Supervisors

Newsom’s shocking Board appearance

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WTF?! Mayor Gavin Newsom shocks everyone by making a surprise “Bad News” visit to the Board.

Photos by Luke Thomas
Text by Sarah Phelan

For years, voters have been asking Mayor Gavin Newsom appear before the Board of Supervisors for monthly policy discussions. And for years, MGN has refused, claiming that such invites were “political theater.”

So, eyeballs understandably popped and jaws dropped when Newsom showed up at today’s Board meeting.
What could have possibly got the Mayor to come and talk to the Board?

A $576 million budget deficit, as it turns out. That’s almost half the City’s $1.2 billion in discretionary funds.

“That arguably makes it the most daunting crisis since the Great Depression,” Newsom observed.

But while the Mayor claimed he had come to the Board to “share the challenge”, he did not share copies of his proposed solution, until hours later at a press conference he did not attend. In other words, no one could ask the Mayor hard questions about his proposed plan in real time. And that was a tad frustrating.

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The media try to make sense of the Mayor’s proposal as Dr. Mitch Katz talks about what it means for the City’s Public Health Department.

Instead, Newsom did what he seems to do best: he stood there, hair and nails immaculate, spouting numbers, percentages, and statistics about his package which he dubbed, ” $118 million in proposed mid-year solutions.”

Somehow,he didn’t get to the part about the 399 pink slips that will be sent to City workers on Friday, or the 313 vacant positions that will also be eliminated.

Those details were left to Controller Ben Rosenfield and Budget Director Nani Coloretti to share with the press, as we stood in the International Room, surrounded by glass cases filled with signed memorabilia from the likes of “Their Royal Highnesses” Prince Charles and his wife Camilla.

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The Mayor’s “dream team” address media questions in the International Room,

It also fell lto the Mayor’s financial team to spell out that this mid-year proposal only addresses $100 million of the problem, meaning 2009-2010 will likely look four times worse.

Meanwhile, some supervisors were left wondering of there will there be any meaningful collaboration between Newsom and the Board, or whether it will take the form of the usual feral faction versus manicured tribe?
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Sup. Chris Daly wonders aloud about “real collaboration.”

“We have the capacity, the ingenuity and the spirit to solve this,” Newsom told the Board, looking painfully alone as he stood in their chambers this afternoon.”It’s going to take all of us working together. It’s in that spirit that I am here..The mid-year solution–difficult and painful as it is–its he easy part. The difficult part comes in the next four months.”
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His appearance was a good first step, but will he follow it up with regular monthly visits, so that the Board can engage him in policy discussions, as per their voters’ requests?

It looks as if the Board isn’t banking on it: Peskin and his fellow supervisors have put together their own package of solutions–an ordinance deappropriating $8.5 million in alternative cuts from the General Fund.

As one aide told me, “It’s important for the Board to set the stage now for the budget discussions in the Spring.”

But it would be great if there was a silver lining to the global crisis-in which the SF Board and Mayor started acting as equal partners in their efforts to save what they can from the economic wreckage.
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Blue Angel kills thousands in SF crash

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By Tim Redmond

That’s the headline we’d be reading if one of the Navy stunt pilots had the same misfortune as the FA/18 pilot just did in San Diego.

We don’t know yet if it was pilot error or an equipment failure, but we know this: Same airplane. Coulda happened here. The only difference is that the Marines probably need to fly training missions in and out of that base (although they could conceivably move to a less-populated area). The Blue Angels don’t need to fly over San Francisco.

Something to think about for next year’s Fleet Week program. If the supervisors decided not to invite the Navy precision flying team, they wouldn’t come.

Newsom swears in Campos

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By Steven T. Jones

A day after appointing David Campos to fill the Board of Supervisors seat vacated by new Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (which Campos won in last month’s election), Mayor Gavin Newsom marveled at the huge and enthusiastic crowd that showed up at City Hall for Campos’s swearing in ceremony.

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“Thanks for coming here on remarkably short notice,” Newsom said. “I’m impressed with his ability to raise a crowd, which is a cautious warning as well.”

Indeed, after an election in which progressives such as Campos consolidated their legislative power, Newsom does have something to fear if he continues with his autocratic attacks on progressive priorities, as we could see more of tomorrow when he is scheduled to announce a package of mid-year budget cuts.

But for today, they were just one big city family, a tone strongly set by Campos, who pledged to work well with Newsom, fellow supervisors, and those who supported other candidates in his race. And he singled out Ammiano for special praise, telling him, “I’m going to do my best to make you proud.”

Transforming traffic analysis

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY A court injunction against new bicycle projects in San Francisco (see "Stationary biking," 5/16/07) could get lifted next year, thanks to environmental studies released Nov. 26 and headed to the Board of Supervisors next month. But it’s a subtle, technical change in how city officials analyze traffic impacts that could have a more far-reaching implications.

It’s called Level of Service Reform and it would change the triggering mechanism for when projects need to conduct full-blown environmental impact reports, an expensive and time-consuming requirement that led to the three-year bike project injunction. And LOS reform has been rattling around the city bureaucracy long before the Guardian wrote about it two-and-a-half years ago ("The slow lane," 5/17/06).

"It’s either wonderful that I started working on this in 2002, or it’s embarrassing," Rachel Hiatt of the San Francisco Transportation Authority told a Nov. 19 meeting of TransForm (formerly the Transportation and Land Use Coalition) on the subject.

The California Environmental Quality Act of 1970 requires EIRs for projects with potentially significant environmental impacts, as is the case when the level of service (LOS) at an intersection could be changed. LOS is measured by the amount of time it takes a car to pass through a given area. The time consumed by the car is often referred to as control delay. Measured by grades A through F, control delay per motor vehicle times of up to 30 seconds (E grade) are acceptable in San Francisco.

Designating sections of certain busy streets to accommodate a bike lane would affect the control delay, thereby earning the area a lower LOS grade. Since cars now essentially have priority over alternative forms of transportation, many potential bike lanes have been stranded by the LOS standard.

City officials are working to replace the LOS measure with a new one based on auto trips generated (ATG), using 1 ATG as the threshold for an EIR. Projects that generate no car trips will not be seen as having any environmental impact, thereby moving through the approval process quicker and cheaper.

"LOS needs to be taken out of the picture," Hiatt said.

The argument for LOS replacement is not solely about the need to accommodate other transit modes, but about lowering costs and making government more efficient. Hiatt outlined other problems with the current measure as the failure to accurately gauge environmental impact, failure to reflect the city’s "transit-first" policy priorities, and an inefficient CEQA review process.

Development advisor Mike Yarne of the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development said that if the city wants to topple LOS, the Transit Authority has a case to make. "What the TA needs to show is that ATG is a more effective proxy to calculate environmental harm," Yarne said.

The city is also considering instituting a mitigation fee to be paid by project sponsors to compensate for environmental impact. Proceeds from the fee will be used to enhance all existing modes of transit, pedestrian safety, and could even include planting trees.

"The fee will go toward making people move faster," Yarne said.

Yarne admits that it could be a little difficult to make both changes at once. San Francisco will be the first city in California to create a mitigation fee, so other cities are taking notes.

"It would be quite an accomplishment if we could make it happen. It’s never been done," explained Yarne, noting that most cities have come to recognize that CEQA does not work well in urban areas. "The irony of ironies is the stopping of the bike plan."

Last week the TA released a Draft Environmental Impact Report for the San Francisco Bicycle Plan. With almost 900 days since the last new bike lane was constructed, the new bike plan will allow a roughly 75 percent increase to the current network..

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum expressed hope in the potential of the new EIR, slated to be approved this spring, after which the plan will be finalized and the city can go back to court to try to get the injunction lifted.

"The draft EIR is definitely a big step toward completion, but more needs to be done," she said. "The ridiculous exercise of slowing the bike plan down is a great case for why we need environmental review reform."

Stop PG&E’s corporate welfare

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EDITORIAL Just in time for the holiday season — and the colder weather — Pacific Gas and Electric Co. wants to shift millions of dollars in fees off big industrial customers and force residential consumers to pay more for natural gas.

The move would set a terrible precedent, and San Francisco officials should join the consumer groups that are calling on the California Public Utilities Commission to reject the plan.

At issue is California Alternative Rates for Energy (CARE), a state-mandated program that helps low-income consumers pay for basic gas service — enough to heat their homes and cook their food. CARE costs PG&E nothing; the entire subsidy system is paid for by modest surcharges on every utility bill in the state. But now the biggest gas users — giant corporations like Exxon Mobil and Chevron — want to stop paying the surcharge, and PG&E, along with San Diego Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison, is taking up their cause. The three giant utilities have asked the CPUC to reduce their subsidy contribution by $90 million. Residential customers would pick up the slack. Why? Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesman, told Los Angeles Times columnist David Lazarus that "We’ve got to try to help make it more attractive for businesses to do business in California."

But Chevron and Exxon Mobil aren’t suffering from a hostile business climate in this state. Both have reported record profits in the past year. The CEO of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson, was paid $16.7 million; Chevron’s CEO, David O’Reilly, made $15.74 million. The fee shift wouldn’t help small businesses much; it’s based on how much energy a customer uses, so the big energy-intensive industries pay the most.

The best way to boost the business climate in this recession era is to promote consumer spending — which means putting more money in the pockets of residents. Raising the gas bills of people who are already hurting will have the opposite effect.

"It’s an absolute outrage that the biggest companies would be given a discount on the backs of ratepayers," Mindy Spatt, media advocacy director at The Utility Reform Network (TURN), told us. "Everyone’s so worried about making the climate good for businesses, but what about the climate for people?"

A CPUC administrative law judge ruled against the utilities in November, but the case will go to the full commission, possibly as soon as Dec. 18. (Details are online at the Bruce Blog at sfbg.com.)

San Francisco has an interest in the outcome, since the city’s economy will take another hit if PG&E gets away with this. And, of course, it’s ironic that the utility would take this step just after it spent $10 million to defeat a local public-power measure (which would have lowered electric rates and helped both small and large businesses, as well as consumers).

The supervisors ought to pass a resolution opposing the plan and City Attorney Dennis Herrera should file a formal statement of opposition on behalf of the city.

In another front on another battleground, state assemblymember Tom Ammiano and state senator Mark Leno are introducing a joint resolution that would put the Legislature on record as supporting the legal challenge to the same-sex marriage ban, Proposition 8, and as raising concerns that the measure violates the equal protection and separation of powers safeguarded in the state constitution (see "Tyranny of the majority," 11/26/08).

Leno told us that the intent isn’t to put pressure on the California Supreme Court, which will begin considering the case in January, but to make clear the Legislature’s intent that substantial changes to the constitution such as this should go through the more cumbersome revision process.

Joining Leno and Ammiano in sponsoring the bill are Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Assemblymember John Perez, and state senate president Darrell Steinberg and state senator Christine Kehoe. Leno said he expects others to sign on as well. It’s a solid idea, and the Legislature should approve it.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I was out of town the day Tom Ammiano appeared at his final meeting as a San Francisco supervisor. Too bad; I would have gone, no matter how busy I was, just to be a part of history.

I know that sounds silly. The Barack Obama inauguration will be part of history. The election of Harvey Milk was part of history. Ammiano’s last day? Hey, the guy’s moving on to Sacramento. Take a bow, everyone says thanks, and another local politician takes another political job. History?

Well, yeah, actually. Because when the history of progressive politics is written in this town (and I hope some other poor sucker takes on that job so I don’t have to) Tom Ammiano will go down as a central figure in the movement that turned San Francisco around.

It’s worth noting that the movie Milk, celebrating the life of the gay pioneer, opened around the same time Ammiano was clearing out his City Hall office. The connection goes deeper than the fact that they were both queer men fighting for basic human rights and dignity at a time when that was a huge uphill struggle.

Milk was part of an urban movement that came out of the 1960s and came of age in the 1970s that sought to wrest control of San Francisco from a cadre of military and big business leaders who had been running it since World War II. The agenda of the crew that we collectively refer to as "downtown" was turning the sleepy port city of the 1930s into the financial headquarters for Pacific Rim trade. They wanted San Francisco to be another Manhattan; they laid plans, they put the machinery in place — and they never asked the people who lived here whether that was the future we wanted.

Because all that downtown development meant higher rents, more evictions, gentrification, budget deficits, too many cars, the death of small businesses … and by the mid-1970s, the activists had figured out how to fight back. It started with electing supervisors by district so that big money didn’t always carry the day.

Milk was elected supervisor as part of the progressive push that put George Moscone in the Mayor’s Office. And if Moscone and Milk had lived, it’s possible that the tide could have turned right then. But the assassinations derailed district elections, turned the city back over to downtown, and sentenced the San Francisco left to more than 20 years of tough political dark ages.

Ammiano got elected in that era, when the developers called all the shots, when tenants and environmentalists and neighborhood people were lucky to get two or three votes on the Board of Supervisors. His pro-tenant and anti-development proposals never even reached the desks of mayors who would have vetoed them anyway.

But he didn’t give up, and in 1999, in the bleak days of the dot-com boom, he took on a long-shot campaign for mayor that, in one six-week period, reenergized the San Francisco left. With his help, district elections came back; and with his leadership, a decidedly progressive board took office in 2001. Living wage, sick pay, universal health care, bike plans, real estate transfer taxes, tenant protections … these are all products of that change.

Ammiano was an odd sort of leader, someone with a sense of humor who didn’t take himself anywhere near seriously enough. He would be the first to credit the movement, not the man — and he’d be right. But when we needed him, he was there.

Decongest me

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› sarah@sfbg.com

San Francisco could raise $35 million to $65 million for public transit improvements annually by charging drivers $3 to cross specific downtown zones during peak travel hours, according to a San Francisco County Transportation Authority congestion pricing study.

The aim of those fees, SFCTA staffers say, is to reduce congestion, making trips faster and more reliable, neighborhoods cleaner, and vehicle emissions lower, all while raising money to improve local and regional public transit and make the city more livable and walkable — improvements they hope will get even more folks out of their cars.

London, Rome, and Stockholm already have congestion pricing schemes, but plans to charge congestion fees in New York got shelved this July, reportedly in large part because of New Jersey officials’ fears that low-income suburban commuters would end up carrying a disproportionate burden of these fees.

As a result of New York’s unanticipated pressing of the pause button, San Francisco now stands poised to become the first city in the United States to introduce congestion pricing. But the plan requires approval from both local officials as well and the state legislature.

As SFCTA executive director Jose Luis Moscovich told the Guardian last week, "The state has control over passage of goods and people. Therefore, if we want to restrict that in any way, e.g. charging a congestion fee, [we] have to get the state’s permission."

If a congestion pricing plan is to go forward, it will need the support of Mayor Gavin Newsom. Wade Crowfoot, the mayor’s climate change advisor, told us, "It’s obvious that the mayor embraces the concept, as he laid out in his 2008 inaugural address."

But Newsom isn’t signing the dotted line just yet. "The mayor wants to make sure that there are no negative impacts that would make people not want to come to San Francisco, or would harm low-income people who live in areas that are not served by public transit and have no other choice but to drive," Crowfoot said.

"We are encouraging the [Transportation Authority] to do vigorous public outreach so that no one feels blindsided," Crowfoot added.

But as SFCTA executive director Jose Luis Moscovich explained Nov. 25 to the supervisors, who also constitute the transportation authority board, even if San Francisco gets the legislative green light, it could take two to three years to implement a congestion pricing plan.

"We’re not making a proposal," Moscovich said. "We’re just showing the initial results of our analysis."

That said, it’s clear Moscovich believes congestion pricing is feasible and would contribute to local, regional, and statewide transit goals.

TOO MANY PEOPLE


With San Francisco planning to accommodate 150,000 new residents and 230,000 new jobs over the next 25 years, Moscovich’s principal transportation planner, Zabe Bent, outlined four scenarios last week that would mitigate impacts in already congested areas.

These scenarios involve a small downtown cordon, a gateway fee with increased parking pricing downtown, a double ring that combines gateway crossings with additional fees downtown, and a cordon that imposes fees on crossings into the city’s northeast corner. (See www.sfmobility.org for details, including maps of the four possible zone scenarios.)

It seems likely the SFCTA will pursue the double ring or northeast cordon option.

As Bent told the board, "If the zone is too small, people will drive around it. And drivers within the zone could end up driving more, thereby eroding anticipated congestion benefits."

But all four scenarios aim to alleviate an additional 382,000 daily trips and 30 percent extra time lost to traffic congestion that would otherwise occur by 2030, according to SFCTA studies.

"We won’t reach environmental goals through clean technology alone," Bent explained. "Even if everyone converted to a Prius, the roads would still be congested."

Observing that it already costs at least $4 to get into the city by car — on top of $2 per gallon for gas and high parking fees — Bent argued that congestion, which cost the city $2 billion in 2005, reduces San Francisco’s competitiveness and quality of life.

Stockholm raised $50 million a year and reduced congestion by 22 percent with congestion fees, while London raised $200 million a year and reduced congestion by 30 percent.

In San Francisco, the SFCTA used computer models to determine that by charging $3 per trip at peak hours, the region would get maximum benefits and minimum impacts.

Discounts would be available for commercial fleets, rentals, car shares, and zone residents, Bent said, with toll payers getting a $1 "fee-bate" and taxis completely exempt.

As Moscovich noted, "Taxis are viewed as an extension of the public transit system."

BIG BUSINESS GRUMBLES


With concerted public outreach scheduled for the next two months, and business groups already grumbling about even talking about any increases to the cost of shopping and commuting with the economy in meltdown, Moscovich warned the supervisors not to wait until after the next economic boom hits, before planning to deal with congestion.

"Now is the right time to study it, but not implement it yet," Moscovich said.

Kathryn Phillips of the Sacramento-based Environmental Defense Fund told the Board that in Stockholm, public support grew to 67 percent once a congestion fee was in place.

"People saw that it reduced congestion, provided more public transit services, and made the city more livable and walkable," Phillips said.

BART director and Livable City executive director Tom Radulovich believes that free downtown transit would make the fees more palatable. "Fares could be collected when you get off the train if you travel outside of the zone," Radulovich said.

Noting that BART is approaching its limits, Muni Metro needs investments, and parking fees are an effective tool for managing congestion, Radulovich added. "Congestion pricing’s main criteria should not be to make traffic move faster. I don’t want to create more dangerous streets, but generally speaking, I think that plan is on the right track."

As for fears that San Francisco’s plans could tank at the state level because of concerns about working-class drivers being unfairly burdened, Radulovich noted that SFCTA studies at Doyle Drive determined that only 6 percent of peak hour drivers are low-income.

"The vast majority are earning more than $50,000 a year," Radulovich said. "And since the number of low-income drivers is very small, they could be given discounts. The real environmental justice issue here is what current congestion levels are doing to people living downtown, who are mostly low-income. They put up with inhumane levels of traffic and congestion, which affects the health and livability of their neighborhoods."

Dave Synder, transportation policy director for SPUR (San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association), said he believes the regressive tax argument is a misleading attack.

"The truth is, that without the revenues this program will bring, the MTA will have to cut service for poor people, not increase service to meet increased demand for people who can no longer afford to drive," Synder told us.

But several local business groups are claiming that San Francisco doesn’t have a congestion problem compared to European cities.

Ken Cleveland of San Francisco’s Building Owners and Managers Association, said he believes that reports of congestion in San Francisco "are more hype than reality.

"We have no problem compared to London, Rome, and Stockholm," Cleveland said. "Congestion fees may work when you have a huge city with millions of people crammed in, like in London, Manhattan, Rome, but not in San Francisco."

Cleveland urged a hard look at what this increase means for people who drive now. " Fees of $160 a month would be "a real hit" on the middle and working classes, he said.

Jim Lazarus of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce said he opposed a local cordon, but supports a regional congestion pricing program. "Look out the window at 10.45 a.m., and you’ll see that there is no congestion on Montgomery and Pine," Lazarus told us, noting that unlike London, which covers 600 square miles, San Francisco only has a 49-square-mile footprint.

"If you decide not to go into downtown London, the odds are your taxes, jobs, and revenues will still go into London’s coffers," he said. "That’s not the case in San Francisco. So from a small business point of view, it doesn’t make sense."

Bent says the SFCTA’s study provides numbers that are irrefutable, in terms of showing how travel times are impacted by congestion, during peak hours. "We’re talking about modest improvements in speed, but significant improvements in travel time," Bent said.

The proposed fees won’t affect shoppers, museum-goers, or those going out at night, but would benefit all users of the public transit system, Moscovich said.

"We’re not designing for London, we’re designing for San Francisco," Moscovich told the Guardian. "And this is not an anti-automobile program. This is an effort to achieve a balanced transportation system."

With the congestion fee revenue reinvested in transportation infrastructure, Moscovich adds, public transit will be less crowded, and provide more frequent, faster service.

"It all makes perfect internal sense: folks with the least resources are likely to benefit the most," said Moscovich, who predicts that San Francisco will agree on some form of congestion pricing.

"The mayor wants to be seen as a leader in initiating climate change commitment, and transportation is one of the first ways to achieve this," he said. "Especially since 50 percent of San Francisco’s greenhouse emissions occur during peak hour travel."

"We’re trying to change behavior, not just engineering. We don’t want people in cars. … For every pollution-free Prius, you have diesel buses and older cars sitting in traffic idling, essentially eroding any benefits. The best way to optimize results is to get some cars out of the peak hour."

Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who is president of the SFCTA board and has supported the congestion fee-pricing system since it was implemented in London, said that "business will have to step up [and] make a willing suspension of disbelief to see that enhanced mobility will enhance business opportunities.

"There will be no need to get mauled at the mall," McGoldrick predicts. "San Francisco has wonderful things to offer, not just a sterile, homogenous, single-purpose environment. You can’t match museums and cultural amenities out at the malls. San Francisco is a cultural center, not just a strip mall."

McGoldrick, who is termed out in January, said that the new Board "will lean very positively toward doing this." He added that state representatives, including Sens. Leland Yee and Mark Leno and Assembly Members Fiona Ma and Tom Ammiano "will see the benefits.

"They should be willing to carry the banner because of the long term benefits for their grandchildren," McGoldrick said.

(The Board will consider the congestion pricing scenarios and impacts Dec. 16. See www.sfmobility.org for details of public workshops and meetings.)

SF slowly pedals forward

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By Steven T. Jones

City officials finally released the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the San Francisco Bicycle Plan, and while I’m still working my way through this 1,353-page tome, the pre-ordained conclusion seems painfully obvious: bicycling is good for the environment, and facilitating more bicycling is even better for the environment.

Why exactly did we need to spend two and a half years and over $1 million on this again? Oh yeah, because anti-bike zealot and occasional also-ran supervisorial candidate Rob Anderson sued the city for not adequately studying bicycling before proposing to complete the bicycle network and almost double the city’s current 45 miles in lanes, leading the courts to impose an injunction against any new bike projects until we can get this EIR certified.

“So far, it’s just a black hole for money, time, frustration… and cyclists are paying the price,” Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, told me.

But the good news is that by next year at this time, the city’s burgeoning population of regular cyclists — which an SFBC-commissioned study placed at about 16 percent of the city’s population and growing rapidly — could start seeing new lanes, bike racks, and safety markings known as “sharrows,” assuming that Anderson and his ilk don’t stall this process further after the public hearings for the DEIR begin in January.

Meanwhile, activists and city officials have been quietly working on reforming how the city analyzes traffic impacts (known as LOS reform, which I wrote about here and which we’ll have another story on in our next issue), which could spare bicycle and pedestrians projects from this expensive, ridiculous EIR process. And I’ve heard from people inside both the Mayor’s Office and Board of Supervisors that they’re excited about moving it forward, so perhaps our creation of a more sustainable transportation system could soon move into high gear.

Now what with this power plant, Mayor?

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By Amanda Witherell

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously against Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposal to retrofit Mirant Potrero power plant at their Nov. 25 meeting.

Everyone’s been calling this political theatre, as the legislation was originally tabled, then dragged off the table at the last moment by Sup. Aaron Peskin. At the Board’s Nov. 18 meeting Peskin and Sup. Sean Elsbernd rattled sabers over whether or not tabling equaled death to the legislation and all it contains. The supervisors agreed with Peskin to take it off the table and vote it down properly, in a 7-4 vote (sans Elsbernd, Carmen Chu, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Chris Daly, who, in an aside to the press box, said he voted ‘no’ on everything related to the power plant. “If I keep voting ‘no’ there will be no power plant.”)

Anyway, the big, bad ‘no’ vote happened yesterday. But that doesn’t mean the issue is dead as the Mayor will still need board approval for a contract or any kind of deal with Mirant.

The other political undercurrent is the mayor’s introducing of the legislation in the first place. If you read the actual language [PDF], it would have given him, his staff, and the SFPUC sole authority to negotiate a retrofit with Mirant. If it had passed it would have essentially given the mayor pre-approval for what ever crackpot plan they come.

And, as Peskin and Maxwell uncovered in committee hearings on the issue, retrofitting Mirant is pretty crackpot. It’s something that’s never been done to any similar power plant and may actually be technologically impossible.

So. they moved the Mayor’s legislation forward in order to forcefully kill it. It was Alioto-Pier who called for tabling it. The board went along with the idea, thinking that tabling is effectively killing legislation. but, as Maxwell said yesterday at the hearing, “Originally on this item, I asked for a no vote. Sup. Alioto-Pier asked for a table, and it was tabled. This is just an assurance that no is no. This is not about the Mayor. I’m voting no on this issue, not the Mayor.”

The other day I spoke with Elsbernd about a different issue, but he mentioned the tabling thing and told me, “You can only pull it off the table the week after it’s been tabled.”

Mary Red, clerk for the Rules Committee, told me this is true, but also said tabled legislation can be brought back for up to 12 months — but if more than a week lapses after the tabling, then it has to go back to committee and all the way through the legislative process again.

This is really a minor legislative distinction and its very likely we’ll see a new proposal to retrofit Mirant at some point, but there is a certain kind of message that gets out there when a piece of controversial legislation gets voted down unanimously. For example, the SF Chronicle headline on the story reads, “S.F. supervisors kill mayor’s power plant plan.”

Sounds like a done deal, right?

Eastern Neighborhoods moving forward

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by Amanda Witherell

The Board of Supervisors, at their Nov. 25 meeting, moved the Eastern Neighborhoods plan a little farther along in the legislative process. The political peregrinations that occurred at the previous meeting, during which the legislation was splintered into several pieces for political reasons, were resolved and the entire package is once again unified

As we reported in this week’s issue, Sup. Aaron Peskin had made some last minute amendments to add more accountability to parts of the plan. Sup. Sean Elsbernd didn’t like the move and severed them – effectively making them their own individual pieces of the legislation and vulnerable to line-item vetos from Mayor Gavin Newsom. Why would Newsom veto them? Why would speculating developers want to be required to start building within three years? Right.

Additionally, with Sup. Tom Ammiano outbound for Sacto and Sup. Chris Daly recused from voting because he owns property in the plan area, the board majority on this issue withers to six, with already suspicious intentions coming out of Sup. Gerardo Sandoval.

Anyway, yesterday the Board agreed to mend fences and move forward by rolling all the amendments back into the original legislation, which no longer allows Newsom to target specific parts of it. Most of the amendments still weren’t favored by Elsbernd, Chu, and Alioto-Pier, and Sandoval was the sole vote against a “use it or lose it” provision to reduce speculation (See above link, and our story that details his own precious amendment designed to benefit one developer in particular.)

The legislation will get its last read and vote at the Dec. 9 meeting.

New member of the SFPUC?

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by Amanda Witherell

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From left, Juliet Ellis with Manuel Pastor from UC Santa Cruz and Lori Reese-Brown with the city of Richmond

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has had two empty seats for months, but Mayor Gavin Newsom has finally made another appointment to the body that oversees the city’s water and power infrastructures. Juliet Ellis has been offered the “advocacy” seat on the five-member board.

For the past seven years she’s been executive director of Oakland-based Urban Habitat, a non-profit social and environmental justice organization that works on affordable housing, transportation, and land use planning issues throughout the Bay Area, though mostly in the East Bay. The organization has been around since 2004, and receives most of its funding from grants. [PDF of its most recent 990.] (A quick check of grants made by Pacific Gas & Electric since then showed none to Urban Habitat, unlike other purported community groups.)

Ellis told the Guardian she’s interested in joining the SFPUC because it will bring her focus back toward San Francisco, where she’s been living since 1995. She currently resides in Bernal Heights.

When asked how her experiences have prepared her to be a public utilities commissioner, she said, “I have a long track record of working with folks who are often the most left out of the process,” she said, and that would continue at the SFPUC. If appointed, she plans to keep her job at Urban Habitat.

“Our organization is really interested in justice components,” she said, and in particular, climate justice. “What are the implications for low income communities if sea levels rise? If air pollution increases?” And, she pointed out, what kinds of mitigations can protect more vulnerable communities when it comes taxation through congestion pricing or the continual siting of power plants in areas where people live, with their pollution and carbon offsets occurring elsewhere?

That relates intimately to long term water and power issues under discussion in San Francisco, like the 51 percent renewable energy projections for the Community Choice Aggregation plan and what to do about the Mirant Power Plant that’s still operating in the mostly black, mostly low-income, and, consequently, most cancerous part of town, as well as how to move the city toward more affordable energy bills.

Ellis didn’t have much to say on specific issues like Mirant or CCA, admitting that she hasn’t “gone deep enough, I haven’t learned all the information” about these heavily nuanced and political issues.

But, her thinking seemed to fall along the right lines of public accountability and control, citing “the more obvious benefits of having more control than when it’s privatized. It seems like CCA would provide more clean energy and control and that in and of itself makes it something that’s attractive.”

Ellis said she sees real opportunities to connect the SFPUC with the communities she’s been helping at Urban Habitat. “The main issues I’m excited about are job opportunities and thinking through how to position those,” she said, pointing out that the SFPUC is projecting 24,000 jobs through the Water System Improvement Plan. She would like to see some of those jobs go to people who are low-income and jobless now. She’s also interested in “out of the box thinking for mitigating impacts for communities like Bayview Hunters Point and Potrero on water and energy issues.” She said most people don’t understand the scale of work undertaken by the SFPUC and she’d like to build a better relationship between it and low income and communities of color.

She said the recommendation to join the SFPUC came from Fred Blackwell, a former Urban Habitat board member who was appointed by Newsom to head the Redevelopment Agency in 2007. So far she’s met with several members of the Board of Supervisors and her appointment will be heard by the Rules Committee during their Dec. 4 meeting.

“The Board without Ammiano is like the Vatican without the Pope.”

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ammiano.jpg

“The man. The myth. The legend.”

That’s how Board President Aaron Peskin introduced Sup. Tom Ammiano, as he bid farewell to the longest serving member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at today’s Board meeting.

Headed to Sacramento to serve in the State Assembly, Ammiano has a 14-year record as SF supervisor that simply can’t be beat now that 8-year term limits have been introduced at the Board. And it will be difficult for other supes to touch his record in terms of legislation, service, attitude, wit and, of course, stark raving popularity.

Recalling Ammiano’s arrival at the Board a decade and a half ago, Peskin said, “Tom was a voice in the wilderness.”

“He managed to got living wage and domestic partnership legislation passed, long before either concept was popular. He succeeded in prevailing on district elections,” Peskin said. “He gave voice to the modern Board of Supervisors—for which I’ll never forgive you, Tom.”

“We love you, we miss you and I’ll come volunteer in your district office, now that I’m not going to have a job come December 8,” Peskin added.

Then it was the turn of Sup. Bevan Dufty, who has sat elbow to elbow with Ammiano for the past two years, to explain why he believes that he had “the best seat in the house.”

According to Dufty, this close proximity helped prevent Ammiano, who also happens to be a wickedly biting stand-up comic, from making jokes about him to the reporters that are corraled directly behind Ammiano in the press box.

Sup. Chris Daly praised Ammiano for ushering in district elections, bringing in a progressive Board and making a historic run for mayor in 1999.

“‘When you get termed out in Sacramento, we’ll be waiting for your return,” Daly promised.

Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier explained why she is going to miss Ammiano a lot.

“We never ever vote together on anything,” Alioto-Pier admitted, describing Ammiano as a “people come first” type.

“You always listen to me, and you’ve given me some of the best advice I’ve gotten since I got here,” Alioto-Pier said, further recalling how Ammiano once screamed at someone, something about, “When you walk a mile in my pumps,” an incident that inspired her to admire this famously flamboyant supervisor even more than ever.

Sup. Mirkarimi recalled how he was working as aide to Sup. Terence Hallinan, when Ammiano was first elected

“Tom really changed the entire climate of this instituion,” Mirkarimi said. “He swifty became the archangel, if you will, of the progressive movement. He is a rain maker, a king maker, a visionary.”

Acknowledging that it’ll be impossible to replace Ammiano’s wit, Mirkarimi suggested that he consider providing courses for would-be politicians.

Sup. Jake McGoldrick said “ Tom Ammiano has changed the world.”

Sup. Carmen Chu found it fitting that Ammiano is going to the State Assembly, since ” he’s such a statesman.”

The wittiest line of the afternoon belonged to Sup. Sean Elsbernd.

“The Board of Supervisors without Tom Ammiano is like the Vatican without the Pope,” Elsbernd said.

And the best warning belonged to Sup. Sophie Maxwell.

Recalling Ammiano’s grace and integrity, his ability to get testy and angry one minute, to lash out and then let matters drop the next, Maxwell said, “Look out Sacramento, they just don’t know what’s coming.”

Then it was Ammiano’s turn to say goodbye.

“It’s been a great time,” he said, recalling how district elections heralded a return to populism and admitting how he has only recently been getting in touch with how much Harvey Milk inspired the city, and how “terrifically special and strong” Milk was.

Calling San Francisco “a crazy indefinable city,” Ammiano said, “Elvis may have left the building, but never the City.” Then, turning to the press box, tears in his eyes, he said, “And thank you, press.”

And then he was gone in a blaze of bouquets and flowery accolades, leaving the running dogs of the press wondering just exactly how we are going to survive Board meetings, without those joking asides that Dufty rightly feared and that Ammiano frequently tossed out for us, like biscuits for naughty puppies that he somehow still manages to love, no matter how many times we chew on his favorite slippers.

After the bubble

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› amanda@sfbg.com

Speculators will be able to sit on tracts of San Francisco land until the market improves. Development impact fees will be set too low to cover the costs of neighborhood improvements like parks, streets, and transit. Affordable housing development is intimately tied to a busted market rate-housing boom.

This is the future of the eastern South of Market, Potrero Hill, Central Waterfront, and Mission District neighborhoods as laid out in the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, a community rezoning effort that began in 2001 that now fills a binder thicker than a weightlifter’s bicep.

After more than 30 public hearings, the plan is approaching final approval by the Board of Supervisors. While some are lauding all the heavy lifting that’s been done to get it to this stage, there are still some noticeable shortcomings.

"The plan itself is despicably deficient in terms of affordable housing," housing activist Calvin Welch told the Guardian. That sentiment was echoed by spokespeople from the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition and the South of Market Community Action Network, who may join together in a legal challenge of the plan’s Environmental Impact Report for failing to properly consider socioeconomic impacts.

"There will be environmental impacts in terms of displacement, increased amounts of traffic and cars, increased levels of noise," said April Veneracion, SOMCAN’s organization director. "The Board of Supervisors could have addressed these inadequacies in the EIR with amendments."

Some last minute amendments were added that would audit the financing of projects and reduce land speculation — but due to a tricky legislative maneuver, even these concessions could be axed by a veto from Mayor Gavin Newsom.

The bulk of the plan rezones vast tracts of industrial land on the eastern flank of the city for housing, mixed urban use (including retail and commercial sites), and a light industrial category called "production, distribution, and repair" (PDR) that protects many of the working-class jobs remaining in San Francisco.

Building height limits will increase in some areas and remain at 40 feet in others. Between 7,000 and 10,000 new units of housing are anticipated, with affordable housing rates between 15 to 25 percent, depending on the location and project.

However, the one method of financing affordable housing — known as inclusionary housing, which requires market-rate developers to include a certain percentage of affordable units — is entirely linked to a now-waning economic boom. "Events have rendered it meaningless," said Welch. "The Eastern Neighborhoods Plan is a plan predicated on a red-hot real estate market. Planning has no ability to shift with the market and the market, since mid-September, has changed radically."

The Controller’s Office recently readjusted the city’s revenue projections, suggesting a $90 to $125 million budget shortfall in the current fiscal year, with 40 to 49 percent of that directly connected to flagging real estate transactions.

Yet housing in the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan remains primarily composed of market-rate units, fetching upward of $700,000 apiece, with "middle-income" units discounted to half that, and below-market-rate apartments still costing over $200,000 each. Development impact fees are set for $10 per square foot of construction — not enough to cover the proposed improvements that would make these industrial areas pleasant and safe for everyday residential living and working.

"In order to support the population that’s expected to move in, you need transit improvements, park improvements, street improvements," said Tony Kelly of the Potrero Boosters, a neighborhood group. "Less than half [of these] have been funded by the project."

He characterized the approved parts of the plan as "pretty weak." "They’re rezoning 500 acres of industrial land for housing — predominantly market-rate — right at a time when no one’s building market-rate housing," Kelly said. He also said the plan lacked many creative financing ideas. "When the area plans were presented to our neighborhood back in 2006, the Planning Department outlined all the things a neighborhood needs. There was a chart with 18 different ways to pay for it. How many are now in the plan? One."

Ways to ensure that developer fees are used well and land doesn’t sit fallow were introduced at the last minute. Amendments to the plan, made by Sup. Aaron Peskin, require audits of the neighborhood improvement fees and forcing developers to actually build rather than speculate — but they received a potentially fatal last-minute blow.

The Board’s first vote on the plan occurred during the Nov. 18 meeting and the bulk of the plan received unanimous support (minus Sup. Chris Daly, who is recused from voting because he owns property in the plan area).

But late in the game, a standoff arose between Peskin and Sup. Sean Elsbernd, who opposed blindly rubberstamping the last-minute amendments offered by Peskin during the previous night’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee hearing.

"We saw the actual language of this if you looked in your e-mail in the last two hours," Elsbernd said during the heat of the Board hearing. "I’d like a week to read the changes made by you last night."

The Board voted to continue the matter for a week, but then, at the end of that day’s business, Peskin rescinded the vote and forced the issue. As promised, Elsbernd severed the four Peskin amendments — a legislative tactic that allows one supervisor to slice out parts of legislation and place them into individual files for separate votes.

Peskin countered by severing another amendment, added by Sup. Gerardo Sandoval, which would have allowed special height increases for two lots on Mission Street, where the New Mission Theatre and the Giant Value store currently sit. Gus Murad, who owns the properties as well as the adjacent restaurant Medjool, has been lobbying to convert the properties to commercial and residential space.

The supervisors shot down the "spot zoning" amendment that would let future buildings on the two sites to be built higher than what’s currently allowed on Mission Street. MAC spokesperson Nick Pagoulatos later applauded the move: "It would have been a ridiculous exception to make and one that clearly favored one developer."

Despite Elsbernd’s move to sever the amendments, all four passed, but didn’t receive enough votes to block a veto from Newsom. Supervisors Carmen Chu and Michela Alioto-Pier voted with Elsbernd.

The mayor’s ability to line-item veto some key protections sought by neighborhood activists was at the heart of the move. "That’s absolutely right," Elsbernd told the Guardian, who added that although he hadn’t spoken with Newsom and didn’t know his intentions, "These are issues that absolutely concern me."

The amendments add "metering" and "use it or lose it" provisions to the plan. Metering is essentially an audit performed by the board every five years to ensure that collected developer impact fees are used properly. Peskin said that while they couldn’t meet all the requests of neighborhood groups and housing rights activists, "this was something that we could do that made good public policy sense."

Elsbernd told the Guardian he didn’t object to the concept of metering but would like oversight by the Controller’s Office. "Metering gives the Board of Supervisors full power and takes the executive out of the mix," he said of the plan as it stands now, adding that it should be viewed as a long-term protection. "This is not about Mayor Gavin Newsom. It’s about Mayor Mirkarimi or Mayor Peskin."

The "use it or lose it" requirements are designed to reduce speculation by mandating that a developer with a project that has received a green light from the Planning Department must procure a building permit within three years, after which they have one year to break ground. Currently, there’s no limit to the amount of time a developer can sit on a property, which becomes more valuable after receiving city approval.

Elsbernd said, "Three years is just not fair," but again, he said he thought there was a middle ground and would like to see project developers given opportunities to make cases for extensions. However, if the developer has one of those grandfathered projects that doesn’t have to meet the new, stricter inclusionary housing regulations or pay public benefits charges, they should "have to pay full fare, full affordability, full fees," said Elsbernd.

A second vote on the plan and its amendments is scheduled for the Nov. 25 Board meeting, after Guardian press deadline, but Elsbernd expressed optimism about a compromise as part of last-minute dealmaking. "I would say there’s a possibility, as colleagues realize the potential mayoral veto."

Still, Welch pointed out that resistance to a "use it or lose it" protection is proof that San Francisco’s real estate market is in no way immune to the economic crisis afflicting the rest of the country. "The assumption built into the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan was this robust growing market for condo development and I think the bubble has burst," said Welch. "If that isn’t the case, then why would developers care about a requirement that says you have to build in three years? The Mayor’s Office told me the phones were melting after Monday night’s amendments passed."

But Welch said one of the great ironies of a market-rate housing crash is that it makes nonprofit housing development even more competitive. "That’s why we pushed so hard for ‘use it or lose it.’ It forces developers to say to the city ‘we’ll do it,’ or ‘would you like to buy the site?’<0x2009>" He said the city should be poised to buy those sites in order to build affordable housing and suggested the city lobby Barack Obama’s administration for the funds to do it as part of the large infrastructure improvements planned by the president-elect.

"I think the way housing is financed is going to be totally transformed and the federal government is going to play a bigger role," said Welch. *

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors passed the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan last week, in what seemed to be an awful rush. If it had been my call, I’d have left the transformative rezoning to the next board, which will have to deal with the impacts of it. But that wasn’t to be. The meeting was marked by Board President Aaron Peskin pushing a series of crucial amendments that Sup. Sean Elsbernd wanted to delay — and that Mayor Gavin Newsom may veto. That will force an override vote, and it will be close.

So one of the most important land use decisions in the history of San Francisco is going to be coming down during the holiday season, during the last few weeks that the outgoing board is in place, and possibly after Sup. Tom Ammiano — a solid progressive vote — has left for Sacramento.

This is not good.

The plan itself is a bit out of date — it was designed for a time when developers were champing at the bit to build market-rate housing in southeastern San Francisco. And while housing demand in this city is still strong, the market has dropped a bit, and the notion that fees on high-end condos will be paying for affordable housing and infrastructure is a lot more shaky these days.

I was never that thrilled with the rezoning anyway — it allows way too much expensive housing, nowhere near enough affordable housing, and the fees that developers will pay are utterly inadequate to fund the level of transportation, parks, schools, water and sewer pipes, and other facilities the area needs.

But at least the amendments add some sanity to the plan. One of Peskin’s proposals would mandate that developers who get a conditional use permit for their projects actually start building within three years — or lose their right to special zoning. That not only makes sense, it’s an anti-speculation measure — you can’t just buy up land, get special permission for additional height and density, and then sit on it until you can flip the property for more cash.

Of course, the Mayor’s Office is getting flooded with calls from developers who think this is just an outrage. The builders are also unhappy with another amendment, which requires the city to monitor the payment of building fees to make sure they’re coming in on time and going to the right places.

So if the mayor holds true to form, he’s going to veto those parts of the plan, and right now, progressives don’t have eight votes to override him. If that’s how it goes down, then the new board needs to take up the issue again in January. And while the new supes are at it, maybe they can try to raise the development fees.

The good news is that the lower the housing market goes, the more competitive nonprofit developers can be. And if the Obama administration comes through with some federal affordable housing money, the community-based organizations could be the ones driving the new wave of construction.

It sucks that Prop. B didn’t pass, because this is a rare opportunity for the public sector and the nonprofits to grab building sites. The supervisors can still allocate money for affordable housing in the next budget. And if there’s federal money to match it, Newsom, who refused to spend the last allocation, should be hammered by every part of the city if he screws up this sort of chance.

Fueling change

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EDITORIAL As a lame duck Board of Supervisors winds down, and the economic crisis and bloody budget cuts absorb most of the political focus at City Hall, there’s a major environmental issue creeping toward a January deadline — and city officials need to present a united front.

At issue is the Mirant power plant in Potrero Hill, an aging fossil fuel dinosaur that has been belching pollution into the southeastern part of the city for years. It’s been hard to shut down — the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), the regulatory agency that controls the electric grid, wants some sort of generating facility inside the city lines. Sup. Aaron Peskin, backed originally by Mayor Gavin Newsom, sought to replace the Mirant plant with city-owned combustion turbines — so-called peakers — that would run only when needed. But Pacific Gas and Electric Co., fearing city ownership of power production, fought that proposal, and some environmentalists, arguing that the city should build no new fossil fuel plants at all, also opposed the plan.

On May 5, seven PG&E lobbyists descended on the Mayor’s Office and gave Newsom his marching orders: drop the peakers proposal or we’ll spend whatever is necessary to kill it. Newsom suddenly decided he didn’t like the peakers after all, and started pushing a PG&E-backed alternative: the Mirant plant, which runs on diesel and natural gas, could be converted to run entirely on natural gas, thereby reducing emissions.

The emissions numbers are pretty complicated. If the city ran the natural-gas-fired peakers for only a limited amount of time, they would emit less pollution than the Mirant plant. Obviously neither option is pollution-free; neither is sustainable; and neither is perfect.

Still, the worst of all possible alternatives would be allowing Mirant to continue to operate a private plant. At least the peakers would be city-owned and city-run. The city would have some control over how often they were fired up and could shut them down when more renewable technology becomes available. The Mirant plant — even after a retrofit — would continue burning fossil fuels; the private company would continue to profit; and the city would have no control at all.

Besides, it’s not clear that the plant even can be retrofitted for natural gas. The project that Newsom, PG&E, and Mirant are proposing has never been done before. Mirant may not be able to get the financing; the technology may not exist.

Which means that it’s entirely possible nothing will change. If all goes the way PG&E wants, the city will abandons the peakers, the dirty Mirant plant will continue to run without a retrofit, and the people of southeast San Francisco will continue to suffer.

But there’s a problem facing Mirant, and it could potentially change the whole picture. The plant sucks 200 million gallons of water out of the bay every day for cooling — and its Regional Water Quality Control Board permit expires at the end of this year. The board has said it’s not inclined to renew the permit, since the plant can’t meet modern water-quality standards. So as of January, Mirant could be forced to shut the plant anyway — unless the company, and Cal-ISO, find a way to force the water board to back down.

That’s where the city comes in. The mayor, the supervisors, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera should publicly inform both the water board and Cal- ISO that San Francisco does not want the permit renewed for the current Mirant plant. Even if Newsom thinks the facility can be upgraded, it’s hard to argue that the existing plant is anything but a disaster. And unless and until there’s a credible, peer-reviewed retrofit plan, Newsom has no business siding with Mirant and PG&E.

The water board could force the issue. If the Mirant plant has to close, the city either needs to come back with a peaker plan that environmentalists can accept or find a way to meet Cal-ISO’s mandates without new fossil fuel generation. That sounds like an excellent outcome to us. *

Clean energy

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EDITORIAL Pacific Gas and Electric Co., its political hacks, and to a great extent, the San Francisco Chronicle all seem to take the same line on the defeat of Proposition H: It’s done. The people have spoken. Public power has been on the ballot 11 times, and it’s never passed.

And — as is always the case with a losing campaign — supporters of the Clean Energy Act are discussing what went wrong, looking at how the measure was written, the details, the language, the scope to see if there was something that could have been done differently.

But that ignores the central reality of the campaign for Prop. H: PG&E spent nearly $10.3 million to kill it. And it’s very, very hard to fight that kind of money.

The truth is, there was nothing wrong with the language or scope of Prop. H. If it had passed, it would have given the city the tools to create a sustainable energy portfolio that would be the envy of the nation. In fact, there is little doubt that the Clean Energy Act was well ahead in the polls when it was first placed on the ballot.

But as we’ve seen with so many races over time (and as we saw with Proposition 8 this fall) when a ballot measure it becomes a citywide or statewide race, big money has a serious impact. And we’ve never seen this kind of money in a San Francisco initiative campaign. In the end, PG&E spent about $53 per vote. That’s an outrageous sum, dwarfing any political spending that’s ever happened in San Francisco

Yet despite the barrage, the Clean Energy Act got tremendous grassroots and political support. Clean Energy has a strong constituency in San Francisco, including from the Sierra Club, and the power of this campaign won’t go away. Despite the efforts of downtown and PG&E, progressives still control the Board of Supervisors. Three of the city’s four representatives in Sacramento — Senator-elect Mark Leno, Assembly Member Fiona Ma and Assembly Member-elect Tom Ammiano — supported the legislation and will continue to back efforts to replace PG&E’s dirty power with locally- owned renewable energy. PG&E has money but it’s running out of friends in this town — and its illegal monopoly is the very definition of unsustainable.

There’s now an organized constituency for clean energy and public power, seasoned by this campaign and ready to continue the battle. That’s what needs to happen. There are numerous fronts: the city needs to be moving forward quickly with community choice aggregation, which offers the potential for cheaper, cleaner power. (The downside to CCA is that it doesn’t allow the city to make money; PG&E would still own the transmission lines, and thus make all the profits in the system.) Potentially, however, a CCA agency could begin moving toward creating local generation facilities and eventually toward building a local transmission system. A CCA also could directly access the city’s own Hetch Hetchy power and begin delivering it to local customers (once San Francisco can get out of the contracts requiring it to send too much of that power out of town).

The supervisors need a strong Local Agency Formation Commission to keep monitoring and pushing this, and the new board president needs to be sure LAFCO members are committed to and energized about renewable energy and public power.

Several supervisors — Sean Elsbernd, for example — told us they saw no reason for Prop. H to be on the ballot since so much of what it called for could be done by the board. Fine: Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, one of the authors of Prop. H, should immediately introduce legislation to do everything in Prop. H that doesn’t require a city charter change. Let’s see if Elsbernd and the mayor are really just PG&E call-up votes or if they’re willing to support an energy options feasibility study and strong renewable-energy mandates for the city.

And there are still legal options that the board should look at. City Attorney Dennis Herrera never wanted to go to court to enforce the Raker Act, the federal law requiring San Francisco to operate a public power system, but that’s an area the board can push. David Campos, the apparent supervisor-elect in District 9, is a lawyer who has worked in the city attorney’s office and sued PG&E, so this is an area where he can show leadership.

The bottom line is that this battle isn’t over.

There were other disappointments on what was generally a progressive ballot. Proposition V — the phony measure calling on the school board to reinstate JROTC — passed, narrowly. It was mostly a wedge issue to hurt progressive candidates for supervisor, and has been a horribly divisive issue in the schools. The school board, which cut off JROTC last year, is now pushing for an excellent public service alternative and doesn’t need to go back and reexamine the issue. JROTC is a terrible idea for San Francisco, and the newly elected board members shouldn’t even bring this up again.

Of course we were deeply unhappy about the passage of Prop. 8. The repeal of same-sex marriage was such a blow to San Francisco that it dampened a lot of the enthusiasm over the Obama victory. But that one’s not over, either; it has just begun. Statistics show that voters under 30 overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage — and if the campaign is run differently, and the message is positive, it’s likely that Prop. 8 can be overturned. Marriage equality advocates should think seriously about preparing now for a major campaign in November 2010 to restore equal rights for same-sex couples in California.

Progressive Victory Party in SF

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Sup. Chris Daly displays finger puppets that look like supervisors-elect John Avalos, Eric Mar, and David Chiu, mocking efforts during the campaign to assert that they would be nothing but his puppets.

By Steven T. Jones

San Francisco progressives celebrated the movement’s election night victories and set their sights on the mayor’s office during a party last night at The Independent sponsored by the San Francisco Democratic Party, San Francisco Labor Council, and the SF Tenants Union.
“The progressives in San Francisco still need the real prize and that’s Room 200,” said Aaron Peskin, who will continue in his role as chair of the local Democratic Party after leaving the Board of Supervisors at the end of the year.
He wasn’t the only one looking forward. John Avalos, who won the Dist. 11 seat on the Board of Supervisor, praised the unified movement’s ability to withstand withering attacks by downtown-funded groups and said, “Together, we can take the mayor’s race in 2011.”

Taxi merger

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› amanda@sfbg.com

A plan to merge the Taxi Commission with the Municipal Transportation Agency will be heard by the Board of Supervisors on Nov. 25. Most city officials and taxi industry bigwigs support the change, but some drivers fear it could signal the end of the semi-autonomous medallion system that has been in place for 30 years.

The merger legislation by Sup. Aaron Peskin is brief, simply transferring duties from the Taxi Commission to the MTA beginning March 1, 2009. But Peskin also helped write another key piece of legislation — last year’s sweeping MTA reform measure Proposition A — that contains a provision allowing the MTA to wipe out all prior taxi regulations.

Skeptics fear that the real target of the merger is Prop. K, the 1978 law that created the current driver permitting system, which requires taxi medallions that are owned by the city to be in every car. With the MTA in control, the door could be open to privatizing taxi medallions. These permits are currently leased by the city for a fee — $658 a year for most cabs — to longtime drivers, but a scheme to sell or transfer them could mean huge profits for the select group of drivers who now hold medallions, with a potentially high transfer fee kicked back to the city.

Reguutf8g San Francisco’s taxi industry involves ensuring cabs are being properly operated, with medallions held by legitimate drivers, and investigating various complaints. But the Taxi Commission barely has enough money to meet its mandate. Proponents of the merger say the MTA can bring more resources and professional attention to the industry. Mayor Gavin Newsom, who as a supervisor in 1998 pushed for formation of the Taxi Commission, has long supported the merger as a way to have all transportation housed in one agency.

“The benefit of merging is the MTA already regulates all surface transportation,” said Jordanna Thigpen, acting director of the Taxi Commission, who was appointed by Newsom after the Taxi Commission ousted Heidi Machen in 2006. “Most cities in the country do incorporate taxis into the common transportation agency.”

Currently, cab companies, medallion holders, and rank and file drivers essentially function as a feudal system, with the serfs driving San Franciscans around in vehicles usually owned by the lording cab companies and permitted by older drivers who hold the coveted medallions. There are only 1,500 of these permits, which are literally tin medallions that correspond to the numbers printed on the sides of cabs. They are owned and regulated by the city, and leased for life to drivers who wait years to move up the list.

Medallion holders make about $20,000 to $50,000 per year leasing their medallions to cab companies, which then charge drivers daily “gate fees” that are set by the city. Drivers pay an average of $96.50 per day to use a cab, but are allowed to pocket all their fares. Drivers usually clear about $150 a day, but that’s before paying gas, tolls, and tickets, and before even sometimes allegedly slipping bribes to dispatchers to get the best assignments. Drivers have no health insurance and are essentially treated as independent contractors.

Drivers have criticized the newly formed Taxi Advisory Group, which has made recommendations to the MTA and is likely to be expanded after the merger into a 15-member council, which would have only three drivers, but seven medallion holders and cab company representatives. Five members of the public would also be seated and their unanimous support would be required for a driver-led initiative or idea to trump the medallion and cab company bloc.

“We want a much greater and fairer representation on this Taxi Advisory Council,” said driver and United Taxicab Workers chair Bud Hazelkorn. “Without that, all the issues that we bring will not be heard.” Those issues include providing health care for drivers and creating a centralized dispatch system so fares are allocated more equitably. He pointed out that drivers are the only people in the system making all their income directly from fares. Everyone else in the industry gets slices from other pies.

And the existing provisions outlined by Prop. K may soon be a thing of the past.

Prop. A included language that allowed for the Taxi Commission merger and stated that once the MTA was in control, “Agency regulations shall thereafter supersede all previously adopted ordinances governing motor vehicles for hire that conflict with or duplicate such regulations.”

During the 2007 election season, this was interpreted by the UTW and Judge Quentin Kopp, a former supervisor who authored Prop. K, as possibly undermining the current medallion system. “The taxicabs CEOs have tried EIGHT times to undo Prop. K, failing each time as voters upheld this good government measure,” Kopp wrote in a paid ballot argument at the time. “Now encouraged by City Hall, Prop. A slips in a deceptive clause undoing 30 years of voter policy.”

Back in 2007, when seeking the Guardian‘s endorsement for Prop. A, Peskin told us, “I have met with the mayor. The mayor has no desire, as do I, to undermine Prop. K, and what we would do if we ever were to transfer the Taxi Commission to MTA, we would transfer upon the condition that they adhere to and embrace by regulation all of the previously voter approved ordinances, such as Prop. K. So I think we have it handled.”

Peskin said he reaffirmed that commitment in a letter, cosigned by Newsom, but neither office could locate a copy of that letter as of Guardian press time.

But at a Nov. 17 Government Audit and Oversight Committee meeting, Peskin asked MTA executive director Nathaniel Ford if it was his understanding that this merger was not to undermine Prop. K. “That is my understanding,” said Ford. “I think it is important to all stakeholders.”

Yet the interpretation is still correct. “The MTA will now have the authority to enact provisions that supersede Prop. K,” City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey told the Guardian.

This past summer, the Taxi Commission established a Charter Reform Workgroup with a primary goal of reviewing Prop. K. The group is expected to meet for about six months with any recommendations subject to a citywide vote.

Although the workgroup has yet to release any specific statements regarding Prop. K, chairman Malcolm Heinecke believes it’s already making strides simply by opening up public discourse among citizens, companies, medallion holders, and drivers.

“One of the problems with the taxi industry and discussions of reform is that they are very insular,” said Heinecke, who is also an MTA board member. “I believe we have a balanced group of voices [in the group].”

Heinecke said he thinks varied stakeholders are essential because of broad dissatisfaction with Prop. K. “You hear everyone — both inside and outside the industry — bemoaning some aspect of Prop. K. It’s a system we’ve had in place for 30 years; rather than just say it’s bad and not do anything, [the goal of the workgroup] is to look at where we are and revise.”

While it may be true that no one is satisfied, that hardly means members of the factional workgroup agree on how exactly Prop. K should be changed. For some, the problem begins with issues of representation. Not everyone agrees with Heinecke that this is a “balanced group.” Of 12 members, there are just three drivers and three members of the public, with the rest representatives from the upper echelons of the industry.

Driver and UTW member Thomas George Williams pointed out that “companies and medallion holders often have the same interests — most companies are owned by medallion holders.”

Furthermore, Mark Gruberg, a UTW member, told us, “Everyone would say some things can and possibly should be done to improve provisions of Prop. K. But it’s one thing to work around the edges to reform a law and another thing to throw it out the window.”

He pointed out that one proposal before the workgroup would allow medallions to be sold for profit, something he said “would be a complete reversal of Prop. K.” If other cities are an example, medallions could fetch as much as $500,000 apiece, enough for the holder to retire handsomely. “People that have them would clean up at the expense of the next generation of cab drivers,” Gruberg said. “It would be a completely indefensible windfall.”

“This is public property, these medallions,” Hazelkorn said. “They could be misused as a pension, but that’s not a pension that applies to everyone.”

When questioned, Heinecke was vague about concrete changes the workgroup might instigate. “This is a delicate position for me because the whole purpose of the task force is to hear the views of all the stakeholders,” he said.

Taxi drivers, the serfs of the industry, do not have high hopes about the merger. “If the merger happens, the MTA [officials] will be able to do whatever they please,” Williams said. “Everyone knows MTA is always in need of money … they don’t care about drivers or improving industry, only their budget.”

Williams worries that, under the MTA, the commission will lease medallions to companies instead of individual drivers, which would “totally ruin the concept of Prop. K.” Gruberg agreed. He pointed out that some proposals mention levying a tax on the medallion transfers, a potential revenue source the MTA could be eyeing. “It’s a whole new ball game with MTA and if they’re so desperate for cash and they see the taxi industry as a cash cow, they might go for any scheme.”

MTA spokesperson Judson True told us, “We have no intention of looking to taxi revenue to supplement existing Muni operations.”

Judge Kopp said, “By itself that does not disturb Prop. K, but if that’s a fig leaf for some recommendation from this ersatz Charter Reform Workgroup, then it becomes ominous.” He said dressing the changes in a group with a pithy name like Charter Reform “is not reform, it’s subterfuge.”

And, he added, Prop. K doesn’t need reform as much as it needs enforcement. “They’ve been at this for 30 years. Their revisions are always to start to restore the pre-1978 conditions and enable them to treat these permits as personal possessions for sale.”

Peskin, with the approval of other members of the committee, calendared the full board hearing on the merger for a date after the MTA announces the result, expected sometime this week, of its national search for a director of taxi and accessible services. Solid leadership has been elusive: two years ago the Taxi Commission fired executive director Heidi Machen, reportedly for being too tough on cab companies. Machen was replaced by another Newsom appointee, Jordanna Thigpen, who said she has applied to stay on the job but doesn’t know if she’ll be selected.

When asked if the merger would unnecessarily stretch the MTA’s resources, Thigpen said, “On the one hand you could look at it that way. On the other hand, we’re so chronically understaffed. Trying to add staff is so complicated because we’re funded by the taxi industry.”

The taxi industry brings about $1.6 million in revenue to the city, mostly from fees paid by 1,500 medallion holders and about 7,000 drivers. However, “Fees do not currently meet the city’s cost recovery needs,” according to a Taxi Commission merger report. “Both Taxi Commission and Taxi Detail are understaffed and additional enforcement personnel are needed.”

MTA’s True said, “We expect some cost savings or at least increased efficiencies,” when asked how the merger will affect the MTA’s budget. “When it comes to changing Prop. K, raising fees, or adjusting how medallions are allocated,” True said, “I can’t say that it’s not on the table … In the last several months the focus has been on procedural issues. I think that policy questions will largely come post-merger.”

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Is anyone else appalled that the Obamas are not even considering sending their kids to public schools? Seriously. This may not seem like the most important issue on the president’s agenda, but I think it’s a big deal.

According to The New York Times, Michelle Obama has toured Sidwell Friends, the pricey private school where Chelsea Clinton was educated. She’s also looking at Maret School and Georgetown Day, two institutions that cater to the children of the rich and powerful. There are no public schools on the list.

Adrian Fenty, the mayor of Washington, DC has urged the Obamas to consider the schools that most DC kids attend, but he has little moral suasion: Mayor Fenty’s twin sons go to private school.

I’m a public school parent, and this really bothers me. What the Obamas are saying, in essence, is that there is no public school anywhere in the district good enough for their kids. They’re saying that if you’ve got the money, you should flee for the safety of private academies. Those lowly public places are just for the peasants.

That sort of statement matters. It matters when you think about the new president’s priorities. It matters when you think about the role he wants to play not just as a chief executive but as an agent of change and a moral compass for the nation and the world. In a way, it’s his first test, and he’s flunked it.

I’m sorry: the children of the president should go to public schools. The children of mayors, and city council members, and county supervisors, and city attorneys should go the same schools as the kids of the majority of their constituents. And if those schools aren’t as good as they’d like, well then, join the team. The rest of us are working like hell to make the under-funded, over-stressed public schools better. You can, too.

And by the way, Mr. President-elect, my public school in San Francisco is giving my son and daughter a great education. And they’re growing up with kids who aren’t just like them. That’s worth way more than your fancy $21,000 private school can ever offer.

* * * *

The election of Sup. Ed Jew two years ago gave ranked-choice voting a bad rep. This year, however, I think we saw how the system can work.

I understand the critics who say that old-fashioned runoffs — second-round elections held a few weeks after the general — are more fair and allow for excitement, like Tom Ammiano vs. Willie Brown in 1999 and Matt Gonzalez vs. Gavin Newsom in 2003. But they also create a problem, particularly when one side has a lot more money than the other.

Downtown had almost endless resources to try to defeat Eric Mar, David Chiu, and John Avalos. The Democratic Party, thanks to the progressive takeover this summer, was supporting the three progressives, as was labor, the Sierra Club, and the Tenants Union. And while party chair Aaron Peskin raised a sizeable sum for slate cards and labor spent cash on organizing efforts, that was dwarfed by the landlords and developers.

Mar, Chiu, and Avalos had the advantage of a high-turnout election. If they’d been forced to run again three weeks later, downtown would have again dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the races — and at some point, the good guys would run out of money. Plus, RCV gave the candidates an incentive to make alliances.

Not a perfect system, but better, I think, than the obvious alternative.

Political Theater

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

Pair an effusive and extroverted, larger-than-life politico like Harvey Milk — complete with community-forging charisma, panoramic outlook, and labyrinthine City Hall machinations — with a reserved, perpetually-outside-looking-in independent, à la director Gus Van Sant? That feature-film odd-coupling might have understandably strained some brains in Hollywood. Making the seldom-seen moments of otherwise-secret or neglected lives visible has seemingly been Van Sant’s calling, and his most memorable films — 1985’s Mala Noche, 1989’s Drugstore Cowboy, 1991’s My Own Private Idaho, 2003’s Elephant, and even the Oscar-gathering 1997 Good Will Hunting — have relied on his coolly unblinking, surprisingly cerebral yet gently empathetic eye, whether focused on Mexican immigrants, ’70s-era oblivion-seekers, Northwestern hustlers, a hidden savant, or disaffected teenagers.

Still, those leitmotifs — entwined with Van Sant’s terrible, tangible sense of romance with his outsiders, artists, and lost souls, as well as the way his camera seems to fall head over heels for his characters — made Van Sant a natural to make Milk, after Oliver Stone’s aborted feature-film attempt to tell the slain San Francisco supervisor’s story. "There is always that question: why I haven’t done a film like this earlier," Van Sant confessed, clearing his throat for the umpteenth time while agreeing that he hasn’t ever quite done a film like Milk. "Yeah, I hadn’t done a big movie, so there were people around who were like, ‘Can you handle it? Can it be done?’ They think that way. Since there was no business model, they were like, ‘No, he can’t, because he makes these scruffy, little movies. Too big a gamble, you know.’

"That’s a part of Hollywood, but it’s kind of like safe bets: it can make bad stuff happen as easily as good stuff, and it has its own closed policies like the old conservative City Hall-type policies. ‘New supervisors who haven’t handled the job before are incapable and they’re screwing things up.’"

Thankfully the gamble paid off and the tale of California’s first openly gay politician has been told with elegance, poetry, and not a little heart-stirring, inspirational grace, by the man whom biographer James Robert Parish describes as "the standard bearer of America’s ‘queer cinema’" — one who fuses extreme close-ups, handheld shots, and found footage in a collaborative, textural approach that lends a Kodachrome pop-culty feel to his films. The process makes for "beautiful pictures every time," as a windblown Sean Penn put it at a Ritz Carlton press conference after Milk‘s Oct. 28 world premiere at the Castro Theatre.

Seated at the middle of a long table between Penn and Josh Brolin, who portrays Milk’s killer Dan White, as they traded friendly jabs, Van Sant remained mostly silent — physically at the center, but an observer apart at the same time. Later in a hotel suite, face to face with a single interviewer, the director seemed equally out of place, folded uncomfortably into a plush chair, arms tightly crossed over a tan jeans jacket sporting a "No on 8" sticker, with a small, nylon, bright-blue dollar-store-style backpack by his side. He more closely resembles a 56-year-old teacher or elder-care worker than a Hollywood insider.

The latter role is evidently still alien to him. His first brush with Milk came in 1978 while he was driving across the country and heard on the radio that the supervisor was shot. Though he later saw the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, it never occurred to him to make a film about the politician. "It seemed like a very big story," Van Sant said. Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy "were stories that were devised to be made with really low budgets, like $20,000. So it was never like, ‘Oh, we can make a story about City Hall with $20,000.’ I guess I was always coming at filmmaking from not really being in the business, but knowing that I could get a hold of or save up my own money to the point where I’d have $20,000 and I could actually make a feature."

In the process of making Milk, the filmmaker admitted that he had to leave out many details that "I really like and things that sort of explain the situation. We suggest things. We explain this new law that enabled people to elect their supervisors from their districts, but we didn’t explain that the people up to that point that had to run city-wide resembled a different and maybe more antiquated type of politician. They were more, I guess, conservative. They were more business-oriented."

If San Francisco is palpable as a character in Milk, then City Hall is that elegantly shambolic figure’s brain, and Van Sant effectively used the Beaux Arts space, which harks back to classical forms, to his own dramatic ends. A down-the-rabbit-hole corridor leading to supervisors’ chambers becomes a pulsing nerve center visually rhyming with the characters’ stratagems. The sweeping staircase and balconies become the backdrop for Milk’s and White’s clashing trajectories, and the building itself becomes the spotless stage for Milk’s political birth and death.

"What I usually try and do, in general, is to connect the characters to a timeless quality, so it’s not necessarily situated in the specific time they’re in," said Van Sant. "So if they’re in City Hall and there’s a beaux-arts classical relief on the ceiling, if you frame it correctly, they can kind of look like Roman senators. You can get this timeless quality of people trading votes and betraying each other for as long as there’s been a forum and a senate.

"There were certain things in the script and in Harvey’s life — the famous line is ‘How do you like my new theater,’ which is what he says to Cleve [Jones, played by Emile Hirsch]: ‘Always take the stairs, never dress up, never blend in, make a show of it, use the whole space.’ I thought of that as a centerpiece of the whole film. That scene is one of my favorites because it was kind of like Harvey, who was a stage manager and was in theater. This was his new forum, his new theater, his new proscenium, with which to create new stuff — in this case, gay rights and other things that he thought were important, like education and help for minorities and seniors."

The question that arises so often among those who care about gay rights is: Why wasn’t Milk released before the Nov. 4 election, when it might have energized voters to shut down Proposition 8, a battle so similar to Milk’s charge against Proposition 6? As Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black said, "I didn’t know this [movie] would be about Prop. 8, but I don’t think this fight is over."

"I don’t really decide when movies should come out," said Van Sant. "The distributors came up with that." He spelled out some of the thoughts behind the Nov. 26 theatrical release: worries included "whether or not the elements of the story were so like the political moment that the film wouldn’t have a life after the election," and "whether people are too busy with the election to go see the movie. Are people overtaxed with politics to go see a political movie?" As a compromise, the late-October Castro Theatre premiere was arranged to get Milk and its overall message into the media eye, while still opening it into November through January, the Academy campaign season.

"Yeah, I didn’t make the call," repeats Van Sant, somewhat regretfully and shedding perhaps a smidge of that cherished detachment. "Harvey would have opened it in October."

Milk opens Wed/26 at the Castro Theatre, with additional Bay Area openings Fri/28 and Dec. 5.


>>Back to the Milk Issue

Politics behind the picture

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› news@sfbg.com

The new Harvey Milk movie, which opens later this month, begins as a love story, a sweet love story about two guys who meet in a subway station and wind up fleeing New York for San Francisco. But after that, the movie gets political — in fact, by Hollywood standards, it’s remarkably political.

The movie raises a lot of issues that are alive and part of San Francisco politics today. The history isn’t perfect (see sidebar), but it is compelling. And while we mourn Milk and watch Milk, we shouldn’t forget what the queer hero stood for.

Milk started out as something of a pot-smoking hippie. “The ’70s were a hotbed of everything,” Sup. Tom Ammiano remembered. “Feminism, civil rights, antiwar.” Milk’s early campaigns grew out of that foment. “Sure, he wanted to be elected,” Ammiano told us. “But the main ingredient was courage. He was fighting with the cops when they raided the bars … what he did was dangerous.”

Milk never would have been elected supervisor without district elections — and the story of district elections, and community power, ran parallel to Milk’s own story, for better and for worse.

Milk tried twice to win a seat on the at-large Board of Supervisors and never made the final cut. But in the mid-1970s, a coalition of community leaders, frustrated that big money controlled city policy, began organizing to change the way supervisors were elected. The shift from an at-large system to a district one in 1976 was a transformational moment for the city.

“I think that San Francisco doesn’t always appreciate the sea change that district elections brought,” Cleve Jones, a queer activist and friend of Milk who helped Dustin Black write the script for Milk, told us. “It wasn’t just important to the various communities that had been locked out of power at City Hall — it was the glue that began to grow the coalitions.”

Milk was elected as part of what became the most diverse board in the city’s history, with Asian, black, and gay representatives who came out of community organizations. The board, of course, also included Dan White, a conservative Irish Catholic and former cop. And it was the assassination of Milk and Mayor George Moscone by Sup. White — and the civic heartbreak, chaos, and confusion that followed — that allowed downtown forces to repeal district elections in 1980. That gave big money and big business control of the board for another 20 years, a reign that ended only when district elections returned in 2000.

Milk was a gay leader, but he was also a tenant activist, public power supporter, advocate for police reform, supporter of commuter taxes on downtown workers, and coalition-builder who helped bring together the labor movement and the queer community. It started, ironically, with the Teamsters.

“Those of us who came out of the antiwar movement remembered that the Teamsters supported Richard Nixon until the very last moment,” Jones said. “And they were seen as one of the most homophobic of all the unions.”

But in the 1970s, the Teamsters were at war with the Coors Brewing Company, and trying to get San Francisco bars to stop serving Coors beer. Allan Baird, a Teamsters leader who lived in the Castro District, saw an opportunity and contacted Milk, who agreed to help — if the Teamsters would start hiring gay truck drivers.

“It wasn’t just San Francisco and California,” Jones recalled. “We got Coors beer out of every gay bar in North America.” And gays started driving beer trucks.

Today, the queer-labor alliance is one of the most powerful, effective, and lasting political forces in San Francisco.

Milk was never popular among the wealthier and more established sectors of the gay community; he believed in a populist brand of politics that wasn’t afraid to take the fight to the streets — and beyond San Francisco. A central theme of the film is the fight against Proposition 6, a 1978 measure by conservative state Sen. John Briggs that would have barred homosexuals from teaching the public schools.

Milk, defying the mainstream political strategists, insisted on debating Briggs in some of the most right-wing parts of the state. He refused to downplay the gay-rights issues. And when Prop. 6 went down, it was the end of that particular homophobic crusade.

Milk was always an outsider, and he ran for office as a foe of the Democratic Party machine. “His campaign for state Assembly was all about Harvey vs. the machine,” former Sup. Harry Britt told us. “His main supporter was [Sup.] Quentin Kopp. He didn’t run as the liberal in the race; he ran against the machine.” And for much of the next 20 years, progressives in San Francisco found themselves fighting what became the Brown-Burton machine, controlled by Willie Brown and John Burton.

It’s too bad the movie wasn’t released early enough to have had an impact on Prop. 8, the anti same-sex marriage measure that just passed in California. Some critics of the No on 8 campaign say the message was far too soft, and that a little Harvey-Milk-style campaigning might have helped.

But for us, one of the most striking things about the movie is the fact that Milk and his lover, Scott Smith, were able to leave New York with very little money, arrive in San Francisco, rent an apartment on their unemployment checks, and open a camera store. That wouldn’t be possible today; the Harvey Milks of 2008 can’t live in the Castro — and many can’t live anywhere in San Francisco. The city is too expensive.

In fact, for all the victories Milk won, for all the successes of the movement he helped to build, much of his agenda is still unfulfilled, even in his hometown.

The first time Harvey Milk gives a public speech in the film, he’s standing on a soapbox … literally. He brings out a box with “soap” written on the side; a funny gag, but a serious and telling moment for him and San Francisco.

The issues that Milk spoke so passionately about in that speech included police reform, ending the war on drugs, protecting tenants and controlling rents, and improving parks and protecting people’s rights to use them liberally — all issues with as much resonance today as they had back then.

The movie leaves us with a painful question. For all the celebration of Milk’s legacy by San Franciscans of various political stripes, why have we made so little progress on some of his signature issues? We celebrate the martyr — but often forget what the man really advocated.

Support for gay rights is de rigueur for anyone who aspires to public office in San Francisco. But a quarter of city residents still voted to take away same-sex marriage rights in this election. Many older gay men today are barely able afford their AIDS medication and rent. And transgender people and other nontraditional types are still ostracized, unable to get good jobs, and sometimes treated contemptuously when they seek help from their government.

Sure, marijuana is supposedly legal for medical uses in California and pot clubs proliferate around San Francisco. But even these sick patients are still targeted by the federal government and its long arms in San Francisco, including former US Attorney Kevin Ryan, whom Mayor Gavin Newsom named his top crime advisor and who is now seeking to crackdown on the pot clubs. Why, 30 years after Milk was shot, does one have to claim an ailment or illness to smoke a joint in this town?

Two-thirds of city residents are renters, a group Milk championed with gusto, but we barely beat a state initiative in June that would have abolished rent control. Housing is getting steadily more expensive. And in this election, Newsom and his downtown allies opposed Proposition B, an affordable housing measure, and Proposition M, a common sense measure to prohibit landlords from harassing their tenants. Such harassment is a common tactic to force tenants from rent-controlled units, even though the City Attorney’s Office is currently suing the city’s biggest landlord, Skyline Realty, for its well-documented history of harassment. Newsom may be the champion of same-sex marriage, but when it comes to issues like tenants’ rights, we suspect that Milk would be appalled at Newsom’s gall.

Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union noted that in the wake of Milk’s death and before the repeal of district elections, San Francisco established rent control and limits on condo conversions. The tenant movement has grown steadily stronger and more sophisticated, he said, as it had to in order to counter increasing economic and political pressures and creative gambits by landlords.

“The city has gentrified phenomenally since that time, and that’s put tremendous pressure on tenants and on condo conversions,” Gullicksen told us. “It continues to be a real struggle.”

Police reform was also a huge issue for Milk and his gay contemporaries, who suffered more than most groups from the behavior of thuggish cops protected by weak oversight rules and a powerful union. And today, the Police Officers Association is stronger and meaner than ever, but the oversight has improved little, as both the Guardian and San Francisco Chronicle have explored with investigations in recent years.

And in our public parks, San Francisco officials in recent years have banned smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, playing amplified music, and even gathering in large numbers without expensive, restrictive permits. Even in the Castro, where Milk and his allies took it as a basic right to gather in the streets, Newsom and the NIMBYs unilaterally cancelled Halloween celebrations and used police to chase away citizens with water trucks.

Is this really the city Harvey Milk was trying to create? In the film, he talks about transforming San Francisco into a vibrant, tolerant beacon that would set an example for the rest of the country, telling his compatriots, “We have got to give them hope.”

Well, with hope now making a comeback, perhaps San Francisco can finally follow Milk’s lead on the issues he cared about most.

>>Back to the Milk Issue

Fighting Newsom’s mid-year cuts

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EDITORIAL If Mayor Gavin Newsom moves forward aggressively with mid-year cuts to the city budget, a lame duck Board of Supervisors with four veterans — including the board president and chair of the Budget Committee — on their way out the door could be voting on harsh reductions in city spending on health care, parks, and other services. That’s not the best way to make policy; we’d rather the cuts go to the new board, which will be dealing with next year’s budget anyway. But if the mayor is pushing reductions now, the current board needs to act aggressively and quickly to be sure that the mayor’s wrongheaded priorities don’t carry the day.

We recognize that the city has money problems. Like every other taxpayer-financed entity in America, San Francisco is getting hit hard by the recession. When retail sales drop, so do local sales taxes. When real estate values plummet, so do property taxes receipts. And while some prominent economists are urging President-elect Barack Obama to pour federal money into cities this spring, nobody can count on that happening.

City Controller Ben Rosenfield is projecting that the city will be around $100 million short of cash by the end of the fiscal year. And since California cities (unlike the federal government) can’t run a deficit, that money has to come from somewhere. (Fortunately, the red ink won’t be as bad as it might have been — with little help from the mayor, Sup. Aaron Peskin got two new revenue measures passed in November that will bring some $50 million more into city coffers).

Newsom’s chief target at this point is the Department of Public Health, which is facing more than $256 million in cuts. That’s on top of all the cuts the department has had to absorb over the past two years — and it will cut deeply into the city’s ability to maintain its landmark Healthy San Francisco program. The Recreation and Park Department, libraries, and Muni will face cutbacks too, and there’s almost certainly a Muni fare hike (essentially a tax on the poor) on the horizon.

But there’s no talk of reducing or eliminating any of the mayor’s pet programs — like the 311 call center, which is a fine service but perhaps not as important as medical staff at SF General — or cutting significantly into his own office spending.

And, as always, the mayor has failed to look at any additional sources of revenue (with the possible exception of new parking meters in Golden Gate Park and at Marina Green). It’s particularly frustrating that Newsom and his hired gun, Eric Jaye, pushed so hard to help Pacific Gas and Electric Co. defeat the Clean Energy Act when public power would be the source of hundreds of millions in annual revenue. (PG&E killed 10 other ballot measures that would have brought cheap Hetch Hetchy public power to San Francisco, the largest source of potential new revenue for the city, and the private monopoly yanks more than $650 million a year out of the city in high rates, according to a Guardian study.)

The supervisors don’t have to wait for the mayor to propose cuts and then react. They can begin to move now. They can begin to identify their own set of cuts and revenue enhancements — and can begin establishing an alternative set of priorities. Is it better to cut 311 and the mayor’s special global warming deputy than to cut nurses at General? Is it better to close some redundant fire stations than cut hours at libraries? Should parking meters and garage fees go up downtown before city parks get meters? Back in 1973, in his first run for supervisor, Harvey Milk proposed eliminating the police vice squad (see "I remember Harvey"). That’s an idea whose time may have come again.

The point is that the mayor, who is weak and more focused on running for governor than on running the city, shouldn’t be driving the fiscal agenda alone. The supervisors need to either agree that they won’t act on cuts until the new board takes office or offer some alternative plans today.

Guardian: ‘Fighting Newsom’s mid-year cuts’

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Scroll down for the Guardian editorial in Wednesday’s edition (ll/19/08), “Fighting Newsom’s mid-year budget cuts”)

Once again, the Guardian is editorializing about the problems of the structural city budget deficit, which of course will be worse because of the economy and because of Mayor Newsom’s moves for mid-year cuts aimed at our lame duck Board of Supervisors.

And once again, the Guardian raises the issue, as we have since our first PG&E/Raker Act scandal story in l969, that the city is losing tens of millions a year by allowing PG&E to control its cheap Hetch Hetchy power and instead forcing the city’s residents and businesses to buy PG&E’s expensive private power. (See Guardian stories and Bruce blogs for details.) And it is most annoying that Newsom and his hired gun, Eric Jaye, worked so hard to defeat the Clean Energy Act (H), when public power would be the biggest potential source of new revenue for the city. Jaye conveniently advises Newsom and runs his campaign for governor at the same time he consults for PG&E and ran PG&E’s campaign against H. Neat.

More: it also annoying that the San Francisco Labor Council allowed PG&E to hold labor hostage in this campaign and in effect allowed PG&E to drum home the charge, without labor counter, that city workers are so dumb, so incompetent, and so lazy that they can’t run an electricity system. This posture puts city workers and their unions at a disadvantage when the budget axe starts falling.

The Guardian editorial: “Fighting Newsom’s mid-year cuts”

The old Chris Daly line again

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By Tim Redmond

The Chron’s piece on the upcoming battle for board of supervisors president was fairly accurate and well-balanced, as far as it went, except for this:

the presidency appears to be guaranteed to a bloc led by the board’s most controversial member, Supervisor Chris Daly.

Daly may or may not be the board’s “most controversial member,” but he clearly isn’t the leader of the progressive bloc. He has his allies — incoming Sup John Avalos used to work for him — but the other three newcomers have other alliances. David Campos ran with the support of Tom Ammiano; Daly backed Eric Quezada. David Chiu is way closer to current Board President Aaron Peskin than to Daly. Eric Mar, former School Board member, is friendly with Daly but also with others on the board and is far too independent to just do what Daly says. And of course, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi isn’t going to follow Daly’s lead.

Daly has made it clear that he shouldn’t and won’t be board president. And with Peskin and Ammiano leaving, there’s no clear “leader” of the “progressive bloc.” That’s why the race will be so interesting.

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