Willie Brown Archives — Page 17 of 20 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Newsom’s fixers

January 29, 2008

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom is acting more and more like his predecessor, Willie Brown. It’s an alarming trend, and Newsom needs to take some steps right away to assure the public that he’s not letting political fixers run the city.

We’ve been seeing signs that Newsom is becoming more of an imperial mayor for months, ever since he launched his new administration with a demand that all of the department heads and commissioners resign. The idea, he said, was to bring a fresh start and new ideas to his second term — but he never explained exactly what those new ideas were or why the current city officials weren’t living up to them. And it was clear that some of his moves were motivated by nothing but politics: ousting Susan Leal as head of the Public Utilities Commission had nothing to do with her job performance and everything to do with the fact that she had been willing to challenge Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s power monopoly.

The shenanigans continue. As Sarah Phelan reported on sfbg.com last week, Newsom just attempted a coup at the Planning Commission, moving behind the scenes to oust Christina Olague, a progressive appointed by the supervisors, from her post as vice president. Newsom and his crew wanted to install his loyalists, Sue Lee and Mike Antonini, as president and vice president of the panel.

That move, sources told us, was orchestrated through Dean Macris, the former planning director who needs to get the hell out of that department. Macris still has his fingers firmly planted in the planning pie; he maintains an office in the department as a "liaison to the mayor."

The mayor has also managed to pad his own office’s budget while cutting key city services — and has, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported Jan. 25, used funny accounting to divert money from Muni to the Mayor’s Office payroll. And he continues to use the San Francisco International Airport as a place to put highly paid employees who have, at best, unclear job descriptions.

This is the sort of thing that led to Brown’s downfall: the voters, infuriated by backroom deals, voted nearly all of Brown’s allies out of office in 2000 and elected a Board of Supervisors that had a mandate to block the mayor’s worst initiatives.

Newsom has always insisted he’s a different type of politician than his predecessor and onetime mentor, and his future political career will depend on his ability to make that image stick. Brown’s reputation for corruption was the main reason he never had any hope of seeking or winning a statewide office.

If Newsom wants to avoid that fate, he can start with a few significant changes:

•<\!s>Knock off the secrecy and sleaze. If Newsom has a reason to replace a department head or commissioner — and there are good reasons to fire a bunch of them — he needs to make that public. If someone isn’t carrying out his policies, fine: explain what the policies are and where he and the official in question part ways. Don’t pull out the knives and do the dirty work of PG&E and the developers behind closed doors.

•<\!s>Be open about the jobs and the money. If the mayor really believes he needs a bunch of new $150,000-per-year aides, fine: take that money out of the General Fund and tell the public where it’s coming from. Budgets are displays of political priorities, especially in tight years, and the voters have a right to know what the mayor cares about most.

•<\!s>Keep the operatives out of City Hall. Brown had lobbyists and consultants cutting deals in room 200 almost every day. Newsom needs to make it clear that campaign advisors aren’t making policy or personnel decisions.

We have four more years of Newsom to go, and if he keeps up this kind of crap, he’s going to find himself fighting the board — and the voters — at every step.

Reviving Reagan: A burst of Durst

January 19, 2008

B3 campaign note: Durst is right: there are no real Republican candidates and there is no president for them to fall back on except Reagan. I think the Republicans made a terrible mistake when they left Cheney on the ticket, probably the worst vice president since Aaron Burr, and the kind of bull who carries his own china closet around with him. They should have kicked him off the ticket four years ago and put in the most electable candidate they could find to run as vice president and emerging presidential candidate. Those mistakes are fatal in politics. Thank God the Republicans are making them, one after another.

By the way, I miss Will on the old Will and Willie show on the Air America/Quake radio via Clear Channel. He did a “burst of Durst” on every show, which was always a clever and biting commentary on the day’s news.
Quite a performance. I can almost hear him doing his “burst” as I read his latest column. Willie was of course ex-Mayor Willie Brown. Will and Willie were an excellent show, getting better all the time, and giving San Francisco
a marvelous showcase on Air America radio. Now there are only shows centered from God knows where.
However, John Scott is holding down the 4 to 6 p.m. slot with a creditable left-leaning news program on 960 the Quake. B3

Where’s Michela?

December 5, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

Michela Alioto-Pier, carpetbagger.

That’s what her Democratic primary challenger called her in 1996, when Alioto-Pier ran for the House of Representatives from the 1st congressional district, which hugs the California coastline from the town of Napa to the Oregon border.

Alioto-Pier, a San Francisco native, had spent the previous two and a half years at the White House advising Al Gore on telecommunications issues. After returning to the West Coast, the ambitious 26-year-old packed up her belongings and moved to St. Helena in Napa County, buying a home there in November 1995 and registering to vote the following month.

Her opponent, Monica Marvin, promptly attacked with a commercial showing a moving van heading across the Golden Gate Bridge alongside a photo of Alioto-Pier and a voice-over condemning outside candidates.

"I think the perception was that someone who’d lived most of her life in the district had a more comprehensive grasp of the issues and the culture reflected by those constituents," Marvin told the Guardian recently.

Alioto-Pier nonetheless won the primary, but she narrowly lost the general election to a Republican incumbent named Frank Riggs. He too assailed her for moving to the district just before the race.

More than a decade later, District 2 supervisor Alioto-Pier hasn’t managed to escape accusations that she’s detached from her constituents, nor has she succeeded in clearly reestablishing residency here since beginning a new political career at San Francisco’s City Hall.

THE SECOND-HOME STORY

Alioto-Pier is registered to vote at a Vallejo Street condo that she bought in 2005 for $1.9 million, and she told us that she, husband Thomas Paul Pier, and their three children make it their primary residence.

"Depending on the time of year, we spend some weekends at our St. Helena house, which is on the same street as Congresswoman [Nancy] Pelosi’s St. Helena house," she said in a written response to our questions.

An Alioto-Pier office assistant, Gene Eplett, left a voice message with the Guardian insisting that second homes are commonplace. "You probably have one as well," Eplett said.

Not exactly. Particularly not one with a taxable value of $774,793.

And in some legal documents, Alioto-Pier lists the Napa County house as her residence.

In August the supervisor formed a limited liability company for the purpose of "wine production" with Pier, called Alioto-Pier Vineyards, according to state business registration records. Both listed their home address as the three-bedroom, two-bath St. Helena home on Zinfandel Lane. Alioto-Pier paid $590,000 for the place, which sits on 2.6 acres of world-famous Napa County soil.

Within days of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s appointing her to the Board of Supervisors in January 2004, she signed a deed of trust for a $100,000 equity line of credit, again listing the Zinfandel Lane property as her home address, according to Napa County records.

In early May 2003, not long before she joined the board, former mayor Willie Brown tapped her to sit on the powerful San Francisco Port Commission. That same week she reregistered another wine-making business in Napa County she’d founded years before called Alioto Cellars, a.k.a. Alioto Winery. In the area of the original form asking for a residence, she began to list the St. Helena property but thought better of it, crossing it out and replacing it with a San Francisco address on Jackson Street that she appears to have used for at least two years, according to Napa County records.

In response to questions regarding the business registration records for Alioto-Pier Vineyards, the supervisor said neither she nor her husband signed the form and that it was filled out by their attorney.

"Alioto-Pier Vineyards LLC is a small wine producing business (approximately 250 cases per year) whose business address is more suitable to where our vineyard (approximately one acre) is located — at our St. Helena property," she wrote.

The form asks for the addresses of the company’s managers separate from the location of the principal executive office. For both Alioto-Pier and her husband, Zinfandel Lane is given as the home address.

DISTRICT ISSUES

As a supervisor, Alioto-Pier has exhibited savvy on emergency preparedness, mothers in the workplace, energy use, and the threatened demise of St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission, which treats primarily low-income patients.

Mick Suverkrubbe, president of the Marina Merchants Association, said the supervisor always has a presence at the group’s meetings.

"If she doesn’t show up, one of her aides shows up," Suverkrubbe said. "She’s always been real responsive when we’ve had questions."

But some critics say Alioto-Pier appears all too willing to take direction from the Mayor’s Office, well-financed business interests, and Democratic party functionaries rather than independently arriving at positions.

"She’s like the windup doll," said one City Hall insider who asked not to be named. "It’s fair to say every time I see Sean Elsbernd [her board ally] make a decision, I know that it’s coming from a policy perspective, not someone yanking his chain. It’s the exception, not the rule, that she comes up with her own policy perspective."

"She has three more years, and hopefully they’ll be better," Bill Barnes, an aide to Assemblymember Fiona Ma who formerly worked for Sup. Chris Daly, said of Alioto-Pier’s current board term. "The point of district elections is that supervisors respond to their neighborhood. The values and concerns in District 2 are going to be more moderate and conservative than some other areas, but you still have to provide that basic level of service."

ATTENDANCE PROBLEMS

Alioto-Pier’s attendance record has also caused her trouble and made her an easy target for political adversaries.

"I see her here on Tuesday afternoons," when the board meets, one City Hall staffer said. "She probably spends a full day here when she has a committee hearing with an item. Beyond that, her office is routinely shut on Fridays."

Alioto-Pier missed 17 of 160 board and committee meetings in 2004 and 2005 — that’s only about 10 percent. But throughout her tenure as a supervisor, she’s attended barely half of the meetings of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, where each of the supervisors automatically serves as a director, according to an analysis of the $100 payments the members receive for attending meetings.

"I missed Transportation Authority meetings related to the birth of my third child and the complications of that pregnancy," Alioto-Pier told us.

Alioto-Pier noted, as did others at City Hall, that she had health problems in 2006. She was pregnant with her third child, and there were complications. Further, she said, supervisors don’t get time off for maternity.

"All city employees with the exception of members of the Board of Supervisors are allowed to take a four-month maternity leave. I was the first member of the board in the history of San Francisco to give birth while in office. As such, there were no guidelines in place, and I had to place the health and safety of my newborn first," she said.

But for many months in 2004 and 2005, before that pregnancy, she missed all or almost all of the Transportation Authority meetings.

She also missed 16 of 20 scheduled meetings, including three public hearings, during the short time in 2004 that she spent as a director for the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District.

Alioto-Pier left the district before her term was set to expire after serving only six months, complaining that she didn’t have enough time for the position. In her resignation letter, she acknowledged that the bridge was adjacent to her district and "given my ongoing commitment to improving waterfront security in San Francisco, I hope in the future I will once again be able to work with you and serve as a director." She never has, but four other supervisors have served on the district’s board for years.

And she’s apparently not too busy to be running a winery in St. Helena. It’s a modest operation, but it has to take some of her time.

WHERE DOES SHE VOTE?

Alioto-Pier’s voter registration history is confusing.

She doesn’t appear to have voted at all in the November 1999 election — at least not in Napa or San Francisco counties — but, curiously, she did vote in that year’s December runoff, when Willie Brown won a second term over Sup. Tom Ammiano.

She cast a ballot as an absentee in Napa County one year later, even though she was registered at that time to vote in San Francisco under the name Michela Angelina Alioto-Pier, public records show. She voted here in November 1998 with the last name Alioto-Pier, but she didn’t marry her lawyer husband until May 2000, county records show.

In 2002 she voted in San Francisco during the primary and general elections under the name Michela Angelina Driscol Alioto, yet she was still registered concurrently under the name Michela Angelina Alioto-Pier.

Alioto-Pier said that she and her husband returned to St. Helena in July 2000 but moved back here in early 2001, reregistering in both places. She added that San Francisco and Napa counties were at that time slow to remove "deadwood" registrations from their rolls.

"Clearly, once one reregisters, the county has the obligation to cancel all previous registrations for that person," she said. Alioto-Pier insisted that she voted in San Francisco’s November 1999 election, but an office attendant at the Department of Elections asserted that the system "says she was eligible but she did not vote."

Her 1996 Republican opponent, Riggs, also castigated her for failing to vote in 1994 and 1995. Alioto-Pier’s explanation, according to press accounts? Her permanent residency wasn’t clear.

"As best as I can recall from the events of a decade ago, I responded to Republican Frank Riggs by saying there was a mix-up with my absentee ballots," Alioto-Pier told us.

She’s listed a string of San Francisco addresses in public records over the past two decades in addition to her St. Helena dwelling. But in 2005 she finally bought the condo on Vallejo Street in San Francisco. She didn’t file for a homeowner’s exemption on the condo in 2006, but neither has she taken advantage of the tax break on her Zinfandel Lane home during any year since 1997, according to property records.

Alioto-Pier said she was unaware of qualifying for the homeowner’s tax exemption. "However, we declare as a deduction the mortgage interest from our Vallejo Street home on our federal tax returns," she said. Taxpayers are permitted to benefit from the deduction on a second residence.

Whispers at City Hall surrounding the time Alioto-Pier spends in St. Helena and away from her District 2 constituents have dogged her increasingly since she replaced Newsom.

But she’s never faced the punishing regimen of banner headlines endured by District 4’s onetime supervisor Ed Jew. He’s also been suspended by the mayor and faces civil charges that he lied to voters about living permanently in the district he was elected to represent.

Alioto-Pier offered a few telling words in a recent robocall to San Francisco voters opposing mandated appearances by the mayor before the Board of Supervisors: "We need to get our house in order before we invite any guests."

Now, which house would that be?

Question of intent

November 27, 2007

› sarah@sfbg.com

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former mayor Willie Brown, Sup. Sophie Maxwell, and Mayor Gavin Newsom in recent weeks have come out in support of a proposed ballot measure that would allow Lennar Corp. to develop thousands of new homes at Candlestick Point, create 350 acres of parks, and possibly build a new 49ers stadium at Hunters Point Shipyard.

The campaign for the Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative just launched its signature drive, but the measure should qualify relatively easily for the June 2008 election, given new low signature thresholds and the campaign’s powerful backers.

The measure would give Lennar, which is also involved in Treasure Island and much of the Bayview–Hunters Point redevelopment area, even more control over San Francisco’s biggest chunks of developable land.

But should San Franciscans really reward Lennar with more land and responsibilities when the financially troubled Florida developer has a track record in San Francisco and elsewhere of failing to live up to its promises, exposing vulnerable citizens to asbestos dust, and using deceptive public relations campaigns to gloss over its misdeeds?

As the Guardian has been reporting since early this year (see "The Corporation That Ate San Francisco," 3/14/07), Lennar failed to monitor and control the dust from naturally occurring asbestos while grading a hilltop in preparation for building condominiums on Parcel A of the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

Last month the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s Board of Directors asked staff to pursue the maximum fines possible for Lennar’s violations, which could run into millions of dollars, particularly if they are found to be the result of willful or negligent behavior.

"It’s clear to everyone in the agency that this case needs to be handled well," BAAQMD spokesperson Karen Schkolnick told the Guardian. "It’s in everyone’s interest, certainly the community’s, to get resolution."

The air district gives parties to whom it issues a warning three years to settle the matter before it goes to court. Lennar officials have publicly blamed subcontractors for failing to control dust and leaving air-monitoring equipment with dead batteries for months on end, but the BAAQMD is treating Lennar as the responsible party.

"It’s air district policy to deal with the primary contractor, which in this case is Lennar, although additional parties may be held liable," Schkolnick said.

Accusations of willful negligence also lie at the heart of a Proposition 65 lawsuit that was filed against Lennar for alleged failures to warn the community of exposure to asbestos, a known carcinogen (see Green City, 8/29/07).

Filed by the Center for Self Improvement, the nonprofit that runs the Muhammad University of Islam, which is next to Parcel A, the suit alleges that the construction activities of Lennar and subcontractor Gordon N. Ball "caused thousands of Californians to be involuntarily and unwittingly exposed to asbestos on a daily basis without the defendants first providing the adjacent community and persons working at the site with the toxic health hazard warnings."

Now fresh evidence from another whistle-blower lawsuit filed by three Lennar employees (see "Dust Still Settling," 3/28/07) shows that higher-ups within Lennar reprimanded and reassigned a subordinate who told subcontractors to comply with mandated plans or face an immediate suspension of construction activities at the Parcel A site.

In an April 21, 2006, BlackBerry message that was copied to Lennar Urban senior vice president Paul Menaker and other top Lennar executives, Lennar Urban’s regional vice president Kofi Bonner wrote to Gary McIntyre, Lennar/BVHP’s Hunters Point Shipyard Project manager, "Gary why do you insist on sending threatening emails to the contractor. If you can no longer communicate directly without the threat of a shutdown … perhaps we should find another area of responsibility for you to oversee. Such emails should only be sent as documentation of [a] conversation."

McIntyre says he was just trying to do his job, which involved ensuring that subcontractors abided by the long list of special health and safety criteria that were developed for this particularly hazardous work site, located in an area long plagued by environmental injustice.

The shipyard is a Superfund site filled with toxic chemicals, and although the 63-acre Parcel A had been cleaned up enough to be certified for residential development, it sits atop a serpentine hill full of naturally occurring asbestos, a potent carcinogen. So the Department of Public Health and the BAAQMD both insisted on a strict plan for controlling dust, which Lennar used to sell the community on the project’s safety.

Yet when McIntyre began insisting in writing that Lennar and its subcontractors adhere carefully to those rules, he was removed from his job. In a work evaluation signed Oct. 17, 2006, Menaker described McIntyre as "a good company spokesperson as it relates to Hunters Point Shipyard" but claimed that he required major improvement in his leadership and communication skills.

"As a manager, he needs to focus on achieving his ultimate mission, rather than focusing on details. Poor communication skills have led to incomplete and often incorrect information being disseminated," Menaker wrote.

The ultimate mission for Lennar — which has seen its stock tank this year as it’s been roiled by a crisis in the housing market — was to get Parcel A built with a minimum of problems and delays. And as concerns about its behavior arose, its communication strategy seemed to be more concerned with positive spin and tapping testimony from financial partners than with putting out a complete and correct view of what was happening.

Whether or not McIntyre was a good Lennar employee, he was at least trying to do right by the community, as records obtained through the lawsuit’s discovery process show. As McIntyre wrote in a three-page response to Menaker’s evaluation, "Our BVHP Naval Shipyard project has unique environmental requirements and compliance therewith is mandatory."

But the record is clear that Lennar didn’t comply with its promises, raising serious questions about a company that wants to take over development of the rest of this toxic yet politically, socially, and economically important site.

BUYING ALLIES

So who is really behind the Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative, which does not even have the support of the 49ers, who say they’d rather be in Santa Clara?

The measure was submitted by the African American Community Revitalization Consortium, which describes itself as "a group of area churches, organizations, residents and local merchants, working to improve Bayview Hunters Point." Yet this group is backed by Lennar and draws its members from among those with a personal financial stake in the company’s San Francisco projects.

AACRC founders Rev. Arelious Walker of the True Hope Church of God in Christ in Hunters Point and Rev. J. Edgar Boyd of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church of San Francisco are both members of Tabernacle Affiliated Developers, one of four Bayview–Hunters Point community builders who entered into a joint venture with Lennar/BVHP to build 30 percent of Lennar’s for-sale units at Parcel A. TAD is building the affordable units while Lennar develops the market-rate homes.

Neither Walker nor Boyd disclosed this conflict of interest at a July 31 Board of Supervisors hearing where they and the busloads of people Lennar helped ferry to City Hall created the illusion that the community was more concerned about keeping work going on Parcel A than temporarily shutting down the site while the health concerns of people in the Bayview were addressed.

Referring to reports from the city’s Department of Public Health, which claimed that there is no evidence that asbestos dust generated by the grading poses a threat to human health, Walker and Boyd warned that even a temporary shutdown of Lennar’s Parcel A site would adversely affect an already economically disadvantaged community. There is no way to test for whether someone has inhaled asbestos that could pose long-term risks, and Lennar supporters have used that void to claim all is well.

But even if community benefits such as home-building contracts, better parks, and job training opportunities do trickle down to Bayview–Hunters Point residents, will those opportunities outweigh the risk of doing business with a company that has endangered public health, has created deep divisions within an already stressed community, and is struggling financially?

In a recent interview with the Guardian, Minister Christopher Muhammad, whose Nation of Islam–affiliated nonprofit filed the Prop. 65 suit "individually and on behalf of the general public," described Lennar as "a rogue company that can’t be trusted."

"I’m concerned about the health of the community, as well as the other schools that border the shipyard," Muhammad said. "Our contention is that Lennar purposefully turned the monitors off. If you read the air district’s asbestos-dust mitigation plan, it appears that there was a way to do this grading safely. And the community went along with it. The problem was that Lennar was looking at their bottom line and violated every agreement. They threw the precautionary principle to the wind, literally. And the city looked the other way."

And even if Rev. Walker truly believes the June 2008 Bayview ballot measure is "a chance for all of us to move forward together," does it make financial sense, against the backdrop of a nationwide mortgage meltdown, to give Lennar permission to build thousands of homes at Candlestick Point when this measure doesn’t even specify what percentage of the 8,000 to 10,000 proposed new units would be rented or sold at below-market rates?

Lennar/BVHP has already reneged on promises to build rental units at its Parcel A site, and on Aug. 31, Lennar Corp., which is headquartered in Miami Beach, Fla., reported a third-quarter net loss of $513.9 million, compared to third-quarter net earnings of $206.7 million in 2006. Its stock continues to tumble, hitting a 52-week low of $14.50 per share on Nov. 26, down from a 52-week high of $56.54.

On Nov. 2, Reuters reported that Standard and Poor’s had cut Lennar’s debt rating to a junk-bond level "BB-plus" because of Lennar’s "exposure to oversupplied housing markets in California and Florida." And on Nov. 16 the Orange County Register reported that Lennar is shelving a condominium-retail complex in Long Beach and keeping high-rise condos it built in Anaheim vacant until the housing market bounces back.

Redevelopment Agency executive director Fred Blackwell, who was hired Aug. 30, told us his agency’s deposition and development agreement with Lennar wouldn’t let the company indefinitely mothball its housing units: "The DDA gives Lennar and the vertical developers the option to lease the for-sale units for one year, prior to their sale."

While the agency has been criticized for failing to do anything about Lennar’s problems on Parcel A and letting the company out of its obligation to build rental units, Blackwell said it is able to hold Lennar accountable.

"I feel like the DDA gives us all the tools we need," Blackwell told us. "We have opportunities to ‘cure’ whatever the contractor’s default is, but we can’t just arbitrarily shut things down."

But many in the community aren’t convinced. With the grim housing picture and the 49ers saying they’d rather be in Santa Clara, the only certain outcome from passage of this ballot measure would seem to be a mandate for the city to turn over valuable public lands and devote millions of dollars in scarce affording-housing funds to subsidize the ambitions of a corporation with a dubious track record that is actively resisting public accountability.

True, Lennar has promised to rebuild the Alice B. Griffith public housing project without dislocating any residents, and the measure also allows for the creation of 350 acres of parks and open spaces, 700,000 square feet of retail stores, two million square feet of office space, and improved transit routes and shoreline trails.

But although the rest of the shipyard is contaminated with a long list of human-made toxins, would passage of the initiative mean an early transfer of the shipyard from the Navy to the city and Lennar? And with that shift, the requirement that we put even more faith in this corporation’s ability to safely manage the project?

In October, Newsom, who was running for reelection at the time, told the Guardian he was worried about Lennar’s ability to follow through on "prescriptive goals and honor their commitments."

"We have to hold them accountable," Newsom told us. "They need to do what they say they’re going to do. We need to hold them to these commitments."

But how exactly is the mayor holding Lennar accountable?

In March, when the Guardian asked Newsom’s office if he intended, in light of Lennar’s Parcel A failures, to push ahead with plans to make Lennar the master developer for the 49ers stadium and Candlestick Point, the Mayor’s Office of Communications replied by referring us to Sam Singer, who has been on Lennar’s PR payroll for years.

On Nov. 18 the Chronicle reported that Singer was on the campaign team for the Bayview ballot initiative, along with former 49ers executive Carmen Policy, Newsom’s campaign manager and chief political consultant Eric Jaye, Newsom’s former campaign manager Alex Tourk, political consultant Jim Stearns, and political advertising firm Terris, Barnes and Walters, which worked on the 1997 49ers stadium bond and the 1996 measure for the Giants’ ballpark, both approved by voters.

In recent months Lennar has asked the Guardian to send questions to its latest PR flack, Lance Ignon, rather than Singer. In reply to our latest round of queries, about lawsuits and air district violations, Ignon forwarded us the following statement: "The record is abundantly clear that at each and every stage of the redevelopment process, Lennar has been guided by a commitment to protecting the health and safety of the Bayview–Hunters Point community. Lennar has fully cooperated with all relevant regulatory agencies and public health professionals to determine whether grading operations at the Shipyard pose a health threat to local residents. After months of exhaustive analysis, numerous different health experts — including [the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry] — concluded that the naturally occurring asbestos did not present a serious long-term health risk. Lennar will continue to work with the San Francisco Department of Public Health and other regulatory agencies to ensure the health of the community remains safeguarded."

Actually, the ATSDR report wasn’t quite that conclusive. It took issue with the faulty dust monitoring equipment at Parcel A and noted that exposure-level thresholds for the project were derived from industrial standards for workers who wear protective gear and don’t have all-day exposure. "However, there are studies in the scientific literature in which long term lower level/non-occupational exposures (from take home exposures and other areas of the world where naturally occurring asbestos occur) caused a low but epidemiologically detectable excess risk of mesothelioma," the ATSDR-DPH report observes.

It’s not surprising to see Lennar gloss over issues of liability, but it’s curious that Newsom and other top officials are so eager to push a proposal that would give Lennar control of Candlestick Point and perhaps result in a 49ers stadium on a federal Superfund site — without first demanding a full and public investigation of how the developers could have so miserably failed to enforce mandatory plans at Parcel A.

This fall the Newsom administration was peeved when the San Francisco Board of Education, which includes Newsom’s education advisor Hydra Mendoza, and the Youth Commission unanimously called for a temporary shutdown of Lennar’s Parcel A site until community health issues are addressed.

These demands were largely symbolic, since major grading at the site is complete, but the Mayor’s Office shot back with a Nov. 2 memo including the request that city department heads and commissions follow the example of the Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee and the Bayview Project Area Committee, which have said they won’t hear further testimony on the dust issue "unless and until credible scientific evidence is presented to contradict the conclusions of the DPH, CDPH, UCSF and others that the construction dust at the Shipyard had not created a long-term or serious health risk."

Such complex points and counterpoints have been like dust in the air, preventing the public from getting a clear picture of what’s important or what’s happened at the site. But a careful review of the public record shows that, at the very least, Lennar has failed to live up to its promises.

PAPER TRAIL

As records obtained through a whistle-blower lawsuit’s discovery process show, Lennar employee McIntyre was reprimanded for e-mailing a group of Lennar subcontractors including Gordon N. Ball, Luster National, and Ghirardelli Associates and demanding that their traffic-control plan implementation be in place before Gordon Ball/Yerba Buena Engineering Joint Venture "begin using (oversize construction equipment) scrapers or articuutf8g trucks on Crisp Road."

In court depositions, Menaker, who became McIntyre’s supervisor in April 2006, claimed he "never told McIntyre that he should not raise issues related to what he perceived to be deficiencies in Gordon Ball’s dust control measures.

"Rather, I repeatedly advised him that management by e-mail would not accomplish the goal of improving Gordon Ball’s performance and that he needed to communicate with Gordon Ball and others on the project in a more effective fashion. As a result of my observations of his job performance and the feedback from others … on Aug. 1, 2006, we brought in other professionals to assist with duties initially assigned to McIntyre."

But public records reveal that things continued to go awry at the site, long after the bulk of McIntyre’s construction field-management duties were transferred to David Wilkins, an employee of Lennar subcontractor Luster National.

According to a report filed by the city’s Department of Health, on July 7, 2006, the DPH’s Amy Brownell drove to the Lennar trailers and informed McIntye that Lennar was in violation of Article 31, the city’s construction-dust ordinance, after she observed numerous trucks generating "a significant amount of dust that was then carried by the wind across the property line." She even observed a water truck on the haul road doing the same thing as it watered the road.

On Aug. 9 — eight days after McIntyre was relieved of his field-construction management duties and seven days after Lennar declared it could not verify any of its air district–mandated asbestos-monitoring data — Brownell drove to the Lennar trailers and spoke with McIntyre’s successor, Wilkins, about dust problems generated by hillside grading, haul trucks, and an excavator loading soil into articulated trucks.

"Every time [the excavator] dumped the soil into the trucks, it created a small cloud of visible dust that crossed the project site boundary. There was no attempt to control the generation of dust," Brownell observed in her Aug. 9, 2006, inspection notes.

On Sept. 21, seven weeks after McIntyre’s transfer, Brownell issued Lennar an amended notice of violation when it came to her attention that construction-dust monitors hadn’t been in place for the first two months of heavy grading.

On Dec. 8, 2006, five months after McIntyre’s reassignment, Lennar got slapped with another violation after DPH industrial hygienist Peter Wilsey observed on Nov. 30, 2006, that "dust from the work, particularly from the trucks on the haul road, was crossing the property boundary."

And on Aug. 17, a year after McIntyre left, the DPH issued Lennar its most recent violation for not controlling dust properly. But this time the notice included a 48-hour work suspension period to establish a dust-control plan monitor to be supervised by DPH staff, with costs billed to Lennar.

"The issuance of notices of violations shows the regulatory system is working," Brownell told the Guardian. "Dust control on a gigantic project like this is a continuous, everyday process that every single contractor has to do properly. That’s Lennar’s issue and problem. At DPH, we feel we have enough tools to do inspections, which Lennar gets billed for. And if they violate our requirements again, we’ll shut them down again. Or fine them."

So far, the DPH has not chosen to fine Lennar for any of its Parcel A dust violations.

"We considered it for this last violation but decided that shutting them down for two days was penalty enough," Brownell says, adding that while she’d "never just rely on air monitors, a monitor helps when you’re having problems with dust control, because then you can say, ‘Here’s scientific proof.’<0x2009>"

And scientific proof, in the form of monitoring data during the long, hot, and dusty summer of 2006, would likely have triggered numerous costly work slowdowns and stoppages. According to a memo marked "confidential" that the Guardian unearthed in the air district’s files, Lennar stated, "It costs approximately $40,000 a day to stop grading and construction" and "Gordon Ball would have to idle about 26 employees at the site, and employees tend to look for other work when the work is not consistent."

After Rev. Muhammad began to raise a storm about dust violations next to his nonprofit Muhammad University of Islam, Lennar Urban senior vice president Menaker accused him of being a "shakedown artist" when he refused an offer to temporarily relocate the school.

But Muhammad told the Guardian he refused the offer "because I didn’t want the school to be bounced around like a political football. And because I was concerned about the rest of the community."

Muhammad said he’s trying to sound the alarm about Lennar before it takes over all of Hunters and Candlestick points. As he told us, "This city is selling its birthright to a rogue company."

TRIGGER TIME

So what does the BAAQMD intend to do about Lennar’s enforcement record past, present, and future?

At an Oct. 29 hearing on asbestos dust, the BAAQMD Board of Directors unanimously instructed staff to pursue the maximum fines possible for Lennar’s Parcel A violations.

Air district staff tried to reassure the public that the "action levels" the BAAQMD set at the shipyard are health protective and provide a significant margin of safety.

Health impacts from unmonitored exposures, BAAQMD staffer Kelly Wee said, "are well within the guidelines," claiming a "one in three million" chance of developing asbestos-related diseases.

BAAQMD board member Sup. Chris Daly, who as a member of the Board of Supervisors voted July 31 to urge a temporary shutdown of Lennar’s Parcel A site, praised the air district for "moving forward with very conservative action levels.

"But these levels are political calls that are not necessarily scientific or health based," Daly added. "The initial violation, the one that, according to Lennar, CH2M Hill is responsible for, we don’t know what those levels of asbestos were, and that’s when the most significant grading occurred.

"The World Health Organization and [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] scientists are very clear that any level of exposure to asbestos comes with an increased health risk, and if you are already exposed to multiple sources, this becomes more serious," he said, referring to the freeways, power plants, sewage treatments plants, and substandard housing that blight the community, along with the area’s relatively high rate of smoking.

The BAAQMD’s Wee told the organization’s board that Lennar did not conduct proper oversight of its contractors and did not properly document the flow of air through its monitors but did discover and report its lapses in August 2006.

"Lennar exceeded the air district’s work shutdown level on at least 23 days in the post–Aug. 1, 2006, period, which is when the developer was monitoring asbestos dust," Wee observed, noting that the air district has two additional notices of violation pending against Lennar for 2007: one for overfilling dump trucks, the other for failing to maintain enough gravel on truck-wheel wash pads.

BAAQMD spokesperson Schkolnick later confirmed to the Guardian that the air district issued Lennar a notice of violation on Oct. 26 for failing to control naturally occurring asbestos at Parcel A, where grading is finished, but Lennar subcontractor Ranger is digging up the earth again to lay pipes.

"It’s time for the board to make sure the air district is as aggressive as possible to protect residents and sensitive receptors," Daly said. "Asbestos is carcinogenic. The state and federal government knows it. That was why there was an asbestos-dust mitigation plan. The air district asked for air monitoring because of the site’s proximity to a school. The air monitors were sold not just to the city but to the public as the major safeguards to the community, especially sensitive receptors, but during the most gigantic grading period and perhaps the most gigantic exposures, we don’t know what the levels of asbestos were."

Fellow BAAQMD board member Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who was a key swing vote against urging a Lennar work stoppage at the Board of Supervisors meeting in July, is now joining Daly in demanding full enforcement of the law.

"The July 31 resolution had no way to force Lennar or the SFRA to do anything," McGoldrick told the Guardian, explaining why he’s now taking a stronger stance. "It seemed that we’d reached the conclusion that the community didn’t want to shut down the project, since it included 31 percent affordable housing, and that the work was essential in terns of revitalizing the area and that the evidence presented seemed to show that everything is now under control."

But because the coalition of Lennar supporters — who didn’t mention they are on Lennar’s payroll until after the July 31 resolution failed — is now pushing a ballot measure to vastly expand Lennar’s control in our city, McGoldrick is demanding answers and accountability.

"We want to look into whether Lennar screwed up deliberately, and if so, fine them to the hilt," McGoldrick said. "But let’s get the project on Parcel A going, because the grading has been completed and it will be beneficial to the community."

McGoldrick claimed that in July he and Daly knew they had an air district hearing coming.

"And we knew where the strongest action could be taken in terms of sticking it to Lennar and showing them we won’t just be looking over your shoulder, we’ll be standing on it," McGoldrick told us.

"A fine means we have warned you — and we’ve got a gun to your head. It means if you don’t act properly, we can pull the trigger," McGoldrick said, noting that at the time of the July 31 vote the Parcel A grading was essentially done and no one could present any solid evidence that the public health had been harmed.

"So now the question is: did you or did you not do this? [A maximum fine of] $75,000 a day for 383 days, even if it’s not a lot of money to Lennar — it’s a lot of embarrassment," McGoldrick said.

But if Lennar tries to delay settling with the air district to avoid fines until after the June 2008 election, will its perceived unwillingness to face consequences backfire at the ballot box — and soil Newsom’s reputation as a great environmentalist in the process?

As McGoldrick observed, "Some of us are having serious second thoughts about going forward with Lennar. Our feeling is, you should sit down and cooperate with the air district and settle this thing with them. And you know darn well that we are standing there, ready to pull the trigger."

He framed the issue this way: "We’re saying to the Mayor’s Office, you guys have a responsibility [to ensure Lennar is accountable] before you give them another 350 acres — on top of the 63 acres they already have — just to save the mayor’s butt, since he blew it with the Olympics and the 49ers."

LENNAR BY THE NUMBERS

Number of days Lennar Corp. had been in violation of air district monitoring rules, according to the Sept. 6, 2006, citation: 383

Fine, per day, for vioutf8g the air district’s plan: $1,000–$75,000, depending on intent

Maximum fine Lennar faces: $28.7 million

Fine, per day, for vioutf8g the city’s construction-dust plan: $5,000

Number of cited violations of city’s construction-dust control plan: 5

Daily cost Lennar claims for stopping work at Parcel A: $40,000

Amount Lennar paid subcontractors for grading Parcel A: $19.5 million

Amount Lennar paid Sam Singer Associates for public relations work in 2005: $752,875

Amount Lennar paid CH2M Hill for environmental consulting work: $445,444

Parcel A acreage: 63

Acreage Lennar controls on Treasure Island: 508

Percentage of rental units promised at Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island: 27

Number of rental units Lennar is building at Parcel A: 0

Acreage in the Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative: 780

Number of rental or below-market-rate homes in Bayview initiative: Unknown

Lennar’s share price Nov. 26: $14.50 (a 52-week low)

Lennar’s stock’s 52-week high: $56.54

The Fillmore mess around

November 14, 2007

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

San Francisco’s Fillmore District, Willie Brown once said, "had to be the closest thing to Harlem outside of New York." The Fillmore was in its golden era when the future mayor, then a teenager, arrived in 1951 from segregated Mineola, Texas. The 20 blocks that constitute the heart of the Fillmore then bustled with commerce and culture. It was a vibrant African American community, renowned for its nightlife.

People from throughout the Bay Area and around the world came to clubs such as Bop City (1690 Post), Jack’s Tavern (1931 Sutter), Elsie’s Breakfast Nook (1739 Fillmore), the Blue Mirror (935 Fillmore), and the Booker T. Washington Hotel’s cocktail lounge (1540 Fillmore) to see local attractions like Saunders King and Vernon Alley, as well as such national stars as Louis Armstrong, Louis Jordan, Slim Gaillard, Art Tatum, T-Bone Walker, Roy Milton, and Ruth Brown. It was not uncommon for audience members to bump shoulders with Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Robert Mitchum, Sammy Davis Jr., Dorothy Dandridge, and other visiting celebrities. Saxophonist John Handy remembers jamming with John Coltrane at Bop City, then going around the corner to Jackson’s Nook (1638 Buchanan) to share tea and conversation with the then-little-known musician, who was in town with Johnny Hodges’s band.

"Coltrane was quiet," onetime Bop City house pianist Frank Jackson recalls over a plate of short ribs at 1300 on Fillmore, a new upscale soul food restaurant two doors down from the new Yoshi’s San Francisco club. Willie Brown is dining a few tables away.

By the time Brown became mayor of San Francisco in 1996, the Fillmore was pretty much a ghost town and had been for some two and a half decades, the victim of a botched redevelopment plan. Small groups of aging African American men gathered on corners and in vacant lots that stretched for blocks, bringing folding chairs and tables to play dominos or poker.

In a letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle about 20 years ago, an African American minister from the Fillmore who was opposing plans to revitalize the area’s nightlife claimed there had never been much of a jazz scene in the area. But those old men, as well as many musicians from the Fillmore’s heyday, knew better. Visual proof can be found in page after page of historic photographs collected by Elizabeth Pepin and Lewis Watts in Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era (Chronicle, 2006). Many also fill several walls in 1300 on Fillmore’s lounge. Some can be viewed in rotation on a screen above the bar and outside, on the Eddy Street side of the building, which also houses Yoshi’s, the Jazz Heritage Center, and 80 condominiums.

THE HOOD HEATS UP

"The Fillmore was hot," says trumpeter Allen Smith, who moved there from Stockton in the late ’40s. "You could hit two or three clubs in one block, each with a band. Racial prejudice was practically nonexistent. You gotta remember that blacks weren’t even welcome on the east side of Van Ness Avenue — but all the races could mix in the Fillmore. You could be out all hours of the night, partying with whomever you cared to, and you didn’t have to worry about anybody mugging you or bothering you. It was just very cool." The 82-year-old musician — who has played in the Benny Carter, Benny Goodman, and Gil Evans orchestras — will perform as a member of the Frank Jackson Quintet on Dec. 3 at the new Yoshi’s.

"There were a lot of after-hours clubs," says Jackson, also 82, a Texan who settled in the Fillmore with his family in 1942. "Bop City was about the most popular thing in this area. I was one of the house pianists. I would play different nights. We would all fill in for each other. If you got a better gig, you’d go and take it. There was always somebody that could take your place."

Bop City was owned by promoter Charles Sullivan, who in the 1950s and early ’60s was presenting such attractions as B.B. King, Bobby Bland, and Ike and Tina Turner at the Fillmore Auditorium before Bill Graham ever set eyes on the building. The after-hours club opened in 1949 and was originally called Vout City, with Slim Gaillard as host and attraction.

Famous for such songs as "Flat Foot Floogie," "Vout Oreenee," and "Popity Pop," Gaillard was a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and purveyor of jive talk. "He spoke several different languages and invented some of his own," says Jackson, who was a member of Gaillard’s band at Vout City. The eccentric Gaillard was as likely to bake a cake in the club’s kitchen and serve it to customers as he was to perform. After several months Sullivan let Gaillard go and hired Jimbo Edwards to run the room.

"Jimbo was a used-car salesman downtown or somewhere," Jackson says. "He knew absolutely nothing about jazz, but he got his jazz lessons right there with Bop City as his workshop. He got to know exactly what was going on and who was doing what and whether they were good at it."

Besides such then–resident musicians as Handy, Pony Poindexter, Dexter Gordon, and Teddy Edwards, Jackson remembers playing during his seven years at Bop City with many out-of-town talents, including Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Ben Webster, Frank Foster, Stuff Smith, Art Blakey, Chico Hamilton, and Philly Joe Jones. And he especially remembers the night his idol, pianist extraordinaire Art Tatum, came in to listen but not to play. "They gave him a seat right by the piano," Jackson says. "I did not wanna play. The place was packed. There were seven or eight piano players in the house, but nobody wanted to come up and play."

Edwards relocated the club to Fillmore Street in the mid-’60s, but it closed shortly thereafter. The action had shifted to Soulville at McAllister and Webster streets, where younger players like Dewey Redman and Pharoah Sanders jammed, and to the Half Note on Haight Street, where George Duke led a trio with vocalist Al Jarreau. And just down the street Handy’s explosive quintet with violinist Michael White appeared regularly at the Both/And, which also presented such touring artists as Betty Carter, Milt Jackson, Roland Kirk, and Archie Shepp.

"THEY TOOK AWAY THE MUSIC"

By the end of the ’60s, however, jazz was all but dead in the Western Addition. Only Jack’s, which had moved from Sutter Street to the corner of Fillmore and Geary in the building that is now the Boom Boom Room, survived into the ’70s. Some, like Handy, blame the decline of jazz on the popularity of rock, others on rising crime and the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency.

"To me, they just destroyed the area," Jackson says of the city agency. "They took away the music. They took away homes from people. They were in a hurry to get people out of their homes."

Allen Smith’s son Peter Fitzsimmons has long been active in efforts to bring jazz back to the Fillmore and currently runs the Jazz Heritage Center, which includes an art gallery, a screening room, and a gift shop. "There were a lot of variables in place that kinda brought down the jazz scene," he says. "The music trends went away from jazz into the big stadium-rock concerts. There were some black families moving out of the Fillmore, so there wasn’t as much nightlife. And it got a little more dangerous. Like in major cities everywhere else, destitute people, drugs, and other things came into the sociological picture.

"In the ’50s and early ’60s, Jimbo was there," Fitzsimmons adds. "He marshaled his club. It wasn’t a dangerous place. People were coming from all over the world to go to Jimbo’s." Fitzsimmons and a lot of other people are confident that jazz in the Fillmore will again rise to such heights. *

FRANK JACKSON

Dec. 3, 8 and 10 p.m., $16–$20

Yoshi’s

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com

Endorsements: Local offices

November 5, 2007

Mayor

1. QUINTIN MECKE

2. AHIMSA PORTER SUMCHAI

3. CHICKEN JOHN RINALDI

Let us be perfectly clear: none of the people we are endorsing has any real chance of getting elected mayor of San Francisco. Gavin Newsom is going to win a second term; we know that, he knows that, and whatever they may say on the campaign trail, all of the candidates running against him know that.

It’s a sad state of affairs: San Francisco has been, at best, wallowing helplessly in problems under Newsom, and in many cases things have gotten worse. The murder rate is soaring; young people, particularly African Americans, are getting shot down on the streets in alarming numbers. The mayor has opposed almost every credible effort to do something about it — he fought against putting cops on foot patrol in the most violent areas, he opposed the creation of a violence-prevention fund and blocked implementation of a community policing plan, and he’s allowed the thugs in the Police Officers Association to set policy for a police department that desperately lacks leadership. The public transportation system is in meltdown. The housing crisis is out of control; 90 percent of the people who work in San Francisco can’t afford to buy a house here, and many of them can’t afford to rent either. Meanwhile, the city is allowing developers and speculators to build thousands of new luxury condos, which are turning San Francisco into a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. Newsom only recently seems to have noticed that public housing is in shambles and that the commission he appoints to oversee it has been ignoring the problem.

The mayor is moving aggressively to privatize public services (including turning over the city’s broadband infrastructure to private companies), and he’s done little to promote public power. He’s cracking down on the homeless without offering adequate alternatives to long-term housing. Much of the time, he seems disconnected, out of touch with the city; he won’t show up and take questions from the Board of Supervisors and won’t even comply with the Sunshine Ordinance and release his daily calendar so the voters can see what he’s doing all day. He rarely appears in public, unless his handlers have complete control of the situation.

In fact, almost all of the significant policy discussions and initiatives that are happening in San Francisco today (including the universal health plan that Newsom likes to take credit for) have come from the Board of Supervisors.

There are good things to say about Newsom. We were among the huge number of San Franciscans who applauded when Newsom directed the city to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He did more than make a political statement, more than allow hundreds of couples to get married; he put one of the leading civil rights issues of our time on the center stage of the political agenda. And he made all of us proud to be San Franciscans. We were happy to see him stand up against the big international hotel chains and support striking hotel workers. In some ways, he’s brought modern management to the city — the 311 system, which connects callers directly to the proper city services, actually works, and sometimes works well.

But San Francisco is one of the world’s great cities, and it’s in serious trouble, and the person in charge isn’t offering much in the way of leadership — and he certainly isn’t offering the sort of progressive agenda that this city ought to be showing the nation. Newsom doesn’t deserve another term.

And yet the progressives in the city, who have come so very far since the return of district elections in 2000, were unable to field an electable candidate. We could spend pages dissecting why that happened. Matt Gonzalez should have made a decision much earlier in the process. Ross Mirkarimi should have run. The entire movement needs to be better about developing and promoting candidates for citywide office. But right now the issue on the table is this: who should the progressives, the independents, the neighborhood activists, the tenants, the people who have been dispossessed during the Newsom years, who don’t like the prospect of this mayor waltzing into another term atop a landslide majority, vote for Nov. 6?

We aren’t in the habit of endorsing for a big-league elective office people who haven’t put in their time in the minors. And Newsom’s challengers are not exactly a varsity squad. But many of them are raising important issues that Newsom has ignored, and we commend them all for taking on the difficult task of mounting a campaign against a mayor who most observers say is unbeatable. Our endorsements are, to be honest, protest votes — but we hope they’ll send a message to Newsom that there are issues, communities, and ideas he can’t just ignore after his coronation. The smaller the mayor’s margin of victory and the more votes the candidates who are pushing the progressive agenda collect, the less of a mandate Newsom will take into a second term that could be a truly frightening time.

Quintin Mecke has the strongest progressive credentials and by far the best overall approach to issues facing the city. He’s never held elective office (and had never run before), but he’s been involved in local politics for a decade. A volunteer with Tom Ammiano’s campaigns for supervisor and mayor and with Gonzalez’s mayoral campaign, Mecke went on to serve on the civil grand jury and the task force on redistricting, where he helped stave off attempts to chop up progressive supervisorial districts. He helped organize the South of Market Anti-Displacement Committee and now runs the Safety Network Partnership, a nonprofit that works to fight crime and violence in the city’s neighborhoods. He’s on the committee that monitors the city’s homeless shelters.

Mecke told the Guardian that "it’s hard to find an innovative, non-PR-type initiative out of the Mayor’s Office." He supports community policing, a progressive gross-receipts tax that would exempt small businesses, and a moratorium on market-rate housing until the city can determine how it will build enough affordable units. He complains that there’s no standard of care in Newsom’s homeless shelters. He opposes the privatization of public programs and resources.

Mecke tends a bit to bureaucratspeak; he talked about "horizontal conversations" instead of taking some issues head-on. And we’re concerned that he didn’t seem serious or organized enough to raise the modest amount of money it would have taken to qualify for public financing and mount a more visible campaign. But he’s a solid candidate, and we’re happy to give him the nod.

Ahimsa Porter Sumchai is a remarkable success story, an African American woman who grew up in the housing projects and wound up graduating from UC San Francisco’s medical school. She’s running primarily on the issue of environmental justice for southeast San Francisco — and for years has been one of the loudest voices against the flawed Lennar Corp. redevelopment project at and the reuse plan for the contaminated Hunters Point Shipyard. Sumchai says the shipyard can never be cleaned up to a level that would be safe for housing, and she suggests that much of it should be used for parks and open space and possibly maritime and green-industry uses. She’s highly critical of the low levels of affordable housing in market-rate projects all over the city, arguing that the developers should be forced to provide as many as 25 percent of their units at below-market rates. Sumchai is a physician, and she talks like one; her scientific language and approach sometimes confuse people. She suggested that one of the main causes of the homicide rate in the city is mental illness. "You can medically address people who are violent," she told us, saying the first step is to properly diagnose and treat depression in men. "Just as we looked at AIDS as an epidemic," she said, "we should look at violence as an epidemic." Which is, at the very least, an interesting approach.

Sumchai has some innovative ideas, including a universal child-care program for the city, paid for with a "fat tax" on unhealthy food. She’s a strong supporter of public power and a longtime critic of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

She can be abrasive and temperamental, but she’s talking about critical issues that almost everyone else is ignoring. She deserves support.

Chicken John Rinaldi is the political surprise of the season, an artist and showman who has managed a traveling circus, run a bar in the Mission, put on unusual performances of every kind — and somehow managed to be the only person running for mayor who could qualify for tens of thousands of dollars in public funding. On one level Rinaldi’s campaign is a joke — he told us repeatedly he has no idea what he’s doing, and that if by some wild chance he were elected, he would hire people like Mecke and Sumchai to run the city. He’s the Dada candidate, with his entire run something of a performance art piece.

But Rinaldi has a real constituency. He represents a dying breed in the city: the street artists, the writers, the poets, the unconventional thinkers with economically marginal lifestyles, who were once the heart and soul of San Francisco. It’s hard to pin him down on issues since he seems to disdain any policy talk, but in the end, the very fact that he’s running speaks to the pressure on artists and the lack of support the unconventional side of the art world gets in this increasingly expensive city.

Rinaldi is the protest candidate of all protest candidates, but he’s going to get a lot of votes from people who think San Francisco needs to stop driving some of its most valuable residents out of town — and if that leads to a more serious discussion about artist housing, affordable housing in general, arts funding, and the overall crackdown on fun under Newsom, then it’s worth giving Chicken John a place on the ticket.

There are several other candidates worthy of consideration. Josh Wolf, a video blogger, served 226 days in a federal prison rather than turn over to the authorities tape of a demonstration he was filming. It was a bold and courageous show of principle (anyone who’s ever done time knows that spending even a week, much less month after month, behind bars is no joke), and it speaks to his leadership and character. Wolf is talking about some key issues too: he’s a big supporter of municipal broadband and sees the Web as a place to promote more direct democracy in San Francisco.

Lonnie Holmes, a probation officer, has roots in the African American community and some credible ideas about violent crime. He favors extensive, direct intervention in at-risk communities and would fully fund recreation centers, after-school programs, and antiviolence education in elementary schools. He thinks a network of community resource centers in key neighborhoods could cut the crime rate in half. He’s a little conservative for our taste, but we like his energy, commitment, and ideas.

Harold Hoogasian, a third-generation florist, registered Republican, and small-business activist, is a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative and law-and-order guy who complains that the city budget has skyrocketed while services don’t seem to have improved. Yet somewhat to our surprise, he told us he supports the idea of a moratorium on market-rate housing and a ballot measure that would force developers to build housing more in tune with San Francisco’s real needs (even if he wants to start with ownership housing for cops). He supports public power, wants more sunshine in government, and opposes privatization. He also brings a much-needed critique of the remaining vestiges of machine politics in this one-party town and speaks passionately about the need for outsiders and political independents to have a seat at the table. We’re glad to have him in the race.

In the end, though, our picks in this first ranked-choice vote for San Francisco mayor are Mecke, Sumchai, and Rinaldi — on the issues, as a political statement, and to remind Newsom that his poll numbers don’t reflect the deep sense of distrust and discontent that remains in this city.

District attorney

KAMALA HARRIS

We’re always nervous about unopposed incumbents. And since Kamala Harris unseated Terence Hallinan four years ago, running as an ally of then-mayor Willie Brown with the backing of a corrupt old machine, we’ve been nervous about her.

In some ways she’s been a pleasant surprise. Harris quickly showed that she has courage and integrity when she refused to seek the death penalty for a cop killer despite the fact that the police rank and file and much of the brass excoriated her for it. She remains one of the few district attorneys in the nation who oppose the death penalty in all situations. She’s created a public integrity unit and aggressively filed charges against Sup. Ed Jew. She’s made clear to the Police Department that she won’t accept sloppy police work. She talks constantly about making crime and criminal justice a progressive issue.

But there are plenty of areas in which we remain nervous. Harris hasn’t been anywhere near as aggressive as she could be in prosecuting political corruption. She doesn’t pursue ethics violations or Sunshine Ordinance violations. The San Francisco DA’s Office could be a national leader in rooting out and prosecuting environmental and political crime, but it isn’t.

Meanwhile, the murder rate continues to rise in San Francisco, and Harris and the police are pointing fingers back and forth without actually finding a workable solution.

And lately, Harris, to her tremendous discredit, has been stepping up the prosecution of so-called quality-of-life crimes — which translates into harassing the homeless. She’s made sure there’s a full-time prosecutor in traffic court, pressing charges for things like public urination, sleeping in the park, and holding an open container of beer. That’s a colossal waste of law enforcement resources.

We expect a lot more from Harris in the next four years. But we’ll back her for another term.

Sheriff

MIKE HENNESSEY

Mike Hennessey has been sheriff for so long that it’s hard to imagine anyone else holding the job. And that’s not a bad thing: Hennessey is one of the most progressive law enforcement officers in the country. He’s turned the county jail into a center for drug rehabilitation, counseling, and education (the first charter high school in America for county prisoners is in the SF jail). He’s hired a remarkably diverse group of deputies and has worked to find alternatives to incarceration. He’s openly critical of the rate at which the San Francisco police are arresting people for small-time drug offenses ("We’re arresting too many people for drugs in the city," he told us). He took a courageous stand last year in opposing a draconian and ineffective state ballot initiative that would have kicked convicted sex offenders out of San Francisco and forced them to live in rural counties without access to support, services, or monitoring.

We’ve had some issues with Hennessey. We wanted a smaller new jail than he ultimately decided to build. And we really wish he’d be more outspoken on local law enforcement issues. Hennessey told us he wants to stick to his own turf, but if he were more visible on police reform, criminal justice, and law enforcement, the city would benefit immensely.

Hennessey’s only opponent is David Wong, a deputy sheriff who was unable to make a case for replacing the incumbent. We’re happy to endorse Hennessey for another term — but since this might be his last before retirement, we urge him to take his progressive views and push them onto a larger stage.

Will & Willie are back!

November 5, 2007

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Will and Willie are back!
“Keeping it Real” with Will Durst and Willie Brown is now in podcast form at WillandWillie.com. Hear it at the link below.

Clear Channel Communications, the media megaconglomerate with l0 lousy radio stations in the Bay Area, made a terrible decision back in September 2006 when it killed the “Keepin’ It Real with Will and Willie” early morning radio show on its 960 a.m. Quake station.

The show, created by the talented radio producer Paul “The Lobster” Wells, featured Comedian Will Durst and former mayor Willie Brown playing themselves and taking on the issues of the day in the spirit and style of the old Herb Caen columns in the old San Francisco Chronicle. They were fun to listen to, brought on guests that nobody else would touch (Peter Phillips from Project Censored, Noam Chomsky, Marie Harrison from the Hunters Point power plant opposition, etc.), sketched out issues the mainstream media ignored, and provided witty conversation and “Bursts of Durst” every week day morning from 7 to l0 p.m.

I was even encouraged to come on the program and blast away at PG&E, its illegal private power utility, and other Guardian issues. Willie promptly suggested on the air that the program stage a debate with PG&E and me. Fine, I said, but they have never agreed to a debate with me since the Guardian started its public power campaign in l969 and I doubted if they ever would. Willie claimed surprise and said he would work on it. Nothing of course happened.

But this was the kind of fun the program encouraged and I, and many others around town, enjoyed going on the show and making points and arguments we could make on no other local show and certainly not in the San Francisco Chronicle and probably not even in Caen’s column (even he was wimpy on PG&E).

Clear Channel just killed the show outright, with no warning, no real explanation, and no real appreciation for what the show had accomplished in a short period of time. And it left the city without a voice or venue on this Progressive station, just as “San Francisco values” became a national phrase and the war and Bush rhetoric heated up, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi ascended to the speakership. Instead, we got all kinds of Quake talent with the sensibility of other places (Al Franken from Minnesota and Stephanie Miller from Los Angeles) and none from San Francisco. (Newsman John Scott does his best, on “The Progressive News Hour” from 4 to 6 p.m., but it isn’t the same.)

The good news is that Will and Willie are back, with producer Paul Wells, in podcast form. Their inaugural episode is the first gathering of Will, Willie, and Paul since the cancellation. They are in good form discussing the San Francisco election and Mayor Newsom running without real progressive opposition and the problem with parking downtown and and and. Their next episode will take on the upcoming Presidential election and other national events.

Cheer them on! Hear them by visiting the following link HERE and going to the Will&Willie podcast. Log in and give them feedback. B3

Campaign sewer overflows

October 30, 2007

› amanda@sfbg.com

The flow of election cash is often a filthy river that you wouldn’t want to drink from, and a recent local lawsuit, coupled with a new bit of state legislation, has muddied the waters even more.

On Sept. 20, US District Court Judge Jeffery S. White granted a preliminary injunction preventing the city from enforcing key sections of its Campaign Finance Reform Ordinance.

Two local groups with a sordid history of influencing elections with large chunks of cash — the Building Owners and Managers Association and the Committee on Jobs — argued in court that campaign contribution limits violate the First Amendment by financially curbing the ability to communicate a message (see "Pressing the Scales," 8/22/07). The contribution limits of independent-expenditure committees stumping for candidates were set by the voter-passed Proposition O in 2000 after the 1999 reelection of Mayor Willie Brown, in which deep-pocketed business interests backed the mayor in exchange for preferential treatment by city hall.

Prop. O capped contributions to IEs at $500, and people and corporations are allowed to give no more than $3,000 total (e.g., $500 each to six committees).

Those caps are no longer enforceable.

Similar injunctions have been granted in San Jose and Oakland, also destroying local contribution caps in those cities. San Jose appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and is waiting for a ruling. Ann O’Leary, a lawyer in City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office, told us San Francisco is waiting to see what happens in San Jose before making the next move, though an appeal is planned regardless of that outcome. In the past the Supreme Court has ruled that the appearance of corruption in elections is sufficient grounds for restricting campaign contributions, and San Francisco’s history provides ample examples from which to draw to support that decision.

"We don’t know if it will get back to court before November 2008," O’Leary said of the case, "but it’s certainly something to watch in that election."

Meanwhile, over in Sacramento, legislators on cruise control recently passed a bill that may make it impossible for San Francisco to write its election laws anyway. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger just signed Assembly Bill 1430, and according to the legislative digest, the new law "prohibits local governments from adopting campaign finance ordinances that restrict communications between an organization and its members unless state law similarly restricts such communications, or by regulation by the Fair Political Practices Commission."

Proponents say the new law will resolve conflicting interpretations of campaign finance regulations, but opponents say it preserves wide-open loopholes in the Political Reform Act that local jurisdictions have tried to close. For example, a person may be prohibited by the city from giving more than $500 to support a certain candidate. That person can, however, give as much as $30,200 to the Democratic Party, which can then "communicate" a message of support for that candidate to its members.

A recent and egregious example: in San Diego the county Republican Party spent almost $1 million on local races in 2006.

The bill was authored by Carlsbad Republican Martin Garrick and flew through the State Assembly unopposed. Assemblymember Mark Leno told us it came to the Elections Committee, on which he sits, with no vocal opposition, so he gave it an aye. One of his aides, however, became concerned and started making calls. Eventually, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters rallied against it, but it only hit a speed bump in the State Senate. There was still too much support from the Democrats to kill it. Leno said, "It’s an uncommon situation to have the left and right supporting something that in fact runs counter to local election laws."

Only nine senators opposed the bill, including Carole Migden and Leland Yee. "She thought it was an end around campaign finance laws," Migden aide Eric Potashner told us.

San Francisco’s Ethics Commission also took a look at the bill and gave it a 5–0 thumbs-down, resolving to send a letter to both the mayor and the Board of Supervisors urging them to speak against it. Neither did. "The Mayor supports AB1430," his press secretary, Nathan Ballard, told us by e-mail. "He has some concerns about the local control issue, but ultimately those concerns are overridden by his belief that groups like labor unions and the Democratic Party should be allowed to communicate directly with their members."

The governor’s signature now makes it more difficult to pass future measures like Prop O.

Neither the injunction nor the new law seems to be affecting the Nov. 6 election — the FPPC won’t be ruling on AB 1430 until January, though the commission is holding a hearing for interested people to speak in Sacramento on Nov. 2.

Though BOMA and the Committee on Jobs stated in their filing for the injunction that the law harms their ability to raise and spend money for candidates in this November’s election, nothing on record with the Ethics Commission shows they’ve been putting up a lot of money for Newsom, Kamala Harris, or Michael Hennessey. But there’s always next year.

Endorsements: Local ballot measures

October 2, 2007

Proposition A (transit reform)

YES

This omnibus measure would finally put San Francisco in a position to create the world-class transportation system that the city needs to handle a growing population and to address environmental problems ranging from climate change to air pollution. And in the short term it would help end the Muni meltdown by giving the system a much-needed infusion of cash, about $26 million per year, and more authority to manage its myriad problems.

The measure isn’t perfect. It would give a tremendous amount of power to the unelected Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a semiautonomous agency created in 1999 to reform Muni. But we also understand the arguments of Sup. Aaron Peskin — who wrote the measure in collaboration with labor and other groups — that the MTA is free to make tough decisions that someone facing reelection might avoid. And the measure still would give the Board of Supervisors authority to block the MTA’s budget, fare increases, and route changes with seven votes.

We’re also a little worried about provisions that could place the Taxicab Commission under the MTA’s purview and allow the agency to tinker with the medallion system and undermine Proposition K, the 1978 law that gives operating permits to working drivers, not corporations. Peskin promised us, on tape, that he will ensure, with legislation if necessary, that no such thing happens, and we’ll hold him to it.

Ultimately, the benefits of this measure outweigh our concerns. The fact that the labor movement has signed off on expanded management powers for the MTA shows how important this compromise is. The MTA would have the power to fully implement the impending recommendations in the city’s Transit Improvement Project study and would be held accountable for improvements to Muni’s on-time performance. New bonding authority under the measure would also give the MTA the ability to quickly pursue capital projects that would allow more people to comfortably use public transit.

The measure would also create an integrated transportation system combining everything from parking to cabs to bike lanes under one agency, which would then be mandated to find ways to roll back greenhouse gas emissions from transportation sources to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2012. And to do that, the agency would get to keep all of the revenue generated by its new programs. As a side benefit — and another important reason to vote for Prop. A — approval of this measure would nullify the disastrous Proposition H on the same ballot.

San Francisco faces lots of tough choices if we’re going to minimize climate change and maximize the free flow of people through our landlocked city. Measure A is an important start. Vote yes.

Proposition B (commission holdovers)

YES

Proposition B is a simple good-government measure that ends a practice then-mayor Willie Brown developed into a science — allowing commissioners to continue serving after their terms expire, turning them into at-will appointments and assuring their loyalty.

Members of some of the most powerful commissions in town serve set four-year terms. The idea is to give the members, many appointed by the mayor, some degree of independence: they can’t be fired summarily for voting against the interests (or demands) of the chief executive.

But once their terms expire, the mayor can simply choose not to reappoint or replace them, leaving them in limbo for months, even years — and while they still sit on the commissions and vote, these holdover commissioners can be fired at any time. So their jobs depend, day by day, on the whims of the mayor.

Prop. B, sponsored by the progressives on the Board of Supervisors, simply would limit to 60 days the amount of time a commissioner can serve as a holdover. After that period, the person’s term would end, and he or she would have to step down. That would force the mayor to either reappoint or replace commissioners in a timely manner — and help give these powerful posts at least a chance at independence. Vote yes.

Proposition C (public hearings on proposed measures)

NO

Proposition C sure sounds good: it would mandate that the supervisors hold a hearing 45 days in advance before putting any measure on the ballot. The mayor would have to submit proposed ballot measures for hearings too. That would end the practice of last-minute legislation; since four supervisors can place any ordinance on the ballot (and the mayor can do the same), proposals that have never been vetted by the public and never subjected to any prior discussion often wind up before the voters. Sometimes that means the measures are poorly written and have unintended consequences.

But this really isn’t a good-government measure; it’s a move by the Chamber of Commerce and downtown to reduce the power of the district-elected supervisors.

The 1932 City Charter gave the supervisors the power to place items before the voters as a check on corruption. In San Francisco it’s been used as a check on downtown power. In 1986, for example, activists gathered enough voter signatures to place Proposition M, a landmark measure controlling downtown development, on the ballot. But then–city attorney Louise Renne, acting on behalf of downtown developers, used a ridiculous technicality to invalidate it. At the last minute, the activists were able to get four supervisors to sign on — and Prop. M, one of the most important pieces of progressive planning legislation in the history of San Francisco, ultimately won voter approval. Under Prop. C, that couldn’t have happened.

In theory, most of the time, anything that goes on the ballot should be subject to public hearings. Sometimes, as in the case of Prop. M, that’s not possible.

We recognize the frustration some groups (particularly small businesses) feel when legislation gets passed without any meaningful input from the people directly affected. But it doesn’t require a strict ballot measure like Prop. C to solve the problem. The supervisors should adopt rules mandating public hearings on propositions, but with a more flexible deadline and exemptions for emergencies. Meanwhile, vote no on Prop. C.

Proposition D (library preservation fund)

YES

In the 1980s and early 1990s, San Francisco mayors loved to cut the budget of the public library. Every time money was short — and money was chronically short — the library took a hit. It was an easy target. If you cut other departments (say, police or fire or Muni or public health), people would howl and say lives were in danger. Reducing the hours at a few neighborhood branch libraries didn’t seem nearly as dire.

So activists who argued that libraries were an essential public service put a measure on the ballot in 1994 that guaranteed at least a modest level of library funding. The improvements have been dramatic: branch library hours have increased more than 50 percent, library use is way up, there are more librarians around in the afternoons to help kids with their homework…. In that sense, the Library Preservation Fund has been a great success. The program is scheduled to sunset next year; Proposition D would extend it another 15 years.

If the current management of the public library system were a bit more trustworthy, this would be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the library commission and staff have been resisting accountability; ironically, the library — a font of public information — makes it difficult to get basic records about library operations. The library is terrible about sunshine; in fact, activists have had to sue this year to get the library to respond to a simple public-records request (for nonconfidential information on repetitive stress injuries among library staff). And we’re not thrilled that a significant part of the library’s operating budget is raised (and controlled) by a private group, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, which decides, with no oversight by an elected official, how as much as 10 percent of library money is spent.

But libraries are too valuable and too easy a budget target to allow the Library Preservation Fund to expire. And the way to fend off creeping privatization is hardly by starving a public institution for funds. So we’ll support Prop. D.

Proposition E (mayoral attendance at Board of Supervisors meetings)

YES, YES, YES

If it feels as though you’ve already voted on this, you have: last November, by a strong majority, San Franciscans approved a policy statement calling on the mayor to attend at least one Board of Supervisors meeting each month to answer questions and discuss policy. It’s a great idea, modeled on the very successful Question Time in the United Kingdom, under which the British prime minister appears before Parliament regularly and submits to questions from all political parties. Proposition E would force the mayor to comply. Newsom, despite his constant statements about respecting the will of the voters, has never once complied with the existing policy statement. Instead, he’s set up a series of phony neighborhood meetings at which he controls the agenda and personally selects which questions he’s going to answer.

We recognize that some supervisors would use the occasion of the mayor’s appearance to grandstand — but the mayor does that almost every day. Appearing before the board once a month isn’t an undue burden; in fact, it would probably help Newsom in the long run. If he’s going to seek higher office, he’s going to have to get used to tough questioning and learn to deal with critics in a forum he doesn’t control.

Beyond all the politics, this idea is good for the city. The mayor claims he already meets regularly with members of the board, but those meetings are private, behind closed doors. Hearing the mayor and the board argue about policy in public would be informative and educational and help frame serious policy debates. Besides, as Sup. Chris Daly says, with Newsom a lock for reelection, this is the only thing on the ballot that would help hold him accountable. Vote yes on Prop. E.

Proposition F (police pensions)

YES

We really didn’t want to endorse this measure. We’re sick and tired of the San Francisco Police Officers Association — which opposed violence-prevention funding, opposed foot patrols, opposes every new revenue measure, and bitterly, often viciously, opposes police accountability — coming around, tin cup in hand, every single election and asking progressives to vote to give the cops more money. San Francisco police officers deserve decent pay — it’s a tough, dangerous job — but the starting salary for a rookie cop in this town exceeds $60,000, the benefits are extraordinarily generous, and the San Francisco Police Department is well on its way to setting a record as the highest-paid police force in the country.

Now it wants more.

But in fact, Proposition F is pretty minor — it would affect only about 60 officers who were airport cops before the airport police were merged into the SFPD in 1997. Those cops have a different retirement system, which isn’t quite as good as what they would get with full SFPD benefits. We’re talking about $30,000 a year; in the end, it’s a simple labor issue, and we hate to blame a small group of officers in one division for the serious sins of their union and its leadership. So we’ll endorse Prop. F. But we have a message for the SFPOA’s president: if you want to beat up the progressives, reject new tax plans, promote secrecy, and fight accountability, don’t come down here again asking for big, expensive benefit improvements.

Proposition G (Golden Gate Park stables)

YES

This is an odd one: Proposition G, sponsored by Sup. Jake McGoldrick, would create a special fund for the renovation of the historic (and dilapidated) horse stables in Golden Gate Park. The city would match every $3 in private donations with $1 in public money, up to a total of $750,000. The city would leverage that money with $1.2 million in state funds available for the project and fix up the stables.

Supporters, including most of the progressive supervisors, say that the stables are a historic gem and that horseback riding in the park would provide "after-school, summer and weekend activities for families and youth." That might be a bit of a stretch — keeping horses is expensive, and riding almost certainly won’t be a free activity for anyone. But the stables have been the target of privatization efforts in the past and, under Newsom, almost certainly would be again in the future; this is exactly the sort of operation that the mayor would like to turn over to a private contractor. So for a modest $750,000, Prop. G would keep the stables in public hands. Sounds like a good deal to us. Vote yes.

Proposition H (reguutf8g parking spaces)

NO, NO, NO

It’s hard to overstate just how bad this measure is or to condemn strongly enough the sleazy and deceptive tactics that led Don Fisher, Webcor, and other downtown power brokers to buy the signatures that placed what they call "Parking for the Neighborhoods" on the ballot. That’s why Proposition H has been almost universally condemned, even by downtown’s allies in City Hall, and why Proposition A includes a provision that would negate Proposition H if both are approved.

Basically, this measure would wipe out three decades’ worth of environmentally sound planning policies in favor of giving every developer and homeowner the absolute right to build a parking space for every housing unit (or two spaces for every three units in the downtown core). While that basic idea might have some appeal to drivers with parking frustrations, even they should consider the disastrous implications of this greedy and shortsighted power grab.

The city has very little leverage to force developers to offer community benefits like open space or more affordable housing, or to design buildings that are attractive and environmentally friendly. But parking spots make housing more valuable (and expensive), so developers will help the city meet its needs in order to get them. That would end with this measure, just as the absolute right to parking would eliminate things like Muni stops and street trees while creating more driveways, which are dangerous to bicyclists and pedestrians. It would flip the equation to place developers’ desires over the public interest.

Worst of all, it would reverse the city’s transit-first policies in a way that ultimately would hurt drivers and property owners, the very people it is appealing to. If we don’t limit the number of parking spots that can be built with the 10,000 housing units slated for the downtown core, it will result in traffic gridlock that will lower property values and kill any chance of creating a world-class transit system.

But by then, the developers will be off counting our money, leaving us to clean up their mess. Don’t be fooled. Vote no.

Proposition I (Office of Small Business)

YES

Proposition I got on the ballot after small-business leaders tried unsuccessfully to get the supervisors to fund a modest program to create staff for the Small Business Commission and create a one-stop shop for small-business assistance and permitting. We don’t typically support this sort of after-the-fact ballot-box budgeting request, but we’re making an exception here.

San Francisco demands a lot from small businesses. It’s an expensive place to set up shop, and city taxes discriminate against them. We supported the new rules mandating that even small operations give paid days off and in many cases pay for health insurance, but we recognize that they put a burden on small businesses. And in the end, the little operators don’t get a whole lot back from City Hall.

This is a pretty minor request: it would allocate $750,000 to set up an Office of Small Business under the Small Business Commission. The funding would be for the first year only; after that the advocates would have to convince the supervisors that it was worth continuing. Small businesses are the economic and job-generation engines of San Francisco, and this one-time request for money that amounts to less than 1/10th of 1 percent of the city budget is worthy of support. Vote yes on Prop. I.

Proposition J (wireless Internet network)

NO

It’s going to be hard to convince people to vote against this measure; as one blogger put it, the mayor of San Francisco is offering free ice cream. Anyone want to decline?

Well, yes — decline is exactly what the voters should do. Because Proposition J’s promise of free and universal wireless Internet service is simply a fraud. And the way it’s worded would ensure that our local Internet infrastructure is handed over to a private company — a terrible idea.

For starters, San Francisco has already been down this road. Newsom worked out a deal a year ago with EarthLink and Google to provide free wi-fi. But the contract had all sorts of problems: the free access would have been too slow for a lot of uses, faster access wouldn’t have been free, there weren’t good privacy protections, and the network wouldn’t have been anything close to universal. Wi-fi signals don’t penetrate walls very well, and the signals in this plan wouldn’t have reached much above the second floor of a building — so anyone who lived in an interior space above the second floor (and that’s a lot of people) wouldn’t have gotten access at all.

So the supervisors asked a few questions and slowed things down — and it’s good they did, because EarthLink suddenly had a change in its business strategy and pulled out of citywide wi-fi altogether. That’s one of the problems with using a private partner for this sort of project: the city is subject to the marketing whims of tech companies that are constantly changing their strategies as the economic and technical issues of wi-fi evolve.

San Francisco needs a municipal Internet system; it ought to be part of the city’s public infrastructure, just like the streets, the buses, and the water and sewer lines. It shouldn’t rely just on a fickle technology like wi-fi either; it should be based on fiber-optic cables. Creating that network wouldn’t be all that expensive; EarthLink was going to do it for $10 million.

Prop. J is just a policy statement and would have no immediate impact. Still, it’s annoying and wrongheaded for the mayor to try to get San Franciscans to give a vote of confidence to a project that has already crashed and burned, and Sup. Aaron Peskin, the cosponsor, should never have put his name on it. Vote no.

Proposition K (ads on street furniture)

YES

San Francisco is awash in commercialism. With all of the billboards and ads, the city is starting to feel like a giant NASCAR racer. And a lot of them come from Clear Channel Communications, the giant, monopolistic broadcast outfit that controls radio stations, billboards, and now the contract to build new bus shelters in the city with even more ads on them.

Proposition K is a policy statement, sponsored by Sup. Jake McGoldrick, that seeks to bar any further expansion of street-furniture advertising in the city. That would mean no more deals with the likes of Clear Channel to allow more lighted kiosks with ads on them — and no more new bus shelter ads. That’s got Clear Channel agitated — the company just won the 15-year bid to rebuild the city’s existing 1,200 Muni shelters, and now it wants to add 380 more. Clear Channel argues that the city would get badly needed revenue for Muni from the expanded shelters; actually, the contract already guarantees Muni a large chunk of additional funding. And nothing in Prop. K would block Clear Channel from upgrading the existing shelters and plastering ads all over them.

On a basic philosophical level, we don’t support the idea of funding Muni by selling ads on the street, any more than we would support the idea of funding the Recreation and Park Department by selling the naming rights to the Hall of Flowers or the Japanese Tea Garden or the golf courses. On a practical level, the Clear Channel deal is dubious anyway: the company, which runs 10 mostly lousy radio stations in town and gives almost nothing of value to the community, refuses to provide the public with any information on its projected profits and losses, so there’s no way to tell if the income the city would get from the expanded shelters would be a fair share of the overall revenue.

Vote yes on K.

The underground campaign

September 25, 2007

Click here for the Guardian 2007 Election Center: interviews, profiles, commentary, and more

› news@sfbg.com

Elections usually create an important public discussion on the direction of the city. Unfortunately, that debate isn’t really happening this year, largely because of the essentially uncontested races for sheriff and district attorney and the perception that Mayor Gavin Newsom is certain to be reelected, which has led him to ignore his opponents and the mainstream media to give scant coverage to the mayoral race and the issues being raised.

To the casual observer, it might seem as if everyone is content with the status quo.

But the situation looks quite different from the conference room here at the Guardian, where this season’s endorsement interviews with candidates, elected officials, and other political leaders have revealed a deeply divided city and real frustration with its leadership and direction.

In fact, we were struck by the fact that nobody we talked to had much of anything positive to say about Newsom. Granted, most of the interviews were with his challengers — but we’ve also talked to Sheriff Mike Hennessey and District Attorney Kamala Harris, both of whom have endorsed the mayor, and to supporters and opponents of various ballot measures. And from across the board, we got the sense that Newsom’s popularity in the polls isn’t reflected in the people who work with him on a regular basis.

Newsom will be in to talk to us Oct. 1, and we’ll be running his interview on the Web and allowing him ample opportunity to present his views and his responses.

Readers can listen to the interviews online at www.sfbg.com and check out our endorsements and explanations in next week’s issue. In the meantime, we offer this look at some of the interesting themes, revelations, and ideas that are emerging from the hours and hours of discussions, because some are quite noteworthy.

Like the fact that mayoral candidates Quintin Mecke and Harold Hoogasian — respectively the most progressive and the most conservative candidate in the race — largely agree on what’s wrong with the Newsom administration, as well as many solutions to the city’s most vexing problems. Does that signal the possibility of new political alliances forming in San Francisco, or at least new opportunities for a wider and more inclusive debate?

Might Lonnie Holmes and Ahimsa Porter Sumchai — two African American candidates with impressive credentials and deep ties to the community — have something to offer a city struggling with high crime rates, lingering racism, environmental and social injustice, and a culture of economic hopelessness? And if we’re a city open to new ideas, how about considering Josh Wolf’s intriguing plan for improving civic engagement, Grasshopper Alec Kaplan’s "green for peace" initiative, or Chicken John Rinaldi’s call to recognize and encourage San Francisco as a city of art and innovation?

There’s a lot going on in the political world that isn’t making the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. The interviews we’ve been conducting point to a street-level democracy San Francisco–style in all its messy and wonderful glory. And they paint a picture of possibilities that lie beyond the news releases.

THE RIGHT AND THE LEFT

As the owner of Hoogasian Flowers on Seventh Street and a vocal representative of the small-business community, mayoral candidate Hoogasian describes himself as a "sensitive Republican," "a law-and-order guy" who would embrace "zero-based budgeting" if elected. "The best kind of government is the least kind of government," Hoogasian told us.

Those are hardly your typical progressive sentiments.

Yet Hoogasian has also embraced the Guardian‘s call for limiting new construction of market-rate housing until the city develops a plan to encourage the building of more housing affordable to poor and working-class San Franciscans. He supports public power, greater transparency in government, a moratorium on the privatization of government services, and a more muscular environmentalism. And he thinks the mayor is out of touch.

"I’m a native of San Francisco, and I’m pissed off," said Hoogasian, whose father ran for mayor 40 years ago with a similar platform against Joe Alioto. "Newsom is an empty suit. When was the last time the mayor stood before a pool of reporters and held a press conference?"

Mecke, program director of the Safety Network, a citywide public safety program promoting community-driven responses to crime and violence, is equally acerbic when it comes to Newsom’s news-release style of governance.

"It’s great that he wants to focus on the rock star elements, but we have to demand public accountability," said Mecke, who as a member of the Shelter Monitoring Committee helps inspect the city’s homeless shelters to ensure that people are treated with dignity and respect. "Even Willie Brown had some modicum of engagement."

Mecke advocates for progressive solutions to the crime problem. "We need to get the police to change," he said. "At the moment we have 10 fiefdoms, and the often-touted idea of community policing doesn’t exist."

Hoogasian said he jumped into the mayor’s race after "this bozo took away 400 garbage cans and called it an antilitter program." Mecke leaped into the race the day after progressive heavyweight Sup. Chris Daly announced he wasn’t running, and he won the supervisor’s endorsement. Both Hoogasian and Mecke express disgust at Newsom’s ignoring the wishes of San Franciscans, who voted last fall in favor of the mayor attending Board of Supervisors meetings to have monthly policy discussions.

"Why is wi-fi on the ballot [Proposition J] if the mayor didn’t respect that process last year?" Mecke asked.

Hoogasian characterized Newsom’s ill-fated Google-EarthLink deal as "a pie-in-the-sky idea suited to getting young people thinking he’s the guns" while only giving access to "people sitting on the corner of Chestnut with laptops, drinking lattes."

In light of San Francisco’s housing crisis, Hoogasian said he favors a moratorium on market-rate housing until 25,000 affordable units are built, and Mecke supports placing a large affordable-housing bond on next year’s ballot, noting, "We haven’t had one in 10 years."

Hoogasian sees Newsom’s recent demand that all department heads give him their resignations as further proof that the mayor is "chickenshit." Mecke found it "embarrassing" that Sup. Ross Mirkarimi had to legislate police foot patrols twice in 2006, overcoming Newsom vetoes.

"San Francisco should give me a chance to make this city what it deserves to be, " Hoogasian said.

Mecke said, "I’m here to take a risk, take a chance, regardless of what I think the odds are."

ENDING THE VIOLENCE

Holmes and Sumchai have made the murder rate and the city’s treatment of African Americans the centerpieces of their campaigns. Both support increased foot patrols and more community policing, and they agree that the root of the problem is the need for more attention and resources.

"The plan is early intervention," Holmes said, likening violence prevention to health care. "We need to start looking at preventative measures."

In addition to mentoring, after-school programs, and education, Holmes specifically advocates comprehensive community resource centers — a kind of one-stop shopping for citizens in need of social services — "so individuals do not have to travel that far outside their neighborhoods. If we start putting city services out into the communities, then not only are we looking at a cost savings to city government, but we’re also looking at a reduction in crime."

Sumchai, a physician, has studied the cycles of violence that occur as victims become perpetrators and thinks more medical approaches should be applied to social problems. "I would like to see the medical community address violence as a public health problem," she said.

Holmes said he thinks the people who work on violence prevention need to be homegrown. "We also need to talk about bringing individuals to the table who understand what’s really going on in the streets," he said. "The answer is not bringing in some professional or some doctor from Boston or New York because they had some elements of success there.

"When you take a plant that’s not native to the soil and try to plant it, it dies…. If there’s no way for those program elements or various modalities within those programs to take root somewhere, it’s going to fail, and that’s what we’ve seen in the Newsom administration."

Holmes spoke highly of former mayor Art Agnos’s deployment of community workers to walk the streets and mitigate violence by talking to kids and brokering gang truces.

The fate of the southeast sector of the city concerns both locals. Sumchai grew up in Sunnydale, and Holmes lived in the Western Addition and now lives in Bernal Heights. Neither is pleased with the city’s redevelopment plan for the Hunters Point Shipyard. "I have never felt that residential development at the shipyard would be safe," said Sumchai, who favors leaving the most toxic sites as much-needed open space.

Despite some relatively progressive ideas — Holmes suggested a luxury tax to finance housing and services for homeless individuals, and Sumchai would like to see San Francisco tax fatty foods to pay for public health programs — both were somewhat averse to aligning too closely with progressives.

Sumchai doesn’t like the current makeup of the Board of Supervisors, and Holmes favors cutting management in government and turning services over to community-based organizations.

But both made it clear that Newsom isn’t doing much for the African American community.

ORIGINAL IDEAS

The mayor’s race does have several colorful characters, from the oft-arrested Kaplan to nudist activist George Davis to ever-acerbic columnist and gadfly H. Brown. Yet two of the more unconventional candidates are also offering some of the more original and thought-provoking platforms in the race.

Activist-blogger Wolf made a name for himself by refusing to turn over to a federal grand jury his video footage from an anarchist rally at which a police officer was injured, defying a judge’s order and serving 226 days in federal prison, the longest term ever for someone asserting well-established First Amendment rights.

The Guardian and others have criticized the San Francisco Police Department’s conduct in the case and Newsom’s lack of support. But Wolf isn’t running on a police-reform platform so much as a call for "a new democracy plan" based loosely on the Community Congress models of the 1970s, updated using the modern technologies in which Wolf is fluent.

"The basic principle can be applied more effectively today with the advent of the Internet and Web 2.0 than was at all possible to do in the 1970s," Wolf said, calling for more direct democracy and an end to the facade of public comment in today’s system, which he said is "like talking to a wall."

"It’s not a dialogue, it’s not a conversation, and it’s certainly not a conversation with other people in the city," Wolf said. "No matter who’s mayor or who’s on the Board of Supervisors, the solutions that they are able to come up with are never going to be able to match the collective wisdom of the city of San Francisco. So building an online organism that allows people to engage in discussions about every single issue that comes across City Hall, as well as to vote in a sort of straw-poll manner around every single issue and to have conversations where the solutions can rise to the surface, seems to be a good step toward building a true democracy instead of a representative government."

Also calling for greater populism in government is Chicken John Rinaldi (see "Chicken and the Pot," 9/12/07), who shared his unique political strategy with us in a truly entertaining interview.

"I’m here to ask for the Guardian‘s second-place endorsement," Rinaldi said, aware that we intend to make three recommendations in this election, the first mayor’s race to use the ranked-choice voting system.

Asked if his running to illustrate a mechanism is akin to a hamster running on a wheel, Rinaldi elaborated on the twin issues that he holds dear to his heart — art and innovation — by talking about innovative ways to streamline the current complexities that artists, performers, and others must face when trying to get a permit to put on an event in San Francisco.

"I’m running for the idea of San Francisco," Rinaldi said. He claimed to be painting a campaign logo in the style of a mural on the side of his warehouse in the Mission District: "It’s going to say, ‘Chicken, it’s what’s for mayor,’ or ‘Chicken, the other white mayor.’"

He repeatedly said that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about; when we asked him what he’d do if he won, he told us that he’ll hire Mecke, Holmes, Sumchai, and Wolf to run the city.

Yet his comedy has a serious underlying message: "I want to create an arts spark." And that’s something he’s undeniably good at.

THE LAW-ENFORCEMENT VIEW

Sheriff Hennessey and District Attorney Harris aren’t being seriously challenged for reelection, and both decided early (despite pleas from their supporters) not to take on Newsom for the top job. In fact, they’re both endorsing him.

But in interviews with us, they were far from universally laudatory toward the incumbent mayor, saying he needs to do much more to get a handle on crime and the social- and economic-justice issues that drive it.

Hennessey said San Francisco’s county jail system is beyond its capacity for inmates and half of them are behind bars on drug charges, even in a city supposedly opposed to the war on drugs.

"I had this conversation with the mayor probably a year ago," Hennessey said. "I took him down to the jail to show him there were people sleeping on the floor at that time. I needed additional staff to open up a new unit. He came down and looked at the jails and said, ‘Yeah, this is not right.’"

Asked how he would cut the jail population in half, Hennessey — in all seriousness — suggested firing the city’s narcotics officers. He readily acknowledged that the culture within the SFPD is a barrier to creating a real dialogue and partnership with the rest of the city. How would he fix it? Make the police chief an elected office.

"From about 1850 to 1895, the San Francisco police chief was elected," he said. "I think it’d be a very good idea for this city. It’s a small enough city that I think the elected politicians really try to be responsive to the public will."

Hennessey said that with $10 million or $15 million more, he could have an immediate impact on violence in the city by expanding a program he began last year called the No Violence Alliance, which combines into one community-based case-management system all of the types of services that perpetrators of violence are believed to be lacking: stable housing, education, decent jobs, and treatment for drug addiction.

Harris told us so-called quality-of-life crimes, including hand-to-hand drug sales no matter how small, deserve to be taken seriously. But it’s not a crime to be poor or homeless, she insisted and eagerly pointed to her own reentry program for offenders, Back on Track.

More than half of the felons paroled in San Francisco in 2003 returned to prison not long thereafter, reaffirming the continuing plague of recidivism in California. Harris said more than 90 percent of the people who participated in the pilot phase of Back on Track were holding down a job or attending school by the time they graduated from the program. "DAs around the country are listening to what we’re saying about how to achieve smart public safety," she said of the reentry philosophy.

But at the end of the day, Harris is a criminal prosecutor before she’s a nonprofit administrator. And her relationship with the SFPD at times has amounted to little more than a four-year stalemate. Harris and former district attorney Terrence Hallinan both endured accusations by cops that they were too easy on defendants and reluctant to prosecute.

To help us understand who’s right when it comes to the murder rate, Harris shared some telling statistics. She said the rate of police solving homicides in San Francisco is about 30 percent, compared with 60 percent nationwide. And she said she’s gotten convictions in 90 percent of the murder cases she’s filed. Nonetheless, cops consistently blame prosecutors for crimes going unpunished.

"I go to so many community meetings and hear the story," she said. "I cannot tell you how often I hear the story…. It’s a self-defeating thing to say, ‘I’m not going to work because the DA won’t prosecute.’ … If no report is taken, then you’re right: I’m not going to prosecute."

YES AND NO

In addition to the candidates, the Guardian also invites proponents and opponents of the most important ballot measures (which this year include the transportation reform Measure A and its procar rival, Measure H), as well as a range of elected officials and activists, including Sups. Aaron Peskin, Tom Ammiano, Jake McGoldrick, Mirkarimi, and Daly.

Although none of these people are running for office, the interviews have produced heated moments: Guardian editor and publisher Bruce B. Brugmann took Peskin and other supervisors to task for not supporting Proposition I, which would create a small-business support center. That, Brugmann said, would be an important gesture in a progressive city that has asked small businesses to provide health care, sick pay, and other benefits.

Taxi drivers have also raised concerns to us about a provision of Measure A — which Peskin wrote with input from labor and others and which enjoys widespread support, particularly among progressives — that could allow the Board of Supervisors to undermine the 29-year-old system that allows only active drivers to hold valuable city medallions. In response, Peskin told us that was not the intent and that he is already working with Newsom to address those concerns with a joint letter and possible legislation.

"If San Francisco is going to be a world-class city, it’s got to have a great transportation infrastructure," Peskin told us about the motivation behind Measure A. "This would make sure that San Francisco has a transit-first policy forever."

Measure A would place control of almost all aspects of the transportation system under the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and give that panel more money and administrative powers in the process, while letting the Board of Supervisors retain its power to reject the MTA’s budget, fare hikes, or route changes. He also inserted a provision in the measure that would negate approval of Measure H, the downtown-backed measure that would invalidate existing city parking policies.

Ironically, Peskin said his approach would help prevent the gridlock that would result if the city’s power brokers got their wish of being able to build 10,000 housing units downtown without restrictions on automobile use and a revitalization of public transit options. As he said, "I think we are in many ways aiding developers downtown because [current development plans are] predicated on having a New York–style transit system."

Asked about Newsom’s controversial decision to ask for the resignations of senior staff, Peskin was critical but said he had no intention of having the board intervene. McGoldrick was more animated, calling it a "gutless Gavin move," and said, "If you want to fire them, friggin’ fire them." But he said it was consistent with Newsom’s "conflict-averse and criticism-averse" style of governance.

McGoldrick also had lots to say about Newsom’s penchant for trying to privatize essential city services — "We need to say, ‘Folks, look at what’s happening to your public asset’" — and his own sponsorship of Proposition K, which seeks to restrict advertising in public spaces.

"Do we have to submit to the advertisers to get things done?" McGoldrick asked us in discussing Prop. K, which he authored to counter "the crass advertising blight that has spread across this city."*

Phil Frank memorial service Monday

September 20, 2007

Lee Houskeeper (no pesky e) sent out this press release announcing the public memorial service for Phil “Farley” Frank from noon to l p.m. Monday at Washington Square Park (Camp Farley).

If I were writing a story for the Guardian, or most any other newspaper, I would take this release and convert it into a story. I would make sure that Houskeeper’s name, as the press guy for the Frank family, would not appear. After all, he did all the work and that would not be good to reveal.

However, since this is the Bruce blog, and I can do any damn thing I like, I am going to run the Houskeeper press release as is, since it is a good one and lays out the information and the art straightforwardly in good Farley form. That’s why I like blogging now and then. See my previous blogs for more Frank lore and his early front page graphics for the Guardian. Our then Art Director Louis Dunn spotted Frank as a real talent and immediately pressed him into front service and his work appeared first in the Guardian, starting in 1972. Click here to see some early 70’s Phil Frank Guardian covers. B3

A Farley Celebration of Phil Frank

Monday, September 24th, 2007

Washington Square Park (Camp Farley)
12:00 Noon—1:00 PM

Attire: Favorite Farley character

Hosts: San Francisco Chronicle & Friends of Phil

Lunch: BYO to park (Possible Frank Hot Dog Concession)
Chris Tellis MC
Washington Square Bar & Grill and other North Beach Restaurants alerted
Fog City Diner (hosting Park Service Mounted patrol)

Speakers:

Phil Bronstein-Publisher San Francisco Chronicle
Honorable Gavin Newsom
Honorable Willie Brown
Mike Tollefson-Superentendent-Yosemite & Park Ranger Mia Munro-Muir Woods
MC: Mike Cerre-Correspondent

Entertainment:
Beach Blanket Babylon
Green Street Mortuary Band
Tried & True Gospel Singers
National Park Service mounted Color Guard Patrol
SFPD Parking Enforcement “Precision Scooter Team”

Editor’s Notes

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September 12, 2007
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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I was talking the other day to the mayor’s chief political advisor, Eric Jaye, who thinks we should endorse his client for reelection. "Gavin Newsom," he told me, "is the most progressive mayor in San Francisco history."

Well, I haven’t been here for all of them, but in my 25 years or so, the competition hasn’t been terribly stiff. Newsom vs. Dianne Feinstein? That’s a no-brainer. Newsom vs. Frank Jordan? Uh, what was the question again? Newsom vs. Willie Brown? Things are pretty bad now, but I never want to go through another era like the Brown years again.

Newsom vs. Art Agnos? Well, Agnos had a lot of potential and did some good stuff, but he also sold the city out to Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and became such an arrogant jerk that he alienated a lot of his allies and nobody could work with him anymore.

So on one level, Jaye has a point: we’ve had some pretty rotten characters in room 200 at City Hall, and his guy isn’t by any means the worst.

But I keep coming back to my basic complaint: what has Newsom actually done about the crucial issues facing the city? Where is the leadership?

A few days earlier, I’d had lunch with Jack Davis, the gleefully notorious political consultant, and we got to talking about housing and rent control, which I’ve always strongly promoted and Davis’s landlord clients have always bitterly opposed. And we realized, two old opponents, that on one level that battle is over: it was lost years ago, when San Francisco failed (and then the state preempted our ability) to regulate rents on vacant apartments. The wave of Ellis Act evictions has damaged the situation even more. The limited rent control in San Francisco today can’t possibly keep housing even remotely affordable. The only way to fix the problem would be to roll back all rents to their levels of about 15 years ago; anyone (besides me) want to take on that campaign?

So what, Davis asked, would I do about it?

Since Newsom is going to be reelected this fall anyway, let me suggest how he could live up to Jaye’s billing.

Imagine if the mayor of San Francisco called a meeting of all the key players in the local housing market — the residential builders, the big developers, the nonprofits, the tenant activists, the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition folks, the Board of Supervisors president, the neighborhood groups — and said something like this:

"San Francisco needs about 15,000 new affordable-housing units in the next five years. That’s housing for low-income people, housing for people who work in San Francisco … family housing, rental housing, land-trust housing, supportive housing, a mix of units at a mix of prices, but none of it out of the reach of blue-collar and service-industry workers.

"So here’s the deal: you people sit here and figure out a way to make it happen, including how to pay for it — and until you do, not one new market-rate project will get approved by my Planning Commission."

You suppose we might get a little action here? You think the developers who see a gold rush in the San Francisco housing market might be willing to play ball? You think that the mayor might show leadership on the most pressing problem facing residents and businesses in this town, the most serious drain on the local economy? It sure wouldn’t hurt to try.

The homeless sweep won’t work

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August 2, 2007
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By Tim Redmond

I came to San Francisco in 1981, and there were people sleeping in Golden Gate Park. Dianne Feinstein, who was the chief exec back then, would periodically try to get rid of them. Art Agnos and Frank Jordan did the same thing. At one point in the 1990s, when Willie Brown was mayor, he discovered the shocking fact as if for the first time, and had a team sweep the campers out. Now the Chronicle has gotten the scoop yet again, and the mayor has dispatched his shock troops and is trying it all anew.

It won’t work this time, either.

There simply aren’t enough places for homeless people to sleep in this town. The shelters are unpleasant and often dangerous, and don’t work for people who are opposite-sex couples (all the shelters are men- or women-only) or people who have dogs (and there are quite a few homeless people with dogs). They aren’t a long-term answer for people who drink or take drugs, since they’re all alcohol and drug-free (or are supposed to be).

The transitional housing the mayor is promoting is fine — but there are thousands of homeless people and not enough rooms for all of them. So if you sweep the park, you just get homeless people sleeping in doorways.

Mark Salomon had an interesting post on this on the PRO-SF listserv; you can read it after the jump.

No waterfront highrises

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July 24, 2007
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EDITORIAL We’ve been concerned for decades about development along San Francisco’s waterfront, and with good reason: the Port of San Francisco has done a generally miserable job of managing one of the city’s most significant resources. In the 1960s and 1970s, the port effectively gave up on the shipping industry, losing container freight (and plenty of good blue-collar jobs) to Oakland. Development proposals for port property, particularly under then-mayor Willie Brown’s administration, were largely horrible.

And now the port wants the state to turn over development rights for some key seawall-protected properties, which could be turned into very-high-end housing with ground-floor retail. The port needs the money for historic preservation and is promising to build some waterfront parks, which is all well and good. But when it comes to building expensive housing along the waterfront, we’re dubious right off the bat — and even more dubious now that Port Director Monique Moyer is howling about the prospect of a 40-foot height limit.

Sen. Carole Migden has introduced legislation, Senate Bill 815, that would authorize the port to lease out for development lots that are now part of a state trust. But at the request of neighborhood groups, she wants height limits included in the deal as part of state law.

The port argues that 40 feet is too low for, say, three stories of housing above a storefront. Besides, port staffers say, zoning issues should be a local decision, and the state should hand over the lots and let the city decide on height, bulk, density, and appropriate use. In principle, we’d tend to agree with that — but the City Planning Department today is a disaster, with every key decision driven by developers, and the last thing this city needs is a string of high-rise condos on the waterfront.

If the port’s land is going to be developed, it has to be done with tremendous sensitivity, clear public benefits — and inflexible, mandated height limits. And if the money is going to go to parks, we’d like to see specifics, in advance: which projects will pay for which parks, and where — and what guarantees do we have that they’ll ever be completed?

This is the kind of decision that will affect the city for a century or more. Migden’s right: we should take it slowly and carefully. *

Bonds brings ’em out

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July 13, 2007
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Guardian staffer Ben Hopfer checked out Barry Bonds pre-MLB All Star bout soiree at Roe Restaurant and Lounge on July 9. Where was Jay-Z? Who knows where the Jigga goes – anyhoo here’s what Hopfer saw on the red carpet.

The man of the hour and soon-to-be-world-record-holder for most home runs: Barry Bonds. All photos by Ben Hopfer.

Bay Area rapper B-Legit

49ers quarterback Alex Smith

David “Big Papi” Ortiz.

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Note the adult Barbie doll on his arm.

Former Giants manager Dusty Baker – come back, we miss you!

Bay Area rappers Dem Hoodstarz (Band-Aide and Scoot)

Dave Winfield and significant other.

San Francisco Giant Rich Aurilia

Local rapper Richie Rich

Problems with Peskin’s Muni plan

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July 10, 2007
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OPINION Last week the Board of Supervisors received a proposed charter amendment that takes a misguided stab at the much-needed reform of the Municipal Transit Agency, which oversees Muni. In undertaking reforms we all agree are needed for the MTA to better serve our city, the supervisors should consider the Hippocratic oath required of doctors: “First, do no harm.”

Our union, Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents almost a thousand MTA workers, has enormous respect for the bill’s sponsor, board president Aaron Peskin. We know that Peskin strongly supports workers’ rights and has always stood for openness, transparency, and accountability in government. This initiative, however, undermines everything that he and his board colleagues stand for, and we urge progressives to oppose it.

Most important, the initiative is profoundly undemocratic and would transfer oversight from an elected body to an appointed one. An MTA that no longer had to answer to our elected representatives would be a less accountable and less transparent board.

Downgrading elected oversight into appointive power resting in the hands of one person — the mayor — is not reform but a political power grab. Commissioners would be well aware that they might not be reappointed if they voted too independently of the mayor’s preferences.

The initiative would present additional risks for the abuse of power in local government by allowing MTA to approve its own contracts. This is a dangerous conflict of interest that would create more opportunities for problems, not reform.

The amendment furthermore would undermine workplace protections by increasing the number of nonunion workers from the current 1.5 percent to a whopping 10 percent. Working people would serve at the pleasure of an unelected board and lose their right to collective bargaining. Seven years ago many members of the Board of Supervisors and progressives strongly opposed a nonunion special assistant position in Mayor Willie Brown’s office. The board converted this position to a civil service job because of the perception of patronage and corruption. The current charter amendment exhumes that political cadaver while hiding behind the fig leaf of flexibility — which in this case is a code word for the power to fire people without just cause or due process, or for political expediency.

On one point we agree with this charter amendment: it’s true that the MTA needs more money to serve our residents the way it should, and this amendment would take $26 million from the General Fund and transfer it to the MTA budget. But we do not believe we should be raiding the General Fund without carefully considering the possible impact.

This is a charter amendment and cannot be easily undone. If it turns out to be a disaster, as we believe it will, San Francisco will find itself in a very dire situation without a timely remedy.

SEIU Local 1021 strongly opposes this charter amendment unless it undergoes major revisions. Sup. Jake McGoldrick’s competing initiative, by contrast, offers us a path that is much more democratic, promotes accountability and transparency in government, and protects the rights of working families. We agree that reform is needed, but if passed, Peskin’s initiative will create many more problems than it purports to solve. *

Damita Davis-Howard and Robert Haaland

Damita Davis-Howard is president of SEIU Local 1021; Robert Haaland is San Francisco political coordinator for the union.

The golf club

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July 3, 2007
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› news@sfbg.com

For the better part of a century, San Francisco’s public golf courses have offered players relatively inexpensive rates, belying the view of some that this is an elitist sport incompatible with progressive civic governance. But since a botched revamp of the Harding Park course several years ago, golf operations have landed in the rough, siphoning large sums from city coffers every year. Now Mayor Gavin Newsom and his Recreation and Park Department claim that private businesses would do a better and cheaper job of running three of the city’s most valuable links.

Sup. Jake McGoldrick and other privatization opponents say outsourcing control of the Harding, Fleming, and Lincoln courses would inevitably lead to less access for the general public and higher costs. "A lot of folks don’t realize that the Golden Gate Yacht Club and the St. Francis Yacht Club are public assets that are now run as private membership clubs, elitist things," McGoldrick told the Guardian. "That’s certainly the way this could go."

McGoldrick has called for the formation of a Golf Course Task Force to explore nonprivatization solutions, including converting some of the courses into parks or open space, as the Neighborhood Parks Council has urged. On July 10 the Board of Supervisors will decide between McGoldrick’s plan and Rec and Park’s "hybrid management" resolution, which would award leases of 20 to 30 years for the courses. Political handicappers say the vote could go either way.

In addition to their concerns about prices and accessibility at privately run links, McGoldrick and others have serious reservations about who will run the courses if the mayor’s plan succeeds. No one we spoke with could name potential bidders with any certainty, but if the past is prologue, the choice is likely to involve political cronyism.

Golf advocate Sandy Tatum engineered the deal that turned Harding Park over to the management of Kemper Sports, which has been accused of overspending public funds and turning the course into a huge drain on the city treasury. Kemper also rents space to Tatum’s First Tee program. More recently, another nonprofit started by Tatum and former city attorney Louise Renne initiated and funded a study for Rec and Park that recommended more privatization by turning over courses to entities such as theirs.

The SF Weekly, which has run stories critical of the city’s golf privatization scheme, revealed a 1990s deal that privatized a city-owned course near Burlingame and, in what it deemed a corrupt selection process, handed control of the course to former Willie Brown staffer Tom Isaak.

In 2004, Tom Hsieh, one of Newsom’s key campaign consultants, submitted the sole bid for control of Gleneagles Golf Course in McLaren Park. Neither Hsieh nor his business partner, real estate investor Craig Lipton, had ever run a golf course before winning the contract for Gleneagles. But what really raised eyebrows around City Hall were the terms of the deal. Any lease of more than 10 years would have needed approval by the Board of Supervisors, so Hsieh and Lipton were given a nine-year contract.

"That was a very obvious and blatant end run around the contract requirements of the Board of Supervisors," McGoldrick told us. Hsieh, he went on to say, "is one of the mayor’s good buddies, and he got himself a nice contract out there."

Rec and Park spokesperson Rose Dennis defended the lease agreement with Hsieh, telling us, "At the end of the day, he legally got the concession. It wasn’t like it was put down to a nine[-year contract] to screw anybody. That would suggest a level of sophistication that Rec and Park just doesn’t have."

Reached for comment, Hsieh bristled at the suggestion that he landed the contract because of his ties to the mayor, writing in an e-mail that the mere suggestion was "a scurrilous attack motivated by politics." Hsieh did not answer our repeated requests for information about wage levels at the Gleneagles course and the number of groundskeepers employed there. McGoldrick and sources in the industry assert that one of the main ways private managers would make money from the other courses would be to reduce labor costs.

Sup. Sean Elsbernd, one of the privatization plan’s strongest backers, conceded that some past golf contracts have been "questionable," specifically in the case of Hsieh’s deal. But he said the supervisors would oversee the leasing process this time to avoid cronyism and the kind of spending excesses allegedly committed by Kemper Sports. They would also mandate that new managers continue to employ union employees.

Unlike the city, Elsbernd argued, private businesses could invest large sums of money in rehabilitating the courses, especially Lincoln. "When it gets that kind of [cash] infusion," Elsbernd said, the course "is going to see a turnaround in revenue so that you can actually justify charging higher fees."

That is exactly the kind of scenario privatization foes fear: more exclusive golf courses on public land that raise greens fees beyond ordinary people’s means. "These courses are untapped gold mines," said golf instructor, former pro, and activist Justin Hetsler, who has formed a nonprofit group, Golf San Francisco, to lobby against the mayor’s plan. "But every penny spent at the courses should go back into them, not into someone’s pocket as profit." As for capital improvements, Hetsler, who also works as an accountant, argued, "The courses’ future revenue streams can secure credit for improvements. That does not require privatization."

For McGoldrick, this debate is about far more than golf courses. "I don’t even play golf," he told us. The push to outsource control of the links, he said, reflects a larger philosophical battle about what to do with publicly owned resources. "The mayor is a pro-privatization kind of guy. That’s his MO…. We’re seeing this happen all over the place, not just San Francisco. But for me, it’s just painful to watch city assets [be] given away. It really kicks me in the gut." *

Beyond the Progressive Convention

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June 5, 2007
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EDITORIAL The Progressive Convention didn’t produce a candidate for mayor, which wasn’t really a surprise: by the time the show opened, it was pretty clear that none of the leading contenders was ready to enter the race that day. And that, of course, will give the mainstream news media plenty of opportunity to say that the San Francisco left is disorganized, discouraged, and unable to mount a challenge to Mayor Gavin Newsom.

But Sup. Chris Daly actually did a very positive thing in pulling this event together. It wasn’t a nominating convention and never should have been, but it did serve as a reminder of the large and growing number of ideas, activists, and elected officials that make up that amorphous bloc known as the San Francisco progressives.

Daly, in a closing speech, noted that he’s heard over and over again how weak the movement is, but reminded the 400 or so attendees that "the state of the progressive movement is strong." Progressives control the Board of Supervisors and the school board. More than half the elected officials in the city generally fit under the progressive banner. And of the successful policy initiatives that have come out of this city in the past two years, almost none were from the Mayor’s Office.

Ten years ago, this event couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened. The city was stuck under the tight rule of a political machine, and only a handful of elected officials dared defy the kingpin, Willie Brown. Although the progressives have come a long, long way, winning a citywide race for mayor when the incumbent has soaring approval ratings and an essentially endless supply of money still isn’t an easy task. So it’s no surprise that there aren’t many takers.

In fact, there are some on the left who argue that it’s best to just give Newsom a pass and focus on the next round of supervisorial elections, in 2008. But that would be a mistake.

For starters, we’re still not convinced of Newsom’s invulnerability. The mayor may have great PR, but he has a lousy record. The city’s facing a long list of serious problems, from the murder rate to the Muni meltdown, and Newsom has done almost nothing to address them. The right candidate could mount a real challenge.

And even if it’s a long shot, San Francisco needs a mayor’s race. Newsom has gone into hiding of late; he won’t face the press, won’t appear before the supervisors to answer questions, and holds only farcical community meetings where all the questions are planted or screened ahead of time. A challenge would force him into the open and give the voters a chance to hold him accountable.

If it’s done right, a campaign could energize the legions of disenfranchised and create the sort of momentum the progressives need to retain control of the Board of Supervisors next year. And it would ensure that the left turn out for the election in November — which will be crucial if some downtown-backed initiatives and an attempt to recall Sup. Jake McGoldrick are on the ballot.

It’s late, and it’s getting very late for a candidate to enter the race, but there’s still a short window of time. Former supervisor Matt Gonzalez is still thinking about a run, and if he’s going to do it, he should be talking now to some of the progressives whose support he’ll need. Frankly, he has some fence-mending to do from his last race and from his decision to leave the board, and he should start that now.

We still think Ross Mirkarimi ought to run, and despite his official reluctance, he still can. A win would shake up city hall like nothing in years; a loss might still position the supervisor well to try again when Newsom is termed out. Daly at this point has taken himself out for family reasons, which is understandable — but he could also mount a strong campaign.

In his convention speech, Mirkarimi kept saying that "somebody" needs to take on the mayor. Ross, Matt, Chris … we’re waiting. *

Raised eyebrow

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June 5, 2007
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by Amanda Witherell

The best part of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s speech today in front of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce came after the closing remarks when everyone was leaving and the guy sitting next to me said, “Did he even say anything about energy?” Good question, given that we were seated in the inner sanctum of PG&E’s 77 Beale Street corporate headquarters. Why are we here?

“They’ve been a great partner to our administration,” said Schwarzenegger, when he thanked the utility company for the digs, which were pretty bland considering some of the other Chamber of Commerce members probably could have proffered something flashier.

Ah, yes. The partnerships — that’s what they like to call it in PRC terms (not “politically correct,” but “public relations correct,”) which is something the guv thinks he excels at. “I’ve been very well-trained because I sleep with a Democrat,” he joked after his introduction from Willie Brown, which lauded his ability to chum around with the Dems.

Editor’s Notes

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May 22, 2007
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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Ken Garcia, who just loves to bash the left, announced in his Examiner column May 15 that the progressives in San Francisco are in disarray because we don’t have a candidate for mayor. That’s one way to look at it.

The other way — and, like many things in politics, it’s not entirely true but certainly not false — is that the process for choosing a candidate in this wonderful yet still pretty young progressive movement isn’t like anything Garcia would understand.

These days most candidates for public office tend to select themselves. You want to run, you go get the money and the initial support, and you announce. But it’s a little more complicated than that for San Francisco progressives. A lot of people — some elected officials, some community leaders, some hotheaded (and hardheaded) activists — want to be consulted and want a say in the decision. It’s not perfect democracy by any means, and it’s true that the lack of an obvious front-runner speaks to a certain degree of disorganization. But I’m also somewhat pleased that we don’t have a 600-pound gorilla demanding that the field be cleared. And Sup. Chris Daly’s proposed progressive convention may not work perfectly, but at least it’s a nod in the direction of the grass roots helping decide who will carry the torch.

Let’s remember: it’s been only seven years since the progressives finally ended three decades of stifling machine politics and cracked open the local system. Let’s remember: for much of the 1980s and ’90s, we had only self-selected candidates and unaccountable candidates for mayor. And now that the people who broke Willie Brown’s iron grip on San Francisco politics in 2000 are ready to run for higher office, it’s not surprising that they’re a bit cautious about jumping the gun.

We all know what’s going on: Aaron Peskin, Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, and Matt Gonzalez have been approached and courted by all sorts of organizations and people. Peskin and Mirkarimi have said pretty flatly that they aren’t going to run. Daly will if he has to. And in the Chronicle on May 16, Matier and Ross proclaimed that Gonzalez is out of the picture.

I’m not so sure that’s true. I think Gonzalez — who starts off with the highest name recognition, poll numbers, and fundraising potential — is still taking a serious look at the race. I know he’s holding some preliminary house meetings this week and talking to people who aren’t among the traditional progressive voters. He’s also talking to his friends and allies. And I think it’s entirely possible that he could wind up deciding to go for it.

One very good thing that Daly has done is force that issue; if nobody else comes forward, Daly will announce at the convention, and then it will look lame and divisive for anyone else to join the race.

There are, of course, egos and personal agendas playing here; these are, after all, politicians, and (unfortunately) all of our major contenders are guys, which probably makes it worse. But again, let us remember: Daly, Peskin, Mirkarimi, and Gonzalez would all be good candidates. I’d be happy with any of them in room 200. They should all be happy with the idea that one of them could be the next mayor. And if we can all work together to pick a winner, then perhaps we can show the Ken Garcias of the world that this is a movement with legs. *

Why I’m with Carole Migden

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May 15, 2007
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OPINION With the election on the horizon, declared candidates have hired their campaign consultants, tested the field with expensive polls, and hit the city’s political club circuit hoping to lock up early endorsements. Unfortunately, the race getting the bulk of the attention is not San Francisco’s political watermark, November’s mayoral contest. It’s not even the new super-duper Tuesday presidential primary in February. As crazy as it may seem, the election getting the most attention in San Francisco right now is the June 2008 California State Senate primary.

After several months of polling and speculation, on March 2 Assemblymember Mark Leno announced that he would be challenging former ally and incumbent senator Carole Migden.

Make no mistake about it: Migden is one of the most fearsome politicians in Sacramento. She knows how to stand up to the governor, and she has a long list of progressive accomplishments, including authoring the state Clean Water Act, enabling local governments to do community choice aggregation, and protecting the vulnerable from predatory lending. Migden is already endorsed by progressive supervisors Jake McGoldrick and Gerardo Sandoval, progressive school board commissioner Eric Mar, former president of the Board of Supervisors Harry Britt, and progressive activists Debra Walker and Michael Goldstein. She’s also up double digits, so it’s time we call this one for Migden and get on with the job of putting a progressive in the Mayor’s Office.

Progressives know that to defeat Mayor Gavin Newsom this year, we will have to mount a significant and focused grassroots campaign. Any distractions will be costly. Migden-Leno is clearly a major distraction. Leno’s challenge takes both Leno and Migden off the progressive list of possible mayoral candidates. And more important, progressive energy, volunteers, and money that should be going into the effort to defeat Newsom will be gobbled up by the State Senate race.

Leno’s longtime political consulting firm, Barnes, Mosher, Whitehurst, and Lauter, is probably best known for its role in successfully challenging San Francisco’s soft-money regulations and then managing the record-shattering $3.2 million soft-money operation to reelect Mayor Willie Brown in 1999. BMW went on to help elect Newsom in 2003.

BMW not only provides the money and operations to get its candidates elected; the firm also — by its own proud account — seeks to influence these elected officials to get deals done for its corporate clients.

One of BMW’s biggest corporate clients is the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which opposed San Francisco’s minimum-wage and paid-sick-leave laws and is now suing the city to stop it from enacting our universal health care plan. Progressives shouldn’t allow Leno and BMW to advance up the political ladder. *

Chris Daly

Supervisor Chris Daly represents District 6.

Next week: "Why we’re with Mark Leno," by Theresa Sparks and Cecilia Chung.

Editor’s Notes

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May 8, 2007
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› tredmond@sfbg.com

San Francisco district attorneys have never been known for fighting political corruption. You don’t see politicians or corporate CEOs doing the perp walk around here — and trust me, it’s not because there’s a lack of criminal activity. Over the past 20 years, I’ve personally written or edited at least two dozen stories that involved clear evidence of lawbreaking by prominent San Francisco citizens, and not one of them has ever been held to account in a court of law.

(OK, I’ll give Terence Hallinan credit for Fajitagate; at least he tried. But it turned out to be an embarrassment when the highest-ranking cops walked away free and clear. And even Hallinan couldn’t — or wouldn’t — lay a glove on Willie Brown.)

Kamala Harris, who will be up for reelection next year, clearly has higher political ambitions. When I saw her take the stage with Sen. Barack Obama at the state Democratic convention in San Diego and he introduced her as one of his most prominent supporters, I could almost see the wheels turning: Federal Judge Kamala Harris. White House counsel Kamala Harris. Even Attorney General Kamala Harris. If Obama doesn’t win, she’s still on a lot of short lists for higher office.

But if she wants to be another Eliot Spitzer, she’s got to, well, be Eliot Spitzer. She’s got to be willing to take a firm hand on political crimes, pursuing and investigating violations of public trust as if that were the most important part of her job.

And she can start right now with the San Francisco Community College District.

It’s been more than a month since the news broke that an associate vice chancellor at City College diverted $10,000 in public money to a private campaign fund set up to pass a college bond act. Nobody’s been charged with any crime, but it seems to me there are some real questions not just about propriety but about legality here. And it seems to me, as someone who has watched that snake pit over there for a long time now, that it’s highly — highly — unlikely that a junior-level college official acting entirely on his own would have shifted 10 grand into a campaign committee that had close ties to elected members of the community college board.

Nobody in the DA’s Office will confirm or deny any investigation, which is standard practice. But I bet an aggressive district attorney who started digging out there on Phelan Avenue might shovel up some serious dirt. Just a thought, Kamala.

I’m beginning to think that our candidate for mayor ought to be Sup. Ross Mirkarimi.

Part of that is, frankly, political reality: Matt Gonzalez shows no sign of wanting to run at this point, and it’s getting late. Sup. Aaron Peskin doesn’t want to do it. There’s talk about former mayor Art Agnos, but I don’t buy it: Agnos would have a lot of fences to mend from his administration, and he’s not the type to apologize.

I hate to say that "leaves" Mirkarimi, because he’s actually a good candidate. He’s smart and full of energy and can take on the mayor on street crime: Newsom is going after panhandlers while Mirkarimi is trying to do something about the appalling murder rate. He’s only been in elected office a couple years, but then, Obama (who is Mirkarimi’s age, to the day) has been in the US Senate a couple years, and he could be the next president. Worth thinking about.

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