Bruce Brugmann

By Bruce B. Brugmann

The email came in to me from a City Hall source during Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of Supervisors.

“Are you hearing the same thing I am about Daly possibly approving Sklar’s appointment? I can’t get my head around why he would do that, if the rumor is true.”

I sent a note back saying that our understanding at the Guardian was that there were seven solid votes against the mayor’s nomination of Richard Sklar and Ryan Brooks for reappointment to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, a longtime PG&E bastion in City Hall. The swing vote, I said, was Sup. Gerardo Sandoval, but he appeared to be resisting the massive pressure on him to vote for Sklar.

My source was right. Sup. Chris Daly did the ignominious thing and voted for Sklar and gave him the vote he needed to stay on the PUC, on a 7-4 vote. (It takes eight votes to reject a mayoral nomination.) Daly in the process did the following: (a) gave PG&E a major victory, (b) gave the mayor a major victory, (c) allowed Newsom’s campaign manager and key strategist, Eric Jaye, with PG&E as a major client, to claim a major victory, (d) helped assure the firing of PUC General Manager Susan Leal (Newsom had fired her earlier because, in the opinion of the Guardian and other public power supporters, she was making some baby steps toward public power), (e) helped assure that the PUC would most likely be a safe haven for PG&E for yet another few years.

And Daly did it without tipping his hand in advance and letting his public power and other supporters know what he was doing. Nor did he explain his vote at the meeting. Nor was he available after the vote to explain.
What happened? “He’s painfully qualified to serve on such a commission,” Newsom told Cecilia Vega, the Chronicle’s City Hall reporter, for her excellent story today. Sarah Phelan, the
Guardian reporter covering the meeting, tried in vain to get a comment from Daly and even went to his office after the meeting. No luck.

But Daly did post a comment on Steven T. Jones’ blog story in which Jones reported that Daly “flipped his vote” on Sklar and described it as a “surprising and inexplicable move.” Jones posted the item at 3:43 p.m. Tuesday.

Daly posted his comment 57 minutes later at 4:40 p.m.,. He wrote that he “never ‘flipped’ my vote on Sklar, because I never committed to vote against Sklar. I also didn’t cut a deal with any Sklar supporters–I quickly terminated the only call I received from a Skar supporter.

“Not that it wasn’t a very difficult vote, especially considering the company I had on the vote at the Board.

“I am strongly against the removal of Leal and the associated $400,000 payout and have expressed my concerns about the Mayor’s meddling in Commission affairs. When I brought this up, Skar admitted to me that he did not handle this well. But on other subjects, Sklar has shown independence from Newsom–most notably on the issue of the peaker plants and the Charter Amendment. I also believe Sklar when he says he’s not against public power.

“So here I am looking at a Commissioner that is clearly qualified and has shown some independence, but with whom I’ve disagreed on a number of issues. I just don’t think that rises to the level of meriting a rejection. That also doesn’t rise to the level of deserving an appointment if I was the appointing authority.”

C’mon, Chris. This is pretty lame stuff for a guy who likes to kick ass all around City Hall and the Hetch Hetchy watershed. You’ve been out there on a host of good issues over a long period of time, including public power and kicking PG&E out of City Hall. So what happened? (I’m sending this blog over to your office to give you a chance to answer.)

And so Daly joined the emerging PG&E Three on his vote: Sups. Michela Alioto-Pier, Sean Elsbernd, and Carmen Chu. And he rejected seven solid votes for public power and against PG&E by supervisors who deserve gold stars in their lapels: Sups. Aaron Peskin (who led the charge), Ross Mirkarimi (the cca and public power generalissimo), Tom Ammiano and Jake McGoldrick (all good on the issue), Sophie Maxwell and Bevan Dufty (who came through nicely), and Sandoval, who did the right thing while having a lot to lose because he will be running for judge. He was told during the intense lobbying campaign, sometimes bluntly, sometimes obliquely, that he would get lots of support and money if he went for Sklar and lots of pain and punishment if he went against Sklar. Good going, Gerardo.

And Sklar? Well, he’s never shown us the slightest interest in pushing public power and taking on PG&E during his long PUC tenure and he wasn’t reappointed by the Mayor/Jaye/PG&E to suddenly turn state’s evidence on PG&E. If he were the statesman his supporters were portraying him to be, he would have turned down the appointment and made some helpful comments. Instead, he took the occasion, in his appearance before the board, to trash Leal and say, according to the Chronicle, “‘I supported Susan for mayor in 2003. She’s my friend,”” he said. “”But this is not the job for her.'”

The Chronicle neatly pointed out that, during the meeting, Sklar “declined to offer specifics about why he thinks Leal should go.” Note the Newsom/Sklar spending habits: If the board votes to terminate Leal’s contract next week, she stands to collect a severance package of more than $400,000.

The Chronicle also pointed out that Sklar had mounted a “vigorous campaign to keep his post on the commission by meeting with supervisors beforehand.” The story also said that Sklar had rounded up support from a batch of high profile politicians: former mayor Art Agnos and Willie Brown (both of whom operated as PG&E aliles during their reigns), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (a PG&E ally who negotiated the sellout Turlock/Modesto power contract that cost the city millions) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a PG&E ally who led the fight to help PG&E privatize the Presidio and turn the public power base over to PG&E’s private power. Like Sklar, none of them have taken on PG&E on much of anything ever.

Let’s have a show of hands on this one: how quickly will Sklar, with PG&E support and allies like these, put even a tiny pebble in the path of the PG&E steamroller on the PUC? I’ll keep you posted. B3

Click here for Steven T. Jones’ blog, Daly’s comment, and Kimo Crossman’s comments.

Read Kimo Crossman and Chris Daly’s full blog comments after the jump.