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WTF?! Mayor Gavin Newsom shocks everyone by making a surprise “Bad News” visit to the Board.

Photos by Luke Thomas
Text by Sarah Phelan

For years, voters have been asking Mayor Gavin Newsom appear before the Board of Supervisors for monthly policy discussions. And for years, MGN has refused, claiming that such invites were “political theater.”

So, eyeballs understandably popped and jaws dropped when Newsom showed up at today’s Board meeting.
What could have possibly got the Mayor to come and talk to the Board?

A $576 million budget deficit, as it turns out. That’s almost half the City’s $1.2 billion in discretionary funds.

“That arguably makes it the most daunting crisis since the Great Depression,” Newsom observed.

But while the Mayor claimed he had come to the Board to “share the challenge”, he did not share copies of his proposed solution, until hours later at a press conference he did not attend. In other words, no one could ask the Mayor hard questions about his proposed plan in real time. And that was a tad frustrating.

The media try to make sense of the Mayor’s proposal as Dr. Mitch Katz talks about what it means for the City’s Public Health Department.

Instead, Newsom did what he seems to do best: he stood there, hair and nails immaculate, spouting numbers, percentages, and statistics about his package which he dubbed, ” $118 million in proposed mid-year solutions.”

Somehow,he didn’t get to the part about the 399 pink slips that will be sent to City workers on Friday, or the 313 vacant positions that will also be eliminated.

Those details were left to Controller Ben Rosenfield and Budget Director Nani Coloretti to share with the press, as we stood in the International Room, surrounded by glass cases filled with signed memorabilia from the likes of “Their Royal Highnesses” Prince Charles and his wife Camilla.

The Mayor’s “dream team” address media questions in the International Room,

It also fell lto the Mayor’s financial team to spell out that this mid-year proposal only addresses $100 million of the problem, meaning 2009-2010 will likely look four times worse.

Meanwhile, some supervisors were left wondering of there will there be any meaningful collaboration between Newsom and the Board, or whether it will take the form of the usual feral faction versus manicured tribe?

Sup. Chris Daly wonders aloud about “real collaboration.”

“We have the capacity, the ingenuity and the spirit to solve this,” Newsom told the Board, looking painfully alone as he stood in their chambers this afternoon.”It’s going to take all of us working together. It’s in that spirit that I am here..The mid-year solution–difficult and painful as it is–its he easy part. The difficult part comes in the next four months.”

His appearance was a good first step, but will he follow it up with regular monthly visits, so that the Board can engage him in policy discussions, as per their voters’ requests?

It looks as if the Board isn’t banking on it: Peskin and his fellow supervisors have put together their own package of solutions–an ordinance deappropriating $8.5 million in alternative cuts from the General Fund.

As one aide told me, “It’s important for the Board to set the stage now for the budget discussions in the Spring.”

But it would be great if there was a silver lining to the global crisis-in which the SF Board and Mayor started acting as equal partners in their efforts to save what they can from the economic wreckage.