Rebecca Bowe

Mayor’s Homeless Count report: Just as invisible as many homeless San Franciscans

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By Rebecca Bowe

On an evening in late January, hundreds of volunteers hit the streets of San Francisco to complete the 2009 Homeless Count, a biennial point-in-time head count of homeless persons in the city. The count is required by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for all jurisdictions receiving federal funding to provide housing and services for the homeless. To do it, city staffers from various departments team up with volunteers to go out into city streets, emergency shelters, drop-in centers, jails and hospitals to take a tally of how many homeless people they encounter.

In the weeks leading up to it, the Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a press release announcing that he was working with the city’s Human Services Agency to conduct the point-in-time count. “Having an accurate count of our homeless community is essential in determining the effectiveness of our homeless outreach efforts,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’ve got a long way to go toward ending chronic homelessness in San Francisco, but this count will help us to continue in the right direction.”

We called the Mayor’s Office of Communications in January and asked them to keep us in the loop when the results of the homeless count were released. Given the tanking economy, home foreclosures, and anecdotal accounts of rising homelessness, we were interested to see what this survey might reveal. Yet after submitting a series of requests to the MOC earlier this week for the homeless count results, we were finally told: “There has not been a report that has been released.”

Really? How strange. Because Jennifer Friedenbach from the Coalition on Homelessness later forwarded us a document from the city titled “2009 Homeless Count: Executive Summary,” featuring an introduction, survey methods, homeless count results, and analysis. Looks like a report. Sounds like a report. It must be a report!

Clean Power SF will take center stage at joint meeting

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By Rebecca Bowe

Last Friday, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi declared 2009 the “make-or-break year” for San Francisco’s ambitious Community Choice Aggregation program. Also known as Clean Power SF, the program would establish the city and county as an electricity purchaser for residents and businesses currently served by PG&E, and put S.F. on track for achieving 50 percent renewable power generation. At an April 3 LAFCo (Local Agency Formation Commission) meeting, it was announced that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has agreed to sit down with LAFCo for a meeting about CCA for the first time ever — a sign that things could actually start moving forward.

The process of getting Clean Power SF off the ground has been fraught with delay, in part because the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission — which is tasked with implementing the program — dropped the ball on a series of deadlines. During the last couple monthly meetings, LAFCo, which is charged with overseeing CCA implementation, has vented frustration about the feet dragging at the PUC and questioned the agency’s commitment to the effort. However, the tone shifted some at the April 3 meeting.

CCA director Michael Campbell, who was hired by the SFPUC, noted that the city agency is getting back on schedule — and announced the launch of a new Web site. Two new LAFCo staff positions were approved recently by the Board of Supervisors, providing further momentum.

Out with the old

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› rebeccab@sfbg.com

It may seem odd that the loss of a two-story vacant building would ruffle so many feathers, spur multiple phone calls to the police, and inspire a push from Board of Supervisors president David Chiu to make changes to San Francisco’s building code. But the March 16 demolition of the Little House, a 148-year-old Russian Hill cottage on Lombard Street, struck a nerve and raised a slew of questions — many of which continue to go unanswered.

Controversy may have started swirling because a property that has stood since Abraham Lincoln’s presidency was razed with scarcely a week’s notice on a swiftly issued emergency-demolition permit. It might also have been because the co-owners of the property, Michael Cassidy and James Nunemacher, represent the high-profile Residential Builders Association and the real estate firm Vanguard Properties, respectively — both politically well-connected entities that have been behind projects in the past that drew criticism from various citizens groups.

The Little House, which previously stood at 1268 Lombard St., was by some accounts one of the 10 oldest homes in San Francisco. Under the California Environmental Quality Act, a building of that age would normally require an environmental impact report before the Planning Department can issue a demolition permit. According to Department of Building Inspections spokesman William Strawn, the emergency demolition permit was issued after a structural engineer who had inspected the property on behalf of the owners sent a letter expressing concern that it was in danger of collapse. DBI staffers, including department manager Ed Sweeney, inspected it, and Strawn said the permit process started once they concluded that it presented a safety hazard.

Word that the cottage would be razed sparked an outcry from a group of concerned neighbors and historic preservationists, including architect F. Joseph Butler, who says he discovered it 15 years ago when he learned that it was one of the few structures on Russian Hill to escape the 1906 earthquake and ensuing fires. Butler says he doubts the building was in danger of collapse, and says he tried in vain to convince DBI to allow him to bring in a third party who could offer a second opinion. When asked about that possibility, Strawn said, "The building department would not rely on a third-party source."

The building was torn down March 16, with tensions simmering in the days leading up to it. When a demolition crew showed up March 9 ready to go to work, several days before the emergency permit had actually been issued, a neighbor who was trying to save the cottage phoned the police to halt the demolition. Police reports show that a few days later when the crew arrived on the property and were greeted by a small group of protesters, the cops were called twice more — by both sides. Joe Cassidy, Michael Cassidy’s brother and a prominent member of the Residential Builders Association, is the president of the demolition company.

Protesters charged that the building was neglected on purpose to hasten its demise, so the owners could skirt the regulatory EIR process. "It appears the property owner has exceeded the scope of their permit to replace dry rot by structurally damaging the building and claiming it is in imminent danger of falling down," Cynthia Servetnick, an architect with the SF Preservation Consortium, wrote in an e-mail to the City Attorney’s Office not long before the demolition. Building Commissioner Debra Walker, who also inspected it, noted that "the windows were out, and the doors were out in the back. It looked to me like people had just left it open."

Megan Allison Wade, who blogged about the demolition of the Lombard Street house, wrote in an e-mail to zoning administrator Larry Badiner that she perceived "a very clear case of willful neglect in an attempt to degrade the property into demolish-able condition."

Badiner responded: "This emergency demolition permit supersedes historic preservation and housing preservation procedures. … Without commenting on whether this is willful neglect, public safety would trump any concerns regarding how the building became unsafe."

An article published by the San Francisco Chronicle noted that Nunemacher denied that he and Cassidy had neglected the property. When we called Nunemacher to ask him directly, the conversation didn’t go so well. He said he was busy, and told us to read the other news reports. When asked if this meant he didn’t want to comment, he said, "You are putting words into my mouth. I don’t like what you are doing." Then he threatened to call the police.

Whether or not the property was in fact neglected on purpose is a question that may never be answered conclusively. City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey told us he was not at liberty to say whether an investigation is underway, but it’s clear that any investigation would have to go forward without a crucial element — the house.

Attorney Arthur Levy made a last-ditch effort to try to save the Little House just before it came down, sending a letter transcribed on his office’s letterhead to a list of city department heads. "What makes San Francisco different is our built environment," Levy says. "It seems to me that when a property owner willfully neglects a building, and that results in demolition … there ought to be some consequences."

For some of those engaged in the fight over the cottage, the incident brings to mind past controversies involving the same players and others close to them. When an historic Victorian shipwrights’ cottage at 900 Innes Ave. — which the city designated as a historic landmark last year — was under the ownership of developer Joe Cassidy, he had plans to demolish it and build condos, retail space, and a kayak center. In that 2005 battle between the RBA developer and preservationists, the preservationists won.

Another project that involved both Joe Cassidy and Nunemacher was a residential development at Fourth and Freelon streets. At the time that project was being permitted, one of the top-selling agents at Vanguard Properties, Jean-Paul Samaha, worked as a liaison between the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Department. In 2005, architect Kepa Ashkenasy lodged an Ethics Commission complaint against Samaha alleging he had failed to disclose a $100,000 loan from Nunemacher, who had been his romantic partner at the time, even when he was in a position of testifying before the Planning Commission in his professional capacity about the Fourth and Freelon development, Ethics records show.

The complaint was dismissed after Samaha lodged a counter-complaint against Ashkenasy with the Human Rights Commission, noting that loans from spouses and domestic partners are exempt from financial disclosure rules, and charging that her allegation was motivated by a kind of homophobia, a HRC document shows. Ashkenasy told the Guardian that she only sought to illuminate a conflict of interest — and added that she is a lesbian.

Servetnick said the case of the Little House highlights a broader issue of vacant historic properties throughout the city that are allowed to go to waste because it’s more profitable to knock them down and build new. Draft legislation introduced by Board President David Chiu seeks to address this concern by requiring owners of vacant properties to register their empty buildings with the city so that inspectors can play a more proactive role in detecting problems before it’s too late.

At a March 26 Planning Commission meeting, Charles Marsteller, former head of government watchdog group Common Cause, told commissioners he had attended the demolition of the Lombard Street cottage. When it came down, he says, he realized how unique it was and earnestly told planning commissioners that he thinks the Little House should be reconstructed, and the lot turned into a park.

As for the demolition, "It was just a put-on by some insiders in City Hall working the network that they normally work," Marsteller says. "And it shouldn’t have happened."

Green and stimulated

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By Rebecca Bowe

At a March 30 event hosted by Change SF, representatives from Green for All, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and other grassroots organizations opened up a dialogue about green jobs and federal stimulus spending with District 10 Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and Mayor Gavin Newsom’s director of climate protection initiatives, Wade Crowfoot.

Participants spoke about projects they’re engaged in that are aimed at promoting environmental justice, green-jobs training and environmental education, and voiced support for programs that can boost prospects for disadvantaged workers by preparing them for jobs in the green sector. Supervisor Maxwell, a panelist, praised the audience for their work, saying, “It makes me feel like I’m not out of my mind when I’m asking, who are we stimulating with the stimulus package?”

At this stage of the game, Maxwell’s question has yet to be answered with any real clarity. Crowfoot noted that as part of the economic-recovery package, San Francisco is slated to receive some $7.7 million from a U.S. Department of Energy community block grant for energy efficiency and conservation purposes. Additionally, the city will receive some $1.5 million as part of a federal weatherization assistance program, he said, which seeks to curb the energy consumption of low-income residences. Crowfoot threw out some thoughts on how the funding might be used — including energy retrofits on city buildings, initiating a program to replace inefficient boilers, and working alongside existing community-based programs — but on the whole the outlook was vague, as he characterized these suggestions as still being “in the universe of interesting ideas.” Applications for specific project funding are due in late April, he noted. We tried calling a few times today to get more details, but haven’t heard back yet.

T. Boone Pickens visits S.F.

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By Rebecca Bowe

T. Boone Pickens, 80, is a Republican billionaire living in Dallas whose spot-on predictions about the petroleum industry have earned him the nickname the “Oracle of Oil.” More recently, the founder and chairman of BP Capital Management has garnered media attention for reinventing himself as a proponent of clean energy. On March 25, hundreds of San Franciscans came out to the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel to listen to the former oilman discuss the Pickens Plan: a blueprint for curing America’s addiction to foreign oil.

Pickens launched his campaign last July with a slick Web site designed by one of the top brains behind Obama’s online presidential campaign. So far, some 2 million supporters have signed on, Pickens said. “I found out this,” he told a team of reporters shortly before his talk. “When I was a rich guy going to Washington trying to get something done, I got in to see everybody and they were all nice, but not much happened. Today, with 2 million people with me, I’m a hell of a lot more important when I go to Washington.”

A main component of his plan is the installation of thousands of wind turbines through the central corridor of the United States, harnessing what has been called the “Saudi Arabia of wind” to provide what Pickens estimates to be 20 percent of the nation’s electricity supply. To make it work, transmission lines must be constructed to move that power east and west. And according to his vision, domestic natural gas currently used to fire power plants can be utilized as a transportation fuel instead.

When protesters become ‘terrorists’

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› rebeccab@sfbg.com

When does passionate protest become a terrorist threat? Is it when activists choose to target someone’s house, or when the subject of the protest feels scared? Why single out animal rights activists for special treatment? And if the definition of terrorism is expanded for them, what group is next in these turbulent times?

These are the questions being raised by the federal prosecution of four local animal rights activists. Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope, and Adriana Stumpo pleaded not guilty March 19 to charges of using threats and violence to interfere with University of California animal researchers, in violation of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA).

A coalition of civil liberties defense groups have come to their defense, arguing that the law is unconstitutional and that the activists were merely exercising their freedoms of speech and assembly.

AETA specifically protects research institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and other businesses that use animals from individuals who "interfere with" their operations. Anyone using threats, vandalism, property damage, trespassing, harassment, or intimidation to cause someone connected with an animal enterprise to have "reasonable fear of death or bodily injury" can be tried under the law. But critics say the statute is over-broad, arguing that legal activity like boycotts can be construed as a form of interfering with a business’ operations.

"In its abstract form, and now with these arrests, the AETA is a full frontal assault by the U.S. government on the First Amendment," says San Francisco-based attorney Ben Rosenfeld, a member of the National Lawyers Guild. "Everybody, whether they identify with animal rights causes or not, ought to be very alarmed."

According to an FBI affidavit filed by special agent Lisa Shaffer, the activists took part in actions targeting UC researchers who conduct experiments on animals. They didn’t free caged animals, torch laboratories, or slash tires. Instead the defendants were caught picketing, chanting, and creating flyers. And while the complaint cites an alleged assault, it never states that any of the four defendants was responsible. Yet they each face up to five years in prison.

In October 2007, the complaint alleges, the defendants joined a group of protesters outside a UC researcher’s home in El Cerrito where they marched, chanted things like "vivisectors go to hell!" and rang the doorbell. The second incident took place in January 2008, when a group of about a dozen people "wearing bandanas over their nose and mouth" allegedly drove to a number of researchers’ homes in the East Bay. They "marched, chanted, and chalked defamatory comments on the public sidewalks in front of the residences."

The complaint says UC researchers felt harassed, intimidated, and terrified. Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in New York City, says AETA is flawed in that prosecutions are based on the targets’ reactions, not the protesters’ intent. "Basing prosecutions on the subjective feelings of individuals to whom no harm was inflicted undermines the foundation of criminal law, which punishes those who commit crimes with the intent to do so," Boghosian told us. "Demonstrating — even noisy, angry demonstrating that may be uncomfortable to others — is still protected under the First Amendment."

During the third incident, six bandana-clad protesters allegedly approached the home of a UC Santa Cruz researcher. Her husband heard banging on the glass pane of the door, opened it, and then "struggled with one individual and was hit with a dark, firm object," according to the complaint. The protesters dispersed, and one allegedly yelled, "We’re gonna get you!" Santa Cruz police later seized a vehicle belonging to one of the activists. Bandanas found inside the car were later sampled for DNA, linking them with three of the defendants.

The complaint doesn’t indicate whether any of the four defendants struck the researcher’s husband or yelled a threat. But that hardly matters. "Another flaw of the AETA is its ‘course of conduct’ language," Boghosian said. "If one protester commits a single unlawful act at a protest … but five others were present, all may be charged with engaging in a course of conduct that interferes or attempts to interfere with the operations of an animal enterprise."

Finally, the FBI charges that in July 2008, a stack of flyers listing the home addresses of two UC professors under the headline "murderers and torturers" was discovered at a Santa Cruz cafe. The FBI tapped security camera footage and Internet use logs to link three of the defendants to the stack of flyers.

Several days after the flyers were discovered, a firebombing took place at one of those researchers’ homes — but the federal complaint doesn’t mention it. When asked if there might be a connection, FBI special agent Joseph Shadler told the Guardian that the complaint speaks for itself.

Several civil liberties groups have been wary of AETA since it was enacted. "The law is so overly broad and so vague that no one knows what’s legal and illegal," Odette Wilkins, who is pushing for a repeal of the bill through her organization, the Maryland-based Equal Justice Alliance, told us. "The USA Patriot Act makes it very, very clear what terrorism is. It’s anything that causes mass destruction … or places the entire civilian population in fear. I don’t see how people exercising their First Amendment rights … rises to the level of terrorism. It’s ludicrous."

FBI special agent Schadler sees it differently. "As far as the distinction between free speech protected by the Constitution and what we would consider terrorism, whenever somebody’s purpose is to cause fear to get their point across, that’s terrorism," he told the Guardian. "The definition of terrorism is using threat of violence, or violence, to accomplish a political means. And the threat of violence — when you are actually going out and threatening to hurt people, or causing people to believe that they’re going to be hurt, or actually hurting them to get your movement or your political voice heard — then you are committing terrorism."

Lauren Regan, executive director of the Eugene, Ore.-based Civil Liberties Defense Center, helped create Coalition to Abolish the AETA. "We were working on putting together a civil lawsuit simply challenging the constitutionality of the law when the criminal indictments happened," she explained.

Regan has been on the case since a previous law, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, was in place. That statute was upgraded to the AETA in 2006 in the wake of aggressive tactics employed by a radical animal rights group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). "Many felt [the AEPA] was also unnecessary," she told us. "Because there are already statutes for burglary, theft, vandalism, arson [etc]. Any of the crimes that could have fallen within the AEPA were already federal and state crimes."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein cosponsored AETA along with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), saying it would "ensure that eco-terrorists do not impede important medical progress in California." Before the bill passed, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) voiced the lone complaint against it. "I am not for anyone … damaging another person’s property or person. But I am for protecting the First Amendment and not creating a special class of violations for a specific type of protest."

No one else was persuaded. The bill was bundled with other legislation deemed to be noncontroversial then passed by voice vote. The American Civil Liberties Union didn’t oppose it after an amendment was added guaranteeing that it wouldn’t restrict First Amendment rights. The ACLU declined to comment for this story.

Regan says broadening the definition of terrorism can stifle important campaigns. She points to the example of a widely publicized video released by the Humane Society last year that showed disturbing footage of downed cows at a beef processing facility. Though it spurred one of the largest beef recalls in history (and saved school kids from consuming an unsafe meat product), the cameraperson could be tried as a terrorist under the AETA, Regan says, because it was necessary to trespass to shoot the film.

She also criticizes the FBI’s excessive use of paid informants. "This has happened across the country — if someone posts a vegan potluck, the FBI is showing up to see who’s there and what they’re doing," she says. Between 1993 and 2003, the FBI’s counterterrorism division increased 224 percent, according to its Web site.

While advocates are quick to point out that there are no documented deaths associated with animal rights activism, the movement has a history of employing firebombs, threatening phone calls, and other creepy tactics in pressing to end animal cruelty — a trend that led to the passage of the domestic terrorism bill.

"The AETA has backfired, causing an increase in underground activism," says Los Angeles-based activist Jerry Vlasak, whose inflammatory language against animal researchers was quoted extensively during the 2006 Congressional hearing on AETA. Vlasak is a media contact for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which operates a Web site featuring anonymous "communiqués" sent in by clandestine activists. In a posting dated March 6, a group called the Animal Liberation Brigade takes credit for burning the car of a Los Angeles primate researcher. "We will come for you when you least expect it and do a lot more damanage [sic] than to your property," the message reads. "Where ever you go and what ever you do we’ll be watching you as long as you continue to do your disgusting experiments on monkeys. And a special message for the FBI, the more legit activists you fuck with the more it inspires us since wer’re [sic] the people whom you least suspect and when we hit we hit hard."

Will Potter, a Washington, D.C.journalist who runs a Web site called Green Is The New Red, testified before Congress prior to the passage of the AETA, arguing that the law would not deter underground activists. Instead he predicts it will have a chilling effect on protests staged in broad daylight. "This legislation will … risk painting legal activity and nonviolent civil disobedience with the same broad brush as illegal activists," he said.

That, says Rosenfeld, is precisely what’s happened. "The whole underpinning of a democratic society is that it’s rights-based, and government power is limited and checked by law," he says. "Here we have a complete perversion of that process. The government gives itself this over-broad, sweeping power to go after anyone it wants and then seeks to reassure people that it will only use those laws against the real bad guys."

A LAFCo “milestone” at today’s Board meeting

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By Rebecca Bowe

At meetings of the Local Agency Formation Commission, it’s all too common to hear concerns that the whole Community Choice Aggregation program endeavor is moving along at a snail pace. At today’s Board of Supervisors meeting, there will be vote on whether to approve two new LAFCo staff positions, which could jump start CCA. But is there enough support for eight votes, which would ensure that the decision could withstand a veto? And will Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, who voted against it at the last meeting but for it at a committee meeting the day before, stick with her ‘no’ vote?

LAFCo plays an advisory role in the implementation of San Francisco’s CCA program, which would allow the city to combine electricity needs of residents and businesses into a citywide electricity buyers’ program. Administered by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the plan includes ambitious targets for clean and renewable-energy generation.

But the process of getting such a massive project off the ground has been fraught with delay, and it’s not uncommon for citizens to get up during the public comment session at LAFCo meetings to voice their anxiety that an environment threatened by climate change can’t afford to wait any longer.

Update on proposed solar power purchase agreement

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By Rebecca Bowe

The city’s Budget & Finance Committee voted 3 –2 this afternoon to table the discussion about the Recurrent Energy power purchase agreement until April 22.

The 25,000 solar panels that would be installed upon the roof of the Sunset Reservoir could generate enough power to serve 2,500 San Francisco households, Barbara Hale of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission told the committee. It would increase the city’s solar generation from 2 to 7 megawatts, she said, and it would become California’s largest solar photovoltaic system. But while everyone applauded the idea of going solar, some supervisors said they weren’t comfortable with the terms of the contract with Recurrent Energy.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said he had a problem with the city cementing a 25-year agreement to pay $235 per megawatt-hour, a rate that will escalate at 3 percent per year, when there is uncertainty about how the renewable-energy market will behave. If the going rate for solar power drops significantly in the next two decades, he pointed out, the deal could leave San Francisco locked into paying a high price to a private company.

Budget & Finance Committee to discuss solar plant

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By Rebecca Bowe

A proposed solar-power project slated for discussion at the city’s Budget & Finance Committee on March 18 could help San Francisco edge a little closer to its greenhouse-gas reduction goals. But instead of owning and operating the solar photovoltaic system itself, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission would enter into a long-term contract with a private entity – and the new approach has raised questions from committee members.

Supervisor Carmen Chu and Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed the deal. The idea is to establish a 25-year power purchase agreement between the SFPUC and Recurrent Energy for a solar-photovoltaic power plant. The large-scale system would be constructed atop a 480,000-square foot rooftop at the SFPUC’s Sunset Reservoir. The city would lease the space to the company for $1 a year, and the SFPUC would agree to purchase power from Recurrent Energy at a rate estimated to be just under $2 million a year. According to a report prepared by the city’s Budget Analyst’s Office, the cost for electricity over the entire 25-year stretch would come out to about $68.5 million.

Rally held outside Israeli Consulate over West Bank shooting

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By Rebecca Bowe

At least 200 demonstrators gathered outside the Israeli Consulate on Montgomery Street in downtown San Francisco March 16 for a rally and march organized by friends and supporters of Oakland activist Tristan Anderson, who was critically wounded in the West Bank by Israeli Defense Forces on March 13.

Anderson, 38, was shot in the head with a high-velocity teargas canister while demonstrating against a wall that is being constructed through the West Bank village of Ni’lin. He was transported to a hospital in Israel, where he underwent brain surgery the following day. He remains in stable, yet very serious condition, according to demonstrator David Martinez.

At LAFCo, more trouble getting CCA into gear

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By Rebecca Bowe

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who serves as chair of the Local Agency Formation Commission, frowned at what he characterized as “shadiness” at a March 6 LAFCo meeting, and ultimately moved to hold off on a decision to award a contract that would have pushed things forward with San Francisco’s Community Choice Aggregation program.

Ironically, many of the advocates who typically voice concerns that the municipal-power program is moving too slowly expressed relief that this decision was stalled, saying that if the contract had gone to the wrong firm, the integrity of San Francisco’s CCA program would have suffered.

LAFCo is charged with working alongside the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to implement a community-choice aggregation program, which would bring municipal electricity to San Francisco using locally produced, cleaner energy generation.

Spin vs. substance

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› rebeccab@sfbg.com

Hollywood paparazzi crews are beginning to follow high-profile politicians, such as Mayor Gavin Newsom, the same way they track the likes of Britney Spears, the San Francisco Chronicle reported recently. And when a celebrity gossip photographer surreptitiously aims the lens at a political leader, the picture that emerges isn’t always flattering.

Likewise, the documents that can be extracted through public records laws — including the federal Freedom of Information Act, California Public Records Act, and San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance — don’t always paint political figures in the most favorable light.

Both end products leave the same impression of a glimpse behind the curtain — consumers feel they’re privy to the raw, unpackaged truth. But while photos may show politicians looking silly or meeting with controversial power brokers, documents show how the people’s business is being conducted. So the willingness of officials to promptly comply with requests for documents and information says a great deal about whether their public statements match their private deeds.

Nathan Ballard, Newsom’s press secretary, characterizes (through e-mail, the medium through which he insists on dealing with the Guardian) the mayor’s commitment to open government as being "as strong or stronger than any public official in this country."

But to hear some proponents of open government tell it — and in our experience here at the Guardian — the Newsom administration keeps much of the mayor’s business under wraps, leaving many info-seekers in the dark or reliant on Ballard’s spin. Responses to requests for public records tend to be delayed and incomplete, and queries directed to the mayor’s office of communications are often returned with terse, one-line e-mails that obscure more than illuminate.

Rick Knee, a longtime member of the city’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force — the city body charged with upholding the open-government rule — says Newsom has been in violation of the Sunshine Ordinance on several occasions. "Mayor Newsom’s actual practices regarding Sunshine have been, shall we say, less than what one would desire of him," Knee says. Despite those violations, he adds, the mayor "continues to refuse to provide what remedies the task force calls for on his part."

Under Proposition 59, a state constitutional amendment that won overwhelming voter approval in 2004, the records kept by public officials are considered to be "the people’s business." In practice, however, it doesn’t always pan out that way.

For example, a group of citizens informally known as the Sunshine Posse who have made it a personal quest to improve government transparency by peppering city departments with Sunshine requests, have sounded alarm bells over the mayor’s refusal to release a more detailed daily calendar. One Sunshine Posse member began seeking more fleshed-out mayoral itineraries back in 2006, according to group member Christian Holmer, to gain an understanding of whom the mayor had met with and what had been discussed.

But he quickly ran into a slew of difficulties. "The Mayor’s Office ignored our simple request for 255 days," Holmer told the Guardian. "We sent weekly reminders to most of his staff and key members of the city attorney’s executive and government teams for months and months." After bringing the matter to the attention of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, Holmer says, a new set of problems cropped up. "For the Mayor’s Office, it was an ongoing tale of crashed hard drives, changing office personnel, lost documents, overt/covert confusion, and best intentions."

Nearly three years later, the scrutinizing crew remains frustrated with the results, saying the Mayor’s Office has only come forth with a watered-down schedule, called the Prop. G calendar ("scrubbed" and "virtually useless," in Holmer’s opinion), rather than the more descriptive document known as the working calendar. Many days, Newsom’s Prop. G calendar is blank, and seldom is there more than a few hours worth of activities, each one usually described in just a few words.

The Prop. G calendar seeks to comply with the minimum standards for calendars set forth in the city’s 1999 sunshine law: "The mayor … shall keep or cause to be kept a daily calendar wherein is recorded the time and place of each meeting or event attended by that official…. For meetings not otherwise publicly recorded, the calendar shall include a general statement of issues discussed."

The working calendar is a confidential document, the Mayor’s Office held in a letter responding to the Sunshine Posse’s complaint that the mayor was withholding public information. "The Mayor’s Office prepares a working calendar that is extremely detailed and accounts for his time from departure from home until his return in the evening," the letter states. "The working calendar contains not only the mayor’s meeting schedule, but also confidential information such as the officers assigned to protect him, security contact numbers, the mayor’s private schedule, details of his travel [etc.]. As with past administrations, the mayor’s staff keeps the working calendar and its contents confidential…. The computer system automatically deletes the working calendar after five days."

Despite this defense, the task force determined that the working calendar is in fact a public document that should be provided to the citizens. Doug Comstock was task force chair when the issue was heard. "We made it very clear that they have to turn over those documents," he says. "If there’s a document that’s being created using public monies and public funds, that is a more specific calendar, that’s the document that needs to be provided." Comstock also noted that it is possible for the Mayor’s Office to redact sensitive information that could pose a security risk. Nonetheless, he says, three years have passed and "the real calendar remains hidden from view."

When asked about the complaints regarding the calendar, Ballard responded, "Their criticism is baseless. We exceed far [sic] the requirements of the Sunshine Ordinance with the level of disclosure that we provide."

Erica Craven, an attorney who sits on the task force, believes there’s room for improvement on the mayor’s practices regarding sunshine. "My instinct is that there are a lot of people who work in the Mayor’s Office who are committed to open government," she says. "But there are some troubling things we’ve seen as well, such as complaints where the Mayor’s Office hasn’t sent a representative to respond to allegations. I would like to see a little bit more commitment and leadership on open government from the Mayor’s Office — I think it would set a good tone in City Hall."

In recent weeks, interest in the mayor’s schedule has intensified once again in light of the city’s financial predicament. In the face of a looming budget deficit of unprecedented size and with the economy in shambles and jobs at stake, journalists and affected citizens are seeking details about how the conundrum is being dealt with inside City Hall.

Last month, the Guardian filed a request under the Sunshine Ordinance for details on the mayor’s meetings about the budget, asking for "a list of all the labor and business leaders and supervisors that he’s met with about the budget, the dates of those meetings and how long they lasted, all documents associated with those meetings (including any agendas, communications to set up those meetings and follow-up communications after the meetings), and summaries of what was discussed at those meetings, including any outcomes or agreements."

Under the Sunshine Ordinance, such "immediate disclosure" requests are supposed be honored in two days’ time, but it took five days and a Guardian reminder for the Mayor’s Office to respond via e-mail, saying: "As you know, the Sunshine Ordinance does not require us to create documents. If you can point to a specific document that you’re seeking, I’d be happy to try and locate it for you."

Three days later, the Mayor’s Office forwarded the Prop. G calendar, which revealed that the mayor booked 7.5 hours of meetings about the budget crisis over the course of 17 days, none with labor representatives (whom Ballard said Newsom had met with). It included one-line entries disclosing whom he met with and when, but no information concerning the substance of the discussion. When the Guardian pressed for more information, the Mayor’s Office said there were no other documents associated with those meetings or any other information they were willing to provide.

Similarly, just last week, the Guardian tried to find out what the Mayor’s Office was doing about reports that Caltrain and the California High-Speed Rail Authority were balking at using the Transbay Terminal, citing technical concerns. On March 6, we asked who was working on the issue, what communications there had been with these agencies, and other basic information.

Ballard would say only that "The mayor is fully engaged in finding a comprehensive regional solution that ensures that high speed rail will come to the Transbay Terminal," and denied further requests for more substantive information.

Ballard acknowledges that the Mayor’s Office has "occasionally" been found to be in violation of the city’s Sunshine Ordinance. However, he noted, "I can’t remember a time when the Ethics Commission did not overturn a task force decision against our office. In other words, most if not all task force decisions against us have, upon review, been found to be without merit."

Actually, the chronically under-funded Ethics Commission isn’t charged with judging whether SOTF findings have merit. The SOTF is the arbiter of whether the Sunshine Ordinance was violated, but it has no enforcement authority and therefore must rely on Ethics to pursue violations — if it has the will and resources to do so.

This touches on a trend that Knee says is a fundamental challenge to upholding the Sunshine Ordinance. "If the [task force] finds that there has been a willful violation … we can refer our findings to any or all of four entities: Ethics, the Board of Supervisors, the District Attorney, and the California Attorney General," Knee explains. "At one time or another we have made referrals to any or all of those organizations. And every single time, those entities have thrown out our findings. Not one complaint we have submitted has been upheld."

To remedy this, he says, a package of proposed reforms is in the works. "We want to give the task force some teeth," he says. "We want enforcement power of our own."

Steven T. Jones contributed to this report.

Blaming the system

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› rebeccab@sfbg.com

The Grand Sheraton Hotel in downtown Sacramento was buzzing Feb. 24 as some 400 conference-goers representing myriad geographies and political perspectives gathered in one room to tackle an enormous question: should California’s constitution get an overhaul?

Hosted by the Bay Area Council, a San Francisco-based business group, the summit introduced the idea of staging a statewide constitutional convention that would grant Californians the opportunity to make major revisions to the state constitution and streamline the government reform process.

The council hopes to place a measure on the ballot as early as November 2010 to ask voters if a convention should be called. If the effort gets a green light, it would mark the first time in 130 years that a meeting of this kind was convened in California.

The state’s government is dysfunctional, Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters opined during the summit. Full of stakeholders with disparate viewpoints who are too often unwilling to collaborate, he said, the Legislature either tends to roll out "unworkable monstrosities" or have its efforts stalled by a small number of representatives who disagree with the majority. "The problem isn’t really which party is in charge," he said. "It’s the fundamental structure of the government."

The summit attracted diverse interests ranging from Chevron Corp., an icon of big business in the Bay Area, to the Courage Campaign, a left-leaning political organization cast in the mold of Moveon.org. Despite being divided on other issues, all parties seemed to be in agreement on the main point that California’s government is desperately in need of a fix.

"I think of the government in California as being like the Winchester House — you keep adding rooms, but there are no corridors," Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) joked at the summit, referring to a historic mansion in San Jose renowned for its monstrous size and complete lack of a floor plan.

The idea for holding a convention was first floated last summer, when Bay Area Council President and CEO Jim Wunderman published an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle titled "California Government Has Failed Us." Wunderman struck a nerve, and organizations such as Common Cause and the League of Women Voters signed up to partner with the business group to launch the constitutional convention effort. Clamor for government reform got louder still in recent weeks, as a disapproving public witnessed legislators sink into a debacle over the budget deal.

An arduous budget debate further intensified when it came to extracting the last vote needed to achieve the required two-thirds majority. The Democratic majority wound up negotiating with Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria), who turned his vote into leverage to force concessions on his own demands. Maldonado was able to single-handedly eliminate a proposed 12-cent increase on the gas tax, and he stipulated that an initiative be placed on the May ballot for an open primary.

"The budget was held hostage to right-wing ideology when the people of the state were demanding a real solution to a real problem," says Lenny Goldberg, executive director of the California Tax Reform Association and the owner of a lobbying firm. "For example, the only way they could get the votes was to give away huge corporate loopholes."

The lesson learned? "We have tied ourselves in knots with the two-thirds vote requirement," declared Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a moderate Democrat and gubernatorial candidate, spurring a round of applause at the summit. Garamendi called for "majority rule, plain and simple, on every issue." He also suggested extended term limits, and transitioning to a 120-member unicameral legislature to allow representatives to better represent smaller districts.

Other ideas for reform that got bandied about during the summit included reinventing election procedures and considering approaches such as instant-runoff voting, establishing proportional representation, changing the number of signatures needed to place an initiative on the ballot, and establishing an automatic review process for state agencies.

In order to hold a convention, California voters would have to approve two separate ballot initiatives. The first would create an amendment to the current constitution allowing voters to call the convention, while the second would call the actual convention. Both questions could be put to voters on the same ballot, according to the Bay Area Council. Any changes made to the constitution would then have to be ratified by voters.

The process of calling a convention is clear enough, but questions abound on how to proceed from there. For example, how would convention delegates be selected? How many would attend? How would the organizers ensure inclusiveness across ethnic, gender, and economic boundaries? Would the convention open up the entire constitution to debate, or would parties agree to narrow the scope to a few key issues? How would the convention itself escape the same gridlock that critics say has rendered the Legislature dysfunctional?

Without hammering out the fine points, it’s hard to know whether the enthusiasm exhibited at the summit could survive the nitty-gritty details of actually going through with a convention. It’s also too early to say whether progressives could emerge from such a process satisfied with the results.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward the constitutional convention. "I wouldn’t tell you at this point I’m enthusiastic about it because it could be too much blah-blah and not enough action," he told the Guardian. "I do definitely support budget reform — I’m going to make that a priority — and really want to look at the budget infrastructure, certainly the two-thirds majority. I think we need to deliberate on it and make certain that it wouldn’t have any unintended consequences."

Sen. Mark Leno shared Ammiano’s view that the two-thirds majority requirement tops the list of problems. "I think we could take some modest but profound steps before we open up an entire potential Pandora’s box," he said of the convention idea. "I don’t wish to dampen the spirits of our friends at the Bay Area Council. Their intentions are very good. But should it go forward, the devil will be in the details."

Goldberg took a similar stance. "The biggest problem is the two-thirds vote requirement for taxes and a budget," he told the Guardian. "If a constitutional convention is the way that issue gets resolved, that’s positive. But the question is, how long is that going to take? How are they going to do it? There are so many unanswered questions that I would say, if that’s the only way to deal with the two-thirds vote, let’s do it."

Robert Cruickshank, public policy director at the Courage Campaign and a blogger with the political Web site Calitics.com, said he feels confident that a convention is a worthwhile pursuit for progressives. His organization conducted a poll of its membership to gauge whether there was progressive support for the idea, he said, and results showed that 92 percent of respondents supported it.

For his part, Wunderman emphasized the convention as a tool that could be used by voters rather than elected officials in Sacramento. "I’m excited about changing the game, changing the rules," he told the Guardian. "And I’m more confident than ever that if you lead Californians to revise their constitution, once they see it, they’ll know what they have to do, and they’ll do it. And the fact that it was them that did it will give rise to support for the product."

Daly introduces rule changes to aid struggling tenants

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By Rebecca Bowe

As the economic downturn deepens, millions in state and federal funds have been allocated to struggling homeowners who are falling behind on mortgage payments. Today, Supervisor Chris Daly will ask the Board of Supervisors to extend a life raft to another group of people who are worried about losing the roofs over their heads: tenants.

“Homeowners aren’t the only ones struggling with the financial crisis. Most San Franciscans are renters,” Daly points out. “It’s about time we do something to help tenants who are losing their homes. In this crisis, it is not appropriate for landlords to be raising rents that tenants can’t afford.”

Toward that end, Daly will introduce a “renters economic relief package” at today’s board meeting, which proposes several amendments to the city’s rent-control law. The three changes are designed to ease some of the pain for San Francisco renters, who face the pressure of rising rents even as the economy continues to slide. In 2009, the Board of Realtors projects a 7 percent rent increase for vacant units, a measure that’s looked to as a barometer for how the rental market is behaving, according to Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union.

Margaret Brodkin, former DCYF director, honored as ‘Community Builder’

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By Rebecca Bowe

A little more than a month after Mayor Gavin Newsom asked former Department of Children, Youth and their Families director Margaret Brodkin to step down from her post, community support for her work is still very much in place. At an annual fundraising event called Soul of the City, hosted by the San Francisco Organizing Project on Feb. 23, Brodkin was honored with a Community Builder Award.

Brodkin, who is currently serving as director of the New Day for Learning Initiative, a project aimed at galvanizing efforts for a more just and comprehensive educational system in the city, thanked the crowd who had gathered at a Mission District restaurant for the Soul of the City celebration. But she also expressed disappointment about being removed from her position at DCYF, which she was appointed to in 2004. “I lost a job that I was very devoted to and felt I’d lived a lifetime to do,” she said. On the day that she was asked to step down, the mayor’s office issued a press release to put a good face on it, but Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth worried that her dismissal set the stage for a “possible raid, erosion, or elimination of the children’s fund and other critical services for our kids and families.”

Meanwhile, members of SFOP and others working on education issues in the city are gearing up for tough work ahead on pending budget cuts that could affect schools and youth programs. The coalition has had success in the past: Last April, the organizing project spearheaded an effort to protect the jobs of 535 teachers from seven schools in the county whose employment was threatened by state budget cuts. Facing pressure from parents and teachers, city officials agreed to release $20 million from the city’s Rainy Day Reserve to reinstate the teachers’ salaries. But with the dismal financial landscape on the state and local levels, another battle looms ahead. “How can I tell my daughter to do the best she can when the education is not available?” asked Michelle Antone, a SFOP community leader, whose daughter attends school at Sanchez College Preparatory School.

No service area

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› Rebeccab@sfbg.com

A little less than an hour before the Tenderloin Health Resource Community Center is scheduled to open for the afternoon, a line forms outside and stretches down Leavenworth Street. If they arrive early enough at this drop-in center for the chronically homeless, people can get health services or be put on a list for a bed in a homeless shelter. For many, the drop-in center is simply a place to use the bathroom, have a snack, or take refuge from the street.

Once the doors have been unlocked, every seat inside the center is filled. Most clients are African American men. A few are in wheelchairs. One has a hacking cough. The atmosphere feels like a rundown waiting room at a doctor’s office, filled with dispirited patients. Standing quietly near the entrance is a security guard, dressed all in black with a pink mask covering her nose and mouth.

Tenderloin Health is contracted to provide services for 6,000 individual clients per year, according to Colm Hegarty, the organization’s director of resource development. In reality, it serves twice as many.

But it appears that the center’s days are numbered. Its initial city funding of $1 million a year was halved in 2008, Hegarty explained. In the latest round of deep budget cuts — dealt to address next year’s gaping budget deficit — the rest of its funded was eliminated.

While the decision hasn’t been finalized, Hegarty says, the center will likely have to close its doors for good June 30. It’s just one of many San Francisco health and human services programs that will be affected by looming budget cuts, which were mandated by Mayor Gavin Newsom to balance an unprecedented shortfall, projected at more than $500 million for the coming fiscal year, that was triggered by the economic downturn. Newsom, meanwhile, has twice vetoed legislation passed by the Board of Supervisors calling for a special election to ask voters to raise taxes to save programs such as this one.

For the clients of Tenderloin Health, just a stone’s throw from City Hall, the deep cuts have real-life consequences. "The question is going to become where will these people go?" Hegarty wonders.

Brendan Bailey, an occasional client at the drop-in center who says he’s currently staying in a shelter, echoed Hegarty’s concern. "I’d think that they would rather have them here than wandering the street," he said, gesturing toward the center’s crowded waiting room.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, sounded a similar note at a recent Human Services Agency budget hearing, where it was announced that homeless shelters might also be shut during the day in an effort to save money.

"We were basically putting forth this idea that if they’re both going to close the Tenderloin Health and close the shelters during the day, it really ends up being a recipe for disaster in terms of people’s ability to get off the streets," Friedenbach said. "It just would be incredibly problematic … They need to be somewhere."

Another blow to homeless services are cuts to the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, which operates a program that caters to homeless women. All told, Newsom wants 25 percent slashed from the Department of Human Services budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year. According to a list of proposed reductions presented to the San Francisco Human Services Commission Feb. 12, at least 62 staff positions will be eliminated. That figure doesn’t include layoffs that are taking effect in the next couple months as a response to the current year’s midyear budget adjustments.

Another eliminated component of human services is the agency’s Civil Rights Office, which consisted of two full-time staffers who were responsible for investigating complaints from clients who felt they had experienced some form of discrimination. When the Guardian contacted one of those staff members, she declined to comment but did acknowledge that her position had been written out of the budget.

Steve Bingham, an attorney with Bay Area Legal Aid, notes that state law actually requires the city to have a civil-rights mechanism in place. "The law doesn’t require that there be specific full-time people to do it. The law requires that somebody be designated and that certain work be done," he explained, adding that he’d been told the civil-rights responsibilities would now be shared among several staffers.

"I’m very disturbed that they’re basically going to divvy up responsibilities," he said. "We are constantly bringing to the attention of management in the department deficiencies that are essentially civil rights deficiencies. For example, somebody who just can’t process written information misses a meeting with a worker that he was informed about with a notice. Accommodation means that you figure out that that person needs a telephone call. If you miss a meeting with a worker, you get a notice that you’ve been terminated from benefits."

Human Services Agency executive director Trent Rohrer did not return repeated calls requesting comment about budget cuts.

Meanwhile, in the Department of Public Health, the consequences of deep budget cuts are already taking a heavy toll. Over Valentine’s Day weekend, 93 certified nursing assistants employed at Laguna Honda and SF General hospitals received pink slips, a blow that represents just one of several rounds of layoffs being administered in the wake of midyear budget cuts. (An earlier round, which included 19 CNAs, took effect Feb. 20.) The fallout from budget reductions for the 2009-10 fiscal year won’t take effect until May 1, according to Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda. Everyone the Guardian spoke with expects that round to be worse because there’s a much larger projected deficit.

Ed Kinchley, healthcare industry chair and executive board member of SEIU Local 1021, is employed as a social worker in SF General’s emergency room. He says the cuts have diminished the quality of service the hospital can provide. "Part of my job is trying to hook up the patients who are coming into the emergency room with services, and almost every week when I come into work, there’s some service we have had in the past that isn’t there anymore," he says.

"The biggest thing they’re doing is what we call ‘de-skilling,’" Kinchley continues. "For example, in the first round, they took 45 unit clerks — the clerical people who sit at the centralized desk and make sure the right labs get done and sent to the right place — and replaced them with clerks who don’t have any medical knowledge. That’s at the clinic where all the people go who are supposed to be getting quality care under Healthy San Francisco."

Reassignments are another issue, he says. When an African American nurse was reassigned, she was made to leave her post at a program that offered therapy for youth and adolescents that had suffered sexual abuse. Since many of those clients are African American, Kinchley points out, her removal diminishes the culturally competent service that was previously in place for these youth. Sometimes the new assignments shake up people’s lives: staffers in the process of completing nursing programs who were recently reassigned to completely different work hours, for instance, have had to abandon their studies because of the scheduling conflict.

The end result, in his opinion, is a decline in both the quantity and quality of service at SF General, even in the wake of voters approving a bond measure in the November election to borrow some $887 million to rebuild the facility.

"I have worked there since 1984," Kinchley says. "Right now, morale is lower than I’ve ever seen it."

As the cuts create ripple effects in the lives of health and human services staffers and the clients they serve, a City Hall fight over raising city revenue continues between the Board of Supervisors and the mayor. In the face of opposition from Newsom and the business community, the special election proposed for June 2 has been pushed back to late summer at the earliest.

"I firmly believe that moving forward precipitously with a special election not only puts the success of needed revenue measures at risk, but bypasses our responsibility for finding long-term and enduring budget solutions," Newsom wrote in a Feb. 13 veto letter to the Board of Supervisors.

Labor, meanwhile, continues to advocate for raising city revenues, saying it’s the only way to stave off cuts to the most critical services. A group called the Coalition to Save Public Health, comprised in part of SEIU members, will host a forum called State of the City: Budget Crisis Town Hall to discuss across-the-board cuts (See Alerts for details).

"If the voters of San Francisco are willing to vote for a tax increase — or even if they’re not — if they’re given the opportunity to vote for it, then they’re not going to hold that against [Newsom]," Kinchley says. "The initiative is coming from the Board of Supervisors anyway. All he needs to do is get out of the way."

Layoffs take effect tomorrow for 236 city employees

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By Rebecca Bowe

February 20 is a date that many city workers have probably looked toward with anxiety ever since Mayor Gavin Newsom first announced the 2008-09 midyear budget cuts. Tomorrow, 236 layoffs of city employees will take effect, signifying the first (but not the worst) of several waves of job cuts that will be dealt in an effort to remedy budget shortfalls for the current fiscal year and the 2009-10 fiscal year. On March 20, another 22 city employees will lose their jobs, and two months from now, yet another 94 layoffs will become effective, according to Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda. All of these pink slips are being distributed to address the current year’s budget deficit.

Many of the layoffs that will take effect tomorrow are concentrated in the Department of Public Health. According to a breakdown of layoffs by department provided by the City Controller’s office, 49 are unit clerks in DPH, another 21 are nursing assistants and 13 are licensed vocational nurses. (These numbers don’t include unfilled positions that were eliminated from the budget.)

But these blows won’t be the heaviest: On May 1, an unknown but likely much larger number of layoffs will take effect as part of the city’s attempt to remedy the 2009-10 budget shortfall, which is projected to be more than $500 million. “I’m assuming that’s going to be much larger because we are working with a larger deficit,” Zmuda said, but added that she did not yet know what that number would be.

D.I.Y. campaign-finance search? Good luck with that!

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By Rebecca Bowe

This week, the Guardian offers a look at the biggest spenders in local politics, using SF Ethics Commission campaign-finance data from 1998 to 2008. The Ethics’ Campaign Finance Database is an excellent tool for answering questions about which organizations have given money to which causes and candidates over the years, but the system could be a lot more user friendly.

For instance, plunging into the bowels of the SF Ethics Commission database to try and find out who’s opening the fattest wallets come election time isn’t as easy a task as the average voter might hope. Although the information is a matter of public record that’s available to everyone, there is no ranking system that makes the highest donors easy to spot – so researchers literally have to pick through tens of thousands of data rows in order to spot the high contributions. Meanwhile, there are limitations with the short-cut method of finding such information, which is to use the “Advanced Search” function on the city agency’s Web page. That search engine spits back incomplete results: Our No. 2 top donor, for example, doesn’t show up, even though a comprehensive search of the campaign-finance spreadsheet from 2001 reveals that he contributed some $3.5 million to his own run for mayor.

Money talks

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› news@sfbg.com

The economy’s a mess, and the housing crisis, financial meltdown, and skyrocketing unemployment rates have left a lot of San Franciscans short of cash. But the flow of big downtown money into political campaigns hasn’t slowed a bit.

In fact, a tally of all 2008 monetary and in-kind political contributions logged in the SF Ethics Commission Campaign Finance Database shows that even in the face of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, money spent on local political campaigns in the city swelled to a whopping $20.6 million. That grand total, which does not include loans or so-called "soft money" like independent expenditures, is higher than that of any previous year recorded in the Ethics database, which tracks campaign spending back to 1998.

A review of the entire database paints of picture of how influence money flows in San Francisco: Six of the top 10 donors over the past 10 years are big businesses and downtown organizations that promote the same conservative political agenda. The campaign cash often wound up in the same few political pots — a handful of supervisorial campaigns and some coordinated political action committees.

And despite spending ungodly sums of money, downtown lost more races than it won.

More than half the total money spent in 2008 came from one source: Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which plunked down $10.2 million last fall for the No on Proposition H campaign against the San Francisco Clean Energy Act. That November ballot measure, which lost under PG&E’s barrage, would have paved the way for public power, initiating a process to make the city the primary provider of electric power in San Francisco with a goal of 50 percent clean-energy generation by 2017.

The powerful utility wasn’t only the biggest spender last year — it claims the No. 1 slot on a list of all campaign contributions spanning from 1998 to 2008, which the Guardian compiled using Ethics data. PG&E dropped a juicy $14.7 million into local political campaigns over that period, beating out runner-up Clint Reilly by more than $10 million.

Below are brief introductions to the 10 biggest spenders, 1998-2008.

They’ve got the power. The colossal sums PG&E has forked over to influence ballot measures over the years puts the utility in a category all its own. SF isn’t the only municipality where the company has poured millions into defeating a public power proposal. In 2006, when Yolo County put measures on the ballot to expand the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), which would have edged PG&E out of the service area, the utility spent $11.3 million to try and keep it from happening.

Pay to the order of Clint Reilly. Reilly, the former political consultant, now runs a successful real estate company. While his name routinely comes up on the roster of campaign contributors, he owes his status as No. 2 to his 1999 campaign for SF mayor, into which he poured some $3.5 million of his own money. "Most of the money we give is for Democratic candidates or progressive politicians, or neighborhood-oriented issues," said Reilly, who also served as president of the board of Catholic Charities.

Committee on really high-paying jobs? Third in line is the Committee on Jobs, a political action committee that aims to influence local legislation affecting business interests. The PAC is bankrolled in part by the Charles Schwab Corporation, Gap, Inc., and Gap founder Don Fisher — all of whom surface on their own in our Top 30 list. With a grand total just shy of $3 million, the committee coughed up about $100,000 in campaign-related spending in 2008. Much of that funding went to similar political entities, including the SF Coalition for Responsible Growth, the SF Chamber of Commerce 21st Century Committee, and the SF Taxpayers Union PAC (see "Downtown’s Slate," 10/15/2008). This past November, the COJ also backed the Community Justice Court Coalition, formed to pass Proposition L, which would have guaranteed first-year funding for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s small-crimes court in the Tenderloin. Prop. L failed by 57 percent.

Bluegrass billionaire. San Francisco investment banker and billionaire Warren Hellman has dropped nearly $1.2 million over the years into local political campaigns, our results show. Dubbed "the Warren Buffet of the West Coast" by Business Week for his sharp financial prowess, Hellman co-founded Hellman and Friedman, an investment firm, in 1984. Hellman is known for putting on Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, an annual SF music festival. While he tends to contribute to downtown business entities such as the Committee on Jobs and the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, in 2008 he devoted $100,000 to supporting a June ballot measure, Proposition A, that increased teacher salaries and classroom support by instating a parcel tax to amp up funding for public schools.

Fisher king. Don Fisher, founder and former CEO of Gap, Inc., is another one of SF’s resident billionaires. While Gap, Inc. turns up in 17th place in our results, Fisher himself has poured more than $1.1 million into entities such as the Committee on Jobs, SFSOS, the San Franciscans for Sensible Government Political Action Committee, and other conservative business groups. Fisher’s total includes money from the "DDF Y2K family trust," a Fisher family fund that shows up in Ethics records in 2000. In that year, $100,000 from that trust went to support the Committee on Jobs’ candidate advocacy fund, and another $40,000 went to a pro-development group called San Franciscans for Responsible Planning.

Not a very affordable campaign, either. Sixth up is Lennar Homes, the developer behind the massive home-building project at Hunters Point Shipyard, which the Guardian has covered extensively. The vast majority of its $1 million reported spending was directed to No on Prop. F, a campaign sponsored by Lennar to defeat a June ballot measure that would have created a 50 percent affordable-housing requirement for the Candlestick Point and Hunters Point Shipyard development project. The measure failed, with 63 percent voting it down.

Chuck’s bucks. Charles Schwab Corp., which set up shop in San Francisco in the mid-1970s, is an investment banking firm that reports having $1.1 trillion in total client assets. The corporation ranks seventh in our Top 30 list, with some $973,000 in donations. In 27th place is Charles R. Schwab himself, the company’s founder and chairman of the board (and the guy they’re referring to in those "Talk to Chuck" billboards posted all over SF). If Schwab’s individual and corporate donations were combined, the total would be enough to bump Warren Hellman out of fourth place. Schwab’s dollars are infused into the Committee on Jobs, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, SF SOS, and other downtown-business interest organizations. "We’re a major company here in the Bay Area and a major employer," company spokesperson Greg Gable told the Guardian. "We’re interested in political matters across the board — it’s not limited to any one party." But it’s limited to one pro-downtown point of view.

The brass. The San Francisco Police Officer’s Association is another major player, spending some $913,000 since 1998 on political campaigns. The organization backed candidates Carmen Chu, Myrna Lim, Joseph Alioto, Denise McCarthy, and Sue Lee for supervisors in 2008, contributions show. All but Chu lost.

At your service. SEIU Local 1021 and SEIU 790 crop up frequently in Ethics data, with a grand total of about $860,000 in spending over the years. SEIU representatives recently turned out en masse at a Board of Supervisors meeting to urge the supervisors to support a June 2 special election to raise taxes in order to boost city revenues and save critical services from the hefty budget cuts that are coming down the pipe.

Friends in high places. No real surprises here: the Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library contributed its money to, well, ballot measures that would have affected the library. In 2000, for example, the F and F plunked $265 thousand into an effort called the "Committee to Save Branch Libraries — Yes on Prop. A."

Top 30 San Francisco campaign donors, 1998-2008

1. Pacific Gas & Electric $14,831,486
2. Clint Reilly $4,138,089
3. Committee on Jobs $2,970,857
4. Warren F. Hellman $1,191,970
5. Don Fisher (incl. Don & Doris Fisher Y2K trust) $1,164,286
6. Lennar Homes $1,002,861
7. Charles Schwab Corporation $973,176
8. S.F. Police Officers Association $913,834
9. SEIU Local 1021 & SEIU Local 790 $860,979
10. Friends & Foundation of the S.F. Public Library $858,082
11. California Academy of Sciences $818,154
12. Residential Builders Association of S.F. $753,857
13. Steven Castleman $665,254
14. S.F. Association of Realtors $647,299
15. S.F. Chamber of Commerce $614,824
16. SEIU United Health Care Workers West & Local 250 $585,937
17. Gap, Inc. $573,959
18. California Issues PAC $556,238
19. Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums $541,474
20. Wells Fargo $464,899
21. Building Owners & Managers Association of S.F. $464,027
22. Bank of America $429,316
23. Golden Gate Restaurant Association $422,685
24. SF SOS $407,491
25. AT&T Inc. and affiliates $404,704
26. Clear Channel $391,783
27. Charles R. Schwab (individual) $362,250
28. Yellow Cab Cooperative $344,907
29. S.F. Apartment Association $280,376
30. San Franciscans for Sensible Government PAC $279,009

Tomorrow’s Supes meeting: next round on special election

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By Rebecca Bowe

As expected, Mayor Gavin Newsom has vetoed an ordinance approved on Jan. 27 by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors modifying regular election procedures in order to pave the way for a special election to be held on June 2. The election would give voters an opportunity to decide on a number of tax measures that could raise city revenues in the face of a looming $576 million city budget deficit for the 2009-10 fiscal year.

“I understand the argument that revenue measures passed in June will bring in funding sooner than measures passed in November,” the mayor wrote in a letter explaining his decision. “However, if new tax and revenue measures put on the ballot in June do not pass due to a lack of unified support and planning, not only will the City incur the significant expense of a $3.5 million election, it will also critically damage our chances for success in November.”

Parents and youth advocates up in arms over budget cuts

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By Rebecca Bowe

Representatives from a host of youth-services organizations gathered on the steps of San Francisco city hall Thursday afternoon to sound off on proposed budget cuts to the Department of Children, Youth and their Families. DCYF faces a proposed $11 million in cuts for the 2009-10 fiscal year, according to NTanya Lee, executive director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. Add to that cuts to juvenile probation and Human Services Agency programs, and the total annual reductions to youth-related causes could be some $15 million, Lee estimates.

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“This is the worst we’ve seen it in our entire organization’s history,” said Lee, whose nonprofit organization has been speaking up for kids on budget issues for 30 years. DCYF is hardly the only city department facing funding reductions: To address a staggering $576 million budget deficit for the 2009-10 fiscal year, the mayor has asked all city departments to find ways to dramatically reduce spending. But in the case of DCYF, the announcement of funding reductions came as a second blow. Mayor Gavin Newsom’s firing of former DCYF Director Margaret Brodkin, who was widely respected for expanding the department’s services to reach more kids and especially disadvantaged children, recently drew the ire of youth advocates.

A 20-foot high controversy

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By Rebecca Bowe

At the Feb. 3 Board of Supervisors meeting, District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly expressed disgust at what he called “pay-to-play politics” and charged that Mayor Gavin Newsom had insisted upon a 20-foot height extension for the proposed redevelopment of the New Mission Theater as a favor to a developer who’d given him a political boost.

“At the very least, there is a massive and unprecedented appearance of impropriety and I think ethical malfeasance,” Daly told his colleagues. Before the meeting, he handed out photocopies of a blog post he’d written to back up his argument.

Nathan Ballard, Mayor Newsom’s press secretary, refuted Daly’s claim. “If the legislation had gone forward, the project would have been killed,” Ballard wrote in an email to the Guardian. “We reject Supervisor Daly’s false allegations. The Mayor made his decision, as he always does, on the merits alone.”

June 2 special election gets a green light

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By Rebecca Bowe

On Feb. 3, the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to adopt a resolution calling for a municipal special election on June 2, setting the stage for an epic ballot battle over budget choices.

With Supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd dissenting, the board approved the election, which will ask voters to decide on new tax measures in an effort to raise city revenues.

The election was proposed as a partial solution to the city’s looming $576 million budget deficit for the 2009-10 fiscal year, which Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi described as a “tsunami … that the city is being hit by.” The cuts will deliver painful blows across the board, affecting citywide health and human service programs in particular. At last week’s meeting, hundreds turned out to express concern about how deep cuts will leave some of the city’s most vulnerable populations at risk.

Without a net

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› news@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors heard more than four hours of public comment at its Jan. 27 meeting, as hundreds of labor representatives, public-health workers, homeless advocates, hospital staffers, and others crowded into the board chambers to sound off on the deep budget cuts that many charged would leave they city’s critical-services safety net in shreds.

The message was chilling.

On the ground, the budget cuts Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing translate into staggering losses in services that segments of the city’s most disadvantaged populations rely on. Among those who will lose their jobs: some San Francisco General Hospital staffers who are trained to watch the cardiac monitors. "They are the first responders when someone goes into cardiac arrest," nurse Leslie Harrison told the board during public comment. "This is a life and death job — literally."

The Huckleberry House, which was established in 1967 and provides assistance to more than 7,000 homeless youth each year, may face closure.

Homeless shelters are already being forced to turn away two out of three clients seeking a bed due to lack of space, according to Coalition on Homelessness Executive Director Jennifer Friedenbach.

Demand for hot meals from the St. James Infirmary, a clinic for uninsured sex workers, has tripled since the onset of the recession, Executive Director Naomi Akres told the Guardian. As a result of the cuts, the clinic will lose its ability to continue either the food program or an outreach program that aims to get people off the streets.

Other areas that face funding reductions, according to a tally of midyear reductions issued by the mayor’s office, include some programs that administer STD testing and HIV prevention services, the Adult Day Health programs at Laguna Honda Hospital, aid for foster care, and the Single Room Occupancy Collaborative (which assists low-income tenants living in dilapidated hotel rooms across the city). San Francisco’s Human Services Agency will lay off 67 staffers.

Of the $118 million in midyear cuts rolled out by the mayor’s office last December, some $46 million will be shed from health, human welfare, and neighborhood-development services.

The midyear reductions, which will begin to take effect Feb. 20, are aimed at addressing a steep drop-off in revenue for the 2008–09 fiscal year. Now, health and human services providers and others across the board are anxiously looking ahead to the next round of blows, which will be dealt to address a projected $576 million deficit for the 2009–10 fiscal year, which begins in July. That figure could be reduced to $461 million after budget cuts, according to Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda.

Newsom has known about the gravity of the current budget problem since late October, when City Controller Ben Rosenfield issued a memo projecting fiscal disaster. "Since the adoption of the budget in July, the City’s economic outlook has significantly worsened, particularly since the onset of the global financial market upheavals that began in September," the memo states. It goes on to predict a worst-case scenario of $125 million in tax-revenue shortfalls for the 2008–09 fiscal year.

Cuts in frontline services don’t have to be the only answer. Supervisor Chris Daly has introduced an alternative budget proposal, which includes reductions in funding for management positions, cuts in the city’s subsidy to the symphony, and a reduction in the size of the mayor’s press office in an effort to free up funds that could then be diverted back to critical services. "I don’t think any of the choices are good. There’s really only the lesser of the evil," Daly noted at the meeting.

The choices the city faces were described in clear terms. "I’m sorry to say it, but you have some tough decisions in front of you," Friedenbach told supervisors when it was her turn at the podium during public comment. "You have to choose between abused children, or the symphony. You have to choose whether you want to decimate the mental-health treatment system — or do you want to get rid of the newly hired managers since the hiring freeze? You have to decide whether you want to cut half of the substance-abuse treatment system — or do you want to create a new community justice center that will have nowhere to refer its defendants?" Rather than choose, however, supervisors voted 6–5 to send Daly’s alternative package back to the Budget and Finance Committee for further consideration. The swing vote was Board President David Chiu, who was elected president with the support of the progressive bloc.

Had Chiu voted for Daly’s alternative, it wouldn’t have mattered much — the mayor would almost certainly have vetoed it.

Eight supervisors — enough to override a veto — did demonstrate a willingness to move forward with a June special election. With Supervisors Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Carmen Chu dissenting, the board voted to waive deadlines that would have prevented new tax measures from being placed on a June 2 ballot.

Several different tax ideas are under discussion. According to a list of preliminary estimates calculated by the Office of the Controller, slight increases over the current rates of taxes levied on business registration, payroll, sales, hotel-room stays, commercial utility users, parking, property transfers, and Access Line fees together could bring the city an estimated $121.6 million per year.

Other proposals include creating parcel taxes for both residential and industrial property, gross-receipts taxes on rental income for commercial and residential properties, a local vehicle license fee, and a residential utility users tax. If all of those proposed new taxes were voted into effect, the city would have the potential to raise an additional $112.9 million.

The problem: under state law, unless the mayor and supervisors unanimously declare an emergency, any tax increase would require a two-thirds vote to pass.

Supervisor John Avalos voiced strong support for the special election. "I think that the people of this city are still grappling with the meaning of the crisis that we’re in," Avalos told his colleagues.

Avalos amended out the possible new parcel tax, increased parking tax, and utility-users taxes, and instead proposed two new revenue measures that could be added to the ballot: a vehicle-impact fee, and "a possible new tax to discourage the consumption of energy that produces a large carbon footprint."

It won’t be easy to pass any of these proposals. Business interests are mobilizing against the very idea of a special election. In an e-mail newsletter distributed by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, a "call to action" urged supporters to contact Supervisors and voice opposition to the emergency election.

The language in the Chamber of Commerce message closely resembled that of Small Business California, which put out a message to the small-business community warning that higher taxes "would be the straw that breaks the already strained back of our local businesses, resulting in more layoffs and acceleration of our downward spiral."

Labor organizer Robert Haaland asked supervisors why they would be afraid of allowing voters to decide on the tax-revenue measures. A poll commissioned by his union, SEIU Local 1021, demonstrated that a significant portion of voters would rather raise revenues than allow vital services to disintegrate.

Even if new revenue is raised, Haaland told us, no one is under the illusion that there won’t be painful cuts. "Everyone’s going to feel some pain," he said. "It’s a question of how much pain."

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