Supervisors

Immigration update: good news, bad news

Mary Magee
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7
Immigration update: good news, bad news

Yesterday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously appointed tireless immigrant rights advocate Angela Chan to the San Francisco Police Commission.
That’s the good news.
The bad news? Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown declined San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey request to allow San Francisco to opt out of Secure Communities, ICE’s latest federal-local law enforcement collaboration.
“I think this program serves both public safety and the interests of justice,” Brown said. “ICE’s program advances an important law enforcement function by identifying those individuals who are in the country illegally and who have a history of serious crimes or who have previously been deported.”
“ Before the inception of Secure Communities allowing fingerprint identification, if a county suspected an arrestee was in the country illegally, the county submitted the person’s name to ICE for a background check,” Brown stated.

What Brown’s letter didn’t say was that, up until now in San Francisco, the county only submitted folks’ names to ICE if they were charged with a felony. Nor did he address why the federal government is sneaking around, switching this program on, without openly and transparently announcing their intentions to the local community.

Eileen Hirst, spokesperson for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office said that, as a result of Brown’s letter, “As far as we know, San Francisco will be a part of Secure Communities as of June 1.”
In a statement, Sheriff Hennessey said, “I am disappointed with the Attorney General’s position and continue to be concerned that U.S. citizens and minor offenders will be caught up in the broad net of Secure Communities, and I will be studying the issue further to see how this program can be applied as fairly as possible and in the spirit of the sanctuary ordinance.”

So far, ICE’s data reveals the number of folks caught up in the Secure Communities net, plus a brief breakdown of the deportees’ level of crime.

It would be helpful, as several immigrants rights groups have suggested, if ICE revealed the nationality of these deportees, clarified if these folks were convicted of crimes or simply charged with them, and had to make frequent reports to Congress in which they included this data along with evidence that the program actually deports convicted criminals rather than folks simply arrested. Otherwise, the program could potentially be abused by renegades who realize that all you have to do to get someone deported is arrest them on trumped up charges

Anyways, you can read the rest of AG Brown’s letter below. My favorite line from Brown’s letter is, “Many of the people booked in local jails end up in state prison or go on to commit crimes in other counties or states.”  

Hmm. Does that mean that folks charged with crimes in this state are presumed guilty then, until proven otherwise? Or is that just the presumption about immigrants?

 

AG Brown’s letter:
“Dear Sheriff Hennessey:

I am writing in response to your letter regarding the Secure Communities program developed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The program is scheduled to be rolled out in San Francisco next month. You requested that the California Department of Justice (DOJ) block ICE from running checks on the fingerprints collected in San Francisco. The Secure Communities program is up and running in 169 counties in 20 states, including 17 counties in California. Because I think this program serves both public safety and the interest of justice, I am declining your request.

The DOJ Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigative Services is the entity designated by California law to maintain a database of fingerprints used in the state for law enforcement purposes. When someone is arrested, the county forwards the fingerprints to the DOJ to identify the person, determine his or her criminal history and to discover any outstanding warrants. As in every other state, the DOJ forwards those fingerprints to the FBI to check for a history of criminal activity outside of the state. Under the Secure Communities program, the FBI forwards fingerprints collected at arrest to ICE. If ICE finds a match to prints in its database, ICE notifies the county. ICE’s stated intent and practice is to place holds on those individuals who are in the country illegally and who have a history of serious crimes or who have been previously deported.

Prior to the Secure Communities program, the name, but not the fingerprint, provided by an individual on arrest was run through ICE’s database of people known by ICE to be in the country illegally. Often, individuals with a criminal history were released before their immigration status was discovered. Using fingerprints is faster, race neutral and results in accurate information and identification.

In these matters, statewide uniformity makes sense. This is not simply a local issue. Many of the people booked in local jails end up in state prison or go on to commit crimes in other counties or states.

I appreciate your concern. But I believe that working with the federal government in this matter advances important and legitimate law enforcement objectives.

Sincerely,

EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
Attorney General.”

Affordable housing group’s shady, “shameless” endorsements

Zelda Bronstein
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0

Editors note: This article orginally ran in October, 2000.T


he Brown machine’s soft money operation is churning out some very
duplicitous propaganda. While we haven’t seen many mailers attacking
independent candidates yet (they’re usually deployed in the final days
of the campaign, when the targets don’t have a chance to respond), we’ve
come across flyers that aim to portray business-friendly machine
candidates as champions of progressive causes.



Perhaps the most egregious comes from an organization called the
Affordable Housing Alliance.



Once a legitimate tenant advocacy group, the AHA does little these days
except endorse candidates and send out mailers during election season.
Numerous well-known tenant activists say the AHA reflexively promotes
the candidates of the Willie Brown machine — no matter where they
stand on tenant issues.



And from what we’ve learned about the group’s endorsement process, AHA
director Mitchell Omerberg isn’t even trying to give the group the
appearance of legitimacy.



Omerberg, who works as a deputy city attorney for San Francisco, was
active in the 1979 fight for rent control. We called him several times
and left messages at the AHA, at his home, and at his city office. He
never called us back or faxed us a copy of the group’s endorsements.
The shenanigans began when Omerberg invited candidates to speak at the
AHA’s endorsement meeting. Chris Daly, the District Six hopeful who has
inspired more enthusiasm from tenant activists than any other candidate
in the city, wasn’t even invited. Daly told us his campaign called
Omerberg to ask when the meeting was scheduled, and Omerberg never
called back.


At the Sept. 28 meeting, the candidates whom Omerberg did invite made
their speeches. Then the group’s supposed members voted on the club’s
endorsements. But it’s not clear who most of those members are or where
they came from.


Progressive activist Richard Ow, who probably attends more political
meetings than anyone in San Francisco, told us he didn’t recognize a
single other tenant activist among the voting members. Ow sits on the
boards of the San Francisco Tenants Union, the Housing Rights Committee,
and the Senior Action Network and is active in dozens of other tenant
groups.


The most egregious maneuver came at the end of the meeting. According
to District One supervisorial candidate Jake McGoldrick (one of the few
people who stayed until the end) Omerberg refused to open the ballot box
and tally up the votes there and then.



Instead, he insisted on taking the ballot box home with him.
Apparently Omerberg prefers to count the ballots alone: one former AHA
member, who asked to remain anonymous, told us he did the same thing
after at least two endorsement meetings in years past.


Alex Wong, chair of the Democratic County Central Committee, helped
Omerberg run the meeting, introducing the candidates and watching the
clock as they spoke. Wong, a Brown ally, told us he didn’t know if Omerberg had taken the ballots home with him; he says he, too, had left the meeting by that point. Then he got off the phone, saying he’d call
us back. He never did.



With Omerberg and Wong keeping mum, we couldn’t track down a copy of
the group’s endorsement list. (McGoldrick campaign manager Jerry Threet
says he asked Omerberg for a copy and Omerberg flat out refused.) But an
AHA mailer sent to tenant voters in the Richmond provides a clue.
“Renters have two choices in the November election,” the flyer
proclaims. “Michael Yaki will preserve rent control. Rose Tsai wants to
repeal it.”


Of course, Richmond renters have more than two choices. There are five
candidates on the District One ballot, including McGoldrick. McGoldrick
has been active on tenant issues for decades, including a term as a San
Francisco Rent Board commissioner from 1988 to 1992 and another as
cochair of the now defunct Housing and Tenants Council, an umbrella
coalition for the movement.


“Jake has a long history of being pro-tenant, from his days on the Rent
Board to doing grassroots work on every tenant campaign and every piece
of tenant legislation,” said Ted Gullicksen of the Tenants Union. The
city’s preeminent renters’ advocacy group, the Tenants Union gave
McGoldrick its enthusiastic endorsement. If you believe the AHA’s
mailer, he’s not even in the race.


On the other hand, Gullicksen said, “Yaki initiated legislation to stop
owner move-in evictions — but then, under pressure from landlords,
killed it himself. Since then he has consistently been against tenants
and with the real estate industry.”


That’s the candidate of the Affordable Housing Alliance. Yaki has a
strong claim on AHA support: he is backed by Willie Brown, of whom he
has been a stalwart ally, and Omerberg worked on Yaki’s 1998 campaign
for the board.


“As a tenant who went through an owner-move-in eviction, I strongly
believe in protecting our rent-control laws and stringently enforcing
protections for seniors and the disabled,” Yaki told us through his
consultant Ellie Schafer. “I am proud to have supported all the measures
which passed the Board of Supervisors expanding OMI and Ellis Act
protections.” (Note Yaki’s careful phrasing: he supported the measures
that passed, and opposed the measures that failed. The same can be said
for most of Willie Brown’s other appointees; that’s why those measures
passed and the others failed.)


The AHA also endorsed Meagan Levitan in District Three, according to a
Levitan mailer. Her opponent Aaron Peskin, who spoke at the endorsement
meeting, has the support of the Tenants Union and just about every other
legitimate tenant activist. Yaki and Levitan are both endorsed by the
Small Property Owners Association and the San Francisco Apartment
Association, which lobby for landlords.


The AHA’s endorsements of Yaki and Levitan were no surprise to longtime
members of the tenant movement. “Historically, the Affordable Housing
Alliance hasn’t endorsed credible pro-tenant supervisors,” Robert
Haaland of the Housing Rights Committee told us. “It’s a group that’s
used to perpetuate machine candidates. It’s another shameless example of
how the machine stays in power.”

A public power landmark — and the battle to come

David Talbot
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0

CCA allows communities to offer an alternative — to buy cleaner power in bulk and resell it at comparable or cheaper rates to residents and businesses

EDITORIAL It’s been 97 years since Congress passed a landmark law mandating public power in San Francisco, 67 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city was violating the law by allowing Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to operate a private monopoly in town, and 42 years since the Guardian first broke the story of the Raker Act scandal and launched a campaign to bring public power to the city. And now, even operating under a tight PG&E-imposed deadline, the San Francisco is moving very close to establishing a modest type of public power.

Community choice aggregation (CCA) isn’t what John Edward Raker and his supporters had in mind in 1913 when they allowed San Francisco to build a dam in Yosemite National Park, breaking John Muir’s heart. The idea — which the city explicitly accepted in a formal written agreement — was to use the dam not just for water but for electricity, specifically to create a public power beachhead in Northern California that would prevent any private company, specifically PG&E, from getting control of the electricity grid.

CCA leaves PG&E’s private grid in place and allows the investor-owned utility to continue to sell power in the region. But it also allows communities to offer an alternative — to buy cleaner power in bulk and resell it at comparable or cheaper rates to residents and businesses.

Since 2002, when the state Legislature passed a bill authorizing CCAs, the concept has slowly started to take hold. Marin County launched its CCA this spring. San Francisco last week reached an agreement with PowerChoice LLC, a vendor that will oversee the procurement of electricity, to begin service here, and the contract is headed to the SF Public Utilities Commission and the Board of Supervisors for approval.

That’s a huge step forward for public power — but the city faces a tight deadline. PG&E has placed Proposition 16 on the June 8 ballot, which would require a two-thirds vote before any local agency could get into the electricity business. That’s an almost impossible threshold (see: the state Legislature). Prop. 16 may still go down to defeat, despite PG&E’s $45 million campaign to pass it.

But even if it passes, any existing agency — that is, any community that has its CCA in place before the election is certified — will be grandfathered in.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera argues, with good authority, that San Francisco is already protected from Prop. 16. The city already has taken enough steps to implement CCA (the implementation plan has been approved by the supervisors) that the inevitable lawsuit by PG&E will probably fail. But every step the city takes to bring the process closer to completion provides more protection, and the stakes could not be higher.

With CCA, the city will have control of its own energy future, be able to offer power that doesn’t contribute to global warming — and be able, at long last, to take a step toward complying with the Raker Act. (And remember: the law says, and the Supreme Court confirmed, that the federal government can move at any time to seize the Hetch Hetchy dam and uproot the city’s entire water system for failure to comply with the 1913 agreement.)

It seems almost certain that by June 8 the city will have a contract with a vendor and state certification that defines San Francisco as a CCA. Then, whatever the outcome of Prop. 16, the city needs to move forward with the program. And if PG&E sues to block it, then every official in San Francisco will have to be prepared to wage the legal and political battle of all time. PG&E can and probably will take the city to court — and the city can immediately start talking about breaking the 1930s-era franchise agreement that gives PG&E a low franchise fee in perpetuity, and enforcing the Raker Act, and taking the corrupt utility to task on every possible front.

A public power landmark — and the battle to come

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
A public power landmark — and the battle to come

EDITORIAL It’s been 97 years since Congress passed a landmark law mandating public power in San Francisco, 67 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city was violating the law by allowing Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to operate a private monopoly in town, and 42 years since the Guardian first broke the story of the Raker Act scandal and launched a campaign to bring public power to the city. And now, even operating under a tight PG&E-imposed deadline, the San Francisco is moving very close to establishing a modest type of public power.

Community choice aggregation (CCA) isn’t what John Edward Raker and his supporters had in mind in 1913 when they allowed San Francisco to build a dam in Yosemite National Park, breaking John Muir’s heart. The idea — which the city explicitly accepted in a formal written agreement — was to use the dam not just for water but for electricity, specifically to create a public power beachhead in Northern California that would prevent any private company, specifically PG&E, from getting control of the electricity grid.

CCA leaves PG&E’s private grid in place and allows the investor-owned utility to continue to sell power in the region. But it also allows communities to offer an alternative — to buy cleaner power in bulk and resell it at comparable or cheaper rates to residents and businesses.

Since 2002, when the state Legislature passed a bill authorizing CCAs, the concept has slowly started to take hold. Marin County launched its CCA this spring. San Francisco last week reached an agreement with PowerChoice LLC, a vendor that will oversee the procurement of electricity, to begin service here, and the contract is headed to the SF Public Utilities Commission and the Board of Supervisors for approval.

That’s a huge step forward for public power — but the city faces a tight deadline. PG&E has placed Proposition 16 on the June 8 ballot, which would require a two-thirds vote before any local agency could get into the electricity business. That’s an almost impossible threshold (see: the state Legislature). Prop. 16 may still go down to defeat, despite PG&E’s $45 million campaign to pass it.

But even if it passes, any existing agency — that is, any community that has its CCA in place before the election is certified — will be grandfathered in.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera argues, with good authority, that San Francisco is already protected from Prop. 16. The city already has taken enough steps to implement CCA (the implementation plan has been approved by the supervisors) that the inevitable lawsuit by PG&E will probably fail. But every step the city takes to bring the process closer to completion provides more protection, and the stakes could not be higher.

With CCA, the city will have control of its own energy future, be able to offer power that doesn’t contribute to global warming — and be able, at long last, to take a step toward complying with the Raker Act. (And remember: the law says, and the Supreme Court confirmed, that the federal government can move at any time to seize the Hetch Hetchy dam and uproot the city’s entire water system for failure to comply with the 1913 agreement.)

It seems almost certain that by June 8 the city will have a contract with a vendor and state certification that defines San Francisco as a CCA. Then, whatever the outcome of Prop. 16, the city needs to move forward with the program. And if PG&E sues to block it, then every official in San Francisco will have to be prepared to wage the legal and political battle of all time. PG&E can and probably will take the city to court — and the city can immediately start talking about breaking the 1930s-era franchise agreement that gives PG&E a low franchise fee in perpetuity, and enforcing the Raker Act, and taking the corrupt utility to task on every possible front.

Beating the reaper

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Beating the reaper

rebeccab@sfbg.com

The wholesome-looking woman in the Pacific Gas and Electric Co.-funded Yes on Proposition 16 commercial seems trustworthy. "Voters should have the final say," she intones over a background of soothing music, "because we’re paying the bills."

TV-friendly slogans aside, many have deemed PG&E’s $45 million (a new figure well over the $35 million initially committed by the company — paid for by ratepayers who had no say) Prop. 16 campaign to be a subversion of the democratic process and corporate deception at its worst. And it’s aimed in part at stopping San Francisco — one of PG&E’s most lucrative territories and the home of its central office — from implementing a modest public power program called community choice aggregation (CCA).

But San Francisco may be slipping under the deadline. With a last-minute push by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and other public-power supporters, it appears that the city will have the legal underpinning of a CCA program in place before the June 8 election.

It’s still complicated and a bit tricky, but under questioning by Mirkarimi April 21, SF Public Utilities Commission general manager Ed Harrington said that the city is going to meet all the necessary deadlines.

Prop. 16 seeks to require a two-thirds majority vote before a local government can move forward with a municipal electricity program. Voter approval of the measure on June 8 would effectively weed out any potential competition within PG&E’s service territory, particularly given that PG&E overwhelms all campaigns with multimillion dollar propaganda blitzes.

Paul Fenn helped craft the state law that created CCA, which allows local governments to purchase power on behalf of their citizens, a vision for an alternative to PG&E that lies squarely in the crosshairs of Prop 16. "Unfortunately, it’s mostly up to Republicans in Southern California how it turns out," Fenn said, because this election will attract conservatives to the polls to decide between gubernatorial candidates in the GOP primary. "Unless people in the Bay Area become aware."

BEAT THE CLOCK


Public power advocates are fighting to stop Prop. 16 — but at the same time, in San Francisco, there’s a frantic effort to gets its own CCA in place. The city is poised to have completed a CCA contract by June 8 — election day.

Although the contract will not be finally approved by committees, the Board of Supervisors, and the mayor until after the election, City Attorney Dennis Herrera says the steps are solid enough to protect the city against the inevitable PG&E lawsuit.

The approaching election day has sent the SFPUC scrambling in a months-long race against the clock to seal the deal on CleanPower SF, the CCA program that envisions offering energy customers the choice of a climate-friendly, 51 percent renewable mix by 2019.

Had the city agency failed to strike a deal with Power Choice Inc. (PCI), the program’s service provider, before the June 8 election, years of effort to get the clean power program off the ground could have gone down the tubes. Mirkarimi, City Hall’s strongest advocate for CleanPower SF, urged the SFPUC to get into gear, nicknaming Prop. 16 "the grim reaper."
Things grew tense in April and May as contract negotiating sessions wore on without success, green-power advocates sparred publicly with the SFPUC, and the "grim reaper" approached. A breakthrough came May 21: the SFPUC announced at a meeting of the city’s Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) that it had finally signed a term sheet agreement with PCI.

A contract based on the terms is expected to be prepared by early June, Harrington said, adding that it could be introduced to the Board of Supervisors on June 8. A month-long review period is expected to follow.

"Today was an announcement of a very critical milestone," Mirkarimi, who chairs LAFCo, noted after the meeting. "I’m delighted to see us turn a corner, and I think … having a term-sheet signed, having a CCA implementation plan approved by the CPUC, and having literature sent out in three different languages to 250,000 households in San Francisco is all a testament that we are, as a city, absolutely serious in implementing and delivering our clean power energy program."

He nonetheless kept cracking the whip on advancing the goals of the program during the meeting. "Any hiccup whatsoever on timelines is a dangerous hiccup," Mirkarimi said.

"We fully expect to meet all deadlines," Harrington responded.

Public power advocate Eric Brooks, who has helped move the CCA program forward since the outset, expressed trepidation at a stakeholders meeting about the SFPUC’s commitment to the program, saying he believed that the city could have cleared the deadline months earlier without having to worry about Prop. 16 as a deadline.

Brooks advocated for Local Power, Fenn’s firm and a city contractor, to play a more central role in program design, saying that as long as the SFPUC remained at the helm, the program would be shaped by "the same inside-the-box thinking" and limited enthusiasm.

LITIGATION LIKELY


Despite recent leaps forward, the common wisdom around City Hall is that CleanPower SF is nonetheless unlikely to escape PG&E’s litigious wrath — particularly if Prop. 16 gets a thumbs up at the polls. If it passed, Prop. 16 would become effective immediately, according to the City Attorney’s Office.

"It’s not a foregone conclusion that Prop 16 will pass," City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey pointed out. And if it does? "In our view," he said, "San Francisco has already implemented its CCA program," making it capable of withstanding a legal challenge.

"We are talking to the city attorney every single day," Harrington noted during a recent SFPUC stakeholders meeting.

But Fenn warned that a complicated lawsuit could still inflict damage. "Litigation processes can outlast political possibility," he cautioned. "San Francisco may be caught up in the courts." Or, if Prop 16 passes and the program moves forward as planned, "[CCA] might be a weird new variant that only exists in San Francisco and Marin."

Marin County’s CCA program is already up and running, and the Marin Energy Authority recently began providing power to its customers. PG&E — which is bound by state law to "cooperate fully" with CCA implementation — fought it by contacting customers to persuade them to opt out of the program via mailers sent in violation of CPUC laws that only allow CCAs to solicit opt-outs. PG&E earned a sharp rebuke in a May 3 letter from CPUC executive director Paul Clanon, specifically warning the company to "refrain from sending any mailers of this nature in the future."

On May 12, Clanon was back with a second letter. "On May 4, PG&E mailed a letter to every customer that had not opted out of MEA’s service, formatted in a manner that directly conflicts with the direction I provided to PG&E just one day earlier," he wrote. This time, he warned the utility that it was "in danger of the commission’s imposing significant and continuing fines and other penalties."

PG&E responded by saying the mass mailing of illegal opt-out notices had been an accident, and apologized. "They accidentally licked envelopes, accidentally stuck the stamps, and accidentally sent them out?" asked an incredulous Ben Zolno, a Prop 16 opponent, in a phone conversation with the Guardian.

"Nobody quite remembers PG&E acting so outrageously," Sen. Mark Leno remarked to the Guardian in the wake of the debacle. The CPUC later determined that any opt-outs solicited by PG&E’s illegal mailers were void.

At a May 20 meeting, the CPUC bolstered restrictions prohibiting PG&E from printing false statements about CCA programs in mailers but made no move to impose penalty fines. City officials characterized the decision as falling short of the action needed to halt the utility’s attempts to sabotage Bay Area CCAs.

"We would expect the CPUC to tell them to cooperate," Harrington told the Guardian. "What the CPUC said was ‘you can’t lie.’"

Meanwhile it’s up to the CPUC to decide whether to honor PG&E’s request for a $4 billion rate hike, which will amount to an average 30 percent increase on customer bills over three years. "They’re not always guaranteed to get what they ask for," CPUC spokesperson Andrew Kotch noted. Public hearings on the increase are coming soon, with a final decision scheduled for December.

"There have been other sizable rate increases and PG&E keeps coming back for more," says Dwight Cocke of The Utility Reform Network (TURN), which is also part of the Prop. 16 opposition campaign. "Up until recently, PG&E was shutting off 15,000 customers per month" for nonpayment, forcing customers to pay extra deposits and reconnect fees to get their electric service back.

"For a lot of people on fixed incomes and low incomes," he said, "it spirals out of control."

Read up: www.prop16.org; www.powergrab.info

Insecure Sanctuary

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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9
Insecure Sanctuary

Sarah@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors is urging San Francisco officials not to participate in Secure Communities, a controversial federal-local fingerprinting collaboration set to be activated June 1. But opting out of a program that threatens to make debates over “sanctuary city” protections of immigrants irrelevant may not be easy.

Speaking at a May 18 rally, Sup. Eric Mar warned that the use of Secure Communities by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could cause the deportation of innocent residents and destroy local community policing efforts. “The police-ICE entanglement will hurt our communities and many people accused of minor crimes will see families torn apart,” Mar warned, as he urged the city to opt out of the Department of Homeland Security initiative, which identifies immigrants who are sitting in U.S. jails and may be deportable under federal immigration laws.

Cosponsored by Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, Chris Daly, Bevan Dufty, Sophie Maxwell, and Ross Mirkarimi, Mar’s resolution was scheduled for a May 25 vote that would make San Francisco the first jurisdiction in the nation to pursue withdrawing from the system.

“The shadow of Arizona is starting to cover other cities,” Mar said, referring to Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation, SB 1070. “We can’t let Arizona come to San Francisco.”

ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice said the program’s focus is on criminal aliens. “These are folks who have been charged with or found guilty of felonies and have ignored deportation orders,” Kice said.

But ICE statistics show that the program mostly deports those with minor offenses. Between October 2008 and March 2010, Secure Communities submitted 1.9 million sets of digital fingerprints and deported 33,326 people nationwide. Fifteen percent of those deported (4,903 people) had criminal histories that included major drug and violent offenses such as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and kidnapping (Level 1 crimes). The other 85 percent (28,423 people) were deported for less serious drug and property offenses (Level 2 crimes) and other minor charges (Level 3 crimes).

Kice admits that Level 2 and 3 offenders constitute the largest percentage of SC cases. “That’s because representatively more people are arrested for Level 2 and 3 offenses than Level 1,” she said. “That’s probably fortunate, because Level 1 crimes are very serious.”

But American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Joanne Lin warns that Secure Communities allows the federal government to circumvent local sanctuary policies and fast-track deportation. “It allows the Department of Homeland Security to identifty everyone who is booked, whether they are here lawfully or their charges are subsequently dropped or dismissed,” Lin said.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said he has no reservations about the program, which the Bush administration first announced in March 2008. “Sanctuary city policies were never meant to protect criminal behavior,” mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker said May 7, when San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey blew the whistle on the federal-local fingerprinting collaboration. “At the end of the day, federal officials should enforce immigration laws. We report — we don’t deport.”

The program links local law enforcement databases to the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric system through interoperability agreements with states, allowing instantaneous information-sharing among local jails, ICE, and the FBI.

ICE implemented the program in North Carolina and Texas in October 2008. Under President Obama, the program has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states. ICE plans to have a Secure Communities presence in each state by 2011, and in each of the 3,100 state and local jails nationwide by 2013, according to its Web site.

Under the program, participating jails submit fingerprints of arrestees to immigration and criminal databases, thereby giving ICE a technological presence in prisons and jails. An overview conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan National Immigration Law Center observes that “the critical element” of the program is that, during booking in jail, arrestees’ fingerprints will be checked against DHS databases, rather than just against FBI criminal databases.

“ICE asserts that the purpose of the Secure Communities program is to target violent criminals for removal,” NILC observed. “Advocates had criticized the program’s operation because it took place at the beginning of the criminal process and therefore indiscriminately targeted persons arrested for crimes of all magnitudes, rather than persons convicted of serious crimes.”

“The underlying purpose may be to lay the groundwork for real immigration reform,” NILC concludes. “But the mechanisms put in place will be difficult to dismantle, and the civil rights violations they produce cannot be undone.”

Scott Lorigan of the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information signed an interoperability agreement with ICE’s John P. Torres in April 2009. Since then, the system has been activated in Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura counties. Now it’s set to get switched on in San Francisco.

Campos thanks Hennessey for blowing the whistle, and lays the blame at Obama’s door. “None of us would have known this was happening,” Campos said. “This is the time for all San Francisco’s elected officials to stand up in support of the principles that led us to establish a sanctuary city. It’s not just the board, but also the mayor who needs to step up and say what just happened is not acceptable. This program eviscerates sanctuary city.”

Hennessey has written to California Attorney General Jerry Brown asking for assistance in opting out of the ICE program. Brown’s office is reviewing his request. “The California Department of Justice manages the statewide database of fingerprints that are essential to solving crimes, but we have no direct role in enforcing federal immigration laws,” Brown’s press secretary Christine Gasparac clarified. “We were informed by ICE that they will work with counties to opt out of their program. Because that is a process directly between the county and ICE, we’re advising local authorities who want to opt out to contact ICE directly.”

But it’s not clear what opting out will achieve. ICE’s Kice said jurisdictions can choose not to receive the immigration-related information on individuals who are fingerprinted, but that information will still be provided to ICE, which can act on it. Kice said that after an arrestee’s biometrics are forwarded to the feds, the information is bounced off FBI and DHS databases, and the information that comes back says if they have a record.

“What comes out is a recap of whatever relevant information is in the database,” she said. “For example, whether there has been a prior formal deportation or a prior arrest. It also shows if they have an adjusted status — whether they have legal permanent status. It will indicate if they are naturalized, in which case they are not subject to removal. That’s the information the community could cut off.”

“ICE always did these checks, but it was only available to local law enforcement agencies if they queried the system themselves, which required them to take a couple of extra steps,” Kice continued. “And it was name based. And that could be problematic, given duplicate names in system. That’s what fingerprints eliminate. Our concern is that municipalities are dependent to a large extent on information provided by the individual at the moment of arrest. We think the use of biometrics will ensure that folks who provide false information to local law enforcement officials don’t escape detection.”

Kice acknowledged that not everyone in the database is a violator. “The fact of having a record does not mean that you are a deportable alien,” she said. “And we understand that someone may get arrested and may not get convicted on their current charges. But what about a prior history? We know that folks have eluded detection, escaped, or been released from custody. So the individual may be someone who has other prior convictions. It’s the totality of their record that we are talking about here.”

At present, the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department only reports noncitizens who are booked on felony charges. Hennessey expressed concerns about the unintended consequences of ICE technology interfacing with that of the Department of Justice’s fingerprint database.

He also warned that the 2,000 or so ICE referrals his office makes annually could explode. “We’ll be fingerprinting 35,000-40,000 persons annually,” Hennessey claimed. “And ICE has a record of secrecy. They won’t tell me what happened to folks they pick up. They won’t say if they are still in custody, been released or deported. The basis of sanctuary city is to protect immigrants who are not doing anything wrong or serious. When ICE grabs someone who failed to pay a traffic ticket and that person is supporting a family, I don’t think those crimes should rise to the level of deportation.”

The politics of sit/lie

Zelda Bronstein
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91
The politics of sit/lie

It’s no surprise that Mayor Gavin Newsom wants to put a sit/lie law on the ballot, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the supervisors are moving slowly on his proposal. It has nothing to do with any facts — the cops could enforce existing laws and address the problem.


No, this is all about politics. Newsom never wanted the supervisors to approve a sit.lie law; he and his operatives want to put it on the November ballot, so they can use it as a wedge issue to attack progressive candidates. They can also use it to raise money, which can be spread around through slate cards to support his supervisorial picks.


Remember, this is how Newsom got elected mayor: He picked a wedge issue (general assistance payments to homeless people), created a slogan (“care, not cash”), raised a ton of money, and made it his signature campaign strategy. It worked, so he’s trying again.


Before Arthur Evans leaps in and attacks me, let me say: I know there are people in the Haight who want this law. (There are also people in the Haight, including the venerable Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council, who oppose it.) But I don’t think Newsom really cares about that; if he did, he’d work with the supervisors on a compromise or alternatives. Instead, he’s refusing to participate in the board’s debates.


This is all about November’s board elections. Sorry, Arthur, but your pet cause is now the mayor’s political tool.

Sit/Lie: The Movie

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

Directors Ricky Angel and Samuel Hernandez sent over this energetic and colorful short documentary about the screwy rationale — and possibly devastating impact — of the proposed sit/lie law that Mayor Newsom now intends to put before voters, bypassing the Board of Supervisors. Local activists and San Francisco citizens express dismay and hope.

The battle over Muni reform

Zelda Bronstein
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1
The battle over Muni reform

Sup. Sean Elsbernd is getting a lot of attention for his plan to change the way Muni drivers are paid, and although he’s going to have a hard time getting 70,000 signatures for a Charter Amendment, the fact that Muni’s unions have given back to the city less than the other major employee unions gives he move a boost. There are arguments in favor of the current salary structure, but as long as it’s set in the Charter this way, it’s hard for the city to get any leverage on work-rul changes, which are really what Elsbernd is after.


But if you want to look at reforming Muni, you have to go beyond this one issue — and that may be the battle that takes place this fall. Sup. David Campos, along with Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Eric Mar, has put together a comprehesive Muni reform Charter amendment that includes some of the changes Elsbernd is proposing — but addresses Muni governance and funding, too.


The Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees Muni, is now run by a seven-member board, with all the members appointed by the mayor. That’s hardly created the sort of political independence that the supporters of the system wanted. So under the Campos proposal, three members would be appointed by the mayor, three by the Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors, and the final member, the potential swing vote, would be appointed jointly by the mayor and board president (boy, that meeting will be fun). All seven would be subject to board confirmation.


The MTA would also be guaranteed a stream of income equivalent to 2.5 cents for every hundred dollars of property tax valuation.


The reform plan creates an Office of Inspector General in the MTA, and gives that person the authority to conduct audits and monitor waste and fraud — something sorely needed in the agency. And it would allow the supervisors to reject the MTA budget by a simply majority vote.


It’s likely that Campos, Mirkarimi and Mar will get the six votes they need to put this on the ballot, so they won’t have to go out and get signatures. Which means that even if Elsbernd’s ambitious grassroots effort is successful, the voters won’t be deciding whether to accept or reject a Muni reform measure; they’ll be choosing between one that only addresses pay for Muni workers and one that changes the pay system — but also seeks to overhaul how the system is run.

DTS voters must re-register to cast DCCC ballots

Sasha Cuttler
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10

Like nearly 30 percent of San Franciscans, I’m not registered with a political party, but when I got a letter from the Department of Elections a few weeks ago letting me know that I had the option of choosing either a Democratic or Republican ballot, I thought that I was all set to be able to vote for my favorite Democrats in the June 8 primarily election.

So last night, I sat down with my “(NP) Democratic Party” absentee ballot to vote, I made strong and clear “No” votes on state Propositions 16 and 17, I voted for Jerry Brown and other Democrats for statewide office, and I flipped the ballot over and over to find the Democratic County Central Committee race – but it wasn’t there.

It turns out, only registered Democrats are allowed to vote for the DCCC, the body that controls San Francisco’s Democratic Party operations and will be hugely influential in the fall elections for the Board of Supervisors. Even some DCCC candidates weren’t aware of the restrictions and are now scrambling to let their supporters know to re-register as Democrats.

May 24 is the deadline to register – or to re-register – for the June 8 primarily election. And Elections officials say that if you’ve already received your absentee ballot, it’s best if you bring it with you down to the Department of Elections in the basement of City Hall and turn it in as a spoiled ballot as you re-register.

And once you do, click here to vote for the Guardian’s slate of progressive DCCC candidates.

Sheriff: ICE referrals will leap from 2,000 to 40,000

Mary Magee
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4

There was a strong showing of supervisors, activists and community members at today’s rally to urge San Francisco to opt out of the Secure Communities Initiative, an automated fingerprint screening system that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to switch on, in San Francisco on June 1—just two weeks ago.

The program links local law enforcement agencies to the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric system through interoperability agreements with each state. Scott Lorigan in the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information reportedly signed such an agreement with John P. Torres, acting assistant Secretary of ICE, over a year ago, on April 10, 2009. And according to ICE, As April 2010, biometric identification has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states:

In California, the system has already been activated in Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernadino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura.But as speakers pointed out at today’s rally, the supervisors and the communities they represent would not have even known that this system was about to go live in San Francisco, had it not been for San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey, who spoke out after ICE informed local law enforcement agencies about the program three weeks ago.

Eric Quezada of Mission-based Dolores Street Community Services kicked off the rally with a rousing speech in which he warned that this “draconian Policy” was happening in the “shadow of Arizona.

Sup. Eric Mar warned that ICE’s proposed program will not make communities more safe.
”It was developed in the dead of night,” Mar said. “The police-ICE entanglement will hurt our communities and tear families apart.”

The Bush administration introduced the Secure Communities Initiative in March 2008. But as Mar observed, it is now being expanded under President Obama.“Many people accused of minor crimes will see families torn apart,” Mar said, citing statistics to show that  “90 percent of those IDed have been arrested for minor, less severe crimes.

“The shadow of Arizona is starting to cover other cities,” Mar continued. “We can’t let Arizona come to SF.”

Sheriff Hennessey told the crowd that he had written to California Attorney General Jerry Brown asking for his assistance in opting San Francisco out of the ICE program.“The Sheriff already has the authority to report foreign born folks charged with serious  felonies,” Hennessey explained.

In a May 18 letter to AG Jerry Brown, Hennessey wrote that he believed that Brown’s agency “has the technological capability to isolate by agency the information linked to ICE.”

““I ask that you isolate transactions from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department because Secure Communities conflicts with local laws,” the Sheriff continued. “My department already has a system in place that reports individuals to ICE and I do not wish it to be replaced by Secure Communities.”

Hennessey also expressed concern about the unintended consequences of ICE technology interfacing with that of the Department of Justice’s fingerprint database, which also holds fingerprints collected for non-criminal justice purposes such as employment applications. And he warned that the number of ICE referrals could explode under the new system.
Under this system, we’ll be fingerprinting 35,000-40,000 persons annually, “ Hennessey said. “I think that’s excessive.”

Currently the Sheriff’s Dept. reports foreign-born individuals arrested on a felony crime or found during the booking process to have a felony of a previous ICE contact in their criminal histories.

‘Since 2007, the department has delivered more than 3,100 individuals to ICE, and has reported at least twice that number,” Hennessey wrote. “I would like to keep system that way.”

At the rally, Hennessey warned that the new system will widen excessively to include folks who were charged with misdemeanors, infractions and traffic violations, but failed to show up in court.

“ICE has a record of secrecy. They won’t tell me what happened to folks they picked up, they won’t say if they are still in custody, been released or deported,” Hennessey said.

Sup. John Avalos said the Secure Communities Initiative is yet another example of why the nation needs comprehensive immigration reform.
“I don’t know if we have the ability to opt out, there are a lot of obstacles in our oath, right now.”

But he warned that the nation is passing laws that “stand at odds” with the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights “And we have rogue departments in the Obama administration, “ Avalos added. “ I consider ICE a rogue department. “
 
Rev. Phillip Lawson, a retired Methodist minister said he wanted to stand in solidarity with “resident aliens”.
“As black people, we know what it’s like to be aliens in our own land. And this enlarges the net of ICE. We will soon not be able to tell any difference between the police and ICE. And no one will trust the police.”

“I give thanks to the courage of folks here for instituting this attempt to say, no we will not cooperate…And we can also resist the law.”

Sup. David Campos, who provided much leadership in the last two years around the city’s sanctuary legislation, thanked Hennessey for blowing the whistle.

“None of us would have known this was happening,” Campos said. “This is the time for all San Francisco’s elected officials to stand up in support of the principles that led us to establish a sanctuary city. It’s not just the Board, but also the mayor who needs to step up and say that what just happened is not acceptable. This program eviscerates sanctuary city.”

Campos warned that the community has already lost trust in the local police, over the last two years, thanks to the city’s policy of referring juveniles to ICE when they are booked.

“If we cooperate [with SCI] that lack of trust will intensify,” he warned. “I applaud the sheriff, but we also need the police department to come forward.”

Campos laid the blame at Obama’s door.
“This is a Democratic president, who was elected with the support of the Latino and the immigrant community, but is engaging in practices worse than any other president.”

Tim Paulson, executive director of the Labor Council spoke on behalf of 150 unions in town. “Our work is dependent on the immigrant community,” He said. “Secure Communities is absolutely divisive and unconstructive. It pits worker against worker, families against families.”

Heidi Li of Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach warned that victims of domestic violence, trafficking and elder abuse would be at risk from ICE’s program.

“It will result in a situation where folks who need trust and assurance the most, will not feel safe and will no longer report to the police when they are the victims of abuse,” Li said.

At rally’s end, Hennessey told the Guardian, “The basis of Sanctuary city is to protect immigrants who are not doing anything wrong or serious. When ICE grabs someone who failed to pay a traffic ticket, and that person is supporting a family, I don’t think those crimes should rise to the level of deportation.”

Warning folks that folks did not know that SCI had been activated in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, Hennessey said all he can do is “raise the issue” of opting out. 

Sup. Mar told the Guardian that the request to opt out is a “unique and creative tactic.”

“We have the strong legal backing from organizations around the country, but SFPD Chief George Gascon doesn’t seem convinced,” Mar observed

Christine Gasparac, Attorney General Jerry Brown’s press secretary told the Guardian that they received Hennessey’s May 18 letter requesting to opt out and are reviewing it.

“To clarify, the California Department of Justice manages the statewide database of fingerprints that are essential to solving crimes, but we have no direct role in enforcing federal immigration laws,” Gasparac said. “We were informed by ICE yesterday that they will work with counties to opt out of their program. Because that is a process directly between the county and ICE, we are advising local authorities who want to opt out to contact ICE directly.

Virginia Kice, ICE’s Western Regional Communications Director said, “under Secure Communities jurisdictions can choose not to receive the immigration-related information on individuals who are fingerprinted, but that information will still be provided to ICE.

As April 2010, biometric identification has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states. Since it’s unclear, which communities know about the program, the Guardian is posting the list here:

In Arizona:  Cochise, Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Yavapai and Yuma

In California Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernadino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura

In Delaware: Kent, New Castle and Sussex

In Florida: Brevard, Browar, Charlotte, Clay, Collier, Duval, Escambia, Highlands, Hillsborough, Lake, Leon, Manatee, Marion,Miami Dade, Monroe, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Polk
Sarasota, St. Johns, St. Lucie, Volusia

In Georgia: Clayton, DeKalb and Gwinnett

In Hawaii: Oahu

In Illinois: DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair, Will and Winnebago

In Lousiana: Jefferson Parrish

In Maryland: Frederick, Prince George’s, Queen Anne’s and St. Mary’s.

In Massachusetts: Suffolk

In Michigan: Wayne

In North Carolina: Brunswic, Buncombe, Cabarrus, Catawba, Columbus , Cumberland, Dare , Duplin, Durham, Gaston, Halifax, Harnett, Henderson, Jackson, Lee, Mecklenburg, New Hanover,
Orange, Transylvania, Union and Wake.

In New Mexico: Bernalillo, Dona Ana, Grant, Hidalgo, LunaOhio, Cuyahoga and Franklin

In Oklahoma: Oklahoma, TulsaOregon and Clackamas

In Pennsylvania: Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia

In Utah: Box Elder, Davis, Salt Lake, Utah and Weber

In Virginia: Alexandria City, Arlington, Fairfax, Fauquier, Henrico, Loudoun, Norfolk City, Prince William, Rappahannock. Richmond City and Virginia Beach City

In Texas: Bexar, Brazoria, Brewster, Brooks, Collin, Culberson, Dallas Dallas County Jail, Dallas Farmers Branch PD, Dallas Irving PD, Dallas and Collin Richardson PD, Dallas and Kaufman Mesquite PD, Dallas, Collin, Denton Carrollton PD, Denton, Dimmit, El Paso, Fort Bend, Galveston
Grayson, Harris, Hidalgo, Hudspeth, Hunt, Jeff Davis, Jefferson, Jim Wells, Johnson, Kaufman, Kenedy, Kinney, Kleberg, Maverick, McLennan, Montgomery, Nueces, Pecos, Presidio, Real, Starr, Tarrant, TDCJ, Terrell, Travis, Uvalde, Val Verde, Webb, Willacy, Williamson, Zapata and Zavala.

Supes to SF: Let’s opt out of ICE’s automatic fingerprint referral program

Mary Magee
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8
Supes to SF: Let’s opt out of ICE’s automatic fingerprint referral program

Just two weeks before a controversial collaboration between local police and ICE is set to get switched on in San Francisco, Sups. Eric Mar, John Avalos, David Campos, Chris Daly and Sophie Maxwell are introducing a  resolution that calls on the city to opt out of a program that could undermine public safety and threaten innocent community members with deportation.

Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who blew the whistle on this program, and Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson will join the supervisors May 18,  9 a.m. on the steps of City Hall. The resolution will be formally introduced at the Board’s afternoon meeting.

Sup. Mar’s legislative aide Lin-Shao Chin told the Guardian that it looks like an opt-out option is possible.
“It’s very vague, the way it’s written,” Chin said, referring to the contract that the Department of Homeland Security has drafted and that cities are required to sign onto, via a statement of intent.”So, while it doesn’t say you can opt out, it’s very vague, and from what we’ve heard, so far it’s all just been verbal communication between the law enforcement agencies.”

The fed’s proposed Secure Communities Initiative (SCI) has been criticized by civil rights experts.They say the program causes immigrants to be reported for deportation without due process and that it destroys trust between the police and immigrant communities.

The program seeks to check the immigration status of anyone whose fingerprints are taken by law enforcement personnel by cross-checking fingerprints through a federal database. They warn that  immigrants who are simply charged with very  minor charges – such as selling ice cream bars without a permit– or those who are overcharged on arrest–could end up torn from their families without due process and reported for deportation.
 
Advocates see similarities between the program and Arizona’s SB1070, since SCI gives discretion to individual police officers, who may mistakenly arrest or overcharge innocent immigrant residents, thereby triggering their deportation. 

“ICE’s own statistics, cited in news reports, indicate that some 88 percent of the 33,000 immigrants deported to date under the program had committed non-violent offenses or no offense at all,” community advocates note.

“Five percent of people tagged are actually documented, and only 10 percent are actually felons,” Chin claimed, warning that there is also, “the  potential for a whole bunch of databases, including those containing information on legal citizens, to be hooked together in ways that pose civil liberty concerns.”

Earlier this month, Washington, DC’s City Council unanimously introduced legislation that would prohibit local police from sharing arrest and booking information with ICE. But the Board’s resolution will be the first in the nation to urge an opt-out.

“The feds didn’t present opting-out as an option, they made it sound compulsory, but immigrant groups who met with ICE were verbally told the could opt out,” Chin claimed.
“Immigrant advocates in Contra Costa and Alameda counties didn’t even know their cities had opted into the program, until folks were referred to ICE. The good news is that we are touching this before we have been hooked into the program.”

Chin said it seems the SFPD CHief George Gascon’s office is “under the impression that the program is mandatory, but that’s not the impression we get from ICE.”
Chin also noted that the SCI is an “unfunded mandate,” since there could be costs to cities and municipalities who have to hold folks in jail longer than usual, while they wait for the feds to come and pick them up.

“From what we have heard, these [SCI] contracts are negotiated at the state level,” Chin added, suggesting that the ball on this issue in California lies within Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown’s court.
 

Democratizing the streets

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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26
Democratizing the streets

steve@sbg.com

It’s hard to keep up with all the changes occurring on the streets of San Francisco, where an evolving view of who and what roadways are for cuts across ideological lines. The car is no longer king, dethroned by buses, bikes, pedestrians, and a movement to reclaim the streets as essential public spaces.

Sure, there are still divisive battles now underway over street space and funding, many centered around the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which has more control over the streets than any other local agency, particularly after the passage of Proposition A in 2007 placed all transportation modes under its purview.

Transit riders, environmentalists, and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors are frustrated that Mayor Gavin Newsom and his appointed SFMTA board members have raised Muni fares and slashed service rather than tapping downtown corporations, property owners, and/or car drivers for more revenue.

Board President David Chiu is leading the effort to reject the latest SFMTA budget and its 10 percent Muni service cut, and he and fellow progressive Sups. David Campos, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi have been working on SFMTA reform measures for the fall ballot, which need to be introduced by May 18.

But as nasty as those fights might get in the coming weeks, they mask a surprising amount of consensus around a new view of streets. “The mayor has made democratizing the streets one of his major initiatives,” Newsom Press Secretary Tony Winnicker told the Guardian.

And it’s true. Newsom has promoted removing cars from the streets for a few hours at a time through Sunday Streets and his “parklets” in parking spaces, for a few weeks or months at a time through Pavement to Parks, and permanently through Market Street traffic diversions and many projects in the city’s Bicycle Plan, which could finally be removed from a four-year court injunction after a hearing next month.

Even after this long ban on new bike projects, San Francisco has seen the number of regular bicycle commuters double in recent years. Bike to Work Day, this year held on May 13, has become like a civic holiday as almost every elected official pedals to work and traffic surveys from the last two years show bikes outnumbering cars on Market Street during the morning commute.

If it wasn’t for the fiscal crisis gripping this and other California cities, this could be a real kumbaya moment for the streets of San Francisco. Instead, it’s something closer to a moment of truth — when we’ll have to decide whether to put our money and political will into “democratizing the streets.”

 

RECONSIDERING ROADWAYS

After some early clashes between Newsom and progressives on the Board of Supervisors and in the alternative transportation community over a proposal to ban cars from a portion of John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park — a polarizing debate that ended in compromise after almost two acrimonious years — there’s been a remarkable harmony over once-controversial changes to the streets.

In fact, the changes have come so fast and furious in the last couple of years that it’s tough to keep track of all the parking spaces turned into miniparks or extended sidewalks, replacement of once-banished benches on Market and other streets, car-free street closures and festivals, and healthy competition with other U.S. cities to offer bike-sharing or other green innovations.

So much is happening in the streets that SF Streetsblog has quickly become a popular, go-to clearinghouse for stories about and discussions of our evolving streets, a role that the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition — itself the largest grassroots group in the city, with more than 11,000 paid members — recently recognized with its Golden Wheel award.

“I think we are at a tipping point. All these little things have been percolating,” said San Francisco Planning Urban Research Association director Gabriel Metcalf, listing examples such as the creative reuse of San Francisco street space by Rebar and other groups (see “Seizing space,” 11/18/09), experiments in New York and other cities to convert traffic lanes to bicycle and pedestrian spaces, a new generation of more forward-thinking traffic engineers and planning professionals working in government, and more aggressive advocacy work by the SFBC, SPUR, and other groups.

“I think it’s all starting to coalesce,” Metcalf said. “Go to 17th and Valencia [streets] and feel what it’s like to have a sidewalk that’s wide enough to be comfortable. Or go ride in the physically separated bike lane on Market Street. Or take your kids to the playground at Hayes Green that used to be a freeway ramp.”

Politically, this is a rare area of almost universal agreement. “This is an issue where this mayor and this board have been very aligned,” Metcalf said. Winnicker, Newsom’s spokesperson, agreed: “The mayor and the board do see this issue very similarly.”

Mirkarimi, a progressive who chairs the Transportation Authority, also agreed that this new way of looking at the streets has been a bright spot in board-mayoral relations. “It is evolving and developing, and that’s a very good thing,” Mirkarimi said.

Both Winnicker and Mirkarimi separately singled out the improvements on Divisidero Street — where the median and sidewalks have been planted with trees and vegetation and some street parking spaces have been turned into designated bicycle parking and outdoor seating — as an example of the new approach.

“It really is a microcosm of an evolving consciousness,” Mirkarimi said of the strip.

Sunday Streets, a series of events when the streets are closed to cars and blossom with life, is an initiative proposed by SFBC and Livable City that has been championed by Newsom and supported by the board as it overcame initial opposition from the business community and some car drivers.

“There is a growing synergy toward connecting the movements that deal with repurposing space that has been used primarily for automobiles,” Sunday Streets coordinator Susan King told us.

Newsom has cast the greening initiatives as simply common sense uses of space and low-cost ways of improving the city. “A lot of what the mayor and the board have disagreements on, some of that is ideological,” Winnicker said. “But streets, parks, medians, and green spaces, they are not ideological.”

Maybe not, but where the rubber is starting to meet the road is on how to fund this shift, particularly when it comes to transit services that aren’t cheap — and to Newsom’s seemingly ideological aversion to new taxes or charges on motorists.

“We’re completely aligned when it comes to the Bike Plan and testing different things as far as our streets, but that all changes with the MTA budget,” said board President David Chiu, who is leading the charge to reject the budget because of its deep Muni service cuts. “Progressives are focused on the plight of everyday people who can’t afford to drive and park a car and have to rely on Muni. So it’s a question of on whose back will you balance the MTA budget.”

 

WHOSE STREETS?

The MTA governs San Francisco’s streets, from deciding how their space is allocated to who pays for their upkeep. The agency runs Muni, sets and administers parking policies, regulates taxis, approves bicycle-related improvements, and tries to protect pedestrians.

So when the mayoral-appointed MTA Board of Directors last month approved a budget that cuts Muni service by 10 percent without sharing the pain with motorists or pursuing significant new revenue sources — in defiance of pleas by the public and progressive supervisors over the last 18 months — it triggered a real street fight.

The Budget and Finance Committee will begin taking up the MTA budget May 12. And progressive supervisors, frustrated at having to replay this fight for a second year in a row, are pursuing a variety of MTA reforms for the November ballot, which must be submitted by May 18.

“We’re going to have a very serious discussion about MTA reform,” Chiu said, adding, “I expect there to be a very robust discussion about the MTA and balancing that budget on the backs of transit riders.”

Among the reforms being discussed are shared appointments between the mayor and board, greater ability for the board to reject individual initiatives rather than just the whole budget, changes to Muni work rules and compensation, and revenue measures like a local surcharge on vehicle license fees or a downtown transit assessment district.

Last week Chiu met with Newsom on the MTA budget issue and didn’t come away hopeful that there will be a collaborative solution such as last year’s compromise. But Chiu said he and other supervisors were committed to holding the line on Muni service cuts.

“I think the MTA needs to get more creative. We have to make sure the MTA isn’t being used as an ATM with these work orders,” Chiu said, referring to the $65 million the MTA pays to the Police Department and other agencies every year, a figure that steeply increased after 2007. “My hope is that the MTA board does the right thing and rolls back some of these service reductions.”

Transit riders have been universal in condemning the MTA budget. “The budget is irresponsible and dishonest,” said San Francisco Transit Riders Union project director Dave Snyder. “It reveals the hypocrisy in the mayor’s stated environmental commitments. This action will cut public transit permanently and that’s irresponsible.”

But the Mayor’s Office blames declining state funding and says the MTA had no choice. “It’s an economic reality. None of us want service reductions, but show us the money,” Winnicker said.

That’s precisely what the progressive supervisors are trying to do by exploring several revenue measures for the November ballot. But they say Newsom’s lack of leadership on the issue has made that difficult, particularly given the two-third vote requirement.

“There’s been a real failure of leadership by Gavin Newsom,” Mirkarimi said.

Newsom addressed the issue in December as he, Mirkarimi, and other city officials and bicycle advocates helped create the city’s first green “bike box” and honor the partial lifting of the bike injunction, sounding a message of unity on the issue.

“I can say this is the best relationship we’ve had for years with the advocacy community, with the Bicycle Coalition. We’ve begun to strike a nice balance where this is not about cars versus bikes. This is about cars and bikes and pedestrians cohabitating in a different mindset,” Newsom said.

Yet afterward, during an impromptu press conference, Newsom spoke with disdain about those who argued that improving the streets and maintaining Muni service during hard economic times requires money, and Newsom has been the biggest impediment to finding new revenue sources.

“Everyone is just so aggressive on trying to raise revenue. We’ve been increasing the cost of going on Muni the last few years. I think people need to consider that,” Newsom said. “We’ve increased the cost of parking tickets, increased the cost of using a parking meter, and we’ve raised the fares. It’s important to remind people of that. The first answer to every question shouldn’t be, OK, we’re going to tax people more or increase their costs.

“You have to be careful about that,” he continued. “So my answer to your question is two-fold. We’re going to look at revenue, but not necessarily tax increases. We’re going to look at revenue, but not necessarily fine increases. We’re going to look at revenue, but not necessarily parking meter increases. We’re going to look at new strategies.”

Yet that was six months ago, and with the exception of grudgingly agreeing to allow a small pilot program in a few commercial corridors to eliminate free parking in metered spots on Sunday, Newsom still hasn’t proposed any new revenue options.

“The voters aren’t receptive to new taxes now,” Winnicker said last week. Mirkarimi doesn’t necessarily agree, citing polling data showing that voters in San Francisco may be open to the VLF surcharge, if we can muster the same kind of political will we’re applying to other street questions.

“It polls well, even in a climate when taxation scares people,” Mirkarimi said.

 

BIKING IS BACK

It was almost four years ago that a judge stuck down the San Francisco Bicycle Plan, ruling that it should have been subjected to a full-blown environmental impact report (EIR) and ordering an injunction against any projects in the plan.

That EIR was completed and certified by the city last year, but the same anti-bike duo who originally sued to stop the plan again challenged it as inadequate. The case will finally be heard June 22, with a ruling on lifting the injunction expected within a month.

“The San Francisco Bicycle Plan project eliminates 56 traffic lanes and more than 2,000 parking spaces on city streets,” attorney Mary Miles wrote in her April 23 brief challenging the plan. “According to City’s EIR, the project will cause ‘significant unavoidable impacts’ on traffic, transit, and loading; degrade level of service to unacceptable levels at many major intersections; and cause delays of more than six minutes per street segment to many bus lines. The EIR admits that the “near-term” parts of the project alone will have 89 significant impacts of traffic, transit, and loading but fails to mitigate or offer feasible alternatives to each of these impacts.”

Yet for all that, elected officials in San Francisco are nearly unanimous in their support for the plan, signaling how far San Francisco has come in viewing the streets as more than just conduits for cars.

City officials deny that the bike plan is legally inadequate and they may quibble with a few of the details Miles cites, but they basically agree with her main point. The plan will take away parking spaces and it will slow traffic in some areas. But they also say those are acceptable trade-offs for facilitating safe urban bicycling.

The city’s main overriding consideration is that we must do more to get people out of their cars, for reasons ranging from traffic congestion to global warming. City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey said that it’s absurd that the state’s main environmental law has been used to hinder progress toward the most environmentally beneficial and efficient transportation option.

“We have to stop solving for cars, and that’s an objective shared by the Board of Supervisors, and other cities, and the mayor as well,” Dorsey said.

Even anti-bike activist Rob Anderson, who brought the lawsuit challenging the bike plan, admits the City Hall has united around this plan to facilitate bicycling even if it means taking space from automobiles, although he believes that it’s a misguided effort.

“It’s a leap of faith they’re making here that this will be good for the city,” Anderson told us. “This is a complicated legal argument, and I don’t think the city has made the case.”

A judge will decide that question following the June 22 hearing. But whatever way that legal case is decided, it’s clear that San Francisco has already changed its view of its streets and other once-marginalized transportation choices like the bicycle.

Even the local business community has benefited from this new sensibility, with bicycle shops thriving around San Francisco and local bike messenger bag companies Timbuk2 and Rickshaw Bags experiencing rapid growth thanks to a doubling of the number of regular bicyclists in recent years.

“That’s who we’re aiming at, people who bike every day and make bikes a central part of their lives,” said Mike Waffenfels, CEO of Timbuk2, which in February moved into a larger location to handle it’s growth. “It’s about a lifestyle.”

For urban planners and advocates, it’s about making the streets of San Francisco work for everyone. As Metcalf said, “People need to be able to get where they’re going without a car.”

Chris Jackson leaps into the District 10 race

Mary Magee
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9
Chris Jackson leaps into the District 10 race

Community College Board Trustee Chris Jackson has thrown his hat into the District 10 Supervisor race. The move is guaranteed to upset the already crowded field of candidates in the district. District 10 lies in the city’s southeast sector and is home to San Francisco’s largest remaining African American community, and some of its most economically disadvanted communities and environmentally polluted lands.

Jackson was elected to the Community College Board in 2008, winning more than 8,000 votes in District 10, as part of that citywide election. And he has done a good job on the Board ever since.

The only African-American male currently holding elected  public office in San Francisco, Jackson works as a policy analyst for the San Francisco Labor Council. That position is sure to raise questions about Jackson’s ties to Lennar’s redevelopment proposal at Candlestick Point and the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. The Labor Council entered a community benefits agreement with the developer shortly before the June 2008 election on Prop. G. and Labor Council representatives appear to be proponents of Lennar’s draft environmental impact report (DEIR). A final version of that report is expected to come before  the Board of Supervisors for approval in June.

But Jackson told us that he will fight to keep District 10 a middle-class district and not a neighborhood dominated by millionaire’s condos.

 

Immigrant rights – in Arizona and at home

David Talbot
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0
Immigrant rights – in Arizona and at home

By Angela Chan


Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera have publicly opposed the anti-immigrant bill, SB 1070, in Arizona. A diverse coalition of civil rights organizations — including the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Asian Law Caucus, Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, Central American Resource Center, Community United Against Violence, Equal Justice Society, La Raza Centro Legal, National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, POWER, and Pride at Work SF — applauds both city officials for taking a strong stand against the Arizona bill. At the same time, we urge Newsom and Herrera to firmly and unequivocally support the implementation of a local policy that protects the due process rights of immigrant youths in San Francisco.

As with SB 1070 in Arizona, the mayor’s policy of requiring juvenile probation officers to report young people to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before they receive due process has opened the door to racial profiling and torn many innocent youth from their families.

Since July 2008, pursuant to Newsom’s draconian reporting policy, more than 160 youth have been reported to ICE right after arrest, before they even have had a chance to be heard in juvenile court. That means that youth who are completely innocent of any crimes and youth who are overcharged have been reported to ICE.

Despite the veto-proof passage of a policy by the Board of Supervisors last fall that moves the point of reporting from the arrest stage to after a youth is found to have committed a felony, Newsom has insisted on ignoring the new city law. Herrera, in turn, has yet to advise implementation of the new law.

Like the Arizona bill, Newsom’s policy requires reporting to ICE when local officials — in this case juvenile probation officers — merely have "reasonable suspicion" that an individual is undocumented. The factors that probation officers are required to use to determine reasonable suspicion have come under fire for codifying racial profiling into law.

In March, a year and a half after the mayor’s policy went into effect, Chief Probation Officer William Siffermann admitted before the Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors that the latter factor could lead to racial profiling. A few days later, Herrera stated that this factor had been removed from the policy. However, if any changes have been made to the written policy, they have not been made available to the public.

Another similarity with the Arizona bill: probation officers in San Francisco have not been properly trained and do not have the expertise in immigration law to accurately determine which youth are actually undocumented. Rather, these officers rely on race, ethnicity, language ability, surnames, and accent as a basis for assuming immigration status.
Much like the Arizona bill, Newsom’s policy goes well beyond any obligations under federal law by requiring that probation officers report suspected undocumented youth to ICE. Finally, as with the Arizona bill, the mayor’s draconian policy only compounds the harm to immigrant families caused by an already flawed federal immigration system, which is in drastic need of comprehensive reform. We need humane reform at the federal level. But in the meantime, Newsom and Herrera need to take swift action to restore due process and protect family unity by ending San Francisco’s draconian policy. *

Angela Chan is a staff attorney with the Juvenile Justice and Education Project at the Asian Law Caucus.

Muni reform that might actually work

David Talbot
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0
Muni reform that might actually work

EDITORIAL The 2007 ballot measure that was supposed to give Muni more political independence and more money has failed to provide either. It’s time to say that Proposition A, which we supported, hasn’t worked — in significant part because the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom hasn’t allowed it to work. It’s time for a new reform effort, one that looks at Muni’s governance structure, funding, and the way it spends money.

There are several proposals in the works. Sup. David Campos has asked for a management audit of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, and that’s likely to show some shoddy oversight practices and hugely wasteful overtime spending. Sup. Sean Elsbernd wants to change the way Muni workers get paid, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu are talking about changing the way the MTA board is appointed. There are merits to all the reform plans, but in the end, none of them will work if they don’t address the fundamental fact that Muni doesn’t have enough money to provide the level of transit service San Francisco needs.

The basic outlines of what a progressive Muni reform measure would look like are pretty obvious. It ought to include three basic principles: work-rule and overtime reform; a change in the way other departments, particularly the police, charge Muni for work orders — and a sizable new source of revenue.

The work orders are, in many ways, the easiest issue. Last year, the San Francisco Police Department charged Muni more than $12 million in work orders. For what? Well, for doing what the Police Department gets paid to do anyway: patrolling Muni garages, putting cops on the buses, and dealing with Muni-related traffic issues. And a lot of that $12 million is police overtime.

The labor and revenue issues are trickier — mostly because they’re being addressed separately. Elsbernd, for example, wants to Muni workers to engage in the same collective bargaining that other city unions do, which makes a certain amount of sense. But he’s wrong to make it appear that the union and the workers are the major source of Muni’s financial problems — and that approach won’t get far. The bus drivers and mechanics didn’t make millions on large commercial developments that put a huge strain on the transit system — and the developers who profit from having bus service for the occupants of their buildings have never paid their fair share. Nor is it the fault of the union that car traffic downtown clogs the streets and makes it hard for buses to run on time.

We agree that the transit union needs to come to the table and talk, seriously, about work-rule changes. Every other city union, particularly SEIU Local 1021, whose members are among the lowest-paid workers in the city, has given something up to help the city’s budget problems.

But any attempt to change Muni’s labor contract needs to be paired with a serious new revenue program aimed at putting the transit system on a stronger financial footing — and traffic management plans that give buses an advantage over cars. The city can add a modest fee on car owners now, and if a Democratic governor wins in November, it’s likely that state Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow a local car tax will become law. That’s part of the solution, as is expanded parking meter hours. (And someone needs to talk about charging churchgoers for parking in the middle of the streets on Sundays.) But Muni also needs a regular stream of income from fees on developers.

And a seven-member MTA appointed entirely by the mayor does nothing for political independence; at the very least, the supervisors should get three of the appointments.

The city badly needs Muni reform — and the elements are all in place. But it can’t be a piecemeal approach.

Muni reform that might actually work

David Talbot
-
7

EDITORIAL The 2007 ballot measure that was supposed to give Muni more political independence and more money has failed to provide either. It’s time to say that Proposition A, which we supported, hasn’t worked — in significant part because the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom hasn’t allowed it to work. It’s time for a new reform effort, one that looks at Muni’s governance structure, funding, and the way it spends money.

There are several proposals in the works. Sup. David Campos has asked for a management audit of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, and that’s likely to show some shoddy oversight practices and hugely wasteful overtime spending. Sup. Sean Elsbernd wants to change the way Muni workers get paid, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Chiu are talking about changing the way the MTA board is appointed. There are merits to all the reform plans, but in the end, none of them will work if they don’t address the fundamental fact that Muni doesn’t have enough money to provide the level of transit service San Francisco needs.

The basic outlines of what a progressive Muni reform measure would look like are pretty obvious. It ought to include three basic principles: work-rule and overtime reform; a change in the way other departments, particularly the police, charge Muni for work orders — and a sizable new source of revenue.

The work orders are, in many ways, the easiest issue. Last year, the San Francisco Police Department charged Muni more than $12 million in work orders. For what? Well, for doing what the Police Department gets paid to do anyway: patrolling Muni garages, putting cops on the buses, and dealing with Muni-related traffic issues. And a lot of that $12 million is police overtime.

The labor and revenue issues are trickier — mostly because they’re being addressed separately. Elsbernd, for example, wants to Muni workers to engage in the same collective bargaining that other city unions do, which makes a certain amount of sense. But he’s wrong to make it appear that the union and the workers are the major source of Muni’s financial problems — and that approach won’t get far. The bus drivers and mechanics didn’t make millions on large commercial developments that put a huge strain on the transit system — and the developers who profit from having bus service for the occupants of their buildings have never paid their fair share. Nor is it the fault of the union that car traffic downtown clogs the streets and makes it hard for buses to run on time.

We agree that the transit union needs to come to the table and talk, seriously, about work-rule changes. Every other city union, particularly SEIU Local 1021, whose members are among the lowest-paid workers in the city, has given something up to help the city’s budget problems.

But any attempt to change Muni’s labor contract needs to be paired with a serious new revenue program aimed at putting the transit system on a stronger financial footing — and traffic management plans that give buses an advantage over cars. The city can add a modest fee on car owners now, and if a Democratic governor wins in November, it’s likely that state Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow a local car tax will become law. That’s part of the solution, as is expanded parking meter hours. (And someone needs to talk about charging churchgoers for parking in the middle of the streets on Sundays.) But Muni also needs a regular stream of income from fees on developers.

And a seven-member MTA appointed entirely by the mayor does nothing for political independence; at the very least, the supervisors should get three of the appointments.

The city badly needs Muni reform — and the elements are all in place. But it can’t be a piecemeal approach.

Sit-lie proponents criticize their allies

Sasha Cuttler
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37
Sit-lie proponents criticize their allies

It’s really amusing to read the recriminations and second-guessing from the most vociferous proponents of criminalizing sitting or lying on San Francisco sidewalks after yesterday’s Public Safety Committee hearing on the matter. And the funniest part is their failure to understand that this punitive, overreaching law just isn’t needed to deal with aspects of street life that scare them most, as the police reluctantly testified.

Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius and Haight Street resident Arthur Evans have been the two most vocal promoters of the sit-lie ordinance, and both sounded similar criticisms of the Police Department and the Mayor’s Office (as well as progressives, their usual target), Nevius in the paper and Evans on the Guardian’s Politics blog (last comment on this item). They call on the so-called “moderates” step up their games or be defeated.

But they miss the point, and falsely believe that “common sense” is on their side. Certainly police officers have the ability to deal with rowdy groups of vagrants who are blocking the sidewalks and intimidating people. They do it all the time, and simply walking a beat usually prevents such behavior. To argue that tough police officers are powerless to deal with thugs defies common sense. And Assistant Chief Kevin Cashman even testified that police don’t need an official citizen complaint to deal with people who are blocking the sidewalk, debunking a fallacy that is oft-cited by Evans and others.

But the efforts by Evans and the Chamber of Commerce to rebrand the sit-lie ordinance as the Civil Sidewalks Law – and to threaten to use it as a wedge issue on the November ballot – reveals their true intentions. The bottom line is they don’t like the more unruly aspects of urban life, and they believe that they can legislate “civility” and have the cops enforce it.

That’s a scary notion, and it’s part of larger campaign to, as Nevius writes, “demonstrate to the far-left supervisors that they were seriously out of step with the residents of the city.” Nevius, who is not a resident of this city, wants San Francisco to be a bit more like his hometown of Walnut Creek. But San Franciscans shouldn’t fall prey to their divisive fear-mongering, and supervisors like Sup. David Chiu – who has publicly toyed with the idea of compromising on sit-lie with some kind of restorative justice program – should heed the message of this hearing and resist creating an unnecessary new law that the community opposes.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen yesterday as the committee voted to continue the matter for two weeks. And you better believe that next time, the Evan-Nevius crowd will come back strong, with more fearful anecdotes than ever. But the opposition campaign to sit-lie has been strong, creative, and effective — the true voice of San Francisco — and it seems up to the fight.

Chiu moves to reject Muni budget

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1

At the May 4 Board of Supervisors meeting, Board President David Chiu introduced a motion to reject the Municipal Transportation Agency budget, approved by the MTA Board on April 20.

Noting the deep service cuts that are scheduled to inflict the city’s public transportation system on Saturday, May 8, Chiu said riders could expect “longer wait times, more crowding, and people being passed up by full trains.”

Chiu has signaled his frustration with the MTA before and called for reform. “We will be having many conversations with the MTA and with the Mayor’s Office, but I do think at this time we can do better than the budget that we have in front of us,” he said.

Chiu also referenced a recently issued City Controller’s review of SFMTA work orders, conducted to find out if various city departments contracted to provide services for Muni are fairly and accurately billing the agency. The report indicated that MTA work order expenditures have been on the rise, while various city departments “did not often provide sufficient reporting documentation in their billings, and we don’t have a strong sense of whether these bills were paid appropriately for services rendered,” Chiu noted.

Accordingly, he introduced accompanying legislation requesting that the City Attorney draft legislation to implement key recommendations in the controllers’ review.

“It’s just not responsible,” said Tony Winnicker, press secretary to Mayor Gavin Newsom, when asked for a comment on the proposal to reject the Muni budget. “If they’ve got specific solutions … then that’s different. But for now it’s just political grandstanding of the worst kind, and it’s really irresponsible.”

According to section of the City Charter that deals with the public-transit system, however, the board doesn’t have the power to modify the MTA’s budget — it can only accept it or give it a thumbs down. According to Section VIII A 106 (c): “the Board of Supervisors may allow the Agency’s budget to take effect without any action on its part or it may reject but not modify the Agency’s budget by a seven-elevenths’ vote.”

Spotted today at City Hall

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1

That’s right, folks, this “Stand Against Sit/ Lie” sticker was slapped onto a fire extinguisher locked inside a glass case in the City Hall corridor just outside the Board of Supervisors’ Chambers. Obviously, the message this totally badass sit/lie critic is trying to get across is that it’s possible to oppose sit/lie and still care about public safety. The proposed law to ban sitting or lying down on the sidewalk, which has triggered a smoldering citywide debate, is slated to go before the Public Safety Committee on Monday, May 10.

Supes continue AZ boycott resolution; Daly calls for boycott of AZ Diamondbacks

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1
Supes continue AZ boycott resolution; Daly calls for boycott of AZ Diamondbacks

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote yesterday, May 4, on a resolution introduced by Sup. David Campos for a municipal boycott of Arizona-based businesses as a response to Arizona’s anti-immigration measure, which we report on in this week’s issue.

“I would imagine that if Arizona had passed a law that said if any person is Latino or who looks Latino has an added burden to prove and demonstrate their immigration status, then most of us would say that … action is needed,” Campos said. “Arizona hasn’t done that, explicitly, but … that is the direct result of this piece of legislation.

“At some point,” Campos added, “those of us who are looking at what’s happening in Arizona have to recognize that for us not to do something, or not to say something, in some respects, in an indirect way makes us complicit in that.”

The resolution was continued until May 11 on a motion by Sup. Sean Elsbernd, seconded by Sup. Carmen Chu.

Reached later by phone, Elsbernd said he opposes the boycott, and that he continued the item so he could cast a ‘no’ vote. If an item is introduced and then goes directly to the full board without committee reference, as happened in this case, it requires a unanimous vote to pass, he said — so if he had voted against it on May 4, the whole thing would have died. “I think the boycott is misguided. It’s not hitting the target,” Elsbernd said, adding that he opposes the law but thinks a boycott would have unintended consequences. He said he thought energy and resources should go instead toward fundraising support for Arizona Democrats who oppose the law, or lobbying in D.C. for federal immigration reform. While he said he traveled to D.C. for that purpose in 2007, he doesn’t have any concrete plans to organize a fundraiser or book a trip anytime soon.

Sup. Chris Daly rose from his seat and left the room the moment the item was continued. Earlier in the meeting, Daly introduced a resolution urging a boycott of the Phoenix-based Arizona Diamondbacks, scheduled to play the San Francisco Giants here in the city on May 28, 29, and 30. Daly’s resolution notes that team owner Ken Kendrick has contributed significantly to the Republican Party, although he has claimed to oppose the controversial legislation.

Daly’s resolution encourages “those concerned about immigrant rights to protest the Arizona Diamondbacks in San Francisco on May 28th – 30th,” encourages Giants fans to attend other games to support the team, and “encourages the San Francisco Giants and San Francisco Giants fans to wear Gigantes uniforms during our home stand against the Arizona Diamondbacks to show our support for Latino baseball players and the Latino and immigrant communities.”

Sounds and slides from May 1 immigration rally

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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0

Thousands of people spilled out into the streets of San Francisco on Saturday, May 1, to march for federal immigration reform and to denounce Arizona’s SB 1070, an anti-immigration measure widely perceived as a racist, ill-advised approach to addressing illegal U.S. border crossings. The law makes it a state-level crime to be in the U.S. illegally, and criminalizes failure to carry immigration papers at all times.

Sup. David Campos, who introduced a resolution at last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting calling for a city boycott of Arizona-based businesses until the law is repealed, delivered remarks in Spanish to a crowd of rally participants, which can be heard in the slideshow below. (Those of you with delicate sensibilities may want a heads up that his remarks are interrupted a couple times by a guy screaming “Fuck Arizona!!!” right into the mic.) Campos’ resolution is on the agenda for the May 4 Board of Supervisors meeting.

Here’s a translation of the Supervisor’s remarks: “Power to immigrants! Power to the workers! Power to the Latino community! Power to America! This is our country, we’re Americans like anyone else. We’re sending a clear message to the president and the Democratic Congress. They’ve been elected by the Latino Community. They were elected to pass immigration reform. It makes me proud that San Francisco was the first to send a message to the whole country. We’re going to boycott Arizona. We’re going to send a message to Arizona that they’re not going to violate our rights, that they’re not going to violate this country’s constitution. Let’s send a message to our brothers and friends in Arizona that you are not alone. We’re with you. Power to the immigrants! Yes we can! Let’s keep fighting onto victory!”

Audio and photos by Rebecca Bowe

For a more detailed story about the day’s events and local responses to the Arizona legislation, pick up this week’s Guardian.

 

The voice of fun

David Talbot
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0
The voice of fun

steve@sfbg.com

In the midst of a crackdown on San Francisco nightlife, club operators, promoters, entertainers, and supporters of a vibrant urban scene have formed a new lobbying group that seeks to offer a united voice in favor of fun.

The California Music And Culture Association (CMAC), a nonprofit advocacy and education group, launches its first chapter in San Francisco this week.

Discussions about the need to organize have been going on for years among the owners of local nightclubs such as Bottom of the Hill, Mighty, DNA Lounge, and Café Du Nord. They were initially triggered by arbitrary enforcement actions by the California Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) and persistent noise complaints by a handful of NIMBY neighbors (see “Death of fun,” 5/24/06 and “Death of fun, the sequel,” 4/24/07).

But in recent months, conflicts between the culture-creators and enforcement agencies have come to head, driven by an aggressive crackdown on parties and clubs led by ABC agent Michelle Ott and San Francisco cop Larry Bertrand (see “The new war on fun,” March 23) and efforts by Mayor Gavin Newsom and other officials to blame youth violence on the entertainment industry.

“This is certainly as bad as it’s ever been,” said Guy Carson, owner of Café Du Nord and a CMAC board member who has run San Francisco nightclubs for 26 years. “We needed an organization that can speak for us.”

So dozens of nightlife advocates have pooled their resources to create CMAC. The organization is supported by membership dues and aims to follow a model similar to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which has more than 11,000 members and has been effective at advocating for their interests.

What’s at stake, Carson said, is San Francisco’s reputation as a vibrant, world-class city that nurtures its artists and welcomes those who come into town for parties and events.

“Do we want to look like Walnut Creek?” Carson asked rhetorically. “I came here because I like a vibrant arts scene, and that requires an infrastructure. It doesn’t happen in a void.”

He said City Hall and the enforcement agencies have lost sight of the important role nightlife plays in creating the city’s culture, and how aggressive enforcement efforts can push club owners — many who are “struggling to survive,” Carson said — over the edge.

“There is a void in the political and public perception of nightlife,” said Frieda Edgette, an employee of the politically connected firm Barbary Coast Consulting, which helped launch CMAC. Edgette added that the group’s goal is “to empower and provide a voice for a constituency that hasn’t had a voice.”

Beyond advocating for the interests of members at city and state levels, CMAC will serve as an information clearinghouse on best practices for maintaining good neighborhood relations and research into the importance of the industry to the economy.

“I’m not sure club owners do all they can to foster good relationship with their neighbors,” said Tim Benetti, owner of Bottom of the Hill, a former deputy city attorney, and current CMAC board member. “So we can play a big role in educating our members.”

Yet he said that a far bigger problem has been the polarization between the nightlife community and entities that try to demonize and scapegoat it for problems ranging from noise to drugs to violence. “There is an antagonism that has developed between nightclubs and enforcement agencies, and we want to end that antagonism,” Benetti said. “Right now, there’s no dialogue.”

Or as Edgette said, “We want to bring all the parties to the table to have a holistic discussion about nightlife.”

So far, efforts to open up that dialogue have gone nowhere. Attorney Mark Webb, who represents some of the victims of harassment and brutality by Bertrand and Ott, publicly called on Newsom to mediate the dispute in March. But he was rebuffed, so last month he filed a racketeering case against the city, arguing that police shakedowns of legal activities amount to a criminal enterprise.

“I was quite disappointed at the reaction to this case,” Webb said. “It’s fallen on deaf ears in terms of trying to get Newsom or others in power to deal with it. Now it’s just in the pile of lawsuits.”

Last week the City Attorney’s Office had the case bumped up to federal court, and Webb said he has subpoenaed police records and sought depositions from Bertrand and his supervisors. Another lawsuit, brought by promoter Arash Ghanadan after he was arrested and, he charges, brutalized by Bertrand in retaliation for filing an earlier complaint, is also being contested by the city.

“We are in a battle for Bertrand’s personnel file,” said Ghanadan’s attorney, Steve Sommers, who is also seeking to depose Police Chief George Gascón about the matter.

State Sen. Mark Leno has helped to mediate the disputes and has been in touch with ABC chief Steve Hardy. “I think we’re going to see some improvement,” Leno said. “I don’t know how aware he was of the activities at the local level.”

Those activities include citing nightclubs for not serving enough food, repeatedly harassing customers at certain disfavored clubs, pursuing noise complaints on behalf of particularly sensitive neighbors, and announcing a crackdown on bars serving infused liquors.

Leno welcomed the creation of CMAC and said that it will be an important voice for a vital and under-appreciated industry, both in San Francisco and in Sacramento, where Leno unsuccessfully pushed legislation to extend the operating hours of nightclubs a few years ago.

“I applaud this effort,” Leno said of CMAC. “There is great wisdom to advocating for this on a statewide basis.” 

CMAC LAUNCH PARTY

With DJs J Boogie, Motion Potion, and more

Thu/May 6

7–11 p.m., $10

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

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