Rebecca Bowe

Police Commission braces for another Taser debate

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Police Commission braces for another Taser debate

The San Francisco Police Department, police commissioners, and community advocates are gearing up for another debate about whether or not SFPD officers should carry and use Tasers. The hearing will be held at tomorrow’s Feb. 23 police commission meeting.

Interim Police Chief Jeff Godown — carrying forward a plan that originated with his predecessor, former police chief George Gascon — called for a hearing on the Taser proposal, according to a Police Commission spokesperson. If it wins approval, the SFPD will begin conducting research to develop training and policy guidelines for the SFPD to implement Tasers. The issue has ignited fierce debate in the past, and resistance is likely to be revived on this go-round.

Last year, the commission rejected Gascon’s proposal to add Tasers to police officers’ use-of-force options. Now, Commissioner Angela Chan, who was appointed last year by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors after the proposal had been defeated, is emerging as a voice of dissent.

Chan submitted a handful of reports published by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International, and other sources critical of Tasers for commissioners to review prior to the meeting. She’s also preparing a 45-minute presentation highlighting concerns about the weapons.

The SFPD will give its own 45-minute presentation to try and convince commissioners that it should be allowed to move forward with the plan this time. “It’s another tool for officers to use when encountering violent persons,” noted Sgt. Mike Andraychak, a police spokesperson.

Andraychak said it was too soon to provide any details about whether the Taser proposal would take the form of a pilot program, or be implemented all at once. He did not have specific information about how training would be developed, how the department planned to solicit input from various communities, or how long the department expected to be working on a draft policy if the police commission granted approval. Chak did note that if the SFPD moves forward, it may host town hall meetings about Tasers.

The Feb. 23 police commission meeting is likely to bring vociferous community opposition. The Coalition on Homelessness (COH) and a number of other community-based organizations are encouraging people to attend the meeting and speak during public comment.

In a letter submitted to the police commission, Asian and Southeast Asian Societies, Causa Justa (Just Cause), The Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, COH, and other community advocates point out that Tasers have been declared a form of torture by a UN torture panel, and cite a University of Calfornia San Francisco study finding that police shootings more than doubled in the first full year of Taser implementation.

The community organizations also pointed out that Tasers are manufactured in Scottsdale, Ariz. — and San Francisco is still boycotting Arizona for enacting SB 1070, a bill that has drawn widespread criticism for encouraging racial profiling. Meanwhile, in a lean budget year, the cost of implementing Tasers is estimated at around $2 million, according to the letter.

Despite being turned down last time, the department has revived its Taser proposal in the wake of two officer-involved shootings early this year, including one that struck a mentally ill, wheelchair-bound man who was brandishing a knife. That case came under scrutiny after it was caught on a phone camera and posted to YouTube.

Following that incident, Gascon suggested that the outcome may have been different if officers had the option of deploying Tasers.

Yet Allen Hopper, police practices director at the ACLU, questions the idea that deploying a Taser would have been the correct response in that circumstance — especially in light of a recent Police Commission vote to strengthen SFPD practices when encountering people with mental illness. The Commission recently directed the SFPD to establish a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT), based on a policing model that emphasizes deescalation. Yet Hopper says deploying a Taser would achieve just the opposite.

“We think it’s putting the cart before the horse to give the police Tasers before they put that plan into effect,” Hopper said. People with mental-health problems, he added, are more likely to be on strong medication, or prone to excited emotional states and rapid heart rates — all of which could place them at a higher risk for serious injury or even death if struck with a Taser.

Counted among a class of weapons called conducted energy devices, Tasers deliver a painful electric jolt when deployed, temporarily immobilizing a subject by disrupting the central nervous system and causing involuntary muscle contractions. While they tend to be hailed by law enforcement as non-lethal alternatives to firearms, human-rights organizations have criticized Tasers because accidental deaths have been linked to their use. According to a report by Amnesty International, more than 330 people were reported to have died in the last decade after being struck by police Tasers. While not all of those deaths were directly attributed to the Tasers in coroners’ reports, many of the people who died were found to be in “excited states of delirium” or under the influence of illegal drugs or prescription medications when they were Tasered.

“My girlfriend is a hacker”: Inside the EFF party

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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2

On our way to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s 21st Birthday party, my programmer friend explained to me why, if it weren’t for the work of the good folks over at EFF, neither eBay nor WikiLeaks could do their thing.

See, it’s all about encryption, a topic my friend is slightly obsessed with. It used to be illegal for anyone but the government to send encrypted information through electronic channels, he explained, using technology that’s now commonplace and used in any website that requires a log in. In the 1990s, the EFF came along with a lawsuit to open up the ability to offer a secure transfer of information to the masses. The tech law firm prevailed, and soon it became possible to securely log in to a website and enter your credit card information without fear that it would be intercepted. Hence, the trail was blazed for online shopping.

From minds far more subversive than that of Meg Whitman sprang a very different use of the technology. Utilizing encryption software, WikiLeaks designed a way for whistleblowers to securely submit classified documents to an online repository.

That’s just one of many accomplishments that EFF could point to at its Feb. 16 celebration. A nonprofit, EFF “fights for freedom primarily in the courts,” according to its website, taking on the US government and major corporations on issues that threaten Internet freedom and digital rights. EFF boasts more than 61,000 contacts through its Action Center, which it uses to beat back bad legislation and raise awareness.

Just in the last few weeks, EFF has taken on the FBI over its plan to expand federal surveillance laws, weighed in on net neutrality, fended off against attacks from Congress over its aggressive protection of online privacy, and spearheaded a program that allows web users to surf secure all the time.

The EFF staged its 21st bash at Bricks and Mortar Media (BAMM.tv), a “content creation factory” in SoMa.

The place was adorned with festive, futuristic hacker art, from a flat-screen monitor displaying a word cloud, to a stage setup featuring an aerial array of computer bits and video game controllers.

One room featured a live video feed projected onto the wall with a strobe-light effect, and partygoers delighted in throwing kung-fu kicks in front of it and watching themselves flicker on screen like action figures seconds later.

In true tech-pioneer fashion, the night featured live nerdcore performances. What’s nerdcore? Let me put it this way. When the star of Dual Core shouts into the mic, “Throw your hands in the air if you’ve got mad skills,” the people he’s addressing really do have mad skills – like programming, web design, developing apps for mobile devices, managing vast databases, creating video games, and yes, even hacking. One of Dual Core’s raps included the line, “My girlfriend is a hacker.” He’s clearly smitten.

Several chiptune artists also performed, including Crashfaster  — “a chip musician, retro remixer, and low-bit concert promoter whose outreach has galvanized the Bay Area’s vibrant chiptune community,” according to EFF – and Trash80, “the eminent chip musician behind ArduinoBoy — software that helps integrate the Nintendo Game Boy into any existing electronic music arsenal.”

I had the honor of chatting with Doctor Popular, described on EFF’s site as a “professional yo-yoer, nerdcore artist, and innovator.” The good doctor makes music using only an iPhone, iPad, and some wires. He told me he writes songs using a handful of apps while riding CalTrain from San Francisco to San Mateo for his day job at a company that makes video games.

And oh, the nerdy crowd! The knowing glint in their eyes, those people who really understand how to manipulate technology. They program software, develop apps, eat, sleep and breathe online communication, whip out iPhones and Droid phones and talk about video games, latest versions of browsers and operating systems, and other matters that this reporter could not quite comprehend, because they were using acronyms.

They were gracious. “Sorry,” some one said to me after launching into a paragraph of alphabet-soup gibberish to my programmer friend. “Sometimes I forget, and then I notice people’s eyes glazing over.”

And yet, when you hang out with hardcore nerdcore fans, you learn the most fascinating things. For example, how when you begin typing “Torrent” into a Google search engine, the word “torrent” will not show up in the automatic feed that suggests search terms. Why? Well, there are theories.

Planned Parenthood calls for support against GOP attack

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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6

As the struggle to keep the doors open at the legendary women’s clinic, Lyon-Martin Health Services, continues here in San Francisco, yet another blow to women’s health care at the national level has advocates sounding the alarm. Planned Parenthood has issued a call for help defeating a federal bill it’s calling “the most dangerous legislative assault on women’s health and Planned Parenthood in our 95-year history.”

Congress is gearing up to vote on the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which would eliminate federal funding for all health-care services provided by any clinic that offers abortion services. The legislation places Planned Parenthood, a leading national provider of reproductive health care serving primarily low-income and uninsured women, squarely in the crosshairs.

The bill was proposed by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IL), who apparently has serious beef with Planned Parenthood.

While Pence has sought to convince lawmakers that the bill would eliminate federal funding only for abortions, its reach is actually much broader than that, and it would deliver a devastating blow to basic reproductive health services for millions of women.

“This bill would eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood health centers — including funding for birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing, and more,” notes a statement on Planned Parenthood’s website. “The consequences of this bill are clear — and they would be devastating. More women would have unintended pregnancies. Cancer would develop, undiagnosed, in countless women. There is no doubt: cutting off millions of women from care they have no other way to afford places them at risk of sickness and death.”

Even Cosmo has weighed in, noting that this federal funding is helping millions of women stay healthy or detect early stages of disease: “Last year, that money (which would dry up completely if the bill is passed) went towards 2.2 million Pap tests, 2.3 million breast exams, and over six million tests for STDs.”

City Attorney Dennis Herrera has joined in the calls for defense of Planned Parenthood, issuing an email blast as part of his mayoral campaign asking voters to sign a petition against the Pence legislation. “New efforts by the far right to eliminate funding from all Planned Parenthood health centers nationwide pose a dangerous and immediate threat to women’s health,” Herrera wrote in the campaign message.

A number of other online petitions are circulating on this issue as well. Go here or here to learn more.

Dense in the west

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Dense in the west

rebeccab@sfbg.com

A marathon special meeting of the San Francisco Planning Commission on Feb. 10 demonstrated a clear split over Parkmerced, a $1.2 billion private development project that will rebuild an entire existing neighborhood on the west side of San Francisco.

While some expressed strong enthusiasm for moving forward with the ambitious plan, many residents turned out to voice vehement opposition, citing concerns about traffic congestion, noise, dust, and the demolition of affordable apartments that some Parkmerced tenants have occupied for decades.

The votes to certify the project’s environmental analysis and send the plan onto the Board of Supervisors with a commission endorsement were split 4-3, with Commissioners Christina Olague, Hisashi Sugaya, and Kathrin Moore dissenting.

Those who voted no were appointees of the Board of Supervisors, while the four commissioners who voted in favor were appointees of former Mayor Gavin Newsom, suggesting a break along clear political lines. State Assemblymember Tom Ammiano also submitted a letter urging commissioners not to approve the project.

While Parkmerced Investors LLC, the project sponsor, eagerly awaits groundbreaking, spokesperson P.J. Johnston noted that they weren’t there yet. “First,” he said, “we have to break ground at the Board of Supervisors.”

 

IS IT GREEN?

The Parkmerced redesign has been touted as an ecological and sustainable beacon for urban development and, indeed, some features of the grand plan read as if they were plucked from a checklist from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green-neighborhood standards.

Walkable, bikeable streets with proximity to transit? Check. Water-efficient landscaping? Check. Energy-efficient dwellings? Check. Project sponsors claim that through dramatic reductions in per capita resource consumption, three times as many residents would consume the same amount of water and electricity as Parkmerced’s current population does today.

Johnston emphasized how adding new units to the west side of the city also helped contribute to “density equality,” since most new projects tend to be concentrated in the eastern neighborhoods.

Johnston was particularly jazzed about an innovative storm-water discharge system envisioned for the plan, which he described as a design that could “regenerate and repair the environment.” It would recirculate rainwater through a naturally filtrating system of ponds and bioswales to recharge Lake Merced, a water body that has been slowly shrinking due to being choked off from its natural watershed by a concrete urban barrier.

Green points might be awarded for plans for an on-site organic garden, but Commissioner Michael Antonini, who said he lives less than a mile from Parkmerced, cautioned that developers shouldn’t get too attached to that idea. After all, he said, many kinds of vegetables won’t thrive in that part of the city.

Meanwhile, the wholesale destruction of existing units is decidedly not eco-chic. The Green Building Council’s LEED neighborhood standards insist that “historic resource preservation and adaptive reuse” is always preferable in a green development — and that’s the point that Aaron Goodman, an architect who previously lived at Parkmerced, has been driving at for more than a year. Proponents maintain that Parkmerced’s wartime construction meant it was built with inferior materials, and that property owners have battled dry rot and other infrastructure problems.

Another not-so-green Parkmerced project feature has also raised eyebrows: parking. While proponents portray the redesign as a switch from a suburban, love-affair-with-the-automobile style to an enlightened departure from car-centrism, plans nonetheless include a parking space for every single unit.

That creates the potential for more than 6,000 new cars on the road in that area, and the 19th Avenue corridor is already notorious for traffic snarls. According to calculations by the Environmental Protection Agency, the typical American motorist generates more than five metric tons of carbon dioxide by driving in a given year.

 

REPLACING WHAT’S THERE

Before the Planning Commission meeting, residents from the Parkmerced Action Coalition — a relatively new residents’ group formed to oppose the redevelopment and a wholly different entity from the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization — made a public show of their dissatisfaction outside City Hall. Holding signs with slogans such as “Don’t Bulldoze Our Homes,” residents sang protest songs and chanted, “We are Parkmerced!”

With the dramatic makeover, Parkmerced would expand to around 8,900 units, tripling the number of residents who could be accommodated. Existing 1940’s-era garden apartments would be razed to make way for higher, denser housing. The plan comes at a time when neighboring San Francisco State University is undergoing its own phase of expansion.

“This project in its current state is a vision that is not in harmony with the people, place, or the environment,” charged Cathy Lentz, an organizer with the Parkmerced Action Coalition, in a vociferous plea to the commissioners. “It is a narrow vision, a corporate vision … a true vision would be inclusive of present dwellings, inclusive of animals, trees, and present environment.”

One resident lamented the pending loss of his garden courtyard, noting how much his children had enjoyed the green space growing up and listing the different kinds of birds that would surely be driven away by heavy-duty construction and tree removal. For many, the point was not so much what developers intended to build, but what would be lost to make way for it. One speaker dismissed the plan as “architectural clear-cutting.”

Commissioner Moore, an architect, sounded a similar note when she rejected the notion that the Parkmerced redevelopment should be hailed as infill, a desirable development concept that curbs sprawl by utilizing space efficiently. “Urban infill housing is defined as infill on vacant sites,” Moore said, “not sites that have become vacant by demolition.” She added that she believed the environmental impact review “fails to sufficiently examine why housing demolition is even necessary.”

In Moore’s view, “the only reasonable alternative is a significantly redesigned … project.”

 

WORKING-CLASS NEIGHBORHOOD

Unlike a luxury condominium development, the Parkmerced plan emphasizes built-in economic diversity — yet critics point out that as it stands, the housing complex is already inclusive of many lower-income, working-class residents.

The plan will incorporate several hundred below-market rate units, in accordance with the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance. Commissioner Antonini also emphasized the boost to city coffers from tax revenue associated with the project.

Meanwhile, questions are still arising on the issue of rent control. “We do not believe it is appropriate for the City and County of San Francisco to be displacing rent-controlled residents,” noted Michael Yarne, a mayoral development advisor. A binding agreement between Parkmerced Investors LLC and the city of San Francisco, which will be linked to the land, promises that new units will be made available to rent-controlled tenants at the same monthly rate they now pay, with rent control intact (See “Weighing a Landlord’s Promise,” Dec. 21, 2010).

Yet Polly Marshall, a commissioner on the San Francisco Rent Board, noted that she still didn’t believe tenant protections were adequate. She also spoke to the pitfalls of tearing down and redoing an entire neighborhood.

“The proposed Parkmerced development is the kind of development that I normally would support. It’s the kind of thing I work on in my profession,” noted Marshall, an attorney who has worked on redevelopment projects. “What’s different about this project is that it involves an existing community. It requires devastation of that community. It reminds me of the old-style redevelopment projects that went on in the Fillmore that destroyed existing neighborhoods. Look around that area now … there’s high density housing there, but that’s about all. The community — the networks of the people — was destroyed decades ago.”

Marshall took it a step further, offering her analysis on why Parkmerced was targeted. “It’s because it’s a working-class neighborhood of renters,” she said. “That’s why we’re going to destroy Parkmerced.”

Mayor Ed Lee willing to disclose work calendar

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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1

Among the many issues that rankled progressives under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration was Newsom’s unwillingness to turn over his work calendar to members of the public who formally requested it. Beginning in 2006, a group of sunshine activists routinely submitted public-information requests for the mayor’s daily schedule in hopes of finding out who Newsom was meeting with, what events he attended, and just how he spent his time on the job as mayor of San Francisco. After years of battle, Newsom finally agreed to release a watered-down calendar containing very little information.

On this matter, it does not seem as if Interim Mayor Ed Lee will follow in the footsteps of his predecessor.

In an interview with Guardian reporters today, Mayor Lee indicated that he would be willing to make his calendar available to the public. “Sure,” he said when we asked him about it. “I have no problem with that.”

Lee noted that he has complied with similar requests in the past. “I’ve had those already reviewed as the City Administrator, so I’m used to it,” Lee said.

He added that while he was willing to share his work-related calendar, “I may not want to share where I privately go every night.”

That’s OK. Thanks to former Mayor Willie Brown, we already know Lee went out to dinner in North Beach the other night with Brown, Rose Pak, and several others.

“Flex” keeps marine scientists guessing

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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I received a call last Friday from Nicole Catalano of Pacific Environment, an environmental nonprofit focusing on marine conservation. An endangered gray whale was headed for California, she told me, and I could follow its movements online. “We expect it to be in California either now, or any day now,” Catalano said.

“Flex,” as researchers have named him, is one of an estimated 120 western Pacific gray whales. The highly endangered species has fared much worse than the related eastern gray whale, which has an estimated population of around 20,000.

The whale was tagged last October as part of a research project geared toward offering the mammoth creatures better safeguards against extinction. “They were going to tag many of them,” Catalano explained, but so far, Flex is the only whale researchers have succeeded in making contact with.

The Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University has created a website, updated weekly, to track Flex’s transoceanic journey. So far, he’s gone from Russia, to the Bering Sea, to the Gulf of Alaska, to the coast of Oregon, to the coast of California.

Researchers have been suprised by his progress, and don’t know what to expect next. “Flex’s route may or may not be typical of what western gray whales do — there could be three or four other whales from the western population making this same trip, or Flex could take an entirely different route next year,” said Bruce Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute.

The international environmental community’s interest in western Pacific gray whales stems in part from monitoring offshore oil and gas drilling near Russia, Catalano noted. Seismic testing for offshore development is known to impact marine mammals, and some of this activity is occurring nearby the whales’ feeding areas. In 2006, the Western Pacific Gray Whale Advisory Panel was convened by scientists to provide independent recommendations on how oil and gas companies can minimize risks to rare creatures.

It’s a sign: MUNI passsenger angst

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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7

It’s raining for the first time in weeks, and you know what that means. Somewhere in San Francisco, someone is standing on an outdoor MUNI platform and wondering why those stylish, clear sloping roofs fail so miserably when it comes to keeping the rain out. And while MUNI drivers should not take the blame for this and other transit-system flaws, we cannot help but feel the pain of the passenger who vented their frustration by leaving this bombastic complaint at the T-Third 20th Street station.

Dirty business

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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24
Dirty business

rebeccab@sfbg.com

The owner of a certified minority-owned business in San Francisco is suing the city, charging that his telecommunications company went belly up after city officials falsely accused him of participating in a fraudulent kickback scheme within the city’s Department of Building Inspection (DBI).

The case and depositions of high-ranking officials offer a rare window into the inner workings of city government at a time when corruption was rife within DBI and regulations governing city contracting were considerably less strict. They also provide a glimpse at how city business was sometimes conducted under the administration of Mayor Willie Brown, a powerful figure who has resurfaced recently in San Francisco politics.

In addition, the case alleges inappropriate behavior by current Mayor Ed Lee when he was the city’s purchasing director. One of the depositions includes allegations that Lee, at Brown’s direction, approved a city contractor who was utterly unqualified and was later accused of being part of a criminal scam.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit — James Brady, CEO of Cobra Solutions — closed up shop years ago and moved to Sacramento with his wife and business partner, Debra. But he’s been locked in an ongoing legal battle against powerful forces in City Hall since 2003, when he claims the city stopped issuing payments to his company, terminated its contract, and declined to award it a new contract on suspicions of bribery.

“They want to make us look like we’re Bonnie and Clyde,” Brady told the Guardian. “We’ve never done a thing.”

Nancy Fineman, an attorney with the firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, which is representing the city in the case, said the corruption allegations against Cobra still stand and she emphasized, “The city attorney was not involved in doing anything wrong.”

In a complaint filed Jan. 7, attorney G. Whitney Leigh — law partner of former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez — alleges that a host of city officials are responsible for precipitating Brady’s financial ruin.

According to Leigh’s version of events, Cobra was dragged into an overzealous campaign to hold someone accountable after a contractor the city alleged was corrupt vanished, leaving a number of subcontractors unpaid and the city “with egg on its face.”

Leigh subpoenaed Ed Harrington, former city controller and current head of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission; Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda; former officials from the Office of Contract Administration, and others to testify out of court during discovery. Leigh describes the case as “a Shakespearean tragedy combined with a cartoon combined with a soap opera.”

For City Attorney Dennis Herrera, it might be more like a zombie flick. The city attorney is gaining momentum in his campaign for mayor and has taken an early lead in fundraising against his opponents. The Cobra Solutions saga might be one that he — and other top city officials — would rather forget.

 

CONFLICTS AND CRACKDOWNS

Appeals in the case have reached all the way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled that Herrera had a conflict of interest that should have disqualified his office from suing Cobra. Beginning in September 2000, before he was elected city attorney, Herrera provided legal representation to Cobra while working with a private firm called Kelly, Gill, Sherburne & Herrera.

Due to the disqualification, Herrera could not discuss specifics in the case. But he did offer us a general comment. “I’ve made it very clear that me and my office are going to have zero tolerance for corruption and individuals who would violate the public trust,” he said. “This case, I think, represents that philosophy.”

When Herrera was campaigning for city attorney in the November 2001 race, he ran on a platform of cracking down on fraud and corruption. The DBI case began as a triumphant delivery of that campaign promise.

In 2003, following a yearlong investigation by a Public Integrity Task Force that Herrera had convened, a corrupt DBI official named Marcus Armstrong got busted by the feds. He’d allegedly falsified the qualifications on his resume and set up shell companies to funnel money out of city coffers for his own personal gain. He pleaded guilty to corruption charges brought by the U.S. Attorney, and spent time in prison for cheating the city out of about $500,000.

Herrera brought a civil suit against Armstrong and a DBI contractor, Government Computer Sales, Inc. (GCSI), which allegedly partnered with Armstrong in a kickback scheme. Questions surrounded GCSI from the start. It only gained certification as a city contractor after being rejected multiple times by city staff as unqualified. Deborah Vincent-James, who directed the city’s Committee on Information Technology (COIT) at the time and has since died, testified in a 2008 deposition that GCSI was “fraudulent” and got the contract only because of ties to Mayor Brown.

Herrera hit a stumbling block when he amended the complaint to name Cobra Solutions and its management company, TeleCon Ltd., as another city contractor in on Armstrong’s kickback scheme. (Debra Brady was president of TeleCon, which predated Cobra. Although the Bradys insist the two entities were separate, Herrera named TeleCon in the suit as an alter ego of Cobra.)

Cobra struck back, claiming the City Attorney’s Office wasn’t entitled to file suit against the company because Herrera’s old firm had represented Brady. Herrera told us the whole thing came about “because of the 18 minutes that I billed to work for Cobra.”

Herrera’s office initially denied any conflict of interest. “Immediately upon discovery of Cobra’s role, the office screened Herrera off from further involvement in the investigation and all matters related to it in accordance with a stringent ethical screening policy Herrera established when he took office,” according to a statement issued by the City Attorney’s Office.

But the Supreme Court disagreed in a 2006 ruling. “The possibility that the City Attorney’s former client might be prosecuted for civil fraud by the City Attorney’s office may test public faith in the integrity of the judicial system,” the ruling stated, “raising the specter of perceptions that the former client will be treated more leniently because of its connections, or more harshly because of leaked confidences.”

 

COBRA’S CASH

The city’s lawsuit alleged that Cobra paid Armstrong about $240,000 in bribes in exchange for $2.4 million worth of business with DBI from April 1999 through 2000. The allegation was based on checks Cobra sent to Monarch Enterprises, which the city said was an Armstrong front. The investigation found that GCSI paid Armstrong about 10 percent of the contract amount in a similar fashion.

“Armstrong used these and all other funds received from Cobra for his personal benefit and gain,” the suit claimed. The complaint also charges, “Cobra … knew that Monarch enterprises was wholly owned and controlled by Armstrong, and that any payment made by Cobra was in fact a payment to Armstrong.”

But Cobra’s suit claims an FBI investigation into Cobra’s involvement found no wrongdoing. Additionally, “We turned all of our records over to the U.S. Attorney,” Leigh noted, and that didn’t lead to a criminal prosecution.

Brady calls the corruption allegation “a big lie,” and says his company’s name has been wrongfully sullied. He says Armstrong led him to believe Monarch Enterprises was an Internet company performing training, support, and computer security upgrades as a subcontractor. The bills came in, and Cobra believed it was responsible for paying for the service, Brady said. “We mailed the checks, and never thought about it.”

Before the trouble started, Cobra Solutions was in a growth phase, having gone from four employees to 35 in just a few years. James and Debra Brady moved from Colorado to San Francisco in the late 1980s with nothing. James Brady worked as a manager in several SROs, became a member of the Tenderloin Merchant’s Association and helped establish a credit union serving low-income residents.

The couple established TeleCon Ltd. and started out as city subcontractors providing voicemail services. At first, they had very limited resources. “Prior to being able to afford an office, Debra frequently used the telephones in the women’s lounge at Nordstrom to conduct business,” according to her bio.

Cobra was established after Vincent-James urged the Bradys to submit a bid for an upcoming contract. The city had opened up a Request for Proposals (RFP) for vendors who wanted to be admitted to the Computer Store, an entity created to speed up municipal orders for technical services.

Before then, it could take six months for the city to purchase so much as a desktop computer. A Human Rights Commission vetting process, designed to ensure that city contractors adhered to environmental and social justice criteria, caused long delays. Then-City Purchaser Ed Lee created the Computer Store to solve this logistical challenge. Vendors who applied for membership were vetted in the RFP (minority-owned businesses were given preference), admitted as certified contractors, and granted preference by city departments in need of IT services.

Cobra’s first departmental contract through the Computer Store was a $1.3 million agreement to provide technical services for DBI, working with Armstrong. Things got off to a rough start.

“We could never find the guy, he would never be at work, and when we did see him, he was complaining,” Brady recounted. According to Cobra’s complaint, “it ran into a series of disputes with DBI and Armstrong over the scope of work and particular payment issues,” and Cobra was eventually awarded a settlement reflecting services it provided after Armstrong changed the scope of the work.

Brady says he sought city help in dealing with Armstrong. According to Cobra’s complaint, he appealed for assistance to COIT, which oversaw the Computer Store. Cobra’s relationship with Armstrong soon soured, and the DBI deal dissolved.

According to the description of Vincent-James, “The relationship between James Brady … and Marcus got worse … Marcus got another company involved because James Brady would not do what Marcus wanted to do.”

The other company was GCSI.

 

NEW PHASE

Things got better for the Bradys before they got worse. Cobra became one of the city’s largest technology services providers, netting $14.5 million in contracts with various city agencies by 2003. They relocated to a nicer, more spacious office in the Financial District.

A partnership with IBM granted them access to higher credit limits than ever. The couple had a home custom-built in El Sobrante. When GCSI vanished without a trace, Vincent-James called on Cobra to hire some of the GCSI subcontractors who had gotten burned in the process, according to a deposition from former city purchaser Judith Blackwell.

By 2003, the Public Integrity Task Force’s DBI investigation was in full swing, but Brady didn’t know it. He says he started experiencing problems getting paid, yet couldn’t get an explanation from city agencies.

According to Cobra’s complaint, “The city intentionally frustrated payments to Cobra and TeleCon because investigators hastily and incorrectly concluded that the companies had conspired with Armstrong in a GCSI-type scheme to defraud the city.”

Fineman, the city’s attorney, said she strongly disagrees with “the idea that we just stopped and left them in the lurch,” emphasizing that there had been a whole separate legal proceeding arising out of the fact that “Cobra was not paying its subcontractors,” in violation of its contract.

The city defended its decision to delay Cobra’s payments by pointing to the GCSI scandal, which had left city agencies high and dry. “By the time the City discovered GCSI’s fraud and stopped making payments to GCSI, GCSI had already received millions of dollars in city payments that were not then passed on to the subcontractors,” a letter from the City Attorney’s Office to Brady’s attorneys explained. “Once the city started investigating the payments to GCSI that Marcus Armstrong authorized, GCSI’s assets, officers and staff disappeared. … The city has an obligation to its taxpayers to prevent the GCSI scenario from unfolding with regard to Cobra / TeleCon.”

Brady insists that because Cobra couldn’t get paid, it couldn’t pay its subcontractors, or its creditors, either — and the financial holdup triggered a cascade of losses. “I’ve got IBM, Booz Allen Hamilton, and American Express breathing down on me like a dragon,” he said. “Everybody wants to get paid. We owed folks after we couldn’t collect our receivables.”

The bills were piling up. “We were sinking fast,” said Debra Brady, “so we sold our house in El Sobrante.”

Brady said he was stunned to learn that Cobra had been named in Herrera’s suit.

“I have 37 employees, and I had to go in and tell them. I was all choked up and the phone was ringing, and it was my attorney on the line telling me that the FBI was coming. I could not believe that after everything we had achieved in the last three years, my former attorney was filing a lawsuit against me.”

 

CLEARING THEIR NAMES

After filing the complaint against Cobra, the City Attorney’s Office called on the company to submit to an audit — but Cobra refused on the basis that Herrera’s firm had represented it in the past. “The City Attorney’s assumption of the role of auditor seems calculated to exacerbate and expand the existing conflict of interest,” Cobra attorney Ethan Balogh wrote in an April 2003 letter. “This problem could easily be solved by allowing an agency other than the City Attorney to conduct the audit.”

In a lengthy back-and-forth, Herrera’s office responded: “You have never explained why your client, having been caught sending over $240,000 in cash to a San Francisco IT manager who authorized over $2.4 million in payments to Cobra/TeleCon during the period of time which he received those payments, has elected not to immediately … open its books and records to the city. Instead … you have raised a host of constantly-shifting objections and arguments as to why the city’s demand was inappropriate.”

Cobra’s lawsuit charges that the City Attorney’s Office never informed the Controller’s Office that Cobra would have allowed an audit by another party. At the same time, it charges, city attorneys weren’t allowing Cobra to communicate with the controller directly, due to the legal dispute.

“The question of who would do the audit and whether or not the City Attorney was doing the audit was not something that I was aware of or certainly had not agreed to,” Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda said during her deposition.

Meanwhile, Cobra had received the highest Human Rights Commission score of any bidder for a renewal on the Computer Store contract, an HRC document shows. Brady received a letter stating that his company would be awarded a new Computer Store contract — but shortly after, he got a second letter reversing that award.

Judith Blackwell, who oversaw city purchasing under Brown’s administration, explained why during her deposition with Leigh. After Cobra’s bid evaluation, Blackwell testified, her office moved to award the contract — but the controller intervened, saying Cobra shouldn’t be awarded a new contract because of the Armstrong scandal. Blackwell wasn’t willing to throw Cobra out, however.

“I learned from watching politics that I cannot afford to bend the rules,” Blackwell testified. “If I step outside the precise boundaries in any way, or if any African American administrator does, they are probably not going to be interpreted in the same way as if anyone else did it. Based on the … procurement code, there is no way that I could, as the purchasing director, just throw them out.”

Blackwell testified that Zmuda requested that she sign paperwork denying Cobra the contract, and Blackwell received a warning when she refused. “She told me that I needed to remember that when [Mayor Brown] was gone that they, the Controller’s Office, and [Chief of Staff Steve Kawa] — I knew that is what she was implying — were in charge,” Blackwell said. Once Mayor Gavin Newsom replaced Brown, Blackwell was let go. She now lives in New York City.

Blackwell testified that losing her job came as a surprise, since she’d worked on Newsom’s campaign and expected to keep her position. “I had asked him something about why it happened and he said … he knew nothing about it and people were acting without, you know, basically not at his direction,” Blackwell testified. “I said, well, Mayor Newsom, you are in charge. And his response was, oh, I wish that were so.” 

 

ED LEE APPROVED UNQUALIFIED CONTRACTOR ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION

GCSI — a company accused of defrauding the city after improperly being given a city contract by Ed Lee, allegedly at the urging of then-Mayor Willie Brown — is long gone.

“I don’t think they’re around,” Nancy Fineman, an attorney representing the city, told the Guardian. “We’ve just been focused on Cobra and TeleCon.”

The story of how GCSI came to be a city contractor may be the most fascinating part of this case, one that could have repercussions today, even though it happened in the late-1990s.

Like Cobra Solutions, GCSI was a contractor with the city’s Computer Store — gaining admission after being repeatedly rejected by city staff, according to a 2008 deposition with former COIT director Deborah Vincent-James, who has died.

Vincent-James testified that GCSI didn’t meet the minimum qualifications and recounted how, during an interview with city officials about the bid, a member of the City Attorney’s Office noticed a wire peeking out from the suit of a GCSI representative who had been surreptitiously taping the meeting.

“San Francisco was not aware of GCSI’s wrongful conduct, financial problems, or legal difficulties at the time it hired GCSI to work on the DBI projects,” a city lawsuit claimed. Nor had the city realized that, “GCSI’s president and owner had been arrested and imprisoned by a federal judge for contempt of court and for disbursing funds in an effort to avoid …efforts to collect its loan.”

GCSI principal Robert Fowler resided in both Washington, D.C., and California, was believed to be a citizen of Sweden, and was also the director and owner of a bank located on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, according to Herrera’s complaint.

“From day one, I knew that they were not qualified,” Vincent-James’ deposition transcript reads. She went on to say that the official city process for evaluating contractors was “totally bypassed.” Nonetheless, “We had to admit them to the Computer Store.”

“Who told you, you had to admit them to the Computer Store?” attorney Whitney Leigh asked.

“The director of purchasing,” states Vincent-James’ deposition transcript. “Ed Lee.”

She went on to testify that Lee had been acting under the direction of Mayor Brown. According to her deposition, “[Lee] was directed by the Mayor’s Office and told to do an evaluation process. They evaluated them. They were put in the store.” She also testified, “Principals of GCSI hired an attorney who had been in the State Legislature with Mayor Brown and … GCSI had felt that because we were asking intrusive questions during the oral interview, such as ‘Why do you have that wire hanging out of your coat?’ … They felt that biased the committee toward … not hiring them.”

Neither Brown nor Mayor Lee’s office responded to requests for comment.

GCSI is still a codefendant in the complaint, but the principals of the defunct company seem to be off the hook. A 2008 story from the Anchorage Daily News noted that Fowler had emerged as the head of a natural gas company in Alaska. The Bradys, meanwhile, are getting ready for another court date in March. “We keep going to court,” Debra Brady said. “I’m kind of like, when is the end coming?”

Saving Lyon-Martin

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Saving Lyon-Martin

rebeccab@sfbg.com

When word got out that the Lyon-Martin Health Services clinic faced imminent closure, Luette Chavez’s cell phone started ringing off the hook. Her friends were going into panic mode.

“It’s shocking to think that something that’s so important to so many people could just be lost so easily,” Chavez told us. The clinic serves nearly 2,500 patients, regardless of their ability to pay for health care. It offers specialized services for queer women and transgender people, providing everything from primary care to mental health services to hormone treatment. A Hurricane Katrina survivor, medical school student, and part-time sex worker, Chavez volunteers at the clinic and relies on it for health care. Her dream is to someday start a free clinic in New Orleans that is cast in the mold of Lyon-Martin. But for now, all of her energy is consumed with the widespread effort to raise enough money to keep the clinic afloat. To survive, Lyon-Martin must pay off a $250,000 debt immediately.

 

CASH FLOW PROBLEM

As one volunteer among many, Chavez has adopted the mindset that failure is not an option. “I have absolutely every confidence that we will be able to save it ourselves because we’re running ourselves into the ground doing it,” she said.

Lyon-Martin’s board of directors initially voted to shut down the clinic at the close of business Jan. 27, citing insurmountable financial problems. That decision was rescinded, however, following an emergency meeting held at the LGBT Center shortly after news of its pending closure went viral. By Jan. 28, an emergency fund drive had netted close to $100,000 in pledges and cash donations. A fundraiser held Jan. 30 at El Rio drew nearly 700 supporters and roped in another $28,000.

Despite the outpouring of support, the long-term future of the 30-year-old clinic remains uncertain. Lyon-Martin can restructure and avoid shutdown if it manages to clear the $250,000 urgently owed, but it must find $500,000 to continue operating in the same capacity as it has. It has stopped accepting new patients, but will likely be able to serve current patients until at least the end of February.

“Without Lyon-Martin, a community that is historically marginalized won’t have anywhere to turn,” stated an open letter to supporters from Board Chair Lauren Winter, who was unavailable for comment.

A combination of state funding cuts, increased demand, and poor financial management created a perfect storm for Lyon-Martin. A key source of the trouble was that the clinic had not been keeping up with its billing, and after a certain amount of time, it could no longer claim reimbursements from Medi-Cal. Yet external factors such as state and local budget cuts contributed to the problem, too, and Lyon-Martin is not alone in that respect.

All across San Francisco, community clinics that serve low-income and uninsured people are struggling to do more with less. Jim Illig, president of the San Francisco Health Commission, told us that he knows of several other clinics in dire financial straits.

“There are a lot of clinics on the edge because they have dedicated their mission to serving the uninsured,” he said. “Any nonprofit clinic that you see — they’re struggling.” The Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, another nonprofit healthcare organization serving the uninsured, recently announced a merger with Walden House, a substance-abuse treatment center. The merger allowed the venerable health-care nonprofit to continue offering services after its budget was slashed by 50 percent due to reduced support from the city’s General Fund. Even as the cuts took effect, demand for the free clinic’s services rose 10 percent from 2009 to 2010.

“Every time I look into the waiting room, it’s full,” said Jeff Schindler, chief development officer.

If Lyon-Martin closes, its patients will have to be transferred to other clinics, but there’s high demand everywhere. Such an outcome might evoke a sense of dèjá vu for some. Last fall, when an LGBT-focused clinic called New Leaf shut down due to crippling financial problems, many of its clients were transferred to Lyon-Martin.

 

COMMUNITY SURPRISED, UPSET

The front office manager at Lyon-Martin, who wished to be identified only as Braz, said she’d had no warning that closure was imminent. “Just closing down like that seemed impossible. We couldn’t ethically do that,” she said. “Our patients are freaking out right now.”

Once people became aware that the clinic was on the brink of closure, some aired the criticism that the board should have been more forthright about financial troubles. The Bay Area Reporter, a San Francisco publication covering LGBT issues, published an editorial calling for the resignation of the six-member board, and several sources told the Guardian they expected the board members to step down.

Meanwhile, health officials and elected representatives have stepped into the mix, but no promises of governmental financial assistance had been secured by the time the Guardian went to press.

Department of Public Health Director Barbara Garcia was unavailable for comment, but released a prepared statement: “The Department of Public Health has been in close discussions with Lyon-Martin and the pressing need to make immediate changes to the way they conduct their financial affairs. We value the important health care services they deliver and will continue to work with them to find the best long-term outcome for the clinic and the patients.”

Sup. Scott Wiener told the Guardian that he’d been in discussions about Lyon-Martin with Garcia and Sup. David Campos. Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Jane Kim also attended the emergency meeting, and California Sen. Mark Leno was said to be attempting to secure some state funding for the clinic. As the push to save the clinic continues, a parallel effort is moving forward to craft a contingency plan for how Lyon-Martin’s nearly 2,500 patients can access care in the event that it doesn’t survive.

 

COMPETENT CARE

Lyon-Martin patients and others familiar with its services stressed that the women’s clinic is a critical resource for lesbians and the transgender population, because medical staff are trained in that specialized area of care.

“The service there is incredible,” noted Cheryl Simas, who has been a patient there for three years. “They explain everything to you, you’re listened to, and you’re treated with care and respect.” Simas said it was a dramatic difference from an experience she’d had in the mid-1990s, when her healthcare provider was barely comfortable pronouncing the word “lesbian.”

Lyon-Martin medical staffers receive training on transgender patient care, and it even offers training in that realm for medical professionals from cities throughout the United States. “They are internationally renowned as a model for what it means to offer transgender care,” noted labor organizer Gabriel Haaland, who said he was once denied health care due to his transgender identity. “The healthcare system is a fairly traumatic experience for most transgender people,” he added.

If Lyon-Martin closed, “it’d be pretty tragic,” noted Carlina Hansen, executive director of the Women’s Community Clinic, which works closely with Lyon-Martin. When it comes to health care, “We live in an unusual city, in that there is a lot of need among low-income people, due in part to a high cost of living. “Every clinic in San Francisco provides an integral part of that network,” and each clinic fills a specific need, Hansen noted. “The diversity of the clinics matches the diversity of our community.”

Danny Glover, DCCC stand up for HANC

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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9

The Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC) Recycling Center has gained some powerful allies in its ongoing fight against eviction.

A YouTube video posted over the weekend shows actor Danny Glover, a resident of the Haight, sitting in his car at the recycling center. If it were shut down, “I would be dismayed,” Glover tells a staff member. He also says, “It would be a tragedy. It would be a great loss to this city.” (Scroll down to watch.)

On Jan. 26, the Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) voted in favor of a resolution calling for the HANC recycling center to stay at its location behind the Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park. The statement noted that “San Francisco is notoriously underserved by recycling centers,” adding that “people want to receive their California Redemption Value deposit, especially in this depressed economy, which can only be done at recycling centers.”
 
In recent weeks, Sup. Eric Mar told the Guardian he was strongly supportive of the recycling center’s continued operation in the park. He added that he planned to encourage Mayor Ed Lee to overturn the eviction.

The San Francisco Recreation & Park Commission voted in December 2010 to evict the recycling center from a paved lot in Golden Gate Park, where it has been operating for more than three decades. Since the center was originally on a quarterly lease, it was given 90 days notice — but HANC’s lawyer contends that it could legally occupy the property till June.

The eviction, supported by former Mayor Gavin Newsom and a commission composed of his appointees, was widely viewed by recycling center supporters as a form of political payback. HANC, a progressive organization that was at odds with the Newsom administration on a variety of issues, was particularly outspoken against the sit/lie ordinance, which Newsom placed on the ballot.

A neighborhood group, the Inner Sunset Park Neighbors, also supported the ouster of HANC, citing quality-of-life issues such as aggressive panhandling and public safety concerns that the group believes to be linked to recycling center patrons. Rec & Park plans to use the lot for a community garden, at a cost of $250,000.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l09tUCChOiA

Getting free

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Getting free

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal have been held captive in Evin Prison in Tehran for more than 540 days, and their friends and supporters in the Bay Area have been mounting an extraordinary campaign pushing for their release.

On July 31, 2009, Bauer and Fattal were hiking with Sarah Shourd, who is Bauer’s fiancée, through green mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan. The three UC Berkeley graduates had traveled from Damascus for a recreational visit. They were wandering nearby Ahmed Awa, a popular tourist destination where hundreds of people had flocked to camp, to visit a waterfall and enjoy the peace and quiet of the mountains.

They say they didn’t realize how close they were to Iran, which has no diplomatic ties to the United States.

Shourd told the Guardian she’s not sure whether they accidentally traversed the Iranian border, because it was unmarked. “We had no intention of being anywhere near Iran,” she said. “And if we were, we’re very sorry.”

Iranian officials surrounded them, speaking in Farsi, which they couldn’t understand. They were arrested on suspicion of spying and taken into custody. Before being taken to prison, one phoned a friend, Shon MeckFessel — who had been traveling with them but opted not to go on the hike because he wasn’t feeling well — to alert him that something had gone wrong. That would be the last communication any of them would have with close friends or family members for months.

Shourd was finally released on bail Sept. 14, 2010 on humanitarian grounds after spending 410 days in solitary confinement. She was reunited with family and friends — but Bauer and Fattal have remained in detainment ever since.

Since returning to the United States, Shourd has thrown her energy into advocating for their release — and she’s not alone. “Everyone in the family has been working tirelessly for all 18 months,” she said, “which is far, far longer than we ever imagined in our worst nightmares.”

 

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM

While Shourd was still in prison, her mother, Nora, gave up her home and job to move in with Bauer’s mother, Cindy Hickey, and work for their release full-time. Fattal’s older brother, Alex, suspended his graduate studies at Harvard to dedicate himself to the campaign. His mother, Laura Fattal, stopped working to devote herself to the campaign.

“That’s just family alone,” Shourd noted. “If you start to look to how many people have contributed to our campaign and how many ways, it just blows your mind.” Soon after her release, Shourd put out a call for people to hang banners proclaiming the innocence of Bauer and Fattal and calling for their release. In response, nearly 60 banners were unfurled in 25 different countries.

Shourd has made countless media appearances since her release, and even put out an MP3 of a song she composed while in solitary confinement, which can be downloaded as a way to support the Free the Hikers campaign. Their story has drawn the interest of prominent figures. On Jan. 19, Noam Chomsky released a video offering to testify on their behalf if a trial is held, saying Bauer and Fattal “have dedicated themselves to advocating for social and environmental justice in Africa and elsewhere, and they truly embody the spirit of humanitarianism.”

Others who have publicly defended the trio include President Barack Obama, who issued a statement in July saying none of the hikers ever worked for the U.S. government, addressing Iranian accusations that they were there to commit espionage. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu have called for their release. A documentary has been produced about their plight, and a second one is in the works.

In San Francisco, artists and musicians have responded in droves to a call for support. An art auction that will benefit the campaign is planned for Jan. 29, featuring the work of more than 80 artists, plus live musical performances. As a nod toward Bauer’s work in photojournalism, the event will emphasize photography, and notables such as Mimi Chakrova, Taj Forer, Roberto Bear Guerra, Ken Light, the LUCEO Photo Collective, Susan Meiselas, Lianne Milton, Mark Murrmann, Alec Soth, and others have donated work. Among the artists who donated pieces are Marianne Bland, Mark Brecke, Teresa Camozzi, Andreina Davila, Eric Drooker, and former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez.

In early February, a music benefit will be held at the Bottom of the Hill to benefit the campaign. Titled “They Sing These Songs In Prison,” the event will feature performances of The Nightwatchman — that’s Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine — plus Jolie Holland, accordionist Jason Webley, and Ryan Harvey & Lia Rose.

“The funding is to support the campaign to free Shane and Josh, and it goes to a wide array of needs that we have, like translation into Farsi, travel for media, and meeting with some various embassies and governments that are involved in advocating for Shane and Josh’s release,” Shourd explained. “Also, some of the money will probably go toward legal fees, and website fees, and materials for the campaign from flyers to business cards to t-shirts.”

 

WHO ARE THE HIKERS?

The campaign to advocate for their release has been tagged Free the Hikers, but the identities of the three young people (Bauer and Fattal are both 28, Shourd is 32) go much deeper than that. They’re social-justice advocates, antiwar activists, writers, environmentalists, travelers, and creative thinkers with deep ties to the Bay Area.

Shourd, who lives in Oakland, was teaching English to Iraqi refugees when she was in Syria, as well as practicing some journalism. Fattal, who taught at Aprovecho — an education center in Oregon focused on sustainability and permaculture — had been traveling to India, South Africa, and other places through the International Honors Program to lead workshops on health and sustainable technology before visiting his friends in Syria.

“Josh is an environmentalist, he’s a teacher, he’s an incredible, incredible, generous and selfless man,” Shourd said. “As soon as you meet him, you feel what an extraordinary and unique human being he is. I was friends with him for years before he came to visit us in Damascus, and he decided to travel with us to Northern Iraq to Iraqi Kurdistan to learn about Kurdish culture, to see another diverse aspect of the Middle East.”

Bauer wrote for publications such as The Nation, Mother Jones, and the Christian Science Monitor. A photojournalist who has won multiple awards and had his work published internationally, Bauer has documented everything from tenant conditions in San Francisco SROs to conflict-ridden regions in Africa and the Middle East. Bauer also wrote an article for the Guardian about an Oakland residence that is famous among East Bay anarchists (See “Hellarity burns,” May 27, 2008).

“Shane has an incredible passion for pursuing truth and complicating our ideas about other parts of the world, about conflicts around the world and at home,” Shourd noted. She added that many of his stories serve to highlight “some of the very specific ways that the U.S. presence in Iraq has taken a toll on innocent people.”

Before their ill-fated excursion, Shourd said she’d heard from multiple westerners and her Arabic tutor that Iraqi Kurdistan was a safe and enjoyable place to visit. “It’s often referred to as ‘the other Iraq’ because it’s a semiautonomous region designated as a no-fly zone by the U.S. government,” she explained. “It’s actually a part of the Middle East that has a very positive fingerprint from the U.S. government because they helped protect the Kurdish people from Saddam Hussein. So Northern Iraq is not a dangerous place for Americans or westerners to go, and no American has ever been killed in Northern Iraq, which is just phenomenal after a decade of war and occupation.”

She said Bauer, Fattal, and MeckFessel were all enthusiastic about the trip, and after researching it online, the four felt they had enough information to travel there. “We ordered a special Lonely Planet guide of Northern Iraq, and a friend of ours who went a month before we did borrowed it and lost it, so we didn’t have the Lonely Planet guide,” she noted. “But we still felt we had enough information about it to travel there and really believed we had nothing to fear.”

 

SOLITARY

Shourd credits her fiancé and her friend with helping her through “every minute of prison,” even though she was alone in her cell for 23 hours a day. At first she wasn’t allowed to see them at all, but after some time had passed, guards allowed her to visit with them in an outdoor courtyard for 30 minutes a day. Later, that brief time together was increased to an hour.

“There’s no way I could have maintained hope and maintained my own sanity and the strength that it took to get through every day of isolation and depravity and uncertainty and fear,” she said. “The emotional strength that that took, and the discipline that it took, really Shane and Josh and I all created together in the little time that we had, through the unconditional support and love we had for each other.”

Since they didn’t speak Farsi and the guards spoke very little English, it was difficult to communicate basic needs, and Shourd described the experience as being surrounded by hostility.

“Whenever I just started to slip away mentally, Shane and Josh would bring me back, and the knowledge that they were going to be there for me was the only thing that got me through 410 days of solitary confinement,” she said. The three thought up activities to give themselves something to look forward to, like marking time with small courtyard celebrations and special food they saved to share together or discussing topics in an organized format. “We had almost like a curriculum that we followed of study, and sort of intellectual exploration,” she explained.

They were only allowed to have pens for one month — that was the easiest month, Shourd said. But the rest of the time, even though they weren’t permitted to write things down, they were allowed to read. “Books were our lifeline. We read the same books in concert, we took turns reading books and passed them back and forth when we saw each other in the courtyard. And we would memorize dates and memorize poetry and recite poetry to each other and test each other on dates,” Shourd said.

“Josh would give me math problems to do in my head because he knew I was trying to get better with algebra. We had a dictionary that we passed back and forth, and we would make stories from words in the dictionary and tell each other these really intricate fantastical stories that we came up with. Anything to keep your mind busy.”

Beginning in her second month in prison, Shourd also passed the time by composing songs. A month went by before she was able to share the first one with Bauer and Fattal, but when she did finally sing it for them, they learned the words and sang it with her. “When we were together in the outdoor courtyard, they would just tell me to sing louder,” Shourd said. “I know they’re singing those songs now.”

The intellectual drills, storytelling, math problems, and singing weren’t merely a remedy for boredom. “You have to really keep your mind strong and busy so that you don’t get sort of swallowed up by the abyss of fear and loneliness that encroaches on you day by day in that kind of situation,” she said.

 

LOOKING AHEAD

Despite the time, energy, and effort spent on the campaign to free all three, no one can say for sure just when Bauer and Fattal will finally be reunited with family and friends. In November, Iranian authorities said that a trial previously scheduled for that month had been postponed, but the Free the Hikers campaign is calling for them to be released without a trial.

“They don’t deserve to be there one minute longer than I was, and they never deserved to be there in the first place,” Shourd said. “They should be shown the same kind of humanitarianism that they have put into action in their lives, through their work.”

Amnesty International is among many of the groups that have called for the Iranian government to release the two young men. “One year after their arrest, the Iranian authorities’ failure to charge them with illegal entry into Iran or more serious charges, such as espionage, has fueled speculation that the Iranian authorities are holding them as a bargaining chip,” notes a statement released July 2010 by Amnesty International, an international human rights organization.

Meanwhile, Shourd has been contemplating what her experience would have been like if the U.S. and Iran actually maintained diplomatic ties, and she published an opinion piece on CNN International calling for greater communication between the governments.

“I think it’s their responsibility to their people to do that, and I think it’s a tragedy that there’s been 30 years of practically no relationship between Iran and the U.S.,” Shourd said. “It’s a tragedy for countless Iranian Americans in this country who have a hard time visiting their relatives in Iran, sending them money, even just getting information about them or visiting their homeland.”

She began her opinion piece by recounting the time that a prison guard brought her freshly picked roses, an uncommon gesture of kindness during her incarceration. “In the worst of circumstances, the most extraordinary acts of human kindness emerge,” she told the Guardian. “They were rare. The vast majority of my experience was empty and desolate. But the times that the guards were kind to me … will stay with me for the rest of my life.” *

ART AUCTION TO FREE ALL THREE

Saturday, Jan. 29, 7 p.m.

SomArts Cultural Center

934 Brannan, SF

Musical performances by The Ferocious Few, Devon McClive and Sons, Grant Hazard and Lorin Station

www.artforssj.tumblr.com/#about

THEY SING THESE SONGS IN PRISON

Featuring The Nighwatchman, Jolie Holland, Jason Webley, Ryan Harvey & Lia Rose

Thursday, Feb. 10, 8:30 p.m., $12–$18

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17 St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

To learn more, visit www.freethehikers.org, www.freeourfriends.eu

CA Labor stats: Bay Area schools shed jobs, department stores hire

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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2
CA Labor stats: Bay Area schools shed jobs, department stores hire

A new set of labor market data released Jan. 21 by California’s Employment Development Department reveals that unemployment in San Francisco was 9.2 percent in December 2010, compared with 12.3 percent for California and 9.1 percent for the nation during the same period.

Marin County had the lowest unemployment rate of all California counties in that month, and San Francisco had the fifth lowest. Worst off was Imperial County, with an unemployment rate of 28.3 percent.

In San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo counties, there were 800 more jobs than in the previous month, according to the data. Yet while some sectors actually hired new employees, others continued to let people go.

Government in the three counties cut back by 2,200 jobs — mostly in local public schools. Around 700 jobs in construction were slashed. Some 200 jobs in arts, entertainment, and recreation were lost.

Retail, especially clothing and department stores, added 1,700 jobs — but that fell short of the average gain of 3,000 new retail jobs during the holiday season. Leisure and hospitality gained 500 jobs, restaurants and bars added another 500, and hotels added 200 jobs.

The big picture for the three-county area from December 2009 to December 2010 is sobering, with a total loss of 12,800 jobs, or 1.4 percent. The greatest losses occurred in finance, construction, transportation and utilities, government (especially schools), and health services. 

On a positive note, manufacturing recorded its first net gain — 100 jobs — since 2007.

On the whole, the Bay Area’s employment situation continues to look pretty grim. To all the job seekers out there: Good luck.

Net neutrality: “The American Way”

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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3

Media Alliance, an Oakland-based organization advocating for press freedom and media access, has teamed up with San Francisco-based Bad Monkey Studios to produce a quirky cartoon about net neutrality called “The Internet You Need.”

The short film follows a December vote by the Federal Communications Commission approving a set of net neutrality rules.

Critics say those regulations fall short of what’s truly needed to maintain an even playing field for all internet users, and Media Alliance is encouraging people to write to their congressional representatives to push for stronger rules.

(There’s a broad array of opinion as to whether the FCC vote resulted in protecting an open internet, or whether it sold consumers short in favor of internet service providers.)

The Media Alliance and Bad Monkey cartoon and website seem like an attempt to make the issue accessible to those of us who aren’t technology wizards. The emphasis on soda pop and BBQ strikes us as a little weird, but sparking dialogue about net neutrality seems like a worthy goal.

Here’s the pitch from Media Alliance: “Net Neutrality really means ‘Internet Freedom.’ The freedom for you to put up what you want when you want to and have it seen equally by everyone in the world. It means what you put up has as much chance of being seen as something created by a major corporation. It’s innovation from the ground up in the truest sense. It’s the American Way.”

SF’s new political era

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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31
SF’s new political era

news@sfbg.com

You can argue about what the word “progressive” means, and you can argue about the process and the politics that put Ed Lee in the Mayor’s Office. And you can talk forever about which group or faction has how much of a majority on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, but you have to admit: this city has just undergone a significant political realignment.

Some of that was inevitable. The last members of the class of 2000, the supervisors who were elected in a rebellion against the sleaze, corruption, and runaway development policies of the Willie Brown administration, have left office. Gavin Newsom, the mayor who was often at war with the board and who encouraged a spirit of rancor and partisanship, is finally off to Sacramento. For the first time since 1978, the supervisors will be working with a mayor they chose themselves.

For much of the past 15 years, progressive politics was as much about stopping bad things — preventing Brown and then Newsom from wrecking the city — as it was about promoting good things. But the “politics of anti,” as San Francisco State political scientist Rich DeLeon describes is, wasn’t a central theme in the November elections, and this generation of supervisors comes into office with a different agenda.

Besides, one of the clear divisions on the board the past seven years was the Newsom allies against the progressives — something that dissipated instantly when Lee took over.

But the realignment goes deeper.

Until recently, the progressives on the board had a working majority — a caucus, so to speak — and they tended to vote together much of the time. The lines on the board were drawn almost entirely by what Newsom disparagingly calls ideology but could more accurately be described as a shared set of political values, a shared urban agenda.

There are still six supervisors who call themselves progressives, but the idea that they’ll stick together was shattered in the battle over a new mayor — and the notion that there’s anything like a progressive caucus died with Board President David Chiu’s election (his majority came in part from the conservative side, with three progressives opposing him) and with Chiu’s new committee assignments, which for the first time in a decade put control of key assignments in the hands of the fiscal conservatives.

 

A PROGRESSIVE MAJORITY?

The progressive bloc on the board was never monolithic. There were always disagreements and fractures. And, thanks to the Brown Act, the progressives don’t actually meet outside of the formal board sessions. But it was fair and accurate to say that, most of the time, the six members of the board majority functioned almost as a political party, working together on issues and counting on each other for key votes. There was, for example, a dispute two years ago over the board presidency — but in the end, Chiu was elected with exactly six votes, all from the progressive majority that came together in the end.

That all started to fall apart the minute the board was faced with the prospect of choosing a new mayor. For one thing, the progressives couldn’t agree on a strategy — should they look for someone who would seek reelection in November, or try to find an acceptable interim mayor? The rules that barred supervisors from voting for themselves made it more tricky; six votes were not enough to elect any of the existing members. And, not surprisingly, some of the progressives had mayoral ambitions themselves.

When state Assemblymember Tom Ammiano — who would have had six votes easily — took himself out of the running, there was no other obvious progressive candidate. And with no other obvious candidate, and little opportunity for open discussion, the progressives couldn’t come to an agreement.

But by the Jan. 4 board meeting, five of the six had coalesced around Sheriff Mike Hennessey. Chiu, however, was supporting Ed Lee, someone he had known and worked with in the Asian community and whom he considered a progressive candidate. And once it became clear that Lee was headed toward victory, Sup. Eric Mar announced that he, too, would be in Lee’s camp.

A few days later, when the new board convened to choose a president, the progressive solidarity was gone. Sups. David Campos, John Avalos, and Ross Mirkarimi, now the solid left wing of the board, voted for Avalos. Chiu won with the support of Mar, Sup. Jane Kim, and the moderate-to-conservative flank.

Now the Budget Committee — long controlled by a progressive chair and a progressive majority — will be led by Carmen Chu, who is among the most fiscally conservative board members. The Land Use and Development Committee will be chaired by Mar, but two of the three members are from the moderate side. Same goes for Rules, where Sup. Sean Elsbernd, for years the most conservative board member, will work with ideological ally Sup. Mark Farrell on confirming mayoral appointments, redrawing supervisorial districts, and promoting or blocking charter amendments as Kim, the chair, does her best to contain the damage.

You can argue that having independent-minded supervisors who don’t vote as a caucus is a good thing. You can also argue that a fractured left will never win against a united downtown. And both arguments have merit.

But you can’t argue any more that the board has the same sort of progressive majority it’s had for the past 10 years. That’s over. It’s a new — and different — political era.

What happens now? Will the progressives hold enough votes to have an influence on the city budget (and ensure that the deficit solutions include new revenue and not just cuts)? What legislative priorities will the supervisors be pushing in the next year? How will the votes shake out on difficult new proposals (and ongoing issues like community choice aggregation)?

Mayor Lee has pledged to work with the board and will show up for monthly questions. How will he respond to the sorts of progressive legislation — like tenant protections, transit-first policies, immigrant rights measures, and stronger affordable housing standards — that Newsom routinely vetoed?

How will this all play out in a year when the city will also be electing a new mayor?

 

IDENTITY POLITICS?

When Sups. Chiu, Mar, and Kim broke with their three progressive colleagues to support Chiu for board president — just as Chiu and Mar helped clear the path for Ed Lee to become mayor days earlier — it seemed to many political observers that identity had trumped ideology on the board. There’s some truth to that observation, but it’s too simple an explanation. There’s also the fact that Chiu strongly supported Kim, who is a personal friend and former roommate, in her election, so it’s no surprise she went with him for board president.

And the phrase itself is so laden with baggage and problems that it’s hard to talk about. It has come to signify a wide range of political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups. “Rather than organizing solely around belief systems, programmatic manifestoes, or party affiliation, identity political formations typically aim to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context,” says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an ongoing research project by the students and faculty at Stanford University.

Although the notion of identity politics took hold during the social movements of the 1960s and ’70s — when liberation and organizing movements among women and various ethic and other identity groups fed a larger liberal democratic surge that targeted war, economic inequity, social injustice, and other issues — it’s also a political approach that has divided the populace.

“One of the central charges against identity politics by liberals, among others, has been its alleged reliance on notions of sameness to justify political mobilization,” says the Stanford Encyclopedia. “Looking for people who are like you rather than who share your political values as allies runs the risk of sidelining critical political analysis of complex social locations and ghettoizing members of social groups as the only persons capable of making or understanding claims to justice.”

Mar explains that the reality of identity politics and whether it’s a factor in the current politics at City Hall is far more complex.

“With me, David Chiu, and Jane Kim as a block of three progressive Asians — and I still define David Chiu as a progressive though I think some are questioning that — we all come out of what I would call a pro-housing justice, transit-first, and environmental sustainability [mindset],” Mar told us. “But I think because of our ethnic background and experiences, we may have different perspectives at times than other progressives.”

For example, Mar said, many working class families of color need to drive a car so they’ll differ from progressives who want to limit parking spaces to discourage driving. He also has reservations about the proposed congestion pricing fee and how it might affect low-income drivers.\

“I think often when progressive people of color come into office — Jane Kim might be one of the best examples — that sometimes there’s an assumption that her issues are going to be the same as a white progressive or a Latino progressive,” he said. “But I think kind of the different identities that we all have mean that we’re more complex.”

Campos, a Latino immigrant who is openly gay, noted that “as a progressive person of color, I have at times felt that the progressive movement didn’t recognize the importance of identity politics and what it means for me to have another person of color in power.”

But, he added, “I don’t think identity politics alone should guide what happens. A progressive agenda isn’t just about race but class, sexual orientation, and other things. It’s not enough to say that identity politics justifies everything.”

University of San Francisco political science professor Corey Cook told the Guardian that identity has always been a strong factor in San Francisco politics, even if it was overshadowed by the political realignment around progressive ideology that occurred in 2000, mostly as a reaction to an economic agenda based on rapid development and political cronyism.

“I’m not sure that identity wasn’t relevant, but it was swamped by ideology,” Cook told the Guardian. Now, he said, another political realignment seems to be occurring, one that downplays ideology compared to the position it has held for the last 10 years. “I’m not sure that ideology is dead. But the dynamics have definitely changed.”

Cook sees what may be a more important change reflected in Chiu’s decision to put the political moderates in control of key board committees. But he said that shift was probably inevitable given the difficulties of unifying the diverse progressive constituencies.

“It’s hard to hold a progressive coalition together, and it’s amazing that it has lasted this long,” he said.

There’s another kind of identity politics at play as well — that of native San Franciscans, who often express resentment at progressive newcomers talking about what kind of city this is, versus those who see San Francisco as a city of immigrants and ideas, a place being shaped by a wider constituency than the old-timers like to acknowledge.

“I’m honored to join Sups. Elsbernd and Cohen in representing the neighborhoods they grew up in,” Sup. Mark Farrell said during his opening remarks after being sworn in Jan. 8., sobbing when he thanked his parents for their support.

As he continued, he fed the criticism of the notion of ideology-based politics that has been a popular trope with Gavin Newsom and other fiscal conservatives in recent years, telling the crowd he wanted “to turn City Hall into a place based on issues and ideas, not ideology.”

Cohen also placed more importance on her birthright than on her political philosophy, telling stories about entering board chambers through the back door at age 16 when she was part of a youth program created by then-Mayor Frank Jordan, and with former Mayor Dianne Feinstein coming to speak at Cohen’s third-grade class. “I am a San Francisco native, and that is a responsibility I take seriously,” said Cohen, who graduated from the Emerge Program, which grooms women for political office,

“We will have another woman as president of the Board of Supervisors, and we will have a woman as mayor of San Francisco,” she added. And as the sole African American on the board, she also pledged, “I will be working to add more members of the African American community to the elected family of San Francisco.”

But what issues she plans to focus on and what values she’ll represent were unclear in her comments — as they were throughout her campaign, despite the efforts of journalists and activists to discern her political philosophy. In her public comments, her only stated goal was to build bridges between the community and City Hall and let decisions be guided by the people “not political ideologies.”

Oftentimes in recent San Francisco history, identity and ideology have worked in concert, as they did with former Sup. Harvey Milk, who broke barriers as the first openly gay elected official, but who also championed a broad progressive agenda that included tenants rights, protecting civil liberties, and creating more parks and public spaces.

Sup. Scott Wiener, shortly after being sworn into office, acknowledged the legacy of his district, which was once represented by Milk and fellow gay progressive leader Harry Britt, telling the crowd: “I’m keenly aware of the leadership that has come through this district and I have huge shoes to fill.”

Yet Wiener, a moderate, comes from a different ideological camp than Milk and Britt and he echoed the board’s new mantra of collaboration and compromise. “I will always try to find common ground. There is always common ground,” he said.

 

GETTING THINGS DONE?

Chiu is making a clear effort to break with the past, and has been critical of some progressive leaders. “I think it’s important that we do not have a small group of progressive leaders who are dictating to the rest of the progressive community what is progressive,” he said.

While he didn’t single out former Sup. Chris Daly by name, he does seem to be trying to repudiate Daly’s leadership style. “I think that while the progressive left and the progressive community leaders have had very significant accomplishments over the past 10 years, I do think that there are many times when our oppositional tactics have set us back.”

When Chiu was reelected board president, he told the crowd that “none of us were voted into office to take positions. We were voted into office to get things done.”

Some progressives were not at all happy with that comment. “I thought that was a terrible thing to say,” Avalos told the Guardian, arguing the positions that elected officials take shape the legislation that follows. As an example, he cited the positions that progressive members of Congress took in favor of the public option during the health care reform debate.

Talking about getting things done is “a sanctimonious talking point that fits well with what the Chronicle and big papers want to hear,” Avalos said. He said the Chronicle and other downtown interests are more interested in preserving the status quo and blocking progressive reforms. “It’s what they want to see not get done.”

Campos even challenged the comment publicly during the Jan. 11 board meeting when he said, “It’s important to get things done, but I don’t think getting things done is enough. We have to ask ourselves: what is it that we’re getting done? How is it that we’re getting things done? And for whom is it that we’re doing what we’re doing? Is it for the people, or the downtown corporate interests? I hope it’s not getting things done behind closed doors.”

Chiu said that, for him, getting things done is about expanding the progressive movement and consolidating its recent gains. “I think we all share a political goal. As progressives, we all share a political goal of getting things done and growing mainstream support for our shared progressive principles so that they really become the values of our entire city.”

To do that, he said, progressives are going to need to be more conciliatory and cooperative than they’ve been in the past. “I think it’s easy to slip into a more oppositional way of discussing progressive values, but I’m really pushing to move beyond that.”

The biggest single issue this spring will be the budget — and it’s hard to know exactly where the board president will draw his lines. “I have spoken to Mayor Lee about the need for open, transparent, and community-based budget processes and he’s open to that,” Chiu told us — and that alone would be a huge change. But the key progressive priority for the spring will be finding ways to avoid brutal budget cuts — and that means looking for new revenue.

When asked whether new general revenue will be a part of the budget solution, instead of Newsom’s Republican-style cuts-only approaches, Chiu was cautious. “I am open to considering revenues as part of the overall set of solutions to close the budget deficit,” he said. “I am willing to be one elected here that will try to make that argument.” But with his political clout and connections right now, he can do a lot more than be one person making an argument.

Chiu has always been open to new revenue solutions and even led the way in challenging the cuts-only approach to both the city budget and MTA budget two years in a row, only to back down in the end and cut a deal with Newsom. When asked whether things will be better this year given his closer relationship to Lee, Chiu replied, “I think things are going to be different in the coming months.”

During the board’s Jan. 7 deliberation on Lee, Sup. Eric Mar also said that based on his communications with Lee, Mar believed that the Mayor’s Office is open to supporting new revenue measures. He echoed the point later to us.

In addition to supporting the open, inclusive budget process, Mar called for “a humane budget that protects the safety net and services to the most vulnerable people in San Francisco is kind of the critical, top priority.

“I think it’s going to be difficult working with the different forces in the budget process,” he added. “That’s why I wish it could have been a progressive who was chairing the budget process.”

Mar said progressive activism on the budget process is needed now more than ever. “The Budget Justice Coalition from last year I think has to be reenergized so that so many groups are not competing for their own piece of the pie, but that it’s more of a for-all, share-the-pain budget with as many people communicating from outside as possible, putting the pressure on the mayor and the board to make sure that the critical safety net’s protected.”

 

CUTS WILL BE CENTER STAGE

But major cuts — and the issue of city employees pay and benefits — will also be center stage.

At the board’s Jan. 11 meeting, before the supervisors voted unanimously to nominate Lee as interim mayor, Sup. Elsbernd signaled that city workers’ retirement and health benefits will once again be at the center of the fight to balance the budget.

Elsbernd noted that in past years he was accused of exaggerating the negative impacts that city employees’ benefits have on the city’s budget. “But rather than being inflated, they were deflated,” Elsbernd said, noting that benefits will soon consume 18.14 percent of payroll and will account for 26 percent in three years.

“Does the budget deficit include this amount?” he asked.

And at the after-party that followed Lee’s swearing-in, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who caused a furor last fall when he launched the ill-considered Measure B, which sought to reform workers’ benefits packages, told us he is not one to give up lightly.

“We learned a lot from that,” Adachi said. “This is still the huge elephant in City Hall. The city’s pension liability just went up another 1 percent, which is another $30 million”

Chu agreed that worker benefits would be a central part of the budget-balancing debate. “Any conversation about the long-term future of San Francisco’s budget has to look at the reality of where the bulk of our spending is,” she said.

Avalos noted that he plans to talk to labor and community based organizations about ways to increase city revenue. “I’m going to work behind the scene on the budget to make sure the communities are well-spoken for,” Avalos said, later adding, “But it’s hard, given that we need a two-thirds majority to pass stuff on the ballot.”

Last year, Avalos helped put two measures on the ballot to increase revenue: Prop. J, which sought to close loopholes in the city’s current hotel tax and asked visitors to pay a slightly higher hotel tax (about $3 a night) for three years, and Prop. N, the real property transfer tax that slightly increased the tax charged by the city on the sale of property worth more than $5 million.

Prop. N should raise $45 million, Avalos said. “I’ve always had my sights set on raising revenue, but making cuts is inevitable.”

 

THE IDEOLOGY ARGUMENT

Newsom and his allies loved to use “ideology” as a term of disparagement, a way to paint progressives as crazies driven by some sort of Commie-plot secret agenda. But there’s nothing wrong with ideology; Newsom’s fiscal conservative stance and his vow not to raise taxes were ideologies, too. The moderate positions some of the more centrist board members take stem from a basic ideology. Wiener, for example, told us that he thinks that in tough economic times, local government should do less but do it better. That’s a clear, consistent ideology.

For much of the past decade, the defining characteristic of the progressives on the board has been a loosely shared urban ideology supported by tenants, immigrant-rights groups, queer and labor activists, environmentalists, preservationists, supporters of public power and sunshine and foes of big corporate consolidation and economic power. Diversity and inclusiveness was part of that ideology, but it went beyond any one political interest or identity group.

It was often about fighting — against corruption and big-business hegemony and for economic and social equality. The progressive agenda started from the position that city government under Brown and Newsom had been going in the wrong direction and that substantive change was necessary. And sometimes, up against powerful mayors and their well-heeled backers, being polite and accommodating and seeking common ground didn’t work.

As outgoing Sup. Daly put it at his final meeting: “I’ve seen go-along to get along. If you want to do more than that, if you think there’s a fundamental problem with the way things are in this world, then go-along to get along doesn’t do it.” When Chiu announced that the new progressive politics is one of pragmatism, he was making a break from that ideology. He was signaling a different kind of politics. He has urged us to be optimistic about the new year — but we still don’t know what the new agenda will look like, how it will be defined, or at what point Chiu and his allies will say they’ve compromised and reached out enough and are ready to take a strong, even oppositional, stand. We do know the outcome will affect the lives of a lot of San Franciscans. And when the budget decisions start rolling down the pike, the political lines will be drawn fairly clearly. Because reaching across the aisle and working together sounds great in theory — but in practice, there is nothing even resembling a consensus on the board about how the city’s most serious problems should be resolved. And there are some ugly battles ahead.

They have issues: Members of the new Board speak

Mary Magee
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20

Board President David Chiu touched off a broad political discussion in recent weeks with his statement that officials were elected “not to take positions, but to get things done.” Delivered just before his reelection as Board President with the solid backing of the board’s moderate faction, Chiu’s comment has been viewed in light of City Hall’s shifting political dynamic, a subject the Guardian explores in a Jan. 19 cover story. Politics aside, Chiu’s statement also begs the question: Just what do members of the board hope to get done, and how do they propose to accomplish the items on their agenda?
Last week, Guardian reporters tracked down every member of the board to find out. We asked, what are your top priorities? And how do you plan to achieve them? Some spoke with us for 25 minutes, and others spoke for just 5 minutes, but the result offers some insight into what’s on their radar. Not surprisingly, getting the budget right was mentioned by virtually everyone as a top priority, but there are sharp differences in opinion in terms of how to do that. Several supervisors, particularly those in the moderate wing, mentioned ballooning pension and healthcare costs. Aiding small business also emerged as a priority shared by multiple board members.

Sup. Eric Mar
District 1

Issues:
*Budget
*Assisting small businesses
*Programs and services for seniors
*Food Security
*Issues surrounding Golden Gate Park

Elected in 2008 to represent D1, Sup. Eric Mar has been named chair of the powerful Land Use & Economic Development Committee and vice chair of the City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee.

Asked to name his top priorities, Mar said, “A humane budget that protects the safety net and services to the must vulnerable people in San Francisco is kind of the critical, top priority.”

It’s bound to be difficult, he added. “That’s why I wish it could have been a progressive that was chairing the budget process. Now, we have to work with Carmen Chu to ensure that it’s a fair, transparent process.”

A second issue hovering near the top of Mar’s agenda is lending a helping hand to the small businesses of the Richmond District. “There’s a lot of anxiety about the economic climate for small business. We’re trying to work closely with some of the merchant associations and come up with ideas on how the city government can be more supportive,” he said. Mar also spoke about the need to respond to the threat of big box stores, such as PetCo, that could move in and harm neighborhood merchants. “I’m worried about too many of the big box stores trying to come in with an urban strategy and saying that they’re different — but they sure have an unfair advantage,” he noted.

Programs and services for the senior population ranked high on his list. Mar noted that he’d been working with senior groups on how to respond to a budget analyst’s report showing a ballooning need for housing – especially affordable housing – for seniors. “It’s moving from the Baby Boom generation to the Senior Boomers, and I think the population, if I’m not mistaken, by 2020 it’s going up 50 percent,” he said. “It’s a huge booming population that I don’t think we’re ready to address.”

Addressing food security issues through the Food Security Task Force also ranked high on Mar’s list, and he noted that he’s been working with a coalition that includes UCSF and the Department of Public Health to study the problem. “We’ve had a number of strategy meetings already, but we’re trying to launch different efforts to create healthier food access in many of our lowest income neighborhoods,” Mar said.

Finally, Mar talked about issues relating to the park. “I do represent the district that has Golden Gate Park, so I’m often busy with efforts to preserve the park, prevent privatization, and ensure enjoyment for the many residents not just in the Richmond but throughout the city that enjoy the park.” Although it’s not technically in his district, Mar noted that he is very supportive of HANC Recycling Center – and plans to advocate on their behalf to Mayor Lee.

Sup. Mark Farrell
District 2
Issues:
*Pension reform
*Long-term economic plan for city
*Job creation
*Quality-of-life issues

Elected to replace termed-out D2 Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, Farrell has been named vice-chair of the Government Audits & Oversight Committee and a member of the Rules Committee. A native of D2, Farrell told the Guardian he believes his roots in the city and background as a venture capitalist would be an asset to the city’s legislative body. “I know at the last board, Carmen [Chu] was the only one who had any finance background,” he said. “To have someone come from the private sector with a business / finance background, I really do believe … adds to the dialogue and the discussion here at City Hall.”

Along those lines, Farrell said one of his top priorities is the budget. “I’m not on the budget and finance committee this time around, but given my background, I am going to play a role in that,” he said.

So what’s his plan for closing the budget deficit? In response, he alluded to slashing services. “In the past, there have been views that we as a city don’t provide enough services and we need to raise revenues to provide more, or the perspective that we first need to live within our means and then provide more services. Everyone’s going to disagree, but I’m in the latter camp,” he said. “I do believe we need to make some tough choices right now – whether it be head count, or whether it be looking at …pension reform. I do believe pension reform needs to be part of the dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s unsustainable.”

He also said he wanted to be part of “trying to create and focus on a framework for a long-term financial plan here in San Francisco.”

Secondly, Farrell discussed wanting to put together a “jobs bill.”

“Jobs is a big deal,” he said. “It’s something I want to focus on. There are only so many levers we can pull as a city. I think the biotech tax credits have spurred a lot of business down in Mission Bay.”

Next on Farrell’s agenda was quality-of-life issues, but rather than talk about enforcing San Francisco’s sit/lie ordinance – supported by political forces who organized under the banner of maintaining ‘quality-of-life’ – Farrell revealed that he is incensed about parking meter fines. “It is so strikingly unjust when you are 1 minute late to your parking meter and you have a $65 parking fine,” he said.

Farrell also mentioned development projects that would surely require time and attention. “CPMC is going to be a major dominant issue,” he said. He also mentioned Doyle Drive, and transitional age youth housing projects proposed in D2 – but as far as the housing project planned for the King Edward II Inn, which has generated some controversy among neighborhood groups, he didn’t take a strong position either way, saying he wanted to listen to all the stakeholders first.

Board President David Chiu
District 3
Issues:
*Budget
*Preserving neighborhood character
*Immigrant rights
*Preserving economic diversity
*Transit

Elected for a second two-year term as President of the Board, D3 Sup. David Chiu is rumored to be running in the mayor’s race, after he turned down former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s offer to appoint him as District Attorney. That offer was made after Kamala Harris won the state Attorney General’s race this fall. And when Chiu turned it down, former Mayor Gavin Newsom shocked just about everybody by appointing San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon, who is not opposed to the death penalty and was a longtime Republican before he recently registered as a Democrat, instead.

A temporary member of the Board’s Budget acommittee, Chiu is also a permanent member of the Board’s Government Audits & Oversight Committee.

Asked about his top priorities, Chiu spoke first and foremost about  “ensuring that we have a budget that works for all San Franciscans, particularly the most vulnerable.” He also said he wanted to see a different kind of budget process: “It is my hope that we do not engage in the typical, Kabuki-style budget process of years past under the last couple of mayors, where the mayor keeps under wraps for many months exactly what the thinking is on the budget, gives us something on June 1 for which we have only a couple of weeks to analyze, and then engage in the tired back-and-forth of debates in the past.” Chiu also spoke about tackling “looming pension and health care costs.”

Another priority, he said, was “Ensuring that our neighborhoods continue to remain the distinctive urban villages that they are, and protecting neighborhood character,” a goal that relates to “development, … historic preservation, [and] what we do around vacant commercial corridors.”

*Immigrant rights also made his top-five list. “I was very sad that last November we didn’t prevail in allowing all parents to have a right and a voice in school board elections,” he said, referencing ballot measure Proposition D which appeared on the November 2010 ballot. “I think we are going to reengage in discussion around Sanctuary City, another topic I have discussed twice already with Mayor Lee.”

Another issue for Chiu was  “ensuring again that hopefully San Francisco continues to remain an economically diverse city, and not just a city for the very wealthy.” He spoke about reforming city contracts: “In particular, dealing with the fact that in many areas, 70 to 80 percent of city contracts are awarded to non-San Francisco businesses. … I think there is more significant reform that needs to happen in our city contracting process.” Another economic-diversity measure, he said, was tax policy, “particularly around ensuring that our business tax is incenting the type of economic growth that we want.”

Finally, Chiu spoke about “Creating a transit-first city. This is not just about making sure MUNI is more reliable and has stable funding, but ensuring that we’re taking steps to reach a 2020 goal of 20 percent cycling in the city. Earlier this week I called for our transit agencies to look at pedestrian safety, because we are spending close to $300 million a year to deal with pedestrian deaths and injuries.”

Sup. Carmen Chu
District 4
*Budget
*Core Services
*Jobs
*Economy

Chiu has just named Sup. Carmen Chu as chair of the powerful Board and Finance Committee. And Chu, who worked as a budget analyst for Newsom’s administration, says the budget, core services, employment and the economy are her top priorities.

“My hope is that this year the budget is going to be a very collaborative and open process,” Chu said.

Chu believes workers benefits will be a central part of the budget-balancing debate.
“Any conversation about the long-term future of San Francisco’s budget has to look at the reality of where the bulk of our spending is,” she said.

Chu noted that the budget debate will have to take the state budget into account.
“At the end of the day, we need to take into account the context of the state budget, in terms of new cuts and taxes, because anything we do will be on top of the state level.

“We need to ask who do these measures really impact,” she added, noting that there were attempts to put revenue measures on the ballot last year.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi
District 5
* Local Hire / First Source / Reentry programs
* Budget / generating revenue
* Infrastructure improvements
*Reversing MTA service cuts

With only two years left to serve on the Board, D5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has been named chair of the Board’s Public Safety Committee and vice-chair of the Budget and Finance Committee.

“One of my top priorities is building on and strengthening the work that I’ve already done and that Avalos is doing on mandatory local hire and First Source programs,” Mirkarimi said. He also spoke about “strengthening reentry programs for those coming out of the criminal justice system, because we still have an enormously high recidivism rate.”

The budget also ranked high on Mirkarimi’s list, and he stressed the need for “doing surgical operations on our budget to make sure that services for the vulnerable are retained, and looking for other ways to generate revenue beyond the debate of what’s going on the ballot.

“For instance, I helped lead the charge for the America’s Cup, and while the pay-off from that won’t be realized for years, the deal still needs to be massaged. What we have now is an embryonic deal that still needs to be watched.”

Mirkarimi mentioned safeguarding the city against privatization, saying one of his priorities was “retooling our budget priorities to stop the escalating practice of privatizing city services.”

 He spoke about “ongoing work citywide to make mixed-use commercial and residential infrastructure improvements, which coincide with bicycle and pedestrian improvements.”

Finally, Mirkarimi said he wanted to focus on transportation issues. “As Chair of the Transportation Authority, if I even continue to be chair, to take the lead on signature transit projects and work with the M.T.A. to reverse service cuts.”

Sup. Jane Kim
District 6
Issues:
*Jobs
*Economic Development
*Small Business
*Pedestrian Safety
*Legislation to control bedbug infestations

Elected to replace termed-out D6 Sup. Chris Daly, Kim has been named chair of the Rules Committee and a member of the Budget & Finance committee.

Kim believes that she will prove her progressive values through her work and she’s trying to take the current debate about her allegiances on the Board in her stride.

“The one thing I learned from serving on the School Board was to be really patient,” Kim told me, when our conversation turned to the issue of “progressive values.”

“I didn’t want to be President of the School Board for the first few years, because I loved pushing the envelope,” Kim added, noting that as Board President David Chiu is in the often-unenviable position of chief negotiator between the Board and the Mayor.

But with Ed Lee’s appointment as interim mayor, Kim is excited about the coming year.
“There are a lot of new opportunities, a different set of players, and it’s going to be very interesting to learn how to traverse this particular scene.”

Kim is kicking off her first term on the Board with two pieces of legislation. The first seeks to address bedbug infestations. “Particularly around enforcement, including private landlords,” Kim said, noting that there have also been bedbug problems in Housing Authority properties.

Her second immediate goal is to look at pedestrian safety, a big deal in D6, which is traversed by freeways with off-ramps leading into residential zones.
“Pedestrian safety is a unifying issue for my district, particularly for all the seniors,” Kim said, citing traffic calming, speed limit enforcement and increased pedestrian traffic, as possible approaches.

Beyond those immediate goals, Kim plans to focus on jobs, economic development and small businesses in the coming year. “What can we do to create jobs and help small businesses? That is my focus, not from a tax reduction point of view, but how can we consolidate the permitting and fees process, because small businesses are a source of local jobs.”

Kim plans to help the Mayor’s Office implement Sup. John Avalos’ local hire legislation, which interim Mayor Ed Lee supports, unlike his predecessor Mayor Gavin Newsom.

“Everyone has always liked the idea of local hire, but without any teeth, it can’t be enforced,” Kim observed. “It’s heartbreaking that young people graduate out of San Francisco Unified School District and there’s been not much more than retail jobs available.”

She noted that jobs, land use and the budget are the three overarching items on this year’s agenda. “I’m a big believer in revenue generation, but government has to come half-way by being able to articulate how it will benefit people and being able to show that it’s more than just altruistic. I think we have to figure out that balance in promoting new measures. That’s why it’s important to be strong on neighborhood and community issues, so that folks feel like government is listening and helping them. I don’t think it’s a huge ask to be responsive to that.”

Kim said she hoped the new mayor would put out a new revenue measure, enforce local hire, and implement Sup. David Campos’ legislation to ensure due process for immigrant youth.

“I think Ed can take a lot of the goodwill and unanimous support,” Kim said. “We’ve never had a mayor without an election, campaigns, and a track record. Usually mayors come in with a group of dissenters. But he is in a very unique position to do three things that are very challenging to do. I hope raising revenues is one of those three. As a big supporter of local hire, I think it helps having a mayor that is committed to implement it. And I’m hoping that Ed will implement due process for youth. For me, it’s a no brainer and Ed’s background as a former attorney  for Asian Law Caucus is a good match. Many members of my family came to the U.S. as undocumented youth, so this is very personal. Kids get picked up for no reason and misidentified. People confuse Campos and Avalos, so imagine what happens to immigrant youth.”

Sup. Sean Elsbernd
District 7
Issues:
*Parkmerced
*Enforcing Prop G
*Pension & healthcare costs
*CalTrain

With two years left to serve on the Board, D7 Sup. Sean Elsbernd has been named vice-chair of the Rules Committee and a member of the City Operations & Neighborhood Services Committee. He was congratulated by Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak immediately after the Board voted 11-0 to nominated former City Administrator Ed Lee as interim mayor, and during Lee’s swearing-in, former Mayor Willie Brown praised Elsbernd for nominating Lee for the job.

And at the Board’s Jan. 11 meeting before the supervisors voted for Lee, Elsbernd signaled that city workers’ retirement and health benefits will be at the center of the fight to balance the budget in the coming year.

Elsbernd noted that in past years, he was accused of exaggerating the negative impacts that city employees’ benefits have on the city’s budget. “But rather than being inflated, they were deflated,” Elsbernd said, noting that benefits will soon consume 18.14 percent of payroll and will account for 26 percent in three years. “Does the budget deficit include this amount?” he asked.

And at the afterparty that followed Lee’s swearing in, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who caused a furor last fall when he launched Measure B, which sought to reform workers’ benefits packages, told the Guardian he is not one to give up lightly. “We learned a lot from that,” Adachi said. “This is still the huge elephant in City Hall. The city’s pension liability just went up another 1 percent, which is another $30 million.”

As for priorities, Elsbernd broke it down into district, city, and regional issues. In D7, “Hands-down, without question the biggest issue … is Parkmerced,” he said, starting with understanding and managing the environmental approval process. If it gets approved, he said his top concerns was that “the tenant issue. And the overriding concern of if they sell, which I think we all think is going to happen in the near-term – do those guarantees go along with the land?”

Also related to Parkmerced was planning for the traffic conditions that the development could potentially create, which Elsbernd dubbed a “huge 19th Avenue issue.”

Citywide, Elsbernd’s top priorities included enforcing Proposition G – the voter-approved measure that requires MUNI drivers to engage in collective bargaining – and tackling pension and healthcare costs. He spoke about “making sure that MTA budget that comes to us this summer is responsive” to Prop G.

As for pension and healthcare, Elsbernd said, “I’ve already spent a good deal of time with labor talking about it, and will continue to do that.” But he declined to give further details. Asked if a revenue-generating measure could be part of the solution to that problem, Elsbernd said, “I’m not saying no to anything right now.”

On a regional level, Elsbernd’s priority was to help CalTrain deal with its crippling financial problem. He’s served on that board for the last four years. “The financial situation at CalTrain – it is without question the forgotten stepchild of Bay Area transit, and the budget is going to be hugely challenging,” he said. “I think they’ll survive, but I think they’re going to see massive reductions in services.”

Sup. Scott Wiener
District 8
Issues:
*Transportation
*Reasonable regulation of nightlife & entertainment industry
*Pension reform

Elected in November 2010 to replace termed-out D8 Sup. Bevan, Wiener has been named a temporary member of the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee and a permanent member of the Land Use and Economic Development Committee.

“Transportation is a top priority,” Wiener said. ‘That includes working with the M.T.A. to get more cabs on the street, and making sure that the M.T.A. collectively bargains effectively with its new powers, under Prop. G.”

“I’m also going to be focusing on public safety, including work around graffiti enforcement, though I’m not prepared to go public yet about what I’ll be thinking,” he said.

“Regulating nightlife and entertainment is another top priority,” Wiener continued. “I want to make sure that what we do is very thoughtful in terms of understanding the economic impacts, in terms of jobs and tax  revenues, that this segment has. With some of the unfortunate incidents that have happened, it’s really important before we jump to conclusions that we figure out what happened and why. Was it something the club did inappropriately, or was it just a fluke? That way, we can avoid making drastic changes across the board. I think we have been very reactive to some nightclub issues. I want us to be more thoughtful in taking all the factors into consideration.”

“Even if we put a revenue measure on the June or November ballot, we’d need a two-thirds majority, so realistically, it’s hard to envision successfully securing significant revenue measure before November 2012,” Wiener added. “And once you adopt a revenue measure, it takes time to implement it and revenue to come in, so it’s hard to see where we’ll get revenue that will impact the 2012 fiscal year. In the short term, for fiscal year 2011/2012, the horse is out of the barn”

“As for pension stuff, I’m going to be very engaged in that process and hopefully we will move to further rein in pension and retirement healthcare costs.”

Sup. David Campos
District 9
Issues:
*Good government
*Community policing
*Protecting immigrant youth
*Workers’ rights and healthcare

Elected in 2008, D9 Sup. David Campos has been named chair of the Board’s Government Audit & Oversight Committee and a member of the Public Safety Committee. And, ever since he declared that the progressive majority on the Board no longer exists, in the wake of the Board’s 11-0 vote for Mayor Ed Lee, Campos has found his words being used by the mainstream media as alleged evidence that the entire progressive movement is dead in San Francisco.

“They are trying to twist my words and make me into the bogey man,” Campos said, noting that his words were not a statement of defeat but a wake-up call.

“The progressive movement is very much alive,” Campos said. “The key here is that if you speak your truth, they’ll go after you, even if you do it in a respectful way. I didn’t lose my temper or go after anybody, but they are trying to make me into the next Chris Daly.”

Campos said his overarching goal this year is to keep advancing a good government agenda.

“This means not just making sure that good public policy is being pursued, but also that we do so with as much openness and transparency as possible,” he said.

As a member of the Board’s Public Safety Committee, Campos says he will focus on making sure that we have “as much community policing as possible.

He plans to focus on improving public transportation, noting that a lot of folks in his district use public transit.

And he’d like to see interim mayor Ed Lee implement the due process legislation that Campos sponsored and the former Board passed with a veto-proof majority in 2009, but Mayor Gavin Newsom refused to implement. Campos’ legislation sought to ensure that immigrant youth get their day in court before being referred to the federal immigration authorities for possible deportation, and Newsom’s refusal to implement it, left hundreds of youth at risk of being deported, without first having the opportunity to establish their innocence in a juvenile court.
‘We met with Mayor Lee today,” Campos told the Guardian Jan. 18. “And we asked him to move this forward as quickly as possible. He committed to do that and said he wants to get more informed, but I’m confident he will move this forward.”

Campos also said he’ll be focusing on issues around workers’ rights and health care.
“I want to make sure we keep making progress on those fronts,” Campos said.

“It’s been a rough couple of days,” Campos continued, circling back to the beating the press gave him for his “progressive” remarks.“But I got to keep moving, doing my work, calling it as a I see it, doing what’s right, and doing it in a respectful way. The truth is that if you talk about the progressive movement and what we have achieved, which includes universal healthcare and local hire in the last few years, you are likely to become a target.”

Sup. Malia Cohen
District 10
Issues:
*Public safety
*Jobs
*Preserving open space
*Creating Community Benefit Districts
*Ending illegal dumping
Elected to replace termed-out D10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell, Cohen has been named chair of the City & School District committee, vice chair of the Land Use and Economic Development Committee and vice chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Cohen says her top priorities are public safety, jobs, open space, which she campaigned on, as well as creating community benefits districts and putting an end to illegal dumping.

“I feel good about the votes I cast for Ed Lee as interim mayor and David Chiu as Board President. We need to partner on the implementation of local hire, and those alliances can help folks in my district, including Visitation Valley.”

“I was touched by Sup. David Campos words about the progressive majority on the Board,” she added. “I thought they were thoughtful.”

Much like Kim, Cohen believes her legislative actions will show where her values lie.
“I’d like to see a community benefits district on San Bruno and Third Street because those are two separate corridors that could use help,” Cohen said. 

She pointed to legislation that former D10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell introduced in November 2010, authorizing the Department of Public Works to expend a $350,000 grant from the Solid Waste Disposal Clean-Up Site trust fund to clean up 25 chronic illegal dumping sites.
“All the sites are on public property and are located in the southeast part of the city, in my district,” Cohen said, noting that the city receives over 16,000 reports of illegal dumping a year and spends over $2 million in cleaning them up.

Sup. John Avalos
District 11
*Implementing Local Hire
*Improving MUNI / Balboa Park BART
*Affordable housing
*Improving city and neighborhood services

Sup. John Avalos, who chaired the Budget committee last year and has just been named Chair of the Board’s City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee, said his top priorities were implementing local hire, improving Muni and Balboa Park BART station, building affordable housing at Balboa, and improving city and neighborhood services.

“And despite not being budget chair, I’ll make sure we have the best budget we can,” Avalos added, noting that he plans to talk to labor and community based organizations about ways to increase city revenues. “But it’s hard, given that we need a two-thirds majority to pass stuff on the ballot,” he said.

Last year, Avalos helped put two measures on the ballot to increase revenues. Prop. J sought to close loopholes in the city’s current hotel tax, and asked visitors to pay a slightly higher hotel tax (about $3 a night) for three years. Prop. N, the real property transfer tax, h slightly increased the tax charged by the city on the sale of property worth more than $5 million.

Prop. J secured only 45.5 percent of the vote, thereby failing to win the necessary two-thirds majority. But it fared better than Prop. K, the competing hotel tax that Newsom put on the ballot at the behest of large hotel corporations and that only won 38.5 percent of the vote. Prop. K also sought to close loopholes in the hotel tax, but didn’t include a tax increase, meaning it would have contributed millions less than Prop. J.

But Prop. N did pass. “And that should raise $45 million,” Avalos said. “So, I’ve always had my sights set on raising revenue, but making cuts is inevitable.”

Notes on tragedy in Tucson

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Notes on tragedy in Tucson

A dear friend and former classmate of mine, Sarah “Uppie” Updegraff, recently began working the night shift as a nurse at the NICU, the Tucson hospital where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is in intensive care.
 
Today, Uppie sent me a link to a blog she recently created to post her personal reflections on life as she makes the transition from nursing school to a career in health care. Just days after she began writing, she found herself processing not only what it’s like to be up all night caring for patients, but doing so in a highly charged atmosphere and media zoo that’s been thrust into the center of a national tragedy. I thought I’d share some excerpts, which offer a real-life, on-the-ground glimpse into what it’s like to be in Tucson in the wake of this horrific incident.

Here are a few of the thoughts and reflections from her blog, “The Uppie Update.”

From an entry titled, Sad Times in Tucson, City that I Love …

“Of course, then there are politics.  Our liberal wild-west gun laws.  The overall culture of dislike for Sarah Palin (with a comparable vigor to any liberal small college town), and my beloved NPR, blaming Republicans as usual. Usually I find it consoling to listen to news that agrees with me, but I’ve been rolling my eyes all morning, exhausted and unsatisfied.

“And then I think about this young man’s parents.  And this little girl’s parents. How terrible. It’s hard for me to understand these actions, to make sense of anything, other than to believe this boy must have had some psychological issues which compelled him. I can’t believe that a ‘regular’ person could just wake up one day and decide to shoot some people they have decided not to like. … I want to know more about this boy. What systems  have failed? I’ve been obsessively listening to the news, as though I’ll find an answer there. Instead, I find just more politics.”

Here’s more, from an entry titled, My First Week of Night Shift Amidst Tragedy.

“I just move through it, making too much eye contact or none – waiting in line to have multiple security people check my badge on my way to my floor. The Obama hospital parade – a pensive fanfare. 

“They show the little girl, smiling with her milk-carton-worthy optimism, making me notice feeling nauseous. 

“In my time off, I’m unable to focus on anything requiring attention. I find myself, wandering Target alone, watching people, eavesdropping. Listening to chatter, chatter about groceries, children, and shootings woven by many mouths – so strange. Is Target always this strange and solemn, or is it just me, in a disconnected haze of exhaustion? And of course everyone knew someone, everyone’s comparing notes on who they knew and how – as they do in newsworthy tragedies like these. Tucson is so small.  I haven’t met anyone yet who had no connection to the people killed or shot. Droning punctuated by sentences that seem to lift out of the shoppers around me: ‘It could have happened here, it could have happened anywhere.’ ‘I had just been at that Safeway the day before.’ ‘My brother works there.’ conversations laced in and out. This is my community after all, even at Target in the middle of the day/night. It feels lonely and connected at the same time.”

Will the “real” progressives please stand up?

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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9

Before Ed Lee was unanimously appointed interim mayor at the Jan. 11 Board of Supervisors meeting, Sup. David Campos delivered a speech about the progressive movement in San Francisco.

“Progressives are no longer in control of this Board of Supervisors,” Campos noted. “We have a president of the Board of Supervisors who was elected without a clear progressive majority, and who was elected with a clear backing of the moderate block of supervisors.”

Speaking to the notion that supervisors were not elected to take positions, but to get things done, an idea aired by Board President David Chiu, Campos demurred. “I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to say that none of us are elected to take certain positions,” he said.

“It’s important to get things done,” Campos continued. “But I don’t think getting things done is enough. We have to ask ourselves, what is it that we’re getting done? How is it that we’re getting things done? And for whom is it that we’re doing what we’re doing?”

Would things be done in the interests of the people, Campos wanted to know, “or the downtown corporate interests?”

Would things be done in a transparent way? “I hope we’re not getting things done behind closed doors,” Campos said.

Campos also took issue with the implication that “progressives cannot get things done.” He pointed to district elections, universal healthcare, domestic partner benefits, and police reform as accomplishments of the progressive community.

Despite Campos’ pronouncement that progressives were on the losing end, nearly every elected official who stood to speak throughout the course of the historic day uttered the P-word — including Lee himself.

“I was a progressive,” Lee said during his inaugural speech, “before progressive was a political faction in this town.” Lee pointed to his history of fighting for the rights of African Americans and Latinos, his move to establish a whistle-blower program, and his role in creating a recycling program for the city as evidence of his progressive credentials.

Supervisors Eric Mar, Ross Mirkarimi, and Chiu also touched on the issue of progressive politics in comments delivered before Lee was unanimously appointed. “Progressive politics needs to qualify its new definition,” Mirkarimi said, “which is more than just who we are by name or

by ethnicity or culture but by what we stand for.” Mirkarimi also spoke about the transition representing an opportunity to “inject a level of smart politics, not necessarily branded as a progressive or moderate or conservative, but smart politics that take us forward.”

Mar spoke about “our changing progressive movement,” and Board President David Chiu countered Campos’ charge that progressives had lost their control of the board, saying, “I do believe that the majority of this board shares progressive values.”

Chiu also said he believed that there is “a danger in an overly narrow definition of what is progressive.”

At this point, given so many different opinions and affiliations with the label, the very word “progressive” is starting to take on a confusing quality. Does this stem from a lack of a better term? Is it simply that many people with different sets of alliances and perspectives, sometimes at odds with one another, nonetheless identify as “progressives?”

Or is does this new, more complex version of “progressive” relate to the void left behind by two polarizing figures, who drew definitive battle lines between “progressives” and “moderates” by staking out furious opposition to each other? The transition of power in City Hall was marked not only by the introduction of new elected officials in the board chambers and Room 200, but by the departure of former Sup. Chris Daly and former Mayor Gavin Newsom, both towering white men known for relishing the limelight, delivering long-winded addresses, and waging fierce battles against their enemies.

If those elected officials once viewed as the solidly progressive block – former Sup. Chris Daly and Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi – were swept out of power with this shift, as Campos suggested, their political label seems to have survived intact. Despite the approving nod of the board’s moderates and two business-friendly powerhouses who hold tremendous sway even if they don’t hold office, the city’s top two officials — Chiu and Lee — nonetheless seemed eager to be associated with “progressive” values.

Ed Lee is San Francisco’s interim mayor

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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After a unanimous vote by San Francisco’s newly installed Board of Supervisors on Jan. 11, City Administrator Edwin M. Lee was sworn in as interim mayor of San Francisco. The swearing-in was regal affair staged in the rotunda of City Hall. A host of prominent political figures, including Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, congregated to witness the changing of the guard.

Former Mayor Willie Brown served as master of ceremonies, standing behind a podium on the grand staircase with members the newly elected board to his right and former Mayor Gavin Newsom and Mayor-elect Ed Lee to his left.

Newsom offered advice to Lee on how to govern the city, saying, “Figure out what it is you want to accomplish, and work backward from there.”

Rose Pak, the powerful head of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, was seated near the front row for a close-up view of the ceremony. Speaking to the historic nature of the first Asian American holding the office of mayor in San Francisco, Lee singled out Pak, whom he called his good friend, saying, “Today, Rose, our struggle is here, and it’s succeeding.”

Newly anointed as mayor, Lee expressed gratitude to Brown, Newsom, Pak, and the members of the Board of Supervisors who supported him.

He also noted that several weeks ago, he hadn’t even anticipated such a momentous change. “It’s been a whirlwind for me,” he said.

Lee promised to be “a mayor who tackles things head on, and moves the bar forward.” He also vowed to be inclusive – and if he is true to his word, it will mark a dramatic difference from Newsom’s administration, which tended to exclude anyone who disagreed with the mayor.

“I want to say to all of you: I will do my very best to represent all the communities,” Lee said. “I’m going to open up that Room 200 to everybody.”

Following the swearing-in was a reception featuring tables piled high with sushi, gourmet finger foods, and fancy cheese, plus a bar serving wine and beer. Several observers remarked to the Guardian that they had never seen such a feast offered up to the public at City Hall.

In the red

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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In the red

rebeccab@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED When the University of California Board of Regents met Nov. 17, 2010 to approve an 8 percent tuition hike, roughly 300 UC students who were furious about the decision converged outside the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) campus at Mission Bay to rally in opposition, some traveling from as far away as Los Angeles.

“We had been organizing with all the campuses to get students to come up because we really wanted to be there to let them know that it’s not what we want, and it’s something they can’t just get away with doing year after year,” said UC Student Association President Claudia Magana. The protests were raucous, and police cracked down by discharging pepper spray and making 13 arrests.

Despite the palpable fury outside and impassioned student opposition delivered to the Regents inside, the 8 percent fee increase was approved. It came on the heels of a 32 percent tuition increase imposed the year before, and the price was ratcheted up by 9 percent and 7 percent in the years prior to that.

The tuition hikes were steep, but hardly new. Indeed, the cost of attending UC schools has been rising steadily for quite a while. According to a study by economist Peter Donohue, student tuition and fees increased 277 percent from 1990-91 to 2008-09, and that was prior to the 40 percent increase that followed. That trend is repeated in rising costs at the California State University and California Community College systems (See “Access Denied,” April 6, 2010).

Student protesters have sought to make it clear that their outrage isn’t rooted in selfish unwillingness to shell out more money, but instead is linked to a broader concern about privatization and the increasingly limited accessibility of public education.

Magana expressed concern that the climbing cost of instruction at UC, though still a relative bargain compared with private institutions, would ultimately start to affect who could and couldn’t attain higher education through the public university system. The question isn’t limited to UC — tuition is increasing at public and private colleges across the board, and as income inequality sharpens, more students seek higher education.

“Students will always pay to be here,” she noted. “The issue is going to be, which students are here? That’s really the big problem — the huge class issue that’s going to come up. Although there are some forms of support for low-income students, it’s not easy.”

 

DEEPER IN DEBT

Rising costs at UC mirror the upward trend at private nonprofit and for-profit postsecondary institutions nationwide, and those higher prices have triggered a dramatic increase in student borrowing. While students from low- or medium-income families can access higher education at any institution they’re admitted to as long as they’re willing to take out significant sums in student loans, many find themselves at a serious disadvantage once they have to start repaying their debt.

A study conducted by the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) noted that hefty debt burdens often dissuade graduates from pursuing careers in teaching, social work, the nonprofit sector, or other low-paying occupations that foster social justice. PIRG found that 23 percent of public four-year college grads and 38 percent of private four-year college grads were saddled with too much debt to manage paying back student loans on a starting teacher’s salary.

For students pursuing careers as social workers, the economic bind looked even worse: 37 percent of public school grads and 55 percent of private school grads with student loans wouldn’t be able to manage repayment with starting salaries in that field, the study concluded.

“Because students with lower incomes are more dependent on student loans than higher income students, students who already face significant challenges to attending college will more strongly feel the effect of loan debt on career choice,” the report points out.

“It’s a serious problem for so many young people to be starting out their working life so deep in debt,” said Edie Irons, spokesperson for The Institute on College Access and Success (TICAS), an Oakland-based research organization. “It really does limit people’s ability to take advantage of the opportunities education is supposed to provide. In concrete terms, it can make it really hard to buy a house, or start a business, or start a family, or go back to grad school, or to save for retirement or your own children’s education. And that’s all assuming you can keep up with the payments.”

Student loan debt has intensified over the past two decades. In 1993, just one third of all four-year college students graduated with debt, owing on average slightly more than $9,000, according to PIRG.

Today, the majority of college students take out loans to finance their education. Around 62 percent of public university students graduate with student loans, as do 72 percent of students attending private nonprofit institutions, and 96 percent of students attending for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix or the Academy of Art University, according to TICAS. Nationally, students graduate owing an average of $24,000, not counting debt associated with advanced degrees.

While young people must invest more than ever before to obtain higher education, the return on investment isn’t showing signs of improvement. The expected median income for UC graduates has stayed the same over the last decade, even as the cost of tuition has ballooned.

What’s more, says Bob Meister, president of the Council of UC Faculty Associations and professor of Political and Social Thought at UC Santa Cruz, is that an estimated 40 percent of public university students entering the workforce will either be unable to find a job, or will land in a lower-paying job that doesn’t require a college degree.

“For college graduates under 25, the unemployment rate is nearly as high as the national unemployment rate,” around 10 percent, Meister notes. “Over the past decade, what’s happened is that the median hasn’t risen. The top has risen very fast, and the bottom has fallen.”

 

IN A DIFFERENT CLASS

There’s no doubt that diminished state funding is affecting California’s public universities.

“A lot of departments are being eliminated, and a lot of professors who are really amazing are leaving to other universities,” Magana says. “And the waiting lists for classes are just ridiculous.” Academic goals are being compromised — for example, students had to abandon their push for an ethnic studies program at UCSC, she added, because the American studies department that would have partially supported it was slashed.

While diminished public funding has been used to explain the need to raise tuition, Meister has published numerous essays suggesting that the root cause of rising tuition costs at UC goes deeper than that, and he has gone so far as to publicly encourage students not to accept higher tuition without first demanding financial information.

Meister previously served on the UC budget committee and has observed the institution’s evolving financial policies for years. He doesn’t seem surprised that tuition is going up, regardless of what condition the economy is in or what amount of public funding is available because, as he puts it, “the universities will cost as much as they can.” UC had long sought to boost revenue by raising tuition, he noted, yet its leaders feared a rollback in state funding in response. But that changed under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who agreed to increase state support only on condition of that UC in turn require students to contribute more.

Around the same time that Schwarzenegger provided this new incentive to raise tuition, UC pooled its various revenue streams into a consolidated general revenue fund, Meister said, a departure from the old way of keeping separate accounts. This new fund, which included all non-state revenue and funding that wasn’t legally required to be used for certain purposes, could be pledged entirely as collateral for bonds for new construction projects, greatly increasing the institution’s borrowing power and boosting its revenue with the addition of new facilities.

To maintain its stellar bond rating, UC had to ensure an increase in revenues, according to Meister’s explanation, and to do that, UC ratcheted up the one source of revenue it had full control over: tuition. Meister laid bare this financial play in a 2009 open letter to students, titled “They Pledged Your Tuition.” Since it was published, a small corps of student activists has become deeply engaged in studying campus finance documents and airing criticism of financial policies.

Just before the Nov. 17 protests at UCSF Mission Bay, Meister published another open letter, this one addressed to UC President Mark Yudof. This one contemplated, “Why they think they can increase revenues regardless of how fast the economy grows … and regardless of whether the income of graduates is stagnant.”

His answer is somewhat surprising: “Their ability to raise tuition is a function of the growth of income inequality,” he told the Guardian. In the letter, Meister charges, “In the 21st century, when almost all income growth has been in the top 1 to 2 percent of California’s population, UC is still marketing income inequality to students as its most important product. It now expects all students to pay more for an ever-shrinking chance of reaping the ever-growing rewards that our economy makes available to the few. Your plan to increase revenue through tuition growth is feasible, of course, only because the federal government still allows students to borrow more for education despite the greater likelihood that they will not be able to repay — student loans may be the last form of subprime credit available in our economy.”

His theory highlights a paradox. “Being in the have-not category is increasingly worse,” he explains, “and so they are willing to take on more debt, which actually dampens their prospects for income growth.”

The question now is what will happen under Gov. Jerry Brown, who is likely to take a different stance toward rising tuition than Schwarzenegger but nonetheless is expected to unveil harsh cuts to education as a way to address a $26 billion budget deficit.

In a recent interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, UC Regent Richard Blum indicated that it probably would not be feasible to raise tuition again, so the message was that students should brace for more cuts to education.

When Brown unveiled his proposed budget on Jan. 10, he announced further cuts to higher education in California to balance the state budget. Brown’s revised 2010-11 budget decreases the state funding for UC, CSU, the community college system, and other higher education programs by $1.7 billion for the 2011-12 budget. The UC system would take a 13.3 percent hit in general fund support; the proposed cut to the CSU system is 12.5 percent; and the community college system would be cut by 6.9 percent.

Brown, who also wants to hold a special election to ask voters to maintain the current level of tax rates for income, sales, and vehicle license taxes for five years rather than let them expire later this year, expressed regret about making cuts to higher education. But he emphasized the need to make tough decisions in the face of a bleak financial outlook, saying, “We need to face the music.”

PG&E’s Nancy McFadden named Brown’s executive secretary

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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2

Remember when Pacific Gas & Electric Co. embarked on a $46 million political adventure called Proposition 16, the so-called Taxpayers’ Right to Vote Act, which would have rendered it nearly impossible for municipal Community Choice Aggregation electricity programs to compete with the utility giant by requiring a two-thirds majority vote for their implementation?

Remember how the initiative drew scathing criticism from state legislators, including Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who wrote in a December 2009 letter to PG&E that Prop. 16 “calls into question your company’s integrity,” and Sen. Mark Leno, who called it a “slap in the face to the legislature”?

And how even Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, wrote in an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News: “Pure and simple, Proposition 16 is a clever, brazen, buzzword-driven effort by one company to manipulate the California Constitution to protect its current monopoly.”

And how, at the end of that extraordinarily expensive campaign, PG&E lost, primarily because Prop. 16 was rejected by voters in its own service area?

Well, Governor Jerry Brown just appointed the brains behind the operation as one his executive secretaries, a position that’s akin to chief of staff.

Nancy McFadden was senior vice president of PG&E from 2005 to 2010, and she has been publicly credited with dreaming up Prop. 16. Now, she’ll serve in Brown’s administration as an executive secretary along with Jim Humes, who was chief deputy attorney general to Brown. McFadden previously served as deputy chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, and she also served in the Schwarzenegger and Davis administrations.

Out with the old

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Out with the old

On the chilly morning of Dec. 21, a crowd of prominent local and state figures huddled in an industrial parking lot overlooking the brick smokestack of the Potrero power plant, which has been in operation for more than 40 years. It was the winter solstice, the morning after a lunar eclipse, and an historic environmental moment for San Francisco.

A longstanding battle to shut down the aging, polluting power plant was finally coming to an end, and it would be effectively shuttered as the calendar flipped to the new year. Although the past decade had been marked by political infighting and a relentless push to persuade the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) to shut it down sooner, the tone that day was buoyant as people made the rounds, embracing one another and offering congratulations and thanks.

Among those who lined up before the media were Mayor Gavin Newsom, who will be sworn in as lieutenant governor in early 2011; Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose 10 years on the Board of Supervisors is coming to a close; City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who’s thrown his hat into the mayoral race; and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Ed Harrington, whose name has been floated as a contender for interim mayor.

Each of these local politicians played a role in the contentious battle to close the plant, and each candidly admitted that shouting matches on the subject had erupted over the years. Yet they all expressed thanks to one another and to community members in the Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, and Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhoods, where residents were most directly affected by the noxious air pollution generated by the plant.

“They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a state and a city to close this power plant,” said Maxwell, whose District 10 includes the neighborhoods affected by the power plant. “I started working on these plants when I took office, and now the plants are leaving with me.” Maxwell was credited with displaying dogged persistence and playing an instrumental role in pushing for the shutdown the plant.

“There were a lot of phone calls, there were a lot of arguments, there were a lot of disputes. But the fact of the matter is that everybody was focused on the same goal — and that was getting this plant shut down,” said Herrera, who has also been a key player in the decade-long fight to shut down the plant.

Newsom sounded a similar note. “I want to compliment everybody for their steadfastness and their devotion to this process,” the mayor said. “We didn’t always necessarily agree.”

Joshua Arce, who worked with community members to shut down the plant as part of his work with the Brightline Defense Project, was clearly pleased by the announcement. “It’s a fantastic day. We’re at last going to see the billowing smokestack come down, and for good,” Arce said.

The shutdown finally came to pass because the CalISO, which regulates the state power grid, was willing to accept new energy system upgrades as sufficiently reliable. For years, despite the community’s insistence that the plant was having an unacceptable impact on public health and disproportionately affected low-income communities of color, CalISO refused to terminate a contract requiring the plant to stay in operation for grid-reliability purposes.

However, new pieces to the city’s energy puzzle were recently fitted into place. The Trans Bay Cable, a 53-mile submarine power line that can transmit 400 megawatts of electricity from a Pittsburg generating station to San Francisco, became fully operational Nov. 23, months behind schedule. Meanwhile, a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. re-cabling project deemed important to San Francisco’s electricity reliability was completed Dec. 5.

“This plant has been part of the reliable supply for San Francisco … for a long time. And more recently, it actually provided the security for San Francisco should anything happen outside of San Francisco,” Yakout Mansour, president and CEO of the CalISO said during the shutdown ceremony. “But the time is here to replace the plant with an alternative to make the city more secure and reliable with much less polluting options.”

The CalISO issued a letter to the plant owner, which recently merged with another company and changed its name from Mirant to GenOn, stating that the must-run agreement would be terminated effective Jan. 1. The date of the final termination is Feb. 28, pending approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Now the major question is what will become of the power plant site, a vast strip of industrial real estate wedged between Illinois Street and the waterfront. “Many ideas have been thrown out there. People have come to us and said everything from office and industrial and research and development, to wind turbines,” noted Sam Lauter, a local spokesperson for GenOn. Lauter noted that community meetings would be held soon to discuss the future site use.

The site was previously owned by PG&E, and the utility is responsible for cleaning up lingering toxic residue including lampblack, a byproduct of coal processing, left behind when PG&E sold the site. Because of the pollution, residential units cannot legally be constructed on the site, even after cleanup.

There is one unfortunate consequence to shuttering the plant. According to plant manager Mike Montany, five or six of the 28 employees of the plant will lose their jobs. The rest will either retire or go to work at a new facility, he said.

While San Francisco will be poised to ring in the new year with improved air quality thanks to the elimination of its last polluting energy facility, residents of the area where the city’s power will now be sourced from won’t be so lucky. They are faced with the construction of two new power plants. The undersea Trans Bay Cable will run from the PG&E’s substation in San Francisco — a humming network of cables and transformers located beside the power plant that will stay put after the shutdown — to a generating station in Pittsburg, located in the delta near the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.

GenOn owns the Pittsburg power plant, and it recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new power plant in neighboring Antioch, called Marsh Landing. At the same time, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) recently gave the green light for another new power plant in that area. The $1.5 billion PG&E facility would be located in Oakley, which borders Antioch. It won commission approval Dec. 16, despite an earlier decision rejecting the proposal.

The plans for new power plants were approved just after the conclusion of an important United Nations convention on Climate Change in Cancún, Mexico, and amid news reports highlighting scientists’ conclusion that polar bears have a shot at survival only if serious efforts are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While the cheerful ceremony to shut down the Potrero power plant was a satisfying conclusion to a long battle, there’s a long road yet ahead in the overarching struggle against climate change.

Weighing a landlord’s promise

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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8
Weighing a landlord’s promise

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Emotions ran high at meetings held by the San Francisco Planning Commission about a massive overhaul of Parkmerced, a housing complex located next to San Francisco State University that is a neighborhood unto itself.

The plan envisions tearing down 1940s-era garden apartments and townhomes to make way for new low-rises and high-rises that would contain a mix of rental housing and for-sale units. Over the course of a construction project spanning three decades, Parkmerced would expand to 8,900 units — enough to triple the number of residents who can now be accommodated. Final approval for the project is expected in March at the earliest.

Some 150 residents turned out at a Dec. 9 special meeting held near Parkmerced to make it more accessible for seniors and people with limited mobility. Although commissioners had planned to open with a staff presentation, residents protested and demanded to speak first, and their request was granted. After listening to residents comment for hours, commissioners continued the discussion until the Dec. 16 meeting, which drew a smaller turnout.

While some residents were pleased by the plans, the majority who attended the first meeting expressed alarm and anxiety. People aired concerns about the long construction timeline, increased density, traffic congestion, and the impact the plan would have on a well-established, multigenerational community. Many of the speakers had been born at Parkmerced or raised families there. The comments portrayed an economically diverse neighborhood supporting close-knit circles of friends and family.

One question that seemed to have residents rattled most was whether they could trust the developer’s promise that their rent control would be preserved, even after their existing apartments have been torn down.

Among them was octogenarian Robert Pender, a founding member of the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization, who hobbled from his wheelchair to the podium to deliver his statement for the public record. “Parkmerced is my home, and I’m not going to be evicted because some landlord wants to make some more money,” he announced. After making his comments, Pender turned to face the audience, lifted his cane in the air, and issued a rally cry that captured the sentiment of the evening: “fight!”

Under the development plan, 1,500 apartments would be razed to make way for new residential units. The midcentury garden apartments open out to shared courtyards and patios. Many house tenants who’ve lived at Parkmerced for decades. For elderly residents or those who have disabilities, the exceptionally low rent makes it possible for them to stay in San Francisco despite limited income.

From the outset, Parkmerced Investors LLC and Stellar Management have promised existing tenants that they will be relocated to replacement units with roughly the same square footage, where they’ll continue to pay the same monthly rates and keep their rent control. The developer has even promised to keep the existing apartments intact until the new units are available so that none of the residents will have to move twice.

“Our promise to our residents is that we will preserve the rent control,” said P.J. Johnston, a spokesperson for the developer. “Our attorneys believe that the rent-control protections are absolutely ironclad.”

Johnston emphasized the big picture: “For decades, progressive San Francisco has been talking about the need for developing large chunks of affordable housing, for increasing density on the west side, and for creating more housing around transit. Here we finally have the opportunity to do all that while introducing major transit improvements and extending rent control.”

The landlord’s promise of continued rent control is written into a development agreement, a contract between the developer and the city that would be filed along with permits and entitlements for the property. Any subsequent owner would also have to adhere to the terms of the agreement.

Despite those assurances, tenant advocates speaking at the Dec. 9 meeting sounded the alarm that the guarantee could be called into question in court if the developer or a new owner ever sought to challenge it. The Costa-Hawkins Act, passed in 1995, prohibits rent control on newly constructed units, and San Francisco’s rent ordinance guarantees rent control only for units built before 1979.

“It is disingenuous for the Parkmerced landlord and for city staff to assure tenants that they will have rent-controlled replacement units after their units are demolished,” noted Polly Marshall, a tenant commissioner on the San Francisco Rent Board who spoke as an individual before the Planning Commission. “We simply don’t know if this will be the case.”

Marshall said the agreement could be susceptible to a legal challenge, given recent court rulings in Los Angeles and Santa Monica finding that the Ellis Act and the Costa-Hawkins Act preempted any contracts brokered with the municipalities. In each case, signed agreements between a developer and a city were dissolved in California courts.

“There’s nothing in state law that says that when you demolish rent-controlled housing, it has to be replaced with rent-controlled housing,” said Dean Preston, director of Tenants Together, a statewide tenant advocacy group. “I don’t think the city or the developer can make those guarantees.”

Preston added that the problem would be intensified if the property is conveyed to a new owner who didn’t make the same commitments, and acknowledged that he didn’t perceive a surefire way to guarantee enforceability. “It’s not the developer’s fault, and it’s not the city’s fault,” Preston added. “Ultimately this needs to be addressed In Sacramento.”

City staff and the developer seemed responsive to the concerns. In comments submitted to commissioners Dec. 9, Marshall said the development agreement should be amended to specify that the developer agreed to waive any rights to challenge the requirements of the agreement. The following week, at the Dec. 16 meeting, planning staff distributed revised copies of the agreement that had been changed to include that language.

During a staff presentation at the Dec. 16 meeting, mayoral development advisor Michael Yarne addressed the rent-control question in a detailed presentation. “The city wants to protect existing tenants,” Yarne told commissioners. “It is not the city’s intent to leave existing tenants vulnerable.”

Under Costa-Hawkins, Yarne said, exceptions to the rent-control prohibition apply in cases where a municipality has made a valuable contribution to a developer for a residential project in exchange for the waiver of rights under Costa-Hawkins.

Yarne ticked off a slew of contributions he believed would pass muster in a court of law as enough to qualify for the exception. Among other perks, maximum density controls for the site would be eliminated; the height and bulk for new buildings would be increased beyond what’s normally allowed; the city would not assess impact fees for the replacement units; the amount of permitted commercial mixed-use development for Parkmerced’s zoning category would be substantially increased; and the development rights would be frozen for 30 years with no required milestones.

“We believe this satisfies the public-assistance exception,” Yarne said. He noted that the document was drafted with feedback from City Attorney Dennis Herrera.

Tenant rights activist Calvin Welch, who had not yet seen the latest draft of the development agreement when the Guardian caught up with him, said “we’re agnostic” on the rent-control provision until having had a chance to carefully vet the final agreement. Yet he said the tenants were “absolutely right to be concerned,” given the recent legal precedent.

Sup. Sean Elsbernd, whose District 7 includes Parkmerced, said he tuned into the hearings though he did not attend. Elsbernd said he would feel comfortable moving forward with the plan as long as he had assurance from the City Attorney’s Office that the agreement was enforceable. “I don’t want to see that project go forward without certainty,” he said.

Christina Olague, vice president of the Planning Commission, acknowledged the strong concerns voiced by residents about the coming changes to the property. “We have to be sensitive to the emotions that we witnessed that day,” Olague said. “We have to balance out a lot of different needs.”

At the Dec. 16 meeting, more residents made comments echoing the furious opposition expressed on Dec. 9. At the same time, a small contingent of residents who favored the plan turned out to urge commissioners to approve it.

“I have witnessed consistent honesty from one source — the owner of Parkmerced, Rob Rosania,” Daniel Phillips, who identified himself as president of the Board of Directors of the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization, noted in written comments submitted to commissioners. “As long as I have known Rob Rosania and Stellar Management, they have made promises and kept them.”

Yet it was clear that many other tenants were not convinced, and on Dec. 9, several lamented the idea that their homes would be knocked down and their longstanding community impacted by the new development.

Residents who oppose the development recently formed a new residents organization called the Parkmerced Action Coalition. Members of that group are opposed to the wholesale demolition of the 1,500 garden apartments and would rather see them retrofitted and preserved.

“We are living in panic,” a woman who had lived in Parkmerced for many years told commissioners. “I am completely opposed to the tear-down of our community.”

San Francisco activists denounce WikiLeaks crackdown

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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3
San Francisco activists denounce WikiLeaks crackdown

A small group of protesters gathered outside the British Consulate in San Francisco’s financial district Dec. 16 to speak out against the recent crackdown on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is out on bail after being imprisoned for nine days by British authorities.

Assange, whose organization recently created an international stir with the release of secret diplomatic cables, could be extradited to Sweden to be tried on sex crimes charges following a hearing in January.

According to a recent New York Times article, U.S. government officials are trying to build a case against Assange for conspiracy. In the wake of the leak, Sen. Joe Lieberman was calling for the New York Times to be investigated for espionage for publishing information provided by WikiLeaks, and last week, a Fox news pundit even said he thought Assange should be assasinated.

Among the small crowd that gathered before twilight were representatives from Veterans for Peace, Courage to Resist, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Rainey Reitman, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation — a legal firm and nonprofit that defended WikiLeaks against a 2008 lawsuit from Swiss bank Julius Baer — called the recent backlash a threat to Internet freedom and freedom of speech.

“Let me be clear. Here in the United States of America, WikiLeaks has a fundamental right to publish truthful political information. And equally important, Internet users have a fundamental right to read that information and voice their opinions about it. We live in a society that values freedom of expression and shuns censorship. Unfortunately, those values are only as strong as the will to support them — a will that seems to be dwindling now in an alarming way,” Reitman said.

Reitman said the case touched on broader issues. “This isn’t just about WikiLeaks. It never was. It’s about the future of the Internet and the future of free speech.”

Among several other speakers, Reitman was joined by Jeff Patterson of Courage to Resist, which has mounted a support campaign for U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning. Manning has been accused of acting as WikiLeaks’ source for 250,000 secret government documents and classified military footage, which has now been made available to the general public.

Patterson noted that the Bradley Manning Support Network had raised $100,000 for Manning’s legal defense. Although many activists have sent letters of support to Manning, who is being held in solitary confinement in a prison outside of Washington, D.C., “the military is rejecting letters pretty much arbitrarily,” Patterson claimed.

To read more about the WikiLeaks saga, check out the blog of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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