Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez Archives — Page 4 of 14 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Muni sickout: Q&A with transit union president

Erica Hanna

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June 5, 2014

Muni sickout: Q&A with transit union president

It’s fair to say San Francisco is sick of the sickout.

Three days after hundreds of Muni workers called in sick to work, crippling the city’s transit system, City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed a legal action against Muni workers’ union to end the pseudo-strike.

Just as Herrera announced his intentions, the Bay Guardian sat down at the Transit Workers Unit local 250-A for an interview with Eric Williams, president of Muni’s worker union.

Here are William’s answers to our questions. Pick up a copy of next week’s paper for a broader story on the Muni sickout and union backlash in San Francisco.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Thanks for sitting down with me. This is obviously a contentious time for Muni workers. But let’s hear how this all started: What’s the nitty-gritty contract disagreement between the SFMTA and the union?

Eric Williams: We don’t have a problem paying our pension, despite what’s being said. We would like a fair even swap, just like everyone else had. The police, the fire department, every union in this city got a fair swap to help pay their own pension. Right now they want to offer us a bump to pay our own pension, but once we got our CPA to crunch the numbers, it’s all negative.

The city wants you to beleive it’s cost-neutral, but that’s not the case. Our members will be making $1.10 less an hour due to this negotiation.

SFBG So you’ve said before that certain laws and codes have “stacked the deck” in negotiations against the union, in favor of the SFMTA. How does that work?

EW You have to read Prop G [regarding Muni operators’ salaries] and code A8.409 [prohibiting strikes] and say “is this fair?”

We’re struggling, we’re coming into a negoatiaion with our hands tied behind our back. The beauracracy and the spinning of the words and statements is alive in the agency.

It’s unfortunate the public thinks it’s the common workers’ fault on any of these issues. Our members have to take care of our families, our children, paying for college, just like you.

[Proponents of Prop. G said] “Well, it will make everything fair.” Actually, it’s not.

A ten-minute video interview with TWU Local 255-A President Eric Williams, as he explains the motivations behind the sickout.

SFBG Let’s get into that a bit more. So you walk into a negotiation, you bring a proposal. The way most union negotiations work is two parties sit down and present proposals, but the Muni worker/SFMTA negotiation is unique. You have to prove something to the arbitrator. What do you have to prove?

EW Basically, we have to show we’re not going to be costly to the agency. But inflation is going up, how could we not be costly?

We just want restrooms, but those are costly. We want raises, those are costly. We want better parking, that’s costly.

The arbitrator must side with the city if they feel the cost burden will be too high on the city. All SFMTA employees are under the same deal. I’ve been at four tables in the past few months and negotiated two contracts with parties other than the SFMTA. We had to go to mediation, those mediators told us to talk it over again (offering compromise). You take this proposal, you take this one. That’s not the case with the SFMTA negotiations.

SFBG Can Muni workers afford to live in San Francisco?

EW Definitely not. The only members that live inside the city are those who purchased a home 20 or so years ago. The majority of our members live outside the city. That’s what leads to the issue of transportation and parking. If you’re pulling a bus run at 5:30 in the morning, guess what, there’s no bus at 4am to get them there. They need parking. It’s poor or rich in this city, there’s no in between. That’s no secret.

SFBG How far back would you have to go to say a good strong bloc of members lived in the city?

EW At least 20-30 years. Early ’90s, ’80s.

SFBG Let’s talk about the atmosphere with riders out there. We recently saw a BART strike, did you take a read on the reaction? The sickout, which seems similar … people seem to not be siding with the union on this. There’s a lot of animosity.

EW We thought people understood who were in charge of the economics. It’s unfortunate the public may believe it’s the common workers’ fault on the issues.

If you look at the bargaining with BART, yes it caused frustration. Yes it did. But when you see them empathizing with the power, “yes we know this hurts, but we have a family too.” The only thing we can do is ring the bell and say “this is unfair.”

SFBG Do you feel there is a backlash against Muni workers for the sickout?

EW Honestly i couldn’t tell the difference, we’ve been drug over the coals for so long. The frustration you’ve seen the past few days, not brought by the union itself, but by the members, is real.

But in reality our members encounter something different with the everyday riders. The mothers, the fathers, [they have] a different attitude. Of course we have that 10, 20 percent that no matter what we do, who say we’re wrong. But we have to take a stand as well. We’re important here. We take our jobs seriously, and we should be treated as such.

[Those who disagree with us] need to challenge the agency on everything the agency tells them. The system is still not on time, you still don’t have enough employees to drive the buses on the ground. The SFMTA spends all this money but we’re not on time, we don’t have enough people.

Those 10-20 percent [who disagree with the workers] need to read the charter. Any person with common sense, any person with a heart, ask themselves if that process is fair.

SFBG You don’t think part of it is the view that Muni workers make much more than private sector workers?

EW There’ve always been good private sector employers out there. But unions got us weekends, unions got us better working hours, unions got you sick leave. But go out and ask how they feel, what they think the public’s issue with us because we’re making $60,000 a year, and you went to college for four years. Maybe it’s because we’re making a living, and you’re struggling. Well hey, come get a job as a bus driver if it’s that bad out there.

No Wall on the Waterfront wins big, Chiu prevails in Assembly race by slim margin

Erica Hanna

-

June 4, 2014

113

No Wall on the Waterfront wins big, Chiu prevails in Assembly race by slim margin

Developers looking to build high-end luxury condos on the waterfront lost big last night.

Proposition B, backed by a campaign committee known as No Wall on the Waterfront, won handily with a 19 percentage point lead at the polls.

At the Yes on B campaign party at Sinbad’s, former Mayor Art Agnos described the outcome as a win for the people of San Francisco.

“I think this vote is a decisive vote,” Agnos said, “that sends a message to City Hall that people in San Francisco want to protect the waterfront.

The ballot measure will require voter approval for waterfront development projects that exceed established building height limits.

Most political experts predicted last night’s June primary election would result in record-low turnouts, since Governor Jerry Brown’s expected win meant no big-ticket votes on the ballot. The prediction was correct. All told, 22 percent of San Francisco registered voters cast ballots in the June 3 election. And though some provisional ballots and mail-in ballots will be counted over the next few days, the initial counts have Yes on B miles ahead.

At Oddjob, a SoMa cocktail bar, opponents of Prop B backers were in a grim mood on election night.

Patrick Valentino, a No on B spokesperson, said his camp had a “more complex message” to convey. He felt their thesis, arguing luxury condos take pressure off the housing market, wasn’t heard by voters.

Meanwhile, in the Assembly race for soon-to-be termed out Tom Ammiano’s seat, Board President David Chiu and Sup. David Campos emerged as the first- and second-place primary winners, respectively, setting them up to face off against one another in November as expected.

Chiu prevailed, with 48 percent to Campos’ 43 percent, a five percentage point lead. But from the start of the night to the end, Campos was able to close a gap that was initially larger, setting the stage for a close race in November

At his celebration, Chiu told supporters: “It feels good.” When early polling results showed Chiu much farther ahead, a finance staffer told the Guardian, “We’re surprised by the gap, we expected to be up, but not by this much.”

David’s father, Han Chiu, said “we are so proud.

But as more results came in, Campos was able to narrow the gap, finally trailing by a margin of about 3,000 votes.

Campos adressed his supporters at Virgil’s Sea Room, and as the crowd whooped and hollered, he took note of a few milestones.

Firstly, few progressive campaigns for Assembly had ever raised as much money as his had, which he thanked his staffers for.

And the numbers should make Chiu nervous, Campos said, because fewer voters turn out to the polls in the primaries.

“We’ve been very clear,” he boomed to the bustling crowd. “If Chiu doesn’t win by double digits [in June], we win in November.”

Reed Nelson contributed to this report.

Bay Guardian News Editor Rebecca Bowe, Staff Writer Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez and freelancer Reed Nelson live-tweeted campaign parties throughout last night. Check out their tweets in a curated timeline, below.

Primaries 2014

LIVE June election coverage UPDATED

Erica Hanna

-

June 3, 2014

9

Follow the San Francisco Bay Guardian tonight [Tue/3] as we cover the 2014 Primary Election live!

A war on the waterfront is brewing, with Proposition B set to decide if voter approval should be required for increases in height limits for waterfront development, an issue we’ve long covered. Additionally, tonight’s primary will set the tone of the David Chiu vs. David Campos Assembly race.

Follow live updates on Twitter as News Editor Rebecca Bowe, Staff Writer Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, and contributor Reed Nelson pop in at various election night gatherings. Our continuous updates will show up in the embedded Twitter feed, below.

To follow us directly and Tweet back with your own election night updates, search for @ByRebeccaBowe, @FitztheReporter, @ReedNelson01 and @SFBG.

For more background on the election, the issues, and the candidates, check out our Clean Slate voting guide here.

Update: The election is over (see the results here), but yo can scroll through our reporters’ live tweets from last night’s campaign celebrations in the timeline below.

Primaries 2014

“E” is for “evidence”

Michael Redmond

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June 3, 2014

9

Former Mayor Willie Brown was infamous for keeping the workings of San Francisco government secret. Now his successor, Mayor Ed Lee, has codified government secrecy into written policy.

A Bay Guardian review of Lee’s newest public records retention schedule found the mayor granted himself the ability to destroy public records with broad power: deleting emails deemed “routine,” drafts of legislation, and records of telephone calls to the office of the mayor.

The policy should have anyone interested in government transparency up in arms. It potentially flouts the California Public Records Act, as well as the city’s Sunshine Ordinance, state and local laws granting citizens and journalists alike the legal right to keep tabs on what goes on under the hood of the political machine.

Emails, which Lee’s policy says the Mayor’s Office can destroy, are a particularly powerful tool for keeping government in check.

“Sources can be less than reliable, but an email speaks for itself,” said James Wheaton, senior counsel for the First Amendment Project, a group that defends the public’s right to government information. “Emails are a unique window into the way an institution functions. We call these things ‘paper trails.'”

But the paper trail used to track the mayor is kept in the shadows by his new policy, the most recent crack to appear in an eroding wall of public trust in open government.

LET THE SUNSHINE IN

Reporters and engaged citizens depend on access to public records to do the everyday dirty work of keeping an eye on government.

In 2010, reporters from the Los Angeles Times investigated the town of Bell’s corrupt network of city officials (including the mayor and police chief), who swindled money from city coffers. Public record requests of their emails revealed brazen exchanges: “I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money?!”

Closer to home, public records allowed a Sacramento Bee investigative reporter to uncover perilous corrosion in the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, leading to a public outcry over a threat to public safety.

The Guardian, long critical of mayoral backdoor deals, often requests emails from government agencies to track people in power. “Behind the Tweets [3/11],” relied on emails obtained from the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development to chronicle how Twitter wrangled local lawmakers into weakening the benefits it had to supply the city in exchange for its much-contested tax breaks.

A recent Guardian investigation led us to the mayor’s newly minted policy. When Guardian Editor in Chief Steven T. Jones requested email correspondence from the Mayor’s Office, we were told the emails may have been deleted, leading us to ask a reasonable question.

“What the hell?!”

VANISHING PAPER TRAIL

On April 22, the Guardian made a Sunshine Ordinance request to the Mayor’s Office for communications involving Tenderloin power broker Randy Shaw and the Tenderloin Museum project that he and Lee launched at a press conference the previous day.

A week later we obtained two emails from Shaw copied to city government officials: one supporting Ellis Act reform, and another calling for a city crackdown on the Turk and Leavenworth Smoke Shop.

We spoke to Kirsten Macaulay, who handles Sunshine requests for the Mayor’s Office, and asked about something quite curious: Even though Lee and his office were involved in a press event with Shaw on April 21, there were no emails or other messages setting up that event or coordinating when the mayor would speak.

We asked where those emails were, and got an astounding answer: They may have been deleted, she said, a regular practice for emails deemed to be “routine.”

“We don’t have a record retention policy against deleting emails,” she said.

That seemed to explain a number of suspicious responses to routine records requests we’ve made after politically charged decisions.

After a controversial behind-closed-doors political move by power broker (and Lee ally) Rose Pak to replace progressive Police Commissioner Angela Chan with a former Ed Lee campaigner, Victor Hwang, the Guardian requested emails from the mayor’s office concerning either candidate.

“This office is confirming that we do not have any responsive documents,” Macaulay wrote in reply to our request.

When we made similar requests of city supervisors, we received more than 70 emails per supervisor, supporting and decrying both candidates. The emails were like a trail of bread crumbs leading back to power broker Pak, revealing all the community members who had stepped in as proxies on her behalf to flex political muscles.

No such luck with the mayor.

The idea that not a single soul would send an email to Lee, nor would he or his staffers send a single email regarding the appointment of Chan, or of her opponent, just isn’t credible.

The Guardian pushed on the issue and obtained a copy of the records retention policy from the Mayor’s Office. The Mayor’s Office drafted a new version of that policy, which was quietly approved by Lee’s Chief-of-Staff Steve Kawa as well as City Attorney Dennis Herrera in February.

We’ve been pushing for more information on how that policy differs from previous versions, and whether it complies with state and local public records laws. But the staff member from Herrera’s office who dealt with the policy was unavailable for comment, and we haven’t gotten a straight answer from the mayor himself.

“San Francisco has the strongest open government and sunshine laws in the country,” Christine Falvey, a spokesperson for the mayor, told us. “The Mayor’s office fully complies with the spirit and letter of the law.”

She would not grant us a direct interview with the mayor. When the Guardian asked the mayor if he has the legal right to delete his emails when we saw him outside a campaign party Tuesday night, he said “I’ll answer your questions later,” and shut his car door in front of us.

One thing is for sure: The new policy has holes big enough to drive a Mack truck through, and that has open government advocates worried.

POLICY EXPERTS WEIGH IN

The most troubling language in the mayor’s new “Records and Document Retention and Disposal Schedule,” as it’s formally called, can be found on page two under the heading “No Retention Required.”

This section details which documents the Mayor’s Office believes it may destroy.

“Documents and other materials (including originals and duplicates) that are not required for retention, are not necessary to the functioning or continuity of the Department and which have no legal significance may be destroyed when no longer needed,” the section states. “Specific examples include telephone message slips, notes from ongoing projects, preliminary drafts that have been superseded by subsequent versions, routine emails that do not contain information required to be retained under this policy, miscellaneous correspondence not requiring follow-up or departmental action, notepads and chronological files.”

Emphasis ours. Attorneys we spoke with were concerned the exemptions would keep the public in the dark.

“The city should be retaining all records that bear on the operations of government and public oversight thereof,” David Greene, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told us. “The listing of telephone message slips — which sometimes might be the only record of a communication — is a disturbing example. Same for ‘routine emails’ — whatever that means.”

Terry Francke, lead counsel at open government group Californians Aware, went further, saying the records the Mayor’s Office claims it can destroy flouts state law.

“State law,” he said, “sets a minimum retention period of two years for any records of a city or county.”

We asked, does that mean any records destroyed in under two years would run afoul of state retention policies?

“Other than duplicates,” he said, “yes.”

He pointed to California Government Code 34090, which states cities cannot destroy records affecting the title to real property, court records, and records required to be kept by statute. Importantly, cities also cannot destroy records that are less than two years old.

Contrary to that law, emails the Mayor’s Office said may have been deleted were less than a few months old.

Rick Knee, a longtime member of the city’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, was cautious.

Alarmingly, he said, “the list of documents of which retention is not required allows the destruction of records that should remain open to public scrutiny, and gives the mayor’s office far too much discretion to decide what is or is not ‘necessary to the functioning or continuity of the department.'”

The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force is the only city body specifically tasked with enforcing government transparency laws, which are in place to ensure that government conduct remains open to public scrutiny. But the power of that entity to act effectively is under threat, as city supervisors recently rejected two strong new appointments from the Society of Professional Journalists, one of whom litigated against the federal government to obtain public records regarding the National Security Agency, domestic drones, and more.

San Francisco politicians interested in deleting documents wouldn’t benefit from strong government watchdogs on the task force.

We can only hope local open government advocates and journalists alike will challenge the mayor’s policy, which potentially flouts state and local open government laws. But that may not be enough.

Even if we had ironclad rules safeguarding government email, Wheaton, an attorney with the First Amendment Project, pointed out there are ways around transparency.

Two months ago, the California Court of Appeals ruled in City of San Jose v. Superior Court (Smith) that personal emails and text messages of government officials are not public record.

“It’s just handing every corrupt politician an absolute get out of jail free card,” Wheaton said. “Now all they have to do is get a Gmail account to stay out of the public eye.”

Or, corrupt politicians could take the route of Mayor Brown, who barred digital devices in his presence during staff meetings and famously does not use email.

In his column for the San Francisco Chronicle, Willie’s World, Brown explained his position on email to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“These days, Schwarzenegger appears to be more into tech than politics. Do I do Twitter? he eagerly asked me. Do I do e-mail?

‘No, no, no,’ I said. ‘Let me remind you of something, governor. Do you know what that ‘E’ in e-mail stands for?

‘No.’

‘Evidence.‘”

Steven T. Jones contributed to this report.

UPDATE: The Bay Guardian was given a brief quote by Christine Falvey, the mayor’s spokesperson, for this story on Monday. Though we used the quote in the print version of this story, an error on our part led to it not being included in the web posting. We have corrected the web posting and apologize for the error.

Below we’ve embedded the document retention policy for download and viewing.

San Francisco Mayor's Office Record Retention Policy 3.7.14 by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez

Political insider targeted for possessing explosives

Michael Redmond

-

June 3, 2014

0

Political insider targeted for possessing explosives

San Francisco PR consultant Ryan Chamberlain was apprehended by the SFPD on the night of June 2. The well-connected social media and campaign consultant allegedly possessed explosives in his apartment, and was described as being on “armed and dangerous.” But in a letter he wrote to personal contacts via iCloud that many interpreted as a suicide note, Chamberlain recalled the road to his depression.

Many of the examples he cited involved his time as a political consultant in San Francisco. “He’s a classic political operative — crafty, cynical, but also really nice,” Adriel Hampton, a former SF Examiner political reporter, told the Guardian. “I always liked him, even when I was busting him in a story.”

Some San Francisco political insiders were up in arms about the FBI’s manhunt for Chamberlain, and the law enforcement agency’s assertions that he was a dangerous individual.

“I’ve known the guy for a decade,” wrote Alex Clemens, founder of prominent San Francisco PR firm Barbary Coast Consulting, in a Facebook post. “I hired him as a contractor for a month or two in ’09 to handle some social media efforts for a client in North Carolina. And that for the second time in a few months, I am head-spinning surprised to learn of these allegations against another SF political operative. What. The. Hell?”

As a City Hall insider and San Francisco political moderate (and former member of the Republican Central County Committee), Chamberlain helped run former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s successful mayoral campaign as a field organizer. In a letter released on Chamberlain’s iCloud June 2, he singled out the aftermath of that experience as one of his life’s major losses.

“Getting left out of the Newsom win was hard,” Chamberlain wrote. “But I was always able to override it by forcing some common sense onto my brain … but every time it would somehow come back … I’d hit bottom again.”

What did he mean by “getting left out” of the Newsom win? Apparently he thought he’d be awarded a job in exchange for his efforts, but that never happened. Political consultant Johnny K. Wang, who worked on the Newsom campaign with Chamberlain, filled us in on the details of working alongside Chamberlain during Newsom’s first mayoral bid.

“We started off working for free,” Wang said. “Then we worked seven days a week, day and night, with extremely low pay. We gave it our all. The people in the campaign became like brothers and sisters, because they practically lived together. The understanding was, in return, ‘you’ll take care of us,’ because we are good workers and we have proven our loyalty.” Instead, Wang said, “We were burned by the campaign,” an outcome that he said Chamberlain was particularly upset about at the time.

Yet Wang insisted that in more recent history, Chamberlain had been acting normal and exhibited “zero signs” that he was capable of domestic terrorism. He said his last contact with Chamberlain had been at the end of 2013.

Many details of the FBI’s targeting and pursuit of Chamberlain were still sketchy as of press time.

The FBI alleged that he possessed explosives, but would not elaborate on what type of explosives agents claimed to have found in his home. Another unanswered question: How did the FBI come to the conclusion Chamberlain was a suspect in the first place? Was Chamberlain digitally surveiled, as he hinted in his online note?

“The whole thing is weird,” Wang said. “None of the FBI’s stories make sense. First he’s a domestic terrorist, then he’s made no threats to anyone. What do they know for sure? I’m assuming they know something, because you don’t start a raid and a national manhunt without some facts.”

“It’s unacceptable,” Wang added. “I want to see some real bomb making materials. I want to see a car that’s rigged to explode. Because otherwise, it’s just accusations.”

There are many unknowns, but Chamberlain’s note revealed that his political losses weighed heavily on him. One such loss was in 2006, when he helped run the group SFSOS, which politically battled San Francisco progressives. The group aided Rob Black, then a candidate in the District 6 supervisor’s race, in a campaign against progressive Chris Daly, who prevailed.

A Fog City Journal report, shortly before the election, described Chamberlain’s disdain for Daly.

“As Chamberlain speaks, he gets more inflamed about Chris Daly,” FCJ wrote. “Clearly, he believes in the work he’s doing.”

Chamberlain was so impassioned against Daly that he wrote a free e-book called The Case Against Chris Daly.

Daly said he holds no grudges. “In terms of what’s been going on,” he told us, “I’ve felt a bizarre mix of vindication and pity.”

As San Francisco media add context to Chamberlain’s story, right-wing bloggers have tried to paint Chamberlain as the second coming of Leland Yee — another liberal gone wild.

But by San Francisco standards, Chamberlain was a far-right “Marina moderate.” He was far from a lefty liberal.

“There are some folks on the Internet trying to malign the guy as a San Francisco leftist,” Daly told us. “I mean, the guy isn’t.”

In Chamberlain’s letter, he wrote of making progress with what he described as feeling “dark.”

“I was still fighting,” he wrote in the note to his friends. “One day at a time, I was pushing through…Today was going to be a good day. I got great friends…. But so much was broken from this past year-and-a-half, and from moments way back before that, I guess it was just insurmountable, and the time’s up.

“Thank you. I’m sorry. I love you.”

Rebecca Bowe contributed to this report.

Muni sickout continues for second day

Erica Hanna

-

June 3, 2014

58

Update: At 2:23pm the SFMTA sent an update on shortened Muni Metro service. See our guide to Muni sickout service below.

Muni delays are expected for a second day as the sickout continues through Tuesday, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency confirmed early this morning.

The reduction in service is slightly alleviated by an additional 100 buses in service, bringing the scheduled running fleet of buses to 300 out of 600.

The continued absence of hundreds of Muni drivers and other workers through simultaneous requested sick leave comes on the heels of an overwhelming vote by the Transport Workers Union Local 250-A to reject a contract proposal by the SFMTA. The main dispute in the contract is around pensions.

In a statement to press, the union said the wage increases SFMTA is offering wouldn’t cover the pension increases.

“Rather than improving wages and benefits, under the transit agency’s proposal,” the union wrote, “the vast majority of drivers would be paid less in real wages over the life of the agreement than they make now.”

“This is a great city, but a very difficult place to operate a bus, streetcar or cable car,” said TWU 250-A President Eric Williams. “This also is a very expensive city and while SFMTA’s ridership and revenues are on rising, the agency seeks to cut wages and benefits and convert full-time positions to part time.”

The union said they offered to return to the bargaining table but were rejected, and anticipate arbitration will begin to help negotiate the contract.

In the meantime, there’s no indication when the sickout will end.

“I apologize to San Francisco residents and visitors for the continuing disruption to our transit service,” said Ed Reiskin, SFMTA Director of Transportation, in a statement to press. “We are doing everything we can to get operators back to work and mobilizing all of our resources to keep as much service moving as we can.”

In a memorandum issued to Muni workers last night, the SFMTA warned drivers that strikes and slowdowns aren’t allowed in the contract betwen workers and the SFMTA, and that abuse of sick days for a sickout may result in not being paid for their absence, or even termination.

The Bay Guardian tried contacting the unions for a response, but were unable to reach them by press time.

In the meantime, Muni advised transit riders walk, bus, bike, or take any form of transit that isn’t, well, Muni. BART will accept Muni transfers for the day.

The SFMTA also issued a list of cancelled and delayed Muni lines for the day:

Muni Service

All routes and lines continue to experience missed and delayed service. Customers should expect crowding and waits of up to 60 minutes. Some routes may be turned back mid route to help minimize crowding. Announcements will be made via NextBus, on vehicles or in Metro stations.

Muni Metro (J Church, K Ingleside, L Taraval, M Ocean View, N Judah, T Third)

New! – As of 3 p.m., Tuesday: the J, L, M & N will operate on short routes with limited bus shuttles to the terminals. Customers should allow extra time for transfers. See details below.

J Church—will operate between Embarcadero Station and 30^th Street. Limited bus shuttle service will be provided between 30^th Street and Balboa Park Station. Customers traveling between Balboa Park Station and 30^th are encouraged to use BART or Mission Street routes.
K Ingleside—will operate on its regular route
L Taraval—will operate between Embarcadero Station and 22^nd Avenue. Limited bus shuttle service will be provided between 22^nd Avenue and the Zoo.
M Ocean View—will operate between Embarcadero Station and SF State. Limited bus shuttle service will be provided between 19^th Avenue and Holloway and Balboa Park Station.
N Judah—will operate between Embarcadero Station and 19^th Avenue. Limited bus shuttle service will be provided between 19^th Avenue and Ocean Beach. T Third trains will provide service from Embarcadero to Caltrain at 4^th and King.
T Third—will operate on its regular route

Muni Bus Service

No limited-stop service on the 5L, 9L, 14L, 28L, 38L and 71L routes
The following routes will not operate:
- 1AX/BX, 31AX/BX, 38AX/BX
- 16X, 88
- 3 Jackson – The majority of stops on this route are covered by the 2 Clement
8AX Bayshore Express and 8BX will operate without changes.

Below we’ve embedded tweets and twitter photos from yesterday’s #munisickout.

Catbuses would NEVER have a #munisickout pic.twitter.com/oEQ6M8E78j

— Greg Dewar (@njudah) June 2, 2014

The scene at West Portal station. I was able to get on a shuttle. How was your commute home? #munisickout #muni pic.twitter.com/3BdWvosmRM

— Jerold Chinn (@jchinn84) June 3, 2014

2 Clement already PACKED at Front Street! #Diarrhea #munisickout #SF pic.twitter.com/WwMm8iN7rC

— Patrick Connors (@uppityfag) June 3, 2014

This #njudah train is crowded. Hope the kitten doesn’t get squished. #munisickout pic.twitter.com/GEzUPNa1TE

— Chris Phipps (@CPbike) June 3, 2014

The weary workers waiting on limited buses during #munisickout @sfmta_muni #sf pic.twitter.com/WDUW2gJxxI

— Samantha Moore (@TheLilSammie) June 3, 2014

This is how riding Muni looks like today! #munisickout pic.twitter.com/EvNCRm8gMF

— Mina Doroud (@MMiiina) June 3, 2014

Which Muni lines aren’t running during the #MuniSickOut?

Erica Hanna

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June 2, 2014

7

Which Muni lines aren’t running during the #MuniSickOut?

Update: This article has been updated with new information (which lines aren’t running?) for the second day of the sickout, Tuesday.

Everyone is scrambling for a way home during the #MuniSickOut, with over 400 of Muni’s 600 scheduled buses out of service.

No, it’s not technically a transit strike, but with so many workers calling in sick, it may as well be. Muni transit workers are protesting increases in pension contributions under a contract agreement with the SFMTA. Muni operators voted 1,198 to 42 to shoot down the contract, the Transport Workers Union Local 250-A announced earlier today.

In the wake of the delays, Muni released a list of bus lines that are in service, while also advising people find “alternative forms” of transit. Basically: Today, you can’t get a ride with us.

Sources are still unclear if the “sick out” will continue on into tomorrow. Until then, here’s a list of Muni lines running for the Tuesday morning commute, via the SFMTA as of 6am:

Muni Service

All routes and lines continue to experience missed and delayed service. Even with 100 additional vehicles on the street today, significant delays will remain. Customers should expect crowding and waits of up to 60 minutes. Some routes may be turned back mid route to help minimize crowding. Announcements will be made via NextBus, on vehicles or in Metro stations.

Muni Metro (J Church, K Ingleside, L Taraval, M Ocean View, N Judah, T Third)

All Muni Metro rail lines will operate on their regular routes and continue to operate with two-car trains to maximize capacity.

Muni Bus Service

No limited-stop service (affects the 5L, 9L, 14L, 28L, 38L)

The following routes will not operate:

1AX/BX, 31AX/BX, 38AX/BX

16X, 88

3 Jackson – The majority of stops on this route are covered by the 2 Clement

8AX Bayshore Express and 8BX will operate without changes.

The cable cars are not in operation. Cable car lines will continue to be covered by limited bus shuttle service.

The F Market Line will continue to operate between Fisherman’s Wharf and the Ferry Building. For service along Market Street, please use Muni Metro.

Below we’ve posted some frustrated Muni rider tweets from today’s #MuniSickOut.

Jam-packed #Muni trains starting to arrive at Van Ness station. Barely anyone gets on. #munisickout pic.twitter.com/lKDEzPtzjz

— Jerold Chinn (@jchinn84) June 2, 2014

.@sfmta suggests u “pls consider alternatives.” Delays rampant, platforms full at 2pm. Gonna be a long day on #muni pic.twitter.com/p3Q8b5L34u

— chris roberts (@cbloggy) June 2, 2014

really #MUNI? Looks like I’ll walk today again. pic.twitter.com/XC21tgrlsH

— Chuck Reynolds (@ChuckReynolds) June 2, 2014

Heads up for commuters! #MUNI drivers strike today “@sfmta_muni: ATTN: delays on ALL routes and lines this morning.” pic.twitter.com/dIZeZikyji

— Amy Schapiro (@aschapi) June 2, 2014

Ouch. #muni #sickout pic.twitter.com/KowzsJayFD

— Stan Bunger (@BungerKCBS) June 2, 2014

Happy Monday. #sickout pic.twitter.com/aLEpFxS0h4

— Jenna Lane (@jennalane) June 2, 2014

If you’re taking the bus today, don’t bother #MUNIsickout pic.twitter.com/8Jm8pKQW5D

— Cara ॐ (@CaraaaaMel) June 2, 2014

Thinking about taking the cable car this morning? Too bad. #MuniSickout pic.twitter.com/ipJrIF0Ak4

— Evan Sernoffsky (@EvanSernoffsky) June 2, 2014

PLATFORM at Embarcadero Station!! Not AN INCH OF SPACE and very quiet. #MuniSickOut #Diarrhea #SickOut #SF pic.twitter.com/wHRRJUg7co

— Patrick Connors (@uppityfag) June 3, 2014

Re: today’s #sickout, #sfmuni slated to raise fares starting Sept., and will be a measure in Nov. election to give @sfmta_muni more $….

— Tiffany Louie (@TMLouie) June 2, 2014

Wanted PR consultant Ryan Chamberlain burned by SF politics

Erica Hanna

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June 2, 2014

18

Wanted PR consultant Ryan Chamberlain burned by SF politics

PR consultant Ryan Chamberlain is now in FBI custody in connection with allegedly posessing explosives, but in a letter he wrote to loved ones via his iCloud, Chamberlain recalled the road to his depression.

Many of the examples he cited involved his time as a political consultant in San Francisco. Chamberlain is very well-known within San Francisco political circles.

“He’s a classic political operative — crafty, cynical, but also really nice,” Adriel Hampton, a former SF Examiner political reporter, told the Guardian. “I always liked him, even when I was busting him in a story.”

Some San Francisco political insiders were up in arms about the FBI’s manhunt for Chamberlain, despite the law enforcement agency’s assertions that Chamberlain was “armed and dangerous” and possessed explosives.

Alex Clemens, founder of well-connected PR firm Barbary Coast Consulting, expressed surprise in numerous outlets, and also on his Facebook page.

“I’ve known the guy for a decade,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “I hired him as a contractor for a month or two in ’09 to handle some social media efforts for a client in North Carolina. And that for the second time in a few months, I am head-spinning surprised to learn of these allegations against another SF political operative. What. The. Hell?”

As a city hall insider and San Francisco political moderate (and former member of the Republican Central County Committee), Chamberlain helped run former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s succesful mayoral campaign in the Richmond District as a field organizer. In a letter released on Chamberlain’s iCloud today, he cited his experience with Newsom as one of the life losses that hurt him.

“Getting left out of the Newsom win was hard,” Chamberlain wrote. “But I was always able to override it by forcing some common sense onto my brain… but every time it would somehow come back… i’d hit bottom again.”

But what did he mean by “getting left out” of the Newsom win? Apparently he thought he’d be getting a job in exchange for his efforts, but that never happened. Political consultant Johnny K. Wang, who worked on the Newsom campaign with Chamberlain, filled us in on the details of working alongside Chamberlain during Newsom’s first mayoral bid.

“We started off working for free,” Wang said. “Then we worked seven days a week, day and night, with extremely low pay. We gave it our all. The people in the campaign became like brothers and sisters, because they practically lived together. The understanding was, in return, you’ll take care of us because we are good workers and we have proven our loyalty.” Instead, Wang said, “We were burned by the campaign,” an outcome that he said Chamberlain was particularly upset about at the time.

Yet Wang insisted that in more recent history, Chamberlain had been acting normal and exhibited “zero signs” that he was capable of domestic terrorism.

Phillip Hirsch, a bystander, took this footage of Chamberlain’s arrest.

Perhaps Chamberlain ran afoul of Newsom due to an incident from 2003. In a post on local news site Fog City Journal, progressive H. Brown wrote of an incident during Newsom’s run for reelection against green party candidate Matt Gonzalez, in which Chamberlain allegedly “worked the Internet” to falsely claim green party activists were being bussed in from out-of-state, arriving in the middle of the night, to bolster the ranks against Newsom.

Brown claimed there were no such activists being bussed in, and that the politically embarrassing incident got Chamberlain “fired,” but the Guardian has not independently confirmed that account.

In fact, many details of the FBI’s targeting and pursuit of Chamberlain are still sketchy.

The FBI alleged that he possessed explosives, but would not elaborate on what type of explosives agents claimed to have found in his home. Another unanswered question: How did the FBI come to the conclusion Chamberlain was a suspect in the first place? Was Chamberlain digitally surveilled, as he hinted in his online post?

“The whole thing is weird,” Wang said. “None of the FBI’s stories make sense. First he’s a domestic terrorist, then he’s made no threats to anyone. What do they know for sure? I’m assuming they know something, because you don’t start a raid and a national manhunt without some facts.”

“It’s unacceptable,” Wang added. “I want to see some real bomb making materials. I want to see a car that’s rigged to explode. Because otherwise, it’s just accusations.”

A panicked update to my letter that should have posted by now. Nothing they’re reporting is true. No “stashes.” Not “armed and…

— Ryan Chamberlain (@poliholic) June 2, 2014

A Twitter update sent by Chamberlain after the news broke of the manhunt.

There are many unknowns, but we do know from Chamberlain’s note that his political losses weighed heavily on him. One such loss was in 2006, when he helped run the group SFSOS, which politically battled San Francisco progressives. The group aided Rob Black, then a candidate for District 6, in a campaign against progressive Chris Daly, who prevailed in that race.

Another Fog City Journal report, shortly before the election, described Chamberlain’s disdain for Daly.

“As Chamberlain speaks, he gets more inflamed about Chris Daly,” FCJ wrote. “Clearly, he believes in the work he’s doing.”

In fact, Chamberlain was so impassioned against Daly that as part of his consulting work, he wrote a free e-book called The Case Against Chris Daly.

Daly, it should be noted, holds no grudges.

“In terms of whats been going on,” he told us, “I’ve felt a bizarre mix of vindication and pity.”

As San Francisco media adds context to Chamberlain’s story, right-wing bloggers have tried to paint Chamberlain as the second coming of Leland Yee— another liberal gone wild.

But by San Francisco standards, Chamberlain was a far right “Marina moderate.” He was far from a lefty liberal.

“There are some folks on the internet trying to malign the guy as a San Francisco leftist,” Daly told us. “I mean, the guy isn’t.”

In Chamberlain’s letter, he wrote of making progress with what he described as feeling “dark.”

“I was still fighting,” he wrote in the apology note to friends. “One day at a time, I was pushing through…Today was going to be a good day. I got great friends…. But so much was broken from this past year-and-a-half, and from moments way back before that, I guess it was just insurmountable, and the time’s up.

“Thank you. I’m sorry. I love you.”

Below we’ve embedded “The Case Against Chris Daly,” written by Ryan Chamberlain, to give a hint at his political history.

The Case Against Daly by FitztheReporter

Muni permanently locks up front facing seats, fearing lawsuits

Erica Hanna

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May 28, 2014

51

Muni permanently locks up front facing seats, fearing lawsuits

Regular Muni riders have no doubt seen the wheelchair-accessible seats, located just in front of Muni’s middle door, snapped up in the upright position. A seat not for sitting, leading confused riders to wonder: why has Muni left these seats permanently upright?

The answer is actually pretty simple, if you follow the documents. Muni fears a lawsuit, and maybe with good reason. A warning from one manufacturer of Muni buses, New Flyer, has transit circles spooked.

The warning didn’t mention any lawsuits, but CalTIP, who insurers transit agencies across California (but not Muni), warned its members of potential lawsuits stemming from the forward facing seats:

In the summer of 2012, a CalTIP member experienced an incident where a passenger was thrown out of a first row front-facing flip-up seat (right side aisle seat) when the operator applied the brakes hard to avoid a collision with another vehicle. Although the passenger indicated at the time he was OK, he eventually filed an injury claim. The case closed with a total cost of approximately four times the average CalTIP loss rate.

New Flyer warned that three similar accidents occurred, though it did not mention lawsuits related to those incidents. In response, California transit agencies were recommended by CalTIP, to disable the seats — and fast.

Muni isn’t a member of CalTIP, but it followed suit all the same. Muni wrote last month that setting the seats upright is all about the safety:

You’ve probably noticed that on some of our buses, the first row of forward-facing seats are secured in their flipped-up position, with decals explaining they have been taken out of service for safety reasons. These seats are not broken. They have been removed from use for your safety.

So when will the seats be fixed? They won’t, Muni said. The seating issue will end when the fleet is replaced in four to five years. Until then, enjoy the extra standing room. Or don’t.

Update 5/29: Paul Rose, a spokesperson for Muni, offered in an email last night, somewhat cryptically: “The solution will be on place in buses by June 16th. New buses are not affected.”

Cash backwards

Erica Hanna

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May 28, 2014

36

news@sfbg.com

San Francisco is moving into the heart of city budget season, with the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee holding detailed budget hearings over the next month to modify the $5.9 billion budget that Mayor Ed Lee introduced on May 1. Lee’s budget had a $66.7 million shortfall in the General Fund for the coming year, which he needs to close with a revised budget by June 1, as well as a $133.4 million budget hole the following fiscal year.

We at the Bay Guardian are here to help, because this is a mismanaged city that has some severely misplaced fiscal priorities right now. Although San Francisco’s booming economy means this will be a far less painful budget season than previous years, the city still has a structural budget deficit and lingering damage from the administration of Gavin Newsom, who slashed services and raised a variety of fees to address big budget deficits without raising taxes.

The moment is now, when we have more revenues than expected — and more money than we’re likely to have again for awhile given boom-bust business cycles and our over-dependence on the volatile tech sector — to finally create a city budget that sees to the needs of all San Franciscans.

WHAT WE SHOULD BE FUNDING

Medical Examiner’s Office Families now have to wait at least six months to find out how their loved ones died in San Francisco, which is new, preventable, and unacceptable. Short staffing and slow turnaround times have led the National Association of Medical Examiners to downgrade this office’s accreditation from “full” to “provisional.” The city budget should provide the staffing needed to process autopsies and medical reports as quickly as the examiners and laboratories can perform them and help give grieving families the closure they’re being denied for budgetary reasons.

Infographic: Click here for the full page inforaphic (also in this week’s print edition) of Cash backwards.

Public health In a recently issued report, nurses at San Francisco General Hospital represented by SEIU Local 1021 publicly warned of dangerously low staffing levels. “Our patients frequently do not receive the level of care required by state law, hospital policies, or modern safety standards,” they wrote. The concerns are especially worrisome in the Emergency Department, where core staffing of 22 nurses per shift dropped to 17 in recent months, or sometimes down to 11. “As a result, an average of 11 the Emergency Room’s 26 beds are closed while the Hospital goes on diversion,” turning away ambulances. “Over the year, our trauma center, SFGH, uses 3 percent more beds than budgeted—which indicates a dangerous lack of ‘surge capacity’ to absorb extra patients in the event of a natural disaster.” The report noted that vacant positions are technically budgeted in, but lingered filled.

911 dispatchers California law mandates that 90 percent of 911 calls be answered in 10 seconds or less; in San Francisco, that number often drops to 60 percent or lower. In early April, 911 dispatchers gathered at the city’s Department of Emergency Management to say that chronic understaffing is forcing dispatchers to put distressed San Franciscans on hold, or to force new callers to wait longer than 10 seconds before answering. “When a mother calls 911 because her baby isn’t breathing, 10 seconds matter. San Francisco 911 dispatch department is understaffed and needs to be improved,” say dispatcher Sean Dryden, calling for the city to put more resources into the system.

Activating surplus property Last week, the California State Assembly passed legislation that would give affordable housing developers the right of first refusal for “surplus” lands owned by local governments, thereby strengthening an existing priority for use. San Francisco has at least 42 surplus properties that could conceivably be converted into affordable housing projects, if resources were dedicated toward facilitating such partnerships and prioritizing this important need. “There is very little land available for affordable housing development,” says Assemblymember Phil Ting, who authored the legislation, which is now headed to the Senate for final approval. “These precious properties should become homes for working people.”

Homeless services In the past 10 years, San Francisco has lost about one-third of its homeless shelter beds, while about half of the city’s drop-in center capacity was also slashed, longtime advocate Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, told us in a recent interview (see “San Francisco’s Untouchables,” March 24, 2014). The city can and should do more to provide a safety net for those in the precarious position of sleeping on the streets. And on a related note, city contracts for providing short-term stabilization beds for the homeless should not be awarded to slumlords who have been cited so many times for Health Code violations that they’re being sued by the City Attorney’s Office. Surely city agencies can find landlords who don’t endanger their tenants’ health and wellbeing through chronic neglect of their properties.

Pedestrian safety San Francisco spends $15 million annually on pedestrian injuries, according to the Department of Public Health, and 20 pedestrians were killed by vehicles on the streets of San Francisco in 2013 (including 6-year-old Sofia Liu on New Year’s Eve). Investments in safe streets for pedestrians saves the city money, and saves lives — but all of that counts on making the right investments. WalkFirst, the city’s pedestrian safety program, identified San Francisco’s most dangerous intersections, main in the Tenderloin and downtown, where there is a crucial need for safety modifications. Though the mayor pledged $50 million over five years to improve those intersections, that money depends on November transit ballot measures (including the vehicle license fee increase he’s now waffling on even placing on the ballot). If they fail, only $17 million will be available for pedestrian safety work. But even that amount barely scratches the surface: WalkFirst identified $240 million worth of street improvements needed to make San Francisco safe for walking.

Bike infrastructure The city has made strides in recent years to build out its bike infrastructure, but it still has miles of roadway left unsafe for bicyclists. The city identified many intersections and roadways in need of better bike infrastructure in its 2009 Bicycle Plan. Five years later, many of the identified “near term” projects still need big improvements: the Broadway tunnel; Golden Gate Avenue and Turk corridors; Division and 13th Street corridors; and “The Hairball” between Cesar Chavez and Potrero. Some of these improvements would cost the city $1 million or more, but others would cost as little as $100,000. Even the low-cost bike improvements languished since 2009, a clear failure.

A higher minimum wage In 2012, when San Francisco’s minimum wage was $10.24 per hour and rents were lower than they are today, the Department of Public Health published a map showing how many minimum-wage jobs a toiling soul would have to work in order to afford a market-rate two-bedroom apartment in a given neighborhood. To live in SoMa? 7.4 jobs. The Sunset? 3.8 jobs. The Mayor’s Office opposes increasing the city’s minimum wage to $15 on the grounds that it would increase the costs of city contracts with nonprofit organizations to provide various city services. It’s bad enough that the city has privatized essential public services, but to make the argument that the workers who provide these services aren’t even entitled to a living wage is obscene.

Crucial infrastructure The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is desperately trying to come up with $625 million to replace 19-mile-long Mountain Tunnel, a critical conduit for city water from Hetch Hetchy that is in danger of imminent collapse, which would be devastating to residents of San Francisco and other Bay Area jurisdictions that rely on it. And that just one of many items on the long list of capital improvement projects — from failing sewer lines near our bayfront to overdue transportation infrastructure improvements — that get funded each year based on politically influenced budget decisions rather than what the city actually needs to be functional and forward-thinking.

Affordable housing When voters approved creation of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund in 2012, Mayor Lee and his allies in the business and development communities congratulated themselves on finally addressing affordable housing. The only problem was the city contribution of $20 million per year, eventually rising to $50 million annually, was a drop in the bucket compared to the actual need for subsidized housing construction. The city’s Housing Element calls for 60 percent of new housing to be below market rate to meet the needs of city resident, yet less than 20 percent of housing in the pipeline is affordable. Even the mayor’s grand promise to have a third of new housing built by 2020 be affordable turned out to be a lie, with the San Francisco Public Press recently reporting that he’s counting rehabilitation of existing public housing units. Sup. John Avalos is now working on devoting more city funding in this budget to affordable housing and we hope the full board supports his efforts.

MISSPENT PUBLIC DOLLARS

Business tax cuts The Mid-Market Tax Exclusion Zone — more commonly known as the Twitter tax break after the company whose threat to leave the city extorted millions of dollars from city coffers — is just one of series of business tax breaks aimed at the booming technology industry by Mayor Ed Lee and his allies. Not only did they also get stock options excluded from taxation (repealing a law signed by tech-friendly ex-Mayor Gavin Newsom), but they also subtly crafted 2012’s Proposition B, the complicated business tax reform measure approved by voters, to give the tech sector a substantial tax cut with little public discussion about that provision.

Central Subway We at the Bay Guardian are huge fans of public transit, and we generally believe this is all money well spent. That said, the Central Subway is a costly boondoggle whose false promises and high cost per rider we’ll all be covering for years to come. That money could have been better on a variety of other transit projects that would improve service to Chinatown and other hard to access parts of the city. And the cost overruns in the project — which have been hidden from public view by sneaky and unethical according tricks, as the SF Weekly reported this spring — are likely to continuing sapping resources from Muni and the SFMTA for a generation to come.

Repeal of Sunday metering It made no sense for Mayor Ed Lee to insist that the SFMTA repeal having to pay for parking meters on Sunday, a program that the agency found was causing more turnover and thus more parking availability and less traffic congestion in busy commercial corridors. Drivers, businesses, and Muni riders all benefited from the paid meters. That repeal will cost taxpayers about $11 million per year while transit riders are paying Muni fares that are being increased to $2.25 and the SFMTA is claiming to have no money to provide free transit service to senior and those with disabilities. This decision amounted to a $11 million annual expenditure with negative environmental impacts that were never studied — a violation of the California Environmental Quality Act, as the Board of Supervisors should rule when they hear that appeal this summer. This is money that could be better spent.

Nonprofit Inc. The city spends millions of dollars every year on hundreds of contracts with nonprofit organizations, much of which goes to politically connected groups in a sort of political patronage system. For example, Randy Shaw and his Tenderloin Housing Clinic have dozens of contracts with the city to perform a variety of services, all while he writes glowing puff pieces on Mayor Lee for his Beyond Chron blog. Shaw even recently got a $20,000 city contract to help find tenants for commercial spaces in the Tenderloin — as if that’s actually a problem in a booming city with an overheating economy. The city’s contracts should be thoroughly reviewed by an independent party — in addition to the Board of Supervisors — to weed out the political patronage.

Promoting tourism San Francisco takes in almost $300 million per year on its transient occupancy tax, then it turns around and spends a significant portion of that promoting tourism by funding the San Francisco Travel Association (including its high-paid President Joe D’Alessandro), the Moscone Convention Center and its current expansion plans, and a variety of other tourism outreach efforts. The private sector that receives the biggest benefits from tourism (tourists spend $25 million a day in the city, according to the SFTA) should be funding more of the city’s tourist promotion and the hotel taxes should be treated as a general revenue source to improve Muni, roads, and other services that tourists also use.

Subsidies for automobiles Even in this transit-first city, where the SFMTA claims to be trying to reduce the percentage of total trips taken by car from about 60 percent now down to 50 percent, city policies subsidize automobiles (as well as the Google buses and other private shuttles). Drivers get free parking on public streets throughout the city, particularly on the west side. Most housing development projects are still required to provide on-site parking, which increases the cost of housing even for residents who don’t drive, despite some early progressive reforms that try to de-link parking from housing. And motorists contribute far more than other residents to wear-and-tear on our roads, adding to the Department of Public Works budget — with the very worst offender being those massive Google buses, whose impacts on the city budget are far more than the $1 per stop they’re now paying. There are tricky legal restrictions around making drivers pay for their impacts, but there are ways of doing so if the political will is there.

Hiring bad construction contractors According to an audit published by the City Controller’s Office, San Francisco has budgeted more than $25 billion for its capital improvement plan in the next 10 years — but doesn’t bother to check whether a contractor has done a good job in the past before passing out lucrative contracts. “City departments do not adequately assess contractor performance and do not consider past performance in the construction contract award process,” the audit found. “Although 70 percent of surveyed city construction staff have at least occasionally encountered city contractors that they considered poor performers, the City’s Administrative Code does not require departments to assess the performance of construction contractors, and past performance is not considered.” The result? “Project delays, substandard work, and higher likelihood of claims and litigation.” Oh, and that great flushing sound as tax dollars are whooshed away.

Subsidizing events for the wealthy Can anyone fathom why San Francisco used taxpayer dollars to fund Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s super-rich boy America’s Cup last year? Ellison pulled in a $96.2 million salary in 2012, and is worth billions. Yet Mayor Lee put up general fund money to the tune of $20 million for the billionaire’s yacht race, according to a report by the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst. What was the city supposed to get out of it? A major tax revenue windfall, for starters, but that turned out to be a myth. San Francisco lost $6 million in general funds, and Larry Ellison won the cup, and our money. City taxpayers also subsidize the symphony, the opera, blue-blood gatherings in City Hall, and other events their wealthy attendees should be paying for themselves.

Treasure Island San Francisco purchased contaminated Treasure Island for $105 million in 2009, spent millions more on planning and contracting work to prepare for private developers to build about 6,000 homes on the island, agreed to stake an additional $700 million in bond money against future property taxes, and then basically gave the whole thing away to politically connected developers to build up the island with towers that will rise up 60 stories, developer who will take their customary 15-20 percent profits on what they put into the deal. All of this on a island that current climate change projections show will be underwater by the end of the century, requiring acres of landfill and buffering against the elements to avoid this fate, even though San Francisco is under state mandate to remove bay fill and live in more harmony with the natural world. Is this really a good idea? Rainy day fund Why is the Mayor’s Office proposing to stick $125 million into the Budget Stabilization Fund, aka the Rainy Day Fund, when city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund is falling woefully short of building the below-market-rate housing that San Franciscans right now. With this city displacing its more diverse populations and becoming steadily more affluent, which will forever change its socioeconomic and political dynamics, it’s raining now — raining the will of the wealthy, a downpour that is flooding the rest of us out of the city of St. Francis.

Student protesters file claim against City College and SF citing injuries, defamation

Erica Hanna

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May 27, 2014

40

Student protesters file claim against City College and SF citing injuries, defamation

Student protesters filed a claim against City College of San Francisco and the city and county of San Francisco today, citing excessive use of force by San Francisco Police Department and City College police officers.

The claim is a first step before filing a lawsuit against San Francisco, and was announced at a press conference earlier today [Tues/27] at City College’s Ocean Campus. The two students filing the claim, Dimitrios Philliou and Otto Pippenger, may seek over $10,000 in damages, according to the claim. They allege they were physically and emotionally injured by police violence in a March 13 protest against City College’s state-appointed Special Trustee Bob Agrella, who entirely replaced City College’s elected Board of Trustees.

The two students also asked for the college’s chancellor, Arthur Q. Tyler, to retract his public statements they say casts blame for the violence on the protesters.

“I think everyone on the City College campus and in the larger community agree that violence is not a means to solving disagreement,” Tyler wrote in an email addressed to the college’s student body, faculty and staff shortly after the protest. The two students said they were defamed publicly to students and faculty.

“The public statement blaming protesters reached tens of thousands of people at the school I go to,” Pippenger said at the press conference.

Tyler was not available for comment as he is on a business trip in Texas, his staff told us. City College spokesperson Jeff Hamilton would not comment due to the pending litigation.

The two students are represented by Rachel Lederman, the president of the National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area chapter.

The protest erupted in response to the special trustee allegedly curtailing democracy at City College. The school is in a fight for its life, and Agrella’s role is to see the college maintains its accreditation. But he said the urgency to save the school was sufficient reason to halt public meetings and public comments which used to be standard practice under the college’s board.

Previous coverage: Check out “Democracy For None,” recounting the March 13 City College protest and the state of democracy at the school.

That removed an important place for students to decry policy changes, such as class cuts that harm the most vulnerable, Philliou and Pippenger alleged. Eventually, the protesters’ cries reached Agrella and he partially restored public board meetings, though they are not broadcast nor recorded.

It’s a small victory, and it took the injuries of the two students filing claims, Phillou and Pippenger, to draw media attention to their plight. Philliou said students and faculty at the protest “were met by attacks from police and were beaten, brutalized, attacked, and arrested.”

He later experienced sleep deprivation, emotional torment, and has since felt unsafe while at school. Agrella refused to speak to him, Phillou said, and he was instead “met with brutality.”

Pippenger described how he sustained his injuries speaking slowly, and methodically.

“At the height of the violence, right there,” he said at the site of the conflict, pointing behind him to where he was beaten, “I was first struck repeatedly with fists, and then thrown to the concrete and restrained by a number of officers. I was then beaten on the pavement, insensate and unbreathing beneath five or six bodies, as one officer punched me in the back of the head and against the pavement. My fists were broken, and I sustained a concussion.”

In the animated GIF above, student protester Otto Pippenger is held on the ground, face against the cement, while an officer throws a punch to the back of his head. The full video is at the bottom of this post.

It is SFPD policy not to comment once a claim has been filed, police spokesperson Officer Albie Esparza told the Guardian. The City Attorney’s Office, who would represent the city and the police, had not yet seen the text of the claim.

Since the protest, Tyler convened three open meetings aimed at improving campus discourse, and to gain insight into how to handle student demonstrations in the future. A newly formed school task force on “Civil Discourse and Campus Climate” has been appointed and will soon have its first meeting.

For more background, see our previous coverage of the bloody protest in “Democracy for None [3/18].”

The strange, unique power of San Francisco mayors

Erica Hanna

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May 23, 2014

64

The strange, unique power of San Francisco mayors

Mayor Ed Lee wields a strange and unique power in San Francisco politics, passed down from Mayor Gavin Newsom, and held by Mayor Willie Brown before him.

No, we’re not talking magic, though mayors have used this ability to almost magically influence the city’s political winds.

When elected officials leave office in San Francisco and a seat is left vacant, the mayor has the legal power to appoint someone to that empty seat. A study by San Francisco’s Local Agency Formation Commission conducted March last year shows out of 117 jurisdictions in California, and ten major cities nationwide, only seven jurisdictions give their executives (governors, mayors) the ability to appoint an official to a vacant seat. The other jurisdictions hold special elections or allow legislative bodies to vote on a new appointment.

The power of a San Francisco mayor then is nearly singularly unique, the report found, but especially when seen in the context of the nation’s major cities.

“Of the 10 cities surveyed here,” the study’s authors wrote, “no other city among the most populous grants total discretion for appointments.”

The study is especially relevant now, as Sup. John Avalos introduced a charter amendment to change this unqiuely San Franciscan mayoral power, and put the power back in the hands of the electorate.

His amendment would require special elections when vacancies appear on public bodies like the community college board, the board of education, or other citywide elected offices. He nicknamed it the “Let’s Elect our Elected Officials Act,” and if approved by the Board of Supervisors it will go to this November’s ballot.

Avalos touched on the LAFCo study while introducing his amendment at the board’s meeting on Tuesday [5/20].

“One of the striking results is how unique San Francisco’s appointment process is,” Avalos said. “There’s no democratic process or time constraint when the mayor makes these appointments.”

He pointed to then-Assessor Recorder Phil Ting’s election to California Assembly in 2012. Camen Chu, his successor, was not appointed by the mayor until February 2013, he said, a longstanding vacancy.

So what’s the big deal? Well, voters notoriously tend to vote for the incumbents in any race, so any official with their name on the slot as “incumbent” come election time has a tremendous advantage. In fact, only one supervisor ever appointed by a mayor was ever voted down in a subsequenet district-wide (as opposed to city-wide) election. This dataset of appointed supervisors was culled from the Usual Suspects, a local political-wonk blog:

*Supervisor*	*Appointed*	*Elected*
Terry Francois	1964	1967
Robert Gonzalez	1969	1971
Gordon Lau	1977	1977
Jane Murphy	1977	Didn’t run
Louise Renne	1978	1980
Donald Horanzy	1978	Lost in 1980	Switched from District to Citywide elections.
Harry Britt	1979	1980
Willie B. Kennedy	1981	1984
Jim Gonzalez	1986	1988
Tom Hsieh	1986	1988
Annemarie Conroy	1992	Lost in 1994
Susan Leal	1993	1994
Amos Brown	1996	1998
Leslie Katz	1996	1996
Michael Yaki	1996	1996
Gavin Newsom	1997	1998
Mark Leno	1998	1998
Alicia D. Becerril	1999	Lost in 2000	Switched from Citywide to District elections.
Michela Alioto-Pier	2004	2004
Sean Elsbernd	2004	2004
Carmen Chu	2007	2008
Christina Olague	2012	Lost in 2012	Only loss by a district appointed supervisor.
Katy Tang	2013	2013

So mayoral appointments effectively sway subsequent elections, giving that mayor two prongs of power: the power to appoint someone who may agree with their politics, and the power to appoint someone who will then owe them.

A San Francisco Chronicle article from 2004 describes the power derived from appointees former Mayor Willie Brown infamously enjoyed.

Once at City Hall, Brown moved quickly to consolidate power, and using the skills he honed during his 31 years in the state Assembly, gained control of the Board of Supervisors. Before the 2000 election, he appointed eight of the 11 members, filling vacancies that he helped orchestrate, as supervisor after supervisor quit to run for higher office or take other jobs.

The board majority was steadfastly loyal, pushing through Brown’s policies and budget priorities with little debate. In a 1996 magazine article, he was quoted as likening the supervisors to “mistresses you have to service.”

Voters may soon choose what elected officials they want in offices. The mistresses of the mayor, or the mistresses of the people.

Graph of the LAFCo study produced by Guardian intern Francisco Alvarado. LAFCo looked at California jurisdictions as well as ten major cities nationwide.

Thieves! Duboce Triangle free library stolen, replaced

Erica Hanna

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May 23, 2014

1

Thieves! Duboce Triangle free library stolen, replaced

Thievery! The little free library on Noe went missing Wedenesday, and initially in its place was only a chalk outline decrying its loss.

“I was pissed,” librarian Jamison Wieser told reporter (and Bay Guardian freelancer) Sara Bloomberg for her blog, A Room with a View in San Francisco.

The little free library sits outside 233 Noe, and people can freely borrow from its collection of 20 or so books. No checkout system exists, it’s all based on the honor system. Unfortunately, someone decided to act less than honorably. After the case was stolen, chalk outlines were drawn on the ground where the books from the stolen bookcase were thrown.

Luckily, this story has a happy ending.

The book case was shortly replaced, with books already filling the shelves, Bloomberg reported. There was one new addition though, a sign, reading “These books may be freely borrowed. (Please do not take bookcase).”

The Duboce Triangle little free library is part of the Little Free Library network, with 15,000 participating little libraries and counting. The Duboce Triangle little free library is taking donations at Paypal using the email noesocute@gmail.com, or you can leave cash with the librarians right on Noe.

littlelibrary

Intersection for the Arts lays off staff, halts programming

Erica Hanna

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May 23, 2014

8

Intersection for the Arts lays off staff, halts programming

Intersection for the Arts, one of the city’s most established alternative arts venues, is the latest casualty in a city slowly strangling its arts and music scene.

The decades-old studio and artists space will lay off most of its staff and program directors by the end of the month, and will no longer produce its own arts programming.

“With the specific shifts in the economy and culture of San Francisco, it has been increasingly difficult to operate and sustain a community-based nonprofit arts organization like Intersection,” ousted program directors Kevin B. Chen, Rebeka Rodriguez and Sean San Jose wrote in a joint statement. “For the decade-plus that we have been able to work together, we have collaborated and worked for varied and multiple voices – the marginalized, under-represented, young, immigrant, queer, people of color, disenfranchised voices.“

The layoffs were confirmed by Intersection for the Arts’ Board of Directors Chair Yancy Widmer in a post on Intersection for the Arts’ website.

“Our financial situation is deeply challenged,” he wrote, “and it has become apparent that the current business model is no longer sustainable.”

He explained the move in the post:

Our financial situation has always been fragile. Like many non-profit, grassroots arts organizations, it has been a perpetual struggle, dependent on “angel donors,” “heroic” leadership and unpredictable trends. The move from our long-time home in the Mission to an improved facility in SOMA was a significant effort to address this issue, but it was increasingly clear that they were not enough to build the financial foundation we need not merely to survive, but to grow and thrive.

Recognizing that the organization needed fundamental change to sustain its contributions to community life, the Board embarked on a deep organizational examination that led to a substantial rethinking of our role in the community and a refining of our mission.

The layoffs follow a sold-out run of Chasing Mesherle, a play tackling white privelige and the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant at Fruitvale Station, in Oakland.

Intersection’s own programming will end, but they’ll still play host for other art shows. Additionally, Intersection’s Incubator programs will remain unaffected. The incubator spawned Litquake, Youth Speaks, Cutting Ball Theater, and many other arts programs and organizations are still being brewed there even now.

An art show on prison life at Intersection for the Arts.

In his post, Widmer invited the public to weigh in on the changes at Intersection by emailing transitions@theintersection.org.

We’ll post the full text of Chen, Rodriguez and San Jose’s email below.

We want to personally write you as our work and time at Intersection is suddenly coming to a close. As of June 1, Intersection will be undergoing substantial changes. As part of these changes, the three of us, in addition to other staff, will be laid off at the end of May. With the specific shifts in the economy and culture of San Francisco, it has been increasingly difficult to operate and sustain a community-based nonprofit arts organization like Intersection.

It is truly miraculous that we were able to exist for so long and be able to thrive with programs for as long as we did. Working together with Deborah Cullinan and other amazing colleagues for all the years we did, it worked not just because of the genuine investment and dedication of all at Intersection and us as a staff, but rather, it worked because of YOU — your creative vision, your zeal for social justice, your enthusiasm to collaborate, your desire to communicate and connect. We can not thank you enough for how much you have inspired us, changed us, and taught us. We are proud, still inspired, and ever changed by being able to support, develop, produce, and premiere new works of the highest order by artists and collaborators of the utmost amazing quality, originality, creativity, and heart – more than 15 years of new works and voices. Thank YOU. We look forward to witnessing more.

For the decade-plus that we have been able to work together, we have collaborated and worked for varied and multiple voices – the marginalized, under-represented, young, immigrant, queer, people of color, disenfranchised voices. We are proud of the work we have accomplished, birthing countless beautiful, resonant, and profound projects. Our work with community based organizations, schools, after-school programs, lock down facilities, coalitions, and individuals has allowed us to collectively flourish and grow.

We look forward to seeing you, experiencing new work, hearing and being part of dialogues, and partaking in both action and reaction to this world we all live in together. If you feel strongly about this kind of work that has happened at, with, and through Intersection over these past 15 years, we ask of you all:

DO IT!

MAKE IT HAPPEN!

TELL PEOPLE!

TELL OUR STORIES!

SUPPORT COMMUNITY!

CREATE ART!

In continued solidarity,

Kevin B. Chen

Rebeka Rodriguez

Sean San Jose

BART delays progress on wheelchair access in Fleet of the Future

Erica Hanna

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May 22, 2014

8

BART delays progress on wheelchair access in Fleet of the Future

A group of wheelchair users and others from the disability community plan to speak out against BART’s new “Fleet of the Future” at tonight’s BART Board of Directors meeting — again.

They’ve rallied for months, but so far, it seems the shiny new trains will be worse off for people with disabilities than the current fleet.

The Fleet of the Future has a number of futuristic bells and whistles: stop arrival video screens, cockpit touch screens, multi-bike racks, and digital outer signage. The new trains will roll out in 2015, and by 2017 BART’s fleet will begin to be fully replaced.

So the new trains are the new gold standard, but they won’t serve everyone well. A three pronged pole near the center of the car has the disability community up in arms, because they say it is so close to the doorway that it would obstruct powered wheelchairs entering the cars.

“We understand the poles are for people who may need more balance or support,” said Peter Mendoza, a community organizer at the Independent Living Resource Center. We spoke with him for a longer piece on Bay Area transit issues, “Waiting for Transit, [5/6].”

But for Mendoza, the issue is one of equity. The Americans with Disability Act guarantees equal access to public transit for people with disabilities, and the new poles make entry difficult for those with motorized wheelchairs.

“We don’t feel they should be in the path of travel of the BART train,” he said. Mendoza uses power wheelchairs regularly.

The advocates from the Disability Organizing Network plan on speaking at the BART Board of Directors tonight, they said on their Facebook event page.

“Pain day, but I think I can get there,” wrote one member on the Facebook event’s wall. Apparently even chronic pain won’t stop the community from advocating.

But despite several recent protests from the disability community, there’s been little change to the position of the poles, though the three columns were raised some.

The board had aimed to discuss the Fleet of the Future at tonight’s meeting, but it has since been pushed back till June, BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told us.

“The BART Accessibility Task Force is meeting today and will be discussing the Fleet of the Future,” Trost said. But this is far from the first time they’ve considered disability access problems relating to the Fleet of the Future.

“From day one, [the task force] identified the pole as being a problem,” BART Access Coordinator Ike Nnaji told us, but apparently, the engineers and the BART board didn’t listen.

The Guardian asked BART board member Tom Radulovich if the pole will be removed. He responded, “I don’t know,” though he said he never liked the poles.

“And,” he said, “I have let BART know that.” For now though, the jury is still out.

Shortly before we went to press, we talked to Mendoza yet again, just as he left the Accessibility Task Force to travel to attend the board meeting tonight. When he got off his train at 19th street BART station, he had to go back to the 12th street station, delaying his plan to speak for disability access.

The elevators were out of service.

Supes won’t let mayor raid CleanPowerSF without a fight

Erica Hanna

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May 21, 2014

20

Supes won’t let mayor raid CleanPowerSF without a fight

The Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee today voted to reject the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission budget, an effort by Sup. John Avalos and others to force Mayor Ed Lee to the bargaining table over the city’s neglected sustainable energy infrastructure needs.

“I wanted to get the mayor’s attention and to find a practical way to let the mayor know the Power Enterprise infrastructure needs help, as well as CleanPowerSF,” Avalos told the Guardian. CleanPowerSF would provide electricity derived from renewable sources to enrollees in the municipal program.

After CleanPowerSF was approved by a veto-proof majority on the Board of Supervisors last year, Lee’s appointees to the SFPUC blocked implementation of the program during what should have been a routine vote to set a maximum rate. Then Lee this year raided those funds and transferred them to his GoSolar program.

“Because he raided our funds, I worked with [fellow Budget Committee members Sups.] Eric Mar and London Breed to kill his budget,” Avalos told us, noting that he alerted Lee on Sunday of his intention to do so and never got a response. “It was remarkable that he thought he could just bring this to committee and thought everything was hunky-dory.”

Christine Falvey, the mayor’s spokesperson, said the mayor hadn’t had time yet to develop his next step but “the mayor is committed to funding GoSolar, a program that can start immediately, help us reach our agressive environmental goals and employ San Francisco residents.”

The tendrils of the mayor’s power could be felt even in the SFPUC’s Citizens’ Advisory Committee meeting last night. The committee makes recommendations to the PUC with no authority for mandate, but rather for long-term strategic, financial and capital improvement plans.

As the committee considered a vote to recommend the PUC move forward with CleanPowerSF, the tussle between the mayor and the supervisors reverberated through their frank discussions.

“The problem is the mayor is violently against this program,” said Walt Farrell, a committee member from Supervisor Norman Yee’s District 7. He added, “How will you convince them?”

Director of Policy and Administration at Power Enterprise Kim Malcolm was slated to be the Director of CleanPowerSF, but she deflected, saying it wasn’t up to her.

“We view our job as, we do what the policy makers tell us to do,” she said.

Jason Fried, executive director of the Local Agency Formation Commission, told the CAC most of the mayor’s concerns regarding CleanPowerSF have since been addressed.

The mayor critiqued the program for relying on Shell for energy, Fried said, but now Shell is out of the picture.

Kim Malcolm presents information on CleanPowerSF to the SFPUC Citizens’ Advisory Committee.

He said the program could also possibly provide extra money for Power Enterprise, the city’s Hetch Hetchy powered hydroelectric system.

Highlighting all the benefits of CleanPowerSF, Jess Derbin-Ackerman, a conservation organizer speaking on behalf of the Sierra Club, urged action.

“This program was in the works for ten years,” she said, and “it’s largely been fought because of political attachments to PG&E.”

She noted more than four other counties in Northern California are now shifting to clean power, and San Francisco lags behind.

“Get with it,” she said, “the rest of the Bay Area is.”

Ultimately the CAC opted to push the vote backing CleanPowerSF until its next meeting, due to absent members. The CAC’s chair, Wendolyn Aragon, supported the supervisors stalling the PUC budget.

“CleanPowerSF has been proven time and time again as a viable source of clean energy,” she told the Guardian. “But if Mayor Lee and the SFPUC Commissioners (whom he appoints) want to keep denying that … it’s time to draw a line in the sand.”

Now that the PUC’s budget has been formally rejected, the agency has $20 million in reserves that it can spend until it comes up with a budget that meets the approval of the Board of Supervisors, as the City Charter requires. In the meantime, Avalos called on Lee to negotiate in good faith with the board.

“The path forward is to negotiate,” Avalos told us. “The mayor has overstepped his bounds on this issue. He is not taking the leadership to convene us together to find a solution.”

Making sausage: Airbnb helped write its own regulations

Erica Hanna

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May 21, 2014

19

Making sausage: Airbnb helped write its own regulations

Documents obtained by the Bay Guardian show the active role that Airbnb played in helping craft the legislation by David Chiu that would regulate and legalize the company’s activities in San Francisco.

Emails we received through a Sunshine Ordinance request show that Chiu staffers and politically connected lobbyist David Owen, working for Airbnb, worked closely to craft the legislation. The emails, mostly from January 2013, detail conversations between Chiu’s staffer Amy Chan and Owen on how best to craft proposed regulations of “shared” housing spaces.

“Hi David, Take a look and see if this is useful,” begins a Jan. 30, 2013 message from Chan. “I included all the big picture policies and I left out some of the legalese. I’ll call (Deputy City Attorney) Marlena (Byrne) first thing in the morning if I don’t see a draft from her later tonight. And let’s definitely check in tomorrow.”

Whether or not that level of cooperation is acceptable depends where you stand: housing activists who see Chiu’s legislation as weak would no doubt cry foul, but sharing economy advocates may appreciate Chiu reaching out to the company on important legislation.

San Francisco Tenants Union Executive Director Ted Gullicksen was also copied on some of the emails and gave input, but Gullicksen didn’t seem to actually help write the legislation, only offering a few suggestions on proposed language.

Owen’s emails went further. “A slightly more cleaned up, consistent version. Please disregard previous,” Owen wrote to Chan and Byrne on Jan. 28. The title of the attached document was “AdmincodeBJcomments1-28revised,” and contained a draft of Chiu’s legislation with recent edits and revisions which were revealed using the Microsoft Word “track changes” function.

Was it unusual or inappropriate for Airbnb to play such an active role writing the legislation? “Is it common practice for stakeholders to give us feedback directly? Yes,” Chan told us. “We’ve had a number of stakeholders give us feedback.”

She referenced Gullicksen’s emails, and said she also sought input from other stakeholders such as unions and the Hotel Council. But Owen, who was a legislative aide to Chiu’s predecessor, Aaron Peskin, was the only one to make in-document changes and send them back to Chiu’s office.

Chan defended this by pointing out that other groups provided some language suggestions, but admitted that they did not write it directly in the legislation itself, nor was the feedback as extensive and detailed. Among Owen’s edits were small word-choice changes, from “unit” to “hosting platform,” from “will comply” to “is in full compliance,” from “for rent” to “rented.”

Seemingly minor changes were numerous, but other changes were more extensive, although not all were accepted. Owen emailed Chiu with a list of new proposed changes, including changing the number allowable rental days from 90 to 120, “understanding we’re not in full agreement here.” The final legislation kept it at 90 days.

“From the big picture perspective to say we’re only taking direct feedback from one group versus other groups is incorrect,” Chan said. “The direction comes from us, and we make the decision after all.”

Supervisors play politics with Sunshine appointments

Sasha Cuttler

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May 20, 2014

44

Supervisors play politics with Sunshine appointments

The Board of Supervisors today [Tues/20] considers reappointing three Sunshine Ordinance Task Force members after the board’s Rules Committee last week blocked other qualified nominees, including those named by organizations with designated seats on the board, a move critics say undermines the independence of the body.

SOTF is responsible for holding city officials to the open government ideals of the city’s voter-approved Sunshine Ordinance. When government makes backroom deals or shields public records from disclosure, the ordinance allow citizens (and journalists) to appeal to the SOTF, which rules on whether the ordinance was violated.

Sunshine advocates say the supervisors are stacking the task force with ineffective political appointees and barring the appointments of qualified, independent candidates. The Sunshine Ordinance, which Bay Guardian editors helped create in the ‘90s, gives New American Media, The League of Women Voters, and the Society of Professional Journalists-Northern California direct appointments to SOTF, pending supervisorial approval.

The SPJ appointed Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Mark Rumold, who works on EFF’s Transparency Project and has uncovered documents exposing federal surveillance activities, and Ali Winston, a local journalist who has broken big stories for the Center for Investigative Reporting and other media outlets using public records.

Rumold is considered one of the leading Freedom of Information Act litigators in the country, but was humble in his appointment interview at the Rules Committee. “I’m hoping to apply my experience to the task force to make San Francisco an open and more efficient government,” he said.

But those appointments and others were blocked last week at the Rules Committee by Sup. Katy Tang, who told the Guardian, “Personally, I would have liked to see stronger applicants,” claiming that they didn’t seem to have a good understanding of the Sunshine Ordinance and that she wanted more ethnic diversity on the body.

Yet the backdrop of these blocked appointments is a running battle that the SOTF has had with the Board of Supervisors over the last couple years, stemming mostly from the SOTF finding that some supervisors violated the ordinance in 2011 by not making public a package of late amendments while passing the massive Parkmerced project.

The City Attorney’s Office disagreed with the SOTF interpretation, just as it did earlier that year when the SOTF voted to change its bylaws surrounding how a quorum is calculated. They were the latest battles in a longstanding battle between SOTF and the City Attorney’s Office, which sunshine advocates criticize as being too lenient on city agencies that refuse to release documents.

“I was around when the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force decided to change some of the rules against the advice of the City Attorney’s Office,” Tang told us, calling such actions improper conduct and saying she won’t support any SOTF members who took part in that vote.

Thomas Peele, who co-chairs SPJ’s Freedom of Information Committee, which made the appointments, told us that he understands Tang’s points about diversity, but he doesn’t understand why Rumold and Winston were rejected, calling them strong candidates.

“We put up excellent, well qualified candidates,” he said. “One of the country’s leading FOIA lawyers and a very good police watchdog reporter doing work with Propublica and CIR.”

While critics contend the Tang and other supervisors are trying to weaken SOTF as a watchdog agency, Tang told us it wasn’t about SPJ’s appointments, noting that she also delayed the League of Women Voters appointment of Allyson Washburn. But she said all remain under consideration and could come up for a vote next month.

“I have every intention of supporting someone put forth by those organizations,” Tang told us. “I will have a conversation with both those organizations about their nominees.”

The SOTF has long struggled to fulfill its mandate. It has little means of enforcing its rulings, which usually require further actions by the City Attorney’s Office or the San Francisco Ethics Commission to have teeth.

After the Rules Committee blocked the reappointment of Bruce Wolfe in 2012, citing his role in defying the City Attorney’s Office, it was essentially dormant for more than four months because it couldn’t meet without a seated member from the disability community, until Bruce Oka was finally appointed in November 2012.

Currently, the Sunshine Task Force has a backlog of over 62 complaints against city agencies for not adhering to the city’s sunshine records policies, dating back to 2012. The three re-appointments the Rules Committee did approve, which will go before the Board of Supervisors today, are Todd David, David Pilpel and Louise Fischer — none of whom have much support among longtime Sunshine Ordinance advocates.

“The supervisors,” Peele told us, “appear to have an issue with having a strong Sunshine Task Force.”

Karen Clopton, past president of the League of Women Voters said she was disappointed that Washburn, a former League board member, wasn’t appointed and said the SOTF should be independent: “It’s extremely important for us to make sure we entrust such an important task to an individual who is trustworthy, nonpartisan, and devoted to nonpartisanship.”

Dear United States: #Jessicastux discrimination shows SF inequality

Erica Hanna

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May 19, 2014

41

Dear United States,

Yes, you’ve found San Francisco out. You’ve got us. Our city is not the bastion of equality we claim it to be.

It’s something most San Franciscans know, but now you, the country, are getting a peek at how discriminatory our local institutions can actually be.

Just last week, the news of Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep’s discrimination against young Jessica Urbina went viral. Urbina just wanted to wear a tuxedo in her yearbook photo, and the Catholic school, Sacred Heart, said it would not print her photo in a yearbook because she wasn’t in a dress.

The resulting social media firestorm blew up in national media, propelled by the hashtag #jessicastux. Today Sacred Heart issued an apology, offering to work on its policies moving forward.

“On Friday, May 16, the school communicated that it will change its policy regarding senior portraits. We agree with our students who showed solidarity with their classmate that the current policy regarding senior portraits is not adequate to meet the needs of our families or our mission. We will involve our students, families, and Board in crafting the updated policy.

…

Many people suggest that the past few days have been deeply revealing about our school community. We agree. We are an imperfect community that can and does fail. We are a community that is open to self-reflection, and to the constructive criticism and leadership of its students, as well as to the criticism from members of our broader community. We are a community that strives to grow, improve and do what is right. We are a community that sees, in all situations, an opportunity to learn.”

But before we let Sacred Heart be crucified in the court of public opinion, let’s remember an old religious maxim: let ye who is without sin cast the first stone. And when it comes to inequality, San Francisco has many sinners.

Yes, dear country, you spent the last week utterly aghast that San Francisco, the champion of marriage equality, could discriminate against an LGBT teen.

You really don’t know the half of it.

Take our public schools. Even as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of Brown vs. the Board of Education, an investigative report by the San Francisco Public Press revealed massive inequality in San Francisco public elementary schools. Though the SFUSD suffered funding cuts totalling $113 million in the 2009-10 school year (after numerous annual state cuts), some public schools managed to stave off layoffs and provide excellent facilities for their children. The catch? Only the elementary schools attended by rich families survived, bouyed by nearly $3 million in PTSA fundraising in 11 elementary schools.

But 35 of SFUSD’s elementary schools raised no money at all. These schools are not surprisingly attended mostly by the city’s poorest families, and their schools were met with brutal cuts.

The SFUSD is only now allowing students to wear hats (including some religious headgear), and is only now considering raising its minimum wage to San Francisco’s minimum of $10.24 an hour (as a state entity, it only has to pay $8 an hour).

And lest we pick on the schools too much, the explosive tech industry has had its impacts on San Francisco equality too. As taxi drivers flock to rideshare companies like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, there are fewer drivers to drive wheelchair-accessible taxis. Those rideshare companies don’t yet have a plan to offer service to our city’s many persons with disabilities. Even our beloved regional transit system, BART, has new proposed “trains of the future” offering less space for electric wheelchairs to move around as well.

San Francisco has also seen massive numbers of folks displaced by the tech boom, symbolized (and even exacerberated) by our city’s most hated/loved/over-discussed behemoths, the Google buses.

We’ve even got the second highest inequality in the United States, fast headed for number one. Go us.

And though Bill O’Reilly at Fox News loves to make funny videos about San Francisco’s homeless while he talks up our love of hippies, he’s got it all wrong (unfortunately). The city issues numerous citations against homeless youth for the act of sitting down in the Haight Ashbury district (the birthplace of the Summer of Love), and has struggled with policies to help the homeless for over 10 years running.

Also, did we mention one in four San Franciscans are food insecure? That means about 200,000 San Franciscans don’t have enough money to eat healthily, and many are near starvation.

Yes, dear country, San Francisco espouses many loving principles, and we do have an innate sense of justice to help immigrants, the poor, and the marginalized.

But we still have a long, long way to go.

Best,

A San Franciscan.

KUSF’s axe-man, Father Privett, stepping down

Erica Hanna

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May 16, 2014

40

KUSF’s axe-man, Father Privett, stepping down

The University of San Francisco president who sold off beloved community radio station KUSF in 2011 is stepping down in August, the university recently announced. Father Stephen Privett is known by elected officials and higher-education folks as a strong, stalwart 14-year leader of San Francisco’s oldest university. But to local artists and music lovers, Privett was and will always be the axe-man of KUSF.

And no, we don’t mean he shredded on the guitar.

KUSF continues to rock on as San Francisco Community Radio, but in 2011 its spot on the terrestial dial was sold and closed.

The day it went down, KUSF radio’s employees and volunteers were unexpectedly tossed out of their studio, the locks were changed, and they learned then and there that the station was sold. The signal went dark, radios went silent. The USF-hosted radio station long broadcasted renegade tunes on 90.3 FM, with programming in a variety of languages few other stations replicated.

Privett brought the hatchet down on the beloved radio station, silently. The backroom deal to sell KUSF’s spot on the dial to a Southern California classic music radio station was brewed largely in the dark, with only two KUSF employees told before the day the station was shuttered. Both were silenced under non-disclosure agreements, according to news reports at the time.

In his farewell interview with USF’s campus magazine, Privett touched on his controversial decision.

“KUSF was originally student run and operated, and a valuable learning laboratory. It morphed over time into a community enterprise where only 10 percent of the workers were USF students, while USF remained 100 percent responsible for its operation and costs.

Our mission is to educate in the Jesuit Catholic tradition, not to provide opportunities largely for non-students. I am obligated to spend tuition dollars to support student learning, and that’s how the proceeds were used: to fund scholarships and academic programs.

USF continues to offer students solid learning opportunities at KUSF.org, which is entirely student-staffed and streamed live on the Internet.”

It’s safe to say former KUSF DJs and volunteers aren’t sad to see him go.

“Sadly, a black cloud continues to linger over Father Privett’s legacy, due to his shady and dishonest actions in killing one of the largest and most vital community radio stations in San Francisco,” former KUSF Music Director (and DJ) Irwin Swirnoff told the Guardian. “With all the drastic changes the city has gone through since the sale of the station, the loss of KUSF is extra devastating as the need for a spot on the terrestrial dial for artists, activists, musicians, and underrepresented communities.”

Privett has led San Francisco’s oldest university for 14 years, and this will be his last semester presiding over the Jesuit institution. This weekend, May 16-17, Privett will send off a graduating USF class for the last time. Meanwhile, the fate of the former KUSF-in-Exile, now SFCR, is still in limbo.

The staff and volunteers of KUSF filed an appeal of the sale of the station with the Federal Communications Commission back in 2012, former KUSF DJ Damin Esper told the Guardian. The appeal has neither been ruled on nor dismissed.

SFCR also filed with the FCC for a new spot on the dial, 102.5 FM. The frequency is known as Low Power FM, which has a variable broadcast strength. On its blog, SFCR says the broadcast range of 102.5 FM is as of yet unclear.

But what is clear is that no matter what his accomplishments at USF, Privett will long be remembered in San Francisco as the man who shut down KUSF.

“The station was gutted and demolished; dorms now stand in its place,” former DJ Andre Torrez told the Guardian. “He did what he felt he had to do in order to make his instant millions. Our vast vinyl library was handed over to the Prometheus archive, with no option for the Save KUSF volunteer/ activist group, which still broadcasts online only, to purchase or access the collection.”

“We were major. We had Nirvana, The Ramones, Metallica, Iggy, Green Day, and more recently Ty Segall all as live in-studio guests when they were emerging artists or on the brink of breaking through. Father Privett probably wasn’t fully aware of how important KUSF was, but we certainly would have let him know how we felt had he cared or asked.”

“He has been instrumental in killing community terrestrial radio in San Francisco,” Torrez said, “and for that, he should be ashamed.”

Photos: Oakland fast food workers join strike with #FastFoodGlobal movement

Erica Hanna

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May 15, 2014

9

Photos: Oakland fast food workers join strike with #FastFoodGlobal movement

Last year, Bay Area fast food workers marched for higher wages. Today hundreds marched against Oakland restaurants serving Whoppers and Big Macs again, but now they’ve super-sized their movement.

Today [Thurs/15], fast food workers worldwide rose up for fair wages and the right to unionize. The protest spanned 150 US cities, as well as 33 countries across the world. Twitter flooded with photos of protesters in Argentina, France, Morocco, and Japan.

And protesting fast food workers in the Bay Area increased in number thanks to new workers joining the movement in Pleasanton, Livermore, and Oakland, workers told us.

The Oakland march picketed a McDonald’s on East 12th Street, and a Burger King at on 13th and Broadway, among other locations.

Last year, KFC worker Jose Martinez helped organize the Oakland march. Since then, he said, his bosses have shown little inclination to help workers.

“Nothing has changed,” Martinez said. “I’ve been working there four years, and I haven’t had a raise — $8.25 is nothing, I can’t live on that.”

Martinez is a student, seemingly fitting in the conservative national narrative of workers who don’t deserve to earn more. But Martinez says the pay is not enough to pay for basic needs while he attends school.

And many workers we talked to before today’s strike also support their families.

“I haven’t had a raise in three years,” a McDonald’s worker who identified herself as Markeisha told us just after she went out on strike from an Oakland McDonald’s in December. Markeisha said she has two children and she is their sole provider.

Another common misconception is that workers are merely fighting for higher wages. Although raises are among their needs, fast food workers also contend they are a vulnerable workforce. Wage theft, low salaries, slashed hours, and punitive measures for speaking out are among the grievances fast food workers allege against their bosses at chains including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell.

“One thing we found when talking to fast food workers was wage theft issues were high,” Service Employees International Union Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly told the Guardian. “When you’re making $8-11 an hour, a couple shifts can be the difference between paying the rent or not.”

Workers we talked to at the last strike alleged their jobs at McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken paid so low they had to also enroll in CalFresh (food stamps) to afford food. That sort of government subsidy for big business puts a strain on the taxpayer, former Labor Secretary and current UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich noted on his blog.

McDonald’s alleged last year’s actions were strikes-in-name-only. “To right-size the headlines, however, the events taking place are not strikes. Outside groups are traveling to McDonald’s and other outlets to stage rallies,” McDonald’s wrote in a press statement.

Counter to the corporate narrative, the Bay Guardian witnessed multiple Oakland McDonald’s workers joining picket lines (captured on video).

But it seems McDonald’s is worried about how the protests will affect its bottom line. As first reported by Salon, McDonald’s public SEC filings report the company list protests and strikes in its “Risk Factors and Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements.”

“The impact of campaigns by labor organizations and activists,” is one forward looking risk to the company’s future earnings, McDonald’s wrote in their filing, “including through the use of social media and other mobile communications and applications, to promote adverse perceptions of the quick-service category of the IEO segment or our brand, management, suppliers or franchisees.”

Below are images from #FastFoodGlobal strikes and protests in Oakland and around the world.

Lots of moms and kids among the protesters at #Oakland McDonalds #FastFoodGlobal pic.twitter.com/hXTykUQcPx

— Julia Wong (@juliacarriew) May 15, 2014

Bet you were wondering “What about Nepal?” KATMANDU #FastFoodGlobal pic.twitter.com/ywPlS8Xyhf

— Low Pay Is Not OK (@LowPayIsNotOK) May 15, 2014

Massive @FastFoodForward march of striking workers in NYC #FastFoodGlobal pic.twitter.com/AwVSTb4Sxo #solidarity #fightfor15 @nermeendn @ROC_NY

— Jonathan Leavitt (@JCL_VT) May 15, 2014

Now: Argentina is bringing the clown down! #FastFoodGlobal #RonaldMcDonald pic.twitter.com/LXfQIiDpap

— Low Pay Is Not OK (@LowPayIsNotOK) May 15, 2014

NU-HRCT general secretary speaks in support of Swiss fast food workers. #FastFoodGlobal #fightfor15 pic.twitter.com/qwbbwKLuq7

— NU-HRCT (@NUHRCT) May 15, 2014

Live: In Casablanca, Morocco @McDonalds can’t hide. Give workers a raise! pic.twitter.com/yWD6Ar71q3

— Low Pay Is Not OK (@LowPayIsNotOK) May 15, 2014

solidarity with fast food workers in the world #France #starbucks #Paris Montparnasse #fastfoodglobal @IUFglobal pic.twitter.com/uC0zFMFcJm

— CFDT HTR Services (@cfdt_htr) May 15, 2014

こちらもブラジル。　RT @JoeSimoes2: #FastFoodGlobal #lowpayisnotok curitiba Brasil pic.twitter.com/LfHNd3XIrH

— yamada shingo (@syashingo) May 15, 2014

#fastfoodglobal # hungryforjustice #fastfoodrights McDonald’s belfast city centre pic.twitter.com/tztwlJrP33

— Laura Graham (@Laura_Graham8) May 15, 2014

“#Glasgow #Scotland #fastfoodglobal @McDonalds-Pay living wage+respect workers’ rights pic.twitter.com/9LgIBZYdQy” @FastfoodRights @labornick

— Julie Sherry (@Juliebsherry) May 15, 2014

The view from McDonalds. Dublin supports #Fastfoodglobal #fightfor15 #union pic.twitter.com/ps07n1vuCI

— Ian McArdle (@IanMcArdle1) May 15, 2014

Pakistani workers in action! Global #solidarity #FastFoodGlobal pic.twitter.com/maHtvrfSgh

— IUF (@IUFglobal) May 15, 2014

#India #FastFoodGlobal pic.twitter.com/pBV3MbdbPC

— artika ashdhir (@cribbing_tree) May 15, 2014

Not lovin’ it: Fast food workers in Tokyo protest to demand higher wages http://t.co/rEwiwH11YU pic.twitter.com/YnVkEkAb1V

— RT (@RT_com) May 15, 2014

Fast food workers strike in the Bay Area and worldwide

Erica Hanna

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May 15, 2014

0

Bay Area fast food workers who walked out and picketed their stores last year are set for a repeat performance in their battle against the house that Big Mac built, timed to debut right as the Guardian hits the streets. And this strike is also set to expand.

On May 15, fast food workers worldwide plan to rise up in protest of unfair labor practices and punitive actions by their bosses. Fast food workers in the Bay Area will be joining the strike. Labor sources tell us their numbers may double thanks to new workers joining the movement in Pleasanton, Livermore, and Oakland.

The new Oakland march is twofold: One will picket a McDonald’s on East 12th Street, and another a McDonald’s on 14th and Jackson.

“I haven’t had a raise in three years,” a McDonald’s worker who identified herself as Markeisha told us just after she went out on strike from an Oakland McDonald’s in December. And contrary to the common narrative of fast food workers being independent teenagers, Markeisha said she has two children, and she is their sole provider.

Another common misconception is that workers are merely fighting for higher wages. Although raises are among their needs, fast food workers also contend they are a vulnerable workforce. Wage theft, low salaries, slashed hours, and punitive measures for speaking out are among the grievances fast food workers allege against their bosses at chains including McDonalds, Burger King, and Taco Bell.

“One thing we found when talking to fast food workers was wage theft issues were high,” Service Employees International Union Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly told the Guardian. “When you’re making $8-11 an hour, a couple shifts can be the difference between paying the rent or not.”

Workers we talked to at the last strike alleged their jobs at McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken paid so low they had to also enroll in CalFresh (food stamps) to afford food. That sort of government subsidy for big business puts a strain on the taxpayer, former Labor Secretary and current UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich noted on his blog.

McDonalds alleges last year’s actions were strikes-in-name-only. “To right-size the headlines, however, the events taking place are not strikes. Outside groups are traveling to McDonald’s and other outlets to stage rallies,” McDonald’s wrote in a press statement.

Counter to the corporate narrative, the Bay Guardian witnessed multiple Oakland McDonalds workers joining picket lines (captured on video: “Oakland joins 100 cities in national strike,” Dec. 5,www.sfbg.com).

The next Fast Food Strike will have a world focus. Earlier this month, Salon.com reported the strike will reach cities including Karachi, Casablanca, London, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Geneva and San Salvador.

“The fast food organizing across the country speaks to how this issue is capturing not just the public imagination,” Daly told us, “but speaking to low-wage workers realities to struggling simply to live.”

Porn stars write-in against mandatory condom bill

Erica Hanna

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May 15, 2014

5

Porn stars write-in against mandatory condom bill

A website and letter-writing campaign against a statewide mandatory condoms-in-porn bill launched on Monday.

The website has no stated backer or “about” page, but an embedded video PSA against the mandatory condoms-in-porn-bill is hosted at a YouTube page of local porn studio Kink.com.

AB 1576, sponsored by Assemblymember Isadore Hall III (D-Los Angeles), would require porn actors to wear condoms at all shoots, mandate STD tests, and require porn studios to keep health data on its actors. Locally, Kink.com and other porn studios alleged if the bill passes, they may choose to leave California.

“AB 1576 is opposed by both adult film performers and filmmakers because it puts performers’ health at risk,” AB1576.org states. “It would also effectively force California’s adult film industry out of state and underground, putting thousands of people out of work and costing the state a multi-billion dollar business.”

The subject of Kink.com’s possible move from the historic Armory building in the Mission District is the topic of a story in this week’s Bay Guardian, “Getting the Kink Out, [5/14].” The Division of Occupational Safety and Health (formerly Cal/OSHA) fined Kink.com $78,000 for safety violations related to the alleged HIV infection of two actors on the set of a Kink.com shoot last year.

Porn performers have already taken to Twitter using the #stopAB1576 hashtag to speak out against the bill.

“Shame on you for taking away performer rights, Isadore Hall,” tweeted performer Anikka Albrite.

A video PSA against the mandatory condom in porn bill, via Kink.com.

The stop AB 1576 website also calls out the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, largely seen as the driver of the mandatory condom bill. It claims the foundation is pushing the bill for a “hidden agenda.”

AIDS Healthcare Foundation spokesperson Ged Kenslea told us condoms were already essentially mandatory under state law, given workplace protections against contact with infectious materials, and enforcement of those regulations is the organization’s goal.

“It’s not a hidden agenda,” he said,”it’s a pretty straightforward agenda.”

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has been pretty vocal, leading press conferences with porn perfromers and politicians to champion the bill, which they say strengthens existing regulations.

“Federal and state OSHA statutes require condom use,” Kensela said. “That’s something (Kink CEO) Peter Acworth has not been compliant with. While he threatens to go to another state, those statutes apply there as well.”

But Kensela warned tthat being so loud and out in opposition to the bill may actually damage the porn industry’s cause.

Not just performer but HUMAN rights too @kinkdotcom Shame on you for taking away performer rights, Isadore Hall #stopab1576 (cont…

— Anikka Albrite (@AnikkaAlbrite) April 29, 2014

“There is middle ground, but this is poking the bear,” he said. The porn industry, he said, erroneously suggests the regulations are burdensome on acts like cumshots, claiming “there will be goggles and space suits.”

“In fact that won’t be what AB 1576 would require,” he said.

But inspectors from DOSH told the Guardian even cumshot facials run afoul of state regulations, because it exposes eyes and mucus membrane to bloodborne pathogens.

So is the AIDS Healthcare Foundation picking and choosing which regulations it cares to emphasize?

“We do not have a realistic expectation,” Kensela said, “that condom use for oral sex is necessary or practical, and similar with goggles.”

Free Sunday meter plan challenged with environmental review

Erica Hanna

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May 14, 2014

140

Free Sunday meter plan challenged with environmental review

Transit advocacy groups filed an appeal today challenging a controversial vote by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Board of Directors to end paid Sunday meters last month.

The appeal contests paid Sunday meters were a benefit to many, and the decision to terminate the program was made without adequate review under the California Environmental Quality Act.

“The enforcement of parking meters on Sunday in San Francisco has been doing exactly what it was designed to do,” the appeal argues, “reduce traffic congestion, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase parking availability, and increase revenues in the City and County of San Francisco.”

The appeal was filed by transit groups Livable City, The San Francisco Transit Riders Union, and an individual, Mario Tanev. The appeal will now go to the Board of Supervisors, for a vote to approve or deny review under CEQA.

SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told the Guardian, “We’ll take a look at the appeal, but it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment at this time.” The SFMTA had only just recieved notice of the appeal.

Proponents of paid Sunday meters also spoke at the SFMTA board meeting, shortly before the paid meters were struck down.

“Your own studies show meters are beneficial to shoppers and businesses,” Tanev said during public comment. “You could have used this money to support seniors and people with disabilities who clearly need it.”

And the need from those groups was clear, as over 200 seniors and people with disabilities came to the meeting to advocate for free Muni. The SFMTA board denied the request for free Muni for seniors and disabilities just before voting to approve a budget that included rescinding the paid Sunday meters.

The Sunday meters program brought in $11 million, more than enough money to pay for all of the proposed free Muni programs, as many at the SFMTA meeting pointed out.

Shortly after the vote, SFMTA Board of Directors Chairman Tom Nolan told the Guardian he felt pushed from all sides.

“I’ve been on the SFMTA board for years, and I’ve never felt more pressure,” he said. “This is the hardest budget in the eight years I’ve been on the board.”

At the meeting, many seniors noted the rising cost of living in San Francisco, combined with declining federal assistance and retirement funds, are forcing hard choices on seniors. Many spoke of forgoing doctor’s trips because they could not afford Muni, or of forgoing food in order to afford Muni trips.

“Muni is for everybody, especially those who need it most,” Nolan said. “The testimony was very heartbreaking.”

Embedded below is the CEQA appeal filed against the free Sunday meter decision.

CEQA Appeal – SFMTA Sunday Meter Enforcement by FitztheReporter