban area as a rationale for dismissing impacts that will inevitably result from construction of the bridge over Yosemite Slough and/or the reduction of public land in the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area.

In their appeal, Mike Lynes, Conservation Director Golden Gate Audubon Society, Linda J.Shaffer, Vice President, California Native Plant Society, Yerba Buena Chapter, Jennifer Clary of San Francisco Tomorrow, and Arthur Feinstein, Sierra Club, San Francisco Bay Chapter, promised that each of the abovementioned deficiencies will be further documented by additional submissions to the record prior to a hearing on this appeal by the Board. So, stay tuned.

Bike Plan hearing yields lots of detail but no decision

Sasha Cuttler
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Bike Plan hearing yields lots of detail but no decision

The fate of San Francisco’s Bicycle Plan and the four-year-old court injunction against implementing its projects remains unclear following a nearly three-hour hearing today that delved deeply into the minutiae of traffic studies, mitigation requirements, and the dictates of the California Environmental Quality Act.

But Superior Court Judge Peter Busch did make a few things clear, most notably that it’s a legitimate decision for city leaders to give more street space to bikes, even if it slows down cars or Muni. “That’s the policy question that’s not for the court to decide,” he said, cutting off plaintiff attorney Mary Miles’ repeated arguments that the city shouldn’t be favoring bicyclists because they are a minority of road users. He later repeated the point: “I don’t get to decide that the Board of Supervisors’ policy is misguided.”

The issue at hand – which was argued to a level of detail that only a lawyer or traffic engineer could really appreciate – was whether policymakers had the benefit of a full analysis of all the various impacts and options before they unanimously decided to certify the four-volume EIR and green light 45 of the 60 near-term bike projects it studied.

“The analysis had to occur before the city approved the project,” Miles, who sued the city along with anti-bike activist Rob Anderson back in 2005, told the court today, charging that “there’s no mitigation or analysis in the EIR” that their suit forced the city to prepare and adopt last year.

Deputy City Attorney Audrey Williams Pearson strongly disagreed, asserting that “one of the great things about this EIR is the breadth of alternatives studied” and noting, “For complicated projects, caselaw is clear that it’s almost impossible to eliminate all impacts.”

And this is certainly a complicated case, as all sides acknowledged. Part of the reason for that was the city’s 2004 decision to mention dozens of specific projects in the plan – a legal strategy some bike activists have criticized – without doing a full EIR, which has proven to be a complicated endeavor that took two years and blazed a new regulatory trail because of all the intersections and factors it needed to study.

“There probably has never been an EIR for a project like this. This is a strange project to prepare an EIR for,” Busch acknowledged, noting the difficulty in deciphering what is then legally required by CEQA. In the end, he gave no indication how he was leaning, asking both sides to submit proposed orders by July 6 and responses to those orders by July 13, meaning that it will likely be at least another month (and up to 90 days) before we have a ruling.

But Busch certainly didn’t seem to buy Miles argument that this was a fatally flawed study that did little to study alternatives or mitigation measures, which she charged was a gross violation of CEQA and abuse of the city’s discretion.

Miles seemed to be throwing out a wide range of accusations hoping that something would stick, belittling every city claim to have diligently looking at alternatives and employing hyperbole and sweeping denunciations with such regularity that Busch finally challenged her on it.

“That’s such an over-argument it leaves me wondering about the rest of your argument,” Busch said after Miles asserted that the voluminous EIR contained no references to any of its underlying studies and source data.

Busch also noted the contradiction between her complaints that the EIR didn’t include all the traffic count data that went into its formulas for determining changes to the level of service at intersections and her complaint that the EIR was too big and unwieldy. “So you’re saying the info should have been added to what you say is already an overlarge EIR?” Busch asked.

Later, he took Miles to task for advocating that the threshold the EIR used for determining whether delays to Muni service rose to the level of a significant impact should have been the subject of separate public hearings, just as she argued that virtually every detail in the plan should have been explicitly laid out in full detail and subject to challenge.

“You’re describing an endless process that would be impossible to comply with,” Busch told Miles.

In fact, Pearson said CEQA specifically says such fine details shouldn’t be in EIRs. For example, while the EIR discusses impacts to the level of service at every intersection affected by the plan – a complicated formula involving 30 different data points, which were in a Transportation Impact Study that the EIR referenced – she said it didn’t need to all be in the EIR. “If this detail was in the EIR, it would turn the four-volume EIR into an eight-volume EIR,” she said.

Miles challenged the city on not going into that same level of detail in justifying why potential mitigation measures for each impact weren’t included in the EIR, something Pearson argued isn’t legally required (although she did trip up in citing a case that did require such analysis, saying that court ruling was wrong and earning a rebuke from Busch, who said it’s not in his power to overrule a higher court’s ruling).

Pearson also noted that for all the complaints about not studying enough alternatives, neither Miles nor Anderson have suggested any. “I think it’s telling that the petitioners haven’t come up with a single alternative that we should have looked at,” Pearson said before acknowledging the point by Miles and Busch that’s not incumbent upon petitioners in cases like this.

But Pearson seemed more persuasive when she noted that in a built out city, there’s only so much the city can do to find creative ways to offset the traffic impacts of giving more space to bikes. “This is not your typical project. We are not working on a blank slate. We are working within the constraints of the city’s existing roadways,” Pearson said.

In the end, Busch asked both sides what the remedies might be if he finds some flaws in the EIR, expressing a desire to wrap this case up without extending the current wide-ranging injunction against all bike projects. But Anderson said the hearing gave him hope that the judge might not let the plan proceed without more work: “It’s taken longer than I thought, which tells me he has some serious concerns.”

CompStat vs. community policing

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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CompStat vs. community policing

By Alex Emslie


news@sfbg.com


Two competing visions for the San Francisco Police Department are central to a looming debate involving the mayor and his police chief, who favor the high-tech yet impersonal CompStat model, and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors who are pushing for a community-based, cops-walking-beats blueprint for SFPD.


District 5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi introduced a proposed ballot measure on June 7 that would require the police chief to institute foot patrols in all districts and ask the Police Commission to establish a written community policing policy. SFPD Chief George Gascón opposes the initiative, instead favoring a reliance on the new CompStat system to determine how best to use police resources.


The terms “CompStat” and “community policing” have become trendy buzz words, UC Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring told the Guardian, so they mean different things to the police departments that employ them, muddying the waters of the current debate.


“When labels get popular, they get pasted into lots of different things,” said Zimring, who wrote The Great American Crime Decline (Oxford University Press, 2006) and is working on a second book about the crime rate drop in the 1990s in New York City, where CompStat orginated. Yet the two models point to differing law enforcement philosophies.


At its most basic, CompStat uses computerized crime mapping software to drive police deployment decisions. It emphasizes lowering a city’s crime rate by centralizing authority, spotting statistical trends, and targeting crime hot spots. Community policing, a model embraced by many U.S. police departments in the 1980s and ’90s before CompStat swept the nation, grounds police officers in the neighborhoods they serve, decentralizing authority. The model seeks to prevent crime with regular patrols that develop relationships on their beats and lets the community help set law enforcement priorities.


“There is not community policing in San Francisco,” Mirkarimi — the only member of the board to go through the police academy — told the Guardian. “I don’t care what anybody says. If they say there is, then it is isolated. It’s unique to that particular experience or location.”


Proponents of CompStat insist the new model is really just a part of community policing. Gascón wrote a letter to the Board of Supervisors in February saying the proposed legislation “oversteps the jurisdiction of the legislative branch,” “attempts to give district station captains authority and discretion that rightfully belong to the chief of police,” and “will deprive the department of the flexibility it needs to address public safety throughout the city.”


Mirkarimi doesn’t oppose CompStat and said he sees merit in the program’s statistical collection, which has long been a shortcoming in the SFPD. “But I caution against any over-reliance on CompStat as a method that dictates how policing and public safety should be applied,” Mirkarimi told us. “Because the casualty of this over-reliance will be a compromising of any hopes of having true community policing.”


The SFPD website portrays CompStat as starting with data collection and then, similar to community policing, encouraging officers to find creative solutions to ongoing problems, anything from singular incidents of burglary to repeated graffiti or even a spike in murders. The crime triangle, a lasting symbol of community policing, illustrates that victims, suspects, and locations are all necessary for crime to thrive, and successfully policing even one of those factors can prevent crime. But CompStat programs often lack sustained commitment to building relationships with neighborhoods.


“Compstat seemed to engender a pattern of organizational response to crime spikes in hot spots that was analogous to the Whack-a-Mole game found at fairs and carnivals,” argued a 2003 study commissioned by the national Police Foundation titled “CompStat in Practice: An in-depth Analysis of Three Cities.”


The study found immediate contradictions in Lowell, Mass.; Minneapolis, and Newark, N.J. between beat officers’ new responsibility to “simply follow their superiors’ orders” and the community policing model that cast them as individual, authoritative protectors of their neighborhoods. CompStat centralizes authority with the higher echelons of SFPD. It includes bimonthly meetings in which station captains are grilled by SFPD brass and are expected to answer for the statistics in their district.


“Given the gap between the two models of policing, CompStat naturally tends to encounter the greatest resistance in departments that are most committed to community policing,” the study found.


Understaffed and poorly trained crime analysis units tasked with deciphering data patterns into useful correlations (for example, between drug crimes and murder) was another barrier to the success of CompStat outlined in the study. SFPD’s crime analysis unit consists of three civilians housed at the Hall of Justice, SFPD spokesperson Lt. Lyn Tomioka told us. They are not deployed to district stations and are supervised by a lieutenant who also has other responsibilities.


“There are a lot of rough edges. There’s a lot of non-fit there,” Zimring told the Guardian. “Who sets the priorities? CompStat priorities are always crime prevention, and they are set, and tactics are provided, by the chief of police. He is, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, ‘the decider.’ Community policing is supposed to be more cooperative and organic.”


Gascón initiated CompStat in San Francisco in October 2009, although Mayor Gavin Newsom has been touting the CompStat model since he first ran for mayor in 2003, when a campaign policy brief gushed about its “accurate and timely intelligence, rapid deployment, effective tactics, and relentless follow-up and assessment.” Initially, however, SFPD only took baby steps, using a confusing plot system to map crimes. That changed when Gascón took over as police chief last August, bringing experience in the program with him from the Los Angeles Police Department.


SFPD officials say vendor contract costs to start the system’s electronic crime mapping were less than $1 million, and an additional $1 million has been proposed for next year’s budget for technology upgrades in the CompStat unit. But the numbers so far haven’t backed up the boldest claims. SFPD reports 24 homicides this year as of June 12, up 20 percent from last year’s rate for early June. Homicide arrests are down from 12 last year to eight this year. Occurrences of rape are also up by 12 percent, but overall violent crime is down 2 percent compared to this time last year.


Gascón wrote that foot patrols are a valuable tool for community policing in San Francisco, but he doesn’t want to be forced to maintain them with limited staffing. Newsom’s proposed budget maintains current SFPD staffing, 2,317 sworn officers, while many other city departments received deep staffing cuts. Progressive supervisors have pledged to closely scrutinize SFPD’S budget.


Community policing was law enforcement’s response to civil unrest in the 1960s and ’70s, when police were seen as the enforcers of institutional power. Previous beat patrol methods largely ended when the 911 system came along, and the emphasis was placed on calls for service, statistics, and response times, leaving officers with little time to patrol and prevent crime.


The change to community policing emphasized neighborhood input and officers becoming an organic part of the community they served. Citizen contributions, generally through community meetings, began to drive decision-making. Foot patrols were revived and officers were once again expected to have a physical presence and a connection to the community they served.


That change was seen as particularly important in poor neighborhoods and communities of color, where police can sometimes be seen as an occupying army and residents were reluctant to cooperate with investigations. Officials hoped to prevent crimes by showing a presence in neighborhoods rather than simply reacting to them when someone called.


Mirkarimi says a CompStat-driven police force would be a return to that reactive model, potentially sacrificing the long-term commitment required to build trust between a neighborhood and its police department, which is central to community policing. “[CompStat] undermines the principles and practices of community policing because true community policing requires a discipline and a protocol that is sustained,” he said.


While either approach can theoretically result in the same practices, such as a foot beat patrol in a given neighborhood, Zimring said the reasoning behind it depends on the model. “CompStat to begin with is completely crime-driven,” Zimring said. “The reason you have it is to reduce crimes. It involves computerized mapping of crimes. It involves allocating resources to so-called hot spots, and it involves the police department imposing its own priorities as opposed to implementing community priorities.”


The Board of Supervisors will consider Mirkarimi’s measure and SFPD budget in July, airing a debate that could continue on to the November ballot, when voters would decide whether to maintain their faith in CompStat and the SFPD or ask for more community policing and foot patrols.

Danger zone

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Danger zone

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Rita Connolly, a registered nurse who has worked with inmates in San Francisco jails since 1985, says she’ll never forget the time she had to act fast to save a prisoner’s life.

The man had just arrived from a different jail and was waiting to go through intake. He was slumped over and looking ill, too weak to voice a complaint. Several worried inmates beckoned Connolly over, and once she examined him, she realized he was in the midst of a heart attack. He was rushed to the emergency room. He lived — but sustained irreversible heart damage.

“He could have been someone who didn’t live,” Connolly told the Guardian, but he also could have had a better outcome. The inmate had alerted someone that he was having chest pains earlier in the day, she later learned, as he was boarding a bus from an Alameda County Jail. A medical services worker examined him just before the bus left, but allowed him to proceed. By the time he arrived in San Francisco, the warning signals had progressed to a full-blown heart attack.

The story highlights an extreme example of a trend Connolly said she observes regularly — inmates from counties that use privatized jail health services aren’t receiving the same standard of care that San Francisco provides. Sometimes, there are obvious signs that the care is inadequate, placing inmates’ health at risk.

Alameda’s jail health services contractor, Tennessee-based Prison Health Services Inc. (PHS), has made headlines before for a track record marred by inmate deaths and lawsuits alleging negligence. PHS has expressed interest in contracting with San Francisco if the city opened the door to privatization, which Mayor Gavin Newsom has once again proposed in his latest budget.

That budget also calls for cuts to community-based health and human service programs that threaten to erode the safety net for those battling mental health issues, drug addiction, and chronic health problems, all proposals now being weighed by the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee.

But it is the debate over whether to make a $11 million cut to jail health services that raises the most thorny and telling questions about what sacrifices are considered acceptable — and what populations can be the most easily targeted — in the quest to balance a budget without the tax increases that Newsom opposes.

 

OPEN WOUNDS

In San Francisco, the city’s Department of Public Health contracts with the Sheriff’s Department to address inmates’ medical needs. Privatized jail health care would be cheaper, though by how much is a moving target. But nobody is arguing that the care would be better.

Newsom’s budget proposes switching to a private firm as early as January 2011 to help solve a daunting budget deficit. The proposal originated with the Mayor’s Office, and Sheriff Mike Hennessey — whose department would realize the potential savings — went along by including the item in his departmental budget.

In years past, the Board of Supervisors has repeatedly resisted the proposal and is likely to do so again — but rejecting it would mean finding up to $11 million in savings elsewhere.

“The fear is that when you bring privatization into the picture, there is a financial pressure to cut corners. And even though that may end up saving some money … the price that comes with it is too high,” Sup. David Campos said at a recent budget hearing. Referencing stories about inmates who died needlessly in jail under the care of for-profit firms, Campos said he isn’t willing to risk a similar tragedy occurring in San Francisco.

The proposal has been floated repeatedly since as far back as the early 1990s, according to healthcare workers whose jobs have been jeopardized by privatization before. Newsom proposed the cut last year, and the year before.

“In absence of the budget problem, [Hennessey] probably would not have proposed this, nor would we have proposed this,” Newsom’s budget director, Greg Wagner, told members of the Budget and Finance Committee at a May 26 hearing, adding that the mayor shares concerns about prisoner safety. Newsom’s office did not return multiple calls requesting comment for this story.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to a hear an appeal by the state of California to the federal court ruling that substandard medical care in California prisons constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and necessitates the early release of about 40,000 prisoners. At the May 26 hearing, healthcare workers familiar with the interiors of county jails and state penitentiaries came forward with horror stories.

“Every week I receive at least one inmate who has an open gunshot wound. They have not seen medical care in the county jails,” Dr. Elena Tootell, chief medical officer at San Quentin state prison, told committee members. “It’s quite surprising to me that they send inmates with gunshot wounds to prison. They just walk off the bus. They often have paper towels stuck to their bodies, seeping the blood. And then we are obligated to take care of them. This does not happen from San Francisco County, I’m going to tell you that right now.”

Tootell said she’d observed a significant difference between those counties using private firms and those using public health care. “They will have a fracture — they’ve never been splinted, they’ve never seen a doctor. They’re on anticoagulation [medication], but haven’t had their blood checked in weeks and have bruises all over their body.”

Connolly echoed similar concerns. For example, she told the Guardian, she’s found herself asking questions like, “You were on AIDS medication before you got arrested and now you’re not?”

Susanne Paradis, a healthcare research contractor with SEIU Local 1021, rejects the premise that the same services could be provided at a lower price. Under a private model, she says, the priority is to keep costs low — and that means doing less.

A key issue, Paradis said, is that private firms tend to rely more heavily on licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) — lower-paid medical staffers who aren’t trained to assess patient’s medical needs and cannot administer the same care that registered nurses (RNs) can. Using PHS data, Paradis found that in Alameda, there is one RN for every 92 inmates, compared with one RN per 32 inmates in San Francisco.

“An RN has the ability to assess, observe, and determine if there’s emergency care needed,” Paradis explained. “An LVN does not have the ability to do that.”

John Poh, a nurse practitioner stationed at a jail in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice, explained the difference this way: “The more RNs you have working for you, the fewer deaths you have.”

PHS, an obvious point of comparison with San Francisco since it serves Alameda, declined to answer questions about its services. Instead, media spokesperson Pat Nolan e-mailed a brief statement. “We are excited to hear that San Francisco is considering the contracting of correctional health care,” he wrote. “Should the city choose to go through an RFP process, we would look forward to participating. We think it is the right thing to do for the city and its taxpayers.”

 

LINES OF DEFENSE

While those incarcerated in San Francisco jails can be thought of by some as criminals, nuisances, or miscreants, those requiring medical attention are patients in the eyes of the jail healthcare workers.

Inmates routinely enter the system with diabetes, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, heart problems, liver disease, and substance abuse issues, Connolly said. On occasion, a woman will arrive in jail only to learn that she is pregnant. Mental health problems are common, and some battle psychiatric issues in combination with physical ailments.

“Overall, our patient population has had little access to health care. For many people, we’re the only show in town,” Connolly noted.

Poh said some problems could spiral out of control if jail health staff didn’t nip them in the bud. If an inmate is exhibiting signs of tuberculosis, for instance, they’ll immediately get a mask and be sent to the hospital for screening. Sexually transmitted diseases are also a priority for treatment. “You don’t want that person going out infected,” Poh explained.

The city takes a proactive stance when it comes to treating inmates, Poh said, because at the end of the day, county jail is a revolving door. “Everybody leaves county jail. They’re either going home, to a program, or to prison.” If people are released back into the community with contagious, untreated health problems, the risk of exposure can spread beyond jailhouse walls.

San Francisco’s current system is considered a first line of defense, in which inmates are “seen as members of the community who happen to be in jail right now,” Paradis said.

Privatizing jail-health services would constitute a blow to a wider public health safety net in San Francisco that is already weathering painful cuts. At a June 15 Beilenson Hearing, a state-mandated opportunity for community members to explain the impacts of proposed health and human services cuts to the Board of Supervisors, people came out in droves to protest cuts to programs serving vulnerable residents.

Kristie Miller, executive assistant of the Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE) Project, told the Guardian that her organization serves 350 clients a year who are victims of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. The organization stands to lose its mental health funding, so Miller had come out to speak against the cut. “It provides trauma-focused psychotherapy for survivors who’ve experienced a lot of abuse, violence, and exploitation,” she said.

Jeff Schindler, chief development officer for the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, said he was there protesting a 79 percent funding cut to his organization’s 108-bed residential program on Treasure Island. “We won’t have a place for people to actually go into residential treatment for their mental health and substance abuse issues,” he said. “These are individuals who are going to get their needs met somehow, somewhere, and generally that’s going to be at San Francisco General Hospital.”

It’s in this context that the proposal to contract out for jail health services is being proposed. “It’s easy to dismiss prisoners as probably the least valued sector of our society,” Deirdre Wilson, of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, noted at a May 26 hearing. “But the right to health care is a human right.”

 

FOR THE RECORD

According to an estimate prepared by the Sheriff’s Department, the city could save anywhere from $11 million to $14 million by contracting out for jail health services, and Newsom’s budget assumes a savings of “over $11 million per year.”

However, the Controller’s Office continues to revise that figure as the debate shifts and concerns are raised about the skill mix that a private firm would use. “We don’t really know what it would cost to contract out, unless there was an RFP and a response to the proposal and some discussion about what the staffing requirements would be,” Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda explained at a June 17 hearing. She added that the potential range of savings spanned from $3 million to $11 million annually, depending on decisions that would have to be made about acceptable staffing levels.

San Francisco’s inmate population has shrunk in the wake of the crime lab scandal, and a city-owned facility in San Bruno has been temporarily shuttered. Sheriff Hennessey told the Guardian he believed medical care in the jails could be provided either by city workers or a private firm, but added that he’s “quite happy” with the status quo. Noting that 25 of the 58 counties in California already use private firms, he added, “It’s not an unusual or unique thing.” Hennessey also said the decision was linked to a broader philosophical and political question, and that he doubted there was support on the board for the proposal to go forward.

Mitch Katz, director of the city’s Department of Public Health, did not directly say whether he supported Newsom’s proposal. “I think our Jail Health Services does a great job, but I do understand that the city is facing an extremely difficult budget year and that ultimately the budget must be balanced,” Katz wrote in an e-mail.

Gabriel Haaland, who represents SEIU Local 1021 union members whose jobs would be affected by the proposal, voiced strong opposition at a June 17 Budget and Finance Committee meeting. “‘We don’t care about these people because they’re poor and they’re in jail.’ That’s the message” in the decision to contract out, Haaland charged. The item was continued and will be revisited as budget deliberations unfold.

How SF can get $50 million a year from PG&E

David Talbot
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How SF can get $50 million a year from PG&E

EDITORIAL Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Budget Committee, is looking for ways to bring another $100 million into the city’s coffers this year. There’s a hotel tax initiative headed for the fall ballot. He’s talking about an increase in the real-estate transfer tax for high-end properties. And he and his colleagues are looking into a tax on commercial rents.

Those are all valid ideas. But there’s another way the city can bring in as much as $50 million more a year — without raising anyone’s taxes. It just involves increasing the franchise fee Pacific Gas and Electric Co. pays to the city.

PG&E uses the city’s streets and rights-of-way to run its gas lines and electricity cables; the company doesn’t pay rent for that space. Instead, it pays an annual franchise fee to the city, a percentage of its gross sales. Other utilities pay, too — Comcast, for example, pays 5 percent of its gross to San Francisco every year for its cable-TV franchise.
PG&E pays 0.05 percent for electricity sales, and 1 percent for natural gas.

That deal was reached in 1939. The Board of Supervisors back then gave PG&E the lowest franchise fee in California, a pittance, a fraction of what other cities and counties charge — and the contract has no expiration date. It’s a perpetual deal, something highly unusual.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi wants to open up the 72-year-old contract for renegotiation and raise the fee significantly. It seems like a perfectly reasonable idea — Berkeley charges PG&E 5 percent for electricity. San Diego charges 3.5 percent. If the city is desperately scrambling for money to close the budget gap, why are we leaving so many millions on the table?

The numbers are big. In 2008, according to the Controller’s Office, PG&E paid San Francisco $3.5 million for electricity sales and $3.16 million for gas. If the city raised both fees to the level that cable TV providers pay, the general fund would pick up another $50 million.

It seems crazy that a franchise deal signed seven decades ago, by a board that was in PG&E’s pocket, should tie the hands of elected officials today. Most legislative bodies have rules barring any laws that would tie the hands of future legislators forever.

It’s particularly ironic for this to happen in the only city in the United States that is mandated by federal law (the Raker Act) to run a public power system.

But according to City Attorney Dennis Herrera, raising the fee would be very difficult; California law allows perpetual utility franchises. If Herrera is right (and no city attorney has ever been willing to challenge PG&E on this), then the state Legislature needs to act.

One idea from Mirkarimi’s office: simply mandate that all perpetual utility franchises increase every year by the cost of living index, up to a maximum of, say, 5 percent. If all the years since 1939 were counted, the city would be at the max today.

An even simpler option: the state could outlaw perpetual franchise deals — something that should have been done years ago — and mandate that all existing deals expire on, say, Jan. 1, 2011. That would give San Francisco six months to negotiate a new deal with PG&E, and the money from that deal would save a lot of city services.

Both Assembly Member Tom Ammiano and state Sen. Mark Leno have expressed interest in a bill that would open up San Francisco’s franchise fee, and both told us that they’re looking into it. Leno already has a bill barring PG&E from using ratepayer money on political campaigns; potentially, a franchise fee amendment could be added to it. The deadline for introducing bills for this session has already passed, so it would be a little tricky to find a way to change state law in the next few months. But it’s worth a try: there’s never been a time when PG&E was less popular in Sacramento. The company violated its own agreement with the Legislature, promising to support the law authorizing local community choice aggregation systems then turned around and spent nearly $50 million to overturn it.

Leno and Ammiano should pursue a bill as soon as possible to get rid of one of the great scandals in city history, a sweetheart deal in 1939 that has saved PG&E billions and cost the city dearly.

How SF can get $50 million a year from PG&E

David Talbot
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EDITORIAL Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Budget Committee, is looking for ways to bring another $100 million into the city’s coffers this year. There’s a hotel tax initiative headed for the fall ballot. He’s talking about an increase in the real-estate transfer tax for high-end properties. And he and his colleagues are looking into a tax on commercial rents.

Those are all valid ideas. But there’s another way the city can bring in as much as $50 million more a year — without raising anyone’s taxes. It just involves increasing the franchise fee Pacific Gas and Electric Co. pays to the city.

PG&E uses the city’s streets and rights-of-way to run its gas lines and electricity cables; the company doesn’t pay rent for that space. Instead, it pays an annual franchise fee to the city, a percentage of its gross sales. Other utilities pay, too — Comcast, for example, pays 5 percent of its gross to San Francisco every year for its cable-TV franchise.

PG&E pays 0.05 percent for electricity sales, and 1 percent for natural gas.

That deal was reached in 1939. The Board of Supervisors back then gave PG&E the lowest franchise fee in California, a pittance, a fraction of what other cities and counties charge — and the contract has no expiration date. It’s a perpetual deal, something highly unusual.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi wants to open up the 72-year-old contract for renegotiation and raise the fee significantly. It seems like a perfectly reasonable idea — Berkeley charges PG&E 5 percent for electricity. San Diego charges 3.5 percent. If the city is desperately scrambling for money to close the budget gap, why are we leaving so many millions on the table?

The numbers are big. In 2008, according to the Controller’s Office, PG&E paid San Francisco $3.5 million for electricity sales and $3.16 million for gas. If the city raised both fees to the level that cable TV providers pay, the general fund would pick up another $50 million.

It seems crazy that a franchise deal signed seven decades ago, by a board that was in PG&E’s pocket, should tie the hands of elected officials today. Most legislative bodies have rules barring any laws that would tie the hands of future legislators forever.

It’s particularly ironic for this to happen in the only city in the United States that is mandated by federal law (the Raker Act) to run a public power system.
But according to City Attorney Dennis Herrera, raising the fee would be very difficult; California law allows perpetual utility franchises. If Herrera is right (and no city attorney has ever been willing to challenge PG&E on this), then the state Legislature needs to act.

One idea from Mirkarimi’s office: simply mandate that all perpetual utility franchises increase every year by the cost of living index, up to a maximum of, say, 5 percent. If all the years since 1939 were counted, the city would be at the max today.

An even simpler option: the state could outlaw perpetual franchise deals — something that should have been done years ago — and mandate that all existing deals expire on, say, Jan. 1, 2011. That would give San Francisco six months to negotiate a new deal with PG&E, and the money from that deal would save a lot of city services.

Both Assembly Member Tom Ammiano and state Sen. Mark Leno have expressed interest in a bill that would open up San Francisco’s franchise fee, and both told us that they’re looking into it. Leno already has a bill barring PG&E from using ratepayer money on political campaigns; potentially, a franchise fee amendment could be added to it. The deadline for introducing bills for this session has already passed, so it would be a little tricky to find a way to change state law in the next few months. But it’s worth a try: there’s never been a time when PG&E was less popular in Sacramento. The company violated its own agreement with the Legislature, promising to support the law authorizing local community choice aggregation systems then turned around and spent nearly $50 million to overturn it.

Leno and Ammiano should pursue a bill as soon as possible to get rid of one of the great scandals in city history, a sweetheart deal in 1939 that has saved PG&E billions and cost the city dearly.

SF mayoral analysis in the NY Times misses the mark

Sasha Cuttler
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SF mayoral analysis in the NY Times misses the mark

I have praised Bay Citizen’s early work and I think Gerry Shih is a smart young reporter, but I think their analysis of who will be San Francisco’s next mayor – which ran in today’s New York Times – was off the mark and shows they don’t yet have a good grasp of this city’s political dynamics. And a big reason for that is – just like the Examiner and the Chronicle – they relied too much on downtown players who consistently misread those dynamics, at least in recent years.

The one thing it got right was naming Aaron Peskin as one of the frontrunners to succeed Newsom if he is elected lieutenant governor. Peskin is really the only politico in town he has been putting big plays together these days, whether it be keeping Democratic Party leadership in progressive hands or defeating the 555 Washington project. So he might be the only one who can count to six with this current progressive-dominated board.

But nobody really thinks David Chiu is a frontrunner, despite Shih’s claim. Chiu has been a pretty good board president, but remember that he was elected as a compromise candidate (with lots of help from Peskin) after the then-frontrunners, Ross Mirkarimi and Bevan Dufty, couldn’t put the votes together. And since then, he has disappointed his progressive colleagues on several votes, making them unlikely to support him for mayor.

Besides, it will be difficult for any supervisor to get six votes when they can’t vote for themselves, which also makes me scoff at Shih’s contention that John Avalos and David Campos are running for mayor (two supervisors who are close to the Guardian and have never indicated to us that they’re running, even when we’ve asked, although they might each eventually become mayors). Ross Mirkarimi is more likely and wants the job, but would have a tough time getting a board majority to give is to him.

Shih told the Guardian that he’s been getting lots of critical feedback on his article today, and while he said Chiu and Peskin are names that kept coming up in his interviews, Shih admits that the attractive narrative of the protege challenging his mentor perhaps skewed the final analysis: “The relationship between those two guys ended up getting played up in the story.”

The article makes several other mistakes as well (and not just the obvious factual errors, like getting the mayoral election year wrong, as well as the year Feinstein left office, both of which have since been corrected online). It left City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s name out entirely, despite the fact that he’s already declared his intention to run for mayor and could certainly be a compromise candidate. Public Defender Jeff Adachi also wasn’t mentioned, even though he has a better chance than half the people on Shiu’s list, such as Willie Brown or Ed Harrington, who downtown may like but progressives really don’t.

Two strong possibilities for mayor – Mark Leno and Leland Yee – were given only passing mention in the article even though they are far more likely choices than Chiu. Both Leno and Yee have aggressively worked both the centrist and progressive sides of the aisle and are in great positions to run for mayor or be appointed by the board.

The hopes for a Chinese-American mayor that Shih placed with Chiu are probably better placed with Yee, who has worked with Rose Pak and other business interests while also having a history of endorsing progressive candidates, which he’ll be able to call in when he runs (and yes, unlike other candidates on Shih’s list, Yee has actually declared his intention to run).

Similarly, Leno has good relations with progressives on the board, which will be tested a bit this fall as he campaigns for moderate supervisorial candidate Scott Wiener and navigates the wedge issue minefield, but it’s easy to see how with the right outcomes this fall and key deals cut, Leno could emerge as the frontrunner.

The dynamics of this thing are incredibly complicated, but if I was in Shih’s shoes and was asked to name the two frontrunners, I’d probably say Peskin and Leno, with Yee a close third and Herrera as an outside possibility. Or it could be none of them if nobody can count to six and the option of a caretaker mayor who agrees not to run later (such as an Art Agnos) seems like the only way forward.

As politicos Alex Clemens and David Latterman said in their post-election analysis on June 10, this is very complicated and will be the subject of many deals by experienced insiders (of which Chiu really isn’t one just yet). “Everyone is gaming this thing out and trying to figure out what happens,” Clemens said.

But there is one scenario in which I could see Chiu figuring prominently, and that’s in what happens if both Newsom and Kamala Harris win their respective state races. Chiu has expressed a desire to be District Attorney, a chance that he might get if he can help play kingmaker with whoever becomes our next mayor.

So perhaps that qualifies him as a frontrunner of sorts after all.

The Gaza resolution

Zelda Bronstein
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The Gaza resolution

I know that the discussion over the John Avalos/Sophie Maxwell resolution on the Gaza flotilla took a long time, and kept the supervisors and assorted city employees at work until midnight, and Sweet Melissa says that cost the city some money. And she makes the same argument we hear all the time when these things come up:


Run for Congress. Jump onto a plane. Send money to a worthy organization. But don’t pat yourselves on the back for a job well done for getting a resolution passed at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. No one cares what supervisors in San Francisco think about foreign policy — not other governments, not the U.S. government and especially not those of us who live here.


And while I agree that the Avalos/Maxwell resolution was long, and isn’t going to change anyone’s foreign policy, and a lot of the other supervisors wish the thing had never come up and consider it a terrible time suck, let me gently argue the contrary.


I remember back in 1984, when a group of Berkeley activists put a measure on that city’s ballot calling on the United States to reduce its aid to Israel by the amount that Israel was spending on settlements in the occupied territories. It bitterly divided the Berkeley City Council, stirred up a giant fuss on the city’s left and led to a long, dramatic meeting of the progressive coalition called Berkeley Citizens Action. BCA was at that point the equivalent of a political party that dominated city politics.


There were some BCA members who thought the measure was horrible, anti-semitic and needed to be killed. There were some who argued that the situation in the occupied territories was so bad that Americans needed to take a stand. There were others who said this was none of Berkeley’s business — much as a lot of San Francisco pundits say that the Avalos resolution was none of San Francisco’s business.


But I was there and I watched all of this come down — and in the end, it was a good thing for Berkeley, for progressive politics, and for the way the left in the Bay Area thought about the Middle East.


Lee Halterman, who was an aide to then-Rep Ron Dellums, chaired the BCA meeting where the measure was debated, and he did a fabulous job — everyone got a chance to speak, nobody was cut off, the discussion was remarkably civil and in the end, the group voted not to endorse either side. “This was healthy for BCA,” Halterman told me afterward. “This was a discussion that we needed to have.”


I didn’t know much of anything about the politics of Israel’s settlement policies back then, and I got quite an education. The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination committee folks came down to the Guardian and — calmly, without harsh rhetoric, explained why the continuing settlement construction was creating a serious obstacle to future peace (they were absolutely right). I learned that John B. Oakes, the former editorial page editor of the New York Times, had written a series of columns saying, in essence, that building all the new settlements was going to make a two-state solution almost impossible. Slowly, political observers who fully supported Israel on almost every issue were starting to question the Israeli government’s actions.


We heard the other side, too: Anna Rabkin, the Berkeley city auditor and an icon on the Berkeley left, came in and told us how painful this would be to progressive Jews and how harmful it would be to the progressive agenda. She made a powerful, impassioned argument. 


And all of this came to a head with a ballot campaign that generated both heat and light. We endorsed Measure E (I wrote the endorsement myself); it went down overwhelmingly, but it got a lot of people thinking. I think today it would pass overwhelmingly. And while the usual snipers complained the “Berserkeley” was wasting everyone’s time and money on a foreign policy statement that nobody would pay attention to anyway, I think a lot of us were glad it happened.


And I think that the members of Congress who represented the Bay Area were paying close attention.


So let’s not trash the Avalos/Maxwell resolution so quickly. Sometimes these debates are good; sometimes they help the local voters — who, after all, decide who to elect to Congress, the U.S. Senate and the White House — hear conflicting sides of a complicated story.


The Gaza flotilla wasn’t just about breaking the blockade; it was about getting people in the United States to pay attention to a terrible situation that the daily papers and TV stations typically ignore. I don’t see why it’s so bad for the San Francisco supervisors to help spread that word. 

Newsom’s plan for DCCC domination

Zelda Bronstein
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Newsom’s plan for DCCC domination

Gavin’s not quite ready to take over the world, or even California, but he’s not leaving office without trying to mess up the progressive majority on the Democratic County Central Committee. The plan he hatched June 15: Ban elected city officials from sitting on the DCCC. The idea: Get rid of Supervisors David Campos, David Chiu, John Avalos and Eric Mar. The overall plan: With the progressive supervisors — who have high name recognition and thus get easily elected — gone, the Newsom allies can take back control of the local Democratic Party.


It’s a pretty blatant move — far beyond Aaron Peskin’s so-called coup. And I must say, it’s a bit hypocritical.


See, the DCCC isn’t just made up of 24 elected members. Every San Francisco Democrat who holds state or national office — or who is a candidate for state or national office — is also an automatic member. So Senator Diane Feinstein is a DCCC member; so is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and Sen. Mark Leno. And guess who gets a seat this fall? Lt. governor candidate Gavin Newsom. People like Feinstein and Pelosi never show up; at best, they send a proxy. They rarely pay much attention to the local party, don’t help out much with party fundraising, don’t even come to the party’s annual dinner (Newsom didn’t show this year, even though he’s the mayor of a Democratic city.)


There have been members of the Board of Supervisors on the DCCC for years. The late Sue Bierman was always a member, and actually cared about and paid attention to the local Democratic Party. Leslie Katz was a member as a supe, and still is. It’s never been that big a deal to anyone — until the progressives starting winning seats. Then suddenly it’s a horrible conflict.


The real conflict has nothing to do with city officials sitting on the committee; it’s the fundraising issue. The city’s campaign finance rules don’t apply to DCCC races, so candidates for DCCC who are also running for supervisor — Scott Wiener, Rafael Mandelman, Debra Walker — can raise unlimited money for their DCCC races and use that additional name recognition for the fall elections. The thing is, I think most of the candidates who benefit from this loophole agree that it needs to be fixed; Mandelman certainly does, and he’s told me that several times. I couldn’t reach Walker or Wiener this morning, but I’d be very surprised if both of them wouldn’t endorse some kind of contribution limits for DCCC races.


I asked Newsom’s press spokesperson, Tony Winnicker, if the mayor would support fundraising limits. Apparently he doesn’t (or at least, he doesn’t want to push the issue):


“For this November’s local ballot, which the Mayor can place an initiative on, we propose eliminating the potential conflict that exists between City officeholders also holding office as elected County Party Committee members.”


How about getting rid of all the elected officials, and creating a real grassroots county committee? No, that won’t fly with Newsom either. Winnicker:


It’s appropriate for state and federal Democratic elected officials from San Francisco to serve on the Democratic County Central Committee.


The city/local offices — Mayor, Board, Treasurer, Assessor, City Atty, Sheriff, District Atty, Public Defender — are nonpartisan offices who have direct oversight over City business. That’s the difference and conflict. This is a local initiative, so our focus and concern is local good government and local conflicts or appearance of conflicts.


From everything I can figure, Newsom doesn’t want campaign-finance reform and doesn’t want to put the party in the hands of local activists; he just wants to get rid of the supervisors who take positions he doesn’t like. That seems like a pretty bad way to make public policy. 


UPDATE: Just talked to Scott Wiener, who told me he agrees that the whole issue of DCCC campaign spending ought to be on the table. And he said he is not at this point prepared to support Newsom’s initiative. “I have concerns with the number of elected officials on the DCCC,” he said, “but there are times when it’s entirely appropriate to have people who have a demonstrated commitment to the DCCC and then get elected supervisor to stay on it.”

Elsbernd blocks state budget resolution

Zelda Bronstein
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Elsbernd blocks state budget resolution

The Democratic leadership in the state Assembly has a budget plan that challenges the entire approach Gov. Schwarzenegger is taking on the state budget. It’s not perfect; it relies on borrowing (although it’s borrowing against the revenues from a new oil severance tax). But it will, Speaker John Perez says, save more than 400,000 jobs. And it’s way, way better than what the governor wants to do. “It’s good,” Assembly member Tom Ammiano, who has always been willing to challenge party leadership and take progressive stands. “It’s something we can support.”

Among other things, it would bring San Francisco another $40 million next year as part of a plan to end the raids on city and county treasuries.

So the Dems in the Assembly are trying to get cities, counties and school boards to endorse their plan. Sup. David Chiu did the honors in San Francisco, asking the supes to approve, on consent calendar, a fairly innocuous resolution endorsing the so-called “Jobs Budget.” Nobody objected — except Sup. Sean Elsbernd, who demanded that the measure be sent to committee for further review.

I don’t get that; San Francisco’s support won’t determine the future of this budget, and it’s not a huge deal — but Elsbernd’s a Democrat, he doesn’t like what the governor is doing, and if this could help even a little bit with the forces pushing for an alternative, what’s the big deal?

Well, I talked to Elsbernd about it (one of the things I respect about Elsbernd is that he never ducks questions; unlike some politicians I know, he always returns my calls, always responds, is willing to have an intelligent discussion and doesn’t try to hide). His argument: “I’m not following the details of the state budget yet. I would love to hear a little more about it.” His concern is with the borrowing; “I’m sure,” he said (perhaps a bit sarcastically) “that President Chiu will be able to explain to me why this isn’t just kicking the can down the road.”

He went further: “If the mayor tried to balance the budget by borrowing money with general obligation bonds, you guys would blast him, right?” Well, not necessarily, I told him. Sometimes, governments ought to borrow money, to save and create jobs during an economic downtown. In fact, that’s exactly what President Obama did, borrowing heavily and adding to the already massive federal debt with a stimulus plan that probably prevented the recession from becoming another depression.

I mean, didn’t Sup. Elsbernd support the Obama stimulus package?

“Frankly, Tim,” he said, “I’ve been too busy trying to do my job in San Francisco to be taking a stand on state and federal issues.”

Okay, Sean — it’s a good line. But every elected official in every city in America was paying attention to the Obama economic plans. And SF supervisors have to be paying attention to the state budget. Counties are, in part, the local arms of the state; making sure there’s money to do what the state tells us is part of the job.

San Franciscans decry Newsom’s public health cuts

Sasha Cuttler
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San Franciscans decry Newsom’s public health cuts

By Alex Emslie

More than 100 concerned citizens, mental health providers, SRO hotel representatives, and clients of San Francisco’s community behavioral health programs spoke to the Board of Supervisors yesterday at a Beilenson hearing, which the state requires of counties that slash public health services, decrying crippling cuts in the mayor’s proposed budget.

Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed cutting the Department of Public Health’s funding by close to $31 million in next year’s budget currently before the Board of Supervisors. The board can choose to add funding back into departments that were cut before approving the final budget by the end of July.

“These are all services that we value,” DPH director Dr. Mitch Katz said following nearly four hours of public testimony. “We have to make difficult choices because of the state of the city’s budget. We recognize that it is never desirable for us to make cuts.”

Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Budget and Finance Committee, said the city Budget Analyst’s Office was examining cost savings within the police and fire departments to free up money for the DPH. “I, as budget chair, am working with my colleagues to prevent these cuts that you are concerned about. We have to find cost savings in our budget across other departments.”

Avalos added that cutting other departments wouldn’t solve San Francisco’s looming deficit for years to come, and that taxation must be part of San Francisco’s budget solution. “If we don’t find a significant amount of revenue, looking at progressive forms of taxation, we’ll be in the same boat next year, but even worse, because we don’t expect to have the authorization of federal money [that the city received last year] to help us out.”

Mirkarimi to PG&E: We want our $46 million back

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Speaking at the June 15 Board of Supervisors meeting, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi introduced a non-binding resolution calling on Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to refund ratepayers for the $46 million it spent on a failed bid to pass Proposition 16, a ballot initiative dubbed the “Taxpayer’s Right to Vote Act” that would have impeded the creation of municipal electricity programs.

While PG&E has publicly stated that its campaign costs were covered by “shareholder funds,” the sole source of income for the parent corporation is money that the utility makes selling electricity, so the $46 million originated in ratepayers’ pockets.

At the meeting, Mirkarimi displayed a map of PG&E’s service territory beside a map of the California counties that rejected Prop 16, highlighting the striking similarity. In San Francisco, Prop 16 was rejected by more than two-thirds of the vote.

Mirkarimi’s resolution included several other improbable requests. He extended an invitation to PG&E CEO Peter Darbee to attend a Board of Supervisors meeting, to “discuss what it really and truly means to peacefully coexist,” he explained. “We look forward to Mr. Darbee coming to meet with us.”

The third aspect of the resolution deals with SFERS, San Francisco’s employment retirement system, which owns 106,348 shares of PG&E common stock valued at $4.38 million on the day the information was accessed. Institutional investors such as CalPERS and SFERS account for more than a 60 percent share of ownership of PG&E, according to the resolution.

Mirkarimi is calling on PG&E to refund SFERS, and “urges CALPERS and SFERS to consider divesting its holdings in PG&E stock” if the company refuses.

The resolution also asks the California Public Utilities Commission to carefully scrutinize PG&E’s requested rate hike.

PG&E didn’t return our requests for comment the last 10 times we called, but we tried again — even though the result is predictable.

And now, the race to replace Kamala Harris

Zelda Bronstein
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And now, the race to replace Kamala Harris

David Onek, who has strong political connections and little courtroom experience, sent out a email today announcing that he wants to be San Francisco’s next district attorney:


As many of you know, District Attorney Kamala Harris is very likely to become California’s next Attorney General. DA Harris is a friend and I would never run against her, but her victory in November will open up the office as early as the end of this year. This means the time to get organized is right now.


He adds his name to the list of people, including former chief homicide prosecutor Jim Hammer, who want the job. But it’s going to be an unconventional campaign, to say the least. Because if Harris wins, her successor won’t be chosen by the voters of San Francisco.


There are three relevant scenarios here.


1. Harris loses the AG race. Entirely possible; she’s got a tough campaign ahead of her. Then all of this talk is moot; Onek clearly isn’t going to run against her, although Hammer might.


2. Harris wins the AG race, and Newsom loses his race for lieutenant governor. In that case, Newsom will be mayor of San Francisco when Harris resigns to move up to Sacramento — and under the City Charter, he will appoint someone to serve out the rest of Harris’s term.


3. Harris and Newsom both win — in which case there’s a fascinating legal issue. Do Harris and Newsom leave at the same moment — in which case the Board of Supervisors appoint the next mayor, who appoints the next DA? Or does Newsom try to fill Harris’s job before he resigns himself? In the end, Matt Dorsey, spokesperson for City Attorney Dennis Herrera told me, “that’s a question that will be answered by the attorney general. Theoretically, it could get very complicated.”


Under the state Constitution, the governor, lt. governor and attorney general all take office the same day, the first monday after Jan. 1st, which in this case is Jan. 3. The constitution doesn’t say what time of day that happens. In theory, then, Harris could take the oath of office at 9 am, Newsom could wait until 10 am, and appoint a new DA in between. Then somebody who didn’t get appointed (or, frankly, any angry citizen of San Francisco) could sue — because if Newsom’s term technically starts at 12:01 am Jan. 3d, then at that moment, by city law, the president of the Board of Supervisors instantly becomes mayor, meaning David Chiu should be the one making the DA appointment.


Or Harris and Newsom (and whatever other parties wanted to play ball) could cut a deal. Harris could resign a day early, and Newsom could appoint her replacement with no legal consequences at all. That would look sleazy as hell and be a rotten way for the mayor to start his term as lieutentant governor, but he could do it.


Of course, that will all depend on an interpretation from the attorney general on when the AG and lt. gov. terms actually begin — and the AG at that point will be Jerry Brown, who may have just been elected governor on a ticket with Newsom and Harris.


What a clusterfuck.


At any rate, David Onek now has to build a campaign aimed not really at winning an election, but at convincing either Newsom or Chiu (or, potentially, the next mayor, who would be named by the supervisors) that he ought to be district attorney. Part of that calculation will hinge on whether he can hold onto the job when it comes up for a real election in November.


If it’s a simple deal with Newsom, Onek will be relying on his political allies. He notes:


A broad range of leaders in government, in law enforcement and in the broader criminal justice community have already pledged their support – including former San Francisco City Attorney and Police Commission President Louise Renne, former state Treasurer Phil Angelides, Supervisor Carmen Chu, School Board Commissioner Hydra Mendoza, former Mayor Art Agnos, former Police Chief Heather Fong, Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley, Jr., Police Commission President Joe Marshall and former Chief Probation Officer Jeanne Woodford. 


Although I’m not sure that Newsom cares much these days what Louise Renne, Art Agnos or Phil Angelides think.


So what Onek — and anyone else who wants to be the next DA — needs to do is convince the next mayor that he’s not only going to be a good chief prosecutor (already a hurdle for someone with no background as a prosecutor) but that he has the political ability to convince the actual voters that he’s qualified. Otherwise he’s just another Kim Burton waiting to happen.


I haven’t been able to reach Onek yet to discuss all of this, but the minute he calls me I’ll post an update.

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